List-o-rama! Penguin Edition!

What's black and white and red all over?

A penguin hit by a snowmobile!

Ah, eat all the veal you want, folks, I'll be here, floating in cyberspace, for eternity.

Anyhow, being a holiday week and all, I've decided to revisit that previous popular feature (popular with me, that is, since it took so little time, effort, or thought to produce) List-o-Rama! A little gift from me...to you.

The subject of tonight's List-o-Rama is penguins. Now, I'm not talking about the stinky, slightly creepy-in-an-alien-way penguins that you find at your zoo, with their feet all cracked and crusty and their disgusting personal hygiene habits, including poop covered rocks. No, I'm talking about the cute movie penguins that are so popular now, what with "March of the Penguin Youth" and "Happy Marching Feet", and "Surf's Up! (So Quit Your Damn Marching and Get to the Ocean!)" Now it is a well-known but little verbalized fact that penguins control all media, ESPECIALLY the Internet, which is why you so often see movies about penguins, but so rarely see blog postings critical of penguins (and, allow me to point out, that this posting is not meant to be critical in any way, only informative and reflective of my love for our penguin overlords). The last thing I want is an army of marching penguins headed up my driveway to peck my eyes out in the attic. No, sir. I love me some penguins. Hear that, penguins! I love you! What? The joke at the beginning? Well, come on now, a little humor just makes you look kinder right? Everyone loves penguins. Well, Mel Gibson may not love penguins, but he was drunk, anyhow. That's why the rest of us keep giving you our money when you make your movies. What? More money? To avoid an accident? But I don't have anym- Alright, get your razor sharp, black beaks away from me! I'll get you your money. Just let me finish this posting.

Anyhoo, knowing that I have two rather large Emperor Penguins reading this over my shoulder as I write (back off, fish breath!) to monitor for "quality purposes", allow me to waste no further time in presenting, the Top Seventeen Favorite Movies of Those Most Glorious, Mighty and Wise, Yet Benevolent and Kind Birds Called Penguins.

Oh, and they want me to make it known that they CAN fly, they just choose not to. They prefer to march.

Top Seventeen Favorite Movies of Those Most Glorious, Mighty and Wise, Yet Benevolent and Kind Birds Called Penguins, Who Could Fly if They Wanted to, but Instead Prefer to March, Unlike the Flamingos, Who are Just Too Stupid From Standing Around in the Sun to Even Bother to Fly

1. March of the Penguins (Of course. Penguins are soooooo predictable.) (OUCH!)

2. Happy Feet (Again, how predict- OUCH! I'M BLEEDING, YOU JACKASS!)

3. Surf's Up! (No comment)

4. Madagascar (What's the deal with computer animated penguins? Is it some kind of feature that comes with the software, like "Penguin Animation: Shift-P"?)

5. Peeping Penguins (Banned on every continent except Antarctica)

6. Cry of the Penguins

7. Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (This is actually the SAME film as #6, but penguin's are not film connoisseurs (or as the French say, le connoisseurs penguine) and their attention spans are too short to realize that- OW! CUT IT OUT WITH THE BEAK, ALREADY!)

8. The Hot Spot (as with all living creatures, penguins love a naked Jennifer Connelly sitting on the bank of a lake)

9. Penguins Behind Bars (This is a real production- I didn't make it up. Of course, when a penguin goes to prison, they do save on money as they don't have to issue the black and white jump-suit)

10. Avenger Penguins (starring Steven Segal)

11. Penguin Justice (strangely, also starring Steven Segal)

12. The Penguin Always Rings Twice

13. Penguin's Under Seige (Steven Segal was not available, so starring Jean Claude Van Damme)

14. Of Penguins and Peacocks (strangely enough, I expect you can guess which one wins both talent and swimsuit competition and which one gets its beautiful tail feathers caught on fire)

15. Help Me (I'm Being Held Hostage By Emperor Penguins) (This is not a real movie title but is instead a desperate disguised cry for help while the penguins that invaded my home after I started typing this entry headed into the kitchen for a glass of ice and mackerel)

16. Des manchots et des hommes (since most penguins are blind from the glare off the ice sheet, this is not available in a subtitled version at this point, but only in a crappy dubbed version where the words don't match the beak movements AT ALL. Penguin dubbing is far inferior to that of Pelicans)

17. The Emperor Penguin Strikes Back

And there you have it, folks, a comprehensive, penguin moderator approved listing of the Top Seventeen Favorite Movies of the Glorious Penguin. I encourage you, if you cannot get enough penguins, to purchase everything from the Beanie Babies to the breakfast cereal. And it's like I always say, Elephant Seals Suck!

See you-wait. What? Uh, I don't know what you are talking about, #15. #15? You mean, in the list? Yeah, uh, well, that is a movie that, uh, I, well, it's like this-

HELP! PENGUINS! HELP! THEY HAVE ME! STOP THEM OR YOU'LL BE NEXT! SOMEONE HEAR ME, PLEASE, OH, PLEASE! THEY'RE HERE, RIGHT HERE AND, OH MY GOOD LORD NO NO NO NO NO NO NO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH-

(crunch, crunch, CRRRRCK!- then, silence...)

List-o-rama!

Ok, today I logged on here to post another amazingly insightful review of a film I have never seen when I realized something horrible: my fly had been open and my penis was hanging out for the ENTIRE DAY! This wouldn't have been so bad, had it been a regular day spent sleeping, watching DVDs, and eating chips from the bag. But this was NOT a regular day. This was the day that I a) led an a cappella (or, as they say in France, l'acappella) singing group at a nursing home, 2) welcomed a plane of African orphans to America, and III) gave a speech to a church group on ethics in the government. If there was ever a bad day to walk around with your penis hanging out, today was that day.

But, of course, then I woke up and realized that it had all been a bad dream. My penis was safely tucked between my legs, and I was lying cozily on the couch with a half-eaten bag of chips on my belly and an empty bag of chips at my side. So all was well with the world. But all that chewing and sleeping made me tired, so tired that I felt I couldn't move from the couch to the keyboard and create a thrilling film review for my blog. But then I asked myself, "Self, what are you doing? How can you skip out on the no people who visit your blog everyday? Do you not realize that, if you keep your inspiring ideas to yourself, no one will have the benefit from being able to access them, whereas, if you vomit them from your brain to your blog, no one will simply access them? What a depressing thought. It's like the old saying: if a blog falls on the web with no one around, who's mind is terribly wasted? Or something like that.

So, realizing I was way too tired to write a coherent review, and realizing that, if I made an attempt at thrilling composition, I would live up to nobody's standards, which would be perfect, since nobody would be reading it, I decided to do the 1st thing they teach you in English in kindergarten: when you can't write in complete, meaningful sentences using standard English, write a list. "Perfect!" I exclaimed so loudly I frightened the dog. Here is a genre often followed by lazy practitioners of language arts, a form used by everyone from Moses to the editors of "The Book of Lists" to the editors of "The Book of Lists 2", to my grandmother when she is going shopping. An amazing amount of astounding knowledge and enlightened information can be packed into a few short lines that would take about eighty seconds flat to compose, getting me safely back on the couch, licking the salt from my fingers. And, it provides yet another format to present to you, the echo of the empty Internets, nuggets of wisdom that will better allow you to broaden your filmatic experience. So, hopefully, you will find this new presentation, which, in honor of all the great "-o-ramas" throughout history (ie, Circ-o-rama, Confed-o-rama, O-rama-lama-ding-dong, Barak O-rama, etc.) I am calling "List-o-rama", as glorious as my ignorant film reviews, and it will become a regular feature in the Frog Blog, providing yet another forum for no one to read as no one stops by to learn nothing while taking the Internets by storm. Plus, when I am just feeling plain lazy, it will allow me to satisfy my unspoken contract to the lonely surfers of the Internets to freshen these hallowed pages while spending as little time on construction and word choice as possible. Yeah, baby!

Without further ado (as I just finished going ado, or, as they say in France, adieu), allow me to put my Listing Cap on, please put your penises (peni? penies?) away, zip up our collective flies, and I will proudly present to you List-o-rama! And always remember- the list is light.

Top Twenty-Two Movies according to Trucks and Other Heavy Commercial Equipment:

1. Trucks
2. Trucks!
3. Trucks II (although far and away inferior to the original)
4. The Girl in the Red Truck
5. Trucker Woman
6. Truck Stop Women
7. Truck Stop
8. Truckin'
9. Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive
10. Truck Busters
11. Space Truckers
12. Carros, Amor, Vida, y el Viaje (the subtitled version, not the crappy dubbed edition)
13. National Lampoon's Vacation
14. CB Hustlers
15. Every Which Way But Loose
16. The Hot Spot (hey, trucks love Jennifer Connelly, too!)
17. Duel
18. Bigfoot Presents: Monster Truck Rally
19. Cars
20. Terms of Endearment
21. Speed
22. Taxi Driver*

*Of course, this entry caused great controversy during the 105th Truck Annual Meeting and Garage Sale, as several large and cranky utility trucks accused a contingency of taxis of infiltrating the meeting and skewing the vote. Since it is recognized by the Truck Film Review Board, I've included it on this list, but, if you disagree, don't come turfing my lawn or driving up my gas prices with your wasteful idling. Instead, just remove it from the list and substitute # 23. The Last Temptation of Dump Trucks.

And there, ladies and gentlemen and trucks, you have the first edition of the new feature List-o-rama! Print it out and trade with your friends! Read it backwards for hidden messages (hint: the Walrus was Paul)! But please remember, the above is the sole expression and opinion of trucks and in no way reflects the views and thoughts of this author. If you seek any of these movies out, please be sure and note that trucks have no eyes, brains, or fingers needed to operate a DVD player, as well as a lack of cognitive ability, "Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive" aside, so their views and opinions may differ from your own. But at least it is recognized that Jennifer Connelly is the universal language of hotness.