Warning! Graphic content!
Mood:  special

Picture this:  You're sitting around a table in a conference room, having your weekly video meeting with a couple dozen people on both coasts.  There are two TV screens.  One is displaying a group of yawning co-workers on the other side of the country (it's 7 am Pacific time).  The other screen is plugged into someone's laptop Powerpoint presentation.

One of the meeting participants is giving a status update involving pie charts.

The first 400 or so pie charts are thoroughly unremarkable.

Then the discussion works around to the fact that 100% of the critical P1 project issues (all 2 of them) are still outstanding.  To illustrate this idea, a pie chart appears on the screen.  It looks something like this:

Only more luridly flesh-colored, with a more well-defined...um...crack.  Much like a full moon, in fact.

Now imagine that the phrase "South Park butt" pops into your head.

Unfortunately, because it's a video conference, you can't laugh.  You bite your lip and concentrate very, very hard and try not to dwell on the unfortunate color scheme, but the more you can't laugh, the more you want to laugh.  Your stomach muscles quiver with the effort.  Your eyes are watering.  It seems like an eternity before the meeting presenter moves on to newer and less tushy-looking pie charts.

So what do you do?  During your lunch hour, you channel all this repressed laughter into creating some Powerpoint charts for the Grove.

So if everyone is ready, then, please have a seat, and we'll get started.

We'll begin with item 1 on the agenda:  What is this?

(Sometimes it takes a bar chart to make these things clear.)

Our R&D team has analyzed the Spartan market...

....and found that there won't be much call for satin sheets and hand moisturizer around the Laconian Plain.

The following figure calls attention to David's phenomenal celluloid survival rate (particularly if he's in a battle)...

 

Note that we may have to restate these figures after Public Enemies comes out.

This quarter, 100% of the hills are resonating with the cacophonous symphonies of frustrated playwrights:

Meanwhile, the Edam division is experiencing record profits!

Where delusion (D) intersects with son (S), narrative equilibrium is achieved:

Unfortunately for Denethor, their places cannot be exchanged.  "Mir Brother" commodity supply is extremely inelastic, so there isn't much competition at work here.  Also, the concept of marginal utility does not apply to Faramir.  (We know his uses, and they are many.)

Swords and arrows had flat sales last year.  Our product division is going to be introducing New and Improved versions of these weapons, with even more swiftness and brightness, in hopes of capturing a bigger demographic share of Faramir's heart. 

I was going to conclude today's presentation with a pink bar chart in the shape of an upraised middle finger, depicting Doug's play approval ratings, but that seemed a little tasteless.  Especially since I've already mooned you.

Alien theology
Mood:  spacey

Dr. Zhivago was on TV last weekend, starring the lovely Julie Christie (one of David's fave actresses, if I recall correctly).  As always, I marvelled at David Lean's gorgeous cinematography -- for example, the sparks that fly from the top of the streetcar as Yuri and Lara unknowingly brush against each other -- as well as his inability to make films in temperate climates (Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge Over The River Kwai).  Just watching the characters struggling over the tundra makes you feel in need of a heavy blanket and some hot toddies.

One has to wonder what Zhivago and Lara were eating when they were shacked up in that frozen dacha in the middle of nowhere, with war going on all around them and continual food shortages.  (I also wonder the same thing about Josh and Cyn in Better Than Sex, but at least they could get Chinese takeout if they needed to.  And they were able to romp freely among the sheets without any pesky fears of getting conscripted and executed by the Red Guard.  Although, if you ask me, that taxi driver looked like a card-carrying Menshevik.)

I also have to share another news item that caught my eye yesterday.  The Vatican's chief astronomer publically announced the Catholic Church is OK with belief in extraterrestrials.  Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said: "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

Now that it's no longer a venial sin to watch E.T., that raises some complicated theological issues.  What if the space aliens are gay, or use birth control?  What if they eat meat on Fridays?  Isn't that a double standard?  And what about original sin, does that also apply to Alf, Spock, Jabba the Hutt, and Dr. Ghrobak?  (OK, so David's character in Return to Jupiter wasn't technically a space alien, but he was kind of extraterrestrial.)  Do aliens need an alien Jesus to be redeemed, or are they automatically included in the Earth's salvation deal, like extra drivers on a rental car agreement?

If there are alien Jesuses, do the children wear little ray guns around their necks instead of little crosses?  Is alien communion different?  Instead of bread and wine, are they offered plasma gases and neutrinos?  Must they attend confession?

Sunday School teachers always hated me.

But don't worry, the fates are already in the process of devising exotic punishments for dwelling on such blasphemous questions.  A horrifying credit card bill arrived in the mail yesterday, one that actually exceeds my bank balance by a few digits.  Looks like I'll have to subsist for awhile on peanut butter, and gum scraped off the sidewalk.  If anyone wants me, I'll be huddled in a frozen dacha with Omar Sharif.

Legalize Poetry!
Mood:  cool

Last month I entered a poem in our city's annual Poetry Festival, and it got second place.  On Saturday, the winners were all invited to give a reading at the public library.

To get to the reading, I had to pass through a group of dreadlocked citizens who were holding a "Legalize Marijuana" demonstration right outside the library. They were beating drums and hollering "HONK IF YOU LOVE POT!"  My opinion about pot hovers somewhere around total apathy.  I do agree that mandatory drug sentencing is way out of control in this country (here's a lovely statistic: 1 out of 100 people in America are now behind bars).  I also agree it's arbitrary that alcohol and tobacco, which are far more lethal and corrosive to society, are legal while pot is not.  On the other hand, I've always been take-it-or-leave it about mind-altering stimulants.  Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all ('cause I get a kick out of you).

And so I proceeded to the library auditorium, where the illicit poetry den was being held.  There was a bit of a mix-up with the prizes.  The three winners in the children's category all got gift certificates to Starbucks.  I guess the poetry committee wanted them to get a head start on the espresso shakes.  It would have been really cool if they'd handed out miniature black berets and packs of Gauloises as well.

The adults went last.  I've spoken in public before, for pinups and design presentations, but I've never read any of my own writing out loud to a crowd of strangers.  It was here that I made the interesting discovery that when I get nervous, my nose runs.  I was terrified that it was going to drip right in the middle of the poem, right ONTO the poem, with all those people staring.  There was a microphone sitting on the podium, so I couldn't sniff.  There were no tissues, so no opportunity for a delicate, discreet blot.  All I could do was pray for a momentary gravity waiver, and get through the poem as quickly as possible without sounding like I was reading through it quickly.

I should have submitted a haiku instead:

In springtime, the nose
contracts in terror, becomes a
babbling brook of snot

In less amusing news, our company announced surprise layoffs on Friday after posting first quarter results that sucked the proverbial ho-ho.  My project team lost 12 people.  They always try to reassure the survivors that everyone is valuable, but that doesn't mean there won't be more layoffs.  Job security doesn't mean much anymore.  Whenever these layoffs happen, they're greeted with a yawn and a callous attitude of "it's just business, nothing personal".   Nobody ever questions the brutality of this system, or the idea that layoffs ought to be a last resort, not a first resort.  The executives' annual bonuses, stock options, and golf trips to the Caribbean never get put on the chopping block.

People are in a nervous mood these days anyway, from the mortgage crisis and health-care crisis and high gas prices and the looming recession.  I can't help thinking of Eddie Harnovey standing on the sidewalk after getting fired, his life packed up in a box, papers getting blown away by the wind.  Ordinary people shouldn't have to struggle so hard to get by. 

Oh, artificial sweetener! (for people who feel "Oh, sugar" is too strong)
Mood:  incredulous

There must be a place that rents babies to Jehovah's Witnesses on an hourly basis.  I swear, they're always toting along an infant (or sometimes, a sweet-looking septuagenarian, if they belong to the Granny Upgrade Reward program at the rental office).  They also have an uncanny sense for showing up when I'm at death's door with the flu, or the spaghetti pot is boiling over, or the President has just announced we all have five minutes to live.  Somebody must have carved a secret hobo sign on the fence to alert proselytizers, because our little dead-end street gets inundated regularly with young missionaries competing for our souls.

Two burly young men showed up at my door last weekend, brandishing a Mid-Sized Luxury Compact Rental Infant with Missouri plates.  They were dressed entirely in black, like Secret Service agents.  When I didn't answer the door, they left behind a tract entitled "DID JESUS OWN A BIBLE?"

The answer, of course, was "no", but I found myself wondering why they felt the need to pose such a silly rhetorical question in the first place.  I'm anxious to find out in next month's issue of Watchtower if the ancient Greeks had cable television.  I'll let you know.

P.S. A more important question just occurred to me:  did the FBI have a "Public Friends" list to counterbalance its Public Enemies list?  Who was Public Friend #1?

I'm guessing Mister Rogers.

Married Life: The Sequel
Mood:  suave

Why in the Sam Hill did I spend half of the last blog post, which was supposed to be a review of Married Life, babbling about wallpaper?  'Tis a real head-scratcher, that.  I never know where these posts are going to end up.

Anyway, I found this intriguing little insight into the John O'Brien character on the DVD Talk site:

The one truly physical character is John O'Brien (David Wenham), another corner in the eventual love pentagon, a hulking, sweating fellow who Rich tells us is the only one among them to actually have "fought the Huns." John looks like he's ready to batter down the walls that separate him from what he wants, just put him in the game, coach. It's also of no insignificant irony that he's the artist of the group, an unpublished author. Perhaps he is capable of doing because he's capable of imagining. 

In that first scene, at least, he certainly comes across as a guy who knows what he wants and is used to taking action.  On the other hand, he's no Ann Landers - when Richard asks him for his opinion on Harry and Pat's marriage, he backpedals and equivocates.   Enigmatic as John is, he functions as a sort of catalyst which enables the lies and deceptions to start doubling back on themselves (mainly thanks to Richard, whose own emotional entanglements prevent him from helping out his best friend).

By the way, I love that term "Love Pentagon". It sounds like a big top-secret classified military building where all the Cupids meet to plot their guerrilla campaigns and heart-smitings.  I hear Lockheed gets most of the arrow contracts.

One final bit of trivia:  the real-life novelist John O'Brien wrote Leaving Las Vegas.  (What happens in Vancouver, stays in Vancouver.)

Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Married Life, at a theater not near you

I just got back from a two-week vacation in Colorado, which was wonderful.  We did tons of hiking,  toured a gold mine, and got really sunburned while panning for gold in a mountain stream.  It never occurs to me to pack sunblock, because around here it's so rare to see that round yellow thing in the sky.  If I ever vacation someplace like Tunisia, I will die of UV poisoning within 24 hours.

One of the perks of sojourning in a populous city was getting to see Married Life in the theater.

Now, unfortunately, I wasn't able to give Married Life the full concentration it so richly deserved, because that afternoon I was sweating bullets over a very, very critical and potentially life-changing phone call (which, sure enough, arrived after the movie started and made me rush out into the lobby, but fortunately I was back in my seat before David's big scene).  Even so, I enjoyed it.

I can understand why reviews have been mixed - it's a film that can't decide whether to be black comedy or film noir, and frequently flinches at the awfulness/absurdity of its own premise.  Each of the four main characters has an interior life that contradicts his or her exterior: the cool, suave ladies' man who unexpectedly finds he wants to settle down, the straight-arrow executive concealing murder in his heart, the vivacious blonde bombshell who craves domesticity, the "ordinary" housewife with lustful physical appetites that can only be satisfied by the attentions of a slightly amoral ginger-haired writer.  (John O'Brien, David's character, is introduced as an "unpublished fiction writer", which I found absolutely hilarious.  That's like being an "unelected politician".)

To me, it was interesting to see Chris Cooper playing a romantic lead.  Usually he plays hard-bitten coal-mining dads and other manly-man roles.  Here, his character had to walk a subtle tightrope between being squishy-hearted enough to care about not hurting his wife, and hard-hearted enough to off her.  Patricia Clarkson was also amazing - she played her part with spunky good humor.

Okay, so now to the important stuff: how does John O'Brien fit into all of this?   His character is verbally referenced early in the movie, by way of introduction, but we don't actually see him until about an hour into the film.  At that point, David is on screen for about ten minutes.  It's one of the most hilariously awkward scenes in the film:  Richard (Pierce Brosnan), peering through the window of his friend's cabin, accidentally witnesses his best friend's wife (Patricia Clarkson) getting herself loved up by a bare-chested writer bearing the sinewy remnants of a mighty Spartan training regime.  O'Brien pretty much skips the foreplay and goes right for second base on the cabin couch.   (In the immortal words of Phil Rizzuto in Paradise By The Dashboard Light: "He's out.  No, he's safe!  Safe at second base!  This kid really makes things happen out there.")

At some point (spots had started swimming before my eyes, and I lost track of time momentarily) John O'Brien spots Richard standing on the porch and invites him in.  The three of them perch politely in the living room pretending that nothing just happened.  John breaks the silence by requesting some cookies.  As an unbiased fan, one must give huge credit to David's light touch and sense of comic timing for leavening the scene.

David is also in a second, smaller scene at the end, playing charades with a group of rowdy, happy partygoers.  I won't spoil the scene by revealing the phrase he's acting out, but I will give you a hint: he's miming playing the maracas.  And wearing the most adorably kicky 1940s sweater vest.

There's also a glimpse of David in another scene, but I can't talk too much about it without giving away the ending twist.   (Oh, all right...Rosebud was his sled, and Darth Vader is his father.  Happy now?)

One other thing that struck me while watching this movie (because the set designers took such pains with the period detail): wallpaper has pretty much gone extinct, hasn't it?  Do you know anyone who's voluntarily put up wallpaper in the last 10 years?  I don't mean those cute little 12" rubber ducky borders that new parents put around the walls of their nurseries, I mean honest-to-god flocked, flowery, viney, peely, crawling-with-claustrophic-patterns wallpaper.  Whenever people buy a new house, the very first thing they do is gasp at the horror of the wallpaper, then start heating up the electric steamer and sharpening the scrapers.  My 81-year-old neighbor has lived in the same house ever since he got married, and has never done any interior renovations.  Inside, it's like a museum of 1930s wall treatments.  The original owners were so in love with wallpaper, they even cut out butterflies from the pattern and glued them onto every light switch they could find.

The living room of my sister's house was sheathed in a heavy grasscloth wallpaper that the cat loved -- LOVED -- to sharpen her claws on.  By the time she moved, the grass fibers on the lower half of the wall had been plucked and unravelled into a sort of bushy cloud.  It looked like a vertical savannah.  She had to take hedge clippers to it.

My childhood bedroom had avocado-green wallpaper with little white tulips on it that, if you stared at them long enough with your eyes slightly unfocused, the tulip pattern would appear to pop out from the wall and float, shimmering, on top of itself.  It was like one of those "Magic Eye" drawings.  (Try doing that with paint!)

Wallpaper's OK, but it's like getting a tattoo.  You have to find a pattern you'd want to stare at for the rest of your life.  Even John O'Brien wallpaper would be pushing it.

Glory be to God for Depp-led Things
Mood:  lazy

Lately, all of my dreams have been about sleeping.  I must be really, really tired.

Here's a little tidbit from the casting company that is working on Public Enemies:

A casting company is looking for extras to work in the Johnny Depp movie that will be filming in west suburban Aurora on April 5 and 6.

Last week, Paramount Theater signed a contract to film part of "Public Enemies," starring Depp and Christian Bale, in downtown Aurora. The movie is directed by Michael Mann.

The film, about the life of gangster John Dillinger and the birth of the FBI, is set in the 1930s. In order to re-create the look and feel of the film, male extras need to be less than 6-foot-2 with a jacket size no larger than 44, while female extras must be shorter than 5-foot-8 with a dress size no larger than 10.

A release cautions people not to call if they do not match the size requirements, because the casting agency cannot make exceptions.

To reach Joan Philo Casting, call is (312) 924-1840.

When you call, a recorded message will prompt you to leave your name and phone number.

Drat.  I'm 5-9.  But, I can hunch over and tape my ears back if need be.

 

Grove-ity's Rainbow
Mood:  loud

Sorry for the short hiatus in Groviness.  I was in a 10-hour-a-day training class all last week, which pretty much sapped all thoughts of blogging.  Now I'm trained, and ready to resume my aimless ramblings.

On one of those morning news shows last week, there was a short piece on how drive-in movie theaters are starting to make a comeback.  I think this is probably because, like bell-bottom pants, people who never experienced them the first time around think they're a great idea.  Drive-in movies are actually pretty uncomfortable.  We had one nearby, in the middle of nowhere, that somehow survived the mass die-offs of the '60s and '70s.  My parents liked it because they charged by the carload, not by the head.  On Saturday evenings in the summer, they would round up all visible kids, along with whatever cousins happened to be visiting, cram 8 - 12 youths into the station wagon (using a toilet plunger if necessary), and head over to the drive-in.

The drive-in had one ancient cartoon, about a Japanese beetle, and one ancient movie, a speckly faded print of The Great Escape, which they showed for probably about 15 summers in a row.  I liked the beetle cartoon, but The Great Escape didn't have much to recommend it to the five-year-old girl demographic.  Seating went by seniority, so I was usually relegated to the "way back" (the open trunk area behind the back seat).  There I would try to make out what was happening through the bottom of the fogged-up windshield and the tinny, crackling speaker hooked to the driver's side of the car. (About once a summer, my dad forgot about the speaker and drove off with it still tethered to the window ledge).

Imprisoned as I was in the way back, there were times when I felt a twinge of sympathy with Steve McQueen.  Especially when he was penned up in the metal solitary confinement box, bouncing the ball against the wall.  I spent a lot of time stuffing clumps of dog fluff in my pockets and wishing I could tunnel to freedom through the tailgate.

No, drive-ins aren't the most comfortable way to enjoy a movie.  The root beer is lukewarm and watery by the time you get it back to the car, someone in the audience is always honking their horn by mistake, kids wander freely around the parking area tossing Good 'n' Plentys into open sunroofs, and it's hard to see the whole screen if you're not in the front seat.  The main selling point of drive-ins is that they're different than your regular movie-going experience...because hey! You're in a car!  Nowadays, people spend so much time in cars that it isn't that novel anymore.  I think they ought to provide theaters with wading pools for people wearing flippers, masks, and inflatable rubber horsey rings.  Now that would be a different film-going experience.  Or how about "brush-in" cinemas with sinks, so people can brush, floss, and gargle while watching the movie?

Speaking of old cartoons and nostalgia, the hats that the actors are wearing for Public Enemies:

 

remind me a little (just a little) of the gangster boss from those old Bugs Bunny cartoons.  The one who has a sidekick named Mugsy and says "Shut up shuttin' up" in a nasally voice:

Hat crowns were taller in the 1930s, for whatever reason (no air conditioning?  good place to stash the loot?).  When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in the '80s, it caused a brief resurgence in fedora-wearing.  Indiana Jones was a cool, fun, dashing character who appealed to the non-suit-wearers.  (Gene Hackman's porkpie hat in The French Connection didn't attract quite the same degree of attention, because Gene was The Man).  Indiana's fedora was designed to be iconic, and it became the character's trademark.  It was a hat that said "desert adventure", not "business meeting".  For fans looking to acquire some of their hero's flair, the Indiana Jones hat could be worn on the street unobtrusively (unlike, say, a light saber or a suit of armor.  Or a bullwhip.)

Raiders also coincided with a 1930s revival, when there was a renewed interest in Humphrey Bogart-style cool and movies like The Maltese Falcon.  But don't go confusing the two.  Here is an actual quote from a fedora chat forum debate concerning the Maltese Falcon hat vs. the Indiana Jones hat:

Not to be argumentative, but I don't see any similarity in the two hats other than they are both felt. Indiana Jones - 5 3/4 crown, center dent with high tight pinches ending in a razor sharp crease at the front, 16 ligne ribbon, 2 3/4 raw brim with an almost never done dimensional cut to 2 1/2 on the sides VS 5 3/4 crown, deep diamond crease with no head "bump", approx 2 3/8 brim, conventional meeting of the pinches at front...I just don't agree with your statement.

Got that?  Good.  I don't want to hear any of you getting your fedoras mixed up again.

I don't know if Public Enemies on its own will seize movie audiences enough to cause a new hat-wearing frenzy, but in combination with the upcoming new Indiana Jones movie, it just might spark a renewed interest in haberdashery.  Fedoras look very fetching, and flatter just about everybody.  Someday, an entire generation of kids will rebel against the stodgy old backward baseball hats of their grandfathers, and take up the fedora.  In fact, maybe stovepipe hats will come back into fashion, or those velvety porkpie things that Henrys IV - VII used to wear.

Okay.  Time for me to shut up shuttin' up now.  I need to go rewatch The Great Escape, so I can start planning methods of mass escape from our next training class.

I do not like green taters and ham, Sam I Am
Mood:  lazy

Today, our office had a St. Patrick's Day potluck lunch.  Since there was no sign-up sheet to coordinate the meal, everyone brought more or less the same dish: potatoes.  It was a vast sea of potatoes.  Green potatoes.   Green potatoes in every imaginable emerald hue and form: whipped, mashed, fried, au gratin, pureed, stewed, saladed.  You'd think, given my Irish ancestry, that I would like potatoes, but I don't.  I'm not even that fond of French fries or potato chips.  Someday, when I dine in hell, the menu will feature huge, toothy, baked potatoes the size of footballs.  (Okay, that might be more like the dining-in-heck menu.  There are worse things than potatoes to eat.)

To round off the starch orgy, there were platters of green corn muffins, green Irish soda bread, green scones, and green pancakes.  Anything that wasn't dyed was slathered in green frosting and studded with green m&m's.  To wash it down, there was green punch with blobs of lime sherbet.

The office is strangely quiet and unproductive right now.  I feel like the last survivor of some sort of carbohydrate holocaust.

Before I sink likewise into a green dye #2 coma, here's a little blog tidbit that mentions David indirectly:

Yesterday my son and I went shopping in our newish Westfield mall, where we once saw Sandra Bullock on a promotional visit. As we ducked into Borders she went whizzing by on the scary escalator up to the cinema complex. Also frequently see David Wenham with his family shopping and many other Aussie celebrities. We do not do anything except nod and look away as feel they are entitled to their lives with their families without interruption.

I must say, I'm 110% in agreement with that last sentiment (despite my squeamish feeling of hypocrisy about reposting it here and thereby calling EVEN MORE ATTENTION to the fact that David and his family sometimes go shopping).  There is no reason, ever, to pester celebrities randomly or gawk at them as if they're a zoo exhibit.  If you wouldn't go up to a stranger in a restaurant and interrupt their meal so you could get their name on a napkin, why would you do it to a celebrity?

On the other hand, it's probably socially acceptable to mention to them that their tie is on fire, or they accidentally dropped their Oscar while crossing the street.

Maybe I'm just not that brave.  But I applaud the general restraint of people who recognize David, don't do anything more than quietly acknowledge it to themselves, and move on.  In a similar situation, I would probably do the same.  ("Oh look, there's that guy who's my favorite actor in the entire world and who I devote an entire website to.  Ho hum.  Now, where's Susie Lou's Shoe Igloo?")

Actually, my interior thought process wouldn't be quite that calm and coherent.  It would be more like: "????......!!!!!!!!!!!.....//>@@@@** <loud, crackling static>".  Autopilot would continue steering me in the direction of the shoe store, like those cartoon coyotes who continue to walk off the cliff and find themselves standing on thin air.  Passerby would marvel at my calmness.  And when they ask me how I do it, how I maintain such equanimity in the presence of golden ginger greatness, I'll show them my green tongue, and tell them about the half-ton of starch molecules coursing through my veins.

Things David characters would never say
Mood:  lucky

Happy St. Patrick's Day (as observed in the Greek Orthodox church, i.e. a day late).  

Why, bedad and begorrah, here's a pic of David in green, so don't go pinching him.  Faith, he's immune.  Besides, ye'll break a nail on yer monitor.

Frankly, I never understood that custom of pinching people who aren't wearing green on St. Patrick's Day.  It seems vaguely coercive, like giving Indian burns to unattached people on Valentine's Day.  Not everyone is Irish, or wants to be.

Then again, on Thanksgiving Day it's traditional to grab vegetarians and dunk them face-first into a bowl of gravy and giblets until they recant their meatless ways.  On Flag Day, we shoot commies in the neck with a blowpipe.

Now that we've gotten these festive holiday emotions out of our system, let's turn our attention to a more serious issue:  pirated DVDs.  Oh yes, they're out there.  Floating around the streets, corrupting our children and corroding our neighborhoods.  How do you know if you're watching a counterfeit copy of a David movie?

Besides the fact that you bought it off a guy named "Cataract" on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, the most obvious tell-tale clues are dubbed lines of dialogue that don't quite fit the character.  For example:

FARAMIR:  Gee, Dad, thanks for letting me have the last cookie.

SAM FLYNN:  Brozzie, what say we go down to the river with some dynamite and waste a few crocodiles?

JIM DOYLE:  I'm no good at figuring out restaurant tips.  Anyone got a calculator?

JOHNNY SPIT: I'll have the Daube Nicoise, the Poche de Veau Varcie, and a bottle of your most amusing Merlot.

LUKE:  I have knife scars number more than your leg hair.  You, with your thick face, have hurt my instep.

RICHARD SHORKINGHORN:  I threat you!  I challenge you meet me with cricket bat for duet!

EDEN FLETCHER:  DO NOT WANT

JOSH:  Desecrated....kiwi...

DILIOS: Greetings, large royal person. Let us not forget to team up together and march into the country to inflict the pain of our tiger karate feet on the rump of the taunting lizard person.

FATHER DAMIEN:  I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.

If you find you have a pirated CD in your collection, the safest method of disposal is to pinch it, then throw it in a bowl of gravy.