Garbanzo Toons

The Amazing Things You Can Find on the Web

It was late. I was tired. I hit the wrong keys. I ended up here. I never knew things like that existed, but I suppose there is a need. And if there is a need, some entrepreneur will find a way to fill it. It's just one more reason to love the genius of America.

Labels: inventions

posted by Harry @ 8:56 PM 1 comments

Speaking Truth to Power - For Real

According to the Detroit Free Press, Muslim students at Michigan State University are up in arms over an email sent to MSU's Muslim Student Association by an MSU professor. Here is the entire email as reported in the Free Press:

Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intened to protest your protest.

I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burnings of Christian chirches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavain girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsul you dissatisfied, agressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Ammendment -- you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially, I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As usual, members of the "Religion of Peace" get extremely offended when someone points out the obvious, as Professor Wichman did. They want action taken to shut this infidel up. That's not how they phrase it of course.

"It was upsetting, yet sad" that a tenured professor could make such comments, said Dawud Walid, executive director of the council (that's CAIR ed.). "It's scary when you think about the power that this gentleman has" as a professor.

Walid said that MSU has the academic and moral obligation to publicly denounce the e-mail, conduct a formal investigation and have sensitivity training on how to deal with Muslims on campus.

The university should "strongly and publicly disassociate themselves from the statement," Walid said.

Azeez said education is most important.

"There's a bigger problem here of racism and discrimination at Michigan State University. Faculty training and sensitivity training are very important to help prevent future incidents like this from occurring," he said.

I still find it amazing that with all of the lip service paid to free speech, and open dialogue on campuses, telling the truth about Islam is still grounds for censorship. As the Free Press does correctly point out:

# Last month, University of Texas biology professor Eric Pianka's comments caused a stir after a report that he advocated death for 90% of the world's population as a means to save the Earth.

After a speech on shrinking animal habitats and the explosion of the human population, the Gazette-Enterprise of Seguin, Texas, quoted Pianka as saying that disease "will control the scourge of humanity."

"HIV is too slow," he said, adding that an Ebola pandemic could wipe out much of the human population.

University of Texas officials didn't plan to take action, citing First Amendment rights.

[ . . ]

# Earlier this year, Northwestern University engineering professor Arthur Butz came under fire for commending Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's assertion that the Holocaust is a myth. University President Henry Bienan said Butz has a right to free speech.

# Last year, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill came under fire for an essay he wrote after 9/11, asserting that some of the World Trade Center victims were like Nazis who enabled the Holocaust. Because Churchill has tenure, his comments weren't enough to cost him his job.

See, that's all in the realm of free speech because it doesn't upset the delicate sensibilities of members of "The Religion of Peace." We are supposed to believe their official lie - uh - I mean line, that a fine, noble, and peaceful religion has been hijacked by a few misguided extremists . . .


. . . like this one. Yes! This must be one of those hijacking extremists we've heard so much about.


Oh, and look, here are a few more.


And . . . wait a minute, here are a whole mess of "extemists." They don't look very peaceful to me, but I'm not going to say anything about them because I certainly don't want to bruise anyone's feelings. For more photos of extremists, go here, and here and . . . well you get the idea. Let's be honest. There may be one or two more than a few extremists.

Labels: CAIR, Detroit Free Press, islam, Michigan State University, Muslim Student Association

posted by Harry @ 8:26 PM 1 comments

The Jr. Protocols

I've read portions of the deservedly maligned paper by Mearsheimer and Walt. I've also read some of the critiques by actual scholars who have demonstrated in so many ways that is just another anti-semitic hit piece. In Context presents quotes from the actual Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the new Protocols Jr. by David Duke's new favorite "think tank", Mearsheimer and Walt. The similarity is quite remarkable and quite predictable. Here's one comparison out of many:

The Israel Lobby’s power flows from its unmatched ability to play this game of interest group politics. In its basic operations, it is no different from interest groups like the Farm Lobby, steel and textile workers, and other ethnic lobbies. What sets the Israel Lobby apart is its extraordinary effectiveness.
-- "The Israel Lobby, " p. 16

Moreover, the art of directing masses and individuals by means of cleverly manipulated theory and verbiage, by regulations of life in common and all sorts of other quirks, in all which the GOYIM understand nothing, belongs likewise to the specialists of our administrative brain. Reared on analysis, observation, on delicacies of fine calculation, in this species of skill we have no rivals, any more than we have either in the drawing up of plans of political actions and solidarity.
-- Protocol 5, Paragraph 4

I first linked to this post by way of Little Green Footballs.

Labels: Mearsheimer and Walt, Protocols of the Elders of Zion

posted by Harry @ 9:07 PM 0 comments

Teachers and Reading

A lot has been said and written over the years about schools and teachers. It's one of those things that everyone has an opinion on. I've got a couple of kids in public school and I'm a public school teacher. Does that give my opinion greater weight than the average parent? Um . . . yep. Having been in this game for the past seventeen years, working with dozens of teachers, principals, consultants, and hundreds of students, I think I've built up a body of knowledge that I wouldn't have otherwise obtained. I've also read some of the books about education. There are a few good ones and tons of crappy ones.

Because of my years of experience I can safely tell you that the reason American public schools are not performing at the level they should be performing is due to two factors working in tandem against your child getting the best possible education. First, as I brought up here, here, and here, the average elementary school curriculum has been dumbed down to a truly insulting level. Second of all, teacher training is abysmal.

Those two factors go hand-in-hand. We fourth and fifth grade teachers in my district recently had a new reading text dumped on us. Thanks to a Reading First grant (part of No Child Left Behind legislation) grades k-3 had been using this basal text for the past three years. We in the upper grades had been ignored. That's the way I like it. While other teachers were complaining that they didn't know what kind of stories to use, I was able to read Greek myths, selections from Bennett's Book of Virtues, fairy tales from Jr. Great Books (given to me by our reading specialist becuase she knew I would use them), Donald Duck, and some of Shakespeare's plays. I don't want to claim that I'm any better than my collegues who couldn't put together a reading list for their students, but it does make me wonder how they can inspire their students to read when they have so little knowledge of what has been written. In other words, do these teachers read?

Now that we have a basal text, these teachers are comfortable once again. They know what to teach. They've been given a plan. And the plan, if followed, is pretty much idiot-proof. All of the thinking has already been done for the teacher, and is presented in full color in the Teacher's Guide. Teachers are even guided through the stories, step by step, so that they will know how to guide the students through them.

The stories themselves are trivial. They have controlled vocabularies. They have no depth. The main lessons are based on multi-cultural drivel, "can't we all just get along" platitudes, "you can do it" self-esteem builders, and romanticized "save the Earth" nonfiction. The stories keep the readers firmly planted within themselves. There is nothing to take them outside of themselves, nothing to titilate them with questions and stories that have been told for hundreds or thousands of years. There is nothing for them to reach for, to challenge them intellectually. The richness of vocabulary that should be a staple of childhood reading has been replaced by safe, nonoffensive, dumbed down, political correctness. Even the Donald Duck story I'd been reading with my class challenged them to think more than anything we've found in this book.

To teach the new modern basal readers, teachers aren't expected to have any body of knowledge. Everything they need is given to them by the publisher.

Worst of all, a lot of these stories are boring. When I was taking stories out of Jr. Great Books, I had no Teacher's Guide so I had to think of my own discussion questions, and read the stories to create a vocabulary list. It kept me on my toes and stories like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Ugly Duckling (by H. C. Anderson, not an emasculated version), Beauty and the Beast, other stories by Langston Hughes, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Pyle and others opened up worlds that my students are just not being exposed to any more.

On the other hand, the way things change, in a year or two, when nobody is looking, I just might be able to go back to teaching the way that works. Our principal is a reasonable guy, and as long as you are doing what you are supposed to do, he leaves you alone. We shall see.

Labels: education, NCLB, reading, teaching

posted by Harry @ 3:34 PM 0 comments

Today's rant

I write letters to newspapers. It may be a waste of time, but I do it anyway. If it weren't for email, I probably wouldn't do it. I would sit and stew. My letters used to focus on two issues, Israel and education. Now I just focus on Israel. Since I'm a teacher, and an after-school reading tutor, I can attempt to effect the change that the educational establishment needs. With Israel, I can't do much but write about it. I send letters to both of my local newspapers. I sometimes also respond to calls for action by Honest Reporting and some of my favorite bloggers (in the sidebar) when they report something especially outrageous.

The thing about writing to newspapers is that I'm competing with the liars, moral retards, and Jew-haters on the other side. And no, I'm not engaging in hyperbole. The enemies of Israel have created an alternate universe, a Bizarro world, a 1984-style thought process where good is called evil and evil is called good, or is excused because it's the fault of the Jews. Of course they won't say Jews. That would expose them. They use terms like: zionist, neocon, or Israeli. But they mean Jew. And they get printed in mainstream newspapers in the interest of "presenting both sides."

For example, here is a response to a pro-Israel column by News editor, Nolan Finley. (For some reason, I can't find it or I would link to it.)

Following the revolting experience of reading Nolan Finley's extremely racist piece of garbage, several thoughts came to mind. First, I wondered how many Israeli shekels it took to purchase The News. The News has become an ambassador of hate by regurgitating the lies bigots have historically used to dehumanize and terrorize the Palestinian people.

It was none other than your employer, Ariel Sharon, and his Zionist predecessors who defined terrorism in the region and unleashed countless campaigns of brutality and unrelenting terror upon the innocent.

It was written by the membership representative of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce. I'm sure she would deny her antisemitism. And yet, there she is, recalling the anti-semitic canard of Jews owning the media. And there is the Detroit News printing it.

For sheer dishonesty, it would be hard to beat this response by M. Kay Siblani, editor of Arab American News to Nolan Finley's column.

For one thing, Hamas is not part of an effort to take someone else's land away. Its struggle is defensive, not offensive.

Neither does Hamas want to create a state wherein one religion reigns supreme. In Israel, Jews have automatic citizenship and other rights not afforded to people of other faiths. The double standard applied to Hamas -- and Arabs and Muslims -- is fueling support for more extremist groups.

It's OK to have a Jewish state, but not an Islamic one, even though the Jewish state is undemocratic, consistently violates international law, commits state-sponsored terrorism, has no constitution and no defined, internationally recognized borders.

The double standard is glaring on peace negotiations. The Palestinians are portrayed as an equal partner required to make all sorts of concessions before anyone will talk to them. But they have no land, no money, no arms and a compromised leadership.

The Israelis, on the other hand, have a country, an infrastructure, a government, an economy and the world's fourth strongest army. Because of its strength and the biased way in which the United States supports it, Israel continues to take land and kill people even while it convinces the world that it is trying to talk peace.

[ . . . ]

Those who know that the time has come for justice for Palestinians and believe that it will somehow detract from Israel's well-being have descended into name-calling and demonizing. People like this are irresponsible and should not have a public podium.

This was written before the latest successful homicide bombing in Tel Aviv, but I'm sure it wouldn't matter a bit to the lying Siblani.

And it didn't matter to the Israel-haters who wrote letters to the Detriot Free Press to excuse the Tel Aviv bombing and to lambaste the paper for its coverage of the bombing. It seems the Free Press wasn't sympathetic enough to the murderer of nine innocent people. Even though he injured dozens in addition to the nine he killed using a vest filled with explosives, and nails and ball bearings coated with rat poison in order to cause infction and delay blood clotting, they demand that we sympathize with the murderer.

Why?

The usual reasons that usually begin with "it was tragic but-". And then they go on to give the usual delusional reasons why Israel should be blamed and why both sides must be presented. I don't recall that argument being used for Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Timothy McVeigh, or Jeffery Dahmer. But they didn't target Jews. The Free Press printed all of the lies and moral equivalence between murderer and victim.


Golda Meir once said that peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews. With the election of Hamas that obviously hasn't happened. With main stream newspapers printing thinly veiled antisemitism and excuses for Hamas inspired terror attacks, things seem to be getting worse.

Labels: Detroit News, Hamas, Honest Reporting, Israel, Nolan Finley, Osama Siblani, Palestinians

posted by Harry @ 7:55 PM 1 comments

Passover Food

When I was a kid, it was exciting to eat Passover food. It was different from the food we ate the rest of the year. And different is always (usually?) a treat. We got used to Matzoh and actually enjoyed fried matzoh. Farfel in milk for breakfast? It's not Frosted Flakes, but for eight days it was a novel change.

As adults we probably expect more. Sure we get good food during the seders. There are the feasts of turkey (at least in my family), chicken soup, gefilte fish, salad, tsimmis, cakes, fruit, salads, aaaaaaannnnnnd MATZOH! After the seders, leftovers can only satisfy you for so long. Then you need some variety.

My wife has taken care of that. She plans our Passover meals, and makes some really good meals. We've had garlic mashed potatoes, chicken in some kind of sweet, apricot-based sauce, artichoke soup, matzoh lasagna (she does it vegetarian, with spinach, but you could probably do it with meat), potato cheese triangles (yes, they're wrapped in matzoh, but they're deep fried. We use good, healthy extra virgin olive oil, and let's face it; taters, cheese, deep-frying; they were made for each other. They go together like Moe, Larry, and Curly.) And then there are the deserts: chocolate-farfel-dried cherry candy (home made here in our home) cheese souffle with real whipped cream that's whipped, this lemon meringue thing with chocolate dripped over it. I've been eating like a pig. And loving it!

The source of many of my wife's recipes is a lovely book called The Passover Gourmet by Nira Rousso. We haven't tried all of the recipes, but the ones we have tried have been delicious. We have found that sometimes you have to adjust some of the recipes. Cooking times may vary according to your stove. You may want to use canned or jarred artichoke hearts instead of fresh artichokes, but this book has made for some inspired Passovers, food-wise, at our house.

Labels: Nira Rousso, Passover

posted by Harry @ 8:31 PM 0 comments

Another Reason to Reject Affirmative Action

This November, thanks to that scourge of the race hustlers, Ward Connerly, Michigan voters will have a chance to overturn current Affirmative Action laws. Mr. Connerly, of course, has been villified by the Michigan Press, business leaders, government officials, and others who want to present themselves as progressive thinkers, sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden and abused in society. We've been told that anyone who doesn't support Affirmative Action is a racist, misogynist, homophobic, klan-loving, swastika-wearing pimple on the bunghole of humanity. We have further been warned that if this anti-Affirmative Action initiative passes, Michigan will return to the dark ages. Our economy will suffer becuase businesses won't do business here. (As if the decline of the car companies haven't trashed our economy already). Women will be forced back into the kitchen where they will remain for the rest of their lives, barefoot and pregnant, unless they go skulking off for back-alley abortions. Blacks will once again be forced to ride in the back of the bus. This will lead to the return of lynching as Blacks are pushed back into slavery. Japanese-Americans will be forced into interment camps. Mexicans will be mocked by stereotypical cartoon characters. Gays and lesbians will be spat upon, harassed, and ignored as they die from AIDS. We will all be forced to listen to the music of Pat Boone and Lawrence Welk. That's just the beginning. I don't even want to get into the truly awful predictions.

But according to this article by Amy Harmon in the April 12th NY Times;

Alan Moldawer's adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual's genetic ancestry.

The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid.

"Naturally when you're applying to college you're looking at how your genetic status might help you," said Mr. Moldawer, who knows that the twins' birth parents are white, but has little information about their extended family. "I have three kids going now, and you can bet that any advantage we can take we will."

Yep, take any advantage you can. It's an entitlement, right? So who's entitled? Keep reading.

Given the tests' speculative nature, it seems unlikely that colleges, governments and other institutions will embrace them. But that has not stopped many test-takers from adopting new DNA-based ethnicities — and a sense of entitlement to the privileges typically reserved for them.

Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights.

One Christian is using the test to claim Jewish genetic ancestry and to demand Israeli citizenship, and Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money.

[. . . ]

On its Web site, a leader in this cottage industry, DNA Print Genomics, once urged people to use it "whether your goal is to validate your eligibility for race-based college admissions or government entitlements."

This is the type of game Affirmative Action necessarily leads to. We all want our "piece of the pie". We are entitled!

"If someone appears to be white and then finds out they are not, they haven't experienced the kinds of things that affirmative action is supposed to remedy," said Lester Monts, senior vice provost for student affairs at the University of Michigan, which won the right to use race as a factor in admissions in a 2003 Supreme Court decision.

Does this mean that all non-whites have had the same experiences? Is there a "list-your-grievance" form to document the racist taunts you suffered growing up to make sure you qualify for the proper entitlement?

Still, Michigan, like most other universities, relies on how students choose to describe themselves on admissions applications when assigning racial preferences.

Ashley Klett's younger sister marked the "Asian" box on her college applications this year, after the elder Ms. Klett, 20, took a DNA test that said she was 2 percent East Asian and 98 percent European.

Whether it mattered they do not know, but she did get into the college of her choice.

"And they gave her a scholarship," Ashley said.

So you pick the ethnic group of your choice and the assumption is that you have suffered . . . unless you're white. White people have never suffered. Oh wait, unless they are female or gay.

Shonda Brinson, an African-American college student, is still trying to figure out how best to apply her DNA results on employment forms.

In some cases, she has chosen to write in her actual statistics — 89 percent sub-Saharan African, 6 percent European and 5 percent East Asian. But she figures her best bet may be just checking all relevant boxes.

"That way, of the three categories they won't be able to determine which percentage is bigger," Ms. Brinson said.

This is quite a game. When my children were born, my wife and I decided to play this game. Rather than having my children look forward to a lifetime of being left behind because they are white, we took advantage of the fact that my wife's grandfather was Mexican. That makes our children one eighth hispanic, so you're darn right we checked that box on their birth certificate. As long as the game is rigged, it's human nature to try to have it rigged in our favor. And I'm only human.

If we cut out all the race-based games and require everyone to compete based on their own skills, we won't have to waste our time and energy trying to find a way to beat a corrupt Affirmative Action system.

Labels: Affirmative Action, Ward Connerly

posted by Harry @ 6:24 PM 0 comments

Softening Islam

There were two interesting pieces in today's Detroit Free Press. One was this column by Brian Dickerson. The other was an op-ed by guest columnist, Donna Gehrke-White.

According to Mr. Dickerson,

First there was suicide by cop, wherein perpetrators bent on self-destruction deliberately put themselves in the way of police bullets.

Now comes suicide by jury, the courtroom farce in which 12 law-abiding Americans in Alexandria, Va., appear poised to give the world-class whackadoo known as Zacarias Moussaoui the one-way trip to paradise he clearly craves.

Moussaoui, 37, is the only person to stand trial in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Federal prosecutors have spent most of this month trying to persuade jurors that he deserves to be executed, a thesis for which the defendant himself has offered the most convincing testimony.

and

As his penalty trial peters out, four possible answers to the riddle of Moussaoui's identity have emerged:

True believer: He's the real deal, a committed religious zealot who sincerely believes that killing Americans (and being killed by them) will secure him the eternal companionship of 70 dark-eyed virgins.

Delusional narcissist: He's a pathetic cipher whose claim that Al Qaeda had designated him to lead a fifth suicide mission on 9/11 is utterly unsubstantiated.

Pathological pawn: He's a certifiable schizophrenic, and Al Qaeda handlers expertly exploited his mental illness for their own ends.

Crazy like a fox: He's secretly collaborating with his attorneys to convince jurors that he is deranged and thus an inappropriate candidate for capital punishment.

In true MSM fashion, the words Islam, Muslim, and terrorist are never used. That would be showing racism and islamophobia, I imagine.

Meanwhile, Ms. Gehrke-White informs us of the great strides Muslim women have made in the United States.

She should be one of those red-white-and-blue success stories: An immigrant, she worked her way through med school and now directs the laboratories of two Florida hospitals. She passed her career drive on to her daughters: One just graduated from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing; the other is an investigator for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office.

This feminist vision of a successful family, though, has a flaw: Shahida Shakir and her daughters, Sadia and Sofia, are Muslim.

They're supposed to be downtrodden. Or so that's what most Americans think.

In a Washington Post/ABC poll last month, nearly half of Americans admitted that they have a negative view of Islam. In a poll conducted for the Council of American-Islamic Relations, most people also said that they would feel better about the religion if they thought Islam treated women better.

The evidence is in our own back yard: While researching my book, "The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America," I found Muslims are among the most achieving women in the United States. They are doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, social workers and artists.

Indeed, we should be exporting the success story to the rest of the world.

I found Muslim women achieving from coast to coast. They are leading worldwide humanitarian groups in Washington, presiding over juvenile court in Baltimore, delivering babies in Los Angeles, teaching in Miami and helping the homeless in Las Vegas.

To her credit, she does not try to make us believe that all of the problems of Islam have been solved. But she does, like Brian Dickerson, want us to forget that Islam is the most imminent threat facing the world today. Muslim women are acheiving in America because they are, for the first time in history, allowed to acheive by the country they live in. We also have to assume that their husbands (if they are married) have given them this permission. Will this translate into an Islam willing to live in peace with the rest of the world? I don't know, but trying to portray a vicious terrorist as a lone nut with a death wish as Brian Dickerson does, won't help. Neither will pointing out that Muslim women have taken advantage of the unique opportunities the United States offers its citizens.

The women profiled have succeeded because of their contact with the West and in spite of Islam. If this were the Islamic society CAIR and other "moderate" Islamic organizations wish it to be, these women would be pressed into service as human martyr factories.

And on a day that the Free Press tries to soften our view of Islam, a homicide bomber murdered 9 and injured dozens of Israelis in Tel Aviv.

. . . the Hamas-led administration defended the attack as a legitimate response to Israeli "aggression."

Hamas, in case you've forgotten is the terrorist organization that was freely elected to rule the Palestinians, who, we are told deserve their own state. Of course we were also told that now that Hamas is in power, they will moderate their "hard line stance", you know the stance that demands the destruction of Israel.

It's going to take a bit more than a few editorials to soften the view that Islam is a violent religion. It's going to take major reform on the part of the Muslim world.

Labels: Brian Dickerson, Donna Gerhke-White, Hamas, islam, Zacarias Moussaoui

posted by Harry @ 6:25 PM 3 comments

The Benchwarmers

I saw the Benchwarmers last night. It was an accident. I actually got talked into going to see V for Vendetta with my brother and a friend. I had my wife's permission and everthing.

Owing to a combination of circumstances though, we arrived at the theater well into the coming attractions. It was a small theater, and according to the helpful ticket seller, there were still tickets available, but chances are the three of us would either not be able to sit together, or we would be in the first row staring almost straight up at the screen. To me, this was a fine excuse to avoid a movie I didn't relish seeing.

I read the V for Vendetta comic book years ago. I don't remember much about it, but I probably enjoyed it at the time. It was written by Alan Moore, one of the top comic book writers at the time. After reading about the movie however, it sounded like something I would spend a lot of time cringing over had I seen it.

We decided (well, two of us did, the third came with us, complaining all the while) to walk to the other neighborhood theater and see something else. This turned out to be The Benchwarmers, a truly stupid movie. When I say stupid, I don't mean Three Stooges stupid, where Moe, Larry, and Curly are supposed to be stupid and we laugh at their crazy antics because we get the joke. I mean stupid where you sit wondering during the whole movie, "How did this fiasco even get made? How do the people responsible show their faces in public again?"

In order to enjoy The Benchwarmers, you have to laugh at the movie, at the writers who came up with the gross, juvenile "jokes", at the director, who spent time and effort trying to turn a weak script into a movie with no punch, no feeling, no heart, but lots of gross, insulting "humor". Even the shocking surprise that should have added some much needed depth to the movie was flat.

The stars of the movie were all big-time Hollywood funny guys. And they were funny . . . in a stupid sort of way. I won't describe the plot, because there isn't much plot, although there is an even thinner sub-plot, and if you've seen Revenge of the Nerds, you already know the plot.

The thing is, I like all kinds of humor, including stupid humor. I saw Wayne's World II because I laughed so much at Wayne's World I. The Benchwarmers is dumber than both Wayne's World movies, but I laughed throughout the whole thing, sometimes for the right reasons, but sometimes not. Out of the three of us, I was probably the only one who favored this movie over V, but anything that makes me laugh is a good thing. And my friend and brother will get over their disappointment.

One of them complained the whole way home. I had to laugh at him. I am rooting for The Benchwarmers to achieve fame as one of the worst movies ever made. Competition in that category is fierce. Many years ago I saw Dracula vs. Billy the Kid (or was it the other way around?). That's a tough one to beat.

Labels: Benchwarmers, movies

posted by Harry @ 10:44 AM 0 comments