Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: We're Outta Here!

Theme: R.A.M.O.N.E.S - Ramones ft. Lemmy (the narrator from Tromeo & Juliet)

Actual punks pass righteous judgement on the posersphere.

The first Ramones album I ever heard was the live album of their final show. When I went back and heard their OG studio recordings, they seemed way too slow. This is because the Ramones kept playing faster as they went along, with the result that by the end they less resembled that orangutan trying to hammer nails in that one video you've all seen and more resembled Travis the chimp on the fateful day of his gamer uprising.

This is because Johnny, the reactionary chud who invented the punk guitar style*, also forced the band to wear their signature uniform leather jackets and bent his efforts toward endlessly refining and perfecting the sound now most ripped off in all pop music history. I know it's fashionable to pretend prog was actually gr8 and punk ruined everything, but you're wrong on that, and the posers who immediately co-opted punk are right: two-minute songs that sound like Dennis Hopper wilding on that log with a chainsaw are the Platonic form of rock, and everything good about prog found its correct expression in the metal of Crimson Glory, Queensrÿche and Megadeth.

But as much as the sound saved rock from disappearing up its ass completely, it would never have transcended gimmickry without the songwriting, which is funnier than any imitator to this day. The greatest lyric ever written isn't "Scaramouche, can you do the fandango" (???) or "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon"; it's "now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/that I got no cerebellum" from DDT abuse cautionary tale "Teenage Lobotomy". A thousand monkeys on typewriters would replicate the works of Shakeƒpeare twenty times before they'd write something that good. Likewise, "Cretin Hop" consigns your attempts and mine at political incorrectness to the tryhard penalty box of shame. But it's not just the household-name hits that are on parade here: hardcore dabble "Wart Hog" makes the cut along with "The Crusher" from Dee Dee's epochally bizarre rap album. The most inexplicable choice is to end the set (and their career as a band) with a cover of "Any Way You Want It", but it wouldn't be the Ramones if they didn't throw a questionable curveball at the moment least expected.

It is a testament to their singularity that the most ripped-off band in history's like will somehow simultaneously never be beheld again on Earth. Everyone gets one time-machine gig to attend, and this one would be mine, after I was done giving thalidomide to famous boxers' mothers and planting a rotary telephone in Ötzi the ice man's cave.

*We will entertain no hipster ackshyouwallys of any kind.

Helga: Last of the Amazons? - 1. Titanoboa!

Theme: Für Immer - Warlock

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Broken Arrow!

Theme: Quote Unquote - Mr Bungle

SPOILEUSE!!!

The great where-do-you-want-to-eat-tonight standoff continues.

The greatest and best of the 90s' Big Orange Fireball Explosion movies, Broken Arrow is chiefly notable for its use of doing it right - a long-forgotten cinématic technique where the list of boxes you tick looks like this:

Fun, likable, resourceful hero: ✅

Fun, hammy, but credibly menacing villain: ✅

Likable feminine heroine: ✅

Creative action sequences: ✅

Twists and turns in the action to keep it fresh: ✅

Cool scenery porn: ✅

A bit of humour: ✅

≥4 helicopters blowed up: ✅

John Woo is perhaps second only to James Bond in his inexplicable antipathy toward helicopters.

The plot concerns an average day in the life of John Travolta (The Punisher), whose scheme to hijack a pair of nukes for ransom and/or shits and giggles hits a snag only when his copilot and bro Christian Slater catches wind and tries to stop him, enlisting the aid of adorable park ranger Terry (Samantha Mathis) as he goes, for this kinögraph is set in Utah's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, because it looks cool.

In the good old days you just had to stand around with your thumb up your ass waiting for kino clouds to form.

When a movie does everything right, it often leaves little to talk about. The most nonsensical component is the contrived ticking clocks that result no less than twice when one of the nukes is armed. Naturally, these give our heroes just enough time to escape and/or disarm them. While the first time can be overlooked because Travolta needs to get away as well, the second time he's planning to die in the blast, so why set it to five minutes instead of five seconds? Fortunately, "to be moar entertaining" is a perfectly good explanation for this character in-story, because his main motivation seems to be to set himself a challenge and have fun.

This is in fact also my motivation.

It's kind of endearing the way Travolta sort of mentors Slater through the runtime, even though they're enemies for most of it. It's like their broship doesn't have to end just because one of them turns out to be a psycho. You get the impression Slater would have visited Travolta in the can had he been taken alive. Every man should have a bro as tight. Also, the movie has a guy get kicked off a railway bridge, which is worth a star in itself.

I hope he's alright.