Betcha' five dollars he'll kill you dead.

There's some phenomenon, I don't know what it's called. It's, you know, where you hear about something for the first time, and then you notice that very thing occuring, or just happen to catch evidence of this thing over and over, where you never seemed to notice it before. Ok. That was a little abstract. But, you know, say you just hear about, er, Johnny Damon, or something. His hair, or how good he is, or something. Then you happen to catch a glimpse of his name here and there, or overhear conversations all over the place talking about Johnny Damon and related topics. There's some name for this phenomenon, and I'm not describing it very well, but whatever.

Anyway, something very much like that has been happening to me, only somewhat more strangely, and with less of a possibility of some rational, i.e., non-cosmic-coincidence-related, explanation. Everywhere I go, for the past four or so days, I've been followed by the song "Iko Iko". Heard it on the radio for the first time in, what, 15 years? a few days ago. A day after that, I was watching a DVD of SCTV that I got from Netflix, and the musical guest was Dr. John, doing a version of it. The next day I went to see the somewhat underrated thriller "Skeleton Key", in which that song plays a prominent role. The NEXT DAMN DAY I watched Rain Man, and for some unexplained, strange, reason, that song plays during the opening credits.

I can't get away from it, I tell ya'. It's everydamnwhere. Jacamo fee nane.

In other news, during a (long) break from grading, I watched Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory today. It was very good, although I felt it lacked some of the power of his later works. It definitely has great Kubrick moments - it's a nice bridge, I think, between The Killing and his later, more mature, works. One of the things that struck me most by it was how young Joe Turkel looks. I've just always imagined him as the old codger Tyrell from Blade Runner and Lloyd from The Shining. But he's young here, so it's a nice counterpoint.