POTPOURRI

I recently borrowed the DVD of the animated version of Terry Pratchett's Soul Music from Dorian. I'd like to give it a detailed review. I'd like to, but I can't, since I could only get through one of the seven episodes on the disc. Here's my review: it's awful. Bad animation, bad voice-acting, and the things that are funny in print just don't translate into funny on the screen. But thanks, Dorian! I promise I'll return it today.

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I've been catching up on some of the Saturday Night Lives that I've missed over the past couple of seasons, in repeats on E!, and I just saw the Lindsay Lohan episode. You know, the one where she plays Hermione in a Harry Potter sketch, and everyone keeps staring at her massive cleavage? Yeah, that was a good one. It's very difficult to feel guilty about looking at a 17-year-old girl's boobs when she voluntarily appears in a skit based entirely around looking at her boobs.

What? I'm just sayin'.

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Speaking of Lindsay Lohan (and let's see, by the way, if talking about her boobs gets me as much search engine traffic as my post about a certain Olympian's posterior, which, seriously, has gotten me dozens of very creepy hits), it's time for another installment of This Week in IMDb Chatboard Idiots! Let's see what we can find on Lindsay's page.

So much to choose from! We have one thread titled "Damn girl, your orange!!!" which I can only assume from the use of "your" rather than "you're" is all about Lindsay's choice of citrus products. Then there's "this picture is real!" which includes a link to a very obviously fake picture of Lindsay and Hilary Duff smiling together, which is intended to disprove the two of them are feuding. But I think my very favorite is this thread in which, I swear on my life, these no-life trolls are ripping on her for having, in their opinion... an oddly-placed belly button. I swear to you.

From lookatthisboys, the originator of the thread:

She has such a LONG waist line, and her bellybutton is places to high, or from her belly botton to her privates there a HECK of a long distance there.

From G-Unit_Pimpette624:

And she has the strangest, highest belly button I've ever seen in my life...its like in the middle of her stomach! Ewww!

From 50_Cent_N_Eminem:

JESUS CHRIST I WOULD CONSIDER THAT A BIRTH DEFECT!!

From OrlandoBloomRoxMySox:

omg! i've never seen that pic before, and i'd say i'm more concerned about her belly button! MAN that's weird!

And my favorite, from JAKEGYLLENHAAL16:

I totally agree about her long waist line because when i saw her in her bikini and low rise jeans and her belly button is like about 8 or soo inches away from the middle of her boobs i mean that can't be normal i thought i was abnormal cuz my belly button is normal now i guess cuz i wen i wear low rise i can't wear the jeans how she does cuz my butt would show lol and when she wears them its nothing its so perfect and her thighs r big i think she is that type of person who is thin at the top and huge and the bottom and oo ya she has a big ass!!

I'll bet talking to JAKEGYLLENHAAL16 in real life would sound like an exact transcript of that post. Only more annoying.

TV: CatchphraseCenter

I caught last night's SportsCenter -- the 90-minute special edition called SportsCenter Old School. These special editions, which will be running all week in celebration of ESPN's 25th anniversary, feature alumni of the show returning to once again take the anchor's chair and call the highlights. Last night, it was Craig Kilborn coming back to take a seat next to Dan Patrick. And as I watched, I realized: not only do I not miss the smug and smarmy Craig Kilborn, I don't even miss SportsCenter.

The last time I watched the show with any regularity was about four or five years ago, when I worked in an office with a big football pool, and felt like I had to do my homework. Nowadays, I'll watch football when it's on (NFL only, no college -- unless Cal is playing, and come on, how often does that get televised?), and I'll occasionally sit still for a Dodgers game called by Vin Scully, or the women's nine-ball tournaments, which for some reason I love, or the odd tennis match or three, or golf if it's Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. But I certainly don't care about what's happening in all those other sports events I'm not watching, which makes SportsCenter kind of useless for me.

Especially since it's so goddam annoying. (Back me up here, King Kaufman.) The point of SportsCenter long ago ceased to be delivering sports highlights; the point is for the anchor to insert himself into the highlights with his "wry" "hip" "humor" and "clever" catchphrases. Old School illustrated this fact by showing highlight reels of Kilborn's catchphrases, having Patrick quiz Kilborn on his catchphrases, having Kilborn first coyly refuse to revive the catchphrases as he read the baseball highlights, which became redundant and annoying enough to be a catchphrase unto itself ("No catchphrases, that's simply a home run"), and finally having Kilborn use every one of his not-so-fondly-remembered catchphrases after all ("Jumanji!" "Krakatoa!"), even adding a few new ones ("You stay classy, San Diego," straight out of Anchorman).

All the current SportsCenter anchors are guilty of this catchphrase style of announcing to some degree or another, but it's Stuart "Booyah!" Scott who is currently the most egregious offender. He so desperately wants to be stolen away from ESPN by a major network, or to host his own talk show, that it almost hurts to watch him. But Chris Berman's nickname-game isn't far behind in terms of obnoxiousness.

The only two SportsCenter catchphrases I've ever enjoyed aren't even SportsCenter catchphrases. The first is "Sweet sassy molassey!" from the classic Saturday Night Live send-up of SportsCenter, as spoken by Ray Romano (which, of course, the ESPN people immediately appropriated for themselves). The second is of nebulous origin: I seem to recall that it was from a Rich Eisen-hosted ESPN game show, a very short-lived one (not 2-Minute Drill), and I believe Peter Gammons was actually the contestant (maybe this was some 20th anniversary special show that I'm not recalling correctly). Anyway, the question was, "Which of the following is not a catchphrase used to describe a home run on SportsCenter?" I forget the other three choices, but the correct answer, the one not used, was "a four-base hit," which was by far my favorite. Wouldn't you like to hear the sentence, "And Barry Bonds gets a four-base hit!" "That is an upper deck four-base hit for Sosa!"

I was kind of looking forward to watching all of the Old School specials this week, catching everyone's return appearances (except for Keith Olbermann, who is still hated at ESPN, and wasn't invited back). Now, I'm thinking I'll just watch whatever the heck I want to watch on TV tonight, but describe whomever I'm watching as being "en fuego," or shout out some random word, Tourette's-like, every few seconds: "Yahtzee!" "Roanoke!" "San Buenaventura!" That should be about the same.

MOVIES: Anchorman

I have very rarely laughed as hard at any film as I did at Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Hell, I saw it twice over the weekend, and laughed just as hard the second time. The film is uneven in spots; some bits go on for too long, and one or two bits just don't quite work at all. But when it works, it's hysterical.

The main reason, of course, is Will Ferrell. Let's face it, he's the new comedy kingpin. And it's about time. After far too long being the best thing about very lousy movies (the SNL sketch-based Superstar, The Ladies' Man, A Night at the Roxbury), he is now the best thing about very funny movies (Elf, Old School, even his brief appearance in Starsky & Hutch). And all is right in the world.

As funny as Ferrell is, though -- as much as he is the star of the film, like his Ron Burgundy is the star of 1970s San Diego TV news -- to his credit, he's surrounded himself with some amazing talent. Paul Rudd as Brian Fantana ("I know what you're thinking: 'Does he have a nickname for his penis?' And the answer is yes. I call it the Octagon.") is note-perfect; Rudd, like Ferrell, has often been the best thing about very lousy movies, and deserves to be a much bigger star than he is. David Koechner as the slightly-too-fond-of-Ron Champ Kind is also a riot. And Steve Carell as the incredibly dense Brick Tamland steals every scene, as usual. (When Brick doesn't understand why everyone is yelling, but still desperately wants to join in, he resorts to screaming, "LOUD NOISES!!!") Fred Willard, Chris Parnell, Fred Armisen, and so many others I can't name without spoiling the great surprise of seeing them pop up... it's a surplus of comedic firepower. Oh, and Christina Applegate as Veronica Corningstone is okay, too, I guess.

(I actually felt a little bad for Applegate, whom I think must have experienced the same pressure on the set of the film as her character does within the film: she's entered a very close-knit men's club, and she has to fight for every laugh she gets, and those laughs usually only come by playing off the men.)

The story, about an all-male TV news team invaded by its first female reporter, is silly to begin with, and a great deal of humor is mined from these ridiculously set-in-their-ways chauvinists dealing with a woman (Brick: "I heard their periods attract bears!"), but the film often goes way, way over the top, as in the cameo-studded full-scale newscaster battle scene, complete with medieval weaponry, Planet of the Apes-style horseback net attacks, and severed limbs (cameo newscaster, on having his arm chopped off: "I did not see that coming!").

Sometimes the craziness goes on a little too long, as in that battle scene, or a cartoon trip to "Pleasure Town," but in at least three scenes, the film nails the exact level of craziness necessary for maximum hilarity, and had me laughing so hard my sides were hurting, and I could hardly see the screen from the tears in my eyes.

The first scene is when Brian Fantana mistakenly believes his "Sex Panther" cologne will allow him to seduce Corningstone. The horrible odor has the exact opposite effect; she wonders aloud at the rancid stench: "It smells like a dirty diaper filled with Indian food!" (From around the newsroom: "It smells like a turd covered in burnt hair!" "It smells like Bigfoot's dick!") The second comes when Burgundy, heartbroken over a tragic event, calls Fantana from a phone booth, and dissolves into incoherent shrieking -- no words can capture Ferrell's side-splitting hysteria in this scene. I haven't laughed so hard in a theater since the "franks and beans" scene of There's Something About Mary. I'm still laughing now, just thinking about it. And the third scene is played entirely in subtitles, and I don't even want to say anything more than that about it, other than to note that it demonstrates that the film, though heavily reliant on Ferrell, is actually very funny independent of him as well.

But, yes, Ferrell is the main reason to see this film. He's never hit so many notes so well. From the wild emotional breakdown I mentioned above, to the subtler laughs garnered with just a brief sentence or a gesture, he's non-stop funny. Some of his funniest bits are derived from his plain-spoken, obvious reactions to circumstances. When Fantana douses himself in "Sex Panther" and proudly says, "60% of the time, it works every time," Burgundy's immediate deadpan response: "That doesn't make sense." Of course it doesn't, but somehow only Burgundy is aware of it. Or when Burgundy is stumbling around the streets, broken and disheveled, drinking from a carton of milk: "It's so hot. Milk was a bad choice." Or when he leaps into a bear pit at the zoo: "I immediately regret this decision."

Anchorman would've been very funny if everyone had adhered strictly to character, and the events had played out in some approximation of the real world. But the fact that the film allows itself to take these absurd detours into the utterly illogical is what pushes it over the top into a new comedy classic. I can't imagine a funnier film being released this year.