Monday, January 05, 2004

 
Dean's "Job" Core of Knowledge
Or: Tom & Ted's Excellent Adventures

And who can forget the scene in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" where Ted Logan (Keanu Reeves) is asked by his history teacher to answer "Who was Joan of Arc?" Ted replies, "Noah's wife?"
Not surprisingly, Bill and Ted are in serious danger of flunking History. They hope to avoid this by using a time machine to literally bring the Past to life so as to get a good grade on their history report. In search of temporal coordinates for important personages, they ask a clerk at the Circle K convenience store, "When did the Mongols rule China?" Sadly, to the shame of us all, the eurocentric clerk, apparently "left behind" with respect to his own education, doesn't know.
Genghis is successfully plucked from his yurt and a slave girl, and later manifests his ignorance of Western mores by skateboarding in a mall, although in this regard he does not distinguish himself from my 16 year-old son. That Ted does learn a little about the past is evident from his statement, "This is a dude who 700 years ago totally ravaged China, and, who we are told, two hours ago, totally ravaged Oshman's Sporting Goods." If memory serves, GK does nothing more than put on a martial arts show of sorts for Bill & Ted's history report. His purported reply to the question of "What is best in life?" might have been too unmellow for the residents of San Dimas, California, although Arnold Schwarzenegger's paraphrasing of the famous quotation in the role of Conan The Barbarian didn't seem to have damaged him too badly at the polls.
Those who enjoy tweaking the french undoubtedly loved the depiction of Napoleon(the "short dead dude")as a non-threatening little man who has the time of his modern life enjoying ice cream, bowling and the delights of San Dimas' water park (groan), "Waterloo." The movie ends on a triumphant note as Bill & Ted pass history by parading the captured, but now willing performers from the past. Socrates' pantomine on the stage is interpreted as saying that he loves San Dimas, and Abraham Lincoln gives his approval as well and exhorts the crowd to "Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes!" One message of the flick was that we are living in something of a Golden Age(with better days yet to come), something with which at least one NRO pessimist agrees.(tho' he went on to note, "The past was pretty awful and the future will be far worse. Enjoy!") And to know us is to love us and all that. The "Excellent Adventure" came out in 1989. At that time the Reagan-engineered economic boom was going strong and Russian communism was pretty much kaputt. Of course, a dozen or so years later some travelers to our modern realm who had something of a medieval mentality, savored our titty bars and then got seriously medieval on our ass and on our Twin Towers.
In the sequel, "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey," the duo do more than touch on deep theological issues as they descend into Hell after their murder. Ted observes, "This is not what I expected this place to look like at all!" And Bill exclaims, "Dude we got totally lied to by our album covers!"
Have gone on too long.
'nite, Dudes.