Must have heard The Pogues “Navigator” hundreds of times. Love the tune and the way Shane spit out indignant phrases. But what exactly are these phrases and how do they connect to each other. “Navigator wake up and be strong”. Yeah, he’s on a ship, so he has to plot a course, makes sense. But then there’s something about shovels and dynamite and plenty of lines I can’t quite make out. Landslides and empires with no sunsetting, and now in deep darkness.
Turns out “navigator” was a term for manual laborers doing the hard work digging canals and building railroad enbankments.
Ah, that clarifies the verse in “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”
We are the navvies who work upon the railway
Swingin’ our hammers in the bright blazin’ sun
Livin’ on stew and drinkin’ bad whiskey
Bendin’ our backs 'til the long days are done
Okay, was just listening to “Walk Like a Man” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Frankie does his yodeling while the deeper-voiced guys back him up with “Walk…walk…walk…walk…” But it sounds an awful lot like “wop, wop, wop,” too. Maybe a coincidence, but maybe that, and the fact of that style in general being called “doo-wop”, was a kind of reclaiming the name for Italian-Americans?
In A Christmas Story, when the mom turns off the leg lamp as the family is leaving the house, saying “Don’t want to waste electricity”, I always figured she just hated the lamp and was using energy conservation as an excuse. But the detail I never noticed until others pointed it out – after she says that the camera pans out to show that every other light in the house is still on, making it pretty obvious she didn’t actually care about wasting electricity.
Similarly, towards the end of Fargo, when Marge is giving her monologue to Gaear in her patrol car, she ends with “…And it’s a beautiful day.” The scene then switches to an exterior shot, revelaing they’re driving through a white-out blizzard. Another detail I never noticed until others pointed it out.
Not sure is this fits the topic but I was looking up the magician Teller on Wikipedia and, as is usual, there’s a picture of the subject. What I thought was amusing is that the picture shows Teller talking. I suspect somebody chose that particular picture for its humorous irony.
Having heard Teller talk on several occasions (I once got him into an argument with another guy!), what I find amusing is that he has a much nicer speaking voice than Penn.
Schindler’s List was based on a book written by an author after he’d met one of the survivors while buying a briefcase from him. That survivor was shown in the movie as having escaped death by stacking suitcases.
Australian author Thomas Keneally in fact, the book was called Schindler’s Ark. The survivor you mentioned asked everyone who came into his shop (in NYC IIRC?) whether they were an author; Keneally was the first one to say yes and so g on to write the story.
The ending of The Dark Knight features a pretty classic example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, with the explosives on the two ferries, which can be detonated by a switch located on the other ferry.
Just realized the other day that it likely wasn’t accidental that the person who solved the dilemma was a prisoner.
I spoke to him briefly after a show. My brother-in-law was a student in the high school were Teller was teaching. He did not have class with Teller but remembers him in the school. Jon Stewart went to the same school but long after both of them were gone.
Teller has said (on a radio show) that he thought it rude not to talk to people when he wasn’t on stage and in character.
In their movie, Penn and Teller Get Killed, he does have a line or two at the climax. He also had a speaking part as a guest star on The Big Bang Theory.
Of course a running joke on The Big Bang Theory was that his character would be about to say something, but his wife would jump in interrupt him before he could speak, so he didn’t get to say much. I assume that was meant to be a reference to how Teller never speaks when on stage.
He also spoke in both his guest appearances on The Simpsons - the second of which “revealed” that Penn isn’t allowed to speak when they’re offstage. (“That was the curse the witch put on us.”)
When Penn and Teller played a comedian duo on “Babylon 5”, Teller’s character only spoke cryptic utterances through a vocoder; I thought this made him akin to a Vorlon.
Years ago, they did a bit called “Mofo the Psychic Gorilla.” Mofo was the head from a gorilla suit on a pedestal, crudely rigged for its mouth to move. His voice was provided by Teller, standing a few feet away with his hand over his mouth.
Their current stage act includes a bit where Penn and Teller switch identities, and Teller, in fake beard and dark wig, does indeed chatter away for a few minutes. He does a pretty good Penn impersonation.
