Ticket 4: Nat'l Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1


The Pitch: Lethal Weapon 2 meets Hot Shots! meets Men at Work
Price of Admission: $3.25
When: February 15, 1993 at 1:20 pm
My Age: 12
Quote: Suicide, huh? She must have caught herself by surprise. - Samuel L. Jackson

I just thought of a great band name. Here's how we'd open the show, "Hello Toledo, we're the Early Nineties Emilios." This would be followed by me inquiring, "Golf clap?" And then the audience would respond with a restrained, "Golf clap." Which would then give way to a mighty chorus of "quack, quack, quack, quack..." as we kicked into our obligatory song off the new album

Early 90's Emilio is my favorite era of Emilio. Young Guns II, Mighty Ducks, and Loaded Weapon 1 are some great movies to see at 12 years old. You got your Western genre piece. Your sports underdog story. And your guy's guy action movie parody. So pretty much a doomed loner who's not that good of an athlete who sits in the corner and mocks the jocks. Just your average 12 year old. 

Other Emilio eras are his early cult period where he co-starred in flicks like Tex, The Outsiders, Maximum Overdrive and the definitive cult classic Repo Man. There was his Brat Pack phase which included The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, and the first Young Guns. His newest era seems to be as a neo-Robert Altman with his recent directed piece Bobby and his in-production movie The Public.

I haven't seen Loaded Weapon 1 in quite some time, but my memories of it are that it was one of the better parody movies. Along with the Hot Shots! movies and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, it was part of that early 90's joke-a-minute making fun of movies that actually had more hits than misses. Since then, we've been inundated with the lazy Scary Movie and Epic Movie/Meet the Spartans franchises that think mimicking some famous movie scene verbatim with shitty actors constitutes hilarity. Where's the twist? Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz have thankfully breathed new life into the genre parody pic.

Loaded Weapon 1 borrowed heavily from the Lethal Weapon plots. The synopsis: End-of-his-rope cop , Emilio, is teamed up with by-the-book cop, Samuel L. After Samuel L.'s main squeeze (Whoopi fucking Goldberg) turns up dead, the partners trace it down to an illegal Girl Scout cookie drug operation.
They encounter the femme fatale. First played by the awkward, pipsqueaky secretary from TV's Moonlighting, she luckily puts her hair down and magically transforms into the beautiful Kathy Ireland.) The Sports Illustrated cover model was tops in my budding adolescence. I even went so far as to have her poster up in my room, albeit hidden under a corny poster of egg puns.) The cops take in Jon Lovitz as their version of Pesci's Leo Getz. There's a money laundering joke, where money is actually in a washing machine. Finally, it's uncovered that General Morters, as played by William Shatner, is the ringleader behind this operation. Big action brouhaha and it ends.

There are some nice cameos by Bruce Willis revisiting his John McClane role as the target of mistaken helicopter attack at his beach trailer. Emilio's bro, Charlie Sheen, shows up as a valet who gets car bombed seconds later. Scotty from Star Trek, Ken Ober the host of MTV's Remote Conrol, Corey Feldman, and the two guys from CHiPs. Best of all, though, is the guy who played Proctor in the Police Academy movies, playing a cop who uses Head & Shoulders at the station. (It's tingling. That means it's working.) Incidentally, the director of this movie also directed my two favorite Police Academy movies, PA 3 & 4. Sadly, Tackleberry doesn't make an appearance.


I had a friend that every time we played multi-player Mario Kart tournaments would trash talk in bad cliches. Looking through some of the memorable quotes off of IMDb, this exchange between Shatner and Denis Leary resonated with me. 

Gen. Morters: Where's the microfilm, Mike? 
Mike McCracken: I don't know, I gave it to York. I thought she was one of your men. 
Gen. Morters: Act in haste, repent in leisure. 
Mike McCracken: But he who hesitates is lost. 
Gen. Morters: Never judge a book by its cover. 
Mike McCracken: What you see is what you get. 
Gen. Morters: Loose lips, sink ships... 
Mike McCracken: Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing or fighting, my friend. 
[
Gen. Morters, cornered, looks to Mr. Jigsaw
Mike McCracken: [Mr. Jigsaw consults Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, shakes his head
Gen. Morters: Sorry Mike, no good. 

Up Next: There are no poker tells when you're playing against the Man Without a Face. 

Ticket 5: Rookie of the Year


The Pitch: Happy Gilmore meets Doogie Howser M.D. meets Almost Famous
Price of Admission: $3.25
When: July 17, 1993 @ 1:20 pm
My Age: 12
Quote: [once taken out of the cast, Henry's arm snaps around and hits Dr. Kersten in the noseDr. Kersten: [muffled, with hands over his face] Funky, buttloving...! 

Baseball movies tailored to kids, what a genre. It's produced some true gems and a lot more duds. The gems: The Bad News Bears (original version), Sandlot, and Mr. Baseball. The duds: Angels in the Outfield, Little Big League, The Bad News Bears sequels and remake, and The Kid from Left Field. In a league by itself are the Air Bud movies that have the greatest of all post-colon-pun titles: Golden Receiver and Seventh Inning Fetch. 

Here we have Rookie of the Year. A very watchable movie at the age of 12, though I haven't seen it since. This came at the peak of my baseball-phase. I collected lots of baseball cards, mostly Topps(ex-Disney guru Michael Eisner has just bought up the Topps franchise and is going to try and turn it into another rape-my-childhood entrepreneurial endeavor), Donruss and Score were for the rich kids. 

Most of all, though, I was an avid New York Mets fan. The 80's and early 90's Mets had the greatest roster of baseball teamsters and/or coke fiends. In order of favorites: Dwight "Dr. K" Gooden, Daryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, HoJo, Lenny Dykstra, Kevin McReynolds, Ron Darling, David Cone, Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman and Gregg Jefferies. I loved me some Mets, but hated me some Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs. Growing up in the south, these two NL East teams plagued my Saved By the Bell after school schedule. There was nothing better than getting home from school and settling down with a half-pack of Ritz crackers, a caffeine-free Pepsi and some SBtB. But there were many times I'd have to deal with the likes of Dale Murphy and Harry Carey interrupting Zach sneaking into The Attic to air their buzzkill daygames on TBS and WGN. (Consequentially, these channels have subjected me to the 588-2300 Empire commercials, the catchiest of all ad jingles).

And then Little League happened. I was on the baseball team called the General Shale Generals. We were coached by my future high school physics and chemistry teachers (you'd think we'd of mastered the science of the game, or at least how to make a bat out of balsa wood). 
(Not me)
My first year we placed second-to-last, beating the last-to-last place team the Hit Men. My second and last year we finished completely last. The Generals was an apt name as the Washington Generals were the losingest team in all of sports, being their main opponents the Harlem Globetrotters. Being a subpar player on a shitpoor team will kill anyone's baseball spirits, so I've pretty much faded away from it except for World Series or steroid finger-wagging.

But I did have Rookie of the Year. A cinematic escape into a regular kid succeeding not by actual talent, but by a freak anomaly of a broken-arm-rehealed-into-a-sonic-pitcher's-arm. I remember facing now-NFL player Aubrayo Franklin at the plate. He lined up for the pitch. The pitch sailed by as I teetered all the way back to the edge of the on-deck batter's box in cowardace. I'd have killed to have broken my arm to get a sonic arm, or at least an excuse not to be on the suckiest team in all of Little League.
 
Synopsis of Rookie of the Year: Kid from American Pie breaks his arm and can pitch like a pie-fucker. He gets hired by the Chicago Cubs and is subjected to Gary Busey as a mentor. Has to deal with mommy. All directed by the guy who voiced the narration of Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years, Daniel Stern.

Next Up: Proctor from The Police Academy movies parodies the Head and Shoulders shampoo ads.

Ticket 3: Batman Returns



The Pitch: Jaws II meets Good Will Hunting II: Hunting Season
Price of Admission: $2.50
When: June 20, 1992 at 1 pm
My Age: 11
Quote: Security? Who let Vicki Vale into the Batcave? I'm sitting there working; I turn around, there she is. "Oh hi, Vick - come on in." - Bruce Wayne

Villain overload buried in the Burton-esque pastel shades of gray. Batman Returns raises the question of how much is one Jack Nicholson worth. The answer: not Michelle Pheiffer, Danny DeVito, and Christopher Walken combined. Clearly, they went Quant over Qual in this movie. Three villains and not one emerges as the main antagonist. Tsk-tsk, my high school English teacher would say.

Synopsis: Pee-Wee Herman tosses out a baby. It becomes Danny DeVito (The Penguin). Christopher Walken tosses out a Michelle Pheiffer. She becomes Catwoman. The screenwriter of Hudson Hawk tosses out a shitty script. It becomes Batman Returns. 
This is a nice experiment in phoning it in. One can see Tim Burton as Gus Van Sant in the movie-within-a-movie Goodwill Hunting II: Hunting Season of Jay &  Silent Bob Strike Back. Just sitting there, off to the side in his director's chair, counting all the money he's just raked in saying, "Alright just shoot it and slather my trademark art direction and set design all over it and we'll call it a day." (A constant stance he'll take on the many of his films that do not start with Pee-, Bee-, or Ed- over the rest of his career.) All I can say is, "applesauce, bitch."

Next Up: The guy from American Pie has a jerky elbow.

Ticket 2: The Addams Family



The Pitch: The Royal Tennenbaums meets
Tim Burton's art direction
Price of Admission: $2.50
When: 11/22/91 at 1:50 pm
My Age: 10
Quote: Are they made from real Girl Scouts?
- Wednesday Addams

In my imaginary version of what a Hollywood producer would pitch The Addams Family as, I said The Royal Tennenbaums by way of Tim Burton's art direction. Both the Tennenbaums and the Addams are among the dysfunctionalist of families. Both movies star Angelica Huston as the matriarch holding each family together, for better or worse. Both feature relatives trying to con their way back into the good graces of the family. In this case, Gene Hackman using fake cancer to live out his "last days" and woo back Huston from Danny Glover. While, Christopher Lloyd uses his likeness to the long lost Uncle Fester as a way into stealing the family's fortune. Both are also overly art directed to great success.

My hazy synopsis of The Addams Family: Capitol punishment death jokes can be popcorn fun for the whole family. You can be Goth without listening to Bauhaus or The Cure. Christopher Lloyd looks better in a fright wig (Doc Brown) than in fright bald (Uncle Fester). Uncle Fester really is Uncle Fester!!!

This movie marks my first encounter with Christina Ricci. As a child actor, she was miles away from the aw shucks-isms of the Macaulay Culkins and Jodi Sweetins of that era. We weren't seeing Ricci play Wednesday Addams, but more like Wednesday was playing Christina Ricci. Whereas casting Sophia Coppola in The Godfather III a year before was a huge miscalculation, casting Ricci as Wednesday was perfect. Her pale skin, widow's peak, and soulless puppy dog eyes made for a role that will always typify her regardless of how many radiators she's chained to or Woody Allen/Jason Biggs romps she Keaton-Farrow's her way through. Enigmatic illustrator Gary Baseman has made a career influenced largely by Ricci's likeness.
The Addams Family soundtrack featured MC Hammer in his last forays of hip hop stardom before gangsta rap rendered his pop stylings moot. Weighted with both the classic 2 Legit 2 Quit and the specially-made for the movie The Addams Groove, the public was treated to rollicking songs of legitimacy and a remixed, repetitive TV theme song. In the late 90s I bought a CD from Circuit City that bared both these tracks. It was called Back 2 Back Hits and was a greatest hits collection of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. It was glorious.

As both Ice and Hammer's careers were pretty much over, both staged a revamp of their image to hilarious results in 1994. Vanilla grew dreadlocks and copped a faux-Cypress Hill pot/rapper image singing the catchy Roll 'Em Up.
MC Hammer dropped the MC title, dialed up his bud Neon Deion Sanders, and donned a banana hammock for a video that proved 2 be 2 hot for MTV. Here's your Oakland A's former batboy in all his glory. Pumps and a Bump indeed.

Up Next: Pee-Wee Herman Dumps A Baby In The Sewer

Ticket 1: Terminator 2: Judgement Day


The Pitch: RoboCop meets Gleaming the Cube
Price of Admission: $3.00
When: July 5, 1991 at 4:45 pm
My Age: 10
Quote: Did you call moi a dipshit? - John Connor

T2 - my oldest ticket stub. I remember that summer playing Terminator around my neighborhood. I wore sunglasses (with mirrors on the sides courtesy of Raisin Bran), a shiny silver pleather jacket, and tucked my hand into my coat while holding a strange kitchen utensil as my mechanical Terminator arm. In the midst of my latency/autonomy stage, my buddy and I would venture around the neighborhood to escape my parents' supervision. He hadn't seen the movie, so unfortunately, he didn't dress the part or walk down the street like a robot. Thus, putting the task of being completely awesome all on this 10-year-old cyborg's pleather shoulders.

T2 had it all: Witty, hard-ass one-liners, breakthrough SFX, the fat guy on the motorcycle Arnold stunt double, and dutifully reclaiming Thorogood's Bad to the Bone from the Problem Child movies.

The brief synopsis of T2. Arnold's butt. Robert Patrick's butt. Sarah Connor pull-ups then face-licking. John's stepdad milk carton stabbing. Dyson's creepy last breaths. Judgement Day postponed for a later sequel.

The movie predicted August 29th, 1997 to be Judgement Day, when the robots would take over and bring about the apocalypse. In hindsight, the summer of 1997 wasn't marked by Skynet's cyborg assault, but rather by the fitter, happier ok computers of Radiohead. 

The character of John Connor is fast becoming the Rusty Griswold of sci-fi cinema. Christian Bale has been announced to be JC in the next installment, some no-name takes on John in Fox's sure to be short-lived The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Nick Stahl played him in T3, but I think Eddie Furlong will always be the best Connor. His puberty shrieks. His friendship with Budnick of Salute Your Shorts and a boobless Nikki Cox. His ATM hacking skills. His mastery of the Spanish language.
The Complete Rusty Griswolds and John Connors

In compiling this collage of Rustys and Johns, I discovered that the Rusty Griswold from Christmas Vacation (top, 2nd from right) is Darlene from Roseanne's boyfriend, David. Incidentally, he sat two rows in front of me at a screening of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon back in May of 2007. I just thought that's the dude from Roseanne. Now he's the dude from Roseanne and Rusty Griswold.

Robert Patrick's portrayal of the T-1000 shows how a one-note performance can be quite  frightening. One can almost imagine Javier Bardem studying Patrick's soulless, determined portrayal while prepping the role of Chigurh for No Country for Old Men.

T2 also has the distinction of having one of my favorite Guns 'n Roses songs and subsequent music video tie-ins. You Could Be Mine is what cyborg testosterone would sound like. The video has Arnold hunting GnR through, where else, but a seedy Sunset Strip club. As he catches up with them in the club's back alley his assessment of terminating W. Axl Rose is that it would be a waste of ammo. Somehow, he sensed the rearranged letters of ORAL SEX would not pose a threat to the Connors or any Chinese Democrats. 

Up Next: Too Legit for Cousin Itt.

Ticket 0: Young Guns II





























The Pitch: The Wild Bunch meets The Breakfast Club
Price of Admission: $2.50
When: Matinee sometime in mid-August of 1990
My Age: 9
Quote: "You took my farm, Mr. Chisum. You took a lot of people's farms, Mr. Chisum." - Cameron Frye.
 
So, the whole point of this exercise was to show my old ticket stubs and then reminisce. Well, my first entry is ticket stubless. That's because the stub in question has at some point disappeared from my baggie of tix. Which is a shame, since it was one of my most prized. The stub in question was for Geoff Murphy's Young Guns II (1990). 
 
A movie I remember seeing in the Johnson City, TN AMC Theaters. This is important because it was the only AMC ticket I had before it turned into the now arena-seating Carmike Cinemas. Through IMDb release dates, I can estimate I saw this movie at a matinee show some time in August of 1990. More than likely mid-August, as I was no longer taking Parks & Rec summer tennis lessons and in late August I would be starting the 4th grade. The matinee ticket price was $2.50 (cough).
 
I can't say for sure who I went to this movie with, but more than likely it was with my oldest sister, Mary.  She was the self-proclaimed Queen of All Movie Lines back then. And was a huge culprit in the movies, music, and overall nonsense of humor that influenced me in my formative years. 
 
Anywho, the brief synopsis of Young Guns II. Emilio in old man makeup. Emilio vs. the Petersen guy from CSI. Emilio w/vs. the Jack Nicholson emulating, eyebrow-furrowing rival/pal Arkansas Dave Rutabaugh (Christian Slater). Us vs.  Jon Bon soundtrack. 
Looking back this is a classic August release pic. August is that hairy month when meant to be blockbusters that couldn't compete with the June/July releases (this is before the pre-Memorial Day weekend trend that imported May into the summer blockbuster season of today) are sent out to the public in hopes of feeding on those Dog Days of Summer dollars. 
 
From the future director of the Emilio/Sir Hopkins/Sir Jagger saga Freejack, this Western sequel starts out with Emilio's Billy the Kid (BtK) coming to terms with his fame/infamy. Once a member of a gang, now he is struggling to maintain power among his band of Keifers, Lou Diamonds, and Christians. Ex-compadre Sheriff Pat Garrett is making a "movement" on BtK's capture. En route to Old Mexico, BtK gets Christened the Prince of Piss (wait for it), the Prince of Pistoliers by fanboy Balthazar Getty. Getty's pursuit of joining up with BtK mirrors Casey Affleck's, the coward Robert Ford, enlisting in Brad Pitt's Jesse James' gang. Both read the dime novel fan-fic and both had a homoerotic attraction that would lure them to their fates. In Getty's case, he was shot by Pat Garrett's boys in a heartbreaking scene against the wavy horizon of the setting sun. Garrett finally catches up with BtK in some bordertown village. In a scene borrowing from Papa of Emilio, Apocalypse Now, BtK is snuck up upon by Garrett. In place of the slaying of the water buffalo, the townsfolk slay a PETA-endorsed pinata. But as where Col. Kurtz is most certainly sliced, the outcome of BtK's did he or didn't he get shot in the back is left open-ended. So, we are told from old man make-up Emilio narrating us this story from the Roaring Twenties, that yes Garrett did let BtK survive.
 
One of the most memorable lines from this movie was after the prison guard, Bob, loaded up a shotgun with 18 dimes. BtK escapes his chains and commandeers the shotgun.
"Hello Bob. Goodbye Bob. best dollar-eighty I ever spent." - William H. Bonney.
At the time, I'd say it was the best two-dollar fifty I ever spent on a Brat Pack Western. 

Up Next: Linda Hamilton Flirts With Biceptuality.

Notes From A Ticket Hoarder

[Pointing out the window at Col. Vogel] "No ticket." - Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr.

I could've been thrown out of that zeppelin. Well, at least, from the day I was brought about in '81, up until a decade later. But since then, I can more or less validate pretty much every movie or concert I've attended.

Yup, one of those. I'm a ticket stub pack rat. Ever since a certain sequel to a Brat Pack Western, I've hoarded pretty much every ticket I've had torn by ushers ranging from a former roommate to WWF manager Mr. Fuji.

Growing up, my family were regular-as-Raisin-Bran moviegoers. My earliest movie theater memory was at 5 years old ('86) when we took in John Landis' ¡Three Amigos! in Council Bluffs, IA (possibly Omaha, NE) on the big screen. Most of this memory consists of the drive home from the movie, as I have seen ¡Three Amigos! an improbable amount of times since, initial viewing of the movie has skewed. Where were you when the invisible horseman was assassinated?

Gathered here is a personal mise en scène covering the who, what, where, when, how and why I was when these ticket stubs were torn. Pretty much the roots of my pop culture viewings will be the basis of what I'll be addressing in this no less than a run-on, rambling, purposely pretentious, too much info (but not like that too much info kind of way) guide to the movies and concerts (hereforth known as shows) I've attended. So be ready for the Conlonian nonsense, stilted pop culture perspectives, occasional dalliances with 2nd-person narratives, and shameless wordplay the Pauline Kaels & Lester Bangs of the world substituted in lieu of actual insights.

Admit one.