Random 10 9-3

Last week. This week:

  1. Maybe you’re crazy in the head
  2. I might have to break the law when I catch you
  3. Will you teach me how to whistle with a mouthful of nails?
  4. I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow
  5. Well I took a piss at fortune’s sweet kiss
  6. I love how it feels with your jeans against mine
  7. Let her dance with me just for the hell of it
  8. Hang around, baby, we’ll be baking a cake for you
  9. I hear people are talking about us
  10. It’s just no good anymore since you went away

Good luck!

In which I resort to reposting my Twitter feed

I don’t know what you did today, but me, I spent way too much time making up “facts” about the new Robert Rodriguez movie Machete.

You could probably argue that any time spent doing this is too much time, but every man needs his hobbies.

It all started when Joe Hill posted the following on Twiter this morning:

Robert De Niro has twice won the Oscar. By coincidence, Danny Trejo cut a guy named Oscar in jail, a couple times.

He appended the hashtag #factsaboutmachete, and I decided to just run with it.

Anyway, here are the so-called facts I posted about the ex-Federale-goes-on-brutal-rampage-of-revenge movie:

Based on the novel of the same name by Jane Austen.

“The feel-good musical of the year!” raves Gene Shalit.

A spin-off of Hans Christian Andersen’s heartwarming holiday classic “The Little Machete Girl.”

Audiences will have to wait until the director’s cut to see Danny Trejo have sex in 3D with blue aliens.

Ever the Method actor, Robert De Niro served eighteen months in Congress to prepare for his role as Senator McLaughlin.

Machete was actually the name of his sled.

“Whosoever pulleth the machete from the stone shall be king,” proclaims a possibly inebriated Cheech Marin.

Follows in a long tradition of characters named for deadly weapons: Bullitt, Blade, Celine Dion…

Legend has it that to every age, a new Machete is born. Frankly, though, I don’t what Legend has been smoking.

In Japanese, Machete is known as Happy Sunshine Sharp Pointy Man.

An origin story in which Danny Trejo’s character is bitten by a radioactive machete was scripted but never filmed.

Be sure to stay through the end credits for a thrilling sneak peek at Machete joining the Avengers!

If you stand in front of a mirror and shout Machete! three times, Robert De Niro’s character will appear and deport you.

Machete’s blades may not be crafted from adamantium, but they still put the fear of god into that gringo Magneto.

The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Machete from the bosom of the water…

A shocking twist in Martha’s Vineyard reveals Trejo to be Kyle Machete, formerly of the Kennebunkport Machete family.

A few other people got into the action, too. I particularly liked this from RichterCa:

Originally planned to be the next “Spy Kids” sequel, it was rebranded after children in test audiences cried for hours.

And this from TwittterRock:

He takes just like a Machete. And he aches just like a Machete. But he breaks just like a little girl.

Amazingly, I actually also managed to get a fair amount of work done, too. Today marked the last of my long summer-hour days. I have a half day tomorrow — provided Hurricane Earl doesn’t change those plans — and then I’m off until a week from Monday.

Maybe I’ll even go see Machete while I’m home…

Song of the day

“Black Cab” by Jens Lenkman

Though a glass darkly

The most exciting thing that happened today was, I called the place where I purchased my eyeglasses a week and a half ago, because they’d said the frames would take 7-10 days on order…and moreover that they would call me when they came in. Seeing as that was a week and a half ago and no call had come through…

Anyway, the first person I reached led off, before I’d even had a chance to say a word, with a long spiel of “thank you for calling” and blah-blah-blah — half a minute, at least, that, only after I’d asked her to repeat herself, did I realize ended in offering to set me up for an appointment with their eye doctor. Um, no thanks, I was just calling to check on frames and lenses I purchased a week ago last Friday?

She transferred me to someone else, who took my name, phone number, and the identifying number on my receipt. Then she went away for a minute, came back, and asked if she could call me back in just a few minutes more. Either because they had to check something there, or because they were with a customer, or…it wasn’t entirely clear. But okay, sure.

She didn’t call back in a few minutes. So I went to lunch. I had my cell phone with me, and that’s the number they had.

An hour later, I’m back from lunch, and still no phone call. Another hour, still nothing.

So I call back, and go through the same song-and-dance — though no breathless opening spiel this time — and get connected to a different salesperson. Who also wants to call me back in a few minutes. I sigh. That’s what the other person I spoke with two hours ago said, I tell her. And she never called back. Don’t worry, sir, this woman tells me. She’ll definitely call me right back. She takes my phone number — my work number, since I’m sitting at my desk — and tells me her name, I guess so I’ll feel like I have someone to complain to if she doesn’t call back.

But she does, first to my cell phone, which I let go to voicemail, and then my work number. My eyeglasses are ready to be picked up at any time. Hopefully, I’ll go pick them up on Friday, the last of my half-days at work for the summer.

Seriously, though, the local LensCrafters needs to invest in a better phone system. If it’s seriously just going to be a few minutes — because you have to check in the back, or talk with the optometrist, or something — just put me on hold.

It should tell you something about my day that this was the most exciting part of it.

Song of the day

Appropriately enough, “September Gurls” by Big Star.

Wednesday various

  • James Cameron doesn’t like Piranha 3-D:

    I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip..

    Something tells me he’s going to hate Jackass 3-D.

    Frankly, though, it’s films like that — cheap horror movies with visceral, jump-out-at-you scares — to which I think 3-D is actually most ideally suited. Cameron may be throwing his full weight behind it as a tool on the artistic palette, but even in Avatar I thought the 3-D was a lot less impressive than advertised. It has its uses, but even at its best, I don’t think it rises above a gimmick. (For which you trade a not-insignificant amount of brightness and comfort.) So a film like Piranha, which embraces it fully as gimmick, may actually be exactly what the technology is meant to do.

  • Eye chart for geeks.
  • And interesting look at Yiddish in America:

    The survival of Yiddish in America is an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand story. Yiddish, once the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe, is undoubtedly moribund, with its last full-throated speakers, Holocaust survivors, now well into their 80s and 90s. (A smattering of their children speak it through sheer willpower whenever they can buttonhole a comprehending ear, but some, like this writer, grew up nagging parents to speak English and regrettably saw their first language wither.)

    On the other hand, the language is booming among Hasidim, for whom it is a lingua franca, mushrooming so prolifically that by some estimates the ultra-Orthodox will form a majority of American Jews by century’s end. [via]

  • Have you been reading Kaleidotrope contributor Jason Heller’s weekly Frequency Rotation posts at Tor.com? You really should be.
  • And finally, based on this clip, I would totally buy Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton rap album. [via]

Well, that was August

I don’t think there’s any denying that was a Tuesday. Nope, no sir. Definitely a Tuesday.

But since nothing much of interest happened on this Tuesday, I thought I’d just use this opportunity to share my August mix. This is new music, or newly discovered music, or newly rediscovered music that made an impression on me over the course of the month.

  1. “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” by Stevie Wonder
  2. “Brokedown Palace” by Adrienne Young & Little Sadie
  3. “Addicted to Love” by Florence + the Machine
  4. “Robots” by Dan Mangan
  5. “Arabella Angelique” by Grendailla
  6. “Check it Out” by Caspar Babypants
  7. “Tonight Tonight” by Dan Zanes & Friends
  8. “New York City’s Killing Me” by Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs
  9. “Come Undone” by Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
  10. “Down on Love” by Sarah Blasko
  11. “One Match” by Sarah Harmer
  12. “Blackbird Through the Dark” by Patrick Park
  13. “Clementine” by Sarah Jaffe
  14. “Stolen Car” by Bruce Springsteen
  15. “Walls (Circus)” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
  16. “Four Dreams” by Jesca Hoop
  17. “Black Sheep” by Metric
  18. “Movie Star” by Saint Thomas
  19. “Boy” by Ra Ra Riot
  20. “Run to the Hills” by Hellsongs
  21. “Waiting Around to Die” by the Be Good Tanyas
  22. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Emm Gryner
  23. “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse

It’s hard to believe, but until just recently, I thought I wouldn’t have many songs to list here. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, I guess.

I do this — like most everything else I post here — mostly for myself, but as always, if you’re interested in a mix exchange, just let me know.

Song of the day

Today’s song is “Tomorrow (Sadio)” by Salif Keita.

I first heard this a few years back when I watched Ali, Michael Mann’s 2001 Muhammad Ali biopic starring Will Smith. It’s not a perfect film — it’s at times both deeply personal and strangely muted — but I do love that final scene.

Tuesday various

  • Five Philippines inmates escape while guard plays Plants vs. Zombies. In his defense, it is a very addictive game. (I just downloaded it again on my iPad.) [via]
  • Children’s Pop-Up Books Flop as Learning Tool:

    Those exposed to the book with the photographic images were able to correctly identify their bird nearly 80 percent of the time. Those who saw the book with the drawings did so around 70 percent of the time. But those who were entertained by the pop-ups did so only 50 percent of the time — no better than chance. [via]

  • I’ve only read the first of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books, and I wasn’t exactly wowed by it, but I do know there are fans who love the novels, maybe even more than his more famous Hitchhiker’s Guide books. And I’ll admit, the idea of a television series is quite intriguing. [via]
  • Three words: Alien Pez dispenser. “They’re coming outta the walls! They’re coming outta the goddamn walls!” [via]
  • And finally, hispter dinosaurs [via]

August is almost over already?

This week marks the end of our summer hours at work, and we move back to our regular week after Labor Day. Me, I’m taking all of next week off while my parents are on vacation in England — partly because I only need to take four vacation days to get a nine-day weekend out of it, and partly because I haven’t had a full day off from work since the 4th of July.

I’m looking forward to it. I just need to get through the rest of this week intact.