All We Have Is Each Other--Bums!

[mrsphyllistorgo]

Yes, it's finally back! The next installment of All We Have... and this week's topic is: BUMS!

Now, don't misconstrue this topic. I'm not talking about mocking the truly dispossessed in our society--well, all right, maybe a little mocking, since said dispossesed have made keeping my recycling bins clean a living hell (see my post in Coleman Francis Mountain.)

So let's mock together, you and me! This time around I need an answer in two parts: your favorite bum in the MST pantheon, and how his/her bum life in the movies differs from life on the actual, non-movie streets. So fire up that liberal guilt and conservative indignation (hey, we've all got both) and let fly on the bad movie world's take on bumitude!

Bonus question: Which movie town would you choose to be a bum in?

See replies for last game's winners!

mrsphyllistorgo


Everyone in town is so stupid! He could go back wearing a fake mustache and no one would know!

[mrsphyllistorgo]

My Car Cleans Itself Winners!


Yes, hee-larious replies this time, and some wistful sighs for what never came to pass from the dim, dusty vaults of post WWII future dreams. And the winner is...











INTEROCETER!!!!!!!!!

Tee hee! Your radar post made me laugh until I cried, and than laugh at myself for crying! You win a huge, enormous car and a wierd french maid outfit! Wear it while driving and never get tickets!

Runners up are Newgirl731 and DoctorZ for their office chairs and auto-freeways! Soon we all will climb into our office chairs at home and zip down the autofreeway to our workspaces, pulling right in at our desks. You each win a trip to Ikea and hood mounted bazooka, use wisely: interoceter's out there.

And no awards show would be complete without the "most thoughtful" prize, going to, of course, losingmydignity and his history of the rubber band. I'm sure they'll let you play with them again after they find your dosage level. Please enjoy this office supply catalogue in the meantime.

Everybody play again this time!


mrsphyllistorgo


The director's mistress, ladies and gentlemen, the director's mistress.

[Bart Fargo]

"Are you looking at my bum? Stop looking at my bum! Bum lookers! Cheeky monkeys!"

Oh, wrong kind of bum. Sorry.

I'd have to go with the couple in The Giant Spider Invasion, the Kesters. She's a drunk and he's a waste of a human life. They reminded me a lot of the Hee Haw I was forced to watch as a child.

If I had to be a bum somewhere, I'd be a bum on the moon of Jupiter in Fire Maidens from Outer Space. I'd know then that at least I'd have some women that might take me in!

[Miss Interoceter]

Oh my gosh, I won? Wow!! I'm shocked. Thank you for the great prizes. I think I have an answer ooh, maybe two, but I'll have to go watch that ep, since technically in the three or four months I've had it, I haven't seen it. But then I may have an answer for you. Besides it wouldn't be a good thing to answer while I'm in this state of wonder.

YAYYYYYY!!

[nightfalcawk]

I think the best bum, if you call him a bum, is Mickey. He is obviously retard yet his deductive powers were more than anyone else in the movie. However, because he is a retard, he won't leave the premises so he can fondle a skull in boiling water. In real life, losers like Mickey are not haunted by the skulls of the damned. If you dont' consider Mickey a bum, disregard this post.

[NewGirl731]

Well, if we're having a vote re Nightfalcawk's answer, I say we accept Mickey as a bum...

But I need time to consider my bum options before I can answer this one. Does Crow as Jack Elan count? I love the cast eye...

[Blurryeye]

I've never played this game before, so I will probably suck at it. I apologize in advance.

Let's see, bums. Well, when I think of ridiculous bums in an MST3k movie, I think of "The Girl in Lover's Lane". There were three bums in that one.

First, Big Stupid. The troubled drifter who rides the rails, running from that thing called love. His father drank a lot, and took Big with him to bars when he was still a toddler. When he was drunk, he hit Big, in a big way. One day, Big hit him back, and the old sot was so shocked that his heart exploded and he died. So now Big is all screwed up inside, and he just gots to drift.

This backstory of a bum's life is actually plausible, except that left out is how a bum makes a few bucks to keep himself afloat: offering sexual favors to anyone who will pay him, usually men. And I never knew that a transient could be so sexy it hurts. "Mmm, I've always wanted to be nuzzled by a drifter!" Big should get off the train at Hollywood and walk straight into a casting director's office.

Next, Danny Winslow. He is a young drifter, just starting out in the world of professional bumming. He is prime rape material for the denizens of the trainyards, but this never happens to him because he is taken under Big Stupid's wing. However, he does get beaten up a few times. He is actually an affluent son of a WASP lawyer. His parents got divorced, so he decided to run away and ride the rails. What a knuckleknob.

Consider Danny to be the luckiest moron who ever decided to try his hand at drifting. He was largely spared the horrible destitution and humiliation of life as a bum. This baby-faced neophyte was actually pretty naughty, what with losing his virginity to the opportunistic prostitute and all. He probably really wanted Big Stupid, his hunky protector. You could cut the sexual tension between them with a knife. At the end, he does get Big to go back to his parent's home with him. Just paint him lucky green.

And then there's the town weirdo, Jesse, played convincingly by Jack Elam. This guy comes closest to accurately portraying a bum. He's a dangerous pervert who for some reason is tolerated by the townsfolk. The supposedly naive Danny and Carrie both get the heebie-jeebies whenever he's around. Nothing is revealed of his backstory. He is presumably not homeless, so maybe he doesn't qualify as a bum.

He murders (and probably rapes) Carrie, and stands by as Big Stupid is accused of the crime. Then when Jesse confesses to the killing in the midst of the crazed mob, they just kind of stand there ashamed of themselves. If this were real life, the angry mob would brutally beat Jesse instead of Big. Actually, they'd probably beat them both. Cuz decent folk hate bums.

Big Stupid, Danny, and Jesse. Three of the funniest bums you'll ever see in a movie.

[uncledad]

Dear mrsphyllistorgo,

I gotta go with the nameless bum in Edward Woods classic "Bride of the Monster".

"NO two-bit tank town's gonna hold me!".

You don't know how many times I've wanted to say that to someone.
You can just tell that he's got that bum" thing down.Especially when he waves that Chesterfield smoke (they were all required to smoke back then) in Carlton the cop's(?) face.
Actually the best performance in the flick if you don't count Bela's "I have-a no home" soliloquy.

Spare change???

[Ator]

ANY bum in Escape 2000. Where in the world would you see guys wearing flame retardant suits, running around toasting bums/gang members?

[losingmydignity]

Well, at the risk of playing this game wrong--YET AGAIN--and blowing my chances of winning a nice prize, perhaps some refuse from Mrs. PT's pilfered garbage cans, I have, in both a fit of liberal guilt (the homeless deserve my pity, even when they are trying to kill me) and conservative hubris (those lazy shiftless, etc, don't they know we lowered taxes again), in other words, in my post 90's confusion, I have decided that the worst of our society are not those unfortunates who have, either by losing their job or their dignity, ended up begging and bumming around our streets, or those who, feeling they don't fit in, turn boho hobo, no, but those who do nothing but sit around all day in their living rooms, dozing under newspapers, pretending to sleep, a pretense, so they can do NOTHING ALL DAY and thus DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO MY WELFARE...
(deep breath) I promise my sentences will get much shorter now...
I'm talking about the real bums, or as my dictionary puts it (u weren't specific Mrs. PT) "a person who avoids work and sponges on others; idler."
I'm talking about the layabouts who are best exemplified by none other than GRANDPA MORGAN. You know, Betty's dowdy gramps who shiftlessly allows a TEENAGER FROM OUTER SPACE to rent a room.
Of course, the liberal in me cries out: wait! Behind every bum there is a story. If we can see the human behind the couch potato we will understand. Let us peruse Morgan's and see if we can come to a verdict.

Long before he let in wispy lispy Derek, a perfectly weird stranger, into his home and close proxmity to granddaughter Betty, our Morgan had a bad habit of letting, well, things happen. Pretty much anything. Anything that looked good was okay. For example:
Born to a struggling guar gum manufacturer, Morgan's early childhood was one of total near nothingness. He distinguished himself in no way. Given a hamster, he would stare at it for hours, wondering each time it stopped moving if it were alive. One day it wasn't. He left it in the cage to rot. It turned to blue cheese. At school he wasn't exactly shy, he just forgot to talk or study, and was once found under the stage in the gym, trying to figure the way the bleachers unfolded. That was as creative as he got. Asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Morgan answered, "A grandfather. I'd like to have a little home and rent out a room. Or maybe I'd like to keep parrots."
The parrot comment is perhaps the only moment of supernatural oddness that occurred in Morgan's life. For what happened? At the age of sixteen (Morgan was now an apprentice guar gummer and he had taken a great interest in the history of dentures and instead of hamsters--they didn't die fast enough--now kept slugs.) a parrot flew into his room, rested on his index finger, and stayed there. Morgan for weeks was singularly inert. His parents thought it was overworking at the gummery and perhaps the parrot had provoked him into a final sullen solitary motionless kind of madness. It wasn't so.
He just liked the parrot.
He trained it to do things.
So he wouldn't have to.
He became a Parroter. (see Daddy O's Drive in Info for more, well, info)
One day while performing before his future wife, Bettina Black-Harmon, a girl who had had both feet blown off by a land mine during the great California mining strikes of 29, the parrot, in a pique of jealousy, ripped off that once beloved index finger (Morgan's). He forgave the parrot, married Bettina, and went on to have a daughter Boop, named after a cartoon character they could have sworn they'd seen somewhere, maybe.
Boop gave birth to Betty.
Betty grew tall and long necked and much loved by Grandpa Morgan.
Boop and Bettina tragically "disappeared" one day when, during his "I'll get them up in a hot air ballon, so I don't have to travel" phase, Morgan forgot to fasten the ballast. He sent the parrot to the rescue but the birdie returned empty-clawed and beak fallen.
Morgan stood waiting days for the return of the balloon, gazing at the sky, seeing the shape of bleachers and hamsters in the clouds.
Meanwhile, the guar gum business had bottomed out, factories had long ago moved to Guam, and Morgan had so long neglected the business he'd inherited, that he was forced to move in with, and be supported by, his bright-eyed granddaughter and take in roomers and rumours, and got a tumour and....well. you know the rest of the story.
What do you think, sirs, and madams: Guilty or innocent?

bonus question: Either Catalina for the sun and sunbunnies or girl's town--I'm sure the sisters would take pity on me ("get thee to a nunnery"; "mother superior jumped the bum...")

[Miss Interoceter]

Man, I had an answer and then I read lmd's post and got confused again. But no sir! you will not deter me from my answer. So let's see.... Well, I still remember my bum town I would go to. And that would be the ski town I guess near Carlsbad Caverns (??) where that mob doctor lives and skis. They look like a pretty laid back town group. Hey! Then I'd be a ski bum! Ha!
Bum. Bum.

Ah yes! Whew. I don't know his name, but I think you'll know who I mean when I say, Striped-Dress Wearing Sleeping Man from Attack of the the Eye Creatures. What the heck is with that guy? We meet him at the restaurant with his soon to be killed buddy and he looks like any decent guy, 60's suit and tie in perfect array, hair slicked back with winter weight and then suddenly out of nowhere BOOM! (John Madden taught me that) he's in a spandex black red green and blue dress!! J. Edgar Hoover and Ed Wood Jr. would be mortified to be seen in something like that! Which brings up a whole subtext to those two guys' relationship I'd never thought of until now. Yeeee. But all he does while his buddy tries to make an ill-fated dollar is sleep. And that's what really vaults him into the bum category. "Hey, Maude, let's go make a dollar off the aliens!" his buddy says. "No, I'm tired you do it." "Hey, Maude, your buddy was killed earlier tonight and the cops think we did it." "I don't care, I'm sleeping." "Hey, Maude, help us clear our names." "SIIIGGGGGGHHHHHHH. Alright. But I'm not pushing the car." What a freaking loser bum! He doesn't even care that his boyfriend, I can only assume now, is dead! He's only mildly interested in helping the kids and only if it doesn't involve him doing anything. I'm kind of surprised when they got to Monster Lookout he didn't say, "Hey, thanks for the lift," and then start thumbing again. And like most all bums he had to be picked up face down off the ground in the end.
But if a bum were ever to get off his butt for two seconds and see this guy's act I think it would vault him or her out of bumhood immediately. This guy gives bums a bad name. In conclusion, MEN DON'T WEAR SPANDEX BLACK NIGHTGOWNS, MAUDE!

[losingmydignity]

I really don't know what confused you, my dear Miss I.
Could it have been the parrot reference (I can explain!)
The inexplicable loss of the balloon?
The walks across the frozen tundra (which I left out)
The strange mushroom man who commanded me to write Grandpa Morgan's story? (not a drug reference)

I can help. Dr. Freundshaft is staying with me this week and is available to answer any questions you have...

[hypochrismutreefuzz]

The acme and pinnacle or ne plus ultra, if you will, of bums must still and always be the John Doe character in Ring of Terror that provides the corpse that the really old college students get to practice on. The one that results in the tragic hazing episode. His arm came off! My heart!!!!! Puma! Puma?