I've decided the universe can continue to exist without Pro Beach Volleyball.
Baggy-shorts jerks in a sandbox, right?
Not just baggy shorts. Purple baggy shorts. Aquamarine baggy shorts. With goggle sunglasses riding up on their foreheads like they were a bunch of four-eyed possums sponsored by beer companies.
What's the deal with this? Who's watching this stuff?
Do you realize they actually pack up the sandbox and haul it around the country, setting it up in mall parking lots in Dallas and St. Louis so they can play Pro Beach Volleyball in places that don't have any beaches?
And, if we're gonna have pro volleyball at all, why is it beach volleyball? Why do we want the athletes mooshing around in a bunch of sand?
If we had 'em play on a hardwood gym floor, like God intended, they could jump higher and hit harder. The game would go faster, and it would be more like a real sport.
Why do we want the Quaalude Effect? It's like watching Lloyd Bridges rescue a sick dolphin in real time.
Pay close attention to the commercial sponsors here. We've got light beer. Always light beer. Never real beer.
We've got Sony stereo systems. We've got the guys who make those spaghetti-strap T-shirts and short balloon pants normally not seen outside the South Bronx.
And check out the TV announcers. These guys had to go to Cabana-Boy School to get these jobs. They have little preppie orgasms every time they say "Great dig!"
Then we have women's Pro Beach Volleyball, complete with rigid, aerodynamically efficient nonjiggle sports bras. These gals look like they spend all their free time pumping iron with Cher.
You can picture them running down the beach with a Great Dane named "King." Any sexual fantasy with these women involves being crushed to death between their thighs.
Add it all up, and I think you can see what we've got here.
We're talking Bratfest '95, aren't we?
Save it for the country club. You know what I mean? Bring back the monster trucks.
And speaking of monster trucks, Anna Nicole Smith makes her movie debut this week in To the Limit, the story of a sensitive mob family at war with a tattooed, baldheaded CIA chief who likes to be whipped across the back by leather-clad bikini babes.
When he blows up Anna Nicole's secret-agent lover in a turn-the-ignition fireball, our favorite busty Playmate babe breaks out of her Guess? jeans and blasts her way from El Lay to Vegas to the snow-covered mountains, where she lives with her computer and occasionally has sex with bereaved widower Joey Travolta to prove to him how loyal she is to his family.
Meanwhile, Joey starts having these Nam flashbacks to the time when he accidentally killed the granddaughter of a general, which might explain why female ninjas are trying to kill him every five minutes.
His brother is recruiting hitmen and his other brother is sleeping with every showgirl in Vegas and neglecting his weepy wife, Kathy Shower--yet another neglected-weepy-wife role for this Playmate of the Year.
Then Joey's niece runs away from the Catholic church where she's being protected and the psycho CIA chief starts demanding that Joey give back the computer disk he thinks he has and Anna Nicole starts carrying a gun everywhere she goes, including bed, and, uh, there's a really lame Vegas-showgirl lounge sequence, and...I give up! I have no idea!
There's 194 subplots in this movie.
Anyway, I always knew that Anna Nicole Smith was a big woman but she's, like, a big woman.
When she hoses down in the shower, they have to letterbox the scene.
When she arches her back, it looks like a couple of space aliens are springing out of her chest.
Halfway through the movie, she changes from a blonde to a brunette, then two scenes later it's back to blonde. Talk about your versatile actress.
PM Entertainment tried to do the Traci Lords thing with Anna Nicole--give her as few words to speak as possible. But she has about 20 lines of actual dialogue, which is, oh, 19 too many.
The gal needs to head for one of those L. Ron Hubbard acting classes in El Lay where they can tell her how to say "That bastard!" convincingly.
I was, of course, transfixed.
Seventy-four dead bodies. Seventeen breasts.
Guy shoved out of a copter. Hoover Dam high-diving. Exploding van, with fireball. Flaming ninja.
Multiple aardvarking. Strangulation. Four gun battles, with two fireballs. Two motor vehicle chases, with three crash-and-burns. Death by masseuse. Computer disk to the forehead.
Kung Fu. Bimbo Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...
*Anna Nicole Smith, for testing the reinforced fiberglass on that hot tub, and for screaming, "Look, I don't have to justify myself to yew!"
*Joey Travolta, for surviving 47 assassination attempts in one movie.
*Jack Bannon, as the freebasing tattooed S&M freak who runs the CIA.
*David Proval, as the creepola who likes to get nude massages from UNLV students.
*And Kathy Shower, for having sex with a guy who actually drops her when the game comes on TV, then says, "I ain't no neighborhood girl, and I won't put up with it anymore!"
Two and a half stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
Dear Joe Bob:
Knowing your appreciation for the offbeat, I am sending you this recent news item from the European edition of the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
It sounds like something from the National Enquirer but I'm not making this up--it's authentic. (Article enclosed: "Dutch City Official Dies After Beer Keg Explodes.")
Powerful beer, this Dutch stuff, eh? It should make a great movie--The Keg That Blew Away Heerlen.
With warm regards,
Lt. Col. Gary L. Dikkers, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Otterbach, Germany
Dear Gary:
I've been at parties in Texas where the keg explodes, but that's because Corona is 90 percent kerosene in the first place. I thought that, at least in Holland, they knew how to get drunk in a responsible manner. No wonder they grin so much.
Copyright 1995 Joe Bob Briggs. (Distributed by NYT Special Features/Syndication Sales)
