News You Can Bruise for 2006 February 6 (entry 0)

Mon Feb 06 2006 00:12 The Thin Man: The basic cable package here includes 2 million channels, give or take a million. These include a couple that we actually like, like TCM and a channel that only shows science documentaries, whose mascot should be Professor Science. So we are Tivoing old movies which we will eventually watch. First up was The Thin Man, which was really funny. Man, the main characters were constantly drinking! Even by the standards of their time, Nick and Nora were such lushes that TCM felt the need to follow the movie with an anti-drunk-driving short as a chaser.

In said short, the Highway Patrol officer of "one of our western states" solemnly told us that, even though you may not feel anything, scienticians have proven that a mere four cocktails can affect your reflexes.

The mystery in the movie wasn't that interesting but we kept laughing and laughing at the character studies. We loved the dysfunctional Arrested Development-type family, including Lucille; a classic Buster+George Michael+Tobias; and Cesar Romero, probably my favorite movie-grade-spanning actor, as George Sr.+G.O.B. As Joel Hodgson once said, "Render unto Cesar what is Cesar's!" Also, there was a cop who gave a good impression of what Clark Kent would be like if he wasn't also Superman.