the five-dollar newspaper

For a while now, the newsstand price of a Sunday New York Times (outside of NYC, anyway) has been $5. Purchasing one in the Salt Lake airport today brought to mind that milkshake scene from Pulp Fiction, so with apologies to Quentin Tarantino... here goes:


INT. HUDSON'S NEWS, LAX AIRPORT - MORNING

Harsh fluorescent light. Bleary-eyed business travelers and tourists mill around looking for caffeine and reading materials. Vincent Vega (JOHN TRAVOLTA) and Mia Wallace (UMA THURMAN) approach the check stand. The clerk is dressed as a 1950s newsie.

CLERK
How 'bout you, Peggy Sue?

MIA
I'll have this package of Tic-Tacs here -- orange -- and a five-dollar newspaper.

CLERK
How do you want that paper, New York Times or USA Today?

MIA
New York.

VINCENT
Did you just buy a five-dollar paper?

MIA
Sure did.

VINCENT
And that's newsprint and ink?

MIA
Uh-huh.

VINCENT
It costs five dollars?

CLERK
Yep.

VINCENT
You don't get bonus Web content or nothin'?

CLERK
Nope.

VINCENT
Just checking.

Vincent hands the clerk a ten, the clerk hands Mia the newspaper and $3.08 in change, and she and Vincent walk out into the busy airport concourse. Mia brings the newsprint to her nose and inhales.

MIA
Yummy!

VINCENT
You mind if I read a section of that?

MIA
Be my guest.

VINCENT
I gotta know how a five-dollar paper reads.

MIA
We can share this section if you like -- I don't have cooties.

She hands the front section to him. Vincent smiles.

VINCENT
Yeah, but maybe I do.

MIA
Cooties, I can handle.

He skims a few headlines.

VINCENT
Goddamn! That's a pretty fuckin' good newspaper.

MIA
Told ya.

VINCENT
I don't know if it's worth five dollars, but it's pretty fuckin' good.

He hands the paper back to her.

SCENE.


Naturally, I will be optioning this to all interested studios.

queen rock montreal

My girlfriend M. and I have an ongoing game, inspired by The 40-Year-Old Virgin, called "Know How I Know You're Gay?" For the uninitiated (watch the linked video, which is NSFW unless you work somewhere really cool), this involves witty banter about just what it is that indicates that one's interlocutor is gay.

Anyway, M. recently had the best occasion ever to ask me if I knew how she knew I was gay: I bought the DVD Queen Rock Montreal and am currently watching it. I saw an abridged version of this rock doc on a plane to Europe in January, and it rocked so hard it almost blew my mind. So when I was in Best Buy the other day and saw the DVD on the rack, I knew I had to throw down for it. This is a Queen concert from November 1981, just a few months after I was born, in which the band runs through all their greatest hits. If there is an arena-rock band active today who is as energetic and tight as Queen and who has as charismatic a frontman as Freddie Mercury, I want to know about it.

what we have here is...

I love discovering a classic that I'd somehow missed until now. Tonight I finally saw Cool Hand Luke in its entirety, and I'd have to put it in my all-time top ten. Paul Newman's Luke is the ideal anti-hero, and the film is the prison-movie antithesis of feel-good fare like The Shawshank Redemption. Plus it has some memorable lines. There's the classic "What we have here is a failure to communicate!" (This one is #11 in the AFI's list of the top 100 American movie quotes of the last 100 years.) And then there's my personal favorite, Luke's line in the poker-game scene that gives him his nickname: "Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand."

Then perhaps best of all, there's the song "Plastic Jesus," which I first heard my cousins singing when I was probably ten. Later, I heard the Flaming Lips' version, released on their 1993 album Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. But I'd never heard Luke sing it until now.

Plastic Jesus

Trad., arr. Ed Rush and George Cromarty


Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

CHORUS
Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through my trials and tribulations,
And my travels through the nations,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

I don't care if it rains or freezes
As long as I've got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car,
You can buy Him phosphorescent
Glows in the dark, He's pink and pleasant,
Take Him with you when you're traveling far

I don't care if it's dark or scary
Long as I have magnetic Mary
Ridin' on the dashboard of my car
I feel I'm protected amply
I've got the whole damn Holy Family
Riding on the dashboard of my car

You can buy a Sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I'm not wary
'Cause I've got my Virgin Mary
Guaranteeing I won't go to Hell

I don't care if it bumps or jostles
Long as I got the Twelve Apostles
Bolted to the dashboard of my car
Don't I have a pious mess
Such a crowd of holiness
Strung across the dashboard of my car.