Author: Joey deVilla

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Let my footage go

Slightly updated to be even funnier at 1:50 p.m. EST.

Bill Barol’s not a big fan of Cecil B. DeMille’s epic, The Ten Commandments, as he writes in this blog entry:

Watching the annual broadcast of “The Ten Commandments,” I was struck once again by the mind-altering terribleness of it. I mean, I don’t think it makes me irreligious to say that this is one very large stinker of a Bible picture. And this year, as my mind was wandering, I found myself wondering about lines that had been cut from the original release. There must have been some, despite its three-day running time. For example: In the Passover scene, after Eliazar asks why the Israelites eat bitter herbs and Moses answers that it’s to remind them of the bitterness of their slavery, it seems plausible that the screenwriters had Eliazar answer: “But uncle, I work sixteen hours a day in mud over my head, I need no reminders. What am I, stupid?” That line? Cut.

Here’s what I think ended up on the cutting room floor…

DELETED SCENE ONE

The scene: At the coast of the Red Sea, which Moses has parted. In the distance, you can see Moses leading the Israelites across the narrow strip of dry sea bed. In the foreground is the Pharoah’s army’s captain and his lieutenant, debating their next move. The captain points at the firestorm that Moses has cast behind the Israelites in order to slow the army down.

Captain: Look! The fire dies! This is our chance! All right, men, let’s go after —

Lieutenant: Begging your pardon, sir, I don’t want to seem to be advocating cowardice, but…

Captain: But what?

Lieutenant: Well, sir, I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s just better to…uh…let them go.

Captain: Let them go? At the brink of our victory? Have you gone mad?

Lieutenant: Think about it. Their god’s been wiping the walls with us, right? The plagues — the frogs, the locusts, the dust turning into gnats, everyone running out of toilet paper and Kleenex at the same time… And what about that thing with the water? He turned the Nile into blood…and on my laundry day! Do you know what it takes to get blood out of togas? Then that angel of death guy ices all our firstborn sons, mine included! I had everything riding on little Johnny, and now I’ve got to bequeath all my chattels to my younger son Lance, who’s…well, he’s turning out a little…well…fruity. And now that we’ve chased Moses and the Israelites to the sea and think we’ve got him cornered, poof — he cuts a path across the water and blocks us with a giant firestorm.

Captain: Your point being?

Lieutenant: This hardcore god of theirs clearly gets results. Don’t you think it’s a little odd that now, of all times, one of this god’s tricks has just fizzled out? Call me paranoid, but I smell a trap. And besides, our failure to stop their attacks in spite of our wizards, superior numbers and weapons should clearly indicate flaws in our mideast polic–

The captain pulls out his sword and lops off the lieutenant’s head with a single stroke.

Captain: (muttering to himself) Damned liberals and their “blame Egypt first” rhetoric… (To his men) All right, men…let’s roll!

DELETED SCENE TWO

The scene: Moses returns from the mountain with the two stone tablets, only to find that the Israelites are now worshipping a golden calf.

Aaron: Hail the cow. Amooooo.

Moses: What the…? I leave you idiots alone for a couple of days and you go all pagan on me. Don’t you remember all that God did for us? The plagues? The Nile turning into blood? The thing where I turned my nunchucks into deadly snakes? With His help, we got Mesopotamian on their ass!

Aaron: Um…yeah, but…we thought about it and decided that this God person is a little too right-wing. And He’s way too much into gross-outs for our liking. I mean, the frogs, locusts and gnats? Icky. I mean, couldn’t he have come up with, I dunno, a plague of puppies? And the bit where He gave all the Egyptians boils? Ewwww! Half of Cairo was still inch-deep in pus when we left. And as for killing all their firstborn sons, well, isn’t that a little…well, sexist? We’ve been thinking that if He has to resort to fascist tactics like that, the Egyptians have already won.

Moses (screaming): And so you switched gods? You worship this (Points to golden calf) now? You worship something we make freakin’ brisket out of? If you’re going to worship stuff you can find at the deli, why didn’t you save yourself a lot of sculpting work and make a golden…matzoh?

Aaron: I’m sensing a lot of hostility here…

Moses contemplates breaking the tablet with commandments one through five over Aaron’s head, but decides not to. He looks at the cow and realizes something.

Moses: Hmmm…it just occurred to me…we were slaves. Unpaid labour. No pyramid builder’s union. We were dirt poor with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Where did you get enough gold to make this false god?

Aaron (nervously): Uh….we found it. Yeah, we found it. You know, near that place beside the thing…you know…

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Special memo to my sister and brother-in-law

From left to right: My sister Eileen,

my brother-in-law Richard,

and yours truly.

Taken April 1999, hence the moustache.

Dear Eileen and Richard,

I know it’s a little soon, what with you guys having gotten married only two and a half years ago, but I think now would be a good time for you guys to renew your wedding vows. Why?

Mmmm…betrothal donut…

Because you can now get wedding cakes made out of Krispy Kreme donuts!

Love,

Joey

(I found the story at Bill Barol’s blog.)

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It Happened to Me

Quotes, Part 1

Here are some of the more interesting quotes I’ve heard in the past fortnight, and the stories behind them.

“You’re the happiest unemployed person I know”

Friday, March 22nd: Walking into salsa night at the Courthouse is like walking into a movie.

The Courthouse — so named because it actually was a courthouse built in the 1800’s — has a gorgeous 19th-century ballroom with high ceilings and a balcony, lit only by chandeliers, a couple of fireplaces and dozens of candles. The floor is packed with well-dressed dancing couples and spectators lounge in large and comfy couches by the fireplaces at either side of the room. The musical selection is mostly salsa, with a little cha-cha and merengue thrown in now and again. Unlike most dance clubs, this is one place where strangers walk up to you and ask you to dance.

We were invited there by our friend Sue, whom we’d met at one of the “Singleton” parties organized by our friend Marichka. (The Singleton gatherings are rather yuppified affairs held at a chi-chi resto-bar called Fat Cat, where twenty-, thirty- and forty-something professionals — mostly journos, from the look of it — gather to meet others of their ilk.) It was a little send-off for Sue; she was due to move to San Diego to start a new job in a week.

Paul and I have been to a couple of salsa nights. Paul has ballroom danced for years; he’s even been in competitions and won. He tends to seek out the women who know how to salsa, take them to the floor and then transform himself from dairy country rube to dancing machine. Paul takes dancing seriously and complains that he keeps forgetting all his steps, but as far as my uneducated eyes can tell, he does just fine.

I, on the other hand, can barely waltz. I tend to ask the wallflowers staring longinly at the dancefloor:

“Would you like to dance?”

“I’d like to, but I really don’t know how.”

“Neither do I,” I’d say and then dancing — or a cartoonish approximation thereof — would ensue. There’s a lot of “so what do we do next?” throughout the dance, I tend to turn my partner more times than the legal limit and I’m sure Arthur Murray spins in his grave every time I take to the floor. The “I don’t know what I’m doing but I don’t care” approach to ballroom dancing is cheesy John Hughes movie behaviour, but so is carrying an accordion everywhere, and that’s done me nothing but good.

After watching me, our friend Valerie told me as we watched Paul the Midwestern Mambo Machine, “You’re the happiest unemployed person I know.”

“My brothers would kick your ass”

Saturday, March 23rd: It was like Coyote Ugly, except with better dialogue and an accordion player.

I thought I was going to have a relatively quiet Saturday night — a little coding work until midnight, and then down to Velvet Underground, the alt-rock dance place down the street. Instead, I got a phone call from my friend Anne, who invited me to join her and her cute friends from her PR class at a resto-bar called Seven Numbers. She also mentioned that there was someone she wanted to introduce me to.

(Having your ex try to set you up with someone is similar to getting a letter of recommendation from an employer who fired you. Both will recommend you to others, the fact that you were let go makes the recommendations seem a little odd, you think that your being let go was a colossally gross error in judgement, the severance pay/nookie is never enough and you gracefully accept the recommendation anyway because it’s the polite thing to do and hey, you never know where it’ll lead.)

I arrived at Seven Numbers and met a table of several women and one guy. I’d met Anne’s equally hyperkinetic friend Tanya before, but the rest of them were new to me. She introduced me to her friends as “the infamous Accordion Guy”. I’ve been getting introduced to people that way, complete with “the infamous” or “the notorious”. Most people would probably be embarrassed, but I feed off that kind of thing. It’s called rock and roll, kids.

The restaurant was more like a movie restaurant than a real-world one: the waiters constantly flirted with the girls (when the girls first entered the restaurant, one of them carried Anne to the table); people were doing body shots — drinking sambuca out of each other’s navels — on the bar, and when the music came on, I played along on the accordion and we all climbed up on the bar to dance.

I phoned Paul, who’d stayed home that night. “It’s like Coyote Ugly here,” I told him, “and you’d never forgive me if I didn’t call you.” He arrived about a half-hour later.

A couple of pretty women bought me a drink and asked all kinds of questions about me and my accordion. Have I mentioned how much I love this instrument? (It was a good thing that one of them mentioned that they’d put their kids and husbands to bed before going out. I really need to remember to check for wedding rings.) An older Italian woman walked up to me and pinched my cheeks, saying “It’s-a so nice that a young guy like-a you still plays the accordion.” Grazie, ma’am.

Drew, a friend of the girls, arrived around last call and invited us back to his apartment for more drinks. Drew lived in Yorkville, a boutique-y part of town filled with pricey restaurants, small art galleries and overpriced designer clothing stores. He had an apartment above Gabbana and beside a dance club that had a gaggle of Mexican guys outside, staring each other down with what Laura, one of the girls, called “the look of death.” (Later that night, a fight would break out, there would be lots of screaming in Spanish, an old man would get knocked onto his ass, followed by screams of “El Viejo!“. We’d watch the conflagration from the balcony above.)

I had a feeling of deja vu as I walked into the apartment. Paul Oakenfold playing on the stereo — the same track that the fratboys in San Francisco played at their apartment, where just like now, we’d left a bar and gone back to some guy’s place for more drinks. To my relief, the guys weren’t obnoxious at all, and I didn’t hear the word “dude” all night.

Tanya told us how she’d been kicked out of a bar the week before. Apparently she’d been talking to some guy who called her a “whore from Halifax”. Tanya decked him and was promptly ejected from the bar.

Drew told us about his trip to Mexico and showed us some badly-painted Mexican wrestler dolls he’d bought at the airport. I’ve seen shoddy Third World workmanship before, but who ever painted these wasn’t even trying. They wouldn’t even pass muster in the Land of Misfit Toys.

Somehow the topic drifted to Judy Blume books, and being the pop culture aficionado I am, I mentioned how her books used to be more relevant to school kids and how she went down the slippery slope and ended up writing incredibly cheesy soft-core porn. Stephanie was quite appalled that a guy would know shit from shinola about Judy Blume.

“My brothers would kick your ass,” she said.

“They’re welcome to try,” I replied, “but I’d make sure they limped back to their trailer.”

She either didn’t get my quip or took it extremely well.

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Bits and Pieces

That didn’t come out right

During the commercial breaks for the CBC mini-series dishing the dirt on the life of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, a voice-over announced: “This show has been brought to you by Canadian cheese.”

And while I’m on the Trudeau mini-series…

…could we please revoke the law that says that uber-nebbish Don McKellar

has to appear in every TV series and movie made in Anglophone Canada?

His range of expression seems to run the gamut from A

to…A-and-a-half. As a guy with interesting things to say, he’s pretty

cool, but as an actor, he is less interesting that most trout I have

eaten.

Now if we can only get the majorettes to wear these big red codpieces…

I found this pretty cool version of Word Up [1.5MB MP3] that was performed by a high school marching band.

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Technical Difficulties

I don’t know what’s been happening over at Blogger (the Web service I use to make entries in and maintain this weblog), but the trouble seems to have passed. Unfortunately, it’s time for me to hit the gym and run some errands, so today’s posting will be somewhat delayed.

In the meantime, here’s some interesting reading:

  • Let’s Eat Rice! I get kind of twitchy if I don’t have at least one meal with rice per fortnight. Dad can hold out for about three days, I think.
  • I always give the street kids a cut of my busking money, but someone’s done one better and set up an interesting charity site called ModestNeeds.com.
  • Remember the big story about the Microsoft/Unisys Anti-Unix site being hosted on a Unix server? They’ve very quickly moved it to a Windows server. So quickly, in fact, that the following ports on it are open: 21 (FTP), 25 (SMTP), 80 (HTTP), 110 (POP3), 443 (HTTPS), 1433 (SQL Server), 1755, 1801, 1972, 1975, 2103, 2105, 2107, 3306, 3372 and 5900 (VNC). This is the high-tech equivalent of locking your front door with a deadbolt, but leaving a few windows and a doggie-door wide open.
  • My friend Adina’s sister Lisa, who lives in Israel, has this little writeup about what it’s like there right now — not from the point-of-view of a military analyst or a news reporter, but just an ordinary civilian, like me, and (presumably) most of you. I’m very thankful that the worst of my problems seem to be hunting down a job, finding a new roomate to help absorb some of the rent, my “club” accordion needing some minor repairs and the fact that this cute girl didn’t show up at my gig last Saturday.
  • Bringing karaoke to everyone: Taito, the company that revolutionized the videogame world with Space Invaders, is now going to revolutionize karaoke. Using the CSound programming language, they’ve developed technology that will enable a karaoke machine to adjust the pitch of the music to match the user. Supposedly even the most tone-deaf person will now seem to have perfect pitch.
  • Hey mister, I really like your free concert…Custom — yeah, the guy who does the song Hey Mister is playing at the next New Music Tuesday (April 9th) at the Horseshoe Tavern, which is conveniently located right around the corner from my house. And yes, as with all New Music Tuesdays, there’s no cover.
  • Lindy vs. Lindi: When homophones collide! Yup, this Saturday at C’est What (SE corner of Front Street East and Church), you can see both Lindy, the gentle giant of folk rock and Lindi, the sweet-voiced, skimpy-dressin’ cabaret singer with the firefighter cute accordion player.

And now, I’m off to the gym to make myself Toronto’s most buff accordion player, although I suspect that’s not saying much.

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Because I can’t wait for that Jesus artist to get around to doing one with an accordion player…

…I decided to take matters into my own hands. The Lord helps those who help themselves, right?

Dude! Play some Zeppelin!

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, perhaps you should see the original artwork.

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When Elephants Dance

Michael Frasse has an interesting essay on the Arts and Farces site called When Elephants Dance that covers the battle between the entertainment industry and everyone else. Here’s some stuff from the essay:

When elephants dance, it’s best to get out of the way. That’s exactly what’s happening now as the entertainment industry — the recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainly — attempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isn’t it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective mind’s eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the tools — computers mostly — that allow customers to practice their piracy.

He covers a lot of ground in the essay: copy-protected CDs, Internet radio, copyright, moral rights, the DMCA, the CBDTPA and the entertainment industry’s “soft money” donations made to the Hollywood ass-kissing senators who introduced it:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

    

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

    

$49,852

  

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

    

$120,920

  

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

  

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

  

$211,638

    

$211,638

Total as of 20 March 2002

$849,815

And finally, he proposes these measures:

  • Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
  • Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
  • Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; they’re consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I don’t know about you, but I’m not much pleased any more.

Make sure you check it out.