Steve B. Chooses You

I'm sure we've all been there. You get a friend request on your social networking site of choice who you search your mental card catalog of acquaintances for and come up empty-handed. Your next natural step is usually to check out this person's page, photos, relationship information, etc. to make an informed choice as to whether to let this person into your coveted friends list or to pass. I've actually met a person or 2 via this method who have turned out to be pretty cool, so I usually try not to over-scrutinize these mystery friend requests and let fate decide the rest. Heck, I'm usually more apt to deny someone I do know than someone I don't.

But on occasion, you get a friend request so unbelievably random and potentially frightening that you start questioning the benefit of these sites altogether.

Enter Steve.

Since deleting Myspace from my life, I've had fewer of these random people knocking on life's door to decide upon. However, last Thursday morning I heard some strange fingers rap-a-tap-tapping at my virtual ingress. I clicked on the request, and found this:


I have whited out the eyes of Steve because they seriously creep me the shit out. Why is this guy sending me a friend request? Where's the missing link?

Idea #1: We have common acquaintances

Noting that he and I have the same hometown in common, I thought maybe we had common acquaintances, and for some reason Steve had heard so much raving and ranting about how incredibly awesome I am that he finally folded to the pressure and tried adding me as his friend so he could regale his own friends with tales of my awesomeness and thus improve his social standing amongst his community of admirers.

I look through Steve's list of friends. Nothing. Of his 59 friends, we have zero in common. I don't even remotely know one person on his list. I think this was the moment the icy-cold sensation of terror began slowly permeating my being.

Idea #2: Common interests brought us together

I came to the natural conclusion that Steve and I, being from the same hometown and all, must have common interests and he found me by searching something like "Pennsylvania, self-loathing people named Mike, crappy 70's movies about vans."

No.

Steve is apparently interested in astrology and...well, pretty much astrology. He has a pretty blank page. The interesting thing of note is that he has listed himself as "in a relationship," yet has pictures of no significant others. In fact, he has the most random collection of pictures I've ever seen. A picture of Alfred E. Neuman, a picture of a smiling monkey, a picture that I assume is of himself in high school, a picture of a serious-looking detective monkey with hat and trenchcoat, and a Dallas Cowboys star.

Fear...escalating....

Idea #3: Similar employment situations maybe? I hope...?

In a Steven King-esque twist of terror, Steve has the one job I couldn't be interested in less. The one vocation that instantly brings a sense of anxiety and discomfort to me.

Steve is an "on-air personality."

As in for a radio station.

I start imagining Steve having a voice like one of those "wacky" morning dj people who interrupt my morning commute to work between taking one cd out of the changer and anxiously jamming another one in to save myself the pain of hearing some sort of "hilarious" diatribe about the current state of peanut butter and jelly or whatever the hell it is these people ramble on about while the obligatory straight-man or female counterpart laugh uncontrollably to feed their weak ego.

Conclusion: Yikes.

At this point I have neither accepted nor denied the friend request. I also have noted that Steve still doesn't have any friends in common with me, Steve is 48 years of age, Steve has nothing in common with me, Steve may or may not be a parent per his friends list, and there may or may not be dead bodies in Steve's freezer (this is purely speculation, though...just in case he reads this).

Further detective work has revealed that the radio station Steve states he works for has no information on him on their website.

Somebody call Chris Hansen. I may have caught a predator.

Film of the....er, TV Show of the Week - "Ark II"

I have a secret fondness for the 1970's. Most of my exposure to this decade began around late 1977 because, well...it's hard for me to remember a lot of crap that happened before I was 2. So sure, I remember fondly any television involving Sid and/or Marty Krofft, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, The Godzilla Power Hour, SuperFriends...the list goes on and on.

This past New Year's Eve, I celebrated the way anyone in their mid-30's who has long ago given up on life would; I walked 15 feet over to the neighbor's house and had dinner. I know, I know...somebody call the cops before this party gets out of control.

After dinner, we turned the party up a few notches and sat in the living room, anxiously anticipating the wheeling out of Dick Clark and the prospect of maybe finally seeing him subtitled for the slurred-speech impaired. Long ago, I devised a theory that today's Dick Clark is actually an animatronic robot and has been since at least early 2001. I also believe that vanilla bean and vanilla are the same flavors, except vanilla bean has less stringent quality-control testing, which allows for the flecks of dirt clearly visible throughout.

Anyhow, we're sitting in the living room and drinking vodka and, since I know nothing outside of pop culture, I begin spouting off on some tangent about Sigmund and the Sea Monsters that would usually result in someone quickly scrambling to talk over me and change the course of the conversation to something someone heard on NPR or a variety of other sleep-worthy topics of conversation.

Let's stop here for a moment. NPR. Seriously, what am I not getting about how great this supposedly is? How have I found my way into social circles where NPR usually becomes a topic of conversation? Have you ever tried listening to this crap? Have you been able to stay awake? If you answered yes, you are more powerful than I and should be nominated to procreate and carry on the survival of the human race. It appears that since I hate NPR, I'm "stupid" and "uneducated." Even my ex-wife, who couldn't quite hack high school and eventually BARELY got her GED, and who I pretty much wrote every paper she ever turned in in college (I should have an honorary bachelor's in geography for the amount of papers I wrote on it) called me an idiot for disliking NPR. This is okay though, because as stupid as I am for not liking NPR, I was smart enough to get away from her and her constant spitting of phlegm into tissues and leaving them sitting on the table, and her....

Sorry, staying on topic...

So I'm talking about Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and I hear something along the lines of "I liked that show, but was really into Bigfoot and Wildboy."

"Yeah, that was cool too, but.....wait......did you just say 'Bigfoot and Wildboy?' "

"Yes."

And in that moment, my neighbor became the teacher, and I was his student. Not only did he not mind my incessant babble, but he wanted part of this conversation. In a big way.

We began a conversation about 70's children's TV that would eventually supercede any desire to turn up the contrast to get a closer look at the wires connecting Dick Clark to his puppeteer. I won't bore you with the details, but in the midst of this talk, he asked me if I liked Ark II.

"What's Ark II?" I asked. And with a smile on his face, he began breaking down the almost unintelligible premise upon which Ark II is based. He then walked to his shelf, pulled the dvds down, and said "Here, watch these."



Ark II, for the uneducated, is the type of show you could pretty much only watch as a child, because I've tried to understand what the hell is happening as I watched episode after episode of this show, yet I continually sit there with a crinkled forehead and agape mouth, occasionally hearing myself uncontrollably mutter "What the fuck just happened?"

From the opening credits of Ark II, we're force-fed this information via a very serious-sounding narrator:

"For millions of years, Earth was fertile and rich. Then pollution and waste began to take their toll. Civilization fell into ruin. This is the world of the 25th century. Only a handful of scientists remain. Men who have vowed to rebuild what has been destroyed… This is their achievement… Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people. Their mission: to bring the hope of a new future to mankind."

The phrase "highly trained crew of young people" sounds so out of place you can't help but mutter "huh?" when it's uttered. But Ark II doesn't stop assaulting your sense of reason here. The basic plot of this show, from what I've gathered watching the entire series, is that there's a white guy named Jonah, an Asian chick named Ruth, a Hispanic boy named Samuel, and....get ready....a talking chimpanzee named Adam. This group of "highly trained young people" travel around in this awesome combination RV and laboratory (called Ark II) and try to help 25th century earth, which has become so pollution-ridden it's basically barren and post-apocalyptic, by re-introducing lost ideas to help preserve and save the environment.

Ah yes, but how did these "highly trained young people" (even though Jonah looks to be at least 35 if not older) become so highly trained? Hold on to your skull, for your mind is about to blown. Apparently there is this group of surviving scientists, who I guess are both extremely lazy and really fond of smoking a futuristic hallucinogenic, who decide that the best solution to save the earth is to take their collective knowledge and use it to train 3 annoying kids and a talking monkey to roam around and take samples of dirt, fly around using jet packs, and fight against madmen trying to kill the planet.

Exactly.

"But Mike, tell us more about the talking Chimpanzee." No, I will not. It sounds like an awesome idea (to those who have never had an idea), but the chimpanzee is annoying and very clearly not even talking because there are times when he's talking when his lips aren't even moving. Boulderdash.

Anyhow, as far as 70's mindfucks go, this show gets a gold medal. I'm sure a search of Ark II on youtube or google will eventually present an episode or 2 for your viewing pleasure, but I implore you to watch this first and ask yourself "am I ready for this?"



The answer? No, you are not.

Film of the Week - "Pinball Summer" (aka "Pick-Up Summer")

If there's one thing I love, it' late 70's/early 80's drive-in movies. There's always been something magical to me about this time period and its movies. Nothing makes me happier than a long music montage set to 70's music with Chevy vans, shorts and tube socks, and slow motion scenes of teens splashing each other at the lake. One of my absolute favorite examples of this is Pinball Summer (or Pick-Up Summer, which was an alternate title used for the film since it was released after the pinball craze of the mid-70s and it was thought the original title would harm the film's box office upon release).

This movie involves two guys named Greg and Steve who are your typical 70's high school boys. They each have a love interest they're chasing after, who both happen to be best friends (of course!). Greg and Steve spend a lot of their time at Pete's, a local pinball arcade, which is the big hangout for high school kids in their town.

The antagonist in this movie is named Bert. Bert leads a local motorcycle gang who end up stealing the pinball trophy which is to be awarded to the pinball champion. Greg and Steve steal the trophy back and hide it in a pinball machine, thinking it will be safe there. Enter Whimpy, an overweight loser kid who finds the trophy and tries to strike up a deal with Bert in which he'll exchange the trophy for sexual liaisons with this red-haired girl Whimpy has the hots for.

Pete, the owner of "Pete's" (duh) finds the trophy before Whimpy can deliver it to Bert. I won't give much more of this movie away, except to add that there's a strip pinball game thrown in the middle and Bert goes back and forth with Greg and Steve in a classic game of 70's one-upsmanship. The film culminates in a battle of the champions for the ages, as Greg faces Bert in the finals of the pinball championship.

I first saw this movie in my early teen years and had forgotten the title. For years I thought about how badly I wanted to see it again until one day I was in Eckerd Drugs, browsing their dvd rack when I came across it for the unbelievably low price of 5 dollars. It was the greatest investment I've ever made.

I recently had a conversation with my neighbor (over a few beers) about my love of 70's drive-in cinema and we started talking about the classics. Big Bad Mama, H.O.T.S., The Pom-Pom Girls, The Van, Malibu High....I could go on all day. I asked if he'd ever seen Pinball Summer and, of course, he hadn't. I ran to my shelf, grabbed the disc, and brought it to him. I talked passionately about the plot and must have had a look in my eye that said "watch this movie or I'll seriously hurt you," because he ended up watching it a day or so later. (And yes, he really did watch it as I quizzed him extensively about the plot and he seemed to have a decent idea of what happened.)

Though he wasn't nearly as in love with this movie as I am, he was at least polite and said "that was different." That's good enough for me.

For all you Netflix users out there, they have this movie and you'll forever thank me once you see it. It's a piece of Americana that I'd put in a time capsule without hesitation and be proud to know future generations would be able to enjoy.