Allman Brothers—"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"

Leonard Nimoy's "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins"

Picnic

Tilley: “I don’t understand a picnic . . . we just go some place . . . we put a thing on the ground and we eat.”
Nora: “Yes . . . it’s nice to do that.”
Tilley: “Why? I don’t get it. It’s better sitting at home and watching TV.”
Nora: “I think there’s something nice about a picnic . . . it’s fun.”
Tilley: “What’s fun about it? Ants get into the food . . . there’s bees. I don’t get it. We have to drive, it takes maybe an hour to get there, then you sit in grass and eat. Why is that fun?”
Nora: “I just thought it might be nice to do something together, that’s all . . . thought it might be fun.”
Tilley: “It doesn’t sound like fun to me . . . you take the stuff you’ve got here in the house, you take it someplace to eat it. It’s just as much fun eating in front of the TV, and we do that together, don’t we? No ants and no bees . . . much more comfortable.”
- Tin Men [1987]

Instinct

"Whether or not I am a writer,' I wrote, 'I have—and this is both my curse and my virtue—cultivated the instinct of one, an aversion for the herd, without, in my unhappy case, the ability to harness and articulate that aversion' . . . 'For my heart will always be with the drunk, the poet, the prophet, the criminal, the painter, the lunatic, with all whose aims are insulated from the humdrum business of life . . ." —Frederick Exley, A Fan's Notes, 1968

Top 10 Most Popular Top 10 Lists for 2009

10. Top 10 Greatest Movie Rants
9. Top 10 Charles Bukowski Quotes
8. Top 10 Greatest Philosophical Novels
7. Top 10 Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
6. Top 10 Most Creative Uses of the F-Bomb in Movie History
5. Top 10 Carl Jung Quotes
4. Top 10 Most Disturbing Movies of All Time
3. Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
2. Top 10 College Comedies
1. Top 10 Offbeat Documentaries

Complete List of Top 10 Lists

JFK Assassination: Secret Service Standdown

Sidekick

"Karloff? Sidekick? FUCK YOU! Karloff did not deserve to smell my shit! That limey cocksucker can rot in Hell for all I care! . . . How dare that asshole bring up Karloff? You think it takes talent to do Frankenstein? It's all makeup and grunting."
—Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood, 1994

Park Bench Mutations

"Where the eagle glides ascending
There's an ancient river bending
Down the timeless gorge of changes
Where sleeplessness awaits
I searched out my companions,
Who were lost in crystal canyons
When the aimless blade of science
Slashed the pearly gates.

It was then I knew I'd had enough,
Burned my credit card for fuel
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth
And my suitcase in my hand
How I lost my friends I still don't understand.

They had the best selection,
They were poisoned with protection
There was nothing that they needed,
Nothing left to find
They were lost in rock formations
Or became park bench mutations
On the sidewalks and in the stations
They were waiting, waiting.

So I got bored and left them there,
They were just deadweight to me
Better down the road without that load . . ."
—Neil Young, "Thrasher"

Maniac

"Oh! Stealing through my body! Creeping through my veins! Pouring in my blood! Oh, darts of fire in my brain! Stabbing me! . . . I can't stand it! I won't!"

J. R. R. Tolkien on Film

The Wanderers

Winnie The Pooh Meets Apocalypse Now

A true classic viral video that takes clips from Winnie the Pooh mashed with audio from Apocalypse Now. . . Starring Winnie the Pooh as Capt. Willard, Piglet in the Dennis Hopper role and Eeyore as Col. Kurtz.

Interview with Chuck Palahniuk

The Matrix vs. Carl Sagan

The Chris Farley Show Book Trailer

John Prine - "Happy Enchilada"

Dinner With Henry Miller

Frank Zappa on "The Steve Allen Show"

Hilltop Hoods - "Chris Farley"

Chris Farley: Picking Up Chicks at the Mall

Gagaku Meat: The Steve Richmond Story

Steve Richmond [1941-2009]

Blind Blake

Crispin Glover on David Letterman Show, 1987

In this classic clip, a totally paranoid and confused Crispin Glover shows up on "Late Night with David Letterman" decked out in bell-bottom pants, platform shoes and a long-hair wig. After Glover challenges a visibly shaken Dave to arm wrestling and then nearly gives him a karate kick to the head, the show's producers wisely opt for a commercial and then escort Glover out of the studio. I've always thought Glover was promoting the bizarre film, Rubin & Ed, at the time - but that flick didn't come out until 1991. Apparently, Glover's Letterman appearance coincided with the release of River's Edge. Either way, it was pure brilliance and ranks up there with the performance art of Andy Kaufman.

Daydreaming

"Since the individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining, the average man must take to daydreaming." —Gore Vidal

Siskel & Ebert Review Bachelor Party

The Vodka Ad

Tightrope

"To me, it's really so simple, that life should be lived on the edge. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to tape yourself to the rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge. Then you will live your life on the tightrope." —Man on Wire, 2008

Horror Show

"It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself."
—Charles Bukowski, Hollywood, 1989

Helpless

Thin Blue Flame

Tom Waits

May It Be

Joe Coleman

Kinison

Desperados Waiting for a Train

Beetlejuice Song

A Thing of the Past

"I hate entertainment. Entertainment is a thing of the past, now we got television." —Archie Bunker, "All in the Family"

Brando

I picked up Marlon Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, at the Orange County Public Library book sale last week for $1. Here are some of the highlights:

ON TALLULAH BANKHEAD
"I always thought that if she hadn't been so banged up emotionally, she could have been a great actress and an extraordinarily attractive person, but I think she cared more about fucking and alcohol than about performing . . . I would rather have been dragged over broken pottery than make love to Tallulah."

ON VIVIEN LEIGH
"Like Blanche [DuBois] she slept with almost everybody and was beginning to dissolve mentally and to fray at the ends physically. I might have given her a tumble if it hadn't been for Larry Olivier. I'm sure he knew she was playing around, but like a lot of husbands I've known, he pretended not to see it, and I liked him too much to invade his chicken coop."

ON MARILYN MONROE
"Marilyn was a sensitive, misunderstood person, much more perceptive than was generally assumed. She had been beaten down, but had a strong emotional intelligence—a keen intuition for the feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence."

ON ELVIS PRESLEY
"It seems to me hilarious that our government put the face of Elvis Presley on a postage stamp after he died from an overdose of drugs. His fans don't mention that because they don't want to give up their myths. They ignore the fact that he was a drug addict and claim he invented rock 'n' roll when in fact he took it from black culture; they had been singing that way for years before he came along, copied them and became a star."

ON JAMES DEAN
"I think he regarded me as a kind of older brother or mentor, and I suppose I responded to him as if I was. I felt a kinship with him and was sorry for him. He was hypersensitive, and I could see in his eyes and in the way he moved and spoke that he had suffered a lot. He was tortured by insecurities, the origin of which I never determined, though he said he'd had a difficult childhood and a lot of problems with his father . . . We can only guess what kind of actor he would have become in another twenty years. I think he could have become a great one. Instead he died and was forever entombed in his myth."

ON ANNA MAGNANI
"With her teeth gnawing at my lower lip, the two of us locked in an embrace, I was reminded of one of those fatal mating rituals of insects that end when the female administers the coup de grace. We rocked back and forth as she tried to lead me to the bed. My eyes were wide open, and as I looked at her eyeball-to-eyeball I saw that she was in a frenzy, Attila the Hun in full attack. Finally the pain got so intense that I grabbed her nose and squeezed it as hard as I could, as if I were squeezing a lemon, to push her away. It startled her, and I made my escape."

ON CHARLIE CHAPLIN
"Comic genius or not, when I went to London to work with him late in his late, Chaplin was a fearsomely cruel man . . . A Countess from Hong Kong was a disaster, and while we were making it I discovered that Chaplin was probably the most sadistic man I'd ever met. He was an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher. He harassed people when they were late, and scolded them unmercifully to work faster . . . Charlie wasn't born evil. Like all people, he was a sum of his genetic inheritance and the experiences of a lifetime. We are all shaped by our own miseries and misfortunes."

Dirty Driving

John Coltrane

Facts & Theories

"We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests." —Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945

Before the Law

"Before the law, there stands a guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. Can he hope to enter at a later time? 'That is possible,' says the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He had been taught that the law should be accessible to every man. 'Do not attempt to enter without my permission,' says the guard. 'I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last.' By the guard's permission, the man sits down by the side of the door, and there he waits. For years, he waits. Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him, 'I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that you have left something undone.' Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has learned to know even the fleas in the guard's fur collar. The man growing childish in old age, he begs the very fleas to persuade the guard to change his mind and allow him to enter. His sight has dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of the law. And now, before he dies, all he's experienced condenses into one question, a question he's never asked. He beckons to the guard. Says the guard, 'You are insatiable! What is it now?' Says the man, 'Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years, no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?' His hearing has failed, so the guard yells into his ear, 'No one else but you could ever have obtained admittance! No one else could enter this door! This door was intended only for you! And now, I am going to close it.' This tale is told during the story called The Trial. It has been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream . . . a nightmare."

No Laughing Matter

"The life of a part-time wrestler is no laughing matter. It's not just fun and games like most people think. You work out, train constantly, push your body to the limit of endurance and nobody seems to care. I have wrestled and defeated over 400 women and what do I get? The men call me a wimp, the women say I'm a sexist pig." 
—Andy Kaufman

Fighting Drunk

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales . . . Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion."
—Aleister Crowley

Luca Brasi

"Luca Brasi was indeed a man to frighten the devil in hell himself. Short, squat, massive-skulled, his presence sent out alarm bells of danger. His face was stamped into a mask of fury. The eyes were brown but with none of the warmth of that color, more a deadly tan. The mouth was not so much cruel as lifeless; thin, rubbery and the color of veal . . . Luca Brasi did not fear the police, he did not fear society, he did not fear God, he did not fear hell, he did not fear or love his fellow man. But he had elected, he had chosen, to fear and love Don Corleone." —The Godfather, Mario Puzo, 1969

Respect

“One night I was with a chick, and we snorted coke all night. The next day we took a walk on the beach. As we were walking along, she said, ‘Rodney, did you mean all those things you said to me last night?’ I looked at her. I said, ‘Who are you?’”
—Rodney Dangerfield, It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs, 2004

Believer

“I'm a good believer in capitalism, which when you're making it is wonderful and if you're not, it fucks you and stabs your heart and rips your entrails out. Without money, you're dead in this society. When I had no money, I had nothing. Women didn't like me as much, I wasn't as charming. I was alone most of the time. Hookers never throw you a charity fuck and with shrinks I could not get therapy.”
Al Goldstein, Founder of Screw magazine

Angeles

Deranged

"In a nation where deranged pressure groups fight for the removal of sexual education from public schools, and parents know so little about sex that they have to call Dr. Ruth on TV for answers to rudimentary anatomical questions, it would seem infinitely more responsible for these esteemed wives and mothers to demand a full-scale Congressional demystification of the subject.

Are we headed toward a time when descriptions of sexual behaviour in entertainment media can be obtained only by employing a lawyer to petition under the Freedom Of Information Act? Must all sexual practices in the United States be tested and approved by The Moral Majority? When they test them, do we get to watch?" —Frank Zappa, letter to President Reagan, Aug. 29, 1985

An Ulcerous Sore

"Let me look at the foulness and ugliness of my body. Let me see myself as an ulcerous sore running with every horrible and disgusting poison." —St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 1548