Hucklebug, Episode 160: Shout-outs, Poundsqueeze/Hucklebug Audiobook Project, movies (Bet: Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., Se7en; Stennie: Office Space, The Invention of Lying, To Be or Not To Be), lowlights & highlights, fuck-offs and you-rules.
Music: “The Hucklebuck,” performed by Otis Redding, Lee Rocker, and Frank Sinatra.
Below is the YouTube video that we reference during the You Rule segment:
Along the same lines as the video, I hope we can get a “you rule” for Senator Al Franken.
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_212260731.shtml
As well a hale and hearty (or a laurel and hearty) “fuck off” to 30 republican senators:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00308
I went to see The Invention Of Lying last week, based on Stennie’s glowing recommendation. I enjoyed it, but perhaps not as much as she did. The ads reminded me of the Dudley Moore movie Crazy People. (“Metamucil: We help you go to the toilet so you won’t get cancer and die.” “Volvo: they’re boxy, but they’re good.”)
I’m up for the big alternate tracks round table discussion, and the more the merrier.
They released another season of Red Dwarf? Boy, that’s gotta suck. It was pretty unwatchable in the more recent seasons, especially after Chris Barrie left the show. Even if he comes back, that show definitely jumped the shark.
What’s the format for the audio book project? I shall have to go through the collection of children’s literature and see what’s there. You may get a lot of Winnie the Pooh.
Okay Stennie, next time I see Ron, I’ll send him in your direction. Last time I heard, he was married, if that matters to you or to him.
I’ve been hit up by those ‘panhandlers’—like I”m going to give you my address? Get a clue. They should all just read you Neil’s letter (as re-interpeted by Vyvyan). “Dear fascist bully boy…”
That abortion thing sounds really odd and possibly misinterpeted—don’t they have HIPPA there? For God’s sake, you have to stand a million miles back from the pharmacy window just in case you overhear something you shouldn’t (or don’t want to, thank you Mr. Hemorrhoids).
Okay, I am sitting here eating vacuum fried banana chips. What the hell does that mean? They do seem fluffier than regular banana chips.
I think of the meter as duke-O-meter with emphasis on the O although feel free to call it anything you like. He’s pretty easy going being a meter and all.
I’ve indeed seen “I Walked with a Zombie”, Bet. It was made by Jacques Tourneur right after The Cat People and has his signature atmosphere and style. The Duke-O-Meter gives it an 8. It’s old school zombie which means voodoo and creepy undead rather than George Romero style flesh eating ghouls of today. I Walked with a Zombie is a super cool flick dripping with atmosphere. A classic movie.
What is this Poundsqueeze you refer to? Did I fall sleep and miss something?
What book would I read? Probably a Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer novel, “My Gun is Quick”. It has some of the best hard boiled vintage dialog ever. Mike Hammer lived in a world of “Gats”, “Molls”, “Dames”, “Heaters”, and “Decks of Lucky Strikes” that would be a hoot to read out loud.
That abortion thing is horrible. I guess the next step is to list all registered democrats on the internet along with names, address, telephone, plus a free 800 number so you can call them up for a good cursing out.
I’ve been going to that Conservapedia site for a while now. They are actually rewriting the bible to suit their philosophy. Amazing place. Did you know Jesus was a staunch capitalist who hated socialism? I do now. The Neocon movement has fully pulled away to be it’s own unique religion and Conservapedia seems to be its Temple of Worship. I didn’t expect to see a brand new religion formed in my lifetime but I did.
Good luck at the hi-dee-ho academy Bet! Give Milo a dog cookie for me.
This is so awesome! Hm…our problem is we have a Dance Dance Revolution setup, but the pads are so damn annoying to put on the floor, and after a while your ankles hurt from pounding the floor.
A Wii would be cool to have, so happy you’ve found something that gets you to lose 3 lbs already! And some aggression has certainly been lost too. Maybe the “Fuck off’s” on the Hucklebug will be more sweetly said from now on?
HOOK ME UP, BET!! YEAH!!
I need some music!!
I saw that Movitz band on Colbert, man—I don’t know, tho. I can’t really understand their lyrics, but it’s fun music all right!!
Ever since ThePete showed me “Magic” with Anthony Hopkins, I wanna read the book it’s based on. I heard that it’s all like from the point of view of the puppet. So, like that’s awesome. Puppets don’t get book deals too often. Gotta support the bruthas-in-felt, man. Yeah.
I wanna win a Nobel. Or a Pulit Surprise. That’d be cool.
I enjoyed the Hucklebug, too. YEAH!
I feel like a tax on junk food and cigs is a lifestyle tax and I don’t like it. If anything, I think a better idea would be putting a cap on how much a company could profit from selling products that are bad for their customer’s health. I think it’s lame to make money off of someone else’s weakness or personal choice to harm themselves. I don’t like the insurance industry, either.
Bet, everything ends up on DVD eventually, even stuff from other countries like Doctor Who. MST3K has been quietly traded on VHS among the fans for years before even the ‘net took off. Now I’m pretty sure you can find MST3K via Bit Torrent, though we’ve had every episode for a while now so I haven’t looked.
(Siskita and I are HUGE fans. She even built one of the ‘bots for herself!)
Bet reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” would be pretty awesome. What about a podcast version? A chapter a week? I’m toying with the idea of doing an audio podcast of me quipping to my Kindle reading me the Bible. Or maybe I should have Jay do it?
Erol Morris’ “Fog of War” is amazing. It’s pretty much just McNamara talking the whole time. It’s great—none of those pesky recreations. Just him confessing to being a war criminal pretty much.
Sten, you haven’t seen Seven? Wow. That’s such a “classic.” I actually didn’t like it to the extent I’d ever see it again. It does what it does so effectively, no one should need to see it again. I don’t get these people who own Seven in their collection. I mean, how often are you going to watch a movie like that? Why not have the Saw movies on in the background instead?
I still maintain that Glenn Beck is a faker. Stewart or Colbert (forgot which) proposed the same idea recently.
I agree with both of you on Obama’s Nobel. I hope he brags to every conservative that he got it, but I also hope he earns that shit. Not that Kissinger or Arafat did. :\
Sten, if you see Tom again, ask if he remembers me. I doubt he does, but I saw him nude (well, I was looking away) but we did a video project together. We did a scene from “Carnal Knowledge” and the scene starts with him in the shower. He *might* remember that
<3 <3 I know *I* do <3 <3
Actually, I had a crush on the co-director of that project. She was hawt.
That YouTube clip of Alan Grayson ROCKED, Sten—I blogged it, too and tweeted and stuff.
Book I could read aloud: So many to choose from. GATSBY comes to mind, as well as something more midwestern, like MAIN STREET. However, they’re just a bit too dated, and I might want to find something more late 20th century. FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS seems too drug-addled, and couldn’t pull off the language of a Haruki Murakami or Woody Allen book. Short stories tend to be what I read much of these days, but they seem so….short.
Here’s an odd choice, perhaps, but I’ll say LITTLE CHILDREN by Tom Perrotta. Certain works of art find you at a time where you feel it speaks just to you, and this book captured me at a time when we were first raising our young son. It’s nearly perfect, and completely contemporary. The movie with Kate Winslet is good, but it didn’t quite live up to the book—isn’t that always the case? So, I’d read that.
The older I get, the more distrusting of politicians I get. So when I say that Grayson’s speech seems like grandstanding and perfect for soundbites with little substance behind it, please take it with a grain of salt. I’m starting to think that Washington is a logjam, and takes great people and mashes them into a fine powder. Holy shit, I’m turning into my grandfather.
Oh well, back to my Wii Sports Resort. The flying game is simple and fun. It’s also very funny even when you crash the plane. Recommended!
P.S. A Sunday afternoon for a Hucklebug jam session would be really tricky for me, since that’s kinda family time. I’d much prefer a nighttime jam, since I’d also be more able to relax (read: drink) while on the phone with utter strangers.
P.P.S. I love CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED/ZOMBIE. Looking forward to seeing other Val Lewton/RKO flicks as well.
Too many movies to see! Trying to watch some 2009 movies in time for end of the year voting too. And work full time, and raise a kid, and keep a house from falling down. Lately, I feel like I run my life like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, worrying that I’m always late.
17 U.S.C. § 106(2): grants a copyright holder the exclusive right to prepare derivative works based on his/her protected expression. That includes adaptations like audio books and compilations like our (in)famous CD mixes, which, as an added bonus, also violate the reproduction and distribution rights. (We’re all about value at Hucklebug Industries, Inc., am I right?)
If you were really worried about not running afoul of the Copyright Act, you could read something in the Public Domain, e.g., Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn, pretty much anything published before 1923. Another way around it would be to read the works live, in real time, with limited access to the performance, and not record it. But where’s the pleasure in that? Honestly, the content industry can suck it. My interest in IP law is to bring down the system from the inside. Count me in.
I’d like to read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. That book, the 1983 film, and the biographies of Chuck Yeager and Alan Shepherd, served as a sort of holy canon during my formative years. I’d also love to read some of George Saunders’ short fiction. Saunders’ stories have such a great, off-kilter narrative voices. I’ll probably have to arm-wrestle Patrick, but I think I can take him. Speaking of PMLL, I feel your pain, man. I’m pretty sure my epitaph will read, “Oh shit, that was today?”
I have this dream of doing little Reading Rainbow-style adaptations of kids stories. Entertain the man-cub and teach him about civil disobedience, too!
So, with all that said, have you all seen or heard about Star Wars Uncut? http://starwarsuncut.com/
One of the staffers on the journal for which I’m the Web Editor/blog meister blogged about it and many of us used it as a license to let our Star Wars/copyright-policy geek flags fly.
http://jolt.unc.edu/blog/2009/10/12/these-aren’t-derivative-works-you’re-looking-move-along
I also did a bit about it on my blog, adrinkingsong.blogspot.com, and tied it into a TED talk by Lawrence Lessig that, not coincidentally, talks about things like CD mixes and mashups and DIY audiobooks—things people do to make art from art for the pure pleasure of it.
As long as we’re on the subject of the common man sticking it to the corporate Man, I’d like to suggest a name for your hot pockets gripe site: hotpockets_can_eat_me_freely.com On a related note (this is somewhat old news) did you all hear about the Glenn Beck meme/trademark kerfuffle? http://www.thresq.com/2009/09/glenn-beck-raped-murdered-girl-website.html
The defendant’s response to the UDRP, the body that adjuicates domain-name disputes, is pure gold: http://gb1990.net/legal/response/D2009-1182 Response Brief.pdf
Finally, that Okla. abortion thing is so outrageous and patently unconstitutional that I suspect even Scalia would strike it down, not least because Roe v. Wade was predicated on the right to privacy found in Griswold (right of married couples to buy and use birth control), among many others. Fuckin’ Okies.
Thank you for the get well wishes. Your healing segment reminded me of the great Right Reverend Jimmy Lee Farnsworth.