act /akt/

My acting career culminated in grade seven. Our French class performed a play for the school as part of some larger event which was attended by many parents. It was set in a discothèque. We all had to dance as the play opened. Then we talked. I had one line and I still have it memorized. Ready for this?

"D'accord!"

Which means I agree. I basically just piggybacked on someone else's line. Then we danced again to a cacophony of derisive laughter from the audience as the curtain closed.

I still remember the review I received for my performance: "Hey wasn't that your French class in the play? I'm surprised you weren't in it."

Madame Visser could have at least given me "Je suis d'accord." Maybe that would have got me in the spotlight long enough to be noticed. Oh well.

Totally not us.

Article 1201

So I just noticed that my post count is 1200 on the nose. Kind of a milestone. Twelve hundred blog posts in sixteen years. I realize not all have been winners.

Now if you're an obsessive kind of go-getter you could add up my summary figures from a mile down the side-bar there and you'd come up a handful shy of 1200. That's because a few have been taken off the air for various reasons.

Just for fun, I thought, where could I be if I'd driven a kilometer for every post I've published? I could write a blog post about whatever place that is! So I opened google maps on North America and without any tools of any kind, picked a randommy spot to start looking for a 1200-mark, by trial and error.

For my first guess I picked St. Louis, zoomed in and plunked a waypoint down on "East St-Louis."

1151 KM.

Whoa! That's #%$ close! And still plenty of St. Louis ahead! So I moved toward the far end of the official Greater St.Louis Area and spotted the Spirit of St. Louis Airport and plunked again. 1197 KM! Am I a sub-conscious geography wizard or what!

Oh wait. Google says that the address for SOSL Airport is actually Chesterfield Missouri. What?? Say it isn't so! Okay, wait a minute.

Okay, I just wikipediated Chesterfield MO and they say it's a suburb of the City of St. Louis and a member of St. Louis County. So there. I'm gonna say I nailed it. And I'm not doing a post about a lousy airport. I'm a freaking subconscious geography wizard people! A legend! Don't ever question me again!

Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2022

Those smug old boys in Cleveland are at it again and you too can cast your performer votes; up to one ballot per day until April 29th at vote.rockhall.com!

And this year, if you're a particularly nasty little insectoid maniac you can even vote for - well, I can't bear to say his name but - the creepy caterwauler sometimes known as Slim Shady. Yeah. I was afraid he'd show up this year. On the bright side I've been on the Commodores/Lionel Richie campaign ever since Radiohead ascended, And look who showed up! I suppose I can call it a fair compromise. The White Banshee was inevitable anyway.

Lakmé 2022

So I discovered I needed to put together a motorcycle compilation and decided to focus on esthetics and aerodynamics, with a hint of death. So I give you: the opera Lakmé adapted to the speedway.

I don't know if it will play here because it's 18+ restricted and the reason is - well, here's the rant I provided in the YouTube "About" panel:

Rather than suffer the exhausting boredom of dealing with YouTube's ever-growing army of censorship monkeys and their deluded efforts to protect their dullest most-superstitious viewers from themselves, I just went ahead and designated this an adult-only video so that only adults and super-smart kids who know how to pretend to be adults will be able to enjoy this uplifting opera: It is Lakmé by Léo Delibes, conducted by Alain Lombard and adapted to the speedway by Alfonse Floofter Gnu Jr. 

Any ads will have been placed on behalf of a lovely but unpronounceable Parisian theatre organization. We never choose to monetize here at Half Ass Films.

Please note that some of this film's participants are dead, disfigured and/or mentally debilitated due to their actions captured herein. If this offends you it is because your strings are being pulled by an aggressive ego who enjoys being offended. Suppressing this footage will not bring these people or their brains back to life, but indeed, promoting it may help dissuade others from making the same dire mistakes. This video is best enjoyed with two or three ounces of Irish whiskey or, in a pinch, Kentucky bourbon.

This video is dedicated to my pal Ivosaar over at The Automan Empire.

They're called "Spotlight Images"

Yeah, I just found that out. Those initial MS Windows images, usually beautiful landscapes, where you first enter your pin upon starting up a PC session. They call them spotlight images and in case you're even slower than I to stumble upon this information: you can look them up here, when you really dig one and it gets replaced too soon:

windows10spotlight.com/

Oh hey! Look at this. I still have a blog. I really should make more use of the damn thing.

Cheers.