sen. franken: smoking weed, playing in a rock band, and attempting to seduce a 17-year ...

In honor of Al Franken becoming the junior Senator from the state of Minnesota, I watched 'One More Saturday Night,' the 1986 film he co-wrote and co-stars in with his then-comedy partner Tom Davis. It's available on crackle.com, and it's worth a look (hey, it's free).

Franken and Davis play two members of a rock band called Badmouth (with Jon and Sally Tiven), who are playing a one-night stand in St. Cloud, Minnesota (even though the movie was shot entirely in Illinois). They meet a couple of local girls at the club, take them into their van to smoke pot, and invite them back to their hotel room, where Franken teaches one of the girls (who won't sleep with him) to play the chords to 'Wild Thing' on guitar, while Davis is having sex with her friend in the other room. The rest of the movie is typical mid-'80s madcap 'teen hi-jinks.

The music played by Badmouth in the movie was produced by Jerry Garcia (Franken and Davis were bonefide Deadheads, and of course named this movie after a Dead song), and the credits say that there was a soundtrack album on Motown, but I've never seen it. Take note that the title song posted above has zero in common with the Badmouth music, which is actually kind of cool bar-band rock. I'd have tacked on a scene with the band, but YouTube doesn't have any.

I think it's pretty cool that a United States Senator has this cinematic effort on his resume (and I wonder why Fox News hasn't put the dope-smoking scene in heavy rotation on the Hannity and O'Reilly shows), and that he also appeared on 'Solid Gold' doing an impersonation of Mick Jagger:

This is really a great country. Happy 4th of July.