Winner!

In a stunning victory that featured more contestants than final votes, my man Chad has taken home a movie ticket and second for his lovely wife Pam to a film of their choice. His entry was a virtuoso display of subtlety, featuring 3 white actors of roughly the same body type (Guttenberg, Brannagh, and Harmon) yet who, I believe, would display almost no actual chemistry between them. And with Spike Lee in the mix and Dolph Lundgren floating around in a different yet related film the triumph is complete.

Well done, Chad, and all who participated. Look for more exciting movie contests in the future.

This American Life, the TV show

Hat tip to Jesse at The Sound of Young America for finding this.

The finalists

Okay folks, this was hard to narrow down. You are all a bunch of sick weirdoes and I love it. As you may have seen, it was also hard to come up with the right awful chemistry factorial that ensures that the group overall has poor chemistry, but also that any possible combination of actors in two person scenes also is doomed to have zero chemistry. So before I announce the finalists, I'd like to offer up some combinations of actors that were out there that have a glimmer of plausibility to them, which therefore took the entry out of the finals:

Cedric the Entertainer & The Rock

Darlene Cates and Crispin Glover

al pacino and christopher walken

Kathy Bates & Al Pacino

Wil Wheaton and Kathy Griffin

Robin Williams and Dane Cook

R Lee Ermey and Robert DeNiro

OJ Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Gary Oldman and Clint Howard

Reginald VelJohnson and Emmanuel Lewis
the above entry also included Prince--I hereby announce a movie chemistry doctrine--Prince is the universal solvent. He has enough enigmatic charm to spare that he could be combined with anyone. This doesn't mitigate the fact that he's a lousy actor.

Bronson Pinchot and Sinbad and John Stamos (I wouldn't see this movie, but I could see these three in some kind of 80's nostalgia picture)

This entire entry was so perverse and filled with enough non-actors that I had to rule it out. But I like Seth's moxie.

Seth said...
John Amaechi
Tim Hardaway
Michael Richards
Ant (LCS comedian)

These are of course subjective calls, but so's the contest. The objective part comes in this portion, namely the voting on these 7 finalists. As you will soon see, I many of these entries were relatively subtle, with actors that seem like they might go together (a la Wild Hogs) but the more you think about them, the more wrong the combinations seem. Vote early and often through the end of the Oscars this Sunday. The winner will be announced Monday morning. Also, please note that only entries 2, 5, and 7 participated in the addendum. If none of these entries wins, the highest vote tally among these three will win a movie concession from me.

Here they are:


1. Spencer said...
Bebe Neuwirth
Carrot Top
Kirk Cameron (post-Left Behind)
Ice T


2. shannon said...
Gilbert Gottfried (February 28, 1955)
Forest Whitaker (July 15, 1961)
Billy Bob Thornton (August 4, 1955)
George Lopez (April 23, 1961)

Shannon's fifth entry was Cate Blanchett, whom I think is a least plausible with both Forest Whitaker and Billy Bob Thorton, but the fifth entry doesn't disqualify her initial quartet.


3. Lee said...
Michael Richards
Denzel Washington
Andie MacDowell
Wayne Gretzkie


4. soibois said...
Jeff Foxworthy
Jet Li
Monica Belluci
Charlie Murphy


5. Rennie Harlin's Bitch said...
James Spader
Mike Meyers
Flavor Flav
Val Kilmer

my "5th" man is a woman: Eva Mendez...so long as she's 100% in the same mouth-breather mode she worked so well in 2 Fast 2 Furious.


6. Dano said...
Joel Grey
Tracey Morgan
Tony Jaa
Sandy Duncan


7. Chad said...
Steve Guttenberg
Kenneth Branagh
Spike Lee
Mark Harmon

5th:
Dolph Lundgren

Update: Please vote in the comments.

Gonna go out on a limb

And state that I am the only person in the world who is in the midst of reading these three books:

The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage

You Can't Win

Popeye Vol. 1: "I Yam What I Yam"


More soon, first about Popeye.

Emmett's way of talking

Lacey and I need to start recording what Emmett's been saying recently. He's really been cracking us up. Here are a couple of recent highlights:

He and I watched some Saturday morning programming the other day. We were looking for Babar, which had just ended, but the show Dragon came on and it was OK. A lot of Saturday morning show are a little junky and a tad violent, as they're aimed more at 7- and 8-year-olds whose sensibilities are different. But Dragon was kind of sweet and low key, and Emmett liked it and I approved. Later when we talked about it, I asked,"Did you like that show we watched."

"Yeah. It wasn't scary. Or news." Which I guess pretty much sums up what he doesn't like in a program.

Then, later in the weekend, all three of us were driving around, and Emmett announced, "Some houses have ding-dongs on, and some houses don't have ding-dongs on." It took us a while to realize he meant doorbells.

Late addendum to the contest

OK, so Ghost Rider opens about the same time as Wild Hogs. An extra ticket to the person who comes up with the best 'fifth man' for their four-actor scenarios below. Said actor must occupy the same general "these people have no chemistry between them" vibe as Nicholas Cage would compared to the WH foursome, but will be starring in an equally baffling movie dedicated to the same inanimate object. Get thinking.

Wild Hogs

So Lacey and I the other night were watching network TV, not something we do very often and we caught an ad for Wild Hogs, a movie neither of us knew existed until that very moment. It seems, at first blush, to be a project answering a road trip time killer to come up with a movie featuring four actors with the least potential for having any chemistry between them, both in individual scenes and collectively. John Travolta? William H. Macy? Tim Allen? And Martin Lawrence? This is a dare, right?

So here's my challenge: who can come up with a foursome of living actors all roughly the same generation (Martin Lawrence is the outlier here, of course, in more ways than one) that is less plausible as a group of friends than this?

Update: This is now officially a contest. Entries will be taken until midnight this Thursday. I will convene a panel of experts to weigh in on the entries, and I will buy the winner a ticket to a movie of their choice.

One of my favorite comics these days

Maria Bamford's control of voice and characters is awesome. Here's a taste.