Honolulu, HI – At a recent screening of 90′s classic Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, University of Hawaii sophomore Natalie Umbilika, having just declared herself a zoology major, offered up her new-found expertise to some of her new-found college friends.
The movie is about a man whose abiding love for all creatures weird, wild and wonderful prompts him to support himself by rescuing animals from harmful situations, and it boasts no small amount of animals onscreen at any given moment. Not one to waste an opportunity to broaden her friends’ minds, Umbilika told the group as many pertinent facts about each animal as she could remember.
“I think I might have started it,” says friend Jocelyn Ornz. “In the beginning of the movie Jim Carrey is pretending to be a UPS man so that he can steal the little dog back from the mean fat guy. When that little white fluffball popped his head out from Jim Carrey’s shirt, I just lost it. It was so cute, I just said that out loud: ‘That’s so cute!’ Now I realize that might have let her feel she could speak during the movie.”
According to reports, Umbilika allegedly told the group that it wasn’t called a “little white dog,” but a “Shih Tzu”, a Chinese dog descended from one of the most ancients breeds of dog. She went on to speculate that it may have been a struggle for the movie production to get the Shih Tzu to the set because many airlines will not ship that particular breed if the flight will be more than 75 degrees Fahrenheit due to the Shih Tzu’s sensitivity to warm temperatures. Umbilika is said to have concluded her description with the fact that yes, Shih Tzu’s are quantifiably one of the cutest dogs in existence.
At this point in the film, the action jumps to the Miami Dolphins training facility where their mascot, a real dolphin, is captured and loaded onto a tarp to be taken away. An exact transcription of the movie night taken by Gooden Dunn, an over-eager courtroom stenography major, illuminates Umblika’s excitement at seeing the dolphin.
Umblika: Ooh, did you all see that? That was a dolphin! It was tough to see but I’m guessing it’s a Common Bottlenose, based on size, color, and the fact that the Common Bottlenose captured the American imagination in Flipper, 1964. I’ll bet the fish the bad guys fed it to lure it over was an adolescent King Mackeral, more commonly called a Kingfish, which are plentiful off the coast of Miami.
Trey Peterson: Gee, thanks for that helpful and informative tidbit, Skipper.
Gooden Dunn: (in the style of Ace Ventura) La-hoooo-ser!
Witnesses to the event report being stunned by the breadth of Umbilika’s knowledge. In some, but not all accounts, the depth, height, and/or width of her knowledge was also mentioned.
“It never ceases to amaze me how the smartest people can be so goddamn stupid,” says Trey Peterson, creator and performer of the snarky comment seen above in the transcript. “It’s not that she was wrong about anything and under different circumstances all that crap about the animals might actually be interesting. Impressive, at least. She’s just an idiot is all.”
Although the first ten minutes of the movie certainly provided opportunity for Umbilika to showcase her knowledge and enlighten her friends, the last three minutes that the group watched proved to be an overwhelming onslaught of animal factoids the likes of which no man should be forced to endure. For those of you familiar with the film, you may have guessed that this is the part in which Jim Carrey arrives back at his apartment after successfully returning the Shih Tzu to its rightful owner, being duly compensated for his efforts, and convincing his landlord that he’s not keeping any animals in his apartment. As soon as he closes the door, of course, all hell breaks loose as the dozens of animals he is harboring in the apartment come bursting forth. The effect of so many animals to categorize and describe all at once was disastrous for both Umbilika and her friends. Gooden Dunn’s transcript shows the horror:
Umbilika: Oh wow, there’s a basset hound, derived from the French “bas”, which means “low”. Originally bred to have osteochondrodyplasia, or dwarfism. Don’t let them swim, the short legs can’t take it! Um, so many birds, what are they? Oh, ah. Oh, it’s a smooth-coated otter, Lutrogale perspicillata. Found in the Indomalaya ecozone, what’s it doing in a Miami toiletbowl? Ah! Skunk! Mephitis Mephitis! Well developed anal scent glands! Ooh, capuchin monkey! Um, uh, only sleeps at lunchtime, trained to help quadraplegics and serve food in restuarants while wearing silly hats! Oh! Squirrel! Um, uh…nuts! Penguins! Magellanic penguins! Kingdom: Animalia! Phylum: Chordata! Class: Aves! Dear God, so many parrots! Ah! Ah! Chameleon! Raccoon! Ah!
Trey Peterson: Turn it off! She’s having a seizure! Gooden, you have the remote! Quit writing! Gooden, Jesus Christ!
Umbilika was eventually hospitalized that night. Her friends say they will never watch another movie with her ever again – not at all because she was extremely annoying and ruined their happy nostalgia with her know-it-all interruptions and fun facts. Those, her friends say, were so interesting and so thoughtful. They are only concerned for her health and so they wish it to be known that their request that Umbilika never come back was not motivated out of dislike for such an accommodating friend, but due to the fact that there could be animals around at any moment and they would not want to get so worked up again.
Currently at the Leahi Hospital with her jaw wired shut and Planet Earth on BluRay, Umbilika is more than ok with that.
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