Brother Ray’s version is so much better than the Dead’s that it sounds like an entirely different song.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: It is, in fact, an entirely different song.)
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Author: Thoughts On The Dead (Page 73 of 1031)
I’ve asked, but now I’m demanding: LISTEN TO THIN LIZZY.
- Fuck it, we’re going all the way.
- I’ve quit everything important in my life, but this I’m gonna finish.
- You won’t beat me, Police Academy series.
- I HAVE GRIT AND METTLE, DAMN YOU!
- MY DEAD DADDY IS PROUD OF ME!
- Dude, please.
- Was that unpleasant?
- For all involved; for absolutely everyone in the area.
- Speaking of unpleasant, Steve Guttenberg has left the building.
- He has been replaced by The Guy Who Didn’t Play Chainsaw or Dave.
- Remember Summer School?
- There were guys named Chainsaw and Dave in that flick.
- The guy who’s in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach did not play Chainsaw or Dave, but he might have, and so now that’s what I’m calling him and there’s nothing you can do about it.
- Try to stop me, fucko.
- Oh, right: they’re in Miami Beach.
- I could explain why, but that would just be insulting both of our intelligence.
- They’re there.
- Accept it.
- Gosh-a-rooty, the tropical hijinx that ensue.
- Scarface also took place in Miami during the 80’s, but this is not Scarface.
- No one gets chained up in a bathtub and chainsawed to death while Al Pacino watches.
- Nor does Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio have a breathtaking bouffant.
- Remember that shit?
- You remember that shit.
- Anyway: no Gutt.
- Goot?
- I’m using the diminutive for Guttenberg.
- You know what it sounds like.
- The Gutt!
- He’s not here, and I miss him.
- I want my Gutt back.
- He should be awkwardly seducing Janet Jones, not The Guy Who Didn’t Play Chainsaw Or Dave.
- Janet Jones bore Wayne Gretzky’s children; she is a superior woman.
- She’s Gutt-level.
- Not this guy.
- Oh, yeah: Janet Jones is in this.
- Each Police Academy movie has a new blonde for Mahoney, and now this guy, to woo in a half-assed romantic plot.
- Except the second one, in which the blonde was played by Julie Brown and apparently The Gutt hated her and got her pretty much entirely cut from the film.
- Perhaps it was because she wasn’t a blonde.
- The Gutt’s got a type.
- Or maybe Mahoney’s got a type, and The Gutt is just that committed to the honesty of the character.
- Julie Brown actually did stand out from the other actresses.
- Four semi-identical skinny blondes and Julie, who looked like this:
- She was prettier when she wasn’t making that face.
- Y’know what?
- Fuck The Gutt.
- Julie Brown was better than any blonde.
- Hell, she made elaborate videos mocking blondes.
- Okay, so Commandant Lassard has been kidnapped by Rene Auberjonois.
- I forgot to tell you that Rene Auberjonois was in this.
- He died recently, and this was not one of the projects mentioned in the first paragraph of his obituary.
- But he got to play real broad, and then received a satisfying check, so good for him.
- Anyway, the Miami police have let the imbeciles from the Police Academy do the rescue because, again, these are those kind of movies.
- This will result in a chase scene.
- There are fifteen minutes left in the picture, and so there will be a chase.
- The Police Academy Universe is deterministic.
- All roads lead to a indifferently-filmed, improbably-vehicled chase scene.
- There can be no other conclusion.
- YOUR STRUGGLE IS AGAINST FATE, TACKLEBERRY!
- This one is with airboats.
- They’re in Miami, remember?
- Airboats.
- Ever been on one?
- Loudest conveyances in the world.
- Like a Motorhead concert fucked a funny car.
- Airboat is the Trumpiest means of transport.
- I hate to keep bringing politics into it, but I needed to share that with you.
- Not one single person who owns an airboat voted for Hillary Clinton.
- …
- …
- …
- FUCK IT IMMA KEEP GOING.
- Police Academy 6: City Under Siege.
- I can take it.
- Thank you, sir, may I have another?
- Brother on the Dead has a thriving career for which he is well compensated, and the most beautiful family in the world.
- I’m double-fisting Police Academy movies at midnight.
- You wanna know what I’m watching here?
- The director’s name was Peter Bonerz.
- That’s what I’m watching here.
- With no offense to the man intended, but does it fill you with confidence?
- “Hi, I’m Dr. Bonerz and I’ll be your heart surgeon.”
- “You know what, Doc? I’ll just die.”
- After the first one, the movies were all PG-rated, and so cannot be lumped in with the raunchy sex comedies of the 80’s.
- They’re no Porky’s, or Revenge of the Nerds.
- Both of which were also franchises.
- Remember that.
- People aren’t getting dumber.
- People have always been dumb.
- That’s why Communism doesn’t work.
- Can’t give the people the power, because the people flocked to see Porky’s 3: Porky’s Revenge, and so clearly cannot be trusted.
- I’m not gonna watch fucking Porky’s, even if I’m paid to do it.
- Oh, who am I kidding?
- I totally would.
- I’m a low-rent whore, and I enjoy terrible movies from my childhood, and it’s not like I’m gonna write about the Grateful Dead on this website about the Grateful Dead.
- Wowee, Mark Goodman and Alan Hunter out of nowhere.
- This was 1989.
- Both of them had left MTV, probably moved to Los Angeles.
- Lotta people wanted to party with them.
- Not a lot of offers.
- Money got tight.
- Mark and Alan started doing a private routine for discreet clients.
- Anything to keep the lights on.
- They filmed this one in Los Angeles.
- The productions went back and forth between LA and Toronto.
- Toronto is cheaper, but you can’t get big stars like Mark Goodman and Alan Hunter to cameo.
- Certainly can’t get Vince Neil.
- The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards a cameo by Vince Neil.
- His scene was cut.
- And he killed a guy.
- Actually, he killed the guy way before this, but that’s how much job security Rock Stars used to have.
- It was like super-tenure.
- Nowadays, you bang one 17-year-old and your whole tour gets canceled.
- Everything changes, nothing lasts.
- FUN FACT: Vince Neil has been married four times, once to a mud wrestler that worked at the Tropicana, which was on Western and still open when I lived in Los Angeles, but never had the balls to go into.
- Here, look:
- And read.
- LA was a lot sleazier twenty years ago.
- Jumbo’s Clown Room is still there, but all the rest has been child-proofed.
- Here’s the most important thing to know about Police Academy 6:
- See the pattern?
- It’s called the law of diminishing returns.
- Literally.
- The literal returns are literally diminishing.
- There is no analogy present.
- Oh, swat my balls and call ’em houseflies: it’s the chase scene.
- And so we beat on, boats against the current.
- Except the chase is not a boat chase this time.
- A monster truck is in pursuit of a cherry-picker.
- There is also a city bus involved.
- Why?
- I don’t know.
- Don’t ask me what I think of the Police Academy series; I might not give the answer that you want me to.
- Seven of ’em.
- Plus two teevee series, one animated and the other live-action.
- So next time you wanna make fun of the youths for the Fast & Furious franchise, shut the fuck up, Boomer.
- Plus, none of the Police Academy films star Vin Diesel.
- The best amount of Vin Diesel is none whatsoever.
- I would rather not even be reminded of the homunculus’ existence.
- Anyway, I’m on the fourth one and it’s gonna be the last in this series of posts.
- This is Steve Guttenberg’s final appearance as Mahoney and, as the saying goes, When you’ve lost Guttenberg, you’ve lost America.
- I watched the second and last night/this morning.
- Wait.
- “Watch” is too strong.
- The movies played in my home.
- I was present at the time.
- Occasionally, I would glance up and think “Huh. A jet-ski chase. That’s a way to end a movie, I guess.”
- Or just revel in the glory that was Bobcat Goldthwait.
- The 80’s were Bobcat Time.
- In Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, he played the city’s gang leader.
- In Police Academy 3: Back In Training, he joins the cops.
- Kinda like how Smokey became the Bandit in the third entry of that trilogy.
- This was Bobcat, Younger Enthusiasts:
- And that was most of his act.
- Also, he yelled.
- The stand-up comedy boom was so profitable in the 80’s that there was room for two performers whose acts consisted mostly of screaming unintelligibly.
- (AN ASIDE: If he were alive today, Kinison would be the Trumpiest motherfucker on the planet.)
- Mr Goldthwait would, upon closer listening, be revealed as an intelligent and insightful man who…
- Wait a minute.
- Police Academy 4 just made me laugh.
- Out loud.
- Not ironically, nor was I laughing at the film.
- An according-to-Hoyle hard chuckle.
- Not a guffaw.
- Let’s not get absurd here.
- But a good, stiff chortle.
- As you know, the declarative of Police Academy 4 is Citizens On Patrol.
- (The two cases of movie titles are nominative, which is the name of the series and goes before the colon, and declarative, which describes the particular episode and follows the colon.)
- The cops are, as you would imagine, trying to get the inhabitants of their unnamed city to join the auxillary.
- So they’re having a meeting.
- Establishing shot of the community center showing a sparse crowd; a lectern with a cop standing behind; several officers seated next to him, some sad red balloons.
- Close-up of Mahoney.
- He says something about wanting to develop a better relationship between the police and the community.
- CUT TO: The other cops playing with the balloons.
- Y’know what?
- Show, don’t tell.
- Set-up:
- Detail:
- Punchline:
- THEY PUT THEIR COP HATS ON THE BALLOONS!
- That’s my aesthetic right there.
- The guy with the hidden face is Bubba Smith, who won a Super Bowl with the Colts before becoming an actor who specialized in playing “guys who look like Bubba Smith.”
- Anyway, now some skateboard punks, one of whom is played by a young David Spade, are on trial and for some reason the evil cop is also the prosecutor.
- Luckily, he bends over and Michael Winslow makes a fart noise, and that means the judge has to release David Spade.
- The city where Police Academy takes place runs on an entirely different code of justice than the rest of America.
- Is it Napoleonic law?
- I don’t think we’re in New Orleans; gumbo has not been mentioned.
- HOLY SHIT, SHARON FUCKING STONE IS IN THIS?
- She’s a lady reporter.
- She thinks this whole “citizens on patrol” fooferall is balderdash.
- Or something.
- Really, she’s there to be Mahoney’s girlfriend.
- Out of all the cast members, Michael Winslow is to be most respected.
- He did all seven pictures, plus both teevee series.
- If someone was willing to pay Michael Winslow to wear a cop costume and make funny noises, then Michael Winslow was available.
- None of that “artistic integrity” bullshit for the guy who made really convincing fart sounds.
- It is impossible to overstate how lazy the series has become by the fourth one.
- They do the Blue Oyster Bar gag again, wherein the “bad” cops get sent to the gay biker bar, but don’t even bother to set it up.
- It just cuts to the “bad” cops walking down the alley, and then entering the bar.
- (I put “bad” in quotes because the antagonists of these films aren’t real bad cops. They don’t choke a guy to death for selling loose cigarettes or anything. They’re just hard-asses to our wacky cop friends.)
- Jesus, there’s Sharon Stone again.
- Wax my ass and paint it with KISS makeup.
- Sharon fucking Stone.
- I feel bad for her.
- Not as bad as I felt for Howard Hesseman when he was in the second one.
- This was Sharon Stone’s first major motion picture; it was a big break for her, even if it was a shitty sequel to a shitty movie.
- But Johnny Fever deserved better.
- Plus, you could just see how sad he was.
- The second and third flicks did have Art Metrano as “bad” cop, though, and Art Metrano used to do this routine on chat shows:
- That’s a good routine.
- And now the citizen cops have been made official police officers or something?
- I dunno.
- And there’s a multi-national cop convention going on?
- Along with ninjas.
- Hey, let’s give the series some credit: it took four movies to get to ninjas.
- TotD’s Rule of Ninjistics: As the number of installments in an entertainment series grows larger, the probability of ineffectual ninjas getting involved approaches one.
- Books, teevee, movies, whatever.
- Eventually, you’ll get ineffectual ninjas.
- The rockyroll equivalent of ineffectual ninjas are black-up singers.
- Kiss me, Kate, it’s the climax.
- A hot-air balloon chase.
- I guess maybe the producers watched the jet-ski chase finale from the third feature, and said, “We can top that,” and that both did and didn’t.
- You must admit that ending a movie with a hot-air balloon chase is both better and worse than ending a movie with a jet-ski chase.
- Some of our heroes are not in hot-air balloons, but old-timey biplanes.
- Which they know how to fly.
- Y’know what?
- I’m mad at myself for even having that thought.
- I was like that pedantic asshole from Cinema Sins.
- “Pssh. When did Tackleberry learn to fly a plane? That’s not been established in canon.”
- The fuck is wrong with me?
- This is nice, though:
- This was pre-CG, so they just dangled a guy from a balloon a few thousand feet up and filmed it.
- Very similar to Howard Hughes’ techniques.
- Anyway, it’s over and we’ve learned nothing.
- Let’s all of us go fuck ourselves.
…How long has it been since I’ve listened to Thin Lizzy?
And if the answer is more than a week or so, throw on The Liz, braj.
ALWAYS A DEAD CONNECTION: You must admit that 12 minutes is a very Grateful Deadish length of time for a song. Like, if you asked a hundred people What band plays 12 minute songs? then most of them would say the Dead.
- No one asked for this.
- Literally no one.
- I put it out there, and no one bit.
- Nor did anyone warn me away from the decision.
- There was an unspoken communal decision to ignore my idea, and pretend that it hadn’t been brought up at all.
- But here we are.
- FUN FACT: Most films set up their premise through action, or dialogue, or a combination of the two; Police Academy just flashes some text at the beginning of the movie.
- Kinda like Star Wars.
- The standards for joining the police force have been eliminated, and so now literally anyone can sign up.
- Got it?
- They’ll even take Mahoney!
- Who is a ne’er-do-well if I’ve ever seen one.
- Or a fat guy!
- Or someone who makes noises!
- Of course, Mahoney does not want to be a cop.
- He is forced to join up by an angry black police captain.
- Even comedies in the 80’s had an angry black police captain.
- I once watched a documentary from 1986 about giraffes that had an angry black police captain.
- “OFFICER SPLOTCHY! YOU’RE OFF THE CASE! NOW TURN OVER YOUR BADGE, YOUR GUN, AND YOUR LITTLE NUBBIN HORNS!”
- John Mayer thinks he knows how to drip.
- Meyers doesn’t have the balls.
- He thought that Madonna tee-shirt shit was cute, but we all know that it was pussy bullshit.
- If he were a real man, then Josh would wear that for Summer Tour.
- Every show.
- And he’d also bang Kim Catrall.
- Takes a real man to satisfy a Catrall.
- The whole family is renowned for the effort it takes to get ’em off.
- Gotta warm ’em up first.
- Sweet-talking, flowers, that sort of thing.
- Can’t just go charging at a Catrall’s genitals like you were the Light Brigade.
- Did it end well for the Light Brigade?
- Not according to the Iron Maiden song about the event.
- And here is where we come to the most tedious portion of the evening: evaluating a three-decade-old piece of schlock on its relative wokeness.
- Police Academy doesn’t do too badly, to be honest.
- The good guys are a diverse crew of multiple races, genders, (implied) sexualities, and body types.
- And the bad guys are all Trumpers.
- Now, sure, this was 1984 and there were no Trumpers, but trust me on this one.
- Of course–sticking to the modern discourse of wokeitude–it must be mentioned that all cops are bastards.
- No one’s rooting for anyone to be a cop, at least not in a comedy, in 2020.
- But again: this was 1984.
- Were cops bastards?
- Oh, yeah.
- But they looked like this:
- Whereas now cops look like this:
- Which is less humorous.
- (Don’t get me wrong: that guy in the shirt-sleeves would absolutely drop a bomb on your house. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the MOVE bombing.)
- Police Academy does also bring up the immortal comedy question: Are gay panic jokes ever funny?
- I say that they can be, but only if they’ve got a musical cue as perfect as this one:
- And, it should be noted, the two seemed to enjoy their experience.
- Maybe Police Academy is about acceptance.
- Maybe the reboot could feature the Lone Ranger shoving a peach up Timothee Chalomet’s asshole.
- Maybe maybe maybe.
- Saddest word in the English language, according to some.
- Others think the saddest word is penicillin.
- Mostly people who allergic to penicillin.
- Contrary to popular opinion, Elton John did not think that “sorry” was the saddest word.
- He said it seemed to be the saddest word.
- Elton was making a comment on the chasm between appearance and content.
- The first one was a hit, making $150 million worldwide off a $4.5 million budget, so they made one a year for the next five years.
- ONE-POINT-TWO BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.
- Adjusted (very roughly) for inflation, the Police Academy series made $1.2 billion dollars.
- Imagine having that much money.
- Jeff Bezos would laugh at you, and have his goons give you a wedgie, and you’d deserve it for being poor.
- Oh, is it the third act already?
- The City (never named in the series) has broken out into a riot.
- Not an actual riot.
- A fun, multi-cultural riot that kicks off due to a misunderstanding.
- Gosh, I hope our trainees can settle this rabble down.
- They are roused, this rabble.
- Although, rabble is rarely calm, cool, and collected.
- That’s just a peaceful gathering.
- Gotta be some agitating for the “rabble” label to be applied.
- Luckily, the mob is doing very little property damage.
- Just running down the street with sticks.
- Almost like the production couldn’t afford to break any windows.
- No.
- Wait.
- We have looting.
- Aaaaaand the climax of every Police Academy film, wherein all the characters do their thing.
- Gun nut Tackleberry shoots his guns,
- Whisper-voiced Hooks yells real loud.
- Bubba Smith punches through a wall or some bullshit.
- Enthusiasts, I am gonna come clean with you: there is not enough material in these movies to continue this bit.
- I suppose that I could go tangential, and use the Police Academy series as a jumping-off point to discuss Gramsci.
- But no one would enjoy that.
- I’ve let everyone down here.
- I can’t apologize enough.
- Perhaps it’s time for an organizational reshuffle.
- New blood in the C-suite.
- Oh, good, Mahoney got to bang Kim Catrall.
- That’s how you knew a movie was over in the 80’s: the lead actor banged Kim Catrall.
- It was a simpler time.
Hey, Bobby. Whatcha doing?
“Wriggling away from Parish.”
I see that. What’s the matter?
“Well, you know I love the guy.”
Sure.
“The man’s my brother. Parish has even, uh, been my Parish on many occasions.”
A Rock Star needs his Parish.
“Knight’s nothing without a squire. Can’t even get on his horse.”
The armor was heavy. What’s going on with Parish?
“He won’t stop bugging me about investing in his weed company.”
That doesn’t seem so bad.
“Uh-huh. Literally every white person I’ve met in the past decade has bugged me to invest in their weed company. It’s been, like, my number one conversation for a while.”
I can see that happening.
“Now that I mention it, it seems obvious, right?”
A little. Why don’t you just start a damn weed company? Mickey’s got one. Hell, Garcia’s got one, and Texas was still executing pot smokers when he died.
“True, yeah. I just don’t wanna be a bad role model for my girls.”
Didn’t you recommend to one of them last week that she take LSD for her migraines?
“I didn’t recommend it. I presented it as an option.”
Ah.
And teen horniness is not a crime.
FUN FACT: In Canada, box sets come in a bag.
FILCH FACT: If you don’t buy the new 5-show June ’76 collection, then I can’t steal it.
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