In Dutch With The Wife - Raising Arizona

My name is H.I. McDunnough. All I said was, “Nathan needs some Huggies.”

You see, me and Ed, (that’s short for Edwina) were in a new place in our lives. We had a baby now and “everything’s chaaanged” as Ed put it. I know I’ve got responsibilities, but I guess sometimes we all make mistakes and revert back to our “old ways”.

I pulled over at the Short Stop, a local convenient store, one that maybe I was just a little bit too familiar with already. I told her I’d be out directly, and that she might just stay strapped in. I don’t even think the teenage store clerk made an effort to look up from his dirty magazine long enough to see me walk in and yank some pantyhose off the rack and beam straight for the diapers. “Wake up son.” I said as I walked up to the zit-faced pubescent cashier with a .357 in one hand, the biggest thing of diapers they had under my other arm, and the hosiery covering my whole face down to my neck. “I’ll be takin these Huggies, and whatever cash you got.” Little did I know that the little jerk was pushing the ‘we’re being robbed’ button to instantly signal the police of my presence.

It wasn’t long before my wife Ed could hear the cop sirens getting closer and closer. As a previous officer of the law, she wasn’t very tolerable when it came to things like robbing convenient stores, even though she was surprisingly taken with the idea of breaking and entering and kidnapping. Before he could even load all the money into the paper bag, she was already out of the car, walking around it screaming, “You son of a bitch!” and getting into the driver’s seat.

“You’d better hurry it up, I’m in Dutch with the wife.” I told him hastily. She screamed it again. “Come on now!” I said eagerly, still pointing the gun in his face. And if it isn’t just my luck, she is peeling out of the parking lot just as I’m running out the door. “Honey?” I shout as if that was going to do any good, and what do I see when I look the other way? Just the cops almost flying airborne up and down over the train tracks at the top of the hill.

Bang! The sound of a .45 caliber hand cannon breaks my momentarily dazed outlook by whizzing out the glass door behind me and past my head. That little bastard was shooting at me from inside the store! I have no choice but to take off running as the cops pull in behind me, literally rolling out of the window shooting at me alongside the youthful gunslinger vigilante, who both chase me into the street firing shot after shot.

They managed to catch up close enough to somehow shoot the Huggies out of my grasp. I tried to reach back for them, but it was too late, the cops were creeping up too quickly. I didn’t want to catch a bullet over some diapers so I left them there in the middle of the road.

I ran straight in-between two houses and thought it would be a good idea to hop a 6 foot wooden fence, but on the other side, I found out I was wrong. I had just enough time to lift up the stocking to my forehead when out of the darkness comes a vicious Rottweiler charging at me with no yield. As he neared me I feared for my life, but when he lunged for my face, the chain securing him to the ground stopped him just inches from tearing my nose off. Lucky that I wasn’t dog meat, I ran down the fence line to barely escape a mauling. It was just in time too because as soon as I got over the other side of the fence, that secure chain lifted its anchor from the ground freeing that ferocious mutt.

Running out into the middle of the street usually isn’t the best of ideas, but this time, for me at least, it worked. A local hick was fortunately speeding towards me and had the courtesy to slam on the brakes only a second too late smashing into me with barely enough force to roll me up on his hood and back onto the street like a ragdoll. The kind of thing that doesn’t hurt too much, but your life almost flashes before your eyes because you think you’re done for. I sprang from the road and opened his passenger door.

“Son, you got a pantie on your head.” said the driver. “Just drive fast, kay?” I said, hardly having the words leave my lips, the old coot stomped on the gas pedal forcing me to run alongside the truck and jump in. I tried yelling at Ed when she drove past, “Honey!” but before she could even turn her car around that same kid from the Short Stop was firing mini cannonballs through the windshield, and the driver’s natural reaction to everything just seems to be screaming as loud as he can, so I grabbed the wheel turning it abruptly, and narrowly missed the kid who was in the middle of the road, but out of nowhere, that same dog who was once my nemesis, had gained some other travelling K-9 companions and attacked my teen-aged enemy.

Again the driver can’t seem to make rational decisions so he plays chicken with the police car coming straight at us. I turned the wheel again missing the cops, but they continued giving chase and spraying lead from the rear. “Can I stop now???” screamed the old motorist, and as we barreled toward a house. I agreed screaming, and he screeched to a halt just in the nick of time, launching me from the vehicle into the yard. “Thank you.” I said turning to the man one last time as I ran into the house.

The police continued shooting and attempted to persuade me with their megaphone to come out and reveal myself as I ran from room to room in the house searching for the back door. One officer frantically chased me through the home and through the back door all the way down to the supermarket, with the pack of neighborhood dogs on the trail close behind making their way through the same unsuspecting homeowner’s living room while on TV is a commercial for Unpainted Arizona, owned by Nathan Arizona, and we all know who he is.

I figured, since I was at the grocery store anyway, I might as well find the diaper aisle, so I jogged down past the cheapies and nabbed a pack of Huggies off the top shelf. Bang! Another shot whizzed past my head destroying a pickle jar, and I thought it was about time to get out of there, so I continued my jog down the back aisle dodging bullets and screaming old ladies who hadn’t even bothered to take the curlers out of their hair before coming to the store.

Picking an aisle I thought was a safe one to make my exit in, I encountered that pack of hounds coming toward me at full speed, so I turned around and picked a different aisle, escaping the dogs, but then being rudely awakened by a shotgun blast coming from this store’s clerk. I guess it’s becoming standard to arm your employees who are working the night shift. Almost down to the back of the store again, that same cop was aiming his pistol at me again, so I chucked the package of diapers at him knocking him backwards into a screaming woman who ran into him at full speed with a shopping cart who had now become what the pooches were chasing.

I ran out the back exit to find my wife Ed conveniently pulling up just in time for me to hop in and get a wretched earful. She starts out by interrupting my apology with a swift right to the jaw. She thought if she and the baby were picked up, then they would be an accessory to armed robbery. “It ain’t armed robbery, if the gun ain’t loaded.” I tried to explain. She wasn’t really having it, but she was still listening to me enough to follow my directions when I said turn left and right. “I’m okay, you’re okay, that there’s what it is.”

“I know, but honey,” she said with grief, “I’m not gonna’ live this way HI. It just ain’t family life.”

“Well it ain’t Ozzie and Harriet.” I said putting my foot down, then putting my arm out the door to grab the Huggies that had been shot out of my arms, and left in the middle of the road, that started this whole mess in the first place. 

The Insolent Waiter - The Muppet Movie

By 1979, Kermit the Frog and Steve Martin were already good buddies and had several encounters on-screen from The Muppet Show. Kermit’s likable character and Steve’s hilarity always make for good comedy, but there is one scene from The Muppet Movie that really takes the cake.

A little over halfway through the movie we find the cheerful green frog already waiting at the table in his red velvet suit for his enamored swine, Miss Piggy, who enters the unremarkable outdoor moonlit restaurant wearing her pink dinner gown, purple satin elbow gloves, and a frilly fuchsia scarf.  After a small bit of chit-chat, Kermit mentions that he took the liberty of ordering them some wine and proceeds to call out “Oh, Waiter?” which is when we meet the real star of this cameo, The Insolent Waiter, played by Mr. Steve Martin who turns around with a look of true disgust on his overly-cocked head.

“Yes? May I help you??” says Steve in a most aggravated tone as he walks toward the table revealing his outrageous sport coat and shorts getup. “The wine please?” a simple request made by the frog, and fairly reasonable considering his felt hands are controlled by moving two sticks, not exactly prime for opening bottles of wine. After the waiter begrudgingly shows them the bottle, Miss Piggy mistakes it for champagne and she is quickly corrected. “Not exactly,” says the waiter, “sparkling muscatel, one of the finest wines of Idaho.” and as he sets the bottle down on the table, Kermit says smugly, “You may serve us now.” to which he replies incredibly sardonically, “Oh, may I?”

He then removes the foil from the top of the bottle, revealing the next gag, a bottle cap instead of the cork. The waiter wads up the foil and tosses it over the railing, then grabs the bottle opener that is chained to the pocket on his jacket. After Steve pries the top off he utters what is arguably the most hilariously ridiculous line in this sketch, “Don’t you want to smell the bottle cap?” Kermit plays along and after sniffing he says it’s good. This joke is probably not always understood, but any invariable wine-drinkers should certainly get it.

Steve says, “Would you like to taste it first?” and after a quick consultation with Piggy, Kermit asks, “Would you taste it for us, please?” After a cheeky nod and a quick roll of the eyes, he takes a sip from the glass, holds it in his mouth for a split second, and then immediately spits every last drop of it out, dramatically spraying it toward the ground, then wiping his face off in revulsion. And like the flip of a switch, he turns back around to the Muppet couple with a smile and in all seriousness says, “Excellent choice.”

“Should be for .95 cents.” states Mr. The Frog, then as Steve fills their glasses, he is politely asked for straws by the small well-dressed amphibian. Our waiter is ready for this request, pulls them conveniently from behind his lapel, and places them promptly into their drinks. “Thank-you. That’ll be all for now.” states the green one with his matter-of-factness, and the waiter is finally relieved. “Oh, thank-you, thank-you very much, thank-you.” He bows out gracefully as he exits the patio, still absorbed in the phony graciousness that we have come to know so well in these past two minutes, but then turning at the end just so we can catch one last quick glimpse of irritation and ultra-sarcasm stretched across his no longer fake-smiling face. Classic.

Kermit is then so inclined to say, “Here’s to you Miss Piggy, drink up.” He takes a reasonable sip, but she continues to slurp hers down to the last drop, which is interesting from a puppeteer’s standpoint as to how this part of the scene was actually created, since puppets can’t really sip from a straw, so the table must have been built with some kind of drain in the bottoms of the glasses.

Then, just as the scene starts to get all sappy and mushy with our odd couple of interspecies lovers, and the camera starts to zoom in slowly and their fuzzy faces get closer and closer, and just when you think they are going to swallow each other’s heads, the romance is badly sliced like a hideous golf swing by our favorite waiter, who pops in real quick asking for Miss Piggy. After agreeing that she is, in fact, Miss Piggy, he says just one word with exasperation, “Telephone.”

Piggy regretfully informs “Kermie” that she had placed a call to her agent and that it will only be an “eensy-teensy” moment, and then she leaves him all alone. Time lapses and now his drink is as low as he feels. The faint sound of a piano starts to fade in and the in the next scene Kermit the Frog meets Rowlf the Dog (both voiced by Jim Henson). They do a fun little number together about the joys and heartaches that come tied with women called, “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along.”

As soon as the song comes to a bluesy end, it’s that pesky waiter again, this time asking for Kermit the Frog. “Phone call for Kermit the Frog! You Kermit the Frog?” he shouts across the room to the little guy. Kermit says, “Yeah.” and Steve says his last word in the sketch, “Phone.”  He points at it quite obviously and then walks away. A tasteful exit that leads to Rowlf’s punchline, “It’s not often you see a guy that green, have the blues that bad.”

This scene would not have been possible without the genius of Jim Henson who is talented enough to not only sing a duet solo, but bring this magic film to life with the help from people like Frank Oz who plays the extravagant Miss Piggy (among many other characters), and the hundreds of people it takes to produce such fantastic creations.  

Mexican Standoff - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

We find our characters in a long-developed struggle to locate $200,000 worth of gold coins. Tuco (“The Ugly” member of the trio) finally stumbles upon Sad Hill Cemetery, while the man with no name, or Blondie as Tuco likes to call him, is only a cannonball’s flight distance behind. This gives Tuco the immediate opportunity to run circles and zig-zags through the gravestones as fast as his greasy little legs can manage. He is looking for the grave marked “Arch Stanton”, which remained a mystery until just a few moments ago when Blondie and Tuco each revealed their half of the secret as to where the gold could be located, and coincidentally the wooden grave marker has a death date on it of February 3, 1862, exactly 153 years to the date before this article was posted. This entire movie would not be possible without the musical talents of Ennio Morricone, who has definitively marked in particular this scene and the epic showdown with his genius. “The Ecstasy of Gold” is part of this classic movie’s score, and has even been covered during live performances of Metallica (usually the opening number). When the song concludes, at last, Tuco finds what he is looking for and frantically begins to dig for the money inside the coffin. Just about the time our blonde hero “The Good” shows up to bring him a shovel, they are held at gunpoint by Angel Eyes, our nemesis gunfighter introduced in the movie as “The Bad”, and he proceeds to throw another shovel into the mix, instructing them both to dig. Much to the dismay of Lee Van Cleef (The Bad), Clint Eastwood’s character refuses to dig because he knows that inside the grave marked “Arch Stanton” lies nothing but a dusty pile of old bones. There is only one way to get to that money, and that’s to “earn it”. Blondie decides to write the name of the grave on the bottom of a stone and then he sets it out in the center of the circle that lies in the middle of the cemetery. This begins what is probably the most famous scene ever in western film. The “Mexican Standoff” is extremely tense and emotional, with very little movement, absolutely no dialogue and another brilliant song by Morricone called “The Trio” that enhances the entire scene, and is quite obviously the climax of the film. With all sorts of camera angles, tight shots, close-ups, wide views, blurred backgrounds and such intense energy, the director Sergio Leone really brings it home with the increasingly rapid movement of the shots coinciding phenomenally with the rising music. “Bang!” As Angel Eyes draws his weapon, Blondie is all too quick, puts a bullet in him with the swiftness of a lightning strike, and before he can muster up a shot from the ground, Angel Eyes is fatally shot and winds up in a shallow grave that was already conveniently dug. The Good even has enough courtesy to fire one shot into his hat and another into his pistol, shooting them into the grave along with him. Eli Wallach’s character Tuco can’t even fire his gun when he wants to and soon learns that Eastwood’s character had unloaded it the night before. Blondie states that in this world there are two kinds of people, those with loaded guns, and those who dig. He also reveals the actual location of the money is in the grave marked “UNKNOWN” next to Arch Stanton’s, and also that the stone has no name written on it either, so Wallach’s  character is much obliged to begin unearthing the loads of currency. He jumps in once he opens the buried box and lugs out eight heavy bags of gold tied together in twos. With only a couple of blows to one of the bags with the side of a shovel, he bursts it open scattering the shiny metal pieces into the sand and joyfully relishes in the fact that there really is all that money and that all the effort has finally paid off. “It’s all ours Blondie!” he exclaims, but as he stands up, much to his chagrin, hanging from a tree is a rope tied into a noose. Come to find out, Blondie is not joking around. He forces Tuco at gunpoint to stand on a wooden cross used as a headstone and put his head inside the lariat. Blondie then ties Tuco’s hands behind his back, loads his half of the gold on the rear of his black stallion, hops on his steed, and apologizes, leaving Tuco back there cursing in the wind. He rides off with Tuco facing death once again, and just when things seem pretty bleak for our friend “The Ugly”, Blondie comes back into the picture and takes aim with his rifle, shooting the tethered rope, “just like old times”. Tuco falls from the gallows tree and as his head lands on one of the bags of money, a freeze shot names each character in sequence, “the ugly, the bad, and the good.” The main title theme song “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il, Cattivo" (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) begins to carry us out and we see Tuco struggle to stand himself up off the ground. As Blondie rides into the distance, Tuco manages to scream out one last obscenity, “Hey, Blonde!!! You know what you are??? Just a dirty son of a…” He is cut off by the famous shrieks of Morricone’s music and we see Clint Eastwood gallop away on his horse across the grassy planes of what is supposed to be the Midwest of the United States, but was actually filmed in Spain. This long, continuous shot concludes the staple film found in any reputable western collection. It is the third and most popularized in a series of Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns about the man with no name, and this motion picture from 1966 is definitive as a must-see for anyone who appreciates watching an incredible film. You know, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to anymore.