I've had it with these motherfucking critics on this motherfucking plane!

Sometime in the year that was Wisconsin/Chicago 2005 (not to be confused with the summer music festival Wisconsin/Chicago 2005, which existed only in my head), I watched an interview with Samuel L. Jackson on Conan O'Brien wherein a number of things were bandied about and discussed. At the tail end of the interview, Mr. Jackson offhandedly mentioned how he was doing a film called Snakes an a Plane, and that he had taken the part after having only seen the title page of the script. And with that I was onboard, too.

At some point doing the production of said film, known on the internets as SoaP, the studio big wigs were on the verge of renaming it Pacific Air Flight 121, to which Mr. Jackson and many others promptly stood up and said, "No, good sirs, that would be a mistake of untold proportions." (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) His objections, and the fact that some movie goers might unknowingly mistake SoaP with that other summer plane movie about a more serious and factual airline disaster, caused the studio to stick with Snakes on a Plane. Which, according to Chuck Klosterman, might have been a mistake.

While Mr. Klosterman holds the unfortunate belief that Appetite for Destruction is the best album of the 1980s, he is, for the most part, a very witty and oftentimes erudite observer of pop culture -- sort of like the Dave Berry of my generation. Only with more Schedule I drug references. And he's never written a movie starring Tim Allen, either. But one can hope.

Time will tell if Mr. Klosterman's prediction that SoaP's production and marketing strategy will spawn a whole host of fan-on-demand choose-your-own-adventure flicks. One can imagine the possible direct-to-DVD sequels to SoaP. (Am I the only one to have seen Anaconda 4 and Cruel Intentions 13 on that one rack in the back of Wal-Mart?) Yet, it's hard to figure how another movie could duplicate the type of internet buzz SoaP has enjoyed for the past few months, even while in its preproduction stage (ie, before principle photography had even started). Regardless, Mr. Klosterman's article on the Esquire website is a fun read, at the very least, for it's amusing anecdote concerning inappropriate comments shouted at movie screens during trailers for the aforementioned 9/11 airline film.

And also for its discussion of the concept of irony, a notion which, after some 20-30 odd credit hours in English Lit, I still don't completely understand.