Tip-Top Quotables: "George R.R. Martin would make a terrible pet sitter," plus a few other great lines this week

My favorite monthly section in old Source magazine issues was "Hip-Hop Quotables," in which the Source editors printed out their favorite new rap verse (or two) of the month, from the first bar to the last bar. "Tip-Top Quotables," which I've named after that Source section, will be a collection of my favorite quotes of the week from anywhere, and maybe one or two of them will be an excerpt from a new hip-hop track, a tiny way to tie things back to "Hip-Hop Quotables."

It won't be a regular thing. But once in a while, I have to keep this blog from looking stale, and using Blogger/Blogspot like it's Twitter or Tumblr won't do the trick because Blogger is neither Twitter nor Tumblr, and I think it looks lame when people use Blogger only for what Twitter or Tumblr are better suited for. Blogger is best suited for long-form content. The other two platforms? Uh, not so much. And a lot of morons on Blogger waste this platform to post either only one sentence, a single image with barely any text beside it or a single video, all things that are better suited for Twitter or Tumblr, which, by the way, is the most frustrating platform to use for composing long-form content. If you want to code something on Tumblr, shoot yourself in the head.

Take it away, Mona Lisa, a.k.a. Liz B.

* "The worst job I ever had was working at American Apparel. It was so gross. I worked at one of the first ones they had in New York in 2005 and it was when people still thought American Apparel was a cool place that cared about sweatshop-free labor. I started to work there because they gave health insurance to their full-time employees, but I didn't get it because I didn't work there for long enough. The owner, Dov [Charney], would come in there and sexually harass everybody and then also give us really long, weird speeches about how everyone thinks he's a hero because he's doing sweatshop-free labor, but, in fact, he's only paying these people a few cents more, but they're doing it in L.A. So I was like 'this is hell, this is so gross.' I really didn't like it there. And I would just sit there and listen to this asshole talk and then he'd say, 'Hey! Let me see you in that gold bikini!' and I'd be like, 'No. No, thank you.'"--Jenny Slate, A.V. Club

* "I'm the Cincinnati's 'Kast in the Cadillac/Midwest trunk funk splashed with some battle rap/Colgate trumped-up chumps don't know how to act/Sold on selling out music in McDonald's ads"--Donwill, "Blow My Mind" by The Other Guys featuring Tanya Morgan

* "It's the worst use of scissors since my failed vasectomy."--Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh) giving his opinion on the veep's ugly new haircut, Veep, "Debate"

* "There are some loopholes. What we need to do is to find those loopholes and find out whether are they loopholes or are they legitimate holes?"--Secretary of Defense Maddox (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) getting nervous and spouting gibberish during the debate, Veep, "Debate"

* "If you can't stand the heat, buy asbestos panties."--Amy Brookheimer (Anna Chlumsky), Veep, "Debate"

* "Ten people died in the Bronx last night, due to a fire that killed 10 people in the Bronx last night during a fire."--Anchorwoman (Jackie Tranchida), Louie, "Elevator (Part 6)"

Author Daniel José Older, reacting to Game of Thrones' latest character death (Photo source: Older)

(Photo source: Kumail Nanjiani)

(Photo source: Nanjiani)

(Photo source: Daniel Radosh of The Daily Show)

* "Both movies, Daniel? What are you smoking over there, and can I have some?"--Edge of Tomorrow and Let's Be Cops composer Christophe Beck, responding to a question Film Music magazine's Daniel Schweiger asked him about how to make audiences invested in the characters in "both these movies" (thanks, Christophe Beck, for putting in our heads the amusing visual of Daniel Schweiger, who actually sounds like Eddie Deezen, getting lifted)

Beck also worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer during what I thought were the show's best seasons (two through four). His "Suite from 'Hush'" is currently part of "AFOS Prime" and "Hall H" rotation on AFOS.

An underground avant-garde film called Frozen has become Beck's most popular project to date. None of the music from Frozen is currently part of "AFOS Prime" rotation. Yes, Beck, Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell were great during Frozen, and I'm glad that a Pinoy musician sonned the competition in the Best Original Song Oscar category (Robert Lopez and his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez shared the Oscar for writing "Let It Go"), but I don't care for show tune music.

(Photo source: Jenny Johnson)

Speaking of the NBA... (Photo source: Desus)

* "The iconic image of Yuri speaking with ferocity at a 1968 anti-war demonstration is branded into my brain, and no doubt countless others--young and old, Asian American and non--who, like me, hope to manifest even a small part of her fearless life and vision. This image of Yuri is audacious, it is righteous, and it still quickens my blood every time I see it. It shows someone who does not look like what we've been conditioned to believe a hero can look like in America, but who was nevertheless propelled by the courage of conviction, who boldly lived her values, and who modeled what justice can look like when we build together."--Cynthia Brothers of Hyphen magazine, on the accomplishments of Asian American activist Yuri Kochiyama, who died on June 1

Five killer samples that most people didn't know originated from film score music

Cee-Lo recently dropped his new single "Fuck You" on the Internet, and the delightfully profane break-up anthem, which originated from a song idea that Bruno Mars and Philip Lawrence of "Nothin' on You" fame pitched to Cee-Lo, has become a viral sensation. Before "Fuck You" (which has spawned a lame radio edit called "Forget You"), the Gnarls Barkley singer and former Goodie Mob MC's most popular track was his 2006 Gnarls hit "Crazy." Even though I got sick of hearing "Crazy" all over the place back in '06, I loved how Danger Mouse, the beatmaker half of Gnarls, sampled an obscure spaghetti western score during "Crazy." Not many people knew that the catchy bass line and strings were copped from Gianfranco Reverberi's "Nel Cimitero di Tucson," a score cue from 1968's Preparati la bara!, a.k.a. Viva Django. Here are five other killer samples that many listeners--including myself in some instances--didn't know came from film score music.

1. Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" drum break, 2009 (from Isaac Hayes' "Breakthrough" from Truck Turner, 1974)
The opening drum solo in "Breakthrough" is the Betty White of drum breaks: old and ubiquitous but reliable and entertaining every time. H.O.V.A.'s biggest hit of his career is the latest of many joints to sample "Breakthrough," an instrumental you can now check out during the daily "Assorted Fistful" block on A Fistful of Soundtracks.

2. Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground" harp melody, 1996 (from John Barry's "Golden Girl" from Goldfinger, 1964) [WhoSampled comparison page]
If you were in college in the late '90s, you probably made out to "6 Underground." Did you know you were actually making out to the music from the dead-naked-chick-covered-in-gold-paint scene from Goldfinger?

3. Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" wordless melody, 1996 (from Ennio Morricone's "Sospesi Nel Cielo" from Malamondo, 1964) [WhoSampled comparison page]
One of my favorite videos from the '90s is the Michel Gondry-directed video for "Sugar Water" (a.k.a. the song that soundtracked Buffy's sexy dance with Xander during her "Joan Collins 'tude" phase). My recent discovery that the duo sampled Morricone's Malamondo score made me love "Sugar Water" even more.

4. Ghostface Killah's "Alex (Stolen Script)" bass line and strings, 2006 (from Henry Mancini's Thief Who Came to Dinner theme, 1973) [WhoSampled comparison page]
MF Doom's sense of humor really comes through in his choice of the theme from the Ryan O'Neal/Jacqueline Bisset caper movie The Thief Who Came to Dinner (when's Warner Archives going to release that flick?) for Ghostface's How to Make It in America-esque tale of a Hollywood thief who comes to dinner--or to be more exact, a P.F. Chang's pitch meeting with the song's title hustler, who's pitching to him the script for Jamie Foxx's Ray biopic--and proceeds to steal Alex's copy of the Ray script. As music critic Jeff Weiss once wrote about this Ghostface chune, "Aspiring MC's should study this like the Rosetta Stone."

5. Wu-Tang Clan's "Rushing Elephants" brass riffs, 2007 (from Morricone's "Marche en La" from Espion, lève-toi, 1982) [WhoSampled comparison page]
My favorite film composer and my favorite experts on martial arts cinema "unite."

Stuff White People Like But This Brown Man Can't Stand #1: The vampire genre

I've got four words for the vampire genre: less bussing, more dusting.

I'm so tired of the popularity of navel-gazing vampire genre franchises like Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and True Blood, which earns some points for being like an anti-Twilight because of its unabashed naughtiness, but I lost interest in the show after its first season because British-born Stephen Moyer's attempt at a Southern accent is terrible, the black characters are the racial equivalent of the overdone "gay best friend" trend, as a Newsweek writer astutely notes in "I Won't Be Seduced by True Blood," and thirdly, the show is too soapy for my tastes.

The only bloodsucker genre pieces I ever liked were the sharply written first few seasons of the Buffy TV series, its underrated Angel spinoff (the student outdid the master during the latter's underwhelming last two seasons on UPN) and John Carpenter's Vampires, which isn't one of Carpenter's best flicks, but it's redeemed by Sheryl Lee, some amusing genre-mocking dialogue from snarky, homophobic antihero James Woods ("It's not like they're a bunch of fucking f--s hopping around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Eurotrash accents, alright? Forget whatever you've seen in the movies.") and a largely unromantic portrayal of vampires.

Otherwise, if I want to watch a 200-year-old pedophile slobber over a hot chick, I'll rent a Woody Allen movie.

AFOS: "All This Has Happened Before" playlist

Airing this week on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the 2008 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "All This Has Happened Before" (WEB93), which features the most memorable season finale cues from Battlestar Galactica, as well as selections from scores to other remakes that outstripped their predecessors like Galactica has (Casino Royale, Buffy). jim.aquino.com is no longer online, as are all the pre-WEB97 playlists I posted there, so I'm reposting each playlist as each pre-WEB97 ep reairs.

1. Bear McCreary, "Passacaglia," Battlestar Galactica: Season One, La-La Land
2. David Arnold, "Blunt Instrument," Casino Royale, Sony Classical
3. David Holmes, "Boobytrapping," Ocean's Eleven, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
4. Christophe Beck, "Suite from 'Hush': Silent Night/First Kiss/Enter the Gentlemen/Schism," Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling, Rounder
5. Bear McCreary, "Prelude to War," Battlestar Galactica: Season 2, La-La Land
6. Kronos Quartet, "Heat," Heat, Warner Bros.
7. Bear McCreary, "Something Dark Is Coming," Battlestar Galactica: Season 2, La-La Land
8. Marco Beltrami, "Bible Study," 3:10 to Yuma, Lionsgate
9. Bear McCreary featuring Bt4, "All Along the Watchtower," Battlestar Galactica: Season 3, La-La Land

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Monday night at midnight, Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday night at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

AFOS: "The Wonderful World of Covers" playlist

Airing this week on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the 2007 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "The Wonderful World of Covers" (WEB91), which contains film and TV theme covers from all over the world, including a slammin' cover of Beyonce's Goldmember track "Work It Out" by the U.K. soul band Speedometer. jim.aquino.com is no longer online, as are all the pre-WEB97 playlists I posted on that site, so I'm reposting each playlist as each pre-WEB97 ep reairs.

1. Speedometer, "Work It Out," This Is Speedometer Vol. II, Blow It Hard
2. Los Straitjackets, "My Heart Will Go On," The Velvet Touch of Los Straitjackets, Yep Roc
3. The Lovejoys, "Streets of San Francisco," And You Don't Stop, Langusta Entertainment
4. Barry Adamson, "The Man with the Golden Arm," The Murky World of Barry Adamson, Mute
5. The Civil Tones, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Theme)," Vodka and Peroxide, Pravda
6. Euroboys, "Enter the Dragon," Jet Age, Sympathy for the Record Industry
7. Laika & the Cosmonauts, "Get Carter," Laika Sex Machine, Yep Roc
8. Green Day, "The Simpsons Theme" (from The Simpsons Movie), Reprise
9. Jimmy Smith, "Walk on the Wild Side," Walk on the Wild Side: Best of the Verve Years, Verve
10. Pressure Cooker, "Space: 1999," I Want to Tell You, Pressure Cooker
11. Triology, "For Love One Can Die," Triology Plays Ennio Morricone, Reverso/BMG Classics/RCA Victor
12. Laika & the Cosmonauts, "Psyko," Laika Sex Machine, Yep Roc
13. The Lovejoys, "Streets of Sao Paulo," And You Don't Stop, Langusta Entertainment
14. Renee Geyer, "Do Your Thing," It's a Man's Man's World, RCA
15. Speedometer, "Work It Out (Beatfanatic remix)," Freestyle Remixed, Freestyle

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Monday night at midnight, Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday night at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

"AFOS A-Go-Go" 09/30/08-10/06/08 playlist

1. Cleavon Little, "I Get a Kick Out of You," Blazing Saddles, La-La Land
2. Frankie Laine, "Signature/Main Title," Blazing Saddles, La-La Land
3. Dave Grusin Trio, "The Long Goodbye," Fitzwilly/The Long Goodbye, Varèse Sarabande
4. Roy Budd, "Jazz It Up (MC/M4)," The Marseille Contract, Castle Music
5. Donald Byrd, "Wilford's Gone" (from Cornbread, Earl & Me), Do You Pick Your Feet in Poughkeepsie?, Paul Nice
6. Joseph Koo, "The Killing Fight" (from The Big Boss), Do You Pick Your Feet in Poughkeepsie?, Paul Nice
7. Danny Elfman, "The Little Things," Wanted, Lakeshore(*)
8. Buffy, Spike, Sweet, Giles, Xander, Anya, Tara and Willow, "Walk Through the Fire," Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling, Rounder
9. Ennio Morricone, "Il Giardino Delle Delizie" (from The Garden of Delights), The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music, Rhino
10. Isaac Hayes, "Source No. 3 (Caffe Reggio)" (from Shaft), Shaft Anthology: His Big Score and More!, Film Score Monthly
11. Quincy Jones, "Theme from The Anderson Tapes," The Reel Quincy Jones, Hip-O
12. Quincy Jones, "Money Runner" (from $), The Reel Quincy Jones, Hip-O
13. Bear McCreary, "The Mask of Fargo" (from the Eureka episode "Noche de Sueños"), Eureka, La-La Land
14. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, "Aggressive Expansion," The Dark Knight, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
15. Thomas Newman, "Jazira Maroun (End Title)," Towelhead, Lakeshore
16. John Morris, "Noble Farewell/Finale," Blazing Saddles, La-La Land

17. Lalo Schifrin, "End Title," Cool Hand Luke, Aleph

(*) An interesting L.A. Times column from June about the recording of "The Little Things" can be found here. It mentions that Elfman recorded an alternate version of "The Little Things" with Russian lyrics for Wanted's Russian release.

A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series returns to the channel schedule next Tuesday.