Random 10 5/15

So last week, we didn’t do so well, only two out of ten being guessed. Let’s see what you may of this week’s lyrics:

  1. “Tear in Your Hand” by Tori Amos, guessed by Thud
    Maybe she’s just pieces of me you’ve never seen
  2. “What a Wonderful World” by Joey Ramone (orig. Louis Armstrong), guessed by Thud
    They’re really saying, I love you
  3. “Never Say Never” by Romeo Void
    Old couple walks by, as ugly as sin
  4. “Six O’Clock” by the Lovin’ Spoonful, guessed by Kim
    I went home and found that time to sleep was rare
  5. “Under Your Spell/Standing (Reprise)” from Once More with Feeling, guessed by Victor
    And it’ll grieve me ’cause I love you so
  6. “If Jeff Buckley had Lived” by the Indelicates
    And there’s a flicker of religion in the chances you take
  7. “On Every Street” by Dire Straits
    The moon is hanging upside down
  8. “The Sporting Life” by the Decemberists, guessed by Fafner
    He turns and loads the lemonade away
  9. “Sunset Grill” by Don Henley, guessed by Clayton
    It’s the kind that tears you up inside
  10. “Loom/Pulse” by Ani DiFranco
    The carnival of you and me is coming to town

As always, good luck!

That’s one way of putting it

A.O. Scott on Angels & Demons:

This movie, without being particularly good, is nonetheless far less hysterical than “Da Vinci.” Its preposterous narrative, efficiently rendered by the blue-chip screenwriting team of Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, unfolds with the locomotive elegance of a Tintin comic or an episode of “Murder, She Wrote.” Mr. Howard’s direction combines the visual charm of mass-produced postcards with the mental stimulation of an easy Monday crossword puzzle. It could be worse.

Personally, I was bored and annoyed by The Da Vinci Code — the movie; I’ve never read the book — more than anything else, so I don’t expect to watch this prequel-turned-sequel.

A magical mystery tour de force?

So I don’t know what you did all day, but I spent way too much time coming up with fake Beatles facts over on my Twitter account, when I wasn’t working on a student counseling book or attending presentations on magazine publishing. (I hate to jinx myself, but so far this week has bucked a recent trend of very busy Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) Anyway, I don’t usually repost Twitter content here, except in the ever-changing feed in the sidebar, but I got a kick out of writing these and actually think some of them are pretty funny. Your mileage may vary. Here they are:

Contrary to popular belief, and mainly for tax reasons, the bulk of “Yellow Submarine” was not recorded underwater.

“Ringo Starr” is an anagram for “Tsar Nirrog,” betraying the drummer’s shared Russian and Middle-Earthian parentage.

“Fixing a Hole” was inspired by McCartney’s lifelong love of archeology. He was, in fact, later the model for Indiana Jones.

The Beatles were originally known as the Quarrymen, due to their original job as the house band on Tom Baker’s Doctor Who.

Often misquoted as saying “we’re more popular than cheeses now,” Lennon was referring only to Gouda and Gruyère specifically.

Beatlemania is a legitimate psychological condition recognized by the DSM-IV in 1994. There is no known therapeutic cure.

To honor the song of the same name, Liverpool celebrates “eight days a week,” disrupting calendars and the tourist trade both.

“Yo mama” jokes trace their lineage back to the Lennon/McCartney song “Your Mother Should Know.”

John Lennon is, in fact, not a walrus.

In his later years, Ringo Starr would withdraw from recording and society, changing his name to Yusuf Starkey.

The Beatles have yet to release songs to iTunes, still upset about the time Steve Jobs introduced them to marijuana in 1964.

Ringo Starr does indeed have blisters on his fingers, and wanders the English countryside showing them to any who care to see.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” was actually a taunt at the notoriously strawberry-phobic Ringo, who refused to drum on the song.

The Beatles first performed at the Cavern Club, which is where John Lennon took up his life-long passion for spelunking.

Ringo’s dreams of being the first Beatle in space were dashed when Pete Best was launched by the Soviets aboard Sputnik II.

Ed Sullivan first booked the Beatles on his show under the mistaken impression that they were the Flying Wallendas.

Fermat’s Last Theorem, predicting how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall, was finally solved in 1968 by the Beatles.

The Beatles madly loved the Beach Boys’ album Pet Sounds, mistakenly believing that Brian Wilson’s pet dog had played bass.

Though now long forgotten, the real Sgt. Pepper fought valiantly in the War of 1812 and was later knighted by Queen Victoria.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is now on display in the Smithsonian, although some conspiracy theorists claim it is a fake.

The Beatles were known for being technologically adept in the studio. On Let it Be, for example, Paul was replaced by a robot.

“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”? Not so fast. John Lennon’s monkey was a notorious tax cheat.

“Hey Jude” was a sly tribute to American comedienne and accordionist Judy Tenuta. Ringo was allegedly a fan.

Charles Manson found inspiration in “Helter Skelter,” but Ringo’s own “Octopus’s Garden”-style murder rampage went unremarked.

Mr. Kite has actually not benefited at all from the Beatles, despite years of painful contract and royalty arbitration.

“Mean Mr. Mustard” would be the Beatles’ first and only commercial jingle, a failed attempt to market Grey Poupon to teens.

I don’t know if I amused more than annoyed my Twitter followers with these today, but I had fun with them.

Tuesday various

  • Do you think John Ridley’s caveman ancestors went around saying things like, “Everybody’s always cave-painting nowadays! I don’t want to know about the mammoth you killed last night! You annoying kids and your fire and your wheel!” His anti-Twitter screed on NPR — which he’ll probably hate to hear I heard about first on Twitter — gives Maureen Dowd’s recent piece on Twitter a run for its money on Just Not Getting It. Twitter isn’t anything more sinister or complicated than a microblogging platform with a built-in open chat feature. It’s not an insidious invasion of privacy, and it’s not an unavoidable annoyance. If you don’t care what people are posting to it, then don’t read those posts.
  • Here’s another one I found via Twitter — this time via Rainn Wilson — apparently IMAX isn’t always IMAX:

    Let me make one thing clear: I am not opposed to digital projection in principle, or to the IMAX digital system in particular. I think the change to digital projection in the giant-screen world is inevitable. And I fully admit that the IMAX digital system is superior, in certain respects, to some other digital systems.

    But I object when anyone claims that two patently different things are the same. Where I come from that’s known as “lying.” And call me naïve, but I don’t believe that any company whose business plan is based on deceiving its customers can succeed with that strategy for very long.

    My local IMAX theater is one of the genuinely big-screen theaters, and I think the truly immersive experience you get with that is worth the extra money. Personally, the experience isn’t exactly my favorite, which is the main reason I haven’t been back since I saw Beowulf two years ago. Still, if that’s the experience you’re after — and if that’s what is being marketed — you have a right to be upset when you’re charged the same price for the small-screen IMAX.

  • And another story I first heard about on Twitter — it’s been that kind of day — this time via Jonathan CarrollIrish student hoaxes world’s media with fake quote:

    DUBLIN (AP) — When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

    His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

    Don’t these journalists read xkcd?

  • I kind of actively disliked the Charlie’s Angels movies, but maybe it’s a little unfair for me to keep judging their director, McG, on their excessive and annoying gloss alone. Certainly, he’s no worse a choice to follow in James Cameron’s footsteps than Terminator 3‘s director Jonathan “Who?” Mostow. And I can kind of respect McG’s recent defense of giving Terminator Salvation a PG-13 rating:

    “It just became clear that the things that would take it to an R or an NC-17 would be: There goes the arm, and now the blood is squirting on my face,” McG said in a group interview last Friday in Beverly Hills, Calif. “That wasn’t in service of the character or the story. The elements that would have taken it to R just ended up feeling gratuitous in the editing room. There’s a topless scene with Moon Bloodgood. I was trying to echo that scene in Witness where Kelly McGillis turns and says, ‘I’m not ashamed’ to Harrison Ford. But it just felt like, ‘Oh, there’s the genre stunt of the good-looking girl taking her top off.’ And it felt counterproductive in the spirit of what we were looking to achieve on a storytelling level, so way to go.”

    Assuming it’s not just BS, of course.

    The PG-13 rating is sometimes lambasted for being an easy cop-out for directors and studios, afraid of losing the lucrative teen audience with a more mature R rating. But McG is not wrong: forcing a movie to be an R just to appease fans isn’t the way to go. It would compromise the film just as much as making cuts to appease the ratings board. I’m willing to accept that this is exactly the film McG set out to make.

    Whether that film will be any good… That, I don’t know.

  • And finally, Telescopic Text. I also really liked Joe Davis’ These Are the Boring Bits. [via]