Portland’s Willamette Week went door-to-door to find people who aren’t voting for Obama and to ask them why not. The article is fuzzy on why the newspaper did this, exactly — Willamette Week is often fuzzy on why it does a lot of things — but one of the answers they got caught my attention.

It’s from Connie Pashall, age 56, who says she’s an independent. Willamette Week’s summary of her position:

A supporter of President Clinton during the 1990s, Pashall admits that conservative websites have given her pause about Obama’s heritage. “If there’s anything to his Muslim background, then we’d have al-Qaeda working on our country from the top-down.”

Assuming Willamette Week quoted her correctly, this means Connie Pashall is an astonishingly ignorant woman, one of those people you know exist but rarely encounter, like a billionaire, or a hunchback.

First of all, she apparently believes that being Muslim is the same thing as being connected with al-Qaeda. Really? There really are people who actually think this? I mean, I guess I knew there were. Like I said, it’s just weird to actually come across one.

But what’s more, in Connie Pashall’s view, you don’t even have to be a faithful, practicing Muslim now — all you need is a Muslim background, and that’s enough to make you in league with the terrorists.

I hope the “conservative websites” that have given her pause are on the fringe and don’t represent normal, rational conservatives. I don’t think they do. There are plenty of valid reasons not to vote for Obama, but the belief that his possible Muslim background equals a current sympathy with al-Qaeda is not one of them. That’s an invalid reason, a dumb reason, a reason held by dumb people, a dumb reason held by dumb people such as Connie Pashall, age 56, of Portland. Who is dumb.

“Jaws: The Revenge” has been one of the most requested films for Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com, and I’m pleased to announce that its day in court has finally arrived. My on-the-ball editor over there even went to the trouble of locating the film’s nonsensical, explosive climax on YouTube and has included it with the column.

One of the reasons I put this movie off for so long was that it came out in 1987, and I’ve already covered three films from that year: “Superman IV,” “Over the Top,” and “Masters of the Universe.” The last two were back-to-back and just a few weeks ago, so I wanted to put some distance between them and “Jaws.” Ideally, I’d like to hit a film from every year since about 1980, just to keep things broad and wide-ranging. In the meantime, was 1987 the worst year in the history of film? You’d think so.

“The House Bunny” is surprisingly funny. Maybe not such a surprise if you’re aware of how talented Anna Faris is, but still. FUNNY.

Interesting fact: All 35 of Woody Allen’s films combined have not made as much money as “The Dark Knight.”

[Photo taken this afternoon in a Portland grocery store parking lot.]

“All right, ladies, let’s go to the grocery store!”

“OK! Let me just put on my too-tight low-rise jeans that leave the back side of my muffin top exposed!”

“And should I change out of my pajamas?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m wearing the pants that only come up to the bottom of my butt.”

“What if we get to the store and discover we’re out of wiper fluid?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring this jug of moonshine just in case.”

“OK, we’re ready!”

“Let’s go!”

“Don’t forget to lock the double-wide!”

Hope you weren’t planning to sleep anytime soon! Or ever!

[YouTube]

It occurred to me while watching “Elegy” that Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz have the same nose.

We don’t really assign writers to specific “beats” at Cinematical, but somehow I became the guy for stories relating to the Harry Potter date change. (If you haven’t heard, the film version of “Half-Blood Prince” has been pushed back to July.) Since I know many of you are fans, I thought I’d link to the stories so far.

Here’s the original announcement about the date change. Be sure to read the mildly insane comments that people have posted.

Then there was the matter of Entertainment Weekly’s suddenly obsolete cover, which hit stands the day after the announcement.

Next, the news that with Harry Potter out of the way, “Twilight” was moving to its old slot.

Finally, a succinct debunking of several myths surrounding the Harry Potter date change, for your enlightenment.

By the way, the rivalry between Harry Potter fans and “Twilight” fans — where one group adores its franchise with all its might and can’t tolerate anything good being said about the other franchise — is stupid, to put it mildly. To put it less mildly, it’s incredibly stupid. To put it less mildly still, grow up and quit being such retards. Love, Eric.

Best jokes at Bob Saget roast were either by or about Cloris Leachman: “She’s so old she lost her virginity to a druid.”

So here’s the thing. After I mentioned in “Snide Remarks” last week that I’d been in California for a wedding, I intended to write another column this week about the reception, where my job was to play pretty music on the piano.

But try as I might, I could not come up with more than five so-so paragraphs about the experience. My cousin asked me to play the piano; I did; the end. Nothing funny happened, nor did anything mundane happen that I could make seem funny by means of my scintillating wit and my gift for manipulating the English language.

So there is no “Snide Remarks” this week BUT! If you’re interested, here are the five paragraphs I managed to squeeze out before I hit the wall. Think of them as deleted scenes on the DVD of my life.

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