Wednesday, August 01, 2007

No Tomorrow

(An epitaphany shared, more or less, with Shawn)

Or
The Late Late Host
Hoist a colortini in honor of Tom Snyder, the man who broke up KISS, as he has died of leukemia at the age of 71. The chain-smoking former Philadelphia anchorman became a punchline for his chortling laugh and complete lack of hipness in interviewing such disparate guests as Sterling Hayden and Johnny Rotten. On every show, there was a distinct impression that the guests didn’t want to be there. Hayden refused to talk about his Hollywood career, instead discussing toy trains. Rotten barely understood that he was there to shill his own band, preferring to angrily debate semantics and call anyone who enjoyed his music senile animals. The Plasmatics had such little interest in their performance they blew up a television, disrupting a live news broadcast two stories above Snyder’s studio. Alfred Hitchcock blathered on about his fear of traffic tickets. KISS had to get liquored up before appearing, with Ace Frehley capturing a space bear and proclaiming himself a plumber in the band’s last public appearance before breaking up. Perhaps that was because Snyder always seemed to enjoy his conversations with off-stage help more than his guests. Other lowlights included a momentary freakout by an otherwise lucid Charles Manson, The Clash’s incoherence while playing with a stuffed bear (the question being why did Tom always seem to have stuffed bears lying around) and putting stickers on Snyder’s jacket and U2’s first US appearance, in which Snyder referred to them as being from England. Snyder was dumped in 1981 in favor of up and comer David Letterman, but Dave eventually found him work as host of The Late Late Show.









Mike was the only Pooligan to expect the end of this colorcast, and takes 20 points to put his Trash squad in 19th.

Check Mate

Or
Sista skriket
(aka The Last Gasp)
The unremitting torment of Ingmar Bergman’s life has come to an end after 89 unbearable years. Berman did more than any other man to reinforce the image of Scandanavia as a bleak and depressing land of perpetual sorrow. Director of more than 50 films, seemingly every one of them about loss and lonelines, each more bleak, boring, inscrutable, soul-sucking and depressing than the last, he was a master of the oeuvre of films to kill yourself by. He was widely regarded as a visionary and influential filmmaker, because if you don’t understand it and its European, it must be genius. He was nominated for 9 Oscars, winning 3, and entertaining about 14 people in a career spanning 40 years.

SCTV’s take on The Master



And another parody
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3803584387889303730

Three Pooligans left their quarters on the chessboard and Dawn’s Go for the Light, It’s Right There, Damn It moves into 3rd while Steve @ the Movies and Greg’s Team Matlock join the dogpile in 40th. Paul and Jenni have a real reason to be depressed, removing the octogenerian auteur after ’05 and ’06, respectively. With this hit we posted our 2nd best year ever with 33 hits and still have 3 months to go. Bergman is the 3rd member of the Dirty Baker’s Dozen that had been selected in each of the GHI’s first 6 years to die this year (Lady Bird Johnson, Augusto Pinochet). But wait, there was to be still more…

West Ghost Offense

Or
Not so Quick Out
(An epitaphany shared with Shawn)
Bill Walsh, NFL Hall of Famer and inventor of the West Coast Offense, has died of leukemia at the age of 75. After two years at Stanford, Walsh took over a 49er franchise that had won two playoff games in the previous 29 years and just 2 games the previous season. Three years later with Joe Montana perfecting the short pattern and Jerry Rice adding 80 yards to 5-yard dump-offs, the 49ers were Super Bowl Champions. A three-point loss to the Steelers was the only thing that kept the 49ers from a perfect 1984 season en route to another title in Super Bowl XIX. A thrilling victory in Super Bowl XXIII over the Cincinnati Bengals closed out Walsh’s pro career and cemented San Francisco as the team of the ‘80s. Walsh’s lasting legacy is his coaching progeny – 6 of his assistants became head coaches, and from their coaching staffs came another 23 disciples of the West Coast offense.

Shawn’s draft choice yields 20 points and vaults his Team One - Old into 4th place. This marked the 4th 2-hit day in GHI history and was the fastest we’ve ever notched 3 hits. But there was still to be more as…

La Not

Or
Blown Up
Love depressing, experimental theater with lots of overly stylized pointless characters and meandering plots that lack cohesion and clarity, but prefer it in one of the Romance languages? Then Michaelangelo Antonioni, who died Monday at the age of 94, was the director for you. His most famous film and only commercial success was “Blowup,” about a photographer who accidentally discovers evidence of a murder. His arthouse rep is best typified by his trilogy exploring modern man’s inability to connect on an emotional level: “L’Avventura” (1960), “La Notte” (1961) and “L’Eclisse” (1962). The first installment was so dense most of the audience walked out on its premiere at Cannes. Those that stayed booed like it was a Pauly Shore marathon, but the next year, in an apparent practical joke that no one got, the British film journal Sight and Sound declared it the second greatest film ever made. Even Ingmar Bergman said that he didn’t understand the regard for Antonioni and found his films boring, and if there was ever someone who knew from boring movies…



Three Pooligans scored with this spicy meatball, with Monty’s The U.N. Dead taking 3rd, Steve @ the Movies moving into 22nd, and Jeannie Magner giving up the basement for 27th.

This was the first 3 hit day in GHI history, the 2-day total was the fastest we’ve ever notched 4 hits and makes July 2007 the 2nd best month in GHI history. Steve @ the Movies also became only the 2nd Pooligan to record 2 hits on one day, matching Mark’s March 27, 2002 bonanza.

At the three-quarter pole, the leaderboard:
1st Mark Coen - Beltway Boneyard IV: Foreign Exchange 5 hits, 35.82417583 points
2nd Nancy 5 hits, 17.46703297 points
3rd Monty – the U.N. Dead 4 hits, 39.16666667 points
4th Dawn - Go for the light, it's right there damn it 4 hits, 38.20512821 points
5th Shawn - Team One – Old 4 hits, 31.74603173 points

And at the three-quarter pole, take a look at column H on the attached spreadsheet – if there is no X there, or if your name is Monty, you’re a deadbeat and should be rapidly figuring out how to send me funds.

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