One of the first movies I saw when we originally got HBO in the late 70's was this fine motion picture. Released in 1975, it was an early Sylvester Stallone movie of a cross country race where racers ran over and killed pedestrians for points to win. It's morbid, it's horrible, it's bad but in a good way.
I was checking the on-screen TV guide tonight and then noticed it was on DirecTV Free 101. I decided to watch it as I hadn't seen it for more than 20 years. I think I can still recite most of it line by line like I could from the multiple times I've seen Smokey and the Bandit. As I watch it, I can't help but get plenty of good belly laughs.
In the beginning when the race is about to start, Stallone who plays the bad guy, gets booed by the audience. He responds by taking a sub-machine gun and shoots at the crowd.
In another scene, a group of 3 punks try to play chicken with one of the racers who will undoubtedly try to run them over. They open a man hole so they can escape quickly. The first punk goes underground, followed quickly by the second person. The second person, unbeknowst to the third guy, closes the man hole. This left the third guy out there by himself. The racer comes around the corner and the third guy tries to jump straight into the man hole. Too late. "Oh Shit!" he says only moments before he's run over. Next, the two other guys stick their heads out of the man hole to see what happened. Another racer (Stallone, as "Machine Gun" Joe Vaturbo) comes from the opposite direction and runs them over too!!
At the end of the movie, the hero, named "Frankenstein" played by David Carridine, runs into the platform where the US president gave a speech and kills him.
Good stuff, man!!
Tonight on Free 101, they cleaned up all the profanity and nudity. Every time someone cusses, they bleep it out with the sound of a car horn. All in all, it's still worth watching.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Dog Show
Well, the Labrador retriever got screwed again.
Monday and Tuesday nights were the 132nd Annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show, which Uno the beagle won Best in Show. I was kind of rooting for him last night because 1) the beagle has never won the event and 2) I liked his personality. But I would have been happy with Duce the Australian Shepard or Marge the Weinereiner.
But another dog which has never been Best in Show in this event is the beloved Labrador retriever, nor the Golden retriever. Both of these dogs are the most popular dogs in the world. The Lab falls into the sporting group catagory... and I've never seen a lab or golden win this group either.
But like I said, I'm happy for Uno and also happy that a poodle didn't claim the accolade.
Monday and Tuesday nights were the 132nd Annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show, which Uno the beagle won Best in Show. I was kind of rooting for him last night because 1) the beagle has never won the event and 2) I liked his personality. But I would have been happy with Duce the Australian Shepard or Marge the Weinereiner.
But another dog which has never been Best in Show in this event is the beloved Labrador retriever, nor the Golden retriever. Both of these dogs are the most popular dogs in the world. The Lab falls into the sporting group catagory... and I've never seen a lab or golden win this group either.
But like I said, I'm happy for Uno and also happy that a poodle didn't claim the accolade.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Stacks of Wax
The latest project in the home is one of Buffy's... converting old vinyl LPs to .mp3 files and eventually CDs. She has a number of songs that appearently have never been put on CD or she's not willing to spend the money to buy the entire disc for only one song. So she wants to break out her old records and convert them into a 21st century medium. Of course, I said to her that if these songs have not been converted to CD by now, well, there may be some things best left on vinyl.
Note for the kids: Vinyl LPs, or commonly known as records, was how we listened to music back in the day. There were no .mp3s, iPods, CDs, DVDs, etc. We took basically a wax disc, placed it on a turntable (which is now a musical instrument for the hip-hop crowd to do scratching), placed a needle on the disc and let it play. It came complete with scratches and pops so you had to be careful how you handled the record. And I'm not even going to get into 8-track tapes.
This past Saturday, I dug out my old JVC turntable of about 25 years. After about a couple of minutes of use, the first in essencially 18-20 years, it worked! I ran the RCA cable to the sound card in her computer. Now, I needed something to play on it. Looking through a few old records, I found The Who's 1982 album, It's Hard (now keep your thoughts clean). I thought, "hey, I don't even have a CD copy or .mp3 of any of the songs from this album."
I loaded up the record, started the wav editor program on the computer and started playing around with converting the music. It worked, but the volume level was very low. After recording the song into electronic format, I could adjust the level of the volume, but it also adjusted up all the hissing and pops and scratchs from the source album.
Recently, there has been some sort of revival of the record album. Even a story was featured in the Journal Star last week. Upon listening to this vastly inferior sound reproduction, I thought to myself, "Who in their right mind wants to go back to this?!" But Buffy said to me, "Oh, I like all the hissing and pops in the song." Whatever!
While converting some of the songs off of this album, I took a moment to look at the album cover and artwork. It then hit me. On the cover of It's Hard, there's a kid playing a video game. I wondered if that could have been the modern day Tommy. For those unaware, in 1969, The Who produced a 2-record album called Tommy. It was billed as a "rock opera" and was about a deaf-dumb blind kid who could play some mean pinball. Hence, he was deemed the Pinball Wizard. So was the kid on 1982's Who album a video game wizard?
I have to admit, I do miss having the big album sleeve with the artwork and lyrics. While you do get some artwork with the CD jewel cases, it is so small that you will ruin your eyes trying to read and look at it. But I guess you can't have everything.
Note for the kids: Vinyl LPs, or commonly known as records, was how we listened to music back in the day. There were no .mp3s, iPods, CDs, DVDs, etc. We took basically a wax disc, placed it on a turntable (which is now a musical instrument for the hip-hop crowd to do scratching), placed a needle on the disc and let it play. It came complete with scratches and pops so you had to be careful how you handled the record. And I'm not even going to get into 8-track tapes.
This past Saturday, I dug out my old JVC turntable of about 25 years. After about a couple of minutes of use, the first in essencially 18-20 years, it worked! I ran the RCA cable to the sound card in her computer. Now, I needed something to play on it. Looking through a few old records, I found The Who's 1982 album, It's Hard (now keep your thoughts clean). I thought, "hey, I don't even have a CD copy or .mp3 of any of the songs from this album."
I loaded up the record, started the wav editor program on the computer and started playing around with converting the music. It worked, but the volume level was very low. After recording the song into electronic format, I could adjust the level of the volume, but it also adjusted up all the hissing and pops and scratchs from the source album.
Recently, there has been some sort of revival of the record album. Even a story was featured in the Journal Star last week. Upon listening to this vastly inferior sound reproduction, I thought to myself, "Who in their right mind wants to go back to this?!" But Buffy said to me, "Oh, I like all the hissing and pops in the song." Whatever!
While converting some of the songs off of this album, I took a moment to look at the album cover and artwork. It then hit me. On the cover of It's Hard, there's a kid playing a video game. I wondered if that could have been the modern day Tommy. For those unaware, in 1969, The Who produced a 2-record album called Tommy. It was billed as a "rock opera" and was about a deaf-dumb blind kid who could play some mean pinball. Hence, he was deemed the Pinball Wizard. So was the kid on 1982's Who album a video game wizard?
I have to admit, I do miss having the big album sleeve with the artwork and lyrics. While you do get some artwork with the CD jewel cases, it is so small that you will ruin your eyes trying to read and look at it. But I guess you can't have everything.
The Dubby Dance
This is the dance Dubby performed after the last NE Patriots touchdown in Super Bowl XLII. With less than 3 minutes left in the game, Dubby (as well as many others) prematurely believed they had the game wrapped up. Instead, the NY Giants won, 17 -14. Sorry, Dubby.
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