It's a Cold Day for Pontooning

My Friend, Marita, Balloons, and Modern Art

2010-03-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

Or... You Call That Art? Part Two - Electric Boogaloo

While kicking around grad school at Oklahoma State, I went to Chicago several times with the Hispanic Student Association to go to the United Hispanic Leadership Conference. During one of those trips, we went to the Chicago Museum of Modern Art, where I came away with the idea that most modern artists are lazy hacks.

On display was a special piece done by Jeff Koons, who holds a special place of disdain in my heart. Koons' past work has included putting basketballs in fish aquarium tanks with posters of basketball stars hanging down from the ceiling as well as several vintage vacuum cleaners in a long display case. The latter was on display at the museum. He insists on being called an artist.

Interestingly (or not), Koons has actually been putting effort into his art by making large representation of balloon art out of fiberglass - mainly simple dogs and flowers. Still I detest him.

Other interesting things I remember at the museum:

- a room with around 64 oil drums filled with water, which held a disjointed reflection of the large image above it (a girl and her grandmother holding a flower if I remember correctly). I'm sure the message was something about how fractured our society (even benign parts of it) is.

- a room showing a film of an artist (who looked a lot like mutual friend of Marita and mine), Sarah Gonzales, destroying a hotel room, except it was running in reverse. So the pieces of a smashed drawer would fly together, bounce off the wall into the hands of the artist who would then place it in the chest of drawers it belonged to.

- a painting of people with fish heads sitting on a rock on a seashore (my favorite piece because it actually involved effort and artistic talent)

- and finally a stack of 1 foot by 2 foot pieces of paper with a 1 inch black border on them. The card next to it invited the viewer to take a few sheets as it turned the "sculpture" from something static to something dynamic. You can experience this art thrill on a smaller scale for yourself through the normal use of a pad of sticky notes.

So I just got back from Chicago, having gone there to attend a balloon twisting convention and visit my friend, Marita, who also does abstract and other kinds of art, but hers is actually cool, takes talent and work to put together, and several of her pieces can be used to defend yourself against assailants. I bought Marita a bag of balloons, a pump, and a beginner's book on balloons as a thank you for letting me stay with her to save some moolah. She quickly learned the basic dog and made several of them and started connecting them into a large mass of balloon canines. Here you can already see the brilliance of the artist in a new medium.

She sent me a note today saying that she did some modern balloon sculpture at a women's club meeting, and it went over really well.

Marita now needs to contact the Chicago Museum of Modern Art and get her artwork displayed. It will not need effort on the viewer for it to be dynamic as the air leaks out of the balloons, slowly collapsing the sculpture, reminding us of (and this should go on the card next to the art), "the inherent beauty and fragility of life on display all around us... unlike that stupid pile of papers over in the corner."

Conservatives' Gay Problem

2010-02-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

Just what is the conservatives' gay problem? Is it that oftentimes their most vocal anti-gay advocates are caught trying to solicit sex in airport bathrooms or from gay hookers? Will it be the huge cache of gay pornography that Fred Phelps' family/church will find when he finally kicks off? Is it that no matter how much they fight against it, years from now, most people will think it's no big deal, and the people still speaking out against it will be lumped with the people who still speak out against interracial marriage?

No. It's none of that.

It's that they're continually making bad choices in the category of names that it makes it hard to take them seriously.

First example is the National Organization for Marriage (they're the ones who did the, "There's a storm coming," ad about gay marriage - look for it and its parodies on Youtube for 10 minutes of fun). Besides choosing a name whose acronym (NOM) is associated with LOLCats eating cheeseburgers, they launched an initiative called, "Two Million for Marriage," abbreviated, "2M4M." In personal ads parlance, this would indicate a gay male couple is looking for another male for a threesome.

Now we have a nascent political party called the Tea Party. Now, being anti-gay isn't really their main focus. The best description of the Tea Party that I've seen is essentially they're the Dixiecrats from 1948. Neither were/are really "for" anything nor do they have any actual policies or even ideas besides, "We lost the last election, and we're racist cry-babies." It's just unlike the Dixiecrats (who formed to stop desegregation of the military and society), they have a big Black bogeyman baptized Barack (alliteration).

However, being from the more insane branch of the conservative side of politics, it's safe to say they're not too fond of gays either. Which is why what they originally called themselves, "Teabaggers," is funny. Teabagging, without going into too much detail, is a sexual activity. Thus Teabaggers are those that engage in that activity.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that someone HAD to know that, and either he didn't speak up or was ignored, which is pretty stupid. I mean, you're trying to start a political movement. It might be best to stay as far as possible away from sexual euphemisms. That's why various parties in America have been called Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Bull Moose, etc. and not things like Horny Toads, Hookers, Fruits, or the Intercourse Party. (Although, a case could made that their meetings would have been better attended than the recent Tea Party one).

Which brings me to the latest example of what I'm talking about: The Teabaggers had their meeting in Nasvhille at the Gaylord Hotel.

You Call That Art?

2010-01-06T11:53:00.000-08:00

On another discussion board, I happened along a thread concerning copyright law, which I won't bore you with. It was brought up in terms of the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey, Jr., and how the woman who supposedly owns the rights to Holmes isn't going to allow a sequel if they keep up the homoerotic overtones she feels Downey's Holmes is displaying. (I haven't seen it yet so I don't know anything about it).

As the discussion went along, a link to a documentary called, "RiP: A Remix Manifesto," was put up.

Here it is: http://www.hulu.com/watch/88782/rip-a-remix-manifesto

I honestly couldn't make it more than a few minutes in because during the opening scenes of a club DJ getting ready for a gig, the director/narrator played us clips of songs from the Jackson Five and Queen and asked us if we knew who the artists were, and apparently if we guessed the Jackson Five and Queen, we were wrong. No, the ARTIST was the DJ who goes by the name, "Girl Talk." See, the ARTIST took those two songs and did a mash-up using a computer. He is an ARTIST and combining a Jackson Five and Queen song is his WORK OF ART.

Bullshit, I say, and bullshit, I said in the discussion. Of course, people roundly attacked me for that opinion. I'm still right, of course, but it got me thinking about several things.

Firstly, one of the more eye-opening things (for me) that a professor ever said was how all works of art (especially theatrical) are not original; they're all based on something else. As he explained it, "You move the pinky of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and the toe of Citizen Kane wiggles." Maybe not those two movies in particular, but you get the idea. The 1956 sci-fi thriller, "Forbidden Planet," is based off of William Shakespeare's, "The Tempest," for example. Recently, comparisons between, "Avatar," and "Dances with Wolves," have been made.

Secondly, what about sampling? Rap music is notorious for it, once being so prevalent a humorous news story was written that because all known recordings had already been sampled, a new rap song was forced to sample itself. Some rappers do overly-rely on sampling, but I guess what saves them is that they at least provide the vocals.

Diverging just a bit, we also have covers of songs. And from there, it's a small leap (for me) to balloon twisting.

See, when I'm asked for a monkey by a kid, I don't make a monkey design I came up with. I make Don Caldwell's monkey (Don is a "famous" twister) with some modifications. It's relatively fast, uses five balloons, is fun to watch being made, and looks great. I'm essentially doing a cover of Don's monkey and making money off of it just like a Beatles Tribute Band makes money off, "Yellow Submarine." I have plenty of other sculptures that I do that are originals, but Don's monkey is too good not to do, and he's given permission (in the form of DVD tutorials) to make that sculpture and many others.

So I don't think of myself as a hack like I do Girl Talk. I recognize what Girl Talk does takes skill, and that he entertains others in a fashion I'll never be able to, but he's not an artist. Am I? I don't know.

I've DJ'ed before - nothing on the level of what he does in clubs. I did not scratch records; I didn't have two turntables and a microphone; I did not insist on being called a stupid name like, "Girl Talk." I just played songs .

See, when I was kicking around grad school, I was members of the various Hispanic/Latin groups there, and one of them was a dancing club that taught every week and would normally be in charge of DJ'ing the groups' parties, the various members taking shifts during the night. The "theory" of playing songs that I was exposed to was that you try to find songs that would fade out and into each other well, so that when one song ended, you would fade it out as you brought up the other song. That way, the transitions aren't too jarring. Of course, being who I am, I would still sometimes ignore that rule much to the anguish of the club member who thought he knew it all.

So, there I was, connecting two songs by overlapping them. I didn't even use a computer to do it. I did it the hard way and actually had to rely on my own innate sense of timing. I did EXACTLY what Girl Talk does at its simplest form. If I were to call myself an artist because of it, I would say, "Its purest form." Are all those songs now MY works of art? No.

What Girl Talk and others are getting kudos for is that how they combine the songs is prettier, and I'll admit it, takes more work than what I did. It doesn't make it their work of art though, and it doesn't make them artists anymore than I would be an artist if I took the Mona Lisa and glued it into George Seurat's, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," even if I did use a really nice technique and put glitter over the connection points and made it look fabulous.

This February, I'll be going to Chicago to go to a balloon twisting convention that will have competitions for small, medium, and large sculptures. I'm going to be entering the large competition. Pieces of my sculpture will feature techniques learned from other twisters, which will be re-worked into my own design.

Whether or not someone considers it art or says I'm an artist matters to me. I will be putting in effort and drawing from hours and hours of learning my craft to do this and enjoying myself. I will not grab two other entries and connect them with a single balloon and claim it as my own. That would make me a hack.

Like Girl Talk.

Golf - Seriously, Let's Make It Better or Get Rid of It

2010-01-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

My eleven suggestions to make golf more interesting.

Golfers after hitting a ball must run as fast as they can to where it lands, immediately hitting it again. Time to get through 18 holes will be factored into the score.
Rival golfers encouraged to chant, "Hey, batta, batta... scha-wing, batta, batta!"
Number of strokes to complete a hole = number of shots you do
Body-checking allowed
One club, that's it.
Go over par, lose a finger.
Sand trap promises but doesn't deliver on implied danger. Bee farm "hives" filled with bees will be placed in them
Order of players determined by pre-game Caddyshack trivia
Miss an easy putt, 10 lashes by leather-clad dominatrix
Screw the masters jacket, trophies, and giant checks... give out WWE-style golf champion belts
Golf cheerleaders consisting of Tiger Woods' mistresses.

Merry Christmas, You Douche

2009-12-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

For the last 5 years or so, the so-called War on Christmas has been waged thanks to so-called, "Culture Warriors," egged on by head douches like Bill O'Reilly. The essential "problem" is that some stores tell their workers to wish people, "Happy Holidays," "Seasons Greetings," "Have a Cool Yule," or "Do You Want Fries with That?" Maybe not those last two, but the douchebaggery of getting upset with stores has been extended by certain individuals (read: uber-douches) who get upset with other non-store-affiliated individuals, who don't utter the magic phrase, "Merry Christmas," during December but other near-pornographic things like, "Happy Holidays."

Aside: In my mind right now, I can picture a story in an old, "Dennis the Menace," comic digest I read when I was a kid. It's a street scene of happy people around Christmas time, carrying Christmas trees, packages, etc., and the air is filled with shouts of not only, "Merry Christmas," but the aforementioned Satan-inspired, nation-destroying phrases of, "Seasons Greetings," and "Happy Holidays." If Hank Ketcham (creator of Dennis) were alive and published that book today, Bill O'Reilly would attack him and encourage his audience to boycott Dennis products, call their papers to drop the strip, etc., and they would do it... because they're douches.

Of course, not everyone who says, "Merry Christmas," is a douche so here's a handy guide to help you know if you are:

If you visualize Jesus putting a gold star next to your name in a book every time you say, "Merry Christmas," because you're a culture warrior fighting for Him, you're a douche.
If you say, "Merry Christmas," and HOPE to get back, "Happy Holidays," so you can unleash your anger at the poor schlub you think is secularizing the season, you're a douche. If you do this to a store employee making minimum wage, you're also an asshole.
If you make comments like, "Saying Merry Christmas is controversial," you're a douche.
If you're unable to conceive that there are other religions followed in this country who also have celebrations during December, and it would be nice to acknowledge them, chances are you're a racist douche.

Basically, what you douches are doing is worse than what the imagined, underground movement to take away Christmas is doing: You're taking the joy out of the season. You've taken the phrase, "Merry Christmas," which was not in danger of dying out, and instead of a "season's greeting," and a genuine heartfelt wish for joy you've turned it into a challenge, a dare, a chip on the collective shoulder of douches nationwide, and by doing so, you do the same thing to all the other greetings. Phrases that should be genuine wishes of happiness - and thus, the time of year they're said - are now being ruined faster by you douches than a Best Buy telling their employees to say, "Happy Holidays," to shoppers.

Good job... douche.

God? It's me, TlalocW. What up, playa?

2009-11-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

So here's something I've wondered about for a long time. I'm sure you've thought it as a humorous aside or heard someone else make a joke about it.

The situation is when the quarterback/star center/pitcher for a team that's just won thanks Jesus for all their success, sometimes, almost literally claiming, "It wasn't me; it was the J-Man." The humorous aside, of course, is why does Jesus hate the other team so much?

That's the simpler example. That's a one time thing. The more complex similar situation is when a very successful person more or less makes the same claim. That all of his success is due to Jesus/God.

It makes me wonder.

Is he really stating that he's so untalented that nothing he has in life can be a result of some skill set he possesses?

If that's not the case, is it a case of false modesty, where he knows he's damn good, but he wants to appear as a good Christian so he gives credit to God and Jesus? Wouldn't that displease God? If it does, it apparently doesn't displease God enough to take away the person's good fortune.

If the previous two don't hold water, is he claiming that even with all his skills, success wasn't guaranteed, but God interceded on his behalf and made fortune favor him thus proof he IS a good Christian?

But if his next door neighbor is more successful but is an atheist, what does that mean?

I was raised to believe God loves everyone, but does it mean God rewards people equally?

Does God not reward people equally, but the atheist guy is so talented and got lucky enough that he overcame God's apathy (best worst case scenario) or God's actively working against him (worst worst case scenario)?

Is it all a crapshoot?

Why does God hate the Dallas Cowboy so much?

One of My More Clever Ideas (That Didn't Work)

2009-06-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

The last Harry Potter book was coming out, and bookstores were going to go all out by staying open past midnight to sell the book, have costume contests, etc. I wanted in on that. I had a dream of being hired to not only twist balloons at the party but decorating the place with large balloon sculptures related to the books. I had designs for owls, large dragons, broomsticks, cats, and wanted to try a new weaving technique to create a 20 foot basilisk.

I happened to have some computer paper that looked like parchment, and I made up a one page flier with some photos of my work on it, chose appropriate fonts, etc. My stroke of genius was when I learned that Dumbledore means bumblebee in Old Welsh. I remember seeing some stamps at Walmart that had a bee design on it so after printing out my fliers and putting them in envelopes (but not sealing them), I bought the stamps, lit a red candle, and poured the melted wax onto the envelope. As the wax puddles were drying, I pressed the bee stamp into them, sealing the envelopes with Dumbeldore's "seal." I then delivered them held by balloon owls to the managers of various Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc.

It didn't work out. Big box bookstores' regional headquarters are notoriously cheap.

So instead of entertaining, I went and parked in line at the University of Tulsa's drive-through warehouse bookstore to get a copy of the book. I drove my van with my logos and had my balloon bag with me so I made some stuff for people who asked for them.

Got a couple of gigs out of it too.

Suck it, Borders/Barnes and Noble.

What I've Learned from Fake Psychics

2009-05-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Fake psychics of course being a redundant term.

But I have learned something from them - Take credit for things you have nothing to do with.

That doesn't mean steal someone else's thunder. Oh, no. An example of the type of thing I'm talking about involves a scientific experiment done on a psychic back in the 1970s. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but basically, the psychic was supposed to try and influence some sort of measuring instrument that was physically graphing on paper some sort of physical phenomenon (like a seismograph might) . He was to use his mental powers to influence the spindle/writing instrument, which would then be captured on the graph paper, thus proving psychic power.

Well, like all experiments that show the existence of psychic powers, this one had bad controls. Basically, the psychic could do whatever he wanted, was given no time limit, and most importantly had not been told to do something specific - such as make the spindle jump sharply, make a curve, etc.

So if for some normal, physical reason, the spindle did something unexpected, he could claim credit, and that's exactly what he did. He was looking out the window when the spindle "went crazy." The scientists made a surprised noise, and the clever psychic asked, "Is that what you wanted me to do?" The "scientists" (who were desperate to prove such powers existed) took it as proof.

What the scientists did not know was that the instrument they were using had a flaw in that it routinely had a backup of gas accumulate in it until it had no choice but to expel it. This venting of the gas would cause the spindle to behave erratically.

Another example was one told to me by Steve Lancaster, owner of Top Hat Magic in Tulsa. He was performing walk-around magic at a party and kept forcing the same card through a variety of ways on a volunteer. Finally after he felt the humor of the situation was tapped out, he spread the cards on a table and asked the volunteer to pick one (this was an entirely free choice as Steve was moving on to another trick). The volunteer though defied the odds and picked the same card Steve had gotten done forcing on him over and over. At that point, Steve thanked everyone watching him and moved onto another table of people as there was nothing he could do to top the impression of the "real" magic that had just happened.

I now have the reputation among several people of being able to get through any door. I actually do have some skill with this. I could pick simple locks as a child, and in college I found I could card myself into locked dorm rooms faster than the RAs. I've kept this last ability and have used it - amongst other things - to open a friend's locked front door - one that her then police officer boyfriend had installed for her (much to both their surprises).

The best time I displayed this talent was when I worked part time at a video game arcade for extra Xmas money. I had just taken up magic and was always eager to show card tricks, particularly to two of my co-workers who were both from India, roommates, and here in America attending college. Two more different personalities you would be hard pressed to find - one was type double A, easily panicked and never able to sit still, always providing interesting yelps when a trick ended. The other the most laid back guy I've ever met and always over-analyzing and guessing wrongly how I did a trick.

One Saturday night, a church youth group was coming into the arcade after normal closing hours (having rented the place for themselves). The laid back co-worker and I were not assigned to work it, but Mister Type A was, so after cleaning up from the normal night's customers, we got to leave. The laid-back co-worker asked for a ride back to his house as he and the type-A shared a car.

After dropping off Mister Laid Back, I realized I had left my cell phone at the arcade and drove back to get it.

Earlier that night while cleaning up, Mister Type A had discovered that one of the bathrooms had been locked by a customer, and he was panicking over not being able to find the key to get in. I took out an old credit card, and in under 5 seconds, I had opened the door - much to his amazement. I mention that for a reason.

I arrived back at the arcade and approached the double-glass doors. The youth group hadn't arrived yet. Mister Type A was in the arcade facing away from the doors about 20 feet away. He heard me approach and moved to come open the doors (which were locked) for me. At that point, I noticed that I hadn't shut the doors properly when I left earlier. I motioned at him to stop, ran a finger down the crack where two doors met, pulled open one of them, went around the prize counter to get my cell then left, waving cheerfully at my co-worker who hadn't moved from his spot and was staring slack-jawed at me.

I giggled all the way home.

Years later, at the magic job I had at Casa Viva (a job I got based solely on a simple sponge ball routine I did for a manager), I freaked out that same manager by knocking on her office door then entering. She looked at me strangely when I came in and told me, "That door was locked!" I replied, "Eh, I'm a magician. It doesn't matter," before continuing on to talk to her about something else.

I giggled the rest of the night.

I Pissed Off a Monk Once...

2009-05-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of this recently. A few years ago, I was hired to perform walk-around/close-up magic at a fund-raiser for a local Catholic prep school. It was an adults-only affair, and they really did it up. The theme was Cirque du Soleil so they had unicyclists in the parking lot, a mime greeting people at the door, a juggler, a large banquet/dance room, silent auction of some pricey wines, cigar bar, etc. etc. etc.

As part of the theme, I was dressed in a kind of sparkly unitard that came down to just below my knees with tights underneath.

At one point, I was actually doing a card trick for one of the priests, and a monk, dressed in full monk regalia - a black robe, came up in the middle to watch. I did a few tricks that all went over well with the priest - the monk wasn't really reacting that much so I thought maybe a little humor would draw him in.

So I looked at him with an appraising eye for a second then said, "Black is very chic, but (and I indicated how I was dressed) hemlines are higher this year."

Well, the priest laughed.

Fun at Baptist Bible College

2009-02-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

Another thing I keep posting that I just need to blog about. This happened about 8 to 10 years ago when one of my good high school friends, Brett, was attending Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.

I went to visit him on a Friday for a long weekend. I attended classes with him for the first half of the day before we blew off the second half.

Some interesting things about BBC...

Every student knows Silver Dollar City (an amusement park that's nearby) like the back of their hand and has bragging rights on how well they do on a boat ride that involves shooting targets with light guns. This is because every student has to sign something that says they won't watch TV, listen to certain radio stations, won't go to the movies or rent them, etc. Silver Dollar City is just about the only thing they can do for weekend entertainment, and I think this symbiotic relationship between BBC and Silver Dollar City is the only thing that keeps the latter in business as it's quite dull.

This ban of popular entertainment didn't sit well with Brett who is a movie and music junkie (he is a naturally gifted musician who built a recording studio inside his campus apartment out of scrap wood and carpet) so he signed it and ignored it.

The other thing that he was supposed to do was shave his beard, but for that he went to our hometown doctor - the only Jewish guy in town - and asked him to write him a note that said he had a skin condition that made him sensitive to shaving. The doctor looked at him and said, "So... you want me to lie to Baptists... No problem!"

Anyway, I attended classes with him. The women all have to dress in modest skirts and the men in ties and coats, while I walked around in tennis shoes and a Superman t-shirt. One of his classes was Spanish, which was a major of mine in college, so when the teacher split the class up into groups to work on an in-class assignment, I joined Brett's group, and we got done first.

So one of the guys in the group started up a conversation that went something like this:
BBC: So where did you go to college?
Me: I graduated from Pittsburg State in southeast Kansas then did some grad work at Oklahoma State.
BBC: Ah, OSU. Good ol' Eskimo Joe's (a bar/restaurant).
Me: Oh, you know it?
BBC: Yeah, I'm from Tulsa, and friends of mine and I would drive to Stillwater if they had an interesting band playing there.
Me: That's where I am now, in Tulsa.
BBC: Oh, really? What church do you go to?
Me: (forgetting where I am) Oh, I don't attend church. I like to sleep in on Sundays.
- Uncomfortable silence while he digests this statement, and I realize the silence between us is indeed uncomfortable -
BBC: Well, if you're interested, there's a church at 101st and...
Me: That was your church, wasn't it?
BBC: Well, yeah...
Me: (Realizing my way out of this) Actually, sometimes I do go to church at St. Francis De Guadalupe, a Catholic church with a large Mexican congregation so I can practice my Spanish.
BBC: Oh.

And nothing more. My friend, Brett, was trying hard not to laugh, and later, he complimented me on my ability to use Baptists' inherent dislike for Catholicism to my advantage and shut the guy up (Brett said he was a pain).

Later on that day, we went to Silver Dollar City and went on a water ride where you shoot various targets with light guns. I got a 118.

I Found My Purple Comb - A Boring Story

2009-01-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

In 1994, when I was visiting Mexico to take my last class for a Spanish major through a program at my university (this is how I met Jacinta), I lost the comb I had brought with me. Across from the Hotel Gillow (at the corners of Isabela La Catolica and Cinco de Mayo) where we were staying while in Mexico City, was a pharmacy so I bought a new comb from there. They didn't have any of the normal black (usually ACE brand) combs but only cheap purple ones.

Over the last 15 years, that comb has unintentionally become another souveneir from the trip (one I use daily) as I've - almost unintentionally and unconsciously - put more care into keeping it safe than any other comb. Over Christmas I didn't have a spare comb to take to Kansas with me so I took it, and I thought I had lost it. Last night while going through some duffle bags to make sure nothing was in them before putting them away, I found it.

It was probably the highlight of my day.

Goofus Has It Made; Gallant Not So Much

2008-12-14T22:11:00.001-08:00

Had to go get some new tires put on my car… It’s pretty sad when a new set of tires almost doubles my car’s worth from what a dealer offered me for it in trade… The only reading material in the waiting room was women’s magazines and Highlight Magazine for Kids. For those of you who, as children, had dentists un-American enough not to subscribe to Highlights, it’s a magazine of stories, puzzles, arts and crafts, and the like. It hasn’t changed much since I was a kid except for you can download and listen to podcasts of some of the stories (true), and Gallant and Goofus look different.

Once again, for those not in the know, Gallant and Goofus were the names of two boys that showed you how to act with side by side cartoon panels to help you compare and contrast proper and improper behavior. Thus it encourages you to be a Gallant instead of a Goofus. For instance, Goofus might be shown damaging a friend’s property and just not giving a flying fuck cuz that’s how he rolls (with the caption, “Goofus doesn’t respect other people’s property”) while Gallant, who obeys all city, county, and state municipalities and knuckles under to the man, is shown handing in a pristine library book to a librarian with the caption, “Gallant makes sure to treat other people’s property the right way.”

Gallant is such a tool (even the librarian thinks so).

Unfortunately for Gallant, he’s stuck in the 1950s while Goofus is apparently moving into the high-paying realm of cyber-crimes and all at the age of 10. One of the cartoons messages today was about respecting other people’s privacy. Gallant’s cartoon showed him preventing a friend from reading a female classmate’s diary (complete with large heart on the cover and lock) while Goofus was depicted successfully hacking a classmate’s email password.

Later I learned how to make finger puppets out of construction paper, glue, and paperclips.

Things That Keep Me Up at Night

2008-12-14T22:05:00.000-08:00

Speaking of werewolves...

If someone was truly affected with the dread lycanthropy (werewolfism), and they had normal vision as a human, would they be colorblind when they were a werewolf?

It's a Damn Shame I Hate Working Retail

2008-10-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

I can apparently get anyone to buy stupid things. One year when I was laid off from my regular job, I took a temp position at a local magic/costume store during the Halloween season (the owner is the person who gave me my first balloon twisting job). I sold a record eight gorilla suits and convinced (on accident since I was joking) an attractive woman who was going as a hula dancer to go with the seashell bra as the coconut one would make her look like a slut.

Anyway, I'm helping the owner of the other magic/costume shop in town (he also gets me balloon twisting jobs) with his other costume shop in a small town north of Tulsa. Today I convinced a teenage boy to buy an astronaut costume and wear a werewolf mask underneath the head bubble so he could be a lycanthropic lunar astronaut whose werewolf curse is always apparent whenever he's on the moon since the moon is what makes those so-cursed get all hairy and toothy.

Forget Xmas. What About the War Against Halloween?

2008-10-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

Seriously.

I'm sick of seeing and hearing about places - primarily churches - having Fall Harvest parties or Neewollah Celebrations (Halloween spelled backwards). The day is called Halloween. It means All Hallow's Evening or Eve. November 1 is All Hallow's Day so October 31 is its Eve. Like Christmas Eve. Halloween is not some "special" spooky magic/cursed word like Voldemort in "Harry Potter" (which the fundamentalists don't read for reasons similar to those used to not celebrate Halloween).

Aside: Trunk or Treat celebrations are a little different as their stated purpose is to give kids a safe place to celebrate Halloween - even though it's more for the parents' benefit who believe the urban legends about razors in candy.

Yes, a lot of the traditions come from ancient Celtic/Pagan times, but again, a lot of Christmas ones do as well - mistletoe, Yule logs, Christmas trees, gift-giving, etc. And just like there's no Santa Claus, there's no such thing as magic, ghosts, monsters, etc. so letting your daughter dress up like a witch for one day out of the year is not going to start her down a dark path into the non-existent occult. If anything, the stultifying, over-bearing religious way you raise her will instead cause her to rebel and become a goth and/or emo, and the worst incantations she does will just be bad poetry.

And I hope you're subjected to it. Now back on track...

I had a high-schooler come up to me while I was futzing about my garage. His church was in the area canvassing the neighborhood with fliers for their upcoming Harvest Party. I wasn't in a good mood.

Me: So, why don' you call it a Halloween party?
Him: (Mishearing me and proudly stating) That's right, sir! We would *never* call it Halloween!
Me: No, you're not listening. Why DON'T you call it Halloween? That's its name.
Him: (Temporarily silenced)
Me: It means All Hallow's Eve. November 1 is All Hallow's Day so October 31 is its eve. Looking at your flier, I see you're going to have treats, games, costume contests, a hay ride, a bonfire, etc. All elements of a Halloween party. Why can't you call it that?
Him: (Tries to say something)
Me: You know what? I don't know why I'm asking because I really don't want to hear what idiotic religious reason your stupid pastor has for celebrating Halloween but not calling it that. Here, take your flier.

I have a DVD called Halloween Balloons - a balloon twisting tutorial that I watched recently all the way through. Before, I had set it on fast forward through the whole thing just to see what all the different sculptures were, slowing it down to normal when I saw one that I wanted to learn.

Well, on this viewing, I learned that "Halloween Balloons," was the brainchild of a well-known gospel twister in Texas as he was the last one on the DVD. I say last one because it was filled with other "famous" twisters showing off and teaching their stuff at his request. When it came time for him to show one - a pretty cool Frankenstein - he launched into a harangue about how he's not going to show a Halloween balloon since he doesn't celebrate it, but he's going to show a Fall Festival one.

So, his balloon is the only "non-Halloween" one on a DVD called, "Halloween Balloons," and ten other twisters all referred to his asking them to do something for his Halloween DVD in their openings... As long as he's constant about it, I guess.

My rant against the War Against Halloween ends here by my telling you to kvetch to yourself about seeing Christmas decorations up in the store in October.

Another Story from Days Past - My Boss Was an Asshole

2008-09-25T11:30:00.001-07:00

This happened at a programming job I had several years ago. The boss' name was Lyle. Let me tell you about Lyle...

Lyle was the supervisor over two groups of programmers - one of which my friend, Brian, and I were in. Lyle was a big guy and hyper-competitive. During pick-up games of basketball during lunch, he had no problem "accidentally" elbowing you in the face to get the ball. He also had quite a temper which he used to keep other managers in line. At one point, it seemed that the only people not afraid of him were myself, Brian, and another programmer named, Jerry, who regularly stood up to him regarding impossible deadlines. Brian and I preferred to mock him... openly... to his face.

I will now divert from my original story to this one.

The company I worked for decided to try out the FISH program. The FISH program was created by a fish monger place in Seattle, and it has four tenets that one should do at work, and they're so obvious that only management would consider them ground-breaking enough to spend loads of money on the videos and other things to teach them to employees. The tenets are: Choose your attitude, have fun at work, be there for your co-workers and clients, and make their day (do something nice for your co-workers). The main reason my company did FISH was they would rather spend money on the aforementioned videos and buying various fish things like toy fishes, squeaky-toys in the shape of whales (I pointed out that whales are mammals), fishy decorations, etc. than give employees proper recognition in the form of raises and promotions.

Lyle had gone to our district head office and watched the tapes before us, and when he came back, he walked around the office with a single shot Nerf dart gun, shooting people over and over again, annoying the hell out of them. This was Lyle's version of have fun - take advantage of a program that hasn't officially started yet to pick on employees. Brian and I called him down our aisle and had this conversation.

Me: So, Lyle, what's with the Nerf gun?
Lyle: It's part of a new program we'll be doing here. I watched some videos of the program that shows how to have fun at work.
Me: So... you need a video to show you how to have fun?
Lyle: (starts to say something but is interrupted)
Me: That's kind of pathetic.
Brian: I don't know. I think it's brave of him to admit that.
Lyle: (starts to say something but is interrupted)
Me: No, it's pathetic, Brian. I think it's probably a sign of a bigger problem.
Brian: You might be right.
Me: (starts to say something, but by this time, Lyle has yelled something at us and stomped off).

Brian and I then went out to lunch and stopped by Toys R Us, where I purchased the largest Nerf gun they had - a three chambered, 21 ball, rapid-fire behemoth that took 4 D batteries to run and sounded like a Harley when you pushed the button to get the motor running.

Back to the story. This actually happened after we had done FISH for a while. Lyle decided that his two groups should go out for pizza and then go to the local Laser Tag establishment and play a couple of games in their tri-level maze. We got there, and the teams were divided up into our two programming teams, and Lyle played on the other team. At Laser Tag places, you are given a vest and a gun, both of which have several targets on them for people to shoot at while you're shooting at other people's targets. When you're hit, the gun vibrates, and you are temporarily unable to be hit again for five seconds. This allows you to get away from whomever just shot you. The system keeps track of who shot whom, who hit the most people, etc. and you get a piece of paper with that information and your rank in the game at the end.

My team won the first game. Of course, this could not stand with hyper-competitive Lyle, who immediately started demanding we make a bet on the second game and calling us chicken when we said we just wanted to play. I asked loudly enough for everyone to hear, "I'm confused... I thought normally the winners do the smack talk." Finally, it was decided - solely by Lyle - that the losing team would sing the, "I'm a Little Teapot," song.

We enter for the second game, and immediately, something is wrong. I'm getting hit over and over again in shoot-outs to the point where my gun was deactivated more than it was active. I even asked a member of the opposite team to let me shoot his chest target as a test, and when I did, nothing happened.

After the game, we saw Lyle's team had blown us away by about 1000 points, and he was having a good time talking smack and demanding the song. He was waiting for me to join the group before the singing commenced, but I was busy talking with the kid who was running the game. I asked him if it were possible to turn off one team's targets and if our boss had requested that. The answer was yes to both. I joined the group, looked at Lyle who was demanding his song, and told everyone what I had found out. Everyone from both teams just gave him a dirty look, and we filed out the door to go back to the office.

A few weeks later, Brian and I were in a meeting with Lyle. He was meeting one-on-one (or in our case, two-on-one) to discuss any problems we had with our direct manager or the company in general, and Brian and I replied that we didn't care for it when managers cheat at games. Lyle's face reddened (not out of embarassment), and he tried to explain that the reason that he had done that was because his team had all, "the older Asian women on it who hid in a corner and giggled and shot at people if they walked by," and he didn't want that team to feel bad for losing twice.

Brian and I didn't let him get away with that, telling him that none of us were talking smack or trying to make the other team look bad. Everyone else was mature enough to realize it was just a couple of friendly games of Laser Tag, and ultimately, we didn't care who won, and it was him that had the problem with losing. The meeting quickly ended after that.

A few months later, Brian had his best golf game after I paged him from work (he had taken a day off) to let him know that Lyle had finally been fired because he was such a giant asshole.

Sniff Sniff - Smells Like Schadenfreude

2008-09-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

More Sex Fun with Republicans

This time it’s not a married republican hiring a hooker to put him in diapers while 12-year-old boys are forced to watch with the whole thing taking place in a port-a-potty on the tarmac of a major city's airport.

No, our subject concerns one Gabriel Nathan Schwartz, a (single) delegate to the Republican National Convention. Mr. Schwartz was quite a camera hog and wise-guy at the convention, getting multiple interviews where he stated such inane things like McCain having, “more experience in his little pinkie” than Barack Obama (which is true, but the number of times his experience has been right fits into McCain’s other pinkie) and saying we should, “bomb the hell,” out of Iran then “plant a flag. Take the oil; take the money,” because, “We deserve reimbursement.”

Here’s a picture of Mister Schwartz: http://static.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/gabriel-schwartz.thumbnail.jpg

Far be it for me to come down on anyone else’s looks, but I think the combination of his brain power and this picture explains the situation he found himself in. After his “bomb Iran” interview, it seems he actually picked up someone at his swanky hotel bar, inviting her back to his room. Upon arrival, the woman fixed some drinks and told Gabriel to get undressed, and then… that’s the last thing he remembers before coming to and finding $50,000 of money, jewelry, and other belongings stolen from him – an amount that stunned Minneapolis police.

Aside: Seriously, what do you need $50,000 worth of various assets for when you’re only in town for four days? And this is four days in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The main thing to do there outside of the convention is go to a live taping of, “A Prairie Home Companion,” and the most expensive tickets cost under $50, and you’re not going to go anyway because Garrison Keillor is a liberal.

Republicans, please… I’m begging you for your own sake… Look, we’ve gotten a good laugh over the years of your trying to portray yourselves as the morals party, but let’s face it: you’re as depraved and/or sex-starved as you falsely make liberals out to be. The red states’ sex-before-marriage rates, pre-marital shacking up rates, births out of wedlock rates, divorce rates, etc. are all higher than blue states. Dirty movie viewership at hotels skyrockets when there’s a religious convention going on. Plus, you’re apparently lousy parents by your own definition (since you refuse to believe it’s genetic) because so many of you have kids that turn out gay.

Apparently, God/the universe/Karma/luck is punishing you for being sexually hypocritical douchebags. It’s okay. We all fall into some sort of douchebaggery every now and then, but eventually that fall stops, and we throw off our douchebag shackles. I don’t see that happening any time soon with republicans.

My advice: Take a few years off. Let the adults (democrats) straighten out the mess you’ve made of the United States and the world, and you do whatever is necessary for your party to become as moral as the democrats. If that means studying what it is the blue states are doing right, do it. If you think it means cutting back on your dreams to return America to some mythical Ozzie-and-Harriet-Leave-It-to-Beaver 1950s era, do so except for yourself. Watching your convention, you’re halfway there as it’s apparent that both you and 1950s television had the same amount of minorities hanging around.

You can do this – you’ve just got to believe in yourself and maybe subject yourself to negative feedback treatments (shock therapy, etc).

Dare to dream!

The Best Batman

2008-09-08T23:45:00.001-07:00

I just rented, "Batman: Gotham Knight," a collection of 6 different cartoons of different animation style featuring Batman. The stories are only somewhat (if at all) interconnected, but they feature (and I did not know this until I watched it) Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne.

The current spate of DC cartoons (and I think interest in doing new Batman movies to return him to his grittier roots) got its start in the early 1990s with Batman: The Animated Series, starring Conroy, who I think does the best Wayne/Batman voices out there. The New Batman Adventures came after the Animated Series, but for all intents and purposes, it was the same show with the same voice actors. The TV shows and movies related to this post are:

Batman: The Animated Series

Batman and Mister Freeze: Subzero (movie)

The Batman/Superman Movie

Superman (The Animated Series)

Batman Beyond (TV series, featuring an elderly Bruce Wayne passing on the mantle)

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (movie)

The Zeta Project

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (movie)

Static Shock (There have been various crossovers of Justice League heroes and Static between the various cartoon series)

Justice League/Justice League Unlimited

The Batman (a new series from a different studio with a new voice for Batman. Conroy guest-starred as the father of Dick Grayson, who became Robin)

Teen Titans (a series from a different studio than the rest that focused on Robin. Its relative because while it was on, The Batman could not introduce Robin as a character and so introduced Batgirl as his first sidekick)

The Legion of Superheroes - another new series from a different studio focusing on Superboy/Superman's adventures with the Legion in the far-flung future.

Justice League: The New Frontier - a DVD movie dealing with the Golden Age moving into the Silver Age of DC heroes.

Batman: Gotham Knight starred the following voice actors who had various roles in the six cartoons on the DVD. After Conroy, they're listed with what show(s) they had showed up on in the past. I'm very big on voice actors and can normally pick them out pretty well even when they star in live action productions, and it's interesting when I look them up to see what other projects they've worked on. For Gotham Knights, it seems they really tried to keep it, "in the family," so to speak, if the family is: an animated DC superhero show/movie.

Kevin Conroy - Batman/Bruce Wayne

Jason Marsden - portrayed the villain Firefly on The Batman, the villain Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, reporter Snapper Carr on the Justice League, Static's partner Gear on Static Shock, a one time character on Batman Beyond, the voice of the teenage Clark Kent on Superman, and a one time character on Batman: TAS.

Scott Menville - the voice of Robin on Teen Titans, the villain King on Justice League, and some one time characters on Superman.

George Newbern - the voice of Superman/Clark Kent in Justice League and guest starred on Static Shock and The Batman as Superman.

Crystal Scales - recurring role of Static and Gear's classmate, Daisy Watkins, on Static Shock.

Hyden Walch - Villain Harley Quinn on the Batman, Starfire on Teen Titans, Villain Ace on Justice League, one episode character on Static Shock

Corey Burton - Brainiac on Batman: TAS, Superman, Justice League, Legion of Superheroes, and Static Shock. Various voices on Batman Beyond and Batman: TAS. Abin Sur (the Green Lantern who gives his ring to Hal Jordan) on Justice League: The New Frontier

Jim Meskimen - one episode character on The Batman, Justice League, Superman.

Pat Musick - one episode characters on Batman Beyond, Superman, Batman : Mask of the Phantasm, Batman: TAS.

Rob Paulsen - One episode characters on The Batman, Teen Titans, Justice League, Batman: TAS. Among some of the other noteworth characters he's provided the voice for are: Pinky (Pinky and the Brain), Yakko Warner, and Arthur of The Tick.

Will Friedle - the new Batman from Batman Beyond. The character also appeared in Justice League, Zeta Project, and Static Shock. Villain Gearhead on The Batman. One episode voice on Teen Titans.

Kevin Michael Richardson - the Joker on The Batman. Various villains on Teen Titans. Recurring role of General Wells on Justice League. Mobster Carlton Duquesne on Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. Various voices on Static Shock. Batman Beyond, Batman: TAS, Superman. Is also well-known as Captain Gantu (giant bipedal shark alien) from the Stitch movies/TV show.

Brian George - Villain Parasite (and various voices) on Justice League. Various voices on Batman Beyond, Batman: TAS, and Superman.

David McCallum - Will be the voice of Zeus in the upcoming Wonder Woman cartoon movie.

Andrea Romano - Andrea has been the voice director (and often times a voice actor) for a lot of cartoons, most notably most if not all the shows/movies listed above as well as all the way back to the 1970s Superfriends cartoons.

I Pissed Off an Evangelist (Routinely)

2008-09-05T23:28:00.000-07:00

This is another post of activities long over, but I have to keep referring to them on other message boards so I might as well just blog it and post the link on them to keep from repeating the stories.

In the mid-1990s, I was kicking around grad school at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, before I decided I was tired of college and wanted a job, which moved me to Tulsa, where I still am today.

Being a poor grad student who didn't care for bars, some of the best free entertainment was on Friday afternoons when evangelists would come yell at us on the library lawn. There were actually two that I remember, but one of them only showed up once so I might as well combine them. After all, they're pretty much the same.

This is a list of the various things I did and said to the OSU evangelists.

So Mister Evangelist first showed up the first Friday after the first week of school. OSU had various activities on the library lawn to welcome students to the new year, and one of them was a palm reader - had an actual tent and everything just like in old Bugs Bunny cartoons when while being chased by Elmer Fudd, he would pull a tent out of nowhere and dress like a fortune teller to throw Elmer off the track.

This palm reader was actually on David Letterman when he did a bit where he went to various palm readers and ended up dancing with them. Mister E. showed up to accuse us all of, "spiritual whore-mongering."

Never mind that there's no such thing as palm reading, ESP, telekinetic powers, real magic, etc.

Along with the spiritual kind, the men at OSU were also regular whore-mongers because we liked looking at OSU women, who were of course, whores, because they wore short skirts, shorts, and pants (gasp!) instead of modest dresses and wore make-up.

When Mister E. told us that by looking at a woman with lust in our hearts, we turned her into a whore, I turned to an attractive blonde next to me, took her hand, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, "I would like to apologize from the deepest recesses of my heart..." at which point I trailed off and openly stared at her breasts. Everyone laughed except Mister E. He called me a whore-monger.

Once after asking the guys to raise their hands if they had sex outside of marriage, he ran down the line, pointing at each one while yelling, "There's a whore-monger, there's a whore-monger, there's a whore-monger!" After the third "whore-monger," I yelled, "Everywhere a whore-monger! E-I-E-I-O!"

Once while railing against homosexuals, I asked Mister E. why was there homosexuality (and even the ability to change sexes - certain fishes, etc.) in some animals if they had no souls (a common belief held by religious conservatives - I don't know one way or another). Mister E. had apparently never heard this question as he was actually silent for a moment while looking at me. After the gears had sufficiently turned, he offered this explanation: "God gave man dominion over the Earth, but Man's sin covers the Earth and affects everything on it." Satisfied, he attempted to return to his sermon, but I interrupted. "So, wait a sec. There are these two gay monkeys in the Amazon Rainforest going at it right now - I mean, REALLY going at it, and it's our fault?" He refused to answer so for the rest of his sermon, every couple of minutes I would yell, "TELL US ABOUT THE GAY MONKEYS, DAMN IT!"

For months afterwards, someone who had been in the crowd would greet me with, "Hey, gay monkey man!" Two years after I had moved to Tulsa, James Randi came to town to give a talk. I was the fourth person in the room as he was setting up, and there was a young couple already in there. We looked at each other with a hint of almost recognition, and after a few moments, the lady asked me, "Are you... Gay Monkey Man?" Randi stopped his preparation to look at us, and I said, "Long story. Involved a religious nutcase." Randi smiled, which in turn made me smile.

One of the meanest things I ever did was while I was walking with a friend, and he was out on the library lawn yelling at people on the sidewalk in front of the library. I was on a sidewalk 40 feet behind him. I stopped and yelled, "EVANGELIST!" as loudly as I could. He turned to look at me; I dropped my backpack, and ran across the library lawn straight at him full-speed. As soon as I reached him, I pulled up short (he still jumped out of the way), said, "Hey, how's it going?" and joined the crowd. My friend brought me my backpack.

Probably the funniest thing I ever did was incur Mister E's wrath not on me but on a friend. One of my undergrad degrees was in Spanish, and while that wasn't my course of study at OSU, I did try to keep up with it and had joined all the Hispanic/Latin groups including the Latin Dancing and Cultural Club, where I learned how to merengue, cumbia, and salsa well enough that I sometimes taught lessons when the normal instructor who never bothered going much beyond basics was gone. One of my good friends (and missed romances because I was dense) was a Latina named Lorena whose life was dancing. Before coming to Stillwater, she had been married and living in Argentina, running a discoteca with her then-husband. She taught me a lot of dance steps, but there was this one salsa move I always had problems with.

On this particular day, Mister E. was railing against the evils of music - not just rock and roll music but ALL music - country (understandable), jazz, rock, etc. - if it wasn't Christian and a particular type of Christian music (I'm sure Christian rock was right out). Lo and behold, I see Lorena walking through the crowd to go to class so I call her over and talking very quickly so she couldn't hear Mister E's topic of discussion, asked her to show me that salsa move again. So we started dancing salsa on the front edge of the crowd in front of Mister E, and he literally blows a gasket and starts yelling - not at me, the guy twice his size (of course), but at Lorena, about what a whore she was, and how dancing was evil, and how she was going to burn in hell. I was momentarily taken aback and about to jump in and defend Lorena when she laughed because she realized the joke, and she started yelling back at Mister E in both English and Spanish, not letting him get a word in edgewise. Fortunately, she found it funny and not an attack on her honor.

A while after I had left OSU, I was surfing the online archives of their college paper looking for a picture of me that was taken in a Latin Dancing and Cultural Club class. I was in the habit of giving my name as one of the founding fathers to the paper photographers whenever they took my picture for something as I thought it was funny, and it guaranteed to get me in. For the picture I was looking for, I was, "Thomas Jefferson." I decided to look for any stories about the evangelists and found one about a grad student who had taken to wearing robes and going out on the lawn when the evangelist was there to compete against him - promising to, "save students' souls and validate their parking."

Discoveryland! JIHAD!

2008-08-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

So, Jacinta came to visit me because I won 2 free tickets to go see the musical, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," at a place called Discoveryland, which is about 10 miles outside of Tulsa. (They alternate between that and the musical, "Oklahoma" depending on the day) It's an interesting place, sprawling out over several acres. It kind of appealed to the part of me that likes the cheesy roadside attractions you see on a trip, but this actually requires a time commitment - no just walking in to see the biggest prairie dog in Kansas, realizing it's a statue, and walking out again. Oh, no!

First, you have to go to the chowhouse where you get gastronomical distress... I mean, a genuine cowboy meal of a ribeye steak sandwich, potato salad, corn, beans, and tea with your choice of sugar or Splenda... Just like in the old West.

After that, you can walk over to the teepee.

Here Jacinta demonstrates the proper way to walk over to the teepee.

And you can even go inside.

Here we see Native American "Drinks from Styrofoam" in her tribe's traditional home. "Drinks from Styrofoam's" personal beverage conveyance choices were one of the reasons that Indian from the commercials in the 1970s was always crying.

Whoops! There he is.

After all that kind of fun, it's time to walk through the old West.

Why looky there... Old West style buildings of the Ooooold West. We were given a short history lesson about the Pony Express. Next time, I'll come dressed as an old-tyme telegraph operator and make fun of the rider that comes up and delivers the mail. I think, "Drinks from Styrofoam," was nearby.

And there he is again! I hope, "Drinks from Styrofoam" is happy with herself.

Ye olde country store of the Ooooold West. I bought a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers t-shirt but felt ripped off. It only had five brothers and five brides on it, and one of the brides had a mustache.

Why, look... right down the dirt covered street was an Indian Trading Post. It's like they want you to spend money there. They wouldn't accept pelts as trade.

This was where the musical was staged - an outdoor amphitheater with Mother Nature herself as the backdrop. Made me want to shoot six-shooters into the ground to lift me into the air while I screamed, "Yee-ha!"

That reminds me: the pre-show warm-up had announcements, where one of the actors asked people from the audience to stand up and yell, "Yee-ha!" when the state they were from was announced. It sounded more like we were told to yell, "JIHAD!" which Jacinta and I both felt like doing after they sang, "Proud to be an American."

What better way to emasculate the image of a cowboy than to gussy him up and make him sing and dance? Well, maybe make a movie called, "Brokeback Mountain."

And after the play was over, I was trampled by the crowd as they swarmed the stage to lynch the performers (a year-end tradition).

There he is again! This time he's crying because he was moved to tears by the night's performance.

JIHAD!

The Dark Knight - Truth in Advertising

2008-07-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

I just got done watching the Dark Knight, the latest Batman movie. Before the movie started, amongst the commercials that were shown before the previews, was one for a new SUV.

Aside: For whatever reason, there have been a shitload of vehicles over the years with Spanish or Spanish-sounding names. Some of them like the Hyundai Tiburon were actual words. Tiburon (tee-bu-rone) means shark. (However, they said it as tih-ber-on). Others like the Oldsmobile Bravada may be fun to say (BRAH-VAH-thA – say that loud. It’s fun) but don’t mean anything.

I learned that Kia has a new SUV – the Borrego. Now to my friend, Doug and me, that might bring up memories – possibly bad – of a high school English teacher named Mrs. Borrego. I never had a problem with her. Maybe Doug did. My brother certainly did. He called her a bitch at a scholar bowl tournament which got him suspended. I, however, freaked her out once by being able to sing along with, "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," by Bill Halley and His Comets – even the, "I’m like a one-eyed cat, peeping in a seafood store," line.

Anyway…

Borrego also means lamb or sheep. That’s… rather fitting in some ways. I looked borrego up in my large Spanish dictionary to make sure my first instinct was right, and it was, but it can also mean a slang term meaning simpleton or dope.

"What car are you going to get Bob?"
"Well, Dave, I was thinking of getting an SUV even though gas prices are sky-high now. Maybe the Kia Dope."
"That’s nice. I was looking at the Chevy Asshole myself."

This is an encouraging trend in car naming I think.

What I most admire about the German language is the ability to combine different parts of their language to come up a single word that expresses a complex concept like farfignuten means "driving pleasure" and schadenfreude means the happiness one might get from the suffering of another person or group.

I really hope in the near future a German car company puts out a sports car whose name in German means, "Extension of My Manhood."

Superhero Movies - Part Two: The Stinkness

2008-07-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Just as there are good superhero movies, there are also the stinkburgers.

1. Batman and Robin - Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, and George Clooney in a batsuit with nipples. Uma Thurman was a sexy enough Poison Ivy but underused. The dynamic duo presiding over a grand opening (Holy Shades of the 1960s Batman TV show) before launching skate blades out of their boots to take on Freeze's minions in a fight was also a no-no. The whole point of Batman is both good and bad people think he's a dangerous psychopath. Making him cut a ribbon with his giant bat-ceremonial scissors is too Adam West.

2. Captain America - just about all live incarnations. I've never seen the serials from the 1940s, but I remember the TV movies from the 1970s (where technically Cap was the original Captain's surfer-dude son who was genetically close enough to dad to get the super-soldier serum), and being the nerd I am, I subjected myself to the pain of a 1991 direct-to-video of Captain America. There were talks of a Captain America Broadway musical at one point in the late 80s/early 90s. Thank God that was scrapped. Hopefully, the upcoming movie will help ease the pain.

3. Superman III - Richard Pryor discovers a natural talent for computer programming and is used by a poor man's Lex Luthor to hack a satellite to discover how to make Kryptonite. Pryor's analysis shows an unknown substance makes up part of Superman's greatest weakness so he substitutes in tar. The tar Kryptonite, once given to Supes, turns him into a boozy, sex-hound of a bum. Then there's a fight against a super-computer, yada yada yada...

4. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace - Supes decides to rid the world of nuclear weapons; Lex Luthor returns and using a strand of Superman's hair creates Nuclear Man who... They fight; Nuclear Man wins; Superman wins, but then he doesn't, and they fight again, and Superman wins. Jon Cryer is Lex's nephew, taking over for Ned Beatty as Luthor's bumbling assistant.

5. Supergirl - As bad as Superman III and IV were, they couldn't compare to the black hole level of suck delivered by Supergirl. Just avoid it... in fact, forget I even mentioned it.

6. Spawn - My hatred of Todd McFarlane's artistic style (as well as just McFarlane himself) made it impossible for me to get through all of Spawn so this may not be the fairest entry.

7. The Fantastic Four - Not the 2005 release (although that one wasn't that hot) but the unreleased 1994 version produced by crap movie maker, Roger Corman, which no one who hasn't bought a bootleg from a sci-fi convention has seen. So bad it's fun to watch. My favorite part is when the character of Alicia Masters (the Thing's girlfriend) is subdued by chloroform and kidnapped. As she's passing out, the camera switches to Alicia's point of view to show everything going fuzzy and then black. The only problem with that is the character of Alicia Masters is blind. Wizard Magazine actually ranked this film higher than Batman and Robin, Steel, and Red Sonja.

8. The Hulk - Ang Lee's horrible rendition. The computer graphics for the Hulk made his face look flat if not enraged, had his height change from 8 to 15 feet depending on how mad he got, and used Nick Nolte as Bruce Banner's hateful dad who, when exposed to gamma radiation, essentially becomes the Absorbing Man and then minor (and stupid) Hulk foe, Zzaxx the Living Dynamo, when dear old dad decides to absorb electricity.

9. Steel - Just offhand, I can't think of any good movie that stars a real life sports hero as a lead. Shaquille O'Neil should have stuck to breaking backboards instead of this adaptation of what is an actually interesting comic book character that's part of the "Superman Family."

10. The Legend of the Lone Ranger - The superhero of the Old West. The actor playing the masked man was dubbed over which never lends itself well to creating a good movie. Give me Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels any day. Clayton Moore had legal action brought against him to keep him from appearing as the Lone Ranger at public events (he changed his costume slightly and took to wearing wraparound sunglasses instead of a mask) before the movie started filming. Moore counter-sued and regained the rights to appear as the Lone Ranger after the movie bombed.

The Incredible Hulk

2008-07-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

Thought I would post this email I wrote into my blog since I'm going to be talking about superhero movies in a post or two. This is just my geeking out over the latest Hulk movie.

Clever/Interesting bits. Possibly some spoilers:

The serum originally given to Blonsky (who becomes the Abomination) is taken out of a deep freeze security vault from a canister with the name Dr. Reinstein on it. That was the original name of the doctor (later changed to Erskine) who created the Super-Soldier Serum that created Captain America. The serum required a precise kind of exposure to radiation, which is unknown (explained next) which is why Blonsky mutates into the Abomination.

The army kept it but apparently never used it until the events in the movie because after Captain America was created, a Nazi spy murdered Reinstein/Erskine, who had not written down the entire Super-Soldier creation process leaving Captain America as the only Super Soldier.

This is the second film that Ed Norton and Paul Soles have been in together (the other one being, “The Score”). Soles’ character’s name is Stanley. Stan Lee (who is in the film like he is in most Marvel films) created or co-created many of Marvel’s most famous superheroes: Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, X-Men, etc.

Soles was the voice of Hermy the Elf in the original Rudolph cartoon. He was the one that wanted to be a dentist. He also provided voices for many Marvel cartoons in the 1960s including Bruce Banner’s in the Hulk cartoon, Peter Parker’s in the Spider-Man cartoon, and various voices in the Captain America cartoon and the Iron Man cartoon. He also lives in the same Toronto retirement home that the voice of Rudolph, Billie Mae Richards, lives in.

The Leader, a gamma-ray created super-genius in the comics, has his origins in this one. In the comics, gamma rays mutate people differently, bringing out different aspects of a person’s personality – Banner’s repressed rage, the Leader’s egotistical superiority complex, etc.

One of the college students witnessing the battle between the Hulk and the army is a black guy named Jim Wilson, who in the comics was the Hulk’s sidekick for a while (and was one of the first major cartoon characters to die of AIDS). He is accompanied by a fellow student named Jack McGee, who in the Hulk TV show, was a tabloid reporter constantly tracking Banner/Hulk.

The theme to the 1970s Incredible Hulk series is heard during the movie.

Like in the 2003 Hulk movie, Lou Ferrigno, the 1970s Hulk, plays a security guard as well as provided the voice to the Hulk. Ted Cassidy, Lurch from the Addams Family, provided the snarls of the 1970s Hulk.

Tony Stark (Iron Man) makes an appearance at the end of the film hinting at the creation of a superhero team (Avengers), which Marvel is planning on pushing out after a few more single superhero movies like Captain America and Thor. Nick Fury's name is also seen in the opening montage of the movie (the character appeared at the end of the Iron Man movie to recruit Stark to work for SHIELD/the government.

The reason why this film is so much better than the 2003 movie is that it captures the angst of Bruce Banner from the classic comics (and even the 1970s show) of the Hulk – where Banner is constantly on the run from the government, trying to keep his temper under control so he won’t change and waking up and having to restart a semblance of a life in strange new places when he does change, and the Hulk takes him someplace new. I wasn’t sure that Norton would be able to pull off the role of Banner, but he came through with the geekiness.

Superhero Movies

2008-07-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

I think we're truly in the Golden Age of superhero movies, and being a nerd, I'm as happy as a nerd could be unless he time-traveled back to the 1960s and got to have sex with Nichelle Nichols while she was wearing her Star Trek Uhuru outfit. Well, initially wearing it... oh, you get what I'm saying.

Even the weaker ones - like Spider-Man 3 or X-Men 3 - put in solid performances, and I'm including Will Smith's, "Hancock," on this. I just got done watching this, and I don't get the complaints of the critics except maybe unlike some of the other recent superhero films, Hancock wasn't made to try and appeal to everyone - the casual movie-goer and the hardcore fanboy. Most of them seem to hate the twist that comes about halfway through the movie, but I liked it. Maybe because like most comic book fans my age, I came of age when the whole X-Men/Jean Grey/Phoenix storyline played out and was at its most confusing (and we're talking about playing out over more than a decade and could possibly still be going on now).

To sum that up very quickly: Jean Grey exerts too much of her mutant power trying to save her fellow X-Men during a space mission and unlocks a darker and incredibly powerful side of herself called Phoenix, but it's not really Jean; it's a universal force called the Phoenix Force who was drawn to Jean and took over her identity, sealing her in a pod and dropping her in a lake and eventually became corrupted by human emotions, going crazy before killing itself, until it then corrupted Madeline Pryor, an exact twin of Jean but not really corrupting Madeline (who was a clone of Jean), who became instead the Goblin Queen, meaning Jean was really dead, but oh, wait, they discovered her body in the pod at the bottom of that lake (remember the lake?), and she killed J.R., which was just a dream or not, and during this whole time, just before four different Supermen showed up, Bruce Willis was dead, but we didn't know.

I really don't know too much after all that as I gave up reading X-Men when it started making the plot of the movie, "Naked Lunch," look normal and straight-forward.

So, Hancock - good movie and an excellent twist, I thought. I'm worried about it having a sequel because much like in some previous posts, I think sometimes it's more fun to leave "post-movie" events (or maybe in Hancock's case, pre-movie events) to the imagination like when Neo flies off to flee people from the Matrix at the end of the first movie, or think about all the different adventures the cast of Pirates of the Caribbean get into instead of dealing out crap sequels to capitalize on the hype and popularity of the first installments.

In fact, I have to put Hancock into my top ten of superhero movies, which are in no particular order...

1. Hancock

2. Spider-Man - Tobey Maguire is Peter Parker as far as I'm concerned. Kirsten Dunst, on the other hand, I can take or leave. Honestly, I don't get what's the big deal with her.

3. The Rocketeer - A pilot preparing for an air race in the late 1930s/early 1940s finds a rocket pack that the mob, the Nazis, the Feds, and Howard Hughes all want back. Features Jennifer Connelly at just about her hottest as well as Jan from, "The Office," as a nightclub performer singing, "Begin the Beguine."

4. V for Vendetta - Yes, I include this one. V is as much an anti-hero as Wolverine, and the loss of freedoms and rise of propaganda eerily echo what's happening in the world today.

5. The Incredible Hulk - successfully ignored while still building on Ang Lee's horrible rendition from five years previous, coining the term, "requel." This Hulk takes its cues from the comics when Bruce Banner was on the run from the military, changing his identity and trying to keep his anger under control, failing and finding his gamma-powered alter-ego has taken him hundreds if not thousands of miles away from where he last lived, having to start over again. Plus it had lots of little in-jokes for comic book geeks like the Super-Soldier serum, Tony Stark, etc.

6. Iron Man - Robert Downey, Jr. is the perfect jerk that you just can't help but like, and let's face it, the armor was just too cool.

7. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace - Ha ha. Just kidding.

7. The first Christopher Reeves' Superman. Two words, "MISS TESSMAAAAAAACHERRRRRRRRRRR!"

8. The first Michael Keaton Batman. It will be 20-years-old in 2009. Holy shit, I'm old.

9. X-Men 2 - Takes its cue from the classic X-Men comic, "God Loves; Man Kills," of a reverend who begins a religion-based anti-mutant crusade and attempts to use Charles Xavier to kill other mutants. In the movie, Stryker is a military scientist with a mutant son instead of a reverend, and he and Wolverine share a past, but it's all good. Just like the comic used mutant-human relations as an allegory for race relations and then later hetero-homosexual relations, the movie has a very good scene of a mutant "coming out" to his family. Solid character performances from Wolverine (the mansion fight is great), Magneto, Mystique, and Nightcrawler (although, they made him more tragic instead of the flamboyant Errol Flynn type he is in the comics).

10. The Incredibles - What happens when being a superhero is outlawed? You settle down, have super-powered kids, and wish for the old days. Great animation and humor and three characters that you wished got more screen-time - Edna Mode (fashion designer to the superhero community), Syndrome (the villain, voiced by Jason Lee), and Kari the baby-sitter, who we do get to see more of in a Pixar short showing what was happening to her as she baby-sat the Incredible's youngest son, Jack-Jack, while the rest of them were off on their mission (her personality, at the breaking point after taking care of Jack-Jack, even gave Syndrome pause in dealing with her).

Honorable Mentions: Batman Begins, Hellboy, The Phantom, Superman Returns, Unbreakable.

Mawwiage... Mawwiage Is What Bwings Us Togeva Today

2008-06-27T22:43:00.001-07:00

So, one of my best friends from high school (Doug knows him), Tyler Batten, recently got remarried again in a small ceremony of just him, his wife, his son with his wife-then-paramour (I don’t know the proper terms, but it sounds better than baby momma), and a local St. Louis friend for a witness.

I’m happy for him because I’ve met this woman, and she has a good sense of humor unlike his previous wife.

His previous wife was a cross between a harpy and Martha Stewart. She was very good at crafts and decorating the house, but she had very little sense of humor. An in-joke between Tyler, another mutual friend, Brett, and me was that we were going to have swords at our weddings. Jennifer was told this and was aghast. During the rehearsal dinner, Tyler’s dad gave them a Photoshopped image of Jennifer with a word balloon saying, “Of course, you can have swords at the wedding… and spears and spikes and nunchuks…” When she opened that, she loudly exclaimed, “No swords at *MY* wedding!”

And there weren’t any. However, there were at the reception as Brett and I gave them a set of decorative samurai swords set up at the wedding party table. I have a picture of the happy couple as they entered the reception and see the swords for the first time – Tyler’s thrilled to death. Jennifer’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

Anyway, they divorced because Tyler, a great guy, hard worker, and a good provider, was unable to give her the fantasy life she always imagined she would have without the need to work for it (can you tell I didn’t like this chick?).

Once when I visited them, they were painting the kitchen using some method where you dip a rag in paint then smear it on the wall. Jennifer launched into a long explanation of this method and finished up with, “And I bet you can tell which side Tyler is painting (with much disdain in her voice) and which side I’m painting. This was the second worst time I had ever seen her pissed off – when I told her I honestly couldn’t.

This is a story about the worst time I ever saw her pissed off, which now that I think about it had to be about at 30% her max since it was over such a trivial thing. About a year into their marriage around Christmas time, I was back in Clearwater to pick up Brett to go into Wichita to visit Tyler and Jennifer. We stopped at Tyler’s parents to wish them happy holidays and talked with them for a while. Before we left, Tyler’s mom gave us a puke green rooster figure with fake green jewels for eyes to take to him. Apparently it had been made by his favorite aunt in the 1970s (thus the puke green color). When we got to Tyler and Jennifer’s, we didn’t show him the rooster as we thought it would be fun to surprise him. So after Jennifer showed us all the homemade Xmas decorations she had made (and got mad at me for calling her cat an atheist because he kept batting the baby Jesus out of the manger scene), she left to go shopping. Right before we left to go to the movies, Brett slipped the rooster onto the mantle on the fireplace.

When we came back, we were met by a pissed-off Jennifer with her hands on her hips, arms akimbo. When we first walked in, she pointed at the rooster and demanded, “Where in the hell did *THAT* come from?” Tyler was very happy to see it. Jennifer was still fuming that we had thrown off the décor of the room of a house that sat empty for 3 hours. Horrors be if she had had a guest over, or it was discovered during a holiday cocktail party.

In the end, Tyler moved it into their office, where they each had their own desk and computer and put it on his desk… which was already heavily decorated with Jennifer’s stuff. A few weeks later, the rooster went missing, and it’s never been seen again.

There’s a pottery place in town called, “The Purple Glaze,” (righteous duuuuude). I called them. They have both rooster figures and puke green paint. I think I know what Tyler’s belated wedding gift is going to be. A few fake green jewels super-glued on it will complete the masterpiece.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Whaaaaa...?

2008-05-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out, and this is my review.

Damn You, Lucas! Can you not write something that doesn't have aliens in it? Seriously.

Well Done, Lucas. That said, it was cleverly done. The two best of the original 3 films (one and three) had him fighting Nazis in the 1930s/1940s. Hitler, and thus Nazism, did have a pre-occupation with the mystic, employing (sometimes Jewish) fortune tellers, etc. to come up with best dates to launch certain operations, etc. Thus, the film-Nazi determination to obtain objects of great mystical power such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail.

Continuing in that historical vein, "Crystal Skull," moves us forward a decade to 1957. In 1945, science, in the form of atomic bombs, proved supreme over mysticism. After that, science fiction movies became more prominent. Oftentimes, the "aliens" were metaphors for the Reds. Communism was defined as a scientific system. More emphasis was placed on math and sciences in schools. In just a few years past "Skull," the president would be calling for sending a manned mission to the Moon by the end of the decade. Sputnik scared the free world, and the arms race began.

This new importance on science, however, didn't leave all woo-woo behind. The woo-woo adapted. The false belief that most humans only used 10% of their brains allowed for the possibility of others who used more - people who could move objects with their minds, turn on electrical appliances through will power, project their thoughts into others, etc. Stalin believed in this (even kept on staff a "healer" named Juno). Recently (relatively) released films from the time showed Soviet citizens who supposedly could do the things mentioned. The Americans heard about this, and the importance in making sure we were safe from any kind of Communist attack led to worries about a "psi-gap," and our own program was instituted, (continuing up to the 1990s when Clinton finally canceled it but brought back under George W).

Having the Soviets' purpose be obtaining the lead in psi-warfare was both clever and historically accurate.

So kudos on that, Mr. Lucas. Still, damn you making it aliens be the ones who could ultimately give them (or us) that edge.

Damn you, Spielberg! I guess you felt you needed to try again after failing so spectacularly with Indiana Jones 2 and the Temple of Doom, in turning Indiana into a father figure - something that you have to freakin' have happen to your characters in just about every one of your damn films. At least this time, it wasn't an annoying Asian kid (YOU CALL HIM, DR. JONES, LADY!)

Well done, Spielberg. Shia LeBeouf (can you imagine how much of his life will be wasted spelling his name for people) put in a solid performance. Still, it's not like 95% of the movie's potential audience didn't see that one coming from a mile off (the other 5% are under ten-years-old and not as likely to care to make connections between the established character and a newly-introduced one).

Harrison Ford: Great job as Indiana as always. 'Nuff said.

Other Things: There is in woo-woo land, a - I hesitate to use the word - "school of thought" that the wonders of pre-Colombian meso-America could not be built by the people who built them. The same beliefs are also applied to places like Egypt as well as Stonehenge, but I've found that there is a racist overtone when it comes to the tribes of the new world.

One example not from the movie but bearing mention is the lid of the tomb of Pacal the Great from the Mayan city, Palenque.

A 1968 book, "Chariots of the Gods," by Swiss moron Erich von Daniken, argued that it depicted not Pacal but an extra-terrestrial astronaut basing his rationale on the similarity between the pose of the astronaut/Pacal to those of early 1960s astronauts in their rocket capsules. The lighter parts of the drawing above, to the sides, and below Astro-Pacal, were taken to be the Maya's crude depiction of the rocketship with flame/exhaust coming from it. Turning your head to look at it sideways, Daniken argued that his hands were on controls, that he was sitting on a complicated chair, and that his foot was even operating some sort of complicated pedal.

Note the shape of the head being similar to those of the skulls in the movie.

The one interesting structure mentioned in the film were those of the Nazca lines. These are "geoglyphs" (drawings in the face of the Earth) in Peru. There are hundreds of them, but the most interesting ones are the more complicated and larger ones which can best be seen for what they are from the air (although nearby foothills offer a good view as well) - monkeys, spiders, lizards, etc. They were created by the Nazca indians between 200 BC and 700 AD, and they are another thing that people like Daniken point to to "prove" that ancient meso-American tribes could not have created such things without extra-terrestrial help, as some lines go on incredibly straight for hundreds of feet, and some figures are very complex. Joe Nickel, a researcher in the same vein as James Randi, and a small group of people were able to reproduce one of the drawings using the simplest tools and good planning - with no aerial assistance, terran or extra-terrestrial needed.

Combining the Nazca lines as a method to find the city where the skull is supposed to be returned along with using the Mayan language as a method of communication and putting the Aztec Sunstone down as the floor of the aliens chamber nicely combined three distinct meso-American cultures into one culture, embraced by aliens, who broke off into the 3 main separate "big-name" tribes later on in history if we make the Nazca and Inca cultures the same (which the movie essentially did).

What the Hell's the Matter with Florida - Plus a Free Magic Trick!

2008-05-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

Florida - land of crooked politicians, hard-case anti-drug governors with drug-addicted daughters, and just plain stupidity. I actually feel good about my state, Oklahoma, when Florida is in the news, and the only time they're in the news is for something stupid like the following.

Here's a pretty good summation.
http://www.randi.org/joom/swift/swift/swift-may-9-2008.html#i2

Simply put, this substitute teacher in Florida did a magic trick where he made a match disappear, and he lost his job because some student probably went home, told his parents, and they accused him of wizardry.

Wizardry.

The reason I'm blogging about this is the same reason I chose that link above. One of my few heroes, James "The Amazing" Randi, states in his post about this situation, that he's never been accused of wizardry.

I, however, have.

It probably helps that I live in Oklahoma, and the woman for whom I performed this trick (the one that I will reveal how it's done) graduated from Oral Roberts University.

Now I know a lot of graduates from ORU who have basically come out of their experience unscathed, and many of them somehow find work even though listing ORU under the education section of their resumés should serve as a warning to potential employees. One ORU student who was a regular at the arcade I used to work part time at claimed he went to a healing of a woman with cataracts, and they popped right out of her eyes, and she was able to see again. Hallelujah. Every other thing about him was perfectly normal though.

Except for his webbed toes.

Anyway, this trick I did for this woman from ORU. It was a prediction trick. When I performed it for her, she went crazy and insisted I had some sort of supernatural power or ESP. I argued with her quite a bit that these powers didn't exist, and that I certainly didn't have them, but since I didn't reveal how the trick was done, I wasn't able to convince her otherwise. I even jokingly offered her the opportunity to go see a curandero (Mexican witch-doctor - she was Oklahoma State's Director of Hispanic Student Services) and have him put a curse on me using money I would give her. She flat-out refused even when I suggested that the curse didn't have to kill me... just have me break my little toe or something. Just get a deadline on it. Still no good.

So right, the trick.

Even though I'm a semi-professional magician - more of a balloon twister who gets to do the occasional magic trick - I will often show people how this one is done to hopefully get them to start thinking "magically," so next time they run into an actual magical charlatan, even if they can't figure out what they're doing, they'll at least know they're doing something.

So right, the trick (part deux).

Get a deck of cards. Find all the 3's and put them on top of the deck. Put 3 random cards on top. So now you have a deck of cards with 3 random cards on top, the four 3's, and the rest of the deck. Tell someone that you have looked into the future - a vision came to you while going to the bathroom this morning, but unfortunately of nothing significant so there's no reason to get too excited. Ask for a pen and paper and on the paper write, "You will pick the 3 pile." Tear out the sheet, fold it up dramatically (if that's even possible) and place it somewhere where it can be seen by all.

Bring out the deck of cards and put down 3 piles of cards. The first pile, you will deal 3 cards into it. The second pile you will deal 4 cards into it (all the 3s), and into the last pile, you will deal 5 cards into it. Call the piles, first, second, and third as you do this.

Ask them to pick a pile. They do so.

They pick pile #1.
Your response: "Ah, interesting. You didn't pick the pile with 4 cards in it, and you didn't pick the pile with 5 cards in it but the pile with 3 cards." Reveal your prediction that they will "pick the 3 pile."

They pick pile #2. (This is the most impressive scenario)
Your response: "Ah, interesting. You didn't pick the first pile." Turn over the first pile. "And you didn't pick the third pile." Turn over the third pile. "As you can see, these are just random cards. You chose the middle pile, which, " turn over the middle pile, "is all 3s." Reveal your prediction that they will "pick the 3 pile."

They pick pile #3.
Your response: "Ah, interesting. You didn't pick the first pile, and you didn't pick the second pile, but you chose the third pile." Reveal your prediction and say something like, "And my prediction was, 'You will pick the third pile.'" Chances are they will not miss the little rd that should go by the 3 to make it "third."

I think this is a beauty of a trick. I've performed it for other magicians, and it's fooled them (which is the marketing line for every magic trick out there - IT FOOLS OTHER MAGICIANS!), but, anyway, nice little trick. Enjoy.

And Liza, if by any chance you stumble across my blog - there. Now stop believing I have supernatural powers, or I'll curse you.

The Internet Mocks and Heals My Pain

2008-04-11T07:54:00.001-07:00

After returning home from viewing Sneakers' body and having a good cry, I wanted to just be numb for a while so I found a flash game on the internet I hadn't played in a while. It requires no strategy or any real thinking - just moving around and picking up things.

When the page loaded up, there was an animated advertisement at the top of the page for a personalized credit card. It started out with the face of a guy and some sort of animal that I couldn't quite tell what it was - or even that it was an animal. The text in the ad changed, telling us about all the great benefits of having this particular card - in first person voice as if the guy in the ad was talking to us (I can do this; I can do that). At the end, the pictures changed, and the words changed to, "And I can even put Reggie's picture on it." A credit card with a picture of a ferret on it then dropped into the picture.

I laughed and cried at the same time.

R.I.P. Sneakers

2008-04-11T07:48:00.001-07:00

My ferret, Sneakers, passed away yesterday. About a month ago, I noticed he was getting very obese for a ferret so I took him to my normal clinic thinking maybe he had something in him that was preventing him from passing food as quickly as ferrets normally do. Unfortunately, the vet that has worked with my ferrets before had moved on, and the new guy told me he was just fat and needed to exercise more, and unfortunately, I believed him. So for about a month when the weather was okay, I would take him out in the front yard and have him walk around and follow me, and I cut down his food amount, but he still got fatter. Two nights ago when I checked on him, he was making whimpering noises – or the ferret equivalent of – so I stayed up most of the night with him and took him to a different vet who knew what she was doing and took x-rays. Unfortunately, I was right as it turns out he had a really large tumor that was pressing on his various organs, and we decided to operate, but he was too weak and passed away during the operation.

He was a good ferret. I got him and two others at the same time from a family who could no longer keep them. The girl in the bunch, Luna, passed away in an accident she got herself into, and his cage mate, or possibly brother, I never knew, Socks is still left. Sneakers was the skinniest, fastest, and the one always wanting to play of the three of them, which makes it all the sadder for me that he died like this, in a physical state completely opposite of what he was supposed to be. When I viewed his body, I was happy to see that he still retained the spark in his eye that he had in better days. He wasn’t the climber Zowie was, but every now and then he would get up in the armchair up on the sides of it, and for whatever reason he would just stop and look out over the living room, and the imagery was of that of a lion high on a rock looking out over his domain. I always laughed when he did that.

These are the best photos I have of Sneakers. I’m going to miss him.

http://members.cox.net/amazingchris/sarah/

Aloha... Oy.

2008-01-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

I feel like bitchin'.

One of the nice things about my jobs (or former nice things now) is that the boss didn't care what I wore to work as I don't deal with the customers, and I'm expected to just write code 8 hours a day. So when it was time to get some new slacks as mine were getting holey, I decided to just buy one pair - a couple sizes up from my current size to use for my magic and balloon twisting outfit. This gives me nice access to loose pockets for when I need to pull out a deck of cards or switch things out. But for work, I took an idea from Einstein (who when he came to America bought five identical suits so he wouldn't have to worry about what to wear to work) and bought five pairs of sweatpants. I did this because sweats are comfortable, and I'm back in the gym after a couple of injuries hoping to lose some weight and drop a pants size or two before I really go out and buy new slacks.

Well, every paradise has a snake - or asshole - to ruin things, and during my last review with the boss, he asked me to stop wearing sweats all the time because someone else in the office complained that it wasn't professional looking. Unfortunately, the boss is really big on teamwork and doing things for the team so he did not do the right thing by telling the whiner to take a flying leap.

So I need some pants, and it irks me that I have to go buy them when I don't want to, and it irks me that the boss would acquiesce to a whiner. So I thought to myself, "I really should get some new shirts to wear with my new pants so I can be a 'good team player.'"

God bless the internet because after five minutes poking around, I found an online store that was having a sale of their Hawaiian shirts. Really nice shirts (in that they're high quality) that normally went for $50 to $75 each. So after 10 minutes of choosing the brightest, craziest patterns (that they had in my size), I now have my new wonderful work wardrobe of five new Hawaiian shirts winging its way to me.

Li'l Abner - the Movie

2007-10-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

I like comic strips. When I got the newspaper, there was no strip that I skipped - not even Family Circus or Cathy. They all had their heydays, and even when they had fallen into their ruts of timeworn jokes of hating Mondays (Garfield) or using religious bigotry in place of actual humor (B.C.), I still read them and admired the cartoonists who made a life by doodling. I'm solaced by the fact that even though less kids today read the funnies, that they'll still associate the phrase, "Good Grief," with Charlie Brown thanks to the networks incessant repeatings of, "It's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," "Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown," and "A Peanut's Christmas."

Naturally, I'm also interested in the history of the newspaper cartoon strip and have perused many collections of older comics - Alley Oop, Dick Tracy, Pogo, early Blondie, Gasoline Alley, etc. My favorites, while not technically newspaper toons, were those of Charles Addams, whose drawings gave us, "The Addams Family," (which he detested). Little trivia bit - He was also the first to use the gag of two ski tracks going around both sides of a tree.

Nowadays, we have web cartoonists, free from the restrictions that syndicates place on newspaper strips (that are slowly killing them unfortunately). Creativity abounds, and we have access to genius that we never would have seen if newspapers were our only source for toons.

But these giants - both newspaper and internet - would not stand so tall if they weren't standing on the shoulders of those that came before. One of the most important strips from the past was Li'l Abner by Al Capp. Abner and the rest of the colorful characters lived in tiny Dogpatch, where when they weren't caught up in the various twists in their own lives, often had to deal with events of national and even global importance. Li'l Abner contributed a lot to American culture, and while Sadie Hawkins Dances are increasingly rare, and no one knows what a Shmoo is, everytime a cartoon character, "Gulps," in nervousness or "Sobs," in misery, we have Al Capp to thank.

Not too long ago, I found a copy of the movie, "Li'l Abner," in Walmart for a dollar (I've also seen it in Toys R' Us) alongside copies of Fleischer, "Superman" cartoons from the 1940s. I bought it and was thoroughly amazed at how well done it was. It's live action, not a cartoon, and you can tell that the people in charge really put in overtime, capturing the characters of the cartoon. The various plot lines all come down to, of course, the Sadie Hawkins Day race (where the women-folk chase the men-folk, and if they get "ketched," have to marry up with 'em).

It lacks the subtle satire of Capp's daily strip, but as I said before, the characters and costuming are amazing. They found and made up the perfect people for Mammy Yokum (the actress, Mona Ray, is still alive at 102 as of this writing), Pappy Yokum (the bulbous nose that the makeup department came up with is seamless), Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat (Buster Keaton, during a low point in his career), Earthquake McGoon, and my personal favorite - even though he only had two lines, interrupted both times by the mayor, Marryin' Sam. The actress playing Daisy Mae (the gal who pined for Abner, who refused to admit his feelings for her for much of the strip), was a beauty and well-suited for the role. The actor playing Li'l Abner definitely looked the part in the face and acted like the character, but it's impossible for just about any actor to have Abner's face and physique.

Another interesting tidbit is that Milton Berle helped write the theme song for the opening credits. If you're able to find this, pick it up. It's only a buck, and I think it's an important piece of American cartoon history.

Fun with Ted Nugent

2007-08-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

Since Ted's been in the news lately, I thought I would write down my experience with the man.

Ted routinely comes to Tulsa (along with many other C-list musical acts). One time about 4 years ago, before his nighttime performance, he set himself up at a local Borders during the day to push his book, "Kill It and Grill It." I decided I wanted to get a picture of myself sticking my tongue out at the Nuge so I convinced my then girlfriend (she's Colombian) to go with me to take the shot.

Well, Ted is apparently very popular in Tulsa (but then so is faith-healing) as Borders was flooded with rednecks, blinking confusedly while trying to take in the fact that there are other books out there other than the Bible, books by Ted, Rush, and his ilk, and "The Anarchist's Cookbook" (which Borders doesn't have, but you can pick up at gun shows). I bought a "Kill It and Grill It," was given a colored tag, and told to wait for my group to be called, which we eventually were, and my group and I trudged upstairs (aiiieeeee, more books, and they sell non-Ted music too?) to wait our turn for an autograph.

The group was snaked throughout the various aisles, and we got stuck behind two teenaged kids and their father who was wearing a Damn Yankees t-shirt from the early 90s, a stained Redman hat, had a big ol' bushy beard, and most of his front teeth missing. Also he didn't smell to nice. The kids were typically obnoxious teenagers, bragging about how loud they could burp and pointing and giggling at books like, "Nigger," when we passed through the African-American Studies section on our Bataan Death March to the Motor City Muffin Man.

My girlfriend and I decided we wanted a private conversation so we started talking in Spanish, basically insulting everyone in line and getting dirty looks. Ted and his fans are big on English-Only initiatives, and the fact we were pissing them off warmed the cockles of whatever organ has cockles in it. We finally got up to Ted who took my book, and I got my picture while he was signing it - he never saw me stick my tongue out at him. He handed it back to me and said, "You enjoy that book, pardner. There's a lot of wisdom in there." I immediately hurt myself holding in a laugh and thanked him. Seriously, I hurt myself not laughing to the point that when I got outside I had to lean against the building and hold the stitch in my side. My girlfriend and I then went to a nearby restaurant and picked through his book enjoying such passages as, "The point of life is to live, and if you're not living then what's the point of life?" That may not be an exact quote, but it's damn close.

I didn't keep the book. I gave it to my brother-in-law Glen, who's a conservative good ol' boy as well as a hunter (both gun and bow). I like Glen - he has a good sense of humor, and I've seen him struggle with overcoming his racism through the years. His homophobia... well, that's another issue. Anyway, he took the book and thanked me profusely, admitting that he didn't know much about Ted because he listens to country.

A few months later, I was back in town visiting, and I asked him what he thought of the book.

"Jamie (he still calls me Jamie because I was a kid when he married my sister)," he replied in a somewhat exasperated voice, "the recipes in it look good, but for the rest of it, I thought it was some sort of dumb drug humor that I just wasn't getting until I saw him on ESPN, and he really is that stupid."
"He's all talk and no walk," chimed in my equally conservative sister. "All he does is drive that stupid SUV of his and babble."

So there you have it. Not horribly funny, but my brother-in-law and sister's reactions were very amusing to me.

Internet Personals

2007-08-10T15:55:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about using internet personals is seeing just how stupid the scam-artists trying to fool people are. I should say stupid or ignorant as it seems that America's continued refusal to switch to the metric system helps one pick out the foreign scammers who are unable to do simple conversion math. Thus, I get a lot of emails from women who are 6'2" and weigh 80 pounds.

At times, these 6'2" women will also have photos of themselves next to something that helps you estimate their height such as a picture of themselves standing next to a sedan, and their head barely comes over the roof of the car.

Oftentimes, the system itself helps you out as several of them will now give you an option to look at a list of people who have looked at your profile. Oftentimes, I have an email or 'wink" from someone who is not in my list of people who have viewed me. And 9 times out of 10, they're from 6'2", 80-pound women.

For the non-English-As-a-Native-Speaker scammers, it seems that many of them are using the same translation software as I am constantly told by "Russian Women" that they like my, "structure." It also helps when they apparently just randomly click when it comes to their various physical attributes (choosing hair/eye color, etc.) because their written profile will often contradict what they say.

In the same vein, color-blindness or inability to distinguish basic races is another pitfall as I often get messages from very attractive and very dark African women who call themselves Caucasian as well as women born in other countries listing themselves as Native American.

My most recent scammer is apparently another very attractive African lady whose profile goes on and on about how God-fearing she is, and how she wishes to find a man just as God-fearing as she is, etc. Her first two pictures are normal portrait shots where she's wearing what looks like a suit jacket. The third picture is more of a 3/4's pose with her hand inside the jacket cupping her breast (can't see anything) while she stares seductively at the camera. Message: When I think of Jesus, I touch myself.

Several of the sites have a chat feature, and every now and then, I'll get a chat request from someone I've never talked to before, and I can check her profile. Depending on the profile, I will greet them with, "Hi, I'll talk with you but only if you don't have a sick mom in Africa who needs my help." I've had 3 people automatically disconnect after that.

The scammers apparently know to only go after men. I have an IM buddy that I met through one of the sites (hopefully she's really a woman), who was shocked to learn about stuff like this.

One thing that I like to do is mess with them back because number 1, I just like messing with people, and number 2, it wastes their time. I carried on an email conversation with an "attractive African woman" who had been living close to me (what a coincidence) but was back home in Ghana taking care of her sick mother (of course). After a few emails back and forth, we had declared our mutual love for each other and decided we should meet right away. So I sent "her" an email, once again declaring my love and stating I would be on the next plane to Ghana to meet her just as soon as she helped me out by sending me money for a plane ticket as I was going through some financial difficulties at the time.

I never heard from her again.

Bitch broke my heart.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: Curse of the Matrix

2007-06-21T19:28:00.001-07:00

Remember, "The Matrix?" Wasn't that a good film? I'm not a big Keaneau Reeves fan, but this movie played to his strengths of acting like he's perpetually confused and doesn't know what's going on. Reeves has an affinity for that kind of role. Anyway, "The Matrix"... good film. Very sinister, great pacing in the whole revealing of the whole future dystopia thing that we as humans tend to get off on, and at the end, the hero has realized his potential, and he lets the unseen bad guy/master computer know that it's going down, and the hero flies off into the sky, all cool-like.

It could have ended there. The humans were going to be freed from the Matrix by Neo. We didn't know how, but it was going to happen, and we had our imaginations to wonder how it would be done.

Remember, "Pirates of the Caribbean?" Wasn't that a good film? I'm a Johnny Depp fan as I think he's a very versatile actor, and he's made a career out of playing weirdos without being typecast as any one of them - Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka, Captain Jack Sparrow, etc. Anyway, "Pirates of the Caribbean"... great film. Very funny with great pacing that never overwhelms you. Lots of inside jokes about Disney, good fight scenes and excellent scenery, and all the actors delivered solid performances, and at the end, the good boy has shown he's a little bit bad, and he's got the girl. The bad boy shows he's just a little bit good and makes a clever getaway and sails off into the horizon for further adventure.

It could have ended there. Boy has got the girl. The lovable rogue has made his getaway, and we had our imagination to wonder how their lives turned out.

Yes, they both could have ended there, but they made too much money. The movies had to have sequels, and they had to have them fast. The third Pirates began filming before the script was finished, and both films had their next sequels filmed together so they could pump out the crap fast while the buzz was still hot about the first movies.

At the end of the first Matrix movie, Neo had the power to remake the Matrix, but like Superman in the comics from decades past, being all powerful makes for boring stories so Neo still had to rely on his fancy judo skills to survive in the Matrix. This allowed for the filmmakers to throw in more fight scenes and more special effects to make up for the lack of a coherent plot.. or plot.

Does that previous sentence sound like it describes something else? "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" by any chance?

Finally, we reach the third movie. All bets are off. Everything we've learned in the first two movies may or may not still apply, and when everything seems lost (mainly the audience) - it's Deus Ex Machina time! Why the hell not? There's no other way to wrap things up quickly, and the movies have essentially painted themselves into a corner.

In the third Matrix movie, Neo is blinded in the real world, but somehow the power he has in the Matrix now manifests itself in the real world - WHAT LUCK! In Pirates, a new character introduced in the second movie is revealed to be an actual goddess of the sea... who's pissed off at Davy Jones (an enemy of the main characters) - WHAT LUCK! Neo with his new powers doesn't really destroy the Matrix but brings it and the real world to an understanding (okay...), and the sea goddess makes life difficult for everyone but evens the odds against Davy Jones and his crew enough for the heroes to save the day.

SPOILERS: In the end, some of the heroes have made sacrifices. Neo dies, but he gets a nice park bench dedicated to his memory in the Matrix, and Will Turner has to take over for Davy Jones, but he at least gets to have sex with Kiera Knightly's character every 10 years.

Meanwhile, another piece of movie-going joy withers and dies in your soul ...

Four Movies in Three Days

2007-06-21T19:02:00.001-07:00

I've been putting off seeing the so-called summer blockbusters because I had heard bad things about them, but my friend, Jacinta, came to visit me on Monday, so on Tuesday, we decided to go to the movies and see, "Shrek the Third."

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail or analysis about Shrek (or two of the other movies). It was enjoyable - not as good as the first two. My favorite part was the running joke of whenever the princesses (Fiona, Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty) were together: There would be a shot of most or all the princesses, the camera would cut to someone else in the scene, and when it returned to the princesses, Sleeping Beauty was zonked out, snoring. That never failed to make me laugh.

After the movie, Jacinta felt we should sneak into another one, and the only available one was, "Fantastic Four 2." The first FF movie wasn't all that great in my opinion. Fortunately, it looked like the first movie was a warm-up. FF2 was a lot better, and it really paid tribute to the comics in various ways like Stan Lee being turned away from Reed and Sue's wedding (happened in the comics), Doom stealing the Silver Surfer's powers, the introduction of the Fantasti-Car, etc.

Spoilers: What was one of the nicer references was the Human Torch basically becoming the Super-Skrull. Towards the climatic battle at the end, the Torch (whose molecules are behaving weirdly due to his first encounter with the Surfer) absorbs all the powers of the team so he can beat the snot out of the Silver Doom (Doom Surfer?). So he still had his fire powers which allowed him to fly up to Doom, hit him with the Thing's fist then stretch out ala Mister Fantastic to grab him and pull him back in for another smack. The Invisible Woman's powers might have slid by me as there was a lot of action at that point. Unfortunately, Galactus was a giant cloud instead of a giant humanoid, but at the end, when the Surfer is rebelling against him, you can see a firey part of the cloud shaped like his helmeted head.

More Spoilers: That was Tuesday. Wednesday saw me back for, "Spider-Man 3." Better than I expected. I'm not a big Venom fan so I hope his death in this one is permanent. Tobey Maguire got to stretch a bit as an actor in this one - particularly the scenes where he's being affected by the evil alien symbiote/costume. Best line (when Spidey is "evil" and fighting Harry Osborn, the new Green Goblin): "Aw, is Goblin Junior gonna cry?" Sandman was definitely a good character. Kind of tragic, not overly so. In the comics, he eventually goes good(er), and as he's the only Spidey villain in 3 movies to not die, hopefully we'll see him in the future.

Today (Thursday) was, "Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At My Patience's End." I'll have to start a new post to unleash my venom at this... film.

Reincarnation

2007-04-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

I just had a thought about people who believe in reincarnation. They're the exact same type of people who join SCA (the Society of Creative Anachronisms) except they're too damn lazy to make chainmail.

Every person from SCA I've known, who wasn't a juggler, almost always chose "important" people as their characters - noble men and women, knights, etc. At least the ones who suffered from an overinflated sense of self did. Every now and then you got someone who realized in all likelihood his ancestors were peasants, and if they had a good enough sense of humor would gladly make that his or her character, even if all they did was dress in brown clothing and effect a horrible cockney accent.

Every person I've known who believes in reincarnation believes he or she were very important people in past lives - sometimes naming them (like Marie Antoinette) or more often than not just claiming a past life consisted of being a very important chieftain/warlord/regent, etc.

So, the next time you run into some loon who believes he or she has been reincarnated, tune out whatever dreck they're foisting upon you and see if you can imagine them selling leather mugs at your local Renaissance Faire.

I Pissed Off the Fred Phelps Clan

2007-04-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

I have to keep repeating this story so often, I thought I might as well blog it.

I'm from Kansas (now in Tulsa, Oklahoma) and as many other Kansans have, have run into Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. This is the "God Hates Fags" guy. He and his church picket funerals of homosexuals and fallen servicemen (claiming God is punishing us for not hating homosexuals as much his bunch does by killing military men and women) and basically doing outrageous things.

I've run into them at my brother's law school graduation at the University of Kansas. See, Fred used to be a lawyer (degree from KU), but he got disbarred, and anyone who does anything against him is working for the homosexual agenda, and he somehow blames KU for that now. Alas, I was with my mom, and we were running late, so I wasn't able to play with them.

Another time, I ran into his grandson on a politics chat channel. Apparently he had been holding the channel hostage and doing nothing but talking about homosexuals to everyone's annoyance, and there were no ops to kick him off. When I joined, a few people who knew me private messaged me and asked if I could annoy him into leaving. Ah, my reputation precedes me. Our conversation went like this (Me is... me, duh. GS is grandson).

Me: So you believe that God hates homosexuals.
GS: God hates fags; it's right there in the Bible.
Me: Do you believe that AIDS is God's scourge on those he hates - such as homosexuals?
GS: Yes, and we praise him for sending it to punish those filthy fags.
Me: Did you know that lesbians have one of the lowest infection rates of any demographic group?
(He doesn't respond)
Me: It would seem like by your "logic," if God is punishing those that He hates by sending AIDS then He must really love lesbians since they're not getting infected.
(Still no response)
Me: You know this might be the proof we need to say God really is a man as just about every guy I know really loves lesbians.
GS: YOU'RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO BURN IN HELL!
GS has left channel #politics.

Needless to say I was the hero of the chatroom. Oh, quite the honor indeedy.

The last time I dealt with them was in 1998 when they came to Tulsa to protest a gay pride picnic that was being held in a park downtown (as well as picket Oral Roberts University because the president of the university, Richard Roberts - Oral's son, is divorced and remarried).

I knew what I had to do. The worst thing you can do to people like this is take attention away from them, and one thing I'm good at is making a spectacle of myself. So I drove down to where everything was happening. I parked across from the roped-off corner of the park the Phelps clan was situated in and brought out my two signs: God Is Love and Fred Phelps Is a Wanker. I set them up on the sidewalk.

Now apparently, I supposedly look like an imposing individual because I lift weights. I honestly don't know how I'd do in an actual fight - only been in two in my life; both when I was less than 10-years-old - won one; lost one. But I apparently have put the scare into several people including many of my nieces' boyfriends, an ex-girlfriend's ex-husband, etc. I honestly don't feel like a big, scary guy, but hey, if others do, I'll take advantage of it.

I say that because one of the Phelps clan gave me the stink-eye because of my signs, and he started to move to the curb to cross the street but then turned around and went and talked to another guy. He and his pal then moved to and stood on the curb and waited for traffic to slow.

By then though, I had taken out... my juggling torches. I held all three of them in my left hand and while looking across the street at the two guys who wanted to come "talk" to me, I lit them with the lighter in my right. Their eyes got bigger. I started juggling and gave them one of my "weirder" smiles. They stepped away from the curb and went and picked up their offensive signs.

I juggled for a while, got some cars to honk at me, and give me the thumbs-up. Eventually I put out the torches because a college student had crossed the street to talk to me (after having talked to the Phelps) and wanted to hear my views. I gave him kudos for being intellectually curious although he said he leaned more towards the Phelps view that homosexuality is an abomination. I went into a spiel about the other abominations in the Bible - wearing clothes made of two different materials, eating shellfish, planting two different types of crops in the same field, etc., gave a brief history of the Bible, and all its various forms. At that point, a local "evangelist" had come and stood nearby, and we got to arguing about what I was saying, but he wasn't able to keep up with all my points. I say evangelist - he was a guy in his 60s, missing several teeth, with wild hair and was driving a truck with a large camper on it covered in Bible verses.

Anyway, the kid thanked me and said he was going to research what I said. I called him an abomination for wearing a polyblend shirt; we laughed, and he left. The Phelps people got bored because there were no television cameras around, and the people attending the picnic were too far away from them to hear anything they shouted so they left. I went into the picnic and looked for a guy that the college student said he had seen juggling clubs to introduce myself but couldn't find him. Hung out for a bit; hit on some lesbians (just kidding) then went home.

Epilogue: About a year later I met that juggler when we both were in the musical, "Barnum." Well, he was really in it. I came in late, but when they discovered I could juggle and ride a unicycle, they put me in during the big circus scenes, and I ran juggling boot camp for the other cast members. I lost track of him after that until he hit on a heterosexual friend of mine that everyone things is gay, and they became friends because my friend is cool about stuff like that.

I PIssed Off my Brother at Christmas

2006-11-17T08:01:00.000-08:00

In 1996, the hot toy was, "Tickle Me Elmo." Why, I don't know. I've never understood the popularity of Elmo on Sesame Street, and really, what can you do with it after you've made it laugh 10 or 12 times?

Anyway, on Christmas Eve of that year Mom sent my brother, Jason, and me out to Toys R Us to get a few last minute toys for her grandkids - nothing big - stocking stuffers mostly. The most expensive thing we were sent to get was a video game for one of my nieces.

Now when you buy a video game at Toys R Us, you don't actually pick up the game, pay for it, and leave. No, you pick up a representation of the game - a piece of cardboard that represents the game; it has the game's cover art and upc bars on it. So you go through the check-out line, pay for your actual toys and your video game representation then get a special receipt that you hand (through a window) to a teller sitting in the protective video game room, and he or she gives you the game.

You get to stand in another line for this.

This other line, filled with people just like you, who paid money for a video game proxy, runs perpendicular to the regular check-out lines. That means, if everyone in the video game line is facing forward but then turned their heads to the right, you would be looking in the faces of the people in the regular check-out lines, waiting to purchase their goods.

My brother didn't feel like waiting in another line. He took the two big sacks of stuff we had bought and told me he was heading to the car to wait.

My crazy monkey muse took hold of me, and I said - very loudly - "Okay. You take the Tickle-Me-Elmos (plural) out to the car, and I'll get the video game!"

Now imagine how loud a Toys R Us is on Christmas Eve with people talking, sacks rustling, songs playing over the PA, and registers ringing. Very noisy. Almost all that sound went away as everybody in the video game line, in the regular lines, and even the cashiers turned to look at us. Absolute silence except for the ominous playing of a Christmas song coming from the overhead PA system as we became the center of everyone's attention.

Oh, the looks on the faces of the other customers. You could see in the eyes of some people that they were on the edge of going insane, having looked for the gift of the year and being unsuccessful. About two or three people had a big grin on their face as they winked at me or chuckled, telling me they got the joke.

Jason, however, wasn't as amused. He whispered some very un-Christmas-like things to me, made a claim that he was going to get killed, and rushed off to the car at a pretty brisk clip. I spent another 15 minutes in the line and walked out to the car. Jason had all the doors locked and was huddled down in the passenger side.

It was a very Merry Christmas indeed.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like the War on Xmas

2006-09-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, Brothers and Sisters, we liberals have to be ahead of our game this year. We've been exposed by Bill "Phonesex" O'Reilly the last couple of years so it's not worth it to keep up our underground assault on Xmas; we have to bring it out in the open now, and we need to have first strike capability.

Trivia: The abbreviation, "Xmas," is not a recent phenomenon created by greedy retailers like some would have you believe but has been around for about a 1000 years. The Greek word for Christ is Χριστο, which got itself shortened to XP, which you can see carved into various churches' icons of Christ on the cross, in many examples of ancient Christian art, and in manuscripts for the New Testament. Mas is the anglo-saxon word for religious celebration (where we get Mass in the Catholic religion probably). Putting Christ or X in front, makes it a religious celebration of Christ, like Michaelmas is a celebration for St. Michael. Anyway, don't let conservatives know this. Their insistence that we're "crossing out the Christ in Christmas" will only help our cause, comrades.

So, back to the War on Xmas. We need to get started early before they can get their defenses up. It's just now the first day of Fall that I'm posting this - an excellent time to begin as the Fall Equinox plays in nicely with various Wiccan and Pagan religions. Here's what I've pledged to do.

Once again, buy all my Xmas gifts on eBay from individuals. This will keep money out of the hands of the big retailers - both the ones who have Holiday/Xmas Sales (unfortunately) and the ones who have Christmas Sales (good). But the overall drop in holiday shopping at these retailers will confuse or anger conservatives for 1. Not supporting their retailers and 2. For just not supporting their version of capitalism.

Since my Xmas shopping will be done by November, I'll have a lot of free time that I can spend by going to various retailers like Toys R Us and counting the number of pro-Bush bumperstickers on the cars in the parking lot. If there's a sufficient number, I'll walk in and go to the front of the store and yell, "I've had my Xmas shopping done for the last 5 weeks, suckas! East side rules!" before hastily exiting.

Not only only will I be wishing everyone, "Happy Holidays," but I'll also be doing it in Spanish. This will cause double hit points on O'Reilly and make him cry.

Trivia: Holiday is from the old English, "Halig Daeg" or Holy Day. In fact, just look at the word... Holiday... Holi day... Holy Day. Der-hay. Once again, don't let the conservatives know.

So there you have it, comrades, once Xmas is ours, we move on to taking all the joy out of other days of celebration that used to have religious connotation - starting with St. Valentine's Day (easy since there are so many people who hate it because they don't have a special someone or that special someone always screws it up) and then St. Patrick's Day (a lot harder, but the rumor that we'll plant that the green dye in the beer comes from Spinach laced with e-Coli will surely strike a huge blow for our cause).

Labor Day Eve: 2006

2006-09-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

What I did: Went to finally see both Superman Returns and then right afterwards, Pirates of the Caribbean 2

Result: Didn’t really care for either of them.

First thought: Kitty Kowalski (Lex Luthor’s moll) is a poor substitute for Miss Tessmacher. (MISS TESSMACHERRRRRRRRR!) Also, Kitty ripped off a joke from Miss Tessmacher - along the lines of Lex asking, "Do you know what my father used to say to me?" Kitty/Miss Tessmacher: "Get out?"

Common thread that I’ll remember about the two: The comedic possibility of having to eat a dog – Superman: Lex Luthor stranded on a desert island with Kitty and the dog she carried around. Pirates: A dog belonging to two pirates captured by a cannibal tribe to be used as a substitute for the escaped Captain Jack Sparrow.

Weird coincidence driving/arriving home: Commercial on the radio of a guy with an Australian (ala Steve Irwin) accent talking about bargain hunting for back to school. A local computer repair place in town also uses an Australian called the Virus Hunter in their ads. First thoughts when I hear these commercials: Isn’t Crocodile Hunter kind of a passé thing to parody? After getting home and looking at Google News, I learn that Steve Irwin is also passé. He was unfortunately killed by a stingray while diving and filming a new documentary.

Ferrets Like Magic

2006-09-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

So I was down on the floor playing with my ferrets - Sneakers and Socks (don't blame me for the names - I got them from a family who couldn't care for them anymore). Socks had grabbed a plastic doo-hickey that I took away from him. Of course he wanted it back so I showed it to him in my left hand, reached over with my right and "took it." In reality, I French-Dropped it (magic trick move). I moved my right hand away from my left, which I put on my leg in a natural position while palming the doohickey. He followed my right, and I opened it and showed him the doohickey had vanished.

He looked at my right then to my left hand and back to my right and then up at me for just a second then bounced off to go find something else to play with.

My first thought was, "Wow, that was a very human reaction to a magic trick. Kind of smart of Socks to quasi-realize I was tricking him even if he didn't figure it out."

My second thought was, "I'm doing magic tricks for ferrets. What has my life become?"

The Last Horoscope You'll Ever Need

2006-09-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

And unlike any other horoscope - in any newspaper, given by any psychic, tarot card reader, etc. - this one is 100% accurate.

Aries - You're gonna die
Taurus - You're gonna die
Gemini - You're gonna die
Cancer - You're gonna die
Leo - You're gonna die
Virgo - You're gonna die
Libra - You're gonna die
Scorpio - You're gonna die
Sagitarius - You're gonna die
Capricorn - You're gonna die
Aquarius - You're gonna die
Pisces - You're gonna die

You're welcome.

I hate fondue, but I love this trick

2006-08-26T22:18:00.001-07:00

So today was the birthday of a friend. She's married to a former cow-orker that's pretty cool to hang out with. She wanted to go to the Melting Pot (eh) for her bday dinner. The Melting Pot is a fondue place, which I'm not crazy about. If I'm going to pay $30 for just my meal, I kind of would like someone else to cook it. I'm lazy, damn it! Plus meat that's been fondued just doesn't taste that good. Perfectly good filet mignon, which should have been grilled was reduced to just another hunk of boiled meat.

My advice: Go to a real restaurant with people who will prepare the meal for you then go to your fondue place for dessert. Even the manager told us that dessert was the best part.

Anyway, when you go to a fondue place, they constantly warn you about not touching the... fondue pots? I'm sure there's some fancy-schmancy name for them to appeal to the stupid yuppies who just walked in from the cigar bar that was a few stores down. I don't know what they are.

"Look how suave and upwardly mobile we are. While Biff went to the cigar bar, I stopped in at the overpiced toy stored and picked up educational toys for Jennniphyr and Teighlor, and then we went and fondued."

They're pots, and they're hot; that's the thing. So right after the first warning, I'm taking off one of my keys from my keyring. I have no idea what it goes to, and I suspect I have it on there just so I can do this trick once every 2 years. It's got a round hole at the top, and if you press you finger into it somewhat hard, it will leave a reddened bump on your finger that looks like a heat blister.

So you act like you touch something hot, give a little yelp of pain, and blow on it. Your table-mates will want to know what happened, and you show them your faux-blister. They'll either sympathize with you or mock you, depending on what kinds of friends they are. At that point, you pick up the salt shaker and put some on your faux-blister (they might yell at you some more - my friends did), and you rub the salt into your wound. The rubbing makes the blister go away, but to your friends, it looks like salt can somehow cure blisters. At that point, you can leave them with that impression or show them how the trick works (I opted for the latter - I like my friends and don't want them rubbing salt into their wounds... when I'm not there to enjoy it).

They all laughed and thought it was a cool trick. Brian, the aforementioned cow-orker, knows when I'm doing a trick even if he doesn't understand how it's done and had a little smile on his face the entire time. He enjoys a good magic trick, even buying himself an Invisible Deck once.

Looking back, I should also have taken the lemon from my drink and squeezed some lemon juice on it as well. Ah, well.

I got this trick from Penn and Teller's book, "How To Play with Your Food." An invaluable guide to fake burn tricks, making Satan's face appear on a tortilla, and making a jello Valentine's Day Heart cake that bleeds when you cut into it. They suggest that you actually carry salt in a little envelope labeled as a homeopathic cure, which you then sell to your "friends" because, hey, if they're stupid enough to believe in homeopathy, then you need new friends.

I Pissed Off Senator Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma)

2006-08-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

I've posted this so often to political discussion groups, I just need to blog it.

This happened in 1996. I was goofing around grad school at Oklahoma State University. Homecoming was approaching, and I was in a club called, "Latin Dancing and Cultural Club," which decided to have an entry in the homecoming parade for the first time that year.

Our "entry" was a large pick-up truck with a large boombox on the tailgate playing merengue and salsa, and the club marching/dancing behind it. We won first place in the float competition (no, we didn't).

There were approximately 140 entries in the parade that year, and all the floats and groups were snaked in some sort of pattern in a residential neighborhood close to the beginning point of the parade. We were entry 98 so we had a while to wait. We chatted and danced some. I went over to the bike club ahead of us and rode one of their unicycles. And who did I see close to us? The Young Democrats. So since this was an election year (Clinton Vs. Dole), I went over and got myself a Clinton/Gore 96 sticker.

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe* rode by on a horse five minutes later.

I went up to the faculty advisor for our club who had a camera and told her my cunning plan. "I'm going to lure Inhofe away from his bodyguards (also on horses) into the middle of the street, distract him by asking for an autograph, and slap this Clinton/Gore sticker on him. You take a picture." She was all for it.

Alas! The cunning plan had a problem. An Inhofe campaign volunteer thought I was an actual Inhofe fan and stood next to the lady taking my photo, waiting to give me an Inhofe sticker. I couldn't do what I wanted without being spotted. So I got the picture (will upload later), the autograph (ditto), and the sticker. I shook his hand and quickly went around the other side of the horse and put the sticker on the saddle blanket.

My hope was that he would ride through at least part of the parade stumping for Clinton/Gore.

Alas and alack! That was not to be either, but... But! He rode around a lot, glad-handing different people and groups while on the horse. He was apparently talking to a bunch of campaign volunteers for a republican state senate candidate when they found it. I saw him riding back towards us with a pissed off look on his face - just as it was the club's turn to start moving out.

I hid. Not because I was afraid, but I wanted to watch his reactions.

I got on the other side of the truck and looked through the open windows at him. Inhofe was standing up in the saddle with that pissed of look on his face, scanning the club for me. I would have been easy to find as I was one of the few white guys in the club at the time.

I giggled. A lot. I had tried and failed in my orginal and secondary objectives, but it was still funny. I pissed the moron off.

I thought that would be the end of it. Oh, no.

Two to three years later, I had left grad school unfinished because I was tired of being poor and had secured myself a computer programming position. A friend of mine from work and I went out to a local swing club (swing had made a comeback) because they were having Salsa Night, where they were going to teach salsa and then have a live band play instead of the normal swing music. I joined in the lessons just to see how those instructors taught salsa.

Aside: Thanks to that night and one other, I have since learned that every Latin country (plus either or both the Puerto Rican community or the Cuban community in America) has invented Salsa. If you have a Cuban teacher, salsa came from Cuba. Colombian dude? Colombia invented it. Mexican guy? You guessed it.

Anyway, a woman in the group came up to me and said, "I remember seeing you someplace before. I'm horrible at names, but I never forget a face." Okay... Later on, she came up to me and asked, "Did you ever put a democratic sticker on a republican horse?"

I figured she had been at Oklahoma State and had been in one of the groups around us and maybe spotted me back in 1996.

"No," she said. "I just moved here from Florida a couple of weeks ago. Your photo was in my local paper."

*This "footnote" will eventually have some of the stupid things Inhofe has said or done to give you an idea on what a jackass he is.

I Pissed Off a Girl Watching My Magic Show

2006-07-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

So I had my first real heckler last Saturday when I did a magic show in the back theater at the restaurant I work at. She was a young pre-teen/teenage girl (12-13).

Now the kids magic I do is nothing special - doesn't require a lot of skills. The most difficult thing I do is a pretty simple cups and balls routine, but I do get the laughs, and I do entertain both the kids and adults, and I tie several separate tricks into a relatively long routine that gets the laughs.

Anyway, Little Miss Bitch (LMB) sat down on the level closest to my magic case and kept interrupting me with comments. "I know how you did that." "Why don't you do linking rings? My dad does linking rings, and he's much better than you." "You're kind of amateurish." I have no idea what her problem was except she had a chip on her shoulder that day, or she doesn't like to see anyone "challenge" her daddy in any realm. The weird thing is that she kept raising her hand whenever I asked for a volunteer.

Guess who didn't get picked?

The second to last trick I do is with a Die Box. This is essentially used to just drive kids (and adults) crazy. The main gist of it is that after putting a large die into a box with two doors, you tilt the box and open one door to show the die has disappeared then tilt the other end and open the other door to show it's not there either. Kids will immediately call you on this and tell you to open the other end, which you do, tilting it each time. You can milk it for a good five minutes depending on the kids. LMB got extremely upset during this routine and even pounded her head against my magic case in frustration and jumped up to try and take the box from me. In the end, I open both doors at the same time, and the die has disappeared. LMB was not happy about that (teenager knows all syndrome).

The last trick uses a volunteer and is a type of prediction trick. It looks like I let the audience but not the volunteer in on how it works, but it looks like I still mess it up royally until I reveal the true ending, surprising everyone. The volunteer also gets a nifty balloon octopus, which figures into the routine. LMB was really enjoying my supposed frustration when the volunteer wasn't answering my questions like I wanted him to, but when it turned out the prediction worked out after all, she was steaming. She tried to grab the props off of my case to try and figure out the trick, and I finally had to really break character and tell her to sit down, stop acting worse than the 5-year-olds, and keep her hands to herself. She stuck her tongue out at me.

The show was over; the kids and adults all clapped; some adults shook my hand and thanked me for the show, and the theater emptied except for one gentleman who stayed behind to chat. He told me that I did a good job, not only with the magic (he said he was fooled on everything) but also with the girl. He was interested in magic so I showed him a few extra tricks, and lo-and-behold, who came into the theater but LMB.

Seems that several of the parents at my show followed her back to her table and informed her parents just what LMB had been doing, and daddy sent her back to apologize. I accepted her apology, gave her a short lecture that what I was doing was a quasi-living, and my job is to entertain, and while she may not be entertained or even bored by what I do, the other audience members might be having fun, and she was not only vexing me, but her actions also had the potential to ruin everyone elses' time. She looked appropriately abashed.

By that time her father had entered the theater and had also apologized. Before she left, just to show I was the "bigger man" (but also to be a jerk), I offered to show her a card trick to demonstrate there were no hard feelings. I then did my most powerful card trick for her and the gentleman I was talking to. It amazed and amused the gentleman.

It further vexed the hell out of LMB. Mission accomplished.

Oral Roberts University and Bad Weather = Fun

2006-06-17T20:18:00.000-07:00

Well, poop.

Mike, whose business I won't mention, but you know he sells novelty stuff, asked me to come out to some “Celebrating Freedom” thing (cuz it being less than a month away from July 4^th is too long, damn it) that was held on the campus of Oral Roberts University (wheee) today. It was some sort of music fest, and various people had tables and tents set up, including Mike. I twisted balloons for tips, but the payoff was supposed to come off later when I got to have sex with Richard Robert’s wife. Just testing to see if you’re still paying attention. Actually, there were the outside performances, and then when the sun went down, the venue was going to change to the nearby Mabee Center, the large building on the corner of the campus used for Harlem Globetrotter visits, Dora the Explorer real-life adventure shows, etc. At that point, I would be in position to start shilling not-so-cheap light up trinkets for the concert and getting a percentage of what I sold. Mike said last year people working for him had made quite a bit of money. I figured, why not. I like Mike, and I like quite a bit of money for little work. So, tamping down my natural repulsion from having to step on the ORU campus without taking a friend through the life-size, 6-room diorama of Oral Robert’s life (like Doug), I trotted off.

Oh, good. Mike’s tent is really close to the stage. So for a couple of hours it was, “I wrote this song when my best friend found Jesus (real quote).” Play song. “I wrote this song when I was in Chicago alone on St. Valentine’s Day, and I really needed God that night (real quote).” Play song. “I wrote this song after I did some cocaine lines off of a hooker’s chest when the cops raided the illegal brothel she worked at, and I got away. I figured *someone* was looking out for me (not a real quote).” Play song.

Eventually the cast from Discoveryland in Tulsa-suburb, Sapulpa, took the stage and did the state song (turns out Oklahoma is only 100 years old – pussies) and then launched into, “Proud to Be an American.” At which point, my belief in God was re-affirmed by the killer lightning and huge gusts of wind that were whipped up, ending the song early. The attendees were told to head for the Mabee Center for safety and to chill out while waiting for the concert to start. Mike and his wife gave me various light-up trinkets, and I took off and beat most of the crowd there and started hawking stuff while they took to tearing their tent down and packing up their inventory (Whatever you do, save the containers of Farting Slime! I will find you!).

Sidenote: Jacinta, next time you visit, we need to go to Discoveryland just so I can say I’ve seen Oklahoma: The Musical. It should be sufficiently fun in a cheesy sort of way, and as part of our admission, we’ll get dinner! http://www.discoverylandusa.com/images/dinner.jpg

Then later, we’ll get intestinal cramping!

I stood about 200 feet in front of the Mabee Center and hawked the goods. My sales pitch was something along the lines of, “Get your glowing, sparkly revolving things here. Guaranteed to give the singers motion sickness if enough people buy and use them. Also good for warding off lightning strikes.”

Sidenote: I threw in that bit about the lightning because I was on ORU, and Oral Roberts really got his start in the 1950s as a snake oil salesman and a faith healer (film from various of his tent revivals show him healing the same woman over and over again… in different cities). It amused me.

I sold quite a bit considering people were running for their lives. When the sprinkles came, I moved to the sidewalk right outside the Mabee Center and so was underneath all the various outcroppings of said building when the storm REALLY hit. Over the next 30 minutes, anyone who came into the Mabee Center was absolutely soaked… and then frozen when they entered and got hit by the very efficient air conditioning.

Mike and his wife eventually called me to try and find me, and they drove over, and both were soaked. I think Mike was a little peeved that I was completely dry and having fun. I gave him the unsold inventory, got my cut (pizza time – whoo hoo), and entered the Mabee Center to twist balloons while waiting for the storm to die down enough to run to my car without getting water-logged.