More Riffs on DEATH....

[captainsblog]

...in which nobody I personally knew actually died.

Over the past several days, my Facebook page has inadvertently turned into a source of prompts. A few nights ago, it was one that I saw on a friend's page there:



Apparently this goes back a ways, but the answers are still coming in, as good as ever:

The sign out front says "Welcome Too Heck."

A perpetual Lawrence Welk show with you as the guest star playing alphorn.

You only have 2400 baud dial-up for internet service.
(Actually, I think this was a plot point in Upload....)

Your socks are constantly rolling down off your feet, inside your shoes.

You have a lifetime free pass to attend games at Citi Field.
Jeff Torborg announces that Eric Campbell hits cleanup every game.
And the Arancini Brothers stand is closed for renovation.
Omar Minaya just signed off on a land deal in Heck to build a new ballpark.
And the Mets bullpen can’t hold even a 24 run lead.

I tried my own the other night in honor of my brief but annoying shot symptoms:

What disease, like COVID, has a vaccine that you might not take if the symptoms were the same as the disease itself?
I’m going with food poisoning and herpes.

We got dysentery, botulism and chicken pox.

I did better today, when I returned a movie to the local library, which is next to, and shares a parking lot with, a funeral home.  I don't know why the sign didn't catch my eye until today, but indeed it did-



-and got me wondering what, exactly, the stiffs are reading in there. After coming up with

Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,

I then opened it up:

Death Be Not Proud
Death in Venice
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Our Town (subtle, but it works)
Death in the Afternoon
Anything by Stephen King
Death of a Salesman (especially a telemarketer)
The Necronomicon
100 Years of Solitude
Been Down so Long it Looks like Up to Me

I then decided it was time to, um, jump back in:

And for those going with the other option:
Cinder-ella
Angela's Ashes
Urn Burial
Or pretty much anything by Robert Burns

And for the soundtrack, nominees included the Grateful Dead, and at least these two Blue Oyster Cult songs:

Burnin' for You
Don't Fear the Reaper

But the winner, by my sole judging, was

canadiandiamond, who submitted

I imagine they'd love anything with a good plot.

----

Continuing the theme sortakinda, we began watching a much-missed and hard-to-find film tonight: Truly Madly Deeply is one of those 80s UK comedies we fell in love with while falling in love. It's a class that includes Local Hero and Comfort and Joy, both of which have actors who also appear here. It's also one of many that is almost impossible to find either in ordinary DVD shops or streaming. The one we found is quite possibly a bootleg, has no subtitles or specials, but it gives us a very young Alan Rickman (just off his newfound fame as Hans Gruber in Die Hard) and an incredible Juliet Stevenson, where the former returns as a ghost to haunt and love the latter who misses him terribly.  The writer-director, Anthony Minghella, got his start writing for Inspector Morse episodes earlier in the 80s, and lots of the actors in this (as well as the composer Barrington Pheloung) were connected to that series at one time or another. He went on to write and direct The English Patient, among others, before dying of a hemmorage in 2008 at the stupidly early age of 54.  No word on whether he's haunting anybody, although his son Max is a regular in Handmaid's Tale and there would be so many good choices there.

Speaking of, this was seen in a friend's travels earlier this week:



“Blessed be the fruit pancakes.”

 

“May the umbrellas open.”

Comments

[thanatos_kalos]

If you like Minghella's work (& want to help me with another audience research project I'm setting up ;) just before he passed he was involved with a BBC/loads-of-others co-production called The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It based on a book series and is set (& shot) in Botswana. It's available on YouTube if you can't get it through streaming (I have the DVDs).

[captainsblog]

I think we've seen that. The other one of his I want to see, and have ordered, is one he did right after TMD called Mr. Wonderful. It stars Matt Dillon, who I could take or leave, but the cast also includes Annabella Sciorra, William Hurt, Mary-Louise Parker and a very young James Gandolfini.

Oh my gosh

[dauntless_heart]

These are awesome! Thanks for the chuckle, it's a great way to start the day. :)

And I thought of one for Heck: every time you go outside with your hair perfectly combed, the wind is crazy. Every. Single. Time.