The Curse of Ham. And Cheese.

[onager]

So I'm up early this Sunday morning and what to my wondering eyes should appear (on the Encore channel)?

The 1999 mini-series Noah's Ark! Starring Jon Voight, F. Murray Abraham, Mary Steenburgen, Carol Kane and James Coburn.

Truly a wonderful gift, better than 10 Xmases and 20 birthdays combined!

Things I learned from this most excellent cinematic tour de force:

--It may have been the Bronze Age, but the Ark was hammered together with iron nails. Using sheets of wood clearly stamped "Georgia-Pacific."

--Noah hung out in Sodom with Lot. Which is odd, since even I learned in Baptist Sunday School that Lot lived about 1000 years after Noah. And the producers omitted that very interesting story about Lot and his two daughters. Wimps.

--One of Noah's 3 sons married a black woman. It may have been Ham. Or maybe Larry or Curly. Anyway, I only bring this up because of something else I learned in Baptist Sunday School - there weren't any black people until Gawd cursed Ham and made his descendants black. Which is hilarious, considering what we know now about where all of us humans originated.

--Noah's wife wanted to deep-six some of the ickier animals, like scorpions and cockroaches. Fortunately for our future ecology, he stopped her.

--The Great Flood didn't quite wipe out all of humanity. At least one floating peddler survived. He sold Chinese hats.

--A fleet of pirates also survived the flood! They want to capture the huge wooden Ark, so naturally they attack it with flaming balls of tar...launched from catapults. Though by this point, I wouldn't have been surprised to see the Bronze Age pirates counter-attacked by drones launched from a nearby aircraft carrier.

But you may think this is my usual TV-induced grumpiness. So let me submit, in evidence, the following reviews from Imdb:

A blasphemous and annoying production

I now know what eternity would be like. This incredible mess occupied four hours I will never get back. My kids wanted to watch it. They liked the animals.

It must take a lot of work to make a film that is boring, offensive and wasteful at the same time.

Appalling, terrible and embarrassing.

Verily and forsooth, a latter-day "Plan 9 From Outer Space."

And my favorite...

The script is obviously written by an atheist.



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168355/reviews?start=0

[catnhatnh]

1. Were I a religious man, I would have you whipped for blasphemy...

...As a guy who loves food too much and believes in karma, you take that wisecrack about ham and cheese back or I'll bet you come back as someone with a religion that bans you from eating bacon!!!

[onager]

6. No! Not that!

But part of it has already come true, since I've spent about 6 years living in Muslim countries.

Once I had just come back to the US on vacation, after months of bitter porklessness, and went to a restaurant for breakfast.

The waitress asked: "Would you like bacon, sausage or ham?"

"All of the above, thanks."

[ScottLand]

2. That is hilarious! I'm sorry I missed it. Noah's Ark is my favourite bible story.

My dad is constantly calling me with yet another reason the story is so blatantly fictitious.

[Arugula Latte]

3. I always wonder about the beetles on Noah's Arc.

There are about 400,000 different species of beetles. We all know that God obviously put animals on this planet As-Is (that silly evolution stuff just makes no sense!), so Noah MUST have taken two of every beetle species (I mean, come on, I'm just using logic here). That's 800,000 beetles. Did Noah make 400,000 separate little compartments to keep each pair of Mr.-and-Mrs. X-Species-Beetle together for the duration of the voyage? The logistics sure were complicated!

[onager]

5. Easy! They were kept in 400,000 clear glass jars.

At least the scorpions were in glass jars, when Mrs. Noah was threatening to toss them overboard.

Certainly no expert here, but I don't believe the art of making perfectly identical glass jars was that advanced in Old Testament times. Maybe the Noah family wandered over into Egypt and borrowed some space-alien technology.

Oh, and I forgot to mention a fantastic visual metaphor used in this movie. One of Noah's daughters-in-law picks up a cute koala bear. It promptly takes a crap in her lap.

Yep, that pretty much sums up the whole thing.

I could almost feel sorry for those Big Name Actors, but I'm assuming nobody twisted their arms to sign on the dotted line.

Especially Jon Voight, if he hadn't turned into such a bloviating right-wing knucklehead. From "Midnight Cowboy," "Deliverance" and "Heat" - to "Anaconda" and this steaming much-bigger-than-a-koala's load. Jebus! That's a career arc to rival the airship Hindenburg.

[awoke_in_2003]

10. Glass jars?...

Had humans mastered making glass jars at that point?

[defacto7]

12. I wuz one of them miracles of god

we don't queschun them. Just accept it in your heart... or go to hell. Your choice. Believe in jars or go to hell. But Jesus loves you darling!

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. If we trust Wikipedia, the late bronze age had glass vessels

"The earliest vessels were 'core-formed', produced by winding a ductile rope of glass round a shaped core of sand and clay over a metal rod, then fusing it with repeated reheatings."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass

which made it a luxury item. Glass-blowing didn't come along until the first century BCE or so.

[Lordquinton]

4. "The script is obviously written by an atheist."

I dunno, most atheists I know are sticklers for accuracy, and would do their best to make sure that boat is the exact length in cubits, or whatever god measures by.

[progressoid]

7. Noah's Ark!

Love the explanation mark ! That's what makes it classy.

And the tag line: "It was the end of the world... And the beginning of hope"

[dimbear]

8. Lemme splain about the plywood. Noah turned to his sons and said

go fer wood.

Hence the misunderstanding.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. You make me wish I had seen it.

Not really, but it sounds like it would have been fun to watch it with you.

A latter day "Plan 9 From Outer Space"!

[onager]

11. Fun? Maybe...

I laughed so hard, I think I scared the neighbors.

You should be able to see it pretty easily. Not sure I can recommend anyone actually spending money on that thing, though.

In other TV news, the ID Channel tonight had a true-crime show about a respected church deacon, 48 yrs old, who started counseling a 27-yr-old wife and mother in his church.

"Then they fell into a sexual relationship..."

Ha! They made it sound like a car accident.

[Curmudgeoness]

14. LOL

There are "sexual relationships" lurking around every corner. We all have to be very vigilant.

You seem a little obsessed with religious programming. I worry about you.

[onager]

15. Very nice of you, but absolutely no need to worry.

I don't take any of this seriously enough to obsess about it.

If I were obsessed enough to watch real religious programming all the time - like TBN or Joel Rat-Face Osteen - THEN I'd start to worry myself.

The shows in this thread were both happy accidents. Thought I'd watch a little of "Noah's Ark" while eating breakfast, then I got hooked on the sheer awfulness of it. Wondering what sort of WTF moment it would come up with next.

For the ID channel show, the thumbnail description in the program guide hooked me: Respected deacon has secret life, turns up dead in Mexico. I mean...how could I NOT watch it after reading that?

My real obsession is probably the true-crime shows: Snapped, Unusual Suspects, Wives With Knives, Blood Relations etc.

Coming from the rural South, I really love the shows where a church-going "perfect family" turns out to house more criminals and perverts than the entire U.S. Congress.

Sometimes I have this horrible feeling that I'll answer a knock on my door some morning. The cops will be standing there saying, "Several people have disappeared in your neighborhood, and we've subpoenaed your Viewing Logs from the cable company..."