Category: Funny

resenha do filme Se Eu Fosse Você 2

David Evans2 Comments

um desapontamento depois de seu predecessor bobo mas encantador

Uns anos depois do primeiro filme (e se você ainda não assistiu ao primeiro filme, bom, se eu fosse você, iria assistir aquele primeiro que foi muito melhor), a relação entre o casal (Helena e Claudio) tem deteriorado de novo até a decisão de se separar. Depois de uma discussão barulhenta sobre a divisão dos bens, Claudio e Helena… trocam de corpos de novo [surpresa!]. Varias situações cômicas seguem: Helena – no corpo de Claudio – participa num jogo de futebol e tem medo da bola; Claudio – no corpo de Helena – “ajuda” a planejar o casamento de sua filha.

No primeiro filme, além das cenas cômicas (que foram muito mais cômicas que as cenas neste filme), observamos a reconciliação gradual do casal, como os dois chegaram a apreciar o um para o outro de novo. Neste filme, quase não observamos nada da relação mesma. Só temos as cenas cômicas e depois, alguns mal-entendidos ficam aclarados e o casal fica enamorado justo a tempo para uma cena de dança coreografada no casamento da filha. Também fiquei desapontado que este filme se rebaixou para fazer varias piadas da homosexualidade potencial de Helena no corpo de Claudio, enquanto o filme anterior evitou esse humor por completo. Não vale assistir: fica com o primeiro.

Nota sobre o conteúdo: Este filme tem classificação 10 no Brasil embora fale do sexo e da gravidez entre adolescentes. Não ocorre o sexo no filme mesmo mas o casal transa fora da tela. Nada forte.

plenty of popcorn to get you through the long space voyage

David Evans1 Comment

We also spent part of one holiday season weighing the uneaten popcorn left behind (or thrown away) after the upbeat movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and compared it with the popcorn left after the gloomy “intellectual” film Solaris. Our garbology director showed that the average buckets of popcorn left behind in Solaris had 29 percent less popcorn in them than those left behind in the happy movie.

(from Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating, p144-145)

book review: Thank You For Smoking, by Christopher Buckley

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a rollicking ride through Washington lobbying, spin-meisters, kidnapping, corporate intrigue, despite a little floundering towards the end

I read this in about 24 hours (which is fast for me). Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby. His boss wants him out, but after an impressive showing on Oprah, he becomes the darling of the lobby’s chairman of the board. He gets kidnapped and tortured by antismoking advocates. Corporate intrigue takes place.

This was a very fun, witty ride. Naylor is sympathetic, and he has a genuine friendship with her fellow Merchants of Death, the chief spokesman for firearms and the spokeswoman for alcohol. The satire of Hollywood, of the lobbying industry, of Washington spin, is all fun. A man next to me at baggage claim said, as I laughed out loud, That must be a great book! You haven’t put it down! He was right.

In the last quarter of the book, it starts to get even a little crazy for my generous suspension of disbelief, but I still couldn’t stop reading, and the ending is satisfying (even with a several-years-later epilogue;* it’s like watching 9-to-5 with Lily Tomlin all over again).

Note on content: Some language, some sexual content, some violence. Less language or violence (and a little more sex) than Gun, with Occasional Music (but not as good as that one either). Less of everything than the White Tiger.

Continue reading “book review: Thank You For Smoking, by Christopher Buckley” →

literary halloween costumes

David Evans1 Comment

Suggestions from The Common Reader:

A. Gregor Samsa’s sister from The Metamorphosis. What was her name again? Ah, yes, Grete. Thank you internet. I don’t really know what that would look like, but I think it’d be brilliant.

…

C. You could be A Film Adaptation of Your Favorite Book. So: shorter, dumber, but also sexier, with more kicks to the face, more explosions, and maybe a happier ending. (Don’t take the “more explosions” bit too literally, eh?)

Hat tip to Bookslut

my funniest story ever

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My wife and I were trying to think of funny stories, and this is my funniest story ever, from a visit to Uganda back in 2006.

Over the last few days, I’ve written a couple of letters to my wonderful wife D, but I haven’t had the chance to send them, so they’ve been sitting on the table in my hotel. This evening when I returned to my room after work, I went to get out my computer and found – together with the two letters I had written – another letter, written in an unfamiliar script! Here are excerpts:

Dear Sweetie,
How are you and your life generaly? From my side things are so fine the way you always see me through we don’t meet each other sometimes.
As far as your letter is concerned from yesterday, I read but I didn’t understand because…I thought you had written to someone else…
So sweetie, I also love you too much and if you are realy serious, I welcome you with my two hands in my arms. Also I am a born-again christian… [ME: One of my letters mentioned attending church.] Even I would feel good to be in your country if you could arrange and take me there to tour because I love the place….
BE SPECIFIC AND SERIOUS I VOW TO BE YOURS FOR GOOD AND EVER!
[and a bit more]
She goes on to suggest that she’ll come to my room early tomorrow morning or that I can call her tonight at 8pm at a number she provides. I read the letter at 8:25pm and tried to call but couldn’t get through!

This experience is all the more striking because it’s happened before: in 2000, I was staying at the Joyland Lodge in Busia, Kenya, and the woman who washed my clothes slipped a similar note into my clean laundry (with no unwisely left love letters to provoke her). She also mentioned coming to see my country. I’m amazed by the earnest willingness of someone to consider a marriage based on nothing but a couple of letters (or in the previous case, not even that) and my perceived citizenship in a wealthy country. And yet, as I look around me, I shouldn’t be amazed.

I’ve written a note that I hope is kind but clear and very apologetic for the confusion.
And then, the next day…

When I awoke this morning, the note was gone, and when I returned home from work, I found another letter in the drawer by my bed:

Thank you very much. I appreciate the way you have told me through the letter because to be with two wives is committing adultery which is a very big sin. I wish you well and if you go back greet everybody and I encourage you next time to come back to [the hotel I’m staying at].

She also wished me blessings and safety in my endeavors and travels.

Good times…

intellectual controversies among magnificent, erudite dogs

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I was amused by this caricature of academic debates and the fascination they engender.  I also wondered if I’m not attending the wrong conferences.

Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.  In the case of Rotkopf and Urquiza, however, according to the report in The Gold-Bug, they had very nearly come to bites.  So much so that Oliver Johnson had to break off his discussion of Poe’s influence on Lovecraft…and leave the stage, with Rotkopf congratulating him, saying that every time an imbecile stopped talking, the intellectual climate on Earth improved slightly.  Oliver Johnson had sworn to kill Joachim Rotkopf one day, and Rotkopf and Urquiza had continued their argument in the pages of The Gold-Bug, in a series of increasingly vitriolic articles, which I had followed with fascination, never dreaming that I would one day hear those magnificent, erudite dogs trading insults for real.    (from Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, by Luís Fernando Veríssimo, tr by Margaret Jull Costa, p16-17)

people or dolphins? and the conquest of the Americas

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The other day I encountered this quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, excerpted in Angrist & Pischke’s Mostly Harmless Econometrics:

On the planet earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.  But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons. (MHE, p11)

which is funny and clever.  Then I read this quote in Luís Fernando Veríssimo’s Borges and the Eternal Orangutans:

Rotkopf…said that he did not understand the modern lament that the conquest of Latin America had been a cultural violation.  There had been no conquest, the natives had won, and the indolent, fatalistic culture still dominated the continent.  They merely allowed the whites to think they were in charge in order to expose them to constant frustration and ridicule.  (B&EO, tr from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, p15)

which reminded me of the HGG quote except for the massive body count of indigenous persons (as well as the racism of Rotkopf’s initial evaluation of native culture).

Of course, the dolphins have had a pretty massive body count at the hands of humans as well, so maybe Adams was wrong after all.

what gmail REALLY needs

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Gmail keeps coming out with cool additions: an “undo” button that lets you change your mind for a few seconds after sending an email; the drunk test, that makes you answer a couple of arithmetic problems before letting you send a stupid email at 2am.

I admit that every time I open my work email, I am in fear that I’ll have some email that a survey has gone badly or that a budget has disappeared or that I’ve insulted some international official (but the latter happens too often to really worry).

Can someone develop a gmail add-on that warns you whether you are likely to have bad news emails?  Right after you log in, it plays a peaceful tune and says, Just Relax, There’s Some Bad News Coming, but You Can Handle It.  Everything’s Going to Be Fine.  Breathe Deeply.

Please?