Googling Rene Russo's Lingerie

Last night, hubbie was watching an old movie – Lethal Weapon. Or I thought it was – turns out it was Lethal Weapon III (not sure there is much of a difference). There is a line that is memorable from the movie – "Close is a lingerie shop without a front window." I will explain what it means shortly; that is actually not the point of the post.

Well, I figure my boycott of Google dropped their share price several points, costing them millions of dollars, so I thought, “What the heck, I will use Google to figure this one out.”

I Googled it, and one of the first sites gave a detailed explanation of the bad guys using a lingerie shop as a front, blah, blah, blah. It was one of those question and answers where people pay other people to find the answer. Is it "Google Answers"? Since the boycott, I forget. Well, it turns out that someone paid for this answer, and it is wrong.

The right answer follows:

A cinematic Rorschach test: Please explain the following line of dialogue that is spoken by Det. Lorna Cole (Rene Russo) to Det. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in Lethal Weapon 3: "Close is a lingerie shop without a front window." Give up? You're not the only one. Lethal audiences are puzzled by Cole's taunt, uttered when Riggs admits he came this close to catching the bad guy. And even Riggs himself admits, "I don't get it."

So what does it mean? "Nothing," says screenwriter Jeffrey Boam. "It's a complete non sequitur. The (original) line was something like 'Close doesn't count,' or 'Close only counts with horseshoes.' Dick (director Richard Donner) is a fun-loving guy," says Boam, "and this thought just popped into his head. He said, 'Let's have her say something completely off the wall.'" Boam, who ; wasn't on the set at the time, quickly faxed Donner a dozen meaningless lines that began with the words, "Close is " Then the whole cast and crew started coming up with them. But the one they used came from Russo herself. "This is like some line from a Beatles song," says Boam. "I guess people are trying to figure it out."

Okay, back to my point. And it is not about Rene Russo and Mel Gibson rolling around on the floor (best part of the movie, by the by). It is that the Internet has a lot of misinformation being shared, stored and cataloged for others to find. Another point could be that although Mel Gibson is so hot, I could never be with him because he has better hair than me.

I mean, take this blog. No, don’t really take it, but take a look at it. I do very little research. I just type stuff in what turns out to be a suck-y word processor and some people read it. Okay, and I don’t mean anything negative by this, hopefully everyone with an average IQ can tell when I am off base (which may be most of the time). But, I think to myself, "why would anyone with an average IQ read me?"

I read from people who are smarter than me. Why read about people you already run intellectual circles around? That’s sort of like weight training with Pee Wee Herman. First, he probably can’t spot the weight you are benching, and second, he is a weird little man. Okay, I will admit it – I had to plant something about weight lifting in here. I went to the gym the other week, and hubbie wanted me to spot him. Luckily the bar did not crush his wind pipe when I failed to spot him.

I thought spotting looked cool, but as I was watching hubbie writhe in pain, I had a different thought, "I know nothing about spotting." The next thought was about bills and wondering if we mailed in his life insurance premium for the year.

I have bad news – no, the bad news is not that we failed to make the life insurance premium. Insensitive readers. The bad news is that he eventually struggled and got the bar off of his chest before it crushed any vital organs.

But the point, if you fail to find it thus far is this – don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. I will be taking off a few days, going someplace warm, and coincidently, this place has Swiss bank accounts as well. Hubbie is fine, really.