National Film Registry's list for 2005

This morning the annual list of 25 films that will be preserved for posterity by the National Film Registry was released. The whole list is here. As usual, they have a bunch of good but pretty standard entries (Cool Hand Luke, Giant, Miracle on 34th Street, A Raisin in the Sun and others), several films of historical importance (like footage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake) and a few real surprises that keep me convinced that the folks picking the films really love movies of all kinds and know what they're talking about.

Back in 1996, the very first list of 25 movies included This Is Spinal Tap, which showed they were off to a good start, but this year they've continued that trend. Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are great and deserving choices, as is Mom and Dad. Lest you should think I'm implying RHPS is a "great film", I'm not, but it (and its cult following) is undeniably significant and influential in the history of film and belongs on the list every bit as much as The Music Man, plus it's way more fun than The freaking Music Man.

Mom and Dad is a fantastic choice. The most influential of all the "personal hygeine" explotation films, it's one of the most successful independent films of all time (take that, Blair Witch Project) and toured the country for years. It's a low-budget sexploitation film, but was always shown to single-gender adult audiences as an educational film about the importance of having frank and informative dicussions with your teenaged children about sex. Because it usually included some nude shots and/or graphic footage of a live birth, depending upon how much the exhibitor could get away with in each town, audiences got their share of shock and tittilation but without the guilt of having seen a "dirty movie", because it was educational, you see. Little booklets about the film's subject matter (sex! but it's educational!) were also sold at the screenings, ensuring more cash flowed to the exhibitor. Joe Bob Briggs' excellent book Profoundly Disturbing : The Shocking Movies that Changed History has a chapter on Mom and Dad that tells the complete story of this film's strange history. I wish some enterprising soul would put the film on DVD. There are umpteen versions of Reefer Madness out there; shouldn't we be able to see Mom and Dad too?

Watch out for acetaminophen

This story contains important information about the pain reliever acetaminophen. Acetaminophen is not just Tylenol, but is in a lot of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs. A lot of people don't realize that improper use of OTC drugs can be extremely harmful. Just because you can buy something without a prescription doesn't make it safe for you to take the whole bottle, or to mix any two random medications.

I once took several different medicines to treat a cold and didn't realize that each of them contained a big dose of acetaminophen. I wound up vomiting blood. So be careful, unless you've always wanted to puke blood or try your luck at a liver transplant.

New Jersey: It's a death trap AND a suicide rap

This story cracks me up. The New Jersey legislature is considering putting "Born to Run" on their state license plates as a tribute to famous Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen. If anyone ought to have a Jersey-style tribute, it's the Boss, but is that song really what they want to hold up as a state motto? Here's the first half of the opening verse of the song, in case you're not as obsessed with it as I am:

"In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected
and steppin' out over the line"

About 15 years ago a similar movement started and failed to have the song declared the new state anthem. Robert Wuhl did a routine on comic relief about it, questioning the wisdom of having an anthem that mentions suicide in the second line. And of course, it gets better:

"Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we're young
'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run"

Hey youse guys, let's get the frig out of New Jersey before we end up spineless and dead! At this point, Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" seems like a more appropriate choice, doesn't it?

Draw your own conclusions, if you can

Here's an interesting entry from the Houston Chronicle's science blog. Scientists studying bats have discovered that in the males, there's a trade-off between the size of the animal's brain and the size of its testicles. Apparently they can't be big in both places, so they can either support a greater intellect or produce lots of sperm, but not both. The blogger also makes an amusing hypothesis about the relative intelligence of the members of AC/DC.

BNaT 7

We're heading to Butt-Numb-a-Thon 7 tomorrow night. Austin had an ice storm just in time for the big weekend! Hopefully they'll thaw out a bit before we get there. This will be my 6th year at BNaT. We always have a good time. No clue what we're seeing, as usual, though most of us figure King Kong is on the menu since Peter Jackson basically told us he'd send it when he visited BNaT 5.

There's a precedent of showing new musicals, as we had Chicago at BNaT 4 (awesome!) and The Phantom of the Opera last year (sucked!), so I suspect we'll see The Producers. There are rumors that we'll get a super-early cut of the new Superman, but I'm doubtful about that. It's still six months from release, and if it's awful or something I doubt they want to generate negative buzz (well, MORE negative buzz) this early in the game. Some folks think we'll get Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and it wouldn't surprise me, but I hope I can figure out what's going on since I didn't see Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

Tim League usually gets the 4AM wake-up slot to show some effed-up exploitation goodness, so there's no telling what he'll pull out of his sleeve this year. I hope for an encore of the short Christmas on Monkey Island every year, but so far no dice. I'm sure we'll see the Stunt Rock trailer a few times, though.

Two of my favorites from last year were old movies, Blonde Venus (pre-Hayes Code Marlene Dietrich -- wow!) and Miss Sadie Thompson (Rita Hayworth in a sweaty tropical climate in the lushest, most perfect 3-D presentation you could ever hope to see. THAT'S what 3-D should be used for!). I hope we get another couple of gorgeous, glossy ones like that this year.

There's usually some gore flick that I have little interest in, though occasionally they turn out to be good. I hope we're light on those this year; a little of that goes a long way with me. Also, I hope against hope that we won't get stuck with a pirate movie. Yeah, you heard me. I hate pirate stories. I just don't get the appeal. I'm ocean-averse anyway.

The thing I'm looking forward to the most: the Alamo Drafthouse's Shroomwich. I going to have at least two during the fest. It's juicy, marinated portobello mushroom topped with sundried tomato pesto and gooey goat cheese on crusty bread. I just checked the online menu for the Drafthouse and I don't see it listed. Come on, they had it in September! Oh, I'm going to be so depressed if they don't have it. I hope the online menu is just old, because the Shroomwich is heaven in a basket.