Ace,

I think you're probably right about the "google-bombing" thing. It's not that hard to do: my Amazon page is always throwing some very bizarre "you might like this" titles, but that's because my taste in movies and books is so eclective: Westerns, noir thrillers from the '40's, sci-fi, television series, war movies, documentaries, science stuff. (I've even gotten some come-ons for spanish-language exercise DVDs!)

These algorithms aren't that smart -- all they know is stuff like "you bought item A and item B, someone else bought item B and item C, therefore you might like item C too."

I sincerely doubt it's any kind of racial statement on Wal Mart's part (although they'll no doubt change this glitch ricky-tick as soon as someone points it out to them).

eclective = eclectic

spurwing's style is addictive, what can i say

My money says it just an unintended outcome of reasonable inputs. If you wanted to pull a racial prank, there would be much more witty things. Probably just a statistical fluke, or a bug that mismatched two pointers. One problem is the self reinforcing nature of the algorithm. Imagine that three people in the US happen to look at both items. That might be enough (before there is much other data) to show a correlations. The first guy notices this, clicks on the cross link to see if it is real, then starts telling his friends about how racists Walmart is. With each additional person checking it out (searching one, the clicking on the other) the link grows stronger in the compters rank matrix.

Also, it's possible that Walmart was stuck with a bunch of lame DVD's and is trying to push them randomly.

Don't ascribe to malice what can be caused by stupidity.

The reason the black guy from Planet of the Apes doesn't remember he was in it is because the damn dirty apes had him stuffed and placed in a museum.

Just another reason why I don't trust those "intelligent" apes: their unenlightend racial policies (especially those bigoted Orangutans).

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

spurwing's style is addictive, what can i say

Hmm, a Spurwing Plover Style Manual. I think that might sell!

not on the TV show... that was the movie.

I always thought the "racial" breakdowns of the ape society were pretty dumb:

In the movie, the chimpanzees are the gentle science-loving rational types. The gorillas are mean and warlike. The orangs are politicos or bureaucrats.

In real life, Chimpanzees are mean little bastards who often kill people and each other. Gorillas are gentle and very shy, even among members of their own bands. Orangoutans are less intelligent than either chimps or gorillass, so in that sense the characterization as politicians was spot-on.

Once again, the dumbing down of conservatism via the Walmart empire. These redstate customers will never become aware of the intellectual necessity to learn about MLK with this low brow humor. They likely would rather wear an ape suit to a truck pull than the designer suits worn by MLK. My hate is visceral.

There was a TV show? Oh, that's right, the one with the guy who looked like a low-rent David Soul on it. And that guy who was Judith Light's ex-husband on Who's The Boss. Man, that TV POTA was pretty bad, even if it did have Peter Vincent, Vampire Hunter on it.

Gee, I really don't remember a black guy *at all*. . .

"Citizens of this republic who attend tractor pulls should be flogged.

Like the damn dirty apes they are."

Thomas "Original Metro" Jefferson
in a speech before Congress, 1798

An ape suit to a truck pull? Only if my favorite Monster Truck "Bigfoot" is taking part.

Then, hell ya!

I don't get it. What do Apes have to do with Lutherans?

Wait I know:

Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston,
who was in True Lies with Jamie Lee Curtis,
who was in Queens Logic with Kevin Bacon,
who was Ren McCormack in Footloose,
who, like Martin Luther, hammered an edict on the gymnasium door.

Dave at Garfield Ridge:

Yeah, the Apes movies just kept gettting lower and lower budget and finally bottomed out on TV. For Conquest of the Planet of the Apes they barely bothered to have sets; they just filmed everything in some L.A. office complex because it was so "future-y". Cheap-ass monkey costumes for the cast, and voila!

And as far as Beneath the Planet of the Apes goes: James Franciscus' greatest role. Boy he and Heston had huge teeth, didn't they? They should have been doing Pepsodent commercials.

Trivia: the gal who played Nova in POTA was named Linda Harrison, who just happened to be married to the producer of the movie (Zanuck). She also had a cameo in the crappy 2001 remake.

Linda Harrison in the POTA or Raquel Welsh in 1,000,000 BC ?

In real life, Chimpanzees are mean little bastards who often kill people and each other . . .
Posted by Monty at January 5, 2006 04:29 PM

What the hell did I do to you?

Hath not a damned dirty ape eyes? hath not a damned dirty ape hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Man is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

The similar items for "Ernest Goes to Camp" are "Baby Einstein" and "The Cosby Show."

Nothing says "I love you" like a Bonobo infanticide/orgy. Cheers.

Monty wrote: "And as far as Beneath the Planet of the Apes goes: James Franciscus' greatest role. "

Hmmm. . . you sure about that? Oh, it's his best *performance*, sure, but if you've seen the MST3K crew take on the movie Marooned (entitled "Space Travellers" on MST) with Franciscus, Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, you might differ in your opinion.

The best joke on that episode is directed towards video footage of astronaut Richard Crenna (IIRC) talking to his family. He's in space, his family's at NASA headquarters, there is fear that the astronauts may die, the moment is tense, Crenna is silent, the robots utter the line. . .

"Sooo. . . Do you like pudding?"

Best. MST3K line. Ever.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

I also loved Return to the Planet of the Apes. It was like a Mannix episode, only with talking monkeys.

What the hell did I do to you?

Don't play dump, chimp. AoS HQ is on to you.

And as far as Beneath the Planet of the Apes goes:

"May the Blessings of the Bomb Almighty, and the Fellowship of the Holy Fallout, descend upon us all. This day and forever more."

"I reveal my Inmost Self unto my God. "

Is that when they start reading from the Book of Armaments about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?

Calm down. Here's the connection:

Planet of the Apes [keywors: ape]
King Kong [keyword: king, ape]
Martin Luther King [keyword: King]

Those movies are actually especially popular with blacks for some reason, especially Conquest. Just one of those weird little taste differences, like how they don't like Seinfeld as much as everyone else (although I suspect that has something to do with their hatred of Jews).

Linda Harrison is like a million years old now and I still want her. Just the notion of being able to say I had Nova.

In that movie about the making of the movie series, they said that the sequels all did great box office, but the studio had a policy that sequels all had to have 1/2 the budget of the previous movie. So the last one they did actually did well enough to justify yet another sequel, but they already were making it as cheap as it is theoretically possible to make a Planet of the Apes movie. The next one would have to have been for $500 or something.

I think the chimp/gorrilla/orangutan caste system was based on pre-Goodall observations. People actually used to think that gorrillas were more aggressive than chimps. Remember how Dr Zaius mentions that ape has never killed ape? I'm pretty sure that at that time, apes actually had not been observed killing each other. In Battle for the Planet of the Apes, they mention it as the key to the whole theory of simian supremacy, so that at the end, when Ceasar kills that coup plotting gorrilla for killing his son (in front of a bunch of other apes), that sort of proves that men and apes are equal.

people. dont be all racialist.

lots of POTA convo and big words here - ya'll know the wallmart would be diff if the joos didnt own it, so get off it. next thread please.

-Harken

The TV series and its creators focused heavily on civil rights themed stuff. I'm sure "civil rights" or "race relations" or some such self-important stuff is included in the descriptor tags for Planet of the Apes.

Search other ape related movies on Walmart.com and you don't get the same results.

They sure got that fixed quick. My results show that I might also be interested in "Everybody Loves Raymond" the Complete Fifth Season, "Friends" the Complete Tenth Season and "The Pokemon Movie" I-IV and IX.

And they're right!

James Franciscus? The Finder of Lost Loves? Wait, no, that was Tony Franciosa.

they just filmed everything in some L.A. office complex...

Ha! That was indeed pathetic. Late '60's architecture -- so futuristic, so concrete, so geometrical.

Poor Ricardo, that was before he landed the best role of his life as Mr. Rourke.

Bart,

Lucas also filmed a lot of THX-1138 in the Bay Area BART tunnels (they were still under construction when he was producing the film). There was a whole school of "sci-fi" in the late 1960's and early 1970's that seemed to think that the whole future world would look like the waiting room of a dentist's office. Kubrick's 2001 was the same way.

Then Star Wars and Alien gave us the "dirty, grimy, sweaty tech" future world that we seem to have stuck with ever since.

"Those movies are actually especially popular with blacks for some reason, especially Conquest."

Which likely explains the WalMart Site's linkage of MLK to POA. Just like if you watch a Liberaci Concert on your TiVo you are doomed to repeated auto-tapings of Queer Eye and the Bewitched episodes where that funny uncle visits.

Logan's Run was another "Dentist's Office" futureworld. Ditto all the Star Trek shows (TV and movies) except for Enterprise. Silent Running was a Trumbull flick, and looked a lot like 2001, on which he was the production designer. When you think about it, Planet of the Apes was really ahead of its time in the sense that it didn't have that gee-whiz techno-white vibe.

You can probably draw the metaphor out a bit and speculate that this may be why minorities find the show a bit more relevant than the usual sci-fi shows where white people interact with other white people in a bone-white bland setting. Although I suppose if the producers of POTA had really been chasing the minority demographic, they'd have cast a minority in a speaking role, rather than a lone black guy who gets killed in the first ten minutes and then ends up as a stuffed exhibit in an ape museum.

Monty, you write a lot of great comments. Many readers here actively look for your comments on Ace's threads.

And then, you totally geek out on us, and post the most boring comment this blog has ever seen. Get A Grip, Man!

Perhaps it was because the Apes were very 'articulate'.

AOSHG Comment Quality Control Department:

My humble apologies for not being scintillating 100% of the time. I shall in future...aw, the hell with it. If I can't post this geeky stuff here, where can I post it? (Oh, sure, I could put it on my own blog; but I try to always follow the old proverb don't shit where you eat.)

Besides, I find that whole "destist's office futureworld" thing to be a pretty consistent indicator of how sucky/boring a sci-fi movie is going to be.

You searched for:

Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip

Also Recommended:

The Running Man
Great Balls of Fire
Blazing Saddles

This silly info is now on a CNN video on Yahoo, being called "disgusting."