Trashcanland

Deadly Force (Paul Aaron 1983)

2011-09-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

The past couple of months one of the main things I've been scanning for when thrift shopping for VHS is the name Wings Hauser. I had seen Vice Squad a couple of years ago, and oddly, the singularity of that amazing performance didn't send me on the hunt for more Wings. It was like, how could anything even come close to that tour de force of actor/character insanity? So I didn't really seek anything out. Street Asylum (Gregory Dark 1990) appeared on my doorstep recently, and I couldn't resist...I mean G. Gordon Liddy as the bad guy? I'm in! This film puts him in a role as nutty and intense as Ramrod, but unfortunately it's not the fine piece of work that Vice Squad is. So, luckily I have a lot of stuff to wade through as our big grinning nutjob has had quite the busy career in films and television.
So after Street Asylum (which set off my need to start finding more) , I have moved on to Deadly Force, which I've had on VHS for a while, but never bothered watching. Well, it's not without it's charm.
We get a little prelude where the first of many innocent victims is killed in a quick and tossed off manner. Actually now that I think of it, aforementioned victim is tossed off of a balcony after having her throat slit. Somehow this murder comes off as rather tame and reminiscent of something from an episode of Hunter. Then we make it to Stoney Cooper.
Yes, Wings plays a guy named Stoney; a guy who dribbles a soccer ball and is pretty good at rat roulette (is this a real thing?). He also is a piano playing guy who seems to be drinking away his responsibilities at some dive bar. Or is drinking because he doesn't like flying and he has a plane to catch? Anyhow, this is the first of an endless parade of details that don't really attain clarity.
So, Stoney gets a call from somebody about diffusing a situation with a revolutionary strapped with dynamite. He agrees after negotiating a $20,000 cash payment, putting on his LAPD bullet proof vest in an NYC cab with Estelle Getty plays the sassy taxi driver. They talk about this "X" killer that has been terrorizing LA, killing people at random. So that's established.
Stoney goes to this warehouse, attacks the guy threatening to blow the place and talks him out of not detonating his chest strapped dynamite. This unfortunately is the only scene where Wings really lets that unhinged lunatic thing loose, prefiguring the Lethal Weapon crazy-cop thing by a couple of years. It's also not really up to snuff, considering Wings' ability for convincing the viewer of potential loose screws. By normal cop movie standards it's pretty entertaining though. This scene does feature the first of a lot of casual racist remarks about Latinos, which seems out of place and certainly irritates. Do we really need to hear condescending shit like "buy a quesadilla, amigo?"
And as the plot progresses we get into serious "normal cop movie standards" territory. Stoney is of course flying to L.A. cuz he used to be LAPD and his old buddy needs help finding the "X" killer. After Stoney lost his badge to the "by the book" captain (angry black guy, of course), part of the deal was that he'd never come back to L.A., but here he is and he's interfering with official police business!!!!! Oh, lord. It does feel strange that we aren't witness to the loss of badge scene as it is the most easy to mentally picture thing in the world at this point.
Stoney also has a estranged wife he is still in love with who is a TV reporter also investigating the case. They fight, they flirt, they investigate...they investigate very inefficiently with the help of Sam, the "old friend" who's granddaughter was the girl who got thrown off the balcony.
It's montage time as everybody goes around shaking down hoods and TV reporting and hitting dead ends and meandering like lost dogs. This seems to take forever, and it's a sad state of a movie when this kind of thing is interrupted by random violent murders and it's still a bore!
Luckily it's all so unrealistic and silly that entertainment is there for those masochists like myself who sit through this stuff. One thing I found really amusing during all this dross was the music, which is really over cooked and does not seem like it belongs at all. Most of the cues sound way more dramatic than appropriate for the action on screen (Wings walking down the street? Heavy riffing guitar solos all the way!), and often doesn't really time with what's happening. Could it be library tracks? Not sure.
Amidst all this, a skeezy self help guru convinces a crowd that they are not losers, and is interviewed by Eddie, the TV reporter estranged wife. I wonder if this seemingly unrelated stuff has to do with the plot? It takes another 45 minutes to find out. And that's the rub, the pacing of this movie is all screwy. We get these long periods of what seems like inconsequential dead end nothing and crammed into the last half is a whole giant mess of a plot that comes so fast that it also has no meaning! This one's really lacking in the "sense" department.
There are some little details that are whacked out enough to make this an enjoyable diversion if you are into that sort of thing...like the mob boss (I think?) asleep while his gal watches lesbian porn (Stoney chuckles and says "They're gay") and a cheap hooker hanging out in a church. Also, many of the performances are quirky and gnarled enough keep things interesting. And Wings is always good to watch...I mean, he does chew the scenery, just not as much as he could and should. Sigh... And for those who have the hots for him, you get an overlong scene of him getting shot at while he covers his junk with a towel and (duh) a sex scene with him and wifey. Otherwise, it's rather disappointing even for a low rent action completist like myself. We'll be okay though, we always are. There just better be better Wings movies waiting in the wings.

VHS Memories part one

2011-07-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

At some point in 1985, my father brought home our first VCR, along with two rented VHS tapes. The thing was a top loading monster with a remote control attatched by a wire (!!!!) and a ton of little nobs for fine tuning that I never touched. The two rented titles were Purple Rain for the parents, The Smurfs and the Magic Flute for me and my sis. In a round about way, this is how I learned about sex as a concept, as before Purple Rain, I thought the only reason why little kids like myself couldn't watch a movie would be because of it's scary content. And since we all dug Prince (at least casually, my sister was only two at the time), I couldn't figure out why we were banished from the viewing. How could a Prince movie be scary? Well, Graffiti Bridge aside, I think something had to be explained to me...I guess it was the concept of "Adult Situations," if not the act of sex itself. I was seven, and I would get some full on exposure to sexy stuff after watching a rented copy of Police Academy with my friend Pat's family only (I think) a few weeks later. Awesome.
Never a family for home taping (yet), we, like so many Americans, got caught up in video-rental-fever. Honestly, I don't know how we were able to afford the VCR in the first place, but I was happy to be right in the mix with the rich kids for once. For these early years, our rental joint was also our corner store. The Little Store, named after it's cramped-assness. In fact, The Little Store was/is so small that there were no videos on display, only a 3 ring binder with a print out of the titles. If memory serves, there was no genre division, purely alphabetical. I'm pretty sure they squeezed a small deli in the 12x12 space in addition to the corner store stuff and the vids. A few of the big releases would have their boxes on display behind the counter. I stared endlessly, fearfully at box for Poltergeist. Transfixed, concentrating, worrying. I have the vaguest memories of seeing the trailers for said film on television and being absolutely scared out of my wits. The idea of a TV (my best friend, essentially) sucking in a little kid was essentially the root of me anxiously running away from horror movies (or anything tense or grim) until I was nine or ten years old. This may not seem like a big deal since I was so young, but it seemed that anything my peers talked about horror movies, and it also tranferred over to any movie that could possible be "scary." Totally tried to talk my way out of seeing the Goonies in the theater. "because it has skeletons in it." What a pussy. Good thing I was convinced.
I don't really recall my parents rental choices, but I'm sure that I just rented Empire Strikes Back, and Superman I and II over and over again. I never really bothered with Star Wars too much as I loved Empire with a burning passion...still do.
My pal Pat's family went to a store one town over in Salem called Video Voyage. I'm not sure if it was convenient for them in some other way, or there was no other video rental spot in our town of Marblehead, but the selection at Video Voyage seemed way more impressive. Going with the three brothers and a babysitter to pick out a movie was my first time in a Video Store proper, and it was pretty cool. I didn't venture into the horror section, I think not out of fear, but just cuz I didn't know such a thing could exist yet. So yeah, the boxes were on display and I was a tad overwhelmed and just let Michael and Pat and the babysitter deliberate (Darby was too little to do much arguing). The choices were Jaws, First Blood, and Altman's Popeye, all three of which they had seen, I had seen none. Michael had quite a lisp and now anytime I think of First Blood all I can here in my head is this kid a couple years older than me emphatically repeating "First Bwood! Wet's went First Bwood! C'mon wet's get First Bwood!"
Jaws was the selection and I honestly can't believe I stuck around for that ten minutes before I snuck out of there basement TV room and walked home. Normally I would have not even been in the same room with a scary movie, but I'm pretty sure the promise of a naked girl in the opening moments kept me around. After relishing that voyeuristic shower scene in Police Academy, I was a 7 year old horndog. A bonerless horndog, who still didn't know what sex was, but still, I wanted to see naked girls as much as possible. My Dad rented me Revenge of the Nerds when I was home sick with the chicken pox in second grade....what a guy....naked girls on hidden camera and under pie plates...I was in heaven.
Soon we got cable (with Showtime!) and the renting subsided for a little bit. The Little Store's selection may have lost it's appeal and there were a couple of store bought videos that started the kid-vid library. One of those Golden Book cheapo talking story book ones, and some Berenstein Bears thing, but damn.....cable. I watched a LOT of cable. With the diminishing rental action a lot of my "repeated VCR" viewing needs were met by my Aunt, Uncle and cousin, who were serious home-tapers and filled blank GE tapes with 3 movies apiece taped off of HBO on their GE brand VCR. Me and cousin Mike spent tons of time together, and a bunch of that time revolved around watching his parents' tapes. Watching many scenes over and over and over. I must have seen the girl get sucked out of the chimney in Weird Sciene 500 times. This practice, and that particular VCR lasted until the mid 90's.
At home though, it was mostly cable. A sort of sequel to the mistaking a sexy movie for a scary movie came one night when Bachelor Party was about to be on Showtime (I can still see that "Up Next" title card in my head) and my dad shooshing me off to bed. I was convinced that his veracity in getting me to bed had to do with HOW SCARY this movie must be...and cuz Bachelor really sounded like Butcher...but anywayssss.
Around this time I became really good friends with a rather well off kid named....well, I probably shouldn't use his real name, but it's just too good, and I won't say anything slanderous, so I'm just gonna do it. His name was/is Barron Butler. Him and his new-agey mother lived down the street in a rather modern 4 story house. I gotta tell ya, I grew up in a rather ritzy town called Marblehead, renowned for lots of things, but primarly for it's snootiness and it's yachting culture. My dad grew up there when the town was only half ritzy, the other half being more of a fishing community. So I got to grow up thinking I was poor, when I most certainly was not. Being friends with Barron and his endlessly generous mother really exposed me a lot of the "finer things in life" I must say. One of these things was a camcorder with a top loading VCR component that Barron often had set up in his room! In case you didn't know, most camcorders up until the late 80s required hauling a small VCR on a strap in addition to the actual camera part.
Mary (Barron's mother) would take us another Video Voyage to rent tapes for us to watch all the time. This is how I saw The Karate Kid and Ghostbusters (was too scared to see this in the theater...sigh) and many more showings up Superman. I think on these visits to VV, I started to maybe glance around with an eye out for the horror section. Though I was still scared to death of even the IDEA of horror movies, they were starting to intrigue me more and more....from a distance. This video store was also the first I ever saw that rented video games; NES, but at this point I still just had Atari. This was 1986.
In 1987, the house we lived in was sold without us knowing, and we had 30 days to get out. The only real option was moving into my Grandparents' tiny house in blighted Lynn, two towns over. Lynn is a very different place than Marblehead, and since I was unable to make annnnnnnnnny friends in this new city, I had even more time to watch TV. Since most of our lives were still back in Marblehead, my Dad did a lot of driving back and forth, and right in the middle of the route was Photographics. Photographics was my introduction to the kind of video store that would in some respects, rule the rest of my life and dreams. This place had built itself around the BOOM that was home video rental. The impression I got was that Photographics had a lot of capital and used it to buy every tape they could, regardless of what it was. And what that meant was a huge horror section. This was the first time I ventured into the dark mysteries of the mom and pop video store...well, ventured is probably too strong a word. More like skirted the borders of the land of big boxes with grotesque covers. I had heard of the controversy of the "santa slasher movie," but instead of weird murmurs, here was the thing itself. Silent Night, Deadly Night, with Santa's axe wielding arm descending a chimney...yikes....way scarier to me than the movie ended up being. And why was the box so goddamned big? But what fucked me up even more was ANOTHER Christmas horror movie, Terror in Toyland that I had never heard any parents scoff about.
In fact, I had never heard anyone say much about any of these movies. Well, the titles I could make out as I quickly walked passed. One odd thing about Photographics was that it was the only videostore I ever went to where the boxes had velco on the back and the shelves had cloth backing that it stuck to. Me and sis usually ended up choosing the one dollar "Disney World tour video" tapes. My dad did rent me Fast Times at Ridgemont High one time, even though I didn't ask. I think he just wanted to watch it himself. I think he let me watch some of it at least. But I had a LOT of my T&A desires fulfilled with our continued subscription to Showtime...thank god.
Around this time I saw my old music teacher from Marblehead looking for a movie. I went up to Mr. Sano and asked him what he was doing, and he responded by saying that he was having friends over and needed a good movie. I recommended Secret of My Success without knowing anything about it outside of the commercial and the video for the Night Ranger song of the same name. Always trying to impress the elders with how sophisticated I was...He said he had already seen it and liked it. Mr. Sano had bright orange hair, was probably in his early 50's and all the kids said he wore a wig to conceal his green hair.
After 9 long months in Lynn, we found an apartment in Marblehead closer to the downtown area, giving the more independent me of 1988 access to two video stores. I don't know if Videoscope and Video Attractions were new at the time, but I didn't know about them until now, and I was fucking psyched. I was mostly so excited cuz both places rented NES games, but there was something about VA that started to haunt me. Both stores were wayyyy smaller than Photographics and thus had a much smaller library. This meant I was a lot less intimidated by size of the horror section at VA and I got my bravery up enough to look at some of the boxes up close. The shelf with the 30 odd horror movies was set way in the back hidden by other shelves, and considering the low foot traffic I was afforded a lot of privacy to confront my fears. I had just recently seen my first ever horror movie, Maximum Overdrive on Showtime, and there was no turning back, even if I was still terrified. It still is one of my all time faves, and I thank god I started with something gory but silly, to ease me into this stuff. Watching this scene in my Grammy's rec-room basement is perhaps the moment I really fell in love with horror movies:
I became fast friends with my new neighbor Ian, who was two years younger than me and a big fan of horror movies, so I knew I had to get over this fear pretty quickly. This consisted mostly of getting his babysitter to rent the Nightmare on Elm Street series for us at Videoscope.
One of the things that really increased the appeal of renting R rated movies from these two stores were that they were both run by two different middle aged pills who openly disapproved of our tasteless selections. In our favor we not only had the of-age babysitter renting for us, we also had permission from Ian's mother to rent R rated movies. This didn't stop these women at both stores from calling his mom to express disgust...heh, heh, heh. Ian's Mom, to her vast credit, really stuck by her guns in these situations. Maybe it was a little weird at the time that a nine year old got carte blanche with movie stuff, but this eleven year old wasn't complaining. I gotta say, that I don't think we'd get away with renting R rated sex comedies or whatever, but for whatever reason, my too young horndog side subsided for a bunch of years. Yes, the years that constitute puberty...I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me, but I was much more interested in Hip Hop, Metal, Horror Movies, Star Wars and Cartoons to care about sex...hmmm.
But even with me and Ian (and his little, little brother Eric) watching the mainstream cannon of R-rated horror and action movies for the next couple of years, some of those video boxes at Video Attractions still freaked me the fuck out. Because nobody had heard of these movies, and because the artwork looked so amateurish, this had to be the "really hard stuff," right? Although some of the movies that I was looking at might have had crueler or gorier stuff going on, it was more of a "hard" degree of scariness or creepiness that I was imagining. Truth of Dare: A Critical Madeness was one such video box. How could an embossed cover with a razor blade and dripping blood and a back cover featuring a chainsawed little leaguer be anything but the scariest movie ever? Of course, having seen this flick in later years, I saw how utterly unscary the movie is. Crazy and gory? IN HEAPS. Scary? Last word I'd use to describe it.
I never rented it back then because I was too frightened, but moreso I didn't want access to a world I was not ready for. In my estimation, there was perhaps evil, or spiritual darkness in these videos, and though I know better about the movies themselves, I still link places like Video Attrractions with that sort of feeling. I still dream about it occasionally, actually. But in my more spooked younger mind such unspeakable things should not be let out in such an unassuming little store. It was a well lit glorified cabin with shelves, not a place where the dark spirits of the universe could safely exist!
And this is what was push/pull. this was what kept me going back to rental places and studying movies I would never rent. I wanted the darkness, but I was too protective of the keeping of appearances. Though I relished pissing off the owner-women when renting something they found tasteless, I didn't want to be seen tip toeing into a world that was unsafe or tasteless in MY opinion. I knew I was not ready, I wonder if those ladies ever picked up those same boxes and looked a little too closely and freaked themselves out? Kinda funny how the me and the store ladies are going on the same basic misinformation when deciding on the merits of these films.
The first time that I really dipped my toe in that nameless evil pool was a few years later when me and my only friend from school dared to rent Last House on the Left from Videoscope. This was the mostly uncut version released in the 80's with the image of the woman lying in the huge hand. By this time I had started reading Fangoria (which of course mostly dealt with the gore effects of contemporary films) any other scant info on horror movies I could find. I was a BIG Wes Craven fan at this point (Shocker was another favorite rental for sleepover parties), so one of the films I ended up reading about was LHOTL. And fucking christ, I knew I was doing something bad when I rented that. Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a similar "bad" feel, but at least that had the name recognition and less grungy sequels.
LHOTL was secret, and honestly I don't think the pill at Videoscope would have rented this one out had she known what the fuck she had in her own fucking store. One of the few things that made renting this rape-revenge classic was I Spit on Your Grave staring at us from the shelf above. That had to be much worse, as it had "MUST BE 18 to RENT ID REQUIRED" prominently scrawled on that big-box-cut-down-to-clamshell case. I had also read that scathing "zero star" review that Roger Ebert had in his Movie Home Companion. If I Spit on Your Grave was so deplorable that you needed ID, then Last House on the Left must be sorta acceptable right? I mean, this was Wes Craven, who, at the time, was sort of respected for Serpent and the Rainbow...remember this was long before horror films became a widely regarded genre. If a horror movie was going to be liked by "regular people" it just got rebranded a thriller.
So yeah, we take this movie home, and I cannot express how it made me feel. Well I can't express it without using a long list of adjectives: fascination, disgust, self loathing, hilarity, fear, exhilaration, but still that doesn't quite cover it. This is really the first movie(and now amongst maybe only 4) that really bothered me after I finished watching it. Scarred me, I guess you could say. In a good way, even if a big part of me didn't want to accept that I could ENJOY being so disturbed. But I guess this is what I had been dancing around ever since I saw those Poltergeist commercials: that there were these things out there designed to terrify you, and people LIKED it! What I didn't understand at the time, since I saw no horror films for so long, was that these movies rarely even came close to what my little kid self would imagine as far as the sadistic element goes. When I finally saw Poltergeist, I thought it was "cool" and maybe a little scary, but nothing like the images I concocted when the movie was described to me. So essentially, Last House on the Left was the first crack in the dam, and now I was searching for things movies that were gonna match that feeling.
Where was I gonna find it though? Even though Video Attractions had a few years left in them after I saw Last House, I still too self conscious to try and rent Truth or Dare, or the few other nasty titles, though I would go to rent more normal movies there on occasion. Incidentally, in addition to the horror, there was also a porn room which no one was ever in, probably cuz no one would want to rent X-rated movies from that fucking lady. You really have to wonder about these people who open up stores where they try to profit from stuff they loathe....in public anyway.
The solution lay in Photographics, which was one town over but still bikeable and overstuffed with sleazy vids. Even better they had a "rent 5 movies for 5 days for 5 bucks" deal, which really sealed it for me, considering the lack of easy access to the place. This was my early high school education...forget friends, parties or girls, it was stacks of horror movies, punk rock and Star Wars....I guess not really that different from before, but having STACKS of movies made a big difference...especially since they were weird titles not available in Marblehead.
Around this time however, a defector from Video Attractions opened up Chet's Video. Chet was a cool guy and had a little bit more of an arty sensibility than his old employer. This meant that when Reservoir Dogs came out, I rented it from him.....and all the stuff that came in it's wake. Of course a lot of it was god awful, but damn, so happy that my dad gave Chet the go-ahead to rent Bad Lieutenant at age 14.
After a couple of years of this intensive movie watching, I finally found myself a girlfriend, and our rather intense relationship kind of put the movie obsession on hold for a while. I got most of my kicks reading Film Threat (a magazine that in retrospect could only have seemed okay to an idiot-know-it-all 16 year old like myself) and the few books on horror films I managed to find. The Overlook Encyclopedia of Horror really blew my mind apart and started me on the path of reading tons about movies I could never hope to see, cuz they were obscure Italian gore films or whatever. Little did I know what was in store for me once I hit college.
...and that's part 2......

I do to youtube what UHF used to do to me.

2011-06-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

It seems that youtube, a website you may have heard of, is a kind of spiritual successor to what low rent and late night television was pre-informercial. Well, at least the way I use it. Seems to me the only way to really indulge that time-wasting URL is with open ended mazes of related clips of old glitchy ephemera. Essentially anything recorded originally on video tape, then converted to digital. Most other shit I don't care about, but if you get into the good stuff, it's maze like . And what kind of stuff was originally taped by video enthusiasts and then posted on da web? Some home videos, but mostly weird shit from TV! And their used to be a lot of weird shit on TV, sometimes right in plain view, other times squished to the margins. And generally, the odder the airtime, the odder the programming. I'm pretty sure it still so happens that most television channels switch to a block of paid for advertisements in the wee hours. That or a repeat of the daytime programming. I don't have cable, so I'm basing this on my visits to the abode of the 'rents and their 500 channels. I wonder what the Bruce Springsteen of 89 would have thought of 559 channels and nothin's on, but I digress. Back when broadcast television was the norm and cable was the exception, most stations (broadcast and cable) went off the air. Preceding and following that nothing was another weird sort of nothing. This was television for the not-worth-it. And so the cheapest programming available was the standard of late night broadcast television. Late night movies became synonymous with the forgotten or unsellable. "The Late Show" and "The Late Late Show" were cultural signifiers of the insomniac, or the obsessive movie fan who needed to see that old piece of celluloid that no one sane cared about anymore. Movies were sold to stations in packages, with more tantalizing titles at the top and the unsellable tacked on the bottom. when else to show Zontar but when no one but miscreants were watching? This seems akin to the current cultural idea of the late night internet rat. Y'know, nerdy, sleepless and lonely. The main difference, obviously was that it was a oneway info-feed.
"The Late Show" as it was popularly known, was a format used by network television to provide affordable filler for said insomniacs and movie buffs. Affordable=cheap! CBS called this "The CBS Late Movie" which ran from 1972 to 1993, being a network and all, the programming tended to be a bit classier than the smaller stations. Along with the expected horror films (including The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, The Valley of the Gwangi) current TV movies and reruns of contemporary prime time CBS shows. The other networks left these "Late Show" programs in the hands of affiliates, with varying names e.g. The Bedtime Movie in KTTV in Los Angeles.

For UHF stations the daytime was cruddy enough as these were independently owned stations without powerful broadcast signals and little money to spend on what was beamed to the masses. They had their own package movie programs for Prime Time and Weekends which was where the top their stuff went, so you can imagine what was put out on air in the early morning or late night, when only lowlives were watching. (Of course this ties in with the phenomena of the local Horror Movie Hosts which is covered in depth in the great documentary American Scary. I also wasn't exposed to such hosts back in the day (UGH) so I won't go into that here).
Sign offs, test patterns and static filled the wee-est of the hours, but bottom of the barrel flix after the main feature and rubbish cartoons at 6am book ended the negative zone with hard to trace ephemera. All of these stations had a sign off time which made the return of SOMETHING, ANYTHING to be special. When you can't sleep at your friend's cableless slumber party and the television does nothing but throw snow at you, you are gonna be pretty fucking happy when any goddamned thing comes on the air. And thus, when something did finally show up on that cathode ray, you watched it. Or I watched it, at my friends' slumber party, in league with some angry loners and unemployable folk. This often meant (especially on Sunday) local public affairs shows. Not fun to watch, but I sat there anyway. Sort of reminds me of the way I sit and stare at my computer screen sometimes looking for some abstract digi-human contact.

Any connection with something alive felt good when all of your annoying friends were snoring with cheezball induced bellyaches 10 feet from you. You might also come across sitcoms you weren't aware existed or cartoons that seemed to have originated from another planet. This kind of seemingly interplanetary cartoon exposure might have blown me away had it not been for the fact that cartoons from who-the-fuck-knows populated most of the morning and afternoon blocks of the local UHF stations...along with public affairs programs and old sitcoms. It was just that at 6am, the otherworldiness was bit more extreme. The beauty of UHF was that it was semi batshit even in it's prime hours. This is how I grew up, watching Boston's WLVI 56, WSBK 38 and WFXT 25 (and that mysterious channel 66). Being a young clueless kid in the 80s, I didn't realize that a lot of my favorite shows were from the 70s. I dug the hot current live-action shows like Knight Rider, Diff'rent Strokes and A-Team but I connected alot more with the re-runs being played on the UHF stations like Three's Company, The Brady Bunch and Good Times. In contrast to how those shows and others from the 70s became linked to a specific nostalgia, I had no idea they were old or incongruous with current trends. This lack of recognition of the period of origin of fave showz was even more intense with cartoon reruns. A big part of this was that many of the hottest new cartoons were playing in syndication on UHF channels completely in the mix with "picked up for cheap" relics from the past. In this way you the viewers cultural collage was picked out for them. This stream of consciousness folded in on itself with the airing of Looney Tunes and Rocky and Bullwinkle which were fast paced mind fucks on their own! What was a young mind to make of all this besides revel in it? Well, revel in it, I did...thank god.

This also worked with the movies, as I was lucky enough to be a viewer of the weekday afternoon program "Creature Double Feature." This was WLVI's double feature of late-night monster movies, but aired just after the network Saturday Morning Cartoons ended. In other words it was the perfect schedule for young couch potatoes like myself. I was scared out of my wits 6 year old watching Japanese rubber suit monster movies and creaky old mummy movies, and it was fucking great. Again, I had no idea that these movies came from another time or another place beyond that mysterious realm of weirdo TV. It was a twilight zone, essentially. Weird how they use a little of Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Toccata" for the theme. Did they get permission?

With state of the art televisions being out of the price range of many American families, a lot of us non-cable households were stuck with dials and no remote control. This meant that changing channels required dedication and a sense of purpose. And when you have only 6 other stations, channel 56 is probably gonna be your best bet anyway. So we were fed our stimuli, and we (or at least I) thoroughly absorbed it. The scattershot images received, from refracted and nebulous origins helped create a neurological hive of ghostly transmissions. I'm freely willing to admit that my exposure to such stimuli was in my formative years and so, probably a bit inflated in the contrast to anyone other than myself, but whattayagonnado? The strangest phenomena of all in the realm of UHF for me personally was the use of Public Service Announcements especially by the aforementioned WLVI 56. FCC regulations of the day required a set amount of time set aside for public service, a standard that has been eroded to nearly nothing once the Communications Bill of 1996 was signed into law. Broadcasters had usually dealt with this regulation by relegating the public service programming to a time when they knew very few were watching, a la "The CBS Late Movie." This is why we had locally produced public affairs shows playing out on early Sunday morning as I mentioned earlier. WLVI seemed to take a different tact, which was to play PSA's during their mid-morning and afternoon cartoon block. What made this so strange was that a few of these spots were contemporary, most were recycled from the late 60s and onward. This created a stark contrast when some puppets shot in grainy late 60s style were telling you to save electricity during a commercial break from the latest episode of The Transformers. Many questions abounded the head of young WLVI viewers...who were these puppets? Where did they come from? Why are they telling me to shut off my record player before leaving the house? Why does this look so different from Masters of the Universe adverts? The stealthiness of these relics was of course increased when they existed amongst such contemporary PSA action like a break dancing werewolf telling you to eat school lunch and robo-anthropomorphic foodstuffs teaching nutrition. What was new and what was old? And more importantly; what does it mean to be modern and what does it mean to be old? Watching the old cartoons amidst the new (and still digging them!) made you wonder why kids at school weren't carrying Herculoids or Mr. Magoo lunch boxes. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the episodes of the Bozo the Clown show that I watched so feverishly as a tiny person were actually taped in 15 years before I had seen them, though my envy of the kid contestants as they fought for the treasure chest full of toys and giant Tootsie Roll was as in the moment as the quickly soggifying bowl of cheerios in front of my 3 year old self. The blend of the new and the ancient made for a certain delicious combination that sets a fire my belly all these years later.

As cable became more popular, the stream of consciousness became much more in the hands of the viewer. The cable box and it's companion remote control was for me and most everyone I knew the first way in which a viewer could sit on a couch and aimlessly switch around stations. Yes, a big appeal of cable was the leaving behind of the knobs and surrendering the large console to the tiny box with buttons and a digital display. Now, this is really where the youtube comparison comes into play. I don't know about you, but when I go on that there website, I get sent on a mystical journey not so much determined by purpose, but by a flow of images. I look up one thing, and then tempted by another image on the sidebar I click, sent on another voyage. Now in parallel with other UHF stations needing cheap programs, such is the case with a lot of cable stations. The difference being that with cable, you had a viewer guide channel that would tell you what you were watching and what was up next, and what was on all the other channels...if you had the patience to sit and watch the slow text scrawl. In the daylight hours, one could generally use this information to center yourself: "Yes, I am paying for a children's station called Nickelodeon and they are playing a pretty weird British Sci-Fi show called 'The Third Eye.' Seems odd, but I will look for something more suited to my taste." Once the nighttime comes, the viewer is on his/her own, a voyager amidst the detritus of human entertainment. In the daytime and prime-time, you knew your fellow man was awake also basking in the glow of the warming box. But at 2am, what a creep you are! Trolling for softcore porn and only finding nudity in low rent drama's or teen sex comedies, you are the leaky crust of humanity and you feel alone and disturbed. This isn't like the old days where the networks and the UHF stations signed off! Some of these cable stations stay on all night, and what the fuck is this movie playing? Often at night, the channel guide scroll wouldn't be too accurate or complete. WTF, awesome! And just like UHF on a large scale you had a cavalcade of old and new shows that first and foremost forced the "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?" question.

Most exciting though, was the USA Network's program Night Flight which unfortunately I have only experienced recently on tape and on youtube. The late night show ran for long blocks (four hours for a majority of it's run) from 1981 to 1988. A syndicated version ran in the 90s, but I don't recall seeing it in any of the stations in my Cablevision package. Night Flight took an underground approach to twilight TV, playing oddball animated shorts, cult films (like Fantastic Planet!), new wave and punk videos, and tons of the other stuff all mashed together. It's a real trip and I highly reccomend checking it out. When it left the air, it was replaced by USA's Up All Night which was my source for weird/crappy movies when I was a teenager throughout the 90s, which was a real boon to me, but I really wish I saw Night Flight as a runt.

Well, of course what happened was that the cheapest available programming for anyone was programming that paid to be there, which where infomercials came in. Back when these things first started appearing I watched them often, laughing at how suckers must be born every nanosecond if the sales pitches were working. But I must have been right about the nanosecond thing, cuz these half hour shit-spiels filled vast amounts of programming space. And shit, it was the same couple of fucking product pitches over and over. Where once was the untraceable, was now the homogenized.
This is youtube, or at least how I experience it. All alone, late at night, looking at images that seem to have been ignored for decades. The mouse is the remote control to the cable box of sad mysteries and grainy educational puppets. Sneaking upon the hidden domain of film-making efforts forgotten with reason. Forgotten because they wanted to be forgotten. They live in the late night like ghosts haunting a castle hallway. Creeps like myself keeping the memory alive by continuing to look. Does the element of control in the hands of the viewer take away or give more to the experience? I'm not so sure. It definitely seems less magical in a way, but I'm sure that a lot of this has to do with my age, being an old codger of 32 now. But the magic is lingering. Maybe it's just that I choose to look at such things on this here website that gives me the same feeling, but hell, when I'm on here I'm possessed to look at such things. In fact I often find myself on the computer in the dark lonely hours, looking at the PSA's that were the staple of WLVI. Maybe I'm just the crazy one.
T hat being said, I'm still try to keep the magic alive, as are the freaks who take the time to digitize and upload their old tapes to the web. Even I'm too lazy to do that! And I have a lot of tapes!

.

For Clarence

2011-06-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

I never thought it would be like this. I always joked that I better go to a Springsteen show sometime soon, cuz the guy obviously was gonna keel over from a heartattack after the umpteenth marathon show. Umpteenth is probably the wrong word...countless? Infinite? Time was running out, and though Bruce is one of my favorite artists in the history of histories, I've never seen him. In fact, I've only been to one "real concert" in my whole life, and that was AC/DC at the Boston Garden in 98. That was an incredible show, but I'm just far too much of a cheapskate to throw around money on these big concerts. I'm more of a house show kind of guy through and through. But I still needed to see Bruce. That's how I referred to him, just Bruce...though in my mind, that was the complete package. Bruce was the E Street Band also...I guess I just didn't think of the individuals in the band that much. And I had some reason, Max Weinberg always struck me as kind of a dork, Little Steven could be hard to take seriously and a bunch of the others I don't know anything about at all. I loved Clarence, but I vaguely put him in "guilty pleasure" category as it was the Big Man's sax that I had to deal with anytime I got into one of those "a friend dislikes Springsteen conversations." It was always "I just can't deal with the sax" or the "I just can't deal with all the U.S.A. lyrics." Of course the latter is easily attributed to the mainstream perception of Bruce overtaking the actual meaning of his work, but the sax thing was harder to contend with...Clarence's Sax is bigger than life and sort of coexists with the supercorny urban sax thing(which I love in another way, but that's another story), but it's different. I always tried to explain, but I'm always having these conversations with NOISE DUDES, and it just doesn't connect. And I get it, cuz well, I'm a NOISE DUDE and I have been for many years. Getting into experimental/noise/actuallyunderground music kind of prefigures that you have a distrust of popular music. Sure, I like tons pop music, but there is a certain separation. I love it for it's production quality, audacity in pandering, and it's power in affecting people/myself despite all this. This is also how my friends relate to pop music, but I have another little thing. I have Bruce.
Sure, I've got Neil Young and Prince. Those guys also get me right in the heart and the brain and the spirit, but there's a difference. Neil and Prince are WEIRD. They are experimenters, they are oddballs, they send you juicy curveballs to absorb. Bruce is NOT WEIRD. If he's a little weird, then the rest of the E Street Band possesses not one atom of weirdness. So what grabs me? I don't know...realness and hope, I guess.
Yeah, my relationship with the music of Bruce is completely unique to me. The way I relate to Neil Young and Prince is similar but not close. Bruce has a piece of me, and it's a secret piece and it's a precious thing. I don't listen to him unless I'm in a very specific and special mood. There's a good reason for that: most of the fucking songs bring me to tears. Why? The only thing I can say is that rascally aforementioned realness, the obnoxious, hard to deal with hope stuff. That's my theory anyhow, I just don't know.
I'm a cynic and sarcastic bastard by nature and I have a hell of time just fucking FEELING y'know! It's painful to really FEEL, because to do that you need hope. You need a sliver of humanity, a grain of belief. I'd tell you on any fucking day of the week that belief is a folly and faith is annoying. I'm into being as good a person as I can be, cuz that is what makes life livable, but if I attached it to some grand belief or faith in the fate of the human race, I'd kick my own ass for being such a stooge. But yeah, every once in a while, I will bust out those E Street Band LPs and feel like a fool, but a hopeful fool...and it's painful and hard for me to deal with...as these feelings don't have much to do with how I actually live my life. But it hits me somewhere in the core of my fucking heart. I don't know. The musical voice that is Bruce is always searching, begging for meaning. The various characters, no matter how beaten or carefree are trying to understand and trying to feel as deep as possible. It's unintuitive to identify with that, especially as a disgruntled 32 year old!
As you may have noticed from the way I write about this music, my focus was on BRUCE/THE BOSS. And this is why I was so sideswiped by the loss of The Big Man 9 days ago. I didn't know it was coming, and I didn't know what it meant. But I knew immediately, that he was irreplaceable and he was gone. Sax styling I thought needed defending before were now revealed to me as inimitable. Anybody else playing like him could only sound like parody. The only antecedents that made sense to me were Jr. Walker and King Curtis, and that was still something different. Clarence was his own, but he was also half of a pure partnership.
As soon as I read that Clarence Clemons had passed, I knew it was the end of The E Street Band. I knew I would never see that band play. Incompleteness was like a void rushed upon my heart. I never knew how important it was to me...what they were. Bruce and Clarence. As soon as I read that he died I just fucking google image searched him to put up an acknowledgement on that Facebook thing and the first thing I saw was the "Born to Run" cover shot. That partnership, that teamwork, that friendship, that fucking LOVE evident in that photo brought me to tears. I always looked upon it with a fondness, but FUCK. This man is GONE. This pillar. I had always focused on Bruce but Clarence, Clarence was almost like his reason for being there. I knew that Bruce and Little Steven had a close personal bond, but they were more like equals. Clarence was more the yin to Bruces yang, or whatever. The rest of the band lays a foundation...and those two are like the fucking twin towers. Fuck the cynical youth if it thinks The Big Man's sax is too corny, I don't care! I feel it like anvils on my chest!
And maybe it's not yin and yang, maybe it's something stranger, more spiritual...at least musically. The way I see it, it's like Stevie, Max, Roy, and the rest of the band create the world...Bruce becomes the creature...stalking the world, reaching for meaning, or reaction, or salvation...and Clarence is the spirit world, like a god, sending his rays of beauty to light up the world and give salvation to the creature...giving the man a soul. You listen to "Jungleland" and you'll know what I'm talking about. Really, just listen to it. But now, this spiritual combination is broken, at least in the physical realm. But will the spirits of the night be broken? Will my hope be lost? That's kind of the thing I've always feared; that the me I become when I allow myself to be so affected by this music, is my real feeling self, stifled. I know it's too late to experience this salvation in the flesh (why am I such a fucking cheapskate), but hopefully (there's that "hope" word) that part of me (and potentially YOU) didn't die with the body of my my friend Clarence Clemons.
I love you though I never met you dude, RIP.
DJC 6/28/11 2:42am.

90's Drowning girl Anti-drug PSA

2011-06-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, for anyone else out there who is a nut-job, I found something pretty awesome. The anti-inhalants Partnership for a Drug Free America PSA which includes the shot of the drowning girl's face. All the versions I've found on youtube in the past bunch of years are considerably toned down with that shot missing. you have to go to the 1:26 mark.

Old Zines/Comics pt. 9

2011-06-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Stoners and Boners issue# 8 1/2 x 11 w/ George W. Myers circa 2003

Stoners and Boners issue #8 1/2 x 11 2a (big) w/ GWM circa 2003

Stoners and Boners w/ GWM circa 2006

Old Zines/Comics pt. 8

2011-06-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Amusement Section Vol III circa 2009

Amusement Section #3 circa 2007

Amusement Section circa 2006

Old Zines/Comics pt. 7

2011-06-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

I Feel Like Shit vol 2/4 circa 2006

I Feel Like Shit vol blank 2006

Stoners and Boners 8 1/2 x 11 #2 w/ George W. Myers circa 2004

Old Zines/Comics pt. 5

2011-06-08T10:13:00.001-07:00

I feel Like Shit vol 3 circa 2006

I Feel Like Shit vol 5 circa 2006

I Feel Like Shit vol 4/Amusement Section split zine circa 2006

Old Zines/Comics pt. 4

2011-06-08T09:24:00.001-07:00

Stoners and Boners "ish number Juan, Seat-atle 1992" with George W. Myers circa 2006

Stoners and Boners issue #1 small w/ GWM circa 2004

Stoners and Boners issue 8 1/2 by 11 (big) #2B w/ GWM circa 2008

Old Zines/Comics pt. 3

2011-06-08T08:26:00.001-07:00

Minesweeper issue 1 w/Josh Vrysen and Crystal Regan circa 07

Minesweeper issue 2 w/Josh Vrysen and Crystal Regan circa 08

Are You There Margaret It's Me, Dan circa 2009

Old Zines/Comics pt. 2

2011-06-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

More old cover scans.

Meal Jazz w/ George W. Myers circa 2004 (a tribute to condiments.....sigh)

Guitar Center w/ GWM circa 2006 (fake guitar center catalog)

World of Nintendo circa 2006 (fake Nintendo catalog)

Old Zines/Comics pt. 1

2011-06-08T06:20:00.000-07:00

Scanned the covers to the many zines/comics I've done solo and with friends over the years.

Welcome to Crystalis issue "Stage 1-2" with George W. Myers circa 2005?

Welcome to Crytalis issue "Stage 1-1" w/ GWM circa 2004?

City Slickers (comics adaptations) w/ GWM circa 2004?

No Stalgia

2011-05-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

I fucking hate nostalgia. It causes people to think in an incredibly limited way about the past. You already knew that though. As I get older, I think my nostalgia streak gets thinner and thinner. I recall being a boy of say 6? Me and my cuz, who I was quite close with had a game called "the good old days" in which we would talk about non-existent events from the distant past (presumably before we were born) then do that two-person spinaroundwitharmsextendedholdinghands thing and chant "the good old days, the good old days." I'm not sure if we were imitating older folks talking about the past, but I'm pretty sure it stemmed more from a fascination with what happened before we were around. Like most kids, we would pour over old family photos of mysterious MIA uncles, and the weird hairdos on the people who were still around. The whole spinning/chanting thing may have pushed it into abnormal zones. We also would pull out the maps from National Geographics and point to various spots and challenge each other to a contest of obscurity. "My great great grandmother lives HERE!" whilst pointing to a spot on some mountain range. "Well my great, great, great grandmother lives HERE!" was the response, pointing to some other remote area. Our notions of what the past was, and how it related to ancestry and other parts of the world were pretty off, but it definitely planted a nostalgia seed. I was a hopeless case growing up, unhappy, always thinking things were better in the past, even if that time was merely a year or two ago. This was usually related more to where we lived/family practices rather than popculture related, but it still counts. It really pissed my Dad off...y'know, that whole "I'm working my ass off trying to make a good life for my family and they don't appreciate it" Dad situation. I feel pretty bad about it now, but kids are assholes, so whatttayagonnado.
Today was a beautiful and summery memorial day and thus my plans of getting stuff done around the casa were interrupted by the need to ENJOY the outside of said casa. My bff and companion provided that enjoyment in the promise of a non-3rdwheely jaunt a few towns over to visit a used book store. How could I say no to a nice car ride through the country? At the book store I picked up a copy of this book called "My First Time: a collection of first punk rock show stories." Normally I don't think I would have gone for such a thing, but I've been reading like a maniac lately and I dunno, I'm a sucker for punk rock anecdotes. And so far it seems that this book is devoid of Warped Tour bullshit or whatever. At my age I'm beyond yelling "poser" or "sellout" at mallpunks, but I still don't like that shit. Yeah, I'm getting older, 33 this year and I haven't given up on this punk rock thing. As far as "scene involvement" is concerned I've been much more entrenched in the world of improv and noise for the past 12 or so years, but I'm still an avid listener of mostly older bands. So who cares, right? The reason why I'm writing this is because from the couple of contributions to this book that I've read so far drip with a barely masked nostalgia. I suppose it's fine for anecdotal writing to be like that, I just hope that's not what people think of me, what I write or say. Whatevs.
I'm thinking today was a day I might be nostalgic for in the future...that's why I mention the beautiful day and road trip. How is that I keep having awesome times that don't involve the birth of a child or a wedding? Aren't those the only wicked awesome days that 32 year olds are supposed to have? I guess it's that whole suspended adolescence thing. The problem is that I don't have my childlike awe and adolescent passion in full effect, I guess that's the hitch.
I struggle with all this stuff, constantly, as I'm a guy who is constantly engaged with the products of the past. I don't think I'm a nostalgic person in the least, but I will freely admit that I have that dinosaur/fossil/living in the past thing. To me, newer shit doesn't really seem to exist so much, but older things are breathing life. I wouldn't say it's a case of hindsight being 20/20, rather the rippling effect on history (no matter how small) that makes older things so resonate. Also, stuff fucking sucks now.
My life is immersed in a number of subjects/objects that one wouldn't say were contemporary, and I'm fine with it; reading about old bands I had never heard of, watching old, shitty, forgotten cartoons, listening to the albums of one hit wonder pop-rap groups...I don't think it's weird. I feel okay about my fossil lifestyle since I don't pine too much. Sure, I wish I could go to a Black Flag show in 1986, or see I Drink Your Blood in a drive-in in the early 70s, but it doesn't hurt too much. When I was a teenager, I would pine like crazy for a day in 1985 when I got to see The Goonies in the movie theater with my friend Baron and his mom and then go to a beautiful beach afterward with Steve Perry on the radio and the GI Joe Hovercraft in our clutches. For a number of reasons it was one of the best days of my life, but christ almighty, I'm having a fucking good time now! I don't want 1985 back! This all seems quite normal to me (even for an "historian" such as myself), but I guess I thought that as I got older things would get worse, losing my youth, and becoming further disconnected with the culture of modern youngins. And yes, people I know well, and not so well assume that nostalgia is my stock in trade. I get why this is. The evidence is all in my tumblr? But I'm a sensible guy! Generally any thought about how stuff was better in the past is countered with a thought about how things are better now. And that's the best way to think about things if you aren't gonna go insane. Cuz, uh, most stuff sucks now.
I remember seeing The Goonies at a midnight show 7 years ago and having a major sea change on my thoughts on this stuff. I was psyched, seeing one of my childhood favorites in a fun and rowdy atmosphere and then the movie started. When the scene of the Goonies biking down the hills while Cyndi Laupers' "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" plays, IT suddenly hit me! IT being the most obvious yet hard to stomach fact in all of life. IT hit me that I was never going to be a kid again! I was never going to be what I was seeing on the screen again. IT was heavy...I was in near tears, bittersweet tears, but still. Awe is hard to come by, am I silly in still trying for it, still battling the crusties? I support myself and live in a nice house and have that sort of adult shit together, so who cares if I.....y'know, why am I even writing this? The stigma of being an adult videogame player and/or cartoon watcher is at an all time low. I guess I just think those adults tend to gloss old shit with sugar coating and forget what's really interesting about the past and "stuff" from said past. What makes it interesting is that at any given time a world of crap and gold lived side by side and intersecting...a lot of it remembered, a lot forgotten. It's even happening right now, except that most stuff sucks now.

Evidence of a winner

2011-05-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Well I assumed all these companies were bankrupt before they could give away prizes for solving these contest games.

Coming Up Amidst the Crash

2011-05-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

I came into a videogame player at an opportune if not optimal time. I turned 5 in the summer of 1983 and right about that time I became obsessed with my Neighbors' Atari 2600. They were a young married couple in their early 30's and my parents were friendly with them, playing Trivial Pursuit, playing Pac-Man on the VCS (as the 2600 is also know if you're a layman) and playing "let's pretend we are yuppies." Although my parents were decidedly anti-yuppie (especially living in a town overrun with them), our nice upwardly mobile VCS owning friends made the lifestyle a little more palatable. And of course, I was down cuz I got to play Donkey Kong!
I had whet my appetite for Arcade mania via a few trips to Salem Willows, the local arcade/boardwalky type place (no actual boardwalk, just the stuff you'd find on a boardwalk minus the sleaze) and the VG related stuff coming through the Saturday Morning Cartoon ritual and the endless ads in the comic books that I couldn't really read, but poured over endlessly. I clipped those ads thinking they were coupons and saved them hoping that my parents could use them to buy me all this stuff that was so exciting and new/unknown to me.
I spent a lot of time at the young couple's house, until that Christmas I received my very own 2600 and a big sack of games! Now, here's where the opportune timing comes into play. If you know VG history at all, you know that this is the era of the 2nd generation of consoles. At this point anyone really into gaming was probably more concerned with whether the Intellivision still had any life in it as the ColecoVision and Atari 5200 were coming to market. I only had the vaguest notions of what these machines were from advertisements and the one bachelor in town who had a wide-screen TV and an Intellivision and wouldn't let any of us play it? Oh, I forgot to mention that I lived in a weird close-nit neighborhood where all the kids were semi-welcomed into a lot of the houses in a half-mile radius. One guy would give us all Capri Suns. Umm, I don't know why us little hellions had this arrangement, but I don't think any of us were molested or anything.
Anyhowwwwwww, this sack of games I received for Xmas was a bunch of used games my dad got from a fellow worker at the post office, and I do believe the 2600 was marked down. The sack of games were a big hit around the house, primarily my mom and gram dug Crackpots and my dad really liked Crash Dive. Maybe the Cashmans like games that started with "cr" for some reason.
And speaking of "Crash Dive," why was it so easy for my Dad to score like 20+ games for dirt cheap? The Great Videogame Crash of 1983, that's why! As an industry squandered to maintain any footing, I was happily playing their bargain bin close-out wares. As Atari essentially gave up and turned their hopes to home computers as the 5200 failed, the Atari 2600 was still synonymous with "video games" in my mind. And as various companies went out of business, and the media and the fans declared "the trend is over" I was blissfully unaware and quite content with my glut of inferior product.
"Glut of inferior product" could probably be the catchphrase of the Great Video Game Crash of 1983, as 3rd party VCS publishers pushed any dreck they could out onto the market promptly pissing off the buying public. Of course the 2 most notorious pieces of dreck were created in-house at Atari for a premium. Of course I'm referring the rush jobs Pac-Man and E.T. Surely you know the tales of unbridled hubris that resulted in these games essentially taking down Atari. If you do not, I point you directly to this essential (and riveting) reading The Ultimate History of Video Games by Stephen L. Kent. And for the gist of the tale, look Here .

Well, here's the funny thing being 5 years old, I loved all this garbage! First off, my few trips to the arcade at this point had been overwhelming and completely dizzying. I had not the age or the time to get familiar with all the revered titles. I mostly played Pole Position because I could sit down and play, and it seemed relatively simple. I was not biting my nails off waiting for a faithful port of Pac-man to play on my home console, I was waiting for any means for me to play any kind of Pac-man related thing possible! I was swept up in Pac-mania and I was a sucker for it (still am), but I couldn't just waddle off on my own to play at the local 7-11...and come to think of it, I think my suck-ass town had a "no arcade games" ordinance...fucking yuppies.
E.T. has had some apologists emerge from the woodwork in recent years, but beyond that, it's a universally hated game. Aimed at kids, but complex, baffling and dogged by a difficult (and frequent) "get out of the well" segment; people were pissed. Not me though! I actually didn't have as much trouble as most with getting out of the well over and over, and I found the play scheme mysterious as opposed to baffling. The VCS had many games that were relatively complex, some requiring information in the Manuals, and in the case of the SwordQuest games and Riddle of the Sphinx solving the games was part of a contest. In essence the contest was "are you nerdy/clever/insane enough at decoding our head scratching games to win fabulous prizes?"

I got to play my fair share of these games, and being so young and inexperienced, I was happy just to make ANYTHING happen, I didn't need to really advance far. And this being the age of graphic simplicity, seeing anything colorful or funny, or cute, or weird was often enough to merit playing the game. I mean I fucking played that Strawberry Shortcake game to death, and that consisted of matching up 3 segments of bodies to created dancing figures. I guess I liked mixing up the bodies and hearing weird variations of the music? Maybe my standards were just absurdly low? I don't know what do you think?

Also, I don't think a lot of the maligned 3rd party games were bad at all, in fact I liked them more than the atari classics! Frogs and Flies by M-network is still one of my favorite 2 player games and listen to what the programmer had to say about it in an in-house joke set of instructions:

Basically, VCS Frogs and Flies is a stupid game directed at stupid kids who come from stupid families which are headed by slothful parents who were too ignorant and cheap to buy the Intellivision Master Component, so they bought the indescribably bad Atari VCS unit instead. Most Atari games are so moronic that, as the Atari commercials delight in pointing out, they can be mastered in a number of minutes by the family pooch. The VCS unit itself is so worthless that it has been personally denounced by Richard Nixon and hailed by Carl Sagan as "the greatest boon to mankind since the scratch 'n' sniff bicycle seat."

Oh well, what can you do? Crash Dive, the aforementioned favorite for father/son bonding around the house got some pretty lousy reviews in Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated Nov 83:

And lastly, I wasn't paying for this stuff. I was getting my own glut of inferior glut of product as my family raided the bargain bins and I loved it. At this point Video Games as a whole fell out of fashion for most in favor of home computing or "reality," I never stopped playing that damned Atari 2600/VCS. Sure, once videogame fever came back full force with the NES a few years later I was abuzz with the excitement of this new mysterious system from Japan. No matter how euphoric the early experiences of playing Super Mario Brothers or Metroid were, to me "Atari" meant "videogames" and "Atari" meant the "2600" and it all meant good times playing "inferior product."

Endnote:
You may recall that the NES was branded an "Entertainment System" rather than a videogame, to distance itself from the great crash. This is why their is such a strong emphasis on the Zapper and R.O.B. in early advertising. These peripherals linked the NES to two of the biggest toys of 1986, Lazer Tag and Teddy Ruxpin...that is if you wanna see a similarity in a furry boombox playing story tapes and a slowrobot spinning gyros.

Hot tip:
Leave your Atari 2600 or 7800 at your Grammy's house. It might get her into videogames and it also adds a nice flavor to your visit. If you spend most of your videogame time playing the hot new systems at home, think of how much fun it would be to go drink some pink lemonade, eat a grilled cheese and Galaga in the Pahhhhlah (that's Parlor as my Grammy would say it).

A Different World

2011-04-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

This isn't very important. But a powersurge hurt the press at the newspaper I deliver. Delaying work start time from 2am to 5am. When I got home at 7:30am, the things I wanted most in the world were there. A Colt 45, a microwave veggie burger and a couple episodes of A Different World.
Sometimes, that's the world I wanna live in.
A silly sit-com about a black college circa 88. With Sinbad as my coach.
Yup.

Art dickhead exchange

2011-04-04T01:44:00.001-07:00

So a quick set-up. My personal email (Porkatron88@hotmail.com) was given by a friend to a guy who runs a gallery a couple towns over. I don't know the guy. He wanted "works with paper" for a big group show. My thoughts are "sure, I'll be in the thing" and we have a super casual back and forth via email about how much space I need, what I have, etc. I'm a little surprised he doesn't really ask me anything about my stuff (including what it looks like) until a few days ago. I send him a couple shitty JPEGs of my cube (where it sits in my garage) and some collage/trash garland I've been working on. A few days pass and I get this fucking email:

Danny, [the name on this email account is Danny Dentata]

After seeing your presentation, of the work you want to put in the show, I'm not sure who sent you an invitation.

You haven't gotten back to me, so I am going to make a decision based on the following questions.

Who is the artist you know, that is in this show?
Is this your best and recent work.
Do you have a portfolio, resume and references?
Have you been to art school or taken any art classes?
Do you know how to professionally present art work for consideration in an exhibition?
Do you care about how your work is presented in a show?
Does your work have any content or does it just sit on top of trash?
Do you have names of all the galleries and shows that you have been in?
Have you shown here.
I your name Dentata or Cashman?
Do you have a web-site?
What is a porkatron?

I can not answer any of these questions with what you have shown me.

I'm sorry to inform you that I am taking you off the list of artists that will be in this exhibition.

Best,
Art Dickhead

So, I realize that it's not a big deal, but really, what a dickhead.
Here is my response. I had a good time honestly answering all his questions.

Bruce,
Let me answer some of your questions.
A*********** ********* is the artist who gave you my email address.
Whether this is my best work is something I cannot really say, but it is part of a the most recent batch of things I've been working on.
I do not have a portfolio, I do not have a resume, but references would be easy for me to come up with.
I have not been to art school, and I have not taken art classes.
I have not presented work for consideration in an exhibition, I have always been asked.
I care about how my work is presented, but i think the work stands on it's own and I prefer it to exist in non-traditional/non-gallery contexts.
I don't see what the connection between having "content" and sitting on a pile of trash is. I don't have a studio, and space is limited in my home. I work entirely with recycled materials, often what people might see as trash, and I don't see any problem with keeping my pieces "close to their roots," so to speak.
I've shown work at the Dirt Palace in Providence, R.I., 3 different shows at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton, and I just had my first solo show in the gallery in Feeding Tube Records in Northampton. There might be something I'm forgetting about, but not in your space.
My name is Daniel J. Cashman, the email you were sent was my personal email address.
I have website, but unrelated to my art.
Porkatron is a disgusting word I came up with.
I was just about to call you when I received this email, glad I didn't call.
I am not a professional artist, or an aspiring professional artist. I am a guy who makes collages and collage sculptures.
I was responding to an invite to be in a big group show, and before you saw images of my work the interaction we had seemed casual and friendly.
The reason why I do not have curator-friendly images to shop around is that I think such a thing would convey very little about the pieces I make.
I was giving you images trying to convey a sense of the space I might need, not so that you could determine how much "content" was being provided.
I understand that my stuff might not fit in everywhere, and I'm fine with that. Tens of layers of collage on a cardboard box is not the same as a tasteful print.
Regardless, your insulting attitude towards me in these questions is exemplative of the bullshit I try to avoid by bypassing traditional art-world channels.
Have a good show,
Dan

Atari XE hopes

2011-03-26T03:19:00.000-07:00

1987 was probably the worst year of my life, and also the best. I could go on and on about that for ages, but my memories of that year are very vivid and I keep coming back to that year again and again for various reasons (some unknown). I was 9 years old and obsessed with video games. Well, I still am, but things were at a fever pitch in 87, as the NES was still unattainable but so so close to my grasp, the Atari 7800 was in my clutches and I was psyched! The 7800 port of Xevious really broke my brain! In retrospect that system was a failure waiting to happen, but getting it as a bday present August 17th 1987 was a really invigorating prospect.
But beyond the hot desire for the NES and my love of this newly acquired Atari system, something lay like a nagging forgotten dream. Home computing. As I've written about previously on this here blog, (http://trashcanland.blogspot.com/2009/01/stevie-you-rodent.html) computers were rather fascinating to my young self. Not fascinating enough to really pursue a relationship with the machines mind you, but just enough to generate feelings of longing. I had no computer, could not financially have one, but I had used a C64 at my friend's house and found it frustrating and kind of obtuse: "Why do we have to spend all this time typing weird stuff into this thing to make it play a game? My Atari does it just by inserting a cartidge!" Yet, all those computer wiz characters in cartoons really inspired a need. A need to compute, even if it was in a roundabout dilletantish way that maintains to this day! I was more psyched on (the completely fictonal)computer book that Penny used to solve crimes for her lame as Uncle Gadget than I was in Basic or anything else boring...or based in reality.
I sort of gave up on the computer thing once I realized how out of my family's budget it was, and how very alien the reality of computers was to my sensibilities. But I thought I found the bridge; the place where I could rest my outsider head in the world of home computing. The Atari XE.
This was entirely inspired by the televsion advertisements, as I was enough of an outsider to the culture that I had no idea that Atari had several hugely successful home computers even though I had a fierce brand loyalty to the Atari name.
This is sort of similar to how I was too young to actually notice the great videogame crash, but I reaped the benefits of it in complete ignorant bliss. Discounted 2600 games at 4 bux a pop? Bring it on, merry christmas, Danny! But I read no magazines and had no context. I was 6 and loved my 2600 and that's all I cared about. I saw the 5200 games in Toys R Us and something about the boxes kind of scared me, but that was really my only exposure to the "second generation" systems. Oh and one memorable Donkey Kong/Colecovision commercial. That shit just baffled me though. Wouldn't you just prefer playing Frogs and Flies or Demon Attack for all eternity?
But these ads for the XE really linked cartridge gaming and computers! How could I go wrong! I remember kind of struggling with having designs on this guy, or the wave of the exciting future, which was obviously the NES. I went with the NES and found out there was no Santa in the process, but I still wonder what would have been. Would have I gotten into programming and have an IT job now instead of being a DJ and paperboy? Or would have I just been still totally alienated by all that nerd shit and stuck with yet more ports of Joust? I bet the latter, as it still took me a while to realize that the B button did anything on NES once I got one in early 88. Small minded in the realm of button possibility I suppose (this later really fucking threw me in Metroid).
But anyhow, here are the ads that gave that nerd-desire a momentary pop appeal for moi.

An odd side note: At a time when videogame rentals were still kind of rare, the local mom and pop convenience store rented out XE games. Bet they regretted that business decision!

Journal entries from 2001

2011-03-02T18:54:00.000-08:00

January 21st: Once again
My foot is cold and wet
due to a hole in my shoe and snow on the ground

I feel city
It is nice
John Davis

January 22nd: Here is this time....I'm an Idiot

January 23rd: Coddled by life,
hated by many
Is the rug geoing to be ripped out?
Is this damage the final joke?
All meaningless.

January 24th: I'm stupid.
I'm Evil.
I'm a circle.
Ignore myself,
and send flowers for best results.

January 25th: More bathroom dreams,
Mike was wearing a lie...
"whitesnake"
Definitely not Mike.

January 26th: Written the day after Amy was here
She is TOO CUTE!
and I mean that

January 27th: Dream:
Chuck E. Cheese but different
Axl Rose down a river
Roger Ebert and MK fetching a frog
Monks,
Porno ----------->autobiography of a flea
we are in a movie

January 28th: Perhaps doing things of imiportance from a distance now, letters, etc.

Anthro Rex things

2011-03-02T18:51:00.001-08:00

Hey, whoever was interested in getting some old Anthro Rex material...email me: DJCashman78@gmail.com...I might have some things.

And that's where I picked up...

2011-01-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

Jan 15th 2001
Insignifigent dreams.
George went away.
I am not satisfied.
Explosions are important to me.
I need to grind.
Destroy
I've been a good boy
too good.

Jan 16th 2001
Trying to minimize hatred in traffic...
what hate people when I can just igore it
hate and hypocrite

Jan 17th 2001
Money problems are ridiculous
so are completist issues
Fucking, get off it, Dan!

Jan 18th 2001
A smell like musty nothing
else kept creeping in

Jan 19th 2001
I wanted to watch cartoons forever today.
sometimes it's all I need.

Jan 20th
I ran for the orange line
It wasn't there yet
there were some chicken bones strewn about
train came soon enough
it smells really awful in here
like vinegar.

Old entries found journal

2011-01-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Fri Jan 4th 1946
Dear Diary I did four test in school. I wonder if I got a hundred in each one.

Sat Jan 5th 1946
Dear Diary I helped my mother change the place around today. I hope I did good.

Sun Jan 6th 1946
Dear Diary I miss two masses this morning so I went to the eleven o'clock.

Mon Jan 7th
Dear Diary I got a bike today and it is a good bike. I have a basket on it.

Tuesday Jan 8th
Dear Diary I did mouthing today and I thing I am a awful bad boy.

Wed Jan 9th
Dear Diary I did a lot of work today. I hope you like it.

Thurs Jan 10th
Dare Diary I painted my bike today blue a orange.

Fri Jan 11th
Dear Diary I painted my bike bike again today and the color of it was red.

Sat Jan 12th
Dear Deary I was a bad boy and I got a licken it hurted me.

Sun Jan 13th
Dear Diary I was a bad boy today.

Mon Jan 14th
Dear Diary

[final entry]

Anthro Rex Discography

2011-01-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

After all these years I wrote out a discography....
damn that's a lot of tape.
I thought I had it all and George says "Hey, did you remember that double C90 you did?"
nope.

Anthropophagous Rex Discography
The First Two Albums C-60 BWR
"King of Avarice" on "Show and Tell Vol 2" comp on BWR
3way split live cdr with Bengeorge7 and Landmines Across America
I Like Fun/I am Particled Density CDR on BWR
Contra 4: The Discs of Hollywood 2xC-90
The Erotic Rites of Anthropophagous Rex CDR on BWR
Gothsluts, Jeep Beats and Jeff Foxworthy CDR on BWR
For the Girls C-60
"under the veil of wilderness" on Gilded Throne comp
HM/M/HM C-30
(as DJ Cashman) Mad Monster Maze C-?
Wart Life (live) C-?
Goth Booty Vol 2 C-30
"Gimme Some Cocaine" on comp
Cruisin for Alchemy C-60
(as DJ Cashman) Duo Dimension split with Snackattack
split C-20 with Syn-Toffs on Shorty
Justified and Ancient all covers tape C-30
HM (partial reissue) CDR
Nice Buns/Awesome Graphics C-46 on Ormlycka
(as DJ Cashman) Duo Dimension Dos split CDR with Snackattack
60 minutes of solid gold c-60
Don't Mess Me Up CDR

Entries from found diary.

2011-01-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

Jan 3rd 1946
Dear Diary I cleaned house for my mother. I hope I was doing well.

Entries from found diary.

2011-01-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

January 1st 1946
M.
Dear Diary I was going to fix my runner on my sled but I didn't.
I wonder what caused me to forget.
Ralph

Best birthday present I ever got.

2010-12-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

http://vimeo.com/17968495

Entry from journal of the year 2000. (actually 2001)

2010-12-18T16:21:00.000-08:00

DEC 14th
Had a dream last night. Schoolhouse was in Nahant-scary cops broke up a show > Johnny X via Jeremy. One of them was this old piratey type guy (sort of like Fire Marshal bob (sic) character from in living colour) w/ a hook for a hand. He chased Mike G down by the golf course and I chased them.
cop was limpin.

Entry from journal of the year 2000.

2010-12-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

Dec 3:
I talked to a girl
So I talked to a girl
and then I looked @ a girl
and then I talked to a girl

From the 2000 journal

2010-12-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

Dec 1st: Beautiful, nice,
probably practices Yoga
MAKE ROOM FOR GOBLIN

Rolling Stone

2010-11-29T15:49:00.000-08:00

When stuck for a couple hours in the Ft. Lauderdale airport, I bought an issue of Rolling Stone because it had an interview with Phil Collins in it. I'm pretty sure I haven't pruchased an RS since the Beastie Boys were on the cover or something in 93. I must be getting old. Love that phil.

I love this kitty

2010-11-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

Old French (and translated) piece on Grey Skull

2010-11-25T20:28:00.001-08:00

"

The sound of things that are crumbling: 13 minutes with Grey Skull
Grey Skull, Les Instants Chavirés, Paris, 4 avril 2008 Grey Skull, Instants Chavirés, Paris, April 4, 2008
Vendredi 4 avril. Friday, April 4. Grey Skull, trio noise du Western Massachusetts, fait 7 heures de route entre Amsterdam et Paris pour un concert aux Instants Chavirés qui durera à peine 13 minutes. Grey Skull, noise trio of Western Massachusetts, is 7-hour drive between Amsterdam and Paris for a concert to Instants Chavirés which lasted barely 13 minutes. Un peu bref, oui. A little short, yes. Mais un tour de force pour un groupe qui dépense tant d'énergie sur scène qu'il ne peut promettre que "de jouer jusqu'à ce [qu'il] n'en [puisse] plus". Compte-rendu d'un assaut sonique qui ne pouvait finir que par… un effondrement. But a tour de force for a group that spends so much energy on stage he could not promise that "play until [it] does [can] more." In a report sonic assault that could not finish by… a collapse.

Publié le 21 avril 2008 Published April 21, 2008

Emilie Friedlander Emilie Friedlander

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

..tr>
..table>
Quand George Myers, Dan Cashman et Jeff Hartford de Grey Skull (Breaking World Records) entrent en scène, on voit tout de suite qu'il ya quelque chose qui cloche. When George Myers, Dan Cashman and Jeff Hartford Grey Skull (Breaking World Records) enter the scene, we see immediately that there is something wrong. D'abord, leurs instruments ne sont pas accordés — en tout cas pas de manière à produire quelque chose qui mériterait le nom de rock 'n' roll. First, their instruments are not granted - at least not so as to produce something that is worthy of the name of rock 'n' roll. Et puis, quelques cordes de la guitare de Cashman et de la basse de Myers sont cassées – sans doute les retombées de leur dernière session thrash au Pays-Bas, mais tout de même un peu troublant à voir au début d'un concert. And then, a few strings of the guitar Cashman and the lower Myers are broken - without doubt the impact of their last session to thrash Netherlands, but still a little disturbing to see the beginning of a concert. Enfin, plus troublant encore, la cymbale de Hartford semble avoir été écrasée par une voiture. Finally, more troubling, cymbal Hartford seems to have been crushed by a car. Ou, du moins, fracassée par une batte de base-ball jusqu'à ce qu'elle ressemble plus à une fleur fanée qu'à un objet destiné à produire des sons. Or, at least, broken by a baseball bat until it looks more like a flower fanée as an object intended to produce sounds.

Une performance à base de son… Heavy Metal A performance-based son… Heavy Metal
Dès les premiers drones épais de la basse de Myers, le public se trouve confronté à quelque chose qui ressemble plus à une caricature d'un concert qu'à un concert en soi. From the first drones thick of the lower Myers, the public is confronted with something that looks more like a caricature of a concert at a concert in itself. Pas n'importe quel concert, mais le plus gras, le plus brut, le plus ridicule des concerts de "Heavy Metal" que l'on puisse imaginer. Not any concert, but more bold, more raw, the most ridiculous concerts "Heavy Metal" that one can imagine. Myers et Cashman agitent leurs instruments de haut en bas, plongés dans l'extase d'un solo virtuose à la Black Sabbath – seulement, chez eux, on n'entend aucun riff, aucun solo. Myers and Cashman waving their instruments up and down, immersed in the ecstasy of a virtuoso solo to Black Sabbath - only at home, we heard no riff, no solo. Hartford pousse quelques grognements sauvages puis plonge dans son "headbanging" si caractéristique, ses longs cheveux châtains se balançant à une violence telle qu'ils pourraient mettre un enfant au tapis. Hartford grows wild few grunts and then plunged into his "headbanging" if characteristic, her long chestnut hair swaying to violence as they could save a child carpet. Pourtant, il n'ya aucune pulsation sur laquelle il puisse se caler. However, there is no pulse on which he can wedge. Oui, il ya vraiment quelque chose qui cloche sur cette scène. Yes, there is really something wrong on this scene.

Oui, il ya vraiment quelque chose qui cloche sur cette scène. Yes, there is really something wrong on this scene.

Les singeries qui suivent tiennent moins de la performance musicale que d'une performance théâtrale dont les effets secondaires sont musicaux. The singeries below are the least of the musical performance as a theatrical performance whose side effects are musical. Myers triture un enchevêtrement de mixeurs et de pédales reliées à sa basse, tel un savant fou qui peaufinerait sa machine destinée à détruire la planète ; les sons qui en résultent sont aléatoires, parfois stridents. Myers triture a tangle of mixers and pedals connected to its low, like a mad scientist who peaufinerait his machine to destroy the planet; sounds that result are random, sometimes stridents. Cashman, sorte d'ado troglodyte à guitare, nous berce de ses habituels bafouillements inintelligibles, ponctués de quelques injurieux "Fuck you !" Jeff Hartford, lui, pénètre la masse sonore dissonante de son martèlement symétrique, tel une sorte de Barney Flintstone hard rock qui aurait perdu son sens de l'humour. Cashman, a sort of a troglodyte teen guitar, we cradles his usual bafouillements unintelligible, punctuated by a few offensive "Fuck you!" Jeff Hartford, he penetrates the mass dissonant sound of hammering its symmetrical, as a sort of Barney Flintstone hard rock who would have lost his sense of humour. Alors que les sons produits par la guitare de Cashman et la basse de Myers menacent de faire du hors-piste, sa raclée mécanique donne une structure et une raison à la cacophonie générale – tout bien considéré, sa batterie reste l'instrument le plus mélodique de l'ensemble. While the sounds produced by Cashman's guitar and bass Myers threaten going off-piste, beating its mechanical structure and gives a reason for the cacophony general - all things considered, its battery remains the most melodic of the whole.

Il ya quelque chose remarquablement paléolithique dans la musique de Grey Skull, quelque chose de pré-verbal, de pré-musical, presque. There is something remarkably Paleolithic in the music of Grey Skull, something pre-verbal, pre-musical, almost. Trois hommes des cavernes reçoivent en cadeau une guitare, une basse et une batterie, accompagnés d'un message décrivant sommairement ce que sont le rock et comment se déroule un concert de rock. Three men caves receive a gift guitar, bass and drums, accompanied by a message briefly describing what rock and how to place a rock concert. Convaincus que cela pourrait être une façon de s'attirer la faveur des dieux, ils tentent de recréer le "rock 'n' roll" sans jamais l'avoir entendu. Convinced that it could be a way to win the favor of the gods, they try to recreate the "rock 'n' roll" without ever having heard.

Un son qui pourrait briser une guitare en deux… A sound that could break a guitar in two…
En plus de mettre à mal les notions traditionnelles de mélodie et de rythme, les performances irrévérencieuses de Grey Skull malmènent le culte parfois voué aux instruments. In addition to harm traditional notions of melody and rhythm, performance irreverent Grey Skull malmènent worship sometimes devoted to the instruments. Les trois compères sont connus pour balancer leur matériel dans tous les sens. The three accomplices were known to swing their equipment in all directions. Myers et Cashman jettent régulièrement leurs "noisemakers", comme des enfants hyperactifs qui ont subitement perdu tout intérêt dans la petite voiture avec laquelle ils jouaient un instant auparavant. Myers and Cashman regularly throw their "noisemakers", as hyperactive children who have suddenly lost all interest in the small car with which they played a moment ago. Un jeu d'enfant… mais beaucoup plus dangereux : ce soir-là, aux Instants Chavirés, Myers attrape un mixeur et laisse tomber sa basse… du haut de la scène ! A child's play… but much more dangerous: that evening, the Instants Chavirés, Myers grabbed a blender and drop its low… the top of the stage! L'instrument, littéralement cassé en deux, devra faire l'affaire pour le concert du lendemain, à Anvers ; Grey Skull voyage léger. The instrument literally broken in two, will do the trick for the concert the next day, Antwerp; Grey Skull travel light.

L'instrument, littéralement cassé en deux, devra faire l'affaire pour le concert du lendemain, à Anvers ; Grey Skull voyage léger. The instrument literally broken in two, will do the trick for the concert the next day, Antwerp; Grey Skull travel light.

En guise de bouquet final, Dan Cashman grimpe sur un ampli, puis plonge dans la foule, provoquant une véritable explosion de pogos et de hurlements. As a final bouquet, Dan Cashman climbed onto an amp, and then dove into the crowd, causing an explosion of screams and pogos. Son travail accompli, il remonte sur scène et s'effondre d'épuisement. His work, he goes back on stage and collapsed from exhaustion. Au-dessus du feedback final, une voix retentit du fond de la salle : "Y en a marre de ces conneries. Tu pourrais pas jouer des Beatles ?" Une injure du même acabit que l'injure que constitue les 13 minutes du set de Grey Skull, mais aussi le genre de réaction que le groupe cherche à provoquer. Above feedback final, a voice rings out of the back of the room: "Y has tired of these shit. You could not play the Beatles?" An insult of the same ilk that the insult is that the 13 minutes of play on Grey Skull, but also the kind of reaction that the group seeks to provoke. Vous n'entendrez rien qui ressemble aux Beatles, à un concert de Greyskull, mais vous aurez certainement une idée de ce qu'aurait été la musique des Beatles si le groupe était né à Stonehenge, en l'an 2200 avant notre ère. You hear nothing like the Beatles, a concert of Greyskull, but you'll certainly an idea of what was the music of the Beatles if the group was born at Stonehenge, in the year 2200 BC. Oogachaka.

Emilie Friedlander Emilie Friedlander

A écouter : A listen:

Soft Spot , Breaking World Records, 2008. Soft Spot, Breaking World Records, 2008.

Dan Cashman et George Myers ne sont pas seulement musiciens, ils sont aussi Djs professionnels et co-fondateurs de leur propre label indépendant, Breaking World Records . Dan Cashman and George Myers are not only musicians, they are also Djs professionals and co-founders of their own independent label, Breaking World Records."

olden dayz

2010-11-25T20:26:00.001-08:00

Aug 2, 2008
blognasium

what's the point in saying "what if?" but i wonder how things would been for me growing up if i drank cocacola or some form of caffinated bev. cuz i never did. i hated carbonated shit as a kid and didn't inbibe anything like it until i got hooked on the dew in my early 20s. of course that got out of hand and i had to give it up cold turkey, but coffee soon filled the void. and i'm still all about the big C. i even have a can of coke every now and again. so, as a kid i exercised as little as possible, so really the only zing i ever had was mental zing. and that was still usually rather focused and not so hyperactive. if i drank coke like every other kid i knew, would i have been more of a spazz and therefore not been a boring, sullen blob for the first 18 years of my life? (i stopped being so sullen when i got to college and made some friends). caffiene has been the main thing to put the zip in my hips for almost 10 years now? applying that notion to my childhood is really fascinating...caffinated kids...what a good idea.

in other news, it's friday night round midnight and i am alone at the hummus factory. i feel hugely disconnected with the outside world, though i will be spinning tommorow at the 11's tommorow and i'm pretty psyched on that. also will finish "thrashin'" when i get home, which i've never seen before, but love based on the first 30mins. only $3 bux at big lots! bought a 40 of miller high life based on mike's reccomendation (under two bux) and i'm ready to drink it with josh brolin and whole fuck load of other thrashers. then on to the Dead Pit, which i just picked up today....i love you Code Red DVD.
me, ben and george performed in baltimore and i had a good time. was rather proud of the mix i made for our dance performance. the dancing lasted 25 minutes....it was intense. the only evidence i can find of us being there is a a really bad review in the city paper:
"The nadir of the night was the next act, Ben Heresey, which were three guys who ran onstage chanting "C&C Music Factory" and proceeded to perform silly interpretive dance routines to an ironic backdrop of cheese-ball pop music while dressed in ridiculous outfits. At one point, two of the men wore ALF masks while shooting suction-cup arrows at the other one, who was wearing an Incredible Hulk costume, while "Easy Lover" and "What Is Love" played i n the background. They occasionally pulled a gag that was hard not to chuckle at, but overall it was the kind of smirky meta bullshit that occasionally makes the whole Wham City attitude pretty unbearable. They could've just taken off their clothes and rolled around in their own feces onstage and accomplished pretty much the same thing, but then they wouldn't have gotten to show off their knowledge of campy 1980s pop."

well, our friends in the audience seeemed to like it. and also, it's funny cuz we have no connection with wham city at all, and i don't think we really have the same kind of vibe as them, but how is the city paper to know that. and we were yelling "western mass dance factory." it was awesome to hang out with amy harmon and dave again. on their turf no less.
i go to great barrington on sunday to hang out with madeline and i'm pretty psyched. i've always wanted to go to great barrington. seems like there are all kinds of jokes i could make about that place once i've been there. in the past i've made "humorous references" to hanging out at the birthplace of w.e.b. dubois, but now it can be just fact.
i played at the elevens on monday. that was weird.
okay.
see ya.

Old bwogs

2010-11-25T20:25:00.001-08:00

Aug 19, 2008
my birthday

so on friday i went home to the 'rents and got to hang out with lizzy for the first real time since xmas. it was awesome. we had pizza and cake, and honestly the whole 'me turning 30' thing didn't really hit until i saw that cake that dad bought with the '3' '0' candles on the over thick frosting. i got a little over dramatic and made a little speech to myself, dad, mom, lizzy, grammy and aunt cindy that i hope that "i still like punk rock, heavy metal, cartoons and videogames when i'm 60." then i blew out the candles. i wonder if things would have been different if i actually tried to list ALL of the kidcentered or frivolous type things that are super important to me. had a few brews and got to tell my aunt cindy who suggested to my mom that she could say "bugger" instead of cursing, cuz that's what her australian friend says...like my mom would ever swear...but she was contemplating the word and i had to explain to my mom and grammy and aunt cindy what buggering actually is. i tried to do it in the most polite way possible. lizzy and i went to salvies on route 1 saugus and found nothing, but later spoiled myself with birthday money and bought the new james brown dvd set and the jack kirby biography. finally saw office space on cable when my parent's dvd player shit the bed for me as it always does.

next morning, got up tired and me and lizzy just headed out the door basicly. had a lot to do to prepare for what i thought was gonna be the bash to end all soiree's (sic). some legal speed did the trick. party store and spencers gifts expenditures on stupid shit and massive clearing out of the basement. oh how presumptiuous i was. i really built this shit up in my mind to the point of not wanting to go through with it out of fear of it being too out of hand. at 11:30 dooley, then ella, then martha, then rayla showed up. then some more friends came. i thought i was nursing my normal djnight style fear ("oh no no one's gonna come!") which is usually a false fear. ben came. mercury and teddy. cooper and godard stopped by. once i found out that crystal wasn't gonna be there, i got this serious woe is me birthday blues that i was unable to shake all night. lizzy and michelle were there. matt and lv. and some folks from the basement. maybe the first time i've self destructively drank? mood got worse. felt really bad cuz i wanted josh and adny (my special guest dj's) to have a super awesome huge crowd cuz they deserve that and i know how good that feels to have. and i really dig their tunes, but they don't really quite fit into the tuesday night thing. they seemed to be having a great time playing to the crowd of ten dancers, but i couldn't help feeling bad. i got more drunk and more sad. ann came, and some folks i didn't know. everyone had a good time. corey brought some champaign....that was quite nice. i started laying around on the ground. went and listened to geo's baltclub set, spun some early 90s club dance hits, danced around. layed down some more drunk and babbling. lizzy took care of me. i puked over the railing of our porch twice. felt like a fool all night for planning the sure fire rager of the summer, wasting my day moving shit around. it was like the ego police went and put me in my place. but for most of the night i think i did okay putting on some of a smile.

madeline sent me a box with 30 presents which i opened the following morn (my real b'day) and that cheered me up a lot. then i went to work. and now i'm at work again.

i'm trying to block out the thought of geo leaving for two months so soon. it's scerrry!

Old myspace blogs again

2010-11-25T20:24:00.001-08:00

Aug 26, 2008
i don’t do trucker speed no more

i've been doing a lot of internal weighing of the goods/bads of my old life and my new life as defined by elements of late night sacrifice. what i mean by the last part is that my life used to be ruled by a drive to live each night to the fullest with the wastedunhappiness of the following day almost assured. i would get home from work and be amped to be out and ready to do something. rarely would i have anyone to do anything with at such late hours (getting home between 2am to 5am) and would make some coffee and stay up working on some art or music or whatever. if i was less pumped, i'd watch a movie and a half. sometimes i would stay up into the next day, till the afternoon, then crash for a few hours before having to go to work again. consequently, i'd get a lot of stuff done and be really messed up on no sleep and too much coffee all the time. or before coffee, it was mountain dew.
for a while, i existed in a kind of middle ground where i might start a project or something, but eventually go to sleep cuz i didn't drink any coffee, or the coffee i drank wouldn't do nothin on me. and that self preserving voice would come in, telling me to sleep.
more recently, i've discovered the pleasures of the after work beer or 3. in this set up, i can pretty much just have the energy to watch a movie after work. or if madeline is around, hang out with her. i get to sleep more, i feel better and less like a motorhead. and that's the thing, even though i was getting a lot done in my old life, i was always in that "GOGOGO!" can't be satisfied speedfreak mode. not happy, or at peace.
so i weigh that shit in my mind...and i have to admit, it makes me feel messed up to not have new zines and music coming out on a weekly basis.

and oh yeah, i work 38 hours a week now instead of the 28 i did for years. spirit crushed maybe? getting over the hill too?

and p.p.s. remember when you could go to the flywheel and on average of twice every 3 weeks see fat worm of error and fucking freak out with joy?

Myspace blogs

2010-11-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Sep 13, 2008
things to ban

"comments"
or if not to ban them, require all communication to done entirely youtube comment syle.
"ur hott" "LAME" "FAKE"
funny, cuz my mom used to always try and get me and my sister and dad to stop wisecracking and being mean jabbers by saying "none of your comments."
or "i've had enough of your comments."
now, i don't like comments.
basement was back to glory last tues, thank gawddd, had a good time with dooley.afterwards was too drunk to drive home, so i went to dunkin donuts and sat amongst the goths as i drank some coffee and fingered a blueberry muffin.
watched a dvd of survival research laboratory vids (some of which i hadn't seen previously!) and actually had nightmares stemming from it.
the whole of 145 south st were planning to kill a family in another house by way of burning it down...don't know why, but we were doing it. i remember creeping around the house and maybe checking out the little kids' room and maybe starting to see the fire. i remember seeing some of my housemates getting ready for the big blaze. at a certain point i realized that the big fireball was coming (explosive?) and that i would be burnt to a crisp. i just held my breath and closed my eyes and remembered taht fatal burn victims supposedly feel euphoria as their nerve endings fry.
i survive however and feeling guilty (about killing the family/burning house) i stumble outside and my clothes are smoking and i'm half burnt ala twoface. i wander around some city, kinda like new brunswick nj, my skin smoking. i find donny in some apartment with some girl and i want to ask to stay over, but then i wander some more. end of dream. fugged up.

more old myspace blogs

2010-11-25T20:21:00.000-08:00

Sep 23, 2008
realization

just had a thought.

i have a lot of passionate interests, and i have friends that i can chew the fat with on these topics and for that i'm lucky. i take a lot of stuff seriously and i have pals and compatriots that often take these things as seriously, or more seriously than i do....y'know, fucked up movies, old hip hop, noise music, 'performance', comic books, old video games, and on and on.

but i just realized that i don't think i have any friends who have a real passion for classic animation like i do. y'know, like where it makes total sense to go frame by frame while watching bob clampett shorts or studying the background techniques of those hb dudes. i guess i owe a lot to cartoonbrew.com and johnkstuff.blogspot.com for really pushing me...but i've always been into this stuff...are there any lurkers out there i can talk shop with?

p.s. i'm not an animator, or a real cartoonist.

More old myspace

2010-11-25T20:20:00.000-08:00

Mar 29, 2009
cheap happiness

I feel like rotting dogs...(take that as you like)...so I gotta keep on stridin'.
aka: do stupid shit like make lists.
my ten "desert island" albums in no particular order.
1./2. Beastie Boys "License to Ill"/"Paul's Boutique"....these two albums have given me more joy over more time (more than 20 years) than any others.
3. Lightning Bolt "Ride the Skies"...if I intend to survive on said desert island, I'm going to need something to make me FEEL ALIVE and to inspire me to scribble on rocks.
4. Stooges "Funhouse"...for when i develop fireside rites of tribal fury on the beach at 2am.
5. Sebadoh "The Freed Weed"...probably gonna need a soundtrack to all the meloncholy spirituality on this tropical, lonesome new home of mine.
6. Captain Beefheart "Trout Mask Replica"......"I was shanghai'd by tophat beaver moustache man"....y'know, making sense of it all.
7. Misfits "collection one"...same reasons as number 3.
8. Black Flag "My War"....I'm probably gonna be angry that I got shanghai'd sometimes. I'll try to chop wood when I'm angry and listen to this....
and
9. Public Enemy "Fear of a Black Planet"
10. Bruce "Born to Run" I'll listen to "thunder road" as the bomb drops or I start to die from malnourishment/lonliness.
unrelated note: I think I stopped caring about new bands coming once black dice started to suck (Beaches and Canyons).

Starting to put some of my old Myspace blog on here

2010-11-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

Apr 20, 2009
twitter fame/facebook dread

hey, part 1 is that it was funny and weird that jimmy fallon was at our dance night on saturday. he seemed nice and liked us and took our picture. he twittered about it, with our picture. i don't have a twitter acount, but i saw it and so did almost 14,000 other people. it is really funny and weird. just this anonymous pic of me and geo (looking really mad) behind the decks.
so....anyhow......
part 2 is that since i hear an endless stream of "you should be on facebook!) all day, I wanted to ask you folks if there is anything about facebook that is having besides "everyone is on it now." I was totally ready to go down with the myspace ship and not do social networking ever again, but now that i'm single again...i don't know...but no one can give me a good reason to besides the arbitrary "we are on this new site now!" thing. any thoughts?
list of things i don't have:
cellphone
credit card
facebook acct.
ipod
girlfriend

Another dream from last night.

2010-11-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

had a dream last night that me and a friend were in this sex fantasy wonderland/videostore. But we never saw the videostore, that was just the sign outside. And I had sex with a sex robot in a gazebo? But that sex is theoretical and doesn't seem to contain any details. And me and my friend (who I have had sex with in real life) were walking in this wonderland which was a oceanside cliff with all these people walking around, deciding if they want to hook up with each other. My friend grabs some other dude for us to have sex with, and I'm all "ehhhhhh, don't think so." So we run away. Up the cliffside comes this bully in a bouffant. We have bikes now, and he starts to push us around to show off for his friends who are at the ocean at a dock. Because I fear he will push us off and kill us, I take the lead and push him off, probably killing him. My friend gets mad at me, and then we hear the voice of Wanda Sykes starts chewing me out.

2 distinct nightmares

2010-11-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

Both happened in one nap.
First: running through a big dark house dying, blood everywhere. I think I had killed someone...realize blood is coming out of my dick. I run up some stairss and there is a ghostly figure in a nightgown at the top of the stairs pointing down at me screaming.

Second: I am at a function that I am DJing with my normal partner, it is my turn, and it's too dark for me to see the records...I do okay, making a few random selections...One is "Mannish Boy" and it seems to work, but I can't find another record!

Which is scarier? The second one of course!

Problems with words

2010-11-25T07:30:00.000-08:00

I've been having a problem finding value in my own words lately. I was psyched to start transcribing a lot of old movie reviews I wrote years ago, that I found in my attic. Unfortunately, they didn't really seem any good. Then I found an old journal from 10 years ago which had a lot of odd little entries. But.......who cares right?
Well, I'm forcing myself to write something. My family took me on a cruise 2 weeks ago. My old lifestyle caught up with me and a rotted tooth went into "shut Dan down" mode, and I was unable to have fun/drink/zone out for most of the trip. So I'm just gonna make a quick little record of things I did/saw/had happen to me while on this toothdecay trip.
Before departure, I took a long walk in Fort Lauderdale. Passing a rock with Sade playing out of it at our hotel, I felt kind of at home. Then after passing the Sade-rock, I put on my headphones and listened to Coletrane's Ascension. Then I felt alien.
On the ship I saw a couple almost Hi-top fades on some middle aged black men, it made me feel really happy and at home.
I sang kareoke as much as I could. The book, which had lots of typo's listed "The Message" under "Grandmother Flash." No joke.
No "Strokin" on this kareoke unfortunately, so I was building up to "Unwritten" by Natasha B. I do a pretty intense version of that.
So I filled the time doing all the old rap hits...this led to lots of people giving me high fives and votes of confidence along the lines of "Nice job with Mama Said Knock You Out last night!" As I walked this deck of 3000 strangers.
But the height was a little white old southern lady asking me: "Are you a professional rapppperrrrr?" I told her that I definitely was not.
The dance club on the ship had some of the most hilarious decor I've ever seen. Giant white hands and feet sticking out of the floor with bad Ed Hardy-esque tattoos. They were really huge limbs, and the white reflected all the light so it was bright, bright, bright in there. And I really would hate to be a DJ stuck doing top 40 now...cuz apparently even people who like things like top 40 now, don't seem to like anything but 2 or 3 songs.
So then I read lots of Conan stories (barbarian literature) and an old issue of Cinemafantasique from 1988, and listened to lots of Loren Mazzacane Connors.
Listened to the complete "Bitches Brew" sessions while watching Pandas play on the TV.
The kareoke boss asked me to sing as James Brown in the show at the end of the cruise. I politely declined. Ha, Soul Brother number 1? More like honorary soul guy number 108,597.
But man, my tooth was killing me...it's gone now though!

journal from 00

2010-10-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Oct 23rd: Nightmare Wallet
Mirror man cranberry
take the stovepipe express, bro

old jounals from 00ish

2010-10-22T15:37:00.000-07:00

Oct 17th: Losing here and there, my work is sometimes a delicious day.
Oct 20th: So it is really 21, but it is also really saturday/sunday...............zyang botts
Movies and some warmth of being + a pinch of adv.

hmmm, i thought these would be more interesting.

Old entreeeeees

2010-10-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

Found a journal from about 10 years ago in the atttic. The entries are short, and they start right around this date, so I figure I will put them in day to day.

Sat Oct 12th: It's all becoming more of an issue of outside beauty. Wishing I was stoned and Rich so I could fall into that beauty-world on the drop of a hat.

The Stoned Age (1993)

2010-09-15T07:23:00.000-07:00

After a not so easy night at the DJ gig, I preheat the pizza situation and opt not for a giallo, SOV or Cannon fodder, but the netflix streamy doohicky. The "Goofy comedies you'll love" section had mostly of Troma dreck (no thanks) and then this period piece which I recall reading about upon it's release. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Film Threat really talked this one up essentially as "BETTER THAN DAZED AND CONFUSED!" Well, rest assured, it is not better than Dazed and Confused. In fact The Stoned Age mucho sucks, but I did enjoy it on some levels.
The film concerns two burnouts, Joe and Hubbs and their attempts in scoring some potentially mythical chicks, and the competition they encounter from a legion of other burnouts. The simple premise works to the advantage of the film, as it creates a casual atmosphere which doesn't require too much acting or set pieces or variation in dialogue. As long as it's funny right? Yeah, you can smell the low budget on this from the opening shot, where we plainly see modern cars drive past a hitchhiker. From here we see where the majority of the budget must have gone, as Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" plays over the opening credits, as the BOC logo emblazoned "Blue Bomber" cruises down the strip. Now, I only spent 2 years of my life in the 70s, and I don't remember anything about it, but I've seen alot of old cruising vessels in my time (in films and still in action) and I don't believe I've seen anything that looks like the ugly-ass wagon these boys drive around in. Period detail does not seem like a concern for any of the involved parties, as most of the characters look straight out some bad-tv-show-with-fake-grunge-band crowd surfing scene. In fact, Hubbs, the asshole one looks a lot like Eddie Vedder to me, but that's beside the point. Most of the movie has the look of an early 90s made for cable erotic thriller, but I can get into that. I'm not watching this movie for any visual pleasure, as sad as that seems, but for some cheap laughs, and there are some of those...not enough though.
What I did like most about the film is that every character except the "audience identification sensitive guy" (Joe) is a total asshole, and even that A.I.S.G. is irritating and wishy washy, just like most "sensitive" people. Luckily Joe still wants to get laid, so you don't just wanna smack him the whole time. So yeah, seeing a film from the early/mid 90s where there isn't some kind of "message" about believing in yourself, or being true to yourself, or trying to understand others, or.....whatever, is pretty refreshing..no lessons to be learned here except that "teenagers" are sociopathic shitheads. I guess plenty of that came around in the late 90s...whatevs. Well, unlike the "damaged youth" films of the late 90s and beyond, I don't think this film is trying to say any grand statements about the curuption of western society or anything, it's just dudes being douches.
I find it kind of interesting in that the stoner and proto-metal concerns of the characters herein forecast the reevaluation of such previously derided genres by the hip crowd of the past decade. Who would have thought that there would be young dudes and gals walking down your street with long hair, scruff and BOC tshirts? I'm into it. Dudes from BOC make a post credits appearance, as does BOC live footage along with an big eyeball made by Screamin Mad George. Taylor Negron plays a liquor store employee for the second time (?) but with a much different vibe than in River's Edge.
Man, Film Threat was such a shitty magazine, thank god I encountered it as a youngster, cuz if I was older I would barf.

2010-09-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

The behemoth is like Zima...
Cerberus was like Bud Dry...

Dark Holez!

2010-09-11T15:04:00.001-07:00

I don't think it's such a good idea to crawl into a dark hole that has no money in it.
And if I find a pit that has got the green stuff, that pit better be shallow.
I can be quite shallow when it comes to a short trip to get some money.
Money is cool cuz you can do shit with it and buy a big thing of records and shit.
I'm scared, cuz often money leads you to being an asshole or being on drugs.
I want neither of things, even if I could be a millionaire.
That guy Jeff Koonz made a boat or something.
What can I make?
Without jumping into some fucking chasm or whatever...that is.

more self promo

2010-09-08T10:30:00.001-07:00

I fear....

2010-09-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've lost the impulse to write. About anything or whatever. So here I am forcing myself. I a love certain drug a lot, and it helps me do things like "this," and that's why I don't do that drug. It's too nice. I'm listening to a Professor Griff solo single on Luke records right now. I'm going to watch Hey Good Lookin' on VHS (not the WB clamshell) in a few minutes. I wrote that Machete review while babysitting an art gallery in town. I have some collages up there, I'm happy about that, lots of unlikely folks came in and looked at them. Old people, whoever. There is a closing reception on Friday...the appeal of the wine and cheese is diminished hugely when you have to provide it yourself. Wine and cheese should be free. I quit my good paying/soul crushing/tiring job and thought my productivity would go up three fold, but instead it's like the old days on a good week, but with less stress. The space in my mind that was taken up by the job (Hummus factory) hasn't really been replaced by anything except the feeling of cruising. Smooth sailing. It feels weird...y'know, enjoying life. It's pretty hard for me to commit to things, even more so now, I think. I listen to half a record, check the innanet, watch some of a movie, try to clean my room, wash some dishes, record some music. Drugs?
I feel a little funny that my favorite part of Machete was the mother/daughter 3 way...I guess that's good exploitation...making you feel weird and sleazy.
The 12" of "Teenage Love" has a different version of "Treat Her Like a Prostitute" on it...cool.
Now I'm listening to "Pile Driver: the Wrestling Album part II." This one is heavier so far. Heh.

Grey Skull 2.5.10 Media Mansion Northampton, MA

2010-09-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

Grey Skull 4.1.10 RAVEN KILLER HOLYOKE, MA 2/2

2010-09-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

Cashman/Callahan/Lee/Robinson 4.21.10 FLYWHEEL EASTHAMPTON, MA

2010-09-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

PUSSY 5.31.10 FLYWHEEL EASTHAMPTON, MA

2010-09-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

ANTHRO REX 8.24.10 FEEDING TUBE RECORDS EASTHAMPTON, MA

2010-09-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Machete

2010-09-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

Just saw this matinee on Saturday at the Hadley Mall. It was wonderful; basically everything I could hope for in a movie. I suppose at this point it goes without saying that some CGI moments bugged me, but that's life in 90s, or 00s, or teens.
The rousing opening sequence involving Machete's attempted rescue of a nude babe from the clutches of fat Steven Seagal sets the tone firmly in Cannon Films territory. One-liners, lack of logic or subtlety, naked babes and sleazy vilians continue to punctuate the film throughout it's overstuffed/overlong running time. That's fine by me as I enjoyed every convoluted plot twist, every new character, every body heaped onto the pile. I have to admit, this almost operatic web of sleaze leaves behind some of the effervescent fun of seeing the "fake trailer" way back in the Grindhouse days.
The message of Immigrant empowerment comes in thick broad strokes, and I admire the propagandist adherence to a ideology. There isn't a moral tacked onto the end here, or much complication in character to get in the way. In Machete you have brutal violence and hot babes (actually, very hot babes) fused to a real need on the part of film makers to give a big fat "FUCK YOU" to xenophobia aimed towards Mexicans. Oh and don't worry, the hot babes dole out a lot of the punishment. Cool.
As a prerequisite for a good action movie, you need Heavy heavies, and that's where Machete really shines. As good as Trejo is as the titular fucking badass, it's Segal, Robert DiNero, Jeff Fahey and especially Don Johnson that give the film it's real flash. To say they chew the scenery is putting it lightly...chewing the film sprockets is more like it. And we've also got Cheech Marin who is fantastic as Machete's brother, some Cholo chicks at a chop shop, gnarly henchmen/women and a bunch of other cool stuff. Overstuffed with cool stuff, it's no lean mean machine, but it's still pretty awesome.
I've encountered criticism of Machete that the "joke is that the film is supposed to bad, but so what?" The problem with this criticism is that it's total bullshit. This is pure action cinema for action fans...hey, I'll even say that I liked Planet Terror more, but that's no real issue for me. I want a world where I can go to the movie theater and have the option of seeing a fine piece of trash...or 2 pieces of fine garbage...or 3 pieces of shit...whatever.

Best Horror Comic EVER!

2010-08-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

From Sorcery No. 9 Oct. 1974

Well Jesus Fuck, here we go.

2010-08-12T20:28:00.001-07:00

hello one follower.
I quit my full time job that combined with my part time dj gigs killed most of my time and energy...maybe now I'll write some shit in here and on paper or some shit!
Drink some coffee and write!
Why did they illegalize ephedrine in Massachuesetts? Whatupwithat?
I'm listening to the JSBX "Extra Width" DBL Disc reissue...it's really good. I was convinced for a couple years that this band would never be considered cool again...I guess I was wrong, and I'm lovin it...great to both hearing those old faves and drivin up to an unknown spot in eastern MA.
Welfare Records in Haverhill, Ma...highly reccommended. Thanks for Jon D. for giving me the heads up on this...pulled my normal stylee at indie record store i.e. buying against the specialty..normally this means cheap hip hop and dance in a punk store...today it meant reasonably priced hip hop and dance in a punk store. damn you internet! (jk jk jk).
Picked up the Fearless Four single written about in my fave book of the year :howtowreckanicebeach.com:(not quite the name of the book, but I ain' t no hyperlinker).
Tapper no longer appears to be in residence at Salem Willows...almost all the videostores are closed...I hope some fellow movie weirdos picked up the vhs before any destruction happened.
Photographics in Beverly had basicly every movie I am glad I saw, and a bunch I didn't get around to checking out...fugggg....also a few that I didn't appreciate at the time>>>>not quite at the bottom of the barrel yet. SOV was not for me yet, Splatter: Archetects of Fear? I'd love to see you again. I guess I should get back on this torrent shit, eh?
When the Newbury comics opened in Peabody in 94 or 95 I would buy 7"s often on how many inserts and weird stuff came with it...I could never get enough of that Shellac "The Admiral" 7" with the photo on it and the key to all items in Todd's room. Thusly I picked up the Capitalist Casualties/MDC split 7" cuz it felt so thick....must have a zine in it or something. Actually had the JSBX jukebox 45 with the afforementioned songs jammed inside. Glad I wasn't arrested for unknowingly shoplifting...luckily I ended up with one of my new favorite records. What a boon for a 15 year old! Thief with good taste setting you up!
p.s. I've never had a goatee.

Drawings from 91/92 (trying to be wacky)

2010-05-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

Slightly Modified Comic Book

2010-05-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

The original owner of this H.R. Pufnstuf was so moved by the cover that had to remark with crayon "Right On! Cool Cat!" I'm into it.

Hollywood Vice Squad

2010-05-09T19:02:00.001-07:00

Didn't really like this movie too much, but the Video box art is a SCORCHER! I really hope Carrie Fischer has this hanging above her fireplace. Seeing this kind of visual really makes me wish I had the artistic skill to work in such a manner. I would sit in my house all day making video art work on spec hoping for the return of VHS big boxes.

Farmer Brown with the Cow!

2010-05-02T22:50:00.001-07:00

I saw this air once on WLVI 56 in 1987 and it always stuck with me. As I've written elsewhere on the blog, the Farmer Brown spot with the goose was the one that terrified me for some unknown reason. The spot with the horse is the version I previously found on youtube.
So...here's another piece of the puzzle!

Spells for a nonexistent RPG circa 1991

2010-04-04T20:47:00.001-07:00

more old drawings from when I was 12

2010-04-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

I'm hemmorhaging desire...

2010-03-02T13:58:00.000-08:00

oh god.....I want, I want.....

from the 1981 TSR products catalog.

This is me trying to get better...maybe 91/92?

2010-03-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

wanted to be a cartoonist...too bad this is as "good" as I ever got.

Drawings from 1990 pt. 2: the videogame

2010-03-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

This is what I did when I was 11 instead of playing sports...pretending to design videogames.
Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

I draw almost exactly the same stuff....from 1990

2010-03-02T13:29:00.001-08:00

Flying Steak!

2009-12-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

This is a mid-90s reissue of a toy from the sixties, but I still think it's worth checking out, especially since both the original and reissue are pretty obscure. I only have the "Flying Steak" piece of the "Flying Things" line, but this is the only one I've seen out in the wild. Originals by Tops, reissue by Playing Mantis. Pretty rad stuff!

Best use of plastic in 20 years!

2009-12-12T15:59:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Chris N for hooking me up with this amazing game from Japan (I mean where else right?)...pics of the ooze in action soon!

People I'd Like to Meet

2009-12-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

Back to School pencil bag!

2009-12-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

Funny glasses? I thought these were cool glasses?

2009-11-12T09:41:00.001-08:00

Fun Novelties pt. II

2009-11-02T14:35:00.000-08:00

If you thought the nose on the graphic of the fang-man was white because of a rip or something, well it's the same on the other side.....

Happy Halloween a day late!

2009-11-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

gonna try and list all my Halloween Costumes through the years...
My first Halloween, I was a clown, but thankfully with very minimal make-up...just some red on the cheeks...vinyl "clown" costume shirt.
I might be missing a few here, but next I was a ghost (inspired by, but not actually Casper). My mom made if for me, and I wanted a hood so I could have occasional relief. Dangerously close to a Klansman. But still passably a ghost.
Next up was a home-made E.T. costume. Thanks mom! I may have used it two years in a row.
In first grade I was Admiral Ackbar. Store-bought Ben Cooper plastic mask/vinyl shirt variety. We paraded around for the 2nd graders and one really liked the costume, and I felt pretty cool.
2nd or 3rd grade I was a heavy-metal rock star with a Judas Priest "Screaming for Vengeance" shit, a poster-board electric guitar, headband, and plastic green chains that I thought were really cool.
4th grade I was a depressed little shit and didn't have a costume.
5th grade was the first of two years where I was "victim" to my friend's Jason.
Years pass with no costumes.
Freshman year of college I was Thurston from the "Bull in the Heather" vid with my friend as Kathleen Hannah...that's kind of funny...we didn't go out partying or anything, just made a stupid video.
Sophomore year of college I was Glenn in a Misfits cover band...that was when I really started killing my voice.
Junior year I think I was "you." Which was just me wearing a robe with a mirror where my face should be. It was barely attached and broke upon entry to the party I was going to...lame.
Then I think I was in a bear with a skull mask on. It was very hot at the dance party and after I left I opened the furry suit and billows of steam poured out. It was awesome.
Next I was (sort of) Darby Crash in a germs cover band. I just acted like Darby, didn't dress like him or anything. Tried to get blood by smashing the mic into my forehead but just ended up with waffle marks on my face for a week.
Then I was Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick with Jon as Rick Nielson. I kept the outfit on (including real moustache, but not cigarette) for about a month.
The following year we had a party and I tried to wear a different costume for each hour...most of the costumes were just me in a semi nude state with some junk attatched to me...but early I was a techno fan with a god awful track suit on.
hmmmmm, memory fading.....hmmmmmm
I wore this velour ladies jogging suit and a Laser Tag gun and became "Nigel Vanguard," a Luke Skywalker rip off from a nonexistent Star Wars rip off movie...probably Italian.
I wore a early 70s vintage "the phantom" costume a couple of years ago...that was nice.
Being an "Alf Cluster" while having to DJ the following year was a poor decision. I had all my Alf stuffed animals and masks and puppets taped to me, and the big one was on my back and really dragged me downnnnnn. And nobody seemed to care that I had lots of Alfs all over my bod.
For a "Halloween in July Party" a couple of years ago I was a ghostbuster. Put it together from all the GB related stuff I have laying around, toy proton pack, t-shirt, "shoelace snaps," etc.
I ripped open some kind of snowman wall hanging made of a really itchy fabric and tore a hole for my face and became a snowman! I almost brought back the "xmas related outfit for halloween" this year, but didn't follow through.
Then, last year I was Garth Vader...combo of Darth Vader and Garth from Wayne's world. It didn't really work that well cuz I don't look like Garth even with blonde wig and black rim glasses...more like a Hanson brother.
For another "halloween in july" party this year I was the song "Under Pressure," which was kind of a cheat costume. I have this pair of weightlifter type pants that say "under pressure" right at belt level, so I wore that with a shirt that said "Queen plus David Bowie equals..." Like i said, a cheat.
This year I was first an Ewok, with Ben Cooper plastic mask that has been on my wall for years, and a home made shirt trying to replicate the old "put a pic of the character with name on the costume" bit. It was alright. Thank you puffy paint.
Then last night, I was Darkwing Duck, which is a character I never liked, but somehow made the costume that much more exciting....
I know I'm forgetting some, but halloween has never been too much about dressing up for me...more about the spookiness of watching a god horror movie alone and listening to Samhain and such...
Anyhow, hope you had a good one!

Fun Novelties!

2009-11-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

Got these for a buck a piece at the Brimfield antique fare earlier this year...not a bad deal!

Got this for a buck...

2009-10-23T01:26:00.001-07:00

Pretty good right?

more lp covers

2009-10-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the other Zuma I mentioned earlier.

And this is a handmade replacement cover for a South American children's record: "Jugemos A La Rueda Con Las Ardillitas." Pretty sweet eh?

2009-10-18T15:17:00.001-07:00

Reflections on My Bloody Valentine 1981

2009-10-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

So, I'm really not the biggest fan of slashers. I have a hate/love/hate relationship with the Friday the 13th series and the titles I stand behind are more anomalous to the genre rather than definitive...Sleepaway Camp anyone? I suppose it should also be said that even staunch supporters of the slasher genre are thrust into the conundrum of dealing with overzealous murder-trimming. A lot of these films were either produced by or distributed by major studios at a time when media/public pressure to censor horror-violence was obnoxiously pervasive. This led to these Majors (and lots of Independents)to basically hack out all of the gore and mayhem from the films in order to avoid "the dreaded X rating" from the MPAA. BTW, how many times have I read the phrase "the dreaded x rating" in books about horror movies, 50,000? With the porn-stigma of that X rating, newspapers refusing advertising and theaters refusing to book them, it's understandable from a business that the studios would cut the pictures to get an R rating. What doesn't make sense to anyone who knows about this stuff, is why these films went to video in their pruned states, especially when for slasher flicks, pretty much their whole reason for being is in the murder scenes...this ain't no Cronebergian mindfuck shit, this is all exploitive kills. This is even more frustrating for horror fans seeing photos of these special effects in Fangoria. I mean, after all, this was the age of special gore effect as celebrity, with Tom Savini given near auteur status along with directors Croneber,Romero and Carpenter.
So, now we come to My Bloody Valentine, a Canadian slasher flick directly riding the wave of the Friday the 13th success. MBV replaces the teen related settings of most slashers for a quaint mining town with a bunch of young miners as the "prey," which is a really odd choice that turned me off in the past. I suppose that all those kids who grew up in mining towns and had a life down in the shaft ahead of them might have really identified with this situation, but me? Not so much. Does it need to be said that Summer Camps and Sorority Houses are natural settings for horror movies because they are hubs of awkward desires and changes in young people? So..... how about a small mining town? Youthful partying miners and their girlfriends?
I first encountered MBV as a 6th grader in the late 80s, when WLVI would often show neutered horror movies on weekend afternoons. My friend Greg was intent on showing me the "laundrymatte scene" he had described to me earlier that week. I was at this time still pretty squeamish and thus only half watched as Greg turned the TV on, just in time for an older lady to meet her tumbling demise. Beyond the fact that I didn't want to see any older lady gore right then, there was something about the movie that struck me as very unnatractive. Unsurprisingly, this mining town looks and feels pretty gloomy and the actors populating it are not so glitzy. This just did not jibe with my youthful, late 80s sensibilities. What I wanted from horror at this time could pretty much be summed up as "Nightmare on Elm st 1-5," which in some ways is as glitzy as good horror ever got. Also, a killer miner seemed rather non-scary to me. So I never went back and rented the movie, though I think I may have caught some of it on a subsequent WLVI showing. As the years went on and I dove head on into the horror world, I read about how MBV was cut to ribbons by the notoriously overzealous selfcensorers Paramount. So, why would I bother if there was no gore? I still didn't want to see a killer miner.
The coming of the DVD changed things of course, with all those fanboy desired horror flicks getting the royal treatment, and quite a few that weren't asked for. Paramount, in keeping with their whackness never picked up the ball when it came to redeeming their past indiscretions in the snippy-snip department. It took many years for them to do right by any of their horror properties including the most recognizable and profitable, the Friday the 13th series. The first DVD releases of these titles were barebones and unremarkable, until a box set with better presentation and a bunch of extras finally arrived in 2004. Was this the first time Paramount ever graced a horror DVD with any extras at all?
It took a modern remake of MBV for Paramount to justify a special edition DVD release, and I'm willing to tolerate hearing about these remakes if this is the result. Though I could have cared less about it in the past, the appeal of seeing those thought lost cut murder scenes was too much for me to squash. Was it different this time around? Most certainly.
You get the option of watching the movie with all the deleted stuff put back in, which seems like a given except for the fact that the cut scenes are of much poorer image quality. I suppose some people wouldn't like that so much...but for me...I think I've found my new fetishistic film joy. It feels so good to watch a beautiful remastered print of an ugly movie and have it revert back to grainy, scratchy faded film stock for all the shock-kill-shots. And there are so many of them! You really get to see how sad it is that a film like this had no chance at all, since every little bit of grue is gone...without it, it's pointless, and with it, it's quite enjoyable. There's a lot of murder in this movie! And the added ugliness gives it a chilly discomforting feeling that I enjoyed quite a bit.
I'm sorry reader, if you cared about any of the actual things that happen in the movie. This film falls into the traps of most slashers i.e. it basically sucks as a movie. The characters are nonexistent; some of the victims will actually make you say "wait, have I seen that person before?" It's the same old stalk and slash, and the plot is by rote. Do you care about mining? Do you care about Valentine's Day parties?
But, besides that: Highly Recommended! Thick Canadian accents a major plus!

Hand decorated record covers pt. 1

2009-10-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

This is my most recent personally modified/designed album cover aquisition. I love it a lot. It's actually the second hand colored Zuma I've found. The original stark magic marker artwork just lends itself to such colorfication. I also don't want to fail to mention how great the album art is on it's own. I mean, just look at it! Middle finger givin cactai! Anyhow, here you go, sorry about the awful scan; I'm not much of a digital perfectionist.

Proof of your lies

2009-10-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

From 1985 is this early example of Karaoke technology in the west. I got this baby sealed from a local flea market....SCORE! Cut off by my poor scan on the bottom of the box is the wonderful selling point: "No special tapes required."
You will really impress this gal with the proof that you are have recorded with all her favorite stars. If she doesn't believe you, just play her the tapes. The red/orange foam helps for authenticity.

Sticker Fun!

2009-10-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

Got these for dirt cheap from a nice lady at the Holyoke Flea Market. Got some cool doo-dads and toy from her as well. The thing I love most about the Tweety and Sylvester one is the amazing font choices for the "name" stickers. They are copywrited 1982 by WB, but as 1988 on the back by the Henry Gordy sticker company.

If you don't know, Turbo is a 3/4 perspective car racing arcade game from Sega. It's not that great, in fact, I like these stickers way more than the game. Sleek! Chrashin'! Icy! Hit it!

The TMNT stickers aren't anything special, but I do love this more Eastman/Laird style of merchandising. Not cuted up at all! and plus, they stick on anything.

Bootleg E.T. Toy.

2009-10-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

Scored this one at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago. Tagged for sale at the now defunct Johnson's, which my local friend Jessica tells me is an old W.Mass Drug store chain. I really, really love the little graphic of E.T. commanding his Dr. Wiley-esque U.F.O.

Cereal Reality

2009-10-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

So, here's a longshot. One of my best friends gave me a sealed box of Batman 89 cereal with the bank shrinkwrapped to it. I have eaten 10 year old cereal before (Addamns Family) and that was okay, but what about 20 year old stuff? Anybody else done it? Should I wait for doomsday or should I brave it? Since it's shrinkwrapped, that means it is double sealed...what do you think?

i make stuff

2009-10-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

GodDammit!!!!

2009-07-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

I didn't even realize it, but one of my fave DVD companies, BCI, went under a while back!
AGGG! No more Paul Naschy reissues! No more Crown International garbage!
WTF!
At least Code Red is still plugging along.

Andy Milligan

2009-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

I pursued some interest in the much maligned filmmaker Andy Milligan years and years ago, after watching a VHS of Torture Dungeon. I really didn't know what I was in for, didn't know anything about the guy or his movies. It was the late 90s and I was starting to move away from the horror cannon and into more dangerous, exploitive, grimy stuff. The supertrashy cover art for TD grabbed me and I bought it off the toss-off rack of a local rental place. It was startlingly insane. Check it:

It was like an accidental John Waters, with a less humorous edge...it was kinda hateful stuff. In fact after viewing this, I sought more of his movies, and only found The Man with Two Heads, which at the time I thought was just too hateful and mean. After that I kinda dropped the ball on finding more Milligan movies. I think I'd like TMWTH now, and I"m cursing myself for not making a dub...for me in those days, finding movies was not about waiting for them to be released on DVD or ordering grey market tapes (too broke). Instead it was about driving to each and every Mom and Pop rental place I could find, being psyched if they had just one tape that I couldn't find elsewhere...or that I didn't know existed. Bygone days.
After not being into TMWTH and not even being able to get through any of The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! I kind of dropped the ball on Andy Milligan. Later I found out he was Staten Island based, and made all the wardrobes for his films. I also heard that a book came out about him, my reaction to which was "wow, there's a book about every fucking person now." Little did I know....
A couple of weeks ago I got a copy of The Ghastly Ones on DVD for pretty cheap...while watching it all agog one rainy afternoon, I knew that I was gonna be a die hard AM fan. God, why'd it take me so long? Torture Dungeon might be even better than The Ghastly Ones, but I think I was just not prepared for it as a spritely 19 year dude.

So I hopped on the old internet and searched with vigor! "Andy Milligan book." And up it came on Amazon for 99 cents; The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Andy Milligan...Done! A few more AM dvds? DOne! I get the book, before I start reading I am kind of confused by the pullquotes on the back cover. Time gives a glowing review? Paper says it's "one of the best books ever about the life of a filmmaker..." How did I miss that this was an important book? It sure doesn't seem like that crappy Al Adamson book I have. I start reading and I can't believe it...the guy was certifiably insane and an asshole! But the most exciting nutcase I've read about in ferrrever! This book is the complete antithesis of the Paul Naschy Autobiography I just wrote about; it's obsessive, engaging like a disease and the stories are beyond belief. I don't wanna spoil anything, but experimental theater, extreme hardcore gay S&M, suicide, murder, and cruelty all play a big part in the story.
I was also shocked when I realized after 100 pages that Jimmy McDonough, the author, is also the dude who wrote Shakey, the Neil Young Bio. Shakey really shook me when I read it a number of years ago, and it's great that this guy has gone from writing about one of the most respected artists of the past half century to a guy that NO ONE seems to like. I like him though, no matter how nasty he was. I like him a lot.
I'm not even finished and I don't want the book to end, but I felt like I had to get it out to you, the dear reader, that this one is a must-read....right up there with the Klaus Kinski Autobio.
And check out this guys films!

New Entry into the blog....

2009-06-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah, life has been crazy...
Haven't been on here for a while...
Started a new band...
Me and the Mrs. broke up....
Lots of DJ gigs...
Blah, blah, blah...
So here's a new entry.
Just finished reading Memoirs of a Werewolf, the Autobiography of Paul Naschy aka Jocinta Molina. PN is a big deal in the Eurocult cinema world, but I'm kind of a newcomer to him. I had only scene him in "House of Psychotic Women" and was really underwhelmed by the experience (though I would return to it in the form of it's uncut release Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll and fucking love it). I also attribute my lack of drive to see his films to the gothic element that seemed to run through most of his most available movies. I have never been a big fan of the gothic wing of my favorite genre...never even given any Hammer films much of a chance.
I first got excited about Mr. Naschy when Mondo Macabro released his 1982 film Panic Beats on DVD. I jump on anything that Mondo Macabro puts out and I was not dissapointed with this supergory, Spanish horror film. I didn't rush out and try and find bootlegs of his other works, as Panic Beats is pretty good, but not the best showcase for the man. He's frankly past his prime here.
But last year BCI's awesome series of DVD releases of Naschy films tempted my wallet and I indulged and I am very glad I did. Right from the newly produced introductions from the man himself, I was charmed. I really liked this guy. Don't know how else to put it, except that he seemed like a good guy. The kind of guy I wouldn't mind tell anecdotes for hours on end.
And that's basically what I got in Memoirs of a Werewolf, which reads like a translated tape of Naschy spouting off anecdotes and whatever else comes to his mind. No ghostwriter or overbearing editor to shape this into a compelling read for anyone but PN enthusiasts. Luckily being already charmed by the dude, I was able to enjoy the short paperback, as long as I imagined him entertaining me in his study, with roaring fireplace. Pyched I got it used at Raven, I have to say.

Frontiers still exist

2009-04-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

With all the euro-disco videos I've watched, I hadn't seen this special treat. It's so dope cuz it features a lot of original (i think) animation with a really rad space fantasy theme. I kinda make it my business to see as much old fantasy related animation as possible, so it's really fucking awesome when you come upon something you hadn't even heard of. Although, the cartoon version of the two dudes is not that great, but luckily the song is great, and I'm pretty into the real life version of La Bionda.

Anybody got the rekkid?

WLVI till the day I die!

2009-04-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

I love the high drama of the sci-fi dental PSA.

Ralston/Purina Cereals Part IV

2009-04-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, now for Batman Cereal. Batman cereal is right up there with Ghostbusters and TMNT (review forthcoming) as an all time favorite in cerealdom. Oddly, it was nothing too special; no marshmallows, no variety of flavors, no double bagging, but instead was simple perfection. Little corn Batman logos with a Cap'n Crunch flavor, but not as intense, and without the mouth shredder texture of said Cap'n. The only way I can really convey the tastiness of this breakfast treat is that it is some kind of zenith in the science of cereal creation. Only food scientists could come up with something this good. You may recall that Donkey Kong cereal had a similar vibe, but there's just somethin' about this one. And it came with a giant Batman "piggy" bank shrinkwrapped to it.

There was also a Gremlin's Cereal made by R/S that I unfortunately never got to try, but it looks very much the same as Batman.

Was that Beans Baxter with the mogwai ears on?

Anybody got a time machine, a lot of money, 4-6 weeks?

2009-04-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Marilyn Chambers 1952-2009

2009-04-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

One of the top 5 porn actresses ever.
One of the top reasons I got into classic era porn in the first place.
Star of Rabid, one of Cronenberg's early classics.
She was the girl on the cover of the Ivory Soap box.
Star of a lot of silly softcore t&a stuff, that was pretty bad, but I watched anyhow.
Marilyn, I hope you are cool with the fact that I jerked off to you so much through the years.
I imagine you on an Ivory Snow Cloud in heaven, happy, in some endless insatiable orgy where you are queen.
Or maybe you're just chillin up there.
I hope yer at peace, sex goddess...

new tape release

2009-03-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

I just drank a lot of coffee and I'm trapped at work, which means I'm bummed that I can't be working on music or something right now...so as an antidote to frustration I will post about the new collaboration tape between me (Anthro Rex) and my pal Scott (Id M theft able). It is now available from www.breakingworldrecords.com and the cover is a silkscreened drawing that me and Geo did. I'm really psyched about this cuz I'm proud of the tape itself, but also just happy to have a tape with Id M, cuz he is one of my favorite performers EVER!
Check the style:

This is what I do when not watching exploitation movies, DJing, cleaning the hummus factory or hanging out with Madeline.

Ralston/Purina Cereals Pt. III

2009-03-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

Around 88-89 is where R/P really came into their own if you ask me. In addition to the fine bowl-fillers that I'm about to tell you about, Ghostbusters (my favorite of all mid-80s cereals) was still going strong. What a fine time to indulge in preservatives,sugar and corn.

Nintendo Cereal System fucking ruled for the most part. Employing the dual-bag set up from Nerds, we get both a fruity Super Mario and berryish Zelda cereal. I remember that meant a little less net weight, but I didn't fucking care; this was intellectual property synergy at it's finest. I recall watching that shitty saturday morning show, Captain N: the Game Master and eating me some Mario cereal and feeling like I was really being taken care of. The lame part of the cereal was that the box advertised tips and secrets on beating NES games. Seeing that Nintendo Power was only a monthly jolt, these little tid bits were quite exciting to me, but they were all the outdated well known stuff. Aww well...the cereal was pretty good. The commercial had maybe the catchiest jingle for a cereal ever...

Uh oh, I think I have to say that this is THE catchiest jingle for sugar-meal ever:

I don't a week goes by without me singing this song in my head. This cereal, the NCS and Dinersaurs all had the same kind of taste if I remember right...a kind of Trix-ish meets BerryBerry Kix thing. This is fine, but it isn't the awesome eating experience that I rememer most about these brands.
The only thing I can think of to say about Dinersaurs was that it had pretty oddball concept (Dinosaurs running diner) and that it figured prominently in a kindergarden schoolplay my sister was in. For whatever reason, the kids eating Dinersaurs were sent back in time and turned into dinosaurs...I'm surprised the teachers approved of it, but it was cute nonetheless.

Ralston/Purina Cereals Pt. II

2009-03-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

Even though I was one of those boys who thought Cabbage Patch Kids were strictly girl shit, I kinda liked their cereal namesake. This 1985 cereal was one of those mom-friendly deals with low sugar,kinda like Kix or Crispy Critters, but with bigger pieces, giving it a more Honey Comb like texture. Definitely not a cereal I'd pick on my own, but I wouldn't complain if it was picked for me. With cereals like this, you gotta make sure you eat it while crunchy, cuz hi-sugar sog-muck is way tastier than it's healthier counterpart.

I never got to try Nerds Cereal(I think), which I'm okay with, since the idea of orange flavored cereal never sat well with me. But it's important for it's introduction of the idea of a dual-bagged box with two distinct flavors. Maybe the orange would be more enticing to me if mixed with it's cherry-flavored neighbor. This design would be employed in three short years with the NCS (details to follow). Also, mail in bowl with the "nerds gate" is pretty rad...check the vid.

Dunkin Donuts cereal came in two flavors, "glazed" and "chocolate." I only had the glazed kind, and it was a rather unique taste experience. The glaze was an intense frosting (by that I mean "more intense than usual for sugar cereal") that had a kind of strawberryish flavor. Because it was soooo frosty I liked it, but I always knew it was a little "off." It has been 20 years though, and this cereal memory isn't that strong. Ralston had Dinky Donuts cereal in the early 80s and I can imagine that it was basically the same, but we may never know.

Morning Funnies cereal had the cool concept of a gatefold flap on the box covered in comic strips. Now you'd have something more to look at over the course of a week of breakfasts, besides a crappy maze with Barney trying to get his pebbles or whatever. Unfortunately the comics were mostly of the pre-80s variety, which I hated at the time (now I have books of the stuff) and the cereal tasted mediciny. It was just like the Cabbage Patch Kids faces, but overly sweetened in a way remeniscent of cough medicines trying to taste good. I only dug this stuff in a masochistic way.
(commericial is at the 4:40 mark)

Cruisebound

2009-02-21T01:17:00.000-08:00

Hey,
I mean, what can I say, I haven't been writing. Duh. It's bad. Maybe right now I'll try and do part II on Ralston/Purina. In 24 hours I'm leaving with my rents and sis on a cruise to Mexico, tourist fat-ugly-American style. I'm really psyched, packing all my ridiculous tropical wear and putting together a sick sailing mix tape. I'm gonna post it up later so you can see first hand how bad my music taste can get when I don't have to please anybody (my coworker, my girlfriend, my "audience" as a dj)....but since it's a tape and I have a lot of shit to do tonight, I'm not gonna digitize it till I get back. Even though I've been trying to live the Yacht-rock lifestyle for a bunch of summers, this is the first time I'm actually going to wear the water is clear and the beaches are jammin. I plan to do kareoke every night, hopefully doing "Escape (the pina colada song)" at least once. Long live Rupert Holmes, fuck Jimmy Buffet.
See ya soon!
xo
Dan

Ralston/Purina Cereals

2009-02-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

I have a special place in my flavor-heart for the various Ralston/Purina brand cereals from throughout the 80s. It also didn't hurt that almost all of their cereal line were tie-ins with intellectual properties that I was quite fond of as a kid. But they had an extra-mealy, corny flavor, that I really dug. And most importantly, the marshmallows softened up really fast, actually becoming 'mallowlike. The hardness of the marshmallows in more famous cereals can really detract from the experience, often giving the impression of sweetened styrofoam in yer mouth. R/P also has the gen-x nostalgia cred (oh wait, they don't have cred anymore) of producing Freakies. If you didn't know, Freakies (along with Quisp and Boo Berry) are the beginnings of cult interest in cereals. You can see the connection with Freakies being the tree dwelling hippies, Boo Berry being a stoned ghost who talks like Peter Lorre, and Quisp being a space alien with some whacked-out-drug-use-related-if-you-use-drugs-also-behavior.
Of course, I was born in 78, so I missed the Freakies as it ceased production in 76. A short lived remake never made it to my consciousness until seeing it on Topher's Cereal Guide. This is a great internet resource and helped me jog my memory or blow my mind on numerous occasions: http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-guide.html.
Here's a commercial for Freakies:

R/P is also the producers of Cookie Crisp, which I've never been that into taste-wise, though I do appreciates it's place in our culture. I also find it funny that CC mascot went from wizard (Cookie Jarvis) to Cookie Crook.
The first R/P cereal I remember really digging was Ghostbusters Cereal, which featured those smooshy marshmallows in ghost form. I think it's interesting that the song incorporates the suggestion for completing the "nutritional breakfast" instead of just giving the standard "part of this complete breakfast" line.

Donkey Kong cereal came a little earlier, and I enjoyed it, but more for my videogame obsession. If I remember right, it was a slightly less mouth-shredding version of Cap'n Crunch.

Donkey Kong Jr. had more of the feel of eating a cereal version of Fruit Runts, which was pretty cool.

Part II soon