His chops are so righteous!

Perhaps it was the recent reading of David Gemmell's Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow, but some how that got us here at Wenzel chatting about Homer's Odyssey, which in turn quickly led to a discussion of James Joyce and Ulysses. Only the esteemed Sean Marchetto can lay claim to having read that particular book cover to cover (though we also suspect Marchetto of having read the phone book cover to cover too), but most of us have taken turns at parts of it, and the biopic Nora being a pre-Daily Wenzel afternoon Kino feature. The flow of our conversation however quickly traded literary talk for a more cinematic one, and the various adaptions of the Odyssey that have graced recent screens, most notably George Clooney's O Brother, Where Art Thou, adapted by the fabulous Coen Brothers. Later that evening though, we all received phone calls from a rather ecstatic Elvis Bonaparte. The grand pooh-bah himself told us to tune in to a broadcast of The Sponge Bob Squarepants Movie, that surprising revealed a fair number of Homeric elements.

In talks of other covers and adaptations, Bassano del Grappa is of the firm opinion that Cake's "Long Line of Cars" is a cleverly updated version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky", basing his thinking on the line "We must keep this traffic moving and accept a little sin", suggesting a theme of penance, in keeping with the classic cowboy's driving the Devil's cattle across the sky in payment for their earthly transgressions.