Category Archives: Muddled Musings

Here’s Looking at You, Dumbass

It’s one thing to incorporate movie quotes into your personal life. Hell, I could life-coach a douche into a half dozen dates with quotes from Jerry Maguire alone, provided you show me the money, complete me and help me help you. You had me at sucker.

But what do you do with dimwits who incorporate on-screen behavior into their real lives?

Netflix is grappling with that question now, thanks to mentally impaired fans of Bird Box, the wildly popular movie that has them taking the “Bird Box challenge.”

The exercise, which goes by the meme-friendly #BirdBoxChallenge, is really an invitation to stupidity. The Sandra Bullock horror flick posits that evil forces have haunted Earth, turning people suicidal (or murderous if they’re psychotic) when they see the demon, which is never shown in the film. Based on the bestseller by Josh Malerman, the only escape is to gouge out your eyes or blindfold yourself.

While the film excised the gouging element, it fully embraced the blindfolds — and prompted fans to do the same. People are attempting everything from walking around their homes to pouring a drink to applying lipstick on the willing.

Unsurprisingly, dullards are taking it further, from blindfolding their children to walking out in public, prompting Netflix to issue this Twitter plea:

“Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE,” read the unnamed corporate post. “We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl (the film’s child protagonists) have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”

Even the National Federation of the Blind had to issue a condemnation. “They’re going to get the wrong idea about blind people, and what blindness is actually like,” the federation tweeted. “The #BirdBoxChallenge creates mistaken and harmful impressions of blindness and blind people, perpetuating misconceptions. We strongly condemn it.”

Of course, this is foolishness nothing new for viewers, who have been co-opting ridiculous behavior on screen since, well, the invention of screens, when kids jumped off house roofs after seeing Superman take flight in TV serials.

At least kids had the excuse of the naivete of age. But it takes a darker turn with adults. Just ask Drake, who saw people jumping out of cars while driving to emulate a dance to his song “In My Feelings” last year. That “challenge” led to a spate of minor injuries and prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to issue a warning that should be obvious: Do not to leap from a moving car to bust a move.

But there’s no such thing as obvious to some fans. Here are five of the most horrifying examples of viewers taking on-screen mimicry too far:

The scene: Doc Brown drives through a time portal in a wall in 1985’s Back to the Future.
Ban Talat Yai Real life: In 2015, an unidentified 40-year-old Nashville man who saw the movie drove his Dodge Challenger 88 miles an hour into a brick wall of a Pensacola, Fla. shopping mall. The mall was empty and the man suffered only minor injuries and was released after a psychological evaluation.

The scene: In the 1999 movie October Sky, hero Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllynhaal) pulls spikes out of train tracks and sells them to fund a rocket.

Real life: Police in Thiensville, Wisc. arrested two teenagers in 2006 for removing 157 railroad spikes to sell for scrap metal at $3 apiece. The teens, whose names were not released, were ordered to pay $2,500 in damages, $3,000 in replacement costs and the active CN Railroad line was shut for more than a week.

The scene: In the film Wedding Crashers, Owen Wilson spikes Bradley Cooper’s drink with the eye drop Visine, giving Cooper a nasty case of diarrhea.

Real life: Fox Valley Technical College student Luciana Reichel, 22, from Appleton Wisconsin, was jailed for 90 days on a felony count of placing foreign objects in edibles after emulating the prank. According to the criminal complaint, on ‘numerous occasions’ in 2011 Reichel placed Visine in a quart-sized water bottle used by Briannia Charapata, her 20-year-old dorm roommate, who was treated for nausea and diarrhea.

The scene: Venturing into wilderness in 2007’s Into the Wild. Christopher McCandless became a survivalist who wandered into the wilderness, dying of starvation in 1992 and becoming the subject of a bestselling book and big studio film.
Real life: Dustin Self, a 19-year-0ld man inspired by the film to go “off the grid,” left his home in Piedmont, Okla., in March 2013. His remains were found by a deer hunter a month later. Self died of exposure.

The scene: In Disney’s 1993 The Program, a drunk and drugged out character Joe Kane lies down on the road, daring cars to drive over him in an inebriated bout of bravado.
Real life: Michael A. Shingledecker Jr., 18, of Polk, Pa., was killed almost instantly in 1993 when he and a friend were struck by a pickup truck while lying on a two-lane highway in the small borough in western Pennsylvania. His friend, Dean G. Bartlett, 17, was critically injured. And Michael Macias, 17, of Syosset, Long Island., was critically injured when he was hit by a car at in October 1993 as he lay in the middle of the road.

To pseudo-quote Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of nitwits in the morning.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S6XMi6bDRA

Spaced Out

I’ve met Kevin Spacey once in my life. It was at the 2002 Golden Globes award show, where Spacey had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for The Shipping News.

He didn’t win the award, but looked in fine spirits at one of the after-parties at The Beverly Hilton, where stars annually gather to mingle and the press to schmooze.

It was my first after-party. I had recently left as a police reporter at The Washington Post to join USA Today as a film writer. Milling about in an ill-fitting rented tuxedo, I was to do the conventional celebrity roundup piece, gathering “I can’t believe I won” quotes from the winners and “It was an honor just to be nominated” snippets from the trophy-less.

About 15 minutes into one of the parties, I spotted Spacey across a dining hall. He was smiling broadly, and had his hand cupped on the back of the head of a young, taller actor, who looked as thrilled meeting a star as I felt to be interviewing them.

Not wanting to interrupt, I waited for the two to separate before I approached Spacey. I wasn’t carrying a notepad, just a digital recorder in my pocket, so nothing identified me as press except the badge around my neck.

“Mr. Spacey?” I asked. I was so new at film writing I didn’t know it was acceptable to address actors — even famous ones — by their first names. I held out my hand. “I’m Scott Bowles.”

Spacey gave me a genuinely warm smile and took my hand. “Well hello, Scott,” he said. I was immediately relieved; some actors did not hide their disdain for the media, particularly actors not carrying statues.

I barely had time to utter my standard second-line greeting, “I’m a reporter for USA Today,” when the smile vanished. The handshake, which was warm and slightly lingering, ended abruptly when he pulled his hand away. He turned on his heel, muttered “I have no comment,” and walked to an empty table nearby.

I was disappointed and confused. As a former police reporter, I was used to brush-offs. But this was a noticeable change in demeanor. Plus, I wasn’t going to get a quote from an A-lister. I stood frozen for a moment, uncertain if I had broken after-party protocol, unwittingly offended, or simply chosen the wrong moment to approach an actor peeved he had not won.

Several yards away, I saw Katie Couric, beckoning to her cameraman to come over, that she spotted Spacey was unaccompanied. As the cameraman approached and the two walked toward Spacey’s table, he noticed the press descending. Spacey, who had been resting his head on cupped hands, stuck out middle fingers on both sides of his face, essentially rendering himself inappropriate to film (and letting Couric know to abort her approach).

Similarly confused by the reaction, Couric called off the cameraman and began scanning for more amenable stars.

As a former cop reporter, I was used to brusque reactions. But as a rookie film writer, I was so concerned I had offended that I called my mother the next day to tell her the story.

I thought about that exchange in October 2017, when Spacey came out as gay in an apology to Anthony Rapp for a drunken sexual advance that he allegedly made (but said he did not recall making) to the then 14-year-old Rapp in 1986.

What puzzled me was not Spacey’s admission to being gay, which the press treated as a revelation from the notoriously private actor. What confused me was that it was considered a revelation at all: I had assumed he was gay by the exchange he had with the actor before my encounter with him. I assumed many actors were gay. It wasn’t until I had experience as a film writer that I learned such an admission is considered a career-killer for a lot of actors.

And I wasn’t bothered by what I considered a minor come-on. Particularly when I was young, I was occasionally mistaken as gay. Once, at a party in Detroit held by city paramedics, a guy asked me if I had a girlfriend and ever considered a gay encounter. He even followed me into the bathroom before I excused myself from the gathering.

I’ve pondered the Spacey encounter even more since new allegations arose in November 2017. Spacey, 59, faces arraignment Jan. 7 on a charge of indecent assault and battery for an incident involving a then 18-year-old. His bizarre Christmas Eve YouTube post has utterly spun my head. Wearing a Santa apron and occasionally sipping from a mug, Spacey seems to inhabit his House of Cards character, Frank Underwood, who was killed off in the series after the allegations. In the video, he drawls things such as, “We’re not done, no matter what anyone says.” He even hints at a desire to return to Cards, (“You never actually saw me die, did you?” he asks).

I tried to watch House of Cards, but couldn’t after seeing the first scene of the first episode, in which he breaks the neck of a dog that was hit by a car and is assumed to be mortally injured. I recoil at scenes of animals dying.

I wonder if Spacey recalls that scene now, as I do. I wonder if he would have objected to Underwood’s course of action. It’s a risky endeavor, the snap decision.

Ho Ho Ho…ly Shit

I’m not sure whether to feel terrific or terrified by Donald Trump’s downward spiral into 17 concurrent investigations, from Russian ties to his “university” to his alleged charity foundation.

On the one hand, it’s a beautiful downward spiral, as his embarrassing public owning (and pride) of our government shutdown illustrated.

On the other, one can’t help but wonder whether his withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan isn’t a prelude of his attempt to Tweet the nation into martial law (it would no doubt be spelled “marshal.”)

One thing is clear this holiday season: We could use some truth. Thus, the year-end edition of FactSlaps:

Thomas Edison invented the tattoo pen.
The Netherlands was the first country in the world to make same-sex marriage legal in 2001.
Ratings on Netflix are not actually an average of the ratings of all users, but rather a representation of what users with similar entertainment tastes as you thought of the movie.
St Nicholas is the patron saint of penitent murderers.
The Netherlands paved a bike path with recycled toilet paper.
In the U.S., the death toll from guns is higher for kids ages 0-4 than it is for on-duty law enforcement officers.
Enric Marco, a Catalan mechanic, was a prominent public face of Spanish survivors of the Holocaust for decades, until his story was revealed to be a lie.
Tidsoptimist is a Swedish word for someone who thinks they have more time than they actually do.
To ‘egrote’ is to pretend to be ill to avoid work.
The tallest cactus ever recorded was 78 feet tall.
The Japanese words for wrist and ankle literally translate into “hand neck” and “foot neck.”
During its restoration in 1982, the Statue of Liberty’s head was accidentally installed two feet off-center.
In 1891, a ride was planned that would drop passengers in free fall from the top of the Eiffel Tower into a pond at the bottom.
Parts of Africa no longer want your clothing donations. The vast amount of these imports have devastated local clothing industries and led the region to rely far too heavily on the West.