Follow @tommysalami on twitter and you may wear these classy t-shirts.
Design by Firecracker.
© 2010 Tommy Salami
Follow @tommysalami on twitter and you may wear these classy t-shirts.
Design by Firecracker.
© 2010 Tommy Salami
What was the deal with putting A*S*T*E*R*I*S*K*S in movie titles? M*A*S*H may have started it in the movies. It was short for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and is Robert Altman’s most well-known film. The movie was just called MASH and they stuck asterisks in between the letters of the poster so you didn’t think it was about potatoes.
A few years later came the espionage spoof S*P*Y*S starring Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland, which bombed. Probably because of the stupid name. Why not just Spies? I haven’t seen it, but I imagine it’s a goofy acronym, like Secret Person Yankee Surveillance. Both of these movies star Elliot Gould, so maybe he is a secret asterisk supporter, or S*A*P.
The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N was a Broadway play based on the stories of Leo Rosten, and was written that way because it’s about a Yiddish speaking immigrant learning English in a night class, and he signs his name like that, in crayon. It came first in 1968, so perhaps this was the start? I’ve read Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish, and he’s a fantastic writer. Thanks to @mercurie80 and his blog A Shroud of Thoughts for mentioning that one, and inspiring this post.
W*A*L*T*E*R was a failed M*A*S*H spinoff in 1984, and we didn’t see stars again until the ’90s, when B*A*P*S came around- standing for Black American Princesses. Should’ve been B*A*Ps, but that just looks silly, doesn’t it? I’ve never seen it, despite it starring Martin Landau. It got awful reviews, but much of its humor has been internalized in how white boys imitate black women. It’s rather a shame that comedian Robert Townsend was involved, as his movies are usually pretty funny.
In the ’80s we got *batteries not included which mocks those print ads for toys that we drooled over, bought the thing for $5.95 and found out it required 12 D cell batteries that cost $20. But that wasn’t the same. I still didn’t see it, because the title felt so gimmicky.
The father of all asterisks movies is **** by Andy Warhol, which is probably meant to mean “fuck.” But that’s not a commercial project, so it really shouldn’t count. There is a power in the use of punctuation, or lack thereof. Look at e.e cummings, who we still won’t capitalize, and the archy & mehitabel stories, which aren’t capitalized or punctuated because they are supposed to be written by a New York city cockroach jumping on the keys of a typewriter.
I took punctuation very seriously as a child, and when I was in the shower, I would think up movie ideas. They usually involved me as a cross between James Bond and the Terminator, tasked with saving the world, with Sheena Easton and Nastassia Kinski hanging from each bicep. But some were spoofs, and my masterpiece of spy spoofs, dedicated to Mel Brooks, was entitled:
© 2010 Tommy Salami
I promised if I got 666 followers, I’d record Hank Hill singing Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast.” I do a passable impression of the King of the Hill, so here he is finding Bobby’s Satanic record collection.
© 2010 Tommy Salami
When I moved recently, I decided to get rid of a lot of furniture. After ditching my ancient, dilapidated computer desk near the dumpster of my old apartment in the hopes that some indigent nerd would scavenge it, only to see it sledgehammered apart by the maintenance crew, I thought I should engage in “free-cycling,” the hip new way to recycle, or to get crap for free. I had used it before to get some free weights for weightlifting, and give away spare workout equipment. People looking for this kind of stuff tend to be prompt and courteous, because weights are expensive- over a dollar a pound- and they get snatched up very quickly.
Furniture, on the other hand, seems to be a bunch of soccer moms looking for bargains. My first giveaway, a leather sofa and loveseat, went great. A black couple picked them up with a U-Haul, brought a friend to help lug them out, and I still had a furniture dolly, it went swimmingly. They were delighted to get my 12 year old couches that were still clean and in good shape, despite having absorbed more gas than a fleet of Hummers over the years. Then I was giving away a microwave, and after two no-shows that wasted my time, another black gal showed up promptly, with her car right outside, a blanket on the back seat, ready to go. In minutes, I’d gotten rid of clutter! It was great. Then I decided to freecycle a steel book shelf, a drafting table, a coffee table, and some old vinyl LPs. The nightmare began.
When I was a kid, “garbage picker” was a derogatory term, but we all did it. People still throw out perfectly good things, like white boys, as in Better Off Dead (obligatory movie reference). So, Freecycling has a purpose. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s an archaic reference to when someone might give you a horse, and you’d check its teeth. When you are given something, check it out later in the privacy of your own ingratitude. Then you can throw it out, or re-freecycle it, if you’re a picky garbage picker.
boobies boobies boobies. fighting fighting fighting. burgers burgers burgers.
I had a burger at this place and it was okay. Not worth going out of your way for. But they had crispy fries.
Burgers boobies boobies.
I started a new job and need some time off. Hope that will hold you for a while until I go try some new burgers and watch some horrible ’80s movies I haven’t seen before!
© 2010 Thomas Pluck.
Sorry I’ve been scarce lately. Something to remember from a great, often misunderstood film.
“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”
-Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Like Starship Troopers, I see this movie largely as a satire meant to string along many of its fans and mock them. Do I think Chuck Palahniuk was suggesting bare-knuckle brawling and domestic consumer terrorism as the solution to the fatherless young male malaise that grips the navel-gazing, whiny office culture? No, it’s just as amusing as making soap out of liposucted fat and selling it back to the women it came from at $20 a bar. I certainly agree that our materialistic culture has made us identify with pre-fab furniture and posh vehicles as our spirit totems, but I don’t think that revelation is some sort of enlightenment.
This comes from someone who pays to get punched in the face twice a week at a mixed martial arts gym. Is that what makes a man? To paraphrase The Dude, that and a pair of testicles. Emptiness is as banal as evil; trying to be a modern caveman, the latest Fight Club-esque trend, is as ridiculous as donning medieval armor and championing knighthood as the natural state of man. There’s nothing noble or pure about hunter-gatherers, if you study anthropology. Belief in evolution doesn’t require that we adhere to its ruthless creed. Compassion for the weak is not weakness. We were all weak once.
Tyler isn’t an unattainable ideal, he’s a childhood daydream of the hard man the Walter Mitty in us wants to be, the lone killer Eastwood cowboy who solves our problems with a cold utterance and a gun. Or a clever quip and a few hundred pounds of explosive. We forget that in the end, “Jack” wins, sort of. Maybe Tyler’s plan wasn’t to blow up those buildings, but to get his other side to stop whining and stand up for himself. That’s what I like to think the movie’s final message is. Project Mayhem internalized. As much as I hate Starbucks, the wrecking ball should be aimed at the impatience that makes me a customer of theirs, ever again.
© 2010 Thomas Pluck.