Things We Learned on the Internet Tonight_ What is an Axehole??

We learned tonight from The Urban Dictionary that an axehole is: A person who uses an obscene amount of Axe body spray.

Here were some things we found out through Twitter, apparently folks in the urban parts of North Carolina are dealing with major rainstorms:

@WXII (tv station in Winston-Salem, NC): Several thunderstorms warning for Davidson and Randolph County in NC until 9:15 p.m.

@DurhamBulls (minor league team in Durham, NC, image of mascot in the middle): "Thanks to everyone who's sticking with us through this delay. Tarp still on field, but we expect to play!

@WVUgymnastics: "Morgantown Magazine is thrilled that Morgantown tops Forbes list of Best Small Cities! (Morgantown, West Virginia, is where West Virginia University is).

@SunDC (this will be helpful for Muslims in the DC-area celebrating Ramadan, which makes me wonder what my late Turkish father would make of me eating turkey bacon; since we couldn't find a Washington, DC, sunset, we settled with an image of nearby Annapolis, Maryland): "Sunset 8:29 p.m. Sunset tommorow 8:26 p.m."

@VisitMaine: "Tomorrow, Sunday, July 22 is the last day of the Yarmouth Clam Festival! Don't miss it."

@TVGMDebra: "Martha Stewart on whether she's ever had fast food: I've eaten one Burger King, two McDonald's & today I ate an In-and-Out-Burger."

http://www.urbandictionary.com

http://www.marthastewart.com

http://www.visitmaine.com

http://www.mdisfun.org

http://www.twitter.com/DurhamBulls

http://www.wvusports.com

http://www.muslimmatters.org

My Cinematic Rant for the Films of 2011

We sent in a more verbose version of this rant to a film magazine. The film we are 'discussing' here "Bellflower" was quite a cult sensation. It was shown at the Shadowbox Cinema in Roanoke, Va., and at a/perture Cinema in Winston-Salem, NC, among other places. Originally, "Bellflower," which we gather was filmed in Wisconsin (don't quote us on that), made a splash at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

It also played somewhere in the Washington-DC metro area. We tried to find where by checking out a review of the film in "City Paper," but while we were unable to find out, the publication told us that the film only cost $17,000 to produce?! Of course, we could have found that out on the Internet Movie Database as well.

I thought "Bellflower" was a very interesting, hip film until the third act, and amazingly enough the reviewer for "City Paper" seemingly agreed with me. The film concerns a road trip as the apocalypse is looming.

I guess the best way to describe it is a "Mad Max/Easy Rider meets Left Behind" kind of film, except that "Bellflower" does not have an evangelical political agenda unlike the film series with born-again actor Kirk Cameron best-known for the '80s sitcom "Growing Pains," who is the exact same as I am!

And, we gather he has something like 14 children (that is a joke, but it is a ridicolous number that is slightly lower than that!).

Here is my revised rant:

"I must profess sincere admiration for film director Even Glodell and his film "Bellflower," even though I gave it a four out of ten on the IMDB. It is such a 'so bad it's good' film that I almost put it on my top 20 films of the year list.

Glodell made his own unique film in his own unique way. The fact that the screenplay's dreadful third act derails the film into a lurid mess shouldn't make each of us admire him profoundly.

He may well end up learning from his mistakes and end up out Tarantinoing QT himself!"

Bonus Road Trip (9 of 10)_ Should-Be Ivy League Schools

Today, we are asking blog readers how long this very long road trip between Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, and Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California, would be.

We are saying these are Should-Be Ivy Leagues because they both have high academic standards, and here in the United States, major conference expansion because of major revenues sports is getting so absurd that soon San Diego State will be playing football in the Big East Conference against the likes of the University of Connecticut. For those of you Europe, this would be like Manchester United playing soccer games against teams from Dubai!

For our comparison, we are selecting two coffeeshops: Brew Nerds located in the heart of downtown Winston-Salem and California Cafe which is in Palo Alto.

Both schools lost their respective football bowl games as Wake Forest fell to Mississippi State in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn., on Dec. 30 by a score of 23-17. And, the Stanford Cardinal, which had a very succesful season, lost to Oklahoma State 41-38 at the Fiesta Bowl near Phoenix, Arizona, on Jan. 2.

Wake Forest will be playing Virginia Tech at home in men's basketball within the hour. The team's next home game in the sport will be against North Carolina State on Jan. 14 at 1:00 p.m., local time.

As for Stanford, the school has a highly competitive women's gymnastics team which has its home opener on Jan. 22 against Washington.

So, just how far apart are these two schools?

Is the answer?:

A) 39 hours

B) 40 hours

C) 41 hours

D) 42 hours

Yes, we think it would be better to fly too!

SIDEBAR: The answer to yesterday's Bonus Road Trip was C) 6 hours, 45 minutes. We forgot to mention that we used Blake's Tavern in Providence, RI, and the Ithaca Ale House in Ithaca, NY, as our points of destination.

Also, former Brown gymnast Alicia Sacramone actually posed completely nude for the ESPN Magazine photo shoot in which she was standing unclothed on a balance beam, but only the rear portion of her body was visibile to the camera.

We also wanted to clarify that Brady Quinn, the Denver Broncos quarterback she was dating (editorial comment: lucky guy!) is still on the team roster. Though we don't follow pro football very closely, we gather that the team is now starting Tim Tebow instead. The Broncos have a playoff game this weekend, but we are more likely to know how the Russian soccer CSKA Moscow is fairing!

Quote of the Day- Sam Shepard

Since the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC, is presenting the 1985 Sam Shepard play "A Lie on the Mind," starting Oct. 5th, we thought we'd quote the playwright/actor here. I'm not sure these are encouraging words for beginning playwrights:



"You can't make a living at playwrighting. You can barely scrape by."

Quote of the Week-Lorraine Hansberry

Today's quote comes Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) who died tragically young. She is best known for her play "A Raisin in the Sun," which also became the basis for a critically-acclaimed film of the same name:



"Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women."



We are featuring Hansberry because the National Black Theatre Festival recently concluded down the road in Winston-Salem, NC. Among the featured plays was a work called "Voices from Haiti," which was featured in the Greensboro alt weekly "Yes Weekly."



The festival also included the play "Let Freedom Ring" by Ted Lange, who is best known for playing the bartender Isaac on the the 1970s hit show "The Love Boat." The North Black Reportory Theatre Company in Winston-Salem, which has plays year-round, also had a play in the festival.



SIDEBAR: My hometown of Roanoke, Va., may not come to mind when it comes to art, but the Star City has an acclaimed art museum in the Taubman Museum of Art. There is also a relatively new city-wide campaign called "Art in Roanoke" which features public art displays all over Roanoke.



The art on display includes "Trojan Dog" by Roanoke artist Ann Glover at a fire station on Memorial Avenue in close proximity to the Grandin Theatre. There is also "connect" by Erika Strecker from Lexington, Ky., on Campbell Avenue near the offices of "The Roanoke Times." And, there is perhaps the best one of the seven displays in Crystal Spring Park near Roanoke Memorial Hospital called "Jelly Bean" by artist John Clement from Brooklyn, NY.



I will devote an entire blog entry to the project in a later entry.



SIDEBAR TWO: I will be on hiatus from now until next Monday for a variety of reasons. But, while I'm away, I hihgly recommend visiting the unique blog "New Black Man" from Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal, who was recently on "The State of Things," a local/regional public radio talk show on WUNC-FM (90.7-FM, Chapel Hill), which is hosted by Frank Stasio. I am not an African-American myself, but the blog gives one an interesting perspective on the world around us.

No April Fools Joke This Year

We are postponing our annual prank for a variety of reasons, perhaps the main one being that everyone, even my naiive as a missionary working with cannibals in the Amazon River basin of Brazil friend Sal Jackovich* in Scranton, Pa., gets the gag.

Normally, we have said that we were going on a sky-diving trip at either Carolina Skydiving in Jonesville, NC (near Winston-Salem) or Sky Dive Orange in Orange, Va (near Charlottesville).

However, my friend Chris Knight from Reidsville, NC, normally has great gags on his blog (www.theknightshift.blogspot.com). The April Fools Joke in which he said the radical Rev. Johnny Robertson of Martinsville, Va.** had attacked the Pope in Vatican City remains one of the best cyber-pranks I've ever seen. Knight said that reportedly even the FBI called him to ask where he got 'the information.'

*- Not a real person, but I do have a friend like Sal though he does not reside in Scranton, Pa.

**-Yes, he is a real person and he does fit the stereotype of an over-the-top Southern preacher.

PS_ The answer to our road trip question last week was A, as Lexington, Ky., and Columbus, Ohio, are just over three hours away from each other.

Happy New Year from Lucky Luke/Red Kit

Today, we are taking a brief hiatus from blogging about our family trip to Washington, DC, which had elements of both "National Lampoon's Vacation" and "Taxi Driver" to send holiday greetings via our favorite French cowboy Lucky Luke, whom I still refer to as Red Kit since that was his name in the Turkish translations of his adventures.

Surprisingly enough, even though Lucky Luke's stories all took place in the American west, and featured such real-life figures as Billy the Kid, who Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico did not pardon yesterday, the comic book was never popular in America. Though, Lucky Luke did develop a loyal following in Canada, Turkey, Italy, Germany, the former Yugoslavia and even Vietnam.

The first Lucky Luke comic books arrived in 1946, and his rivals were the Dalton Brothers, a Keystone Kopsesque bunch of numb-skulls who were based loosely on the real-life Dalton Gang.

The books were drawn by the Morris (1923-2001) and the stories were written by the late French icon Rene Goscinny, who also worked on the adventures of Asterix the Gaul.

Red Kit rode a white horse named Jolly Jumper and he was accompanied by a stupid dog Rantanplan, who was a satire of Rin Tin Tin. In fact, the dog was called Rin Tin Tin in the Turkish versions.

Lucky Luke was criticized for using cigarettes, and Morris defended the character using the tobacco product in the children books up until 1988 when he decided it was time for the French cowboy to go cold turkey.

New English-language versions made by Cinebooks can be found at considerably more retailers here in les etats unis than in years past. One of them is my personal favorite comic book shop Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC, where one can also see a Tom Waits octopus!

SIDEBAR: Kudos to the following New Years Day babies who were among the first born in their areas: Colton Jackson Rodenhauer of Richmond, Va., Sean-John Arruda of Fall River, Mass. and Jasmine Bessou of Winston-Salem, NC.

DC Diary_ How I (Almost) Went to GWAR

Wednesday night, I almost went to see the speed metal band GWAR at the famed 9:30 Club on V Street in Washington, DC. It was something I considered as compensation for the fact that I would not be able to see the Russian-emigre punk band Gogol Bordello, a band I am actually familiar with and adore.

As for GWAR, I still don't know that much about them. On the Internet, they have been described as 'a Power Rangers cover band' and ' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on LSD' because of their over-the-top costumes which look like they came from the set of a "Hellraiser" sequel.

Their music is also quite distinctive as one can gahter by simply glancing at their song titles: "Bring Back the Bomb" (1994), "Sick of You" (2009) and "Meat Sandwich" (1998). Though they apparently have a conventional side, since they have covered Alice Cooper's vintage anthem "School's Out" (which I found on vinyl today!).

According to Wikipedia, GWAR has made songs which focus on both socially and politically taboo themes, and since they have made fun of both Al Gore and Sarah Palin, they seem to have no particular political agenda.

Amazingly enough, the band formed in the conservative city of Richmond, Va., which is about four hours east of my hometown of Roanoke, Va., in 1984. They are still going strong after 25 years of existence and their new release "Bloody Pit of Horror" is being sold on their web site for $9.99.

One person who was at the show last night at the 9:30 Club said: "'Expletive' bloody good show in DC last night....," which has to make the band feel good since a concert they were supposed to give over the weekend in Vermont was canceled due to heavy snow.

As for Gogol Bordello, they perform at Terminal 5 in New York. Like their DC shows, I would expect the show for the increasingly popular group is already a sell-out.

But, one can go half-way around the world and see them perform at The Barby Club in Tel Aviv, Israel, for two shows on Feb. 28 and March 1. Of course, an El Al Airlines official might think you are insane for flying to Tel Aviv just to see Gogol Bordello.

As for me, I opted not to go to GWAR, but instead, I saw the new Jim Carrey movie "I Love you Philip Morris," which has nothing to do with tobacco executives in Winston-Salem, NC, (the film is ironically now playing at the Apeture Cinema in Camel City as well), which was an ok flick. I was curious to see the film, which is also reportedly playing in Istanbul, Turkey, at the moment because it has been released in much of the world except here in America even though it's an American film. Surprisingly enough, according to NPR, it was a big hit in Estonia.

On the way back from the E-Street Cinema, I somehow managed to get lost on the way back to the place where we were staying. The reason for this was because I had written down the address for the 9:30 Club in my pocket along with the place where we were staying. I was talking obliviously to V Street when I realized something was wrong.

Thankfully, an Indian or Pakistani taxi driver found me and bailed me out. Amazingly enough, I had walked right by 'the correct address' without even realizing it. A Christmas tree-of all things- had thrown me off.

SIDEBAR: Like many of you, I am staying at home tonight on New Year's Eve, mainly due to fatigue though these blog entries I've been posting have caused me to neglect The Marx Brothers marathon on TCM tonight (I think I'll pick it up with "Duck Soup" at 12:30 a.m.). But, some folks are having fun tonight even in zip codes where one might not expect much to be going on.

Such was the case in the industrial city of Wheeling, W.Va., tonight where the hometown minor-league hockey team the Wheeling Nailers defeated the visiting Gwinnet Gladiators from the Atlanta suburb of Gwinnet, Ga., by a 4-1 margin. Of course, residents of that town who are Gogol Bordello fans will probably have to wait for the band to play in Pittsburgh, and then they will have to drive two hours to see them!