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Sunday, November 28. 2010

Delta Tau Chi

“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor!”

Who can forget John Belushi’s pivotal scene in the greatest comedy epic of all time, Animal House? The Delta House had just been expelled from Faber College and had until the following Monday to be off campus.

The entire fraternity of Delta Tau Chi sits in their house, such as it is, moping about their circumstances. Until of course, Belushi’s character, Bluto, jumps up to rally the troops! He doesn’t say a whole lot in the movie, up until that scene, although Bluto is the centerpiece of, or in, many of the films memorable moments. Like killing the horse in Dean Wormer’s office or window peeping on the girls of the sorority — now I can’t remember the name of the sorority!

Belushi’s other great line: “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.” Right after the Delta’s wreck the Lincoln Flounder borrowed from his brother Fred.

Since its release in 1978, I’ve seen that movie more times than I can count, but every time I laugh at all the same scenes, all the same lines — Animal House stands with the comedies that came 30-40 earlier with the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton.

It’s funny, talking about a movie that was released over 30 years ago. There have been a lot of comedies, including romantic comedies, released in the past 32 years, but National Lampoon’s Animal House stands as the standard for comedies in these three-plus decades.

One of the more recent and hilarious comedies was The Hangover. Now that was a funny movie! Four friends go to Vegas, get the most expensive suite in the hotel, have some drinks and the goofy one, Zach Galifianakis, slips everyone roofies, thinking they are ecstasy. The rest, as they say, is lost in a blackout. Including the groom. It’s funny and now they are making a sequel, with a cameo by President Clinton. Oh, the speculation we can engage in over that bit of news.

Mel Brooks always made funny movies in the 1970’s and ’80’s, but still, the irreverence of Animal House went beyond even Brooks’ masterpiece, Blazing Saddles.

We need a lot of laughs these days, as we did in 1978. With North Korea trying to restart hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, the economy, the Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives, two wars, we have become a dangerously suspicious and divided nation.

During the 1930’s, the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and their contemporaries entertained the nation through the Great Depression. Not to mention, Will Rogers, the Daily Show of his generation.

In the late 1970’s, there were the comedians like Richard Pryor, Steve Martin and Robin Williams. TV shows like Saturday Night Live, The Bob Newhart Show and Mork and Mindy, and of course the movie Animal House

Now, with this, the worst recession since then, we need something to laugh at. Or someone.

Right now we have Sarah Palin, she can be pretty funny, as is the Minnesota idiot, Michele Bachman. Saturday Night Live and Tina Fey did a great job of satirizing Palin, it was the hit of the 2008 TV and election seasons. Sadly, Fey won’t be doing that bit any time soon. Or, maybe she will. Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving. Okay, it was probably just an innocent slip of the tongue when she said we should stand by our ally, North Korea, but can we really be sure? She just kept blabbering on until Glenn Beck interrupted and corrected Palin.

Palin has put on the cloak of victimhood and worn it proudly. Everyone is picking on poor Sarah and her family. People are picking on poor Bristol Palin by criticizing her awful dancing on Dancing With the Stars. And don’t you know, Jennifer Grey and Brandi are professional dancers! It’s just not fair! The poor Palins are just victims in all this!

The real tragedy though will be Darrell Issa, the California Congressman who will now chair the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Issa plans to start one investigation of the Obama Administration every week.

So, instead of doing the Nation’s business, Issa and his Republican colleagues plan to shut down the government. This is funny: when the president called out Senator Mitch McConnell for stating the number one goal of the Republicans is to make President Obama a one-term president, McConnell said his party had to have one of their own — anyone — in the White House to do the Nation’s business. So, their plan is: shut down government for the next 26 months and then get busy doing their jobs.

The plan is, really, to return to the status quo of 2007, when the economy was tanking and the health insurance companies completely controlled your health care and could jack up prices and deny coverage with impunity.

The truth is, it’s all about power and control. The Republicans want to be Dean Wormer and Mayor DePasto — and Eric Cantor, well he would be Class President, Greg Marmalard.

The Democrats, who knows what they want to be when they grow up. Not Delta House, that’s certain. And really, who aspires to be a bunch of drunks and misfits — well, other than myself and a few of my friends. The Dems are the nerdy fraternity. They pledged a brawler, Nancy Pelosi, and made her the chapter president.

The Democrats want to do things intelligently, looking for long term solutions to pressing problems, whereas their opponents, they would rather do the knee-jerk solutions that a big part of the electorate finds so satisfying because then they can go back to thinking about themselves.

Who is the Delta Tau Chi Fraternity in all this? Not the Teabaggers or the moveon.org crowd. Really, no one is. National Lampoon’s Animal House is a fictional movie and we can’t really pigeonhole a real cast of characters with a fictional cast, not completely any way.

No, the Animal House in this comedy will be the comedians and comedy shows who lampoon our elected leaders every day and night. They will continue to point out what is going wrong with our country, politically and socially, just as they have always done for centuries. Satire has been the antidote to what ails us for millennia

Time to watch it again. Just found out one of the supporting cast members is a Playboy Playmate! I didn’t know that until reading the IMdB entry for the movie! Martha Smith, Miss July 1973.

Just to laud my new found knowledge over my friend John, I asked him if he knew who played Barbara “Babs” Jansen in the movie. “Martha Smith,” he replied long and pleasantly. He’s probably known Miss July 1973 was in the movie since it debuted. John ... he’s an engineer and they pay attention to the details, especially really important details like Playmates in movies.

I’m gonna pay closer attention to Babs Jansen this time around!

“Seven years of college, down the drain!” That cracks me up!

Posted by Tim Forkes in NEWS and POLITICS at 08:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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