miscellania

Yesterday I had a show in Willimantic, Connecticut, and I...

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:25:57 -0400

Yesterday I had a show in Willimantic, Connecticut, and I decided to surprise the audience with a rendition of its official song, ‘Willimantic, U.S.A.’ The song is pretty goofy — it begins, “Take a look at the map of the United States and you’ll find Connecticut …” — but it’s peppy and fun to play. Here’s a video of me singing the song.

You can never be too careful.

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:18:57 -0400

You can never be too careful.

Portrait Of A Chair

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:42:23 -0400

Portrait Of A Chair:

CW Roelly, the artist who created the art featured on my last CD, shows how it’s done via a time-lapse photo — 6+ hours of bending wire shown in less than five minutes.

GirlDetective has her writeup of Moonraker here:...

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:02:39 -0400

GirlDetective has her writeup of Moonraker here: http://girldetective.me/post/50036989847 and it is much more extensive than mine will be.

Roger Moore looks kind of bored through a lot of movie, which was pretty much how I felt too. The highlights of this movie mostly involve Jaws, who I think doesn’t actually kill anyone in the first half of the movie, probably so the audience wouldn’t be too squicked when (spoiler alert) he changes sides and becomes one of the good guys at the end. So he’s more cartoony and less menacing (though at one point he is in the most frightening giant clown puppet ever. Only Richard Kiel could pull this off, I think.)

Watching this movie, you can really see where the idea for Austin Powers (and his outfits) came from. Also, there is a _lot_ of “people hiding in plain sight” as a successful concealment strategy, which is something I thought only happened in old Dr Who episodes.

Anyway:

The parachute chase is actually pretty cool, but its ending is _really_ silly.

Q says ‘a fine tooth comb’ with emphasis on ‘fine’ and ‘tooth’, making it seem as though there is a thing called a toothcomb.

If you are introduced playing the piano, then you are a bad guy and probably crazy. If an organ, that goes double. If an accordion, oh man. (After I made this note, a band with an accordion player actually turned up in the movie, but, to my disappointment, he committed no mayhem beyond playing the accordion. Though some might argue that that’s enough.)

I like this: ”Take care of Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him.”

I question the decision to give the centrifuge a ‘kill the occupant’ option, but Bond actually displays some good thinking in getting out of it; his gadget du jour (some kind of spring-loaded dart gun he keeps up his sleeve) is actually used pretty intelligently.

Is it just me, or does Drax kind of look like Rowan Atkinson? I think somewhere in this is a germ of a plot for Black Adder V. (GirlDetective thinks he looks more like Peter Dinklage, which I can also see.)

Boat chases in a Bond film are seldom good news, and this movie has two of them.

Girl Genius noted that it’s kind of silly to have a keycode lock that plays different tones for different buttons, so I thought I would go ahead and point out that the tune it plays is a “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” reference.

Bond has a fight with a ninja in a museum (owned by the bad guys) full of expensive antique glassware, most of which the ninja destroys without a second thought. I think this ninja is going to be fired, even if he isn’t killed.

Putting random shots of billboards for 7Up, Seiko, Marlboros, and British Airways in the middle of a fight scene is not the most subtle form of product placement.

The ‘I can’t read’ joke is sexist and bad, but the movie does have a pretty good Vassar joke.

This space battle is some kind of crazy, with bunches of astronauts shooting laser guns at each other in zero gravity. Also: Wilhelm scream!

And that’s all I’ve got. Happy May!

Another entry in the increasingly misnamed 007 Sunday series....

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:48:36 -0400

Another entry in the increasingly misnamed 007 Sunday series. (In the past I’ve actually watched the movies and took notes on a Sunday, but this time I ended up watching it on Monday.)

In general I defer to GirlDetective in these posts, but this time in particular we made a lot of the same notes, so I recommend reading her post first. Here I’ll just comment on things she didn’t talk about, or where I had something different to say.

So far in the Roger Moore era there was one movie I didn’t care for at all, and one movie that had one pretty good half and one really bad half. My impression was that the half of ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’ that I liked was an aberration, so my hopes were not very high for this one, but in fact, I quite enjoyed it, even though the plot is kind of a mish-mash of stuff from previous movies (mostly ‘You Only Live Twice’ but also some ‘Thunderball’ and perhaps a little ‘Goldfinger’).

Ultimately, the whole thing is pretty fun, and it’s nice to have a lady spy in a Bond movie who (1) is actually competent and (2) isn’t played by someone who can barely act. Also, I may have been looking for something extra-silly to distract me from the grim news that I was otherwise obsessively listening to Monday afternoon. Anyway, any critical comments I make below should be read in that light — I kid because I love! (Well, love might be going a bit far.)

Onward:

There’s sure a lot of secret agents having sex in this opening sequence. Also, James Bond’s wristwatch doubles as a label maker!
This movie came out when I was five, in 1977, and my sister teased me by rewriting the lyrics to its theme (“Nobody Does It Better”) to make fun of my pajamas, which had a plaid pattern she considered hilariously retro. I would like to say that I ignored this teasing, but the fact that I still remember it in 2013 suggests otherwise. Anyway, it’s a good Bond theme. (Now that I think of it, my current pajamas are also plaid. Hmmm.)
The female agent is told that her lover was killed while involved in a British operation. I wonder if any British agents we know might have had anything to do with this???
Would you rather be eaten by sharks or blown up in a helicopter? The latter seems like a quicker, cleaner death. (I guess now if I get killed that way people could legitimately say, “It was how he would have wanted to go.”)
After blowing up the two scientists in a helicopter over the ocean, the evil mastermind instructs his underlings to tell their families that “the funeral was at sea”, which is funny, and to give them a bunch of money, which would be a more meaningful gesture if he didn’t plan to have them and 99.999% of everyone else in the world die in a nuclear holocaust.
Hosein: “I always wondered what you were going to do when you went down from Cambridge.” Bond: “I never had any problems knowing what you were going to do, Hosein.” [refuses some sort of snack from the woman who is offering it to him] Hosein: “We don’t only have oil, you know.” When watching this part of the movie, I thought to myself: I hope GirlDetective will unpack this for me.
“So what can I offer you — Sheep’s eyes? Dates? [pause] Vodka martini?” OK, that part I understand.
Incidentally, both the Wikipedia and IMDB plot summaries for this movie completely omit mention of this part of the movie altogether, so perhaps I’m spending too much time on it.
The foley work on the fight scenes in this movie is kind of Three Stooge-y.
The Egyptian light show seems sort of like an outdoors planetarium, though technically I guess that would just be like being outside, while this has more electronic music and Richard Kiel than that.
I like that all of the music in this section of the movie is diagetic — it is broadcasting from the big light show that’s happening near the fight, and you end up with a kind of over-the-top score that is distinct from the score of the rest of the movie and which seems completely appropriate.
Did Jaws just kill a dude by biting through his neck? Unsanitary!
James Bond reacts poorly to a mention of his deceased wife (see ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’). I feel like it’s rare that the Bond movies refer to each other in an understandable way, which is reasonable given that some are based on the novels and others aren’t, and the ones based on the novels are all out of order, and there are a bunch of different actors playing James Bond, and so on, but I still like it on the rare occasions that it happens — which means that when we get around to Skyfall in about a million years I will be a very happy man, since that movie contains a whole ton of references to other Bond movies.
Richard Keil is legitimately menacing, but the neck-biting thing is still gross.
Bond is the first of the two spies to realize that letting the guy who has the blueprints for the super secret submarine tracker device out of his sight is probably a bad idea.
I like the ‘out of order’ sign taped to the corpse’s body.
Jaws has the inside of his telephone service van tapped? How often can that come in handy? I suppose it’s one of those things that, even if you only use it once, it’s already paid for itself.
Amasova: “You don’t have to worry about me, Mr. Bond. I went on a survival course in Siberia.” Bond: “Yes, I believe a great number of your countrymen do.” Cold war zing!
Q has created a sort of tea set rail gun.
Jesus, how long has Jaws been in that closet?
The sort of terrible 70s chairs that Mr. Stromberg favors are the reason that terrible 80s ergonomic chairs had to be invented.
“It’s amazing the items of information you store away” is superspy for “Shut up, you’re blowing our cover.”
While fleeing enemy goons in his underwater car/submarine, Bond signals that he’s going to turn right, but instead turns left — tricksy!
Aw, he just blew up the yellow submarine.
Amasova reacts poorly to the news that Bond killed her ex. Bond handles that very awkward situation about as well as he could, I think. (But what is Bond doing talking even obliquely about previous missions to a Russian spy, anyway?)
OK, I was wrong about the desert light show thing — Mr. Stromberg’s control room _actually_ is what looks like a planetarium.
If this movie were made, say, twenty years later, this ‘escape from the supertanker’ sequence would be turned into a video game. Hmm, I think I just heard a Wilhelm scream!
Firesuit!
This is not what Stromberg’s underling says to him, but it might as well be: ”Uh, boss, the prisoners escaped, and your boat is kind of … on fire. Got everything under control now, though! Nothing to worry about!”
“James, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” ”There has to be a first time for everything.” It just goes to show you — not all of your quips are going to be winners.
Wait, did James Bond just turn off his own theme music? Can he DO that?
Aw, Stromberg renamed his nuclear subs after himself! That’s kind of cute.
I think once you’ve torpedoed your submarine out of an exploding supertanker, you can pretty much dine out on that story for the rest of your life. It’s hard to think of a more badassed thing to have done.
When Bond asks the captain for some extra time to rescue Amasova, the captain says, “You’re going to get me court-martialed.” I’d like to be at that court martial. ”And so, Captain, after you torpedoed your way out of the exploding supertanker that had been designed to eat submarines, what did you do next?”
Jaws eating a live shark is maybe even grosser than him biting a person’s neck. But still kind of a great image. Then it looks like he’s going to go for the cameraman next!
Say what you want about Stromberg, he knows how to outfit a luxury escape pod. (Seconds after I wrote that, Bond said essentially the same thing.)
Amasova threatens to shoot Bond, but agrees to have sex with him first, which seems practical — you couldn’t really do it the other way around.
A brief show tune version of the theme as a curtain falls on the action. This is one of those decisions that leaves me wondering why someone would do that.
In the credits, the cast listing for ‘Arab Beauties’ is ‘Felicity York, Dawn Rodregues, Anika Pavel, Jill Goodall, and the Egyptian Folklore Group’.

Brad Paisley vs. me

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:32:45 -0400

In 2010, I read a New Yorker article about Brad Paisley which painted him as a guy who was easy-going and who didn’t take himself too seriously, someone with a voice of his own and a mischievous side that informs his stage presence and his music. I like a lot of old country, and some new alt.country, but though I’ve tried listening to mainstream country on occasion it’s been a while since I’ve found much of it enjoyable — there’s something about hearing autotune on a country song that sets my teeth on edge — so I was curious to hear some of Paisley’s music, since it seemed more along the lines of something I would like. However, I listened to a few songs and it left me pretty cold.

I asked my dad about Paisley — he’s the reason I was exposed to a lot of country music growing up and I was curious about his opinion — and he said that he thought the article accurately reflected the state of country music today, which is that it isn’t really about the country. In the New Yorker article, it says, “… in the post-Garth era, the music has thrived partly because of its willingness to chronicle domestic bliss in plainspoken language. This is a big a lucrative niche — and, by definition, an unhip one, because it suggests that respectable suburban family life can be pretty good.” My father says that, basically, the older the country music, and the closer to its roots as a rural music, the better he likes it. I wouldn’t necessarily say that myself, but it’s true that in most (if not all) cases I am not all that interested in listening to songs about comfortable suburban domesticity. (The fact that his music isn’t my cup of tea shouldn’t be taken as a criticism as such. There are a lot of clearly talented people whose music I don’t particularly like listening to.)

As many of you may be aware, Paisley recently released a collaboration with LL Cool J which has been discussed quite a bit online. The song is named ‘Casual Racist’, and I’m not going to say anything about it here, as I can’t imagine I would find anything to say that someone else hasn’t said better. However, the discussion of that song made me check out Paisley’s back catalog again, and (thanks to @travisnorris on twitter) I came across his song ‘I’m Still A Guy’, which he wrote in 2008. This caught my eye because, eight years or so ago, I wrote a song called ‘I’m A Guy’ which is basically the exact opposite of ‘I’m Still A Guy’.

Now, different people have different ideas about what my song means. I recently talked to someone who said that he enjoyed my song about metrosexuals, which surprised me, because the song is basically about me, and I wouldn’t consider myself a metrosexual. (Inasmuch as I understand the term, it implies that the person in question spends a lot of time working on their appearance, which I don’t think is realistically how anyone would describe me.) And that’s all legit — I try not to tell people how to interpret my songs too much, because I am a good postmodernist and don’t consider myself to be the ultimate expert on my own songs’ meanings.

But in terms of what I think “I’m a Guy” is about — well, it’s an attempt to write my own version of those songs, like ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘I’m a Man’ and ‘Mannish Boy’, which were all about what an awesome specimen of masculinity the singers were. (Taken to exaggerated lengths, because those songs are supposed to be, and are, funny.) But my working definition of masculinity is different from theirs, and my song reflects that, hopefully also in an amusing and exaggerated way. If the song has a message, it’s that not adhering to traditional norms of masculinity does not make you any less of a man.

Paisley’s song is mostly about how there’s all this stuff he likes, or would like, to do because he’s a guy: hunting and fishing and riding bulls and so on. (How seriously we’re supposed to take this excuse for, say, not wanting to walk his wife’s little yappy dog, is debatable, but I think that on some level we’re supposed to buy into it.) Which is all fine; that’s a legitimate kind of guy to be, though it’s not the kind of guy I am. And it’s kind of couched as a struggle between him and his wife who tries to ‘civilize’ him, and him punching some guy who tries to cop a feel on her, none of which I’m real crazy about — there’s a lot of gender essentialism here, and a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude — but it’s a country song, and a comic, somewhat exaggerated one, a fact that the audience would by and large recognize, allowing them to enjoy the song even if they’ve never punched anyone in their life, and would rather stay home and watch TV than fish. (Also, the song implicitly recognizes that these days ‘boys will be boys’ isn’t generally considered a great excuse any more.)

However, the last verse starts talking about things that make you less of a guy, and (as you might expect) I’m even less crazy about that:

These days there’s dudes getting’ facials —
Manicured, waxed and botoxed.
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands,
You can’t grip a tackle box

Yeah, with all of these men linen’ up to get neutered,
It’s hip now to be feminized.
I don’t highlight my hair.
I’ve still got a pair.
Yeah, honey, I’m still a guy.

Oh my eyebrows ain’t plucked.
There’s a gun in my truck.
Oh thank God, I’m still a guy.

This section of the song I might call ‘I’m A Guy (But Those Dudes Aren’t)’, and it’s why when I first heard it my first reaction was, this is the exact opposite of my song! Though that might be a overstated: interestingly, the New Yorker article mentions ‘I’m Still A Guy’ and says of how Paisley handles it during live shows:

“He likes to stop, after the second chorus, to tease the men in the audience, telling them that no matter what their beauty regimen is — ‘Even if you’re a man here tonight who wears Estée Lauder lotion on your face, or has hair highlights, maybe some Botox work’ — they’re all still real men.”

Which seems a little weird given that the last verse expressly mocks that kind of thing, but I reckon that Paisley’s song really is supposed to be an assurance to all the middle-class guys out there who think real men work with their hands and go hunting, even though they don’t do either — to reassure themselves that that they’re still a guy — a guy who listens to country music, even — and manlier than those other people, whoever they are.

Hey, GirlDetective wrote up ‘The Man with the Golden...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:34:07 -0400

Hey, GirlDetective wrote up ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ and I did too! Read her analysis and recap here: http://girldetective.me/post/47710355873

This movie is two hours long. The first half I actually thought was pretty good — Bond had some decent superspy moments (it wasn’t all Playboy Bond), there wasn’t too much overt silliness, and most of the times when I had a question (like why Bond got a golden bullet if he wasn’t the target) the movie eventually answered the question.

Almost exactly at the hour mark, though, the movie gets pretty silly and the rest of the movie was pretty hard to pay attention to. One problem is fellow secret agent Mary Goodnight; the general critique around the Internet is ‘dumbest Bond girl ever’, but that doesn’t seem quite right to me — instead, she’s barely a character at all, and just does whatever the plot requires to get to the next dumb plot point, which is a good way to make a character seem completely mindless. Of course it doesn’t help that Britt Ekland’s acting isn’t very strong — but there isn’t a lot to work with here, folks.

Anyway, on with the movie:

Does any other movie series have the double opening that most Bond movies do?
James Bond’s third or fourth line in this movie is ‘Oh, yes — the man with the golden gun!’ which I think gives it the record for the earliest use of the title in a James Bond movie.
Bond asks who would pay a million dollars to have him killed, and M’s response, “Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors — the list is endless” is pretty great. Though really only the first thing on that list seems entirely fair.
James Cossins doesn’t seem to have any lines in the briefing scene, but his excellent moustache is appreciated.
Will Gibson and his solar cell data show up again in this movie? (Spoiler alert: Yes.)
James Bond is holding a cigar in the belly-dancing scene, because this movie does not have enough phallic symbols in it.
The belly dancer uses the bullet that killed her lover Bill (who was shot through the neck while in her arms) as a lucky belly ornament. ”Bill would have loved it,” Bond says. If so, Bill was a much more understanding guy than most.
I wonder who the guys who attack Bond in the belly dancer’s dressing room are? Must be jealous husbands, outraged chefs, or humiliated tailors.
James Cossins and his moustache are back in the scene at Q Branch and they do some nice ballistics work. Bond notes (regarding the bullet), “You have no idea what it went through to get here,” reminding me of that one scene in Pulp Fiction.
A few movies ago, in ‘You Only Live Twice’, Bond mentioned that he took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge, but in Macau he resorts to speaking English slowly. Seems to work, though.
As noted in my introduction, so far (25 minutes into the movie) Bond is much more the sociopathic superspy than he was in the last movie, when he seemed more simply a playboy with some weird gadgets. This is a welcome development to me.
The part of the movie where Bond goes to the Bottoms Up club is effectively confusing — it’s not immediately clear whether Scaramanga intended to kill Bond or the man he actually killed, or if the man who arrested Bond is actually a member of the police, or where they’re going. And it all gets explained pretty nicely, too.
It is at this point that the solar cell plot returns! At this point in the movie I patted myself on the back for noticing the earlier mention as foreshadowing, not realizing that this device would be one of the things that ruins the last half of the movie.
This is also more or less when I wondered: If the real target isn’t Bond, then who sent him the goddamn golden bullet? Slightly to my surprise, a vaguely reasonable answer to this question will eventually be provided.
I don’t think much of the security on Hai Fat’s estate if you can just jump over a wall to get in.
Were the gates designed by a Dalek?
Bond’s martial skills include the Atomic Wedgie, I see. For those who wondered when the movie took a sudden dive in quality, I would say that the fight with the sumo wrestler is pretty much it.
Instead of shooting him, or otherwise disposing of him, the bad guys take James Bond to a dojo to engage in some martial arts fighting. In ‘You Only Live Twice’ Bond became a trained ninja, so I am not too concerned about the outcome of this fight. This whole sequence is very silly, though.
I agree with GirlGenius that a movie about Lt. Hip’s nieces would probably be more entertaining than this movie. Not that their presence here makes any kind of sense, but then, we’re in the bad half of the movie at this point.
Hai Fat is not being very fair to Scaramanga; Scaramanga has succeeded in doing what he was hired to do, as far as I can tell, and Bond’s escape is not his fault. Hai Fat is also pretty dumb to berate the world’s greatest assassin, as he quickly learns. Let this be a lesson to CEOs everywhere!
It is now that the golden bullet is explained!
Oh, a chase sequence. I see how this works — the man with the golden gun has a gold car, and the redneck has a red car!
The shots of the scenery are quite nice. What’s up with Bond’s jacket, though?
I kind of like the idea that Scaramanga is excited about the idea of having a chance to talk to another person high up in the profession and can’t keep himself from showing off all his awesome stuff. It kind of rings true to me.
“I like a girl in a bikini! No concealed weapons!” You probably want to keep the door to your doomsday machine room locked, though, right?
Tucking a gun into your pants is generally recommended against, basically for the reasons shown in the movie.
Some product placement for Sony, I see.
It’s too bad the extensive railing system had that one critical gap. Why don’t the big vats of liquid helium have lids, though?
The signs says: “Absolute zero must be maintained to prevent prompt criticality.” Bond to Goodnight: “Don’t you believe in signs?”
Knick Knack has a knife in his mouth with the sharp edges held vertically, leading me to believe that that knife cannot be very sharp. Or I suppose Knick Knack could have really tough lips and palate.
There’s a weird ending variation on the theme song that talks about how James Bond is really awesome: ‘Goodnight, goodnight/sleep well my dear/no need to fear/James Bond is here’. My hope is that this does not continue in future movies.

Here’s GirlDetective’s take on ‘Live and Let...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:35:06 -0400

Here’s GirlDetective’s take on ‘Live and Let Die’:

girl-detective:

007 Sundays - Live and Let Die (1973)

I’ve made no bones about my scorn for excessive campiness in Bond movies, but I would be lying if I said onscreen absurdity was the only reason for my aversion to Roger Moore. I could write paragraphs on why I dislike him so much, but strangely enough, when it comes to describing Roger Moore’s flaws, nobody does it better than the man himself. In an interview with TIME this past November, Moore made the following comparison between himself and the latest incarnation of James Bond:

[Daniel Craig] looks like a killer…I look as though I might cheat at backgammon.

This comment is the perfect summation of why Roger Moore is my least favourite Bond—because the character he plays isn’t really James Bond at all. His foppishly suave, eyebrow-raising cad is a million miles away from the raw brutality of Fleming’s literary hero, and the disconnect between the two breaks my heart.

That being said, I’ve always considered Live and Let Die to be one of the more palatable Roger Moore Bond movies, due largely in part to the magnificent supporting cast (Jane Seymour particularly shines as the Bond Girl, Solitaire), and my own inexplicable affinity for all films to do with Voodoo culture and Southern bayous.

Live and Let Die is also notable for its attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the blaxploitation genre. The ploy must have been successful, because the franchise continued to shoehorn itself into other fad genres throughout the 70s and 80s.

You see this cat Bond is a bad mother—shut your mouth!

More on Moore below the fold:

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emilyheller: In case you missed it, here I am on...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:12:58 -0400

007 Sundays: "Live and Let Die"

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:59:00 -0400

In January, one of my favorite tumblr bloggers, GirlDetective, proposed that she, and anyone else who was interested, should watch the James Bond films in chronological order, with a new movie being watched every Sunday. She would then post a short essay on the movie’s place in Bond history and some notes she jotted down and she watched it. You can see her synopses here.

I joined the party kind of late — the movies aren’t on Netflix Streaming, and it took me a while to realize I could watch them via iTunes — and so the first set of my own notes that I’m posting are for the first Roger Moore episode, “Live and Let Die.” It’ll be a little while until GirlDetective makes her own post about the movie, but she encouraged me to go ahead and post mine.

I’m going to start with a few notes about the theme song.

I choose to take the selection of Paul McCartney to write the ‘Live and Let Die’ theme as an implicit renunciation of Bond’s declaration in Goldfinger (1964) that drinking warm champagne is “just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs”.

The song combines three or four different styles of songs — I had forgotten there was a reggae section for some reason — but I think it does it well. On the downside, I tried really hard to hear “if this ever-changing world in which we live in” as “if this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’” but Sir Paul enunciates a little too clearly; it really sounds to me like the ungrammatical version is the one that’s being sung.

The rest of my notes should all be in chronological order, though there are some pretty big gaps here and there. Hopefully people who have seen the movie will be able to figure out the context.

The magnetic watch is introduced in a way that tells you: This object is not going to work in a way consistent with what anyone who’s played with a real life magnet would recognize.

James Bond arrives at his room, orders champagne, hears the bathtub taps in the bathroom turn themselves on, and decides to immediately take a bath and shave. That’s crazy, right? Predictably, he’s interrupted by the champagne delivery.

Woah, the theme to ‘Live And Let Die’ is an actual song in the word of James Bond, except it’s kind of Motown-y. Is it the theme to another movie? Whatever it is, I like it. (It still says “world in which we live in” though.)

Solitaire’s post-coital comment is not exactly a rave review: “So it’s finally happened, just as it did to my mother and her mother before that.” Bond is pretty frustrated in this scene too; his attitude seems to be: Jeez, I trick this virgin into sleeping with me, and she doesn’t even have any useful information.

James Bond vs. alligators: Is this how Pitfall was invented?

What is it about boat chases? Why are they always too long? Lose all of the sheriff stuff and and maybe have a boat drive over land a maximum of one time and it might work better.

A red polo shirt and jeans: the practical uniform for the megalomaniac on a budget! And your minions won’t look like idiots if they have to run to the store for something. This is one part of Mr. Big’s plan that makes sense to me. (The rest of his plot reminds me of those things on facebook where everyone is instructed to not buy gas on a specific date, and fill up the day before or after instead, because this will bring the oil companies to their knees somehow.)

Which is the dumber gadget: the magnetic watch or the shark gun? (SPOILER ALERT: it’s the shark gun, which is impressive, because the magnetic watch is super dumb and is in the movie a lot more.)

“An underground monorail. Connected to the last refuge of a scoundrel, no doubt.” I’ve been trying to link this to Kananga being the dictator of San Monique for the last ten minutes, so the moral here is: casually quote Samuel Johnson to me at your peril.

Kananga’s death by inflation: No. No. Absolutely not.

The seriousness of the fight with Tee Hee Johnson is severely undercut by the fact that it’s in this movie. (And possibly his name.) Take out the murphy bed and the prosthesis and it seems like a pretty respectable fight scene to me; not as good as the one in ‘From Russia With Love’, but … Unfortunately, in this movie, all it does is suddenly make me wonder: Hey, why wasn’t that guy’s prosthesis ever attracted to the magnetic watch?

And with the final shot of the laughing Baron Samedi, this movie ends as it begun: with something that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Hey, I just noticed there’s some video from my show at...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:44:37 -0400

Hey, I just noticed there’s some video from my show at the John Henry’s Hammer Coffeehouse in Worcester a couple of weeks ago. In addition to some nice clips of Walter Crockett and the Wannabee Wabbits (the band I opened for), there’s a snippet of me playing ‘That’ll Never Happen No More’ during my soundcheck.
It’s a nice collection of clips from the show. I hope I’ll see Mr. Crockett’s band again soon!

I'm forty years old

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:27:04 -0400

and can just about be trusted to trim my own mustache.

girl-detective:

I tried waxing my own eyebrows.

I’m really glad I have bangs.

The Day - Live Lunch Break: Jacob Haller | News from southeastern Connecticut

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:26:55 -0400

The Day - Live Lunch Break: Jacob Haller | News from southeastern Connecticut:

Yesterday I took the day off of work and headed down to the headquarters of theday.com, a Connecticut newspaper, to participate in a live broadcast in which I played seven songs and answered some questions from the host, Rick Koster. I had a great time, and the episode is now online at http://www.theday.com/article/20130321/MEDIA0104/130329943/1128/medialivelunch . If you know anyone who might enjoy it, please share it around!

After listening to this episode of my current favorite podcast,...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:44:16 -0400

After listening to this episode of my current favorite podcast, Baby Geniuses, I realized that all comedy podcasts should include a heartfelt, informative, and touching tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her husband Martin. Check it out!

babygeniusespodcast:

Bongiorno, babies!!

This week on Baby Geniuses our guest is the delightful, passionate, knowledgeable, exquisite man GUY BRANUM! In one of our most informative episodes ever, Guy explains to us in no uncertain terms why we should all be worshipping Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the heroine that she is.

Then! Teen expert ~~Nate Fernald~~ McWilliams David gives us the three keys to understanding our most sought-after demographic. Mostly it’s about fruit snacks.

And also: fossil words! Weird facebook friends! Internet haters! LISA’S PUBES!!!! Will we get hoisted by our own respective petards??? Listen to find out!!

Subscribe, rate us and leave comments on iTunes! Here’s Facebook!

Check us out on Cave Comedy Radio! Right-click here to download!

Wonderful podcast music provided by Nate Heller.

Goooooodbyyyyyeee!!!

A couple of months ago, I asked the excellent web cartoonist and...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:00:00 -0500

A couple of months ago, I asked the excellent web cartoonist and artist Shaenon Garrity to pick one of my songs and come up with a shirt design to go with it. She picked ‘The Ballad of Anne Hutchinson’, my song about Rhode Island co-founder Anne Hutchinson, and as soon as I saw the first rough sketch I knew it was going to be really great. (A favorite detail: the letters in the border are based on Puritan alphabet books from New England in the 17th century.)

I got the shirts and tote bags from the printers on Friday, sold a few shirts at a show on Saturday, and today catalogued them and put them up for sale on my website at http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/merch. They’re available in mens, womens, and kids sizes. Check ‘em out — I think they look great!

Happy Valentine’s day, everyone. Your friend,Jake

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:10:56 -0500

Happy Valentine’s day, everyone.

Your friend,
Jake

For the day before Valentine’s day I’ve saved up one of my sweeter songs. This one...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:15:13 -0500

For the day before Valentine’s day I’ve saved up one of my sweeter songs. This one features Joe Auger on drums, Natalie Markward on electric guitar, and Jack Hanlon on upright bass.

I sang it first thing in the morning, as I wanted it to start with as much of a languid feel as possible and I knew that after the first take I would be too excited to do it properly.

<a href=”http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/track/just-you” data-mce-href=”http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/track/just-you”>Just You by Jacob Haller</a>

Pickle Postcard

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:04:29 -0500

Today’s valentine-y song is the tale of a man torn between two loves: his partner, and pickles.

Today’s Valentine-related song is ‘You’re the Tea in My Teacup’. Someone...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:04:44 -0500

Today’s Valentine-related song is ‘You’re the Tea in My Teacup’. Someone once asked me to mail them the first verse of this song (and only the first verse).

Chris Monti plays slide guitar and sings backing vocals on this recording.

<a href=”http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/track/youre-the-tea-in-my-teacup” data-mce-href=”http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/track/youre-the-tea-in-my-teacup”>You’re The Tea In My Teacup by Jacob Haller</a>

Today's romantic song

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:05:48 -0500

is Hybrid Car Blues. Aw, let’s snuggle up and conserve a little energy together, baby.

<a href=”http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/track/hybrid-car-blues” data-mce-href=”http://jacobhaller.bandcamp.com/track/hybrid-car-blues”>Hybrid Car Blues by Jacob Haller</a>