It's not what it sounds like

I've had an actor following me around the last couple weeks. As I have mentioned in the past, I enjoy watching bad/cheesy movies. I hit Demonoid (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) looking up anything I could think of, and doing some cross-referencing to find more. One of those was the Starship Troopers triology. I've only seen the first one as of yet, and I was a bit distracted by the sounds of Robert A. Heinlein turning over in his grave.

Along the way, I decided to look for some Rifftrax (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?). For those of you who don't know, Rifftrax is a project being run by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. As with MST3K, Rifftrax is all about poking fun at movies while you watch them. Only in this case, the movies are recent big budget films, and the Rifftrax themselves are MP3s you listen to while the movie plays.

But I digress. One of the Rifftrax I grabbed this time was for Highlander. So I'm watching the movie, and chuckling at the comments being made by Mr. Nelson and his fellow MST3K alumni Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, when I'm suddenly knocked for a loop. The bad guy, the Kurgen, shows up, and my first thought is "My God. It's Sergeant Zim from Starship Troopers. I totally forgot about that." I went onto IMDb (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) to verify, and it was indeed the same actor, Clancy Brown.

So, having had that amusing moment, I went on with my life. Then, two nights ago, I'm watching Gargoyles, and I suddenly realize that this one voice actor sounds real familiar. So, I look it up on IMDb. For some reason, the site doesn't have that particular character listed, so I poke around elsewhere, and find a listing which says that the character Wolf is voiced by...Clancy Brown. I figure it's just one of those things where you never notice something until it's pointed out to you, and then suddenly it's everywhere. Like how I never noticed the Pontiac Grand Prix until I bought one, and then every other car on the road is a Grand Prix (granted, it was a very popular model).

I forgot about it soon afterward, as people usually do. Then, just a few minutes ago, I popped in a copy of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, a movie I've been meaning to see since like High School. I was surprised while watching the credits to see that there's a stack of actors in it that I know. Though I think I already knew John Lithgow was in it. Then, tucked in there at a point calculated to be burned into my memory, I see...Clancy Brown.

I'm getting the feeling that when I go to work tomorrow, Clancy Brown is gonna be sitting on the hood of my car, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife and giving me a knowing grin.

-Long Days And Pleasant Nights

Oh, hai, Blogosphere!

There are times when you hear about a movie or a TV Show, and everyone goes on about how terrible it is. People continually make jokes about one scene, or one line of dialogue, and you feel like the only one on Earth who hasn't tasted the bitter dregs. So, you finally check it out, and it's not what you expected. Sure, it's bad, but you've seen plenty worse. Or it got so hyped that by the time you do see it, the actual product is a let-down.

I wish I could say this was the case with The Room, which I just checked out an hour ago. I was told it's a terrible film, and it is. And the line I kept hearing about, "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" is just as ridiculously over-the-top as people claim. Hell, Wiseau even milks the giant cow as he shouts it.

Lemme back track a bit for people who haven't heard of this film. It's a low-budget ($8 million, which is actually a bit impressive when you consider Wiseau funded it himself) movie directed by, produced by, and starring Tommy Wiseau, a name that is destined to go down in history next to  Ed Wood, Jr. It's a movie about a love triangle between a man, his finance, and his best friend. There's also numerous sub-plots, but there's no point going into them because none of them are ever resolved, and are often completely forgotten the scene after they're introduced.

Walking in, I knew very little about the movie, except that it was terrible, and someone named Lisa was tearing someone else apart (fun fact: as I suspected, the line is a Shout Out to Rebel Without A Cause). From the title, I had assumed the movie took place entirely in one room, perhaps during a party, or a group of people who found themselves trapped in a room together, something like that. Nope. I can't say why the movie is called The Room, except that most of the scenes do take place in one room (though I blame that on the budget more than anything else).

The only other thing I knew about the movie before watching it was that it was a melodrama black comedy. The strikeout is due to a bit of Soviet Revisionism that took place regarding the movie's genre. Wiseau made the movie as a serious, albeit dark, film, exploring concepts like lust, betrayal, and softcore porn. After a few viewings, it became pretty clear that the movie was so bad as to be downright hilarious, so Wiseau suddenly pulled a 180 and claimed that the movie was a black comedy. Take a look around, you won't be able to find anything official written about the movie without the words "black comedy" chucked in every sentence or so.

It's one of those films that's so bad, it's tough to pin down one thing that was exceptionally bad about it. It's more like "What wasn't exceptionally bad about that movie?" The acting ranged from mediocre to terrible, especially in the case of Wiseau. Large portions of the movie were clearly (and poorly) dubbed over. There were a lot of shots inserted that were absolutely unnecessary. For instance, there's a part in the end where a television is picked up and thrown during an angry rampage. The "action" stops for a moment to show a gratutitous shot containing nothing but the TV hitting the ground and smashing. As if Wiseau was worried that if he didn't include that shot, the audience would spend the rest of the film wondering if the TV got broken or not. Or Lisa ordering a pizza for delivery, complete with 555 phone number.

And speaking of unnecessary shots, there were times the movie felt like a Cinemax Porn, due to a rather ridiculous amount of sex scenes. I counted six total, but since two were coitus interruptus, they probably don't count. I was surprised when I got a sex scene within the first five minutes of the movie. Then I was more surprised to get two sex scenes within the first five minutes. By the time the 3rd showed up, I was bored, and by the 4th I was annoyed. The movie was bad enough without having to see the middle-aged star's naked ass flopping around while he moaned like a (female) porn star.

The Room is just one of many bad movies I've been watching lately. I felt I had to comment on this one though, as it was so much worse than the others. I wanted people reading this to know, it's not just hype, the movie really is as bad as everyone says it is.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Waiting for a sign

Right now I'm listening to The Scarecrow by Avantasia. And every time I listen to this album, I get flashbacks to the very first time I heard it. I get this thrill inside me, and not just because it's an excellent Power Metal album. I always flash back to my first impressions. Like, hearing the first song and thinking, "Oh, my God. Is that Roy Khan?" Then I hear the second song, and I'm like "Oh, my God. Is that Jorn Lande?" Then I hear the third song, and I'm like "Holy fucking shit. Is that Mike Kiske?" I mean, Christ. Helloween pretty much gave birth to Power Metal, and here is the original lead singer of the band, assisting in the birth of one of the genre's finest hours.  It's like if I published a book, and Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein got in a fist fight over which one of them was my biggest influence. Which would be real impressive, as they're all dead, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, no long-winded essay here. Just, if you're looking for something new to listen to, give Avantasia a try. And if you like it, take a look at all the people that collaborated on it, and give their albums a listen. You may just find a whole new vista of music to appreciate.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Align yourself

I've been seeing here and there demotivators based on the alignment chart from Dungeons and Dragons. In particular, ones showing all nine alignments, using characters from shows/comics/movies/etc to illustrate the various alignments. The first one I saw showed how Batman, depending on the writer, can fit into any of the nine alignments (though the one for Chaotic Evil was a bit of a stretch).

While sitting around at work yesterday, I started coming up with an alignment chart based on characters from Firefly. At first, I thought "Nine characters, nine alignments, perfect." Then it occurred to me that I'd have to really stretch character interpretations to make three of the guys on the show evil. So, I ended up going with three bad guys from the show (well, one was from the movie). I figured I'd get complaints from doing a Firefly chart and leaving out (insert name of whatever character I left out here), but I figured I'd get even more complaints if I made (insert character name here) evil for the sake of getting all nine on the chart.

Tonight, I found myself continuing the trend with Babylon 5 characters. I'm thinking I might do Stargate SG-1 next, or I might get bored with this and move on to something else.

I'm including the charts in this post. Before any of you get all uppity and shout "Hey, why wasn't X included?" I'd like to point out that Wash is not on the Firefly chart. If I can be OK with excluding one of my favorite characters, you guys can suck it up, too.

 

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

I was thinking about those letters you sometimes get from family members who live far away and/or travel a lot. I've noticed that it seems that it's always the wife who writes the actual letter, even when she's not be the one who's the blood relative. I tried to imagine what a letter from the husband might sound like.

Dear Phil and What's-Her-Name:

I'm just teasing, Janie. I remember your name. Well, we had quite a year! Jimmy came home for a week from Des Moines or Spokane or wherever the hell it is he lives now. He's got a good job up there, which is good because I worked my ass off for ten years to pay for that degree! We met him at the airport, and he bitched about my driving on the way back, like he always does. We sat around and shot the shit for a while. We had some of that new beer Budweiser makes that's made from wheat. Humperdorf or Humperdink or whatever down the street told me it's pretty good, and he oughta know, being German and all.

Here's us in front of some
mountains somewhere

In May we went on a trip to England. By the way, DON'T GO TO ENGLAND IN MAY! The weather sucked, though the food wasn't as bad as everyone says it is. We stayed at some nice chateaus were they make wine, or was that when we went to France last year? Well, now that I think about it, I don't remember anyone at the place speaking too good English, and I'm pretty sure "chateau" is a French word. So that was probably France. Beautiful women there. In France, I mean. England probably had some lookers as well, but it was raining all the damn time so I couldn't see. I wonder why they call those guys Frogs? Or is that the French again?

Anyway, after that, we visited Gretta, who's living in Zurich now. It was nice there, and I got to see my grandkids. I taught them "pull my finger." Great kids, though I could swear that one of them looks a lot like that Hispanic guy that used to live down the hall from her when she first moved out. Your mother thinks I'm insane, but I don't know. I don't remember anyone in our family ever having hair that dark. We were supposed to go on a tour of the city, but my knee was acting up from all that rain in England, so I stayed behind while your mother went on it. Did you know they get The Simpsons out there? You wouldn't believe how weird they all sound in German. Funny, and all this time I thought they spoke Swiss out there. I asked Gretta's husband, and he said there isn't any such language as Swiss. Can you imagine that? That's gotta be weird, living in a country without its own language. Well, besides America, that is.

Oh, your mother said that Zurich is lovely. She's got about four zillion pictures to show you if you ever stop by to see us (hint, hint).

And so we're home now, resting our bones before the fire and all that stuff old farts like us are supposed to do. I spend most evenings at the V.F.W. Hall, and God knows how your mother keeps busy. You should give her a call some time, she pines like crazy for you kids. It's funny, you spend years scrimping and saving for your kids, praying for the day they move out so you can get some peace and quiet. And then one day you look around, and realize they're gone, and you don't have a clue what to do with yourself anymore.

Well, I gotta run. Hal Johnstone died last week. You remember him, guy from the V.F.W. who always gave you that cinnamon candy you hated. We're having a memorial or some crap for him tonight, and I gotta press my good pants for it.Hope you're doing well.

Love,

Dad

P.S.
I remember now. The French are Frogs. The English are Limeys.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Explicit content ahead. Viewer discretion is advised.

Last week, I was on the Wikipedia page for fuck. It was not the random wandering it might sound like. I'd gotten there while looking up the etymology of the phrase "screw the pooch." You can imagine how. I was there to try to find out where the word comes from, and I guess unsurprisingly, no one's sure.

I'm in your wikipedia
defacing your pagez

Anyway, it looked like someone else had gotten there before me, and had decided to have a little fun. In the middle of the article, something like the 3rd or 4th sentence in the second paragraph, someone had written something like "ooooFUCKYOUfuckfuckfuckyouOOooOOoofuck!" After applauding him for his creativity, originality, and high-brow sense of humor, I went to edit the page to remove it. However, someone else had gotten to it before me.

I was informed by a friend that Wikipedia has bots that go through the site removing vulgarity. They work pretty quick, too, as the brilliant observation made by the gentleman quoted above was removed less than one minute after it had been added. When I was told that, I found myself wondering if the bots would be so quick to spot defacement that was more subtle, especially on a page that's full of vulgarity by necessity. So I hatched a scheme, one that if the guy who'd been on the page before me had seen it, may have responded in an awed "no way d00d, u r teh g31gh!"

I figured, what's the point of defacing Wikipedia if it's gonna be noticed and removed before you can even show it to your friends? I wanted something more insidious, something that'd make you go back and say "Hey, did I just read that right?" Not that I think that I'm some sort of evil mastermind for plotting to edit a webpage with malice aforethought, but I've been Trolling since the World Wide Web was getting slapped on its backside by its obstetrician, and I've never been satisfied with doing the same-old same-old, so I figured I had to do something to keep my hand in.

What I did was simple. At several points throughout the page, I inserted the adjective "fucking" into a sentence. For instance, "Non-English-speaking cultures tend to recognize the word's vulgarity, however, it is generally not censored as fucking frequently as in English-speaking cultures." You probably noticed it, as you had advanced warning it was coming. However, the bots that caught the other guy in under 60 seconds didn't spot it at all, and it was about an hour and a half before my "contribution" was noticed and removed.

Subtlety is the key. A friend of mine posted a comment to another page which is still there. I won't say what page, or what the comment was, because I want to see how long it'll be before someone notices it on their own. It's been there since sometime last year, and I find it hard to believe that no one's spotted it for what it is. I guess no one's paying attention. That's what I get for picking a page as high-profile as "fuck." Next time, I'll have to pick something like the page of Dame Edna. I bet it'd be years before someone spotted a fake comment lurking in there.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

A Timeless Lesson

Last night I went to a bar for a friend's birthday party. When they closed, those of us who were left (myself and two people I don't know) decided to go to another bar a few blocks down. The clearest memory I have of that second bar is me trying a clumsy, absolutely terrible come-on line with the bartender. I don't even know why I did it, I don't recall considering her all that attractive.

Anyway, that's not the point of this. The night wore on, and I decided to go home. Outside were a couple guys talking about going to yet another bar. All of them were complete strangers to me, but that didn't stop one of them from asking if I wanted to go too. I said I did, because it seemed like the fastest way to get past these guys and to my car.

One of them, I think the one who asked if I wanted to go, said "I'll go with you, then." Great. Now I've got this guy I don't know who wants me to drive him to a bar that I didn't even want to go to. So I decide to find a way to shake this guy.

I had parked around the corner on a side street, and as we rounded the corner I saw that my car was the only one still there. I pulled out my keys and was about to unlock the doors when I suddenly realized that this guy doesn't know me from Adam, and therefore has no idea what my car looks like. So I started looking around, swinging my head in an exaggerated manner and slurring "Where's my car?" I was too drunk to act well, but that didn't matter because he was too drunk to notice.

He started looking around too, for some reason. Then he realized what he was doing and asked me what my car looked like. I decided to play up the drunken angle and responded "I can't find my car." I even pulled out my keys and started pretending to hit the unlock button, like I was waiting for my headlights to go off. I remember thinking that was an incredibly clever move.

At about that point I discovered that I had a real problem: my house keys were gone. My car keys and my house keys are on one of those key rings that can be pulled apart and separated. I must have done so without realizing it at some point when I was holding my keys. So I turned around and started looking for my keys, and saying so repeatedly. The guy didn't seem to interested in my lost house keys, he was more concerned with when we were getting to the bar.

Somehow, I managed to break away from him while searching for my keys. There's this line of stunted, gnarled trees along the bar, and I ducked behind them to hide, standing in about two feet of snow while wearing clothing inadequate for the weather. This is the kind of thing that seems sensible only to children and drunkards. Or drunk children.

I started making my way towards the back of the bar. My intention was to slip into my car and get away, my lost keys forgotten for the nonce. As I shuffled through the snow, I discovered a planter behind the trees when I tripped over it, losing my glasses.

I don't remember saying anything when it happened, but I must have, because as I was picking myself up, I heard a voice from the other side of the trees say "Did you find your keys?" You've gotta be kidding me.

I informed the guy that now my glasses were missing as well, somewhere inside a snow drift. I stood there, shining my cell phone around to see if I can spot my glasses, knowing it was futile. The guy starts asking me again when we're leaving, completely unsympathetic to my plight. I resorted to responding to everything he said with "I can't find my keys" or "I can't drive without my glasses." The second statement was a flat out lie. I can drive just fine without my glasses, assuming I don't have to scrutinize any street signs while moving. The guy still wasn't getting the hint.

You may be wondering why I didn't just tell the guy to go away. I don't know either.

I was standing by a fence that separated the parking lot from another one at this point. The snow was so high that it came up to about my chest, and I could see people looking for their cars and stuff. I had decided to try a new tack in getting rid of this guy, so I leaned over the fence and started making noises like I was being sick. Again, I didn't do a very good job, but the other guy was so drunk I probably could have just stood there saying "I am throwing up" and he would have bought it.

I'm not sure if it was that, or the sight of a police officer talking to a couple people in the parking lot that did it, but the guy finally scrammed. So I decided to accept the loss of my keys and glasses, jumped in my car, and got away before the guy changed his mind and came looking for me again.

About ten minutes later, I realized I was lost. Well, "lost" isn't the right word. I knew exactly where I was, I just couldn't figure out how I got there. I must have turned at some point without thinking about it. The shock of suddenly finding myself about two miles in the wrong direction sobered me up a bit, and I decided to go back and try to find my keys and glasses.

I pulled back up next to the now deserted bar, and trudged through the snow back into the hedge or treeline or whatever, falling a couple times. I spent a good long time looking around the vicinity of the planter for my glasses, with no luck.

Then, as though hit with some divine inspiration, I plunged my hand into a seemingly random bit of the snowdrift, and my fingers closed around my glasses. Wiping the snow off them and putting them on, I felt like I had experienced a small miracle. I turned around and headed back to my car. When I stepped out into the street, I heard a clink of metal. Looking down, I saw that I had kicked my house keys. I stopped right there, looked straight up into the starry sky, and gave God and whoever is the patron saint of drunken fools my heartfelt thanks.

The moral of this story is: If a stranger asks if you're going to a bar, keep walking.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights