"Why are you drownin' those pancakes in syrup?" Is this a question? This is not a question. Do I have to answer this?
"I can't believe you're puttin' butter on that." Why can't you believe it? You're watchin' me do it.
"Do you know what McDonald's does to your cholesterol?" Yeah. I do. It makes my cholesterol feel good.
I'm sick of havin' these conversations. I'm finished with 'em. Whatever happened to the hippies, who said, "Listen to your body, and your body will tell you what it needs"?
I'm listenin' to my body, and my body is sayin', "Ribeye steak!"
First of all, everbody knows I'm from Texas, so why would they even bring up the red-meat issue? What do they really expect me to say?
"Oh, yeah, well, it only took us 160 years of breeding the best cattle in the world until they tasted right. Why don't we just kill all the herds and plant brussels sprouts?"
I mean, I wouldn't go into an Amish community and tell 'em their hats were out of date.
Anyhow, I have a lot more faith in the human body than nutrition experts do. Because I've been watchin' this situation. I know vegetarians that look like they oughta be in a Sally Struthers infomercial, and I know Jack-Daniel's-drinkin pasta-packers that can run a marathon when they're 84 years old.
I've also read those articles about archaeologists that dig up people from 5,000 years old and figure out what they were eating--and the answer is, "Any old crapola they could get their hands on."
It was stuff that would kill us, but it made them strong. Which says to me that the body changes according to what you put in it. It figures it out. It deals with it. It's smarter than anybody trying to manipulate it.
I've also noticed that the people likeliest to keel over dead from a heart attack are the ones who have daddies that keeled over dead from a heart attack.
And the ones who go crazy from alcohol are the ones who have alcoholic parents.
They got a bad chip in there somewhere.
So maybe they also got a good chip in there somewhere. They got a program that reads, "Eat all the goldang butter you want--we don't care."
And, since we don't know exactly what the chip inside us says, I've decided to listen to what my stomach says. And when my stomach wants a Krispy Kreme donut, I stick one in there.
And then I listen to everbody else talk about it.
"What you just ate has zero nutritional value." I know that. I already know that. Y'all can shut up about it now, okay? Thank ya.
Speaking of cotton candy for the mind, there's always room in this country for a good haunted-house story, and this week's flick, Stormswept, is a fairly decent stupid-people-trapped-in-the-big-house yarn, starring Melissa Anne Moore as the beautiful realtor who holds the dirty secret:
Anybody who stays in the house overnight will become lustful and depraved and start playing weird sex games while a psychopathic demon watches from the basement with a blonde nympho in a spirit trance who makes candles in her underwear and says things like "Do you like my legs?"
Sure we've seen it before, but have we seen it with a lesbian subplot?
I think not.
Melissa begs the famous actress not to buy the big Louisiana mansion where her best friend was strung up nekkid and hacked to death, but it's a bargain she can't resist.
Pretty soon they're all trapped there in a hurricane that lasts two days--Melissa, the actress, the actress' oversexed best friend, a commercial director with an annoying David Niven accent, a couple of lovers from a film crew, Gilligan and the Skipper, too.
What else is a group of fun-loving artist types to do?
Play "Truth or Dare," of course, and then practice sexual hypnosis, then roam around in the dark basement until a knife-wielding maniac is ready to boogie.
Two dead bodies. Twenty-one breasts. Overhead dizzy-cam. One motor vehicle crash. Multiple aardvarking. Orgy montage.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for:
Hunt Scarritt, as the psycho who likes to dress girls up in satin gowns and string 'em up by their wrists, for saying "Do you wanna fry in the electric chair? Then help me pack!"
Melissa Anne Moore, as the pill-popping realtor with a guilty secret who can't seem to keep her dress on.
Three stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
Joe Bob's Find That Flick
This week's noodle-nuzzler comes from...Jim Middlemiss of Farmington Hills, Mich.: "I can't sleep at night. I need to know a name of a movie. It is about some guys who burn up this person who came back from the dead, his ashes get in the rain, and before you even blink your eye there's an army of mutant zombies hunting and eating 'live brains.'"
A video will be awarded to the correct answer. Send "Find That Flick" questions and solutions to Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.
We Have a Winner!
In a previous column, Big Jim Black of Blacksburg, S.C., wrote: "In the early '80s, about '81 or '82, I saw a Frankenstein-type movie...it was in 3-D and was very graphic.
"It had a lot of the usual 3-D scares--guts in the face, body parts falling off of operating tables, graphic beheadings with giant scissors. The plot revolved around this evil mad scientist guy who was trying to bring this dead guy back to life."
We received 40 correct answers, so our winner was chosen by drawing. And he is...Robert Laughlin of Paradise, Calif.:
"Okay, the title of the mystery flick is not Frankenstein, but more properly Andy Warhol's Frankenstein in 3-D.
"I believe it starred Joe Dalessandro and was directed by Paul Morrissey and was released around April or May of 1973. So what the hay did Andy Warhol have to do with it? Beats me. This flick had way too much plot for Warhol, whose previous period included all those wonderful works with the likes of Viva, Ingrid Superstar and especially Taylor Meade.
"Of course, the original 'no plot to get in the way of the story' flick was Warhol's Empire a few years before that. This film consisted of a single tripod shot of the Empire State Building and had a running time of 24 hours (and was only in 2-D).
"Andy Warhol's Frankenstein was one of few flicks in those days that made it to the big-time houses with an X-rating.
"Who says these kinds of movies rot the mind? Here's proof the human mind was in a state of serious decay before that movie ever came out. But then again, 'to understand life, you must first..."'
Copyright 1995 Joe Bob Briggs. Distributed by NYT Special Features/Syndication Sales.
