Tuesday, March 04, 2008

quick links

Wherein the quiz the quiz


Matt Welch on moving to Washington D.C.:
One extremely shallow way to gauge a city is by attempting to buy some new clothes. From this extravagantly unscientific experiment I can exclusively report there seem to be four main categories of male consumer -- Chamber of Commerce Republicans, stylish gay guys, the most ridiculous, retch-inspiring, pressed-shirt yachtsmen you have ever seen; and black guys hitting the clubs. (Many, many people belong to multiple categories.) Hard place to find a decent pair of shoes, in other words. Also, the few malls here make you pay for parking, which, as Emmanuelle rightly notes, is "unAmerican" and "culturally unsound."


Hate the Player, Hate the Game, Hate Everything is an epic rant about people who refuse to understand the very simple concept behind Moneyball. And grammar:
What if money was no object?

Quick review of the subjunctive. I'll wait here.

...

Okay. Let's move on.

A Blazing Saddles appreciation:
Mel Brooks once said his films "rise below vulgarity." Witness Blazing Saddles, a film so politically incorrect it should come with a surgeon general's warning for the easily offended. The film is full of racist language, Black jokes, Jewish jokes, gay slurs, religious blasphemy and cruelty to both animals and old ladies. There are at least three jokes about rape, two jokes about improper use of cattle (one of which I've already counted in the rape jokes) , and one joke about implied masturbation between a cowboy and his bathing boss.

I've a rule about comedy which states that nothing is offensive to me so long as it's funny. Luckily, Saddles is hilarious, but every joke is a powderkeg of potential offense. Nothing is sacred in its skewering of the Old West, and I know every perverted line of dialogue in this film by heart. I try not to work in absolutes, but Blazing Saddles is easily the funniest movie I have ever seen.


KJ said "It was Wallace the segregationist, by the way, not the stand-up comedian." Ken, by your answer it is obvious you read this blog, so fix the two spaces thing. Please.

1. Burgoo? Based on mint juleps I'm going with that horse race thing in Kentucky. I'll think of the name later.
2. I'm curious to see if this is an act I know.
3. *** and scurvy. Not vitamin C, it's that other thing...Ascorbic Acid.
4. I think it's a fall thing, so Thanksgiving. Never smoked, though the whole tone of the smokeout week makes me want to buy a carton. Kinda like TV Tuneout Week tempts me to duct tape my face to the tv screen.
5. Probably not a European country. So an Asian-Pacific country with relative stability post WWII.
6. I think I stumbled across the answer and will leave it in the comments.

5 Comments:

Blogger bill said...

#6 former state capitals

3/04/2008 09:05:00 PM  
Blogger XWL said...

#1, yep, that thing they do the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs.

#2, I'm ashamed to say that I'm almost certain it's Air Supply.

#5, Given the years, I'm guessing Charles DeGaulle, he's old enough to have been a baker in 1913, and he was head of France for a long time.

#6, Pilgrim's Progress

#7, Are you sure it's not cities Frank Sinatra has made sweet love in? (going back to the classics for question seven guesses)

Also, it's amazing how much dweebier Matt Welch looks now that he's in DC. It's like there's some sort of dweebifying field emanating from the Capitol that makes all white guys that much whiter (yet seems to leave mostly black men mostly untouched, hence the phenomenal popularity of The Obama).

3/05/2008 12:53:00 AM  
Blogger bill said...

Obviously my #6 should be #7 and I've forgotten what #6 was. Going by your answer, I probably didn't know it.

I think a couple years ago people were telling him his photo was the spitting image of Ben Affleck. Not so much, anymore.

It's been years since I've had a job that required ties. When I did, I preferred bowties and even had a couple of wooden bowties I'd wear. I made a fused glass bowtie a few years back to wear with a tux. Not a bad first attempt, the problem being that glass is so much heavier than fabric I couldn't decide on a proper way to affix it. Tried button hooks and strips of velcro, nothing worked that well. One of those things I'll work on when I get around to having the kiln wired up.

3/05/2008 09:15:00 AM  
Blogger bill said...

People who say, Jonathan Coulton with Paul & Storm, if you see this show, I may have to stop visiting this site for awhile

might want to be careful flaunting their Air Supply knowledge.

3/05/2008 09:17:00 AM  
Blogger XWL said...

I blame those Time-Life infomercials they're on with the 'soft hits of the 70s' cd collections.

(I checked wiki, and I'm ashamed to say that I got that one right)

As far as hearing those infomercials, I blame that on leaving the TV on while doing other stuff.

3/05/2008 04:53:00 PM  

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