I got to do an episode of the incredible Dork Forest Podcast with Jackie Kashian, whom I inundate with Labyrinth trivia. We also try to help her figure out the difference between David Bowie and Billy Idol. Jackie is a legend and I love her, I love Labyrinth, and I love all of you.
I have now watched Breakfast Club for my personal jillionth time. I still think it’s a movie that holds up over the years, but I have the following questions about the “Happy” ending.
1. Molly Ringwald is overjoyed to have started a relationship with a commitmentphobe alcoholic with rage problems, who screams and stabs desks with knives. Great. I don’t have to point out that every teenage girl who watches this film is in love with John Bender. Apparently, we want to spend our adult years in probation hearings and Al-Anon meetings. A girl who goes out with nerdy Brian has a life of high-end Silicon Valley condo-living ahead of her, and anyone who winds up with Andy will just watch him gain weight after he tears his ACL wrestling but continued to eat a bag of groceries at every meal.
2. Emilio Estevez winds up with a fantasist kleptomaniac pathological liar who showed up to detention because she had nothing better to do, which is like if I showed up at a prison to do time for no reason. He is also overjoyed.
2a. What, is that white shit she’s wearing supposed to be her underwear? She’s wearing frilly long johns underneath her outfit like she’s a Mormon? What is her hair tied back with, her panties?
First of all, let me say, I’m really excited to be joining your team of henchmen. When I saw the ad on Craigslist, I thought, this might be my path out of depression, self-destruction, and debt, and I get my own leather jumpsuit! I’m excited about backing you up when you show up places and make big pronouncements and call for the action of the Target so that we can lure him into a trap. I’m proud to be your muscle and your backup. You’re a big man, and I love being a part of the operation you’re building here. That being said, I want to clarify your expectations of me.
1. I’m a minor character, so I’m never going to be a sureshot.
If I’m shooting at your Target, I’m never going to so much as wing him. I’m a minor character. I am only ever referred to as HENCHMAN #2. I’m never gonna land anything, no matter how many hours I spend on the firing range. If I’m lucky, I’ll accidentally shoot another henchman and he’ll yell at me for comic effect.
2. If the Target seriously hurts me, I’m going to go seek medical attention, not fight him to the death.
I’m an hourly employee. I’m not going to risk my life on this shit. If I’m losing blood and fighting the Target on top of a collapsing tension bridge? I’m gonna get the fuck off the bridge and get some stitches and some painkillers and go home and watch The Voice.
I’m not your Mom. I’m not motivated by superhuman loyalty or revenge. I’m working for just over minimum wage. I don’t even get Medical, we’re all independent contractors because Aetna would be really curious about all the claims your henchmen make for being strangled and shot and burned and bitten by sharks. It’s not worth it. You didn’t know I loved The Voice? There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Work-life balance. Look it up.
3. Lastly, I’m human. I make mistakes. When I tell you that the Target has escaped and I honestly apologize and tell you it won’t happen again, don’t tell me you know it won’t and be creepily affectionate towards me (which I LOVE, I didn’t grow up with a Dad, obviously) and then kill me. I’m doing the best I fucking can. Your Target is an Oxford-educated international spy in constant contact with a support network keeping track of his every move and feeding him information. You know I didn’t even finish high school, man.
Thanks so much for reviewing this! Now, let’s get out there and build an evil empire!
So, I was out in the Catskills, and we made movies with our phones, and played with a dog, and sat around a campfire, and heard all about chemtrails. Thanks to everyone.
This is the film I made about the history of the campsite, Cold Spring Lodge.
Here is a post with all our movies, they make mine make a little more sense but not much more.
Thanks to all.
Thanks go to:
Thanks to Pony for teaching me the eternal optimism of the little dog at the dinner table.
Thanks to Lisa Beth Johnson for making me want to throw up by putting tinfoil in her own mouth, and also for lending Sofiya a dance dress
Thanks to Sofiya Alexandra for being my best girl, but reminding me that Todd is always around to steal my best girl
Thanks to Brandon Vaughn for letting me know I should never take him to Brunch, and for never being more than one moment from mentioning Wolverine or Anne Rice
Thanks to Dennis DiClaudio for filming my clown obsession projected from his own brain, and for teaching me that odes to gothgirls and sea shanties should both be waltzes
Thanks to Matt Tobey for his amazing acting and joke writing. Like, wow.
Thanks to Franky Pelvis for letting me sing A-Ha and Bowie and Pixies/JAMC with him, and letting me play his guitar when I whined about it, and in general for rocking
Thanks to Mike Wiebe for making me feel like a woman.
Thanks to Jason Roeder for teaching me to walk like a man.
Thanks to Josh Abraham for being me cameraman and wingman, and for drawing me as a drag Cruella De Vil.
Thanks to Todd Sentz for teaching me what it might be, after all
Thanks to Steve Douglass for helping me write the women’s lib porn that’s gonna set the industry on its ear.
Thanks to Ahm Seventysix for being the roommate who listens to the much cooler dead person, and for teaching me what a well-orchestrated look is.
Thanks to Darci Ratliff for your amazing work, games, Mad-Libs, organization, and for bringing us together.
Because this film is better than any book out this Summer, I’m going to review it for NPR as Summer Reading. Keep in mind that they did not ask me to, and if they had known that I was going to, would have asked me not to.
The Wolverine concerns itself with the big themes: heroes, loyalty, friendship, spanning the distance between cultures with sex and murder, honor, the loneliness of immortality, the natural world vs. the scientific, goth girls with swords, and giant robots.
Logan stands in for such iconic martyrs as St. Sebastian and an adamantium-clawed Jesus, rising from his (SPOILER ALERT) death on a Terminator 2 liquid metal table to battle evil.
Films about The Wolverine are often, by their very nature, about love — its presence or absence — and this one is no exception. The love that Wolverine shares with Jean Grey- that he loves her completely and forever, even after she has died, and despite the fact that he killed her, creates a blood-stained watermark for other romantic films to aspire to.
Also, in this film, Hugh Jackman got really, really super big, like, his head just sits on a triangle of meat that is his neck. This is just one thing that makes it a great film for the ladies, although in Origins: Wolverine, you got to see his Wolverinis.
This is the best book you’ll never read. The Wolverine. Do it.
Make A 
Guillermo Del Toro Film!
