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For old times’ sake, I downloaded MacArthur Park with Kazaa Lite, played it, and now it’s stuck in my head. Especially the go-go danceable instrumental break. It’s palying right now, and I’m go-go dancing as I type this.

Updated on Saturday, October 26 at 7:45 p.m. EDT. Just added a few more links.

Being Filipino, I have a higher tolerance for disco and musical theatre than what is normally allowed for straight men. So when Camelot came to the O’Keefe Centre (now known as the Hummingbird Centre) in Toronto during the fall of 1985 — a return to the theatre where it was performed for the very first time, twenty-five years earlier, I went willingly. The role of Lancelot was played by its original actor, Robert “Cajun Christmas” Goulet as was King Arthur’s, by none other than Sir Richard Harris. After the show, he gracefully went out into the lobby and autographed souvenir programs, one of which was mine. I’ll have to dig it out of “the memory box”, now a large crate where I keep stuff like that.

The kids know him as Albus Dumbledore, beloved headmaster of Hogwarts Academy in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone or as Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator, older filmgoers know him from This Sporting Life, Heroes of Telemark, A Man Called Horse or The Guns of Navarone, but I will remember him for his hit single — that completely bombastic, over-the-top anthem for anyone who’s ever lamented over what-could-have-been: MacArthur Park.

MacArthur Park became a little bit of an in-joke between me and my friends Ryan and George when we worked together at our summer job designing and producing the student directory and daytimer for Queen’s University. We’d been watching the SCTV episode in which Dave Thomas lampooned Richard Harris. “Harris” appears on the music show “Mel’s Rock Pile” and proceeds to do an extended version of the already-long MacArthur Park, getting more exhausted by the second and screaming “somebody get me a bloody towel!” during the upbeat rock bridge. We also enjoyed the SCTV episode in which “Harris” played the title role in “The Man Who Would be King of Popes“. Harris then became our unofficial mascot of sorts, and MacArthur Park was our unofficial anthem — it ended up getting mentioned in the “thank you” section of our the directory and daytimer.

A tip of the hat to you, Mr. Harris — rest in peace. And for those of you old enough to remember MacArthur Park, here are the lyrics, in all their soggy-baked-goods-metaphoric glory:

MacArthur Park

Music and lyrics by Jimmy Webb

Sung by Sir…Richard…Harris!

Spring was never waiting for us, girl

It ran one step ahead

As we followed in the dance

Between the parted pages and were pressed

In love’s hot, fevered iron

Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don’t think that I can take it

‘Cause it took so long to bake it

And I’ll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress

Foaming like a wave

On the ground around your knees

The birds, like tender babies in your hands

And the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don’t think that I can take it

‘Cause it took so long to bake it

And I’ll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

[The short break]

There will be another song for me

For I will sing it

There will be another dream for me

Someone will bring it

I will drink the wine while it is warm

And never let you catch me looking at the sun

And after all the loves of my life

After all the loves of my life

You’ll still be the one

I will take my life into my hands and I will use it

I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it

I will have the things that I desire

And my passion flow like rivers through the sky

And after all the loves of my life

After all the loves of my life

I’ll be thinking of you

And wondering why

[The extended “somebody give me a bloody towel!” break — everybody go-go dance!]

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don’t think that I can take it

‘Cause it took so long to bake it

And I’ll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

Oh, no

No, no

Oh no!!

If you want the MIDI version, check out this page.

Blogger somehow ate my post and I haven’t got the time to re-type it right now. In the meantime, you might enjoy this photo I just dug up. It’s of my friend, A-list blogger, science fiction author and EFF Outreach Coordinator Cory Doctorow trying on a suit at the San Jose Flea Market just before the end of 2000.

The suit really works for him. Cory, have you considered being the front man for a rockabilly band?

Yes, today isn’t the Wednesday closest to the middle of the month, but Kick Ass Karaoke, the most rock-and-roll karaoke night in town is tonight! It’s at the Bovine Sex Club (Queen, about half a block east of Bathurst). Not only will there be karaoke, there’ll also be a Thirsty People of Toronto gathering at the same time!

If you come you’ll be greeted by mean-looking but friendly bouncers…

…your host, Mr. Carson T. Foster…

…cute women…

…and dapper gentlemen,…

…among whom is Yours Truly.

Won’t you come out and play?

While flipping thorugh some of the photos in Yahoo News, I found this shot of Charlton Heston and just had to post it.

Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong

— lyrics from Industrial Disease by Dire Straits

I know that the plastic Jesus figures (“with gliding action!”) are the all the rage, but if you’re considering buying me one for my birthday, don’t — I already have one.

I am, after all, a good Catholic boy.

[Thanks to Cory at BoingBoing for the link]

Last month, I stumbled across the eXile, Moscow’s alternative paper written largely by expats driven by American xenophobia, culture shock, homesickness and the fact that communism tends to turn places into joyless hellholes. What it lacks in journalistic standards — consider their current contest: whoever guesses the date closest to the American invasion of Iraq wins an hour with one of the prostitutes featured on page 23 — it more than makes up for in hilarity that makes you feel slightly guilty for laughing.

Anyone who’s done a little travelling is probably aware that Europeans generally perceive Americans as bloodthirsty, greedy gun nuts who make lousy beer. This is why the Lonely Planet set often do un-American things such as sew Canadian flags on their backpacks and maybe even attempting to learn a few phrases in the local blabber before hiking across Europe.

What a lot of people don’t know is that Europeans hold their neighbours — Europeans other than themselves, that is — in equal, and possibly greater, contempt. While the worst thing the Americans did to most Europeans is flood them with bad food (Spam during the Marshall Plan, McDonald’s today), Europeans have been raping and pillaging each other since the earliest days, when the rivalries were between villages, not nations (this sort of rivalry continues today). I’m surprised that the word “neighbour” doesn’t have a secondary use as an insult in most European languages.

The eXile have done a little research — and I use the term “research” very loosely — and the result is a feature article called 18 Ways to Hate Your Neighbor. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Bigotry and hatred are the bread and water of European life. This isn’t a vague, impersonal hatred; rather, it’s a profoundly evolved, carefully tailored hatred, a SMART Hatred if you will, tailored as tightly as a Swiss banker’s shirt towards the village over the hill, where your bosom enemies live.

Through hard and thorough research (ie., by pouring beer into the throats of selected Europeans and letting them rant), the eXile has managed to isolate and map the 18 fundamental hatred genomes that Europeans carry towards their neighbors—the RNA strand of Euro-hatred, if you like.

So put away your Lonely Planet guides, and pick up your Euro-Bigotry primer. It’s because of European hatred that the biggest massacres in human history have taken place. And the wonderful thing is, in spite of all the post-war European talk of peace and understanding, all the bigotries still live on, waiting for the day when they can transform Europeans back from harmless disco-dancing buffoons into the murderous village brawlers they once were, and may someday be again.

You should probably take any primer on Europe that makes liberal use of the word “Eurofag” with a grain of salt, but there’s quite a bit of truth in the article and the accompanying charts.

I’m just surprised that the increasingly popular Simpsons description of the French, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, doesn’t appear at all.