Burn, Baby, Burn

I was just catching up on the news and a video came up about Terry Jones. For those who don't know, he's the pastor of a holy roller church here in Florida. Terry got about fourteen of his fifteen minutes in the spotlight last year with his plan to burn a bunch of Korans as part of a celebration commemorating September 11th. Apparently,Terry called off his little shindig last year because of a pretty major amount of media coverage and the resulting public backlash. However, once the furor had calmed and the media moved on, Terry resolved to do his thing, and on March 20th of this year, he gathered up some copies of the Koran and a few of his closest friends and they had their bonfire. According to NBC, this is newsworthy because there have been riots in Afghanistan as a result of all this, and even General Petraeus, commander of one-half of America's military clusterfuck in the Middle East, has spoken out against Terry Jones, basically condemning his actions as detrimental to America's continuing efforts in Afghanistan.

What's amazing to me about all this is that Terry Jones is essentially a nobody. Just a regular Islam-hating workaday asshole. He presides over a small church (Dove World Outreach Center) in Gainesville, Florida. A church that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY outside of Alachua County had even heard of. At least, he was just a regular asshole until NBC et al. took his story and ran with it. Boy, they ate right out of his hand and they still do. In a pre-internet age, this guy wouldn't have made page three of the local news section of the paper in his neighborhood, but thanks to the intense media saturation that's at least partially engendered by the advent of e-news (yes, I am aware of the irony of using a blog to rant about the declining quality of media content. Blow me.) people like General Petraeus are aware of his existence and his stupid fundamentalist weenie roast really can have an impact on world affairs.

Fact is, if this dildo really wants to burn some books, well, he can. As odious as his particular brand of hate speech happens to be, he has the freedom to do as he wishes. In fact, I sincerely hope that Terry and his congregation paid for the books. If they paid for them, they're tacitly supporting the very thing that they seek to symbolically destroy. What dicks.   

Gravemaster!!

I was watching Elvira's movie macabre on CW18 a little bit ago, and it was making me nostalgic for local TV hosts. I know that I was about one generation removed from real local TV (my dad fondly remembers the Bay Area's Dr. Paul Bearer) but I remember a guy called the Gravemaster that was on CW18 back when it was WCKF (I think it was, anyway) and I looked forward to his show most Saturday nights. I loved B-movies even then and I used to love seeing what horror gems he would trot out. I distinctly remember seeing I Drink Your Blood , which took on a special significance for me later 'cause K and I watched it when we first started dating. Laying on her bed, I ate about four pounds of takeout manicotti and couldn't be bothered with getting any farther with our date. Nothing says I'm here to impress you like being bloated and gassy. Oh well. Maybe it's good that we got that over with early on, right? Anyway, I don't know where I was going with this and I've got to finish my show... Oh, here's some Gravemaster related stuff.

THE GRAVEMASTER

(Tim Kincaide)

See pictures of the Gravemaster: 40k gif image | 48k gif image

See bio and more images from the Gravemaster's show -- and hundreds of images of a host of other horrors -- at the incredible Horror Host Gallery website, courtesy of video archaeologist Thomas Rudé!

Friday Night with the Gravemaster

Friday night

WKCF-TV, Channel 18 (Orlando, Florida)

Early '90's for about six months

NOTES:

• Information contributed by Pat (Fleagore) Tantalo, who created the incredible makeup and set for The Gravemaster
• Tim Kincaide was also "Ranger Bob" on New York and Florida kid shows.

Ben Weasel is an ass

I was reading about the Ben Weasel SXSW incident recently (it came to my attention through maximumrocknroll) and in her blurb about it, MRR's coordinator mentioned that she was heartened to see that people had taken a stand against sexist violence. For those who don't know, here's the scoop
(http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/screeching-weasel-members-quit-after-singer-attacks-women-onstage-20110324-you can even see video of the whole thing) While I too am heartened by the fact that some folks have taken a stand against sexist violence by decrying Ben's asshole-ish behavior, what nobody seems to be mentioning is that this kind of thing is unacceptable. Period. Humans shouldn't act this way toward other humans. The genders of the respective participants shouldn't really matter at all. Leaping out into the crowd and punching a fan isn't acceptable for the same reason that punching someone on the street isn't acceptable. It's a dick thing to do.  On a few of the message boards, some witnesses mentioned that the woman was throwing ice at Ben throughout the band's set, as if to mitigate his actions by suggesting that she somehow provoked him. Wow. Ice? Really? Frozen water, dude? It's not going to kill you. If you can't handle that level of provocation, perhaps a career in the performing arts isn't for you. I dunno, maybe this is a calculated effort on Ben's part. Maybe he wants to go for some sort of irascible elder statesman of pop-punk thing (y'know, kinda like Lou Reed when he's cranky). If that's the case, then he really picked a bad way to go about it.

Sorry, Ben. Screeching Weasel meant a lot to me as a teenager, and the records still hold up, but if this incident is indicative of the kind of person you're becoming (or maybe always were) then I have no reservations calling you an asshole. 

This is just a place to post my thoughts. Mostly, it saves my wife from listening to me rant and rave about things that catch my attention. Could be anything. Stuff I see on TV, music, movies, books, or stuff in general.