after many fruitless searches, i've found a link to complete my Obscure Reference of the day. if you were watching "ER" last night, you may not have realized it but the actor playing Dr. Elizabeth Corday's father was Paul Freeman. that's right, Paul Freeman! (pause) indeed, as you are remembering right this minute, he was Rene Belloq in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Indy's snooty French arch-nemesis archaeologist, who steals everything Jones recovers but pays for it in the end when he explodes into tiny bits after unleashing a storm of angry Judeo-wraith-spirits from the Ark o'the Covenant. here's the link to further cement your recollection:

Indy and Belloq at the Hookah Cafe

now, just for the sheer entertainment value, a list of the Durand Kids' Top Ten All-Time Best Belloq Lines (don't probe too deeply into this, just accept that we watched this movie far, far too often):

10. "If only you spoke...Hovitos!"

9. "Please, sit down, before you fall down."

8. "Archaeology is not an exact science!"

7. "It was not to be, cherie..."

6. "I am a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me,
to push you out of the light."

5. "Stay with the ark! Stay with the ark!"

4. "*schxxx!* *schxxx!*" --- neck-slicing noise, with hand-gestures

3. "See this watch? Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, bury it in the sand
for a thousand years, and it becomes priceless, like the ark!"

2. "It's my family label!"

1. "Just blow it up, blow it back to God!"

here's a thought: you know you're not a kid anymore when an INXS song turns up in a Chevy commercial. putting aside the irony of using a song titled "What You Need" to sell a Cavalier, a car which surely nobody needs, let's focus on the debilitating shock of un-hipness that overtakes you when, as you're half-listening to the commercials during "Will & Grace" (which was bad anyway), you start humming along, thinking back to that pinnacle of the 10th grade social scene, the INXS concert at Madison Square Garden, when you and your friends got to take the train in by yourselves (!) and danced your asses off and the next day in homeroom everyone had the same tour t-shirts with the big red X on the back, and generally you're feeling pretty good about it all. then it hits you, wait, this is a crappy car commercial! it might as well be for a minivan, with all these pastel-clad actoroids cavorting about. then you sink even lower, ruminating on how the song doesn't even qualify as 'adult-contemporary,' it's like an *oldie* for god's sake, and how at least when Nike used the Beatles in the sneaker commercial everyone got all pissed off about it, but who's going to complain about a has-been eighties song being used to sell a has-been Chevy? this makes you think of all the irritating commercials you've seen lately, like the Kraft Singles commercial featuring two pre-teens flirting over a cheese sandwich while "Let's Get It On" plays in the background, which made you apoplectic enough to send Kraft a strongly-worded email, to which you have yet to receive a reply. and to top it all off, you then remember that Michael Hutchence, the singer of the song that kicked off this neo-Proustian reverie, is in fact *dead,* having turned up in a hotel closet in Australia after overdosing/choking on his own vomit/auto-erotically asphyxiating or some combination of the three, several years ago. *several years* ago! where, my friends, does the time go? yeah, i don't want to know either.

so it put me in an evil mood. if you would like to follow me down this path, get tips from the good people at

"So You've Decided To Become Evil"

and now, thursday, the day of old leftover Easter candy, all the stuff you've already passed over once or twice, like these awful malted-milk-ball eggs, ewww.

first, the dumbest man in the universe: he dates a woman back in the 70's, stalks her for 20 years, breaks in to her apartment, tries to kidnap her, gets arrested, acts as his own lawyer at the trial so he can cross-examine this woman, and then whips out an engagement ring and proposes to her *while she's on the stand.* nice going, guy. i love how the article notes "he wept" as the court officers tackled him and hogtied him.


stalker in court


and second, the new david gray cd i bought at lunchtime, a fine acoustic effort, sure to replace the other david gray cd as the default washing-the-dishes cd in my kitchen. want one? here ya go:


dave's amazon.com page


on a more local and somewhat existential note, while i was driving to newbury comics to buy the aforementioned cd, i was caught in a traffic snarl. typical, you say? well, i for one have never seen a convoy of streetcleaners with state trooper escorts cleaning Route 9 at 12:30 on a weekday before. there were at least 6 trucks, rolling along even more slowly than streetcleaners normally do, because there's so much damn sand on the roads from the winter, and there were guys walking along the shoulder with leafblowers and power-brooms making heaping piles of sand for the trucks to suck up. is it just me, or is this whole endeavor a monumental waste of time? why don't they just leave the sand there until next winter, and then sweep it up over the snow? oh yeah, it would probably cost a lot less and not cause a big traffic jam, riiiiight. god save the commonwealth.

ooh, how could i almost forget, the poor-quality-control link o'the day? yes, it's better than the fried-chicken-head in the box of wings, the mouse in the Whopper, the chupacabra photos: it's a dead slug stuck to a rice krispie treat (not the homemade kind, the mylar-encased kind):


canadian slug snack


i leave you to make up your own "snap crackle pop" joke here.

it's wednesday afternoon, and it's about time for some cookies...as there are no Famous Amos Belgian Style (which in fact are exactly the same as the regular chocolate chip ones, the package giving *no* explanation as to what makes them Belgian at all, though i love and eat them anyway) Cookies lying about, you will have to read this witty, witty, witty column from sfgate instead:


moron-grade (tm) cookies


more, much more, later - m.