All I did was plug in text from this post and this post, and it was definitively confirmed…
Hey, Dr. Karl Hufbauer – you and your C+ dismissal of my Freshman Billy Budd paper can kiss my baby tuckoo!
What can I say? I try to keep C&B more on the Dubliners/Portrait of the Artist end of things than going all Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake up in here. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: college, Dubliners, Ireland, James Joyce, literature, words, writers
The mindset represented by this sign is what I mean when I refer to the Orange County city of Irvine as a soulless, planned-community hellscape. If I hadn’t spent 90% of my waking hours at the area’s one oasis of culture, the UCI Fine Arts village, I’d never have stayed there for four years.
Full disclosure: I took this picture in 1993, a little bit before the advent of the cameraphone. Still, I think any reasonable person will agree that it qualifies as a folly. This little roadside want ad stayed up for at least a week or two, which gave me plenty of time to remember to throw my camera in my bag before the next time I drove by.
Tags: (in)humanity, college, Irvine, Orange County, sign
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be stalkers. Especially if your babies are dumber than a box of rocks.
Via the L.A. Times:
A trial began this week in the case of a man accused of stalking and making threatening phone calls to a Huntington Beach police detective.
Brian Dopler, 27, is charged with felony criminal threats and stalking of the detective between Jan. 8 and Feb. 10, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.
Look, I understand that stalking isn’t exactly a logic-driven crime… but if you can’t at least pick your spots better than that, you really should get out less often. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: cops, L.A. Times, news media, profanity, stalker, voicemail, Woody Allen
How ubiquitous are cover versions of Beatles songs? They’re commonplace enough to make me wonder whose songs bands used to cover before the Beatles existed. That’s the price you pay for revolutionizing popular music — every song you ever record is covered by everybody under the sun.
For this “Got You Covered” post series, I’m setting the bar higher for Beatles covers than for those of other artists. I’d include one only if it is in some way surprising and unexpected despite being a Beatles cover.
That’s where The Bobs come in. The group originated in 1981 when a San Francisco singing telegram company went out of business, unemploying Matthew Stull and Gunnar Madsen 1° of separation...» . Needing a bass singer, the lone respondent to their classified ad was Richard Greene. At some point the group named themselves The Bobs, the basis of which was the dog show acronym meaning “Best of Breed”; nevertheless, each member took on the middle name “Bob,” apparently just for shits and giggles. The group soon completed itself with the addition of Janie Bob Scott. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: a cappella, Beatles, cover songs, Grammy Awards, San Francisco, The Bobs
HASTY REACTION: The Apartment (1960) Directed by Billy Wilder; watched on DVD. The latest in my personal Festival of Billy Wilder Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet. I was a little apprehensive because in a recent re-watching of Some Like It Hot, I found Jack Lemmon’s comedic affect to be jarring, over-the-top and unfunny. Released only a year later, The Apartment re-teamed Lemmon and Wilder, but fortunately the circumstances were considerably different. The central device of insurance drone C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Lemmon) allowing executives the use of his bachelor apartment for their extramarital trysts in return for professional advancement establishes a rather darker palette than two guys in drag joining an all-girl band. It’s a comedy, but the kind that rests upon all-too-familiar predicaments, e.g. being conscripted into the secrets of others. The movie takes off and flies because of Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik, elevator attendant and the object of Bud’s desires. The 26 year old MacLaine is irresistible — she speaks volumes in few words (compared to the voluble Bud), with a face both beguiling and wholly incapable of untruth. A thoroughly good movie; I now see why so many list it among their favorites, and how influential it has been to later filmmakers (Exhibit A: Cameron Crowe).
If this is your first visit to C&B you may be wondering, “Who the hell is this guy, and why does he have a blog?” It’s a reasonable question, so I’ve dedicated an entire page to answering it: check out About.
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