Back on the Radio

The Man figured out I was getting just a little too close to the truth, so they shut down my motherboard. Now, I'm not comparing myself to the Kennedys or Malcolm X, but you have to admit the similarities are uncanny.

Not only am I back, I have a new laptop with wireless ...juice running all
through it. That's right, no longer are your wires of oppression chaining me to my computer room desk. In fact, I'm writing this from the living room - that's right, the living room, conventions be damned!

Naturally, like everything electronic or mechanical I own or come in contact with, I'm sure this laptop is gonna be broken within two weeks. I got a solar pump for our pond out back which worked twice before it just stopped, giving me a nice mosquito breeding swamp in the backyard. And that has like, what, two mechanical parts total? The plate thing the sun shoots her magical rays on and a little pump that squirts out water?

I already spent two hours on the phone to Bangladesh last night to determine the DVD player was missing a part, so I'm just hoping I can keep this laptop running through the warranty so I can keep broadcasting the truth until The Man shoots another one of his poison death rays at my motherboard.

Gainesville Commercial Help

While pulling weeds in the backyard yesterday, I had a commercial stuck in my head on repeat. I haven't had occasion to recall this commercial in years, and I actually managed to stump Google with it. It used to run in Gainesville on Fox, one of the 3 channels I got (the other 2 being PBS and The Box, where you'd vote on the videos that played; "Pop That Coochie" had something like a 3 month winning streak that year).

So there's this guy walking through a parking lot full of mobile homes. He's giving out prices and whatnot and telling you how awesome his lot is. At the end of the commercial he looks straight into the camera and points. Then, in a tone I'm remembering as a little more angry than determined, says, "I still wanna sell you a mobile home." Some of you might remember it as the ending of the Radon song "Chinese Rednecks," and it is entirely possible that I'm basing my memory of the guy's phrasing from Brent's version.

I'm also picturing the guy as looking sort of like an evil Kenny Rogers, which might not be right at all, but it makes me happy.

Natural Mystics

I had "Mystics in Bali," this Indonesian horror movie at the top of my Netflix queue for about 2 months. I pretty much gave up on ever seeing it when it arrived in the mail a couple weeks ago. After a period of quiet reflection, I understood why it took so long to arrive.


Netflix was testing me. Would I give up after a few weeks and pick another movie for my top pick? If so, then I wasn't really worthy of watching the awesomeness of "Mystics in Bali." Luckily, I persevered, and Netflix noticed and rewarded me.
I am so very, very glad I passed the test.


In the movie, an American woman is writing a book on black magic. She learns that Indonesian Leyack magic is the strongest magic in the world so she goes out in the field to complete her work.

She meets a witch who can extend her tongue about six feet and speaks like an evil Yoda. The witch agrees to teach the woman her secrets, but of course, this knowledge comes at a price.

I've seen some crazy stuff in movies. Back in Gainesville, I would regularly walk over to my friend Keith's apartment, where he had all sorts of wonderful and strange VHS tapes. Kung fu movies where vampires enlist the aid of Dracula and eat placenta and urine to grow stronger. Another kung fu movie scene in which a group of turtles get on their hind legs and dance to Roxy Music. "For Your Height Only," featuring Weng Weng, a two foot tall Filipino midget as a James Bond superspy. A movie about a lady who fell in love with a corpse and keeps his pee-pee in the refrigerator. All sorts of Jackie Chan or John Woo stuff that is pretty commonplace now, but at the time was pretty mind-blowing. After a lot of these movies or scenes, whoever was gathered in Keith's apartment would sort of look at each other to make sure that, yes, we really did see that.

But the scene in "Mystics in Bali" where the woman's head pops off her body and flies away with her lungs, heart and entrails attached flapping in the breeze? That just might be the damndest thing I've ever seen.

Oh yeah, the head/guts fly around looking for blood to keep the witch young or something. In one scene, the head throws a midwife through a wall like Popeye, then gets down between a pregnant woman's legs to suck out a baby.

Luckily, there are some good monks who agree to fight the black magic, who also give all sorts of information on Indonesian magic. If anyone walks in on you watching "Mystics" and accuses you of watching trash, you can always select one of these scenes and you can say you're working on an anthropology degree in folklore.

So yeah, "Mystics in Bali." You might have to wait a while or prove your worth to the gods of Netflix, but it is totally worth it. Now if I can just appease the gods to send "Flash Gordon," which has been number one in my list for like a year, I will have all the secrets of the universe.

Does Not Compute

Our computer died after five or six years of semi-faithful service last week. Someone who ought to know told me the motherboard died. I think that's what he said. Either that or something about the mothership connection. I'll have to take his word, since anything beyond opening a word file, playing a CD or looking up pictures of Phoebe Cates on the internet is beyond my computing capabilities.

Naturally, the weekend before it crashed I was thinking, "You know, I really ought to upload all these photos to Flickr and burn a lot more of these MP3 files I stole off the internet totally paid for onto discs.” Then I searched for more Phoebe Cates pictures and went to bed.

Just like when the power goes out and all you can think about is watching TV or running the vacuum cleaner or anything that uses that wonderful power, this last week without a computer has been annoying.

If I want to check my bank balance, I've got to use the phone and sit through all that 'press one for more options' business, all the while knowing that I could have checked my $23 bank balance 50 times on the computer in the time it takes just to get to the prompt for English.

If I want to find out if it will freeze overnight, I have to watch the weather channel, which for 10 minutes gives the forcast for Miami and Atlanta, so I have to use the pythagorean theorem or something to determine whether I need to cover the plants.

So yeah, it's gonna be a long three weeks. Hopefully by the time my new computer comes I'll have a backlog of stories written out by quill pen.

No Diner For Young Men

Couple years back I took the car to get fixed. My parents had drummed into me the need to get to repair places right when they opened so I would be first in line. I've since learned that at most places the mechanic doesn't show up until 9, so you may as well get another couple hours of sleep instead of hanging around reading 7 month old Newsweeks and watching Judge Judy on the crappy repair place TV while wondering how much all this is going to cost.

After a couple hours of waiting around I figured I'd walk down to this diner and get some breakfast.

As I opened the door all conversation stopped and everyone turned to look at me. I felt like I just walked into the saloon and was going to start a shoot-out. I determined that I was the youngest person in the place by like 50 years, and had probably interrupted some Masonic ritual or spirited review of last week's church social.

After the oldies vibed me out, they went back to eating, but I could tell they didn't take kindly to this young buck taking up valuable space in their establishment.

Later that week my wife and I went to see TV on the Radio at Freebird Cafe, where we were the oldest people by about 15 years, so I suppose it all evened out.

Take a Letter

My dad was awesome at writing complaint letters. If he felt a company or organization had slighted him, he’d get out the paper and pen and fire off a letter. I don’t know exactly what he said, but it must have been pretty persuasive since a few weeks after mailing out the letter he’d get a ton of free samples or a credit voucher delivered in the mail, along with profuse apologies.

Dad wasn’t stingy with praise either. He tried some sort of foot powder and liked it so much he wrote the company. When I came home from college there were crates of the stuff in the garage. I couldn’t visit without my parents trying to sneak bottles of the stuff into my car to take home with me. Now I could see if this was from a big company like Arm and Hammer or Gold Bond, who could afford to mail out a boxes of foot powder to keep a customer happy, but this was some sort of Mom and Pop foot powder outfit, so I’d constantly have people finding a bottle of the stuff holding up the couch or something and asking me what the hell Dr. Funkenmeir’s Olde Tyme Foot Powder and Poultice was, and why did I have a million little plastic bottles of it anyway.

But if he was good with a letter, Dad was a maestro over the phone or face to face. We’d be buying a car stereo or something and he’d say to the guy at Circuit City, “So how much is this really.”

I’d be all embarrassed, because I knew that you just didn’t do that sort of stuff, but sure enough, the guy would knock like 50 bucks off the price. The few times I tried that on my own, the salespeople just sort of looked at me and I felt so awkward and embarrassed that I’d write out a little extra on the check just to make up for my faux pas.

So one day my sister and dad are watching the local news. There’s some story about this Minute Maid fruit juice that was being recalled.

“You know, I’ve been feeling sort of sick all week. I’m pretty sure I had some of that juice.”

“Dad, you’ve never had that stuff in your life.”

”No. I ..I’m pretty sure I had some earlier this week and that’s why I don’t feel good.”

“Dad, that stuff is called like ‘Extreme Razzleberry Kicks.’ You’d never drink that.”

“No, I think I had some at work. I’m gonna have to write a letter.”

Whatever he wrote it worked again, because we had bottles of the stuff when I got home.

Saturday in the Dark with George

Last Saturday night with George Romero commenting over “Night of the Living Dead” was awesome. I fully intended to write something up about it, but got lazy and got scooped.

There’s not much I would have said that Alonzo didn’t hit, but I will say that I was surprised Romero downplayed the politics that have been read into the movie (A movie made in the midst of the Vietnam War featuring children eating their parents lends itself to all sorts of political readings), but he mostly dismissed that as something Cashiers du Cinema took off with and he sort of went along with.
Most of his talk was more on the cooperation between the team that made the movie, and the rigors of the filmmaking, as well as frequent plugs for his new zombie movie which he promises to be more in the spirit of “Living Dead” than the “Land of the Dead,” which won’t really be that hard.

Oh yeah, and he hates fast-moving zombies.

I was also able to use the movie as a way to unveil this year’s Amateur Film Contest. We’re going with a zombie theme this year. As with the other years, all you have to do is make a short movie with a zombie theme, submit it and possibly win valuable prizes.
Expect to be hassled about this from now until May.