Puck’s Prattle

It seems my embed post of the SNL TV Funhouse “Maraka” short is the most popular “destination” post since the Bride Wigout thing back in January. Check out just some of the search terms that are bringing people to it:

maraka tv funhouse
maraka snl
funhouse if mittens
maraka if mittens
TV Funhouse Maraka “free will”
snl freewill
maraka and mittens
u tube maraka saturday night live
if mittens saved baby
dora spoof Utube
dora the explorer spoof saturday night l
mittens really have free will maraka
if mittens chose to save a baby penguin
if mittens saved penguin beliefs free wi
“if mittens chose to save baby penguin”
if mittens chose to save baby penguin be
and mittens beliefs are not in his direc
“does mittens” “have free will”
does mittens have free will
“does mittens really have free will?”
do you know why my father left me maraka
mittens maraka “free will”

That’s just a fraction of them. Anyway, a guaranteed way to bring traffic to your blog is to embed or link to a recent SNL sketch. The same thing happened with my post of Drew Barrymore’s 80s workout, from early February.

Be gentle.

If you like it, go to the YouTube page proper and give me a nice rating.

PuckTube drops Wednesday…

From last’s night’s Saturday Night Live, a surreal spoof of Dora the Explorer.

Do you know why my father left me?

If Mittens chose to save Baby Penguin based on his beliefs, and Mittens’ beliefs are not in his direct control, does Mittens really have free will?

Watch for it!

Mother of God, how did this drip make it to the top ten? He’s beyond sucking. He’s evil. His… hair! What’s more wrong than his coif itself is that apparently women are requesting it in salons, like they did with the “Rachel” in the mid-90s. (I heard that on Access Hollywood or something.)Something surreal happened on last night’s American Idol. It was British Invasion night, and—how à propos—there was an uncontrollably shrieking and sobbing girl in the audience. It was Beatlemania all over again. Is that meta or what?

But she wasn’t ga-ga over Blake “Beatbox” Lewis or that JT wannabe Chris Richardson, or even tubster Jack Osbourne Chris Sligh. No, she was disintegrating for Sanjaya Malakar, who was murdering the Kinks classic, “You Really Got Me.”

Her identity has been revealed: she’s 13-year-old Ashley Ferl. Now, my problem isn’t with her. I’m sure she was just really caught up in the excitement of attending a live broadcast of Idol. My problem is with the show’s producers if they think that the PoMo-ness of it all is above the heads of the entire AI audience. Because I got your joke, man, I got your joke.

Here’s the entire debacle.

• YEAH! The university decided to recognize my academic excellence with a bursary. It’s nothing huge, but a nice chunk of change nonetheless.
• …and I bought myself a present: a new webcam. I’ve spent the past couple of hours fooling around with it. It’s pretty good, but what’s really bugging me is that the low light filter causes significant A/V lag when turned on. I adjusted the other levels so that I look pretty good. Expect some amusing videos soon.
• I made it back to the gym this past weekend. I’m surprised I wasn’t sore from having gone three days in a row after two weeks off.
• Ian Ziering is pure evil, as is Sanjaya Malakar.
• School is about to heat up in a big way. Two essays and two term papers (basically bigger essays), then two exams. It’s all coming in twos.
• Not controlled by time, future lovers shine in a world that’s free, for eternity.
• Something good had better happen on Lost tonight. Last week was pretty cool, what I’d call “old-school Lost,” when you find out a whole bunch of new stuff, or it’s at least a bit suspenseful.
• Yesterday I was passing through the Pepsi Forum and “Vogue” was playing over the PA. It was just getting to that crucial first chorus, so I stopped, and did the classic 1990 Blonde Ambition moves. Here’s an approximation:
  
  Tee hee.

After the hilarity of my first post on the often bizarre search terms that bring people to Prattle, I’ve decided to start compiling the most amusing ones to post in a regular digest.

I’d like to point something out. Notice the entries in bold. What do they have in common?

dancing in million lights
Little Britain is shit
LSD
Updates Jorja Fox Contract 2007
entertainment and leisure in the 1970s
pc stuck in bios
lounge “la la lala”
valium21 lyrics
Pink kappa jackets
hot
hidden frames in “the departed”
why is my new processor running slower t
shoot a puck a mile - meaning
gay baths
louise lombard in porn
sexy pucks
jorja fox fakes
feeling nauseous 1 month after stopping
andy richter smoking
beer puck
“kerry butler” smoking
marg helgenberger’s tits
pc “shut off the beep”
jorja fox singing
white synthesizer
florence henderson fucking
sensual life
jorja fox nauseous
strange feelings in chest and back after

It seems the female CSIs and Carol Brady are fodder for many a fap-fap-fap in front of the monitor. Sorry to disappoint, fellas.

Oh, and to the person whose PC is stuck in BIOS: I suppose I’m too late, but have you tried setting the boot order to CD-ROM first and rebooting with the Windows CD in the drive? That should launch a repair console.

Maggie Blackamore enjoys conserves and other sweet treats—that is, until she finds out who made them…

No more lesbian jam, I can’t keep it down!

Oh no, Maggie, please! I’ve just had the carpet shampooed!

For all these sketches are silly and disgusting, they’re still somehow quite funny, because you can imagine people like Maggie Blackamore wanting to vomit whenever confronted with what they dislike, even as they feign politeness.

Free to Be… You and Me, brainchild of actress Marlo Thomas, started as a record album and was later made into a TV special. Its timeless message was of tolerance, acceptance, self-esteem, and self-actualization—told in a quintessentially 70s way. I remember being all of six or seven years old and going to the school library to watch this. We were enthralled. It harkens back to (forgive the cliché) a much simpler time, and while definitely the product of an earthy, warm-fuzzy, touchy-feely era, it still resonates over thirty years later. Sure, it’s classic Ms. magazine and second-wave feminism, but compare the sincere optimism of Free to Be… to the Just say no mantra of the neocon 80s. That’s when we really began instilling paranoia in children. Every stranger became a child molester, “the gays” were out to give everyone AIDS, and if you smoked a joint you’d be doing crack in the gutter before you knew it. And no one must ever see your “bathing suit” parts!

If anything, popular 1970s child-rearing was about saying yes, or at least maybe. And I may be biased, but I think we children of the 70s turned out pretty good.

We need stuff like this again. Plus, the soundtrack seriously rocked out.

Opening credits

Sisters and Brothers

Parents are People

And something we should all remember: It’s Alright To Cry

I haven’t gotten much of anything done this past week. My lassitude is surprising, given how active I usually am. I’m wondering if the head cold I’m just now getting over was in fact a flu. I don’t recall any fever or chills, so I doubt it. Still, it did knock me out.

However, that doesn’t quite explain why I’ve been so uninterested in my usual activities. I’m not depressed… just bored. I haven’t been to the gym in almost two weeks, and that’s quite upsetting to me. Granted, I was way too sick to go this past weekend, and as I’ve mentioned here before, I can never find a good time to go in the week. But after only a week away from the gym, I start getting puffy in the gut. That’s how old and pathetic I am. I’ll force myself to go tomorrow after I get the laundry done.

It’s hardly doom and gloom, though, and there were two bright spots: I got a paper back in my AmLit course—an A, though that wasn’t much of a surprise. What’s pleasing is that this was the first paper I wrote for this prof, and I know now she’s very receptive to my ideas; further, she said my writing itself was “splendid.” Today I got that Modern Drama test back—the one for which I had all that lit-crit to read, and didn’t finish—and got a very surprising 9 out of 10. ph34r my br1ll14nc3.

This post doesn’t even deserve to be considered a Minutiaeroll, but I have to post something so that you, my fans, know I’m still around. It’s not so much a question of keeping my traffic up, as I’m still getting lots of it.

Oh yeah: my quit smoking journal post is getting spam comments that link to bedding and linen websites. What the fuck? I’ve deleted them, but what’s weird is that the comments are relevant to my post. I’m sure that the bots are smart enough now to do stuff like that.

I’ve got something like seven draft posts in the pipeline; I hope I’ll be inspired enough to finish some of them this weekend.

• I have a head cold and a bit of a sore throat. I’m using this as an excuse to not go to the gym this afternoon.
• This weekend’s features at the PuckPad^® are Babel and For Your Consideration. I love Christopher Guest films, Waiting for Guffman being my favourite. For Your Consideration is a departure from earlier films such as Guffman, A Mighty Wind, and Best In Show in that it’s not a mockumentary. Still, it’s supposed to be good. There will be popcorn and everything.
• Speaking of which, in my microwave, a bag of popcorn takes exactly three minutes and fifteen seconds at high power. Mmm, trans fat.
• Got my hair done yesterday.
• It’s midseason replacement time on TV. I’m curious about the new Andy Richter show, Andy Barker P.I. (I won’t link to the NBC page for the show, because it’ll show you a really loud ad for TurboTax, and then tell you that if you’re not in the U.S., you can’t watch clips from the show… even though they have no problem showing you their commercials.) The problem with anything scheduled on Thursday evenings is that it’s Grey’s Anatomy/CSI night.
• If I wait for the rain to kiss me and undress me, will I look like a fool, wet and a mess?
• The test yesterday… ugh, whatever. I have to write an essay on some renaissance play for Wednesday. (You can tell how much I care.)
• Apparently tomorrow’s early change to Daylight Savings Time is going to cause worldwide chaos and destruction on a scale not seen since January 1, 2000.
• This is the real Alanis.

Wow, this old webcam has got to go. The colour and brightness are fine, but it’s so grainy.

I’m wearing the red Concordia baseball cap that has become a beacon to my school friends. They can see me coming a mile away, which gives them plenty of time to flee.

Here’s me daring to take a non-profile picture. I don’t look too bad in this one.

Anyway, I’m looking into inexpensive cams (in the $40 range) that have gotten good reviews on the web. I did some video capture testing the other day, and the audio quality isn’t too great either—there’s too much ambient background noise.

When I quit smoking a little over seven months ago, I posted a running commentary of what I was going through on my LiveJournal. I was just going through it and thought some of it might be worth reposting here, if only to remind myself of how far I’ve come.

Aug. 6, 2006

Day One

… we’ll see what happens today. Part of me is scared as fuck, but I mustn’t obsess, because that’s what sparks the compulsion to smoke.

… I’d be lying if I said I haven’t had moments where I’ve wanted to smoke and get that sudden hit of nicotine. But those moments of craving really do pass, just like all of the stop smoking tip lists say. Ordinarily, four hours without a cigarette would be hellish, but I feel fine maybe half the time…

… Oh FUCK. I’m finding out what nicotine withdrawal is like. And I’m sick, man. When the cravings come my forehead gets hot, my chest tightens, I exhale really strained-like, and my limbs tingle. I think I even had some nausea a few minutes ago…

… Now I’m feeling some terror about not smoking. It comes and goes. I feel like I have a fever …

… Wow, I had no idea it would feel like this. I expected anxiety and restlessness, but not this feeling of being crushed from the sides like a garbage compactor. I didn’t expect the sweating and the flushing. It’s really… unique. I don’t want to look up at the ceiling lest I see a dead baby crawling on it.

Aug. 7, 2006

… It’s been almost 24 hours since I last smoked, which I think was yesterday around 9 a.m. The rest of last night I zoned out on the couch and fell in and out of sleep, then put myself to bed, and slept all night. So far, so good. I think having day one behind me makes it a bit easier now…

… Right now, at this moment, I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve been up for an hour, drinking coffee and playing on the computer as I always do, but without smoking. In fact, it’s only crossed my mind a few, short times that I’m not smoking. The rest of the time I’m. Just. Not. Thinking. About. It.

Aug. 8, 2006

… I mean, I’m really not going mad for a ciggy here. I won’t lie: I’d love one right now. But I know the dangers of “just one,” having gotten sober once, then after a few years deciding I could have “just one” which then led to three years of being blotto 24/7. If I have just one, not only will I flip the switch back on, but I’ll also rationalize why I can have a second. (“Well, I already had one, so I’ve fucked it up, I might as well buy a pack for today, and get back to quitting tomorrow.”)

… My Dad will be 65 this month, and I hope to still be smoke-free by his birthday. When I tell him, I’m sure he’ll tell me that’s the best birthday present. He quit in January 2004, after maybe forty years of smoking (he quit for a few years in the 80s and took up jogging, then relapsed). When I’d go visit, it was painfully obvious to everyone how much I smoked, because I’d have to put on my shoes and go outside. He got to the point of begging me to quit, almost in tears. I’m sure this will make him happy; it’s one of the many reasons I’m doing this, and yet another reason to hang on.

Aug. 9, 2006

… I’ve done most of the cigarette-trigger things several times over without smoking: morning computer/coffee time, finishing meals, walking outside, waiting for the bus, going to class, sorting the laundry (yes, I’d smoke while doing that), watching TV, settling into bed, and most crucially, waking up. I really thought that mornings would be the worst, but they’re not. I’m not missing it nearly as much as I thought I would. This seems to be working.

Aug. 10, 2006

… I’m sleeping later into the morning. Usually I start having small awakenings around 5 or 6 a.m., and then by 9 I’ll get up. The past few days I’ve been getting up closer to 11. And in the evenings, I’m having these on-and-off naps in front of the TV that unlike my usual naps don’t keep me up later than my usual bedtime.

Aug. 13, 2006

GO ME! I haven’t had a cigarette in a whole week!

Aug. 16, 2006

… Yesterday wasn’t the best. I didn’t have cravings per se, but there were a few moments in the day where it seemed like I had reverted and was expecting a cigarette, and had to remind myself. Like I’d sit down at the computer and my mind would go, time to light up, and then I’d see there was no pack and no lighter and no ashtray. This might explain why I had my first smoking dream last night. Drinking dreams are common, and I still have them every so often. I don’t recall actually smoking in the dream, but rather realizing I had smoked, and had a pack on me, and wondering what to do with the rest of it. I’m also having moments where I nearly panic over not having smoked for so long, as if it’s something I should be doing. But this is all part of the emotional crap that goes with my giving up something that I’d done for eighteen years. I’ve moved from the initial elation at having been able to go through with it to a sense of mourning. It will pass, but it’s a very strange feeling.

Aug. 20, 2006

Two weeks without a cigarette! I almost forgot, which is a good thing, because I want to get to that day when the very idea of smoking no longer exists in my mind.

Sept. 6, 2006

Today I entered my second month of not smoking. Ninety percent of the time, I don’t miss it. It’s like I’ve forgotten I ever smoked. Example: when sitting on the couch watching TV, sometimes I’ll look to the end table on my right, and remind myself there used to be an ashtray there, usually with a ciggie burning away. And I can’t believe that I used to pollute the air like that!

Sept. 14, 2006

I’ve figured out why I’ve had so many I-want-a-cigarette moments lately: school. I’m suddenly back in another major trigger setting. Smoking on the way to school, having another cigarette before class, having a cigarette after class, smoking on the way home and then lighting up again as soon as I got in… I’m almost over it, though. The only positive thing about the school-smoking combination is it provides a situation where you can introduce yourself to classmates who are also outside smoking. Leaving class and going right home feels like I’m missing a social opportunity. So I’ll just make friends in class. And it’s nice to not have to frantically chew gum and wash my hands before going into the classroom so that I don’t stink as bad. (I’m sure I did anyway.)

Oct. 8, 2006

Two months since I last smoked!

And then I stop posting about it. It’s weird: reading those entries in fact doesn’t make it all come back to me. I really do think I’ve blocked the quitting process out of my mind as much as I’ve blocked out smoking itself. It’s quite fascinating how that worked out for me.

My Dad did say my quitting was the best birthday present he could have ever wished for. I did learn to make friends in class instead of outside smoking. And the very idea of smoking no longer enters my mind.

• Overheard in class… Student, poorly describing the mythical phoenix: “It burns, then it comes back.” Me: “Kind of like herpes.”
• Am I really mysterious? Enigmatic, maybe. Annoying, definitely. Hot? You tell me.
• I believe there was significant extraterrestrial intervention in human evolution.
• It’s likely one of this weekend’s features at the PuckPad^® will be Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
• Sometimes I post stuff just to move an image or the freeze-frame of a YouTube embed down the page, because I’m tired of looking at it. Now is one of those times.
• I’ll give you love, I’ll hit you like a truck. I’ll give you love, I’ll teach you how to…
• I still have that lit-crit to read. I got a start on it today in (another) class. I figured since I wasn’t going to pay attention anyway, I might as well start reading. I was pleased to find that, unlike most lit-crit I’ve read, this material is quite light and actually makes sense. (Take that, Barthes.)
• I make the best baked potatoes. I’m not going to share my secret.
• Getting my hair done tomorrow after the test. I found a really excellent new sculpting wax.
• Kate Bush is a genius and goddess.
  “The Sensual World,” 1989.
  

Demon drug LSD leads a young initiate to murder a hot dog! I knew acid made everyone who took it jump off a bridge and end up a quadriplegic, but saucissicide?

I was very hungry, and I had put mustard and ketchup and relish and the usual, and I put the hot dog up to my mouth, and somebody started screaming.

I looked down at the hot dog, and there was a face on it! Eyes, nose, a mouth. I had put the ketchup to where it looked like his hair. And he started telling me that I couldn’t eat him, that he had a wife and seven kids at home to support.

Finally I decided that I was just hallucinating, so I put it in my mouth and bit down. It screamed so loud that you could hear it all over town, so I had to throw it on the ground and step on it. And I was jumping on this hot dog in the middle of Market Street.

I realized that I had murdered it, and I took off screaming down the street, scared.

I don’t know about you, but I find this far more effective than the eggs in a frying pan PSA.

I’m coining a new term. Google doesn’t bring it up, so I’m confident in my claim. I don’t have any delusions of the word gaining the attention (deserved or not) of Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”—or gaining any attention… or ever being used by anyone other than me, for that matter. I do, however, fancy myself as in my own little way capturing the zeitgeist of this exciting Web 2.0 time. And so I’m planting my flag in this term: minutiaeroll. We don’t make lists anymore—we roll. Everything’s a -roll now, such as blogroll or linkroll or cinnamonroll. Minutiaeroll, then, is just a listing of little thoughts and other assorted tidbits that beg to be broadcast but don’t deserve posts of their own. And so, onto the mish-mash of pointless crap!

• Yesterday’s workout was v. v. good. The best I’ve had in a few weeks. I really shouldn’t cram all of my gymming into Friday-Saturday-Sunday, though I do alternate muscle groups and all that crap. I’m always meaning to find a good time to go during the week, but school gets in the way, and I don’t like the gym as much during the week. There’s a sense of urgency that I don’t get on the weekends, when it’s decidedly more relaxed and the place is much less crowded.
• I have so much lit-crit to read for a test on Thursday. I’ll no doubt end up doing it all in a marathon session on Wednesday.
• Life is a mystery; everyone must stand alone.
• If Hollywood couple Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard get a flat tire, do they call Quadruple-A?
• The little coffeeshop on the fourth floor of the Hall building always smells like burnt cheese. It gives me an instant headache. Still, I bought a really good pastry there this evening before class. It was kind of a chocolate danish but it looked more like a croissant.
• I got the webcam working and did some testing yesterday. Holy fuck, my face is fat. Why is that? From the neck down, I’m in the best shape of my life. My mug, however, looks like a lump of dough with a couple of raisins stuck in it. I’m going to look in Movie Maker to see if there’s a stretch vertical effect.
• My plug made Daniel happy, and that in turn made my day.
• The extended “Music Inferno” number from Madonna’s Confessions show is the best music for walking down the street. Pumps up my jam and inflates my attitude. Uh-huh, snap!

‘Xanadu’ glides to Broadway in June

March 2, 2007

NEW YORK –Spring on Broadway hasn’t even started, but the first musical of the 2007-08 season already is in sight.

“Xanadu,” based on the campy 1980 film about a Greek muse who helps a young man build a disco roller rink, will open June 26 at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Preview performances begin May 23.

The musical will star Kerry Butler as Kira, the role played in the movie by Olivia Newton-John. The film also featured Michael Beck and the legendary Gene Kelly.

No other casting for the musical was announced but the show has a book by Douglas Carter Beane, author of this season’s “The Little Dog Laughed.” It will feature songs from the movie by John Farrar and Jeff Lynne. They include such pop hits as “Magic,” “Party All Over the World,” “I’m Alive” and the title tune.

Butler is best known for her portrayal of the sweetly ditsy Penny Pingleton in “Hairspray.” She also played Audrey in the 2003 Broadway revival of “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Now that I’m here, now that you’re queer, in Xanadu

Xanadu is great because it has its own unique flavour of very late 70s/very early 80s tacky—and an excellent synthy, almost New Wave, score by ELO. The special effects must have seemed pretty cool back then, too. Check out the glowing muses in the opening number, “I’m Alive.”

Excuse me, miss, you have a stick shift growing out of your cranium…

The camp value of it all aside, I feel compelled to point out that this is yet another case of Broadway producers’ dusting off a cult classic movie, throwing in some new songs, and sticking it on stage.