Loud obnoxious goodness

Bought Rob Zom­bie’s Past, Present and Future album today. It’s his great­est hits com­pi­la­tion CD/DVD, and has stuff like “Thun­der Kiss ‘65” and “Drag­u­la” on it. Great tunes, if you like that sort of thing. The man (and his band, the now-defunct White Zom­bie) pret­ty much invent­ed grind­core, I think. And if they did­n’t invent, they sure­ly refined it and brought it to the Peo­ple. Or something.

Two weird things about this:

1. I bought it in Wal-Mart. Now I’m in Cana­da, so maybe things are dif­fer­ent up here, but I thought Wal­ly World did­n’t stock music with Parental Advi­sories on it.
2. Far be it from me to com­plain, but, man, Rob, you’re slip­pin’. What hap­pened to album titles like Astro-Creep 2000: Songs of Love, Destruc­tion, and Oth­er Syn­thet­ic Delu­sions of the Elec­tric Head? I mean, real­ly. Past, Present, and Future sounds a lit­tle like a Lover­boy reunion album or some­thing… (Please don’t kill me.)

Hmmm… there’s a tune on here, no kid­ding, with Lionel Richie on guest vocals. Lionel Richie. And Rob Zombie.

For the unini­ti­at­ed, RZ looks and sounds like this:

And Lionel Richie looks and sounds like this:

Just so’s you know what we’re deal­ing with here.

Pop cul­ture triv­ia time
Even if you’re not a fan, you’ve prob­a­bly heard Rob’s work. There was a peri­od a cou­ple years back when you could­n’t see three movie trail­ers with­out hear­ing a snippet–usually lyrics-free–from “More Human Than Human”, off the Astro-Creep 2000 release.

The best part about “More Human Than Human” is that it’s a song inspired by one of my favourite movies, Blade Run­ner. First off, the title is the mot­to of Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ers of the repli­cants. There’s a line in the song that goes “I am the Nexus One”, which refers to the Nexus Six line of repli­cants that Deckard has to retire in the movie. And Rob bor­rows from Bat­ty’s dia­log: “I want more life, f@#$er”.

Best. Dia­log. Ever.
Last night Grosse Pointe Blank was on TV. I love this movie. It’s one of my top five, I’d have to say. The screen­play snaps and crack­les, and nev­er slows down. I think my favourite scene might just be Joan Cusack, play­ing John Cusack­’s sec­re­tary, “just tak­ing down the office, sir” bit (as she dous­es every­thing in gaso­line and takes a five-pound short-han­dle sledgehammer–which looks a lit­tle like Mar­vel’s incor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of Mjoll­nir*–to her computer).

This led me to IMDB, that won­der­ful, won­der­ful site.

Ten points to the per­son who can tell me what TV show this quote is from:

Nor­mal­ly at a time like this I’d ask you for advice, and you’d say some­thing that would make no sense at all, but some­how it would all fit togeth­er. Like, I would tell you, “Sir, I have a prob­lem,” and you’d say, “Well, what is it?” and I’d say, “Well, sir, Lisa wants to have a baby, but she does­n’t want to get mar­ried,” and you’d say “Dave, why milk the cow when you have a fridge full of steaks?” And I’d say, “Sir, that makes no sense,” and you’d say, “Well, it sure made sense when that guy Chuck Con­nors said it in that movie Chi­na­town,” and I’d say, “Sir, Chuck Con­nors was­n’t in Chi­na­town,” and you’d say, “Dave, if I want­ed to have this con­ver­sa­tion I’d have hired that guy Siskel Ebert to do your job,” and I’d say, “Sir, Siskel and Ebert are two peo­ple,” and you’d say, “Dave, just because the man is fat is no rea­son to make fun of him.” 

Every time I even think of that quote, I laugh so hard that, if I were drink­ing milk, it’d shoot out my nose. I try to avoid think­ing of it at break­fast time. Orange juice, I have it on good author­i­ty, hurts.
___________

* The Mar­vel inter­pre­ta­tion of Thor’s ham­mer fea­tures a wood­en han­dle. The myth­i­cal ver­sion from the Norse sources is one chunk of sol­id iron, and the han­dle is short, so short that Thor can only hold onto it with one hand, because Loki, ever the trick­ster, dis­guised him­self as a fly and har­ried the dwarfs as they forged Mjoll­nir. (Yes, I am a bit of a Norse myth geek. Why?)