The Jolly Green Rug

Most people have a rug in their home. I bet you do. But do you have a rug that is actually the footprint of a giant who suffers from an absurd amount of chlorophyll?

Probably not.

Don't feel bad, neither do I. But I feel pretty bad about it, so maybe you should, too.

Look at it:


It would be INSANELY cool to own even if it was just a REGULAR furry, green, foot shaped rug.

But this is a furry, green, JOLLY GREEN GIANT's foot shaped rug.

Think how jealous the neighbors would be! Plus, when the sad day comes that the family pooch dies, stick him under the rug and tell people: "Fido was squashed by the Jolly Green Giant."

It would be a great story.

This rug was a mail in premium from 1967.


It only cost a few bucks and a couple of labels from Jolly Green Giant food cans.

Such bliss for such a great price.

The Shaggy Dog: LIVE

I bet there were a whole bunch of people that had a chance to go to Woodstock, but didn't go.

BUDDY: Hey, wanna go see Woodstock?
SHEMP: Woodstock? The yellow bird from Snoopy?
BUDDY: No.
SHEMP: Then I'm not interested.

That guy probably spends every day thinking about how he missed it.

He had a chance to go to one of the most talked about shows of all time and he missed it.

I may have done the same thing this weekend.

I went to see The Shaggy Dog, Tim Allen's latest attempt to say "HEY! I used to be a drug dealer, but now I am a role model to your kids."

Robert Downey Jr. is along for the ride in this flick, but your kids won't look up to him.

He's really short.

By the way, here is a picture of Tim Allen's mug shot from his cocaine arrest in 1978:


He spent the next 30 months in jail.

Tim has also been arrested for drunk driving in 1997. He didn't have a silly mustache in 1997, so I am not interested in seeing any photos from that arrest.

Anyway, I saw the film.

But, I saw it at a multiplex.

I did not see it at Disney's El Capitain Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

I love the El Capitain (I know, saying "The El Capitain" is like saying "the the captain" or "el the captain.")

The theater is ALWAYS a great place to see ANY film, but their showing of The Shaggy Dog might just be the greatest single theater experience of all time.

Take a look at the advertisement:



See! "Shaggy" go onstage and does tricks before the show! Isn't that awesome??!??!?

He carries flowers, catches a Frisbee, dances and appears to give a "black power" salute by raising his paw in the air.

Isn't that cute?

I look around at the multiplex and saw NOTHING like this. There was a fat guy there who MIGHT have been wearing Tim Allen's old mustache.

He did let me call it "Shaggy" when I asked him. But he got really mad at me when I threw a Frisbee at his nose.

myheritage.com

I know that people found many ways to waste time BEFORE the Internet, but I bet it wasn't as much fun.

I recently stumbled across "myheritage.com" and I learned so much about myself.

The site allows you to put in a photo of yourself and they find a bunch of celebrities that look like you.

They explain WHY and HOW this works on the website, but it seemed a bit boring, so I jumped right in and uploaded a photo.

I started out by sending them my head shot. About 45 seconds later they presented me with the results.



Not bad! A 64% match with superstar Matt Dillon. Let's see who else kinda looks like me:



WOW! That guy I always confuse with Jeff Pullman! Plus Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park! Even matching David Arquette 62% is pretty damned cool.

Think about it. That means I could get into bed with Cortney Cox 48 TIMES BEFORE SHE NOTICED.

I think. I was never that great at math.

Here's the rest of my twins:


Let's see. Theres a guy who married a Spice Girl, one of the Brokeback Mountain guys, HOLY COW: Kurt friggin' Douglas! SPARTACUS, baby!

Wait a minute...

Rudy Giulaini?

Me, Heath, David and Kurt are deeply offended by the suggestion that we resemble Rudy.

We refuse to upload any of our photos anymore, myheritage.com.

So instead, here is Andre the Giant.



Hee hee hee! He looks like Kiefer!

How about an Andre ACTION FIGURE?


HA HA HA HA! Okay, myheritage.com, you have regained my love. Let's put the whole Giulaini thing behind us.

Here is one of my all time favorites: Me hanging out with Mr. T in August of 2005:


Mr. T looks like Bill Gates and I look like Wesley Snipes. You're mocking us, aren't you, myheritage.com?

HEY! Let me try Mr. T's head shot!

Oh, right. That was a big waste of 45 seconds.

I'll do just one more, a photo of Mr. T and I from back in 2002:



Alright, thats it. I hate you, myheritage.com.

I hate you so much.

Micheal Moore in "Lucky Numbers"

A few years ago I saw the movie Lucky Numbers. It was a quirky comedy starring Vinnie Barbarino, Al Bundy and the least attractive chick from "Friends."

Sorry, I didn't watch "Friends" too much, but I did get my hair cut like Jennifer Aniston back in the early 1990s.

I got swept up in Rachael-Mania.

Anyway, this gaggle of television stars were assembled to tell the story of the people that rigged the Pennsylvania Lottery back in 1980.

The film strays quite a bit from the true story, but the basic plot of both is as follows:

A local TV personality conspires with others to fix the lottery. They do so by injecting numbered ping pong balls with paint to weigh them down. They then switched the "fixed" balls with the official ones; and switched back after the drawing.

In real life, the announcer was Rick Perry. He was caught and sent to jail.

In the movie, the announcer was John Travolta. He got away with the lottery fix, but went on to make a long string of box office duds including: Basic, Swordfish, The Punisher, A Love Song for Bobby Long and Be Cool.

Hmmm, "jail" or The Punisher? I guess jail is a LITTLE worse.

I saw Lucky Numbers when it was in theaters back in 2000. I liked it, and found a used copy of the DVD and watched it again. After that I put on the director's commentary track. About 30 minute in, the lackluster Nora Ephron voice track revealed something very interesting:

Micheal Moore was in this film.

At this point I had seen a couple of his documentaries and was pretty familiar with him.

I certainly wouldn't say I was a fan, but I enjoyed some of his work.

I have since learned a dirty little secret about Micheal Moore's films that makes them seem less impressive; he actually shoots very little of his films. What he does instead is purchase footage from outside sources (ie. cable news networks, other documentaries) and COMPILE a film.

I took away a bit of the mystique of the "muckraking journalist digging deep to find the truth" and becomes "guy taping a lot of CNN and showing you a highlight reel."

Regardless of what you think of Micheal Moore as a filmmaker, what I found interesting was that he was A REALLY GOOD ACTOR!



He was so good that I didn't recognize him. It's hard to believe looking at the film today, but at the time he was not AS familiar a face on TV. Plus he had gained a whole lot of weight since his big hit Roger & Me.

I didn't expect to see him in the film, but that is NOT the main reason I didn't recognize him.

The main reason was because he really BECAME the character.

In the film he played Walter, Lisa Kudrow's perverted, asthmatic cousin.

He's really funny in the part and is one of the brightest spots in a very funny film.

If only I get a chance to see Bill O'Reilly share the screen with Cheech Marin and Kirstie Alley, my life will be complete.

The Insane Clown Posse's Bowling Balls

This is an odd little DVD, and I am so glad I found it. It's a 20 minute 3D film called Bowling Balls starring the Insane Clown Posse.

The ICP are a rap duo who have wrestled in the ECW, WCW and the WWE. They also put out a hysterical film called Big Money Hustlas that I should really review one of these days.

Bowling Balls is released as a bonus DVD inside the 2004 CD "Hell's Pit." I love 3D movies and I like ICP, but I had not even heard about this until the other day.

How did I live without it?

The DVD contains two versions of the film (3D and 2D) and is a long music video, like Thriller.

The film starts out with two pretty girls driving a beat up truck into Shaggy 2 Dope (one half of the ICP.)



An injured Shaggy walks off into the woods and the girls call for help.

Then the other half, Violent J shows up.



J offers to let them wait inside his 'bed and breakfast' until their friends get there to help.

He also botches a line about "lemonny-lemonny-lemonade" and keeps going.

Then the camera goes out of focus and they keep going.

Then Shaggy cuts one of the girl's head's off.



Look at that photo closely. If you have 3D glasses put 'em on. Then, in 3D you can see a crew member ducking at the bottom of the frame.

Hi crew member!

Still, the movie moves on. I read that the whole film was shot in 6 days and it kinda looks like it. Of course that's part of the charm.

Speaking of charming, another pretty girl shows up with two wacky horror movie stereotypes. One guy is a pothead, the other a jock.

Actually, I think the white guy was both a pothead and a jock. I don't remember what stereotypical horror character the black guy was.

WAIT! "The black guy" is a horror stereotype, too. He's the one who tries to be tougher than the killer and talks trash... then gets killed.

However, I don't think this guy fit that THAT mold.

Of course most horror films have the stereotype of the "old black guy" he gives sage advice that no one follows.

That was this guy, except the "old" part.



Every few minutes the movie is put on hold so they can show some of the "music video."

The song "Bowling Balls" is about collecting decapitated heads. They call the heads "bowling balls." The song is one of those songs that seems 'just OK' at first but is so catchy it gets stuck in you head for days.

Believe me. It's stuck in there RIGHT now.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil the whole film so I will just mention two scenes.

One involved a guy eating watermelon:


In perhaps the biggest disappointment in film history he DOESN'T spit seeds at the camera IN 3D!

Another scene features a gory decapitation that goes on forever. Here is a rundown.

18:11 Throat gets slit
18:19 Hacking at neck causes decapitation
18:21 Blood oozes, scene becomes very gross
18:27 Still hacking at the head, scene goes from 'gross' to 'absurd'
18:33 Music gets more intense, hacking continues and the scene goes from 'absurd' to 'hysterical'
18:38 Scene ends...
18:40 False alarm, still hacking at the head and neck, scene goes from 'hysterical' to 'down right ridiculous'
18:53 The funniest decapitation scene in the history of film (or at least 20 minute videos that are kind of like films) ends.

BOTTOM LINE:
This is one of the best examples of anaglyph (red and blue) 3D I have ever seen. The picture is sharp and the appearance of depth is very convincing. Also, since it is so short, you don't get the headache that 3D sometimes gives people during a full length film.

The movie features some great death scenes and is really funny. I highly recommend it.

Twas High Winds and Poor Construction that Killed the Beast

The year was 1983 and King Kong was set for a comeback. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the big ape picture, Robert Keith & Company of San Diego created a ten-story inflatable Kong. The balloon weighed 3,000 pounds and stood 84 feet tall.

That means he was 30 feet taller than Kong was in the film.

The much hyped stunt was designed to promote an RCA video disc. RCA video disc's were the main rivals to the LaserDisk format. This format was also known as SelectaVision. It wasn't that successful, but it did produce the "first movie distributed for home viewing systems in the widescreen format.

That flick was a 1973 Italian picture called Amarcord and featured a scene where a woman killed a teenage boy by smothering him with her large boobs.

Sadly, that release was not as hyped as King Kong. It would have been fascinating to see a giant pair of boobs hanging over New York City.

Anyway, the giant King Kong balloon was going to be displayed from April 7-15 1983. In fact, they had talked about keeping it up longer if possible.

So on April 7th, six workers tried to inflate Kong.

They couldn't.

They tried again and again but could not get things to work out.

On April 9th the workers spent a windy and rainy evening trying to inflate him but a gust of wind made a 4 foot tear across his neck. So, they tied him to to the building and called it a night.

On the 10th they worked on repairing him and finally got King Kong up and inflated by April 13th.



He did look cool, but the whole thing had become a bit of an embarrassing joke at this point.

Still, he was up and inflated, the SelectaVision video disc was selling like... uh... a popular SelectaVision title usually sold.

Plus visitors to the Empire State Building were able to view a selection of memorabilia from the film.

Finally, things were going well for King Kong.

The next day, April 14th another 100 mph gust of wind tore a FIFTEEN FOOT hole in Kong. He flapped around like a garbage bag for two days and then they took him down.

In the end, King Kong was on the building AND inflated for just ONE day.