This blog has a proud tradition whereby, anytime it’s my birthday, I’m allowed to drop the usual contrived charade of trying to contextualize whatever it is I want to write about and just present it as is. Thus…
Once my friend and I were watching the The Silence of the Lambs and commenting on how riveting the acting is in exchanges like this one between Anthony Hopkins and Jody Foster (click image for clip):
Suddenly, we got preoccupied by trying to image the worst two actors to cast for the role, those whose talents (or lack thereof) would most detract from the dramatic suspense. “Heather Locklear…” my friend suggested. “… And William Shatner!” I countered. I wish I had the time. energy and savvy to create a knock-off version of the above clip with Hannibal Lecter’s lines delivered in Shatner’s halting, hammy, melodramatic delivery: “THE SILENCE……….. of the lambs”.
Similarly, the only time I went to Burning Man (2004), we dutifully trooped over to watch the Man being burned, but found it off-puttingly sanctimonious and high-handed (again, click for clip):
Particularly, the new-agey, nouveau-Tibetan music being played in the background seemed to be laying it on a bit thick. After a while, to lighten the mood, we started discussing what would be the most inappropriate, mood-ruining music to pipe in through thousands of mega-watts, eventually settling on “The Heat Is On” by Glenn Fry. Subsequently, we discovered that people at Burning Man really, really don’t like it if you continuously shriek with laughter while the Man is being burned.
So, there’s my birthday wish for this year: some personal, metaphysical YouTube where these two clips exist side-by-side.
You could just put Arthur and yourself side to side. 😉 Best wishes! The Modlabs!
Happy Birthday! Do you mean the old or new William Shatner? And I guess you’d have to go with Whoopi Goldberg as Starling . . . “Dr. Lecter . . .”
here you go. 😀
http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1-mU-YSk32I&start1=&video2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dt9N-7u2iBog&start2=&authorName=DJ+Ryan+the+Cole
Wow, thanks! Cacopho-rama!
Happy Birthday! 2004 was the only year I went to Burning Man as well. It was not a transformative, life-changing experience. It was, however, a lot of fun, at least what I can remember, which is not very much.
I agree 100% with your assessment. My biggest complaint was that 90% of the people there seemed to take it in a near-religious event, whereas the other 9.9% spend the whole time furiously turned off by the pretentiousness of the first 90%. I felt like my friend and I were the only people who just took it as good laugh. We strongly considered spending the whole time in Depends adult diapers but eventually decided against it…