Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: robocop

Huey Lewis Doesn’t Deserve This Kind Of Treatment

“All right, that’s it. We’re going outside.”

“Bob, we’re at a press conference.”

“Good! The world needs to know.”

“Know what?”

“You’ll find out. Let’s go, pal. I’m gonna knock the butt off your chin.”

“We’re trying to raise money for AIDS, man.”

“I’ll AIDS you.”

“Nope. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“You are my sworn enemy, Hewis Lewis–”

“Please stop calling me that.”

“–and I’m gonna thump ya. Parking lot time, buddy.”

“I really don’t wanna, Bob.”

CELL PHONE NOISE

“What the hell was that?”

“Your cell phone, HuLu.”

“That’s even worse than Hewis. What’s a cell phone?”

“Oh, right. Your band doesn’t have access to Time Sheath technology.”

“I regret ever meeting any of the Grateful Dead. All of you are weirdos.”

CELL PHONE NOISE

“How did this thing get in my pocket?”

“Just answer it, and I’ll explain the concept of semi-fictionality to you afterwards.”

“Huey Lewis speaking.”

“Lewis, it’s the President. Do you need backup to fight the hippie?”

“I’ll send Robocop.”

“What the fuck is happening?”

“Dammit, Lewis, you’re gonna lay that hippie filth out. You, son, are what’s good with America, and the fairy next to you is what’s wrong. I’ll bet he’s wearing sandals. I’ll bet you can see his toes. Not you, Lewis. You wear shoes like a man. You lace them up in the morning, and don’t remove them until the day’s work is done. I don’t understand much of the youth music, but I can tell a decent Christian man when I see his haircut.”

“Is this Richard Nixon?”

“It is. Elvis refers to me as ‘Nix.’ You, uh, may not do so.”

“I truly wish I had not become involved with the Grateful Dead.”

“That’s it: I’m sending Robocop.”

Albanian Rhapsody

Hoxhaaaaa
Just stole a car.
Bird with two heads on my flag,
Communism was a drag.

HOXHAAAAA!

Stop this immediately.

It’s not racist.

The fact that you were ready with that defense leads me to believe you knew what you were doing was wrong.

Albanian isn’t a race.

“Racist” doesn’t only mean bigotry based on…y’know what? I’m not explaining the world to you. Just shut the fuck up. Write something that makes sense.

Can I write–

And isn’t about Robocop.

–about Robocop some more? Aw. I have a whole idea.

Is it a parody of Robocop where a police officer is put in the body of an itinerant laborer who prefers to travel by train?

Yes.

Is it called “Hobocop?”

Also yes.

I forbid this.

Aw.

 

Thoughts On Robocop

  • Robocop does not pass the Bechdel Test.
  • NO. STOP IT. Do not be woke at Robocop. You may not.
  • Just pointing out the fact.
  • Watch it.
  • Shush.
  • It is, though, a deeply masculine film; the one major female character reads as male whether you believe in the death of the author or in authorial intent.
  • The bitches (the ones who are instructed to leave) read as female.
  • One pours cocaine all over her boobies.
  • That is a pointedly female gesture.
  • And it’s all about dicks.
  • The dicks are guns.
  • The cops’ guns are not big enough.
  • The criminals’ guns are long and thick and go THABOOM.
  • Bing! goes the cops’ guns.
  • But now here is Robocop; listen to his gun: BRAAPA! BRAAPA BRAAPA!
  • And then the dad from That 70’s Show gets a bazooka.
  • Is Robocop’s gun powerful enough to withstand a pounding from the dadzooka?
  • Yeah, so: all about dicks.
  • That Paul Verhoeven guy will tell you it’s about Jesus, but the movie’s about dicks.
  • He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
  • (Wikipedia says that the proper spelling of Robocop is “RoboCop” and I’ll be damned. I’ll be tied up tight and plugged just right before I use that heathen orthograph. The man’s mamma called him “Robocop;” I’m gonna call him Robocop.)
  • Robocop was like Predator or Highlander in that every single offering after the original was shit: all the movies, cartoons, comics, teevee shows, reboots, and children’s bedsheet sets.
  • The worst was the sheets.
  • They were actively flammable.
  • They would seek out sources of ignition.
  • No one could explain it.
  • Anyway, Robocop is more like Predator than it is Highlander; first, it is a good movie.
  • Highlander was crap.
  • Go watch it again.
  • I dare you.
  • Second, like PredatorRobocop is only superficially a science-fiction movie.
  • It’s an action flick.
  • There isn’t a massive Robocopiverse to play in.
  • I don’t wanna go back to the Predator’s home planet, and I don’t wanna go on any more adventures with Robocop.
  • What’s he gonna do?
  • Fight a bigger robot?
  • Evil versions of himself?
  • I don’t need to visit the Robocop Extended Universe.
  • I guaran-fucking-tee there exists a story in the REU wherein they scooped Dick Jones up after he got shot and fell out of the building, and then they turned him into a Jonesocop and he and Robocop fought.
  • Or maybe they put Miguel Ferrer in an ED-209.
  • RIP, buddy.
  • If I could, I would have implanted your consciousness within a stair-averse deathmonster, but this was not within my power, Miguel Ferrer, and so you died like the rest of us have or will one day.
  • You snorted cocaine off the bitch’s boobies so darn well.
  • So: if you haven’t seen the film in a while, the ED-209 scene–you know the one I’m talking about–comes waaaaay earlier than you remember it.
  • Right up front.
  • You just settled into your seat, you watched a trailer for The Running Man, or perhaps Teen Wolf, Too, and DAKKADAKKADAKKA there’s a yuppie getting bulletized with great plumes of explosive blood all over the place.
  • Oh, it’s gonna be that kind of movie.
  • And it is: pre CG squibs and actual discharging guns and real vans driving into vats of toxic waste, helpfully labeled “TOXIC WASTE.”
  • This is not a subtle movie.
  • Nor does it bear any scrutiny; Robocop‘s logic is that of a lethal fairy tale.
  • OCP brought the fucking dead back to life.
  • This point is not explored.
  • They’re a company.
  • In it for the bucks.
  • Aren’t there a trillion more lucrative markets for your breakthrough lazarus-tech?
  • Didn’t you just change the fucking nature of existence?
  • Again: this point is not explored.
  • Instead, Robocop shoots a guy in the dick.
  • In addition, you do not adequately recall just how much action there is in this action movie.
  • So fucking much.
  • You’re never more than five minutes from a big boom.
  • Cars, gas stations, town hall, the ballpark, the international arrivals loading zone at the airport, all the laundromats: they went boom, big boom SHVAAM! and it was all rather flustering to me.
  • All the hoopla, my word.
  • It’s a relentlessly simple movie: there are no subplots and there’s no love story.
  • Robocop gets himself made.
  • Robocop kills some motherfuckers.
  • Robocop kills some more motherfuckers.
  • Now Robocop is the motherfucker.
  • That’s it.
  • You got the fake teevee show interstitials with “I’ll buy that for a dollar” and the newscasts, but they’re just window dressing.
  • It’s Robo’s show.
  • If any part of the Robocop character fail, the whole movie dies, but the costume designers and Peter Weller kill it.
  • The guy walked just like a robot.
  • And when he talks?
  • Also robotic.
  • There were several scenes wherein Robocop drove, and I did not spot any cyborgian affect to the driving; it should be said, though, that it was not actually Weller behind the wheel in those shots.
  • He would not fit in the car.
  • And even if he did, the helmet rendered him blind.
  • He also couldn’t hear in there, or poop.
  • And now he’s a professor of art history.
  • Good for you, Peter Weller.
  • Assorted thought:
    • One of the criminals played the sad gay kid in Fame who sang Out Here On My Own in the window, and it was tough to take him seriously when he was holding up a gas station.
  • And that was an assorted thought.
  • Thanks for coming out tonight.