Archives for November 2006

On the heels of this post (Did You Listen to Abba?) comes news that the city of Stockholm is going to create an Abba museum.

“A museum dedicated to Abba is set to open in Stockholm in 2008.

The museum will feature outfits and instruments used by the band, along with handwritten lyrics.

In a statement, the band said: “It is nice someone feels compelled to take on our musical history.”

Can you hear the drums Fernando. A simple 20% of the gross sales for the first five years will be considered adequate compensation.

I thought that this was interesting. My thanks to Panopticist for this.

“In 1951, a sound designer on a Gary Cooper western called Distant Drums needed to overdub a scream onto a scene in which a man is killed by an alligator. He brought a contract actor into his studio and rolled tape as the man did six brief, anguished screams in one take. These screams were then added to the Warner Brothers sound library, and over the next couple of decades they found their way into dozens of Warner Brothers films.

In the mid-’70s, a young sound designer named Ben Burtt gave these sounds a name: “the Wilhelm scream,” after a character in one of the earliest films that utilized the sounds. A couple of years later, Burtt was hired to work on a film called Star Wars. As an homage, he overdubbed the scream onto a scene in that film. Then he overdubbed it onto a scene in The Empire Strikes Back. And Return of the Jedi. A fellow Lucasfilm sound designer began using the Wilhelm too, in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, among other movies. And thus a film-geek in-joke was born. In the last 30 years the Wilhelm has been used winkingly in dozens of movies and TV shows, from Reservoir Dogs and The X-Files to Aladdin and Return of the King. More details are at Hollywood Lost and Found.

The video below is a compilation of dozens of Wilhelms from the last half-century.”

Make your own.

TV Land has compiled a list of the 100 greatest catchphrases in TV. Here is part of the list:

– “Aaay” (Fonzie, “Happy Days”)

– “And that’s the way it is” (Walter Cronkite, “CBS Evening News”)

– “Baby, you’re the greatest” (Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, “The Honeymooners”)

– “Bam!” (Emeril Lagasse, “Emeril Live”)

– “Book ’em, Danno” (Steve McGarrett, “Hawaii Five-O”)

– “Come on down!” (Johnny Olson, “The Price is Right”)

– “Danger, Will Robinson” (Robot, “Lost in Space”)

– “De plane! De plane!” (Tattoo, “Fantasy Island”)

– “Do you believe in miracles?” (Al Michaels, 1980 Winter Olympics)

– “D’oh!” (Homer Simpson, “The Simpsons”)

– “Don’t make me angry …” (David Banner, “The Incredible Hulk”)

– “Dyn-o-mite” (J.J., “Good Times”)

– “Elizabeth, I’m coming!” (Fred Sanford, “Sanford and Son”)

– “Gee, Mrs. Cleaver …” (Eddie Haskell, “Leave it to Beaver”)

– “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat” (Jim McKay, “ABC’s Wide World of Sports”)

– “The tribe has spoken” (Jeff Probst, “Survivor”)

– “Would you believe?” (Maxwell Smart, “Get Smart”)

BOZEMAN – Call it recreational robbery: An out-of-state resident sets up a dummy company in Montana, buys a motor home under that company name and escapes tens of thousands of dollars in sales taxes.

And there is nothing illegal about it.

In California, where a majority of RV buyers are escaping a sales tax as high as 8.75 percent, depending on where the buyer lives, law enforcement officials and lawmakers are crying foul at this loophole.

Some Montana officials, however, don’t see it as a crime; they see dollar signs. Private business wins by gaining out-of-state business. The state wins by getting more registration fees.The perceived problem has gotten so much attention in California that that state has created a law-enforcement program specifically to deal with it.

The California Highway Patrol has a program called Californians Help Eliminate All The Evasive Registration Scofflaws, or CHEATERS, which asks people to report California residents suspected of having a vehicle registered in another state.

California Highway Patrol Officer David Constantini runs the program created in 2004 to combat California’s diminished sales tax revenue.

“We’re missing out on a good $10 million a year, and that’s being very conservative,” Constantini said. “It’s very frustrating.”

Fees, taxes less than 1% of California’s

A $350,000 motor home bought in California would include more than $30,000 in registration fees and taxes. The same motor home bought in Montana would cost less than $300 a year to register, according to the Montana Department of Motor Vehicles. And there would be no sales tax.”

Click here to read the whole story.

“I got sent home from school one day with a shiner on my eye.
Fightin’ was against the rules and it didn’t matter why.
When dad got home I told that story just like I’d rehearsed.
And then stood there on those tremblin’ knees and waited for the worst.

And he said, “Let me tell you a secret about a father’s love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us.”
He said, “Daddies don’t just love their children every now and then.
It’s a love without end, amen, it’s a love without end, amen.”

When I became a father in the spring of ’81
There was no doubt that stubborn boy was just like my father’s son.
And when I thought my patience had been tested to the end,
I took my daddy’s secret and I passed it on to him.

And he said, “Let me tell you a secret about a father’s love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us.”
He said, “Daddies don’t just love their children every now and then.
It’s a love without end, amen, it’s a love without end, amen.”

Last night I dreamed I died and stood outside those pearly gates.
When suddenly I realized there must be some mistake.
If they know half the things I’ve done, they’ll never let me in.
And then somewhere from the other side I heard these words again.

And he said, “Let me tell you a secret about a father’s love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us.”
He said, “Daddies don’t just love their children every now and then.
It’s a love without end, amen, it’s a love without end, amen.”

George Strait