music

To My 3000th Visitor, The Internet, And New Friends

5 Comments

The 3000th visitor to “I, Splotchy” was only here briefly, only stopping for 0 (zero) seconds.

Here are the details regarding their location:

Continent: Europe
Country : United Kingdom
State/Region: Slough
City: Perivale
Lat/Long: 51.5333, -0.3167

Here’s that location on Google Maps (click on the image to see something more humanly readable):

I could be wrong, but I believe Slough is the same Slough where the UK version of The Office was supposedly set. Another useless fact from me (someone who has zero concept of geography in England), you’ll see “Hammersmith” near the bottom of the map, which is referenced in a song lyric I posted here.

The thing I found most interesting was where the user was hitting my site from:

A Head Full Of Wishes

A Head Full Of Wishes is a fansite for the bands Galaxie 500, Luna and their offshoots. It’s run by a very nice guy in the UK, Andy Aldrige. Andy (or someone at his site) apparently found my description of a Luna show I saw in St. Louis. They posted a link to this posting of mine, and a few people have clicked through it to see what I have to say about Luna.

The strange thing is, that it was this very same website through which I first made an attempt to interact with people over the Internet whom I did not already know. In the mid-90’s, I signed up for Andy’s Galaxie 500 mailing list, and carried on the geeky kind of conversations one does when obsessed with a subject.

Tonight, I did a bit of research, and was able to dig up messages from me in the alt.music.galaxie-500 newsgroup from 1997, ten(!) years ago.

Some really positive things happened as a result of reaching out to these people. I was able to share in something that I cared about with others — and it so happened that many of these people were pretty damned wonderful.

Andy was gracious, funny, and a fan I would imagine any band would kill for. He worked it out with Luna that he issued a vinyl single for the band, with money out of his own pocket. I think I bought 6 or 7 copies out of the 1000 copies he made, just to give him the support he richly deserved.

Andy’s “Dear Paulina” single:

I don’t doubt that if my wife and I made it out to London that Andy would play the gracious host. I could just sense his goodness and decency from reading his thoughts and observations, and reactions to my own observations.

Through Andy’s Galaxie 500 list, I also met the drummer for Wild Carnation, the band of Brenda Sauter (ex-bass player for The Feelies). He was also a really sweet, good-hearted person. My wife and I went to New York City for the first time in the late 90’s, and he and his wife met us and gave us a whirlwind tour of the city. They took us out to eat at a favorite Mexican restaurant of theirs in Greenwich Village. I still can’t get over how it’s possible to make a connection with people through webpages and email. It’s pretty amazing. Humbling, even.

I sort of lost interest in Luna late in their career, and eventually unsubscribed from Andy’s list, but I still remember the people I met there. It’s so odd that now I am meeting a whole host of new people, whom I’m never met, but on occasion there is still some sort of profound connection when sharing my thoughts with them, and reading the thoughts they share with me.

And now it seems to have come full circle.

Crazy.

movies

Ten Mysterious Movie Quotes

9 Comments

Okay, if it’s not too obvious, this is a variation on the lyrics quiz I recently posted. In this case, you just need to figure out what movie each quote is from. Feel free to comment on the movie as well, if you have a hankerin’.

We love talking of the movies ’round these parts.

All of the movies I’m quoting from have a place in my heart for one reason or another.

As you probably can imagine, searching for the quote is considered cheating.

===========================================
UPDATE:

Okay, since nobody got #3 and #9, I’m going to just answer them and be done with it.

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1. “Are you waving the flag at me?”
 &nbsp  — Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark), Pickup on South Street (identified by bubs)

Oh, man, this movie. One of my favorites by Samuel Fuller, who has really done some wonderful movies. This quote’s greatness is only amplified by the fact that it was a delivered in the 1950’s, when the US was knee-deep in patriotism, blacklisting and the Cold War. The line just drips with cynicism, as Richard Widmark’s character snarls it at an FBI agent, who tries pushing his “You’re an American, not a Commie” button to recover some microfilm Widmark unwittingly pickpocketed off a Soviet agent.

Wow.

Some people like to say, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” but I’ll stick with this quote.

2. “An intellectual carrot? The mind boggles!”
 &nbsp  — Ned “Scotty” Scott (Douglas Spencer), The Thing From Another World (identified by bubs)

I have only seen this movie once or twice, and honestly my memory of it has faded. The John Carpenter remake is one of my favorite movies — it’s actually much closer to the source material, Joseph Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?”.

Still, I shot up when this line was delivered. An intellectual carrot? A mind boggling? I am so there.

3. “How does it feel? Getting paid for it? Getting paid to sit back and hire your killings… with the law’s arms around you? How does it feel to be so goddamn right?”
 &nbsp  — Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), The Wild Bunch (never identified)

One of my favorite lines, delivered by one of my favorite character actors, in one of my favorite movies. The answer to Deke Thornton’s question — “Good. It feels good.” — to which Deke then replies, “You sonuvabitch!” Man, I love this movie.

4. “Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!”
 &nbsp  — Noel Dichter (Kris Lemche), eXistenZ (identified by mob)

I’m not sure how many people actually caught this David Cronenberg movie, but it’s one of my favorites of his. It’s got a lot of great acting talent, some notably being Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm. Jude Law gives a great performance, before all of his ridiculous overexposure where he seemed legally required to appear in 80% of all movies in a given year. Jennifer Jason Leigh has a great role as game designer Allegra Geller.

This quote is actually repeated by several characters in the film, but the Noel Dichter character says it first, right before shooting her with an organic gun that has teeth for bullets. Cool!

5. “Nothing is more reliable than a man whose loyalties can be bought with hard cash.”
 &nbsp  — Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), The Ninth Gate (identified by samuraifrog)

I love pretty much every movie by Roman Polanski I have ever seen. I have probably seen The Ninth Gate more than any other. I’m not exactly sure why, I just find the need to rewatch it from time to time.

Frank Langella’s Boris Balkan character is one of my favorite parts of the film, whether he makes an appearance as a politely sinister phone voice urging Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) to continue his mission despite the growing pile of dead bodies, or is scaring away a group of amateur devil worshippers with a loud “BOO!” after strangling their leader.

Balkan desribes his faith in Dean Corso in the quote cited, but turns out to be mistaken. Corso wants more than the money.

6. “I said I wanna see a Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight, now cough it up.”
 &nbsp  — Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), After Hours (identified by becca)

This is one my favorite Martin Scorsese films, possibly only being outdone by The King Of Comedy.

Who knew that a simple bagel paperweight could spark such an agonizing night?

7. “The enormous flies flapping slowly away into the sunset, small brown babies clutched in their beaks.”
 &nbsp  — Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk), The In-Laws (identified by bubs)

It has dated a bit, but I still think the original In-Laws is incredibly funny. The interplay between Alan Arkin and Peter Falk is fantastic, especially in the scene where their characters first meet at a dinner. That scene contains the above quote, as well as the equally classic, “Sadly, there is very little you can do because of the tremendous red tape in the bush.”


8. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
 &nbsp  — Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), The Princess Bride (identified by becca)

One of my favorite parts of this movie is the dialogue between the kidnappers of the Princess Bride – Inigo, Fezzik (Andre the Giant) and Vizzini (Wallace Shawn).

Inigo is filled with hate towards the six-fingered man that killed his father, but is a pussycat to everyone else, including the verbally abusive Vizzini.

It’s probably my favorite line in the movie, for reasons I can’t or don’t really want to explain. It’s just nice.

9. “The commander’s dead. Everybody in the mine has gone insane.”
 &nbsp  — Sgt. Jericho Butler (Jason Statham), Ghosts Of Mars (never identified)

It should be acknowledged that I really have an unhealthy soft spot for the films of John Carpenter. This movie was the first time I saw Jason Statham, a pasty-faced British action hero. I like the way he talks, his accent and phrasing, and I especially liked the way he delivered the above lines.

10. “Do you realize I haven’t kissed you in over an hour?”
 &nbsp  — Ramon Miguel ‘Mike’ Vargas (Charlton Heston), Touch Of Evil (identified by samuraifrog)

Oh man, one of my all-time favorite movies. This is my favorite Orson Welles movie — better than Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Lady From Shanghai. This is the one.

So many fantastic performances — Welles himself delivers the best acting performance of his career. Then there’s Marlene Dietrich, Akim Tamiroff as ‘Uncle Joe’ Grandi, Dennis Weaver as a motel manager (a definite precursor of Norman Bates, and perhaps even a little creepier than Bates), Mercedes McCambridge as a leather-clad butch biker chick(!) — goddammit, there is some wonderful acting in evidence. Wonderful story, wonderful cinematography, music, *everything*.

There are many quotable lines from this movie, but my favorite is the one above, a kind of a clunker piece of dialogue badly delivered by Charlton Heston near the beginning of the movie. It’s one of the few pieces of cheesiness in the movie, but a piece of cheesiness I have infinite love of.

I’ll actually say this line to my wife from time to time.

lyrics, meme, music

Comedy Is Easy, Lyrics Are Hard

10 Comments

===========================================
UPDATE: As to not make people go insane looking for the answers to the lyrics that have not been identified, I thought I would add the answers, but encoded by ROT13.

This will do a couple things — first, give you a hint as to what the unidentified song is, and second, give you the ability to decode the song/artist if you really want to know what it is.

There’s a ROT13 decoder at the top right of my blog now.

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samuraifrog posted a boatload of lyrics to guess, and I got one.

I was unable to get any on the quiz of becca’s (who answered an impossible number of the questions on le frog’s quiz).

So, I thought I would give this a whirl.

The Rules
Put your iTunes (or whatever) on random. Post lyrics from the first songs that play. Post it on your blog & let everyone guess the song & artist. Looking the lyrics up on any search engine is cheating!

1) Gur Cvkvrf – Avzebq’f Fba
One night upon my motorcycle through the desert sped
And smashed my body so that all my friends thought I was dead
My sister held me close and whispered to my bleeding head
“You are the son of a mother fucker”

2) Ybhqba Jnvajevtug VVV – Crbcyr Va Ybir
Movie stars smooching in an old movie
Kid turns away, and says it’s yucky
The kid knows something that the grownups don’t
When the kid grows up after that, the kid won’t


3) Donovan – There Is A Mountain (johnny yen)
Caterpillar sheds his skin
To find the butterfly within

4) Ebola Uvgpupbpx – Genzf Bs Byq Ybaqba
On a clear night you can see
Where the rails used to be
Oh it seems like ancient myth
They once ran to Hammersmith

5) Pnegre Snzvyl – Lbh Qravrq Lbhe Ybir
That was the day when you went away
You broke my heart in the month of May
That little ring I gave to you
Was to show you dear my love was true


6) Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah (samuraifrog)
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?

7) Jnyxre Oebguref – Avgr Syvtugf
There’s no hold
The moving has come through
The danger brushing you
Turns its face into the heat and runs the tunnels
It’s so cold
The dark dug up by dogs
The stitches torn and broke
The raw meat fist you choke
Has hit the bloodlite


8) The Who – Christmas (samuraifrog)
Did you ever see the faces
Of the children, they get so excited.
Waking up on Christmas morning
Hours before the winter sun’s ignited.


9) The Ramones – Rock ‘N Roll High School (samuraifrog)
I just wanna have some kicks
I just wanna get some chicks


10) The Human League – Don’t You Want Me (tim)
I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar
That much is true

11) Phegvf Znlsvryq – V Cyna Gb Fgnl N Oryvrire
I met a friend of mine the other day
He said he couldn’t stay
Because the world was going to end
At the end of May
Well, May done passed
And everbody still sittin’ here on their ass
With some talk
They’re now waiting for The Judgment Day


12) George Jones – The Race Is On (mob)
I feel tears wellin’ up cold and deep inside
Like my heart’s sprung a big break
And the stab of loneliness, sharp and painful
That I may never shake
You might say that I was taking it hard
When she wrote me off with a call
But don’t you wager that I’ll hide in sorrow
When I may break right down and bawl

13) Fynqr – Bar Jnl Ubgry
They asked me to sleep on the floor
The people were running galore
They asked for the time to make a number of changes and I let them


14) They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse In Your Soul (samuraifrog)
There’s a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free
Though I respect that a lot
I’d be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts

15) Zbzhf – Nqnz Terra
If my name were Howard
I’d dress up in a cumberbund and fez
If my name were Howard
I’d puff all night on funny cigarettes

If my name were Howard
I’d be terrified of getting sucked buck naked down the drain
Into a damp, dark world of flesh-eating spiders
If my name were Howard
I’d have thought of South Park and be rich as Midas

16) Gur Fuvaf – Erq Enoovgf
And I can’t go into this no more,
It puts too many thorns on my mind,
And the necessary balloon lies a corpse on the floor,
We’ve pissed on far too many sprites,
And they’re all standing up for their rights.


17) The Trashmen – Surfin’ Bird (samuraifrog)
Don’t you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word


18) Rick James – Superfreak (tim)
She’s a very kinky girl
The kind you don’t take home to mother

19) Qr Yn Fbhy – Rlr Xabj
May I cut this dance to introduce myself as
The chosen one to speak
Let me lay my hand across yours
And aim a kiss upon your cheek
The name’s Plug Two
And from the soul I bring you
The daisy of your choice
May it be filled with the pleasure principle
In circumference to my voice


20) Harry Belafonte – Jamaica Farewell (samuraifrog)
But I’m sad to say I’m on my way
Won’t be back for many a day
My heart is down, my head is turning around
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town

meme

Five By Five

7 Comments

mob lobbed this meme over the fence, so’s I haveta jump on it before it ess-plodes.

INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1. What Greg Likes
2. A Blog of a Good Time
3. Wine When Drunk From a Mug
4. Dear Bastards…
5. I, Splotchy

Select five people to tag:

1. Tim
2. Tim
3. Tim
4. Bubs
5. Tim

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Aw, man, were that I blogged back then. What the hell was I doing? I think mostly temping, doing the odd film job, riding my bike a lot, dating the woman who I would eventually marry.

What were you doing 1 year ago?

I dunno, just being a parent, mostly. Our littlest guy just had his 1 year birthday. From reviewing some old Gmails, it looks like I was also passive-aggressively avoiding helping a coworker with a website of theirs.

Five snacks you enjoy:

1. Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked Ice Cream
2. Wheat Thins Chips (not really grammatically correct, but tasty)
3. Spoonfuls of Creamy Jif peanut butter alternating with swigs of grape juice
4. 2 Chocolate Caramel Ghirardelli Squares (a habit I have at work in the afternoon)
5. Plain M&M’s and Coke (movie snack)

Five songs that you know all the lyrics to:

1) “Only Life” by The Feelies
2) “Dead” by The Pixies
3) “Exhuming McCarthy” by R.E.M.
4) “Three Girl Rhumba” by Wire
5) “Burn Hollywood Burn” by Public Enemy

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

1) Go back to school for a degree in public interest law.
2) Make a low-budget feature film.
3) Put aside moolah for the kids’ education.
4) Eat out all the damned time.
4) Stop worrying about money, fer crissakes.

Five bad habits:

1) Procrastination
2) Avoidance
3) The occasional nose-picking
4) Having good intentions with no follow-through
5) A complete lack of concern for my personal appearance

Five things you like doing:

1) Wrestling with the kids
2) Talking with the kids
3) Makin’ music
4) Makin’ whoopee
5) Watchin’ movies

Five things you would never wear again:

This might be difficult.

1) Wool
2) Mittens
3) A ski mask
4) Speedos
5) Denim jacket

Five favorite toys:

Argh, another hard one. I’m going to expand it a bit, to include technology kinda things that aren’t necessarily objects.

1) iPod
2) Bittorrent
3) DVD Player that has a USB port, and can play AVIs
4) The MAME Arcade emulator
5) Blogger [sniff] [cough]

Uncategorized

Wow, I Have A Stopwatch Now!

1 Comment

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

–Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”

How long did it take me to walk from work to my train in Union Station?
10 minutes, 26 seconds, and .71 hundredths of a second.

How long did it take me to walk from my train in Brookfield to home?
16 minutes, 23 seconds, and 64 hundredths of a second.

How long did it take me to write this post?
4 minutes, 22 seconds and 13 hundredths of a second.

two buck schmuck

Wild Hogs Couldn’t Drag Me Away

5 Comments


Lessons learned that are unlearned must then be learned again.

My teacher? Wild Hogs.
The lesson? Unfunny comedies have little to no redeeming value.

But, wait. I get ahead of myself.

I rolled my shitty minivan into LaGrange a little early this windy, humid night. I popped over to Walgreen’s for a “king”-size M&M’s, dropped over to Border’s to pick up a new collection of Noam Chomsky essays, then ambled down to the cinema.

I noticed that the stretch of LaGrange Road that the theater sits on has not one, not two, but three fancyish ice cream cafes. Isn’t that a sign of a corrupt and decadent society prior to its imminent, violent collapse? “Let them eat Cold Stone Creamery…”

So, I lay down 2 bucks for a ticket, and 3 bucks for a large RC cola. I tried reading my book in the several minutes before the theater went dark, but the lights were just too damned dim. So, I watched the advertising slides. Many of the slides were those dumbish word puzzles by Coca-Cola, which struck me as odd since the theater has Royal Crown on tap, not Coke.

There were some local ad slides which drew my attention. I’m going to be so nice as to give these local establishments some free advertising. A realtor had what I would consider an unfortunate name and slogan for her business – “Thinking Real Estate?? Think Katrina”. I’m sure she is quite a competent and lovely person, and would never be party to the destruction of a major metropolitan area. The National Weather Service hurricane names are a bitch, ain’t they?

Hey, guess what else I saw a slide for? An ad for local movie reviewers Kaplan Vs. Kaplan! I checked out their review of Hot Fuzz to compare it with my own. Goddammit! They use words like ‘panache’ and ‘madcap’ and never stoop to use the word ‘balls’. Oh, balls.

I saw another ad indicating that one can rent a slide on a LaGrange Theater screen for as little as $8.00 per week. Is this something the Two Buck Schmuck would be wise to invest in? I’m thinking about doing it, maybe for a month. But then I’d haveta come up with an ad, maybe a slogan. Here’s a few I’m considering.

Two Buck Schmuck – Like A Monkey’s Ass In Your Face
Two Buck Schmuck – Belittling Movies You Might Like Because I Am Filled With Bitterness
Two Buck Schmuck – Not Affiliated With Kaplan Vs. Kaplan

Okay, okay, enough of that now. To the review.

Wild Hogs was everything you thought it was when you had the misfortune of accidentally stopping on a commercial for it as you fast-forwarded your DVR to get to the final scene of Law And Order, where Sam Watersten sputtered out a ridiculous legal argument as the strings swelled up behind him. Yes, it’s pretty bad.

It’s like City Slickers, but on motorcycles and without the live calf birth. I can’t imagine any guys in the midst of their own midlife crisis getting any comfort from four middle-aged guys riding bikes, coming into confict and eventually triumphing over a real motorcycle gang led by a tattooed Ray Liotta. Who was this movie made for? The family of six that sat in front of me, four of which were children under nine?

Why did anyone else attend this movie? Are they writing snarky movie reviews on the Internet, too? Man, I thought I was the only one.

I literally felt the motion of plodding through the various jokes of this movie — setup, expectation, punchline, setup, expectation, punchline.

Kyle Gass of Tenacious D was at a carnival giving a homoerotic spin on various current pop songs. Someone please give me the hormone injection that makes me think he is funny. I am Vitamin-D deficient, apparently.

John C. McGinley plays a small part as a gay motorcycle cop that comically hits on the gang. Ah, the gays. What can’t they funny up? At one point McGinley pulls off his shirt, revealing a very muscular body, which kind of surprised me. I was thinking, man, did this guy get pumped up for this role? You have critically-acclaimed movies like Raging Bull where everyone goes on about how DeNiro trained to get his boxer’s physique, then ate all that food to become the fat Jake LaMotta at the end. But, man, to do all that work for a piece-of-crap movie? Somehow, the silliness of it all becomes overwhelming.

There were a few bright spots in the movie. M.C. Gainey, who plays Tom Friendly, the *only* mildly good thing about Season 3 of Lost, shows up in this movie as a biker dude. He doesn’t have a great performance; I was just happy to see him.

There was a kung fu biker I recognized from the only Walker Texas Ranger I have ever seen, Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire. His name is Arnold Chon. I just had come upon the Walker TV movie and had to watch it, primarily due to the amazingly hammy expressions made by Mr. Chon. You catch a brief glimpse of him giving one of those goofy grins of his in this movie. I am not exaggerating — it’s truly amazing to see someone intentionally look so goofy.

Probably the most positive aspect of this film is that it’s a road movie. I am a sucker for road movies. I think I could watch an hour-and-a-half of stitched together driving scenes from various godawful movies and I would say, “Y’know, it really isn’t that bad.”

jung vf fcybgpul?