Bandwagon redux.
Alright, well, my last quote list was highly disappointing, largely because of the songs WinAmp picked out for me. So I sat down and went through, pulling twenty of the best quotes I could find in a quick and slightly incomplete perusal of the history of music. Some of these are probably incredibly obvious, some a bit more obscure, but all have in them a certain kind of perfection.
I. "Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?"—It is indeed Zappa, as Anne guessed, but I'll see if anyone knows which song.
II. "He bought me a soda and he tried to molest me in the parking lot, yup yup yup yup." The Pixies. Remi is totally the bone machine, and gets 18 points. (Moss gets three half-points for knowing the artist.) Would you like to see a live version or "A picture of some weird guy with Bone Machine in the background"?
III. "Lie down, gel, mek me push it up, push it up, lie down." Max Romeo tried to tell the BBC that "Wet Dream" was about a leaky roof. They were not convinced. Eleven points to the old man.
IV. "She took me to the cleaners, and other misdemeanors, but I got right up between her rum and her Ribena." Ian Dury's masterpiece of innuendo, "Billericay Dickie"—though actually I was listening to a Billy Bragg cover. Another 5 points to Dad.
V. "B-more, Maryland, we servin' up essential medicine, bright pink sweatsuits, and Timberlands!" Cex's "Stamina" is not to be found on the YouTubes, but here's one that's about 1000% different. (One point to Anne. Don't blame me, blame the random number generator.)
VI. "Back on the road, not a moment too soon, dish ran away with some other spoon."
VII. "I don't believe it! There she goes again! She's tidied up and I can't find anything!" She may have blinded Thomas Dolby with science, but not Mirabai, who gets 4 more points!
VIII. "Now these points of data make a beautiful line, and we're out of beta, we're releasing on time." If the only thing this quote game accomplishes is getting Jonathon Coulton's "Still Alive" stuck in someone else's head, it will be a triumph. Watch either the evil computer version or the sensitive acoustic version, or preferably both. Man, do I ever want to play Portal. (15 points to Mirabai.)
IX. "Well, guy in a skeleton costume comes up to the guy in the Superman suit, runs through him with a broadsword." The Mountain Goats, "Oceanographer's Choice", which John Darnielle doesn't know the words to. Interestingly, "Jenny" would probably have been my second choice for a great Mountain Goats quote. (19 half-points to Patrick.)
X. "Now my helmet's on, you can't tell me I'm not in space!" I found a machinima version, but it faded out halfway through the song, so enjoy this blatant abuse of YouTube. (Anne, who is controlled by gamma light, gets 14 points; Moss, who is armed with six rounds of space doo-doo pistols, gets half of seven.)
XI. "We'll karaoke all night long! We'll macarena 'till the break of dawn!" This is Electric Six's "Future is in the Future", which gets its charm mostly from the earnest sincerity. The only other song of theirs I really know, "Jimmy Carter", is arguably better, in an extremely creepy fashion. Whichever the case, they clearly inspire some interesting YouTube videos. And by "interesting" I mean "terrible, but in a good way". (9 points for Julia, who got it all on her own without Anne's help, thank you.)
XII. "We're the enigmatic panda team." Sadly, the Internet's only response to the Super Furries' brilliant "Night Vision" appears to be some dude playing Duke Nukem. Still a good song, though. (2 points for Anne, who's having terrible luck today.)
XIII. "'Till I went home with a six foot girl from the south side of Chicago—but it turned out she was a man, oh can you imagine the disaster?" Black 47's "Different Drummer". Here's a majorly lo-fi live version. (8 full points to Dad, 9 half points to Neil and 16 to Moss.)
XIV. "No one can beat us, we drink beer and wear Adidas." What could be better than The Bouncing Souls and Godzilla? And hey, it beats "Vindaloo". (Anne does slightly better this time, scraping four.)
XV. "I'll fuck you up like you had chicken pox and got your ass thrown in a piranha tank."
XVI. "It's a good thing you don't have bus fare. It would fall through the hole in your pocket and you'd lose it in the snow on the ground." Apparently Waylon Jennings was the first to record "Love of the Common People", and Paul Young's version might be the best known, but it's Nicky Thomas's version for Trojan Records for me.
XVII. "I drop science in my rhymes cause I'm fly like Bill Nye."
XVIII. "And when we've had a couple of beers, we'll put on bunny suits." Stephin Merritt longs to nibble your ears. (8 points to Mirabai.)
XIX. "Everybody feels like Gary Coleman sometimes, except the actual Gary Coleman, who finds he almost always feels like Gary Coleman." No, YouTube, I did not mean '"ookla the monk" "a.m. suicide"'. But you can and indeed should download the song here. (6 points for Anne, who would probably get better if she didn't diss on the Ookla.)
XX. "I'm well known to the cops in this section, my expired tags give them all an erection." Neil clearly knew it, though he was unable to identify it as Optimus Rhyme's "Fuzzy Dice". No video, but here, watch "Obey the Moderator" (with helpful subtitles!). I guess I can spare Neil nine three-quarter points for that.
Nota bene: Because I eliminated randomness from the quote selection process, and clearly something about this process has to be random, I am assigning each correct answer a random number of points, with the help of random.org.
Only three and a half left! Go team!
surreptitiously posted by Martin Marks at 8:15 in the evening // twenty-eight comments by:
