Veronica Mars Investigations

VMI: Village Mostly Invisible, an investigation of Brigadoon

A LONG TIME AGO IN THE 1954 MGM MUSICAL BRIGADOON:

New York City gents Gene Kelly and Van Johnson are lost in the Scottish Highlands! They want to shoot some birds, but instead stumble upon a village that’s not on the map… Brigadoon!
Everyone’s dancing around the town and preparing for a wedding that evening; meanwhile, sister of the bride Cyd Charisse gets to fall in love with Gene Kelly on the heathery hillsides.
But something’s weird, and it’s not just the fake Scottish accents, the very tight tartan trousers, the two-dimensional mountains and all the day-drinking: it’s that the village is under an enchantment whereby it only appears on one day every hundred years, and it will disappear forever if anyone tries to leave.
Then someone tries to leave!
Then Gene Kelly and Van Johnson have to leave before the village goes sleepy-byes for another hundred years. But Gene left his heart behind...
Lucky for him, there’s a special wake-up-Brigadoon-early clause buried deep in the small print of the enchantment, because of course there is.

audio, Season 5VMI Pod15 December 2021Jenny Owen Youngs, Helen Zaltzman, VMI, film, entertainment, movie, recap, review, drama, mystery, musical, Scotland, Scottish, Highlands, dancing, dance, singing, songs, magic, witches, enchantment, miracles, bad ideas, accents, fear, death, history, tartan, Chekhov’s things, love, romance, MGM, Broadway, Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, sets, cattle, Highland cows, birds, sheep, 100 years, alcohol

VMI: Vanquishing Malevolent Invaders, the crimes of Home Alone

A LONG TIME AGO IN HOME ALONE:

In an enormous house in Chicago, the enormous McAllister family is preparing to leave for a Christmas trip to Paris.
But, when designated naughty child Kevin causes a ruckus at dinner, he is sent to sleep in the attic as punishment.
Then in the chaos of being such an enormous family with shitloads of kids, the McAllisters accidentally fly off to Paris without Kevin, leaving him Home Alone.
Thus, an 8-year-old who has never even packed a suitcase before has to fend for himself in a hostile adult world.
AND fend off two serial burglars who are determined to break into the enormous McAllister house! Even after Kevin subjects them to multiple kinds of potentially fatal harm.
A grim cavalcade of child neglect and violence: ho ho ho Merrrry Christmas!

Join Jenny Owen Youngs, Helen Zaltzman and resident legal expert Lo Dodds to investigate the crimes that take place in the harrowing cavalcade of ultraviolence that is Home Alone, and learn what the penalties would be for such misdeeds as hanging a child on a hook, stealing a toothbrush, leaving your 8-year-old unattended while you jet off to Paris, and shooting a burglar in the dick.