| Tuesday Top Ten (on Monday) |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|09:22 pm] |
Since I'll be away for the next few days (Thanksgiving in Colorado with my family), here's the extra early edition of the Tuesday Top 10:
1. "Tomorrow Comes a Day Too Soon" - Flogging Molly
2. "Not Too Soon" - Throwing Muses
3. "The Future Soon" - Jonathan Coulton
4. "Someday (Soon)" - The Real Tuesday Weld
5. "All Tomorrow's Parties" - The Velvet Underground and Nico
6. "Sooner Than You Think" - New Order
7. "I've Been Waiting for Tomorrow (All of My Life)" - The The
8. "Early in the Mornin'" - Louis Jordan
9. "One Step Ahead" - Split Enz
10. "Still Too Soon to Know" - Elvis Costello |
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| Shut up, already. Damn. |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|05:39 pm] |
Last week I was in an extremely minor traffic accident. This guy in a van was trying to turn into the lane next to me while I was stopped at a traffic light and he wound up scraping up my back bumper and cracking my tail light. He admitted fault, his insurance company accepted liability, and they're paying for the repairs. My car's in the shop now and should be done either tomorrow or Monday. So far, everything's cool and basically working the way it's supposed to.
Except that literally every day* since I reported the accident I've been informed, either by telephone or mail, that I have the right to have the repairs done anywhere I want to, and that neither insurance company can require me to use a particular body shop. I think I understand that now, but it's a moot point anyway since the car is already in the shop. Usually this information is provided at the end of a phone call or letter that ostensibly had some other purpose, but today I got a letter that was just to inform me, again, that I can use any repair facility I want to.
Okay. Glad to hear it. They can stop telling me any time now, because I really do think I understand.
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*Excluding weekends. So literally literally every business day. |
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| Tuesday Top Five |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|08:11 pm] |
The "Jacks or Better" Playlist
1. "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" - Bob Dylan
2. "Queen of Hearts" - Dave Edmunds
3. "Ace of Spades" - Motorhead
4. "Jack of Diamonds" - The Daily Flash
5. "Ace of Hearts" - Average White Band*
* I actually like "Ace of Spades" by Link Wray better, but then there would be two aces of spades which would mean that somebody was cheating, and there'd be a gunfight and God knows what all. |
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| Tuesday Top Five |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|04:51 pm] |
Top Five David Bowie Covers
1. "Changes" - Butterfly Boucher
2. "Life on Mars" - the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain*
3. "John, I'm Only Dancing" - the Polecats
4. "The Man Who Sold the World" - Nirvana
5. "Life on Mars" - Seu Jorge
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*No, seriously. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxCj2MO02AE
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|05:50 pm] |
It was election day today, and here in Long Beach (or at least in the part where I live) there was exactly one thing to vote on: a special property tax assessment for the school district. There aren't a whole lot of pop songs about property tax assessments, so instead I present the
Top Ten Songs About School
1. "My Old School" - Steely Dan
2. "Grade 9" - Barenaked Ladies
3. "Rock'n'Roll High School" - the Ramones
4. "Teacher, Teacher" - Rockpile
5. "Happy Hunting Ground" - Sparks
6. "Corduroy" - the Previous
7. "Charm School" - Elvis Costello & the Attractions
8. "School's Out" - Alice Cooper
9. "Schooldays" - Starjets
10. "Hot for Teacher" - Van Halen
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| I'm not sure if this sign is ironic or just alanic ... |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|07:20 pm] |
That's a link, so you can click on it and see a bigger version if you can't read the sign.
Brandyce and I went to the Long Beach Historical Society cemetery tour. It's during the day, so they don't have people jumping out at you and shit. Instead, they have people dressed up as people who are buried in the cemetery and they tell you their life stories. It was all interesting, and most of the actors were good, although a few of them could have worked on voice projection a little bit more. It was sometimes hard to hear if you were at the back. Also, props to current Long Beach mayor Bob Foster for portraying "controversial" (in the sense of "crooked, but not universally reviled") local politician Emmet Sullivan.
More pictures of the cemetery are available on my Flickr page.
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| Tuesday Top Five |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|04:58 pm] |
It's almost Halloween, and I was going to do some kind of Halloween costume list, but I couldn't really think of anything clever. Since I did a Halloween playlist last year (or was it the year before that? I'm too lazy to check.), I figured I'd go with movies this time.
Top 5 Black & White Horror Movies
1.) The Haunting (1963)
2.) Psycho (1960)
3.) Dracula (1931)
4.) Night of the Hunter (1955)
5.) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921)
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|07:05 pm] |
Top Ten Self-Referential Songs
1. "Hook" - Blues Traveler
2. "The Song That Goes Like This" (from Spamalot) - Eric Idle and John DuPrez
3. "Title of the Song" - Da Vinci's Notebook
4. "This Song" - George Harrison
5. "How to Write a Song" - The Frantics
6. "Song for Whoever" - The Beautiful South
7. "I Bought A Flat Guitar Tutor" - 10cc
8. "The Grunge Song" - The Vestibules
9. "This Is Not a Love Song" - Public Image Ltd.
10. "Please Play This Song on the Radio" - NOFX
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| Tuesday Top Ten (on Wednesday again) |
[Oct. 14th, 2009|10:56 am] |
Forgot to post this yesterday.
Top Ten Bob Dylan Covers
1. "All Along the Watchtower" - Jimi Hendrix
2. "My Back Pages" - the Byrds
3. "This Wheel's On Fire" - Siouxsie and the Banshees
4. "Crawl Out Your Window" - Transvision Vamp
5. "I'm Not There" - Sonic Youth
6. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" - Mike Ness
7. "I Threw It All Away" - Elvis Costello
8. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" - Shawn Colvin
9. "Absolutely Sweet Marie" - Jason and the Scorchers
10. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" - Ken Bishop's Nice Twelve*
(*Completely mostly** unavailable. It was in an episode of The Young Ones but due to licensing issues, isn't on the DVD.)
**Thanks to Ian for the correction.
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Oct. 6th, 2009|06:36 pm] |
Top Ten Out-of-Context Simpsons Quotes for All Occasions
1. Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm?" Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?
2. It's a perfectly cromulent word.
3. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true.
4. Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?
5. Chief Wiggum! Don't eat the clues!
6. Troy McClure? You said he was dead.
- No, what I said is that he sleeps with the fishes.
7. No Frank-Gehry-designed prison can hold me!
8. Bon jour, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!
9. My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say "dickety" because the Kaiser had stolen our word "twenty."
10. And I'll never get my comeuppance! Do you hear me? No comeuppance!
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| Tuesday Top Five |
[Sep. 29th, 2009|08:35 pm] |
Okay, so here's the list I was going to do last week. The Top Five Underrated Movies of ... well, not all-time, I guess. Recent Memory, let's say. How did I decide a movie was "underrated?" Through a very thorough and scientific process of looking stuff up on the Internet. Any movie I gave 4 or 5 stars to on Netflix and which has at least one of a.) an average Netflix rating of 3.0 or less; b.,) an average IMDB rating of 6.0 or less; or c.) 60% or less ("rotten") on Rotten Tomatoes. So, here's the list:
Top Five Underrated Movies of Recent Memory
1. City Heat. (1984). Netflix: 3.0, IMDB: 5.1, Rotten Tomatoes 25%. Part of the problem with City Heat is that the trailers made it look like the kind of movie that it's actually a parody of. So people who would have liked it didn't see it, and the people who saw it didn't like it. And yet, it's genuinely funny, with Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood spoofing their respective tough-guy images, and Madeleine Kahn, who's always funny, doing the Madeleine Kahn thing. This may be damning with faint praise, but it's certainly better than anything else Burt Reynolds did in the '80s, and certainly better than most of the truck-driver with a monkey/Bronco Billy/Dirty Harry treadmill that Eastwood was on.
2. Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead (1995). Netflix: 3.3, IMDB: 6.6, Rotten Tomatoes: 35%. The knock on this one seems to be that it wants to be a Quentin Tarantino movie, but it isn't. But, you know, it's not like Tarantino invented hard-luck criminals and quirky dialogue. Also, it's a lot more plot-driven than Reservoir Dogs, which is the QT movie it's supposedly "ripping off."
3. Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Netflix: 2.8, IMBD: 6.2, Rotten Tomatoes: N/A. Apparently people are down on this because it's "boring" and has "too many sub-plots." It is very much of its time, and so it's kind of like a lot of mid-to-late '60s movies like, say, The Graduate or The Sterile Cuckoo (if that's the movie I'm thinking of), where the main characters are kind of alienated and adrift from mainstream society. Except that here, James Coburn's character is actually a cynical con man playing on that soulful loner image to hustle up the seed money so he can put together a heist to rob the bank at LAX. So I guess I can see where if you were expecting a caper comedy like Big Deal on Madonna Street or Topkapi or something you'd find this to be not what you wanted.
4. Tapeheads (1988). Netflix: 2.8, IMDB: 5.7, Rotten Tomatoes: 75%. Well, the critics are with me on this one. This is another movie that's very much of its time, very hip and ironic in that late-80s way. It's also absolutely hilarious, in a way that lets me (although clearly not everyone else) overlook the way it kind of falls apart in the third act.
5. The Cat's Meow (2002). Netflix: 3.0, IMDB: 6.4, Rotten Tomatoes: 72%. I've looked at some of the user reviews, and I still don't get why this is rated so low. Again, the professional critics seem to be with me. A great cast, tight script, based on a true story, set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. What's not to like?
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| An open letter to CBS Sports |
[Sep. 27th, 2009|09:34 pm] |
Dear CBS Sports,
Everybody likes the ticker that runs across the bottom of the screen during football games and shows the scores of other games. There is one way you could make the ticker even better and more informative. During the afternoon games, in addition to showing the scores of the morning games that are over and thus unlikely to change, you could also show the scores of the other afternoon games that are currently in progress. I don't think this should be too difficult, as I believe that's the way the ticker already works during the morning games.
Thank you,
Steve |
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Sep. 22nd, 2009|08:27 pm] |
This actually started out to be a completely different and much more positive list. It was going to be "Top 5 Underrated Movies" and I was going to base it on the discrepancy between my Netflix rating and the average for all Netflix users. I may still do that, but while researching that I accidentally discovered this list, which allows me to be all cranky and elitist and stuff.
Ten Movies I Hated That Have Average Netflix ratings over 3.5*
1. The Terminator (4.0)
2. Lethal Weapon 2 (3.9)
3. Bram Stoker's Dracula (3.8)
4. Moonraker (3.7)
5. Total Recall (3.7)
6. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (3.7)
7. Back to School (3.6)
8. Tron (3.6)
9. Conan the Barbarian (3.6)
10. Rambo: First Blood Part II (3.6)
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*On a scale of 1-5. For comparison, the following movies are rated at or below 3.5: Annie Hall (3.4), Broadcast News (3.5), The Constant Gardener (3.5), Lost in Translation (3.3), and Night Moves (3.2). Casablanca gets a 4.2. Citizen Kane is 3.9. The Godfather and Star Wars are tied with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at 4.5.
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| Tuesday Top Ten (on Wednesday) |
[Sep. 16th, 2009|03:39 pm] |
The "Better Late than Never" Playlist
1. "It's Too Late" - Carole King
2. "All of a Sudden (It's Too Late)" - XTC
3. "Lifetime Too Late" - Peter Himmelman
4. "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" - Louis Jordan*
5. "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" - Bob Dylan
6. "It's Too Late" - Jim Carroll Band
7. "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)" - Louis Prima
8. "Save it for Later" - The English Beat
9. "Better Never than Late" - Jon Astley
10. "Late in the Evening" - Paul Simon
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*You know. "I got a gal who's always late ..."
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Sep. 8th, 2009|09:04 pm] |
Top Ten Out-of-Context MST3K Lines for All Occasions
1. "Hey, beanie boys! Shag out there and fix that whoop-whoop noise!"
2. "A hamburger sandwich with a french-fried potato garnish."
3. "It's nice that they're giving the dead girl a second chance."
4. "Big old buttery moon ..."
5. "Renaissance Fairs of the Old West!"
6. "That was one unstable octopus."
7. "Wait! Don't shoot, we don't know if we don't understand it yet."
8. "Rex Dart, Eskimo Spy."
9. "Also in there is a poisoned sammich!"
10. "This door sounds brown."
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| Vacation, all I ever wanted |
[Sep. 7th, 2009|09:40 pm] |
For Labor Day weekend, Brandyce and I drove up to Santa Cruz. We got a hotel literally right across the street from the boardwalk, which has lots of cool rides even for a mild acrophobe like myself, and a very short walk from the municipal wharf, which is chock full of really good seafood restaurants with surprisingly reasonable prices. One of the really cool things about Santa Cruz (other than being the world capital of guys with grey beards and ponytails) is that you can get onto a train at the beach (actually on Beach Street, right in front of the boardwalk) and in an hour find yourself in a redwood forest in the mountains. We had a good time, and there are pictures up on Flickr. Traffic wasn't bad at all, except for LA-to-Santa Barbara on Saturday morning and the general Santa Barbara area this afternoon. Turns out you can get from Fucking Oxnard or Some Place (the last time we stopped for snacks and a restroom break) to our house in Long Beach in just under an hour and a half with mild traffic, so that's good to know I guess.
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Sep. 1st, 2009|09:09 pm] |
The "Get a Clue" Playlist
1. "Mean Mr. Mustard" - The Beatles
2. "Scarlet's Walk" - Tori Amos
3. "Peacock Suit" - Paul Weller
4. "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" - Mission of Burma
5. "Bought a Rope" - The Minus 5
6. "Chelsea Dagger" - The Fratellis
7. "Still in the Kitchen" - The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy
8. "Lines from the Library" - Shriekback
9. "Mr. B's Ballroom" - Devo
10. "Looking for Clues" - Robert Palmer
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| Tuesday Top Ten |
[Aug. 25th, 2009|06:04 pm] |
"Sticking it to the Man" Edition
1. "I'm the Man" -- Joe Jackson
2. "The Man Who Invented Himself" -- Robyn Hitchcock
3. "I'm the Man Who Murdered Love" -- XTC
4. "The Man Who Sold the World" -- David Bowie
5. "Working Undercover for the Man" -- They Might Be Giants
6. "The Man With Two Surnames" -- John Wesley Harding
7. "The Man With the Black Moustache" -- The Monochrome Set
8. "The Man With the Child in His Eyes" -- Kate Bush
9. "The Man in the Dark Sedan" -- Snakefinger
10. "The Man in Me" -- Bob Dylan
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