Skip to main content

What's a nubian?

For the last few weeks, certain bits of dialogue from Chasing Amy have randomly come into my head. I don't know why, but lines about Archie and Jughead, the other three being figments of your imagination, and hiring Charles Schulz have come up during making the bed, getting the mail, and brushing my teeth.

This all led me to pop in my DVD copy of the movie and watch a few scenes a couple of nights ago. I had not watched the entire movie in at least four years and had not opened my copy of the Clerks/Chasing Amy scriptbook in at least seven years. Somehow, while watching the Hooper X comic-con rant, every single line blurted out of me as I watched. Not just the words themselves, but the inflections and pauses. I couldn't believe this, but then again, I watched this clip dozens of times over and over again when I went nuts for Kevin's films back in college.

I'm sure VCR hounds and theater-goers will frown upon hearing this, but as somebody that really got into movies in college (aka, the time that the DVD format broke through), I'm a product of the DVD generation. Meaning, I skip around DVDs and watch certain scenes and watch entire movies with commentary tracks on. I couldn't help it back in college: rather than watch a TV show, I'd watch certain scenes from Clerks over and over again. That stuff got stuck in my brain somehow, and even though I rarely watch any of Kevin's movies these days (Clerks II is probably the biggest one that I relate to with my life now, next to Dogma and Jersey Girl), I still remember a lot.

Thinking about this now, I'm reminded of when I watched Empire Strikes Back with a friend of Matt and Tim's in college. This guy knew practically every single line from the film verbatim. I guess I'm that way with Kevin's movies. But if I were to watch any one of his films with somebody now, I'd keep quiet and let the person experience the film as he or she wants to. Besides, watching a movie with someone who knows every frickin' line can take some of the fun out of watching a flick for the first time.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J