Dancewich!

I'm alive! I recently got to watch the cutest damn movie, and I was expecting it to be mediocre--Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.



I was watching it on my laptop at the Flying Saucer, since their wifi was out that day. I had my headphones on and I giggled out loud more than once; also, one line caught me off guard and I nearly snorted into my beer. So when the battery died about fifteen minutes before it was over, I just stopped off on the way home and bought it. Absolutely worth the $14 and luckily, the ending didn't stink. (Wouldn't that have been a bitch.)



All the actors were great, but I also found Kat Dennings pretty damn cute. (Uh, her imdb pics kinda SUCK, though, yikes.) And Michael Cera is the only actor I know who can mumble and get away with it. Also, having linked to his imdb page, I see that he was born in 1988. That is really wrong. That poor bastard can finally buy a drink later this year, he's that young.

Anyhoo, it had a couple weak moments ("clean up the girl"??), but they were few and far between and it more than made up for it. A+, it's not even a guilty pleasure, I freely recommend for cuteness and laughs.

Also, I have to recommend an album I bought. My dad sent me a video, To the Ghosts Who Write History Books, by The Low Anthem. I previewed a few other songs and bought the album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. It's a really great album! I think my favorite track is To Ohio (listen!). Also, they have quite a different sound in some of the songs, it's pretty varied! (Hey, Vel, they're playing in Montpelier at the Langdon Street Cafe on April 13th! Argh!)

Nothing really new to report, otherwise. For randomness, I came home one day to find the computer room door closed and a song playing loudly on the other side. It was this song...



(Ooh, look at youtube gettin' all fancy, lettin' you pick borders 'n stuff!) I thought red was appropriate. Though in retrospect, I don't like it. Distracting.

Anyhoo, inside were a ton of red balloons. It seemed like 99, but apparently it was more like 150. D had done it just for randomness and fun. (We were just going to leave them indefinitely, but I did a lot of spring cleaning this past weekend and had to do away with most of them...20 or so oddly remain in the corner of the room.) I should have taken a picture, but I never did!

Speaking of taking pictures, I need to upload pics of the beef beast I bought over the weekend. I got a whole beef brisket from Central Market for a recipe in the new Fine Cooking. It advised to buy flat brisket or the point half, because "that's all you'll find unless you live in Texas barbecue country." GUESS WHERE I LIVE! So I got a whole one, found in the sidecase by the meat counter--11 pounds of GIANT, BLOODY MEAT. You've got to see the pics, this thing had me torn between lust and repulsion.

I suppose there are worse things that could inspire such a reaction, so luckily in this case it was just dinner.

Hmm, I think that's a good place to stop.

The virtues of shelf-reliance

I’ve been doing some research that involves skimming a representative selection of American pop polemicists from the past 10 years, and it seemed pretty zeitgeisty (straitened global circumstances and all) to start in the second-hand bookshops. Oddly, there were loads of lefty tomes (Michael Moore, Al Franken, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky) but very little from the rightists (Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Bernard Goldberg and so on).

However, I did pick up a slightly foxed copy of Freakonomics and, since I’ve been accused of plagiarising said tome, I thought I'd better get round to reading it. So, applying the analytical techniques of Messrs Levitt and Dubner, I can tell you that the political imbalance in two second-hand bookshops proves that: there are no right-wingers in Bangkok; there are lots of right-wingers, but they keep hold of their books (maybe they’re slow readers); there are lots of right-wingers, but they’re quite poor, so every time a second-hand right-wing book appears, they snap it up; there are lots of right-wingers, but they’re functionally illiterate; there are lots of right-wingers but they never go to second-hand shops because they smell funny (the shops, that is, not the right-wingers); there are lots of right-wingers but they never go to second-hand shops because they smell funny (the right-wingers); there are lots of left-wingers, but they have very small apartments, so they’re forever thinning their book collections; there are lots of left-wingers, and they’ve burned all the right-wing books; any or all of the above.

Next week, Chris Anderson on why Middlesbrough will be relegated, and why they won’t and why they might. And Malcolm Gladwell does a funny little dance in his vest and pants.

I'm a corporate attorney, what you need is a good divorce lawyer...or a good pharmacist.

I swear I'm still alive. And I have plenty to write about, I'm just falling behind on the job!

In the meantime, enjoy this 80s awesomeness of Golden Earring's Twilight Zone. I see absolutely no reason why they can't make videos like this anymore. Hell, do they really still MAKE music videos? And does anyone seriously show them anymore?

High wire

Something that could have turned into a meandering meditation on plagiarism and originality at RBP, but it’s the weekend, so I’ll spare you that; and in the Graun, David Simon articulates a philosophy that should be tattooed on the soul of anyone who has ever claimed to be an artist of any kind: “Fuck the average viewer.”

Triple booked

Just to prove I’m a proper writer, like, and don’t just waffle about Jade Goody all day, three books in which I've had a hand have just appeared or are just about to. Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter Happier More Deductive includes my chapter ‘Hyperreally Saying Something: Radiohead, Baudrillard and the Importance of Being Authentic’, alongside the thoughts of far more erudite chin-strokers. It’s published by Open Court on April 1st, and is available from Amazon in the US, or direct from the publishers. UK publication is scheduled for August, so you can pack a copy when you go grouse shooting.

Then there’s the 2009 edition of Thailand Tatler’s Best Restaurants Guide, including my thoughts on conceptual tuna sandwiches and much else. It’s available from a good bookshop near you, provided that good bookshop is in Thailand. But if you’re not in Thailand, you probably won’t need to read it anyway. It’s jolly good though, and I’ve got the cholesterol to prove it.

And if those two aren’t exciting enough, there’s always Vital HR Insights: Best Practices and Case Studies in Asia, published by CCH in Singapore. I’m especially proud of the robot sex scene on page 307.

I believe it's customary to ask after the health of someone recently plugged three times.

This one's going out to Vel, assuming she's still in a Bruce Springsteen frame of mind!

(And fyi, it's rare to see Jon Stewart get all giggly and nervous over an interview...and this is one of 'em. This is like the way the interview might go if I got to talk to Paul Simon (actually JS is far more articulate), but still, it's almost embarrassing. In a good way.)

The interview...

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The new song...

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Goody awful poetry

There has been much gnashing of garments and renting of teeth among the literati about who the next Poet Laureate should be. Gnash not, for I have discovered the perfect candidate. His name is Dermot Byrne, and his application for the post came in the form of a post on the BBC’s Have Your Say forum; specifically, in a thread asking “What is Jade Goody’s legacy?”* Here it is, in full:

Goodnight sweet Jade
Your time has passed
May heaven or hell be filled with your laugh
You may not have been beautiful
You may not have been smart
But like Diana you'll always be in our hearts

What Byrne has done so brilliantly is to create something that has sufficient form that we recognise it as poetry; yet the work contains within it such a dazzling array of technical badness that we start to doubt our frames of reference. “Is this a poem?” becomes “Is anything else a poem?”; in the same way as, when we are confronted with someone of monumental stupidity, we are forced to question how we define humanity. Also, it is possibly unique in the tradition of elegiac verse in that it raises the distinct possibility that the subject might be roasting in eternal, unimaginable torment, thus expressing the mixed responses that the mention of Jade’s name provokes, and doubtless providing great comfort to her family at this difficult time.

In its heartfelt crapness, the poem brilliantly embodies its subject; its seamless blending of form, function and content verges on genius. This makes Dermot Byrne my candidate for the Laureateship.

However, I would also like to draw attention the the contribution from one Maria of New York City, who vouchsafes to us the fact that “I personally think death sucks btw”. How so very true.

* Near enough eight digits, I would have guessed, when you add the book deals, the perfume and the wodge from OK!

I'm sorry for that Knots Landing moment.

You know, I haven't watched South Park in ages, but I've got it on while I'm catching up on writing my articles. And this episode mocking the Jonas Brothers and purity rings is totally fabulous. Complete with Mickey Mouse beating up the brothers while swearing up a storm and forcing them to keep wearing the rings. Nice. I barely know who they are, but I'm still relishing it.

I have to admit I watched a film the other day...it's a little embarrassing. And then explaining why I watched it makes it even worse.

Okay, fine, I watched I Love You, Man.



The reviews seemed positive for what it is, and finding a genuinely funny stupid movie is nearly as difficult as finding a genuinely scary horror movie. And I went out on that limb to go watch it because I had just rented and watched Role Models. Throw in Paul Rudd on The Daily Show this past week, and well, there I was at the theatre.



For the record, Role Models is shockingly funny. (Mom, do not watch it. You might disown me.) I'm just saying, after a really tedious day, and maybe at least one beer, I laughed. The two guys make a great pair--Paul Rudd is always wonderfully dry and deadpan, and Seann William Scott is obnoxious without being loathsome. It was painfully paint-by-numbers on the plot front, but who the hell is expecting a surprisingly original plot? Anyway, if anyone's looking for a little stupid, I absolutely recommend Role Models. (Oh sigh, I really just said that out loud. Truly I am without shame.)

But this new stupid movie? Meh. Totally mediocre. And I enjoyed Jason Segel in Freaks & Geeks, I really did. I wasn't wild about him here, and he wasn't a good counter to Paul Rudd--they were a little too similar for any great comedic effect. I chuckled once or twice, but ultimately I still liked it just because I really enjoyed the point it was trying to make. It wears thin on the jokes and the pace kinda plods, but at least it kinda had something refreshing to say. Total rental, fwiw.

Don't worry. When we go out, you can act like you don't know me.

Also, I am not addicted to crack. Cause I know what you're thinking: what the FUCK? You watched I Love You, Man, when there was a BRAND NEW Clive Owen movie? With a little guilty Julia Roberts fun to round it out? Are you feeling okay?! I really do want to see Duplicity, and I would defend my choice by saying I felt it looked recycled (that trailer, Jesus, LOVE ME, I AM EDGY LIKE OCEAN'S ELEVEN BUT EVEN HIPPER AND TWISTIER WITH A CREAMY CHOCOLATE CENTER), but that's hardly a valid defense in this case. I admit it, I just like to keep even myself guessing.

To kick it up a notch, I came home and made butterscotch crunch ice cream. It tasted a lot like my favorite Ben & Jerry's heath crunch number...it made my weekend, no doubt. I'm just wild like that, get used to it.

La Chanson de Roland II (the cover version)

Legend!ary journalist/musician/raconteur Everett True is reinventing himself yet again, this time as an academic, a process we can all follow in his thought-provoking new blog. Like Socrates with access to the complete K Records back catalogue, he poses questions that bounce between alt-rock, lit-crit, cult-studs and back again.

Here’s a frinstance, with specific reference to Roland Barthes: “Have there been any famous examples of post-structuralists being reprimanded for plagiarism?”

Funny you should ask, ET. One of the key books in my intellectual development (could that sound any more poncy?) was Myths and Memories, by Gilbert Adair. It was essentially a reworking of Barthes’s Mythologies, but from the point of view of a Scot born in 1944, rather than a Frenchman born in 1915. That said, Adair does explicitly acknowledge his debt; and after I'd read it, I went on to read Barthes, and then Baudrillard and Debord, and even tried to get into Deleuze, so nobody missed out, especially when the royalty cheques came round.

Essentially, Adair can’t be accused of plagiarism because he tells us that he’s plagiarising; he offers a knowing, known pastiche, not a forgery. Matt Barton, in his essay A Critique of Plagiarism, suggests that context is all:

My purpose here is not to praise dishonesty or dismiss it as harmless. What I am arguing is that a student who downloads a paper and submits it as her own is not so much guilty of “literary theft” as she is of lying about the type of work she performed.

So, provided she subtitles her essay ‘A Post-structuralist Tribute to Wikipedia’, she’s OK. If she doesn’t, she gets an ‘F’.

The thing is, if we follow the logic of Barthes’s Death of the Author (essentially, that as soon as a text is read, it ceases to be the sole intellectual property of the poor sap who typed it), we are all – including the reader – writers; and we are all – including the writer – readers. If credit for authorship is shared, so is any culpability for plagiarism.

One of Small Boo’s least favourite business maxims is that one about not pointing your finger at someone else, because three will point back at you. As she so eloquently notes, this is not true, provided you point like Alvin Stardust does, with all your other fingers splayed out in different directions. And in a culture where authorship is dead, it is not to Barthes that we must turn for the final verdict, but to Stardust: we are all plagiarists; we are all plagiarised; his leatherette fingers are pointed at you and me alike. Alvin ripped off 1968-era Elvis, and was in turn ripped off by Travis in Blake’s 7. We are victims, we are villains; we are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon; in the great continuum of creative thought, Everett True is Roland Barthes is Gilbert Adair is one of the drummers from the Glitter Band.

And I bet Socrates never got an answer like that.

Isn't it possible to be a sober person without having to be a good person?

This totally made me giggle.

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Good mourning

Thoughts about Jade and Natasha, at First Drafts.

Chopper was my first lesson in the vast difference between myth and reality.

Alex recently sent me an article about comfort movies and while I have a list on my sidebar of my top 100, the idea of scaling it down to 10 is borderline impossible. It really depends on my mood, you know? But I tried.

Also, I had 5 honorable mentions but my dad is right, that's totally cheating. ;) So here it is, in alphabetical order. (And I feel totally unoriginal now, btw!)

All About Eve



Bandits



Bridget Jones' Diary



Contact



Kicking and Screaming



L.A. Confidential



Party Girl



Stand By Me



Streets of Fire



When Harry Met Sally



For the record, my dad's were

Nobody's Fool
That Thing You Do!
Oliver's Travels
Twister
My Night at Maud's
Babette's Feast
Guantanamera
Miracle on 34th Street
My Dinner with Andre
The World of Henry Orient


And Alex's were:

Diva
Strange Days
Blade Runner
Beautiful Creatures (2000)
Chungking Express
Into the Night
Lethal Weapon
The Lost Boys
Subway (1985)
The Thin Man

And Veloute's were:

Wrath of Khan
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
Tampopo
Miracle on 34th St
Lord of the Rings movies
Firefly (I tried to leave this out b/c it's a TV series, but I see Oliver's Travels, so I feel justified!)
Casablanca
The Matrix
Watership Down
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

(She wasn't sure about the 10th spot, but Priscilla seemed to be winning.)

Dunce in a lifetime

Two more good examples of wordsmithery (albeit neither of them a patch on Roland’s moment of dizzy brilliance from yesterday).

In the Guardian's obituary of the diplomat Nicholas Henderson, his group of schoolfriends is said to have shared “the horror of the dim”, a phrase that veers perilously close to snobbery but you do rather see where they were coming from. And for the benefit of the aforementioned dim, Rod Liddle in the Times succinctly explains why those ghastly protesters in Luton should not have been banned: “Proper western liberal democracy is about accommodating all forms of fabulous stupidity”. Nice.

And on a less exalted level, I discuss the in-concert crapness of one of my favourite bands, and encourage others to do the same, here.

PS: But far more significantly, lock up your slightly disreputable-looking boychildren, the Spinster's back!

Le La Chanson de Roland

Today I’ve been doing some research into buzzwords and phrases of the Noughties, with an interesting off-piste into the world of protologisms: words that are specifically created and promoted in the hope that they will become widely adopted, and the person responsible will be able to carve out a small personal fiefdom in the Republic of Words. There's something a little tacky about the process; it's like manufacturing and promoting a faux indie band, and inventing a back story about how they met in the toilets at a My Bloody Valentine gig.

A real, effective, resonant neologism, I reckon, appears in the heat of the linguistic moment, in an environment that fosters and favours spontaneity and succinct wit — Twitter for example.

I can’t claim to have spawned a good new word; few of us can. But I can report that today, at 10:58 GMT, the magnificent Fat Roland came up with “net-loafing twazmuppet” And although I had no part in its creation, when Roland steps up to accept the award for the OED Interwebnet Phrase Of 2009, I’ll allow myself a titchy frisson of pride in the fact that I was the first person to whom it was applied.

I'm pretty good friends with the school nurse...she's a divorcee.

I went to the neatest garden today! It's about an hour west of my house, in Weatherford, called Clark Gardens.



The best part was that while it was chilly and cloudy while I was driving, by the time I got there the sun was out and it was fairly warm.





Dwarf Flowering Almond...



There are lots of places like this for sitting and reading...



And there are at least two huge decks...



...with little kitchen areas!







This one was on the other side of the park, but its lake had about 30 or so ducks.



There were lots of halls like this, many of which weren't green yet. Their Spring Festival thing is the first weekend in April, and knowing Texas weather, it should be fully green by then!



The place is HUGE. I'm sure I may have missed at least some of it. This was especially pretty...



The downside is that every time I go now, I'm going to want it to be like it was today: deserted. I think I saw maybe 10 people? I have a feeling it is rarely that way.

Also, a little odd bonus to the gardens: they have this area called Clark Station for miniature trains. Just on the other side of the rainbow...thing.



And they're really cool! They are, as my friend Nella might say, "cute as fuckin' buttons." I saw at least three; this one has a little red caboose (just for you, mom)...



But the little coal train was my absolute favorite. So cute.





So I highly recommend going! I was there for nearly two hours and I didn't even have food or books!

I started fooling around...then I started screwing around...which is fooling around without dinner.

Many thanks to Alex for recommending these yummy pretzels from Smitten Kitchen. I did just make the big ones (they're not even that big)--they were so easy and delicious! Smitten Kitchen was recently mentioned in an article my dad sent about the 50 best food blogs, and that article is really worth a look...

But my pretzels are brought to you by my NEW CANON REBEL XS! So there was just drooling all around. My kitchen is usually not picture-friendly since the lighting sucks, but this camera (lens) has a built-in stabilizer, which I previously only had on my 300mm lens.

The dough begins...



And rises for an hour...



After rolling em out and twisting, you poach the little suckers...



And they rise a little more...



Cooking time! (The shadow makes it appear as though they are drastically uneven but this was not the case!)



Mmmm.



For dipping we used wasabi mustard, honey nut cream cheese and queso. This was possibly not the best thing to make if you're starting a diet that weekend, but oh well. Isn't that what "tomorrow" is for?

And while I was waiting for the dough to rise, I wandered into the next room to see if the fire needed more poking...and was happy to see someone enjoying it...



So I had to bother him, naturally.



And then someone got jealous and threw himself down for equal love.



And then they just hung out here, nice and sloth-like, for the remainder of the evening.

Duchy original

More shavings from the cultural Parmesan:

1. A vignette from Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, which would appear, annoyingly enough, to be as good as everyone says it is:

Often I was joined by a very kind widow in a baseball cap who conducted an endless and apparently fruitless search and murmured to herself, for some reason, about Luxembourg.

It’s the subject of the murmuring that’s so perfectly chosen: Belgium or Cleveland would be too obvious; Mongolia or Ouagadougou too self-consciously wacky. But Luxembourg is just right.

2. In the BBC3 documentary Deborah 13: Servant of God, the eponymous pubescent creationist goes to stay with her equally devout but slightly less intense brother Matthew at university. He introduces her to the joys of clubbing, but leaves the floor when Katy Perry’s lesbian-till-graduation hit ‘I Kissed A Girl’ comes on: “I’m not going to dance to this song because I don’t agree with it,” he announces as he flounces. (Incidentally, did anybody else think Matthew was the campest fundamentalist Christian they’d ever encountered?)

As Matthew and Deborah stand outside assessing the experience, a slightly déshabillé young lady stumbles over and asks if anyone might be good enough to write on her prominently proffered ladybumps.

Matthew demurs, having previously recounted how he’d fended off the amorous attentions of a mud-spattered wench with the horrified retort, “you’re dirty!”; he's clearly a very picky young man. He then determines that she’s a fresher, and asks: “Why are you letting people write on your boobs on your first night?”

“I’m not,” she responds, “this is, like, my third night.”

3. And following on from the earlier reminscences about Uncle Tom Dolby and all, at Rock’sBackPages, I attempt to concoct a retrospective pop genre: Postmodern Futurism.

Don't you destroy enough dough on your own show?

For anyone who has been following the Jon Stewart/CNBC clusterfuck, tonight was The Big Night when he had Jim Cramer on his show.



Cramer could not have been any more acquiescing from the get-go (I heard that just before going on, someone pulled him aside and said, "You know what happened to Crossfire, right?"), and yet Jon Stewart totally went to town on his ass. (Yet he was very cool about it, there was no assholery or douchebaggery for miles.) He fully admitted that Cramer was not his intended target and that it was a shame for him to have to be the face of this debate, but it never stopped Stewart from asking question after question, calling him on all of it.

The entire show was the interview, and it still didn't all air. Apparently if you go to the website, you can see the whole thing.

I totally heart Jon Stewart.

**UPDATE**: My dad sent me this article, which has all the links for the full interview.

Crystal balls

I recently picked up a copy of Our Future: Dr Magnus Pyke Predicts, a paperback from 1980 in which the wildly gesticulating boffin has a guess at what life might be like 50 years hence:

News is what journalists put into newspapers and news bulletins. Because we get news from a number of different channels, it does not follow that we are any better informed.

Which should remind us that transmission of facts was hardly perfect even before the Babel of the blogosphere got in on the act. But then the good doctor goes and spoils it with his guess at how the news might be physically delivered:

...newspapers could be printed on washable nylon sheets, to avoid the necessity of cutting down so many trees.

Oh well. At least old Magnus had a few more strings to his bow:



Sad to note from Dr Pyke’s Wikipedia page that his later years were dogged by people yelling “SCIENCE!” at him in the street.

(For some reason, people used to say I looked like Thomas Dolby. Or the saxophonist from Haircut 100. Or even John Denver. When really, I knew I was Andy Partridge.)

Everybody does it in America!

I love the randomness of the internet. And not just the fact that everyone comes here looking for "penis piercing," "penis snake," and "man with double penis." (I have no idea why that brings them here...they must be getting to page 18 on the Google and then clicking? So now I'm just doing my part to bump myself up by mentioning it ALL IN ONE POST.) But anyhoo, I was checking my stats on the site where I post film reviews, and my whole week is the usual low-numbered hits...except for Monday. Monday had an insane amount of hits.

This time last year, I had about a 6,000% increase in hits when imdb linked to my Ten Best St. Patrick's Day films. This time? Not only did no one link to anything, of all things, it's for Horror Express and nearly all of them found that article by google searching "cushing lee horror film." Did I miss something? Is there a giant film class out there researching this topic? Why did everyone and their dog suddenly, randomly search for this? Seriously, like 500 people looked at it yesterday. So weird.

But whatever racks the pennies up is okay by me.

Just one fucking thing after another

Forgive the fragmented nature of this post, which rather reflects real life at the moment. (Occupying my in tray right now: wine labels; upholstery; Leonard Cohen; 9/11; lost cheques; ants.)

1. I am now also blogging at Rock’sBackPages: this is my first effort.

2. Someone called Stephen Jones (see comments) appears to have got it into his pretty little head that I’m something to do with a cabal of swivel-eyed free-market fundamentalists called the Adam Smith Institute. Well I’m blimmin’ well not, OK?

3. Please go and check out my friend Stuart’s site, Your 10 Movies. It’s not quite buzzing yet, but the more people who show up to argue about whether The Seventh Seal is better than High School Musical 3, the better.

4. Did you know that in the first 11 years of the Academy Awards, the Best Director Oscar was on seven occasions won by a man named Frank?

You know, even though we've watched Pretty Woman like, 36 times, I never get tired of making fun of it.

When most women get depressed, I assume they go look at pictures of puppies and kittens to make them laugh. And I certainly enjoy the occasional glance at Cute Overload, sure.

But when I'm feeling down? I head over to Garfield Minus Garfield...as you can readily tell, the concept is to remove Garfield from the entire strip. It is the most depressing thing ever but I cannot stop laughing my ass off.







Mix in a little alcohol and it's pure joy.

How can you tell a Frenchman's been in your backyard? Your trashcans are empty and your dog's pregnant.

Speaking of movies that continue to be classics that I can quote line by line, we've now moved on to Stand By Me. It never gets old and it never fails to make me laugh.



I wish I had more pull in the world, I would totally bring "boss" back. Ok, maybe not.

We were just discussing the rating (it's R...presumably mostly for language...the leech scene might not have helped) and how unusual it is that it basically stars a bunch of kids (aging from about 12 to 15), yet it's a fairly hard R. I actually really wish more movies were like that these days, but it's rarely the case. So many movies are dumbed down, lame, tame and generally witless. It's hard to think of a comparable film with realistic dialogue for kids this age, but I could be overlooking something I suppose? Mmm, oh yes, She's All That, absolutely.



Some of my favorite trivia bits from imdb...

While practicing his lines, Jerry O'Connell was incredibly impressed that, as an 11-year old, he was being allowed to swear.

When they were filming the scene where Gordie and Vern are about to be run over by the train, Wil Wheaton and Jerry O' Connell did not look scared enough; in frustration Rob Reiner yelled at them to the point where they started crying and that's when they were able to film the scene.

The pond the boys fall into was a man made pool because the crew wanted them to be "safe and secure" and didn't want to put them a real pond because they didn't know what was in it. But Corey Feldman stated in a interview the joke of the whole thing was they built and filled it with water in June and by time they got to film the scene it was in August. So it been out in the woods for 3 months and they didn't know what was in it anyway.

Great ending, can't wait to see Wesley Crusher take on Jack Bauer, kwim? ;)