Grease 3 - This Time It's French!

As a fan of Grease 2 on Facebook (What, you're not?!) I was informed that yesterday was film's 30th anniversary. My sister in-law asked me if I really liked it better than the original. For me, that's like asking if you prefer Star Wars or Spaceballs. One is a beloved classic, the other a silly, over-the-top spoof. Of course that's not what the creators of Grease 2 intended, but it's what they ended up with.

I'll admit I love the sequel more. Way more. Grease shows high school kids in an idealized light. The T-Birds are cool, smooth and perfect, with the bravado of teenagers who have it all figured out. Compare that to Grease 2's T-Birds who try to be cool but are dorky, insecure and mess up a lot. I appreciate the more realistic depiction of immature teenagers over the fantasy that an immature teenager would hold - that anyone in high school has a clue what they are doing. Plus, Michelle Pfeiffer straddles a ladder. While singing.

But enough social analysis of a cheesy flopped sequel. On to the greatest movie never made: Grease 3: A T-Bird for France. In the early 1990s my high school friend Michelle introduced me to the wonders of Grease 2.  We loved that movie. We even convinced our sophomore class to perform "Girl for All Seasons" in the school talent show. Serious love. So of course we wrote our own sequel. These days you'd call it "fan fiction" and maybe get a book deal. Back then we were just dorks with too much free time.

This screenplay combines our love of French (we were Madame Takala's favorite students) with our passion for watching and re-watching Grease 2. Our tale has Dolores Rebchuck, the tough little sister from Grease 2, running the Pink Ladies just as she predicted. There is one spot open and the Ladies are holding try-outs to see who's pink enough. Pinky has dreamed her whole life of being a Pink Lady but starts falling for Jean-Pierre, the new French foreign exchange student. Trouble! Pink Ladies can only date T-Birds, so this causes a dilemma of epic proportions. For a teenager anyway. To complicate matters there is also a female French exchange student, the sultry and sophisticated Brigette. She's caught the eye of all boys at Rydell - including the T-Birds - and she wants JP all for herself!

We penned a few songs, intending to have Michelle's boyfriend Brian set them to music. We started picking friends for the cast, though never actually mentioned it to them. I was to play Dolores and Michelle would be Pinky. We had Parissa, now an international tango star, in mind for the part Brigette - it could have been her first big break! We scouted out filming locations at local schools. I remember a playground painting of the USA was to serve as the backdrop for a number called "Coming to America."

For all this planning, we only tapped out seven pages on Michelle's Macintosh Classic before the project stalled out and we went back to the concerns of normal high school nerds, like studying for the PSAT and joining library club.

But the time has come. The world needs..... A T-Bird for France!

You're welcome.

More Than Meets The Eye

As the season of store-bought love approaches, allow me to share the best licensed valentines ever printed: The Transformers Valentines.

I expected the cheesy lines like a helicopter guy saying "Let's fly high this Valentine's Day" but I was thrilled at these gems: 

 
 Romance Formula: [MYPERSONALPHILOSOPHY], Valentine!

 
 Keep believing that.

 
This one is nice for stalkers.

 
 BY KILLING YOU, AND THEN MYSELF.

Collect 'em all!

Weekly Reader Goes Down the Toilet

I was heartbroken to learn that Weekly Reader is shutting down for good. I have such fond memories of this little classroom magazine which covered general news and interest stories in a bland generic manner. It was clearly meant to teach kids and offend no one, with topics like presidential elections ("Who Will Win?"), the space shuttle program ("Ready for Liftoff!) or the annual article about the boy who lived in a bubble.  My brother Paul & I loved it, and as with many things we loved we ended up making our own version. Ours was part mockery, part tribute, but mostly fart and poo jokes. I was around 10 years old so "bathroom humor" (as our mom called it) was big-time funny. Thus Poo's Weekly Reader was born.

Looking back through the 13 issues I'm amused not only by our awful potty-mouthed jokes but also by how dead on our parody was. We mimicked and mocked every aspect of the 1980's Weekly Reader, down to the little bug that appeared in the side bar and asked an obvious question designed to get kids thinking. We'd take turns writing the different sections, rotating them with each issue. For all this work we never showed them to anyone else. It was purely for our own enjoyment and to make each other laugh.

I haven't been about to track down any 80's versions of the Weekly Reader online, but I did my best to annotate this version, aptly covering the "Ass Olympics."  Enjoy! Or cringe! Or both!

Ah, youth. Now off to wash my mouth out with soap.