Weekend Assignment #121: This One Goes To Eleven!

Weekend Assignment #121: Do whatever you want, so long as it somehow involves the number 11. Memories of being eleven, lists that have eleven positions on them, collections of eleven similar objects -- hey, whatever you want. As long as the number eleven is somehow involved, it's all good. For those of you thinking about being sneaking and using binary notation: no "11, base 2." We're talking binary number 1011 here, pal.

Extra credit: Grab a book, open it to page 11, and write out the 11th sentence.

My favourite uses of the number eleven:

1) The title of this assignment, "this one goes to eleven," is, of course, a quotation from the most excellent 'mockumentary/rockumentary,' This Is Spinal Tap. Starring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, the "folks" who brought you A Mighty Wind, Best In Show, and Waiting For Guffman, Spinal Tap is a mock documentary about a fictional British heavy metal group billed as the loudest rock band in the world. If you are a fan of any of the other three mentioned films, or were a heavy metal headbanger in your youth, you owe it to yourself to check out this film. It also spawned the quote that I find best describes this journal: "treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry."

2) J. R. R. Tolkien's epic tale, The Lord of the Rings, begins with the hobbit Bilbo Baggins celebrating having reached the grand old age of 111, or, as the hobbits call it, eleventy-one. That is so delightfully quaint that I immediately adopted it. I first read the trilogy almost thirty years ago, and have not used the expression "one hundred and eleven" since. In fact, I often substitute the phrase "eleventy-one" in place of multiple exclamation marks, you know, for fun.

3) Canadian band Finger Eleven's website has organised the band's bio page into lists of eleven things, including where the band name came from. There are some music samples to listen to on the band's music page, if you are interested.

4) One of my favourite rock bands has always been Pink Floyd. I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of one of the founding members, Syd Barret. Here is a list of eleven reasons why Syd Barret was cool.

5) I do this blog thing because I enjoy writing. I suspect many of you are the same. In the spirit of that, here is a list of eleven of the most commonly violated rules of writing, grammar, and punctuation.

6) Pictures at Eleven is the name of the first solo album released by Robert Plant after the demise of Led Zeppelin. I remember buying it almost immediately after it came out in 1982. Although it did not enjoy any significant commercial success, I quite enjoyed it. In fact, it was one of my favourite albums for a while. I must remember to add it to my list of old vinyl albums I need to replace on CD.

7) There are eleven players per team on the field during a normal soccer match. I am coaching my son's house league soccer team. With a roster of eighteen boys, scheduling even and fair substitutions can be all encompassing, to the point that I have actually missed seeing a significant portion of the goals scored by my team because I have had my head down studying my clipboard. I am exceptionally proud of the fact that my guys are currently in first place in our division (we are Royal Blue/France).

8) Schoolhouse Rock. Who doesn't remember fondly the educational musical vignettes that used to be shown between our favourite cartoons on Saturday morning? The Good Eleven was a segment of the Multiplication Rock series. "Eleven almost makes multiplication fun." I love the use of the word 'almost' there.

9) Here is a web page representation of a hydrogen atom. The electron is represented as a single pixel. That makes the proton a thousand pixels across. If your monitor displays 72 pixels per inch, the entire page will be eleven miles across. Wow! Science is so freaking cool, isn't it?

10) I have always been intrigued by Arthurian legend and lore. I am still trying to muscle my way through Le Morte Darthur, by Sir Thomas Malory. Here is a website called the Camelot Project. It is a part of the University of Rochester, in New York state, and features a collection of Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies and basic information. On that website can be found the entire text of a book called Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. The language has not been modernised at all. It is even harder slogging that the version of Malory I am reading.

11) Some things I noticed while Googling the word eleven:

-There are a large number of bands that have the word eleven in their name.
-There are a large number of Christian organisations and websites with the word eleven in their name.
-There seems to be a link to a website about the movie Ocean's Eleven on almost every page of Google results for the word eleven.
-I only Googled the word eleven. I did not Google the numeral 11.
-One of the pages I came across was titled The Eleven Satanic Rules Of The Earth, by Anton Szandor LaVey. I was going to include it here, simply because I thought it would piss people off, but I changed my mind.
-Oops.

Extra Credit: I have been rereading the novel The Last Light of the Sun, by Guy Gavriel Kay, and participating in a group reading and discussion of the book over at Brightweavings.com. Here is the eleventh sentence on page eleven:

The land his father had bought with looted gold (mostly from the celebrated raid in Ferrieres twenty-five years ago) was on the other side of the village, south and west.

Here endeth the eleven squared edition of John Scalzi's weekend assignment. What better a way to end than in the way we began? Here is another quotation from This Is Spinal Tap:

"I  don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you."
--David St. Hubbins

tags:Memes, Weekend Assignment