Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(1944)

There was a time, long ago, when criminal scum was regarded simply as that. Anyone who might be so debased as to commit a crime like jaywalking or cursing in public has clearly been without a moral compass since birth and no amount of explanation or blame shifting need be considered. It is a scientific fact that some people are just plain evil through and through, and are put on this Earth simply as a test for the good people like us to see if we will be corrupted ourselves or will we meter out the necessary cruel and unusual punishments as we should.

In the film “I Accuse My Parents” Jimmy Wilson proposes the radical notion that his involvement in organized crime is the fault of his boozehound mother and unconcerned disconnected father. Sad as this may sound, one must question the validity of this claim as it’s made clear in the film neither of his parents have any actual connections to organized crime but Jimmy doesn’t think this is an overly important point. This raises a hard question. Is Jimmy stupid?

Well, at the beginning of the film he did win an essay contest at school so he can’t be all that dim-witted. Then again his essay was about how great his mother was. Maybe Jimmy is stupid after all.

The stupidity is further exemplified by Jimmy throwing himself litterally at the feet of the first mob-boss’s girlfriend he meets while shoeing customers at his shoe store job. Keep in mind, Jimmy insists this is his parents fault.

But how was Jimmy to know this beautiful strait-laced classy dame who probably smelled like caramelized pears was the mob-boss’s girlfriend? How was Jimmy to know the club she sings at was run by that mob-boss? How was Jimmy to know the courier job he accepted from the mob-boss was offered to him by that same mob-boss? How was Jimmy to know those envelopes he was distributing all over town for the mob-boss were full of evil mob-boss stuff? How was Jimmy to know the guy he gets in a gun fight with WAS A MOB-BOSS!?! HOW!?!

No one could have foreseen this very gradual series of events transpire over the course of 60 minutes. If only Jimmy’s parents hadn’t been so consumed with tipping back the hooch and engaging in domestic disputes to warn Jimmy of his impending doom! Oh it IS all their fault! Why!?! Why didn’t they hover over him like a pair of micromanaging drones, dictating to him his every move clear into adulthood!?!

“I Accuse My Parents” wasn’t a bad movie per sé. I think it missed its own point a bit though. Seems like the writer or director was afraid to show what a real dysfunctional family looked like. Or maybe this was the writer’s definition of one. I don’t know what the reason is but I blame the writer’s parents.

It just looks like Jimmy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and we meet him when he is seemingly doing well in school and has a lot going for him. Happenstance ran him into a girl who unfortunately was wrapped up with the wrong people which is probably her parents fault. Jimmy just doesn’t come off as the type to willfully and knowingly get involved with an organized crime circuit. The judge at the end even agrees with me and yet still admonishes Jimmy’s parents as if they had something to do with the whole situation. Lay off, judge! This is good ol’ Jimmy Wilson’s parents you’re talking to, not Jeffery Dahmer’s! They had a bit too much to drink and went to the country club a bit too often. Is it their fault their son is just a dumb-dumb?

When I was just newly driving, a friend of mine started to want to hang out all the time. We’d go to a particular restaurant and get some piddly inexpensive thing and then sit and shoot the breeze. Never long into the conversation, this friend would start tapping on his phone and he’d ask if his other friend with whom I was less acquainted could join us. Not long after the other friend joined us did they suddenly need a ride somewhere real quick. I was always asked to wait while they went into a house and came back shortly after. One evening these events transpired like this and my two “friends” came RUNNING back out and told me to just drive. No satisfactory explanation was ever offered to me as to what the hurry was. This marked the last time I would be seeing this friend for a VERY long time.

Despite my dad having a beer instead of Pepsi at the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament in Los Angeles, California when I was 9 and despite my parents being members of the North American Camping Organization which is similar to a country club, I still had the wherewithal to realize I was being used as a freaking wheelman and I shut that shit down tout suite!

I’m not sure how I developed that kind of common sense, but I accuse my parents. I’ll stick to writing essays from now on, thank you very much.