The Chinese Valley Girl reminded me of another cultural variation. When I lived in NYC I would encounter the Chinese Ghetto Thug. They were young Chinese men, that seemed to emulate the typical male black that resided in, or around the housing projects. If you think ghetto slang/ebonics is hard enough to decipher. Try listening to it with a Chinese accent
Have you met a Korean slacker yet? Very LA phenomenon. They fall asleep in class, fail tests etc. Such a hard-ass culture but occasionally they kick up a stoner screwup type.
"Literally the only threat that wasn’t present was Godzilla. Yet conspiracy nuts still blame Mossad…because we all know that Jews can summon fog, ice, and rain at will."
Now I haven't read the talmud myself but schizophrenics on the internet have claimed for years that jews who study it can learn to cast spells that can change the weather.
Finally we have confirmation from a member of the tribe that they were right all along.
Apparently there's an incantation in the talmud that can summon mothra, a giant japanese moth monster. That's basically a stones throw away from being able to summon a giant bipedal lizard who can shoot blue beams out of his mouth.
What are the odds that Dave brings up godzilla right after admitting jews have magical powers? Pretty slim chances.
There's nine words in the sentence that mentions godzilla, the ninth of may was victory day in nazi Germany & they lost the war. The side that won the war used nukes that irradiated the water which created godzilla. The name david cole shares many of the same letters as the movie the davinci code, which sounds suspiciously like davinci cole, in other words dave code or dave speaking in code. Dave is well known for drinking liquor & as we all know anaconda malt liquor gives you "woooo" & anacondas are reptiles... Godzilla is a reptile.
Coincidence?
I think not.
The coded message is clear, Dave is telling us that the jews summoned godzilla to take out the helicopter.
👍🙂 Though I think you meant to respond to Abdul ... 🙂
But you -- y'all 🙂 -- might be interested in this old Atlantic article on "How America Lost Its Mind" by Kurt Andersen, the author of "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire":
Poor thing! You have been deprived! Thanks for catching my typo! Autocorrect turned it into "Mother" and then I corrected that phonetically Mothara.
BTW- thanks for the interesting Kurt Anderson links. I agree w/ him generally, but tend to think that the detachment from reality is not restricted to Americans (or those who lean right!) It really is universally rampant (IMHO)
When it comes to buying Dave a beer for the weekend- sermterms I derrit and sermterms I dern’t. And he did somewhat stiff his subs this week. But what the hell, it’s Memorial Day weekend. Enjoy.
Dave nice work. The genocide police reminded me of the COPS in Medieval Europe sketch from The Ben Stiller Show where they go around busting a drunken sorcerer conjuring fireballs out of the sky and such like. Can't wait for the movie stuff next week. We have a full blown moral panic here in Germany which most people here aren't swallowing for once. Kids singing a harmless song called Deutschland den Deutschen during a pub crawl in Sylt with the lyric "Ausländer Raus!" "NOOOO, where's my cyanide capsule? It's all over. Time to drink the potion." OK one dude gave the Hitler Grüß ironically, however this is a party song even migrant pub crawlers sing and these white kids have been doxed by the regime while suffering job loss and public censor. Meanwhile Hamas friendly Humanoids from Deep, that deep being the Mediterranean, sing "Gas the Shitty Jews!" while having their faces pixelated with NO job loss mainly because they don't have one. I checked X here and it doesn't seem like it was a popular move by the gobermint. They seem to be taking a page from the Stasi and declaring war on their own people while protecting sand nazis. I hope these kids make a case out of this but you can't really sue the gobermint in this country. Who would have thought that would be the case? Yuk Yuk. I'm so mad over the whole thing that I went on YouTube and listened to Erika, twice! It's a good song. I really hope our fearfull leaders have finally jumped the shark with this nonsense.
It's crazy, the Germans are terrified of themselves-- this is why no Europeans want the U.S. to leave NATO-- everyone is terrified of the German domination that would happen in a EUTO, and the Germans are most terrified of them all!
Speaking of Deutschland, I looked today at the film The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), which has AMAZING period detail!
If George Clooney wasn't wealthy & an 'A' list celebrity, Amal the Reich visitor wouldn't have looked at him once. I agree, “international human rights lawyer" is on the same page as an "activist" & the "World Health Organization" & without funding from woke poser nin-com-poops, they can't survive. If the world is saddled with "Ocean's 14" we know George Clooney needs more money to fund his wife's vanity project.
Not a big difference between a deluded older man with a super model girl-toy introducing her as his "interior decorator" to justify their "relationship" & a super model girl-toy “international human rights lawyer". All that is missing is the "fry voice" & "Valley girl accent". I'd guess that black lives matter & certain kente cloth shawled members of congress & the senate, aren't the only ones "taking-a-knee".
The essential stupidity of Hollywood is epitomized by the long list of credits that had to be attached to every piece of crap it produced. I'm sure a lot of those credits HAD to be fake.
.... and what about the CATERING credits? The credits only list the caterer, but never the poor guys who work for the caterer ( the BEANS, as you might call them). Don't they deserve some credit? What about the guy that grows those little cherry tomatoes, and sells them to the caterer, so the film crew can eat them? Doesn't he deserve the credit? And on and on it goes. This dilemma first entered my brain at age twelve, just as I was starting to do the you-know-what to myself.
Yeah Dave, don't let the Substack overwhelm you! It's like drinking out of a firehose, little cautious dipping sips so you don't get your head blown off.
Speaking of young Asian actresses, just watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) and crushed heavily on Ellen Wong as 17 year-old schoolgirl Knives Chau....
Yeah, her initial unveiling in the film as a 17 year-old schoolgirl is what took my breath away. Also liked when she was ranting to her gal pal while bent over the tub and rinsing blue dye out of her hair.....
Ahh, minor attraction, OK! I thought you meant she was just a bit player in the film....
Reminds me of a time at work, a guy brought to me a pallet of tires to load into a truck-- he said, "Are you TIRED? Because you will be." I was like, why is this guy asking me if I'm tired? Then after a minute it clicked and I said, "Oh, TIRES, I get it!" and the guy doubled over with laughter.....
Dave I'll take what I can get. 3 things per week is ideal but by all means take a day off when you need to.
Also, good for you for letting that actress know about her deficiency. I've worked for people who will not tell an actor or actress when they have a serious drawback. The first place I interned, my boss wouldn't tell this one actress that she had a weird eye and would never book real work. Not a lazy eye, like a weird staring eye. Just one. When you see her in person she's pretty normal looking, but on film or in stills she just looks...weird.
That gal has got to be 40 now and is still doing audience work, and copy & credit indies. I tried reaching out to her once on social to offer some advice - she didn't want to talk to me. She could probably play zombies or homeless people, but she wants to be a stah of course. She works a lot at Halloween Horror Nights/Haunted Hayrides every October, of course.
I wish I'd just blurted something out in the meeting instead of letting her leave all deluded like that.
Why-- but you know Karen Black never thought she looked slightly cross-eyed! Someone coulda told her "girl- you look funky on film" and where would we all be now??
There are people where all you see is the weird eye, though. Karen Black's really versatile and holds her own in a scene - she was also probably helped by being willing to play roles like "LSD hooker" when that was more controversial than it is now. Or take, like, Forrest Whittaker. He can convey gravitas etc. You're not always thinking, "what's up with his eye??"
Sometimes you see a reel where it's not 100% great, but there are great moments. One actor, when I was working at an agency, submitted a reel where he throws the worst punch ever. My grandma's dead, and SHE throws a better punch, you know? But he could do other stuff. His comic timing was good, there was enough in there that one of my colleagues wanted to bring him in for a meeting. (I passed).
With this girl, all you saw was weird staring eye. I followed her on IG for a while until it got too depressing. Her "I'm playing a zombie at the Haunted Hayride!" looks are flawless - they're perfect. But she was always paying for new glam headshots and all you can see is that weird fucking eye. As I said, I tried reaching out to her and recommending that she target more character roles. But she has this dream of like, being in a romcom or something (I guess a Hallmark Channel romcom at this point).
Qué pasa con Takimag going sub at ten pesos/month? I adjusted the settings on my browser to get the pop ups but now the stripes are warning me, "only a few more freebies, then pay up, you putz." Guess Taki must knead the dough. If that Chinese duo sent 32M packages from 2020 to 2023, that's 23,272 packages/day every day (1461 days from 1/1/20 to 12/31/23). That's a lot of egg rolls.
I have been really sick the past few days (bedridden and sore everywhere rolling around in pain to the point I couldn't go to a broadway play last night I already bought a ticket for) and this was a wonderful pick me up that miraculously healed me (the flu medication might have also helped but I'm still leaning towards the miracle hypothesis).
BTW did you know that after Carter lost the election the people of Australia saw the video of him yeeting that rabbit and offered to make him their Prime Minister?
Mike, you're a great friend and I'm honored that my words were able to help you out of your sickbed! No better use for a column.
The Carter rabbit incident might've been the first time I started making political jokes. I was too young to make Watergate jokes, and Ford falling down jokes wrote themselves. But Carter and the wascally wabbit...that might've been the first time I started making fun of politics.
Hi Dave! When it comes to putting out a highly readable and fun column, you always "derrit!" Hey, I left a couple of beers in your fridge. Hope you are feeling better.
The Swedish chicks going gaga for black dudes reminded me of a friend's experience. (Mid-western white guy of German extraction) My friend is a jazz trumpet player. Was in a band playing around Europe and Scandinavia in late 70's early 80's when perms were in style (even for men!) The band went to Sweden and he had women approaching and propositioning him asking him (point blank!) if he was black. They weren't very interested when he said "no"! He told this story in front of his wife, so I don't know if he ever did a Dolezal and said "yes!"!!
Dave, why not do a "My Breakfast with ______" type of film with some raconteur you know-- like Andy Kaufman did with "My Breakfast with Blassie" in 1982? (I guess the Hutton Gibson film will be like that.)
Moving this question over from a past thread: wondering what Dave thinks of Renny Harlin's film Prison (1987), and if he thinks Edgar Wright's zombie film Shaun of the Dead (2004) added anything to the genre....
Great question. I never saw Prison, but regarding Shaun...I'm typically not a fan of comedy horror. I don't mind it in a movie like Return of the Living Dead, perhaps my favorite zombie film ever. The difference between Return and Shaun is that Shaun asks us to cheer for a fuck-up whose decisions get everyone killed (even his own mom), and we're supposed to be "awwww....how charming." I dislike movies where the lead character does everything wrong but you're expected to like him anyway. In Return, the humans fuck up like crazy, but it's presented neutrally, like, "hey, here's what they did, here's the terrible consequences." But the "lovable hero who fucks everything up but you're supposed to cheer his hero's journey" thing is one of my least-favorite tropes.
Yeah--- Edgar Wright seems to always maintain a puckish tone, no matter what happens in the story. If he did a Holocaust film, he'd turn it into a whimsical, CGI-laden fluffernutter (think Wertmuller's Seven Beauties (1975) with Simon Pegg in the Giancarlo Giannini role, Queen Latifah in the Shirley Stoler role, and with all the nightmarish comedy taken out). I haven't seen Wright's 2017 film Baby Driver, which looks like it's more serious in tone than his other stuff. Maybe the best thing he's done is the TV show Spaced (1999-2001)?
You make a good point about Pegg's movie persona--- b/c if you ask people if they like Edgar Wright's films, you're also kind of asking, "Do you like Simon Pegg as an actor?"
One of Wright's fave films from his childhood is The Super Cops, a 1974 film directed by Gordon Parks and starring the late great Ron Leibman:
The Chinese Valley Girl reminded me of another cultural variation. When I lived in NYC I would encounter the Chinese Ghetto Thug. They were young Chinese men, that seemed to emulate the typical male black that resided in, or around the housing projects. If you think ghetto slang/ebonics is hard enough to decipher. Try listening to it with a Chinese accent
Have you met a Korean slacker yet? Very LA phenomenon. They fall asleep in class, fail tests etc. Such a hard-ass culture but occasionally they kick up a stoner screwup type.
Koreans have their share of slackers, but their family is embarrassed. This is not too different among successful white families, really.
Or how about this cultural variation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMeX3lmlrjw
"Literally the only threat that wasn’t present was Godzilla. Yet conspiracy nuts still blame Mossad…because we all know that Jews can summon fog, ice, and rain at will."
Now I haven't read the talmud myself but schizophrenics on the internet have claimed for years that jews who study it can learn to cast spells that can change the weather.
Finally we have confirmation from a member of the tribe that they were right all along.
Apparently there's an incantation in the talmud that can summon mothra, a giant japanese moth monster. That's basically a stones throw away from being able to summon a giant bipedal lizard who can shoot blue beams out of his mouth.
What are the odds that Dave brings up godzilla right after admitting jews have magical powers? Pretty slim chances.
There's nine words in the sentence that mentions godzilla, the ninth of may was victory day in nazi Germany & they lost the war. The side that won the war used nukes that irradiated the water which created godzilla. The name david cole shares many of the same letters as the movie the davinci code, which sounds suspiciously like davinci cole, in other words dave code or dave speaking in code. Dave is well known for drinking liquor & as we all know anaconda malt liquor gives you "woooo" & anacondas are reptiles... Godzilla is a reptile.
Coincidence?
I think not.
The coded message is clear, Dave is telling us that the jews summoned godzilla to take out the helicopter.
LOL! Thank you for the Sunday morning laugh.
Glad you got a laugh out of it, I certainly did while writing it lol.
"... schizophrenics on the internet ..."
LoL. "Snakes on the plane!!" 😉🙂
Pareidolia writ large:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
I'm sorry Abdul-- the ONLY ones who can summon Mothara are the tiny twins from Infant Island! No Talmudic incantations involved!!!
👍🙂 Though I think you meant to respond to Abdul ... 🙂
But you -- y'all 🙂 -- might be interested in this old Atlantic article on "How America Lost Its Mind" by Kurt Andersen, the author of "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire":
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
Archive link: https://archive.ph/prYcS
https://www.amazon.ca/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-History/dp/1400067219
Great links, thank you so much!
De nada. Share the wealth, praise the lord and pass the ammunition. 🙂
But quite a book of Andersen's -- highly recommended. The Atlantic article is a decent synopsis of it.
"Amurica" may well be "humanity's last best hope" -- as I think Lincoln put it. But so badly polarized is not a good prognosis.
Steersman-Do you mean to imply my belief in Mother and the twins is misplaced?
Is nothing sacred? 😉🙂
https://freethinkersanonymous.com/2017/02/nothings-sacred/
But I hadn't really known anything about Mothara/Mothra -- mea culpa ... 😉🙂 -- before Googling it just now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothra_(film)
Poor thing! You have been deprived! Thanks for catching my typo! Autocorrect turned it into "Mother" and then I corrected that phonetically Mothara.
BTW- thanks for the interesting Kurt Anderson links. I agree w/ him generally, but tend to think that the detachment from reality is not restricted to Americans (or those who lean right!) It really is universally rampant (IMHO)
When it comes to buying Dave a beer for the weekend- sermterms I derrit and sermterms I dern’t. And he did somewhat stiff his subs this week. But what the hell, it’s Memorial Day weekend. Enjoy.
Thernks!!!
You’re lucky you didn’t post anything, because I was ready to UNSUBSCRIBE!
LOL!!!!
I wasn’t just ready to UNSUBSCRIBE!, I was damn near ready to UNTHUBTHSCRIBE!!!
UNTHUBTHSCRIBE!!! UNTHUBTHSCRIBE!!!
Dave nice work. The genocide police reminded me of the COPS in Medieval Europe sketch from The Ben Stiller Show where they go around busting a drunken sorcerer conjuring fireballs out of the sky and such like. Can't wait for the movie stuff next week. We have a full blown moral panic here in Germany which most people here aren't swallowing for once. Kids singing a harmless song called Deutschland den Deutschen during a pub crawl in Sylt with the lyric "Ausländer Raus!" "NOOOO, where's my cyanide capsule? It's all over. Time to drink the potion." OK one dude gave the Hitler Grüß ironically, however this is a party song even migrant pub crawlers sing and these white kids have been doxed by the regime while suffering job loss and public censor. Meanwhile Hamas friendly Humanoids from Deep, that deep being the Mediterranean, sing "Gas the Shitty Jews!" while having their faces pixelated with NO job loss mainly because they don't have one. I checked X here and it doesn't seem like it was a popular move by the gobermint. They seem to be taking a page from the Stasi and declaring war on their own people while protecting sand nazis. I hope these kids make a case out of this but you can't really sue the gobermint in this country. Who would have thought that would be the case? Yuk Yuk. I'm so mad over the whole thing that I went on YouTube and listened to Erika, twice! It's a good song. I really hope our fearfull leaders have finally jumped the shark with this nonsense.
It's crazy, the Germans are terrified of themselves-- this is why no Europeans want the U.S. to leave NATO-- everyone is terrified of the German domination that would happen in a EUTO, and the Germans are most terrified of them all!
Speaking of Deutschland, I looked today at the film The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), which has AMAZING period detail!
If George Clooney wasn't wealthy & an 'A' list celebrity, Amal the Reich visitor wouldn't have looked at him once. I agree, “international human rights lawyer" is on the same page as an "activist" & the "World Health Organization" & without funding from woke poser nin-com-poops, they can't survive. If the world is saddled with "Ocean's 14" we know George Clooney needs more money to fund his wife's vanity project.
Not a big difference between a deluded older man with a super model girl-toy introducing her as his "interior decorator" to justify their "relationship" & a super model girl-toy “international human rights lawyer". All that is missing is the "fry voice" & "Valley girl accent". I'd guess that black lives matter & certain kente cloth shawled members of congress & the senate, aren't the only ones "taking-a-knee".
Great offhand reference to Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors!
I'm guilty of snobby as charged!
The essential stupidity of Hollywood is epitomized by the long list of credits that had to be attached to every piece of crap it produced. I'm sure a lot of those credits HAD to be fake.
"Associate producer" is always fake. It's a credit given in exchange for a favor.
Out of curiosity, did you ever stay to the very end, just to see your name in the credits?
Every time.
.... and what about the CATERING credits? The credits only list the caterer, but never the poor guys who work for the caterer ( the BEANS, as you might call them). Don't they deserve some credit? What about the guy that grows those little cherry tomatoes, and sells them to the caterer, so the film crew can eat them? Doesn't he deserve the credit? And on and on it goes. This dilemma first entered my brain at age twelve, just as I was starting to do the you-know-what to myself.
Yeah Dave, don't let the Substack overwhelm you! It's like drinking out of a firehose, little cautious dipping sips so you don't get your head blown off.
Speaking of young Asian actresses, just watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) and crushed heavily on Ellen Wong as 17 year-old schoolgirl Knives Chau....
Dave doesn’t strike me as the “sipping” type. More akin to a less druggy Hunter S. Thompson.
Yes! More boozy, less druggy.
She was cute, but just a minor attraction, and now I’m over her
Yeah, her initial unveiling in the film as a 17 year-old schoolgirl is what took my breath away. Also liked when she was ranting to her gal pal while bent over the tub and rinsing blue dye out of her hair.....
I have no idea who she is. I just wanted to make a pun about “minor attraction”
Ahh, minor attraction, OK! I thought you meant she was just a bit player in the film....
Reminds me of a time at work, a guy brought to me a pallet of tires to load into a truck-- he said, "Are you TIRED? Because you will be." I was like, why is this guy asking me if I'm tired? Then after a minute it clicked and I said, "Oh, TIRES, I get it!" and the guy doubled over with laughter.....
Hee Hu run in front of car get tired. Hee Hu run behind car get exhausted
LOL!
Dave I'll take what I can get. 3 things per week is ideal but by all means take a day off when you need to.
Also, good for you for letting that actress know about her deficiency. I've worked for people who will not tell an actor or actress when they have a serious drawback. The first place I interned, my boss wouldn't tell this one actress that she had a weird eye and would never book real work. Not a lazy eye, like a weird staring eye. Just one. When you see her in person she's pretty normal looking, but on film or in stills she just looks...weird.
That gal has got to be 40 now and is still doing audience work, and copy & credit indies. I tried reaching out to her once on social to offer some advice - she didn't want to talk to me. She could probably play zombies or homeless people, but she wants to be a stah of course. She works a lot at Halloween Horror Nights/Haunted Hayrides every October, of course.
I wish I'd just blurted something out in the meeting instead of letting her leave all deluded like that.
Why-- but you know Karen Black never thought she looked slightly cross-eyed! Someone coulda told her "girl- you look funky on film" and where would we all be now??
There are people where all you see is the weird eye, though. Karen Black's really versatile and holds her own in a scene - she was also probably helped by being willing to play roles like "LSD hooker" when that was more controversial than it is now. Or take, like, Forrest Whittaker. He can convey gravitas etc. You're not always thinking, "what's up with his eye??"
Sometimes you see a reel where it's not 100% great, but there are great moments. One actor, when I was working at an agency, submitted a reel where he throws the worst punch ever. My grandma's dead, and SHE throws a better punch, you know? But he could do other stuff. His comic timing was good, there was enough in there that one of my colleagues wanted to bring him in for a meeting. (I passed).
With this girl, all you saw was weird staring eye. I followed her on IG for a while until it got too depressing. Her "I'm playing a zombie at the Haunted Hayride!" looks are flawless - they're perfect. But she was always paying for new glam headshots and all you can see is that weird fucking eye. As I said, I tried reaching out to her and recommending that she target more character roles. But she has this dream of like, being in a romcom or something (I guess a Hallmark Channel romcom at this point).
Some people do just have faces for VO basically.
Without her we'd all have crashed on the Airport 1975 plane!
Qué pasa con Takimag going sub at ten pesos/month? I adjusted the settings on my browser to get the pop ups but now the stripes are warning me, "only a few more freebies, then pay up, you putz." Guess Taki must knead the dough. If that Chinese duo sent 32M packages from 2020 to 2023, that's 23,272 packages/day every day (1461 days from 1/1/20 to 12/31/23). That's a lot of egg rolls.
I have been really sick the past few days (bedridden and sore everywhere rolling around in pain to the point I couldn't go to a broadway play last night I already bought a ticket for) and this was a wonderful pick me up that miraculously healed me (the flu medication might have also helped but I'm still leaning towards the miracle hypothesis).
BTW did you know that after Carter lost the election the people of Australia saw the video of him yeeting that rabbit and offered to make him their Prime Minister?
Mike, you're a great friend and I'm honored that my words were able to help you out of your sickbed! No better use for a column.
The Carter rabbit incident might've been the first time I started making political jokes. I was too young to make Watergate jokes, and Ford falling down jokes wrote themselves. But Carter and the wascally wabbit...that might've been the first time I started making fun of politics.
Can Jews summon wildfires? Hit heavy smoke on the road last night?
Another very funny and refreshing TWTP.
Thank you!
Hi Dave! When it comes to putting out a highly readable and fun column, you always "derrit!" Hey, I left a couple of beers in your fridge. Hope you are feeling better.
Greatly appreciated, my friend!
The Swedish chicks going gaga for black dudes reminded me of a friend's experience. (Mid-western white guy of German extraction) My friend is a jazz trumpet player. Was in a band playing around Europe and Scandinavia in late 70's early 80's when perms were in style (even for men!) The band went to Sweden and he had women approaching and propositioning him asking him (point blank!) if he was black. They weren't very interested when he said "no"! He told this story in front of his wife, so I don't know if he ever did a Dolezal and said "yes!"!!
Dave, why not do a "My Breakfast with ______" type of film with some raconteur you know-- like Andy Kaufman did with "My Breakfast with Blassie" in 1982? (I guess the Hutton Gibson film will be like that.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWCJM8wvcg8
Moving this question over from a past thread: wondering what Dave thinks of Renny Harlin's film Prison (1987), and if he thinks Edgar Wright's zombie film Shaun of the Dead (2004) added anything to the genre....
Great question. I never saw Prison, but regarding Shaun...I'm typically not a fan of comedy horror. I don't mind it in a movie like Return of the Living Dead, perhaps my favorite zombie film ever. The difference between Return and Shaun is that Shaun asks us to cheer for a fuck-up whose decisions get everyone killed (even his own mom), and we're supposed to be "awwww....how charming." I dislike movies where the lead character does everything wrong but you're expected to like him anyway. In Return, the humans fuck up like crazy, but it's presented neutrally, like, "hey, here's what they did, here's the terrible consequences." But the "lovable hero who fucks everything up but you're supposed to cheer his hero's journey" thing is one of my least-favorite tropes.
Yeah--- Edgar Wright seems to always maintain a puckish tone, no matter what happens in the story. If he did a Holocaust film, he'd turn it into a whimsical, CGI-laden fluffernutter (think Wertmuller's Seven Beauties (1975) with Simon Pegg in the Giancarlo Giannini role, Queen Latifah in the Shirley Stoler role, and with all the nightmarish comedy taken out). I haven't seen Wright's 2017 film Baby Driver, which looks like it's more serious in tone than his other stuff. Maybe the best thing he's done is the TV show Spaced (1999-2001)?
You make a good point about Pegg's movie persona--- b/c if you ask people if they like Edgar Wright's films, you're also kind of asking, "Do you like Simon Pegg as an actor?"
One of Wright's fave films from his childhood is The Super Cops, a 1974 film directed by Gordon Parks and starring the late great Ron Leibman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTFrmOXWem4
Someone put Harlin's Prison up at YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8iMVXC_-8k