Monday at the races

There are a limited number of Monday songs, and I used the best one months ago.

Deal. Only 13 guessing days left until contest’s end on June 24

Monday morning brings us two repeat guessers and guesses, both of which featured the correct answer to #4

Crossing the line first is Michael Bachelor, who writes:

4. Iâ€™d invite you back to my place. Man in a Suitcase, The Police (Zenyetta Mondatta, 1980, A&M records) 8 points, 5 bonus points

What can I say? Even before I travelled the globe as the world’s first (and only) professional Dungeons & Dragons player, this song and I were very well acquainted as I shuttled between parents in the skies of the Southwest and Northwest. Before such things were tracked and rewarded, I used to rack up tens of thousands of airmiles each year

By the time I was 12, I could perform the pre-flight safety breifing better than the Stewards and Stewardesses. But in my mid-teens, I stopped talking to and visiting my father, and did not board an airplane again for almost 8 years.

Asture readers will note that not only was I done with college at that point, but I was also of legal drinking age, and pretty damn good at it to boot. My studies of physics led me to a very real concern about airplanes, and the principles that govern them

They should not work. They do, and I’ll not argue the point of my own continued physical existence against the math involved. But Bernoulli was a magician, and so far most of us have bought into his chicanery.

So to my reasoning (having spent far, far too much time trying to prove it theoretically) Airplanes really work on faith. We all beleive without examination that they will go up, since 98% of the passengers never have to deal with the sheer terror of an enhanced knowledge of gravity and speed vectors. And were enough of us passengers able to question it rationally, we might find ourselves in a bit of a pickle somewhere around 30K ft.

Lacking faith in a lot of things, I still maintained my inherent beleif in one of the four fundamental forces. So I resolved to take a path of ignorance, and drink myself to a point where I really didn’t think too much about aeronautics. Spent a good 3 years doing so in fact, and during that period I developed the Unified Field Theory of Air travel.

It’s proofs are as follows.

#1. The bar is Always Open. Make use of it, you don’t know for sure the next time you’ll be able.

#2. Don’t run. There’s always another flight.

#3. Airplanes are boring. Sleep as soon as you can. Not only will you use less oxygen, and avoid inhaling the majority of the nasty crap in the air around you, but you also will not be tempted by tasteless food, overpriced drinks, and badly cut movies.

#4. Any trip of less than 300 miles should be driven. It’s your time, spend it having fun. Not standing in lines, being irradiated, sitting in uncomfortable chairs, and having to worry whether the fat bastard next to you has room for “one more bi…KABOOM”

Your frequent flyer mileage may vary, of course.

Several hours later, Delaina Dancey came to the party (not hers, which I did not attend due to another commitment, and for which I have been suitably chastised, and don’t you think I’m going on a bit about this when it’s really not that important, for I surely do, and I should probably stop now) with 3 more correct guesses, hoping to retain her title as “person with the most correct guesses, 2006.”

Unfortunately, the first one was also #4, so she only racks up two this time. They are:

11. Okay, so, tell me again about the hash bars? Royale with Cheese, Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega (Pulp Fiction: Music From The Motion Picture, 1994 MCA records) 5 points, 3 bonus points

It is my fervent beleif that Samuel L. Jackson has a clause in his contract that guarantees him the right to make long, compelling speeches in all of his movies. To my knowlege, only one of his roles is exempt from this rule; that of a crack addicted Truck Driver in Goodfellas. In that film, he gots shot in the face before he can deliver the speech, so to my thinking the clause was written in afterwards.

But I digress.

Not only does his character of Jules Winfield deliver a speech in this seminal chronicle of thuggery and blood, he in fact gives 5. And one of them is read three times.

3 TIMES!

What bliss.

In fact, I listen to that particular speech as the opening track to my 60 minute, ‘get angry enough so that the rest of the day won’t bother you’ morning rage mix.

and it reads:

Ezekiel 25-17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Funny fact. the “actual” text of Ezk 25:17 is

(KJV)25:17 And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I [am] the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

(ASV)25:17 And I will execute great vengeance upon them with wrathful rebukes; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

Which is pretty chilling in and of itself, but not nearly as cold blooded as a moustachioed hitman in a black suit. Perhaps if I saw more angels with flaming swords saying

I’d change my mind.

17. restless soul, enjoy your youth. Not for You, Pearl Jam (Vitalogy,1994 Sony records) 10 points

Nearly every song on this album applies to my relationship with one of the Four, the Bartender. This is not the place for her whole story, but I’ve listened to this album an awful lot over the years, and given my persistent and enhanced state of “single,” I often wish that this particular track was not the most relevant.

Sigh.

I will relate that in a rare display of sober wit, I managed to conjure the perfect one-use pickup line in order to get her phone number for my very own. And considering I’d just downed a plate of shark tacos seasoned with house-made habanero ketchup, that’s saying a great deal.

I had never before had a love so intense. And it’s departure left a pretty huge hole for me to crawl into afterwards. Lucky for me, there was a beer waiting in there for me when I pulled the cover over.

after all,

all that’s sacred comes from youth
dedication, naive and true
with no power, nothing to do
i still remember, why don’t you…don’t you…

More later, but keep those guesses coming!

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