Broken Lizard

If you haven't had the luck to watch the movies created by the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, please take the time to do so. I was turned on to these talents by good friend McInfly, who told me I seriously needed to sit down and watch the nouveau-keystone cops comedy Super Troopers. This wasn't the first time McInfly had initiated a new and hilarious experience for me, so I trusted his suggestion and watched it. I laughed harder than I had since the last time I had watched Tom Hanks and Jim Belushi in The Man With One Red Shoe (trust me). I followed this with their next movie Club Dread and then Beerfest, the last feature film they have released.

"Man, you must of eaten like, 100 bucks worth of pot, and like, 30 bucks worth of shrooms, man... So I'm-I'm gonna need that 130 bucks... as soon as you get a chance..."

I think that's what College Kid #2 says to College Kid #3 in the opening scene of Super Troopers. This is great writing, as it's sounds and feels just like something we all heard from that one dude we all knew in high school who was kind of a dick. What follows is total fantasy.

Or so it might seem, but how many of us can recall stories, though maybe not quite as intense as the ensuing scene, of crazy happenings when we were in high school and college? The time you almost flipped your car because you took a turn too tight? The time you were followed out of the local miniature golf course by what seemed like all the gang members in town, the time you actually did flip your car... Anyway, in the midst of all their hilarious and sometimes cheap jokes and their healthy use of sex and boobies and drug references, the Broken Lizard crew really knows how to tell a story. These are not necessarily the most complex of plots, but the concepts are ones that utilize to great effect the old technique of asking "what if?" as in, "What if there were a department of highway patrolmen who really knew how to party?" or "What if a Jimmy Buffet-type of has-been musician owned a resort and the employees started getting killed?" or "What if there were a super-secret, global underground beer-drinking competition that considered even the idea of an American team a huge joke?"

These "what ifs" all produce stories that, in turn, produce moments you will never forget once you have watched them. You will never forget them because you and whichever buddy of yours has also seen the movie will constantly quote lines to each other, send lines as text messages to each other, and post them on each other's Facebook walls on a regular basis.

I am especially impressed by Lizard member Kevin Heffernan. Heffernan co-wrote all Broken Lizard films and delivers, IMHO, the most ridiculously funny, dry, and well-acted performances of the entire (extremely talented) crew. Also keep a close eye on auxiliary performances by seriously funny goofy guy Michael Weaver, particularly in Club Dread, and an actor whose mystery and charm lure me and entrance me in every movie he's in-Philippe Brenninkmeyer. Wow.

There are several projects in the works with these guys. Heffernan is starring in some promising-looking comedies. One, Strange Wilderness, a non-Lizard production, puts him together with another comedy great, Steve Zahn. I don't, however, believe that semi-hack Jonah Hill deserves screen time with him, but hey, maybe Hill can continue to rebuild the funny he promised us in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and started to reclaim in his hilarious, albeit brief, encounter with Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (yes, I have a four-year-old). It's just too bad that Hill gets higher billing. Oh well, welcome to how it is. I'll have to watch it and report back.

Anyway, back to Broken Lizard. They are poised to release Super Troopers 2 in 2010 (directed, as were the other Lizard productions, by Jay Chandrasekhar), and The Slammin' Salmon (directed by Heffernan-eep!) this year (is it out yet?) Watch them, learn them, take some of what they put on screen with a grain of salt (a couple of these guys can ham it up a bit much), and forever find yourself asking "Who's Barry Badrinath? Who's Barry Badrinath? Who's Barry Badrinath?"

Thanks again, McInfly.

The Thrifty Reader

Being married to a vintage fashionista has its advantages. One, she always looks pretty damn awesome. Two, I spend a lot more time in thrift stores and, subsequently, walk out of said thrift stores with some fairly wonderful book finds. The downside is that I spend money I should be using to pay off my now ten-year-old school loans and continue to add to the stacks and stacks of pulp in the house.

But those downsides are nothing compared to the joy I receive from getting myself nice and mellow and paging through something like this:

Yes, it's an elementary school book, but hey, it's just the kind of book I would have found in the library of Sierra Vista Elementary in lovely Upland, California, and yes, I have an insanely nostalgic streak in me that makes the characters in Springsteen's Glory Days look like serious "live-in-the-now" kind of folks.

Just listen to the music of the book's opening paragraph:

"Mexico, our sister republic on the south, is an enchanting land of mountains and deserts, golden sunshine and purple shadows, dense evergreen forests and tropical jungles."

Ahh... Such lush pictures do enter my head! I feel like I'm floating in a wee boat, lost in the cool air, hypnotic song, and dazzling bedazzledry of It's a Small World. Any moment now we'll pass through Polynesia, into the brilliant sunlight, and back on our treck toward the Storybook Land ride, soon to be swallowed whole by Monstro the whale.








Enchantment of America
Mexico
By Frances E. Wood
Illustrations by Katherine Grace
Copyright 1964 CHILDRENS PRESS, CHICAGO