The_Triple_Lindy

I liked the sign that said, "OBEY ALL SIGNS"

And since you brought up the talent show ... are we just ignoring the fact that Magic Mike killed a girl? Edit after re-listening to the episode: They did briefly mention that, after all.

This movie is definitely about conformity, though. They go to "Carry Nation" High School. Carry/Carrie Nation is this person: She was a temperance activist, which means she railed against alcohol, specifically, but also she just generally went around telling people how to live their lives. There's even a statue of her at the school. And the campus of Carry Nation High School is covered with signage that says "Obey" and "Listen" and "Submit," and it's run by a girl who puts everyone into their places on the first day. And yeah, she hates Da Bratz because of Cloe, but also because they are constantly defying the order she tries to maintain over the school, just by being themselves. Meredith carries around evidence of everyone's weirdness on her flash drive (like Cloe singing "La Cucaracha") threatening to reveal it to the rest of the school, and that seems to terrify Da Bratz into submission for most of the movie, until they learn to embrace it at the end of the movie. But the movie has the internal contradiction of having an "anti-conformity" message while also relying very heavily on stereotypes to flesh out characters whose primary concern is fitting in.

Meredith's dog is named "Paris," and hearing that made me think about Paris Hilton for the first time in years. It's funny because, during her heyday, I always wondered how much longer Paris Hilton would be famous, and now she's not even on our radars -- just like MySpace and flip phones and using desktop computers for video chatting.

I've bailed on the last 30 minutes of this movie twice now ... why the hell is this movie so long?!? And does it even matter how it ends? Also, I'm a Cloe. I'm cool with that, since she most directly seems to piss off the Dimly girl.

Amidst all the awful racial stereotypes in this movie, we also mustn't forget that not all deaf people are Beethoven.

Oh, sure ... I just saw an opportunity to join in your social theory pedantry. I teach, and my students frequently come to me with that mindset, and I like to say things like, "Did you pave the roads that you drove on this morning? If not, then HOORAY for Socialism!"

Apparently one of the actresses is his god-daughter.

Anyone else surprised to see that Bratz isn't an animated movie? Even listening to the trailer, I would've bet money that it was CGI. And I mean, why the hell isn't it? Did they just have a teenie-bopper script sitting around and slapped the Bratz trademark on it?

Unions are Marxist-Socialist constructs which seek to empower laborers. Communism is Socialism with a gun. Stalin et al hated unions because they empower laborers, i.e. the people, and despots can't handle anyone having power but them. Unions are antithetical to communist societies because citizens tend to have their roles prescribed in a communist society. Socialism is more of an economic theory/practice than a system of government.

So, there's an episode of the Cosby Show (link) where Rudy and her friends want to watch a movie called "The Gross-out Gang," and I'll be damned if it doesn't seem like a direct reference to the GPK Movie -- silly music and gross noises with very little actual dialogue heard. Even before I watched this movie, I remember thinking that Gross-out Gang had to be a GPK send-up. But no! Turns out that the Gross-out Gang is an actual thing: I mean, goddamn, how much of this does the world need?

The most entertaining and well-made part of this movie is the 30 seconds-ish of Three Stooges we get, and even then, it's a fucking SHEMP!!

So, after they save Edy and are driving away in the van, someone asks "What about Seth?" and then Rowdy shoots out of the back of the van on a motorbike. And we don't see him again until later in Donna's house while she's fighting off Seth and then the snake ... where he comes bursting through the wall, still on the motorbike! What the fuck has he been doing the whole afternoon?!? Was he out all day, biking around, looking for Seth? And where was Seth ... hiding out in Donna's apartment?

It's a hard ticket to say anything about a movie where there are equal numbers of bras and bazookas ... and the only bra in the movie was worn by a man. But I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the movie's treatment of the Michelle/Michael character. I like others figured that Michelle was a man the second the character spoke, and I was almost immediately on-guard for a trans-phobic Ace Ventura "Finkel is Einhorn" moment considering the ridiculous racism and casual mentions of rape that had already taken place on-screen by that moment. But no ... the wig and make-up just came off and no mention of it was ever really made after that. The worst is when Taryn calls her the "wannabe female bartender." So, kudos (?) to this movie's one progressive-ish moment. However, as much as I loved Andrea Savage on the show, she needs to let go of the word "transvestite." No judgement really, since I didn't know until recently how pejorative that word has become.

That was my take on the matter, as well, and it seems to be confirmed by the lyrics to the theme: "It's a hard ticket to hawaii/it's not paradise all the time."

I'll just go ahead and confess this honestly -- for a second when she was punching numbers on the calculator, I thought she was on her cellphone.

Hey, if a group of teenagers want to throw a small orgy in secret, after hours, on someone else's property, smoke a few cigs, and say a few cuss words, who are you to pass judgment? Morality goes beyond your 1's and 0's!

Imagine someone with a BB-8 avatar being a robot apologist. "What's its mission?" Unequivocal robot advocacy, it seems. But in defensive of all us humans, if being rude, goofing at work, cursing, and stealing donuts were really justifications for brutal robot death, would any of us here really be alive today? I suspect most of us are doing most of those things right now.

How about a shout-out to the movie's real unsung hero -- the surprising versatility of screwdrivers. Cars are repaired and elevators are turned into booby traps using just a screwdriver. And during the movie's climax in the paint store, who's there to help Alison with those lids? That's right:

It's funny that Chopping Mall and Short Circuit came out in the same year, because the first five minutes of both movies are strikingly similar ... both movies open with the robots in attack mode, followed by a reveal that it was all just a demonstration to a lukewarm and skeptical audience. In CM, someone says that the robots look like the 3 Stooges, and in SC, Johnny 5 loves the Stooges and even reprograms some of the robots to act out a Stooges scene. And of course, both feature lightning as the root cause for robots' malfunctions.

Does it pass the Bechdel test, though? I agree that Alison is pretty badass, but when do any two women have a conversation that doesn't eventually lead back to a guy? In the pizzeria, they're complaining about the nasty customer ("MORE BUTTER!!"). In the locker room, Suze convinces Alison to come to the "party" by promising her that Ferdy has a good personality. And in the heating duct, although the heat is the main complaint at first, Suze ultimately decides to turn back because she thinks the guys might be in trouble. I don't remember another scene featuring just two women. Does it count that Alison and Linda later make a plan to take down the central computer, even if the other three guys are there, too? This comment brought to you by: Creeps -- we can't be stopped.

Obviously, we have an opinion, but there are others who have different opinions.

Just FYI ... http://www.food.com/...-raisins-215025 This is a 5-star recipe, because there's no accounting for taste in this world.

Some folks like myself enjoy putting the coleslaw right on the barbeque sandwich. If I ever found out that some negligent potlucker allowed raisins to infiltrate my BBQ sandwich, "Are there raisins in the coleslaw?" would be my first question at every other BBQ I ever go to.