Hi Everyone —
We went to see The Naked Gun over the weekend, and I didn’t realize how much we needed that kind of movie. As pal Tommy Tomlinson wrote the other day, it’s rare these days for Hollywood to make a film with just one goal — to make people laugh. No message, no twist ending, no gentle moral, no “let’s take a moment to celebrate humanity” wrap-up.
Nope. It’s one gag after another, start to finish — a throwback not only to the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker machine-gun comedies (Airplane, Ruthless People, the original Naked Guns) but also to Austin Powers, Spinal Tap, Stripes, and especially Mel Brooks.
There’s a scene in Mel Brooks’ classic Young Frankenstein that I think about all the time. The movie isn’t just joke after joke like Blazing Saddles or Spaceballs — it’s an homage to Hollywood’s old horror films — but early on, Dr. Fronkonstein pulls into a Transylvania train station and sees a porter.
Dr. Fronkonstein: “Pardon me, boy. Is this the Transylvania Station?”
Boy: “Yah! Yah! Track 29. Oh, can I give you a shine?”
To go that far out of your way — and out of the plot — just to mimic the lyrics of Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for no reason except to make us laugh? That’s pure Mel Brooks. And that’s the ethos of the new Naked Gun. Maybe one out of every 20 jokes lands, but that’s all you need when you fire off 400. I won’t spoil the punchlines, but I will tell you that they go way out of their way to make a Cleveland Browns joke, and I’m obviously all for that.
If you’re in the wrong mood, you might walk out saying, “That wasn’t funny at all — just a bunch of very stupid wisecracks and one-liners.” You wouldn't exactly be wrong.
But if you’re in the right mood — open to escaping, laughing, being silly and not thinking about anything else — you’ll walk out thinking: “That was the whole point.”
OK, let’s get to some baseball water-cooler talk in this week’s Monday Rewind — and maybe offer a few pointless gags along the way!
OK, this is getting ridiculous, Milwaukee!
The Brewers won again on Sunday — this time coming back from a 5-0 deficit against the Mets and winning on an Isaac Collins walkoff homer (more on Collins in a minute) — and that means that Milwaukee has now won nine games in a row, 13 of their last 14, and they are an almost impossible-to-believe 48-16 in their last 64 games.
That’s the best 64-game span in Brewers history.
The Brewers are now notably better than every other team in baseball, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense that this team of Turangs and Hoskins and Frelicks and Yeliches and Priesters and Durbins would be outshining clubs with double and even triple the payroll. But this is the wonder of baseball. The Brewers don’t have stars. They just do everything well —probably the best defensive team in baseball, third in the league in runs, a solid-to-good starting pitcher every night, more stolen bases than any team in the league, a bullpen guy named Abner striking out the world, and they have a grand old baseball guy named Pat Murphy running the show. The Brewers are having that sort of magical season that makes the heart soar.
There’s only one bummer, and it has nothing at all to do with the Brewers themselves — the regular season just means so much less than it used to. If this were, say, 1966, the Brewers would be five games up in the National standings with the WORLD SERIES on the line. If his was 1984, the Brewers would be leading their division (the American League East if we’re going back to ‘84) with a great shot to reach the ALCS.
Instead, the Brewers are playoff-bound — their odds are greater than 99.9% now — but will have to start over likely by staying warm through the first-round bye, then beating the Padres or Mets or Cubs or Dodgers or Phillies, then beating one of them again and only THEN getting to the World Series.
All I’m saying is that it should mean more to play the way the Brewers are playing.
His name is Isaac Collins
Isaac Collins? Is that a cocktail?
Actually he's the most Brewersy Brewer of them all — plus the Dodgers lose a weird one (but not as weird as I thought), the Yankees wander off into the wilderness, and Jen Pawol learns the first lesson of home plate umpiring.
Join JoeBlogs and read on