Shaun!

Funny, then stupid, then funny again. I don’t know why.

Cracked says …

Heavy Rain is an ambitious, complicated and tense murder mystery, which is exactly the sort of game that’s begging for glitches to interrupt the drama like a drunken clown stumbling into a funeral. In the heady emotional climax, protagonist Ethan has found his missing son, Shaun, just in time to stop a serial killer from serial killing him. You’re prompted to hit a button to howl Shaun’s name to the heavens in sheer joy, but what’s supposed to be a touching moment of fatherly love instead turns into a bizarre fit of familial Tourette’s.

Sometimes the prompt to shout “Shaun” shows up and refuses to leave. You can scream it anytime: Ethan yells it at his girlfriend for no reason; he interrupts the villain’s evil monologue with “SHAUN”; he hollers his son’s name in response to getting shot. Later, as Ethan’s lady friend is running from the killer, he keeps screaming “Shaun!” with the voice of a demigod that carries for miles. Eventually, Ethan recovers from his wound, confronts the killer, and blows him away on top of a construction crane. In the pouring rain, he delivers his badass one-liner. It is, of course, “SHAUN!!!”

25 Years Of Conan

Coco’s been at it for a while.

I probably watched more Letterman (I’m an old, old man), but I know enough Conan to be dumbfounded that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Masturbating Bear, and Live via Satellite Famous Person Interview did not make the final cut.

It All Began As A Summer Vacation …

Burnt Offerings, the 1973 inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining, was made into a movie in 1976 starring Burgess Meredith, Bette Davis, Oliver Reed, and Karen Black. I’m almost certain it’s one of those horror flicks that scared the everliving shit out of me when it aired on network television back in the day.

The story concerns a family who moves into an old house that regenerates itself by twisting the life force of the occupants who become violent and either kill each other or are killed off while the member of the household who becomes possessed by the spirit of the house survives and becomes a sentinel (in this case “elderly Mrs. Allardyce”), awaiting the next family to be lured once the powers of the existing sentinel wear down and a successor must be found.

We watched it on Amazon Prime the other night – for nostalgia more than anything. It’s pretty slow by today’s standards, but suitably creepy. I kinda want to read the book now, which is recently back in print.

18 Years Ago…

Radiohead ditched their guitars and released Kid A. So now it’s old enough to buy cigarettes and vote. They grow up so fast…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnfPaaMR6Qc

How Bruce Thomas Came Up With That Glorious Bass Riff

As Thomas tells The Peverett Phile blargh …

The riff wasn’t totally spontaneous, it was sort of contrived [from riffs] I’d been listening to at the time. It’s kind of weird. If you listen to “The Price of Love” by the Everly Brothers, you’ll get the rhythmic pattern.

And if you listen to “You Gotta Lose” by Richard Hell & The Voidoids, you put those notes to the riff you get “Pump It Up.” It’s a hybrid riff.

Then I was left with a half a bar so I added “You Really Got Me,” which was one of the best songs ever written. So, that was it.

I love this shit. Everybody rips off somebody – some are just more creative about it than others.