I’m proud to announce my newest feature, Dare to be Stupid. The goal is for this to be my forum for posting general editorial rants, musings, or even just odd things that I find on the Web that just might be movie related. The goal is to post this feature regularly, though how regularly I do not know. Some of the editorials I am actually going to attempt to show a bit of journalistic integrity and actually research my subjects. Novel I know.

As for the title of the feature, I’m sure some of you are wondering just what I mean by it. It basically is a philosophy that I do not live by, but wish more often that I did. Their is something to be said for people and events that take risks to be great, knowing full when that in hindsight they could look utterly stupid. It’s to those who will risk everything for the opportunity to look stupid that is the inspiration for this feature. And with that I give you my first foray into the unknown, thanks to legendary guitarist Nigel Tufnel of the in-famous (i.e. more then famous) rock band Spinal Tap who recently sat down with National Geographic to discuss his expertise on Stonehenge.

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A co-worker recently purchased a Dairy Queen chicken fingers basket for her lunch and brought it in to work. If you have never had a DQ chicken fingers basket I recommend trying one. Not highly recommended mind you, but if you are looking for something relatively inexpensive and borderline tasty you can do much worse.

But what interests me most about the DQ chicken fingers basket is the make up of it. Now of course you get chicken fingers, your choice of 4 or 6 depending on how much of a glutton you are. Me, I’m a 6 finger fatty, but that is straying from my rather ambiguous point.

Now along with the chicken fingers you of course get your choices of sauces to eat them with. By my last count you had something in the neighborhood of 239 different varieties. I’m a honey mustard man myself but occasionally dabble with barbecue sauce or ranch if I am feeling particularly saucy that meal. Along with the fingers and the sauce you get what appears to be a rather large fistful of fries artfully tossed in the general direction of the basket. I’m sure by this time you have absolutely no idea where I am going with any of this, let alone how I could possibly tie it in with my latest review of Time After Time, but I promise you, my thesis shall be made clear quite soon.

Now we come to the pièce de résistance of the meal which, rather ironically, is a piece of toast. Now I don’t know why they would include a piece of toast with the meal, or why they choose to butter it beforehand, but dammit if it isn’t just about the perfect compliment to the meal. In spite of being completely ridiculous, and improbably illogical, it rather simply makes the entire meal work.

And in light of such a ridiculous combination of foodstuffs somehow conjoining to create a meal far greater then the sum of its parts, it is my hope that you see the connection to tales like Time After Time, in which several notable characters are combined in an unlikely, if not utterly ridiculous, situation in the hopes their struggles will entertain the audience.

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