Rattus cattus's definitions

the grove

The Grove is a fake-European upscale shopping mall in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles' west side, near West Hollywood (and not too far from Beverly Hills). It was built to look like a central historic district of an old Mediterranean city like Nice, but it is only five years old. It is a perfect example of "fake history" - building something new that looks like it's old while actual older parts of L.A. are left to decay. It was built next door to the Farmer's Market, a collection of shops that was one of the last landmarks of old Hollywood left. While the Farmer's Market still keeps some of its old vibe with a mixture of tourists and aging locals, the stores in the Grove are the same overpriced "designer chains" that one can find in any mall in America, and the whole place is so fake looking it's sick. The Grove has incredibly worsened traffic on the west side of L.A. particularly all the shortcuts that one could once take to get from the west side to Hollywood are all fucked up now because of the massive traffic of people going to The Grove. I for one wish that it was never built.

"It's been hard to come over to your place ever since The Grove was built, because now there's permit parking on the streets and traffic is really fucked up"

by Rattus cattus October 20, 2006

Grateful Dead

Proof that if you give enough people LSD they'll totally love bad country music.

The Grateful Dead were the spiritual godfathers of the jam band scene.

by Rattus cattus October 20, 2006

volvo

A Swedish car company, currently owned by Ford, that in the 1960s got a reputation for making safe, reliable, and mostly ugly (except for the 1800 series, Volvo's only good looking car, made from 1959-74, and most known as the car Roger Moore drove in The Saint TV series) cars. The quality took a huge nosedive in about 1975 like the quality of many other cars. Almost overnight Volvos became completely unreliable and prone to breaking down almost on a daily basis. For some reason, Volvo's reputation amongst consumers wasn't affected much for years. They coasted on their reputation for what seemed like two decades, of course people unlucky enough to buy one would know that any Volvo made after 1974 is a pile of crap best suited for a junkyard. Not until the Japanese entered the luxury car market in the 1990s did people start to realize what pieces of shit Volvos were, and as a result their target market largely started buying Lexus and Acura. One of THE most expensive cars to repair, and you'll need to repair it often.

Volvos spend more time in the shop than on the road.

The Swedes tend to be such nice people ; how could they come up with a car as crappy as a Volvo?

by Rattus cattus October 26, 2006

poland

A Central European country that has suffered immensely through the centuries because of being coveted by larger neighbors. The reputation of Poles being stupid came from them being willing to fight for their country and their freedom when they had no chance in hell of winning. Poland, contrary to popular belief, is a very cultured country that has produced many great scientists, authors, artists, writers, film directors, etc. Poland is now in the European Union. The most negative thing about Poland, however, is the lingering tradition of antisemitism that has survived even though Poland has almost no Jews. This is ironic because Poland before the Russians came in was not as anti-semitic as other European countries ; the Russians introduced the virus of antisemitism into Poland and unfortunately it remained. It probably thrived because of Poles' pride in their Catholicism (even under Communist rule the church remained strong) causing them to look suspiciously upon non-Catholics. Nevertheless Poland has made many great contributions to the world, and perhaps the greatest was the Polish Resistance fighting the Nazis when they had no hope of prevailing against Hitler's war machine. Millions of Poles died in the Nazi concentration camps built on Polish soil. Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, with the backing of the Polish Pope John Paul II, helped bring down Communism ; Poland was the first communist country to return to democratic rule.

The world owes Poland a debt of gratitude for the contributions of Poles in fighting Nazi Germany

by Rattus cattus September 15, 2006

Zog

1. The former king of Albania

2. Racist slur used by bigots to refer to Jews, it's supposed to stand for "Zionist Occupation Government". Often used in the sense of a convenient scapegoat to explain their own personal failures.

1. Zog was essentially a puppet of Mussolini and few Albanians have any affection for him today.

2. Mel Gibson blames everything wrong with the US on ZOG.

by Rattus cattus October 25, 2006

trustafarians

Rich kids "slumming it" and thinking they're being cool by smoking pot and living out their "creative" fantasies that usually don't come to anything, in between travelling to exotic third world places like Bali, Morocco, or Thailand, more or less like a cross between a neohippie and a hipster (although there is considerable overlap between trustafarians and both of those other subcultures) commonly found in the Venice, Echo Park,Atwater Village, and Silver Lake neighborhoods in L.A. (although Silver Lake is getting a bit too expensive for all but the wealthiest trustafarians, so some are going to Hollywood and assuredly some will go to Koreatown soon if they haven't already). The term is derived from a combination of "trust fund" and "Rastafarian".

Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice is riddled with trustafarians who claim to be working on film scripts or doing art but nothing they're doing ever amounts to anything.,

by Rattus cattus November 15, 2006

High School Confidential

A campy late 1950s anti-drug propaganda film starring Russ Tamblyn with Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester from The Addams Family) playing a soda fountain owner/drug lord. It opens up with a sequence of Jerry Lee Lewis playing the title song, one of his all time best songs (The Killer was considered to represent the height of depravity at the time to mainstream America, hence his presence in the film). One could say it's more or less the dark side of "Happy Days" as clean cut American teenagers start smoking pot, listening to rock and blues, getting into juvenile delinquency and (implied, given the era) promiscuity, and eventually heroin. It's a lot more fun to watch than "Reefer Madness" not only because of Jerry Lee (and the whole idea of Uncle Fester getting kids hooked on pot and then moving them on to heroin) but because it is actually a pretty well made film in a 50s B way.

In the 70s people would go to midnight screenings of High School Confidential and get stoned.

by Rattus cattus October 20, 2006