What's your white whale? Post something you've been trying to find for ages

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What's your white whale? Post something you've been trying to find for ages

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Dick Swiveller: Mar 2, 2011

Peanut Butter posted:

1. A book I read in high school. I don't remember a lot of it, but the tone was really melancholy and at the end the main kid breaks into a (school? public leisure centre?) and tries to swim in the pool where he gets trapped under the pool cover and drowns. The ending shocked me and it's been burned into my brain ever since. It might have been set in Australia, and it may have had a bird on the cover, but I'm not sure.

I dunno enough of his stuff to say for sure but if there's any chance that the writer and not just the setting was Australian this sounds like the sort of poo poo Tim Winton writes. His books, which always involve swimming or surfing and drowning and usually jerking off, ended up in a lot of high schools here and I think he did all right in the UK, could be worth checking out synopses for his books around that period if you can find 'em. Problem is if it's a book about a drowning in Australia that's like half of the literary realist fiction/YA stuff written here for a few decades.

I have a couple of white whales:

1) I remember as a kid watching a recording of this play - I think it had been specifically set up to record and release on video. It was like a Greek myth thing, I think, possibly the Oddyssey or Jason and the Argonauts or something, and I have pretty vivid flashes of a bit where the characters are on a ship and get attacked by a giant squid, maybe or maybe not the kraken. So huge production values for a play - big prop ship, big prop squid. I remember the tentacles, the main active part of it, being I think like fabric stretched over spaced out wooden hoops and then dragged around possibly by wires overhead or maybe even stagehands running about with like puppet poles. I think the head of the squid was either not seen or just a static part of the prop. My very vague memory of it is that it was pretty clear it was meant to look proplike rather than purely realistic, but that the effect was pretty staggering and cool. I was really into giant squid for a while as a kid and I'm pretty sure it all stemmed from this wild loving play. Haven't been able to find a trace of it since. I would've watched it in the early to mid nineties. I'm pretty certain it was real but every time I search for it I get a little less sure.

2) Absolutely longest shot in the world but I got home late one night maybe six to eight years ago and turned on Rage, an Australian music video show, and saw this song that I liked a lot but I missed the little identifier chiron thing and I've really wanted to track it down since. I caught the back half of the song - the video was the band, three or four people maybe, standing against a brick wall shot at a sort of slight side-and-up angle. Pretty low quality video, obviously done on the cheap. The other band members may have come and gone from the wall but the lead singer was always there, kind of a little bit chubby, generic looking white dude, dark hair and a button-down. The song had a Joy Division as-interpreted-through 90s moody indie vibe, with lowish production values but in a way that could easily have been intentional, very solemn, mostly clean guitars, I think mostly just chords although there may have been some small lead part. The only lyric I remember is "keep warm", MAYBE "stay warm" but I don't think so. Guy had a lowish voice, sort of mournful croon. This was repeated pretty often, I think as the last chorus blended into an outro.

I'm assuming this one is a lost cause because it's probably some local band that was around for a minute and then faded away, but due to the nature of the show it could have been that or some American band with a cult following, it could've been current to the time or older, it could've been anything. It'll pop into my head from time to time and bug me like hell and I assume that a) I'll have to spend hours on lyricfinder going through every song with "keep warm" in the lyrics and b) that this will be fruitless and I'll die wondering, cursing myself for not looking up the Rage playlist when I had the chance.

Dick Swiveller fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Aug 3, 2019

# ? Aug 3, 2019 16:31

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 10:26

Call Your Grandma: Jan 17, 2010

Bomrek posted:

I've been looking for a weird Sinbad movie that my family had on vhs when i was really young in the early nineties.

İn it, Sinbad and his shorter, fatter comic relief character go on 3 or 4 adventures. They're separated from their crew, captured and have to escape a palace (i think?), confront the Rok, get lost at sea in a tiny raft, and take down the cyclops! And then the film abruptly ends.

İ remember the thing with the Rok taking place in a desert and they think it's eggs are boulders at first. And when they're adrift in the raft it was the first time there's a bit of dialogue that ends the scene where the comic relief asks "why didn't you tell me?" And Sinbad says "you never asked".

During the cyclops fight the rest of the crew is there for some reason too, and they have to break out of a cage together.

The animation quality was really up and down, mostly down. İt might have come from Eastern Europe? İ say that because as an adult that's what the style of drawing and animation reminds me of. İ really want to find it again, it was my childhood favorite movie and i watched that tape endlessly. I'd love to see if it's anything like my memories.

When you say animation, did you mean the claymation one? Because that had him fighting a roc and a cyclops (and also some skeletons from an evil wizard) but I didn't think it was obscure at all. He ends up blinding the cyclops with a fire and also most of his sailor friends also die some pretty grisly deaths. Is that the one?

That's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and it's a pretty important film because it's one of Ray Harryhausen's works and he's basically the grandfather of CGI.

# ? Aug 3, 2019 16:35

Linux Pirate: Apr 21, 2012

I've been looking for this game for I don't know what kind of OS, something from the mid 90's. It's was a top down shoot em up and had amateurish, but descent graphics. It's wasn't in the Japanese visual style of 80's and 90' shoot em ups. You had four planes to pick from, each with there own shooting style, one was like a yellow throwing star that shot all in four directions. First level was over a pretty basic grass and dirt setting with turrets on buildings scattered here and there and various flying enemies, The second lever was in space, you where in a rocket ship and the game play switched to a side scroller shooter, think R-Type but way less detailed. That's the best description I can give.

My brother and I have been searching for years and haven't found anything close.

E: misplaced sentence.

Linux Pirate fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Aug 4, 2019

# ? Aug 3, 2019 17:21

Salty Josh: Jul 13, 2016; Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.; Nap Ghost

There was a pleasant song with the lyrics:

...keeping me here with your eyes closed

I can't find it, and the only things that keep popping up are r&b songs.

Its more of a melodic guitar/voice piece than anthing else.

# ? Aug 3, 2019 20:35

PIZZA.BAT: Nov 12, 2016

besides the usual porn / cam girl from 2004 that�s lost forever story we all have for me it�s a selfie i took for a mod challenge back in the LF days. i was hung over as gently caress and dehydrated and actually looked real good in it but i never saved it and the forum was wiped out in the great purge so it�s gone forever.

i know some of you keep archives of this poo poo so if you have it please PM me. i looked real cute. also PM me if you have the world archive of porn and a rainman knowledge of every video in it

# ? Aug 4, 2019 04:15

Lpzie: Nov 20, 2006

speaking of LF, if someone remembers a video that was posted there once about some woodland creatures, gnomes? squirrels? i dunno, but they lived together in harmony but then capitalism showed its face, with smoke stacks on factories and it tore the community apart. would like to see it again.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 09:35

internet celebrity: Jun 23, 2006; College Slice

There was a dude who posted in musicians lounge like 10 years ago who made really good metal under the name Vitamins and Minerals of Death and I've been trying that stuff for ages. There was one song called Clams that was basically two guys arguing about clams over sick rear end riffs and I need it back in my life.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 10:52

CheeseThief: Dec 28, 2012; Two wholesome boys to brighten your day

Robert Sheckley's Status Civilization:

Sci fi novel set on a prison planet, new prisoners start as peons and become free citizens by earning it. The main character becomes one right away by killing a man of higher rank in self defense. The planet is strange and hostile, for example they have a church that worships evil.

Anyway the main character eventually sneaks back to earth and relearns his past, he was wrongly imprisoned because he witnessed a murder and all earth citizens are brainwashed into confessing any crimes they commit. His brain washing kicked in when he saw the murder and made him turn himself in.

The copy of the book I had ends with the main character standing in front of a broken mirror having overcome his brain washing, then it just ends. I'd swear there were pages missing, another chapter that wasn't there or something.

If anyone has read this book just tell me the ending, did it stop there or was there more? It feels weird that it never resolved anything but the brain washing.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 11:39

Wrageowrapper: Apr 30, 2009; DRINK! ARSE! FECKIN CHRISTMAS!

Lpzie posted:

speaking of LF, if someone remembers a video that was posted there once about some woodland creatures, gnomes? squirrels? i dunno, but they lived together in harmony but then capitalism showed its face, with smoke stacks on factories and it tore the community apart. would like to see it again.

Goddammit now you have me thinking of this short film I saw years ago, maybe early 2000's maybe late 90's. Probably the same thing you're thinking of, probably not. It was claymation and the woodland creatures were either monkeys or apes and they were all living on a giant space turtle ala Discworld and they go through civilisation in fast forward eventually polluting and destroying everything until the giant space turtle has enough and wipes them all out.

This memory also led to another memory of a New Zealand show that was also claymation and was about animal wrestling and that's all I got.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 12:23

ElectricBlizzard: Jun 24, 2011; "I never met a monster I didn't like"

internet celebrity posted:

There was a dude who posted in musicians lounge like 10 years ago who made really good metal under the name Vitamins and Minerals of Death and I've been trying that stuff for ages. There was one song called Clams that was basically two guys arguing about clams over sick rear end riffs and I need it back in my life.

I dug up an old harddisk for you and found it: Satans Penguin - Clams (gaybar) http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=62799133673126941528
enjoy!

# ? Aug 4, 2019 13:32

KiteAuraan: Aug 5, 2014; JER GEDDA FERDA RADDA ARA!

I recall this edutainment adventure game on either Windows 95 or 98. It was in Egypt and you could enter Abu Simbel and get yelled at by a sitting statue of Osiris with glowing red eyes.

Never once have I been able to figure out what the gently caress the name of the game was.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 13:40

big trivia FAIL: May 9, 2003; "Jorge wants to be hardcore,
but his mom won't let him"

2002-ish, 3AM episode of Jerry Springer, a poindexter-looking audience member stood up to comment and blurted out "I say, she must be a prudent investor, for there's a bony precipice PROTRUDING from her hindquarters!"

Jerry just said "alright" and I've been trying to find a video of it ever since

# ? Aug 4, 2019 13:53

COPE 27: Sep 11, 2006

I really unironically need a copy of the dole fruit company's edutainment game "five a day adventures", but the original Mac cd-Rom game not the online one.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 16:28

mysterious frankie: Jan 11, 2009; This displeases Dev- ..van. Shut up.

Lpzie posted:

speaking of LF, if someone remembers a video that was posted there once about some woodland creatures, gnomes? squirrels? i dunno, but they lived together in harmony but then capitalism showed its face, with smoke stacks on factories and it tore the community apart. would like to see it again.

Was it something David The Gnome related? That feels right.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 16:30

Jenny Agutter: Mar 18, 2009

Lpzie posted:

speaking of LF, if someone remembers a video that was posted there once about some woodland creatures, gnomes? squirrels? i dunno, but they lived together in harmony but then capitalism showed its face, with smoke stacks on factories and it tore the community apart. would like to see it again.

Are you thinking of yellow cake? https://youtu.be/fGH1iu_NTVU

# ? Aug 4, 2019 17:56

DocBubonic: Mar 11, 2003; Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis

Pastry of the Year posted:

This was published in 1977, so it very well could have still been on the shelves, especially in a school library, and was roughly the print format you describe.

Searching for the title and such online also brings back a lot of reviews along the lines of "I'd been looking for this for years," etc., so it seems like it made an impression. You can read the whole text on the Internet Archive, and there are plenty of single page scans to look at, as well.

Holy poo poo! I don't know how you found that, but I'm really impressed. Thanks!

Edit: I'm not surprised that other people remember this as fondly as I do. I think the illustrations really stuck in my head.

DocBubonic fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Aug 4, 2019

# ? Aug 4, 2019 19:22

GORILLA BASTARD: Jun 20, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Willfrey posted:

Who had the biggest cock? It was dopey wasnt it

My uncle Patrick

# ? Aug 4, 2019 20:09

Cowslips Warren: Oct 29, 2005; What use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?; Grimey Drawer

Spicy Queso Sun Chips. Costco no longer carries them.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 21:04

Lpzie: Nov 20, 2006

Jenny Agutter posted:

Are you thinking of yellow cake? https://youtu.be/fGH1iu_NTVU

yeh that looks like it. not the message i recall it having, but also i was a dumber person so that could explain it.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 21:23

bitmap: Aug 8, 2006

Jenny Agutter posted:

Are you thinking of yellow cake? https://youtu.be/fGH1iu_NTVU

I believe you mean the waif of persephone by the same artist, Nick Cross.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 23:30

The Dregs: Dec 29, 2005; MY TREEEEEEEE!

Here's one I've been looking for for like 20 years, even posted in these threads before. This was mid to late 80's. I had a Choose Your Own Adventure book that was extra super hard. It bragged about it on the cover. It was 2-3 times as thick as a regular CHOA book, and I don't think it was affiliated with them at all, nor Lone Wolf. It was sci-fi themed, and I think the cover had some space man cresting a hill with a gun in one hand. It was mostly red. I never did beat that fucker.

# ? Aug 4, 2019 23:53

pseudanonymous: Aug 30, 2008; When you make the second entry and the debits and credits balance, and you blow them to hell.

Cowslips Warren posted:

Spicy Queso Sun Chips. Costco no longer carries them.

I quite liked that vanilla toothpaste that was all the rage like ~10-15 years ago.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 00:08

dee eight: Dec 18, 2002; The Spirit
of Maynard

An after school type tv episode where a guy (LeVar Burton maybe?) interviews mummers before the mummers parade and gets to see them setting up 'the sardine dance'. The actual scene of the parade is an amazing thing I need to see once again.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 00:15

Rebel Blob: Mar 1, 2008; Extinction for our time

The White Dragon posted:

two things from when i was really young

1) a picture book about a little girl named ruby(?) who lived in a world where everyone turned into animals under the light of the (red?) moon, but she didn't have this power and she felt left out. her parents always told her, don't worry about it, you will get the power eventually, but she didn't want to wait and went on a journey to see if she could find out how to turn into an animal. various things happen and i don't really remember the details but at the end she can turn into a bird. book had to have come out no later than 1992.

I remember that book, took me a while to find it but here it is: Red Sun Girl. There is also the sequel Blue Sun Ben.

For some reason, these books seem to be pretty obscure.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 00:48

Animal-Mother: Feb 14, 2012; RABBIT RABBIT
RABBIT RABBIT

A good essay on the symbolic meaning of the white whale and why Ahab was so singularly obsessed with Moby Dick. "Oh, it just stood for mortality." C'mon. :cmon:

# ? Aug 5, 2019 01:17

internet celebrity: Jun 23, 2006; College Slice

ElectricBlizzard posted:

I dug up an old harddisk for you and found it: Satans Penguin - Clams (gaybar) http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=62799133673126941528
enjoy!

Holy poo poo thank you! I don't know where I got the name Vitamins and Minerals of Death from, maybe that was someone else who was active at the same time.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 01:53

George Zimmer: Jun 28, 2008

There�s a commercial from when I was a kid that�s permanently burned into my memory, but I haven�t seen it since. This would have been 1996 or 1997. The commercial alternates between a 35ish woman exiting her office while wearing a long raincoat and a man pensively waiting in his car. The woman finally makes it to the guy�s car when, right in the headlights, she opens her raincoat to reveal some lingerie, presumably the product actually being sold. The man wryly smiles, end scene.

Why do I remember this? Why do I seek to see it again? Because I am mentally damaged.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 02:59

a few DRUNK BONERS: Mar 25, 2016

Animated video, creepy. A man drives a truck into the woods with his dog. Strange things start happening to him. He goes fishing and catches half a fish. His truck breaks down. His dog runs away into the woods. The last scene is him hiding in a stove surrounded by elves (scary elves).

No combination of these words gets me anything remotely close. This must have been from around 2005.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 07:11

curlingiron: Dec 15, 2006; b l o o p

a few DRUNK BONERS posted:

Animated video, creepy. A man drives a truck into the woods with his dog. Strange things start happening to him. He goes fishing and catches half a fish. His truck breaks down. His dog runs away into the woods. The last scene is him hiding in a stove surrounded by elves (scary elves).

No combination of these words gets me anything remotely close. This must have been from around 2005.

I got you, friend: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt5lB-RoAi4

# ? Aug 5, 2019 07:53

a few DRUNK BONERS: Mar 25, 2016

curlingiron posted:

I got you, friend: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt5lB-RoAi4

cool thanks

# ? Aug 5, 2019 07:58

Slore Tactician: Aug 27, 2005; MOURN!

edit: already found

Slore Tactician fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Aug 5, 2019

# ? Aug 5, 2019 08:11

just another: Oct 16, 2009; these dead towns that make the maps wrong now

The music video for Remember by Corky and the Juice Pigs. Saw it on Much Music's Fromage (or maybe Al Music) when I was a kid and since then I've only been able to find a video of a live version.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 08:18

Slore Tactician: Aug 27, 2005; MOURN!

I�ve been searching for this promo for well over a decade:

DMX (in his crackhead era) did a promo for UPN where in he rapped the Friday night lineup to the tune of �Party Up�

We got Moesha up in here, up in here.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 08:25

ElectricBlizzard: Jun 24, 2011; "I never met a monster I didn't like"

internet celebrity posted:

Holy poo poo thank you! I don't know where I got the name Vitamins and Minerals of Death from, maybe that was someone else who was active at the same time.

I could be wrong about this but this one came from one of the musician's lounge themed compilation challenges (the same one where the other classic "dig a grave for your dick" came out.)
Most of the submission were done under a different name, could be that it's the same guy.

Vitamins minerals of death however did release a small album on the forums i think, i still have the folder structure on my mp3 player but the tracks are gone (but you can still find a some live performances on youtube)

# ? Aug 5, 2019 10:34

Pastry of the Year: Apr 12, 2013

The Dregs posted:

Here's one I've been looking for for like 20 years, even posted in these threads before. This was mid to late 80's. I had a Choose Your Own Adventure book that was extra super hard. It bragged about it on the cover. It was 2-3 times as thick as a regular CHOA book, and I don't think it was affiliated with them at all, nor Lone Wolf. It was sci-fi themed, and I think the cover had some space man cresting a hill with a gun in one hand. It was mostly red. I never did beat that fucker.

This might be The Badlands of Hark:

This and its sequel were both thick and notoriously difficult. Obviously, the difficulty cover-brag isn't here, but it might be on the back cover or on the title - I read the sequel and specifically remember the difficulty being An Announced Thing.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 11:52

axolotl farmer: May 17, 2007; Now I'm going to sing the Perry Mason theme

Mode 7 posted:

I remember playing what I think was a tech demo, but I don't remember what graphics card it was for - you were a dolphin swimming underwater with other dolphins, and could get a burst of speed temporarily as you swam around. If you swam upwards to the surface of the water, you'd leap into the air and transform into a bird and then fly around as a bird. If you dove into the water as the bird, you'd transform back into a dolphin.

It blew my mind at the time - I think this was circa '98 or '99? - and I'd love to see/play it again but I don't remember what the card was or what the tech demo was called.

This is probably completely useless to you, but that's the exact premise of the 1983 game Fathom that was available on the Texas instruments TI994/A, Atari 2600 and Colecovision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb4q4TZIOmY

# ? Aug 5, 2019 11:55

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

I'm not sure if this thread can help, but dammit, I might as well ask.

I enjoy the kind of rock music produced by people who listened to too much Mr. Bungle as kids, like this Chicago-based band called Tub Ring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89smIaiblBQ

In the liner notes for one of their albums, they point to a URL (http://www.tubring.com/thegreatshift) where you could download two B-sides, "The Uninitiated" and "Heathens". Sadly, the site is long-since dead and Archive.org's backup has nothing. I'm unable to find anything else online. I think the closest I got in the past was finding a long-dead discography torrent that supposedly had it. Is there someone out there who has similarly-bad taste in music to me and remembered to save some random freebie MP3s at some point three backup drives back?

# ? Aug 5, 2019 12:29

Kosmo Gallion: Sep 13, 2013

a few DRUNK BONERS posted:

Animated video, creepy. A man drives a truck into the woods with his dog. Strange things start happening to him. He goes fishing and catches half a fish. His truck breaks down. His dog runs away into the woods. The last scene is him hiding in a stove surrounded by elves (scary elves).

No combination of these words gets me anything remotely close. This must have been from around 2005.

I remember this, it was legitimately frightening. I recall it being on ebaums world or albino black sheep etc. There were a couple of others I think made by the same person.

I'll have a proper look for it tonight when I'm not phone posting.

E: I should read replies first.

# ? Aug 5, 2019 12:58

Riptor: Apr 13, 2003; here's to feelin' good all the time

A kids show that aired on, and was maybe produced by WGBH in Boston (a PBS station) called A Likely Story which was about a lady who drove a bookmobile and took kids on adventures into story books they were reading, by jumping into something called "the magic book" which was a four foot tall green screen book thing

# ? Aug 5, 2019 13:23

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 10:26

Riptor: Apr 13, 2003; here's to feelin' good all the time

Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

Conan O'Brien used to have this ongoing gag where this clip would play of an old-ish bald man yelling either "YES!!!" or "NO!!!" or something over a techno beat. It would keep looping over and over on top of this techno beat. The guy kind of looked like that wacked out guy from Heaven's Gate cult but it wasn't him. I would say this was late 90s Conan. Searching yields nothing and I would love to see this again. I've been looking for it for 20 years but it's a pretty hard thing to search for

Was it his old announcer Joel Goddard? They used to use him in sketches quite a bit on late night

# ? Aug 5, 2019 13:25

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What's your white whale? Post something you've been trying to find for ages

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