Don't mind them---they're morons

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Our correspondent in the Grampian Hills sends a riddle:

I saw [a] preview for the 3 stooges movie—I think it opens around mid April. They (whoever they are) seem to have the impersonations down OK but, why?

That is a bit of a noodle-scratcher, true. Beer-D has provided the most salient market-based analysis I've heard. (Yes, Stooge fans have been discussing this pending corporate profiteering atrocity for awhile.)

As Beer-D sees it, it's difficult to fathom what audience the movie producers are targeting. For kids who aren't familiar with the Stooges, none of the references or tributes to the original cast members will register. People of any age who did not like the original Stooges will have no interest in subjecting themselves to a impersonation of them. And, of course, it is hard to believe that any fans of the original Stooges will respond to the release with anything except contempt.

Some few charitable people might at least appreciate any craftsmanship and dedication that the actors may have applied to recreating the original characters and situations. But I don't think that will provide a sufficient basis for either a blockbuster box office or a career boost for the director. However, I may be wrong, and Beer-D may have missed something: maybe the target audiences are the Chinese and the French.

What I learned from the Bible this week

I have been working my way through the Book of Genesis, words by God Almighty with pictures by Robert Crumb. It is interesting to read reputable translations, unexpurgated and basically unedited except where Crumb jumped between different translations to restore a "Behold!" or select a more scholarly and precise choice of words than King James's crew provided. I say interesting because Judeo-Christian ideas and references so permeate Western Civilization that many of us don't recognize the full extent. Irrespective of any literal or allegorical truth found in the text, reading this book is to me a very similar experience to reading a good history.

I found the story of Noah and the Ark to be intriguing. This adventure was much more of an ordeal for Noah and his stalwart family than I ever received in Sunday School. The narrative is vivid and it plays out over a time scale that makes the flood and its rescission almost seem plausible. The three gentlemen pictured at upper left are Noah's three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham. I immediately noticed that Ham appears to have an anger problem, as if about to exclaim "Get busy, Porkypine, we got a job to do!" as a prelude to a smack in the kisser. And Shem seems to be cooking up a wisecrack, apparently vulnerable to the same lapses of judgment that plagued his distant descendant, Samuel Horwitz.

I claim "discovery" of this charming coincidence in the same way I claim "discovery" of Saturn about 25 years ago in my backyard telescope after returning from the fridge with my third beer, after the earth had revolved a few degrees through the ecliptic. I performed a quick google search to discover that, sadly, comics publisher Dan Nadel had made the same connection back in October, shortly after publication. (Schmuck probably got a free review copy, but I had to save my hard-earned shekels to purchase mine.)

As far as I can tell, this is the only "gag" Crumb embedded into his Old Testament illustrations. Somehow, this works for me and I think it might not offend me even if I had a long-nurtured reverence for the text. When you look at Crumb's drawings of the ark, sealed with hot pitch, it's easy to see these three lunkheads tripping over each other and bonking each other on the noggin with 8-cubit two-by-fours.

Editor's note: fair use is claimed for the image of Shem, Japheth, and Ham, which is reproduced here for purposes of literary critique and education. The art panel is copyright 2009 by R. Crumb; the text is in the public domain as previously furnished by The Lord and His earthly designees.

This burns-up me!

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This is an abominable idea, as well explained by this guy.

OK, the 2000 Three Stooges biopic was one thing. I don't know if it was any good, but I'd probably watch it. The intent of a biopic (other than to profit from the production) is at least to pay tribute to the subjects, and possibly to give modern audiences some insight into their sense of Duty and Humanity. But the idea of "recreating" the Three Stooges is so lame that not even Joe Besser would buy in, even if threatened with having shit slapped out of him by Kenneth MacDonald or being breathed on by a guy wearing a gorilla suit.

For starters, who is supposed to be the target market for a reinvention of the Stooge "franchise" --- Stooge fans?!? Every one of us will stay away and will warn everyone we know to do the same. The project is pre-moiderized in terms of profit potential.

Second, there is no way to duplicate the Stooge pace in a feature film format --- it's been tried and it failed every time. The world has enough Three Stooges feature films, such as The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. The Stooges' tautly plotted (or unplotted) action-packed scripts won't work in long form. Predictably, the one halfway decent idea the film developers toyed with --- packaging the film as four separate shorts --- was discarded: the script will now be "streamlined into a single narrative".

Third, it will be too violent and vulgar. Studio suits and focus groups will see to that. The Stooges were violent and vulgar, of course, but not too violent and vulgar. They produced family entertainment, at least for junior and pop if not necessarily for mom and sis.

Fourth, Hollywood will surely go all out with grotesque digital special effects in the upcoming 2010 atrocity, which will completely disrespect the craftsmanship that went into compiling the encyclopedia of hilarious analog special effects that the original Stooge crew developed using only basics such as invisible wires, dummies, fast-motion effects. The same goes for all those lovely, full-bodied audio slaps, cracks, thuds, glug-glugs, bonks, rusty hardware squeaks, nails being extracted from the skull or buttocks, and so on.

And finally, even assuming that Benicio del Toro (?!?), Sean Penn, and Jim Carrey (!!!) might be able to impersonate Moe, Larry, and Curly effectively, there is no way to recreate the contributions of the 4th -- nth stooges. I'm not talking about Shemp and his successors, but all the rest of the recurring cast, including Vernon Dent, Bud Jamison, Dudley Dickerson, Duke York, Christine McIntyre (the niece really was nice!), Emil Sitka, and the ever-renewable posse of dowager ladies and the gum-snapping vamps in shoulder pads.

So, even though I regret saying so, I sincerely hope this ill-advised Stooge-denigrating project by Peter and Bobby Farrelly (whoever the fuck they are) is plagued from start to finish by The Curse of King Rootin Tootin. I have a tapeworm and it's not even good enough for him!