Wolf Gnards

Regardless of everything (this article included), the Muppets were the Muppets. A fun Muppet movie was promised and a fun Muppet movie was delivered. There was some minor hubbub by Frank Oz about the new movie not being true to the Muppets. But I felt it lived up to expectations and perhaps the real issue could be the audience. This is essentially a kids movie made for nostalgic 30-year-olds, mostly because nobody under 30 remembers the Muppets (a plot point which the movie addresses). In fact, some of the younglings I work with were shocked that they were making a live-action adult version of the Muppet Babies. The Muppets basically disregarded most of Muppet history after 1984, which means the target audience is an adult nostalgic for things he or she never saw. It’s a heavily manufactured product composed of prepackaged memories and false childhoods, but while it is a processed product, The Muppets is a good product.

Starring and written by Jason Segel, The Muppet’s has a few fun gags (80’s Robot is a scene stealer) and cute songs (I'm a very manly Muppet). It manages to somehow be slightly irreverent while displaying zero full frontal shots of Segal. However, the most interesting part of film is its plot. The movie revolves around the Muppets being largely forgotten and about to have their studio and trademarked name sold to an evil tycoon. To stop this, Kermit and the gang have to put on one last big show to raise enough money to buy their studio back. However, in the context of Muppet history, you have to remember that the Muppets were sold to the Walt Disney Company in 2004. So, everything in this movie actually happened in real life.

It’s interesting that they would pick the villain to be a maniacal Texas oilman (portrayed by Chris Cooper) drilling for oil underneath the Muppet Theater because the message of the movie is basically saying, “I drank your milkshake.”

Mickey drank your milkshake.

It’s saying that Disney has usurped Jim Henson’s vision for purely monetary reasons. Disney is the oil tycoon, Muppets are the theater, and Muppet blood is being drained out of them for profit.

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Or Soylent Green is Pokémon

In the modern Pokémon world there is no food chain—I mean they fight, all they do is fight—but there is no predator/prey relationship. There are no carnivores or herbivores or omnivores. So, how do they survive? Instead all Pokémon seem to enjoy the same brown bits that Brock doles out of little plastic baggies. So, kibblivore? Be they electric, ghost, rock, bug, or water type they all enjoy Pokémon Brand X Kibbles. However, saying that the natural food for Pokémon is Brock’s secret stash is like saying a cat’s natural food is Meow Mix. Brand X Pokémon Kibbles are made from condensed & processed berries (and if they're anything like real life pet food then the ground up bones and organs of other Pokémon, too). Berries are fairly plentiful in Pokémon games and can cure any number of ailments, so I can see why a Pokémon would enjoy them. But this means all Pokémon no matter where they live—in a cave, underground, underwater—have to seek out berries for nourishment. Imagine bats, gophers, dolphins all needing to survive off the same berries.

However, as I delve ever deeper into the world of Pokémon eating habits, I find that I was quite wrong about there not being predator/prey relationships. Way back before the games designers realized there might be a bit of a moral dilemma in cute and cuddly and very sentient beings eating other cute and cuddly sentient beings, Pokémon hunted Pokémon. (Of course, there’s no moral dilemma with making these cute and cuddly sentient beings fight until they drop). According to the original Pokémon Handbook's entry for Pidgeot it states that "When they hunt, Pidgeot fly on the surface of the water at top speed to catch unsuspecting Fish element prey like Magikarp." Mmmmmm... Magikarp.

Pokémon then are theoretically all vegetarians with the cartoon and video games taking the stance that eating a vegetable is okay, but eating a Pokémon is not. However, some Pokémon are vegetables. Does this mean it’s okay to eat Bulbasaur? So, the line has to be drawn further: vegetables that cannot say their own name are okay to eat, vegetables that can say their own name are not okay to eat.

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When Mrs. Gnards asks, "What ya thinking about?" If I'm being truthful, the answer is usually ninjas. What’s it like to be a ninja? What do ninjas dream about (throwing stars)? Why do ninjas do what they do? To this point, a staple to many an action movie is the swarm of ninjas getting their collective asses kicked by a lone warrior. It’s what’s become known as the inverse property of ninjas: the more ninjas you see, the weaker they are. It works for almost any large group, too: whether you’re Mr. Miyagi beating the crap out of underage teenagers or Neo facing an army of Agent Smiths. The odds are almost never in the group's favor. Be more afraid of a ninja by him or herself than a horde of ninjas. Usually because said horde line up in a neat single file row and successively get roundhoused in the face. Do they not teach how to block a roundhouse in ninja academy? Do ninja masters buy bulk ninjas at Costco? Why do Ninjas always attack one at a time?

Too Dark for Group Attacks

Ninjas wear black and attack mostly at night. Black on black is great for stealth, but bad for seeing what your teammates are up to. Ninja invisibility just makes it plain hard to coordinate attacks.

And while the night is excellent for hiding in, it’s also hard to get around in the pitch dark. Especially, consider some ninjas have to wear those mesh goggle things. They can’t possible see what’s going on. Though, lack of sight increases the other senses like smell or touch. Ninjas actually travel by holding on to the ninja in front of them (who sniffs around). Sort of like a ninja conga line or a group of preschoolers crossing the street. Meaning they get led into battle one after another, or roundhouse after roundhouse.

Ninjas are Stupid

Let’s look at the Foot Clan for one. In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle films, the Foot Clan is comprised mostly of homeless teens willing to work for videogames and soda. So, becoming a Foot Soldier is really just another foot note in a series of unfortunate life decisions. Never do they ask, “Hey Shredder, it seems like the Foot is really just a giant pyramid scheme with me doing most the work and you getting most the money. So, instead of letting me skateboard indoors and play NARC, how about you share some of the wealth?” But that’s the kind of forward thinking that leads to things like coordinated attacks.

In the TMNT cartoon, the Foot Soldiers were robots. As robots go, they were highly advanced, but not highly advanced killing machines. As ninjas go, they were just plain horrible. They pretty much walked into the Turtles’ attacks. Being robots also made it easier for the Ninja Turtles to mow down their opponents without having to explain the moral dilemma of killing for pizza to kids watching Saturday morning cartoons.

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John Stamos is Greek. He’s really Greek. As in he’s really into being Greek, and he plays Greek roles, and he promotes Greek products. John Stamos is so Greek (How Greek is he!?), he’s so Greek that he had the producers of Full House change the character of Uncle Jesse from Jesse Cochran to Jesse Katsopolis. Now I have no problem with Greek pride or Jesse being Greek—the world keeps spinning, the Rippers keep ripping—my problem is are we seriously supposed to believe that those three little blonde girls are half Greek?

D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle are three very blonde and very blue-eyed girls. It is, of course, possible to be blond and Greek, but three of them!? That’s highly unlikely. As a pop cultural scientist and amateur sleuth (and an honorary member of the Mary-Kate & Ashley Adventure Squad), I’ve found that recessive genes like light hair and eyes are much harder to pass down to the next generation. For every trait we have—be it blond hair, blue eyes, or general Greekitude—we inherit a gene from both our mother and father with one being a dominate gene and one being a recessive. So, you need two recessive pairings to create blond hair and blue eyes. For more information on hereditary traits, please, consult your local library. I’ll wait.

What this all means though is that it would be difficult to pass on light hair and blue eyes in a very dark hair, brown eyes Greek culture. However, their mother, Pam (Christie Houser), was shown to be blonde on, at least, one very special episode. So, she would have inherited two recessive blond genes and two recessive blue-eyed genes from her parents (who were depicted as stereotypically Greek), and while I said before it is unlikely to happen in Greeks, it is still possible. About a 1 in 16 chance at best. Now the greatest way for Pam to pass on blonde hair and blue eyes to her girls would be to mate with someone who also has those same recessive genes. Since, Bob Saget’s Danny Tanner (and I guess to a larger extent Bob Saget himself) has brown hair and brown eyes; the best they could possibly do to have a child with both blue eyes and blond hair is 1 in 4. This means while he himself has the dominant brown hair genes, he does possess the blond genes within.

The following chart should help demonstrate this. Dominant genes are shown by a capital letter. Recessive genes are lowercase of the same letter.

Pam & Danny Mix

	HE He hE he he HhEe Hhee hhEe hhee he HhEe Hhee hhEe hhee he HhEe Hhee hhEe hhee he HhEe Hhee hhEe hhee

(H) stands for dark hair, (h) for blond hair. (E) stands brown eyes, (e) for blue eyes.

So, the odds of D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle all being blonde with blue eyes are not good. (And for any geneticists reading this, bare with me OK, I said I’m an amateur sleuth) If Pam wanted a brood of mini-mes, she would want to mate with something else also with blond hair and blue eyes. Who in her circle of friends possess those qualities? Who in the world fits that description? Oh, someone like Joey Gladstone perhaps.

Pam & Joey Mix

	he he he hhee hhee he hhee hhee

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After my examination of the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, some readers were a little upset that I just glossed over Tori on Saved by the Bell. As if some great explanation was actually needed to explain what Chuck Klosterman dubbed the “The Tori Paradox.” They wanted a cosmetic event, a wormhole, or planetary alignment to rationalize why Tori was in some episodes, while Kelly and Jessie are in other episodes. When the truth is probably a little simpler: Tori and Lisa were lesbians.

Now I’m not talking about anything happening on the set, or between Leanna Creel and Lark Voorhees. In real life, we know what happened. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley were in a contract dispute, NBC wanted more episodes, they wouldn’t star in them, all of which led to Lisa Turtle needing a new pretend BFF. So, in walked Leanna Creel as new girl and resident tough chick with a heart of gold, Tori Scott. Tori’s job was to fill up just enough episodes to get those crazy kids to graduation, where she could then promptly vanish without a trace. However, Tori was only in 10 episodes of the last season (the last real season), and instead of having 10 consecutive Tori episodes NBC alternated Tori with Kelly/Jessie episodes of SBTB… creating a universe where Tori and Kelly/Jessie cannot occupy the same space at the same time (sort of like the movie Time Cop but with fewer full splits). But the problem wasn’t a space-time anomaly that caused a rift in the Tori Paradox, but Kelly and Jessie’s own prejudice to Lisa’s relationship.

In the reality of the show (or unreality), it wasn’t that Kelly and Jessie were physically unable to exist with Tori, it’s that they chose to not be around when Tori was near. They snubbed her, but were essentially snubbing Lisa. You have to remember how conservative these girls were. Kelly’s the All-American Girl: a wholesome girl from a large family of gun nuts. There are a lot of conservative values that go into volleyball and part-time jobs at the Max. And while Jessie had all the trappings of a liberal activist, how often did she actually help a real person? It was always some faceless cause that has little to do with helping people and more to do with her own self-righteousness. Take a good hard look at her in those high waisted jeans, she wears her jeans like her attitude. Jessie was in student government, she was all about her grade point average, and getting into an Ivy League School. She was basically just a pill popper only concerned with getting good grades and maintaining her perfect public image. Having lesbian friends doesn’t get you into Stansbury after all. Ousting Lisa would seem like the more humane thing to do. The Bayside gang did the same thing to Kelly when she cheated on Zack with Jeff. If you did something considered taboo, they would cut you out of the clique. Or take when Jessie didn’t want to dance with the guy who was shorter than her, she didn’t even want to be seen with someone outside the statistical norm. These are girls who wouldn’t risk their popularity and social status because Lisa felt the need to experiment.

So, if they were lesbians, how come all of Bayside High didn’t know about it? Because Lisa was the school gossip and she wasn’t about to gossip on herself. Which also explains why she was so obsessed with secrets because she had secrets of her own. As we go further and further into Lisa and Tori’s relationship, it all starts to make a lot of sense. On one end you have Tori Scott: the tough biker chick. (we know this because she wears a leather jacket… she even wore a leather jacket with a toga). Perhaps, you could even call her butch? She’s a drifter, a woman with a past, and somehow, someway she managed to resist both Zack and Slater (and Screech and Mr. Belding if you want to include them). Inconceivable! And on the other end, you have Lisa Turtle: daddy’s little girl. She likes clothes, fashion, and lipstick. She went to the Fashion Institute of Technology of New York where sexual experimentation is practically a degree. She doesn’t like Screech, or any man that I know of. How many dates did Lisa even go on? Maybe, four? That "blerdy" student council kid, the freshman she accidentally went with to the Senior Kick-Off party, her dancing partner who dumped her after she sprained her ankle, and Screech. Or beard, beard, beard, and curly-haired beard. These weren’t real relationships, these were special guest stars.

Now let’s examine Tori’s time on Saved by the Bell, which becomes very telling. Tori first cements her relationship with Lisa when she helped out with the Fall Ball. The dance committee turned on Lisa, but not Tori. Tori was there for Lisa when Lisa needed someone the most. Was this the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Tori and Lisa then form a Bayside "Teen-Line", a safe place where the alienated could share their feelings. Did they have feelings that needed to be shared? Tori later tricks Slater and Screech into slow dancing and kissing each other at the Masquerade Ball? Was this a gag or a prelude of things to come? Lastly, Lisa, Tori, and the rest of the girls want more money for girl's sports at Bayside, which leads to a battle of sexes. I didn’t make that up, that’s an episode. A general theme of this season is of Tori and Lisa growing closer and closer, and discovering the power of their femininity together.

To me though, the most telling moment in Lisa and Tori’s relationship has little to do with Tori. It was when Zack and Lisa kissed. If you look at it in the proper context, Lisa had just met Tori and exciting feelings were beginning to stir. Scary feelings though, too. If Lisa was questioning her sexuality, what would be the best test? Probably to make out with the sleaziest, douchebag in school. If she could make out with Zack Morris and not feel anything for that blond Tom Cruise then maybe she was gay.

This is not an enjoyable embrace.

Now I understand that labeling Tori as a lesbian is playing into a stereotype. Perhaps, unfairly. What were her character traits: tough, rides motorcycle, wears leather jacket, a demeanor somewhat similar to The Facts of Life’s Jo. Yes, it’s unfair jump to the conclusion that she’s homosexual because she’s good with a bike and has grease on her cheek, but this is Saved by the Bell. Saved by the Bell was a show of stereotypes. The nerds looked like nerds, dressed like nerds, talked like nerds, they even answered to the name “nerds.” On SBTB, if it walked like a duck and talked like a duck, it was a nerd! And jocks were jocks: big, dumb, and in letterman jackets. Blondes were bimbos. These were not complex characters, they were window dressings and their characters ran as deep as their costumes. So, if you have girl that looks like a lesbian and acts like a lesbian, on Saved by the Bell, she was a lesbian.

And does it further the case that Leanna Creel is an actual lesbian? I know, I know that doesn’t mean that Tori is a lesbian. Just because Rupert Everett’s gay doesn’t mean Dr. Claw is gay (Inspector Gadget... go, go, stupid reference). But it kinda does, too. There’s always something odd about a man with a cat, plus that Harvey Fierstein voice. Intellectually we are able to divorce the actor from the role, but emotionally we can never truly separate them, even if it’s just on a microscopic cellular level. Mathew Broderick is Ferris Bueller, Michael J. Fox is Marty McFly, Mark-Paul Gosselaar is Zack Morris, Leanna Creel is Tori Scott and Tori Scott is gay.

Much like real high school, lines got drawn, some got ostracized, feelings were hurt, friendships ended, loves faded, there were nerds, jocks, preppies, bimbos, homosexuals, there were persecutors and persecuted, but in the end it's okay because you still know it will be all right when you’re saved by the bell.

I’ve come to notice several movie posters with characters popping out of sewers in that hey-look-at-me-I’m-in-the-sewer-so-I-must-be-funny sort of way. Sometimes this makes sense as with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They live in the sewers hence posters with them emerging from the sewers seems natural. Also, with the Turtles mostly obscured by the manhole cover this works as a great teaser for film, especially for the first movie where the live action Ninja Turtles were kept back a little bit as a surprise for the audience.

However, other films make less sense. Like Short Circuit 2, which features neither a sewer nor coming out of a sewer in the actual film. Some of these movie posters remind me of the fake movie Sack Lunch in an episode of Seinfeld. The movie poster featured a family in a brown paper bag, which makes Elaine wonder how they got in there: So d'you think they got shrunk down, or is it just a giant sack?

That’s what some of these movie posters seem to be doing, making us wonder what sort of predicament could possibly occur to make Johnny 5 and Ben Jahrvi get into the sewer? Are they hiding in the sewers? Are they exploring the sewers? Are they looking for One-Eyed Willie’s lost treasure? For comedies, these posters promise that if you watch this movie you will see a logical chain of shenanigans to get this upstanding character into the sewer, wackiness will ensue.

Horror movies on the other hand concentrate on the unwacky side of sewage. The gross, hideous dark parts of the sewer. This is the sewer where we flush our dead fish, the mail-order alligators our moms wouldn’t let us have, and all our dirty little secrets. But there’s still something slightly whimsical in that the sewer is still where our poo goes, which inevitably leads to a 98% chance likeliness of poo joke.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The green standard in sewer movies.

Short Circuit 2

No actual sewer in the film.

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