In Which We Make A Better Special Agent Than You Ever Did

Dome Versus Dome

by LAUREN BANS

Fast Five
dir. Justin Lin
130 minutes

Fast and the Furious movies are like animal videos on the Internet, and not only because Paul Walker's face looks like an LOLcat. A few years ago a clip of a single puppy licking its paws was enough to trigger a dopamine rush, but after 100 million hours of sweet-faced animals on YouTube the brain requires more stimulation to incite the same kick.

Now it takes something more ambitious, some novel clafoutis of cute, like a Golden Retriever puppy spooning a handicapped cheetah at a kindergarten choir concert to suffice.

"don't use bing!"It's the same logic behind what dudes who never get laid call the "strange pussy theory," as well as the growing spectacle of the Fast and the Furious franchise. Whereas a couple drag races did the trick in the first installment, Fast Five opens with cars soaring off a moving train, a bunch of roid-raging beefcakes in fisticuffs, a gas tank explosion, and Paul Walker and Vin Diesel doing Olympic 10 dives off a bridge. This is all within the first 15 minutes.

The original cast escapes to Rio de Janeiro for this one, where the plan is to lay low for awhile. But that’s not much of a movie so Vin says, "One more job, and then we're done forever" which is as believable as when I say "One more cookie, and then I'm putting them away for the night." The hit is on Reyes, a corrupt business man who controls the favelas and forces his lady workers to wear bikinis all day while they bind his money, unlike Vin Diesel’s lady workers who just wear bikinis all day of their own volition.

First the fast, furious crew invades one of Reyes' warehouses and burns the money to show their mission is not just about bank, there's some larger, albeit vague moral battle they're waging, despite the fact they cause countless Rio cops to drive into walls and stuff. Then they go after the money. Unfortunately the movie went for a PG-13 rating so there is no real sex to behold, but there is a wrestling match between Vin and The Rock so intimate it is impossible to discern where one bald dome ends and the other begins.

There are some cars in this movie. They don't morph into Autobots, but they do everything else and eye blow you in the process, enough to make you question your donation to Coalition for Alternative Transportation. Director Justin Lin smartly plays Vin Diesel's acting inability for laughs rather than accolades. And there are a few choice slow-mo moments - one where beads of sweat soar from Vin Diesel's cheek as it accepts a punch, the other when The Rock’s inhumanely massive face menaces some wee bad guys with a constipated glare - that are basically just animated gifs made before the Internet could do it.

Combine that with a script in which 90 percent of the lines uttered could be movie poster taglines, along with non-stop metal acrobatics, explosions, and gun play. There's not much to take away from the experience. But there’s nothing to dislike about it either.

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find an archive of her work on This Recording here. You can find her website here, and she twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about waxing.

"This Charming Man (Smiths cover)" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)

"Love Song (Cure cover)" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)

"I Wanna Be Adored (Stone Roses cover)" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)

In Which It's The Kind Of Place Where They Dim The Lights

Bikini Wax Diaries

by LAUREN BANS

Waxists have flitted in and out of my life like boys or gynos or anyone else who ends up causing me high levels of anxiety at times when I'm not wearing pants. I laid down for my first bikini wax in high school, after I had finally snagged myself a boyfriend (an underweight nerd whose bedside table was lined with model Ferraris and worn Kohl's catalogues used for...), mostly because I figured if I was fat I should at least be really well groomed.

That way when he met up with his friends for D&D or whatever, and they were like, "Duuuude, what did she look like?" he would say, "Her bikini line is impeccable" rather than “Her midsection is Homer Simpson-esque, but not as tan." Note: I have since owned up to how fucked up these thoughts are (internalized patriarchy!), but that’s how I felt at the time.

Anyway, I don’t remember at all how much the first time hurt, but I think it was a lot, because I cried and the fact that I can't remember points to undiagnosed trauma. I recall that the very nice blond lady at the Aveda salon in Minnesota called in one of her nice blond lady coworkers to hold my hand and I don't think the second nice blond lady was even a waxist. She was like an actual hair dresser who happened to be on lunch break. After it was done, the original nice blond lady told me she shaped the top like a pretty little flower. So in the end, no harm, no foul, plus the lyrics to “Kiss From a Rose” as my senior quote in the yearbook.

In college, I ended up semi-regularly visiting a mean Bulgarian woman who spewed hateful rants about the beauty salon "fags" she worked with and their unnatural sexual unions as she spread my butt cheeks apart and coated the crack with a hot sticky substance. Hahahahaha. Seriously.

"Bad Boy", oil on linen, 66 inches x 96 inches by Eric Fischl

In recent years, as I have grown up to be an actual adult woman who buys interview outfits at Ann Taylor and can pass both a Forever 21 store and a bong without making contact with it, I have treated myself to more luxurious waxists, because science has proven the more you money you throw at the world the less pain the world will throw back at you. The last time I got waxed it was at a fancy spa in Park Slope, the kind of place where they dim the lights and romance your vaginal area with a warm lavender-scented towel before getting into the thick of it (pun intended). There was also a TV ON THE CEILING playing music videos on loop.

It’s actually really nice to focus fully on a Creed song rather than letting your brain go to its default setting, which is something like: "Fuck, she's doing it now. 1...2.. oh wait, she’s putting more wax on, OH MY GOD, she’s about to pull... IT’S HAPPENING MUTHA#@!#$%%%" On this particular occasion, the music video for Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved" came on just as my waxist was finishing up the last little vanity strips. She was already humming along, and as she stepped back to take a proud look at her final masterpiece, which looked like a mute newborn trying to scream, she poked her index finger into my thigh, and sang, in tune with the song, "YOU. YOU will be loved, now!" Then she laughed hard at her own joke.

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find her website here, and she twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about the best TV dubs.

"Never Gonna Leave This Bed (acoustic)" - Maroon 5 (mp3)

"Makes Me Wonder (live lounge acoustic)" - Maroon 5 (mp3)

"Mine (Taylor Swift cover)" - Maroon 5 (mp3)

In Which You Didn't Even Pay For Your Burger Sandwich

Great Moments in TV Dubbing

by LAUREN BANS

The network TV office where all things FCC-prohibited meet their vanilla alternatives is obliquely dubbed the Standards & Practices department, in the way Stalin was officially titled General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Censorship Czar: it does not look so nice on a business card. Standards & Practices is where "Jesus!" becomes "Gee Whiz!" and the 300 or so ‘fuck’ utterances in Pulp Fiction become signifying bleeps. It’s where, as one Adult Swim segment put it, "funny goes to die."

And it’s true — for the most part watching delightfully ribald, filth-soaked movies through the sugar-rimmed lens of network TV is like watching a George Carlin special had an Azkaban dementor given him a pre-show soul suck backstage. (That is a Harry Potter joke! I’m 28!)

But on rare occasion, Standards & Practices comes up with a dub so fantastically absurd and terrible it actually adds to the enjoyment of the scene rather than detracting from it. (Ahem, looking at you “Yippe Ki Ay, Mister Falcon.”) Without further ado, may I present the five best inadvertently hilarious dubs in television history.

1. Die Hard With A Vengeance: "I Hate Everybody."

In 1995’s Die Hard With A Vengeance (aka Die Hard 3 aka Die Harder-er) Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) is forced to walk around Harlem wearing a huge sign that reads "I Hate Niggers" on the orders of a sadistic criminal mastermind, “Simon,” who threatens to bomb a popular NYC location if McClane doesn’t oblige. In the TV version, McClane’s sign is altered to simply read “I Hate Everybody," which basically packs the same punch as Taco Bell’s “Think Outside the Bun.” To be clear: I’m saying it packeth no punch. But the ensuing reaction around McClane remains unaltered — a woman sees the sign and furiously remarks, “OH NO HE DID NOT... that man is asking for a BULLET in his head” and a group of VABK (very angry black kids) approach McClane intending to beat him into sweetbread parts. I mean, please, white people, do not go into Harlem just throwing around the "I Hate Everyone" bomb. Do you not get how ANGRY black people are, just like, ALL THE TIME?

2. Good Will Hunting: "Give me my burger sandwich!"

Will, Chuckie and Morgan are Boston townies. They say "fuck" a lot. Especially when their fucking double burger is on a fucking car dashboard layaway plan. But apparently Televisual Powers decided that substituting "fucking" with “burger” might pass as a wicked believable Bostonism. You know those people in the suburbs who pull up to the Arby’s drive-through window and order a Panini Sandwich? This is like that.

"Give me my burger sandwich!"

"You didn't even pay for your burger sandwich."

"I don't care! Give me my burger sandwich!"

"Fine! Here's your burger sandwich!"

3. Snakes on a Plane: "Enough is ENOUGH, I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes, on this Monday to Friday plane!"

Oh yes, a Monday to Friday plane, I see.

4. The Big Lebowski: "See what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?"

Like many of you, I too enjoyed The Big Lebowski.

One day we’ll meet at a party and express this shared interest, maybe throw around a few of the money quotes (“You mark that frame an 8, and you're entering a world of pain!”) to demonstrate our cultural likeness, and then become fast friends based on our mutual love of the oversaturated symbols of our cultural demographic, like the kids do these days. And I’ll say, “OMG, have you seen the adapted for TV version?” And we’ll talk about how John Goodman and the Coen brothers came up with the meta-parody solution of "See what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?" for the scene where Walter is bashing Larry’s car screaming, "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, Larry!" Later that evening we’ll become friends on Facebook and never speak again IRL. Fin.

5. Weird Science: "I’m not talking candle wax on their pimples or anything like that."

Let’s start with this: Weird Science, when you get to the heart of it, is a movie about the full-scale corporeal coup d’etat that is teenage sexual awakening — that terrible phase in life when just watching a bee pollinate a tulip can give you a raging boner and all you can do is wrap your Coed Naked Volleyball sweatshirt around your waist in vain. Just about everything is sexual to both sexes, but neither sex understands the opposite sex, so everything is REALLY FRUSTRATING.

Fittingly, the TV version of Weird Science is edited with the grace of a Puritan minister who realizes that just the word “nipple” can cause a spontaneous orgasm in many members of the viewing audience. Emilio Estevez bragging “we’re studs” in the locker room becomes “we’re stars.” (Stud: a sexually virulent word again!) And “candle wax on their nipples” is changed to "candle wax on their pimples.” Another amateur acne remedy that will scare Mom.

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She last wrote in these pages about Bradley Cooper. Her website is here and she twitters here.

"The One In Your Dreams" - Donavon Frankenreiter (mp3)

"All Right" - Donavon Frankenreiter (mp3)

"Dance Like Nobody's Watching" - Donavon Frankenreiter (mp3)