The Oppenheimer Report - 4/25/16

Mom and Grampy

A little over 16 years ago I wrote this one ...

4-2-00 - This year’s Academy Awards ceremony has come and gone, and the best thing I can say about it is that Billy Crystal was funny for about twelve minutes. After that it was the usual, ridiculously long awards ceremony. “American Beauty” won the most awards, and that lady who played a man in a woman’s body in “Boys Don’t Cry” won for best female lead ... two films which again prove that one need not spend eighty million dollars to produce a winning movie. On that note,   I DID see part of “Bride of Chucky” the other night on The Movie Network, and why this movie was never nominated for an Oscar is a mystery to me. Here’s what I gleaned, from the twenty-five minutes I watched...

Chucky is a little plastic doll who somehow - and sadly, I did not see any of the previous Chucky masterpieces - had a malevolent human spirit transferred into his lifeless little body. He’s quite the little devil, with his mischievous expression, patchwork of facial scars, and diabolical habit of brutally slaughtering people. By the time I began watching the movie, Chucky had  already put a few notches on his belt. He was imprisoned in a cage by a very mean woman with whom he exhibited some kind of enigmatic, sado-masochistic  tension. The plot thickens when this caretaker buys Chucky a girl doll to be his bride. Spurned by this callous rejection, Chucky throws a hissy fit,  saws through the bars of his cage with his new doll bride’s wedding ring, then attacks his shedevil caretaker while she’s taking a bath. Though she puts up a pretty good fight,  Chucky prevails by throwing a live electrical appliance into the bathwater. Sparks fly, she  convulses, thrashes about, and finally, after a very entertaining fifteen or twenty second medley of blood-curdling death screams, she reluctantly expires.  Now the film really takes off. Chucky tries  unsuccessfully to transfer the shedevil’s malevolent spirit into the body of his plastic bride by uttering some ineffectual incantations, but not until he plucks the eyeballs out of the dead shedevil’s head and plugs them into the doll does the doll “become” the shedevil. The transformation is now  complete, and Chucky’s new bride “becomes” the personality of his now-expired and somewhat charred shedevil caretaker. Are you with me? Concurrently, the doll bride undergoes some cosmetic changes, which make her to look a like a Marilyn Manson fan. Chucky now has the love of his life, and off they go on their honeymoon of murder and mayhem.  B.O.C. proves to be infinitely more creative and even more devilishly homicidal than Chucky, and our hero realizes he has finally found his soul mate. The lovemaking scenes were, well, unique.

Usually, in these kinds of high school “slash and screw” movies, there are a series of violent murders, typically with a kitchen knife, pick ax, chainsaw, scissors, railroad spike, garden shears, or whatever other sharp pointy object is handy. That gets old fast. These little dolls are much more creative. My favorite murder scene involves Chucky’s bride and two of the more unsympathetic characters in the film. While the two characters are having sex, Chucky’s bride somehow causes the ceiling-mounted mirror over their waterbed to shatter, thus showering the two with cascading shards of broken glass. The piece de resistance is the Sam Peckinpah slow motion shot of the waterbed exploding in a maelstrom of bloody water, engulfing the two flailing victims. Kudos to the director of Bride of Chucky ... this one is a keeper.

You can take your Oscars and shove them where the sun don’t shine. I’ll take “Bride of Chucky”  over  “Snow Falling on Cedars” any day. There are so many good movies  I have yet to see.  For instance, “I Dismember Mama” or ANY of the “Hellraisers,” “C.H.U.D” (cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers), etc.,etc. ... there just aren’t enough hours in the day to see everything I want to see. Thank goodness for VCR’s!

 

And to the people who organize the Academy Awards ceremony ... next year, will you please give us the abridged version?  Nobody wants to sit through four hours of this tripe.                  

                      - Jamie Oppenheimer

The Oppenheimer Report 4-18-16

My sister Jill and I (circa 1959)

This is one of my earlier reports, back when it was called "The Hyman Report". It was written approximately two years after I began writing the weekly reports, and several months before I married Shauna. In those early years, I was a little more inclined to go for the cheap laugh. To follow is a prime example of my earliest attempts to write humor. As I said, because very few read these earliest reports, I wanted to reprise some of them now ...

THE HYMAN REPORT - 2/28/94 .....

Today's subject is soap operas, because I had the good fortune to watch almost an entire episode of one the other day. I think the one I watched was called "The Vain And The Bulimic" but there are a lot of other good ones too ... "The Vacuous And Without a Clue", "The Wretched And The Incontinent", "The Plump And The Flatulent", "The Inbred And Overpaid" ... and they all represent legitimate T.V. at its best. This is just a hunch, but I'll bet more women watch these shows than men. Then again, who knows.

 

I was watching with someone who not only knew what was going on, but actually tapes the show daily so as not to miss any of the car accidents, abortions, and disfiguring lover's quarrels ... there's at least one of these in every episode.

First, there's Rex - he's the leading man - who has porked just about every female on the show - and now, he's got illegitimate children running around marrying each other. Big problems. We're trying to get one of those marriages annulled right now but it's hard because they have to dig up the dead mother, one of Rex's ex's, to see if this really WAS one of his, or rather the son of one of the forty-two other men she slept with (she died having sex with #42  ... they made an episode out of it ... she vapor-locked aspirating a large piece of kielbasa during foreplay ... the scene took TEN minutes). Rex is also called "Mumbles" because he can't seem to annunciate. Frankly, I can't understand how he got the acting job in the first place, unless the script called for a mumbling, middle-aged stud with bushy eyebrows ... I have this image of women all over North America with their ears pinned to the T.V. because they can't understand what Mumbles is saying ... pearls of wisdom like, "I won't be able to live with myself if illegitimate daughter #2 marries illegitimate son #3! ... I'll have to fall off a balcony in a drunken stupor, or drive my car off a cliff, or drown in a whirlpool bath or something ..."  I forgot to mention, Mumbles is rich, and that's how rich guys die. In the soaps, they NEVER die choking on their own puke or shoveling snow. This bothers me.

Then, there's the baby who got stolen in the hospital by a woman who had it out for the mother, and I'm not sure why, but we still don't know who the father is, even though there are ten guys who say they are. The problem is, one of the men has just been diagnosed with leprosy, so we all hope it wasn't him. That baby has enough problems ... did I mention that the mother was a nun?

It's never a dull moment on the "Vain And The Bulimic". But as engrossing as this show is, I can't afford to get addicted to daytime T.V. First you start off watching one, then you're juggling three; then, before you know it, you're hooked and you're discussing them with fellow cretins ... Did Alexis lose BOTH her big toes? .... Will Brock find the mysterious gypsy woman who saw Fellicia maim Sergei with the hedge trimmer ... will that glass eye fit? ... does Alicia know that it was Evelyn who bit off Gordon's penis during the car accident that stormy night? ... Did Mumbles have bad orthodontia as a boy?  Wait til you see the one I'm gonna write!  -r.h-

The Oppenheimer Report 4/11/16

 

I wrote this report on March 21, 1995 …

 

Today, the topic is phone sex. Every night on T.V., I see ads for phone sex and I want to understand this phenomenon. When I turn on the tube late at night, there she is on my T.V. screen ... "Hi, I'm Sabrina ... (attractive young blond with a killer body, wearing a revealing red satin teddy and straddling her bed as if she's riding in the Kentucky Derby) - Do you want to get to know me? Call 1-900-GET-LAID and take me for a test ride." Chuck Yaeger stand back.

I am really not all that interested in having sex with my phone, but I know that there are a lot of lonely people out there who, for whatever reason - perhaps because they've struck out at the bar scene, or they're shy, or they have leprosy, or whatever - would be happy to have sex with anyone or anyTHING, as long as it was quick, anonymous, didn't require commitment, and could not, under any circumstances, give them a communicable disease.

So, what happens here? You, the phoner, calls the phonee, and for three bucks per minute (which, incidentally, is probably more than a real life hooker gets turning tricks in Times Square) you are "aroused" to the point of "supreme personal satisfaction"  when said phonee whispers x-rated stuff in your ear like: "Oh baby, you're my magic wand, yes ... ooooh you get me so hot ... oooh you've touched that special place ... ohhh ahhh ooooh, etc. etc." Depending on your nationality, maybe she even bleats.

Frankly, I never liked phones. I might be the only person who could call up for phone sex and experience performance anxiety. That would be my luck. There are a couple of observations I'd like to make at this point. First of all, that deep, sexy voice on the other end of the line, the one for which you're paying more than some lawyers charge on an hourly basis, probably isn't the nubile blonde you see in the ad. More than likely, she is a hairy, Twinkie-hoovering manatee, with serious B.O. and the disposition of a wharf rat, who lives in a trailer strewn with the debris generated by her brood of twelve welfare scum adolescent trolls, three of whom are on juvenile probation for aggravated assault. These phone sex jobs don't exactly attract the cream of the crop. Secondly, aren't videos and magazines a better deal? It's the gift that just keeps giving. I know it's a tough call, but in my humble opinion, not based on personal experience of course, bopping the baloney to a video or making the scene with a magazine is arguably a better value than getting your rocks off to the voice of some poxied trollop, long distance. Then again, I'm old fashioned; I believe in human contact.

Finally, there is the issue of privacy. You wear a disguise, you buy a video or a magazine ... no one knows. You call up Jabba Galore, and the phone company knows, the FBI knows ... really, anybody who wants to can find out. Also, your ten year-old can call her too. I'd like to see him/her walk into Marty's Adult World and buy a porno magazine or a video. They have rules about stuff like that.

 

All I can say is, thank goodness I'm happily married. Life is getting too complicated for the lonely.

                           JWO Jr

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 4/4/16

Mom and Dad circa 1963

A belated April Fools Day! ... I hope you all played a prank on someone. As I said, I've decided to reprise some of my earlier reports, which most of you have never read (I started writing these reports weekly in January of 1992) and which sometimes reflect an interesting period in history. Hardly a historian, I do sometimes have a different take on current events. To follow is an oldie from 1997. I picked this one for two reasons: 1. There is a reference to Donald Trump, although it is nowhere near as nasty as in earlier reports. 2. This was the report that came out shortly after Lady Di was killed in a car accident...

T
he Oppenheimer Report – 9/2/97

Last night on the news, it was reported that over 28,000 people have died in the United States during the past year in road rage-related deaths. People get stressed out and uncontrollably angry in their cars and then they act out in dangerous ways. If you ask me, it’s a problem here in Canada as well. This has become such a widespread problem that a new breed of shrink has emerged: the auto psychologist. Now, for a modest fee, a professional psychologist will accompany you in your automobile and "work you through" your road rage. As you confront the trials and tribulations of city driving, a shrink will coach you on appropriate and inappropriate behavior to vent your anger. Swearing is good, shooting is bad. Of course this has me wondering what's next. Will we now see other specialists, such as dentists, or maybe proctologists, accompanying us on our daily commutes? "I need to have that hemorrhoid removed, but when do I find the time? I know, I’ll have it done in the car on my way to work. I can foresee some serious problems here.

 

Burger King had some problems last week when it was determined that one of their meat suppliers had sent them a load of unsafe beef. In all, millions of pounds of beef had to be destroyed, and for a day or two, Burger King was selling only chicken and fish. "Excuse me miss, I’ll have the Chicken Whopper with cheese, and could you hold the poisonous bacteria ..." If you think you’re paying too much in bank service charges, consider this news. Royal Bank of Canada has recorded record profits this year, in the neighborhood of $1.32 billion, and the Bank of Montreal was not far behind with a nine month profit of about $1 billion. Those ATM charges add up. That’s almost as much money as Don Trump has. Trump was on Letterman the other night, boasting about this and that. Letterman asked him how much he is worth and he said he has no idea.  He did say that at one point in the recent past, his net worth fell to about negative $900 million. Presently, he’s "in the black" and worth somewhere between $1.5 and $4 billion. Easy come, easy go. So Don, how come all your ex-wives drive Yugos? The lawyers for Goldmans and the Browns, the families of the two O.J. victims, are fighting over who gets how much of the money they expect to extract from Simpson. That’s disgusting, isn’t it? We Americans have really turned into a nation of litigious eels. Split the money 50/50 and put this wildebeest out of its misery, you bottom-dwelling pond slime. Jeesh. If you’ve been made a little more apprehensive about air travel in the wake of all the latest air disasters, consider this interesting statistic: in North America during 1996, 535 million people flew on 7.8 million flights. Given those numbers, a crash here and a crash there doesn't seem so bad. That is, as long as my flight doesn't crash.

 

On a more serious note, Lady Di, Princess of Wales, died over the Labour Day weekend in Paris. She, her fiancée Dodi Al Fayed, and his driver were killed when the armor-plated Mercedes in which they were traveling crashed at about 120 MPH. Though all the facts are not in, it has been reported that the driver was legally stewed to the gills ... three times over the legal limit. This guy had the equivalent of about 11 ounces of hard liquor in his system. Apparently, he was trying to lose the ever present "paparazzi," who were surrounding the limo on motorcycles and trying to steal photographs of the beleaguered couple as they sped along the city streets. What a pack of wolves! Of course, Diana is now a martyr, having been hounded by the press until her untimely death, and there is already a backlash against what many consider to be the predatory and invasive media. In all, seven photographers are in custody at this writing, and all may face serious charges if it can be proved that they contributed to this tragedy. A bodyguard named Trevor Rees-Jones was also in the car, and survived the crash, but he is still in serious condition. I’m sure everyone is eager to hear what he will have to say. I know I am. By some accounts, Lady Di was one of the most popular and widely recognized women in the world. Isn't that ironic?

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c1997 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED