QUOTESSAYS

 My buddy Melissa and my movie this week was the original 2014 'John Wick'. Neither of us had ever seen any of the John Wick franchise flicks, and we figured we better at least see the original for our own pop culture literacy. I am terrible at keeping up on this stuff. I have never even seen a Star Wars movie. When people hear that they always give me a shocked look like I just announced I am the Anti-Christ. When movies get that big you almost absorb them by osmosis anyway by the constant cultural referencing.  This one also interested me as a newly minted gun nut. I had read where it truly follows how guns work in a gunfight situation. The guns' clips ran out of ammo when they were supposed to, they held their pistols correctly for greatest efficiency, shot at as close a range as they could get, moved laterally between shots, two to the chest, one to the head, etc. No sidewise gangbanger or cowboy hip shooting here, or the endless rounds coming out of a six-shooter in a

  The birth of pop: How catchy, disposable songs came to dominate the music industry - Big Think We forget that pop music is a business first and closely connected to the technology of its time. It wasn't that long ago that there was no recorded music, and the money was made by selling the songs themselves in sheet music form. I am old enough to remember when every home seemed to have a piano so mom could bang out some horrible, soulless show tunes we all had to listen to. Then came the electric organs a few years later for a new level of torture. That was the precursor to the electric guitar riff master's that were a staple of every music store in the 70's playing "Stairway to Heaven".  Of course, the only good pop music is produced generally between the ages of 15 to 25. I have a feeling that is because that is when we are running at our peak physically and experiencing all kinds of things for the first time, and that becomes the soundtrack to that brief span of

  Scientists can't decide if consciousness is real or fake (msn.com) I was just discussing this topic with my Lazy Boy Recliner today. Hey, any theory of consciousness is as good as any other theory when all you have to study it with is consciousness. I personally believe our whole Universe is just an atom in a rat's ass. A really big rat. At least relatively speaking. 

Anton Chico was another town Billy the Kid hung out in. Ironically, it was also the town Pat Garrett got married to his second wife in January of 1880. His first wife died in childbirth, a very common thing during these times. I can't count the number of mother/child tombstones I have seen in my wanderings around here. However, Pat's second wife, Apolinaria Gutierrez, was a keeper and gave him 8 kids and outlived him by 28 years. She is buried next to him in Las Cruces. This is their wedding picture in Anton Chico. A year later Garrett was organizing a posse in Anton Chico to track down Billy with Frank Stewart, Lee Hall and others sent by the Texas Cattlemen's Association. They were more concerned with Billy's rustling than his killing. Men were cheap, cattle had value. Soon the were off to Stinking Springs and history. Not much here now. Pretty much a wide spot in the road and crumbling ruins.....  

  Another from my mother's scrapbook of movie stars from the late 20's. This is Patsy Ruth Miller, who was born in St Louis in 1904. She was discovered on a trip to LA with her folks when she was only 16. She met film star Alla Nazimova at a party and she was quite taken with Patsy. Now it did not say so in anything I read, but Nazimova was a notorious carpet muncher and her wild lesbo orgies at the 'Garden of Allah Hotel' off Sunset, which she owned, were the stuff of Hollywood legend. I will let your imagination take it from there. That connection got her a part in "Camille" with Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino and she became a WAMPAS Baby Star of 1923. Her biggest role was as the Gypsy dancing girl Esmeralda in the Lon Cheney Sr. silent version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", which was a huge hit for the studio and set up her career. After that Miller starred in a series of light romantic comedies and eventually retired in the early 30's as t

 The next step in training and conditioning Quigley the gorilla will be to have him invent scenarios and hallucinations as to the meaning of life. From there they will concentrate on establishing a belief in an afterlife for Quigley, complete with other gorillas in robes that will form a priestly class that he will believe knows more than he does about everything. Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday - YouTube

  A little over 40 years ago in '78 the graveyard security supervisor position opened up at the ABC Television Center and I could get away from the leather boys at the BOA Computer building. The title sounded impressive, but we were not employees of ABC. We were just contracted rent-a-cops from a private security outfit. The pay was shitty, but the job could be interesting and the ABC lot was rich in early Hollywood history. And being supervisor was an easy gig on the graveyard shift. I could pretty much just run around the whole lot all night. I had worked at ABC a couple of years before, so I knew the lot. If you could make fog on a mirror you could pretty much move up the ladder in contract guard companies. The ABC studios were on Prospect Ave, which was really just a continuation of Hollywood Blvd. after if turned south in East Hollywood. They were tucked in right at the base of when it started to get hilly again. The 23 acre site was originally Vitagraph Studios, one of the v

  An outlaw with a price on his head needed a safe haven and Puerto de Luna was one of them for Billy the Kid. Alexander Grzelachowski owned the mercantile, cantina, and hotel there and evidently liked Billy and gave him all the supplies and ammo one would need to be a first class desperado. From all accounts Billy was very likable and well met. I always thought Emilio's Estevez's portrayal of him in the two 'Young Guns' movies was probably more accurate than in any of the other the Billy the Kid movies. A hyper, cocky little Irish guy with wicked and deadly sense of humor. Each little town in these parts seems to have their own individual legends about Billy. I read one blog by a young Hispanic woman who traced her Great Grandmother as one of Billy's true loves. It was actually pretty well researched and convincing. Billy did feel safe here evidently and he came here often enough that when Pat Garrett was hunting him down he set up camp here with his posse to see i

Sometime a little over 50 years ago I was on a business trip with my parents in Hollywood and we were eating dinner at Norm's, a Denny's style restaurant chain native to LA. Hollywood is a town where you are always seeing people you know from some TV or movie but don't know their names, the great mass of d-list working actors that the stars float above. It is a factory town after all. And sitting in the next booth over from us, chain smoking and looking all Hollywoody and tan was Gerald Mohr! A little history on this actor. He had kicked around Hollywood since the 30's and never quite made the A-team. He was a leading man in some B-movies, a radio actor and announcer, and also in about any TV show from the 50' and 60's you can name as a guest actor. The perfect example of an actor you kind of recognize but don't know. But I did! Mainly because I was a huge monster and horror movie fan and Mohr had starred in two of my favorite cheapy flicks: "Angry Red

 30 years ago, at the age of 43, it suddenly dawned on me I was never going to mature into a fully grown functional adult, and I best find other options to live out the rest of my life. In retrospect that was a wise decision. The one thing I learned as a geriatric CNA is we revert back to children if we live long enough. I just cut out the middleman and stayed the course my whole life. The first requirement was to not have any children of my own. Then adulthood is forced upon you, ready or not. Ironically, probably the most mature and responsible decision I ever made was not to have kids. The world has more than enough that are not being loved or cared for. My own parents were integral in helping me make that decision. I always had the gut feeling my parents had kids to use as props because of the pressure to have a nuclear family back in the day. They really did not enjoy their children, and by the time I came along at the tail end they had lost interest in any semblance of parenting.

  Luckily it looks like we have a tribulation coming up in a few weeks, though only the two Beasts will be going to war against each other. The King of Lambs is sitting this one out. From the 'Tom the Dancing Bug' comic by Ruben Bolling.

  A handy guide for the politically apathetic. I have used a few of these strategies for years now. They can also work in other areas of apathy. Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election - YouTube

I don't believe I can ever remember a presidential candidate where it is so hard to tell if the election campaign materials are pro or anti. I have seen both of these posted by both pro and anti-Trump FB posters. I believe this election is being run by the WWE.  

  Sandy King was another of the lesser known outlaws of the Wild West, although he had a great gunslinger name. His brief career was more defined by his death than his known exploits. Sandy was born around 1852 in either Arkansas or Texas and that is about the extent of any history of his early life until he shows up riding with the Clantons in the 'Cochise County Cowboys' in the late 1870's. Sandy became buddies with more famous luminaries such as William 'Curly Bill' Brocious and 'Russian Bill' Tattenbaum in pursuing a career of cattle rustling, horse thievery, stage coach hold-ups, and other nefarious business ventures. The 'Cochise County Cowboys' were basically an early crime syndicate dabbling in all sorts of unlawful activity. Sandy wisely left Tombstone about the time the friction between the Earps and Clantons was about to ignite into the 'Gunfight at the OK Corral'. Unfortunately that was about the last wise thing Sandy ever did. Ta

 My buddy Melissa and I watched 2015's 'The Gift' this week. What looked like it could have been the standard psycho flick morphed into something much more nuanced and interesting. I can't really get too much into the plot of the movie as to not give it away, but the three primary leads nailed their characters perfectly. The film stars and was written and directed by Joel Edgerton in a trifecta of talent. A really excellent and subtle thriller that doesn't depend on violence and gore to be unsettling and scary. Highly recommended!

  Trump Learns About Taylor Swift's Endorsement (youtube.com) 'Hitler Rants' nails it again. The funny part is this is just barely satire. The level of political discourse lately reminds me of a badly written SNL skit. Nero is tuning up his violins.

 I literally ran into a guy like this a few days ago on my afternoon walk. This kid was going full speed on one of these e-unicycles while staring intently at and punching his phone. He looked up and swerved, missing me by inches, yet in full control. I never felt in danger. I caught his eyes as he whizzed by, and I was looking into the eyes of a cyborg, living quite comfortably between two realities. His physical reality is now a video game. Is he human or an avatar? Only his Tattoo artist knows for sure. Change is speeding up, that I know for sure.

  ‘Biocentrism’: How life creates the universe (nbcnews.com) The concept of Biocentrism has interested me for a while now. Here is a really long and chewy article on it that no one will read, but it is really written and explained well. One of my constant themes for as long as I remember is that everything we know and experience is filtered through our own consciousness. I always find it comforting that guys way smarter than me agree with that basic tenet. 

  I didn't watch the debate. They are way too scary to watch these days. They really aren't technically debating anyway. We aren't talking Lincoln/Douglas here, where cognizant ideas are presented and discussed in complete sentences you can diagram. Now they are pretty much just meme mines for the proles to plaster all over Facebook the next day. For sure we are getting the two candidates we deserve as a people if Facebook political posts are any clue. It pretty much turned out how I expected it would from the highlight clips I have seen. Trump's first debate with Biden was like he was debating a vegetable and it even made Trump seem relatively cognitively with it. No wonder Trump is missing Biden right now. Harris is no brain trust by any means, but there are definitely some dementia and psychological issues going on with Trump that she jumped on and exploited. Trust me, I know all the signs and clues from my work experience. Add to those some historical mental health

  In 1984 I started working all the shows at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium in a position they called 'Showperson' for lack of a better term. It was just really to represent the Civic while running all around during a show and making sure things were halfway coordinated. Basically, it was being a glorified 'gofer' for all the different entities it took to put on a rock show. It was a good gig, and I got to see many bands I would never have paid to see otherwise and got a front-row seat to the 80's pop music culture of the next generation coming up after mine. That it was 40 years ago now is alone a sobering thought. One of the shows that stuck in my mind from that year was Stevie Ray Vaughn. It wasn't because of the music, as I have never been a hot lick, guitar god fan. I am more of a "give me a bouncy C" and a strong hook kinda guy. It was for the backstage action that came into focus after I read about Vaughn when he died 6 years later in the helic

  I have never been much into woo-woo stuff considering I was raised in Santa Cruz, California, the belly of the beast for alternative medicine. However, being brought up in Christian Science gave me a healthy respect for the placebic effect. I am pretty sure the placebic effect plays a huge roll in the efficacy of allopathic medicine too. I remember the Haitian CNAs I worked with at the geriatric facility in Florida giving patients Tic Tacs if they were acting up, while explaining it was a med that would help them relax. And it worked. They also taught me that corn starch worked better that expensive, doctor ordered ointments to clean up genital rashes. The first thing I do every morning is swish with coconut oil. No doubt it makes your teeth whiter and freshens up morning breath for sure. I psychologically envision it flushing the 'toxins' from my body at the same time. Hey, in the Quantum Universe anything is possible, and I know there will be no unwanted side effects down t