I'LL GIVE YOU A MAN WHO WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD

We watched The Spy Next Door for movie night this past weekend.

It's a Jackie Chan family film in which he plays a Chinese spy on loan to the CIA. He is deep undercover as a nebbishy suburban pen salesman. He's dating the divorcee next door, who has two kids and a step kid. The kids all hate Jackie Chan because he's such a square. Little do they know, amiright amiright?

Anyway, the truly surreal aspect of the movie is that it turns on the plot conceit of having the nerdy middle-school son attempt to download a “rare” concert by the early 80s British hardcore band GBH. You see, having this “rare” (and there are those pesky quotation marks again) concert is supposed to be currency with the mouth-breathing bullies who make our young protagonist's life a wedgie-tinged hell.

Well, it turns out that the GBH file is actually an encrypted Russian file, and not an early 80s British hardcore concert. So of course the bullies are enraged. Atomic wedgies ensue.

But here we get our first hint that Jackie Chan is something cool. He comes through for the nerdy boy and burns him a CD of the “rare” Iggy Pop/David Bowie Shanghai concert that all the middle-school bullies are mad for these days.

And how'd he get a hold of it?

He was there, motherfucker. He was there...