Sexploitation Reviews
Not too long ago I discovered that you can stream soft core pornography on Netflix instant watch. This has become a source of entertainment for me. Not because I watch the movies though. I’ve got real pornography for those needs. I’m getting entertainment out of the Netflix user reviews. Most of which I’m certain are written by middle aged married men. I’ve gone ahead and listed a few of my favorites for you. The movie in question is called Ghost In A Teeny Bikini.
“Great for when your wife has a headache. Reminded me of my better years playing varsity football for Vanderbilt High. Go Pumas! Could’ve used a more cohesive narrative though.”
“Poorly constructed narrative, terrible acting, cheesy dialogue. Huge cans though.”
“I told my wife that I thought it was Ghost staring Patrick Swayze. She didn’t believe me.”
This next batch of reviews is for a film called The Flying Dutchman.
“So good that I didn’t even masturbate.”
“I’ve seen some gross things before but never anything involving a triple A battery and a pile of nylon socks. Are we sure this wasn’t a snuff film? I’m totally cool with it either way. I just need to know.”
“My favorite Kate Hudson film by far.”
Reading those favorable reviews makes me dream of getting something streamable on Netflix someday. In the meantime I’ve got more sexploitation films to rummage through. You know, for research.
Family Matters Matters
When I was a kid one of my favorite shows was Family Matters. It started out as a run of the mill family sitcom. Take this season 1 episode description for example, “Mother Winslow moves in and immediately begins to usurp Carl’s authority. Eddie wants to go out with his friends, but he has a strict curfew that complicates things with Carl.” Pretty standard.
Then, the writers went bat shit insane in the third season of this show. It started with the episode entitled Robo-Nerd in which, “Urkel creates Urkelbot, which soon develops a mind of its own and sets a trap to snare Laura for itself, but Urkel manages to shut it down just in time.” This is the only instance I’ve heard of a show jumping the shark in its third season and then continuing on for six more seasons.
For most shows the Robo-Nerd episode would be the height of insanity. For Family Matters, this was simply one writer laying down a challenge. “Try and make something more absurd then what I just did.” Instead of cowering in fear of Robo-Nerd, writers around the country stood defiantly and said, “Game on, motherfucker.”
Steve Urkel would be the vessel for all this chicanery. There was an episode where Urkel altered his DNA to that of Bruce Lee to beat down local thugs on a playground. An episode where Urkel went undercover as a gang banger to bring down a gang known as The Dragons. An episode where Urkel is kidnapped by terrorists in France and forced to build a tele-porter for them or else he will be killed. Somehow Urkel turned into MacGyver.
It didn’t stop at crime fighting though. There was an episode where Urkel cloned himself. An episode where Urkel rebuilt Robo-Nerd. There was even an episode where Urkel and Carl traveled back in time to the 1700’s and boarded a pirate ship. I don’t even remember this episode. As soon as I read the description I was like, “No fucking way!”
The only attempt at preserving the original essence of the show would be in the subplots in of each episode. Take for example the description of episode 138, Ain’t Nothing but an Urkel. “To impress an MIT recruiter, Urkel demonstrates his transformation chamber. Instead of turning into an Albert Einstein variant, Urkel makes himself into Elvis Urkel by mistake. The hunka-hunka-burning Urkel and his blue suede shoes scare the daylights out of the recruiter, which threatens his acceptance into his childhood college. Meanwhile, Carl and Harriet try to help out a young couple that are fixing to get married.”
Glad to know that some of the characters were able to maintain a degree of normalcy while all the other bizarre stuff was taking place. Here’s a beef I have with that particular episode. What does it matter that Urkel turned into Elvis and not Einstein? He still changed into another fucking person. I wouldn’t care if he turned into Jeffrey Dahmer Urkel. That is still impressive as fuck. That recruiter should’ve given him a full ride as soon as he saw those blue suede shoes.
The show finally began to lose it’s steam in the final season when the actress that played Harriett was replaced by another actress. For some reason, fans of the show called bullshit and said they just couldn’t buy that another woman was the mother of the Winslows. I don’t know why they didn’t just write into the show that Urkel stuck Harriett into the transformation chamber and she was now Vanna White Winslow or whatever and the change was irreversible. That probably would’ve kept the ratings steady.
The series finale involved Urkel getting shot into space, getting stranded out in the nebula and riding a satellite to make it back to Earth. It probably was the series finale not because cancellation but because the crazy well finally went dry. I’m done reminiscing about Family Matters. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Go back and watch the series in the event you think I’ve exaggerated any of this. You’ll find that I haven’t.
Erika’s Body
Raymond is a thirty-something loser. Lately, he can’t stop thinking about his college girlfriend, Jennifer. He broke up with her right before college graduation. Now he’s thinking that was his one chance at having the perfect girl. If he could go back and do things differently, he’d ask her to marry him instead.
Nowadays, Raymond works in an adult book store and helps his roommate Glenn develop his science projects. Glenn’s latest experiment involves time travel. He is on the brink of making it work. The way it works is that he can send a person back in time by using someone from the past as a host for the time traveler.
Raymond decides he can use this as his chance to go back in time and ask Jennifer to marry him. Raymond uses the time travel device without Glenn’s consent to travel back to his senior year of college. It works! Raymond wakes up on a soccer field looking up at Jennifer. She looks just like she did in college. Raymond gets up and soon realizes that he isn’t in his own body. No, he is in the body of Jennifer’s soccer teammate and roommate, Erika! So now instead of simply asking Jennifer to marry him; he has to track himself down, convince himself that he is him but in the body of a girl and that he needs to ask Jennifer to marry him.
Eventually that all gets sorted out. A new problem has developed though. How is Raymond suppose to get home? He never bothered to ask how to get back to the future and he sure doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life as Erika. Raymond and past Raymond figure out that Glenn is actually staying at one of the fraternities on campus. They go visit and he appears to be a real lunkhead at first. Thankfully, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover because he is just as intelligent as he is in the present. He gets to work on a way to send Raymond home.
Raymond and past Raymond get to work on the marriage proposal. Along the way, Raymond deals with the quirks of being a girl. This will provide humor. The big proposal happens and Jennifer says yes. Of course she’ll marry Raymond. Things couldn’t be better.
Later that night, Raymond (as Erika) and Jennifer are having some girl time. Jennifer reveals that she has an offer to play soccer overseas in Lithuania. She might even get a chance to play in the World Cup. She’s turning it down though. All so she can spend the rest of her life with Raymond.
Raymond thinks about how his future panned out. About how he didn’t amount to much and how he couldn’t possible give her the life she could have playing soccer overseas. He realizes that breaking up with her actually enabled her to make the decision to go play overseas.
Raymond decides to convince his past self to break up with Jennifer. Past Raymond refuses at first but Raymond twists his arm enough to make it happen. Past Raymond breaks up with Jennifer and it is an ugly sight. Raymond learns that you can’t be obsessed with the past. Otherwise, you can’t make much of a future for yourself.
Glenn has figured out how to send Raymond back to the future and does so. He is sad but upon learning that Jennifer made the Lithuanian world cup team, he is confident in his decision. At a coffee shop, he runs into Erika of all people. She mentions how some of college senior year seems like such a blur now. They get talking and a romance blooms between them. There is something in Raymond’s future after all.
THE END.
