Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor

Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.

Toronto Odyssey #2: Dr. Doolittle But Kill.


in Heartwarming

I never remember my dreams. My sleep issues run so deep that my brain doesn’t have time for REM by the time I actually manage to get to snoozieland. But I took a cat nap today and had visions that were so strange and disturbing that I realized I should probably finish my Toronto story as means of exorcism. But first, I have to tell you about this fucking dream.

I was at my Grandmother’s house, which had been transformed into a building which was a cross between the movie House and various other naughty structures. Rickety, dark, old, evil smelling, foreboding – an uncanny resemblance to the real thing. My Grandmother was gone, presumably already in ‘the home’, and she had a large variety of animals left behind. All of which had to be killed. By me.

My sister was there, but she was busy packing stuff up and getting ready to leave for Boston. My task was domestic housepet genocide, and I was expected to do it by others in the house as casually as they were cleaning, organizing and inventorying. There were cats which I neck-wrung without difficulty (which is ridiculous because I love cats). A rabbit which I stomped. I think I drowned at least one hamster. A giant furry beetle which I tore into pieces and fed to other furry beetles before then massacring his buddies, too. But when I got to the attic there was one pet left which I could not bring myself to assassinate.

A large-eyed dog, some sort of terrier, was cowering from me up there, behind 30 years of curio crap. I picked it up, brought it downstairs and pleaded with my sister to quietly put it in her car and take it to Beantown with her. She eventually agreed, and I started taking loads of trash to the dump like I’d spent the morning re-arranging a sock drawer.

What is the worst or most bizarre dream you’ve ever had? Should I just check into an evaluation facility right now?

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My Scope Is Busted.


in

Why do I maintain this blog? It certainly isn’t easy to keep up momentum. I have many other things I should be targeting and focusing my effort on. As I’ve lapsed off quite a bit lately I’ve had to ask myself if I still want to keep it up. Other than to make blatant SEO-related plugs for things like crown moldings, it doesn’t serve any real purpose in my life. Actually that’s not true.

Maintaining this site is like talking to a bartender whenever I need to without the downside of spending $80 and then not showing up for work the next morning. It’s similar to going to a confessional and talking to a priest for 30 minutes about niche pornography without then being told to convert. It could be considered a virtual shoulder to cry on that doesn’t then dump me because I’m ‘too nice’. It is many things, it is nothing. A drop in the blogosphere bucket.

But really, we’ve had a lot of fun here over the years.

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Wednesday Wadio: The Kinks’ ‘Death Of A Clown’.


in Wednesday Wadio

I’ve been listening to this tune all weekend after stumbling across it on a Best Of… Kinks compilation. It’s a real shame that a beardy kraut twat is talking over the ultra-eerie piano notes at the very beginning, but Dave Davies‘ Little Lord Fauntelroy coat is a delight to behold. This was recorded in the mid 60s on a West German TV show called BeatClub.

Unfortunately Dave had a stroke in an elevator at the BBC a couple of years ago, so his clowning days are all but over. I have a new appreciation for the Kinks, namely their work through the late 70s prior to the 80s hits like ‘Come Dancing’ which I remember from childhood. And not fondly. Dig into the back catalog if you ever get the chance – particularly ‘Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy‘ which went on to be an unlikely cover for Queens of the Stone Age in 1998.

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Using Your Floodle.


in

I discovered Floodle today while reading one of my favorite marketing blogs. At first look, it is a handy dandy resource for eBooks, Top 10 lists, etc. Pop-advice, if you will. Some sample features include 101 recipes for the deep fryer, Caring for your Pet Hamster, The Big Book of Puppy Names, Credit repair, and my personal favorite (if you know me you’ll get this,) Miracle Vinegar. But I’m not mentioning the site because it’s just a great collection of free information.

What isn’t readily apparent when you visit the site for the first time, is that the owner is only posting things that he finds for sale on eBay. But he is posting them for free! He is like the Robin Hood of eBay – pointing to and providing for free information that unscrupulous hacks are charging the uninitiated a lot of money for. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the sellers were also the people who had written the material. But they’re usually not – they are finding content readily available for free online and then posting it for sale on eBay. Do you follow?

That’s not to say Mr. Floodle is a saint. Many of these articles he himself has purchased from eBay. His payoff is advertising revenue – you’ll see that the site has ads. But I really admire his model and concept, and have added the site to my favorites, as I suggest you do as well. There is some great reference material here that many schmucks are paying through the nose for. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have 65 Tried & Trusted Amish Recipes to get through before lunch.

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Alas Poor Yorick. I Knew Him, Horatio Caine.


in

The TV signal on my bedroom/office desktop is stuck on one channel. And this channel is A&E. Since I began working from home a month and a half ago, I have become an authority on CSI: Miami, college boxes, Forensic Files, Crossing Jordan and a host of other depressing modern cop shows in syndication. And about every 20 seconds there’s an advertisement for the Sopranos, whom the network has just purchased. I have seen it so many times, I may never be able to watch the Sopranos again. But I can watch this:

I work well with music or television on in the background. It’s comforting. Like when you leave the radio on for your dog if you’re going to be out all day. It can also lead you to discover CSI Miami and the many hilarious fan-made YouTube edits. It’s a time-tested formula: David Caruso puts on his glasses, utters a one-liner worthy of a school play, the opening scream from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” punctuates the gravity of said one-liner and then leads into the opening sequence. It’s almost like the Pythagorean Theorum in terms of reliability. I want to make up my own Horatio Caine one-liner for fun. Play along if you’d like.

Detective: “It looks like Angela’s killer was good at covering their tracks, Horatio“.
Horatio: “Maybe, but Angela here… isn’t good (glasses on) … at NOT being dead.”
Roger Daltrey: “Yeeeeeeoooooooooow!“

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