introducing the coen brothers' many poor, less talented cousins

i love bad movies and i love spying on my neighbors. so imagine my excitement at finding myself getting both items at once this weekend.

somehow, a lazy saturday filled with browsing bookstores and gorging on so-cheap breakfast at our local dive turned into a conversation between mb and me about spring cleaning. and before i knew it, that conversation about spring cleaning had turned into spring cleaning itself, with lots of throwing away the worst of my hand-me-down furniture to make some room for mb's stuff still in storage. away with the paint-peeling orange-and-green desk (not a small feat, as we live on the top floor of a walk-up). but as we were preparing to take the next load down the back stairs to the trash bin, we noticed some activity next door. gathered around a black saturn in the driveway were two college boys dressed as beat cops, complete with the big hats and beating sticks (what do you call those?), two more dressed like luigi from super mario brothers, a villain and a sort of non-descript overweight guy whose role i could never ascertain. peering out from a bedroom window above the black saturn was another college guy dressed in yellow striped pajamas and a red sleeping cap (the long pointy elf-ey kind). after about thirty minutes of standing in a big circle laughing at themselves, they all lined up and one by one climbed up the saturn and piled through the bedroom window. then they came out, stood around again, sang some songs, and did it again, this time interrupted with a lot of "wait... should my head be here or over here? no, it'll look stupid if my head is over too far..." eventually they moved the car, brought out a ladder (hmm... that would have been helpful first) and a video camera, laughed some more, and dispersed.

i can only assume one of them is taking some kind of film class, because i can't imagine u of c students do this kind of thing for fun. (i would, but that's beside the point.) but they were so pleased with themselves that they didn't notice our side-splitting laughter next door. i almost dropped the old recliner i was holding. (note to the fans of my recliner: yes, it's time for it to go. yes, tears were shed. no, it's not gone yet - it's sitting on the porch where mb is using it as his grillin' chair until it rains. and to my blogmate: no, the orange shag which once covered the chair is not gone. we now have orange shag carpet, to which mb is fastidiously applying rug backing, giddy with excitement that after all these years, his precious orange shag rug is finally on the floor where it was meant to be.) i was a little relieved that i couldn't keep getting rid of furniture for fear of ruining the guys' carefully constructed shots... although a plummeting recliner might not have been completely out of place.