#I want to learn more about the Mexican American rock star we lost when he was just getting started the fuck

[sassmill]

We as a society don’t talk about this enough

#A 13 minute medley of some of the biggest hits of her fucking career? #all prefaced by the song she thought was going to be a hit #only for the B SIDE TO SHOOT HER TO FAME!!!! #I love Helen reddy so fucking much #also the I am woman biopic was really good and if I don’t get a stage adaptation of it I’m going to riot #rocketman too but that’s a rant for another time #I want rocketman and I am woman to become as ubiquitous to touring theatre as Jersey boys #but I know that’ll probably never happen because one is gay and the other’s a woman #so we just get fucking buddy holly #I have a lot of very intense opinions on bio musicals #because some of them. are just bad. #the Buddy Holly story is my arch nemesis #black musicians I’m sorry buddy Holly stole his career from you #and that the narrative framing of the Buddy Holly story completely glosses over that and acts like it was fine #i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again #the best musical number in the buddy Holly story is fucking la bamba #a Ritchie valens bio musical was in the works in December 2019 but I think the pandemic killed it #I want to learn more about the Mexican American rock star we lost when he was just getting started the fuck #ugh #I think this is why I have the job I do #because I think nonstop about how theatre is the perfect tool to critically engage with history #hey this might be the tangent of all time but I stand by it #Youtube

[kuramirocket]

Growing up in California in my grandmother's house, surrounded by tías, tíos, and all my cousins, I always felt a deep connection to my Mexican-American roots. Every generation of my father's family has had incredibly different experiences that reflect much about American history. 

My great-grandfather on my abuela's side, Daniel Martinez, grew up in Mexico and immigrated to Los Angeles. Eventually, he saved enough money to open a neighborhood market, which is where he met my great-grandmother, Guadalupe Miranda Martinez. She had come from Mexico to Los Angeles with her mother and brother as a young teenager. They soon married and began having children. When he lost his business in the 1920s, the family turned to migrant farm work. They were forced to use segregated water fountains and bathrooms and my darker-skinned tíos and tías were sent to Mexican schools, while those with light skin and blonde or red hair were allowed to attend schools with white students.

Unhappy with the segregated schools, my great-grandfather joined up with other families to open the East Barrio School for Latinos in Claremont, CA — fighting the status quo is part of my heritage! They taught reading and writing in Spanish and learned Mexican history at a time when it was hard to show pride about being Mexican.

My great-grandfather on my abuelo's side, Catalino Alba, came from Mexico during the Revolution. He met my great-grandmother when he immigrated to Gallup, NM, where he helped build the Santa Fe Railroad. He was a musician and inspired my abuelo José Alba to sing, practice traditional Mexican dance, and become an accomplished classical guitarist. As a child, there was never a family party where my abuelo didn't play guitar while my abuela, tíos and tías, and cousins sang along. Perhaps this is where I got my love for the performing arts!

My great-grandfather moved to San Bernardino, CA, to work on the railroad and my abuelo José Alba grew up in the barrio where he and his siblings slept head to foot. With little food at home, he often asked the neighbors for fruit from their fruit trees. He was compelled to eat dirt, which he later learned was a natural response to the lack of iron that he needed in his diet. As a kid, he wasn't allowed to swim in a public pool without a certification of vaccination. He would often get glass stuck in his shoes because the soles were so thin and worn out — he couldn't afford anything else. At one point, glass punctured his foot, and as a result he developed lockjaw, which was nearly fatal.

When he could work, he made money selling oranges and picking potatoes. He says the first thing he did when he had money was to go down to Main Street to have his shoes shined by a young boy. He told that boy that he would come every week because he knew he was trying to make his own way too.

There were 12 kids in the family and my abuelo is proud that his mom figured out a way to send them to school as soon as it was possible. She understood the value of education. Even though it was hard for them, she made it a priority.

This is my abuelo and abuela's wedding above — so classic. I always thought our ancestors were Spanish, but I learned through genetic testing that they were Native American, with roots that may go back as far as the Mayan civilization. We've been here from the beginning!

My parents, Mark and Catherine Louisa Alba, were so different . . . but they had the same hairstyle! I know that when my dad was growing up it was difficult for him and his parents to be Mexican-American. The hyphen wasn't an option back then.

My abuelo had only learned English when he transferred to grammar school at around 6 years old, and he was way behind as a result. Like many others of their generation, my grandparents didn't teach their children, including my dad, to speak Spanish. My abuelo says that he didn't even think about it, but I wonder if he associated it with a difficult transition in his life.

I want my girls to embrace their Latino roots, know how much we have contributed to this country, and understand that the road ahead is richer when we acknowledge and embrace our heritage. I want them to learn Spanish like their great-grandparents. I'm incredibly proud of my diverse heritage and I want my daughters to feel the same way.

Jessica Alba is something of a triple threat: She's managed to achieve major success as an actress, fashion designer, and business mogul. It's hard to imagine anyone not wanting to work with Alba, but early in her career she had a hard time getting roles because of her race.

"They couldn't figure out my ethnicity," Alba said. "I would always go out for 'exotic.' They were like, 'You're not Latin enough to play a Latina, and you're not Caucasian enough to play the leading lady, so you're going to be the "exotic" one.' Whatever that was."

Of course, Alba eventually ended up starring in hits like Fantastic Four, Into the Blue, and Good Luck Chuck. So, yeah, it's safe to say she proved those people wrong.

And not only is this actress leading by example; she's also taking steps to change the game herself. The creation of Alba's cosmetics line, Honest Beauty, which she founded as part of her brand, The Honest Company, in 2015, stemmed from her own struggles as a young girl trying to find a foundation that matched her unique complexion. "I didn't feel like, when I was younger, that there were a lot of things offered to women of color," she said.

So Alba went out and made her own. "The philosophy around starting this beauty line is about enhancing who you are instead of cover up and turn you into somebody else," she said.

Jessica Alba’s startup The Honest Company is a veritable success — approaching over $350 million in sales during a year in which many companies struggled — but venture capitalists turned up their noses to the idea at first.

In 2009, Alba had a real issue: She couldn’t find baby products for her newborn that were guaranteed to be safe and eco-friendly. After having an allergic reaction to one of the allegedly baby-safe detergents she bought, she developed her idea the same way many successful entrepreneurs get started: She pitched building the solution she herself wished was on the market.

Alba pitched serial entrepreneur Brian Lee on her idea, who reportedly passed after saying it wasn't “very promising.” The feeling that others don’t see potential in you or your business idea is a familiar frustration for budding entrepreneurs. At the time, Alba remarked that she felt nobody took her seriously as an entrepreneur, or even believed in her idea, even though she knew there would be demand. 

But just five years later, The Honest Company reached unicorn status, valued at over one billion dollars. What changed in those five years that let her take her failed pitch to becoming a success story?

To perfect your pitch, experiment

Fast forward to 2012. Alba is now in Washington, lobbying for an update to reform the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. Buoyed by her growing knowledge on the subject, she went back to Lee and pitched him again.

This time, her deck was much more concise, down to less than 30 minutes from start to finish. In a world where most entrepreneurs give up after a rejection or two, Alba instead had spent the years between their two meetings pitching her idea to friends, getting holes poked in her positioning,and answering each and every supply chain question that arose. 

Another change had happened over the last three years: Venture capitalists like Lee, whom she was pitching, had all started young families. Alba’s pitch was rock solid, and as an added bonus her prospective investors wanted the product themselves. 

Lee said yes to the second pitch. The first year The Honest Company was in business, it reported an astonishing $12 million in revenue, a number that has only increased each year. After facing initial rejection on her pitch, Alba’s decision to persevere has led The Honest Company to dramatic success.

At first, everyone told Alba she should start with one product, then expand once that was successful. But this didn’t gel with Alba’s vision of a complete line of baby-safe products; the founder knew parents who wanted clean products wanted a brand that could provide multiple solutions.

Ultimately, Alba ignored the conventional advice and launched with 17 products, which many people believed was too many. But because she didn’t compromise on that, either to venture capitalists or herself, the launch was a total success.

Sources: (×) (x) (x) (×)

#🇲🇽 #jessica alba #mexico #mexican #mexican american #latino #latina #hispanic #immigration #usa #united states #history #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #the honest company #los angeles #california #segregation #mexican history #East Barrio School for Latinos #claremont #claremont california #Santa Fe Railroad #new mexico #gallup #gallup new mexico #San Bernardino #maya #racism

[itsblosseybitch]

Well Dunne by Fred Schruers (from Rolling Stone magazine, November 7th, 1985)

The star of ‘After Hours’ knows how to produce a lot of laughs

The day Warner Bros. previewed After Hours at its Burbank, California, studio for a randomly selected public - “People who may have been coming out of Wendy’s on La Cinega” is how Griffin Dunne puts it - leading man Dunne and his co-producer, Amy Robinson, joined a line of cars stop-and-going through the gates to the studio. As he tells about it now, a month later, he mimes the part of a power-buzzed security man clutching a walkie-talkie: “Get these people out of there...Can’t let the audience see you, sir...We’re at Building C, walking the producer and the star over now...” 

They hid Griffin in the projection booth till the lights went down. Then he sneaked in and listened. Very happily. “They laughed. Went crazy. You couldn’t hear the dialogue.”

A lot of his best lines got lost in the hubbub then, no? Dunne lets his swivel chair rock down from a perilous two-legged tilt and gives the serious, almost beady-eyed take meant to remind you what an alarmingly hostile world we live in: “Let that be the most serious of my problems.”

In fact, Dunne has hardly any problems just now that stand much chance of knocking him from the embrace of the bitch goddess Success. Costing roughly $4 million and described by director Martin Scorsese as “an experimental, psychological farce,” After Hours took only one September weekend to show it would clamber out of cult status and be recognized as something the studio could platform into a nice little hit. 

As a producer, then, the thirty-year-old Dunne is at speed. The grudging credit the industry gave him for co-producing Chilly Scenes of Winter, at age twenty-three, and added to with 1982′s Baby, It’s You (OP NOTE: This is an error. Should be 1983), must now give way to admiration. As an actor, he’s got many people besides the studio guards referring to him as an arriving star. He’s onscreen in virtually every frame in After Hours, and his highly expressive face, which seems to be hastily if handsomely thrown together, accented with dark eyebrows and riveting brown eyes, is undeniably crucial to our comic appreciation of the very odd goings-on during the protagonist’s interminable night among the sexually flawed denizens of artsy SoHo. Whether recoiling from the kinky come-ons of Rosanna Arquette’s Marcy and Linda Fiorentino’s Kiki, feeling mousetrapped by Teri Garr’s Julie, marked for slaughter by Catherine O’Hara’s Gail or imprisoned by Verna Bloom’s June, he’s a catalog of nearly nuanced lab-rat reflexes. 

The key to Dunne’s performance is clearly reaction, as Amy Robinson points out: “It was imperative in this movie that the character be very likable. Otherwise, why would you want to spend this hour and a half going through such trials and tribulations?”

Adam Brooks, who directed him in this year’s unkindly received Almost You, judges Griffin to be just the right everyman for this opening up in Scorsese’s work. “He’s alone, like other Scorsese heroes, but not obsessed. He’s more like us - a child of computers and television. Lonely, but not driven.”

“A lot of people say Griffin looks like Dudley Moore, but I think he’s a lot more like Jack Benny - his comedy works when he’s surrounded by a lot of crazy people, crazy events. He’s charming, endearing. What’s great about After Hours is that the charm gets defeated at every point and ends up being a kind of vanity - so you’ve got this nicely mounting hysteria.”

The Joseph Minion script for After Hours - dispatched to Griffin after being handed to Amy Robinson by Minion’s film-school professor, director Dusan Makavejec - caught the actor’s fancy on page 2. He could sink right into the role of Paul Hackett, a lonely and bored word processor who meets an enticing girl at a coffee shop. “I understood the speech patterns, the other characters and the tension. And the situation of a horrible date. Of being with somebody, trapped in a situation. I’m looking around the room, going ‘How do I get out of here? And how the hell did I get in here?’ Which is a pretty funny basis for a movie.”

“My only criterion for directing Griffin,” says Scorsese, “was ‘I don’t believe you. For all you know, you’re pleading for your life. If I don’t believe you, I’m not gonna print this take, and we’ll just continue till I believe you.’ He had to get in touch with something in here, he had to plead for his life. And that was - fun.”

Thomas Griffin Dunne was born June 8th, 1955, in New York City, the first of three children of Dominick and Ellen (known as Lenny). His father was a Connecticut-bred, Williams-educated stage manager en route to producer status; his mother was an actress and model raised in Nogales, Arizona, by her Mexican mother and her cattle-rancher father, Thomas Griffin. Dominick worked on everything from Howdy Doody to Playhouse 90, and when colleague Martin Manulis moved to Los Angeles in 1956, Dominick took his work and family went as well. 

They settled in then quaint Beverly Hills (”Not the Iranian gun boutiques they’ve got now,” grumbles Griffin), where Griffin hung out with other showbiz whelps, like Carrie Fisher, until heading east to a prestigious old prep school. One unfortunately whimsical day, under the influence of a notorious Moby Grape album cover, he extended his middle finger toward the camera in the football-team photo. By chance, two years later, the headmaster glanced at the photo; the punishment was five swats. 

(OP NOTE: I actually contacted Fay School about this photo, and they claimed they didn’t have it. In hindsight, I should have tried a different approach because, to quote Mandy-Rice Davies, “Well they would, wouldn’t they?”)

Next stop was a less stodgy boys school in Colorado, where he won a plum role in The Zoo Story as a sophomore and became “Joe Theater” on campus. By senior year, he was preparing for his greatest performance, as Iago in Othello. The evening before the big day, Griffin and a friend were in a dorm room contentedly smoking dope when the door swung open. They smothered the joint just in time to look up at the school’s “one badass” faculty member, who asked, “What’s that smell?” “There was the longest pause,” recalls Griffin. “Finally, I said ‘What smell?’ “ The smoke, he says, “just poured right out - mocked me.”

Griffin, sent packing, hitchhiked home quite certain that his proper trade was acting. He got a bit part in Medical Story as an intern hooking up an I.V. line amid much medical palaver, but they changed the diagnosis on him at the last minute. Frantically trying to memorize the new bit during a five-minute break, he burned his lip trying to light a cigarette and went before the camera lisping, sweating, shaking, and bereft of words. Actress Linda Purl took pity and wrote his lines on her forearm, where the I.V. was to go. “It was such a classy move,” he says.

Still, deciding he’d better learn the trade from scratch, Griffin migrated to New York and joined the legion of struggling actors. He was catastrophically nervous at auditions: when he went before the stern Uta Hagen to apply for her acting class, he “went up” - completely forgot the text he’d prepared from The Catcher In The Rye. So he improvised, giving the story that morning’s trip downtown as Holden Caulfield might tell it. She was alternately rapt and chuckling, and signed him on. But he was soon shown to be the dunce of a class full of working actors. Finally, one day after he set a prop door up backward for a solo exercise, then frenziedly tried to shove it the wrong way through the jamb, she took him aside and told him he was simply not ready for her class. But he begged her one more chance, and the next day he skipped forward several exercises to do an imaginary phone call. He wowed Hagen and the class and went on from there.

As he built off-Broadway credits, Dunne lived in various shabby apartments and worked odd jobs, notably, selling candy and popcorn at Radio City Music Hall, where he was stung by the indifference of the Amazonian Rockettes: “They certainly had no time for a guy in a polyester zip-up baby-blue jacket with a cadet hat and shoes two sizes too big that had belonged to an usher who died of old age.”

He met Amy Robinson, who had gone from Scorsese’s Mean Streets to searching for work, at a party. With a third actor, Mark Metcalf, they became upstart movie producers by optioning Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter. Joan Micklin Silver came in as screenwriter and director, and they got studio financing to make a cult prestige item. It marked the beginning of a time of happy overwork for Griffin. He came back from shooting a TV film called The Wall in Poland (opposite Rosanna Arquette) to do the play Coming Attractions, which he then left to do John Landis’ film An American Werewolf in London.

He had come back to work full-time on producing Baby, It’s You when horrible news came: his sister, Dominique, a promising young actress, was strangled to death at the age of twenty-two by her boyfriend, a chef at Ma Maison. 

“It brought all of us who were left together for every moment for a year between what happened and the verdict,” says Dominick Dunne. “It’s never for a moment not a part of you. The point is, you have to go on, you have to cope, to live your life. He threw himself into his work.”

Baby, It’s You was completed that year and dedicated to his sister. Then, even as he helped with script revisions to After Hours, Griffin was before the cameras in Adam Brooks’ Almost You. It’s about a couple suffering from the young man’s restlessness, and though Dunne and Brooke Adams agreed to do it while they were very much a couple, by the time it got financing, they were just friends. “I guess you could say they had a lot to work with,” says Brooks. “but that never interfered with the production.”

Griffin’s been seeing New York actress Ellen Barkin lately; she was on his arm for the New York premiere of the film and afterward was a proud but not proprietary presence as he accepted congratulations well into the night from a buzzing crowd of friends at a downtown restaurant. He was due to head cross-country for promotional chores, but he’s got further plans for his unusually hyphenated career. He and Amy Robinson have optioned the hit play The Foreigner, written by the late Larry Shue. And after the rigors of making After Hours on a nocturnal schedule, Griffin is very happy to have the phone plugged back in and the shades up. 

(OP NOTE: As I mentioned in the transcript for the American Film article, The Foreigner never materialized as a feature film, though Robin Williams was attached at one point. That’s all the information I have about that at the moment.)

“I noticed that Griffin is the kind of guy who gets around a lot, parties a lot,” says Scorsese, “and I knew the hardest part of his job was sustaining the anxiety for eight weeks of shooting.” The director pauses for a grin that demands to be called devilish. “So I told him, ‘No sex for eight weeks. We’ve got careers on the line here. I don’t want you up at night talking, wasting your time and your precious bodily fluids.’

“Really, the idea was to contain him and keep him in this night world for eight weeks, ‘cause his performance depended on anxiety, and if he was satisfied, he would never be able to get that.”

Dunne, reminded later of the challenge, tips back his chair and grins to himself. “Aw, that was easy to live up to,” he says, then waits a beat to settle into the deadpan expression that is such a comic weapon for him. “Did you ever try to get a date a six-thirty in the morning?”

#griffin dunne #rolling stone #rolling stone magazine #vintage magazines #archive #journalism #martin scorsese #after hours #amy robinson #after hours 1985

[deanmiles13]

Johnny Cash/Tables for 3

My move from Indiana to Tucson was my transition into adulthood. The trip was on a Greyhound bus and was my first time ever being further west than St. Louis.

I moved into my fathers place which was located on a “reservation”. The domicile we shared was a travel trailer. Just a step up from the pop up kind.The kind you can spit from one end to the other. It was THAT small.

It sucked living there with a stranger basically, and I hated it. I actually looked forward to school, which was a rarity. I took the bus from our way out post, to the school located a few miles away. Almost every day on the trip home, we would get off the bus a stop or two early, just to watch a fight. It was always the typical fights, but these Mexican kids always made up after. It was cool. 

Going to the school I went to, was wild. I was one of about 50 white kids attending. The rest were Mexican Americans or Native American. 

When I moved out to Tucson, I was thinking this was gonna be some real punk rock landing pad. Little did I know where I was going to land. Coming from the midwest I was used to getting shit for the way I dressed. Alot…

I never really got hassled at my new school. At Cholla, everyone seemed to respect the fact that I stood out and went out on a limb to do so. But every once in a while, I did have a couple of goofballs that would yell out “Hey Sid Vicious!” They seemed to have fun doing it. They laughed at themselves more than at me and the way they talked it seemed they knew WHO Sid Vicious at was. 

Finally one day, I “confronted” them. “What’s up with the SID VICIOUS stuff, man?” 

They just busted out laughing and invited me to lunch with them. We were friends from that moment forward.

The lunch’s at this school meant you could leave campus to pursue other options. In Indiana, that was never the case, we couldn’t even leave the parking lot. We were pretty removed and it was a haul to get food around there. When I first learned we could leave for lunch here in Tucson, I was blown away.In this new situation, I often found myself not wanting to return for the second half of the day.

But these two guys, Joe and Adam, are my new besties. We go to record stores and music stores and I even start to stay with their families at night so I don’t have to make the journey all the way out to my dads. Unbelievable kindness I was shown by total strangers.They are of Mexican descent and there parents are pretty much the kindest people I have ever encountered. They must have totally known what was up when I was around there houses. They fed me, and looked the other way as I climbed in and out of there windows at night to sleep in a safe place.

Adam and Joe also are musicians. And this is a HUGE plus. 

Adam plays guitar and is hugely influenced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Joe plays a Gibson S.G. bass. They both have a wacky sense of humor. A ton of inside jokes between them and just a real loose attitude. I would like to think they were EMO way before that was even a thing.

They don’t drink and they love the Descendants. We would listen to records in Adams room and talk about them. Sometimes, he would just take it off the turntable and give the record to me if he didn’t like it. That happened a few times. We would jam on his guitar and play tunes. They also are forming a band.

And needed a drummer. 

See, when I moved out to Arizona, I had pretty much put the drums behind me and was giving the guitar ALL my attention. I practiced a lot and loved the instrument. I would hole up in my dads trailer with Zero Boys on my walkman and the guitar plugged into my amp. I just played all day long out there in that hot tin can.

But, drummers were as rare as hens teeth in Tucson and these guys offered to buy me a drum set if I played in their band. Count me in like Dee Dee Ramone.

My dad had usually called me up around Christmas every year with the same shameful call… “So, what are you into? Drums huh?!?! Maybe I’ll get you a drum set for Christmas!” Man, I heard that for years and the balls it must have taken him to get the courage up to make that call. To lie to his own kids face. Over and over… Well, not literally to his face.

And here these home boys wanted to buy me a drum set? TODAY?!?!

MY first ever drum kit was bought by Adam Lopez. A friend that was working as a bus boy.

More on that in a minute…

Thank you Adam. My gratitude is eternal. 

He took me downtown Tucson to the legendary Chicago Store. That place deserves a story of its own for sure....

Now, Adam always seemed to have a little extra scratch to spend. I was broke as shit all the time. I remember asking him one day how he got all this “cash” he had. He told me he worked as a bus boy at night at an Italian Restaurant. This had my interest. “Hey, If they ever need any help, let me know” I offered. It was almost immediately that I got the job. We would carpool together from school and then I would crash at Adam’s. 

I would sneak in and out the window in the morning so his parents wouldn’t know. They eventually found out, and when they did, they insisted that I stay in the guest house that was outfitted for Adam’s older brother to live in. He was away at the time and this was an awesome opportunity for me. I would actually stay in the park across the street from Adams house sometimes just so I wouldn’t jeopardize  him getting in trouble or me wearing out my welcome

.

So, at this point, we are attached at the hip and if I remember correctly, it was Adam who was going to a new school. It was an alternative H.S. called Project MORE. This was exactly what I needed.

The restaurant we worked at was called Scordatos and it’s kind of a big deal in Tucson. From memory, it was basically an “upscale” Italian joint. The location seemed to add to the overall “allure” of the place.

When hired, I was alerted to the movie stars who would wonder in from time to time. 3 Amigos had just filmed in Old Tucson and I had heard that Steve Martin had come into the restaurant recently. It was talked about in hushed tones and secrecy. We were told in no uncertain terms to NEVER approach the guest.

Makes perfect sense. They are out for a nice dinner and don’t want the attention or the hassle. I GET IT…..

And then it happened!!!

It was just another normal shift. Take out the trash, feed the leftover lettuce to the Javelina that wondered down from the hills at dusk. Back inside, change the linens, get the silverware, wipe the booths down and be seen and not heard. Also, stay out of the way of the waiters and their guest. This was my first real taste of work and I was just getting the whole feel of my place and getting my timing right. So, I was changing a table’s linen one night. I happened to be about two tables from the door where customers come in from the outside. Just as the floating table clothe lands on the table, the door opens. About 3-4 people come in. Just fuzzy shapes to my peripheral vision. 

Not really noticing faces or anything… 

They stand for about 10 seconds waiting for staff to help them and no one is coming to help them as I continue my work and stay out of the way. Then the room starts to go silent. The phrase “Can kill conversation, just by walking in a room”? That was this situation to a tee. Forks hit the plates and you just heard clanking silverware, murmurs and whispers. 

I looked up from the forks and spoons I was setting and notice the party had moved closer to ME as I seemed to be the only “Help” that was there. As, I go to give them a standard greeting like “My name is Dean, and someone will be right with you.”, I look at their faces for the first time really. 

It was like seeing Mt. Rushmore or something for the first time. Something so familiar is staring right back at you. I takes a second to register that this is a face you’ve seen a million times before. On TV? On album covers? So familiar but foreign because of the reality of the situation.

“I’m Johnny Cash” the tall man of the party says as he extends his long arm and shakes my hand.

By this time, it sunk in that this was indeed, the man in black. 

JC- Johnny F’n Cash.

I watched his show on TV growing up. My grandparents listened to him. My parents listened to him. He was synonymous with AMERICA. The gravity of the situation was swirling in my head.

When we shook hands, the rest of the group started to take focus. He was there with June Carter and his daughter Rosanne Cash. Un Frickin’ Believable….

I worried for a nano second about my job and the policy I knew they had about guest. Maybe they would take it easy on me? In truth, I didn’t care AND I didn’t  get in trouble at all. 

But, I did get to meet the Man in Black and the most important women in his life. 

While a very brief encounter, this sticks with me today.

It’s about time and place. Synchronistic stuff.  

I probably would have lost my mind if I had worked a different day and had missed my shot. 

But as fate would have it… we met.

I honored him the day of my marriage. When I married the most important woman in my life. 

Darcy and I had planned to sing “If I were a carpenter” at our wedding. We practiced for a month or two before the big day. Me on guitar and her doing the June Carter parts. 

We were married on Sept. 13th. 2003.

It was Sept. 12th  2003 when Johnny Cash passed away.

As fate would have it…

[billvsamerica]

Part I: Trying to be a good sport

It was the last minute of the match. We were down 2-1 in the semi-final of the playoffs against our bitter rivals, the staff of a local Mexican restaurant. I had just scored a goal to get us back in it, and the ball rolled out of play behind one of their substitutes. He slides the ball behind him and flicks it through his legs. Obviously, I shove him, grab the ball, and ready myself to throw a huge throw-in towards our striker. He would then head it in the goal, take the game to extra time, and I, of course, would score a decisive penalty.

Instead, a man who could be no less than 150 years of age in a snazzy referee’s uniform blows his whistle and shows me my second yellow card. What unfolded next was like a scene from Narcos. 

“You want me to whoop your ass?” their tiny striker whispered to me in a sexy Antonio Banderas way.

Who are you, I thought. The Rock? You look more like the pebble. I didn’t say this, but I should have. 

“Go on.” I said and leaned forward into his face. 

As I began to walk towards my car, an elderly man walked towards me trying to block my path from the field. 

“What are you gonna f*%$*#g do?” I screamed at him. 

He looked confused. I don’t think he knew what he was going to do. Either he didn’t speak any English, thought the game was over and was just walking to his car, or had inadvertently wandered onto the field while out with the dog. 

The team lost that game 2-1 and I had to send an email out apologising for my behaviour to my own team. My own team. Additionally, I was banned for the duration of the season. 

In England, I wouldn’t have even received a yellow card. A black eye maybe. Which I would have preferred. 

                      Me in one of the novelty joke kits my team plays in.

This brings to mind another time - and believe me, there are a few. One Saturday morning, I was having a kick about with a bunch of people at a local park. Some bloke with long hair and a very high opinion of himself kicked me to the ground. I got up and shoved him (most of these stories involve me shoving people), which he did not appreciate. 

At the end of the game, he followed me to my car, where my good lady wife was waiting to pick me up.  

“Does he beat you? I bet he beats you!” he screamed this at the top of his voice dancing around like some sort of possessed Cat Stevens impersonator. After a bit of back and forth, I jumped in the car. 

“Drive. He’s lost his mind. Drive!”

We drove off, and I can only assume steam blew out of his ears and that he spontaneously combusted all over the car park. 

Since I started playing amateur football in America, I have received four red cards. It’s lucky the swear words over here are different to those in England or I may have received a lifetime ban for my reactions to some of the frankly bizarre calls. Playing anywhere else I would have probably received a couple of warnings, a pat on the back from my team mates, and a round of drinks at the local. I’ve tried complaining. I’ve tried losing my rag - which translates in American as getting all jive turkey - but neither have worked. Instead, I must assimilate. I must become one of them. I must play by the rules? 

In addition to irritating the local community of confused soccer aficionados, I’ve been coaching a kid’s soccer team for the last couple of seasons. After playing the game myself, I’ve realised that I need to give back to this starving sporting community. I want to show them how real football should be played. Lump it up to the big bloke up top, he nods it down, and somebody scuffs it in from five yards out. 

Anyway, my team, the Blue Badgers (formerly known as the Purple Strikers) fell to an unfortunate defeat in the final of our first season and did the same thing this season. To say I was more devastated than them on both occasions is an understatement.

As the games went on, the other team’s parents started to dwindle and mine started to grow. The fact that a big weird English bloke was shouting instruction to the players the whole time probably brought a bit of entertainment that the quality of the soccer (football) lacked, and I may have, in turn, scared the other parents off. Despite the changes in soccer coaching over the years and the move to prevent micromanaging during games, I’m a firm believer that they should do things right and listen to me shouting my head off at them. I still remember my father’s rants from the sideline. 

“Billy! Billy! Billy!”

“What, dad?”

“Play better!”

“Yes, dad.”

He wasn’t even the coach.

His constant barraging may not have led me to become a professional footballer like he’d hoped, but I’m feeling the benefit fifteen years later as the up and coming coach for the under twelve squad of a small group of children in Greenville, SC.

                         The Purple Strikers line-up from the first season

Recently in an interesting turn of events, the team I coach had a special exhibition match against a local team who are made up of Central and South American players. These kids were younger than ours, more skillful, and had probably been kicking balls since they were only little niños.  

The game got underway and one of their kids slid into the back of my star striker’s legs, taking him out. Slide tackles aren’t allowed in my league, much to my irritation. I shouted to the ref and told their coach that their kids should be more careful. This did not go down well with the droves of parents who came with them. A mixture of English and Spanish words were thrown at me, which I returned for a while before losing interest and attempting some bold tactical moves to get us back into the game. 

When I moved to America, I honestly never thought I would start an individual race war against Latin Americans. I don’t agree with Trump. The only wall I want them to face up against is three 10 year olds when they’re readying to take a free kick. 

Me and two of my rival coaches. The Blue Badgers destroyed both their teams on the way to the final.

After the game, which we lost 7-3, I heard one of their parents talking to my boss. 

“Your coach! He started a fight with us! He wanted to start a fight!” He kept saying over and over again. 

I don’t like liars. I do like people from south of the border though, let me just make that clear. I’m not a racist, which I am fully aware is the tagline for all racists. 

But on this rare occasion, I had not started a fight with a child’s father. 

“Look, mate. You listen here. I wasn’t starting a fight. We’re not allowed slide tackles and...”

“You’re no coach, you’re not a coach!”

He clutched his child’s hand as I walked away.

“You wine-o. Wine-o! Wine-o!”

The former English teacher in me woke up for a second. And, for once, I hadn’t been drinking. I stomped back down the hill to teach him a lesson. A grammatical lesson.

“Look, wine-o means somebody who drinks lots of alcohol. Not somebody who whines a lot. That is a whiner!”

“You are. You wine-o!”

Christ, I thought.

“I’m not having a go here. I’m trying to help you in case you get into any other altercations with children’s soccer coaches in the future.”

He stared blankly at me, so I wandered back up the hill. He could have that one for free.

“Wine-o!”

Last straw.

“And you’re a great father,” I said. “Father of the year over here!” I reiterated sarcastically. 

He followed me to my car, which I got in and drove away without getting the wing mirrors kicked off. Once again, the car had proven to be a handy exit strategy against angry, testosterone-fuelled berks living in America. 

After getting into altercations with the staff of a Mexican restaurant, a granddad referee, a devout Christian with long hair, and a child’s father at a soccer match, what have I learned? I’ve learned that they’re all mouth and no action. Also, I should probably go and seek some sort of anger management therapy even though, as you can see from my totally unbiased account of the events that unfolded, I was totally in the right on all occasions. 

Next time... PART II: I tackle the world of organised sport (if I don’t get hunted down with pitchforks beforehand).

[hexenbomb]

Deadlands Session 9/19/17

HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU GUYS

THIS SESSION WAS FUCKING CRAZY

Okay to start, this wasn’t an adventure written by our Marshal. This was a legit official Deadlands adventure. Warning: Long AF post cause damn this session was a doozy

This is Part 1 of 2?- Knights Without Armor

Basically the setting was after Romano had lost most of his arm a while ago maybe a few weeks in game. Gretchen was checking in on him in between staying her lab/workshop and going to New Mexico once to check on the Ghost Rock mine (where the Twilight Legion’s deal with the Native Americans there gives her a decent supply of ghost rock).

Lord Benedict, the benefactor of the chapter of the Grand Island Twilight Legion that we stay in and call our headquarters called us in to the main room for a meeting.

He told us of an ad looking for some hired guns. The one who placed the ad wanted to recover some lost property of his and that was all that was said. Our posse agreed to travel to southern Arizona to take up the job and investigate any possible weirdness.

We get to the town and find our way to the ranch.

Some of the men on ranch gives us shit and Gretchen, being a bit on edge due her paranoia and not liking this one particular guy talking shit about her accent as she had said “Guten tag!” as a greeting, just stares him down until he backs off. (I rolled for an intimidation check).

We enter the ranch house, talk to the man who at his request has a Frenchman named Lance come with us. Lance tells us that he believes that a family heirloom of his is in the Mexican town we are heading to. But that he will assist us if needed. We are given the assignment of rescuing a darker skinned woman by the name of Rosalina(?) who had been kidnapped from this estate. It’s a 30 mile ride by horseback to the border town of Mexico and as we ride we start seeing weird mirages and the air feels way to hot for a desert. We realize we are in an area with a Fear Level of 4. It gets dark we stop for the night.

Gretchen doesn’t go to sleep cause of her erratic sleeping schedule and Steve Lux, half-Sioux huckster, stays up with to keep watch while the others sleep. But during the night, things get weird. (Steve and Gretchen are told to roll for Notice). Both Steve and Gretchen both notice the sound of an eerie whinny, spooking all our horses into running away. About 60 feet from the edge of our makeshift campsite, a pitch black demonic looking horse rears up and whinnies again.

(We are told to roll a Guts check at -8, -4 for the Fear Level and -4 for the creature itself. Both Steve and Gretchen fail horribly). Steve faints due his heart nearly stopping and Gretchen is shaken out of fear. She cannot move at all. All she can do is scream to alert the camp. Everyone wakes up and can’t do anything to the horse as it just runs off after we take a few pot shots at the thing. Later on when day breaks, we make our way to the border town after retrieving our horses. We stay for the night and immediately leave in the morning, not wanting to stay any longer than necessary.

We get into Mexico and hang out in the local cantina with Steve outside watching just in case. Gretchen is sitting at the bar, watching her posse but also closely watch this group of French Legionnaires that came into the bar as Doc Johnson talks to them. They all look super tired and mention that their Major has been more “tyrannical” in his operating of the base.

Later on that night we make camp near this barn since there isn’t really a motel or anything like that.

Night goes relatively quiet until we are all woken up by loud commanding French. Lance translates and says that they were told to arrest our group on the suspicion that we are rebels. (There was an unrelated thing going on between rebels and the Legionnaires). Romano steps up and says that we aren’t here to cause trouble. The Frenchman he is talking to just insultingly flicks Romano’s royal crest on his breastplate. That irritates Romano and Gretchen just watches, paranoid, having been rudely woken up. Having only her pistol in her holster as she she doesn’t go to sleep in a new place with something on her while she sleeps.

Romano reaches into his bag and gently unfolds an official letter from the Queen of Spain. (He was a former Spanish count who fought in the Third Carlist War). The man just grabs it and tosses it towards a pile of manure.

Romano instantly draws his sword, enraged at the blatant insult. Gretchen draws her pistol, pointing it at the man and taking a shot at him. She took Romano drawing his sword as the okay to attack. She barely clips him. After the fight, they tie up all the men, surprisingly not killed any of them.

Gretchen slowly walks over the the letter, gently dusting it off and looking it over. She notices the legitimacy of the letter, the feminine handwriting, a royal seal as she holds it out the Spaniard. He gives a small nod of gratitude, dusting it off a little more then folding it up with care and putting it back into his belongings. The letter and his family crest the only things tying him to his past, his family that was killed in the war, to the Spanish Royal Crown.

We decide to take the men’s uniforms and disguise ourselves to infiltrate the base as we knew some fuckery was happening in there now as we almost got arrested at the orders of the Major for no reason. Gretchen was forced to leave behind her weapons and goggles, only allowed to take her pistol and the rifle of one of the Legionnaires. She tucks her hair as best she can into the hat and her posse tells her not to talk as her German accent could cause problems.

But we had made some noise in the confrontation and a priest of Mexican descent had overheard and came to investigate. Steve noticed an aura of magic around this man and after a few questions learned that the priest was a Blessed (a divine blessed type of character than can perform miracles but only through prayer).

Steve knew what some Blessed were capable of and asked if there was any possibility of Romano getting healed. To which the priest confirmed but only on the condition that Romano came with him alone. This didn’t sit right with either Doc Johnson or Gretchen so they attempted to follow but lost the trail.

About 15 minutes of walking around the small town towards the church, we noticed the priest walking down the road towards our group. But he is not alone.

There is another man, looking so familiar yet different. He appeared as though he had regressed in age to look about 26.

Gretchen stopped and it takes a moment to register.

This was Romano.

Whatever the man did to heal her compatriot had made him whole again. No missing left eye, no limp, no missing left arm. All had been healed.

(And also had gotten rid of all his phobias and hindrances)

Gretchen is so overcome with shock and joy at seeing Romano full healed that she breaks from the group and runs down the street towards him. When she get to him her first action is to grab the Spaniard by the head, looking him over frantically and asking a million questions as to how this was possible. But Romano stays tight lipped about the circumstances of what happened in order for him to be healed.

Using Steve Lux as our “captive”, the posse and Lance, posing at as the Sargent of the company that we tied up in the barn start heading up to the base.

We are let into the base, Lance acting as our Sargent due him being the only one able to speak French. Steve detects evil black magic coming from the Major and when he sees the Major’s back turned, instantly blasts him in the back, killing him. He turns invisible and books it out of the open gates of the base.

Lance takes charge and barks (fake) orders in French telling people to search for whoever did that (as Steve instantly turned invisible and ran). The rest of posse investigates the base during the confusion and finds a room with a five pointed star with candles burning, a darker-skinned woman in a chair looking very stressed.

Gretchen smashes the candles with heel of her boot, Romano scuffing up the symbol on the ground with his sword. Her and Doc Johnson tinker with cuffs that were keeping this woman’s hands chained to the wall and break her free. We ask for her name and she confirms it as Rosalina(?).

In rescuing Rosalina(?), she had told us of the Red Devil. An Apache man who had been using black magic to control the major. And also that she herself was a Hoodooist. She was unsure of why she had been kidnapped so there wasn’t much we had to go on there.

We quickly leave the fort and Lance immediately wants to go to the church, as he believes that the artifact, his ‘family heirloom’ is there. But Romano adamantly disagrees with that idea, saying we should find a safe place to talk to this woman. However Lance is insistent in going to to church and had been very secretive over any information regarding what the artifact he was looking for was. Romano attempted to question him to no avail. Lance angrily accused Romano about knowing what the artifact was and not telling anyone.

However, Gretchen still very on edge and emotional from earlier events, snapped. She was done with this bastard.

The insane German woman shouted in anger, stomped up the man, fury in her eyes. She grabbed him by his jacket, yanking him close to her face, blue eyes wide in anger and demanded answers.

“I am fucking tired of zis secret-keeping of yours! Now you tell us vhat the hell zis family heirloom you are looking for is! Vhat does it look like?!”

Her shouting and sudden snapping scared Lance so badly that when Gretchen lets go of him he stumbles a few steps back. He straightened himself up and mumbles something about the artifact being a cup.

Romano’s instantly draws his sword and points it at Lance, refusing to let him get anywhere near the church. In response, Lance also draws his own sword. demanding a duel.

If Romano wins, Lance is going to be kept on a very very short leash. Not allowed to do anything without posse members watching him.

If Lance wins, he gets to go to the church without any problems.

The rest of the posse stood off to the sides, anxious and unsure. Especially Gretchen who had a hand resting on her pistol and staring at Lance in anger.

There was a tense stand off, swords both pointed at each other in dueling positions. But in a quick few swings, despite being evenly matched in skill, Romano had Lance laid out on the ground with some nonlethal but still pretty nasty gashes on his arms and chest.

It was then Romano realized that Vehementi, his sword, was vibrating. The faint sound of Ave Maria buzzing in his ears.

Vehementi only acted this way around undead or Harrowed.

Lance was undead.

During the duel, Steve had gone to the church and now was walking with him to where the posse was.

“I kept my word.” said Romano to the priest as he sheathed his sword.

Romano angrily reiterated that Lance was now under an even tighter leash, considering that he was undead. Gretchen took this metaphor literally and asked Romano if he wanted her to make an actual leash. He shook his head but thought it was amusing.

Keeping a close eye on Lance, everyone met up at the church. After closing the doors, the posse tied up Lance and locked him a nearby room.

Finally having some privacy, the priest took the time to explain what had happened to Romano.

The priest had had an experience a long while ago, about being some ancient catacombs. He was unsure if it was real or just a dream, But in that experience he had found a smooth clay cup. And when he woke up, he had it in his possession.

It was the Holy Grail.

That was the artifact that Lance had been after.

The fact that such a powerful item was here made sense as to how Romano can gotten healed.

It was a true divine miracle.

-TO BE CONTINUED-

#hexenbomb #hexen story #Session Shenanigans #Knights Without Armor #FINALLY WROTE THIS OUT GOD DAMN #LONG POST

[biofunmy]

Hotel Review: Hard Rock Hotel, London

Rates

A deluxe double room starts at £259, or about $320.

The Basics

With its new hotel at Marble Arch, Hard Rock Cafe International, Inc. brings it back to where it all began: London. The eponymous music, merchandise and restaurant company now has 186 cafes, 29 hotels and 12 casinos worldwide, but it started — by two Americans — with a small burger-serving diner in the city’s Mayfair district in 1971. After nearly 50 years, you might think the idea is tired, but on a recent Saturday night stay, at least in its first London hotel, the party is still going strong.

Take the large open-concept lobby and restaurant area, where two bars and a stage welcome guests with brightly colored furniture, friendly staff and nonstop tunes. Homage to rock music and rock musicians is found in details large and small, starting above the check-in desk, where hundreds of drum sticks hang down vertically from the ceiling, with electric lights at their tips. Rock memorabilia, including instruments, costumes and other clothing adorn the walls, and a Hard Rock merch shop is just across the lobby.

If the party stayed on the ground floor, this would be a rave review. Alas, the hotel, particularly its housekeeping arm, seemed to focus only on the fun, not the functionality.

The Location

The 900-room hotel, operated by GLH Hotels Management, is situated in a stately building once occupied by the Cumberland Hotel, on a corner of busy Oxford Street.

Its Central London location is a less-than-one-minute walk from the Central Line’s Marble Arch tube stop, and just across the street from Hyde Park and its 350 acres of green. With the plethora of hotels in the vicinity, be advised you won’t be the only tourist in the area.

The Room

I arrived at 2 p.m., one hour before check-in and was told, absolutely yes, I could be upgraded to accommodate the last-minute arrival of a friend. Housekeeping would convert the king bed with two single mattresses, within 15 to 20 minutes. Would I mind waiting, or perhaps come back in a short while?

Eight hours later, we still didn’t have those mattresses. While my friend Fiona and I waited for housekeeping, me struggling with jet lag, we took in all that was good and not so good with the room. It was immaculate and with double-paned windows overlooking the park and Oxford Street, thankfully quiet. Embroidered guitars decorated the duvet cover, with red and blue throw pillows, one emblazoned with the word “London.” Amy Winehouse looked down at us cheekily from a drawing hung from one wall.

We were told “everything you want or need” could be had by dialing Star Service, the in-room hospitality number. Unfortunately, no one picked up any of my multiple calls — first for the mattress, then to get a free Crosley turntable as a distraction, then simply for a sanity-saving drink (There was no minibar to be found, only the menu). I finally gave up and joined another queue in the lobby to complain.

“At least we have nice, clean mattresses!” Fiona pointed out an hour later, after housekeeping finally arrived.

The Bathroom

The music — particularly the guitar — theme continued in the bathroom, where a good-sized bathtub was shaped like one. The staff kindly hung a sign suggesting guests use a mat to avoid slipping, and I would have, if I could have found the mat. (It must have been with the minibar.) Heated bathroom mirrors were a nice touch, and the bathroom too was spotlessly clean.

Dining

Before our mattress debacle, we had headed to the lobby to hear the music and experience the bar scene. By ordering a Mexican drink at an American hotel in the English capital, perhaps I have only myself to blame: My on-the-rocks margarita arrived in a martini glass, without ice. It did have a nice salt rim. Fiona turned her nose up at the nachos, but she’s British. They were delicious.

The breakfast buffet is available at additional cost. Offered daily underneath the stage of the Hard Rock Cafe, it deserves a mention. After a short wait in line, we had everything we needed to make ourselves an English, American, continental or even Middle Eastern breakfast, or multiple combinations thereof.

Amenities

Yes, we struck out with the turntable (and a Fender guitar was another in-room option lost to the lack of housekeeping), but the evening’s free music show made up for it. Every night on the Hard Rock stage, a musical act puts on two performances, and we had the chance to hear a Scottish band called Delphi. It was an incredibly pleasant evening, after a long day of travel, to be listening to great live music while catching up with a wonderful old friend.

The Bottom Line

When I first walked through the automatic doors into the lobby area, blasting through the ceiling speakers was the classic song by Dr. John, “Right Place, Wrong Time.” Soon I would learn that the first few lyrics, “I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong time,” conveniently encapsulated my stay. The Hard Rock Hotel is rocking, the housekeeping was not. Let’s hope the service improves and the party can keep going.

Hard Rock Hotel London, 1 Great Cumberland Place, London; [phone]; hrhlondon.com

52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you’ll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world.

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[radioleary-blog]

John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin: To Infirmity and Beyond

I remember when the term “Space-Age” meant the future, now it means the past.

With the death of John Glenn and the recent hospitalization of Buzz Aldrin, it’s starting to look like the greatest days of pioneering and exploration are behind us. Let’s face it, we peaked as a civilization about half a century ago, and now we’re sliding back down on the great decline. Like the parabolic arc of a rocketship, we reached our zenith when we reached the Moon, and now we’re plummeting back to Earth to burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere. Not from velocity, just from our own global warming. Going to the Moon was the greatest achievement of humankind, and by a wide margin, 238,900 miles to be precise. Let’s put that distance in perspective: If you were to take everybody in line in front of you at your local Starbucks on a Monday morning, they would only reach halfway to the Moon. Wow, right?

The Moon is so far away that astronauts Tom Hanks and Lt. Dan couldn’t even get there in Apollo 13. I think it was because the other astronaut was Kevin Bacon, and his very presence caused all their calculations to be off by six degrees. Man, I hope somebody got that. I’m pretty sure Ed Harris was in that movie too, before he started killing robots and spilling paint on the floor. If it sounds like I never even saw Apollo 13, you’re right. I just know that from the title it sounds like another one of those high-number sequels, like X-Men 9,  or Star Wars 7, or Oceans 11, and I think I would have to watch the other 12 Apollo movies first to know what was going on. I mean, I saw the first Apollo movie, where he fights Rocky, right? That was a good one. I know they fight again in the sequel, but after that Rocky goes on to fight Mr. T, and Dolph Lundgren, and Viet Nam a few times. I didn’t know there were a dozen more Apollo Creed movies, and in this one he’s in space? Now I have to see it! I learn so much from documentaries. I guess if a cartoon rock band of strippers like Josie and the Pussycats can make it into Outer Space, anybody can.

Going to the moon was man’s highest ambition from the moment the very first cavemen looked up and touched that monolith. Next thing you know, they were throwing bones in the air to the Blue Danube Waltz, and somehow that started the space program. And our Apollo mission was the big, climactic finish of man’s deep-seated longing for the Moon. It wasn’t just the Moonshot, it was the Money shot. And like any good porn actors, our astronauts hit it two more times before they quit it.

And we haven’t been back since. Which is pathetic. And don’t give me any of the usual millennialist Weltschmerz about how there’s no reason to go back, and it costs a lot, and it’s just a bunch of rocks. If you want to put it that way, then Mount Rushmore is just a bunch of rocks, and the Pyramids are just a bunch of rocks, and the Grand Canyon is just a hole where a bunch of rocks used to be. But they’re all sure as hell worth the gas to get there. And you’re not thinking very hard if you can’t come up with a hundred ways the Moon could be used for fun and profit. How a theme park, Disneymoon. And they wouldn’t even have to build Space Mountain, they’d just have to point in any direction and go, “There! There’s a space mountain! And there! There’s another space mountain!”” Then they could point point back to the Earth in the distance and say, “See? It’s a small world after all.” It would certainly be a honeymoon destination. Or would that be a honeyearth destination, it’s kinda messed up. Plus billionaires could hide their money on the Moon to avoid paying taxes, no taxes on the Moon. Today they have to stash their money in off-shore accounts, you know how much they’d love to stash their money in off-world accounts? Good plan, unless the Ferengi find out about it. And the Moon looks like the best place to be to score some alien drugs. No drug laws on the Moon, either. Forget Maui, imagine Lunar Kush from the Sea of Tranquility. In space, no one can hear you cough.

But we’re not going back to the Moon, not anytime soon anyway, not Americans. Not men, not women, and probably not your kids or grandkids. We’ve lost it. The will as a people, the cohesiveness, the cooperation and the belief in a better future that would be needed for such an undertaking. They can’t even fix the roads. Hell, we don’t even have any spaceships anymore. The Shuttles were scuttled and shuttered and scattered and shuffled off to museums and I’m eating skittles. Try saying that, I dare you.

And we don’t have many astronauts left either. And the ones we do have left are getting very, very old. Personally, I’d like to see them go back into space.  And luckily, Cape Canaveral is already in Florida. The mission would be called AARP-OLLO 13. They would stop at the International Space Station, but just to ask directions. And then they’d forget where they parked. There is a danger they might freeze to death, simply because they’re all old men, and they would all keep turning down the thermostat. “I’m not paying to heat the whole outdoors, let alone the endless reaches of space!” They’d be the first astronauts to orbit the Earth at no more than 40 miles an hour. They’d be going so slow they’d probably be passed by a Galaxy. A 1967 Ford Galaxy. Upon re-entry, they’d orbit the Earth six extra times looking for a closer parking space. And they’d land in the wrong time zone just so they can still catch the early-bird special.

John Glenn died on December 8th at age 95, and he was an amazing man. He was a fighter pilot in both WWII and Korea, he flew 149 combat missions, his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on twelve separate occasions and he survived. Then he went into the space program and became the first American to orbit the Earth. Then he served 20 years in the U.S. Senate. Then at age 77, he returned to space. Has anyone in the world ever achieved more? I seriously doubt it. And yet if you ask people today who the most interesting man in the world is, they’ll say it’s the liver-damaged Latin lothario Don Juan-wannabe in the Dos Equis beer commercials. Well if he’s so goddamn interesting, how come he’s always in some dive bar at closing time, telling his stories to a couple of bored hookers one-third his age, instead of being at home with a family that loves him? How badly did he screw up his life with alcohol and the constant need to be the life of the party? Hell, that’s basically me without the accent, and I’m not the least bit interesting. I wish the voice-over in those Dos Equis commercials that tell us how interesting he is were more honest about his actual exploits:

“He drank so much crappy Mexican beer that even his new liver needs a new liver.”

“Once in a drunken rampage he punched Mother Teresa in the tit because he thought she was a velociraptor.”

“He sold his soul to the Devil for free beer for life, but now the Devil realizes he made a bad deal and wants out of the contract.”

And then there’s his tagline. “I don’t always drink beer, but when I don’t, I still drink beer. So I guess I do always drink beer. Buy me a beer?” And, “Stay thirsty, my friends.” Stay thirsty? That sounds like one of the warning signs of diabetes to me. Put down the beer and get yourself to an endocrinologist. “I don’t always inject insulin, but when I do, I always drink beer. Stay medicated, my friends.” Mega-Dose Equis.

And have you noticed they recently replaced the old “most interesting man in the world” for a new, much less-interesting man in the world? What happened to the old guy, did Trump already deport him? Now that would be interesting. What actually happened is, Dos Equis wanted to change their image to appeal to the growing hispanic population, so they dropped Jonathan Goldsmith, who is actually Jewish, and replaced him with Augustin Legrande, who is actually French. That makes sense. Nothing more popular in Latino culture than Post-Impressionism and delicate Croquembouche puff pastries.

Days before John Glenn died, Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, was evacuated from the South Pole because he was showing signs of altitude sickness. That’s how every news media began their report. Every one of them. Buzz Aldrin, “the second person to walk on the moon”.

Actually, what they’ve called him all these years was “the second MAN to walk on the moon”, which is substantially more accurate, and shorter to say. I’m not sure when they stopped using the word ‘man’ to describe him, but it happened when I wasn’t looking. Which basically just means it didn’t happen on Pornhub. So now the Moon landings are gender-neutral now, and I’m cool with whatever, but I think that tinkering with the descriptive language of historical events is kind of ‘1984’. It’s doubleplusungood. I’d say it was ‘Big Brother’, but today it would have to be ‘Big Sibling’. Which is fine, I guess. Orwell that ends well, I always say. I just don’t see the point in being purposefully vague about the gender of the people who walked on the Moon, there were only twelve of them, and all of them were men. I think people are okay with that fact, and I’m pretty sure that if we had continued to refer to them as men it would not have led to widespread protests at Cape Canaveral. I doubt there’d be hordes of angry progressives marching on the launchpad holding up signs that read “NASA: Not Another Sexist Agency!” and “Rockets=Flying Erections!”

I know there are just as many women as men who want to go to the Moon and are qualified to do so. Although with the women I’ve known, their favorite rocket? It fit in their pocket. And none of the women I know would want to go to Moon, for the same reason they hated every restaurant I’ve ever taken them to: the food sucks and there’s no atmosphere. <moonshot rimshot>

But hey, things change fast; language, everything, whether you notice it or not. That’s how the world changes; not before your eyes, but behind your back. Never while you’re looking. One day, you just turn around and there are no more pay phones. “Where did they go? They were right here like five minutes ago! Thousands of them!” There were rows and rows of pay phones, on every corner of every street in every city in America. And then, there weren’t. Just like that. And I’ll tell you what, I never saw any pay phones get hauled up out of the ground by the roots and loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck. Not once. They were just gone, man. Not even a hole in the sidewalk where they were, just smooth cement. Were workmen ordered to remove them only in the middle of the night, so as not to frighten people with the pace of societal change? Nobody ever sees change coming, you just eventually notice that it happened. They always tell you to “face the future”, but to do that, you better keep looking over your shoulder.

I actually feel sorry for anyone who never knew the cheap thrill of walking by a pay phone and sticking your fingers into the coin return slot, on the very small chance that somebody walked away and left money in there. It didn’t ever actually happen, to my knowledge, but people always stopped to check anyway. Today, these are the same people who buy scratch-off lottery tickets and think they’ll win, and when they don’t win, they buy more scratch-off lottery tickets and think they’ll win. I found a dime in the coin return slot once. Not the coin, but a bag of weed some guy stuffed in there when he was making a call and a cop car parked next to him. Apparently it was the kind of weed that makes you paranoid, because when I smoked it up, I had a weird feeling the pay phone was going to ring and it would be the guy asking for his weed back. Anyway. The coin return slot on pay phones curved upward, so you had to crook and curve your finger as you inserted it, wiggling your fingers looking for coins. Incidentally, this hand motion, repeated over time, eventually led to the discovery of the G-spot. Combine that motion with the motion of dialing an old telephone by inserting your index finger into a hole and making lazy circles, and you weren’t sure if you were giving someone a call or giving them an orgasm.

When I was a kid we had a rotary phone, or as it was called back then, a phone. And they were a pain in the ass to dial. It was relatively easy to dial the lower numbers, they were the closest to whatever the hell you called that curved metal hook that stopped your finger like a miniature Soviet-era sickle, but you had to go almost all the way around the circle for the 8, 9, and 0. And then you had to wait for the wheel to roll all the way back before you could dial the next number. I swear to god, we dropped friends and cut ties with family because their phone numbers had a lot of high numbers that were too much work to dial. “I’m sorry, Grandma, but your number is 797-8990, we love you, but we’ve met another old lady whose number is 232-1311. She’s not you, but she’s a lot easier to talk to. Nothing personal, nanna, we just dialed the low numbers until somebody answered.” And to call somebody in another area code, ten-digits with high numbers? You’d be better off writing them a letter and dropping it in a mailbox. Wait a minute - where the hell did all the mailboxes go? They were right here like five minutes ago! Thousands of them! Right next to the pay phones!

Yeah, I’m old, so what. So I was born before smart phones with unlimited data. So how come It was the generation with the smart phones and the unlimited data that were too stupid to vote? If their phones get any smarter, we’ll be living in a feudal kingdom.

But I am old. I’m so old, until recently, I thought “Galaxy 7 with Unlimited Data” was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In all fairness, he was an Android. And the Enterprise’s mission was to seek out new Verizons. Whoa! Wait a minute! I just remembered something! In the original (best) Star Trek, Kirk’s narration was “...to boldly go where no man has gone before”. But in The Next Generation (not the best), Picard’s monologue was “...to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Holy shit, this gender-neutral-in-space thing goes back further than I thought! I didn’t notice it when it happened, and it was even before Pornhub.

But I digress. Buzz Aldrin, “The second man/person to walk on the Moon.” How tired he must be of hearing that word for the last fifty years. Second. They’ve been calling him that since 1969. Second. Hell, John Glenn just circled the globe three times and he still gets to be called First, Buzz went all the way to the Moon and he gets called Second. Forever to be known throughout all of human history as the guy who had to settle for the Silver Medal in the only race that ever really counted. Poor guy, people think. He was this close to being the famous hero in all the books. Because on July 20, 1969, he stepped on the moon about 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong took the historic first step.

But it’s not what this man deserves to be called. Second place? Bullshit. Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the Moon. Why the hell haven’t they given him his due credit for the last fifty years? Sure, he had Neil Armstrong sitting right next to him, but they touched down on the Moon at the exact same second. They were both the first men on the Moon! You want to know who the real big loser in this adventure is, it’s Michael Collins. That poor son of a bitch went all the way to the Moon with Buzz and Neil, but he had to stay in orbit so they could link up to get back home. If you don’t recognise his name, that’s a testament to how badly he got screwed by history. And no, Liam Neeson did not make a movie about him. Michael Collins is alive and well at age 86, and living in Rome. Hey, here’s a crazy thought, maybe we should start appreciating him a little bit while we still have him, and pay him the kind of attention and importance we normally reserve only for Kardashians.

How insane, that the press, popular culture, and now history books have labeled Buzz Aldrin as anything less than First, and forgotten Collins altogether. When two drivers win a cross-country road race, they crossed the finish line together and they are both first place! Do they say the winner is the one who gets out of the car first? Hell no! When a rowing team wins the gold at the Olympics, do they only give the medal to the guy at the front of the boat? You’re damn right they don’t. Why is Buzz Aldrin a hero? Because he’s managed to accept this injustice with class and dignity, and smile and wave as if it isn’t killing him on the inside. But that’s probably why he’s still chasing adventure by going to the South Pole at age 86. I bet when they got to South Pole, Buzz said to the people with him, “ We made it! Hey, anybody see Neil Armstrong here? No? Nobody sees him? He didn’t get here twenty minutes before us? Oh, right, he died in 2012! Didn’t get here first, did ya, Neil!” Until someone says, “Mr. Aldrin? Wouldn’t that mean that Neil Armstrong got to heaven first?” Then Buzz collapsed and was airlifted to a hospital in New Zealand. If I was Buzz Aldrin, I think I would have killed the first guy to call me Second. Then at least I would be the First astronaut to be charged with First degree murder. Total Buzzkill. Pun intended.

I’m afraid that soon enough, after everybody who went to the Moon has died, and then after everybody who witnessed the Moon landing live on TV has died, that people will come to think that it never really happened. It’ll only take another generation or two of societal lassitude and torpidity until the Moon landing will be listed on IMDB as a Stanley Kubrick film. Which, it just may well be, of course, but that’s a discussion for another day. Someday, the Moonwalk will only be remembered as a 20th Century pedophile’s dance move. And someday the astronauts will only be known for the tired old cliche: “How come they can put a man on the moon, but they can’t…” Fill in the annoyance of your choice. No matter how trivial or insignificant, your personal pet peeve deserves to be compared to the decades of monumental effort, investment, innovation, and sacrifice it took to get us to the Moon. Here’s a few examples:

“How come they can put a man on the moon, but they can’t…make a cell phone battery that lasts more than eight hours?”

Hmm, maybe because Jules Verne, the Wright brothers, and Werner Von Braun didn’t give a shit whether or not you could spend your entire work shift playing with your face on the snapchat filter?

“How come they can put a man on the moon, but they can’t...build a robot that looks just like me that I can send to work to earn a paycheck so I can stay home and chill all day?”

They did. It quit your job on the first day, moved to Los Angeles, became an independent film producer, and he’s engaged to the actress you had a crush on in high school. And he said to tell you she is amazing in bed. He’s living the life you could have, but unlike you, the robot has a drive.

“How come they can put a man on the moon, but they can’t...put a man on the sun?”

A fair question. This should be easy enough. The Sun is a much bigger target, so it should be hard to miss, and it’s very well-lit. And it’s solar powered.

“How come they can put a man on the moon, but they can’t…make a toilet that doesn't amplify my farts 500%?”

Now this one I agree with. Everybody tries to be quiet in the bathroom. So why are toilets shaped exactly like a satellite dish designed to pick up the faintest sounds and signals from space? You're trying to crap as quietly as possible into something shaped to acoustically focus sound and amplify it like a SETI signal receiver. I’m in the bathroom, and people in the living room are like, "Either Aracebo has made contact with Alpha Centauri, or he ate Indian food again."  Sure, your ass is pressed to the seat, trying to form a sound-proof seal, but that just changes the pitch. Like when Louis Armstrong used to mute his trumpet with a plunger. He probably thought of doing that while on the toilet, why else would he use a plunger?

Mine might be: “How come they can put a man on the moon, but...we still call the sky the limit?"

But if I could only pick one, I think it would have to be: “If they can put a man on the moon...why can’t that man be Donald Trump?”

[newssplashy]

Entertainment: A Quebec comedian is happy to offend in multiple languages

For Christmas,” it said, “I’d like a complaint from the Office de la Langue Française,” the Quebec watchdog responsible for preserving the French language. His plea did not go unnoticed.

MONTREAL — A few years ago, the Quebec comedian Sugar Sammy put a giant ad on a Montreal subway billboard. “

For Christmas,” it said, “I’d like a complaint from the Office de la Langue Française,” the Quebec watchdog responsible for preserving the French language. His plea did not go unnoticed.

In Quebec, a French province surrounded by an English majority in the rest of Canada, sensitivities about language are profound, and large billboards must typically be only in French. Beyond prompting a complaint to the agency from an irate Montreal lawyer, the stunt spawned a loud debate about language, along with a death threat from a Québécois nationalist at his next show.

A fearless comic with a talent for provoking both laughter and outrage, Sammy, born Samir Khullar, is a 42-year-old son of Indian immigrants. He is also a child of Bill 101, the polarizing Quebec law behind the sign infraction, which requires immigrants to send their children to French schools. As a result, he glides effortlessly between English and French in his shows, and has made Quebec’s tortured identity politics his main preoccupation.

“Humor allows you to address taboos,” said Khullar, whose parents came to Montreal from northern India in the 1970s and who is far more soft-spoken in person than his swaggering, expletive-fueled stage persona would suggest. “In Quebec the ultimate taboo is identity,” he added.

At a recent packed show in a former 1920s cinema in Montreal, Khullar bounded across the stage, before diving into his favorite subject: those who want Quebec to separate from the rest of Canada.

“Are there any separatists here?” he asked in perfectly accented Québécois French. “Come on, don’t be shy.”

After a dozen people raised their hands, he continued, “Are you happy with where you are sitting, or do you want to separate from the rest of the audience and create your own section?” The mixed Anglophone and Francophone audience, including the hand-raisers, exploded with laughter.

He switched to English for a joke on President Donald Trump’s security strategy on the Mexican border. “We don’t have a lot of Latinos in Canada,” he said. “It’s too cold. We don’t need a wall. We have winter.”

When he first came up with the idea of doing a bilingual act, “You’re Gonna Rire” (“You’re Gonna Laugh”) in 2012, comedy producers told him he was crazy: The Anglophones wouldn’t understand the jokes in French, and the English humor would be lost on the Francophones.

So he produced it himself, and the show became an overnight sensation. It transformed Khullar, a virtuoso improvisor whose looks have been likened to Elvis, into a household name in Quebec, garnering him coveted comedy awards and making him a millionaire.

This being Quebec, he was also pilloried by some French-speaking Quebec nationalists for bastardizing the language of Molière by speaking Franglais. Anglophones who didn’t speak French were annoyed at feeling left out.

He was variously labeled a dangerous “Francophobe,” a federalist “fanatic,” and a political activist masquerading as a comedian.

“If Sugar Sammy is the future of Quebec, then Quebec has no future,” Mathieu Bock-Côté, a prominent Quebecois columnist, wrote in Le Journal de Montréal.

Khullar has performed in 31 countries, including Switzerland, Malaysia and France, where GQ enthused that “the funniest person in France is Quebecois.”

He recently opened a show in Paris, where he is living for a time, with the line, “I’m happy to be in France. You guys are my favorite Arab country.”

Louise Richer, director of L'École nationale de l’humour in Montreal and a leading critic, said Khullar occupied a unique place by bridging Quebec’s cultural divide. “He’s a good barometer of a society that has come of age and can now laugh at itself,” she said.

Khullar embodies a new generation in Quebec less burdened by the language and culture wars of the past, said Marc Cassivi, a columnist for La Presse, a leading French-language newspaper, who wrote a book about bilingualism in Quebec.

“It is doubtful that Sugar Sammy would’ve survived as a comedian in Quebec of the 1970s, and would’ve left on the first train to Toronto,” Cassivi said.

Khullar’s humor was deeply informed by being the son of immigrants; his father sold juice out of the back of a truck before opening two convenience stores. His mother worked in a textile factory before eventually staying at home to raise the family. Growing up in a basement apartment in Côte-des-Neiges, a gritty multicultural neighborhood in Montreal, Khullar worked as a cashier at his father’s shops, which sold beef jerky and cigarettes and were called “Au Gourmet International.”

“There was nothing gourmet or international about it,” he said, laughing.

Immersed in French in school, Khullar and his younger brother spoke Punjabi and Hindi at home, and learned English on the street and by watching “The Dukes of Hazzard.” At his high school, where he was anointed the class clown at age 15, his best friends were Jewish-Moroccan, Haitian, Guatemalan and Chinese — a comedic focus group of sorts that he credits for his ability now to cross borders and make people laugh.

He said he was largely sheltered from racism “because we were all immigrant kids,” adding that his Indian parents always supported his comedy. “If you come to my parents’ place you’re not leaving without watching a Sugar Sammy video,” he explained. “The guy will be, ‘I’m just here to deliver the mail.'”

His decision to become a comedian was clinched when he first saw Eddie Murphy’s 1983 stand-up comedy television special “Delirious” as a teenager and was attracted by his raw, unbridled humor. “Here you had this guy in bright red leather owning the stage with the charisma of a rock star,” he said. “I wanted to be that guy.”

Eager to find an original stage name, he settled on the nickname his female friends had given him when he was a party promoter while studying at McGill University: Sugar Sammy.

His political awakening as a comic came in 1995 during areferendum that asked Quebecers whether the province should become an independent country. After the “no” camp won with a bare 50.6 percent of the vote, Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau, a leader on the “yes” side, blamed the result on, among other things, “the ethnic vote.”

The comments stung Khullar, who was 19. “Here I was a teenager who was doing everything to be part of Quebec society and I was being told that I was responsible for the failure of Quebec’s dream of statehood,” he recalled. “I realized that I would always be the ‘other’ in Quebec, no matter what language I spoke.”

Instead of stewing, he used his sense of alienation as fuel for his comedy.

One of his first big breaks came in 2004 when his show attracted attention at the Montreal-based “Just for Laughs” festival, the largest international comedy festival in the world. He became co-creator in 2014 of a successful French television sitcom called “Ces gars-là,” (“Those Guys”) in the spirit Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and began crisscrossing the globe.

An ardent federalist who believes Quebec should remain a part of Canada, he takes mischievous pleasure in skewering those who he calls “separatists,” many of whom prefer to be identified as “sovereigntists.”

“I like picking on separatists because it’s fun!” he said in a performance of “You’re Gonna Rire.”

He brought up the referendum at a recent sold-out performance here. “There are two kinds of Quebecers,” he mused. “There are Quebecers who are educated, cultivated, well-brought up. Then you have those who voted ‘yes.'”

Determined that his comedy have the whiff of authenticity, he obsessively prepares for his shows abroad by observing people on the subway, doing his laundry at public laundromats and eating at restaurants.

He has taken his acerbic humor to, among other places, the American Midwest. “I nearly got killed in Missouri because they think Canadians are communists,” he said. He has performed in English, Punjabi and Hindi in his parents’ India. And he traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform at a remote venue, where men and women sat together.

“People had such a good time — for that one hour they were free,” he said, recalling the performance. He added with cackle: “If only we felt that way in Quebec.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Dan Bilefsky © 2018 The New York Times

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/entertainment-quebec-comedian-is-happy_12.html

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