Yes, I think this is exactly right. The "normal guy has to stand up and go vigilante to defend himself and his family" cliche is what's being deconstructed. Calling it out for being clicheed is totally missing the point.
I like how KO ignores how WPITW consisted of celebrity gossip as often as political commentary, usually him upset because some pop starlet or other did something too slutty and/or druggy for his taste.
And the whole idea of his having focused (non-celeb-related) anger on "Bush and...his...descendants" is a red flag, since neither Bush nor his descendants have been running anything other than SCOTUS for a time now, and during which unemployment has reached a very anger-justifying 10+% while home foreclosures have continued, which facts pretty much nobody in office seems much bothered by.
It actually was (and remains) a good opportunity for the rare media figure with a record for criticizing the GOP to be like "hey Democrats, wake the fuck up, people are pissed and with good reason." Though ultimately I think KO and Rachel Maddow slept on this the same reason the administration has, which is that their friends are all zillionaires who if they do lose their job are mainly concerned that they have to draw on their zillions in retirement savings before they'd planned on it and hence the real priority is to get "the" market back in shape.
They're DWARVES, singing about what he HATES, which is that he hates when dwarves come over to party and break all his dishes. Also I think all the songs in the cartoon (not the main theme, but the ones sung by characters) are taken right from the books, where the lyrics are all written out Pynchon-style. Along with Tom Bombadil, the songs were something I really missed form the LOTR books.
And how do you get into a camp for teen mom musicians without realizing that it's a camp for teen mom musicians? I guess that is probably addressed in the narrative, but I'm curious.
"People can insist on large cash transactions occurring in the new currency"
Can they? I mean obviously anyone can insist on anything they want, but I'm pretty sure that trying to do something like that in like a contract or anything would be illegal, since it would have the undesirable side effect of creating higher demand for new bank notes (or "big face hunneds," as they're known at the Treasury), effectively devaluing the currency in circulation.
Which, actually, stimulates spending (better get rid of these old bills before nobody will take 'em!), so maybe it IS legal and it's just a real clever anti-recession strategy.
He finds a business partner who helps figure out how it will actually work. But it is an actual running joke in the movie that Jack Black is talking about how he "invented" Va-Poo-Rize when all he did is say "there should be a spray that makes dog poo disappear." It's funny!
Haha, I liked this movie. I think I only saw the beginning and end, but the whole part where Jack Black "invents" Va-Poo-Rize by describing what it would do but not how it would work cracked me up.
And it is true that it doesn't really address how sudden wealth can change a friendship, but I think that's really the point, that envy isn't just some naturally unavoidable consequence of one person having something that someone else doesn't: Ben Stiller and his wife are mean jerks from the very start and Jack Black is a good guy, and that never changes throughout the various ups and downs.
In this era of Ke$ha it's hard to imagine anyone can look back to the time when half the songs in the top 40 were produced by T-Pain with anything but a deep and profound sense of loss.
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