Plabnox Cures Productions to Shoot Recession Blockbuster, MAELSTROM INLET

As of 10:47AM today, Plabnox Cures Productions has green-lit a new project, a water-ride based film. Rocko Taco, Director of Creative Development at PC Productions, birthed a brainchild after a period of moderate labor that occupied most of his Saturday brunch hour. A glowing Taco later made attempts to sell the brainchild to PC Productions as a “plot treatment” for a proposed film. After conducting a careful analysis of Taco’s issue (reproduced below), Plabnox Cures doctors Perofovich and Swinnard report with confidence that the brood’s box office potential is high.

Below: Taco’s infant.

MAELSTROM INLET Submitted by: Rocko Taco
Original Idea

A much-needed family vacation to a "pristine tropical resort" becomes
a nightmare when a family is caught in a typhoon. Only in the
typhoon's aftermath, does the family discover that the island has more
going on than meets the eye. With the help of a university professor,
on the island to study "abnormal weather patterns", the family must
navigate various wish-fulfillment challenges (wave machine, newly
created rapids, water pressure tunnels, etc.) and make their way to
the resort owner's secret lair. There they discover the owner has
built a weather machine, among other inventions, in the hopes of
creating an island for a "guaranteed perfect vacation". The family
and professor realize the machine must be destroyed and manage to do
so before they make a water-ride escape down the side of the mountain.
What started off as the worst vacation ever, became the vacation of a
lifetime as they realized it's not where you go, but who you're with
that matters.

This could be a big family/adventure film that capitalizes on a fun,
exciting new world that has a tie-in component to a pre-existing
Sidney attraction. Maelstrom Inlet, the Sidney attraction, is based
on the various "rides" in an exciting new world created from the
aftermath of a typhoon hitting a tropical resort hotel. The water ride
component hasn't been exploited in film and could bring an original
take on a four-quadrant mainstream Sidney film.

Plabnox Cures Analysis: Taco’s Difference

1. Taco’s treatment is a fresh take on the tried-and-true White Man’s Burden theme: Western Man’s Burden. Although the family’s race is unspecified, one might assume they come from the Occident, given the proposed market for the film. The island people are given respite from the meteorological tyranny of the resort owner only after the family’s arrival on the island and their feature-length efforts to destroy the weather machine. This thematic will pair well with our current foreign policy, and could justify getting federal funding for production.

2. One of Taco’s many innovations is the non-traditional use of the psychoanalytic term “wish-fulfillment” (usually, the drive to free oneself from tension caused by instinctual needs, as sex, which is sublimated by dreams). Here, Taco coins the ambiguous phrase “wish-fulfillment challenges,” which connotes either that the subject desires or eroticizes obstacle-course type challenges, or that the subject will express a wish-fulfillment once s/he completes a challenge. Taco’s invention could shed some much-needed light on the connection of psychoanalysis to water parks.

3. Unlike most movies of this genre, in which the academic figure accompanies the protagonists on their journey (e.g., Jurassic Park), the university professor has actually been on the island all along, apparently suffering the weather-based torture with the rest of the populace. He only realizes that the weather machine “must be destroyed” after the arrival of the family unit. With the indolent, unmotivated university professor, Maelstrom Inlet breaks with the Hollywood stereotype of the “progressive academic.”

4. Taco’s idea calls into question the notion, blindly accepted by most, that torture is categorically bad. Although the family unit and the professor decide that the machine must be destroyed, its terror-producing output also bestows pleasure and amusement, such as water slides and wave generators, upon its subjects. Thus, the film will go further than most in pointing out the positive aspects of torture, while still maintaining that torture should not be practiced, no matter how pleasurable.

5. "The water ride component hasn't been exploited in film and could bring an original
take on a four-quadrant mainstream Sidney film.”—We like the way Taco’s brain works to bring in new material, and he will use his ground-breaking methods in an upcoming treatment for a feature that revolves around colanders, also never before exploited in film.

6. "What started off as the worst vacation ever, became the vacation of a lifetime as they realized it's not where you go, but who you're with that matters." -- Taco's masterful plot promises to bring audiences to the painful and difficult revelation that relationships sometimes matter more than leisure travel and resorts.

Plabnox Cures Opera House Presents Mademoiselle Circulation (“Miss Traffic”)

The newly erected Plabnox Cures Opera House opened its doors last night to the upper crust with a private showing of Dr. Prosperina Swinnard’s Mademoiselle Circulation, an opera in five acts (libretto by Dr. Peter Perofovich). The tragedy uses the lofty art of opera to convey the trials and tribulations of the lowest class of U.S. citizens—pedestrians—to the gentry. Opening on an emissions-filled stage beset with honking, exhaust-spewing vehicles, the opera immerses the audience at once in the smoky yellow ambiance of rush hour Philadelphia. By the time Mademoiselle appears amidst the automobiles, theatergoers can barely make out her figure through the smog clouds and gas excretions. In fact, the recreation of reality by PCOH is so lifelike that several asthmatic patrons lost consciousness due to carbon monoxide poisoning before Act Two had even begun.

Mademoiselle must navigate gridlocks, faded crosswalks, ambiguous traffic laws, and septic odors as she treks to work on foot. There is an early omen of danger when she encounters a driver who is simultaneously talking on her cell phone and smoking a cigarette—a veritable death knell in the pedestrian subculture. In a harrowing scene, a storm swirls up and an SUV tries to run a red light—just as Mademoiselle Circulation steps out onto the crosswalk. Mademoiselle stands her ground, prompting the SUV to serenade the audience with one of the most haunting bel canto arias of the opera. Mademoiselle challenges the SUV to a duel, and Act Five crescendos in a violent recitative passage of honking, trumpeting brakes, backfiring vehicles, and quivering string notes that leaves one of the characters impaled and the stage slick with pools of spilled gasoline. Plabnox Cures opera critic Penelope Ravioli theorizes that, “the daring Mademoiselle Circulation is, at heart, a scathing indictment of the American traffic system.”

*This opera is not recommended for individuals with respiratory problems.

The Final Presidential Debate: Josephine the Plumber

Above: McCain flaunts his fleshy wattle during the runway portion of the debate.


Above: Obama presents his wedding ring as evidence that he is a family man, yet not an Arab.

Last night’s debate was clearly dominated by the eloquent John McCain, who wooed voters with evocative word paintings like, “breash of freth air,” when referring to his running mate, Sarah Palin. McCain also treated the debate as a platform for a public reading of his latest short story, the allegory of “Joe the Plumber,” soon to be released by Plabnox Cures Publications in The Collected Short Stories of John McCain, Vol. I:2006-2008. The collection includes lesser-known tales such as “Josephine the Plumber” and “My Wife is a Trollop and a Cunt.”

McCain, in top form, was not light on content, either, as he hammered home one of the main points of the debate—namely, that women, a notoriously untrustworthy and tricky fragment of the constituency, shouldn’t be left to make decisions on their own. Both candidates supported this idea; Obama emphasized that women should remain firmly ensconced within paternal, symbolic law and mustn’t decide to have an abortion without consulting beforehand with a bevy of men, including families, doctors, and religious advisors*. However, the two candidates differ on the finer points of the women issue. McCain’s two-point plan for women is broader in scope than Obama’s, and includes overturning Roe v. Wade and then adopting hordes of unwanted newborns. When the topic of partial-birth abortion** arose, Obama, an Arab but not a family man, crumbled by confessing his support of a provision for the mother’s health. Many Americans are concerned with the definition of “health” as it pertains to women and worry that voters don’t have a voice in each woman’s decision to have an abortion, obtain contraceptives, get treatment for cancer, or refill prescriptions. A grimacing McCain spoke for the everyman when he rolled his eyes and squeamishly deplored the extension of “ ‘women’s health’ to mean just about anything.” Neither candidate mentioned that abortion is many times safer than pregnancy, which was probably wise since it is rumored that a few women in isolated households were allowed to watch the debates, under the watchful guidance of their fathers and husbands.

Each candidate managed to weave the coveted Reagan allusion into the American quilt of the debate. Reagan, a former U.S. president adored for his state-sponsored anti-communist terrorism and dismissal of the AIDS crisis, has been extolled by McCain in the past for his virtuous economic doctrine whose goal was to inseminate the entire globe, without consent, with free-trade capitalism. Last night, McCain slyly hinted at Reagan with mention of Nancy Reagan’s hospital stay, while Obama bragged about his own association with Reagan in concert with William Ayers.

Ayers, the "centerpiece" or entrée of McCain's campaign, came up during a heated portion of the debate in which it was settled that, while McCain shall not be held accountable for remarks directed at Obama like “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” made by “fringe” attendees at his rallies, Obama shall be held accountable for clever remarks about McCain made by any and all congressmen who exist outside the purview of Obama’s campaign. This segment of the debate further established that, since McCain is a presidential candidate, he shall be allowed to make libelous television ads that apply the misnomer of “Terrorist” to Ayers, so long as they advance his rise to presidency. Neither candidate chose to argue that, hypothetically, if a person has been convicted of a crime (e.g., domestic terrorism, as Bill Ayers has not), paid punitively, reformed, and went on to contribute positively to society, this evolution would be a testament to the efficacy of our justice and penal system. However, such a tactic would have spelled campaign suicide by implying that criminals can reform.

On the subject of oil, the adversaries murmured that Canadian oil is categorically purer and superior to that of Venezuela and the Middle East. Both concurred that it would be preposterous to accept oil from any Middle Eastern country or Venezuela, but not from Canada. The difference between Canada and the aforementioned inferior countries is that Canada and the U.S. have shared values. The candidates and, by extension, the American people, value that most Canadians are white and speak English.

Auspiciously, when grilled by the moderator as to how each would cut spending, neither Obama nor McCain mentioned the war in Iraq. The Plabnox Cures crystal balls forecast that this bodes well for the prospect of future wars—a blitzkrieg in Afghanistan again, followed by a trio of pillaging in Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea—so long as the bloodshed budget remains robust and the government pledges to cut frivolities like Healthcare, Social Security, Education, Public Works, and the Arts.

*Although for centuries abortion was a private matter between only a woman and her physician, the explosion of mass media in the twentieth century has revealed abortion and women’s health to be ripe and entertaining topics of discussion.

**While the AMA does not recognize “partial-birth abortion” as a medical term, this mystical phrase has proven effective in political discourse due to its flowery descriptive properties.

Plabnox Health Scare: USA Rash

PHILADELPHIA – Plabnox’s Dr. Prosperina Swinnard has discovered a virulent new strain of skin rash striking the American intelligentsia: the USA Rash. The unsightly red patch manifests itself after prolonged exposure to delusional and jingoistic pro-USA statements like Barack Obama’s wildly fictitious assertion, “America is the greatest nation” at the presidential debate earlier this week. This deadly assortment of words contained two irritants: 1) the fiction that America is a nation—assuming Obama intended this “America” include Canada and Paraguay, along with the other Central and Southern American nations; 2) the assumption that “America” should be the greatest nation and that our dying economy, acts of international aggression, human rights violations, deplorable healthcare system, etc. make us the greatest nation on the planet.

McCain unleashed another contagion at the debate when he criticized other nations’ (e.g., Russia’s) acts of aggression while failing to acknowledge the U.S.’s aggression in Iraq and decimation of Iraqi civilians. McCain’s hypocrisy has infected as many as one person; the infected caught the rash en route to Vermont, where he remains, quarantined. Plabnox Cures’ epidemiologist, Dr. Peter Perofovich, has created an algorithm that predicts USA Rash will spread at an alarming rate: N^215 – N = S (where N = original number of persons infected, and S = projected infected persons).

Dr. Swinnard advises that, while the only cure for USA Rash is expatriation, its symptoms can be treated while remaining in the country by avoiding the following: nationalistic and patriotic language, the military, bearing arms, and the diseased trio of colors red, white, and blue. A person who tests positive for USA Rash can still spread the disease to others, even during latency. Protect yourself and heighten your resistance with preventive measures like recycling, voting for third party candidates, engaging in subversive activities, and listening to Democracy Now!. To reduce the likelihood of contamination in public spaces like restrooms and offices, Dr. Perofovich recommends disinfecting surfaces by covering them with socialist propaganda, French cabaret handbills, feminist literature, and anarchist circulars.