Life in the Ad-Hoc Lane

Brought to you by Kelly Clarkson's divorce.  Kelly Clarkson's divorce!  I guess the guy she was married to didn't love her... even with her dark side.  Also brought to you by the Bechdel Test for Parents.  The Bechdel Test for Parents!  Home Alone 1 and 2 come to mind... oh, I should probably explain.  It's when a movie 1) has to have at least two parents in it, 2) who talk to each other, and 3) about something OTHER THAN THEIR LITTLE BRAT OF A KID!!!!  The most glaring example I have of recent note is in the 2004 classic The Day After Tomorrow, and I believe it's Dennis Quaid and Sela Ward talking about their son, Jake Gyllenhaal.  I guess he has more of his mother's good looks.  I mean, it's a fine scene and all, but ... ugh.  Epic fail of the Bechdel Test for Parents.  Positively epic.  But that's Roland Emmerich for you!  Always pushing the wrong boundaries on things.
We're losing all the Jews this week!  First Joel Schumacher, now Carl Reiner... I don't even want to know who's next.  Whelp, if Mel Brooks doesn't go within the next few days... I guess it wasn't true love after all.  Let's quickly move on... so!  There's currently only eight movies in the Top 10 this week.  PATHETIC!!!!!  $100,000 was how much the #1 movie made... PATHETIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  But there is one title I'm currently obsessed with, and it's this StarDog and TurboCat.  I think you're going to hear a lot more from this duo.  I mean, hey!  Apparently they squeezed three movies out of Norm of the North, and... FOUR TOTAL??!!!  Well, God bless you if you've got that kind of time.  But if you're like me... scary thought, I know... one of the things you're geeking out about StarDog and TurboCat is the whole camel casing thing.  See, it's... on Wikipedia.  Read about it there, then get back to me.  I'll wait... okay, welcome back.  So I guess the big question here is... what other movie and or TV titles feature camel casing?  Sorry... camelCasing?  Or even CamelCasing?  Well, 1992's HouseSitter comes to mind.  Star Kid maybe?  Nah.  Well, at least he's not a StarDog.  But Coto spent about a tenth on advertising that he spent on adverts for Dr. Giggles... ooh!  Just remembered "CatDog."  But perhaps there are other titles that feature camel casing that aren't about cats and or dogs!  Unfortunately, the software I currently have got rid of all the capital letters in my "database" files.  To the Redo Mobile!  Looks like it's once again up to me.  I'll get back to you the instant I have anything further to report... I'm pretty sure it's a recent phenomenon, but who knows?  Maybe a silent film or two features this freakish grammatical tic.

(Friday) Okay, I'm back.  Waiting for more Candy Crush lives; you know how it is.  If I had a SmartPhone, I could play in bed!  And speaking of SmartPhone, back to our... okay, MY camel casing search.  I mean, how could I possibly forget RoboCop and The NeverEnding Story, for Gawd'z zake?  And now... time to run my new program and see what else we come up with.
(a few seconds later) Okay, I'm back.  Whelp, as any enthusiastic programmer will tell you, before they have their gender reassignment surgery... computers are stupid.  Fast as hell, but kinda stupid.  I mean, take this example, for example.  One of the first results is the 1906 classic, Proklamationen af Kong Frederik d. VIII.  That means there's something wrong with the way the program is isolating words... oh, right.  No, wait!  I have it check if there's something like "VIII" that has NO lowercase letters!  See what I mean?  Strings suck.  Then, of course, you have to teach the computer, usually with a series of exceptions to rules, about the vast variety of our melting pot culture.  I mean, Billy McGrath's Love Letters and The O'Neill aren't proper camel casing, correct?  And for the Scots, titles like Arrest Norma MacGregor aren't camel casing, are they?  For the Mexicans, we have Count DeBesa's Mexican Pictures.  And furthermore, Du Barry was a Lady doesn't count, but does DuBarry?  And what about Bettler GmbH for the Germans?

And then... FINALLY!!!  We got something near the bottom of the pile that just might fit the bill.  It's a long-ass title from 1916 called... big breath here... it's called The Fable of the Throbbing Genius of a TankTown Who Was Encouraged by Her Folks Who Were Prominent.  Now... given the age we're currently living in, we'll set aside the "throbbing genius" part for finer minds to debate.  But what on God's Green Earth is a TankTown?  Good luck on Wikipedia and or Urban Dictionary Dot Com finding out, but judging from the context, and judging from the plot description, John Hughes' definition of a "geek": someone who's well on their way to success, but maybe a little too young and precocious.  Precious precocious.  A cut up, a smarty, the life of the party, what have you.  A term even too antiquated for Norm MacDonald.

And... boy, am I tired!  But before I go, let me just do KingFisher's Roost real quick, as well as The CooCoo Nut Grove.  Hah!  CooCoo Nut.  See?  Camel casing's nothing new under the sun.  As old as the cave paintings... maybe not that old.