Remember When Life Was Simpler and We Could Live Dangerously?

Back last September, Zman and I found ourselves on the same flight from Newark to Tokyo. It was unusual. And it allowed me to take one weird stalkerish pic.

As he may (or may not) remember, the flight's wifi crapped out on us. This is a suboptimal turn of events on a 13-hour flight. So I had to hunker down and dig into my meager Netflix downloads. But I did not like Bloodline, even though I've had a crush on Linda Cardellini since her Freaks & Geeks days. So I started perusing the movie selections on the flight.

You take a different mindset when you are alone on a flight with no responsibilities for the next ten hours. You're essentially looking for mindless entertainment. The screen is small and the audio is poor, so you don't want to have to think too hard. On recent flights, I dug into Deadpool and the newest X-Men movie. They were both fine. But I couldn't find one to tide me over...until I found Johnny Dangerously.

In the early days of HBO, they seemed to have ten movies on replay over and over again. I saw The Outsiders and Red Dawn about a million times. And Johnny Dangerously was in that mix as well. It's important to remember how iconic that move is. It ages fantastically.

Here are my seven favorite things about that move, which, at 34 years old, is older than my future second ex-wife.

1. Michael Keaton - god damn, he had his comedy fastball working in this. He was great. It's nice to have him back around these days.

2. This was Dick Butkus' second greatest acting effort after his role in Hamburger U.

3. Raymond's dad played a mafia boss and it made sense at the time. Rest in peace, Peter Boyle



4. Weird Al did the opening credits song. This was before his meteoric rise to fame from Eat It, although I will fistfight with any man, woman or child who denies that Rye or the Kaiser is his best tune.

5. Your Testicles and You. Still epic.



6. There are some tremendous cameos in this movie: Mr. Hand, Taylor Negron, Dom DeLuise and Chuck Woolery, to name a few. That's a random group of 80's name that have zero resonance with the millennials.

7. Roman Moronie. Holy crap is he the best. The actor who played him (Richard Dimitri) did very little of note before or after this movie. But he hit it out of the park with this role.

Tokyo Travelogue, Volume 1: I Have a Pen, I Have an Apple

Much like the globetrotting love machine that is Zman, I find myself in Japan for a work trip this week. I flew out Friday morning on a 14-hour direct flight, landing at 3 PM local time in Tokyo Saturday. I was told to take the extra day to acclimate to the 14-hour time zone difference. I was unable to sleep on the flight, so I pushed myself until 9 PM last night. I then promptly slept until...330 AM. Sub-optimal. On the flip side, no wait for the stationary bike at the gym at 445 AM today (Sunday)!

Tokyo is big, clean and modern. I am excited to explore a couple cool neighborhoods today and eat. A lot. Of course, I can't start until the breakast places open in two hours. Again, this is sub-optimal. And of course, since this is Japan ,there is strange Japanese music everywhere. Like this song that I heard yesterday and was able to find on the world wide web (you'll figure out how I was able to track it down after you hear it). It has wormholed its way into my head, finally pushing out the phrase "drip drip drip" from the Chappelle R. Kelly video that was stuck in my head for a couple weeks.

This video is Japan in a nutshell - kitschy, catchy and really fucking strange. I am trying to keep my head from exploding - the dancing, the outfit, the stache, the whole thing. PPAP indeed. And it's SFW and safe for kids.