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Generally, my 16-year-old daughter Abby has the same rotten taste in movies that I do. Send her to the video store, and she returns with a no-brainer slapstick comedy.
Movies are for entertainment, and if I want to think,
I'll read a book. Uplifting films of moral significance
like Schindler's List
and Dances with Wolves
doubtless deserve their awards, but why should I spend
three hours to feel angry and depressed when the paper can
do that inside of 15 minutes, and for only a quarter?
Abby recently returned with The Beverly
Hillbillies,
and even I, a devotee of the Naked
Gun
series, was ready to draw the line. But it was
funny enough, although Martha observed that the plot was
dated.
In modern America, Jed Clampett wouldn't strike oil, get rich and move to Beverly Hills. Instead, the Clampetts would be going about their lives -- moonshining, poaching, spitting -- in their scenic but remote mountain hollow.
Then the Upscale Land Development Corp. acquires the surrounding territory, and one morning, the Clampetts are amid trophy homes. Instead of them moving to Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills moves to them.
Jed discovers this one afternoon when he's out hunting cottontails and the new neighbors appear. How could he kill small furry animals? And that coonskin cap and leather coat? He returns home, but only after the animal-rights activists have doused his duds with red spray paint.
At the homestead, the Architectural Controls Committee is conducting an inspection.
They tell Granny to put out her pipe. Even though they're outdoors, the second-hand smoke could shorten their anticipated mean life expectancies by 0.7 of a second.
Trying to be hospitable, she offers them moonshine, but they want fruit juice or mineral water. Granny stomps off.
The clothes line has to go, since it's an esthetic affront and children might be permanently traumatized by inappropriate exposure to underthings in broad daylight.
Ellie May wonders how she'll do the laundry. The committee says she needs a $500 clothes dryer.
Jed points out that the dryer requires electricity, which they don't have. Only $8,000 to run the line, plus a $75 minimum monthly bill, he learns.
Jethro's truck is towed away, since the covenants don't allow pickups of any vintage to be parked in public view. The woodpile attracts rodents and vermin, and they can't use the stove anyway, because it might reduce air quality, and the development already has enough trouble with that because most people in it commute 70 or 80 miles a day to their career-track positions.
Finally the committee leaves to consult with social
workers about removing Jethro and Ellie May from their
deprived environment, and Jed gathers the family. They
made us a pretty good offer on our land,
he says,
and I reckon we ought to take it and get out whilst we
can, afore them new folks raises our property taxes any
higher. Any notions where we might settle?
Jethro, always a bit feeble-minded, says he thinks Colorado would be a great place to get away from these arrogant People of Money. They head west, but we'll have to wait for the sequel to see how that turns out.
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