Had an interesting encounter downtown today. Those of you that I’m friends with in bigger cities won’t think this is a big deal, but as a kind of sprawled out city, you don’t see a lot of street vendors here in Little Rock. Sure, there’s random Taco trucks, but not downtown. So what’s there to get for grub if you like your food from a rolling cart? Enter Hot Dog Mike – a photographer turned Hot Dog slinger. My buddy Casey had told me about him, having seen him on Twitter, and then I saw him in the Arkansas Times and decided we had to go get a dog the next time he was Downtown.
Today was the day, Twitter announced: ” @HotDog_Mike: I’m here! Downtown: take 7th towatds main. I’m on the right just before past Louisianna(mk RT in drive) http://bit.ly/dls4Ln ”
In what only a tame, awkward shut-in might call an adventure, we drove around Downtown attempting to locate the sole Hot Dog cart, and after almost giving up and going the Bar-B-Q route, we saw him off of 7th and Louisiana between the Arkansas DHS building and the AT&T building, in the alley, serving ‘em up.
He’s a cool guy and he deftly deflected a lady saying that his “Italian Dog” should be called the “Dago Dog” with a understated “Naaaaaaah.” which got laughs from myself and my fellow dog fans.
Anyway, Hot Dog Mike is awesome. I had two Sriracha Dogs (or as Hotdog_mike says: “Sriracha Dog w/diced sweet onion & cucumber SPICY COOL GOODNESS”) with cucumber, onions and a line of Mayo to cool it off for $4. I brought a Diet Mountain Dew with me (because I’m addicted and have issues), but he’s got several different kinds of drinks and some chips, too if you’re not a well prepared world renowned male model like myself.
SYNOPSIS: Good food, A Where’s Waldo adventure, Fun service and it’s cheap. What’s not to like?
Image by Kyle Jones - http://www.twitter.com/justkyle
Nashville, Tennessee…
I was born there. I lived there for 21 years. (I’m 31 now.) I remember growing up thinking it was the greatest city on earth. I remember listening to Coyote McCloud, Rhett Walker and the Y107 Zoo Crew radio show, and thinking that no one else on earth could do things on the radio or make me laugh like that. I remember the KDF neon on top of their building back when Carl P. Mayfield and Bubba Skynyrd were ruling the rock airwaves of 103 KDF. I’ve had my share of Rotier’s burgers and Vandyland shakes and well, probably everything at Pancake Pantry…and I remember watching them change the banner out in front of Tower Records on West End every month and thinking it was cool as hell that they went through all that trouble just to look cool and sell records. I remember getting really excited going to Stone Mountain and buying stupid band t-shirts, some of which I still have to this day. I remember going with my friends to see the Fun Girls from Mt. Pilot at Lucy’s Record Shop, or to see the Melvins at 328 Performance Hall. I remember the construction of the SBC/Batman building and how cool it was that we had a Batman building, even though it wasn’t “technically” a Batman buidling. I could still explain to people how to get from one obscure place to another just by closing my eyes and visualizing it.
I’ve over-made my point. I remember Nashville how it was when I lived there, way back up until September 2001, when I moved to the West Coast, right around September 11th.
Which makes what I’ve seen the last week so hard to choke down. Yes, there is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and yeah, a guy tried to blow up some sort of jerry-rigged bomb in Times Square, but my thoughts, and my heart are in the 615 area code, trying to figure out what’s going to happen next…because my city is under ten feet of murky Cumberland River water. Twelve feet above flood levels. That’s insane. That’s once every 1000 years kind of stuff. That’s 0001% chance of happening kind of stuff.
The Flood - i-24 by Riker Photography
Yeah, we just had a tornado here in Arkansas, and that’s what we’re dealing with on the day-to-day basis, but to go through the shock of that and hear the following day that my hometown, where my parents still live, was being covered in flood water. Killing people. Sweeping them away. Burying and destroying institutions, places, things that I’d grown up around and in. Well, it’s made me sick all week.
I’m five or six hours away, and I’m not sure that I could even do anything if I *was* down there, hell, I’d probably make it worse,or drown, or something…but I’m definitely thinking about it.
I’ve been away for almost a decade. Done a lot of living and traveling since then. Have settled down, gotten married, the works. Have a great job at an excellent company doing remarkable things. The last time I was in Nashville was December of 2008. I drove there in my new car and went from the slow, methodical pace of drivers in Arkansas back into the frenetic frenzied lane swapping craziness of downtown Nashville traffic. It overwhelmed me. I hated driving there the last time I visited. It freaked me out and made me feel like I’d grown weak and unaccustomed to my city. Like I was a tourist in my own hometown now. It pissed me off. To say I’d gotten used to Arkansas traffic would be an understatement. I remember when I first got to Little Rock screaming curse words and flipping people off because they were going FIFTY MILES AN HOUR. Hell, let’s be transparent, I’d yell at people who were going seventy on the interstate. Because Nashville is just fast. People drive fast, they talk fast, they say “Ten” like “Ten-ee-unn” and we deal with things even faster.
Which is probably why we’re not getting as much press as some of the other things going on right now. Nashvillians have an innate ability to get things done and keep on moving no matter what happens. No one seems to be looting. Everyone is just doing what needs to be done and trying to get past it. Everyone is not-so-secretly happy that the stupid “Ghost Ballet” statue/sculpture fell apart. Nashvillians are kind of dicks. We know that. We’re fine with it.
I haven’t been a live-in Nashvillian in years. But I always feel that it’s my home and I always think in the back of my head that someday I will end up there again, for good. But who knows.
I just hope that the Grand Ol’ Opry, and Hatch Show Print, and Tootsie’s, and Jack’s and Robert’s Western Wear, and Adelphia Coliseum (sorry it’ll never be LP Field to me) and all the things I know and love about Nashville will bounce back.
I know they’ll bounce back.
It’s what Nashville does.
WE GOT THIS. WE ARE NASHVILLE. WE ARE MUSIC CITY.
———————–
Here are some other awesome blogs about the Nashville situation:
Huffington Post: “They Are Nashville: Standing By Music City”
You can help, if you want to, by donating to http://www.hon.org (Hands over Nashville) or by going to http://www.NashvilleRedCross.com (which has been getting so much traffic it has been crashing, so please be patient and keep trying.)
April 30th there was a huge amount of tornado damage where I live right outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, and elsewhere all around the state (most notably in Scotland, Arkansas). So, on May 1, I went around East End, Arkansas and shot photos and video of all the damage I could find. It was pretty humbling to realize how quickly you can be taken out by mother nature.
Because if you are, now it actually looks good! Go ahead and save it to your home screen, because there’s even a totally rad picture of me you can keep, and look at, and treasure forever. Then you can shrug it off to anyone who critiques you for having a picture of me and just say “It came with the app.”
But we all know better than that, don’t we?
(*It works on Google Android, Palm Pre, and any other touch phone, too, for the record.)
Photographic proof (kind of) that I have been in the same vicinity of some of these people. Honest.
I’m part of this community. I am also not part of this community.
I live in Little Rock, and while not a native, it has been my home for the better part of a decade. For years, I lived in my little bubble of TV production and seldom, if ever, ventured out to meet anyone outside of our myopic little society of camera guys, editors, and “producers” who ran all around the country shooting things and bring them back here to cut down to what could, for lack of a better term, be referred to as entertainment. Back in 2007, I read about John Edwards (yeah, yeah) on the campaign trail using something called “Twitter” to tell people where he was on his baby-kissing (and, I guess, in hindsight, baby *making*), hand shaking Presidential campaign trail.
I was at once intrigued and kind of confused by the whole thing. As in, what would make someone put themselves out there with something like this, and also, what kind of creepy freak show of a human being would waste their time reading where someone was eating lunch or what they were doing?
Anyway, I signed up as my musical alter ego, and tested the waters, mostly following celebrities and people I would stumble across that I thought were amusing (Cobra Commander, The Hulk, etc.) in hopes that I would eventually “get” Twitter. I eventually just went ahead and set up an account using my real name as I dislike a pseudonym more than just about anyone.
All my friends and colleagues thought I was stupid for signing up to this site, and it was “just a fad”, but over time they’ve mostly signed up. I try my best to stay on the outside of the periphery. I have no intentions of injecting myself in the community for any sort of professional means, as I like to keep my opinions/jokes/thoughts/etc. and my 9-to-5 work as separate as possible.
Where it is helpful is knowing that there are people thinking and doing entertaining things in the area code you live in. I won’t say that Little Rock’s Tweetup community is great, because really, I don’t know the majority of you, and probably won’t ever meet any of you, and I haven’t been a legitimate part of it so it just isn’t my place to say it. I just don’t go out of my way to be that social. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with meeting people from the internet (hell, I met my wife there in the 90s), it’s just that I have a capacity for being social and meeting hordes of people with a moderate string of related interests based solely around our shared nature to tell people where we’re at, and what we’re eating.
Boil that down, though. At the heart of everything, isn’t everyone reaching out to tell people their story? Where you’ve been, what you like, what you dislike, the list of things that make you go on and on. This isn’t anything new. Twitter has just put it into clear and succinct, easy to follow, unbelievably simple to digest pieces. It’s Clarity-To-Go. It serves a purpose.
Therein lies my main problem with Tweetups, LJ Meetups (which, ironically, my wife and I actually founded in Central Arkansas), and any sort of meetup based on a communal want/need to find out what kind of people live in our community. It’s the same kind of people that were there long before Twitter. There are brilliant, insightful, sincere, thought-provoking, geniuses doing amazing things. There are insular, sullen, folks doing unimaginable things. There are boring people, going through the motions, trying and failing to make a mark. You just have to look around. Listen instead of broadcast.
It was all there before. Don’t blame Twitter for it showing up in your viewfinder, finally. Maybe you just woke up from the National Coma the majority of the world seems to be in. Welcome to having your eyes open. No, I haven’t been here for long, either. Enjoy your stay.
I will say that I am friends with a decent chunk of the LR Tweetup community. I like their company very much when I can be dragged out of my office or my house. Amy Bradley-Hole, for instance, was one of the first I followed, just because I thought she was funny. I didn’t care what her job was, or what she did…I just followed because she made me laugh sometimes.
With all that being said, I realize what kind of people are out there, and I, more than anyone (and this will seem strange coming from me, probably) am in love with the world. I am constantly amazed, dumbfounded, and learning about the world I live in and the people who inhabit it. Sure, when life on our planet is gone it will barely be a blip on the galaxy’s radar, but I am part of that larger community and it is beautiful and I am proud to have been a tiny speck of dust in it.
I appreciate what Tweetup is trying to do. But it’s not networking for me, and it’s not a place for me to advance my career, and really it’s not a place for me to make friends. It’s a sociology experiment, and I’m happy the people who have allowed me to peek into their lives have done so. You are a fascinating bunch and I appreciate you.
If you see me at the River Market at lunchtime, say hi.
My dumpy ass is passing up the Sleepaway Camps, and the Friday the 13th’s and every single other holiday themed monstrosity in my path. I linger in front of I Spit On Your Grave, because who doesn’t want to see a naked butt at the age of fifteen? I see a box with a wild eyed long hair staring back at me with a ridiculous mustache from the cover.
Horror Rises From The Tomb.
“What a stupid fucking title.” I think as my hand reaches out for it’s Styrofoam stuffed case.
I flip the VHS box over and quickly scan the description. A noble comes back to life years after his death and terrorizes the locals, essentially.
What the heck. Maybe it’ll be like those Dr. Phibes movies.
Let me clarify: It was not like those Dr. Phibes movies.
A Sorcerer and his mistress are essentially killed for being into vampirism, witchcraft, lycanthropy (more on this later), cannibalism, and every other thing that you would put on a list of shit that you don’t want to get caught doing in the time of lynch mobs and people with torches beating a bath to your castle, cave, dungeon or lair, especially in a horror movie. The Sorcerer, Alaric DeMarnac and his girl are both dealt with. He loses his head during all the hubbub. Literally. But not before cursing the future generations of their executioners. Natch.
Fast forward 500 years to the 1970’s. The kids of kids of the grandkids of the great grandkids of the great great grandkids of the you-get-the-fucking-point come back to the scene of the crime and come across the (perfectly preserved) head of our wizard buddy Alaric. He pops back to life, resurrects his beloved mistress and they go to town making the locals and the ancestors commit suicide, sacrifices, you name it in the quest to find the rest of his body.
The movie was awesome. It was ridiculous. It was hokey, and scary, and creepy as shit and everything horror could and should be.
I wanted to know more about this Paul Naschy, who most certainly didn’t look like a Paul Naschy….
I never got to meet him. King Juan Carlos of Spain did, though. He met him when he awarded the Gold Medal Award for Fine Arts to him for his lifetime of acting, writing and directing accomplishments in 2001. When he awarded him that Gold Medal in Fine Arts for playing the Wolfman (Hombre Lobo), Frankenstein, The Hunchback of the Morgue, Dracula, Fu Manchu, The Mummy, A Wizard, Jack the Ripper, – you name it – over the course of his forty year career in film.
Spain was the country of origin for Jacinto Molina, also known more fondly and publicly as Paul Naschy. Paul Naschy, the respected horror actor. The Spanish Lon Cheney. The Man of Many Faces.
Spain was the country where Paul Naschy passed away yesterday, on the last day of November 2009 of pancreatic cancer.
Most people who are aware of him know he played a lot of characters, but the one he’s most known for is Waldemar Daninsky…the Wolfman, also known as Hombre Lobo. He played that Wolfman in twelve films (although one has all but vanished off the face of the earth either from a car accident involving the director and producer that tragically included the only known print of the film ) and surpassed even the legendary Lon Cheney for appearances with the seminal lycanthropic character. (Twelve to Cheney’s seven.)
The first appearance of the legendary Daninsky was 1968’s Mark of the Wolfman and the last was in 2004, in Tomb of the Wolfman, when the descendant of Waldemar pulled the silver dagger out of his chest, letting the Hombre loose one last time in an oddly paced attempt to revive the franchise under the guise of a reality tv crew filming a werewolf on a rampage. A sort of spiritual brother to the Jason flicks, there was rarely any continuity or reasoning between the movies in the series, but they were all exactly what they were supposed to be: entertaining and most importantly…scary.
If you’ve never seen Naschy in action, here’s a clip, but not of his famous wolfman, or as the diabolical DeMarnac. It’s just him, in action and in the flesh in a short film retelling Poe’s Tell-tale Heart.
You’ll see the truth in his eyes even if you don’t understand the words that he’s saying. That perhaps he was born too late, and deserved to be right there among the names Cheney, Lugosi, Price and Lorre of the Classic horror age. It’s my opinion, but it’s the opinion of a lot of other Naschy fans as well. The guy was great.
The last I saw of Naschy was in Rojo Sangre (Red Blood) where he played an over the hill horror actor. It’s one of the only roles I saw him in that didn’t really resonate. It wasn’t his performance, or rather…it was, but not because he was bad.
He was having a hard time playing down. He was just too good to play washed up. Too alive. His eyes always screamed that he was smarter, faster, stronger, meaner than anyone else on the screen.
Years have passed, and I got away from horror, and I regret it. I had heard a rumor earlier this year that Christopher Lee, a longtime friend of Naschy, would finally be teaming up with him in a movie, but I never followed up on it. I heard from several friends, including one in Spain, that he was collecting lifetime achievement awards left and right. Had a street named after him. That he was getting the respect he deserved from more than the most cultish for horror fans. That he was hitting the convention circuit despite rumors about deteriorating health.
He was Spain’s Romero and Europe’s Cheney. An author, actor, producer right up until the end.
Gone is the legendary bad ass – and from all accounts – genuinely nice guy who loved his fans and never thought horror was beneath him. The tenuous hold we have with the days of classic horror movies that showed you what you wanted and gave you what you craved is lessening.
Enjoy who we have left from the glory days of horror while we still can.
And if you haven’t, go enjoy some Paul Naschy immediately.
Paul Naschy’s final role in La Herencia Valdemar, comes out in January 2010. For the trailer, click here
Subtle, eh?
