Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

I have yet to express on this blog just how much I LOVE Will Ferrell. Like many other of his movies, there’s a plethora of one-liners that I still laugh at, no matter how many times I watch it. The physical comedy, the way Ferrell never passes up an opportunity to strip down to his tighty-whities, and of course a well-stacked cast of other comedians all make for an excellent time. Cohen’s French accent is just as terrible as Van Dyke’s British one, Molly Shannon is the quirky frosting on the cake, and oddly enough, this is the most normal character I’ve ever seen played by Jane Lynch.

•  Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Baby Jesus, in your golden, fleece diapers, with your curled-up, fat, balled-up little fists pawin’ at the air…
• This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love Fig Newtons.
• Help me Jesus! Help me Jewish God! Help me Allah! AAAAAHHH! Help me Tom Cruise! Tom Cruise, use your witchcraft on me to get the fire off me!
• Where are you, Pepé Le Bitch?
• There is something I want to get off my chest. It’s about that summer, when you went away to community college. I got an offer to do Playgirl Magazine, and I did it. I did a full spread for Playgirl Magazine. I mean spread man, I pulled my butt apart and stuff. I was totally nude. it was weird, I… I mean you probably didn’t hear about it because I went under the name of Mike Honcho. But I just wanted you to know that. If you can hear me, if it got into your brain somehow. That I spread my buttcheeks as Mike Honcho.
• Let’s use this knife to pry it out!… You gotta cut around the meat…
•  Even Diane Sawyer needed Katie Couric. Will you be my…Katie Couric?
• America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
• Chip, I’m gonna come at you like a spider monkey!
• ] If we wanted us some wussies, we would have named them ‘Dr. Quinn’ and ‘Medicine Woman’, okay?
•  Ten years? Man! I gotta lay off the peyote.

Glee – The Quarterback

Glee has this ridiculous, outrageous, and overdramatic way about it that first made me avoid, but later thoroughly enjoy the show. It doesn’t even try to exist in the real world. Glee is just a perky cover band blended with a soap opera, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. On top of it all, you’ve got Jane Lynch, who I’ve loved since Best In Show. But this is not really about the show. Even though I’ve been re-watching the first two seasons, there has been one ominous thought in the background throughout: the passing of Corey Monteith.

It’s always tragic when artistic talent and potential are squandered away and stamped out by substance addiction, and it was befitting that the cast decided to do a tribute. My first and lasting impression was that I saw very little of the characters I had grown so familiar with. Instead, I saw the actors. They looked every bit of their mid-late twenties, and just seemed altogether different. In their eyes you could see their very real pain and mourning, the reality Glee had so far completely avoided.

Most of the episode consisted of singing or crying, a lot of crying. (It made me cry too, a lot.) There wasn’t much room left for story development. I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but I don’t think anyone was supposed to enjoy it. That episode was meant to be experienced. It was a part of the long, at times endless, process of mourning. Whether thinking of Corey or another loved one, The Quarterback was pure catharsis, and well worth the tears.

P.S.  I think Rachel singing “Yesterday” at the season’s opening was a fitting farewell from her character.