Friday, March 18, 2011

Various and Sundry, March 18

Back many, many news cycles ago, eons ago, Newt Gingrich explained that he cheated on his wives because, and I quote, "at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate." The hot and heavy affair he has with America is given a pulpy treatment by Jeffrey Goldberg. I know it's old news, but it's still so funny. I mean, listen:

Sure, I noticed her purple mountain majesties as soon as she walked in the room. I mean, who didn't? Believe me, in a sweater, those purple mountains sure were majestic.

In sports news, it's March Madness, and there are lots of great brackets out there, including this Mass Madness that I found at A Church for Starving Artists

Personally, I'm picking Stay after mass to socialize loudly, Dirty lookers when kids cry, the Confused by song book numbering scheme, and Same Spot Every Week for the Faithful Four.

It is also only two weeks until opening day. I just needed to say that.

Finally, in entertainment, I watched This Is Spinal Tap for the umpteenth time the other day. It's still so funny. I have a habit, when rewatching movies, of keeping imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, open in front of me to look up actors and get trivia about the movie. That paid off in spades for Spinal Tap. I learned, for example, that Christopher Guest is a baron, that one of the groupies in the movie was a member of the original Runaways and became a filmmaker because of being part of the movie, that Tony Hendra had attempted suicide just before filming started, but credits the joy of making the film to bringing him out of his depression.

And I learned about Wonderful Smith. Wonderful Smith is the janitor in this clip. I simply cannot do his story justice. The L.A. Times obit does a good job. Wonderful Smith died in 2008 at the age of 97. That whole thing about "there are no small parts"? I think it's backwards. There's no doubt this is a small part, but the person inhabiting it is huge.

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