These are great. Watch them all. But if you don’t watch them all, at least watch Daniel.
And defective yeti readers: please spay and neuter your pets.
Month: January 2003
Unforgettable
Guys sitting behind me on the bus yesterday:
Guy 1: I hate that guy Alec.
Guy 2: He’s a dick.
Guy 1: No kidding. [Pause] I did his girlfriend. Right after they broke up. Whatshername.
Guy 2: Which one? The blond one?
Guy 1: No, the other one. Whatshername. The one with the big tattoo. What was her name?
Guy 2: The tattoo on her belly? Oh yeah, I did her too. What was her name?
Guy 1: I can’t remember. But she was wild.
Guy 2: She was totally wild. She stole my truck once. Shit, what was her name?
Research Day
From now on I’m going to jot down questions as they occur to me, look ’em up on Google, and post my findings on the 15th of each month. And I shall call it: Research Day!
What’s the origin of the phrase “Soup to Nuts”? According to this Straight Dope column, traditional British meals began with soup and were followed with port and nuts. Thus, “soup to nuts” came to mean “everything, and then some.” (Bob concurs: “They’re the courses in a (Victorian?) formal banquet. Soup is the first course, and the nuts are served with the brandy and cigars as the gentlemen retire to the billiards room.”)
Why is is easier to maintain your balance on a moving bicycle than on a stationary one?: This is actually something I’ve been wondering for, oh, a couple decades now. And here, at long last, is the answer. In a nutshell: it’s not easier in the short term. Upon a stationary bicycle, if you tilt in one direction and will just fall over; on a moving bicycle, however, you tilt one way and the whole bicycle moves in that direction (pulled by your weight) and gets under you again, thereby restoring your balance. The faster you are moving, the quicker the bicycle gets under you again, the more you feel un-topple-able.
Will a woman who has not just given birth begin to lactate if she allows an infant to nurse over the course of a few days/ weeks?: This question arose after I told The Queen that I thought infants adopted by lesbian couples must be totally psyched (because twice the feeding stations meant no waiting), and she announced that it didn’t work that way. The answer, according to this article, lies somewhere in the middle: yes, a woman will start to “produce drops of milk after two to four weeks,” but probably never enough to completely sate a newborn.
How long would would I have to search Google to find photos or an account of a couple that exchanged wedding rings engraved with the Elvish inscription on Sauron’s ring?: Ready … go! Sixty seconds — Found this: “The tengwar Quenya inscriptions on the rings … are very closely based on the style of Tolkien’s own Ring inscription (indeed the Tengwar text was not handwritten, but a cut-and-paste job made from photocopies of Tolkien’s inscription).” Close, but I want the inscription on the actual One Ring. 140 seconds — closer: “My wedding ring is a replica of the One Ring, complete with Elvish script inside (although what it says is much more benign than the Black Speech inscription and is in Quenya).” 150 seconds, closer still: “The rings read: One ring to show our love, one ring to bind us / One ring to seal our love, and forever to entwine us.” (Damn, that page has photos and everything, and is probably about as good as I’m going to get. Well, I’ll keep looking a for another minute or so …). 200 seconds: E-weddingbands.com sells One Rings, so I ought to be able to find some couple that exchanged them. 230 seconds: Got bored, declared the “One ring to seal our love” guys the winner.
Should I eat chili for lunch and then go to the gym in the afternoon? I did a little inadvertent research on this subject yesterday, and discovered the answer to be a resounding no.
Shh.
Operator: Hello, Maury Povich show.Me: Hello, is this the Maury Povich show from TV?O: Yes.M: Hi. I was watching your show today, “Your Boyfriend Got Me Pregnant,” and at the end the screen said “Do you have a secret you want to reveal to someone on the Maury Povich show?” with this phone number, and I thought “I have a secret that I want to reveal to someone on the Maury Povich show,” so I’m calling the number.O: Uh huh. And who do you want to reveal the secret to?M: Maury Povich.O: Maury Povich, the host of the show?M: Yes. He’s the person on the show that I want to reveal the secret to.O: What’s the secret?M: “Maury Povich, your show isn’t very good.”O: That’s not a secret.M: You’re telling me!Sex Appeal
Whoa, did you see that chick, the one dressed all in black? She was totally checking me out. No, seriously. She kept looking at me from across the room, and then I would make eye contact and she’d look away, but a few seconds later she’d totally look at me again. I kept waiting for her to come over to our table and chat but maybe she’s into the long-distance thing. And I guess she was busy presiding and stuff.
She was hot, though. I love strong women, and she seemed really, you know, “authoritative”. It was cool the way she keep telling people what the could and couldn’t do. Like when you said “I object” and she was all like “Overruled!” That was a total turn on. Power, baby, power. When she walked into the room and that one guy said “all rise,” I was, like, “yeah, I’m all rising, if you know what I mean!” Hah hah!
She wanted me, I could tell. At first she was acting all uninterested, but after she told me to stand up and everyone was looking at the jury while they read their verdicts, she was giving me that “oh, you bad boy” look. And I don’t mean “bad” in the sense of robbing a Taco Bell — which I didn’t do, by the way — but bad in the sense of “baaaaaad!” You know what I’m saying.
Maybe the bailiff knows her number. I’m gonna ask him. Remanded? What the hell does that mean? Well, maybe you could ask the bailiff for me, that would be cool.
Aw man, you wanna discuss a possible appeal right now? Jeeze, I dunno. If I appealed, would we get Judge Hottie again? Because, if so, I’m like so there.
You Heard It Here First
I can see where this is going.
Women are in it for money, men are in it for sex. Or so we’re told by the recent rash of “relationship” reality programs hitting the airwaves.
FOX (as usual) fired the first volley with Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire, in which a gaggle of attractive (but not especially well-off) women competed for the nuptials of a well-off (but not especially attractive) man. ABC then ripped off this premise and turned it into a series entitled The Bachelor. FOX is now satirizing the trend with Joe Millionaire, where a bunch of sexy girls vie for the affections of a man they (erroneously) believe to be wealthy.
ABC, meanwhile, has rolled out the next iteration in this downward spiral: The Bachelorette. Here again we have a dozen people competing to wed a member of the opposite sex. But unlike the stars of Marry and Bachelor, the Bachelorette is not a millionaire. She is, however, Smoking Hot — or, at least, she fits the criteria set by TV for “Smoking Hot” designation: blond, buxom, under thirty and entirely too thin.
The question then becomes: how will FOX parody this? It’s easy to make a man appear rich and then pull the rug out from under those competing for his attention. But how do you hornswoggle a bunch of shallow suitors into thinking that someone is Smoking Hot when they are not? Announce, in the final episode, that she is a brunette that dyes her hair? Reveal that her breasts are not authentic? Stun the contestants with the knowledge that Ms. Right consumes two, sometimes three meals a day?
I pondered each of these possibilities, but decided that they weren’t outrageous enough for FOX to consider. And I was left wondering if this could be It, the logical end (and low) point of the genre. What could they possibly do to lower the bar even further.
And then it hit me.
“FOX is proud to present the next generation of reality television: The Crying Game-Show!”
You so totally know it’s gonna happen.
Fifty-Two Weeks of Blah Blah Blah
Today is defective yeti’s one year anniversary. How you like them apples?
Keeping a blog for a year was a 2002 New Year’s resolution of mine. My intentions were fivefold:
I Know Something You Don’t Know
Scene: Last week, after seeing The Two Towers in the theater.
The Queen: I know who puts the ring in the Crack of Doom.
Me: You do?
Q: Yes.
M: I don’t see how. You haven’t read the books.
Q: I tried to read the books! But they were really really boring. Stupid and boring.
M: Yes, I believe you’ve mentioned that several dozen times.
Q: But it doesn’t matter, because I know who puts the ring in the Crack of Doom.
M: Okay.
Q: It’s Sam.
M: Okay.
Q: I’m right, aren’t I?
M: Why would it be Sam and not Frodo?
Q: Because Frodo isn’t going to make it. He’s almost dead and there’s another three hour movie to go. Only Sam will make it.
M: Huh.
Q: I’m right, aren’t I?
M: So you tell me.
Q: I’m right.
Scene: Last Tuesday, after rewatching The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD.
Q: Okay: now I know who throws the ring in the Crack of Doom.
M: Who?
Q: Aragorn.
M: Could be.
Q: Because it’s his destiny. There’s that whole scene where they talk about that king that tried to put the ring in the Crack of Doom and couldn’t do it, and then later they said that Aragorn was the heir to the Throne of Whatever, and then he had the chance to take the ring from Frodo but he didn’t so he’s stronger than his grandfather so he could throw it into the Crack. It’s his destiny.
M: You seem pretty confident that someone destroys the ring. How do you know that Sauron doesn’t get it?
Q: Shut up. It’s Aragorn.
Scene: Last night, 20 minutes after we turned off the light, as I lay sleeping and The Queen apparently lay awake thinking.
Q: Matt?
M: Mm?
Q: Matt, I need to ask you something.
M: Mmf?
Q: I need to ask you a question. And it’s important that you answer me.
M: [Suddenly wide awake and alarmed]: What is it?
Q: Who puts the ring into the Crack of Doom?
Postscript: It would be cool if, at the end of Return of the King when Sauron finally gets the ring, they played I Got The Power by Snap, and Sauron could dance around and do the rap part (“it’s gettin’ kinda hectic!”) and then be all like, “BOOYAH! It your face, hobbits!!” I think that would really drive home how evil he is.
(What? You didn’t know Sauron gets the ring and enslaves all of Middle Earth? Christ, I though The Queen was the only person who didn’t know the ending. Jeeze, sorry man. **spoilers!** Sorry.)
Movies: The Gangs of New York
The last movie I saw in 2002 was a wonderful, sprawling epic that clocked in at 180 minutes. The first movie I saw in 2003 was also a three-hour, sprawling epic. But unlike The Two Towers, The Gangs of New York was less “sprawling” in the sense of “grandiose” and more in the sense of sprawling on the living room floor after tripping over the coffee table.
Maybe it’s because they came at it from different angles. Tolkien, in writing the Lord of the Rings, started with a strong narrative and then crafted a vast and exhaustive world in which to set it, filled with larger-than-life characters and steeped in history. The screenwriter of Gangs, on the other, began with the history — as documented in Herbert Asbury’s (mostly) nonfiction Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld — and had to add a narrative to string the people and events together. Too bad he elected to just pull Plot Number Four off the shelf and use it as his framing device. Plot Number Four is perhaps better known as Standard Revenge Fantasy: Boy has Father murdered by a Powerful Figure; Powerful Figure takes over Father’s kingdom; years later, Boy (hereafter “Young Man”) joins Power Figure’s inner circle in the guise of an ally; Young Man is consumed by his lust for vengeance, Young Man takes on Powerful Figure, everything goes to hell in a handbasket, the end.
Where have we seen this before? Oh, that’s right: Hamlet. The Prince of Denmark, though, is at least contemplative, stopping every few minutes to wonder aloud about morality and mortality. The Young Man in Gangs, meanwhile, goes about his assigned role rather perfunctorily, as if he too has seen Plot Number Four in action, knows how it’s going to end, and therefore opts not to expend any energy on introspection. In other words, we have Hamlet minus the philosophy, which you may have enjoyed when it was entitled The Lion King.
(I wonder how many different movies I can compare Gangs to in a single review. Let’s explore.)
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using a hackneyed plot to tell a historical tale; James Cameron, for example, turned Plot Number Two (“Forbidden Love”) into a Best Picture award. But Titanic succeeds because it uses the plot to explicate the backstory: Leonardo Di Caprio, in the role of Jack, serves as a primer on early 20th century class distinctions, and guides us through one of the most shocking disasters on record. Yeah, you had to sit through a few love scenes, but the focus of the film was always on the history. Gangs, on the other hand, lavishes so much time and energy on its one-dimensional characters that the real story, the setting, is eclipsed. The Leonardo Di Caprio role doesn’t showcase the history so much as obscure it.
Gangs of New York isn’t bad, but it sure ain’t no Two Towers. By staking out the middle ground between Titanic and Hamlet, it gives neither the world nor the characters enough depth to be of much interest. That adds up to a three-hour bore — and there, as they say in Plot Number Four, is the rub.
First Jim Henson, And Now This
Dear Diary: Today, while sitting teary-eyed at my desk at work, I prayed that no coworkers would wander by and put me in the awkward position of having to explain that I was sobbing over a rabbit in Asia that I had never met and had only seen online pictured with pancakes on its head.
I am never looking at the Internet again.