Ask MetaFilter posts by Skot

You, Robot?

Skot — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:55:16 -0800

Longshot, probably. A friend of mine is mounting a production of the Capek play RUR (Rossum's [or Rosmer's] Universal Robots) next season, and he's found a low-res photo from a 1923 production that intrigues him. Any chance anyone out there has some better production stills from this show, or knows of *waves robot hands* somewhere to find them? I believe the production was either in Germany or Poland. The photo in question (of the Robot Rebellion) is here.

Clamback! The Worst Elvis Movie Never Made

Skot — Thu, 25 May 2006 20:02:17 -0800

Dorothy Parker has beguiled and confounded me! And she's dead. What a gal. I'm looking for help figuring out a puzzling casual remark from one of her short stories. In her story "You Were Perfectly Fine," in which a young man learns of his misdeeds from the previous drunken evening, there is this passage:

"Was I making a pass at Elinor?" he said. "Did I do that?"

"Of course you didn't," she said. "You were only fooling, that's all. She thought you were awfully amusing. She was having a marvelous time. She only got a little tiny bit annoyed just once, when you poured the clam juice down her back."

"My God," he said. "Clam juice down that back. And every vertebra a little Cabot. What'll I ever do?"

It's that Cabot reference that I don't get. I've Googled my brains out, which took mere seconds, and had no luck. Was clam juice some sort of tony drink for the social set? Cabots? Vertebra? Clam juice? Snuh?

Any ideas? Man, I hope this isn't a dumb question, but it wouldn't be my first, I guess.

Seattle used vinyl merchants?

Skot — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 12:35:45 -0800

My parents are coming to visit my wife and I in July, and they are also bringing their 500+ or so collection of 60s- and 70s-era vinyl (mostly rock, some country). My mother has charged me with the task of finding some retailer who will buy this stuff. Google searches aren't much help in terms of whether or not people suck, though. So I'm wondering: any Seattleites have any good advice on where my folks can sell their old LPs?

(No, they have zero interest in eBaying the stuff. They basically want someone to take the whole pile off their hands. I'm just trying to find someplace that won't bone them.)

I'd like to sign my wife up for a good

Skot — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:45:36 -0800

I'd like to sign my wife up for a good chocolate-of-the-month club for her upcoming birthday. However, they are legion, and I figure most of them probably suck. Any hints/recommendations/warding spells? [Yeah, step on in for more.]

File under Moving Sucks. Without getting

Skot — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 09:55:16 -0800

File under Moving Sucks. Without getting into the disgusting particulars, we have to clean. Specifically, our horrifying, non-ventilated bathroom, which looks like Richard Preston's nightmares. I sprayed some X-14 on the befouled walls, and the attack-molds laughed at it. What are some thoroughly eco-unfriendly death-chemicals I can launch at these horrors?