Babe: Pig in the World Trade Center Movie Indefinitely Pulled

ollowing the wake of Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, many studios have aided in claiming additional victims of terrorism, namely films that may evoke emotional reactions from audience for their content. The latest victim: The long-awaited third film in the Babe Trilogy, Babe: Pig in the World Trade Center.

"I can't believe it," said film producer Dan Mook. "Here we tried to make a light-hearted, whimsical little film about a sweet talking pig who visits the World Trade Center. Talk about bad fucking luck. I mortgaged my house to get this thing made."

In this sequel, Babe, the optimistic and charming small pig with the can-do spirit, is pitted against vile Islamic terrorists of the mythical "Jizzbad" organization, who take visiting tourists hostage in the World Trade Center towers. Babe takes each of the terrorists out of commission, one by one, as a bomb ticks down, threatening to destroy the twin towers.

"Real bad fucking luck," Mook continued for a few more minutes.

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I'm not going to shit you, after the fad orgy of the 1950's any other decade is going to leave a little something to be desired in the fad department, even the go-go 1960's. But that doesn't mean the era of civil rights and dirty young people didn't have its share of fads worthy of posthumous ridicule. And few can get this embarrassing party started like the limbo.

The limbo originated in Trinidad, an island nation famous for its undersized novelty houses. The native people of this isolated island were so cut off from the rest of the world that they only heard of larger global trends and ideas through rumors, passed through a chain of nearby islands like an absurdly drawn-out game of "telephone." Because of this fact Trinidad developed many absurd traditions, including a virulent bias for shortness, which came about in a confused misunderstanding of the greater world's preference for tall individuals.

Trinidadians took to this adopted prejudice with a passion, and before long every native was trying to out-short the others. Trinidadians blessed with impressive squatness would revel in their ability to pass under low tree branches and would cruelly taunt the island's unfortunate taller inhabitants, asking them if would kindly clean out the ceilings of caves with their hair and screaming for them to duck when birds flew by.

Eventually this short one-upsmanship became ingrained in society, and a huge premium was placed on living in shorter and shorter houses. Soon most homes were barely three feet tall, and residents had to enter by leaning way back and waddling forward with bent knees, a practice visitors to the island dubbed "limboing" due to their lack of imagination.

In time, pretending to be shorter than you actually are became something of a sport in Trinidad, and in 1958 national limbo champion Dolores Reyes set a world record by limboing her way into a casket 6 1/8 inches tall before she expired. This feat caught the eye of Hollywood producers, who promptly made the world's first limbo movie in 1960. The grammatically-incorrect "Where the Boys Are?" featured the hottest young milkfed stars of the day limboing under various objects to try and find out where the heck all the boys went. The film was terrible but a huge hit, as teens of the day loved any odd, kitschy behavior and bright jazzy images flickering on the big screen. The trend caught fire and spread to the wider world, and almost instantly people everywhere were hurting themselves trying to limbo.

Meanwhile back in America, superballs were created when scientists at Cornell University were trying to develop bouncy-shoes that would allow them to bound into treetops and peek through the windows of the girls' dormitory showers next door. The shoes were a failure, as the first scientist to try them broke his neck after bouncing through the window of a nearby umbrella factory. But the scientists discovered something interesting while they were throwing the leftover shrapnel from the shoes at each other: It was fun. The ball-shaped fragments were outrageously bouncy, and seemed to have a special knack for gaining speed immediately before they ricocheted right into somebody's eyeball. They also made a hilarious sound when deflected off an unsuspecting skull.

These superballs became a huge hit as toys, gaining initial popularity only because guys wanted to tell girls they had "super balls" but then growing into a national mania as their considerable potential for mayhem was realized. Flinging superballs into cramped men's rooms and running away became a popular hobby, and several hit comedy records were released that featured nothing but the startled screams of superball victims.

Sea Monkeys were the hit pet of the 1960's, which should go a long way toward answering any questions about how much drugs people actually did in the 60's. Discovered gumming up California toy mogul Walter Gallagher's pool after he got back from a six-month peyote binge in Sri Lanka, sea monkeys were originally marketed as food for pet baleen whales. Realizing he was aiming for something of a niche market, once his swimming-pool stock ran out Gallagher changed gears and began selling packets of the tiny brine shrimp as pets for retards and mental patients.

Under Gallagher's original scheme, he sealed the "Sea Monkeys" in little paper packets so that they were cheap to mail, and if anybody complained that they had a bunch of dead brine shrimp floating in their aquarium he'd just tell them that's what "Sea Monkeys" do: float around like they're dead. It was a genius plan, since only a few of the nation's top nerds knew what brine shrimp actually did in the wild. As long as he didn't sell any Sea Monkeys to those guys, Gallagher would be fine.

To his great surprise however, the brine shrimp not only survived the mailing process, but actually seemed to enjoy it, as it imitated the way they are shipped in the wild. Soon, every kid in America had a plastic bowl of fetid tap water sitting on their desk, clouded with a bunch of tiny wet fleas. And fun was had by all. Actually, most kids added Kool-Aid to the water so they'd have psychedelic Sea Monkeys for a few days before they all died, but this was a natural response to being jobbed into thinking they were getting some magical mermaid king and queen pet family when they bought the kit.

The 1960's saw the birth of many other short-lived trends, from granny glasses to glassless glasses and glass underwear. America was also introduced to the skateboard, one of the rare fads you could break your neck enjoying. Tune in for our next installment where we'll further examine America's century-long aversion to wising up. I'm Griswald Dreck, and if you didn't hear it here, it's a load.

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You know what really pisses me off? People who can't whistle but still do. Talk about begging to be beaten about the head and neck areas. Whistling isn't even that enjoyable when it's good. Even if you're stuck in an elevator with the Stradivarius of whistlers, the Grand Dragon or whatever they call the dude who wins the World Whistling Championships down in Arkansas or wherever they have that crap, next door to the freaks who can play banjo like some inbred Jimi Hendrix, even if it's THAT dude and he can whistle like God himself farting out a melody, he's still probably gonna be whistling some song you don't like. In fact, that's a pretty safe bet since it's rare that somebody whistles any song you actually want to hear, anything hardass like "Ironman," instead it's usually the Andy Griffith theme or "Butterfly Kisses" or some gay bullshit like that.

According to commune answerman and office Sorry champion Griswald Dreck, whistling was invented by the Nazis in WWII as a way of drawing Allied snipers out of their hiding places. The German soldiers who were pinned down would whistle "Oye Como Va" and other annoying German songs off-key for days on end until the sniper finally went batshit and came charging out, yelling like "Alright fuckwad! Who wants to get bitchslapped all the way back to Hamburg?" If the Nazis spoke English at all, a hilarious fistfight would ensue since the Germans only knew Nazi karate, and that just involved stepping really high and heil-Hitlering to block everything until you either got your ass kicked or the other guy fell down laughing. If the German soldiers didn't speak any English, then they'd just shoot the guy.

Disgruntled American vets who didn't get the promised pot to piss in and cherry Mustang in every garage upon returning home from the war brought whistling back with them as a subtle revenge, and before long it spread like an embarrassing nickname all across the country. They even changed the name of the thing from a "Nazi face blow" to the less disgusting term "whistling" to make it more marketable, and soon happy assholes everywhere were whistling away, without even knowing they were giving Adolph Hitler a hard-on in his grave.

Some shit happened in the intervening years, bottom line is eventually whistling spread to my neighbor Dale, which is the worst thing that could have happened. This goddamned guy whistles day and night, and when it's hot I can't even close my windows or spray him with a fire extinguisher and blame it on the weather. Remember that Stradivarius whistler I was talking about earlier? Dale's what it would be like if that guy got kicked in the head by a moose and still thought he could whistle great but actually sucked a giant dick.

The other day I was sitting at home, trying to explain to Osaka why it would be great if she bought a rickshaw to pull me around in (solving both my transportation and never-been-pulled-around-in-a-rickshaw problems in one brilliant move) when my train of thought was totally cocked in the ass by that tone-deaf Sinatra in his back yard, whistling the theme to Simon & Simon while he turtle-waxed his patio chairs. I think it was the Simon & Simon theme, but to be honest he tends to medley shit together and none of it is right anyway so I can never be sure what specifically I'm pissed about. Could've been "Save the Best for Last," but I guess I still give the dick more credit than that.

So my concentration is shot, and one of the all-time great convincing arguments is lost to the sands of time. Talk about an extra-large crock. Enough is enough, and it's time to go on the offensive. It was one thing that Dale insists on calling me "O.B." even though that's just a tampon joke waiting to happen. Now he was messing with my bidness, as the badasses in the movies like to say when they're black badasses.

I'm thinking of having my bathroom wall replaced with Plexiglas so every time Dale looks out his window he gets an eyeful of Omar Bricks' bathroom business. I'm not sure if watching your neighbor take his morning shit is on par with having to put up with some moron whistling ABBA all the time, but hanging a B.A. out the bathroom window every now and again clearly isn't getting the message across. And nothing sounds better in a memorial service than a story about the time you scared a neighbor into an early grave by pressing ham on your Plexiglas bathroom wall one morning in July.

If that doesn't work, I'm sure I can pay some neighborhood kids to shoot some of those insanely loud whistling fireworks in the dude's bedroom window while he's sleeping. That's the kind of experience that can change a man. Not that you heard that from me, when it happens remember I was speaking hypothetically. Bricks out.

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