Summer

Is officially here. I don't care what the calendar says.

 

 +

  

 +

 

Feel free to replace the Dickel with any kind of bourbon (Evan Williams, perhaps) or some rum (Pusser's is a good one, Hell...it was good enough for the British Navy!).  Use half a lime and a bunch of ice in a large cocktail glass.  It's kinda like a Moscow Mule, but I don't do vodka.  And with the rum it is kinda like a Dark and Stormy, but I don't really like Gosling's Black Seal Rum all that much.  So we call it the Ring-a-Ding, for some reason.

Repeat as necessary.  Enjoy! 

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women.

Optical Illusion?

Ze Frank has been freaking me out on a very irregular basis for the past couple of years. And yet sometimes I go 6 months without checking out his stuff because I get tired of his act. And by his stuff, I mean his videos and, um, stuff. Perverts!

Anyway, this one made me laugh so now you can laugh too. See how that works?

HardTime :: Illusion from ze frank on Vimeo.

Happy Friday everyone!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Crap! Now my finger smells weird.

But I want an Oompa Loompa now!!!!

You know what I hate?

When I can't find a video of something I really want to see anywhere on the Internets. I fucking hate that! In this day and age you would think that anything that has been filmed or recorded since the time of Louis Lumiere* would be online somewhere. And most of it is.

But every once in a while I search for something and barely find a mention of it, much less a video.

Case in point.

We have been obsessed with Harry Caray lately. For those of you who don't know, Harry was a baseball announcer with the St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland A's and Chicago White Sox. But his last job with the Chicago Cubs is what he is mostly remembered for. He passed away in 1998, but comedians like Will Ferrell are still doing impersonations of him. And the real Harry was often just as funny.

In 1998, Will Ferrell did an impersonation of Harry at the ESPY Awards. I tell people about this all the time. He rips into Tiger Woods and a bunch of other athletes, but it is his comments about John Elway that makes it legendary. Yelling stuff like "how come he doesn't get his teeth fixed" and such. It was sooo uncomfortable to watch Elway's reaction to it. Like I said, legendary.

Except the legend has apparently died. You can't find video of this bit anywhere on the web. You can barely find a mention of it. Some intrepid soul put the audio of it on YouTube a while ago, but it has since been taken down.  It should be available on ESPN somewhere, but...no, it isn't.

I'm stamping my foot and pouting about this right now. I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I WANT IT! Right now!

Come on, Internets! Get your act together!

*There is your obscure reference of the day.  You are welcome. - Earl

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Hey!  If the moon was made of spare ribs instead of cheese, would you eat it?  Simple question Norm.  Would you eat it?

Those 70's Films (continued)

Well, only really had one silly commenter yesterday who argued against the 1970's as the greatest decade for films. I said I wasn't going to argue the point, and I'm really not gonna. To me, it is just silly to argue against it. No other decade is even close.

But what I will do is pick a few genres and then pick five films from each. Five films that I think best represent the decade for that particular genre. Then I challenge anyone to come up with a similar list from any other decade that they believe is better.

Here are twenty-five films that I believe hold up against any twenty-five from any other decade.

Drama

1. The Godfather (I could include the sequel here too)
2. Chinatown
3. Dog Day Afternoon
4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
5. Taxi Driver

Honorable mention: The Godfather Part II, The Deer Hunter, The Conversation, Deliverance, Badlands, Network.

Action/Adventure (including Science Fiction and Sports films)

1. Rocky
2. Star Wars
3. Jaws
   
4. The French Connection
5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Honorable mention: Breaking Away, The Warriors, Assault on Precinct 13, Superman (feh!), The Longest Yard, The Mechanic.

Comedy

1. Young Frankenstein
2. M*A*S*H
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
   
4. Annie Hall
5. Animal House

Honorable mention: Blazing Saddles, Manhattan, The Muppet Movie (seriously),  The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Being There, The In-Laws (a personal favorite).

Horror

1. Alien
2. Halloween
3. The Exorcist
4. Dawn of the Dead
5. Carrie

Honorable mention: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, Phantasm, When a Stranger Calls, Martin (a personal favorite), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Amityville Horror.

Other (just because I wanted to pick five more)

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. The Sting
3. Dirty Harry
4. Cabaret
5. The Outlaw Josey Wales

Honorable mention:  Paper Moon, Patton, The Last Picture Show, Marathon Man, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Grease, All That Jazz, Eraserhead, Soylent Green, Logan's Run, etc...


So whaddya got?  You think you could pick five films from these genres that are superior to the films listed above?  Go ahead and try.  You may even change my mind*.

*You really won't.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Just being stubborn here.

That 70's Film

We love Netflix.

Got the Roku player for the TV so we can watch anything on our Instant queue anytime. Got our regular DVD queue for newer flicks and anything that isn't available instantly.

And a lot of our queue space is being used for the greatest of decades when it comes to American film, the 70's. Don't even argue that point. You would be wrong and you would sound stupid. The best decade for movies was the 1970's. Period.

Today (Monday) we watched William Friedkin's follow-up to The Exorcist. A nifty little ball of tenseness called Sorcerer. It was an ambitious project. Filmed on four continents with an international cast headed by Roy Scheider. It ultimately failed at the box office, but fans of the 70's and Friedkin are enjoying it to this day. I know we did.

It's a tale of four men running from something in their criminal pasts.  They each wind up in a small oil town in some third world country in South America.  Each man volunteers to transport leaky boxes of dynamite across the jungle so that the oil company can use it to stop an oil well fire.  But the dynamite has been sitting around for awhile and it is "sweating" nitroglycerin.  Any little jiggle or wiggle could cause the whole batch to go ka-blooey.  Lucky they only have to transport the stuff 218 miles over rugged terrain.  In big ole clunky trucks.

And so begins the dance.  Little sub-plots galore, including the back stories of why each man is running and why each of them have nothing to live for anymore.  Except the paycheck. 

Franky, I can understand why it failed at the box office.  It was a bit slow and it was a bit methodical, but it was brilliant.  It did okay business the first week in the theaters, but word-of-mouth spread pretty quickly and the audiences failed to come around after that. 

Although it was a remake itself (of a French film called Wages of Fear), I can see it being remade sometime in the near future by someone eager to tell a good story.  Hollywood is nothing if not derivative of itself.

How about you?  Got any forgotten favorite films from the 70's you love?  We are always looking for suggestions.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. I don't care what Friedkin says, Roy Scheider is the fucking man!

Happy Memorial Day!

So I was first woken up by the cats at 5AM this morning as they decided to have a wrasslin' match on my head. Then about an hour later, as I had just fallen back asleep, my nephew started texting me using his mother's phone. Important stuff like "Your butt smells". Then the cats started up again.  This went on for a couple of hours.

I finally was able to fall back asleep when our neighbor began shooting his cannon...yes, his cannon...over the harbor in remembrance of the men and women who served this country and lost their lives.  They were blanks, in case you were wondering.  Loud-as-fuck blanks.

And here I thought Memorial Day meant you could sleep in late on a Monday in early Summer.

Happy fucking Memorial Day!

UPDATE - What the fuck?  I never thought I would see the day that the Yankees would wear red caps.  This was mandated by MLB, by the way.  Every team is wearing red caps today.  No way Team Steinbrenner makes this choice on their own.  Feh.

"It's just one of those days when you don't wanna wake up.  Everything is fucked, everybody sucks, you don't really know why but you wanna justify ripping someone's head off!" - Fred Durst

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Kittens and texting and cannons, oh my!

Terminator: Salvation - SPOILER ALERT

UPDATE - Spoilers in the comment section, so beware.

No, I'm not going to give you any spoilers for this film. I don't have to.

The studio did it for me.

If you've seen a commercial, an online trailer for it or a preview in the theater than you have already seen the major spoiler in the film. I had seen it, many times, and I thought it was odd that they would give away such a major plot point in the trailer. But I also didn't really care. I figured the movie was gonna suck and that it probably wasn't going to be a big deal in the film anyway.

I was wrong on both counts.

The film was highly enjoyable. It stayed true to the Terminator mythology. The actors all did outstanding jobs. Everything about the film was kinda cool. In my opinion, of course. I've seen a bunch of negative reviews, and I could see some of their points. But I also loved the The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and a lot of Terminator purists hated that as well.

I tend to be a little more flexible when it comes to source material that uses time travel, killer robots and a war against the machines as plot points. As long as it's fun. But that's just me.

Oh, and that spoiler I was talking about? It was handled really well in the film. In fact, tt was handled so well that I began to get pissed about that trailer. REALLY pissed!

Even more so a day after seeing it with Slyde. He felt the same way, I think.

So, if you've seen the trailer and you are planning on seeing the film I think you may be disappointed. If you are planning on seeing the film and you haven't seen the trailer, try to avoid it at all costs.

I probably would have figured it all out before the great reveal, in fact I'm sure I would have. But I like to have that option for myself. And for some unfathomable reason, the studio fucked that shit up. Feh!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Walker told me

Of course everyone has seen that clip or a mashup of that clip by now. Still funny after all these years. It just got me wondering what other bad news Walker might have delivered at some point or another.

Lou Gehrig - "Walker told me I have Lou Gehrig's disease. I should have seen that coming."

Michael Vick - "Walker told me I am being sent to Hell when I die and Satan is a pitbull. Fuck my life."

The Octomom - "Walker told me that one of my kids is gonna kill me someday. It's like a Greek tragedy. Starring Chuck Norris as the Oracle."

Ryan Seacrest - "Walker told me that I was gay.  But I think he misunderstood me when I asked to him if I could give him a hand job.  I meant as a hand model, um, on my show.  Sheesh!"

Rush Limbaugh - "Walker told me I was an asshole.  He obviously wasn't the first."

President Barack Obama - "Walker told me about all the hard times I would face as the leader of our great nation.  The war on terror, the slumping economy, our nation's diminished role on the world stage.  Then he told me he was gonna endorse Huckabee for President.  Phew!"

Alex Rodriguez - "Walker told me that I would be outed by Selena Roberts as a steroids user.  But I was too busy kissing myself in the mirror to really give a damn."

Paris Hilton - "Walker told me that I'm a no-talent, slack-eyed, loser of a whore.  That's hot!"

Donald Trump - "Walker told me that my hair looks ridiculous.  Hello, pot!  This is the kettle.  You're black!"

And finally,

Slyde - "Walker told me that I've always had a secret man-crush on Earl.  I told him that if loving Earl is wrong, then I don't wanna be right! Wooo-gaaah!!!"

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Chuck Norris doesn't just take the quiz, he knocks it on it's ass with a roundhouse kick.

The Amazing Human Race

Gia and I had one of our longest and silliest semantic conversations/arguments last night. We were talking about the lack of black players in baseball today or, to be more specific, a report I had read about the low number of black players in baseball today.

Let me explain that a bit. According to racial statistics, there are less black players in professional baseball today than there were 30 years ago. Now that might seem like a fallacy considering the overall number of "brown" faces in the league today, but many of those men are considered to be Hispanic or Latino. Not black.

I called bullshit. And I am the whitest white dude ever to walk the face of the Earth, so that means that I am most likely wrong and possibly even a bit racist. At the very least I will probably sound a bit stupid, but here goes anyway.

My argument to Gia was that while I agree that there seems to be less black players in the game than there used to be, there are still plenty of black players in the game today. On the Yankees, look at Robinson Cano or Melky Cabrera or Mariano Rivera. I believe that racially, all of these men could be considered to be black.  Not making any judgements on them, just stating my opinion on their race.

She countered that by saying that both Cano and Cabrera are from the Dominican Republic and Rivera is from Panama. They all speak Spanish as well, so that makes them Hispanic, not black. I don't really get that. Since when does where you are from (in the Western Hemisphere at least) and what language you speak help define your race?

I guess the question of race is an ambiguous one today anyway. How does one define race? Is it an anthropological distinction or a cultural distinction? I dunno, but the real crux of the argument over the lack of black players in the major leagues was the lack of African-American players in the major leagues. Aha! Now we are getting somewhere. That goes toward a more societal question of why young Black men in this country have stopped playing baseball.  And I don't have a real good answer for that.

I gave Gia three men who have all played baseball either currently or in the past.  Alex Rodriguez, Fernando Valenzuela and David Ortiz.  Then I asked her what race she would categorize each of them as.  She chose Hispanic for all three men and I went nuts again.  Sure, culturally they are all Hispanic.  A-Rod and Ortiz are both Dominican and Fernando is Mexican.  But the common tie of language is all that they share.  What would be more accurate is to say that all three men are of mixed race.  A-Rod clearly has some European features while Ortiz could be classified as being black or African-Dominican.  And Fernando shares a lot of traits with the indigenous people of the Americas.

I just don't get how a person of African descent who lives in the Dominican Republic is Hispanic, but someone also of African descent who lives in the USA is black.  And yet that is how some studies classify those groups.  

She also couldn't believe that I was saying that I could determine someone's race just by looking at them.  I countered with the argument that the only way to determine someone's race is by looking at them.  Physical characteristics define race, on an anthropological level.  But she is looking at race on a more cultural level.  So who is right and who is wrong here?  I dunno.

So we continued arguing about whether or not being Hispanic was a racial sub-division and we both became too tired to really give a shit about it eventually.  Honestly, there is nothing I find more uncomfortable than a form that asks you about your race.  White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Other.  We spend so much time defining one another, categorizing ourselves that it might contribute to actually keeping us apart.  Who really gives a crap, anyway?  And yet there I was arguing about it with the woman I love.  And here I am writing about it the next day.

What does it all mean and when is it all gonna go away?  People have pride in their backgrounds and where their family comes from.  I have a tattoo of my family's traditional crest from Ireland on my leg.  And yet in other ways I don't care about that shit at all.

One of these days down the line, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of years from now, we are all going to belong to the same race.  The Human Race.  If we don't fuck it all up first, that is. 

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. OK...I guess you can't tell what race Michael Jackson belongs to just by looking at him.  I'll give you that.

The Wolf, the Ram and the...Alpha?

I was pleased to discover that a new website was launched over the weekend based upon universe created by Joss Whedon*.

*It really isn't, but fans of Angel and Dollhouse will get that joke. - Earl

It is called WolframAlpha and it is a computational knowledge engine. I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds really cool.  Have any of the nerdlier of you nerds tried it out yet?  I know I've been playing with it for a couple of days.  Fascinating stuff for the inner geek in all of us.

It was launched on Friday, so one of the creepier searches/questions you can ask it is "How old are you?"  It will answer a specific number of days, down to 3 decimal points, from when it was launched/became aware. Or just simply say "hello" to it.  It will respond with a chilling "Hello, human".

:: shiver ::

Or ask it the meaning of life.  It will tell you.  The answer is 42, of course, but you knew that already.  Well, the nerdlier nerds amongst you knew that already.  Right, Slyde?

Perhaps the funniest/creepiest feature of WolframAlpha is the error message that it uses when it exceeds it's maximum test load.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Resistance is futile.

The Modern

Ate here tonight.

Had this tonight:

• Rock shrimp risotto with wild ramps, fine herbs and hijiki.
• Lemon dusted veal sweetbreads simmered in "vin jaune" with chestnuts and roasted heirloom cauliflower. 
• Chocolate tart, chocolate cremieaux and chocolate sorbet.
• A lovely cocktail with George Dickel No. 12, lemon, maple syrup and mint leaves.
  
• Six Points Paul Saison Farmhouse Ale. (More than one)
  
• Michter's Small Batch Bourbon.
• Bulleit Bourbon.

Very, very happy and stuffed right now.  When you go, and you will go, ask for Jason.  He is one of the managers of the joint and he fucking rules!  Hooked us up with some very rare and very cool beer that I will be reviewing at some point on my beer blog.  When I get to it. 

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the fat bastards are doing it.

Just curious

I was just a little curious about a few things pertaining to the daily trivia quiz I have been hosting.

• Do I need to keep reminding everyone about it via the footnote down there on every one of my posts?  I'm pretty sure someone said they were using that as a reminder, but I also have a tab for it on the top of my header pic.  I have it set up as a template, so I'm not typing that or cutting and pasting it everyday.  So it isn't a big deal to keep it there.  I was just wondering.
  
• Does anyone out there notice that I change the second sentence in that footnote on every new post?  I put almost no work into it, but dammit I want to know that someone notices!
  
• Is anyone interested in taking over the hosting duties for the month of June?  The site allows the administrator, me, the option of turning over that responsibility to someone else.  I still enjoy doing it, but if anyone else wants to run it for a month, please let me know.  It's not very hard.  All you have to do is pick the daily topics and, with the help of suggestions from the madding crowd, a custom topic for each Wednesday. 
  

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Is anyone reading this?

Music Video Fridays - The White Stripes

It's getting harder and harder to find bands that enable the embedding of their videos on Youtube. They are there for viewing, but they don't want anyone putting those videos on their sites. I don't really understand that, frankly. Anyone out there have a clue as to why they do this?

Anyway, The White Stripes (or the record company) do allow embedding. And that is one of the reasons that you are seeing them here today. Another reason is that they are a damned good band. Jack and Meg White (and their ambiguous relationship) are a force of nature. While their sound has graduated from their garage rock revival roots to a bit more of a polished product in their more recent efforts, they still bring it in a consistent manner.

Like a lot of folks, my first introduction to the band was their White Blood Cells album in 2001 and the single "Fell in Love With a Girl". The video became pretty famous as well. An early American effort from French auteur Michael Gondry. I like the Legos.

The next video is from their massively successful Elephant album from 2003. "Seven Nation Army" is a song that will always remind me of my father who passed away that year. He was in the hospital for about three weeks there at the end, and every day that I would visit him I would hear this song on the radio on the way there and on the way back. Sometimes twice as it was a pretty long ride. It's a pretty good song too.

The last video today the opening track from their 2005 album, Get Behind Me Satan. Which is a pretty badass title for an album, if you ask me. "Blue Orchid" is one of my favorite songs that the Stripes have produced to date.  The video is pretty badass too.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Meg White says do it to it.

So, Paris looks like fun

Make The Girl Dance "Baby Baby Baby" ( official video )
by placeblancherec

Courtesy of the kids at GorillaMask.

Did I hear Ethan Hawke's name in there someplace? Oui?

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the naked French models are doing it.

Pick me, Indy! Pick me!

The worst hack on the web* is reporting that Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart are looking to adopt.

I'd like to officially put myself on their radar as a candidate.

Mr. Ford, here are a list of my qualifications:

• I'm 42 and you are 66, so you actually could be my father.  
• We both share rogue-ish good looks, so (again) you actually could be my father.
• I've secretly been calling you "Dad" for a while now anyway.
• I look good in a fedora, so those weekend father/son fedora getaways wouldn't be a problem.
• I don't have much of an interest in carpentry, but I am willing to learn.
• By "willing to learn", I mean that I can hand you a hammer or fetch you a beer while you build us a porch to hang out on.
• Although I've never been to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where you own a ranch, I have been to the Jackson Hole Diner in Queens and I love the burgers there.  Pretty much the same thing, right?
• I probably could have talked you out of making that last Indiana Jones film.  But it did add a substantial dollar value to my eventual inheritance so who is to say you made a wrong decision.  Certainly not me, Dad.
• I've never been a fan of ridiculously skinny women, so there would be little to no chance that I would fall for "Mom".  I can't promise that she won't have naughty feelings about me as I have already mentioned my rogue-ish good looks.  But I would never let her play dirty mother/son games with me.  Unless you really wanted me to, Dad.  I know keeping up with her must be a bit of a chore for you these days.
  
• I like to fish.  I don't know if that means anything, but I'm throwing it out there.
• I promise never to mention Hollywood Homicide.  Well, I promise never to mention it again.

 So what do you think?  If you are interested, please leave a comment down below.  Thanks, um, Dad?

*OK...there are probably many, many websites out there worse than Perez Hilton.  I just can't stand the guy.  And I don't read his stuff normally.  This article was referenced on another site I read.  Pffftht!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. I've seen all of your movies, Mr.Ford.

Wonderful Wanda and Firefly stick figures

My strange love affair with Wanda Sykes continues. I don't even care if she isn't into dudes.

Want some more?

Oh, and hey look!  It's an online comic strip about Firefly.  Well, it's not really about Firefly.  But it does portray Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau and Jewel Staite as stick figures.  And that is something, I guess.  Click thru to read all 5 parts of the story.  If. You. Dare!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Way to go, Queen!

Final Girl Film Club - Amityville II: The Possession

What the what?: One of my favorite blogs out there in Blogityville is Stacie Ponder's Final Girl site. Every now and again she picks a Horror film and asks her minions to write a review for it. She does the same, and blammo...it's a film club.  This month was an easy one for me because I already had a review for this film in the can. Gia and I watched it last Fall and fell in love with it all over again. Or we were disgusted by it. I forget which. Let's find out! - Earl

Final Girl Film Club - Amityville II: The Possession

So last night we were watching Amityville II: The Possession on Monster HD (Hint #1 that this review was written last year.  Monster HD has been off the air for a while now - Earl). Don't judge us! Anyway, neither of us had seen it in over 20 years, and the decades haven't been good to this one. Let me tell you. Or have they?

Prior to the most drawn out demonic possession ever filmed (I'm only guessing here), there was a scene in the basement of the house that had us cracking up and making up our own dialogue. The eldest son is alone in the house and he had gone to the cellar to get a gun because he heard some noises that could have been an intruder.

All of a sudden he hears whispering voices from behind some hidden panel in the cellar. He yells out "Who's there? I can hear you!". That's the point when we started our own MST3K-ish dialogue, imagining what the mysterious voices in the cellar were really talking about:

Satan: You idiots! He can hear us.
Beelzebub: It wasn't me, it was Azazel!
Azazel: NOT! Satan, he's always blaming me!
Satan: Enough with the squabbling! I've had it with you two!
Mephistopheles: I WANT TO POSSESS HIS SOUL!!!
Satan: Shhh...inside voices, Mephistopheles. Inside voices.
Mephistopheles: I WANT TO POSSESS HIS SOUL!!!
Satan: (to himself) I can't believe I'm stuck in here with these guys.
Azazel: Satan! Beelzebub is touching me!
Satan: (slaps his forehead) Crap!

The movie just got better and better from there. Spousal abuse, child abuse, and incest. Yes...the creepiest incest scene ever filmed (I'm only guessing here). The brother visits his sister in her bedroom one night. He asks her to play the model/photographer game, and that's fine. I mean, who hasn't played that game with his sister every once in a while. But then he asks her to take off her nightgown. Her response? "OK, but only for a minute!"

You can imagine where the evening goes from there.


You're imagining it...aren't you? Sickos!

There is so much to love/loath about this flick.  And Burt Young was at his very sweaty best as the father of the doomed household.  1982 was a banner year for Mr. Young.  He was red-hot in Hollywood after wowing audiences in ...All the Marbles and Blood Beach.  He topped those winners with this masterpiece and another outing with Sylvester Stallone, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T in Rocky III.  I think his creepy interaction with his robot/sex slave in that one made for a nice sub-plot.   Or it would have if they had let him run with it.

Sorry...back to the topic at hand. 

As someone who grew up on Long Island and lived about 2 minutes away from the Amityville Horror home (and yet I never visited it), I can vouch for the realistic portrayal of the events in this film.  Long Island was indeed awash in demonic possession back then.  We just accepted it and moved on.  No need to bang your sister or kill everyone in the house.  I mean if you wanted your name in the papers, sure.  But usually the demons found life on Long Island to be as boring as Sunday brunch in Hell, so they departed soon afterward.  They just left you with a bad case of acne and a penchant for playing practical jokes on the clergy.

I believe they are all working gigs in Las Vegas these days. Something about the dry heat.

Amityville II: The Possession.  Feh.  Not the worst way to spend 100 minutes on a Friday night.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the wacky possessed kids are doing it.

Little Avery

We picked up Avery from the airport on Saturday afternoon.

He. Is. Adorable!!!

Slept last night curled up next to Gia, and he has gotten along pretty well with the other cats so far. Wolowitz is still hissing at him occasionally. Maybe something about them both being dudes. But our oldest girl, Sammi, has accepted him unconditionally. We really didn't expect that. She still hisses at Wolowitz and Gogo every once in a while. Go figure.

Anyway, here are some photos. Get ready for the cute.

 

 

That's his little stuffed elephant that he likes to sleep with.  Yeah.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Too fucking cute!

Laundry

I like to do laundry.

Sounds weird, right?

But there is something about this monotonous task that really calms me. I did four load of laundry tonight while watching Survivor and Lost (on DVR). I like to fold clothes, and I'm really good at it too.

Before I had my own setup, I used to either drop my laundry off at the Wash 'N Fold or do my laundry myself at the same place. Whenever I did it myself, I was almost always complimented by some random woman about how well I fold clothes.

I fold clothes extremely well. Like a professional.  Seriously.

I started doing my own laundry when I was around ten. My mother worked and we had a big family, so it just became natural for me to do my own laundry. The only thing I hate doing is bedding. I hate washing and folding sheets.

But everything else, I excel at. Almost to a fault.

Because I don't mind it, I become the status quo laundry do-er. Normally that is just fine with me. I semi-enjoy it. But, of course, everyone occasionally would rather let someone else do the dirty work. And Gia steps up when that happens.

But it doesn't happen that often. Because I like doing the laundry.

Do you have an everyday, monotonous task that you enjoy doing?

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Will not fold, spindle or mutilate.

Three-Finger Brown

All of the props for this post go to Tim Marchman. Go to his site if you find this kind of thing interesting. - Earl

One of my favorite all-time baseball names is Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown.  Being named Mordecai is fucking bad-ass, right?  And his father named him Centennial because he was born in 1876.  But wait, he also went by the names Miner Brown and Three-Finger Brown.  Miner, because well...he was a coal miner.  And Three-Finger because he injured a couple of fingers on his pitching hand when he was younger including losing most of his index finger. His unique grip on the ball created a unique spin when he threw a curve.  He won 239 games in his Hall of Fame career, mostly for the Cubs.  In fact, he was a member of the last Cubs team to win a World Series back in 1908.

Whenever I read a story about Brown, I smile.  Maybe it is the nicknames, maybe it is because he was a part of those legendary Cubs teams from a century ago.  He has just always been one of my favorite old-time players.  Nah...it's those bad-ass names.  Mordecai, Centennial, Miner, Three-Finger.  You just don't hear great baseball names like that anymore. 

So I thought it was really cool that Tim Marchman found this photo from the Library of Congress.

You can click it to make it bigger, but it shows the pitching motion of Brown using stop motion photography.  Kinda cool, but someone figured out a way to make it better by splicing them together and making a video of it all.

Very. Fucking. Cool.  Now I can see what it looked like a century ago when one of my favorite players took the mound.  Look how he whipped his arm around his backside so that he was basically showing it to the hitter.  Amazing!

OK...go back to your non-baseball loving lives.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Mordecai would want you to  do it.

BREAKING NEWS: The British are weird, funny.

This video made the rounds on the Internets last week. It's from a BBC show called "All the Small Things" and it is truly odd. Imagine a choir doing an a capella version of Blink 182's song "What's My Age Again?". Now imagine a dwarf rocking a solo in the middle of it.

Now imagine you are watching a video of all that shit.

              Watch British Choir Sings "What's My Age Again?" on CollegeHumor

Hat tip to the kids at Warming Glow for posting this last week.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the dwarf soloists are doing it.

Moccus Smiles Upon You

How awesome is it that Cinco de Mayo falls on Tuesday Taco Night this year? The Gaulish diety Moccus is most definitely smiling upon us. He was a minor Celtic god associated with the domestic pig back in the day. Might have been a psychopomp as well. I love that word. Psychopomp. Anyway, with all the attention on swine these days, I thought he/she/it must have had something to do with this most cosmic turn of events.

I'm gonna celebrate by wrestling the first Mexican pig that comes across my path. I'm gonna tickle it, ride it like a pony, teach it tricks and then lick it all in all of it's most naughty places . All the while scoffing at the very real possibility that it might give me the Swine Flu. Because it's fucking Cinco de Mayo. A couple shots of tequila ought to fix that shit right up. Besides, I live on the porcine edge. Wooooooo!!!

Now go here and re-live an old post of mine from the magical year of 2006. Way back when I was a baby blogger on Slyde's blog. I wrote about Cinco de Mayo, tequila and homemade chili. These are a few of my favorite things. It is oh-so-very Mary Poppins. Practically perfect in every way.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from that post. A brief history of Cinco de Mayo courtesy of the Wikipedia or some other site that I stole it from. Did Wikipedia even exist in 2006? We've come a long way baby! Enjoy.

The 5th of May is not Mexican Independence Day, as many people here in the US believe. Mexico declared its’ independence from Spain on September 15th of 1810. May 5th celebrates the victory of the Mexican army over the French (and certain Mexican traitors) on the morning of May 5th, 1862. You see, the French had come to Mexico along with English and Spanish troops to collect on certain debts from the Mexican government. England and Spain soon made deals and left. The French, however, decided to stick around and take over Mexico while the United States was in the midst of a Civil War. 4,000 loyal Mexican soldiers decided otherwise and trounced the French Foreign Legion. Some even believe that this battle assisted the Union in beating the Confederates in our own Civil War since Napoleon III was unable to supply the confederate rebels for the better part of the next year. Good stuff!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the pig-lickers are doing it.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

First of all, I'm not posting this on the MovieGrenade because, well, that site is supposed to be for bad films that we are trying to warn you against seeing. We watch 'em so you don't have to, and all that crap.

But X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a movie that really needs no warnings of the kind. If you are going to see it, you are going to see it. Regardless of the press it gets. Or of the opinion of some faceless, nameless blogger like myself.

But I'm gonna give it to you anyway.

I joined Slyde in the early morning drizzle on Saturday to be the first 40-year old kids on the block to see this one. I live on a small block. Slyde was so excited he got to the theater a full 45 minutes before the film started. The theater wasn't open yet, so he had to walk around the outlet shopping area in the drizzle. Silly boy.

I was hoping the film would be in IMAX, but alas...no. That's kinda the reason I picked this theater. That and the close proximity to Chipotle Grill.  Fat boy gotta eat. 

I thought it was a solid film.  Nothing spectacular.  No "Wow!" moments.  Just a solid waste of around 2 hours.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  They messed with a lot of backstory elements for a lot of the characters in this film, but I found myself not caring that much.  I knew they were gonna do it, so why bother getting worked up about it?  I just rolled with the adamantium punches.

A quick rundown:  Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber are a ferocious pair of war-mongering douchebags who don't appear to age or suffer any long-term effects of bayonets, bullets or cannon shots to the gut.  They "join" a covert group of ruffians each with their own unique abilities, until Jackman discovers he has a conscience.  It must have been under his facial hair somewhere.  Flash forward a bunch of years and someone is picking off members of the dream team, or so we are led to believe.  Jackman is convinced to undergo a bonding experience with some heavy metal, and before you can say snickety-snickt he winds up with the girl, the gold watch and everything.

OK.  It didn't happen exactly like that.  But like I said before, if you are going to see this film then you are going to see this film.  Doesn't matter much what I say.

And I say there are worse ways to spend a rainy Saturday morning.  It wasn't great, but you probably knew that already from the trailers.  It wasn't even very good.  But it was...solid.  Like a good crap.

PS - I thought Gambit was decently portrayed in the film.  I have no idea what he was doing in Wolverine's origin story, but I stopped reading/collecting comics a long time ago.  Maybe Marvel changed the story again.  I dunno.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Ryan Reynolds?  Really?.

Music Video Fridays - AC/DC

Quite simply, I think that AC/DC is one of the greatest Rock & Roll bands ever to grace the airwaves. Hard rock, heavy metal...whatever you want to call them. They just bring it. I still have no idea how they were to become so successful after losing Bon Scott in 1980. Replacing him with Brian Johnson shouldn't have worked, but it did. In spades. And those two cats are two of the goofier lead vocalists in the history of Rock & Roll.

So sit back, enjoy...and turn this mother-fucker up!

The first video is from "High Voltage in 1976. It's called "Its a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" and it features Bon Scott on bagpipes. A nice nod to the band's Scottish roots. He and the Young brothers were all born in Scotland and subsequently moved to Australia.

The next video is from 1976's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", and it never fails to crack me up. But you will have to go to YouTube to watch the video for "Big Balls", because embedding has been disabled by request. Fuckers.

Watch it here.

The final video is from 1980's "Back in Black" featuring Brian Johnson on vocals for the first time since Bon Scott's death earlier in the year. "Rock and Roll Aint Noise Pollution" is easily my favorite from this great album that hardly has a clunker on it. This isn't really a video, but a montage of photos as the song plays. But I wanted something to embed, so this is what you get. Feh.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Thats a Whole Lotta Rosie.