“….Underdog is here!”

When I was a kid I enjoyed watching the cartoon “Underdog”, who was, in his secret identity, lovable shoeshine boy until he opened the secret compartment on his ring and took the concealed pill that would transform him into the caped canine with the gift to rhyme.

Over a year ago I heard that Disney Studios was planning on producing a live-action version of the classical cartoon and thought, “No way will this fly” but the studio just released some publicity photos and…well I may have to fit this into my Summer movie schedule after all for a trip down memory lane.

Here’s the studio plot description:

After an accident in the mysterious lab of maniacal scientist Dr. Simon Barsinister (Peter Dinklage), an ordinary beagle unexpectedly finds himself with unimaginable powers and the ability to speak. Armed with a fetching superhero costume, Underdog (voiced by comedian Jason Lee) vows to protect the beleaguered citizens of Capitol City and, in particular, one beautiful spaniel named Polly Purebread (voiced by Academy Award® nominee Amy Adams). When a sinister plot by Barsinister and his overgrown henchman Cad (Patrick Warburton) threatens to destroy Capitol City only Underdog can save the day.

Underdog opens in theaters across the country this Summer, with the hilarious tag line of “One Nation, Under Dog”.

Yesterday Blog Girl was out with her friends and I was trying to get some other writing done when I decided to turn on the TV for some diversion. I checked out one of the on-demand channels and they were showing “Weird Science” and I watched it for the second time in 21 years.

The first time I watched the movie was in the fall of 1985 during a weekend movie theater marathon and fast food festival with my brother, who had come to visit me while the now ex-wife bitch and my children were away. We spent Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday night watching 8 different movies at various theaters, talking like we hadn’t in such a long time and subsisting on fare from Subway and Pizza Hut. I remember we saw “Weird Science”, “Back to the Future” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II”, but I can’t recall the other 5 movies we saw (so Blog Brother, if you’re reading and YOU remember, drop a comment). I even checked out this site trying to jog my remembrance of the movies we watched, but no luck.

What I DO remember is that it was one of the best weekends I ever spent! That weekend has remained in my memory and is always recalled with a fondness that few memories can match. When I catalog happy memories, that one is always there. And as absolutely inane as “Weird Science” was, I still smiled while watching the entire movie yesterday because of what I associate it with.

I don’t patronize the Wal-Mart near the Blog Cave. There’s a couple of reasons for that. The biggest reason is that it is ALWAYS crowded, unless you go in between the hours of 2am and 4am. In addition, the store itself is so overloaded with merchandise that it always looks cluttered, makes it almost mandatory that you walk down the aisles (what there are of them) in single-file and constantly amazes me that the Fire Marshall hasn’t cited them for hazardous conditions. Personally, I prefer Target stores for my discount shopping.

But if you are a shopper who frequents your area Wal-Mart, you might be interested in visiting Wal-Mart Crime Reports, which tracks the number of police calls to individual Wal-Mart stores and allows you to view those numbers of the stores closest to you when you submit your zip code. Amazingly, when I put in my zip code, the store closest to me has the lowest number of calls of all the stores in the greater metropolitan Orlando area. Still, that number, gathered since 2002, works out to one call per week for the past 4 years.

If you’re interested, check out your own local store and see how many police calls have been recorded.

While sitting in the slow moving parking lot known as Interstate 4 on the way home from work this afternoon (I KNEW I should have taken the Greeneway; it’s faster but much more expensive and the Expressway Authority already has MORE than enough money) I decided to fight the urge to drive over or through all the vehicles in front of me by popping in my Time Flies: The Best Of Huey Lewis And The News CD and hitting repeat on my favorite song “Trouble In Paradise” (NOT Bruce Springsteen’s song) on track number 5. There is something about the beat of that song, combined with Johnny Colla’s way of making his saxophone wail that causes me want to hear it over and over and over…

Billy’s home, he just got back from LA.
Plenty of lines but nothing to say.
Said I, seen this movie and it don’t end nice.
Looks like trouble in paradise.

(Trouble in paradise.)
(Trouble in paradise.)
Hey,
trouble in…

…so I did. It helped me endure the traffic that was moving like “mole asses” (Denise’s mutated term) through downtown Orlando. And I didn’t care if people were staring at me as I sang (with the windows up, so all they could see was my mouth moving while my head bounced around) because I wasn’t looking at them.

Heard from my artistically gifted friend Z today. She has become a fellow at Crealde (joining my friend Rebecca in that elite group) and I offer her my heartfelt congratulations.

I have GOT to get this shirt!