Urban Legends Reference Pages: Food (Five Second Helpings)

After scouring snopes.com in an attempt to waste valuable time, I found that the five second rule isn't real. Okay, I don't use it anymore, but when I was a starving student, it saved my lunch more than once. I wonder if there are more germs when your food falls on a heavily travelled floor? If so, then I must be harboring some awful parasite after all these years.

"Mammoth": Delightfully Tacky and Totally Unrefined

"We have an alien-possessed mammoth on the lose and if we don't stop it the government is going to kill all of us."

Okay, I don't normally think in terms of movie reviews, but this one is too good to pass up. SciFi Channel is currently running one of their original movies "Mammoth." Every once in awhile, everyone needs a good dose of tackiness in their movies.

Basically, "meteor" crashes to earth and inhabits the body of a mammoth that has been frozen in a block of ice for thousands of years. Said mammoth has been under study at local museum (naturally inhabited by absent-minded professor with teen daughter and crotchety alien-loving father) and subsequently goes on a rampage while being pursued by the professor, a government agent, and a plethora of locals. Turns out a previous "meteor" had crash-landed 30 years earlier and inhabited the severed hand of the local coroner (okay the meteor's tendril-like arms severed the hand) and attempted to choke the life out of the coroner.

Anyway, this movie is cliche upon cliche, but it all works together. Teens partying in the woods are traumatized and/or trampled by invading mammoth, mammoth squishes in the most gruesome way anyone who gets in the way. Oh, he also blasts, with a trumpet of his trunk, an old couple getting frisky in the back of a Lincoln Continental. The secret agents (one dies pretty quickly, so don't get too attached) are relunctant to share the real plan until they see the wisdom of telling the mammoth professor about the alien invasion. Oh, and the best part? If the mammoth isn't killed or contained in 9 hours the entire town will be blown off the face of the planet!

There are a few relatively clever moments, as in the debate over which classic scifi/horror movie is most like the situation the characters are currently experiencing. It was between "The Blob" and "Body Snatchers."

Ah, yes, tackiness is wonderful. Enjoy