The Wilhelm Scream

ABC News has a great story on the Wilhelm Scream:

The scream was recorded in 1951 for "Distant Drums," a western directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Gary Cooper as a captain who leads a group of soldiers on a mission to defend 19th century Florida settlers from Seminole Indians.

During one scene, a soldier is bitten and dragged underwater by an alligator and he screams the whole way down. The soldier may have died, but a new star was born.

After "Distant Drums," the scream stayed quiet for a couple of years until 1953, when a soldier named Pvt. Wilhelm (played by Ralph Brooks in "The Charge at Feather River") got shot in the leg by an arrow. Sound editors needed a good scream and decided to reuse the one from "Distant Drums."

AICN now has a couple of compilations of Wilhelm screams from movies ranging from Star Wars to Howard the Duck.

Update: Okay, here's one of the compilations, but it has one clip in it that has me completely mystified, at the 1:37 mark:

That's Harrison Ford and Chewbacca, and a real Storm Trooper, but I have no idea where that scene is from. Some lost TV special, maybe?

Help me, readers, you're my only hope . . .

The Rockies, In Context

Mike Carminati runs the numbers, and they're pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, Philly sportswriter Todd Zolecki reports on the Phil's minor league prospects, who are playing fall ball:

Click here to see how some Phillies prospects are performing in the Arizona Fall League. Third baseman Mike Costanzo is hitting .059 with 10 strikeouts in 17 at-bats.

Awesome. Some day all of this will be ours!

Bonus: 10 strikeouts in 17 at-bats? He'll fit right in with this Phillies roster. Only girls work the count.

My Gift to You

Matt Labash, bringing the Jesus Funny, at Slate.

Enjoy.

Sox Baiting

Some fodder for Red Sox Nation (I'm looking at you, A.W.):

When you give up 7+ runs a game, that's on your pitching staff. But when you give up 7 runs in an inning, twice, isn't that on the manager? You can't blame a manager if his team gives up, say, 4 runs at a time. But isn't his job to keep a firm enough grasp on the game, the opposing lineup, and his bullpen, to be able to hold keep the bleeding from becoming a hemorrhage? Particularly in the playoffs?

Your Song

Bill Wyman, the music critic (and not of the Rolling Stones), has finally found a way to measure the level of a musician's selling out, à la Moby's Play (in which every track on the album was sold to an advertiser). In fact, Wyman calls this formula "The Moby Quotient." As you will see, pop stars like Kelly Clarkson score low (a good thing) because of factors like "sacredness," "origins," and "reputation," whereas the Clash and the Ramones score rather high. Wyman refers us to a Nissan commercial, "which wanted consumers to understand that, if you owned an SUV, you could drive places. To underline the point, the commercial broke into the Ramones, who sang, 'Hey! Ho! Let's go!' That's the famous break from the punk rockers' 'Blitzkrieg Bop,' a heartfelt ode to pogoing to the beat of a Nazi military assault." Adds the author, "Well, at least it wasn't a Volkswagen ad."

Sadly, Wyman fails to mention my favorite instance, EMF's "You're Unbelievable," which then became "You're Crumbelievable."

Batnews

My hero.

The Worst Job in America

I used to think it belonged to the cop who was running the sting on Larry Craig, but now I'm not so sure.

Over the weekend I pulled out the 1996 Doug McGrath-helmed, Emma, which stars the young Gwyneth Paltrow. It's not a great movie, but it's fun, and it's Austen, and it's probably Paltrow's best performance. Anyway, while gazing at the DVD case, I noticed for the first time how the film is plugged on the back:

This delightfully fun and lighthearted comedy is based on the story that inspired the hit movie Clueless! Dazzling Gwyneth Paltrow (The Perfect Murder) shines as Emma--a mischievous young beauty who sets up her single friends. Funny thing is . . . she's not very good at it! So when Emma tries to find a man for Harriet (Toni Collette--Muriel's Wedding), she makes a hilariously tangled mess of everyone's lives. You'll enjoy all the comic confusion . . . until Emma herself falls in love, finally freeing everyone from her outrageously misguided attempts at matchmaking!

Having to write that copy surely qualifies as the worst job in America.

There's only one Rocktober!

The Baseball Crank has a little bit on the Rockies' impossible run, but I'd like to see more from him. Do the Rockies need to win the World Series, or does what they've done already count as the greatest streak in baseball history?

Bonus: Can we now get the idiots at ESPN (particularly Golic and Greenberg) to stop mouthing the mantra that "momentum is tomorrow's starting pitching"?

Guilt By Association?

In the course of Slatester Tim Noah's attack on Chris DeMuth and AEI, he attempts to tar the Weekly Standard by noting:

The leading neoconservative publication, the Weekly Standard, argued forcefully for deploying troops to topple Saddam (though subsequently it's had more than a few quarrels with the Pentagon's conduct of the war). The Standard is a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., not AEI … but its office is in the AEI building

This might be the laziest attempt at short-hand I've ever seen. You know what other print publication used to have an office in the AEI building? Slate! It's true! The Slate staff even had access to AEI's famous dining facilities. I once had lunch there with David Plotz and Frank Foer, back in the day. Their neoconservative ties are now undeniable!

The Buffy Horror Picture Show: RIP

Fox has pulled the plug on the theatrical licensing for all of their television products, including the Buffy episode "Once More With Feeling."

Bionic Shuffle

AICN's Herc reports that Bionic Woman is now being unofficially run by Jason Katims. You can read the story if you want to make sure that someone else's workplace political infighting is way worse than yours.

Hope for this show is fading.

Update: Every once in a while, trolling the comments section can be gold. Here's one from the AICN thread:

[D]id Mark Sheppard graduate from the Tom Sizemore school of acting, just like Miguel Ferrer has a masters in Micheal Ironside Studies. While Isaiah Washington went to the Community College version of Denzel university (We all know Chiwetel Ejiofor will soon be graduating Summa Cum Lata from the main Campus). While Michelle Ryan took a summer course (with Damian Lewis and Kevin McKidd) in how to act American but still love thy Queen, taught by Hugh Laurie.

He puts the "T" in "IT"

Galley Friend R.J. sends us this link to what may be the worst Mr. T ad of all time. It's like a mini-movie and it's, well, I can't describe it. Just push play.

Brief Aside

Dan Bartlett on the problems with the GOP presidential field:

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."

Translation:

None of the Republicans running have the strength and experience of being a two-term governor from a large, middle-American state. A lone-star state, if you will. None of these men has a name, a good name, a name you can trust. A name that sounds a lot like the name of another U.S. president. None of these guys is comfortable enough in his own skin that he'll be able to sleep like a baby while American troops are in harm's way and see into the deepest souls of the leaders of our country's rivals. In short, the biggest problem with the current crop of Republicans is that none of them is George W. Bush.

So I guess we now have the Bushie fallback position should Hillary sweep to a 40-state victory next year. Awesome.

Quote of the Week

Following Buffalo's loss to Dallas last night, ESPN's Stuart Scott asked his fellow commentators, Steve Young and Emmitt Smith, that had they not known the outcome, with so little time remaining and with Romo's multiple interceptions, what two words would've come to mind:

Steve Young: Dallas. Lose.

Emmitt Smith: Dallas. Lose. Big. Time.

So what are you doing with your life?

Burbed shares with us a list of public employee salaries from the Bay Area. I'm a huge fan of public employees! A huge number of people near and dear to my heart work for the government in some capacity and I wish they were all paid more money! Really!

But $118K a year for a city bus driver?

Justice League of America

Kill me now.

The only hope is that, like the Wolfgang Petersen World's Finest, Batman vs. Superman, this too will be aborted before shooting commences.

At this point, why not just start with Vibe and Gypsy and Vixen? Or, hell, why not start post-Justice League, with Batman leaving in a huff and starting the Outsiders, which is a much more manageable group of heroes (who could, with the right handling, turn into their own franchise). I always thought Batman and the Outsiders would make for an interesting 115 minute movie.

David Effin' Remnick

Yeah, that's right. He edits the best magazine in America and writes the best reported pieces in said magazine, just for kicks. Just to put idiot scribblers like you and me in our place. He has no mercy.

The Remnick profile of Garry Kasparov is brilliant. Just one choice tidbit:

When I asked Kasparov if he feared for his life, he nodded gravely and said, “I do. The only thing I can try to do is reduce my risk. I can’t avoid the risk altogether. They watch everything I do in Moscow, or when I travel to places like Murmansk or Voronezh or Vladimir. I don’t eat or drink at places I’m not familiar with. I avoid flying with Aeroflot”—the Russian national airline. “It doesn’t help in the end if they really decide to go after you. But, if they did, it would be really messy. And not just because of the bodyguards. There would be a huge risk for the Kremlin if anything happens to me, God forbid, because the blood would be on Putin’s hands. It’s not that they have an allergy to blood, but it creates a bad image, or makes it worse than it already is.”

The Continuing Misadventures of Sony's PS3

Cue the Benny Hill music:

As Joystiq reports, here's Sony talking about why they've decided to ditch backwards compatibility on the Playstation 3:

In separate interviews today both Sony UK boss Ray Maguire and Sony Europe spokesman Nick Sharples spoke about how the 40GB PS3 lacking backwards compatibility is fine. How is it fine? Maguire tells Eurogamer that by this Christmas the PS3 will have a whopping 65 games and so they feel "there's sufficient choice in the marketplace and that we're still better off using that money that we'd put into backwards compatibility in either investing in new games or using that money to help support bringing the price down." Meanwhile, Sharples tells GameDaily, "We have made clear on many occasions that our priority is on developing innovative new features and services for PS3 and not on backwards compatibility."

Here was Sony talking about the prime importance of backwards compatibility a years ago:

Sony's own Phil Harrison clearly and distinctly said in a 2006 interview with GamePro, "Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices -- PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."

This is a company that has no idea what it's doing.

The Black Macho Man

I know you're curious. Go ahead and watch the first clip. It's only 3 seconds long, but you'll get a taste:

So here's the deal: TNA Wrestling has a guy named Jay Lethal, who recently adopted Randy Savage's persona and the moniker "Black Machismo." Here's a bit more:

He's pretty great. But I hope Savage doesn't get pissed. Remember, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Macho Man--Vengeance is mine!"

Falcons v. Vick

ATL has the word:

The Falcons are seeking to recoup $22 million already paid to Vick in signing bonuses. The Falcons claim that, since Vick knew at the time that he signed the contract and received the bonuses that he was running a dogfighting operation and should have known that that could cause him to not be able to play, he has forfeited the bonuses. The NFL Players Association says once bonuses are paid, there's no forfeiture, period.

They seem to be almost right. Under the new CBA approved last year, forfeiture of signing bonuses are allowed for only one reason . . .