I spend a lot of time on the TripleDoubleU. Well, a lot probably is an understatement of the amount of minutes I’ve allotted to pure waste. All I know, is it could be worse. Like, I could have burned the entire Memorial Day weekend away in front of my laptop, and that, um, didn’t happen.
My cousin, Steve, on the other hand, is what I would call a web dabbler. He dives into the stream of the information superhighway every now and again, and he phishes out some strange finds. Such as these two videos below.
Both feature interesting music choices and eclectic slide shows.
Both took a lot of time to make… but hopefully not an entire Memorial Day weekend.
To start off… I know, I know, the last two posts have been kind of lady-centric (which literally meant something way different back in the Old West… say it slowly), so why stop now on this Memorial Day. In addition to the current state of this blog, my last Musical Musings was about songs sounding the same that may or may not have sounded the same. Don’t hold that one against my credibility. Heck, don’t even believe that I have any credibility. But this time – I think I’m onto something.
Listen to the background music in this Maybelline commercial featuring Adriana Lima (hey guys, at least it’s featuring a Victoria’s Secret model… and a golf ball for some reason):
Now take a listen to Regina Spektor’s On the Radio:
(For the record I was at that Lollapalooza concert performance. I think you can see me in the crowd at the end. I’m the guy in a striped shirt, clapping. My face was a little blurry that day, so I kind of blend in.)
Now I dare you to go back and listen to the Maybelline commercial and see how they ripped her song off. (Maybe I should have put them on this page in the opposite order… oh well, deal with it.)
The song is definitely not the original, and amazingly, it’s coincidentally similar. Kind of like these posters:
Okay, it’s even closer than these two posters… but still.
This needs to happen stat! (Why does ‘stat’ mean ‘now?’ Does it even mean ‘now?’) So let’s get to work and watch this video!
Somebody get sand in Ziplock bags.
Somebody wrap said sand-filled Ziplock bags in purple tissue paper.
Somebody sprinkle fairy dust on the Pretty Pink Pathway.
Where are the pink and purple and white helium balloons? I specifically asked for pink and purple and white helium balloons!
Why does that creepy announcer dude keep laughing to himself?
I don’t care if your hands are sore from cutting out stars! We need more stars!
What the fuck is that? It doesn’t even look like a star! It looks like a fucking claw! Gah, you’re worthless!
Stop crying! You’re giving me a headache!
Seriously, if you don’t shut up – where’s all the breakable stuff, ‘cuz I wanna break something on your head!
Peeper get back here and give me back my GD real tiara!
Is it just me, or Gwendolyn way too into letting Peeper lick icing off her finger?
Who had fairy princess music on their iPod? Don’t tell me I put on my dancing shoes for naught!
I’ll make a fairly good wager that if ‘king dad’ got hit in the nuts holding that sliding princess piñata, he wouldn’t feel it (‘cuz he’s nutless, you see).
Hurry up baking! I wanna eat the fuck out of that princess cake.
You want your goody bag of treasures, right? Candy lipstick and bubbles don’t grow on trees!
Yesterday was a bittersweet sports night in Detroit. On one hand, the Tigers won their seventh straight game (barely… thanks, Zumaya). On the other, the Red Wings lost in overtime to the Chicago Blackhawks.
Somehow, through the course of starting the night at Comerica Park and stopping at the bar to watch the second half of the playoff game, the conversation veered to figure skating movies. Well, it started with the mere mention of figure skating; I steered it toward chatting about film.
The topic: What’s the best movie about figure skating?
The answer: TheCutting Edge (natch).
When I finish this post, I just might watch it again. That is, if I owned the DVD. Who am I kidding? I own it…
I mean, it could be argued that since Ice Castles was the first, it’s the best by some (I’ve never seen it, but after watching this video featuring its theme song, I feel like I have to).
Some tidbit facts about Ice Castles:
There’s a remake coming out next year to coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Star Lynn-Holly Johnson went on to be a Bond Girl to Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only.
Co-star Robby Benson almost won the role of Luke Skywalker in some movie I don’t recall, but he did voice The Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. He also directed episodes of Friends, apropos of nothing.
There really need to be five movies to tell the full story.
According to Wikipedia, there have been only 7 films about figure skating, while
skiing gets 9
surfing gets 11
wrestling and ice hockey get 14
(and oh yeah – cheerleading, skateboarding, and rodeo also get 7)
Forget the major leagues and any kind of racing, and you realize Hollywood hasn’t explored other sports all that much. Especially when you consider that the 14 ice hockey movies include the Mighty Ducks trilogy, a second Slap Shot film, MVP: Most Valuable Primate, and The Guru – heaven help all ice-skating related works.
There’s an old math equation that discusses the value of time:
Okay, it discusses more than (‘>’ in mathese) the value of time, but whatever. My point is that time equals money, and since there’s not enough time in the world for a good laugh, 5 Second Films is on the job and ready to help.
Here are a few quick laughs:
(FYI: Tio = Uncle… I guessed this and I’m correcto <–guessed that too!)
Grant it the survey was held with tongue planted firmly at the back of the throat (I know they say ‘cheek’ normally, but it is ‘growing’ out of your throat like a plant… this was funnier and not as gross in my head).
Anyjohnhughes, as much as I would love to see Ferris Bueller’s Laid Off, it ain’t gonna happen. As of now, not any one of those films have a chance – nay, a whisper – of development talk.
These on the other hand, these sequels have been chatted up dearly:
Why not? We’ve already seen these guys ride a cheetah in the wrong direction, and spoke down with W. And everybody knows National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was the best of Chevy Chase’s screen family’s exploits. Too bad they never made that Swiss Family Griswold that Chevy promised. Oops… they kinda did.
Ghostbusters 3(maybe to start filming this Christmas) – I am afraid of part 2:
This movie is the childhood dream behind a fourth Indiana Jones movie. Keep fucking Lucas and Spielberg away (should be easy since they had nothing to do with the first two), and let Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky’s script have room to glow. The duo writes for The Office;The Office can be is funny. Thank Gozer that Atari (wait… really, Atari?) got the Ecto-1 rolling on making a new video game based on the franchise. That probably helped accelerate enthusiasm, and something something clever about waking ghosts.
Wall Street 2(sometime in 2010) – Giant bull anyone?
Is Oliver Stone relevant? The antithesis to the ‘Greed is good’ mantra from the first film certainly is alive and unwell. And Michael Douglas isn’t doing anything except Catherine Zeta-Jones. Greed certainly is good for the studios, but this long-not-so-awaited sequel is a little more The Two Jakes, than The Color of Money(neither is much of a compliment). Wait… Shia LaBeouf is in it? Are you sure he’s not too busy?
I remember wanting to skip a summer baseball game to see the original. Would I want to skip a soccer game as an adult to see the sequel? No. But I would go see a midnight sneak preview afterwards. Director Robert Zemeckis – reigning king of creepy CGI work in ThePolar Express, Beowulf, and the upcoming A Christmas Carol (third holiday shout out on this post) – wants to include… creepy CGI. Could be an interesting mash-up of styles, and could make for a neat-o picture.
Some rumored projects that will most likely never see the light of the darkened theater. Never say never…
This happened on a news broadcast here in Detroit. I don’t know how someone pulled the wool over the network brass’ eyes (or whatever the furry dam-building creature’s pelt is called), or if someone genuinely possesses that name (doubt it would be filmed if that were true), but I won’t spoil the joke:
I’m glad no one at Channel 4 was so uptight to exclude the shout-out, on the off-chance it is real. That usual uppity highbrow mentality keeps cool commercials like this one out of the good ol’ U.S. of T&A:
But on theother hand, our Puritanical ways keep weird shit like this from happening on TV, too:
Born in 1982, Baby Pac-Man was the third game in a series that didn’t have much life left in it. Not because of the slow advancements in processing technology or because the games themselves were repetitive (well maybe that’s exactly why video games died back in the day), but just as quickly as arcades burst on the scene, the movement was deemed a fad in 1983 and they went away. (There were other reasons, too. Check ’em out here.)
SIDENOTE: That’s why Nintendo dubbed their new console an Entertainment System in 1985. “Video games” left a sour taste in many people’s mouths.
But that’s neither here nor there. This is about a dream I had, and it’s about as odd as they get. According to the Wikipedia entry, Baby Pac-Man was a he. And he was born to Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man. But there is no Mrs. Pac-Man, only a Ms. So for all intents and purposes (or is it intensive purposes?), in my subconscious state, the baby’s a she. Pink bonnet anyone?
Well, basically, the dream happened to become the foundation for a feminist diatribe. Baby Pac-Man had grown into a lovely Pac-Woman, but she could not get any respect in the workplace. People kept calling her Ms. and Miss and that didn’t bother her as much as the fact they wouldn’t call her Pac-Woman rather than Pac-Man. People also thought she got the job because of who her father was and not on her own merits. Also, people kept offering her fruits and pretzels.
I don’t remember much else, but I’m sure it all ended swell. But I do wish there was something about mazes or ghosts, though…
"Why do I keep getting spam for power pellets?"
INGREDIENTS: Two different kinds of Powerade, a late night viewing of Saturday Night Live, and Little Debbie chocolate chip muffins.
For the last two weeks, not a smidge of alcohol has quenched my parched, getting-very-used-to-water, lips.
One bachelor party changed the no-drinking-in-May plan (at least for that night). Two beers in, I was feeling tipsy.
The third film in the X-Men series almost killed my burgeoning buzz when it was brought up before the bus bid farewell. Four… ah, I’m at a loss on how to keep this list up. Oh, wait! Four bars is the amount we visited. Five beers came in a bucket at our second stop. Or should I say a fifth of Jack was passed around (of which I passed on).
Okay, yeah, now I give up. Anyway, overall it was fairly trouble free, aside from my cousin slapping me in the face, punching me in the gut, and tucking his feet in my armpit as he curled up in a ball to sleep – all within six minutes (I told you I’m stopping the number thing).
I recall talking to a stripperdancer woman at one of the stops extensively about this:
Like our purloined dispenser, except ours had sunflower seeds, peanuts, and Reese's Pieces. I think.
Someone in the group who will go nameless, but was prone to slapping and punching despite being sleepy, stole lifted a candy dispenser and someone else in the group got really upset about it.
The best man forbid a couple of women from joining the group on its road trip, which at the time, sounded like a bad idea to not let them, but hindsight being what it is, was simply a bad idea, so kudos to him. I can’t get too upset then that he had the bus drop him off directly at home.
Back at our original point of departure, I was done. Well, I was with it enough to eat a few Pizza Rolls.
I guess some of the other guys put the candy dispenser on top of the guy’s car that was getting upset. (Sure, he had a reason for being irritated, but it was meh at best.) I guess that inflamed him further and he smashed it on the ground. Someone else took it upon himself and completely busted it open. Quarters flew everywhere, and those who were still awake scooped them up.
The next morning, the three of us that drove together walked out into the gloomy daybreak. I spotted a crapload of quarters that went unclaimed. My reply: “I would like to say that if I was a kid right now, seeing this would make me happy as hell. But as an adult, I can’t say that I feel any different. I’m not too proud to crouch long enough to pick up a few dollars.”
My cousin and I gathered about ten bucks each. My friend with us had already grabbed about ten bucks the night before…
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