#and our PM is a glorified drama teacher

[pennielane]

oooooh canada we fucking suck aaaas weellll

yeah we do!!! the biggest fallacy in canada is canadians thinking we’re morally superior to americans like…..besties we also suck

#idontwanttospoiltheparty #ask #and our PM is a glorified drama teacher #*NOT a conservative but i cannot take Trudeau seriously ever

[gingervsblondie]

Blondie Brings Up Baby (1939)

8:38 PM, Thursday, 26 September 2019

Nineteen. Ni- Ni- Nineteen.

Ni- Ni- Nineteen.

Nineteen thirty-nine.

How does our favourite zany

Nuclear familial vignette

Get themselves into another casse-tête?

Dagwood’s filled with sandwiches while Flournoy’s filled with regret

And Alexander’s traumatized

You ready for more yet?

Blondie Brings Up Baby. Let’s get into it.

By the way, we’ve got a new head screenwriter, Gladys Lehman. Our old friend Dick Flournoy’s still on the Wikipedia page as “story by, (uncredited)” though.

8:40

I don’t know if I’ve only just noticed this or if this movie just gave the first indication of it, but Dagwood is really bad at his job.

8:42

8:43

UHHH. There’s a woman in the Bumsteads’ house. There hasn’t been a woman in the Bumsteads’ house before. I have no idea who she is and the movie moved swiftly on without explaining who she is.

8:46

UHHHHHHHH. They cut from a scene of Dagwood and Blondie at a police station telling a receptionist that Alexander is missing, after he didn’t show up to school, to a scene where Dagwood is in a shed, and COMPLETELY INEXPLICABLY, a bunch of police with tommy guns have him surrounded and start firing on him and throwing tear gas bombs.

I have no fucking clue what is going on in this movie.

8:51

UHHHHHHHHHHHHH. All of that was the build up to the intro. The intro is playing now.

The movie hasn’t even started yet.

WHAT.

WHAT IS HAPPENING.

They haven’t had anything before the intro on any of the other movies.

8:52

OKAY. SO.

The last few movies I’ve watched on YouTube. They’re in the public domain anyway as far as I can tell. But I couldn’t find a version of Blondie Brings Up Baby with good enough quality, so I switched to Amazon Prime.

Turns out, I’ve just discovered, all the Blondie movies on Amazon Prime have 3-5 minutes of scenes with ABSOLUTELY NO CONTEXT pinned onto the beginning before the intro. So I just watched 4 minutes and 40 seconds of Blondie Brings Up Baby SPOILERS.

And I’m furious about it.

9:05

There’s a “huh?” that Dagwood does in these whenever he does a double-take, and it’s gotta be my least favourite recurring bit. They use it like a rimshot or a catchphrase to punctuate jokes, and 100% of the time it just extends something that wasn’t funny.

9:11

See okay: He just did one, but silently. There was no “huh?”, just Dagwood looking confused. And it was a little bit funny! That’s all it took. No “huh?”.

9:16

K, this time Blondie’s the one being a bad parent. A guy showed up at the door offering a free IQ test for Alexander. Is that a thing that happened in the 30s? No idea, but it’s what’s happening in the movie so let’s just go with it. Alvin, Alexander’s friend/enemy/neighbour who he occasionally brains with a fucking brick, has been over and has been calling Alexander (and also Dagwood) a dumbbell all day. So to get revenge on Alvin, Blondie is getting all competitive about the IQ test, telling Alexander that he has to beat Alvin.

It’s giving me flashbacks to a music teacher I had in high school. We were going to a concert band competition in another province, and she told us she wouldn’t accept us bringing home anything other than gold. In the middle of the performance, we lost time with each other (because we’d never played in an auditorium and weren’t used to the acoustics) and had to start the song over. We got bronze. On the bus ride home, she didn’t talk to us. I don’t think she even looked at us.

The next year, I took drama instead of music.

9:27

Ok. So. The dude with the IQ test watched Alexander build a house out of toy blocks. Based on that, he told Blondie that Alexander is a genius, and that his IQ is 168.

(What follows is me disassembling the logic of this, which I’ll shortly learn was a pointless endeavour.)

First of all, no way can he determine an IQ that specific based on a house Alexander built out of toy blocks. Secondly, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be telling a child they’re a genius, since they’d end up developing less motivation, thinking that their accomplishments are a result of natural gifts rather than hard work. And third, UNLESS they turn around and reveal that the IQ test, which I’ll note happened off-screen, was somehow wrong and Alexander isn’t actually a genius, then I am going to spend the remaining movies in this series frustrated at their continued insistence on calling him “Baby Dumpling.” Which, you know, I already am anyway. Although maybe demeaning him like that will balance out them telling him he’s a genius.

9:34

Oh ok. The test wasn’t wrong. The IQ dude is just a con artist selling encyclopedias.

Should’ve seen that coming.

9:38

Dagwood thought IQ meant temperature, and came rushing home thinking Alexander was terribly sick. It cut to him ripping up the encyclopedias Blondie just bought, saying “This guy’s crazy, coming around here with books at a time like this.”

What an insufferable doofus.

9:41

I’m not a fan of Blondie entirely falling for this con artist’s BS. I feel like she hasn’t been that gullible before. She’s gotten mad at Dagwood based on comical misunderstandings, but that’s been understandable based on the context she didn’t have. But we as an audience are given just as much context as Blondie is to know that this dude is swindling her. It just makes her seem stupid.

9:48

Teacher: “Well, how do you do young man? So you want to start to school?”

Blondie: “NO MA'AM!”

Mood.

9:51

Man, elementary school is a bonkers institution. Just send your small child to a building they cannot leave full of strangers who have absolute authority over them, and are sometimes totally insane people, where they’ll be taught things they not only cannot use but definitely will not remember because they’re tiny tiny children. And sometimes the insane adult strangers will yell at your child. For not behaving. And they’re not behaving because they’re in a place they don’t want to be and cannot leave where strangers have the authority to yell at them for mistakes they’re making FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEIR LIVES BECAUSE THEY’RE SMALL SMALL CHILDREN.

10:11

Huh. I think they just broke the canon? I’ve been calling Baby Dumpling Alexander because the Wikipedia for the first movie listed him as Alexander "Baby Dumpling" Bumstead, but in Blondie Brings Up Baby, they just had this exchange:

Alexander: “[They beat me up] ’cause my name’s Baby Dumpling.”

Dagwood: “Well, your real name’s Dagwood, after me. Maybe we’ll call you that now that you’re going to school?”

Alexander: “Noooo. Guess I’ll stay Baby Dumpling.”

I dunno if his real name’s Alexander in the comic strip and they just forgot while they were writing this? They haven’t called him Alexander in the other movies, I was just basing that entirely off the Wikipedia article. I can’t believe they’d make 28 movies without a clear story bible.

(Future Euan looked it up. In the comic strip, Baby Dumpling grew up into a teenager, and became Alexander.)

I’m still gonna call him Alexander by the way.

10:17

As these movies have gone on, I’ve been increasingly concerned about the wellbeing of the dog. Like, the real dog, behind the scenes. I really hope they weren’t abusing her to get her to do all the stuff she does. But I can’t say I’d be surprised if they were. She kinda gives the vibe of “dog doing impressive tricks because they’ll punish her if she doesn’t.” Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe they had, like, a super good treat to give her every time she did a trick.

10:23

10:24

God I wish I were watching Peanuts.

10:25

Or reading Peanuts.

10:26

You ever notice how in old movies when they cross-fade between two shots, there’ll be an abrupt change in the brightness of the footage right before it fades, and then again after it stops fading? One day I’ll learn why that was.

(Here’s the answer, courtesy of future Euan: https://www.quora.com/How-did-movies-do-a-cross-fade-with-real-film)

10:36

Only moment I’ve liked so far: Daisy’s gone missing (because a dogcatcher caught her and brought her to the pound). The mailman, a young guy on a bike who’s had a recurring bit through every movie where he whistles and Daisy comes running to take the paper from him, just whistled, and instead of Daisy, Alexander came to take the mail and tells him Daisy’s missing. And he says “As soon as I’m finished delivering, I’ll look for her. I’ll look on my bike.”

That’s kinda sweet. No sweet moments between Dagwood and Blondie yet this time, but one sweet moment between a mailman who’s barely talked before and a dog.

10:42

There’s a lot of punching in these movies. Like, just Dagwood suddenly becoming infuriated and decking someone in the face.

What a violent doofus.

10:47

Dagwood got arrested for assaulting the dude who got him fired and didn’t have enough to pay it off so he got put in jail. His boss, Mr. Dithers, came to pay it off for him, while the dude’s in court.

Dithers: “How much is it your honour?”

Judge: “Ten dollars.”

Dithers: “Is that all that cost?”

Judge: “Mm.”

(Dithers punches the dude out)

Dithers: (offering money) “Here’s another one, your honour.”

I don’t want to hear another word about video games inciting violence in young people. Goddamn the rest of culture is responsible for glorifying violence.

10:53

Alexander: “You’re a girl. I don’t like girls.”

Girl: “Why?”

Alexander: “Oh… Don’t know. I learned it in school.”

Ho-ly shit. Movie spitting straight truth.

10:59

Might as well drop this here:

I’ve decided that once I’ve watched all the movies, I’m gonna write my own Blondie, A 60 page screenplay with all the hallmarks and the structure of the other ones. I mean, if I’m gonna be dragging them through the dirt, it’s only fair that I see if I could do any better.

11:02

I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown. That’d be a good one to be watching right about now.

11:07

No, I tell you what:

There are Blondie movies for every year between 1939 and 1950, EXCEPT for 1944. So that’s when I’ll write my script. Once I’ve watched the first 14, every Blondie movie between 1939 and 1943, I’ll write the Blondie movie to have come out in 1944.

11:10

I now have the context for why the police surrounded the shed that Dagwood was in. It still doesn’t make sense though. He was trespassing on a rich guy’s yard, a gardener knocked him out with a shovel and dragged him into the shed, and then presumably called for all of the police to come pick him up, and bring enough weapons to keep a city-wide riot at bay.

11:13

So the police thought Dagwood was somehow responsible for Alexander and the rich dude’s daughter going missing?

Well I’m riveted.

11:16

Or Why, Charlie Brown, Why?

11:19

“You see, playing with other children is the solution. Oh, if only this city had some place where this sort of thing could be carried out. Where the weak children could get courage from the strong, and the strong could learn compassion.”

So not school then.

“Why, I could do something like that. A sort of home for children! I’ll build it myself. It’ll be light and airy, with plenty of windows and playgrounds.”

THE ORPHANAGE

11:25

This movie ends with Dagwood getting insulted again by Alvin. He finds a tear gas bomb that he put in his pocket earlier when the police were attacking him, and says “Here’s a nice ball for you to play with.”

Dagwood just tried to tear gas a child.

What a dangerous doofus.

And once again, no Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019. However, I’ll give the movie a rating all the same.

Turns out Willie Best isn’t in the movie. Wikipedia was wrong. I’m guessing somebody copied and pasted the cast from the first movie, so that they could put in the regular cast, and forgot to take him out. And the movie wasn’t, as I assumed from the title, about Dagwood being a stay-at-home father. Which, I’ve only just realized, is still me thinking Blondie means Dagwood because he’s so much more prominent in the franchise, and I somehow still haven’t managed to internalize that his name is Dagwood. It’s like I’ve learned nothing since I started this. ANYWAY point is the movie wasn’t racist or sexist. It was just boring. Terribly terribly boring.

My rating is: One Dagwood Sandwich with some ham on the outside and nothing on the inside. Blame Amazon.

#gingervsblondie