Ridiculous Movie Titles

As a result of a couple really ridiculously titled movies I’ve reviewed recently (namely, the top two in the list), I decided to put together a list of some of my favorite ridiculous movie titles. It’s not a ranking and it’s sure as hell not a quality judgment, but I’ve only listed movies that I’ve actually seen. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but here we are.

SURRENDER—HELL!: Nothing’s better than punctuating your title with an exclamation point. Never has there been a title more fun to yell out. This is the worst kind of ‘50s jingoistic war film.

NUDE FOR SATAN: If you’re looking for nudity and Satanism, do you really need to go farther?

TORSO, OR THE CORPSE SHOWED EVIDENCE OF CARNAL VIOLENCE: Torso is the English language equivalent of the Italian I Corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale. I prefer the more descriptive original title for this ‘80s slasher flick but, with the English, you at least know where people are getting stabbed.

THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES: Ray Dennis Steckler is one of the true kings of Z-grade films. The title became even more ridiculous than its original, The Incredibly Strange Creatures: Or How I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-Up Zombie, after Columbia’s threat of a lawsuit. Steckler stars in the film under one of the all-time great pseudonyms: Cash Flagg.

THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT: Vietnam vets rearm themselves to battle hippy cultists. This anti-hippy Straw Dogs finishes with a man being impaled on a motorcycle...awesome.

FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY: This comes close to the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but there’s always Titanic. A Bond parody from the Philippines, it features little 003 ½ crack midget spy and ladies’ man. Really, without seeing it, there’s no explaining how insane this movie is.

EVEN DWARVES STARTED SMALL: The one film on the list I will defend on its merits and the second straight film to feature little people, this early Werner Herzog allegory is only the second all dwarf cast in film history. If I remember correctly, Erik really hates this movie, which clearly raises the quality a couple of notches.

YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY: A pretty standard, and fairly decent, giallo film from Sergio Martino, who also made the above Torso, based heavily on Poe’s “The Black Cat.”

JESUS CHRIST: VAMPIRE HUNTER: The cover for the DVD of this film features Jesus with wrestler El Santo doing karate. Indeed, the movie fulfills this promise as Jesus returns to protect the lesbian community of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, from vampires. A true modern classic.

PORNO HOLOCAUST: In the early ‘80s, when the cannibal film was hot in Italy, Aristide Massacessi (aka, Joe D’Amato) decided it would be a good idea to make one that included a couple of hardcore scenes. Brilliant idea for a brilliant movie, this is one of the most reprehensible films I’ve ever seen.

THE EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD: I’ve included a 10b here because this is almost the exact same movie as Porno Holocaust, only the brown people have put makeup on and are now flesh-eating zombies instead of flesh-eating natives. Massacessi covers all his bases here, zombies or cannibals, there’s something for everybody.

Historical Image of the Day

Poor House/Farm. Huron, South Dakota, 1913.

This image comes from a postcard of the time. Why someone would want a postcard of a poorhouse, I don't know. But there were postcards of basically everything back then, including lynchings. I should investigate this phenomenon further. I will when I have time, i.e., after I die.

Welcome to 1886!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 1886!!! Today, we are watching a freak show.

Look at the sights!!! The world's shortest man meets the world's leggiest woman!

That will be followed by some bear baiting and then opium for everyone! Before we start though, let me comb the large chunks of food out of my huge beard.

What's that? It's not 1886? It's 2008? Then why the hell is the New York Times reporting on the world's shortest man meeting the world's leggiest woman? And why do I have such a huge beard? Hmmm...it not being 1886, what explanation do I have for my Gilded Age bathing habits? Or my laudanum addiction? Or my hatred of eastern European ethnic groups?

Boy, do I have some explaining to do...

Oh, Mr. Schwartz, you are such an asshat

The story of the GOP delegate that was robbed of $50,000 by a beautiful woman who "drugged" him in a St. Paul hotel room has been making the rounds (see the Huffington Post). As the story goes, he invited the woman up to his hotel room during his stay for the convention, where she asked him to get undressed... after that he doesn't remember.

In any event, he reports that she stole about $50,000 of personal belongings.

What kind of asshat has $50,000 worth of personal belongings in his hotel room? What kind of personal belongings are worth a total of $50,000? Well...

The haul included a $30,000 watch, a $20,000 ring, a necklace valued at $5,000, earrings priced at $4,000 and a Prada belt valued at $1,000, police said.

First off all, this guy sounds like the biggest douchebag in the country. A $5,000 necklace? A $20,000 ring? That wasn't a wedding ring, either, the dude is single. Is a man that wears a $20,000 ring even remotely attractive?

Aside from the above evidence of asshattery, earlier in the week, he was interviewed randomly at the convention. His insights on foreign policy are especially illuminating.

"Less taxes and more war," he said, smiling. He said the U.S. should "bomb the hell" out of Iran because the country threatens Israel. Asked by the interviewer how America would pay for a military confrontation with Iran, he said the U.S. should take the country's resources. "We should plant a flag. Take the oil, take the money," he said. "We deserve reimbursement." He said an attack on Iran was needed to protect Israel, and he offered how it could be accomplished through "strategical airstrikes". "Hopefully, just bomb the hell out of them from the sky. No troops," he said.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you an asshat of the first order-- one dumb enough to get his rich ass robbed by a prostitute and committ the above statements to film. Bravo, asshat, bravo.

Teaching Foucault?

In the spring, I am teaching a class called "Food, Drugs, and Sex: Bodies and Environments in History." This will definitely be the most experimental course I have ever taught. I'm looking forward to it even though it also scares me. Basically, this is a course that centers the body in history and looks at what we put into our body and what comes out of it, showing how the human body both changes nature and is changed by the environment.

Part of the point of this class is for me to work out ideas of my own about bodies and nature, which is central to my own work, but which I have not dealt with a lot on a theoretical level.

Core to many of these ideas is Foucault. Did any of you deal with Foucault on the undergraduate level? If you did, would you recommend it for higher level undergraduates? Would I be crazy for doing so? I am not that excited by theory generally, but I need to deal with this myself.

The other issue with teaching a class with this title is that it could attract a lot of bozos and frat guys who think they can sit around talking about how much they like to fuck. Teaching some Foucault early on could drive these people out. So that's a point in its favor.

Thoughts?

A slight inaccuracy is a big deal when you have 500 million-plus viewers

It is hard to miss this headline on the yahoo home page today: “Big blunder part of wild loss” accompanied by a picture of rookie Eagles receiver, DeSean Jackson.

Now, there are at least two things incredibly wrong with that story (and not just because I’m an Eagles fan who watched her home team lose after leading for most of the 4th quarter).

1. On a day when Wall Street is tumbling and sending stocks reeling all over the world, a story about a rookie NFL player’s ego getting ahead of himself should not be the front page header on any site, though I must say this beats “how to find out if your man really likes you.” While forcing information down people’s throats is not good business or media strategy, journalism has to be able to do the delicate balance of offering relevant information to citizens while also satisfying its consumers (consumers and citizens being one and the same with very different tendencies). But a Yahoo! home page, which is uniquely positioned as a media source -- one that is incredibly hard to avoid regardless of whether you are checking your email, analyzing horoscopes or looking up a definition --- is the ideal platform to thrust important information on people without being guilty of the proverbial “hiding medicine in icecream” and I think giants like yahoo and google should be using their wide popularity to educate civilians.

2. The second reason why it’s wrong is that rookie wide receiver DeSean Jackson’s “bonehead move” as yahoo! calls it, while extremely asinine, had little to do with the Eagles’ loss itself. In the very next play, as the Yahoo! story goes on to explain, the ever-infallible Brian Westbrook covered the one yard needed to score the missed touchdown. There are many things that go right or wrong in a game, and any number of them are usually attributable to a loss, but articles such as these neither tell the whole story nor capture the excitement. There are times of course, when a game-changing or even season-changing mistake can occur, as with Tony Romo’s infamous botched snap in the NFC playoff round two years ago. Romo did have something similar for Eagles fans last night – a fumble that turned into a Philadelphia TD, turning the tide in favor of the birds. But it was a McNabb fumble in the last quarter, which might have cost Philly the game, though considering his flawless efficiency through most of it, it’s hard to place blame.

While football is unequivocally pleasing to the eye (be it a QB’s impeccably placed touchdown pass or the sight of his receiver rise with the ball and nestle it in his palms), often times we lesser mortals relive it last by reading the reviews and articles that follow on subsequent days and weeks. It would be a good idea for the media to do a better job of it.

Political violence from Mexico's drug cartels?

Last night someone threw some grenades into a plaza during Mexico's Independence celebrations in the capital city of Michoacán. The governor of Michoacán is claiming it was drug cartels. So far, 8 are dead and over 100 people are wounded, but the numbers or changing quickly. You can read more about it here or here (in English). If it does turn out to be related to organized crime, this would be the first time they have engaged in such an open attack on civilians, and during a symbolic political event. The consequences of this attack are likely to be pretty bad...

UPDATE 9/18/08: Just a quick update on these attacks. First, the number of dead is 7, not 8. There were a number of conflicting reports when I originally wrote the post. Second, it seems the attacks might be linked to the cartel, La Familia. I've read it might be related to different factions within the cartel that are fighting each other, or it may be a rival cartel that is striking at La Familia. La Familia has been attempting to spread its operations through Michoacán and Central Mexico, and may have pissed off some other cartel.

Why I Am Not a Cultural Anthropologist

From Kay Warren's Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala. From what I understand, a well-respected book.

"That night I got quite drunk as I wrote my field notes. I felt I had been absorbed by a variant of the transforming-selves notion of personhood in Maya culture- which holds that the self is not stable or fully knowable. It appeared that I had been apprehended in a way that offered little chance for escape. How could I prove I was just myself, that there was nothing menacing to unmask?"

Oh boy. While I fully support getting drunk during both the research and writing processes, the navel-gazing self-reflection could be avoided. Not to mention the jargon.

Sure, I'm a historian and we are conservative on these matters. But can't academics just do their research without constantly thinking about their subjective position within the topics they work on?

Historical Image of the Day

Opium den, San Francisco's Chinatown, 1870s.

e-media is here

And you thought that happened several years ago, with the advent of the Internet. I mean a different kind of e-media: call it old media's answer to hyperlinks, RSS feeds, and all that good stuff that its technological cousin has to offer.

If I can’t quite (yet) wrap my arms around the idea of an electronic book, I must say my first taste of e-ink magazine technology is not looking very good. Esquire’s much-hyped e-ink cover came out last week and the reviews are in. Wired hated it, and Engadget loved it.

Gizmodo, like a good geek Web site merely stuck to dissecting the electronics behind it and didn’t offer an opinion.

I walked into a Barnes & Noble to take a quick glance, but there was no way I was going to purchase the over-priced magazine for a whopping $5.99. What's worse, as Wired reports, this "special collector's edition" is not being made available to regular subscribers who themselves will have to buy it at the newsstand price as opposed to the 50c they would pay otherwise. Apparently the production costs were up to 10$ per cover. As Chris Snyder notes, that’s anything but smart business strategy.

The cover has a rectangular plate of electronic paper inserted with a blinking caption that proclaims, "the 21st Century Begins Now." In case you had any doubt, this is pretty much the best way to reinforce it. This Esquire gig was just eye candy though, something to get people to go gaga over and others to write about (and make 6 bucks apiece while they're at it). This is in no way the ultimate productive use of e-technology: a blurb on the cover is not a commercial for electronic paper, it's something the traditional paper can do just as well! If Esquire were to have done this right, they might have tried it alongside a story or added dimension to an illustration.

Let’s hope that the first e-newspaper will be less disappointing, which is very close, thanks to Plastic Logic, which has unveiled its electronic newspaper reader: a letter-size, sleek device, capable of reading formats ranging from PDF to Word and Powerpoint. An Electronics Show in Vegas early next year will announce which newspapers will use Plastic Logic’s services.

Now that sounds more promising – for the unwieldy reading experience that is the newspaper with its folding and re-folding, uneven columns, split sentences, story jumps, running heads, and low-quality paper, technology might actually offer some comfort.

A magazine, on the other hand, needs little help. It's pretty fabulous as is.

Quick Message to Delta

Dear Delta,

If you don't want to make me angry, please don't use a song that starts with a woman saying "Hello" as part of your hold music. I don't really like saying hello back to a song and then feeling like an idiot.

Thanks!

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

Friday night, (in Claremont, CA, about 30 minutes west of where I live) the author David Foster Wallace committed suicide. The NYT has the obituary.

I first read A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again in college, and ended up reading a number of his works after that. Even if I ultimately didn't like everything I read of his, I always appreciated the technique, the sheer power of his virtuosic writing (I do disagree with the many people who thought Infinite Jest was in need of editing; to me, the sprawling, expansive length seemed almost necessary to the project as a whole). In any event, author deaths are always strange to me, especially under circumstances like this one.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the phrase "zeitgeisty buzz" in the Times article.

It Is Finished!

After two years, including having to start over when my computer died last year, I have finished putting all of my music on my computer. My last album, a Cross Canadian Ragweed and Robert Earl Keen mix a friend made me probably 6 years ago. The total amount of music: 16,287 songs adding up to 47.4 days. At best, this is probably an average-sized music collection for the people who write on this blog.

Historical Image of the Day

Contingent of Native Americans visiting John Collier, Secretary of the American Indian Defense Association (and later Commissioner of Indian Affairs), Mill Valley, CA, late 1920s

One Post, Multiple Sports

-I told Erik earlier this week that I had little hopes for the OSU (sorry - that's THE Ohio State University)/USC game, and even fewer hopes for another OSU title game appearance. I just didn't think they had as good a team as everybody seemed to think they might. With Beanie Wells out, I really thought OSU didn't stand much of a chance against USC. Still.....ouch.

-That said, if the Bucks couldn't win in Hell-A (see what I did there?), it's good to see that at least the Notre Dame won in the one annual game where I don't-totally-and-rabidly root against the Irish.

-And now to things that actually do matter to the universe. While it's impressive that Francisco Rodriguez set the record for saves, if the pitcher who leads the leagues in wins, ERA, win percentage, and is second in WHIP, complete games, and shutouts doesn't win the Cy Young, baseball writers will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they truly do not know what the hell they are doing (and yes, I'm biased and partial, but the Angels are going to the playoffs, wherease the Cy Young is all I've got to hang my happiness on. Oh, that, and the fact that the Yankees aren't going to the playoffs....ah, sweet, glorious, beautiful, fair, just life).

Remembering Machado de Assis's Death, Life, and Works

Earlier this year, I profiled the Brazilian author Machado de Assis, who is arguably the greatest writer in Portuguese ever and who died 100 years ago this month. In accordance with this centennial and his recent flourishing in English, the New York Times has an article up on Machado de Assis and his surgence (it's not really a "resurgence," given that he was never in vogue in English). It's an interesting read, though it doesn't offer anything amazingly new or groundbreaking (if I didn't know better, I'd say Rohter was ripping me off). If any readers are in New York this week, they should definitely check out the commemmorations of films and presentations. I can't attest to any of the films based on Machado de Assis's works. I can't really speak to the films based on his works, but I think the criticisms and challenges raised in the article are valid. To me, as strange as it sounds, I always felt Assis and Philip Roth were similar in that you could never really fully capture the essence and visions of their works on the big screen, because so much of it is so closely bound in their narrative voice and writing style, two things that simply do not get translated to film. Still, I can't say the movies are no good, and so anybody who can should check them out this week.

And it should go without saying, but, for God's or anybody else's sake, if you haven't read any Machado de Assis, get out there and get some to read. You won't be disappointed.

Change and Conflict in the Rural West

Software CEO Jeff Hawn bought a ranch near Fairplay, Colorado. Like many nouveau riche who have purchased rural estates in the West during the last 20 years, Hawn didn't understand what he was getting into. Specifically, he lacked understanding of the common conceptions of property in the West. Much of that area of Colorado is essentially open range. For you non-westerners out there, on the open range, livestock are unfenced and wander wherever they want. Hawn didn't like his neighbor's bison coming over to his property to graze. He considered his land "pristine." When it continued, he invited hunters to kill them. 32 were shot. Hawn is now being charged with 32 counts of animal cruelty.

We are seeing these kinds of conflicts all over the West. These rich urbanites are buying their dream homes in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and other western states. Then they find out that their neighbors have animals. Those animals smell. Sometimes they come onto your property. The neighbors have large farm machines. These are working people and they start that work early in the morning. You wake up at 5:30 am. You don't like that. So you try to organize other new residents against this, attempting to pass ordinances limiting animal usage, noise, and other nuisances. Of course, this makes your neighbors furious, dividing communities between old-timers and new residents.

The kind of jerkish behavior Hawn engaged in is not the only interesting bit about this story. I am also amused that he referred to his land as "pristine." What does Hawn mean by this? Does he really think animals have not grazed that land? Animals much more damaging than bison have been on that land for at least 120 years. The ecology of Colorado has been vastly changed by Europeans since their arrival. There is nothing "pristine" about the place. But these people building their starter castles in the forest have heavily romanticized these places. When their romantic vision clashes with the reality of working people, conflict ensues.

People like Hawn have deeply damaged these rural western communities. Property values have skyrocketed. Many ranchers, facing economic hard times, have split their ranches into small parcels that are then sold to rich baby boomers. These new residents demand urban amenities but don't want to pay the taxes to make that happen. They don't contribute to the fabric of the local communities, such as volunteer fire departments. If their home catches on fire, they want someone there immediately. But new residents don't want to serve in these rural communities, overtaxing the older residents and diminishing the ability of these institutions to be effective. They also are shocked when forest fires burn up their homes. They can't believe that firefighters don't protect their backyard. But when their backyard is a national forest, these things happen.

Essentially, you have thousands of people every year buying land in places that look pretty but which are also working and sometimes dangerous landscapes. People don't do any research to understand what life in the rural West is like. They have a romantic image in their minds and a very specific idea of property rights that don't always conform to the reality of West. This is a pretty extreme case, but conflicts like this are taking place throughout the West all the time.

It's pretty clear I think that my sympathies lay with the older residents, who understand the land they work on and respect that land, even if they don't always treat it that well. Nothing is worse for the land and for wildlife than these subdivided ranches where people have built homes every 1/4 mile. Working to keep properties together, whether as working ranches or as nature preserves is the best thing for the land and the people who live out there. Keeping second (or third or fourth) home buyers out, or at least forcing them to take a course in life in the rural West would also be a good thing for the environment and for the communities they want to live in.

The Most Compelling Reason to Fight Global Warming I Have Ever Heard

Studies suggest that global warming will lead to higher rates of kidney stones. Why? Increased deyhdration.

As a kidney stone survivor, let me tell you that I can think of no better reason to fight climate change than this. Wow, that sucked.

Via Treehugger.

Historical Image of the Day

Native American boarding school, circa 1900

Crazy Musical Statement

We haven't had any music discussions on here lately.

In response, let me declare that "Albuquerque" is Neil Young's best song.

Maybe I'm biased because I lived there. But it's a great song.

Also Tonight's the Night is his best album.

I'm probably the only person in the world who thinks these things.