collisionwork | Entries tagged with memes

Another meme that's been going around Facebook that I did there . . .

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. Go to the tab marked Notes at your Profile, and when you finish, tag 15 others (or more), including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

I got the list to 20 - including some doubles - and left it there; don't feel the need to go any farther in culling it . . . this list is in chronological order of when these albums rocked my world and changed my worldview in some way (or were the sudden, necessary soundtrack for my life at the time) -- #1-4 were "childhood," #5-7 were high school age, #8-12 were college, #13-15 were my 20s, the rest were . . . mostly age 29 (1997 was a big year for me and music).

1. Threepenny Opera – 1976 NYSF Cast Recording
2. 25 Years of Recorded Comedy - 3-LP 1977 compilation
3. Einstein On The Beach – Philip Glass
4. Big Science – Laurie Anderson
5. Trouble in Paradise – Randy Newman
6. We’re Only In It For The Money – The Mothers of Invention
7. Closer – Joy Division
8. Raw Power – Iggy & The Stooges
9. The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle – Sex Pistols
10. The Modern Lovers – The Modern Lovers
11. Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) – Brian Eno
12. 50 Coastin’ Classics – The Coasters
13. The Complete 50s Masters – Elvis Presley
14. Sins of Our Fathers – Andy Prieboy
15. the Sin Alley and Back from the Grave series – Crypt Records
16. Datapanik in Year Zero (box set) – Pere Ubu
17. Anthology of American Folk Music – compiled by Harry Smith
18. Dispepsi – Negativland
19. Lost Highway – original soundtrack supervised by Trent Reznor
20. Special year-after-9/11 Calming Duo: ‘Love and Theft' – Bob Dylan / Heathen – David Bowie

Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: The Chocolate Watchband - "Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love In)"

A meme I did a year ago is now going around Facebook. It was fun the first time, and I enjoyed doing it again, so here's the note I just posted on Facebook, detailing what to do, if you're so inclined (I didn't spend as much time on this year's as last - I have work to get back to):

Rules for Making Up Your Fake Band's Album Cover:

1. Your band name is your first hit on Wikipedia's Random Page

2. Your album name is taken from the end of the last quote on this random quotes page.

3. Your album cover is made from the fourth picture on Flickr's Interesting Photos.

I did this for my blog last January when it was going around then. The result of that one can be seen HERE. Berit did hers a few days later, and can be seen HERE

However, I haven't seen the back cover part of the meme make it to Facebook. Here's how it went when I did it a year ago:

1. Reload Flickr's interesting photos page twice. Use the seventh picture, but desaturate it.

2. Reload the random quotes page. Take the last few words of each quote to make song titles. Use them all.

So here's what I got for the back cover of that exciting new album by THOC2, To Fly in Formation:

Now YOU try it, if you haven't already . . .

Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Pet Shop Boys - "So Hard"

Yup, all snowed/iced in now, and, more than anything else, kinda bored.

So, I did indeed make up my list, as mentioned last post, of 50 Favorite Warner Bros. Cartoons to submit to Jerry Beck for his online poll, and as long as I made up the list, why not post it here as well as on his post calling for lists?

I've also included links to YouTube and Wikipedia/IMDb entries for each cartoon, where available. Some of the YouTube videos are of pretty lousy quality (one has French subtitles; one is cam-corded off a TV screen!), but so it goes (all but three of the following are available in the Warner Bros. Golden Collection DVD box sets).

In any case, if you're also stuck at home tonight, there's several hours of fine viewing here, from directors Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Maurice Noble, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, Frank Tashlin, and Alex Lovy (but especially Jones and Clampett - making this list sure showed me exactly where my tastes lie).

My Picks for Top 50 Warner Bros. Cartoons:

1. Duck Amuck (Jones, 1953)
2. Porky in Wackyland (Clampett, 1938)/Dough for the Do-Do (Freleng, color remake, 1949)
3. What’s Opera, Doc? (Jones, 1957)
4. The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Clampett, 1946)
5. Rabbit of Seville (Jones, 1949)
6. The Big Snooze (Clampett, 1946)
7. One Froggy Evening (Jones, 1955)
8. Rabbit Seasoning (Jones, 1952)
9. A Tale of Two Kitties (Clampett, 1942)
10. Feed the Kitty (Jones, 1952)
11. The Old Grey Hare (Clampett, 1944)
12. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves (Clampett, 1943)
13. Bully for Bugs (Jones, 1953)
14. Book Revue (Clampett, 1946)
15. Robin Hood Daffy (Jones, 1958)
16. Baby Bottleneck (Clampett, 1946)
17. Rhapsody Rabbit (Freleng, 1946)
18. Scrambled Aches (Jones, 1957)
19. Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (Jones, 1953)
20. Russian Rhapsody (Clampett, 1944)
21. Now Hear This (Jones/Noble, 1963)
22. Back Alley Oproar (Freleng, 1948)
23. Operation: Rabbit (Jones, 1952)
24. Porky’s Preview (Avery, 1941)
25. Rabbit Fire (Jones, 1951)
26. It’s Hummer Time (McKimson, 1950)
27. A Bear for Punishment (Jones, 1951)
28. Drip-Along Daffy (Jones, 1951)
29. The Daffy Doc (Clampett, 1938)
30. The Ducksters (Jones, 1950)
31. Bunny Hugged (Jones, 1951)
32. Scrap Happy Daffy (Tashlin, 1942)
33. Falling Hare (Clampett, 1943)
34. Buccaneer Bunny (Freleng, 1948)
35. Baseball Bugs (Freleng, 1946)
36. Show Biz Bugs (Freleng, 1957)
37. Daffy Duck Slept Here (McKimson, 1948)
38. Long Haired Hare (Jones, 1948)
39. Thugs with Dirty Mugs (Avery, 1939)
40. Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (Jones, 1953)
41. The Grey-Hounded Hare (McKimson, 1949)
42. Ali Baba Bunny (Jones, 1957)
43. Hare Brush (Freleng, 1955)
44. The Scarlet Pumpernickel (Jones, 1950)
45. Rabbit Hood (Jones, 1949)
46. Stop! Look! and Hasten! (Jones, 1953)
47. Little Red Riding Rabbit (Freleng, 1944)
48. Norman Normal (Lovy, 1968)
49. A Ham in a Role (McKimson, 1949)
50. What’s Cookin' Doc? (Clampett, 1944)

Phew! Happy watching.

Current Location: Gravesend

I've written about some favorite performers before, and there's a new meme going around the film blogs that appeals to the OCD listmaker in me.

Nathaniel R. at Film Experience Blog innocently started a meme nine days ago that, as he notes, evolved out of control - name and post pictures of your 20 All-Time Favorite Actresses (an original part of his meme seems to have also been to just put them in no particular order, and without comment, which has fallen by the wayside for most others doing this). Why? Well, as he says, "Sometimes you need to be reminded."

He tagged a few people, and they tagged a few, and then everyone just started doing it, tagged or not (ah, film geekery! the province of the OCD and/or slight Asperger's sufferers!). Now dozens of lists are up. Maybe over a hundred (Nathaniel had to stop linking to them; there wasn't time or space). I made up a list, but wasn't going to post it until I got a little bored last night and started searching for pictures of the women I'd had down. Once I got the pictures and cleaned them up, well, there was no reason not to post.

Rules in making the list for myself were: The listed actresses were to be "favorites" based on movie performances only, which not only took out all the stage actresses I work with, of course (several of whom, no joke, would be at the top of my list) but also actresses whose work I primarily love from television - so that took out Helen Mirren, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Melissa Leo. Also, to narrow it down and make it workable, they had to have more than one "key performance" which made them a Favorite - which took out most of my favorite individual performances from all of film, from Agnes Moorehead, Naomi Watts, Julia Ormond, Melanie Lynskey, Miriam Hopkins, Janet Gaynor, Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, and Greta Garbo.

And I wound up eliminating a number of actresses who I would have thought would be here, whose work is wider and more varied than the ones below, but who haven't had - for me - those two or three moments that jump to another level and really grab me the same way: Jodie Foster, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Cate Blanchett, Gloria Grahame, Marie Windsor, Tilda Swinton, and Elizabeth Russell. There, with all the ones I've now named PRIOR to my list, you have a good alternate 21 runners-up. Throw in Anna Faris for 22, just because (yeah, I'm among those who're waiting for her to get a really good part).

So here - for this week at least (and it's changed several times in the week I've had the list sitting around) - are my 20 Favorite Movie Actresses, in alphabetical order:

Jenny Agutter - Walkabout, Logan's Run, Equus, An American Werewolf in London

Ingrid Bergman - Casablanca, Notorious, Under Capricorn, Murder on the Orient Express, Autumn Sonata

Ellen Burstyn - Pit Stop, The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream

Kathleen Byron - A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room

Angie Dickinson - Rio Bravo, The Killers, Point Blank, Dressed to Kill

Miss Pamela Grier - The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Sheba, Baby, Friday Foster, Fort Apache The Bronx, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jackie Brown, Ghosts of Mars

Jessica Harper - Inserts, Phantom of the Paradise, Love and Death, Suspiria, Stardust Memories, Shock Treatment, Pennies from Heaven, My Favorite Year, Minority Report

Holly Hunter - Raising Arizona, Broadcast News, The Piano, The Firm, Crash, A Life Less Ordinary, Timecode, O Brother Where Art Thou?

Kim Hunter - The Seventh Victim, A Matter of Life and Death, A Streetcar Named Desire, Escape from the Planet of the Apes

Anna Karina - Une femme est une femme, Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux, Bande à part, Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, Pierrot le fou, Made in U.S.A.

Nicole Kidman - Dead Calm, Billy Bathgate, Malice, To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, The Others, Dogville

Sheryl Lee - Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Backbeat, Mother Night

Brigitte Lin - Police Story, Peking Opera Blues, Swordsman II, The Bride with White Hair, Chungking Express

Julianne Moore - The Fugitive, Safe, Assassins, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Psycho, Magnolia, Not I, The Hours, I'm Not There

Michelle Pfeiffer - Scarface, Into the Night, Sweet Liberty, Dangerous Liaisons, The Russia House, Batman Returns, The Age of Innocence

Vanessa Redgrave - Blowup, The Devils, Murder on the Orient Express, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Prick Up Your Ears, Mission: Impossible

Theresa Russell - Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance, Kafka, Wild Things

Sissy Spacek - Badlands, Carrie, 3 Women, Missing, The Straight Story

Liv Ullmann - Persona, Shame, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Scenes from a Marriage

Kate Winslet - Heavenly Creatures, Jude, Holy Smoke, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Romance & Cigarettes

Now of course, I want to pick the men . . . let's see . . . Bogie . . . Clooney . . . Dourif . . . Brando . . . Marvin . . . Hoskins . . .

UPDATE

Daniel McKleinfeld correctly notes that I left off someone I should not have. I'll leave the above 20, but really, I should be replacing Jenny Agutter with:

Jennifer Jason Leigh - Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Flesh + Blood, The Hitcher, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Rush, Single White Female, Short Cuts, The Hudsucker Proxy, Georgia, Dolores Claiborne, Kansas City, eXistenZ

Current Location: Gravesend

There's a couple of movie memes going around that no one's tagged me on, but have got me thinking enough to have to do them anyway and post.

So, a couple months ago a meme started where you name your favorite movie for every letter of the alphabet. It's hard with some letters, because you either have to search hard and include also-rans in some places, and pick between five or six for others, but I came up with a pretty good 26 that I can get behind:

A: The Age of Innocence
B: Bad Timing
C: Citizen Kane
D: Duck Amuck
E: Eraserhead
F: The Falls
G: Glen or Glenda?
H: How I Won the War
I: INLAND EMPIRE
J: Jackie Brown
K: Kiss Me Deadly
L: The Last Picture Show
M: Magical Maestro
N: Nothing Lasts Forever
O: Once Upon a Time in the West
P: Point Blank
Q: Quatermass and the Pit
R: The Rules of the Game
S: The Seventh Victim
T: Two or Three Things I Know About Her
U: Urgh! A Music War
V: Videodrome
W: Wavelength
X: X: The Unheard Music
Y: Yojimbo
Z: A Zed & Two Noughts

Maybe I'll do the "Twenty Favorite Movie Actresses" one next . . .

Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Duck Amuck

Hmmmn . . .

Which creature of the night are you? Your Result: Sorceror Control is the name of your game. You are a studied tactician and scientist and you seek a kingdom where things make sense, damn the morals, even if you have to create it. You are cold, calm and calculating.
Incubus/Succubus
Ghost
Cthulu Spawn
Vampire
Werewolf
Demon
Which creature of the night are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

(h/t

amygrech)

Current Mood: apathetic
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: This American Life - "Another Frightening Show About the Economy"

Rudy Ray Moore aka Dolemite, motherfucker, is dead.

I'm not sure if I'd exactly call myself a fan, but damn I enjoyed his movies. I was introduced to them by my friend Jim Baker, who described Dolemite as "Plan 10 From Inner City," but RRM was several levels above most of Ed Wood's work.

Here are two trailers from RRM's best period and a brief clip from my favorite film of his, Petey Wheatstraw, The Devil's Son-In-Law:

( If You Crave Satisfaction, This Is The Place To Find That Action )

B & I will be going to a Halloween party this year that's actually on Halloween, for once. There is a costume theme for the party (though it won't be strictly enforced) which is "Fine Art," as in "come as Jackson Pollock or come as a Jackson Pollock." I suggested to Berit going as some characters from a Philip Guston painting but she said no (I think perhaps wisely, as they wouldn't be good costumes to walk around in).

Not a lot of time to really figure out anything elaborate. Maybe I'll wear a red shirt and black pants and say I've come as Mark Rothko's No. 14.

Not sure what Berit will do - it seems that a woman these days doesn't just have to decide on a costume, but on a "sexy" version of that costume . . .

( . . . and Frog )

And queencallipygos posted a meme that got me because it made me immediately look around and follow the instructions, which are:

Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal/blog along with these instructions.

The only book within reach of the computer turned out to be Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer, on loan from Matt Gray. So I'll leave you today with these words . . .

Margaret was living in fear of the Spiritualists, who had a great deal at stake and were threatened by her confession, and especially her older sister, the domineering force in the family. As Margaret stepped to the platform, she faced more than two thousand people, including a good number of devoted Spiritualists who greeted her with hostility. As she attempted to speak, she found that the words were rambling and disjointed; the strain was too great, and Margaret was completely unable to continue. The expectant crowd realized that she had lost her nerve. Perhaps the entire confession had been a hoax.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Tin Tin - "She Said Ride" - Oceanic Odyssey volume 12

So I'm feeling better - not 100%, but well enough to go start directing today, though I should probably keep as far away from the actors as I possibly can. Berit will also be going back to work house managing the UTC#61 shows at Walkerspace after four days down.

Even such a relatively short, small-cast piece as this Penny Dreadful is giving me agita when it comes to rehearsal schedules and the like. Of course I can't get actors together who are in scenes together until performance/tech day! Of course. It'll work fine. Just wish I could see it work sooner and more often.

Back over at the meme from a few days ago, there are still six quotes left unidentified out of the 15 quotes from my 16 Top Favorite Movies (as one of the Top 15 had no "memorable quotes" on IMDb). Some of them are hard ones I didn't expect anyone to get, but some of them should have been pegged by now.

Well, here's some help. Since I had to figure out what my top 15 films were right now (an occasional chore - someday I should post the many lists of "favorite films" I have, all carefully dated as I knew the lists would change, going back over 20 years), I had to start with a bigger list and winnow it down. So I went to my IMDB page where I've rated several thousand movies (I was trying to give a rating to EVERY movie I've ever seen, but I haven't kept up with it) - you can see these ratings HERE - and grabbed the films from my highest-rated ones that just leaped out at me and made me just feel "favorite film." I wound up with a list of 45, so I've gone back and added another five.

Here's my 50 Favorite Films as of today:

The Age of Innocence (1993) by Martin Scorcese
Apocalypse Now (1979) by Francis Coppola
Bad Timing (1980) by Nicolas Roeg
Barry Lyndon (1975) by Stanley Kubrick
Barton Fink (1991) by Joel and Ethan Coen
Black Narcissus (1947) by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles
Contempt (1963) by Jean-Luc Godard
Detour (1945) by Edgar G. Ulmer
The Devils (1971) by Ken Russell
Double Indemnity (1944) by Billy Wilder
Duck Amuck (1953) by Chuck Jones
Eraserhead (1977) by David Lynch
The Falls (1980) by Peter Greenaway
Glen or Glenda? (1953) by Edward D. Wood Jr.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) by Sergio Leone
Head (1968) by Bob Rafelson et al.
Heavenly Creatures (1994) by Peter Jackson
Hellzapoppin' (1941) by Erle C. Kenton et al.
High and Low (1963) by Akira Kurosawa
Hour of the Wolf (1968) by Ingmar Bergman
How I Won the War (1967) by Richard Lester
Jackie Brown (1997) by Quentin Tarantino
The Killers (1964) by Don Siegel
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by Robert Aldrich
The Last Picture Show (1971) by Peter Bogdanovich
Lost Highway (1997) by David Lynch
Mean Streets (1973) by Martin Scorcese
Mulholland Dr. (2001) by David Lynch
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) by Sergio Leone
Peeping Tom (1960) by Michael Powell
Performance (1970) by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
Persona (1966) by Ingmar Bergman
Point Blank (1967) by John Boorman
The Red Shoes (1948) by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Schizopolis (1996) by Steven Soderbergh
The Seventh Victim (1943) by Mark Robson and Val Lewton
Singing on the Treadmill (1974) by Gyula Gazdag
Sorcerer (1977) by William Friedkin
Stardust Memories (1980) by Woody Allen
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by F.W. Murnau
Targets (1968) by Peter Bogdanovich
THX-1138 (1971) by George Lucas and Walter Murch
Tout Va Bien (1972) by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin
2 or 3 Things That I Know About Her (1967) by Jean-Luc Godard
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick
Videodrome (1983) by David Cronenberg
W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (1971) by Dusan Makavejev
Wavelength (1967) by Michael Snow
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) by Peter Greenaway

Ask me again in a few days and there could be 5-10 changes on there. But the remaining unidentified six quotes are from among these films . . .

Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Kate Bush - "Hounds of Love" - Hounds of Love

Oh, man. Berit and I are very VERY ill. We can do very little but lie around, sleep, moan, complain, take warm baths, cough, etc. Yesterday, B had an increase of symptoms that required a trip to the emergency room and some antibiotics (conjunctivitis), and now we're hoping I don't catch that complication (and as my left eye is beginning to twitch and water, this may be moot).

And I have to go hold auditions for Penny Dreadful at 7.30 pm tonight. Fun fun fun.

So, anyway, there's a movie quote meme going around. No one tagged me, but I'm bored and achy so I'm joining in anyway. It started in the theatre blogs with Joshua James, and has extended to at least Isaac, Matt Freeman, Adam Szymkowicz, James Comtois, and Jamie thus far. I have been accused of being too good at playing this and identifying the quotes, but that's only really been with Isaac and Matt, where there's an overlap of tastes, it seems.

For in this meme, you find your 15 favorite films on IMDb and pull a quote from the file there, and see who can identify the movie. As each quote is identified, I'll check them off (this is actually from my top 16 films, as one of my top 15 had no quotes listed on IMDb). How many will people get of these, I wonder . . ?

1. ~~I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.~~ Caught by Tom X. Chao - 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick

2. -- Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it was all straight up and down like Fifth Avenue. All the cross streets numbered and big honest labels on everything.
-- Everything is labeled, but everybody is not.
-- Then I must count on you for warnings too.

3. You tell the truth about a lie so beautifully.

4. ~~I've only a hundred guineas left to give you for I lost the rest at cards last night. Kiss me, me boy, for we'll never meet again.~~ And Tom X. Chao picks up another - Barry Lyndon, also from Mr. Kubrick

5. ~~You can't buy a bag of peanuts in this town without someone writing a song about you.~~ Indeed this is from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane as noted by "GK" - Greg Kotis? Glenn Kenny? I can't be sure . . .

6. This is a close-up?

7. ~~I put every damn pipe in this neighborhood. People think that pipes grow in their homes. But they sure as hell don't! Look at my knees! Look at my knees!~~ And Tom X. Chao gets another: Eraserhead by David Lynch

8. ~~Only the infinity of the depths of a man's mind can really tell the story.~~ Cait Brennan gets it - Glen or Glenda? by Edward D. Wood, Jr.

9. Never underrate the wily Pathan. What we're going on to now is the wily Pathan, followed the use of and handling of anti-gas carpet. The Pathan lives in India. India is a hot, strange country. It's full of wily Pathans and they're up to wily things, which is why I always wear spurs, even in cold weather. Now, my advice to you is always to keep your rifle strapped to a suitable portion of your body - your leg is good. Otherwise, you'll find the wily Pathan will strip himself mother-naked, grease himself all over - slippery as an eel - make off with your rifle, which is a crime. Any questions so far, or can we take gas?

10. ~~I'll see you in a year or two if I don't get shot.~~ Finally grabbed by daveroguesf after a screening of Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show

11. ~~We've met before, haven't we?~~ James Comtois knows my Lynch love too well; this is indeed from Lost Highway

12. Now it's no longer the presence of God, but the absence of God, that reassures man. It's very strange, but true.

13. ~~To you, I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition.~~ Cait Brennan gets another - Stardust Memories by Woody Allen

14. Combined with economic advantages of the mating structure, it far surpasses any disadvantages in increased perversions. A final tran - An infinite translated mathematics of tolerance and charity among artificial memory devices is ultimately binary. Stimulating rhetoric... absolute. The theater of noise is proof of our potential. The circulation of autotypes. The golden talisman underfoot is phenomenon approaching. And, in the history of now, all ethos are designed.

15. ~~I think that you'll find a little S&M will be necessary to trigger off a good healthy dose of hallucinations.~~ And it's Cait once again who knows it - Videodrome by David Cronenberg

Okay, in pain again. Back to a warm shower and bath before I have to go off to auditions . . .

Current Mood: sick
Current Location: Gravesend

OK. This meme I got from

queencallipygos was too fun and disturbing for a music geek like me to pass up:

Go to this convenient compilation site right here http://longboredsurfer.com/charts.php and find the five years you were in high school. For each year, admit to the song that was your favorite at the time, then decide which one you now generally consider to be the best song on the list. Lastly, pick the year's worst song, snarking optional. (I’m adding a category: A song that’s not necessarily your favorite or you hated; more like a guilty-pleasure, “Oh, that’s so typically [insert year here]!”)

So join me then, as we return to that fine fine superfine time in the history of popular musics and aftershocks that be known as The Early-to-Mid-Eighties. Won't you? Thank you.

1982

I generally was still listening to my parents' "old" Beatles and Stones albums primarily. And comedy records, musical theatre albums, movie soundtracks, and other geeky things. I had also started to listen a bit to Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and other NYC things that had been going on since the mid-70s. Pop of the time didn't make much of an impression, and from that year's top 100, I can see why. Couldn't talk to girls. Very "in-my-head."

FAVORITE THEN: Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - "I Love Rock N' Roll" / J. Geils Band - "Centerfold"
FAVORITE NOW: Willie Nelson - "Always on My Mind / The Go-Gos -"We Got the Beat" / The Cars -"Shake It Up"
WORST (AS SEEN NOW): Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder - "Ebony and Ivory" / Christopher Cross -"Arthur's Theme"
"THAT'S SO 1982:" Buckner & Garcia - "Pac-Man Fever"

1983

Went away to the Northfield Mount Hermon School. Made the immediate conscious decision to be more gregarious. Wanted to meet girls. Went to lots of dances. Was thought a good dancer, enjoyed myself a lot. Looking back, I see this was actually a pretty damned good year to be 15 and hitting the dance floor. Started buying 12" single dance mixes. Spent lots of time with very cute and insecure sci-fi/fantasy/gaming geek girls.

FAVORITE THEN: Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) / David Bowie - "Let's Dance" / Stray Cats - "(She's) Sexy & 17" / Golden Earring - "Twilight Zone"
FAVORITE NOW: Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) / Prince - "Little Red Corvette" / Jackson Browne - "Lawyers in Love" / Toni Basil - "Mickey"
WORST (AS SEEN NOW): Journey - "Faithfully" / Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney - "This Girl Is Mine"
"THAT'S SO 1983:" Men Without Hats - "The Safety Dance" / Greg Kihn Band - "Jeopardy"

1984

Stopped going to dances so much. Started meeting girls through various creative pursuits. I think the music suddenly sucking mightily might have had something to do with it, too. Was also getting more into proto-punk, post-punk, new wave, and hardcore (oddly, actual punk punk would have to wait until college and my education from roommate/best friend/Crash-Course Guitar Hero, Johnny Dresden). Started hanging out with goth and punk girls (oh, I sighed so much over that trenchcoated punk girl with doe eyes like a Jaime Hernandez drawing, who played every kind of saxophone there is and her hair was perfect). Didn't listen to most of what was out there in the "real" world. I seem to have not missed much.

FAVORITE THEN: Prince - "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" / Nena - "99 Luftballons" / Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" / Yes - "Owner of a Lonely Heart"
FAVORITE NOW: Prince - "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" / Eurythmics - "Here Comes the Rain Again" / The Go-Gos - "Head Over Heels"
WORST (AS SEEN NOW): Steve Perry - "Oh Sherrie" / Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson - "Say Say Say" / Ray Parker Jr. - "Ghostbusters"
"THAT'S SO 1984:" Rockwell - "Somebody's Watching Me" / Quiet Riot - "Cum On Feel the Noize"

1985

Stopped being very gregarious. Theatre, writing short stories and poetry, and photography took over my life. Spent all my time in Silverthorne Theatre, at my desk, in the darkroom, or hanging with a female friend in one of the dorm smokers (back when a prep school like this had a room in every dorm where the 15-18-year-old students could go smoke whenever they wanted, with parental permission), or wandering the dark woods around campus. Mooned over a number of different girls I didn't think would give me the time of day - years later, discovered to my horror than more than a few of them were doing the same about me (idiot! idiot! IDIOT!). The school year 1984-1985 is an odd blur in my memory, with almost no specifics, unusual for me (and I wasn't doing drugs, though everyone around me was). Started a radio show on WNMH, first called "Transintercontinental Doormat," then, when I briefly teamed with my late friend William Hill McCarter, it was "The Ian W. Hill McCarter Show," then finally "Ugly Radio." Played a wild mix of classic rock, no wave, show tunes, spoken word, minimalism, and lots of Frank Zappa and Firesign Theatre. Nothing you would have heard on the radio otherwise. Got picked for the school's Performing Dance company, one of the coolest cliques (the only really cool one in the creative arts) at the place - and it also counted as a varsity sport, so I didn't have to keep doing things I hated to fulfill a sports requirement. In retrospect, had a lot of friends; wouldn't have thought so at the time.

FAVORITE THEN: Dire Straits - "Money for Nothing" / Prince & The Revolution - "Raspberry Beret"
FAVORITE NOW: Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire" / Don Henley - "The Boys of Summer" / 'Til Tuesday - "Voices Carry"
WORST (AS SEEN NOW): Harold Faltermeyer - "Axel F" / U.S.A. for Africa - "We Are the World" / Starship - "We Built This City"
"THAT'S SO 1985:" Murray Head - "One Night in Bangkok" / a-Ha - "Take On Me"

1986

More theatre. More radio. More writing. More confidence. Got a varsity letter in Dance (yes, really). Slowly discovered that I - who saw myself as the dirty, nasty, ugly, unpopular outsider artist - was actually quite a popular and liked guy. Had no idea how to deal with this, so didn't (still can't - I enter almost every situation assuming everyone dislikes me and I have to find a way to please them). Hung more with hippie girls, discovered what Berit calls my "fetish" for strong, athletic-bodied, plain-speaking, dirty-blonde New England girls. Girlfriends since have had at least three of these qualities, go figure (just realized that). Went away to college in NYC, and everything exploded wonderfully in color, and light, and noise, and movement. A good time to be 18 in NYC.

FAVORITE THEN: Peter Gabriel - "Sledgehammer" / Prince & The Revolution - "Kiss"
FAVORITE NOW: Pet Shop Boys - "West End Girls" / Prince & The Revolution - "Kiss"
WORST (AS SEEN NOW): Paul McCartney - "Spies Like Us" / Dionne & Friends - "That's What Friends Are For"
"THAT'S SO 1986:" Falco - "Rock Me Amadeus" / Eddie Murphy - "Party All the Time"

Hmmmn. More than I intended to share. These lists brought back a whole lot in an odd Proustian rush. Music will do that - at least it does it to me.

Which gives me a link to some silly photos from the Rock Band party B & I went to over at Daniel and Sally McKleinfeld's last night . . .

Berit, as much as she tries to deny it, is the star guitarist/bassist of any fake group she's in . . .

And there was a pretty strong lineup for the fake band "Barbary Coast," with Sally & Daniel McKleinfeld, David Polenberg, and Berit on vocals (she's VERY accurate, but she can sing only either in an operatic soprano or like Grace Slick) - here seen figuring out what song to try next . . .

We all switched out on instruments from song to song, so I was allowed to try the drums when I could play them on "Easy" without negatively effecting game play . . .

But I sometimes wound up having to keep up above my skill level, and there were intense periods of sweat and concentration (here with Jenny Tavis, David, and Sally acting as groupie) . . .

Sometime we gotta see if we can do this on the big BIG screen at The Brick . . .

Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Momus - "Going for a Walk with a Line" - Folktronic

Berit really liked the album-cover-creating meme I participated in BELOW, HERE, where you create a fake band's album cover from images/words found in random web searches.

So, she had to do one herself. As she says, she could do this for fun all day. Well, it would take a while, since she goes through 19,000 fonts or so looking for the "right one" (I just keep hitting the interestingly-named ones until I find a really good one that works).

When we were doing the random generating that went into this, we first thought it was for a Laibach-type band, then Berit decided it was more like Electric Six. Now I don't know.

What kind of band is Frederick Gent School?

B's just said she thinks they wound up more Pixies-ish, but she isn't so sure either.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Berit playing Guitar Hero II - "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock Ya Tonight"

Here's the best meme I've seen in a while (coming from

flemco, who finds it "silly," but I dig . . .)

Rules for Making Up Your Fake Band's Album Cover:

1. Your band name is your first hit on Wikipedia's Random Page

2. Your album name is taken from the end of the last quote on this random quotes page.

3. Your album cover is made from the fourth picture on Flickr's Interesting Photos.

Add a Back Cover:

1. Reload Flickr's interesting photos page twice. Use the seventh picture, but desaturate it.

2. Reload the random quotes page. Take the last few words of each quote to make song titles. Use them all.

Which brings me to that big hit album - from that new alt-prog group - that's sweeping the ocean . . .

So be on the lookout for when Amiret Township Minnesota comes to your town in support of their album Least Likely To Offend (with the college-rock chart-climber, "All Over The Floor")! Next stop, Lawrence, Kansas!

(Aw man, now I feel like I have to actually make up this entire album as some kind of art project or something . . .)

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Primitive Radio Gods -"Woman" - Rocket

I have been meme-tagged by Matt Freeman.

This meme demands that I . . .

List 5 things that certain people (who are not deserving of being your friend anyway) may consider to be "totally lame," but you are, despite the possible stigma, totally proud of. Own it. Tag 5 others.

What, only 5? No, actually, it was hard (due to the "totally proud of" part). So here's what I could think of:

1. I was in the 8th Street Playhouse floor show for The Rocky Horror Picture Show for several years (hard to tell when I ended, as it kinda tapered off - 1986 to . . . 1988 or 89), under the direction of the great Sal Piro. I mostly played Dr. Scott, sometimes Brad, and Eddie and Riff Raff once each. I had a great time with great people and regret nothing. Except having no pictures or video.

2. I own DVD copies of Glen or Glenda? and Road House, love them, watch them frequently, and actually believe that they are, honestly and truly, with no irony, great motion pictures. As is Tough Guys Don't Dance, but some other people will go along with me on that, so it's less "lame."

3. My favorite musical, and probably one of my favorite theatre texts of any kind, is 1776.

4. I love what my dear fiancee calls "discredited media." I have a trunk full of 300 Betamax tapes (and no player to play them on at this point) and still believe it was a better video format than VHS (and will argue the point). I also still own many laser disks, LPs, 45s, and 78s and will not get rid of them, though I also have no working turntable or laser player - though I have a self-contained 1960s console hi-fi stereo system that doesn't work. I own 15 Super-8 and Standard-8 movie projectors, most of which have blown bulbs (which are near-impossible to find) or motors. I still have my ColecoVision videogame system and many cartridges (as well as the adapter for Atari 2600 cartridges and many of those), but without the very specific and unfindable cable you need to connect it to a TV. I have a broken 1/4" reel-to-reel player and many tapes for it.

Berit swears that the day is coming when we'll wind up with piles of 8-track tapes and edison cylinders that we can't play. She may not be wrong . . .

5. I was a Cub Scout (made it to Webelos).

Okay, as for tagging someone else . . . I'm worried that I don't really know how many other bloggers really read this, at least ones who haven't already been tagged on this meme in the "theatrical blogosphere community." So, I'll hit a few of the LiveJournal mutual friends and pray they don't actually just skip my posts -- I tag justjohn, mcbrennan, queencallipygos, rezendi, and shaenon. Got it, folks?

Current Mood: good
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Al Caiola - "The Mod Squad Theme" - Ultra-Lounge 8: Cocktail Capers

Continuing taking quizzes that are meaningless, but fun, and courtesy of

skzbrust, one that turned out to be very very predictable:

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eloquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Yeah, so when I mentioned I'd taken this quiz, Berit said, "Oh, so what were you, The Magician?" Yeah, pretty obvious. Then she took it and called out "Bullshit!" She had got The Star. Uh, yeah, that dog don't hunt.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Portland, ME
Current Music: VH1 - I Love the 80s 3-D: 1981

Hmmn. Well, I don't exactly mind the result of this little quiz - designed to tell you what book you are . . .

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

(thanks to Alison and Mark)

Current Mood: weird
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Futurama - season 2 episodes

We've had lolcats, lolpresidents, even lolgays.

Now, on LiveJournal Communities, you can enjoy

lolauthors.

How far is this damned meme to go?

Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: DVD - 1776 - "Cool, Cool Considerate Men"

Berit mentioned this to me the other day, that there was a site that would rate your blog as with the MPAA movie ratings, and she told me what my rating was.

I figured something had to be off, cause I thought I cussed more than they seem to register. Either that, or I have a slick, major-studio backer that was able to argue my rating down, since I only get a

which, according to their records, is due to 3 uses of the word "pain," 2 uses of the word "kill," and 1 use of the word "bitch" (I'm assuming I used the latter in the context of "bitching" about something, but with these three words as the guide, it sounds like my site is the equivalent of one o'them "torture porn" movies er somethin').

Fuck, I need a stronger rating. Maybe if I add some "grizzly violence" (which is currently listed on the posters for Captivity as a reason for the R rating - really - "grizzly violence" - as has been noted, it sounds like the film consists of Elisha Cuthbert going up against some bears).

Current Mood: rushed
Current Location: Gravesend

A few scattered things of interest from around the IntarWebs:

Apparently my two theatre friends - from different parts of my theatre life - Tom X. Chao and Bryan Enk have now become acquainted. Dear lord!

Tom X. Chao marks the occasion with a Peculiar Utterance of the Day that, for any friend of these friends (many of you that read this blog), MUST NOT BE MISSED! Pulse-pounding action! Right HERE!

There is something . . . unsettling . . . about putting what is basically a viral advertisement for a multi-million dollar motion picture here, but all the kids are doing it, and, as a fan of the books, I have some hopes for the film -- so here's the Daemon I got from the Daemon Generator on the tie-in website for the upcoming film of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass:

I was a little unhappy to see that Zack Calhoon got another feline with the same name as mine -- hey, how many names/animals have they got in this Generator?

Berit, another fan of the Pullman books (though she HATED the ending of the trilogy a great deal) liked the Daemon she got, though she might have preferred something in the feline range. I think this is cooler:

And finally -- thanks to a pointer from

urbaniak, a music video featuring the great Bob Hoskins (definitely no stranger to lip-synching) of Jamie T.'s "Sheila." I'm not sure when I think Hoskins is better -- when he's talking and expressing completely different emotions in his eyes, with his mouth, and with his body at the same time, or when he's just thinking and reacting, and letting you feel everything that's inside of him -- the final shot of The Long Good Friday, an extended, silent close-up of his face - actually a medium shot, but there's only one place you're looking - is one of the greatest moments of film acting ever (maybe, I'm not joking, the best).

Enjoy.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Tom T. Hall - "The Monkey That Became President"

Interesting, this . . .

I did another little online meme thing not long ago that was supposed to determine your accent from a number of questions that had fewer questions but seemed to come up with a more accurate breakdown. Here's the one I just got from

mcbrennan:

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Northern. Whether you have the world famous Inland North accent of the Great Lakes area, or the radio-friendly sound of upstate NY and western New England, your accent is what used to set the standard for American English pronunciation (not much anymore now that the Inland North sounds like it does).

Take this quiz now - it's easy!

I once was stunned when I met a young woman, who was working on a show at The Piano Store, about whom it was said that she could peg where anyone was born after hearing them speak a short time. Thinking I'd stump her, I asked her to guess at mine, and she said, "South Jersey or Philadelphia."

I was born just outside Philly. We moved when I was four. I was stunned, as I always thought of myself as having the exact accent described above in the meme-thing.

I probably got some Philly just from listening to my parents later. According to the other questionnaire - wish I could remember where it was - I was indeed primarily a Yankee, with touches of the Philly area, the Chicago area (an Indiana leftover?), and the West Virginia area (my great-grandmother, apparently). Odd how few questions can peg this . . .

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: Portland, ME
Current Music: Jeremiah Johnson on AMC

Tyler Green, over at Modern Art Notes, has asked for his readers to assemble another list (previously, he asked for our favorite buildings - mine are HERE).

This time, in light of the fact that a Thomas Kinkade painting will be adapted for the silver screen (aw, jesus fuck a bagpipe!), we're asked for five paintings that we think actually SHOULD have a future in the motion picture medium.

Now, as a lover of both painting and film (the latter being my first love, the medium I think and feel in; the former being the perfect, pure medium I aspire to the qualities of), this is harder for me than it might seem, for my general rule for any medium is that the best work in any art form is usually that that is pure and true to that medium. Great films, novels, plays, etc. don't translate as great in media other than their own.

So, no Pollocks on my list.

My first thoughts were of Hopper and Vermeer. David Lynch once mentioned two of his favorite artists as being Bacon and Hopper, but the latter only "for film." I understand this - I don't necessarily like Hopper all that much, except he's very inspirational in a cinematic sense. There are a few painters like this, not so great on the wall, maybe, but great as static filmmakers (when I was at NYU Film School, Robert Longo was rather popular among my my fellow students - lots of 16mm black-and-white second-year films of men in suits fighting . . . most of them not bad, actually).

Hopper has also been pretty well done in film by now, too, perhaps best in Herbert Ross' film of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven. So, no Nighthawks.

And Peter Greenaway has pretty much dealt definitely with Vermeer in a filmic context in A Zed & Two Noughts. So, after considering The Music Lesson, I decided to go elsewhere.

I also considered and discarded works by Goya, Duchamp, Rothko (one which, I discovered less than an hour after I dropped it from my list, is about to go under the gavel), and a different de Chirico from the one I settled on.

In the end, I had to leave behind some of my own feelings about the works as paintings, and just see them as worlds I'd love to fall into, or frozen stories that I want to see the "before" and "after" of.

( So here they are . . . )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: Brian Fahey - "Countdown" - The Sound Gallery Vol. 2

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CollisionWorks

an occasional view of internal craft and external insanity

Entries tagged with memes

The profound effect 15 album meme....

Dat Ole Album Covver Meme Agin

Filboid Studge

20 Favorite Actresses (from the movies . . . this week . . .)

An Alphabet of Favorites

You WILL Bow Down Before Me!

Avenging Disco Godfather

50 Favorite Movies

Sickbed Meme

When We All Wang Chunged Our Own Bad Selves

So What Kind of Band Is This?

Random Album Meme

I Cn Haz Lame Meme?

We Are the 801, We Are the Central Shaft

You are The Magician

Womb? Weary?

LOLYeats

How Many "Fuck"s Can I Get Away With?

WHEN TITANS CLASH!

(no subject)

If Only Cinema Could Do The Same . . .