Excellent Quotes: Beowulf

Perhaps the most famous start to any poem ever occurs in the Danish epic elegy to the Scandinavian hero, Beowulf. Well, maybe "There once was a man from Nantucket" is a better known opening but that ditty doesn't feature Grendel:

"Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
peod-cyninga prym gefrunon
hu oa aepelingas ellen fremedon."

-Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York (NY): W.W. Norton & Co., 2000. P. 2-3.

I know, I know; it makes about as much sense as the opening verse of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. But it actually rocks! Below is the English translation from Seamus Heaney with the first two words modified by your pal iClipse:

"Listen up! The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns."

PS - Heaney himself has created some pretty awesome poetry. Witness this quote from his "The Cure at Troy," which used to open each edition of the woefully shuttered and sorely-missed magazine, DoubleTake: "History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme." Oh, and U2 did a nice job with that on "Peace on Earth"; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: Numb3rs

No, this is not a Five for Friday posting about the TV show "Numb3rs," although my Father liked to watch it. Nope, this is simply your end-of-the-week booster shot of cool numbers:

1. Pi. Doode! The ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius. It never ends or repeats. Doode! J.J. Abrams WISHES he had invented it. 3.14159 -- that is as far as I can reliably sequence it. Committing anything more to memory seemed a moot exercise.

2. Prime Numbers. These are the numbers (natural numbers, naturally) that can only be divided by the number 1 and themselves. Cool trick, non? I have an unnatural love of prime numbers. I think I share this affinity with my close, personal friend J.J. Abrams. In his new series, "Fringe," the lovable mad scientist, Walter locks his car up in a garage to which the lock combination is 314159, which itself is a prime...and a reversible prime--951413--to boot.

3. Fibonacci Numbers. I'll let Wikipedia explain these numbers for me: "The first number of the sequence is 0, the second number is 1, and each subsequent number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers of the sequence itself, yielding the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc." Want to see why these numbers are so great? Look at a sunflower.

4. 8 15 16 23 42. These are the numbers from "Lost." Get it? Heh heh. I crack myself up. "Lost" is currently, (a) blowing my mind, (b) chewing up all my free time, (c) making me wish I were trapped on an island with Evangeline Lilly, (d) all of the above. Note that the sum of the numbers equals 108 and the Losters have to enter them into a computer terminal every 108 minutes. No moss growing on ole J.J. Abrams. I don't know anything more yet; don't tell me.

5. 44. Think about it. Think about it. This is the numerical moniker of our current President. Thank the Lord we are done with that lack-luster predecessor. I enjoyed the Inaugural. Thanks, Emmett!

PS - Although--ironically, as it turns out given my dating life--my favorite number is two, one of my favorite numbers is 25; it is the number made by putting my favorite number next to the favorite number of one of my favorite people. I think about it pretty often, actually. Oh, and Aimee Mann has a handle on numbers in "One."

9 Rows from Oprah

So, I have survived the Inaugural--so far. Highights:

6 a.m.- Began a truly unnerving 2.5 hour Metro ride that ended up at the Capitol South stop.

8 a.m.- Stood on the train platform for the 20 minute shuffle up the stairs. The nice Metro lady kept yelling "Keep it moving! Keep it moving!" and the crowd kept yelling back, "Yes we can!" Then when she wanted us to stop moving forward so we didn't crush everyone alive she'd yell "Red light! Stop light!" But no one yelled "Neon light" when I did.

9 a.m.- I began to feel that I would die on the spot of cold. The minutes ran backward as they did for Ferris Bueller. Then the sun came out and it climbed to 30 degrees for a while. Bliss. We were in an amazing section called "Green Tickets." Oh, the goodness.

10:30 a.m.- The great cavalcade of celebrities begins. Oprah. Stedman. Sam Jackson. Jesse Jackson. Denzel. Caroline Kennedy. Some dude everyone wanted to be photographed with but who was unrecognizable to me. Jamie Lee Curtis. Don King. Diana Ross. Angela Basset. And a host of others. And the best ever: Curtis said to me, "Hey, Usher just jumped up on my chair."

11 a.m.- The great exchange of power began. It was surreal to watch it so up-close. Yea!

1:55 p.m. - We fund a taxi after just four blocks of hoofing it! Karma. Hung out over the afternoon with the pals who hooked me up with tix.

PS - Time TBD, I will re-brave the Metro and hope to get home. Oh, and "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder is stupendous.

The Inaugural

Kind friends hooked me up with a suh-weet seat at tomorrow's Inaugural ceremonies. I am not looking forward to my 6 a.m. Metro ride but I am pumped about the chance to wave four fingers on each hand at anyone who so much as looks in my direction.

I called my Sister-in-Law to talk about it and she told me that one of my nephews had asked that on Tuesday they eat carrots in honor of the new President. When asked why the carrots, he replied, "I like carrots and I want Mr. Obama to be like me."

Don't we all? The poor man is going to have so many of us wanting him to do what we'd try to do: save the economy, bring back our national self-respect, foster global peace, knit bridges between the elderly and the young so we don't fight over Medicare versus education, and generally not be that woefully idiotic George Bush. We are all so optimistic about the new Administration.

So, put down the smokes and pick up the carrots, Mr. President. We are going to need you for a long time. And we are going to need you to be the kind of a man who makes my nephew say, "I want to be like him" when he grows up.

PS - Now, I love the man but has anyone else noticed that he looks a bit like one of the Easter Island moai? Could be a good thing to have an icon in the Oval Office. Oh, and "Sequestered in Memphis" by The Hold Steady is worth a listen; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: Bumper Stickers

Time for a stripped-down, re-bored, tightly suspended Friday list: this time on awesome bumper stickers.

1. Isis, Isis, Ra! Ra! Ra! I laughed so hard when I saw the gods of Egypt featured in this cheerleading gem that I nearly drove off the road. Still my favorite ever.

2. My President is Charlton Heston. The right-wing nut-job classic rear-bumper answer to the election of Bubba Clinton.

3. Jesus Would Slap the S#*t Out of You. A pal of mine just saw this on a recent drive and we fell out of our chairs laughing about it. Hey, pious Christian types: you better PRAY Jesus doesn't come back while you're still here.

4. Unattended Children Will Be Given Espresso and a Free Kitten. Some say that deliberately kitchy throw-back art and clever sayings have run their course. Still, this one caught me off guard.

5. Obama/Biden 2008. It's on my car. Just below my Tarheel window sticker. Uh oh. Woefully, more than one decal. That way lies madness.

PS - Have you noticed that people who have bumper stickers cannot stop at just one? There are really just two camps--people without them and people with three or more cats and a book on starting your own coven. Oh, and "Touched" by Vast is uh-mazing; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: TV on DVD

One of the great joys of the modern era is Uncle TiVo. But, eeeeeven better is skipping tee vee entirely and just watching shows on DVD. With whole seasons available as boxed sets on a tight turn-around and services like Netflix dishing them up for a reasonable monthly fee, you can enjoy great television the way it was meant to be enjoyed: as a bunch of teeny movies. Below, some of my favorite shows, consumed entirely on DVD. As a special bonus, this 5-4-Fri is brought to you link-free.

1. Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I was once That Guy. I mocked "Buffy" and its fans. I figured the series was fueled by an unholy nexus of middle-aged men who secretly thought Sarah Michelle Gellar was hot and female teens who didn't get their fill of grrl power out of cranking "Jagged Little Pill" on their bedroom CD clock radios. Then an old friend sat me down and made me watch the silent episode. My bad! I was wrong. So wrong. Buffy is for angry girls and nebbishy men who also like awesome writing.

2. Lost. Chant it with me: "J.J.!, J.J.!, J.J.!" Holy cow, this series rocks! Want to scare the crap out of people? Just stare at them with your eyes shut and then open up one eye and make your pupil constrict eerily. Next, appear to them as a ghost mumbling about The Island. This is better than mainlining "24." What a great Christmas gift.

3. Firefly. More Joss Whedon. This uneven premise was excellently executed but still died a famous, one-season death only to be reborn as a Big Damn Movie. I miss Wash. And Kaylee. And Jayne. Sigh. Get it.

4. Angel. In 1999, David Boreanaz made the jump from "Buffy" to his own eminently watchable series. Admittedly, sometimes it got to be "watch David get fat" but most of the time it was "watch Merl get punched in the face." Yea!

5. Bones. More David. But this time with hottie Emily Deschanel as his partner in forensic sleuthing. Great modern-day sex comedy with two actors who have a real on-screen connection and a talented supporting cast.

PS - There was no room to mention the best father-daughter duo since Nancy and Carson Drew, "Veronica Mars." Oh, and "These are Days" by 10,000 Maniacs is some kind of adjective that means iconic+catchy+hummable; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: '80s Movies

Time for a quick recap of films I remember fondly from the '80s. Inexplicably, I am only going to list five of them:

1. Gregory's Girl - I had a crush on a girl who made the cross-country team. This film explained it all.

2. Pauline a la Plage - Young girl intimidated by more worldly cousin learns about love during a summer beach trip. No relation to Seinfield's infamous "Rochelle, Rochelle: A Young Girl's Strange Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk."

3. Pretty in Pink - This needs no explanation. What does need explaining is how Duckie could sink to the level of "Three and a Half Men."

4. Chariots of Fire - Vangelis-fueled goodness about the 1924 Olympic trials of British runners Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell. Good Blake reference, too.

5. Man Facing Southeast - The only thing wrong with this little-seen and excellent Spanish-language film is that it could conceivably have inspired the execrable Kevin Spacey vehicle, "K-PAX."

PS - There are so many more great '80s films. Such as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and the much-cited-by-iClipse "The Sure Thing." No time to list them all. Just start Netflixing John Hughes films as fast as you can. Oh, and "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones is woefully not from the '80s (recorded in the spring of 1990), but it rules; now playing on iTunes. (No matter how good "Right Here, Right Now" is, do NOT buy their album Doubt! Not that I did--lies, all lies--I just, uh, heard that it would be a very bad idea to do so on the basis of one good single.)