The Goods

Saturday my buddy and me went movie hopping. "Isn't that something you do in high school?" Well, yea. Unless you live in Fresno and have nothing else going on.

It was fun though, reliving high school a little bit. It was great being afraid of getting caught when we darted in between theaters (they had a good bit of security too). I liked having authority to be afraid of instead of just being afraid of my own stupid actions.

We saw District 9. Eh. Inglourious Basterds. Great movie! Nothing to do with Fresno though.

But The Goods. Surprise surprise, it's got a Fresno joke! I wrote earlier about the astonishing number of movies which make fun of a city most people on the east coast have never heard of.

In fact, I took note of the lowest-common-denominator nature of most of the jokes in The Goods. Almost all of them were either racist, sexist, made fun of retarded people, or were simply about sex. If they weren't that then the humor depended on simple volume or the juxtaposition of a businessman wanting to be in a boy band (a.k.a. effeminate). Anyone from any era anywhere would get these jokes as we all know what Asians are and what sex is.

This makes the Fresno joke an anomaly, it's one of the most sophisticated and thought out jokes in the whole film! Why do they run this joke knowing it will be completely lost on more than half the people who see it (as the east coast has way more citizens than the west)?

I can just see that part of the film playing in a theater in my hometown. The whole audience would be silent.

It's an inside joke. And yet they still couldn't resist.

I wondered too about the other people watching the movie. Does it bother them that their hometown gets constantly lampooned by outsiders? Do they ever wonder if it really is better in the outside world? Do they think that maybe this many people just can't be wrong and that they need to do something about it?......

Nope, they don't.

Iiiiiiiiironyyyyyyyyyyyy

I got a very nice complement about this here ol' blog a few days ago. Freaked out when I saw a comment as I'm always afraid it'll be from some high-ranking official who has discovered the site trashing his city (in good fun of course!!...) and is vowing to hunt me down at any cost.

But this one was nice. He complemented the conciceness of the blog, how it was updated often and stayed on subject. The being famous part was nice, I'm sure it's a pipe dream every blogger has (cough cough fresnofamous.com cough), but eh.

SO, I finally found the comment -- after updating 2 times in 2 weeks with stuff about Las Vegas and San Francisco A.K.A. doing the opposite of the ish I got the complement for. Stupid me.

But hey, that's Fresno.

Back on da topic:

"I'm comin' out. I want the world to know..."

Truth in advertising came out from the Bee a few days ago, and for once I completely agree with some valley politicians.

The article details the difficulties of the valley legislators in getting any attention for their region of the State ("The Armpit of California"). Apparently towns like Mendota have 40% unemployment rates, which is admittedly a shocking number.

So they're organizing a march on Washington (still unscheduled) and marched locally for water last month.

It's not an opinion piece, but the article nonchalantly asserts the New York Times as "agenda setting" because it put the valley water march on page A17. Dude, the paper operates out of NEW YORK. What you expect? And have any of these unemployed thought of the obvious thing, LEAVING!?

As the story goes, Americans don't care about the unemployment rate here because it's always high. They also don't buy the farmers' excuse that environmental protection is ruining them since there's plenty of food. And they don't care about food shortages from the world's richest agricultural region because prices haven't gone up.

In other words, they have no incentive to feel sorry for the people here. Another tragedy of modern life. Farms the world over can fill in our gap, men are outdated.

THE POINT:

They need to succeed! They need to march on Washington! They need to get the attention of Barack Obama!! (after Saturday night I'm sure he could make some priceless Fresno jokes) Everyone in America needs to know about this!!!

...Cuz if everybody knows, suckers like me will know better than to move here. Oh no, oh Fres-'No, more

Movie night

Q: What do these 5 seeeeeemingly unrelated things have in common?

A: They all make fun of Fresno!!!


I found out yesterday that the new computer-animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens has a scene involving da 'No. The scene is, the main guy in the film is marrying the main girl. They are supposed to move to Paris, but at the last second he tells her they are moving to Fresno instead, and that it is "better".

She responds, "In what universe is Fresno better than Paris?"

Funny huh?

Don't worry though, Seth Rogen and Reese Witherspoon offered a half-assed apology for the unbecoming joke on the city, saying that they didn't destroy it in the movie like they did San Francisco.

Turns out they didn't destroy any OTHER cities either, but who's counting?

Researching a bit more, I found out there are Fresno jokes in Con Air, Thelma & Louise, and EDtv, as well as many on the Johnny Carson show. I got lazy before I started searching for links on those, but dude, seriously!?!?

Consider all of this, and then add to it the fact that millions of people in America, and billions the world over, have never even heard of the place. This reduces the value of the jokes a ton...



THEY COULDN'T RESIST! IT'S THAT FREAKING LAME!!!