12.20.2005

Did you need to know...?

• On some episodes of Thundercats, S-S-Slythe often pronounces Jackalman's name very quickly, not emphasizing the two syllables, so it sounds like a surname.

• Every time I hear bells on the radio, I hope that I'm about to hear For Whom the Bell Tolls, and nearly every time I get Hell's Bells instead.

• In 1976, a remake of King Kong introduced the world to a lovely young Jessica Lange and a man in a very bad rubber suit. To give you an idea of the quality of the film, at one point Jeff Bridges warns that “There is a girl out there who might be running for her life from some gigantic turned-on ape.” Lange's character is named Dwan, and she makes a point of spelling it out and explaining that she changed it to “D-W-A-N” from “Dawn” to make it more interesting. This version also features a flaming Kong leaping across the World Trade Center from one tower to the other. As bad as it was, it apparently spawned a sequel which did little for Linda Hamilton's career and featured a man dressed as a giant female ape, complete with swinging, sagging breasts. Peter Jackson's version was sorely needed, more than anyone realized.

• I'm taking a vacation day on Friday to wrap presents and do some ultra last-minute shopping. I'm sure I won't encounter any crowds in Target.

• When I was younger, my parents would occasionally buy me a comic book or two. In high school I started saving my own money, either from musical gigs or by not buying as much with my lunch allowance. For eight years I collected comics seriously, and tallied them along the way. At last count, my stacks numbered 4,137. This does not include any comics I received as gifts in the last ten years, so with stacks passed on to me from the likes of Rey, Jerry, and Curt among others, the collection is probably closer to 4,200. Despite my justifications to concerned parents and relatives when I was in high school and college, I probably will never sell them.

An innocent joke by Darrell led to a horrible, horrible rap....

• When I was 14, I missed a train to school. I ran to catch it futilely, not realizing a small pebble had somehow, improbably, gotten inside my dress shoe and was slowly wearing away the skin on the back of my foot. After returning to the station and calling someone for a ride, excruciating pain would lead me to peel back my sock as skin fell to the ground, revealing a red spot of exposed inner skin layers the size of a quarter.

• The things on the end of your shoelaces are called Aglets.

9 Comments:

Blogger Jerry Novick said...

And what about those vacation days you have coming to you that you can't bank and must use before the end of the year but are planning to NOT use?

(Yes, everybody, start harrassing MCF to take his vacation days)

12/21/2005 9:06 AM  
Blogger kevbayer said...

-Yesterday was my first day off from work for my normal weekend - and I don't have to be back until 12/28! Vacation time rocks.
TAKE YOUR VACATION TIME! You need it.

-I so did not need that image of a giant female ape. Let me picture Linda Hamilton instead...

-That's a whole frelling lot of comic books dude.

-Thundercats. Cool. I was just thinking of them the other day, and was wondering it was about all of their weapons having the ability to "grow" or "stretch" or "expand" or "get bigger". Nunchucks that the chain stretches to like 12 feet long, a staff that gets longer, a sword that gets longer, a bolo whip that gets longer... There's just something wrong with that. "Snarf"!

12/21/2005 12:27 PM  
Blogger Kelly said...

Oi! MCF, don't throw away your vacation time. You worked hard to get whatever time you have, so TAKE IT!

Also, this is off topic and kind of late, but I was hoping you'd give your thoughts on the "Lexmas" episode of Smallville (or did you already and I missed it?). I thought it was cutely done but the implications were totally wrong. Lex sure better not become evil as a sacrificial thing. Grrr.

12/21/2005 5:26 PM  
Blogger MCF said...

We get 20 days a year and 2 personal days. We can bank a total of 10, and my bank is full from last year. This year I took my 2 personal days, and counting this coming Friday I will have used about 17-18 days, which means I'd only be losing 2 or 3.

Next week the company is giving us both Monday and Tuesday off. Tomorrow I have two meetings for the two book clubs I work for, which both fall at the exact same time. Obvously I won't make both, but obviously I need to be here. I would have to take off all three days next week, which is kind of impossible at this point, especially considering how horrendously behind I've let some things get. I try to make a checklist but it doesn't help and I still get distracted throughout the day. Only NOW, at almost 6, am I tackling the things I should have finished before I went to lunch today. I might work hard, but I don't work hard enough during the day is the problem.

I know losing ANY days is bad, but 2 or 3 isn't that bad. Next year's a new year; I'll try to plan better throughout the year so I don't paint myself into a corner again.

Has Lex turned evil this week? His stance, and his relationship with Clark, flipflops depending on the writer of the week. My head is still spinning from the implication that the world's become such a bad place, the REAL Santa got drunk and almost killed himself. I hate this show. I love this show. I want to stop watching. I have to see it through to the end.

OK, enough with this mental break. Back to work for me! :)

12/21/2005 5:55 PM  
Blogger Lorna said...

I've been a hands-on sandwich generation person for the last two weeks and it's been really hard to keep up on my blogreading, but I'm so glad I got to read all the answers to Q4! There are some funny people hanging around that cyber water-cooler you look after.

12/21/2005 11:24 PM  
Blogger cube said...

It's bad luck not to take those vacation days...your bad luck!

The de Laurentis Kong didn't have much on the original Kong. I haven't seen the new one, but I can't help wondering why Jackson needed so much money? Was it the development of the time machine to take every one back to the early 19th century, or was it paying the South Koreans to develop giant ape cloning techniques? CGI couldn't have cost 207 million.

12/21/2005 11:40 PM  
Blogger MCF said...

I watched the Delaurentis the other day. Tonight I watched the original '33 version which has its place in history and my heart. Having now seen all three within the past week, I can safely, and possibly controversially, say that Jackson has the best of the three. He's respectful and true to the original, but he enhances it in many ways.

I could see CGI costing that much, as well as the sets they built. Recreating 1933 New York and Skull Island to that degree of detail is no joke. I was very impressed with the detail. The cars of the era, the clothes...when you break it down, it could cost that much. One thing I enjoyed watching the original is the monetary values, like how happy the newspaper guy is to get a whole dollar from Denham, or the guy going to the theater complaining to his gf that the tickets cost 20 bucks. How times have changed....

12/21/2005 11:59 PM  
Blogger Darrell said...

I can't help but wonder (and this is not intended as a slight at all) how much of the $$$ spent on King Kong went to Jackson's salary. I'm sure that guy commands one heck of a paycheck these days, and I don't begrudge him a cent of it. His last four movies have returned my box office investment with major entertainment.

If I don't "talk" to you again, before Christmas, here's wishing the best of the Holiday to you and yours.

12/22/2005 6:32 AM  
Blogger Janet said...

I'm probably the only person who has For Whom the Bell Tolls, a song by the Bee Gees, in my head now.

12/22/2005 10:11 PM  

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