One of those pound-me-into-ash prisons ...

I just got done watching Office Space, one of my all time favorite movies, on E!, one of my all time least favorite networks.

I have this movie on DVD -- the "Special Edition With Flair!" even -- but for some reason (such as accidentally letting Ms N near the remote again) I am watching the edited-for-content, riddled-with-commercial-breaks, safe-for-TV flairless edition.

I never figured out why it is that people do this. You could have a full movie, complete with extras, deleted scenes, subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Swahili, and Klingon, the original colorful metaphors as originally spoken by the original actors, and every last body part in its full unblurred splendor sitting on your shelf untouched for the past seven months, but flip through channels and find the TV version with the best lines dubbed over and nary a nipple in sight and that you watch. And while you complain about the stuff that's edited out, as you get up during the many commercial breaks to either get a drink or get rid of one you won't simply grab the DVD so you can watch the real thing.

Actually, there is a side benefit to watching a movie that's been edited for TV. For while the scenes that answer the age-old question "Why does my DVD remote have a slow-motion button?" are cut completely (and any remaining naughty bits deemed too essential to be cut obscured by that dang blur box), the voice-over substitutions for the original potty-mouth scripts can be quite comical.

Nothing quite beats the voice-over of Kurt Russell when Backdraft was first aired on network TV. Amidst a tense argument between Russell and some other guy, Kurt, teeth a-glistenin' and hair a-wavin', shouts, "Well, Forget-it You!"

Forget-it you? Forget-it you? Who the forget-it did they get to write the voice-overs? And what the forget-it was he thinking?

If all they wanted to do was clean up the language, they could have Kurt say "Forget you!" Granted, it's not nearly as forceful as the original, but it is actually something somebody might actually say in such a moment. Such a dub might even go unnoticed by the viewing public, what with their attention diverted by those a-glistenin' chompers and all.

"Forget-it you," on the the other hand, sobers everyone out of their a-glistenin' stupor and forces them to consciously think about what must have been said in order to warrant such an odd comment.

Office Space is chock-full of great lines. Unfortunately, most of the best were voiced over.

I missed one of my favorite lines, where the character Michael Bolton calls his Grammy-winning namesake a "no-talent ass-clown", but luckily Bolton was not finished.

This particular gem:

If we get caught laundering money, we're not going to white-collar resort prison. No, no. We're going to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison!

did not escape the censor's attention. Safe-for-TV Michael Bolton fears being sent to one of those "pound us into ash" prisons.

The commercial breaks also gave me a chance to go Googley, which is how I came to find bullshitjob.com, a site where you can listen to many clips from the movie in all their original glory. Not only do they have their tribute to Office Space but they also have their own Bullshit Job Title Generator.

One can but wonder what kind of exciting work a Dynamic Optimization Orchestrator gets to do for a big company. Oh, the excitement! It's almost enough to give you the O-face.

Forget-it yeah!