You must contain yourself when watching this video, which I stole from Gawker, but only up to the point at which you see the shadow of the fedora. At that point, you may begin screaming uncontrollably or muttering “drat that Jones! I’ll foil him yet,” as you prefer. Behold the greatness which is Doctor Henry Jones, Junior
Did I mention I still have that hat, the coolest in all creation, which I bought on the last day Woodwards was open? Yes, an official Indiana Jones hat from Stetson, I think it was, though the original was Herbie Jones, which I of course and naturally cannot afford; the information printed inside has long since been worn away and the hat has become battered, faded and stained in propa Indy manner. It was once splashed by an Orca on the rocks near Not-Ucluelet. This is what you call adventure cred, my friends. My hat has more than most actual people.
For several months now, all the world, or at least, all the world that can afford New York theatre tickets, has been eagerly looking forward to the Broadway debut of Harry Potter’s wand. We at the ol’ raincoaster blog have not failed to cover the blow-by-blow as Daniel Radcliffe and his Nethers of Strange Hirsutity have triumphed in London in Peter Schaffer‘s intense psychodrama Equus, but as the day approaches when all (and we do mean ALL) will be revealed to the notoriously insatiable, cellphone-camera-equipped American audiences, Radcliffe‘s handlers are getting nervous. They fear his peen may fall into the wrong, presumably sweaty, hands.
Says the star, on the possibility of his privates being made public via a quickie Flickr: “It will be amazing but I will be terrified!” And no doubt so will some of the more shrinking violets in the audience, from what we hear!
Just how amazing it will be, fans who cannot affort the high price to share his physical presence may never know. His handlers have taken every precaution to prevent leaks, going so far as to equip the theatre with infra-red defenses, like in that capoeria laser dance scene in Ocean’s Twelve, you know the one, to sniff out and, presumably, stun or even vaporize overzealous cellphotogs. Who knows?
Cool.
His personal security has been increased as well, and let me tell you, these people do not mess around.
There are so many different varieties of fame these days we need to develop a whole new vocabulary to describe them. At the moment, the best we can do is to rank celebrities according to whether they’re A-list, B-list, etc. But even if we use every letter of the alphabet that still only gives us 26 different types. That’s surely not enough. Eskimos have 47 different words for snow. Shouldn’t we have 47 words for celebrity?
Well, my friends, once again the day’s work has been cleared away, the snarky comments have been left on various blogs that had it coming, the forum troll has been ratted out, and it’s finally time for me to do my own blogging.
At three in the morning.
Given that I have a meeting in about six hours for which I need to be at least presentable-esque if not actually, you know, showered and properly dressed (I mean, it’s like one or the other; what do you people want from me?) it’s not going to be an epic evening of blogging chez raincoaster, I can tell you.
What I can also tell you is that tonight Nine Inch Nails released a single for free download. It’s called Discipline, it’s very catchy, it’s not their most profound work, I found it via the RadReport, it will not play on anything other than Windows Media Player (remix it? Dude, I can’t even open it on decent software! What next, Realplayer?) and I started a new link challenge based on it.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot is a link challenge? you ask if not in so many or those specific words.
A link challenge is this:
Look, have you ever had a boring job? I have one now. I mean, it would be sort of fun, if yes, kind of soul-killing, if my computer would stop crashing in the middle of it. But as it is, the suspense given to the whole operation does the exact opposite of what suspense does in movies: it takes all the fun out. “If I open a tab on Mollygood, is that gonna bring the whole thing down?” These are the thoughts which fill my hours. Makes me feel like hitting a tab of something else, and opening a can of something else besides.
Where was I? Oh yes, still on painkillers.
A link challenge is this: I, along with several others in the seamy underbelly of gossip blogs, get paid to make link posts, posts which consist of nothing other than links to other blogs. It’s the circle jerk manifested, and one of the reasons Google gave us all a big write-down if we got too many links from the same places. I guess Sergey and Other Guy don’t want us to inbreed or something.
But link blogging, for all that it requires much reading (or skimming) of gossip blogs, is not exactly a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporania. It’s a grind. And so the undisciplined mind, not that we’ve seen any around these parts, begins to look for ways to toy with it.
This approach is not recommended for hardware installations, even though I found that both a coffee bag clip and a Nike cross-trainer were indispensable in putting together my latest computer system. But of that we shall not speak…
So, we found some ways to toy with it. Seth started it, with his Three Word Links. I took up the challenge.
Aaaaaand the following Monday I came back with a One-Word link post. Somewhat obscure, bloodless, yes, but technically impressive in its own way, rather like a Russian ice dancing routine. Technorati doesn’t give a rat’s ass what the links say anyway.
Yes, every link is the title of a Nine Inch Nails song. Who says I can’t declare it an international holiday if I damn well feel like it? It is now nearly 3:30 in the morning and there have to be some compensations, dammit!
We shall see if Seth takes up the challenge: I have no idea how he feels about rage-emo. As for AgentBedhead, I think I know a fellow sucker for Trent when I see one. I sent the invite. Time will tell. Even if no-one takes me up on it, it’s okay.
Okay, so now we’re up to (I think) five worthwhile things on LiveJournal. This just might be the greatest of them all: nothing less than Quentin Tarantino‘s genre-busting post-intellectual masterpiece Pulp Fictionas the Bardhimself would have written it.
And he would have, you know. Everybody knows what playwrights will do for money.
ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.
J: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.
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. We at the ol’ raincoaster blog have not failed to cover the blow-by-blow as 
raincoaster 