Making Waves
I haven’t entered The Late Show with David Letterman’s online Top Ten contest
[dead link] for a while. And it’s been longer still since I’ve posted any such entries here. Once upon a time, however, the former activity was a regular thing; I’d hoped it would lead to the latter becoming a regular thing as well, but, y’know, if wishes were horses then... Robin Williams could’ve voiced the Genie in Seabiscuit?
The point is that I’m again sharing my latest efforts. You can submit your own, as many you’d like, one at a time; I rarely come up with more than a few really good entries, plus a ringer that plays off Dave and his staff’s recurring jokes. So here are...
My Top Ten Things You Don’t Want to Hear on Your Cruise Ship
10. “All aboard for Somalia!”
9. “The ship can never lose power — as long as we all take turns running on that giant hamster wheel.”
8. “I don’t care how romantic the movie was; Titanic is not an appropriate theme for the lido deck.”
7. “Okey-doke now... You mama grizzlies come right this way!”
6. “I hope you know how to make a fire. Turns out the buffet is ‘all you can heat’.”
Rounds of the Night Table
I’ve pared down my pull list at the comics shop yet again, both to help offset some
new monthly expenses and because most single issues simply cost too much for too little reward anymore.
40 Favorites: #4
Still from The Big Sleep © 1946 Warner Bros. Pictures.
Raymond Chandler. William Faulkner. Leigh Brackett. Max Steiner. Howard Hawks. Lauren Bacall. Humphrey Bogart.
Some films with such a pedigree end up as perceived if not actual failures. On The
Big Sleep, released by Warner Bros. in 1946, everything went right — at least judging by the end result, never mind this oft-circulated anecdote:
Mad Mix
I’m a sucker for mash-ups, inventive arrangements, and the Mad Men theme. So
yay for the self-proclaimed “bunch of film/music nerds” behind Live Music Videos who’ve performed said theme (actually just an excerpt of the RJD2 track “A Beautiful Mine”) “with a twist” [2:18] — namely, by using it as instrumental backing for the pop standard “Nature Boy”. I don’t know if it ranks up there with Eminem’s appropriation of Dido’s “Thank You” for “Stan” or David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s legendary “Little Drummer Boy / Peace on Earth” medley; at the very least, though, it’s a thrill to hear the theme performed acoustically, and I look forward to more from this ensemble.
Related: Sounds Great • L Is for... • Sisters Go Bangles
40 Favorites: #1-3
For my 40th birthday I thought I’d share a few musings on favorite things.
Not wanting to get mired in a swampland of categories or graphics nor too much internal debate, I settled on a casual catch-all catalog of whatever popped into my head. The items have been jotted down and put in rough order; now they’re being written up in varying levels of detail as time permits.
Of course such “things” as my nieces and nephews are indescribably precious to me,
but while I share the occasional story about them here I wanted to keep these posts focused on pop-cultural diversions.
To XL
a self-portrait of the artist
approaching middle age
I turned 40 yesterday — at midnight legally, but literally at around 7 p.m., and yesterday only in the sense that I’ve been trying to get this up since the header date although you
Yes, I’m still having trouble connecting to the Interwebs with any longevity or reliability. For that reason among others, I haven’t published here in almost a month; due to the substandard WiFi, my own lack of energy, and the fact that dealing with the first makes the second all the more aggravating (or vice versa) when there’s a post fully written ready to go online, I attempt to live by a version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.