The Greatest Man Movie Concept

I have come up with the best idea for a total guy movie. It's got everything a man needs in a movie: a monster and nudity. Here's the premise:

A woman is infested with a parasite. After the paratite bursts out of the woman, nearly splitting her in two, she finds out that it has brainwashed her into feeding it and keeping it alive! And it will only eat... FROM HER BOOBS!

Step 1: Puns. Step 3: Riches

My friend Zach recently brought to my attention a post from the top-notch economic thinkers at NPR's Planet Money blog. They shared with us a drawing, by a kid, inspired by the prompt, "I'm going to be a millionaire because..." The kid drew this:

Yes, that is a picture of an adult male deer with a cutaway of his midsection to reveal some dollars inside him. The conclusion the Planet Money people drew (heh heh) from this picture was:

...puns are the surest route to riches.

Ten Best Comedy Movies

In the spirit of putting one more list on the internet, I figured I'd share with you a list of the top ten comedy movies.

This is a list that has been rolling around in my mind, maybe for years. At least, four or five items on the list have struck me as so good that I need to put them into a list to quantify just how good they are.

BUT, I'm a scientist, so I couldn't just dive in and make my list. I had to do research. I found three different top ten lists from three very different rating bodies:

AFI:
10. AIRPLANE!.
9. THE GRADUATE.
8. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT.
7. M*A*S*H.
6. BLAZING SADDLES.
5. DUCK SOUP.
4. ANNIE HALL.
3. DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.
2. TOOTSIE.
1. SOME LIKE IT HOT.

Bravo:
10 Arthur
9 Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
8 Blazing Saddles
7 The Wedding Singer
6 Airplane [sic]
5 South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
4 There’s Something About Mary
3 Shrek
2 Caddyshack
1 Animal House

IGN:
10. Blues Brothers
9. Raising Arizona
8. Rushmore
7. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
6. Blazing Saddles
5. Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
4. This Is Spinal Tap
3. Caddyshack
2. The Big Lebowski
1. Ghostbusters

There are some interesting trends here. For example, all the lists include Blazing Saddles, but none of them include it in the top five. IGN and AFI both have at number six, while Bravo has it at eight. (Behind Wedding Singer. Really?) This seems like an obvious pan-list item, until you realize Dr. Strangelove, Airplane!, and Caddyshack only made two lists, and This Is Spinal Tap only made one.

This evidence supports my thesis, outlined below, with the question of Caddyshack left open for debate.

And now, I present to you, my list:

10. Airplane!
9. Wayne’s World
8. Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
7. Mystery Men
6. Rushmore
5. Monty Python's Meaning of Life
4. The Big Lebowski
3. Blues Brothers
2. This Is Spinal Tap
1. Blazing Saddles



Post Script: Honorable Mentions

Then, there are some movies that aren't exactly in the main stream. I would hesitate to even call them "movies," per se. Two are commentaries and one is a documentary. But these easily rank as highly as the Top Ten, but they rank differently high. Consider these three as the top three (in no particular order) of a parallel list of feature-length hilarity.

Wizard People, Dear Reader [link]

MST3K/RiffTrax [link]

The Aristocrats [link]

My Taste in DVDs Part 2

A few days ago, I noted that my DVD collection tends to favor a specific genre. In that post I included a photo of my movies that were not either comedy or science fiction. It's a stack of about 20 DVDs. So, in that context, here are my science fiction DVDs:


That's over three feet of DVDs. And yes, you notice correctly: the complete Twilight Zone (five seasons) and the complete Star Trek: The Next Generation (seven seasons) are making the stack pretty tall. They are also making the stack quite awesome.

But that's not even the best part. I went ahead and stacked all my comedy DVDs. The stack is so tall that I could not stack them without help from Lovely Assistant Emily:


I took these photos a few days ago when I was pretty drunk. That means most of these stacks were toppled in a depressing/hilarious drunken way.

File this one under "stacks provide unique insights."

How Should I Spend My Stimulus?

When I filed my taxes (actually, when I had my mom do it, because I'm a child), I discovered (my mother informed me) I am receiving $300 in stimulus money for some reason. I am a patriotic American, so I intend to use this money to its exact purpose: to stimulate the economy. Which means I'm going to buy some stuff.

But I'm no fool. I think before I spend. I present to you three options I am considering for my $300.

The Nerd Collection

Register www.punsultancy.com $10

Fill out my Led Zeppelin collection (all their albums except Houses of the Holy) $75

Battlestar Galactica seasons 1, 2, and 2.5 (I own three and four already, which give it a slightly more nerdy edge) $70 (on Amazon)

LOST seasons two, three, and four $125 (on Amazon)

Dark Knight $20

OR

The Comedy Collection

All My Stuff (George Carlin DVD box set of TV specials) or Seinfeld -- the complete series $180

Let's Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy (Steve Martin comedy albums) $15

Venture Brothers Season 3 (but only after March 24) $20

Andy Richter Controls the Universe -- the complete series (but only after March 24) $30

Saturday Night Live season one -- $50

OR

The Responsible Adult Collection

Membership to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association $195

Microsponsorship of MinnPost $25

New business cards $20

Socks and underwear $40

Backorder www.artallen.com on Godaddy $20

And there you go. $300 smartly spent.


So what do you think? Which would you spend your $300 on?

Nerdscale

Preface: This scale is meant as a jumping-off point for discussion. Please feel free to critique or make your own list. It is my hope that, one day, there will be a definitive list achieved through collaboration.

“Nerdy” is a term bandied about, willie nillie, affixed to many things. My intent is to establish a definitive list of nerdiness.

Is Spaceballs as nerdy as Firefly? Is Spaceballs as nerdy as Star Wars? No, it is not. So, we will take Spaceballs to be our baseline. All items will be measured in Spaceballs (SB).

The main facet of our measurement is level of divorcedness from Reality. For example:

aliens > (Cylons > androids >) robots > spaceships

So Star Trek is nerdier than Battlestar Galactica which is nerdier than Firefly

0 SB: Sports

0.01 SB: "Hans Solo? Isn't he that guy from Star Track?" THIS CAUSES NERDS TO DIE.

0.1 SB: Harry Potter

1 SB: Spaceballs

1.1 SB: Ghostbusters

2 SB: Jeopardy.

2.5 SB: Twilight Zone

3 SB: Star Wars

3.5 SB: Futurama.

4 SB: Firefly

4.5 SB: Star Trek VOY,

5 SB: Sar Trek TOS,

6 SB: Battlestar Galactica

7 SB: Star Trek TNG/DS9

8 < SB: Anime

This, sadly, is where my expertise in nerddom ends. I wanted the list to go to ten, but alas, I am uninspired and unknowledgeable past here. FAIL.

My Taste in DVDs

Recently, I was going to watch a movie with Emily, so I started to narrow our movie options by genre. That's when I realized the demographic makeup of my DVD collection. Let's just say it's a little lopsided.

These are the only movies in my collection that are not either comedy or science fiction:

(Missing from this photo are seasons 2 and 3 of Boston Legal, which are currently being lent to my mother's boyfriend.)

Even within this collection, as you can probably see, there is a bit of a theme. There are a lot of old movies, historical fiction, and old historical fiction (westerns). Also, there even is a little overlap of comedy and science fiction in this collection. For example, Alice's Restaurant isn't a full-on comedy, but it has its funny moments. The Great Escape and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid both have truly funny moments sprinkled throughout. Man on the Moon is classified as a comedy in some movie stores, but I feel like that's just because it was about the life of a funnyman; the movie itself has some very somber, touching moments (to the extent that a movie about Andy Kaufman can have a touching moment).

Hell, Boston Legal is a tongue-in-cheek legal drama that features a rotating cast of science fiction actors.

So, you may be thinking that looks like a bigish chunk of movies. Not outliers. Well, consider that the score or so DVDs featured above have come out of this collection:

Shut Up. I'm a Busy Man.

My college buddy Leif listed ten movies he hasn't seen but which he probably should have by now. (A note on Leif's list: the only movies on that list that I've seen are Citizen Kane and the Shawshank Redemption--and the Shawshank Redemption involved a lot of 10th grade making out, so that one only sort of counts.)

Now, because I judge others and feel (very rightly) that others judge me almost exclusively on taste in media, I shall share with you my list of movies I haven't seen that paint me as an uncultured cinema oaf.

1. The Indiana Jones movies
2. Mad Max
3. The Zombie genre
4. Some Like It Hot
5. Kill Bill (1 and 2)
6. Apocalypse Now
7. Annie Hall
8. The Terminator movies
9. The Pink Panther movies
10. Paul Blart: Mall Cop

That Which I Love

There are two things in this world that I absolutely refuse to live without: