Unentertainment Podcast to Debut December 19

 

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Tribute to INXS: Top 5 "Hallway-Walking" Songs

As if Monday couldn’t get any more depressing, Australian rock group INXS announced today that they were retiring from the rock scene.  This was a shocking development; I mean, who could have possibly guessed that INXS hadn’t already quit?  

 

They will be missed, though, as there may never be another band so profound at creating perfect background music for a person rhythmically walking down a hallway--periodically pointing at bystanders, performing pivots/spin-moves, posing, removing their jacket and tossing it to an on-looking crowd, etc.  If it were up to me, every movie would begin with an opening-credits scene featuring the protagonist dance-walking through a high school with INXS blaring, including Argo. 

Now as any top music critic will tell you, it is nearly impossible to narrow INXS' vast discography to just a few of their most appropriate compositions for pulsating interior foot-traversing, but I have tried. 

As a tribute to this legendary group, from five to one, I present INXS’ top “Walking Down a Hallway” hits.  And, as a bonus, I’ve provided a breakdown of some of their horrific genius lyrical work from within these works of art, because when you think INXS, you think horrific flawless, horrific inspirational songwriting.

 

5. “The One Thing”  

 

An upbeat tune to start, you have to have a brisk pace when traveling the corridors for this one.  This tune provides ample opportunities to vary your movements choreographically;  the sax solo (starting around the 1:35 mark) allows the walker to add some passionate twitching to their stride. 

Key Lyrics Breakdown:  It’s difficult to decipher just what the hell INXS lead man Michael Hutchence was talking about in this track, as we can see when we look at the first verse:

Well you know just what you do to me
The way you move soft and slippery
Cut the night just like a razor
Rarely talk and that's the danger

 

That is poetry too deep for a literary novice like me to comprehend, for sure.  For example, I don’t see how rarely talking could be a danger.  But for as clouded as that verse’s meaning is for me, anyone can recognize the deep romanticism as Hutchence speaks to his love interest in the hook lines:

 

It's the one thing
You are my thing

 

That’s right: “You are my thing.”  Go ahead and try that line on your girlfriends, men, provided you are trying to break up with them.  I’d blame that line on a translation issue except I’m pretty sure I heard somwhere that Australians speak English (some weird version of it, anyway).

 

4. “Devil Inside”  

 

With the intensity-depressed intro to this song, it is perfect for walking up to the set of swinging double-doors that act as the entrance to the hallway you are going to power walk through.  Make sure you push both of those doors open at the same time when you burst through at the 0:39 mark, when once again you will have to maintain a speedy pace.  That potentially exhausting rate of stride is all that keeps this song out of the top 3. 

 

Key Lyrics Breakdown: Again, the complexity of this song is pretty overwhelming, so here let’s just examine INXS' fine attempt to rhyme words.  Taken from the second verse:

 

Here come the man
With the look in his eye
Fed on nothing
But full of pride
Look at them go
Look at them kick
Makes you wonder how the other half live

 

Well, first, “eye” is rhymed with “pride.”  Later, “kick” is rhymed with “live.”  It’s unclear who the “them” is that is going in the fifth line, but they are probably leaving because they've had enough of being written into songs by a lyricist who doesn't understand how rhyming works. 

 

3. “Need You Tonight/Mediate”

Finally, we can walk at a more leisurely pace.  In addition to a slower tempo, “Need You Tonight/Mediate” allows plenty of opportunities for stopping/posing, which can be followed immediately by a fist pump, if you are feeling up to it.  As far as your walking routine goes, the “Mediate” section can probably be cut out, but it does provide a signifcant achievement, lyrically. 

 

Key Lyrics Breakdown:  My theory is that INXS probably received a lot of crap about their kindergartenesque lyrics in their early songs. So, while sulking, they wrote "Mediate," proving that if push came to shove, they do know how to rhyme words correctly: 

Mediate
Clear the state
Activate
Now radiate
A perfect state
Food on plate
Gravitate
The Earth's own weight
Designate

Your love as fate
At ninety-eight

We all rotate

 

Now, of course, these lyrics still don’t make sense, but they do rhyme, and as Meat Loaf said, “Two out of three ain’t bad,” and one out of two is like, almost two out of three. 

2. “New Sensation”

 

 

 

Remember that double-door burst-through mentioned for use in “Devil Inside?”  Well that same move works well at the 0:09 mark in this one.  Also, make frequent use of hesitation-moves (at 0:33, for example).  Pretty much just copy whatever Hutchence does in the music video, and you’ll be performing some pretty chic hallway maneuvers.  
 

Key Lyrics Breakdown:

 

Love baby love
It's written all over your face
There's nothing better we could do
Than live forever
Well that's all we've got to do
 

 

At a certain point, you realize that that even INXS has no idea what they are talking about.  (Also, they rhyme “do” with “do” here.)

All we’ve got to do is live forever?  Sounds easy enough.  I’ll get right on that. 

 
 

1. “What You Need”

 

 

Remember the songs that finished two and three on this list?  Well I’m not sure we can be 100% certain that this song is not identical to either or both of those. The nice part of that self-plagiarism is it means that this track is just as awesome to rhythmically stride to as the previous two.  Actually it’s better, because it is number one on this list. Duh.  

Key Lyrics Breakdown: If someone sits down and reads enough INXS lyrics they eventually will find some that make sen—ah just kidding, they always seem pretty stupid:

 

Ain't no sense in all your crying
Just pick it up and throw it into shape

 

 

Disagree with this list?  That’s totally understandable.  There are hundreds of INXS songs out there, almost all of which sound exactly the same.  You can pick any five tracks of theirs at random and they will be pretty much be the same as what I have highlighted earlier.  The important thing is that we all are on the same page in commemorating the end of an era. 

 

It’s alright, and probably even appropriate, for us to feel bad about having heard INXS' last obnoxious and unnecessary sax solo.  We can and should be somewhat depressed over the retirement of a group of inspirational and transcendent rock gods. 

 

But there ain’t no sense in all our crying about it.  Let's pick it up and throw it into shape. 

College Hoops: Cleaning Up the AP Poll

The college basketball season tipped off Friday, with the exception of the games that were scheduled to be played on aircraft carriers, which were promptly cancelled because—much to the surprise of the NCAA—aircraft carriers are located outdoors, where moisture has the tendency of forming from time to time and can, like, get on the court and make things slippery.   So not as many games tipped off as were scheduled to, but there were still some interesting developments on the court, most notably UConn knocking off Michigan State.  This was surprising because Connecticut should be bad after losing two players to the NBA and their HOF coach since a year ago—when they weren’t that good really anyway.  (To be fair, one of those “NBA players” was Andre Drummond.)  

Tom Izzo's fan club will again be annoying throughout the winter.

But despite last night’s results, there is one thing that is for certain, and it’s that Michigan State will still be very good.  As annoying as it is for a Wisconsin alumnus to admit, you know that the Izzone will be rocking all the way through February, and Sparty will enter the NCAA tournament with no worse than a 5-seed.  The AP ranked them at #14 in their preseason poll, and this seems fair, which is more than can be said for many of their other rankings. 

It’s pretty obvious that a lot of teams are just not ranked correctly, just as it was obvious in football that teams like Florida State, and Michigan had no business being ranked as high as they were in the preseason poll.  Unfortunately, I cannot prove that I knew the Seminoles and Wolverines were overrated going into the football season, because I didn’t fearlessly post those thoughts on a blog that nobody reads.  To avoid duplicating such a misstep, I hereby present what’s wrong with the AP preseason poll:

 

WHATS WRONG WITH THE AP PRESEASON POLL

Slightly Overrated Teams: 2. Louisville, 11. North Carolina

It’s difficult to pick the elite teams without seeing them, but Louisville will surely not enter the NCAA’s with a 1-seed.  They have experience, sure, but they are also starting Gorgui Dieng, whose offensive skills are so poor that by comparison Drummond actually looks like a lottery pick. A Sweet 16 team probably—but they’re not that special.



Rick Pitino will have to deal with Gorgui Dieng's overrated post play for one more season.

North Carolina lost a lot from last season.  Also they just disgust me.  Number 11 is too high. 

Very Overrated—Possibly/Likely Will Not Be Ranked by the End of the Season and Potentially NIT-bound Teams: 5. Michigan, 6. NC State

Both teams on paper have the talent to be ranked here, but anybody who follows college hoops closely knows both teams are much more likely to end up sixth in their conference than sixth in the nation. NC State had a nice run in last year’s tournament that many took as a sign of things to come, and Trey Burke showed flashes of greatness for the Wolverines last year and has plenty of support.  But somehow it won’t matter. 

 

Has the AP Even Observed the Pac-12 the Past Few Seasons? Teams: 12. Arizona, 13. UCLA



Josh Smith remains huge.  The Pac-12 remains bad.

As much as preseason polls have wanted the Pac-12 to be a real conference the past few seasons, that just hasn’t been the case. For the majority of the last two years the Pac-12 has struggled to have a single team ranked in the top 25.   I don’t see why it will be any different this year.  One of these two teams may end up somewhere in the 20-25 range; the other will be lucky to experience March Madness in-person. 

 

The Potentially Underrated Teams: 8. Duke, 16. Creighton, 23. Wisconsin, NR Minnesota, NR Pittsburgh, NR Marquette, NR West Virginia

 

 

Doug McDermott looks to defend his "Best Player in the Nation to Wear a T-shirt Under His Uniform" Honors

The one thing that gets overlooked consistently in these preseason polls is coaching. Too much focus is put on players leaving/returning/arriving while the consistently good/poor coach lurks in the shadows like something lurking in the shadows.  Duke, Wisconsin, Pitt, Marquette and West Virginia are all well-coached and likely to make a move by season’s end.   Creighton’s talent is underrated (I may be underrating coach Greg McDermott as well.) and Minnesota’s talent and experience is being overlooked (enough to make up for subpar coaching). 
 

__________________________________


I realize I am not backing these predictions with hard numbers, but that is sort of the point.  This doesn't take statistics to figure out; it's common sense.  Check back in three or four months and tell me I'm wrong (unless I actually am). 

 

 

Scintillating Sci-Fi Flick Movie Film Motion Picture of the Week: Raptor

 

Ratings: 2.6/10 IMDB, 19% Rotten Tomatoes

Setting the Stage: This classic motion picture sets the tone early, with a group of college students driving their jeep to the edge of a desert cliff to drink some beers.  Even though this seems like a pretty good idea, things take a turn for the worse when they are instantly mauled by a raptor (played throughout the movie by raptor dolls held up close to the camera).  The audience gets to see the attack through the eyes of the raptor itself (You can tell it’s raptor-vision because the your TV screen is tinted green, duh.). One thing you will notice about the raptor throughout the film is that it has been conditioned to attack the stomach and only the stomach of its targets, as we can see from the following chart:     

Source: The Discovery Channel

It turns out that some indeterminate amount of raptors have escaped from some lab operated by a scientist (“Dr. Hyde”…yep, creative name) who had been developing dinosaurs for military purposes until the government shut him down, as if that was going to stop him.  After being alerted to his continued genetic experiments, the government gets involved, sending multiple teams in to bust up the operation, including one unit wearing winter camouflage (to infiltrate a lab which is indoors), a unit wearing berets, and finally, a unit wearing—why not?—raincoats.  It’s very unclear what any of these teams are doing, particularly the raincoat gang, which runs into the facility and then immediately runs out of it, having accomplished the feat of lightly jogging 200 feet, but not accomplishing much as far as containing rogue reptilian beasts.  

Fortunately, local sheriff Eric Roberts is also on the case, and before you know it, a bunch of fundamentally confusing and stupid things are happening, with the movie culminating in Roberts fighting the boss T-Rex (which, scientifically speaking, is not a raptor—the creature the movie was named after) with a Bobcat (much more on this later).  As you watch this film you will be constantly reminded of how far film-making has come since the early 70’s. Except this was filmed in 2001. 

Most Valuable Actor: Roberts. Throughout a movie with some questionable acting and an even more questionable storyline, E-Rob never breaks stride, with a consistent pretty-boy smirk on his face, and an ever-present self-confidence that borders on cockiness.  He also does some pretty convincing facial grimacing and straining in the final climatic sequence (see “Best Scene”). 

Most Valuable Actress: Lorissa McComas. Apologies to Melissa Brasselle, who plays E-Rob’s love interest Barbara in the film; despite giving her best acting effort in the form of not mispronouncing too many words, even exchanges such as the following were not enough to garner her best actress distinction:

Dr. Hyde: Your lady friend isn't a very good poker player, Sheriff. She's just revealed her hand.

Barbara: Actually, I prefer dominoes.

Burn.

No, the best actress in this movie is Lorissa McComas, who plays Roberts’ daughter to over-acting perfection.  Her shining moment comes after watching her boyfriend get disemboweled by a raptor (she narrowly escapes death) when she is locked in a fear-triggered coma (a completely not made-up medical condition) and remains frozen with a look on her face that very well could be a look of terror.   

Her semi-conscious body is taken to a hospital (played by a bed and breakfast room with a guy dressed up vaguely like a doctor standing in it), where the best exchange in the film takes place.

Best Exchange:

Doctor: "I'm afraid your daughter is suffering from a rare form of traumatic catalepsy."
Roberts: "And that would be what, doctor?"
Doctor: "Well, something so terrified your girl that she shut off part of her mind to avoid thinking about it."
Roberts: "That's not like her."

He knows his daughter very well apparently. 

Best Scene: There are a lot of continuity errors in this movie. Day turns to night and back within individual scenes, the windows on the jeep in the beginning are plastic and then glass and then covered in blood and then less bloody plastic, and so on.  There is a scene involving a truck crashing off a bridge that really cannot even be described except to say that there are about 17 things fundamentally wrong with the 15-second sequence.  So it really takes something drastic to stand out in a film like this, but the final scene does just that. 

Basically, a tyrannosaurus rex escapes the lab and is on the verge of wiping out all of the main characters plus the raincoat brigade, when Roberts hatches a plan.  He sees a white front-end loader Bobcat sitting by the lab, and promptly boards it and fires up the engine.  From here, there are a lot of close-ups of E-Rob grunting while working the controls as he is locked in basically a sumo match with the dinosaur.  Only the white Bobcat periodically becomes a much larger, yellow machine with forklift attachments, and then later, a similar forklift with a huge mechanical arm.  After finally dispatching of the t-rex by pushing it into an underground shaft, Roberts hops out of—a small, white Bobcat (with a smirk on his face, of course).  It really has to be seen to be believed; this sequence alone is enough to make the movie worth watching. 

Bonus “Did you know?” about Raptor courtesy of IMDB: “The Purex Poultry truck is a Mitsubishi Fuso.”

Important information.  Thanks IMDB.