I've tried checking accounts. After one week, I have stuff in the check register like "Shirley, 2 hubcaps, $30.74," only I can't tell if the 3 might really be an 8, and so I have to remember, "Did I pay 30 bucks for hubcaps, or 80?"
And then, has this ever happened to you? You go to write down check No. 1674 in the register, and the last check you've written down in there is check No. 1669?
No way. I can't do it.
There's only one person I know who has the whole money thing figured out. She's a topless dancer. Every buck she makes comes in cash. Everything she buys, she pays cash. If she needs a new car, she just whips out a big roll of hunnerd-dollar bills she's been keeping in a cigar box somewhere.
I'm in awe of this woman. Why don't we all just do this? Really. Let's drive the IRS crazy.
Don't even take checks. Musicians do this. When they finish the gig, they have the promoter dole out a few Ben Franklins. They stuff 'em in their guitar case. And they're gone.
All that credit card interest--you can't even take that off your taxes anymore.
I'm serious. I'm going greenback. Let's all do it. Really. Go in with me on this.
If you wanna earn interest on your savings, carry the cash down to the bank, or get a money order and send it in to a money market fund. That's different. When they're gonna pay you money for using your money, then go ahead and let 'em do paperwork.
But when you're buying and selling and carrying on every day, get rid of the cards and the checkbooks. And watch the money world get real simple.
I've already started. It's making me real happy. Go ahead. Audit me. Make my day.
Speaking of ideas whose time has come, once wasn't enough for Married People, Single Sex. Evidently the idea is catching on, because Married People, Single Sex 2: For Better or Worse, is even better than the original. If they gave awards for the best movies about miserable disgusting people having hot sex, this series would win hands down. It's like John Cassavetes Lite.
Kathy Shower, who always plays the neglected wife, is once again packing up all her stuff, putting the kids in the station wagon and getting away from the lying, no-good scumball she's married to.
Liza Smith is the hot-to-trot blonde cookie who likes to get roughed up a little by "a real man," but her boring white-bread hubbie would rather have lunch with Mom.
And Monique Parent is the sexually frigid housewife who just wants to wear enough lingerie so she can get pregnant.
Occasionally all these couples get together by the pool and talk about their kids, settling down, how happy they are and, of course, orgies.
They never quite do it, though, because there's always some stick-in-the-mud there like Kathy Shower. Kathy, a Playboy Playmate of the Year, has the line of the century when she says, "I can't live up to those women in the magazines. Why do our husbands expect us to look like that?"
Meanwhile, they all do this straight-to-the-camera, documentary-style stuff where they say things like, "Why does passion have to be violent?" and "It seems like I've waited my whole life for someone to love me" and: "Something changed. I changed. We changed. I guess it was me."
In other words, it's a two-hour soap opera, but with a lot more nookie.
Outstanding.
Thirty-three breasts. Multiple aardvarking. Pie in the face.
Staring-at-navel Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...
Monique Parent, as the wife who yearns to have babies, for appearing nekkid in the front window of her house and saying: "Is this what you like? Is this daring?"
Craig Stepp, as the guy who's married to Kathy Shower but--you're never gonna believe this--spends a fortune on hookers.
This movie is like gettin' run over by a cee-ment mixer.
Four stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
Joe Bob's Find That Flick
This week's pons-pummeler comes from...Richard Biddle of Midland, Texas:
"There are about 10 of us wracking our brains to come up with the name of a good bad movie. It is a series of shorts with commercials from the 'Uranus Corporation, makers of brown something or other.'
"We don't think it is Kentucky Fried Movie or Groove Tube. One of the prominent stars may have been Ms. Kitten Natividad, and it also had a short with Shelley Long of 'Cheers' fame."
A video will be awarded to the correct answer. (The winner chooses from a list of about a thousand titles.) In the event of a tie, a drawing will be held. Send "Find That Flick" questions and solutions to Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221, or fax them to 214-985-7448, or E-mail them to Joe Bob's CompuServe mailbox: 76702,1435.
We Have a Winner!
In a previous column, Jim Middlemiss of Farmington Hills, Mich. wrote:
"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."'
We received an all-time record of 49 correct entries, so our winner was chosen by drawing. And he is...Joel Spencer "J.S." Horn of Brookfield, Ill.:
"It's just too easy. The film Jim is looking for is Return of the Living Dead, the movie that answers the question, 'What happened to all the zombies from Night of the Living Dead that didn't get killed?'
"Two security guards at a medical complex accidentally release one of the zombies out of some receptacle. The guards kill the zombie and, in a panic, get rid of the body at a crematorium in a nearby cemetery.
"Fumes from the crematorium cover the cemetery where a group of punk rockers (including Linnea Quigley in her breakthrough role) are partying. The fumes cause the exhumed to come back to life so they can: 1. Turn all the other people into zombies, and 2. Make human brains part of their diet."
Additional information came from our 48 runners-up, including...Connie-Lynne Villani of Sierra Madre, Calif.:
"I love this one because it was advertised on television with a big TV-announcer saying in his big TV-announcer voice, 'The dead are back, and they're ready to party!"'
Copyright 1995 Joe Bob Briggs. Distributed by NYT Special Features/Syndication Sales.