HOLY PANIC ATTACK, BATMAN!

I'm not afraid of heights, I'm just not comfortable with them.

That's what I've always told myself, anyway. I can safely say that's a lie. I'm terrified of heights.

I saw this video and had a minor panic attack at my desk. These two guys, Vadim Makharov and Ritaliy Raskalov, basically travel around the world, find the highest places they can get to and explore it.

Recently, they were in China and targeted the Shanghai Tower, which, when completed, will be the second tallest building in the world. During the Chinese New Year and armed with Go Pro cameras, they hopped over the fence, climbed 120 stories and slept until the morning. When they woke up, they went all the way to the top, then climbed out onto a crane overlooking the city.

It's the scariest thing I've ever seen. My hands started to sweat and I felt lightheaded just watching the video. I give these guys all the credit in the world, because there is no way in hell I would ever try this. I get uncomfortable when I'm too high at the climbing gym with ropes attached. There's no way I'd climb an unattended crane nearly half a mile above a city.

They each have their own LiveJournal (!) where they write about their adventures and a joint site called On The Roofs, which is basically just the video below.

WOLVES & MARTYRS: THE ORIGIN OF VALENTINE'S DAY

*Ed. Note -- I post this every Valentine's Day because I had fun writing it and think it's fun for people to read.*

I miss the days when I had to come up with an awesome Valentine's Day box for school. I was pretty good at it and it was fun. Now it's just a day where I read girls complaining about it on the Internet.

But where did it come from? How did it start?

Oh, please, allow me.

In the spirit of the comic books that I've always been fond of, I kind of refer to this as a "Valentine's Day: Year One" story.

In 3rd or 4th century BC, The Parentalia and Feralia Festivals of Purification were celebrated from February 13-18 to coincide with the Fertility Festival. The latter was a ritual not unlike the "Casual Encounters" section of CraigsList. All of the willing females would enter their names into a box and one by one, eligible men would step up for their turn. With a name in hand, the two would go off and what happened next was reffered to as a "rite of passage." You can use your imagination for what that entails.

Before that began however, there was the LUPERCALIA (from the Latin lupus, meaning "wolf"). During this day, priests—known as Luperci—from two colleges (Quintillii and Fabii) would meet at the Cave of Lupercal in the Palatine Hill, where a she-wolf was said to have nursed Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome. There, Vestal Virgins would offer holy salt cakes and the priests would sacrifice a dog and a goat, smearing the animal blood onto the foreheads of youths of noble birth. Clad only in a goatskin thong, those same youths would later lead a band of revelers known as the luperci in the performance of such antics as whipping fields of crops and bystanders with a goatskin strip (known as the februa). Women gently lashed in such a fashion were thought to become fertile—even those known to be barren. The act of such lashings or whippings was known as februatio. Both this word and the word februa come from the Latin meaning "to purify." The naming of the month, February, is believed to have originated from these meanings.

Basically, February means "to purify by beating with a goatskin strip."

No flowers, chocolate or candy hearts yet.

When Christianity was eventually formed, it was attempted to replace the rituals with something a little bit more uplifting. Pope Gelasius outlawed the Lupercian Festival, but kept the name drawing part—just slightly tweaked. Instead of available women, the names of Saints were written on the papers and it was believed that the recipient (boys and girls participated in the drawing) would emulate the life of whichever Saint was chosen. This new system, while much more noble, was a lot less fun. Eventually, it was abandoned and the old "rite of passage" returned.

Those are the ones you don't hear too much about. This one however, is the most widely known part of the origin.

In Rome, 270 AD, Claudius II passed an edict that abolished marriage. He felt that married men made poor soldiers because they were loath to leave their loves ones for battle. The emperor craved a strong army far more than he cared about popularity and banned the act of marriage all together.

Valentine, a bishop of Interamna, disagreed with the Emperor and invited young lovers to come to him in secret to be joined in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius soon learned of this "friend of lovers" and had the bishop brought to the palace. The Emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the Roman gods to save him from otherwise certain execution. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity and imprudently attempted to convert the Emperor. It didn't work and he was sentenced to death. While Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, Asterius. Through his unswerving faith, he miraculously restored her sight—which bothers me because I still have to basically wait out a god damn cold. He signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine."

Soon after he left the note, actually on February 14th (or so history claims), Valentine was clubbed, stoned and then beheaded.

To recap, in case you got bored: Valentine's Day is essentially the celebration of torture, blood, sacrifice, random sex, wolves and martyrs.

I want a card with that on it.

(*Note - I wrote this after reading a few different histories relating to Valentine's Day on the Internet and put it together after reading something Warren Ellis posted way back in the day, so this is all his fault. Also, it's entirely possible that none of this is true or historically accurate at all. But it's far more entertaining. Originally I started throwing it out on LiveJournal, then MySpace and now I re-post it on trevorhale.com every year on Feb. 14.)

THE DAY AL GORE SAVED MY LIFE

I was visiting my family in Arizona.*

It was early in the morning and my mom and Aunt Karen were sitting in the kitchen. A newspaper was spread out on the counter. I glanced at it as I walked by. Something in it caught my eye, so I stopped for a closer look. At the bottom of the opened page there was an ad that read something like, “One lucky citizen will receive a phone call from Al Gore today!”

The ad confused me, because that was literally the only thing it said. There was a picture of Al Gore smiling at the camera with a flashy border around the whole thing, but there was no additional information. As I was thinking about it, the phone rang behind me. It was a cordless phone hung up on the wall next to the refrigerator. I was on the side of the counter nearest to it, and my mom and aunt were on the other. Karen motioned for me to go ahead and get it, which was weird since it was her home and I could have just as easily lifted the phone off the hanger and handed it to her. She said no, and told me to answer it. I did.

“Hello?”
“Hi. Who’s this?”
“Trevor. Who’s this?”
“Al Gore. I guess you’re the lucky winner!”
“Um, hold on. It’s my aunt’s house. You should probably talk to her.”
“No, no, no. You answered the phone and that means you’ve won. You get to spend the next 45 minutes on the phone with me.” **

My mom and Aunt Karen looked confused as to why I hadn’t passed the phone to them. I pointed to the ad in the paper.

“He said I can’t hand the phone to anyone. I answered so I have to be the one to talk.”

Both of their eyes lit up and they exchanged huge smiles. They both started running around the house telling everyone else what was happening.

“Bob! Kim! Trevor’s on the phone with Al Gore! Al Gore! Come up here!”

Everyone started flooding into the kitchen to watch me. Things started to get awkward because as I was talking to Al Gore about nothing in particular, the crowd got bigger and bigger. My brother showed up, his wife and son not far behind, all my cousins and their kids. I didn’t even know all of these people were in the house, but there they were. I eventually wandered into the backyard, down the steps from the sliding glass door, across the deck and to the back lawn. I paced back and forth as my entire family watched through the window.

I don’t think any of them actually like Al Gore as a politician and they’re not fans of his environmental efforts – he’s just the closest thing to a celebrity as they could get. They weren’t jealous that I was the one talking to him and not them, they were just happy to be within a single degree of separation of someone that’s been on TV before.

The first real meaty conversation we got into was about stamps.*** He was telling me about his stamp collection, but it was one he'd just barely started, so the only ones he'd collected so far were the "Forever" stamps that you can buy at the supermarket. He bought his at the post office from the self-service kiosk. He was really excited about it. I told him about my Grandpa's collection that he'd been working on for most of my life and probably before that, too. Al Gore was impressed. I looked up to the window to see if my Grandpa was there, but he wasn't. I relayed this info to Al, but he quickly shot me down. "Well, even if he was there I wouldn't be able to talk to him. You're the one that answered the phone."

Not for a single minute did my new friend Al and I talk politics or the environment. As soon as I got to one end of the yard, it ceased to be a yard anymore and turned into a desolate alleyway. Al Gore was suddenly giving me tips on how to navigate my way through various scenarios that play out in horror movies. As he began to describe whatever situation popped in to his head, that’s what my surroundings became. When he started talking about how to avoid a herd of zombies in an alley,**** all of a sudden I was in an alley looking for places to avoid the undead lumbering towards me. When he started giving me tips on evading a serial killer chasing my through the streets in the middle of the night, that’s what was around the next corner.

There was, however, always one exception. Wherever I ended up, whatever the scene became, there was always a window about 10 feet above me where my whole family was watching. They were never worried about me, because Al Gore was always able to tell me exactly what to do, exactly when to do it. I was never in any danger whatsoever.

Eventually my 45 minutes were up and he said he had to go. I understood, we said our goodbye’s and hung up the phone. That’s when the window to my aunt’s kitchen disappeared and I was all alone in a weird alleyway/neighborhood street hybrid. One half was the alley and the other half was a quiet suburban street lined with trees. I had no phone anymore and no way to get back to wherever I was supposed to be.

That's when I woke up.

This was a dream I had the other night. Lately I've been having weird dreams and in the middle of the night when I wake up, I take notes about them. The next morning, I try to remember everything I can about the dream, so I decided to start fleshing them out.

Here are the footnotes.

* Aside from my Grandpa for 5 months out of the year, I have no family in Arizona whatsoever. My Aunt Karen lives in the suburbs of Sandy. Everything about the house was the same, it was just in Arizona and the only reason I know that is because the newspaper was the Arizona Republic.

** This is the only actual dialogue that I remember.

*** I'm pretty sure this portion of the dream/conversation came about because earlier that day I'd been watching Jeopardy Kid's Week (which I killed at, by the way) and there was a category about stamps that I did surprisingly well at.

**** I woke up once in the middle of this dream because I jumped when a zombie came out of literally nowhere. I must have twitched in bed, which scared my cats because they jumped off the bed which is what woke me up. Luckily, I fell right back asleep and right back into the middle of the dream.

WELCOME TO OAKLAND - FOX NEWS STYLE!

Remember the plane that crashed in San Francisco a little while back?

Well, during the subsequent mad scramble to report on the incident and in the continuing quest to beat out other networks for "scoops," Oakland Fox affiliate KTVU-TV thought they had something no one else did - the names of the pilots responsible for the crash.

Unfortunately, it was just someone playing a joke and the TV anchors were dumb enough to run with it. They claim that an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigator in Washington confirmed the names, but let's get real. No. Way.

KTVU listed the names as:

Captain Sum Ting Wong (something wrong)
Wi Tu Lo (we too low)
Ho Lee Fuk (Holy Fuck)
Bang Ding Ow (Bang! Ding! Ow!)

The kicker? The news anchor READ THESE NAMES ALOUD and didn't think there was anything fishy about them.

Hat tip to Matthew Keys (@matthewkeyslive, MatthewKeys.com)  for pointing it out and documenting it for the rest of us.

Here's the video of it. For now anyway. Until it gets taken down because they probably feel like complete morons as they rightfully should.



And here's video of her kind of apologizing after a bunch of people probably called the station to say: "Are you serious? What's wrong with you morons? You couldn't see those were obviously fake names? How dumb can you be?"



*UPDATE* - Asiana Airlines is now suing the station because of this. They're suing because it was the made up names—not crashing into a wall while trying to land—that has left the reputation of the airline "badly damaged."

TWO IS NOT BETTER THAN ONE - *UPDATED*

*UPDATES*
 
Dez Cadena is now a member of the Keith Morris version, now simply called FLAG. You can see a video of that version over here.

Greg Ginn, whose version is claiming the name Black Flag said his version was "not to be confused with the 'fake' Flag band currently covering the songs of Black Flag in an embarrassingly weak 'mailing it in' fashion." also released a new song that you can listen to here.

The AV Club probably has my favorite line yet about these two: "And meanwhile, Henry Rollins remains at home waiting for the red phone of justice to ring and looking at his tattoos."

The battle lines have been drawn. Whose side are you on?

Original post continues below:

There was a conflicting news report on the Internet this morning.

Not conflicting in the way you're thinking of. It was more personally conflicting and I still don't know how I feel about it.

Greg Ginn is reforming Black Flag with the intent of writing new music and putting out a new record. He recruited Gregory Moore, who played drums on the brief Black Flag reunion in 2003, Dale Nixon, which is actually Ginn's pseudonym for when he writes and plays bass, meaning they don't actually have a bass player and Ron Reyes to provide vocals. Reyes was the second vocalist for Black Flag, but didn't last long. He quit the band mid-set in 1980 because of escalating crowd violence. The band finished their set by playing an extra long version of "Louie, Louie" and asking crowd members to take turns singing. Reyes did provide vocals on the band's EP "Jealous Again" but was credited as Chevo Pedarast—a Spanish term for "pedophile". So they split on great terms.

Reyes replaced original vocalist Keith Morris, who quit the band because he wasn't getting along with Ginn but was getting along very well with cocaine and speed.

Speaking of Keith Morris, he's also reforming Black Flag.

His version has a bunch of shows scheduled and includes Chuck Dukowski, who played bass as Black Flag was gaining a huge reputation in the early years. He's credited with being the so-called "leader" of the band, mainly because Ginn was quiet and usually avoided the spotlight. Dukowski gave the interviews, helped establish the band's sound—along with Ginn's unique guitar style, of course—and kept them working and even acted as the band's manager after he was no longer in it. They've also got Bill Stevenson on drums and Stephen Egerton playing guitar. Stevenson had filled in for Black Flag numerous times before finally joining full-time in the early 80s—pulling double duty with Descendents. Egerton (from Salt Lake City and a member of Utah's very own Massacre Guys) never played in Black Flag, but played in both Descendents and All.

Henry Rollins and Dez Cadena have yet to announce their respective versions of Black Flag, but at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

Actually no, I would be surprised if Rollins formed a different version. He and Ginn don't get along and I don't think they've actually spoken in a long, long time. I've heard him talk about it and read things he's written and he's reached out to Ginn a few times over the years and it's never panned out. I think he's content to just let things lie where they are between them. He gets along great with pretty much everyone in Keith Morris' version, so if anything, I'd expect to see him at a few of their shows. Maybe not on vocals, but definitely hanging on the side of the stage, just watching. I feel like he'd be content with that.

I still don't know how I feel about reunion shows. I've seen a reunited Earth Crisis, which was terrible but I've also seen a reunited Descendents, which was awesome. This could really go either way. If both of these bands came through Salt Lake (which they absolutely will not, by the way) and I had to choose between them, Keith Morris' version would definitely win.

In fact, that's what they should do. Both versions of Black Flag should tour and play the same city each night. Only here's the catch: they each play a different venue. You, as the audience, have to choose which version you want to watch. Whichever band gets the least amount of people can't be Black Flag anymore. There. I settled it.

The thing that bums me out the most about this is that dueling versions of bands that existed in the 80s is something that I thought only happened with shitty glam rock bands like Poison and Ratt.

I don't want to see one of my favorite punk bands follow that path. If that's the case, shitty VH1 reality shows can't be far behind. In fact, I think I just pitched one. I'm claiming ownership of it right now.

* header image taken from Overnight Drive.

BRO.

"Listen bro. I started this band for one reason and one reason only. And I want that directly reflected in the band name. So deal with it. We're called Poonhammer."

This is a real band. I looked it up and I listened to them. If you were wondering if rap-rock was still a thing, it very much is. That's probably why 311 still comes to SLC like twice a year. This city probably pays most of their bills.

WOLVES & MARTYRS - THE ORIGIN OF VALENTINE'S DAY

*Ed. Note -- I post this every Valentine's Day because I had fun writing it and think it's kind of fun to read. Don't get upset about this.*

I miss the days when I had to come up with an awesome Valentine's Day box for school. I was pretty good at it and it was fun. Now it's just a day where I read girls complaining about it on the Internet.

But where did it come from? How did it start?

Allow me.

If you want to get all comic book-y, we can call this kind of a "Year One" type story.

In 3rd or 4th century BC, The Parentalia and Feralia Festivals of Purification were celebrated from February 13-18 to coincide with the Fertility Festival. The latter was a ritual not unlike the "Casual Encounters" section of CraigsList. All of the willing females would enter their names into a box and one by one, eligible men would step up for their turn. With a name in hand, the two would go off and what happened next was reffered to as a "rite of passage." You can use your imagination for what that entails.

Before that began however, there was the LUPERCALIA (from the Latin lupus, meaning "wolf"). During this day, priests—known as Luperci—from two colleges (Quintillii and Fabii) would meet at the Cave of Lupercal in the Palatine Hill, where a she-wolf was said to have nursed Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome. There, Vestal Virgins would offer holy salt cakes and the priests would sacrifice a dog and a goat, smearing the animal blood onto the foreheads of youths of noble birth. Clad only in a goatskin thong, those same youths would later lead a band of revelers known as the luperci in the performance of such antics as whipping fields of crops and bystanders with a goatskin strip (known as the februa). Women gently lashed in such a fashion were thought to become fertile—even those known to be barren. The act of such lashings or whippings was known as februatio. Both this word and the word februa come from the Latin meaning "to purify." The naming of the month, February, is believed to have originated from these meanings.

Basically, February means "to purify by beating with a goatskin strip."

No flowers, chocolate or candy hearts yet.

When Christianity was eventually formed, it was attempted to replace the rituals with something a little bit more uplifting. Pope Gelasius outlawed the Lupercian Festival, but kept the name drawing part—just slightly tweaked. Instead of available women, the names of Saints were written on the papers and it was believed that the recipient (boys and girls participated in the drawing) would emulate the life of whichever Saint was chosen. This new system, while much more noble, was a lot less fun. Eventually, it was abandoned and the old "rite of passage" returned.

Those are the ones you don't hear too much about. This one however, is the most widely known part of the origin.

In Rome, 270 AD, Claudius II passed an edict that abolished marriage. He felt that married men made poor soldiers because they were loath to leave their loves ones for battle. The emperor craved a strong army far more than he cared about popularity and banned the act of marriage all together.

Valentine, a bishop of Interamna, disagreed with the Emperor and invited young lovers to come to him in secret to be joined in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius soon learned of this "friend of lovers" and had the bishop brought to the palace. The Emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the Roman gods to save him from otherwise certain execution. Valentine refused to renounce Christianity and imprudently attempted to convert the Emperor. It didn't work and he was sentenced to death. While Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, Asterius. Through his unswerving faith, he miraculously restored her sight—which bothers me because I still have to basically wait out a god damn cold. He signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine."

Soon after he left the note, actually on February 14th (or so history claims), Valentine was clubbed, stoned and then beheaded.

To recap, in case you got bored: Valentine's Day is essentially the celebration of torture, blood, sacrifice, random sex, wolves and martyrs.

I want a card with that on it.

(*Note - I wrote this after reading a few different histories relating to Valentine's Day on the Internet. Originally I circulated it vie LiveJournal, then MySpace. I put it together after reading something Warren Ellis posted way back in the day, so this is all his fault. Also, it's entirely possible that none of this is true or historically accurate at all. But it's far more entertaining.)

WHAT IF...? (PART II)

I followed a random link on the Internet the other day and came across the kind of thing I love. Now, I hate movie websites that focus all their attention on what actor might be cast in a role, but I love stories of actors that were almost cast in a role. I've written before about Tom Selleck getting but not keeping Indiana Jones, Kurt Russell almost getting Han Solo and Eric Stolz getting but not keeping Marty McFly, but here are a few others that never came to pass.

All of these actors turned down these roles, by the way.

Sean Connery as Gandalf in LORD OF THE RINGS and Morpheus in THE MATRIX: I don't know exactly how much different either of these films would have been, but probably a lot.

Emily Blunt as Black Widow in IRON MAN 2 and subsequently THE AVENGERS: I'm in love with Emily Blunt, so this would have been awesome for me. Had to turn it down because she was already attached to the Jack Black masterpiece GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.

Kevin Costner as Andy Dufrense in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: Tim Robbins killed it in this movie (one that I will watch from any point whenever it's on TV), so I'm actually really glad Costner passed on this to make his critically-adored, award-winning magnum opus, WATERWORLD.

Molly Ringwald in both PRETTY WOMAN and GHOST: She passed on both of these and no one has heard from her since.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Dirk Diggler: Leo says this is his biggest regret in regards to roles he turned down. I love Marky Mark, but if hadn't gotten this role, we not have to hear about him starring in another piece of shit TRANSFORMERS movie. I don't know which way I lean on this one.

Johnny Depp as Ferris Bueller: He probably would have been awesome, but it would have been a much, much different movie. Ferris would have had some deep-rooted emotional problems that would have dwarfed anything wrong with Cameron Frye.

Jack Nicholson as Michael Corleone: Not the biggest fan of THE GODFATHER movies (I like them, I just don't worship them), but I definitely think Nicholson would have done more harm than good here.

Matt Damon as Harvey Dent in THE DARK KNIGHT and the lead in AVATAR: Happy he turned these down. Neither of them fit what he does as an actor and he must have known it.

Richard Greico as Jack Traven in SPEED: Another movie I will watch any time it's on TV and dare I say it actually has a lot to do with how good Keeanu Reeves is in it. It's the perfect movie for him. Greico, not so much.

Will Smith as Neo in THE MATRIX: Just think about Will Smith talking about weird shit with Sean Connery for a minute. Would we have had to watch two shitty sequels with such high expectations with these two in the lead roles?

Mickey Rourke as Axel Foley in BEVERLY HILLS COP: I think this was the movie that turned Eddie Murphy into a superstar. It would have been just awful with Rourke trying to crack wise while stuffing bananas in tailpipes. Great actor, but this movie would have suddenly not been a comedy.

Nicolas Cage as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in THE WRESTLER: Cage had this role then dropped out in order to pursue a string of weird, awful and forgettable movies. Much to the delight of Rourke who had been kind of MIA since passing on BEVERLY HILLS COP.

Matthew McConaughey as Jack Dawson in TITANIC: McConaughey waxing intellectual about high school girls while drowning in the Atlantic might have made this movie more watchable for the first and third hours. The middle part, when the boat is sinking, is actually pretty awesome and enjoyable. I hate everything else about this movie, but McConaughey might have given it a little comic relief just for being so out of place.

Burt Reynolds as Han Solo in STAR WARS: Harrison Ford was probably their last choice and the only guy not famous for his mustache.

I love this kind of thing. I'm sure there are tons more, but we'll save those for another day.

BADASS DUDES TALKING ABOUT BADASS STUFF

Back in the heyday of Grudge City Activities, Casey and I decided that we wanted to start a podcast. We had no real radio skills or equipment to do such a thing, but that's the beauty of podcasts—any idiot with a microphone and an internet connection can do one. We had both of those things, so we did.

We recruited Dan Fletcher to do it with us and soon after he moved away to NYC (where he still is) we brought in our buddy Sias aka Cuatro to take his place. We got a solid years worth of podcasts done before we all kind of got bored or busy. The GCA website slowed down a bunch after that too, so there wasn't much reason for us to keep on keeping on.

We still had all the equipment and Casey and I talked about starting another one up, but just never got around to it. I broke everything out for a SLCFF podcast around this time last year, but even that was short lived.

Then, somewhere around Thanksgiving of 2011, Richard (who had done one episode of the GCAcast with us) and Casey decided they were going to start a new one. They added me on as a "producer"and recruited Fernando for the first episode. My role was basically to set everything up, edit the thing and "check facts" as they spouted off ridiculous things one after another. My only stipulation for that was that Casey had to be in charge of the website and finding a place to host them. If I was going to do all the work of editing them, the least he could do was make sure people heard them.

He agreed and we recorded the first one the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I had it edited within a week and sent it off to Casey.

About a month and half later, they wanted to record another one. I asked what happened to the first one and Casey told me he wanted to get a few in the can before he posted them so we could keep a regular schedule. Once we had a couple of them done, we'd start posting every couple of weeks. I edited that one together and had it done around the beginning of February.

Two weeks ago I posted the first one on my Soundcloud page. Yesterday I took it down and posted the second one.

Casey's been planning his wedding recently (well, he's been planning it in his head for 10-15 years, but now he actually has the proper requirements like a fiance) and that's taken up most of his time. Also, (and mostly) he just doesn't want to do it. He's compulsive and comes up with awesome ideas, but has very little followthrough. So I stepped up, created a bullshit Tumblr page for it and started posting them.

I doubt we'll ever get to an Episode 3, but the first two are available right now. Go check them out and give them a listen.

We came up with the simplest name possible: Bad Ass Dudes Talking About Bad Ass Stuff

Enjoy.

Episode 2 - Stream or Download - Soundcloud.com/trevorhale

Bad Ass Dudes Talking About Bad Ass Stuff Website

"SORRY GENTLEMEN, THE LAW IS THE LAW"

This has been floating around the Internet for years but I just came across it via Badass Digest. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were required to fill out a customs form declaring what they brought back to the U.S. after Apollo 11 touched down off the coast of Hawaii.

No, really. They actually did.

JESUS' WEEN

Halloween started off as something much different than what it's become, but it's still way too evil for some people.

And by some people, I mean Evangelical Christians.

The origins of the holiday aren't exact, with some people attributing it to Romans and others saying it evolved from an and old Celtic festival. Either way, it's become basically one day a year (that gets stretched out an entire month) for people to celebrate scary things, dress up in costumes and eat candy. No one uses it as an excuse to raise the dead or hold sacrifices.

But Christians are getting upset (like they always do) about the fact that it's a holiday that doesn't celebrate Jesus. So they're taking it back.

Not only that, they're giving it an awesome new name: Jesus' Ween.

Okay, I'll admit that I added the apostrophe at the end of Jesus, but that doesn't make it any less silly.

I think this means that Christians will be handing out bibles and facts about God on October 31, largely as a promotional stunt for the first two weeks in November which is some sort of festival called "Jesus Win!"

But still, JesusWeen? That's just ridiculous.

I have plenty of Christian friends and I like seeing them and talking to them. We just can't talk about Christianity or God. I can't listen to them talking about a man in the sky watching over us, or how God placed dinosaur bones on the earth to test our faith. I can't keep a straight face listening to that, so it's just better to avoid it.

And for what it's worth, I don't go out of my way to talk about NOT being Christian or anything like that. Fair is fair.

What are the chances of Jesus' Ween actually replacing Halloween? I bet the odds are pretty slim—mostly because of the name.

Jesus' Ween. They have a website and everything.

RELAXING

The airport runway on the island of St. Maartens is remarkably short, ending just feet away from Maho Beach. Since the runway is just barely long enough for jets to land, pilots have to fly extremely low, nearly clipping the fence as they descend. Tourists ‘relaxing’ on the beach often have planes pass a mere 30 feet over their heads.

THE ORSON WELLES SHOW

I really want the entire episode of this to surface so I can watch Orson Welles get weird.



From Crackajack - The Orson Welles Show was an unsold television talk show pilot. It has never been broadcast or released. Filming began in September 1978 and the project was completed around February 1979. […] Welles interviewed Burt Reynolds (taking several questions from the audience,) Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and performed two magic tricks assisted by Angie Dickinson. Several of The Muppets were featured in taped segments, including Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo the Great and Animal.

BEST. STORY. EVER.

I'm re-posting this in its entirety because I think it's that good. I found it on Refinery29.com and by all means check them out, but I wanted to make this as easy to get to as possible. The more people that read this, the better everyone's nightmares will be.

While there's a 50/50 chance of this being total bullshit, it's still a great, well written story so I'm just choosing to believe it. Also, there are some fucked up people in the world (NYC especially) so you never know.

I don't remember how I found this sordid tale, but I have never, ever forgotten it.

Keep this in mind the next time you're shopping for a roommate.

THE SCARIEST (TRUE) NYC SUBLET STORY YOU'VE EVER HEARD

In the summer of 2005, I moved to New York to live with a girl I had been dating long distance. And—as "moving across the country to be with a girl" stories usually go—it didn't work out. Our reunion was short-lived, and I needed someplace to stay, quick.

In my experience, finding good housing in New York is largely based on luck, and I had that in low reserve. I tried all the usual avenues—Craigslist, friends, friends of friends, acquaintances of friends… and, after a few weeks of searching, I finally managed to be put in contact with a guy who had a spare room to sublet for a super-low price in the Lower East Side.

The owner of this apartment (we’ll call him Doug) was a heavy-drinking, chain-smoking freelance writer who had also recently split from his girlfriend. His ex-girlfriend's office space was in the apartment, which made the perfect bedroom to rent out. I was in a sort of headspace at the time that necessitated a lot of shut-door boozing and miscellany, and I found it highly attractive that Doug seemed to be into the same kind of mopery that I was. Plus, the room for rent was large (for the Lower East Side), seemed cloistered enough from Doug's area that I would have a decent amount of privacy, and—while it gave off the kind of "dude" funk smell that some might have shied away from—it wasn't that big of a deal considering it was also devoid of rats, mold, and water damage. It seemed perfect.

"This place seems perfect!" I said to Doug. And of course, the follow-up: "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with the room," he said a little too cautiously. "But you're talking about the price right? Why it's so low?"

"Ha," I joked. "Did someone die in here or what?"

"No, nothing like that. But something did happen, and I'd feel like an ass if I rented the place to you and didn't tell you what happened here a few months ago." …Ah, the words every subletter wants to hear. And with that, he launched into the best story I've ever heard about NYC housing.

After Doug's girlfriend left him a few months before I met him, he became unable to afford the rent by himself. He quickly found Jack via Craigslist, a recent Columbia journalism school graduate and fellow writer. Like Doug, Jack was also quiet and a loner, choosing to order Chinese food and chip away at his novel instead of getting drunk like the LES revelers on the sidewalks bellow. But he was courteous and stayed out of Doug's perma-sedated way, which is the exact kind of stranger you want to be living with.

After living with Jack for a few months, Doug was running home through the middle of a raging rainstorm, and noticed that Jack’s window was wide open, water pouring into the room. He rushed up the stairs, still dripping wet, and knocked on Jack’s door. Nobody answered, and Doug figured Jack was out. He found his master key, opened the door, and clicked on the light.

Neatly piled into stacks were Chinese food containers, some 10 boxes high, some already toppled, with their half-eaten contents strewn on the floor. The cartons covered all the available area on the floor except for a narrow walkway to the bed and the desk. Doug stood horrified at the doorway, then noticed the water flooding the floor by the window. He rushed over to close it.

Compulsive hoarders—as anyone who's spent a decent time watching TV will know—are not rare. There are between six to 15 million hoarders living in the United States, with many of them carrying on seemingly normal lives outside of their obsessive disorder. This fact didn't make Doug any more comfortable with the toy city of rotting Chinese food in his spare bedroom. He was going to kick Jack out when he got back to the apartment.

Then he saw the boot.

Doug leaned over to pick it up, knowing what the contents were before his fingers even made contact. Spilled out from the tops were strings of Lo Mein noodles, and hard pieces of dried rice. Doug was sure he could see crusted-over mounds of meat and hardened sauce. Sickened, Doug sat down the shoe, and as he did so, he noticed a shadow in the shape of a human body beneath the twin bed.

With absolute trepidation, Doug lifted the bed and slid it a few feet away, knocking over a pile of takeout boxes. What he uncovered wasn't—to his immediate relief—a real person. But it was a person's shape, with a hooded sweatshirt attached to gloves and a pair of jeans, with the other boot tucked into the leg. Coming out of the seams were remnants of noodles, rice, and meat, grease stains pooling through the fabric and onto the floor, spoiled scraps of food filling the hoodie to the brim. Doug scanned the body—and...yep, there it was. Noodles oozed out of the unzipped fly; a glory hole that Jack had ostensibly been taking advantage of all spring long.

Doug called an emergency locksmith who came and changed the locks within the hour. Jack arrived home not too long afterward and found it locked.

"I just need my laptop," he called through the door.

Doug slid the laptop through the mail slot. He could hear Jack's footsteps click down the hall, and the apartment entrance door slam shut. During the following days, Doug hired cleaners to remove all the food that Jack had left behind. Though the room had been cleared of all the takeout containers (along with the Meat Lover, which I've since started using to describe the effigy), the floors and walls scrubbed clean, and the room aired out for days, the smell still lingered.

Doug paused. "So, yeah. The room is cheap. What happened was fucked up." Doug looked ready to pass out, and I felt faint. "I'm sorry, dude. I can't," I muttered, and headed for the door. I regret leaving in such haste now, as the amount of questions I have are overwhelming—Didn't Doug smell something weird coming from Jack's room before he went in? Didn't he notice that Jack never took out any trash? What did he think was on his laptop? I've considered calling him to tie up those loose mental ends (which would lend this story that I've retold at least a hundred times much more credence), but really, I hate to bother the guy. That summer was an especially damaging one for me, and I wasn't the one who had to clean up a leaking sex toy my ex-roommate had constructed out of decomposing Chinese food.

Editor's Note: After reading your comments about the mail slot, we grilled Peter about that detail, and he admitted that he misremembered due to telling it incorrectly for so many years, and it was actually passed through the door crack with the chain lock fastened. So, there you go.

127 HOURS - A LUKE PERRY FILM

Oscar nominations were announced this morning. I don't follow the Oscar race too closely, but I was pretty satisfied with what got nominated—with the exception of Helena Bonham Carter in THE KING'S SPEECH, because that's just dumb.

But since 127 HOURS was nominated for a bunch of awards, I wanted to pull the curtain back on what that movie could have been if Danny Boyle didn't have the clout to get anything he wanted after winning for SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

The A.V. Club -- Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours may have been one of the most critically lauded films of the year, and yes, much of that had to do with the performance of James Franco as trapped hiker Aron Ralston. (It was all part of a new media experiment Franco’s working on called “Disbelief In Phases,” a project that has some mysterious parallel to Franco’s staged puppet-show versions of Goethe for the homeless, and which will only be revealed by time capsule some 100 years hence.) But just so you know, former 90210 star Luke Perry thought of doing Ralston’s story first, trying unsuccessfully to secure the rights as a vehicle for his former little rapping DJ buddy Brian Austin Green: “Brian's a great actor," Perry told Access Hollywood while promoting his Jason Priestly-starring Hallmark Movie Channel feature Goodnight For Justice. "I thought he'd be great in that part, but Danny Boyle, he got it.” Yeah, thanks a lot, Danny Boyle.

ALMOST THERE

So close, yet so far away.

AND THE WINNER IS...

The Golden Globe nominations were announced today. Here's a sample.

BEST MOTION PICTURE - MUSICAL OR COMEDY
"Alice in Wonderland"
"Burlesque"
"The Kids are Alright"
"Red"
"The Tourist"

Not sure which one I'm supposed to root for, as I never saw any of them. Why, you ask? Because they all looked fucking terrible.

As my City Weekly editor said via Twitter,

"We can all agree, however, that the Golden Globes make the Oscars look like the Independent Spirit Awards."

My bitterness here may have something to do with my hatred for everything Tim Burton has done since ED WOOD (his last good movie, in my opinion) and for the man himself. There's no excuse for the rest of them though. That's just a terrible, terrible list.

YOU'RE KIDDING, RIGHT?

This might be one of the worst things I've ever seen. It's hilarious, but it's also very, very sad. I wonder if these kids even understands what they're talking about, because they're obviously reading a script that someone else wrote.



And there's a whole bunch more of these, too. He "reviews" the Naked Brother Band show. According to Andrew, it's about kids in a band, one of which is part Chinese, there's also a black and the rest of them "is white and maybe Jewish." or the MARMADUKE review that just goes off into some weird white pride tangent.

And it's all part of some website called WhitePrideTV that looks like a Geocities site from the late 90s, but maybe that's what they were going for. Who really has time to learn how to build a proper website these days when there's far more important things going on like, as Andrew here says, "race mixing is wrong."

I can't believe this is a real thing. I mean, I can, nothing really shocks me anymore because the Internet is a weird, weird place. But still...

MONDAY.

It started off great. I met Colby and Andrea for coffee at Atlas (where I regretted not getting something to eat or any treats the whole rest of the day) but that was the one and only highlight.

My flight was at 2:49, so I decided leaving the city by noon would get me there with plenty of time to spare. That assumption was incorrect. For more than a few reasons.

1. I got on the wrong train. Since I don't live there, and I'm actually pretty stubborn, I didn't actually ask anyone which train went to JFK. I saw one that said BROOKLYN and jumped on. Luckily I was only on it for two stops before I realized I was going the wrong direction. I jumped off at Penn Station, found the right train and got on. Problem was, it wasn't exactly the right train. I was headed the right direction, but the train I was riding didn't go all the way to the airport.

2. It was the slowest train I've ever been on. Usually, they go pretty fast, but this one just kind of crept through the city. If the doors were opened and I stuck my arm out, it wouldn't hurt. Might sting a little, but wouldn't cause any actual damage.

3. I got off the train at Rockaway Blvd so that I could catch the right train down to the Airtrain at JFK. That took another few minutes, but it finally came, I got on and was airport bound.

4. The Airtrain was down. Closed for repairs or something like that. Not the entire thing, just most of it. We were all herded downstairs and put on a bus that took us to the terminal loop. When I got on the bus, it was 1:50 (So, it took me from 12:30 until 1:50 to take the train from West 4th Street all the way to JFK). When the bus finally dropped us where the Airtrain was running again, it was 2:15. I had to go through 5 stops, but finally got to my terminal.

5. It was a ten minute walk from where the train dropped me off to security. There was a ticketing kiosk at the end of the tunnel, so I didn't have to wait in any lines to print my boarding pass, but security was a different story all together.

6. The guy in front of me had a carry-on bag, a backpack (with a laptop he hadn't taken out yet), a coat, boots and a sweater. He waited until he got to the counter to start getting ANYTHING ready. So I cut in front of him. He was pissed, but didn't say anything. Just kept giving me dirty looks and ramming his little plastic tub into mine. Then, while my bag was halfway through the scanner, I realized I'd forgotten to take my mouthwash out. It set off the alarm or whatever and one of the agents had to search my bag. It didn't take long, but it was 2:30 by then, so as soon as she was done, I grabbed everything and took off. I got to the plane just as the last few people were lining up.

But...

7. Apparently if you check in a little late, JetBlue gives away your seat. I chose 9D (an aisle) but when I looked at my printed boarding pass, I was in 24F. Not bad except for 5 things- children. There were 5 little kids to my left and behind me all between the ages of 9 months to three years old. You have any idea how restless 5 kids get on a 5 hour flight? Use your imagination. If I was ever thinking about having kids anytime soon, this set me back at least a few more years.

8. We sat on the runway for an hour before we actually took off. Probably longer, because I took a nap, watched half an episode of According to Jim, an entire episode of The Office and half a Friends ep before we were actually in the air.

And that's where we are now. I'm somewhere over Nebraska typing as all these children shriek and scream. Unfortunately, my hearing isn't bad enough to ignore it.

Oh, and right after we took off, the battery in my iPod died and the sound stopped working on my little seatback TV.

So good flight all around, right?

OH, SCIENCE

Damn you, Spielberg!

First the Brontosaurus and now the Triceratops? You guys are killing me.

Gizmodo -- Scientists are saying that the Triceratops dinosaur—you know, the three horned one—was actually a juvenile form of a Torosaurus, the three horned dinosaur you don't know. Apparently, dinosaurs' skulls can shape-shift.

The scientists, John Scannella and Jack Horner, believe that the Torosaurus and Triceratops are actually of the same species. According to the them, as a Triceratops aged, its horns and frill became more similar to that of a Torosaurus. Short becomes long, saw-edged becomes smoothed and so on. Having them be the same species would explain why there were never any young Torosaurus fossils discovered.

The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated.

Scientists sure enjoy crushing my childhood memory of The Land Before Time (they nixed Brontosaurus a while back). Hopefully they won't delete Triceratops too.

I guess it doesn't matter though, because we all know that dinosaurs weren't real anyway. God only planted their bones to test our faith, right? Right.

But just for fun, here are "5 Reasons the Triceratops Definitely Existed".