If you were walking down the street and a crazy-looking homeless lady wearing a Target bag fashioned into a serape turned to you and said, "Beware the Ides of March," what would you do?
1. Laugh in her dirty face and walk away. 2. Ask her what she meant by that, and then laugh in her dirty face. 3. Get totally freaked out and watch your step all day. 4. Wonder why you are walking outside, as it is Houston.
If you were Julius Caesar, you would opt for choice one or two and then wind up dead several hours later.
That's right, March 15 is that infamous day in history when Caesar was betrayed by his so-called comrades and stabbed by his bestie Brutus. We can all thank Shakespeare for stamping this fateful day into popular culture due to his historical fiction drama Julius Caesar.
The thing that gets us is why he didn't heed this abnormal warning. It's not every day that someone tells you to take stock of something, so why the ignore? This wasn't a silly e-mail he received from one of his friends telling him that if he didn't forward it on, he would never get married. Those are the types of warnings that you should regularly delete from memory (unless they are about Microsoft giving you money -- they might!).
Other warnings worth slighting are those from your grandmother, when she tells you not to take cigarettes from strangers because it could be drugs, or when your mom says if you swallow your gum it will come out in your poop. These types of cautions are merely suggestions, and they rarely amount to much. But warnings from seers, fortune-tellers, ghosts, strangers or anyone else that looks weird or scary should be taken more seriously.
Movie characters are classic for not taking advice and, by golly, they always get it in the end. We dug up some of our favorite warnings in movies that should have been paid more mind to, but alas were not.
5. Who Framed Roger RabbitThroughout much of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger and his whiskey-slugging pal Eddie Valiant are on the lam, hiding from The Toon Patrol's band of laughing hyenas. For whatever reason, those hyenas think everything is incredibly funny all the time. It was a running remark throughout the film that if they didn't stop their obnoxious laughter, one day they were "gonna die laughing." Do they take this advice and quiet their crack-ups? No way. In the end, the hyenas do indeed laugh themselves to death. But at least they went with a smile!
4. One Crazy Summer
One Crazy Summer is one of those '80s flicks that you may have forgotten about. It stars John Cusack and Demi Moore and an ensemble cast of 1980s nerds such as Bobcat Goldthwait. The plot, if you can call it that, has something to do with a summer at the beach, Moore needing to save her grandfather's house, a sailboat competition and one of the nerd's sisters and her recently neutered dog. All of this is interspersed with Cusack's character's cartoon drawings.
There is a set of obnoxious girls who feel it is their job to make nasty faces at the neutered dog and his pathetic owner, calling him a "dog from Mars." However, the girls are warned that if you make faces like that and someone slaps you on the back, you will stay that way forever! Guess what, snotty little girls who are mean to dogs? It totally comes true! Children everywhere stopped making stupid faces at each other after this movie was released.
3. I Know What You Did Last Summer Okay, so you just happened to be out partying one night with your bros and you just happened to hit and kill a man crossing the road and then you just happened to dump his body in the ocean. We've all been there!
If you had found yourself in such a situation and a year or so later you received an anonymous letter that read, "I know what you did last summer," you are screwed. Please take this note as a warning. You are going to die. Should you further hide all associations to the aforementioned hit-and-run? Of course not. What is worse, going to jail or being chopped up in a factory by a man with a hook? Take the advice of the note-sending stranger and watch your back.
2. The Shining
Danny, Jack Nicholson's psychic son in The Shining, is warned that something potentially fatal is going to happen to him and his family if they take up residence in a virtually abandoned hotel for the winter season. In fairness, it is his imaginary friend Tony that notifies him, but nonetheless he has been sufficiently warned with visions of blood pouring out of elevator shafts.It matters not. The threesome find themselves in the middle of a haunted Indian burial ground of a hotel and Jack Nicholson almost kills them all. It's sad to think that the entire situation could have been avoided had anyone believed the words of a talking pointer finger.
1. Ghost Patrick Swayze, a ghost, is on the hunt for his killer and finds that all clues lead to his old partner, who is now putting the moves on his wife. Luckily, Swayze finds friendship and assistance in a fantastic Whoopi Goldberg, who can hear dead people. Goldberg goes to warn the naive Moore of the trouble she is in with the famous line, "Molly, you in danger, girl?"
If you were Demi Moore, would you believe Whoopi Goldberg, who was claiming to be in communication with your dead husband? Don't forget she looked crazy in this movie, as well. No, of course you wouldn't and neither does Moore. The result: She almost winds up dead at the hand of her husband's killer.
Moral of the story, always listen to Whoopi Goldberg.
