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In the hall of the awesome king

Posted on by Patrick

I don’t know much about clas­si­cal music, but I know what I like. I’ve always liked “In the Hall of the Moun­tain King”*.

Last night, I was dri­ving home after see­ing Want­ed**, I heard “In the Hall” on the radio. Then it switched to this:

It was awe­some. Thanks, Randy Bach­man! You made my night.

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* If ItHofMK isn’t clas­si­cal music — if it is, in fact, baroque or roco­co or pas­tiche or water-ele­men­tal music — rest assured that it is far more clas­si­cal than the rest of the music I lis­ten to.
** Don’t both­er. Unless you like loud, vio­lent revenge fan­tasies fea­tur­ing ludi­crous physics and 0.9 sec­onds of Angeli­na Jolie’s naked butt.

Really now? The Gyrocaptain?

Posted on by Patrick

Tonight, flip­ping through my chan­nels, I came across this listing:

Beg pardon?

Cast your mind to The Road War­rior. Who comes imme­di­ate­ly to mind?

I know, I know. It’s these two guys, right?

It must be, because they’re the ones list­ed first. Last billing goes to this unknown actor, Melvin Something-or-other…

What ever became of him, anyways?

Comparative Gourmetology

Posted on by Patrick

If you’ve nev­er had pou­tine — if you don’t know what pou­tine is — it’s a French Cana­di­an food, con­sist­ing of French fries, gravy, and cheese curds.

I nev­er thought I’d eat a food that made pou­tine seem light in com­par­i­son, but that’s because I’d nev­er had a “Chick­en Bake” from Cost­co before tonight.

Yikes. I ate less than half the thing and I still feel like I may nev­er be able to eat again.

Indy

Posted on by Patrick

I went and saw the new Indy Jones pic­ture-show* tonight, and…

…well…

…it was­n’t the film I was hop­ing for, but I sup­pose it was the film I was expect­ing.

Too many know­ing nods to the audi­ence; too many hat-relat­ed gags, like they’re try­ing to work an entire tril­o­gy’s worth into one script; too much of Shia Leboeuf**—who may be a fine actor in his own right, I have no idea, but he’s not up to par with Har­ri­son “Hen­ry Jones Jr.” Ford; and an over-the-top cli­max that made me feel like they were try­ing to out-every­thing everything.

It almost felt like they made the movie, watched it, and said, “Needs more… some­thing.” So they crammed it right full of in-jokes, winks, and armies of CG mon­keys, ants, and gophers, when what it need­ed was more, let’s see, coherence.

Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull: It’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark, with more cowbell.

____

* You know. The talky.
** I’m sure I spelled that wrong, but I’m not inclined to look it up.

Mats

Posted on by Patrick

Last night three of us car­ried 5,000 pounds between us, down a flight of stairs, and loaded it onto a truck.

This after­noon five of us car­ried the same 5,000 pounds back up the stairs.

Judo tour­na­ments are a lot of fun.

Late to the party

Posted on by Patrick

…again.

A friend of mine told me about Car­nivàle when it was orig­i­nal­ly on TV. I don’t get HBO, though, and I was­n’t inter­est­ed in get­ting hooked on episod­ic TV either (which worked out well, aside from a slight Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca addiction).

But the first sea­son was on sale at Wal*Mart the oth­er month, for like $20, so I said “What the hey” and bought it. Tonight I put the first disc in the player.

It’s pret­ty fan­tas­tic; the first episode was well laid out, with a self-con­tained sto­ry and the promise of more to come.

It seems to be a sto­ry of the war between good and evil, in 1934, dur­ing the Dust Bowl years. It’s well-act­ed, well-writ­ten, and the pro­duc­tion val­ues are unim­peach­able. Ronald D. Moore, who pro­duced this series (or at least the episode I watched) went on to “re-imag­ine” Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, my addic­tion to which I’ve already mentioned.

This series promis­es to be inter­est­ing. Hope­ful­ly I can find the sec­ond (and, I believe, final) sea­son some­where too.