Writer Adam Bertocci imagines if William Shakespeare wrote The Big Lebowski. What follows is beyond description; hyperbole aside, it’s one of my favorite things on the Internet ever. To wet your whistle, here’s how Bertocci renders the second of John Turturro’s (in)famous scenes as Jesus Quintana. (Joshua Quince = Jesus Quintana; The Knave = The Dude)
QUINCE
Hail, masters! I crave thine able readiness
To be dealt with roughly, as the Sodomites.
For men of sport have noted that our play
In semifinal hour draws on apace.
By Jove! I’ll wager well, Liam and me,
To thrash thee soundly at the fair tourney.
THE KNAVE
Yea, well, that be, forsooth, thy opinion, sir.
QUINCE
Well; but be forewarn’d. It reach’d mine ears
That combustible Walter, o’ercome with rage
Did shed good sense, and raise his sword in play.
I fear not such jade’s tricks, an seeing ill,
Would snatch the burden from the jealous knight
And pierce his gizzard with the wrongful steel,
Points up, as said of Coriolanus.
THE KNAVE
Zounds!
QUINCE
Thou speakest rightly, sir. No man misdeals with Joshua Quince, by Jesu.
Last month in New York, strong winds and heavy rain wreaked Stalinesque havoc on the only (known) object of affection shared by Rihanna and Andy Rooney: the umbrella. Luckily, Patrick Griffin documented the devastation.
Somewhere in the middle of the film Adventureland, what I consider a sleeper hit of 2009 (it even made its way onto a New Yorker list of best movies of the year), there’s a scene where the two main characters, Em and James (played by Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg, respectively), sit on a bench and watch a fireworks show. At that moment the movie, set in the 80s, hits a uniquely perfect note:
Hey now, hey now. Don’t dream it’s over.
It was Crowded House.
My last year of college I roomed with a guitar player who I would, over the ensuing months of school, come to hate with a virulent passion, the sort of tangible hatred reserved for radical fundamentalist racists, domestic abusers, and 7 year-olds that spread the word to kindergarten classmates of Santa’s not really existing. One day I lay in the bed of my room, next to his (we shared a wall), and I could hear a low rumbling bass—a sort of familiar sound, sort of swing-ish sort of not. I soon found myself humming the chorus.
Hey now, hey now. Don’t dream it’s over.
Playing along to songs in our respective rooms was nothing unusual, but they were usually songs recorded after the mid-nineties—Get Up Kids songs, Black Keys songs—so why my roommate chose to play guitar to a song by a New Zealand pop-rock outfit with a penchant for falsetto and frosted tips was beyond me.
Since its release in 1986, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” has been played in the background of television series like One Tree Hill and Miami Vice, and was even covered in 2002 by also-since-forgotten Sixpence None The Richer (though I still haven’t been able to forget about “Kiss Me”). But even at its most popular, the best it ever did on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was second place, and Paul Hester, the founding drummer of the band, reportedly hanged himself from a tree in 2005. In other words, the band went the way of the 80s.
And so the 80s came and went, and there I was in my college apartment, laying next to the rumblings of its low bass notes, letting them fill me with resentment for New Zealand, for trench coats, for the bearded turncoat living next to me who would eventually owe me 300 dollars for the trailer he took from the band we were once in. And then, years after that, I would find myself watching a film starring an actress made famous by a tweenage-popular Vampire franchise, humming the words hey now hey now—all three minutes and fifty five seconds of the thing—and downloading it to my iTunes. Because songs can transcend musical trends, they can transcend decades, they can transcend former roommates that still owe you a ton of cash. And because sometimes there’s freedom within trying to catch the deluge in a paper cup. If you know what I mean.
Oh man, this video from a high school Christian rock band called Final Placement has got to be among the roughest musical artifacts I’ve ever encountered. It’s either a complete disaster or some kind of deeply ironic exercise in bad songwriting and musicianship. There are any number of notable moments, but my favorite is the guitar solo at 2:08. It’s just so off, and so sincere. Because I’m pretty sure this isn’t a joke, I do feel bad for these kids. I remember what it was like to start playing music at a young age. I just can’t imagine how this song made it this far without anyone stepping in. You know, for the sake of the children.
People like to disparage so-called “modern” art by proclaiming that with the proper time and inclination, anyone could draw seemingly arbitrary lines on a canvas or reprint the iconic image of a soup can. As it turns out, those people are wrong, and I don’t mean their closed-minded aesthetics: it now takes neither time nor inclination to make Pollockesque art, thanks to a new software application by Anatoly Zenkov. According to Fast Company,
You just run the app, minimize the window, and go about your business. The tracks show your mouse path, and the circles show where your pointer lingered–stopping points where you were working on the keyboard, away from the computer, or immersed in content.
Erik on What are you? I’m Batman.: Unrelated to Batman, just wanted to say I love your blog. (This is a separate Erik. I assume BloggerErik is not a narcissist.)
Recent Comments