Suck it, Romeo

Romeo and Juliet is a good love story. Cyrano de Bergerac is better. In my personal opinion, it is the greatest love story ever written. It has more depth and complexity than R&J, more pathos, more noble gestures, and more battle scenes. QED, bitches.

It is a lovely read.

You should try it.

Or, if you are in a hurry and don't enjoy reading French translations...they made a movie. It is called Cyrano.

It is epic.

I just watched it.

You should too. 

There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours, I assure you.

Love stories don't have happy endings; just endings. Watch the ending on this bad boy, and be amazed. Thank me later.

 I never realized how good the words in this song were, until I found this version.


Horror movies. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, you gotta wonder about something. In these movies, when a demon or somesuch is attacking, a fucker with a bad haircut in a frock waves a cross at them and commands them to bugger off. That is all well and good if the demon is Christian, but what about a Hindu demon? Or a Muslim demon? They won't vanish if you wave a cross at them. They will laugh at your stupid cross.

So how do you checkmate a Hindu demon? I am at a loss here. Yoga?

"Quick, Hariharan, here comes a demon. Do a Downward Dog and hold for two minutes. Breathe normally. Rajesh, why are you doing a Flying Monkey? I said Downward Dog..."
Do yourself a favor. Go watch the movie (it's in the title; do some work), then listen to this, and then read the comments on youtube for some extra points and entertainment. In that exact order. Think of it as a magic spell, if that makes it easier.

Ah love, could you and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Shatter it to bits and
Remold it closer to heart's desire.
Omar Khayyam wanted to shatter this world and remake it closer to his desire.

Let's think about that. Say you were given the task of taking this world and remaking it. How would you best design this new world? I assume that if you are not a fucking psychopath, you would want to make it the fairest, most satisfying world to live in.

For yourself.

That is how most people would approach the problem. They would imagine a world that does not hurt them.

There is an idea in ethics called The Veil of Ignorance. American philosopher John Rawls outlined this idea, and if there was a designer of the universe, this would be the blueprint that it would follow.

The idea is simple. You put yourself behind a veil of ignorance and design the world without knowing your place in it. That is the key idea: not knowing your place in the new world that you have designed. This virtually guarantees a fair design.

If you put income inequality in your brave new world, there is a chance you might find yourself on the wrong side of the tracks and be born poor. So you would not do that. If your world allows for slavery, you may be materialized in this world as a slave, so you don't entertain that design. If the politics in your universe heavily favor kings, you risk being a serf. So in your own best interest, you strive like a mofo to get the design right.

It really is that easy.
Sam Lloyd from Scrubs does a better job than the original song. Lovely song, and a great scene to go along with that.



With lyrics like that, this is just begging to be the track of some grand D&D game, or the next Game of Thrones clone. This band does a great job on those tiny instruments, proving once again that size doesn't matter.

I've heard several tributes and covers of this song, but nobody sings the song like Iz does.


Not sure what the fuck I just watched, but by all that is holy, this has to be the most badass song ever made. The real insanity begins around 3:20. The Asian guy is just ridiculous. From the comment section, comes this piece of wisdom.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
There's always an Asian
Better than you.




Postscript: I finally figured out how they made this song. Here are the steps.

1. Take a regular garage band.
2. Give them each a kilo of cocaine.
3. Take an average audience.
4. Slow them down with some heroin, or if you are feeling cheap, ganja.
5. This song!

I did not know these types of songs were also called AOR (Album Oriented Rock). I just called them rock ballads. Anyway, it's one of those songs that smells like an entire era. An era gone forever.

When people think of Colin Hay, usually they think of Men at Work and Down Under. But his composition shines through in these songs, below. You could just read out the lyrics and they would read like poetry. My favorite TV show of all time, Scrubs, used every one of these songs in the track. Game recognize game, as they say.





The comments following this video are just the funniest. Watch this video on Youtube proper (Link: https://youtu.be/XwCK1z3wT8g) and scroll down for the comments.
 
Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese, is a good movie.

Why you want to watch this movie:

  1. You want to see a super suave and super smooth Harvey Keitel. Honestly, it is hard to believe that is him.
  2. Robert De Niro.

This is utterly insane. And this video has one of the funniest comments I have seen ("tabs" is how guitarists ask other guitarists how to play a song.)

 

The Cutest Human

Yeah, I am biased, but this is my daughter when she was seven or eight. Cute as a bug. This came up in a memories spotlight in Google Photos...