Friends and readers …
Throughout this building process, many people, including Shauna and I, have joked about the project being hard on our marriage.“ If the marriage survives, we’ll end up with a beautiful home”, I have quipped more than once. The truth is, Shauna has been a wonderful partner in all of this, and we continue to share a unique vision for this dream home which is now more than half completed. But we both realize that it is now “crunch time”, when we will need to be even more focused on completing this home as we’d imagined it to be. If I value my marriage, which I do, then I must basically give up anything unrelated to the house indefinitely. Much as I love to write this report weekly, I find we are too busy and distracted now for me to indulge in this selfish writing exercise. For the next several weeks, I’ll be playing some of my favorite reruns; reports that 99 per cent of you have never read. Remember, I’ve written over 600 of these things since 1992. For any of you who do read the report, I thank you for indulging me, and hope you will still be tuning in to my miscellaneous grumblings for years to come. Without further ado, here’s an oldie but goodie …
The Oppenheimer Report 6/6/99 –
We have a movie dilemma tonight ... I want to watch Attack of the Killer Shrews, but my wife wants to watch “Night of the Twisters.” Tough call. I’ve been flipping back and forth between the two movies and I have to say, the killer shrew movie looks pretty good. I came in late, but it seems these four guys and one woman are stranded on this island which is inhabited by a bunch of giant mutant shrew things with poisonous saliva and mambo hooked canines that are about three times as long as their pointy snouts. They used to be tiny like mice but, as so often happens in these movies, someone screwed up in the laboratory, and before you know it, you’ve got giant mutant flesh-eating rodents surrounding your island, multiplying like rabbits. Oops. As if this isn’t enough plot to chew on, there is even a romantic sub-plot thrown in, for comic relief. The killer tornado movie would be OK, but it’s on the Family Network. For me, this is the kiss of death. How can I expect to see a cow flung into a light standard at three hundred miles per hour and sliced in half, or any of the other bizarre violence caused by tornadoes, on a network which regularly shows Dean Jones movies and reruns of Lassie. Lassie would never let a cow die like that. On MY score card it=s tornado movie - 0, shrew movie - 1. Of course, my wife will make the shrew movie unwatchable with her cries of disgust and disapproval, so I guess we’re watching the stupid, sanitized, Mickey Mouse tornado movie.
Writer Joe Bob Briggs has (or had) a show called “Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Theater” in which he airs crappy movies, such as the afore-mentioned shrew flick, and he always begins each movie with a discussion about why that movie got the Joe Bob thumbs up or down. He had a rating system which essentially took two variables into consideration: breast count and body count. The number of naked breasts and/or dead bodies logged in a movie is directly proportional to Joe Bob’s enthusiasm about that movie. Obviously Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater had more of a guy following than a girl following. I love crappy movies, but to achieve the Jim Bob Oppenheimer seal of approval, the movie cannot just be bad; it must be atrocious.
One of my all time favorite crappy movies is a movie I saw years ago with my friend Bob. It’s called “Night of the Zombies”, and let’s face it, any movie with the word “zombie” in the title can’t be all bad. It began almost immediately with someone chowing down on someone else’s arm, and went downhill from there. Absolutely no attempt was made to establish any kind of a plot, theme, or even temporal continuity. This film did not pretend to be “about” anything; it was simply a film of people tearing the flesh off other people’s bodies and eating it. What was particularly bizarre about this monumentally awful film was that, dubbed in at completely inappropriate moments, were 1-2 minute clips of nature scenes. One minute we were watching some screaming victim with a baseball bat, beating off a blood-soaked zombie who was trying to eat his leg, and then suddenly, we’re watching a flock of Canadian geese flying out of a marsh. This went on throughout the movie, and seriously eroded the continuity of the film. Marlin Perkins might have enjoyed it, but for Jim Bob the film critic, this flaw knocked a perfect “ten” down to a dubious “eight.” Anyhow, I’ve got to go now, this tornado movie is picking up ... an old lady was just flung two hundred yards into a stack of hay. There haven’t been any naked breasts, and only one person has died so far, but I’ll take what I can get. It’s certainly no shrew movie.
- Jamie Oppenheimer
Throughout this building process, many people, including Shauna and I, have joked about the project being hard on our marriage.“ If the marriage survives, we’ll end up with a beautiful home”, I have quipped more than once. The truth is, Shauna has been a wonderful partner in all of this, and we continue to share a unique vision for this dream home which is now more than half completed. But we both realize that it is now “crunch time”, when we will need to be even more focused on completing this home as we’d imagined it to be. If I value my marriage, which I do, then I must basically give up anything unrelated to the house indefinitely. Much as I love to write this report weekly, I find we are too busy and distracted now for me to indulge in this selfish writing exercise. For the next several weeks, I’ll be playing some of my favorite reruns; reports that 99 per cent of you have never read. Remember, I’ve written over 600 of these things since 1992. For any of you who do read the report, I thank you for indulging me, and hope you will still be tuning in to my miscellaneous grumblings for years to come. Without further ado, here’s an oldie but goodie …
The Oppenheimer Report 6/6/99 –
We have a movie dilemma tonight ... I want to watch Attack of the Killer Shrews, but my wife wants to watch “Night of the Twisters.” Tough call. I’ve been flipping back and forth between the two movies and I have to say, the killer shrew movie looks pretty good. I came in late, but it seems these four guys and one woman are stranded on this island which is inhabited by a bunch of giant mutant shrew things with poisonous saliva and mambo hooked canines that are about three times as long as their pointy snouts. They used to be tiny like mice but, as so often happens in these movies, someone screwed up in the laboratory, and before you know it, you’ve got giant mutant flesh-eating rodents surrounding your island, multiplying like rabbits. Oops. As if this isn’t enough plot to chew on, there is even a romantic sub-plot thrown in, for comic relief. The killer tornado movie would be OK, but it’s on the Family Network. For me, this is the kiss of death. How can I expect to see a cow flung into a light standard at three hundred miles per hour and sliced in half, or any of the other bizarre violence caused by tornadoes, on a network which regularly shows Dean Jones movies and reruns of Lassie. Lassie would never let a cow die like that. On MY score card it=s tornado movie - 0, shrew movie - 1. Of course, my wife will make the shrew movie unwatchable with her cries of disgust and disapproval, so I guess we’re watching the stupid, sanitized, Mickey Mouse tornado movie.
Writer Joe Bob Briggs has (or had) a show called “Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Theater” in which he airs crappy movies, such as the afore-mentioned shrew flick, and he always begins each movie with a discussion about why that movie got the Joe Bob thumbs up or down. He had a rating system which essentially took two variables into consideration: breast count and body count. The number of naked breasts and/or dead bodies logged in a movie is directly proportional to Joe Bob’s enthusiasm about that movie. Obviously Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater had more of a guy following than a girl following. I love crappy movies, but to achieve the Jim Bob Oppenheimer seal of approval, the movie cannot just be bad; it must be atrocious.
One of my all time favorite crappy movies is a movie I saw years ago with my friend Bob. It’s called “Night of the Zombies”, and let’s face it, any movie with the word “zombie” in the title can’t be all bad. It began almost immediately with someone chowing down on someone else’s arm, and went downhill from there. Absolutely no attempt was made to establish any kind of a plot, theme, or even temporal continuity. This film did not pretend to be “about” anything; it was simply a film of people tearing the flesh off other people’s bodies and eating it. What was particularly bizarre about this monumentally awful film was that, dubbed in at completely inappropriate moments, were 1-2 minute clips of nature scenes. One minute we were watching some screaming victim with a baseball bat, beating off a blood-soaked zombie who was trying to eat his leg, and then suddenly, we’re watching a flock of Canadian geese flying out of a marsh. This went on throughout the movie, and seriously eroded the continuity of the film. Marlin Perkins might have enjoyed it, but for Jim Bob the film critic, this flaw knocked a perfect “ten” down to a dubious “eight.” Anyhow, I’ve got to go now, this tornado movie is picking up ... an old lady was just flung two hundred yards into a stack of hay. There haven’t been any naked breasts, and only one person has died so far, but I’ll take what I can get. It’s certainly no shrew movie.
- Jamie Oppenheimer
2 comments:
you've go to do what you have to do:(
But I'm sure it's for the best.
Hey I read that report already...or maybe not...but the zombie thing is a good appetite suppressant. urgh.
Jasper Bark Lodge obviously has nothing on the Hearst Mansion. Can't wait to see the finished photos!
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