Mr. Snake, Meet Mr. Shark

[robotnik2004]

I want somebody with a paid LJ account to set up a poll / betting pool: When will Snakes on a Plane and all related references cease to be funny? Because it still cracks me up (because there's all these snakes see... and they're on a plane) but I can feel it waning.

So what do you think? When do the snakes jump the shark?

• It happened the instant I posted this.


• The moment the SoaP phenomenon is mentioned on NPR.


• The moment the SoaP phenomenon is mentioned on the CBC. (Bonus points if Cameron Philips calls it "Snakes on Planes" or "The Snake Plane" or otherwise gets it wrong.)


• The day the movie comes out.


• About twelve minutes into the movie, opening night, after you've dropped $10 on a ticket and $5 on snax, and everyone cheers when the title comes up, but then the movie itself starts, and the realization sets in that this is a crap movie, it's always been a crap movie, made by the star of Sphere and the director of Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco and the writer of Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature, and yeah, it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than ironic amusement at the title to carry you through 86 more minutes.


• When I'm visiting my parents next Christmas, and my Dad says, "Hey, guys, check out this great Samuel Jackson movie I rented for us all to watch!"


• When I'm walking down the street wearing my SoaP t-shirt, feeling like an ironic hipster, and I run into a friend wearing his Vote for Pedro t-shirt, and we chat a little about our mortgages, and then I realize all these kids born in the 1990s are laughing at us, and I shake my fist and try to chase them but get winded after half a block, and also my son/daughter spits up all over me.


• Never! What is funny now will always be funny!! ALWAYS!!!*

This, on the other hand, will never stop being funny, ever.



(Via Chris' Invincible Super-Blog.)

Edit, redited to be less bitchy: It's been brought to my attention that, hard as it is to believe, some people never thought SoaP was funny. They are of course entitled to opinions. Part of the appeal of SoaP is (was?) the randomness of it: if it hits your brain at the right angle, it cracks you up, and if it doesn't, no amount of explaining it will make it funnier. But I did delete some comments along the lines of "it was never funny", because I thought they'd offer little help to those of us who do/did find it funny in analyzing the complex neurocultural chemistry of when it will cease to be so. That was probably rude, and I apologize, but come on: snakes! On a! And so forth!

*See also: "Yeah, baby! Do I make you horny?"

Comments

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

I believe it was foogie who reminisced about the time he said "The Bob & Doug Mckenzie Album will never stop being funny, ever." And of course gammafodder1 bet me in about 1994 that "the 1980s will never be 'in' again, ever."

[gammafodder1.livejournal.com]

Ok Mr. Selective Memory: the bet was that the 70s would be considered "in" before the 80s were - and I was right. Although Funk never came back to the degree I though it would, there certainly was a string of 70s inspired films (and a television show) that came out before that godawful 80s fashion hit the American Apparel racks. Despite my deepest desires for the 80s to have been consumed in some sort of Techno hell fire and never to be seen again, even I couldn't accept that the unimaginative Marketing types wouldn't regurgitate it again ...

Now the flannel heavy and corporate alternacheese rock 90s? That will never see the light of day again. /sarcasm

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

The pot is calling the kettle's memory selective? There may have been a time frame, like "will the 80s be back 'in' in the next 10 years" but there is no way the bet could have been "will the 80s be in before the 70s"? The 70s WERE back in at the time we made the bet. It was 1994, the summer of the In Yo Face collection and the Funk party and Lenny Kravitz etc. etc. How much cheeba did you smoke that summer?

norky, krustukles, foogie, sneech515, back me up on this one.

[foogie.livejournal.com]

Oh baby! I want to read those deleted posts!

I think R-nik is right on this one.

When I read this line: Never! What is funny now will always be funny!! ALWAYS!!!*, I planned on retelling my Bob & Doug anecdote... thanks for taking care of that one for me.

Oh, and my vote is for step 5: 10 minutes into the movie.

[gammafodder1.livejournal.com]

Dude, smoking pot so does not affect your long term memory.

Uh ...

Dude, smoking pot so does not affect your long term .... uh ...

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

There are hypes I buy into wholeheartedly. This one ain't one of them.

See, there's this plane. Also, snakes.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I was talking about this with several people, and your third-to-last point is the key. The realization that the title is hilarious, and the backstory is awesome, and Sam Jackson rocks, and all that, but the movie will most likely not even be as B-amusing as say, Tremors or Eight Legged Freaks, and really the whole experience will be roughly like watching one of those Saturday Night Live skits turned into an overlong and unfunny movie.

But that title/backstory is still gold.

Re: See, there's this plane. Also, snakes.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

It's not my third-to-last point anymore, but yes, I think we are in agreement.

[moxieholic.livejournal.com]

Wait for the sequel, "Snakes On A Plane Jump The Shark".

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Jess is right. The variety and range in the continuum of people who "get" it and don't "get" it ensures that at least until the movie comes out, we're talking comedy gold for those who do love it.

It'll lull for a while in the next couple of months, and then Promo Fever will hit. I'm just simultaneously glad and relieved I get to go to a popcorn movie and be loud and cheer... SAM JACKSON GRABBING A SNAKE AND HITTING ITS HEAD AGAINST A WALL.

I mean, come on.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I'm not trying to seize grumpy hipster high ground. Just saying that, for me, it ceased to be funny much more quickly than it did other people.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

That's cool.

[chris-goodwin.livejournal.com]

It looks like I'm the lone voice of "never".

Whether the movie is competently done funnay or not isn't really the point. The point is, everyone involved is brutally honest about what you're getting. I mean, it's Samuel L. Jackson saying "mu'fuckin" and carrying a gun. And snakes. And a plane. It's all about the expectations. (C'mon. How many times have you gone in expecting greatness and had it puke in your lap, or how many times have you been pleasantly surprised?)

Krusty IS coming!

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Your naive optimism is sweet, Chris. I wish I could shelter you from the disappointments of this tough old world.

[ezrael.livejournal.com]

Vampire Snakes on a Plane to the Moon.

I have nothing important to add to the debate otherwise, but I had to share that one. Yuan-Ti Vampire Spawn attack the first Earth-Moon Passenger Flight.

okay, sonny bono was pretty good

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

So it's like Airplane 2, except funny?

Zing!

[allegedly.livejournal.com]

-cracks up-

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I'm personally waiting for Some Guy Shooting People, starring Will Smith.

Correcting your verb tense

[sben.livejournal.com]

"The moment the SoaP phenomenon is mentioned on NPR."

I think you mean was mentioned on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5298003). Which wasn't even the first mention (http://www.npr.org/search.php?text=%22snakes+on+a+plane%22).

Re: Correcting your verb tense

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Oh man, the things you miss when you leave the country.

A fan-produced dance remix of a Robert Siegel - All Things Considered interview?

Incredibly hilarious or incredibly lame? I can't even tell any more.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

The rule, should you happen to care, is that anything that appears in the New York Times' "Trends" section is no longer a trend. So by extrapolation, SoaP (which stopped being funny to me about a week ago) stops being funny the instant any New York Times writer tries to be funny with it.

Conversely, if the New York Times published a big, long dudgeon-filled article about the death of creative imagination in Hollywood, and Pointed With Alarm to SoaP, *then* SoaP would still be funny. Funnier, even.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right. I knew somebody could provide a definitive answer.

"New Study Shows Today is Mostly, but Not Entirely, Unchanged from Yesterday. Does This Trend Offer a Chilling Portrait of Tomorrow?"

[sben.livejournal.com]

Looks like (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=%22Snakes+on+a+Plane%22&srchst=nyt) it's as funny as ever.