As you may have heard, our beloved Jason’s heart exploded last month and it took the doctors something like 10 hours to put enough RTV on it to get it running right again. The good news is he’s finally home from the hospital and getting some much-deserved rest as his body tries to recover from having his ribs cracked open like a Christmas chestnut. Side note: Is that where the word chestnut comes from? I’m not going to look it up.
We’re not quite sure how long it’ll take to get Jason back on these pages regularly, but he’s on Slack and vigorously chatting with all of us from the comfort of his bed. Thank you, of course, to all of you who supported Jason in this surprise endeavor. We all greatly appreciate it and I will reward you with a cute picture of Jason recovering with his dog very soon.
But Jason needs your help again! You see, he can’t work (did you hear that Jason? No working!) and yet his mind is pretty much all there. Or, well, as there as it ever was. The one wrinkle is that his doctor prescribed him a bunch of serious painkillers and anti-seizure meds because, if I had to guess, they put a scar the size of a Jeep Grand Wagoneer down his center.
He is, in his own words, pretty high. He has earned this high by not dying. Since he can’t work and his brain is levitating about two feet above his bed, the one thing he can do is watch stuff. What should Jason watch while completely zonked out?
I suggested that he should watch all the Fast and the Furious movies in the correct canonical order (as opposed to the cinematic release order). What do you think he should check out?
Ok, here’s a picture of Jason recuperating at home as a reward for your help.
Lots of great suggestions here. I’ll add mine to the mix: put 2001 A Space Odyssey on loop and make sure you have a kick-ass surround sound and a very large screen.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Mulholland Drive. It can’t make any less sense sober vs whacked out on opioids.
Also The Abyss is now streaming in 4K and in March I can retire my 20+ year old DVD for a shiny new 4kUHD disc (Also True Lies and Aliens in March). Bring on the James Cameron UHD’s!
Two films, both coincidentally from 1971: “Trafic” and “Le Mans”.
I recommend Texas holdem poker tournaments. Used to be on tv; now I think can be found in online channels. In the day, watching poker tournaments at the gym, I felt like I could pedal all day.
The Monkees magnum opus (written and produced in part by Jack Nicholson!) Head. It’s a helluva trip, maaan.
If he wants a real trip, I recommend the following ten films:
-The Void
-Kuso
-The Mist
-A Serbian Film
-Goodnight Mommy
-Salo / The 120 Days of Sodom
-Event Horizon
-The Thing
-Moon
-Soylent Green
But be warned, these won’t bring joy to everyone. Really depends on if you like morbid/dark/gross/disturbing stuff.
A Serbian Film?!? I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read a synopsis. Do you WANT Jason to kill himself?!?
No. Jason tends to have an “out-there” sense of humor, as I do. If dark/disturbing things are to his taste as they are mine, he might actually like the movie.
Some of the others on that list are even worse!
The Void was a nice little unexpected riff on a genre we haven’t seen in awhile I thought.
Ever see The Endless? Similarly good recent cosmic horror.
Haven’t seen The Endless. Will add it to my backlog.
From Beyond was similarly great to The Void.
Moon was a fantastic movie.
If I were high AF on oxycodone I’d want to watch anything Miyazaki.
I love Miyazaki, but if you’re high, Paprika
I haven’t seen Paprika, but the trailer made it look like it would be more suited to cannabis or a hallucinogen.
Ah yes, we need a sommelier to pair our movies with our drugs.
Not /s
Don’t watch Naked Lunch unless completely sober
And don’t read the book, ever. It’s a complete waste of your time.
Naked Lunch was an ok read but don’t read Infinite Jest if you want to avoid ten time the amount of wasted time.
I slogged halfway through that one before I gave up, and I don’t often give up halfway through a book.
I enjoyed all his non fiction though.
The Grande Lebowski
It’s got a lotta ins, a lotta outs a couple what-have-yous. And it features a Beatle so he won’t feel totally lost
That dude in the Beetle reminds me a lot of Jason. This film has a surprising amount of depth for a comedy. There’s always something new I learn about it every time I watch it. The characters are quite some “characters”…
I keep noticing so many lebowski references. i.e. The Fargo TV series. Even Alan Kohler on the ABC News drops them into his reports!
The Star Wars Holiday Special. Because you can’t watch it if you’re not F****ed up.
1981’s Heavy Metal. Good in any state, but probably excellent in his.
C2 Vette in the opening even.
“Hey, do we have any of that Plutonian Nyborg left?”
Sure, first Earth chick we see in years, and he has to make a play for her…
“Don’ t worry, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s drive while I’m stoned”
Followed immediately by South Park Season 12 Episode 3, the episode from 2008 named “Major Boobage.” I think even in Jason’s present state he’d appreciate the absurdity.
You never even get a good look at them anyway…
Mighty Boosh on Hulu: silly british weirdos.
Valhalla Rising on Amzn Prime: amazing New World horror-scape.
The Magic Christian
https://youtu.be/FE2zTnOJ94I?si=eW3bB1Dq1f_hlFrF
He should watch the not at all Czechoslovakian but rather Czech movie Dedictví aneb Kurvahosigutntag. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106693/
Top Secret – and/or binge on Police Squad (IN COLOR!). Both a good laugh.
Hmm. Fantasia’s always a kick when you’re effed up. When one of my hands was mangled in an industrial accident, I was given morphine. That evening, a bunch of friends took me to the local premiere of a little movie called “Star Wars.” Let’s just say that morphine really enhances Industrial Light and Magic’s work in that film.
Learn Hungarian. Very time-consuming, yet the fun factor is almost as high as Jason.
Jó ötlet!
Suspiria, specifically the Dario Argento version. There isn’t much plot to follow, but it’s gorgeous
He should watch that old 60s TV show “My Mother The Car” and then dream about what sort of car the mother should be if they remade that show today. A minivan seems too cliche, a crossover seems too obvious, and in that show his mother the car was a 30ish yo car so maybe a mid-90s Taurus station wagon? Torch, we need your guidance, but don’t do any work, so dictate your response to the dog.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The first time I watched it I was very much not sober (honestly don’t remember what substances were involved) and just assumed that was why the whole movie felt a bit like an acid trip. Nope, that’s just how the movie is. I would say that not being sober just makes it more…authentic. It’s what Hunter S. Thompson would have wanted.
Johnny Depp: How long does he stay in your head?
Bill Murray: It never goes away
Try “Where the Buffalo Roam” as well (with the original sound track if you can find it).
Better Off Dead.
Where the guy down on his luck basically gets picked up by the new girl in a bitchin’ Camaro she fixes up herself.
“Tentacles! It’s tentacles.”
The Hamburger scene will be perfect for the state he’s in.
Did her parents drive it up from the Bahamas?
Myth & Mogul: John Delorean
It doesn’t really focus on the car itself much, but man….it really gives you a better idea of him as a person and the impact of The Troubles and how the Delorean factory was smack in the middle of it all.
3 episodes, great watch. Even if you don’t care about Deloreans.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80219915
Yeah, that was a really interesting one!
Sly Stallone’s Driven should be on his watch list….not because it is good though. But so he has good writing fodder when he comes back.
Memento and Pulp Fiction. Don’t have to worry about continuity.