Coyote Ugly”?
More like Coyote Stupid, if you ask me.
And not just the sub-zero plot. This summer turkey boasts half the complexity of your average MTV video and all the predictability of a WWF bout. It’s the kind of movie that gives mindless entertainment a bad name.
Normally you wouldn’t catch Joe Sixpack shelling out seven bucks to see something like this. I’d wait a few months for it to show up on my satellite dish so I could change the channel after 10 minutes.
But I confess, I was suckered by those commercials.
Who could resist the sight of sultry Tyra Banks wiggling her whatever while pulling a draft handle? My suds runneth over.
So I ducked out of the city sauna and into the theater for what I thought would be 90 minutes of babes and beer. I shudda stayed at home and waited for a Coors commercial.
Oh yeah, it’s a movie about a bar – but it’s the damnedest bar I’ve ever seen.
Coyote Ugly is the hottest joint in Manhattan, apparently, though it offers little more than “Jim, Jack and Johnny Black. ” As for beer, it’s MGD, Icehouse and Red Dog.
Nonetheless, customers stand in line around the block to get into this dive. Once inside, the wait for a drink is as orderly and efficient as the Vet parking lot exit after an Eagles game.
Possibly that’s because your lovely server – a so-called Coyote – is currently:
A. Soaking her T-shirt.
B. Breathing fire.
C. Performing gymnastics.
D. All of the above.
Certainly, she isn’t carefully pouring your drink.
She may, however, be guzzling shots and spitting them back into an empty beer bottle. Or spilling a fifth of Seagram’s while attempting to fill a half-dozen glasses.
Either way, I haven’t seen this much liquor wasted since Robert Stack took a Tommy gun to a wall of wooden kegs in “The Untouchables. “
The worst moment came when the girls doused the top of the bar with a few gallons of tequila, then torched it, to the delight of the howling patrons.
Hey, I’m as pyro as the next guy, but haven’t these women heard there’s an agave shortage?
“Coyote Ugly”: Such a waste.
Look and learn
The movie does offer a few lessons to the intelligent adult-beverage consumer, however.
1. Never stand an hour in line for a drink, no matter how much cleavage awaits.
2. Avoid bars where the barmaids address you with a megaphone.
3. Pack a poncho.
4. Forget it – you don’t have a chance of scoring with the supermodel behind the bar.
5. Don’t leave your drink on the bar if there is an outside chance it will be consumed by flames.
I’m still waiting for a great beer movie. Something like what “Caddyshack” did for golf.
In the meantime, your video store offers some light refreshment:
- “Smokey and the Bandit”: Burt Reynolds and a truckload of Coors.
- “The Quiet Man”: John Wayne, a mammoth beer brawl and lots of porter.
- “Beer”: Dick Shawn, Rip Torn and a memorable advertising campaign that urges men to “Whip out your Norbecker.”
- “Barfly”: Mickey Rourke and lots of boozing.
- “Boys Don’t Cry” – Hillary Swank sucking down bottles of, strangely enough, Celis Pale Rider.
- “The Lady Eve” – Screwball Preston Sturges and brewery heir Henry Fonda (nickname: Hopsie) who hates his own beer, “Pike’s Pale, the Ale that Won for Yale. ” “You see,” he tells Barbara Stanwyck, “I don’t like beer, bock beer, lager beer or steam beer. . .I do not! And I don’t like pale ale, brown ale, nut brown ale, porter or stout which makes me ulp just to think about it. Ulp!”
-0-
About that name, Coyote Ugly.
It’s a reference to a bedmate you pick up in a bar only to discover the next morning she/he’s so ugly, you’d chew off your paw to escape.
Locals will recall it was Common Pleas Judge Bernard J. Avellino who once opined that a rape victim in his courtroom basically got what she deserved because she was “coyote ugly. “
Avellino retired under pressure in 1998.
Beer Radar
Dock Street Terminal brewpub (12th and Filbert streets, Center City) is pouring $2 drafts to Philly cops this week in appreciation for their work during the GOP convention. Police officers – presumably off-duty – need only show their badges to get the cheap beer, through tomorrow. No word on any local bars offering similar deals to anarchists . . . Cool Blues & Microbrews sounds like a good way to spend the afternoon. It’s at the Riverfront Arts Center in Wilmington tomorrow. Info: 888-862-2787.
Joe Sixpack, by Staff Writer Don Russell, was written this week with a bottle of Yards India Pale Ale.
-30-