"the permanent retention board of the adult"

Mary, Terje, and Jason, you'll appreciate this one the most.

From a Google-translated page of Japanese text, here's how Warner Bros. Japan describes its Melodies: The Best of AOR collection:

The famous musical work of AOR which cannot forget even now was recorded completely “the permanent retention board of the adult” first feature.

Google probably should've held onto some of the $1.65 billion it paid for YouTube and used the leftover cash to shore up its translation capabilities, but I can't deny that "the permanent retention board of the adult" has a certain sense of poetry about it.

I also like that, courtesy of Google's translation, Robbie Dupree's "Steal Away" is retitled "Night Just of Cover."

"Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?"

Yes, come see top comedy stars—before they die.

It's been a while.

I was out of town last Thursday through Sunday, then back at work for 36 hours Monday through Wednesday, so there hasn't been much time to write. But I have big news, people. Are you ready for it? Here it is:

I'm now listed on IMDB.*

Thank you, thank you! Not a lot of people are listed on that site, as you know. Probably only a hundred or so actors, because when you think about it, Michael Caine and Gene Hackman are in everything, so there really isn't much room for anyone else on the silver screen.

But there was room for me. And the movie I appear in for three minutes is now available through Netflix, so it must be legit, right? Sure, Common Senses is a straight-to-video release, but I think it holds a little more artistic merit than the average Shannon Tweed erotic thriller. I shot my scene over the course of an afternoon on July 31, 2005, in an office that smelled like Big Red chewing gum. That was comforting to me.

* Confession: I submitted my name to IMDB. But I also submitted the names of all the other actors in the movie who weren't already listed on the page for Common Senses, so it wasn't an entirely selfish act.

What an odd design for a bottle that contains alcohol. Oh, wait ... never mind. I get it now.

According to Don Julio's helpful corporate literature, those two things on the side of the tequila bottle that look like hands on a scrotum are actually "agave leaves." Well, that explains that.

Who you think you foolin', Apple?

I think I saw a woman behind the Genius Bar at an Apple Store once. And she was a lot whiter than the two women shown here.

Oh, the lyrics you'll mishear ...

Ten years ago I remember listening to Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' classic "Bad Luck" (1975) and thinking Teddy Pendergrass was singing, "Marv Albert plainly states that chances go around."

I knew that couldn't be right, but I also couldn't figure out what T.P. was actually saying for the longest time, partly because I never bothered to listen to "Bad Luck" on headphones. Then Web sites devoted to song lyrics came along (many of them sneak-attack visitors with pop-up ads and are poorly designed and/or fact checked, but they do provide a valuable service in our 24-7 information age). It turns out Pendergrass is saying, "Law of averages plainly states that chances go around," except he ignores the plural and spits out "law 'f average" as fast as he can, because time and the MFSB rhythm section wait for no one.

Way to beat the buzzer, Teddy. Or, as Marv Albert might say: YES!!!!

still dying

From IMDB's gossip (not news) page, written by British reporters:

Bruce Willis turned the air blue at a live basketball game on Sunday when he used the expletive "mother f**ker" at the end of an interview. The Die Hard star was interviewed courtside during the New Jersey Nets' NBA Finals play-off game with the Toronto Raptors and forgot he was live on air. Asked about his upcoming Live Free or Die Hard sequel, he beamed, "It's unbelievable ... It's better than the first movie," and signed off, "Yippee Kay Aye, mother f**ker." Ironically, the outburst comes as Willis insists he's not "naughty" enough for the tabloids in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine. He says, "They're not writing about guys my age anymore unless I do something naughty."

Look, you limey muckrakers, over here in America we spell "motherfucker" as one word, not two. While we're at it, "yippee-kay-aye" doesn't need all those capital letters either. (Didn't you guys invent the English language? I guess America invented the rules of punctuation.)

But the real problem that needs to be addressed here isn't spelling, or even that Bruce Willis corrupted the ears of grade-school hoops fans. The real problem is that Willis said Live Free or Die Hard is "better than the first movie." In the interview Willis appears to have had one too many jumbo beers, but that's no excuse—it's irritating to hear entertainers of any stripe disown one of their past endeavors, but it's more irritating to hear them over-hype their latest product, especially after Willis made a statement a few years ago that the first Die Hard is the only good one of the first three. I'm 99.9% sure he didn't offer that opinion to reporters while promoting Die Hard 2 in 1990 and Die Hard: With a Vengeance in '95.

soft death

Well, it didn't take long for yesterday's Die Hard news to be questioned by more than just me, but for different reasons, and it seems that others don't have the same soft spot for the franchise that I do. (I wouldn't be surprised if Fox's marketing department pushed that story on the Hollywood Reporter in the first place.) The following is from IMDB's news page:

Suggesting that it is sometimes difficult to sort the buzz from the hype, the Hollywood Reporter was being castigated by numerous film-related websites Monday for a report suggesting that the upcoming Live Free or Die Hard could be "the sleeper hit of the season." The trade publication cited research by Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which measures Internet discussions of upcoming films, noting that the film had received nearly twice as many mentions on blogs as Spider-Man 3 and dwarfed those for Shrek the Third and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

On Monday, however, several blogs noted that much of the buzz about the June 27 release of Live Free or Die Hard was negative and that other blogs suggested that the Pirates sequel is the most anticipated movie of the summer. Movie buzz reports have been notoriously dicey this year, particularly in the recent case of Grindhouse, [which] produced a ton of Internet chatter but tanked at the box office. None of that has discouraged the Nielsen company, which announced today (Tuesday) that it is acquiring the 42 percent of BuzzMetrics that it does not already own (for a reported $100 million) and plans to combine the company with Nielsen-NetRatings. Nielsen also owns the Hollywood Reporter.