Errors-To: ecto-owner@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #878 ecto, Number 878 Monday, 22 November 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* All Aboard the Lestat Cruise... Streets of LEGO additions to archivve Rant on pomegranites, no rants Exile in Kafkaville Re: pomegranites, no rants thanks and ectofete pix Re: Streets of LEGO Re: Exile in Kafkaville Re: Exile in Kafkaville ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 17:18:57 -0500 (EST) From: Chris Sampson Subject: All Aboard the Lestat Cruise... To elucidate on my last comment about Tom Cruise: When I read IWtV, I probably ignored Anne's description of Lestat (and Lewis, and the interviewer, for that matter). What I *DID* imagine was a physical presence that seems to align with her depiction of their characteristics. Cruise as Lestat: A Coworker has described him as "always playing the golden boy" (Born on the 4th of July and Rainman (partiall) aside). I haven't seen B4thJ. Even in Rainman, where his character does undergo something of a change/maturation, he was glib, shallow, and generally annoying (In other words, I doubt he'd have been as convincing if the character were more complex). I tend to (perhaps unfairly) think of him more in connection with the movies: Cocktail, The Color of Money and others of that genre. Despite the movies he's been in, I doubt his ability to exude either breadth OR depth (centered around things as fundamental as his "thin" voice). To me, Lestat was handsome (though in an unusual way, perhaps), but most of all, he was deep, tragic, mysterious and commanded a great presence...sadly, I doubt Cruise can cut this image....Perhaps it's that I only see $$$$$ when I see him. Phoenix as the interviewer: This decision I agree(d) with. The interviewer, at least in the later books, strikes me as a minor role, but one of a guy out of his element and in over his head (no other cliches leap to mind). I think River Phoenix could've done it well. Slater as the Interviewer: I never saw Untamed Hearts, so I have to agree with...whoever it was...who harped on his cockiness/derivativeness (I've seen Gangsters (Mobsters???) and Heathers, and he strikes me, especially in the latter, as a James Dean wannabe (right down to the references to this effect in the movie!). I'd be afraid that he'd overpower the weak-chinned Tom Cruise (something that should, but hopefully won't, spell doom for the movie...on second thought, I almost wish the movie would crash-and-burn). *I* pictured John Malcovitch as Lestat (or, at least, Lewis...Who *IS* playing Lewis, anyway????). There's a coolness/tragic quality about Malcovitch, who has, certainly, proved his willingness (if not ability, as I haven't seen Of Mice and Men, yet) to play disparate characters. Sure, Sting could've been Lestat (especially as he has a penchant for the story, considering Moon Over Bourbon Street.....), or Val Kilmer (though, he already played a vampire in The Doors ;), or even Kyle Machlachlan (sp?) Though that would necesiitate the direction of David Lynch (and, contrary to some, I think he really screwed up Dune (though I've HEARD that it wasn't the direction as much as the editing.....I'll try to suppress my usual tirade when speaking about that movie. Suffice it to say, that the release of that movie is, IMHO, what killed Frank Herbert.)). My SO described the necessary characteristics of the actor to play Lestat: He'd be the person who, though he looked just like everyone else, would inevitably draw your attention in a room full of 100 people. While this obviously contradicts the necessity of Lestat's (et al) anonymity, I think she's got the essence right. Finally, my officemate thinks that, if they were going to get Tom Cruise, they might as well have gotten Ernest (or as Dave Letterman calls him, "that 'Hey-Vern' guy). Whew! That's all for now. See you all soon. Chris Sampson chris@neuron.uchc.edu ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 14:36:49 PST From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: Streets of LEGO Hey all, Anyone out there care to share what's on the Happy T-shirt? I'm sure it's great and worth significantly more money, I'm just curious. The LEGO saga: Vickie, I thought it quite amusing all the NeIl's in your note. I guess I don't know where NeIl lives, but I think I'm the NeAl closest to Carlbad. I'm used to seeing my name spelt wrong, but I thought it was funny to see it spelt wrong with an emphasis (not that I"m mad or anything, for all I know it's not even me). I read in the paper that it's at least 2 years before official approval comes out of Carlsbad. In California, there seems to be significantly more hAstles and restrictions for geting things done, so who knows what'll happen. I had also heard that there are significantly more children in this area than in Prince Williams, and that was another factor. I'll be happy to put you up in 1999, but unless things change dramatically in my life, you'll be heading the wrong way. I should be back on the east coast by then, but if you're looking for a Lego-less visit, you'd be welcome. (I do have a few Legos we could play with.) Maybe the new Disney Park would be open by then. Visit this year and we can go look at the proposed sight and throw candy and Legos at the NAIL folks. Jeffy: Sonia of disappear fear is supposed to play some solo shows at Borders. So now its record expansion includes live music as well!! I've never seen Sonia solo, but love disappear fear and would go at the drop of a hat if I were there. I think it was early December, but they have been cancelling a lot of dates to work on a new album, so you might want to call if you care. Congrats on your kite victory. Checking out one of those competitions (and seeing your fine routine) is one of the things I look forward to doing when I move back to MD. brni: I love pomegranites, but the things are just a mess. I used to be real finicky and suck the pulp off the seeds, but it was hardly worht eating them then. NOw, I break them in half somehow (that's the messiest part) and spend about 10 minutes knocking all the seeds out into a bowl. Now you've got a big pile, suitable for eating. I've taken to just chomping down on a handfull, red juice dribbling down my chin, and then swallowing the seeds when I'm through. I've got one at home now. Maybe I'll but on TRS and eat it tonight. Oh wait, I'm going to see Squeeze tonight, guess it'll have to wait. Anybody know the films of the Brothers Quay? THey do what I think of as found object animation, and they are one of my favorites. There is a show of recent work for two nights (from Street of Crocodiles forward, all but that one unknown to me) and I'm really psyched for it. Neal ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 18:30:34 EST From: jessica@maurolycus.rutgers.edu (jessica) Subject: additions to archivve Hello, I'm finally going through lists of "things I need to do".. I've put some things up in the archive! I am listing here only the additions to the INDEX. For the full INDEX, use anonymous ftp to hardees.rutgers.edu and get pub/hr/INDEX. For WWW, open http://www.rutgers/edu/NS/fun/happy/tour.html. If I've forgotten to put up something you sent me, please just remind me! >From Klaus, we have: /pub/hr/interviews/* --------------------------------------------------------- Acoustic.Sunday.Apr.3.93 - This is a transcript of the interview done on the show "Acoustic Sunday" (WMMR), April 3, 1993. /pub/hr/encyclopedia/* ------------------------------------------------------- This directory contains "The Happy Rhodes Encyclopedia"; hypertext files with information about Happy Rhodes. It is available for several machines: AmigaGuide.Z - for Amiga, AmigaGuide format ms-win3.exe - for PCs, MS-Windows Help format. This is a self-extracting archive. Copy the file in it's own directory and start the program. One of the files created will be README.TXT, which will explain how to continue. /pub/hr/ectophiles/* ------------------------------------------------------ ectofete1.gif - Picture from the Montreal EctoFete ectofete2.gif - Another picture from the Montreal EctoFete >From Brian Bloom: /pub/hr/ectophiles/* ------------------------------------------------------ brianb.gif - portrait of Brian Bloom brianb2.gif - Brian Bloom with his girlfriend, Mindy >From Christine Waite: /pub/hr/ectophiles/* ------------------------------------------------------ christine_waite.gif - picture of Christine Waite ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 15:30:47 PST From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: Rant on In the travesties of justice department - Dale Akiki just got released from jail. I don't know if this is a national story or not, but it was a really big local one. It had all the great elements of sensationalism: mass child abuse, animal sacrifice, scary people and monsters. This guy, who is mildly retarded, would watch day care classes at a church. Somehow this giant witch hunt started, and he is acused of case after case of child abuse. Oddly enough, all the children have the same psychologist, and she has managed to coax all sorts of horrible tales from them. These include various items like killing rabbits, elephants, giraffes and other children, as well as sexual abuse. Despite the fact that he does not drive and no one has ever seen him drive, many children swore that he drove them places. His trial lasted 7 monthes, and it took the jury 7 hoursto find him innocent on every count, with no signs of guilt on anything. So how long do you think this innocent man should spend in jail? (Good thing I didn't post this before the positive outcome of your recent dificulties Jessica :) Two and a half years!!!! He has been in jail for the last 30 months, with no bail, while they prepared for and eventually tried him. It's one of the most appalling things I have heard in the US legal system. WHy on earth wasn't there any bail set? How could they justify this sort of thing? There wasn't even a shred of evidence to find him guilty, and yet they treated him as if they had found him in a room full of dead children with a bloody knife in his hand. Whenever I see his picture, which is in the papers all the time, I just get furious. My room mate, on the other hand, always looks at the paper and says "That Akiki guy, he just gives me the willies". Rant off, Neal ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 15:33:24 PST From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: pomegranites, no rants I don't recall if it was in Miss Manners (that Manners babe) or Ann Landers, but there were recent discussions on eating pomegranites. One woman's solution was to gleefully eat them naked in the bathtub. You should give that a try Holly, it might be even more fun than sitting in a box. Neal ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 17:22:07 CST From: Subject: Exile in Kafkaville This afternoon, for the second time in less than a week, the system crashed and creamed a bunch of my files of saved mailing-list incoming. This defies probability. It all reminds me of the day in 1975 when something especially weird happened in my office, and I mused to my officemates that if Kafka could have seen that, he wouldn't have wasted his time writing cockroach stories. That night I awoke not once, but twice, to the sensation of little antennas being wiggled right before my eyes. If there's anything I hate, it's a species that can't take a joke :-). After all that, I could use some fun over the long weekend. I hope we have an ecto party. Those who won't be in Chicago, I would implore to use the long weekend to get your submissions to the HGP squared away. If you can't or won't record your opening monolog, email your prepared text to me or Doug, and I'll read it live on tape, as they say in the trade. This could lead to an awful lot of ectophiles coming out sounding like me, but I guess we can't have everything. :-) Vickie offers an interesting perspective on Holly Cole's appearance on NPR. I heard it too, and unlike her, I heard it early in the morning after getting up. Somehow, I never really thought of Mary Margaret O'Hara as a composer of jazz songs. Reading Kirsty MacColl introducing songs, it's reassuring to know that Vickie's stumbled onto someone competent to take over SiG after she and Charley have taken over the Today Show or something :-). Unfortunately, I had not the time to do more than skim the full interview. But it's an interesting idea to think of _Riff Raff_ as a cowboy flick. I shall have to remember to make the herculean effort to stay awake Thursday night, so as to see Tribe on Leno (or was it Conan O'Brien?). I haven't studied Greek mythology since high school. What's the scoop on Persephone running afoul of the pomegranate? Why are my paragraphs all so short all of a sudden? The Lego thing sounds like classic NIMBY. I shall have to remember to make the time real soon to get my ecto product file squared away, so I can submit it to the archives in time for the Christmas shop ping season. WRT the colloquy between Neal and Holly WRT ways around the messiness of pome- granites: Why not split the difference and eat them naked in a box? :-) Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 19:08:36 -0500 (EST) From: HOLLY@umbc2.umbc.edu Subject: Re: pomegranites, no rants > I don't recall if it was in Miss Manners (that Manners babe) or Ann > Landers, but there were recent discussions on eating pomegranites. One > woman's solution was to gleefully eat them naked in the bathtub. > > You should give that a try Holly, it might be even more fun than sitting > in a box. That depends entirely on who is in the box with me. :) Holly ======================================================================== From: ezust@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca (Alan Ezust) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 19:42:03 EST Subject: thanks and ectofete pix Thank you all for the birthday greetings. I am recovering from a cold right now, but I'll properly celebrate the occasion over thanksgiving when I trek down to Boston to visit my family. And what a wonderful surprise to see the ectofete pictures finally made available to all in digital format! yes, as jessica announced in an earlier message, there are 2 pictures of the ecto-fete which took place near easter last spring. both pix were taken with my camera, and sent to Alberta where Tim scanned them and uploaded them to rutgers. The first picture, taken by eric (justin's roommate and lizzylou's SO)... It features: angelos (in the corner) and from left to right: MJM, Justin, Tim, yours truly, and Mary-Lou. We are all leaning on Liz who was trying to sleep through our photo session at the time. The second picture, taken by Angelos, features from left to right, MJM, Mary-Lou, Justin, Myself, and Tim... Note that the second picture is a strict subet of the first, and it is also substantially bigger, so if you just want to see as many people for as little transfer time as possible, get the first one only. I hope this starts a trend for all future (and past, Klaus?) ecto gatherings. Group pictures can be fun to pass around the list, ay? -- | Alan Ezust ezust@{binkley.}cs.mcgill.ca Montreal, Quebec, Canada | |------------- McGill University School of Computer Science ----------------| This line is intentionally left blank. ======================================================================== From: neilg@sfu.ca Subject: Re: Streets of LEGO Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 17:12:02 PST > Vickie, I thought it quite amusing all the NeIl's in your note. I guess I > don't know where NeIl lives, but I think I'm the NeAl closest to Carlbad. You sure are. I live in Vancouver, Canada; a land mercifully free of major theme parks. The nearest theme parks I can think of are Fantasy Gardens, a hokey "Christian Family" (their name; not mine) theme park run by a former crazy premier, and The Flintstones theme park, a pathetic and rundown sorry little place somewhere near Chilliwack in the Interior. Generally speaking, Canadian attempts to be extravagant and flamboyant fall far short of US efforts. :) - Neil K. -- 49N 16' 123W 7' / Vancouver, BC, Canada / neil_k_guy@sfu.ca ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 20:34:34 -0500 (EST) From: HOLLY@umbc2.umbc.edu Subject: Re: Exile in Kafkaville > I haven't studied Greek mythology since high school. What's the scoop on > Persephone running afoul of the pomegranate? Once upon a time in Greek mythology, there was this Persephone person (daughter of Ceres) who was in charge of flowers and trees and green things and whatnot, and Hades fell in love of her. While an unsuspecting Persephone was out one day a-Persephone-ing, Hades abducted her and took her into his Dark and Nasty Underworld (tm) so she could be his wife. Persephone was not happy, as she and Hades did not have similar interests. Meanwhile, with Persephone gone, the flowers and trees and green things and whatnot got all brown and dry and ugly-lookin'. Ceres went out looking for her daughter to smop her and find out why she wasn't Persephone-ing like she was supposed to. When Ceres found out about the company Persephone was keeping (rather, the company that was keeping Persephone) she went to Hades and demanded that Persephone be returned. Hades refused. Ceres pulled Persephone aside and told her to hang on to herself for a while; she was going to appeal to the other folks on Mount Olympus for some help. Ceres also told her not to take anything from Hades, not even food, because if she did, she'd have to stay underground. So Persephone waits for her mother to spring her from Hades. Persephone waits some more for her mother to spring her from Hades. Persephone waits and waits and waits for her mother to spring her from Hades, while Hades waited for Persephone to get hungry. Hades tempted poor ol' Persephone with all sorts of goodies. Persephone didn't break. Hades tempted poor ol' Persephone some more with all sorts of goodies. Persephone concealed her appetite. Hades tempted and tempted and tempted poor ol' Persephone with all sorts of goodies, and Persephone started to crack. Persephone saw Hades deriving a great deal of enjoyment out of snacking on a pomegranate. Hades was making soft yummy noises and enjoying that pomegranate like no other underworld god had ever enjoyed a pomegranate before. Hades saw Persephone looking at his food hungrily, so he offered it to her. Persephone ate one pomegranate seed. She liked it! She ate another. Then another. Then another! Then she took two at a time and popped them in her mouth. Just as she was reaching for another one, Ceres burst into hell, saw her daughter looking guilty, and screamed at her, "WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU EATING?!" Hades was quite pleased. Now that Persephone had eaten his food, she'd have to stay in hell with him. But Ceres and the rest of them there immortals would have none of that. Because Persephone had only eaten six itty bitty seeds, it was decided that she only had to stay in hell for six months out of the year. The other six months, Persephone could go above ground andbe her usual Persephone-y self, making the trees and flowers and green things all pretty again. That's how come we have seasons, you know! > WRT the colloquy between Neal and Holly WRT ways around the messiness of pome- > granites: Why not split the difference and eat them naked in a box? :-) "Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox?" Holly ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 18:08:29 PST From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: Re: Exile in Kafkaville Holly, could you please rewrite my entire Edith Hamilton Mythology book? In a box or in a bathtub? Neal ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is an INDEX file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)