Dudley wrote:can anyone tell me the novel or short story that has this little anecdote about men working around vats of something either very hot or very caustic. One of the men falls in, and his father who is one of his workmates, instead of trying to pull him out, just presses his head under with a shovel, to hasten his inevitable death and minimise his suffering. It's a tiny aside, I think, told really calmly.Dudley, I think this is Acid, a short story by the Scottish writer James Kelman which is why you might have been thinking of Irvine Welsh.

Not coneheads... I would've been able to remember coneheads, it's terrifying.

Not Dan Ankroyd, but...phpBB [media]

atomjackfuser wrote:Not Dan Ankroyd, but...phpBB [media]Yes, the burbs!!!! Now I can watch this again!!!

cjh wrote:Dudley, I think this is Acid, a short story by the Scottish writer James Kelman which is why you might have been thinking of Irvine Welsh.Brilliant, Chris, thank you. Having googled his bibliography, I'm guessing it must have been in "Not Not While The Giro", as I've definitely read that, and none of the other collections' titles rang a bell.

mine from back on page one is still up for grabs. i watched etch's suggestion of Defiance, and that wasn't it. lots of similarities - like the setting is definitely right: stereotypical New York slums - but definitely not what's in my head.scntfc wrote:Here's mine: Late 70s, early 80s TV after school special type movie about the dangers of street gangs. i remember a game of baseball/stickball in a vacant lot or something, and the ball gets hit and goes through the window/sunroof of a car and knocks some dude's pizza in his lap, getting red sauce all over his awesome white slacks. this is cause for retaliation, and an epic gang fight ensues... gangsters chasing gangsters around the streets, culminating in one dude getting stabbed in the gut. this movie freaked the shit out of me when i was a kid, and am pretty sure is the sole reason why i didn't join a street gang. it was not the warriors. if i had seen the warriors at that age, i would most definitely have joined a gang because that movie is awesome.this has been bugging me for years now, and still no luck. i even combed through the wikis for after school special type shows and didn't find anything close. help me remember!

This could be a long shot, but I am trying to remember some rock song (from the 70s, I think?)What I can remember is that there was (at least) one part where the guy was talking a story more than singing... and it had to do with him getting a phone call... or maybe his lady answered the phone first... maybe that was it, like she couldn't understand the person calling, and then handed it off to the guy (or I could even have that part wrong?)Anyhow, the upshot of it was like:and I knew it was him because of how he could make his guitar talk...orthere's only one person I know that could make their guitar talk like that...I dunno, something like that, but then, yeah, as you might expect, the other end of the phone call was a dude wailing a talkbox, etc... maybe he was calling from jail? Or not? (I don't know!)Anyhow, my Google-fu is weak on this one, and just turns up like bojillions of Framptron hits.I would have heard this in the mid to late 70s (or *maybe* early 80s, but I don't think so...?)DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT HERE? PLEASE HELP.

Does it get mentioned here?http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk\_box%23Singing\_guitar

Wow, this is not my mother's REO Speedwagon:phpBB [media]

Dang, that seems only the slightest bit familiar. Are you paraphrasing the lyrics? Because yeah, Google is useless here.