How Fat Bastard, Cartman, and Jabba the Hut Conspired to Ruin My Life
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/New Line Cinema/LucasfilmThe below is an excerpt from T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People by Ian Karmel (and Alysa Karmel, PsyD), available now.I still remember when I first saw Fat Bastard waddle onto the screen in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. It was in the Regal Cinemas off 185th on opening night, June 8, 1999. A movie like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me coming out when you’re a 14-year-old boy is like Adele releasing an album the day after you get dumped. The synchronicity is divine.Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the first movie in the series, was as funny as anything I had seen before in my dumb little life. The bad guy, Dr. Evil, puts his pinky to his lip for no reason when he talks, and his voice sounds like Lorne Michaels’. In one scene, he made a comically paltry demand for “one million dollars,” and when that shit dropped in 1997 it was everywhere. Everywhere.Read more at The Daily Beast.