Who knew Snoopy was a plagiarist?

Now is the time, and God knows this blog is the place, to celebrate bad writing. We at the Daily Marmoset would like to congratulate Dan McKay of Fargo, ND, the 2005 Grand Prize winner of the 23rd annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest, hosted by San Jose State University, is the world's most famous competition for deliberately bad writing. The goal is to write the worst possible opening sentence for a novel.

Here is Mr. McKay's jewel of an entry:

"As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.''

The contest (which, by the way, has a highly entertaining website) is named for Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the 19th Century novelist who is mostly remembered for actually using "It was a dark and stormy night" as an opening line for one of his books. Kudos to McKay and all the other writers for their gloriously painful efforts.

Gee, that's swell

When Frau Skippy and I went to buy a few things from the Evil Empire last weekend, I made an impulse buy of two discount DVDs for a dollar. One of them was three episodes of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet". I'd never seen the show, but my wife (mein Frau, that is) had mentioned before that she had enjoyed the reruns as a kid, so I figured it would be a dollar's worth of entertainment.

NOTE: For those who don't know, "Ozzie and Harriet" used to be the longest-running sitcom in history, until the Simpsons recently broke their record. The four main characters were a real-life family as well as a TV family. The episodes on our DVD were from near the end of the show, when the sons Ricky and Dave were both grown up and married and had dragged their real-life wives into the show as TV wives.

Wow. The early 60s were a magical era. I would now like to share a few nuggets of wisdom I gained from my evening with the Nelsons:

• On any given day, only one member of a family is allowed to have a life. The others are required to hang out and have nothing better to do than whatever the Important Family Member asks of them.
• In the days before cell phones, nobody talked to anyone about anything. They just made plans and then changed them at will without noticing this would affect other people.
  
• Calling his wife to say hello is the most important thing a lawyer will ever do. Ever.
  
• If you hire your own wife, don't turn your back for a second, or else she'll sneak out to go buy groceries. Oh, those silly, useless women!
  
• Secretaries don't mind when you call them and ask them to come back from vacation a week early.
  
• Pleasantville was even funnier than I remembered.
  

The best line of dialogue on the whole DVD, which I will treasure forever, was as follows:

June (Dave's wife): I could fill in for your secretary. After all, I did work in your office before we got married, remember?
Dave: Of course I remember. But Honey, umm, well let's just say that it wasn't your typing skills I fell in love with.

I dare any man on Earth to say that to his wife and see how many of his original teeth are still there when he regains consciousness.

There. I have now given all of you the ancient wisdom of the Nelsons and saved 90 minutes of your lives. You're welcome.

cheers,
Skippy

ps- the other DVD I got was reruns of the 1954 TV version of Flash Gordon. Stay tuned...

Pop Quiz

POP QUIZ!!!!


GUY IN LEDERHOSEN!!!!!


A week before flying to Germany, one should acquire:

a) verification of registration with the State Department
b) one of those weird neck pillow thingies
c) chloroform, in case you're seated near a screaming baby
d) a middle ear infection

Okay, I don't know which one you should acquire. But guess which one I got?

But that's alright. I still have the other eardrum.

Don't worry, we won't.

"I don't want people walking out of a movie thinking I was trying to act..."
--Jessica Simpson, on playing Daisy Duke. (from IMDB)

Short and sweet

Er, sorry. that post from yesterday sort of got away from me. I'll be much more brief today.

First, in a final postscript to my recycling-crap-from-television rant, I saw in the news this morning that they're making a Smurfs movie, scheduled for release in 2008. The Smurfs will be made into a CGI movie, apparently in part due to the excitement over a Transformers movie that hasn't even been made yet. Oh goody, I can't wait. I wonder which will get a movie first, M.A.S.K. or C.O.P.S.?

Now please don't misunderstand me; I'm a product of the 80's and I have extremely fond memories of all those shows. Voltron, He-Man, Optimus Prime, Snake Eyes, and the rest probably had a far greater impact on my impressionable little marmoset brain than I'd care to admit. However, making these shows into a movie has been tried before, and I don't think thats a road we want to go down again. Mark my words: here begins a chain of events that will not end until they reach the absolute dregs of the 80's cartoon barrel.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I also see that in two consecutive days we have lost William Westmoreland and Scotty. Those are two names I never expected to use in the same sentence.

Nothing new under the sun...

I keep hearing in the news about how Hollywood is having such a rough year, and their profits are way down compared to last year.

Poor Hollywood.

Since I'm such a nice guy, I'll give them a little hint why fewer people are going to the movies this summer: we've already seen them. I wouldn't think this was a difficult thing to realize, but then again, this is Hollywood we're talking about, the same people who thought that this was a good time for a movie about a terrorist superhero. So, let me spell this out for them a little better.

Here, in no special order, is a list of popular movies that have come out in recent months, or are scheduled to come out soon:

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - a remake of the beloved 1970's Gene Wilder movie.
• The Longest Yard - a remake of the beloved-by-some 1970s Burt Reynolds movie.
  
• Bad News Bears - a remake of the somewhat less beloved (but still funny) 1970's Walter Matthau movie.
• The Honeymooners - a remake of the beloved 1950s TV show.
  
• Bewitched - a remake of the beloved 1960s TV show.
• Dukes of Hazzard - a remake of the beloved 1970s TV show.
• Aeon Flux - a remake of the hideously bad 1990s animated TV show.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - a remake of the beloved Douglas Adams novel, created in 1979.
  
• Fantastic Four - a remake of the beloved Stan Lee comic book, created in 1961.
• Batman Begins - a remake of he beloved Bob Kane comic book, created in 1939.
  
• War of the Worlds - a remake of the beloved H.G. Wells novel, created in 1898.
  

See a pattern in there?

That, dear Hollywood, is the problem; I don't want to see the Bad News Bears or the Honeymooners or War of the Worlds because I've already seen/read them. Ok, I mostly don't want to see Honeymooners because it has Cedric the Entertainer in it, but you get my point.

In all fairness, this is not to say that the originals were all that great. The infamous "tunnel scene" from the original Chocolate Factory scarred countless children for life (including me), and whoever put that in that movie should be shot. And it should be noted that there is absolutely nothing wrong with reusing a good idea, if it's done properly. No matter how old he is, Batman is a great character, and Batman Begins is a great movie. After all, the Lord of the Rings was based on an extremely beloved series of books, and the movies were amazing.

But here's the thing. That was LORD OF THE RINGS, not Dukes of Hazzard. One is taking a great book and making it into a comparably good movie; the other is recycling crap for lack of a better idea. Hollywood has officially run out of ideas, so they are digging through their neighbor Television's trash can.

This can lead to dangerously bad decisions. The Wachowski Brothers (aka the Matrix guys) are releasing their new movie "V for Vendetta" in November. Based (however loosely) on the famous graphic novel by Alan Moore, it's the story of a brilliant but deranged anarchist, known only as "V", who takes on an evil totalitarian government and brings it to its knees. The problem is that V is an insane terrorist who, among other things, blows up half of London. Even setting aside the unfortunate resemblance to the recent terrorist attacks, who in their right mind thinks this is the time for a bomb-throwing, police-killing, lunatic "hero" who devotes his life to creating chaos?

So, if the Powers That Be want to keep recycling old crap from television because they are too lazy to invent their own, so be it. But to help them out, here are a few of my suggestions for shows they should rehash into new movies:

Smokey and the Bandit - Why not? Judging from Dukes of Hazzard and The Longest Yard, Burt Reynolds must be really hard up for money anyway.

Happy Days - Turn the Fonz into a badass biker dude who terrifies the townfolk.

Mister Ed - Everybody loves talking animals with irritating theme songs. Don't they?

Namor, the Sub-Mariner - While Marvel Comics is eternally reaching ever farther into their barrel of characters for movies, why not Namor? He's like Aquaman with a bad haircut and anger management issues, and he was really popular once (circa 1940). Oh wait, apparently they're already working on that one.

Oh my God. It's even worse than I thought...

Enter the Marmosets

Hello, and welcome to the Daily Marmoset. Why, you might be wondering, is this thing named the Daily Marmoset? Well, two reasons, really:

1. Marmosets are awesome. Seriously, look at the photo in the post below.
   
2. All the good names were taken.

It's a crime that the "Keepers of the Cheese" went to a website that's actually about cheese. Ren and Stimpy fans everywhere weep in despair.

So, umm, yeah. I guess you also might want to know what exactly this site is, huh? Well, I'd tell you, but I'm not so sure myself. Mostly it's two guys who wanted to take a crack at this newfangled Internet thingy. What happens next, I suppose, is that we're going to write some stuff that interests us, and with any luck other people will like it too. If they don't then at least we have an easier way of communicating with each other, being in different states and all.

That's all I got. Have a good one, and thank you for shopping at the Daily Marmoset.

What's in a name?

As Hurricane Dennis peters out, I find myself wondering: why do we name hurricanes, anyway? And it’s not necessarily that I have a problem with giving a natural occurrence a human name, but why only hurricanes? Are tornadoes not “human” enough?
So I got to thinking, and I decided that we should name more crap. Here are a few examples. (Feel free to provide your own.)

“Hailstorm Harry sure screwed up my car.”

“I had every intention of coming to the party, until I ran into Dysentery Stu.”

“Just wait ‘til Broken Arm Leroy is gone, and then your ass is mine.”

Welcome to the Marmoset

And The Marmoset was born. And it was good.