THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 17

• Movies in which the main character's [mother/brother/girlfriend/best friend] gets bitten by a [vampire/zombie/werewolf/fundamentalist Christian], causing him or her to [adopt a Romanian accent/start shouting "BRAAAAINS"/mistake your leg for a Milk Bone/distribute Chick tracts], and the main character agonizes over whether or not to [stock up on garlic and holy water/aim for the head/run a Google search for "silver bullet"/purchase a gift copy of anything by Bertrand Russell] and destroy the freshly minted monster. I last saw this tired device in the otherwise decent flick Shaun of the Dead.
  
  You all need to know that if you're ever chilling with Kilgore Trout, and you start metamorphosing into any species of hellspawn, you are toast. I'm not saying that I'd enjoy pounding a wooden stake into your chest, (although I probably would, unless you owed me money). I'm just saying that it's an easy decision.
• Magazine articles that incorporate bad puns into their titles. Sports journalism seems especially rife with this sort of thing: a recent issue of Runner's World has articles titled "Iron Maiden" (about an 8-time female Ironman finisher), and "Walking the Walk" (about walking marathons). MLB.com's announcement of Vladimir Guerrero's American League MVP win was titled "Most Vlad-uable." And ESPN.com right now has an article about the Buffalo Bills headlined "Reason to Bill-ieve." Enough already, guys.
  
  
• When I make a great catch and nobody notices. I was at The Wizard's Chest last weekend, looking at books on a shelf above my head. I put a book back -- not very well, apparently, because a moment later it fell. Startled, I grabbed it out of the air with one hand, only to see a half-dozen more books tumble from their perches. By reflex, I caught them all in a stack on top of the first book. It was like the Warner Bros. cartoons where Sylvester catches stacks of china cups in each hand, with one foot, on his nose, with the tip of his tail, etc. It was an amazing athletic feat that deserved an entire segment on "SportsCenter." I turned around, expecting to see men jealously admiring my preternatural eye-hand coordination while throngs of women with prominent noses and small breasts held out their phone numbers. Instead, I saw a group of oblivious teenage boys playing Magic: The Gathering. You know if I had dropped them all, I would have turned around to see the laughing, pointing members of the local chapter of Single Attractive Women Who Don't Like Children And Crave Sex With Skinny Guys.
  
  
• This nagging question: Where did Luke Skywalker learn to fly the X-Wing fighter? One day he's toiling on a moisture farm on Tatooine, and the next he's battling Imperial TIE fighters and aiming proton torpedoes at the Death Star's small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The equivalent would be a Nebraska farm boy driving a John Deere tractor all his life and then, with no training, casually climbing into an F/A-18 Super Hornet and dogfighting MiGs over the Indian Ocean.
  
  George Lucas must have sensed this lapse, because before Luke boards his ship, he has an officer walk up and say, "You sure you can handle this ship?" prompting a childhood friend and fellow Rebel pilot to say, "Sir, Luke is the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim Territories." The officer smiles and says, "You'll do all right," which is strange, given that he's just been told, approximately, that Luke is the best crop-duster in all of Scotts Bluff County.
  
  Luke would have been a natural pilot, of course, because the Force was strong with him. But how did he convince the Rebel commanders to let him take a precious starfighter into battle?
  
  REBEL COMMANDERS: Let's get this straight. You have no combat experience and no formal flight training, but you want to fly a sophisticated X-Wing fighter into battle against a military space station powerful enough to vaporize a planet?
  
  LUKE: I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, and they're not much bigger than two meters! And check out this midi-chlorian count!
  
  REBEL COMMANDERS: Saddle up, partner!

+posted by Lawrence @ 12/19/2004 11:31:00 PM