AHS Season 6 Episode 2

Well, “My Roanoke Nightmare” continues to entertain…and provoke and remain Swiss cheesy in terms of logic.

It starts off kind of where last week’s show left off, but not exactly.    Last week’s show ended with Shelby is running amuck in the woods in pursuit of Kathy Bates’ character who literally bounced off Shel’s car when she was trying to escape the house.     She gets lost and is confronted by a man with the top part of his head missing;  he sees her and falls to her knees.  The end.

This weeks show starts of with her still lost in the woods but she walks upon a crucifixion or purification  scene in which.  The scalped man is tied and nailed, chest first to  a much larger version of one of those Blair Witch looking twig figurines we we were introduced to last week.      Kathy Bates’ character is the head of this puritanical coven, is it?…. and she has has Igor hunchback counterpart which looked something like Lady Gaga in bloody make up.    And whoever or whatever this person represents she’s egging on Kathy Bates’ urging of these angry, torch welding phantasmas.   He died something illegal with a pig  and the villagers slap on pig’s head (a fresh kill by the looks of it) and  then he’s not crucified, rather large figurine is turned into a spit and the man is burned alive.

Shelby screams, allerting Kathy Bates and company to her presence, a chase ensues and Shelby runs into the driveway and almost into a car, driven by her sister in law, Lee.

Shelby is rushed to the hospital and checked out.  She’s okay. Matt comes to see her; tells her that the cops were called…once again…searched the woods and found nothing.     They are becoming a total pain in the ass for this  local jurisdiction.   Anyway, Shelby still thinks its the local yokel inbreds who placed a low bid on the house during episode one.

Lee decides she wants to see her daughter, Flora.  So the eight year old ones for a weekend visit and of course immediately, befriends a ghost bonnet wearing ghost child named  Priscilla Flora who  during a game of hide and seek at the end of her visit, tells her that she’ll kill everyone in the house, and keep Flora alive until the very ends.  This enrages Isaac Hayes who  has come back from the grave to play Lee’s ex-husband who wants total custody of the child, due to Lees/ boozing fired cop way.  He takes Flora off in a heart wrenching good bye scene….child screaming for her mother, mother screaming for her child.    Then Lee falls off the wagon and drinks all night long.  Matt and Shelby awaken  to the all too familiar sound of glass breaking.   It’s Flora in the dining room just coming off her bender she’s drunkenly broken a bowl.    Everyone looks up and there are knives thrown into the ceiling.  Matt and Shelby assume Lee did that, too, but she denied it.  Matt takes her upstairs to sleep off the rest of it.   She’s awaked a few hours later the image of two 60’s looking nurses staring at her in bed.    She shakes her head.   They’re gone.  Then she hears a noise….runs towards it anyone scared shitless is inclined to do and she sees a bunch of blood pig tails nailed into the wall.  She shakes her head.   They’re gone.  She looks into a mirror and sees the man with the pig head on coming towards  her.  Again, she shakes her head and  he’s gone and apparently Lee is gone too because we don’t see her for a while.    More on Lee in a sec.

Its the middle of the night and Matt and Shelby are sleeping.   we hear a phone ringing.     Loudly.  Shelby sleeps through it, but Matt but go down three flights of stares to answer a desk phone that was outdated in 1985.   On the other end is a woman moaning.  He looks down and sees the phone isn’t even connected to the wall outlet.   Then, the moans start coming from the kitchen.  Matt turns around and sees a residual haunting of when the house was a senior care facility decade earlier.     He sees  are the same two nurses that Lee saw by her bed, that Shelby saw cross the hall in front of her that, that went unmentioned in the last last episode.   They are oblivious to his presence and they stand around a bed with an elderly woman in it, refusing to take her medicine.   One nurse accuses the patient of having a sassy nought so she pulls out a handgun and shoots granny right between the eyes.  This elates the sisters who revel in the fact that the patient’s name was Margaret, so they gleefully spray paint a large M on the wall.

The cops are called.    Nothing is there.  The ugly wall paper chosen to refurbish the house is undisturbed.   Matt, says the officer, had to have been having a vivid dream.

Then the next night, they are awakened once again to the sound of that damn pig.   Shelby and Matt grab his and hers flashlights and head into the wooded acreage that came with the house, in search of a pig.   They get separated and a pig comes out of no where and runs by Matt’s feet and he says nothing.  They meet up once again to find the greasy, dripping, gross remnants of the grilled man….but no Kathy Bates lead villagers.  The cops were called once again , but this time, the cops see the remnants, but they also think its the handiwork of Papa Hayseed, Ishmael Polk and his odd progeny.

Then one afternoon, Matt and Shelby are looking outside and see a pilgrim looking woman standing there.  They of course, run our to see who o what she really is and there’s nothing there, but she was standing on the entrance to a fruit cellar.    What do they do?   Run down the step ladder and into the old cellar, which is oddly free of cobwebs, spiders and or critters.  All they find is a video camera.   They take it to their VCR and play it.  Its an extreme close up of  bearded Denis LO’Hare  portraying a academic and author, namedDr. Elias Cunningham, who lived in the house in order to write a Charles Mansonesque murder mystery, based on a pair of pure sisters who were homicidal sociopaths.  They took pleasure in killing off old people that had become a burden to their families.

Sad.

Dr. Cunningham explains in the tape that the women only took boarders whose first names could spell out one word M-U-R-D-E-R.    But they hadn’t gotten to the R yet.  It was just MURDE.   And apparently, the five letters couldn’t be covered top by paint, so we see extras placing ugly green floral wall paper over it. The professor on the tape says there are demonic things happening in the house and that he’d been in the fruit cellar for days and didn’t want to step foot back in the house, but somehow, he finds the courage and takes his camera with him.     He walks through the darkened youse, demanding that whatever is in the house show itself, well, it does…in a big way.

Think “The Ring”.   I know….I don’t get it either.

Matt and Shelby freak and call the bank wanting their money back.     A representative comes to meet them .  They accuse him of nondisclosure, regarding specific aspects of the house’s past.  He claims he’s no real estate agent and can’t help them; the house is theirs until they choose to sell.

So, they’re stuck with the house and the pig noises and Kathy Bates who only roasts by night.

Oh yeah and Lee kidnaps her daughter and brings her back to the house.   Really?

There are a couple of other things I should add.    A bloodied meat clever is left in their front door and yet another window is broken.  It takes down a vase filled with flowers in  and mixed with all the flora is a small dirty bonnet….described by the human Flora, who’s new imaginary friend Priscilla said she’d make for her,  IF she helped Priscilla stop.

Stop what, we ask.

Flora  explains “all the blood”.

Later, we learn that Lee has kidnaped Flora and brought her back to the house and the episodes ends with Flora running into the forrest,  at the behest of a ghostly John Smith looking mother fella.      Matt, Lee and Shelby run after her and they find her yellow sweater tied atop a newly de-branched tree….a very tall tree….with no sight of young Flora anywhere.

This episode?  Intriguing to make me look forward to episode 3 next week.

Now, there are still major plot holes, and scary things that happen this couple won’t tell people., much less each other.   I’m finding if I watch this show as a civilian and throw logic out the window one of the few windows unbroken in the house. And don’t I wish I were the window and glass purveyor in that vicinity.    And lastly, we do know that they, whoever they are, are looking to kill someone who’s name begins with an R to complete the word “murder” which lies behind wall paper that’s the easiest to remove in the history of mankind.

As for Lady Gaga character as the Igor character?    Maybe I’m right.   Gaga’s name was featured as a guest star in the closing credits.    Now, I don’t know if that means that she’s there as part of the general cast or if it was specific to this episode, but it was there.

 

 

 

 

 

AHS Season 6 Episode 1

Interesting.

Very interesting.

The episode, entitled My Roanoke Nightmare, harkens back to season one when uttering the word, Croatan would make the ghosts of Murder House go away.   Well, when the early settlers of Roanoke disappeared, the only clue remaining was the word Croatoan carved in a tree.

OK, now that we’ve established that .

The story is being told like a one of those police/crime stories on the ID Network.    Actors recreating the stories often told by the real victims or depending on the cheese factor, actors as the narrators, too.

This is a story about an interracial couple played by two separate couples.   I don’t recognize the actor narrating Matt’s account of the story, but his wife, Shelby is played by the wonderful Lilly Rabe. The couple acting out Matt and Shelby’s account of their Roanoke nightmare is AHS regular, Sarah Paulson and series newbie, new Cuba Gooding, Jr., who supplied us with our first naked male ass shot in the season premier .

They’re young and in love and living in Los Angeles.  Shelby is a yoga instructor and Matt is a rising star win the world of pharmaceutical sales.     He just got a promotion, Shelby just learns she’s pregnant and everything is hunky dory until while out celebrating, Matt is knocked out cold by a gang initiation.     He’s rushed to the hospital with a broken orbital socket crushed to the hospital where he” have surgery and she loses the baby.   Miscarries the right by her husband’s hospital bed.

Thanks to the magic of Hollywood, Matt is healed two minutes later and Shelby seems to coping but they decide to get out of Gotham, seek a small, simpler place.   He suggests they go back east to his home state of North Carolina.

They’re picnicking in the woods (with very odd looking mountains in the background), and happen upon a 200-year old farmhouse that, with 12 adjacent acres, is for sale at auction with a starting price of a mere, $21,000.    Matt and Shelby eek in delight then  scope out the property , which is massive, old and scary, but of course they want it and show up for the auction which along with three inbred YOU SURE HAVE A  PRETTY MOUTH hicks.   They tell Matt and Shelby that they don’t want this house, then Matt remembering this is the the South, defiantly ups the bid to $40k.     The hillbilly men are pissed and they grunt in anger and pile in an old pick up.     The auctioneer cant get the hell out of the place fast enough.

They move in and start redecorating.    It would cost six figures just to furnish one of the three stories, but they take paint brushes in hand and DIY as much as they can.  The house is cleaned up, modernized but still sparsely furnished.    Then they start to hear weird noises outside…..like a lot of people walking and a pig squealing.      Matt runs outside and sees that their garbage cans have been vandalized.    Just as he’s assuming this is the handiwork of the ZZ Topp wannabes, another can is hurled at him from 30-feet away.

Police are called.   An officer arrives played straight—not an inkling of Barney Fife in the portrayal—he seems nonplussed by the story but seems to know Hillbilly guys Matt whom Matt has accused.

Over the next few days more noises which result in a skinned pig on their front porch.  Matt decides not to tell Shelby whose already freaked out.   He buries the pig somewhere on the on the property.    The next day, Matt runs into town on errands and Shelby stays home yoga-ing  in  one of the house’s many unfurnished rooms and  it starts to hail.  Shelby walks outside and realizes the hail is human molars .   As in teeth.     This freaks her out more, especially since Matt is leaving the next day for an out of town trip.    She frantically calls him and he comes home and she takes him to the back where minutes early it was raining teeth.    And they see nothing.

So, Matt leaves and Shelby decides this night, despite seining the ghosts of twin women cross the hall in front of her, is the perfect night to go take a dip in the hot tub we’ve never seen before,.   As she’s lying in the water, eyes closed, a glass of vino an arms length away, suddenly she’s forced under water and held there and from the camera shot, it looks like this small hot tub is a small swimming pool.   She looks up and sees a face which I thought was one of the hillbillies.     She’s released, rises up from the water and catches her breath enough to call the same nonchalant cop  and Matt.   He rushes home and the cop says  Shelby told him people in period clothes, with torches were the offenders.    Again, I thought I only saw one face above the water and it looked like one of the hicks at the auction.

Matt needs to leave again but he doesn’t want to leave Shelby alone so he calls his angry, resentful, ex cop sister Lee (played by the divine Angela Bassett) who was fired for abusing pain pills after being shot on the job.   She and Shelby never liked each other.     And that’s obvious.

They’re in the kitchen and Shelby is cooking dinner.     I see a pork roast in a pan and Shelby chopping vegetables.   She hears a noise in one of the home’s many hallways and when she returns, she can’t find her knife.      IT’S STUCK IN THE PORK ROAST!!!!!!     She accuses Lee of doing it, Lee denies it.    A few hours later, Lee is in bed when she hears more of that odd squealing sound and then out of the darkness comes a rolling empty wine bottle.   Lee thinks Shelby did this and goes to the library to accuse her.     They get into it and hear more noises, this time, coming from the basement.    They decide to Nancy Drew t and head down the stairs to see whats happening.    They find a video set up, from a security system Matt had installed and there’s a video playing.   It’s staticky, shows a large pig traipsing through the woods, like a man in  a pig costume.  then there’s a woman saying something and shots of trees.   Then the lights go out and Shelby frantically calls Matt and once again, he rushes home.      The next scene we see in a lovely homage to The Blair Witch Project, these odd twig figures strewn throughout the house.  Remember if you will, those twig images the trio of filmmakers kept encountering in the Blair With Project which just happens to be premiering in series form on FX next week.

Permit me to backtrack a bit here….in the moments before the arguing Shelby and Lee hear noises in the basement, the camera takes us outside and we see angry villager types walking close to the house and peering inside every window  because a home this big which has windows everywhere, are unobscured because I’m assuming window treatments for a house this size would also cost six figures.

OK, so were up to speed—-after the trio see all the twig figures hanging everywhere, Shelby loses it and jumps  in the car shouting she’s had enough.   Half a mile from Hell House, she hits what I thought was a scarecrow.       Well, whatever it is is, it breaks the windshield.    She grabs a flashlight from the glove compartment and checks out the area for a body.     And she eventually finds one—a portly woman dressed in period garb, is lying in the road, she slowly gets up, dusts herself off saying nothing and walks into the woods.  This wasn’t a close up shot, but to my delight, it was Kathy Bates.  I’d recognize that body shape of  of hers anywhere.   I was hoping she would come back for this season.  So, La Bates walks into the woods with Shelby following and Shelby ends up getting  lost herself .  She panics and runs and trips, of course, landing on the mulch-like ground which starts to undulate beneath her.   She  looks up and sees angry torch bearing villagers approaching her.    And then, out of nowhere,  what I think is a man, missing the top of his head runs up to her and falls at her feet as the torch wielding villagers merge closer, EL FIN.

That was it.    The end of the premier episode.   I wanted more, which is something I haven’t been able to say about AHS in years.

ONSERVATIONS:    In a scene when the villagers were surrounding the house, I thought I saw one man carrying a bloody machete.     Could that be connected to the headless man or could that have been a scarlet red kappa?    Perhaps all this happened on a Friday night.    Also, when Matt played back the security videotape , it looked to me like the big pig in his version was a large breasted naked women with a pig head.

I hate setting myself up for this season, but I like what I saw tonight.  I can handle weird and strange but its got to have some context and for me, the show hasn’t had any of that since the premier season.    And even then there were so many unanswered questions about Murder House.    Seasons two through five tried too hard to be too weird.   Last season had too many plot twists to be even remotely enjoyable.    But since this season ,which is supposed to be an homage to the collective works of Steven King, perhaps Ryan Murphy and his creative team will effort to tell a better story.

And yes, there were a few moments tonight that actually startled me and kept me glued to the set.   Bixby my dog needed to got outside to glorify the magnolias with bodily fluids, he had to wait .   I keep forgetting i have VTR on my system.     Based, on the amount in which the magnolias were glorified, I feel sure next week, his bladder will remind me .

 

 

American Horror Story: Season 6

I tolerated five shows of Season 5 and checked out early for Season 4 ,so Ryan Murphy, this is your last chance.

Mr, M is being very hush hush about this season.  We do know that Gaga is back (yawn)  back and so are most of his usual cast of characters, with newbie Cuba Gooding, Jr..  This season is supposedly dedicated to fear monger, Steven King.   I respect his body of work but, I’m not a huge fan.    I’ve never read  any of his books and I’ve only seen a few movies based on his books or screenplays and so far, Cujo has been my favorite.      Scary!!!!      It obviously did something to then child star, Danny Pintauro.        Not that he’s gay.  I think we knew that while watching him growing  up on “Who’s The Boss”, but he just seems like a strange cat..

So, if I like what I see during tonight’s premier, on FX at 10 EST/9 CST, I’ll review it.   If I don’t like what I see, well,I can promise you one thing, you’ll know about that as well

 

9/12/16

I still think a lot about 9/11, the  day that changed the world.     Some would say evil showed its ugly face on that day in the form of four hijacked 757s;.  less patriotic types might say America had it coming, especially on her own soil.  Others don’t care–it didn’t happen to them personally and still others mourn the loss of humanity.

Fifteen years has flown by.  Since that time, so many people have been born, so many have died.    What happened on 9/11 to some kids born since then might have the same affect on them as the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination has  on my generation.   It happened at Ford’s Theater, I know…in April, I think.

I was four when John Kennedy was killed.    I didn’t exactly understand the politics involved or the motives, but I knew a bad man didn’t like him enough to kill him and didn’t care how Caroline or John John  felt about it.    That’s how I saw it, I related to my fellow children.    That’s how my  four year old mind grasped that November day.

Fifty-three years later and I’m not sure I understand anything better than I did back in 1963 or in 2001.    It was hate that bought the planes down, three took buildings with it.  It was hate that killed JFK and hate that killed that black kid or that white kid or that murdered Asian doctor, the Palestinian college student or the Jewish merchant who’d been stabbed in the streets of Jerusalem..     Hell, if you want to be specific, hate even killed Osama bin Laden.

Or does it make a difference because ‘we’ hated bin Laden; united by a very strong emotion?

Well, September 11th, the marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, the USS Cole all happened because somebody hated Western ideals.   Were we attacked by the same united hatred , but in this case, it was hatred for us   For America.

I could recall terroristic tragedies that happened even longer ago, but admittedly, things get a little hazy after anything relative to Archduke Ferdinand’s murder.

I had a thought recently….the kind that would enter our gray matter after smoking some great weed.   What if God as we know it was really this massive alien or aliens and we were all put here for their amusement like Ceasar, the lions, and  the Christians in the colosseum????.    Violence being more sport than horror.

Sun Tzu (I think) believed that everything comes down to war. It’s the basic organizing factor of every society.   Well yeah, how can you know peace without knowing war?   Just think about it, somewhere at any given time on this planet, there are warring factors.     From an organized militia,  to ragtag guerrillas fighting in rain forests to football rivals facing each other every weekend in the fall.  Defense.  Offense.  Its the strategy of everything.

Is life just one big power play?

It feels like it is sometimes.     Who has the gold?    Who’s the king of the mountain?.   You hear stories about Wall Street tycoons or the star makers in  Hollywood who get the biggest thrills of their lives simply by fucking someone over a deal.

And don’t get me started on free will.    I think about the passengers on board the hijacked planes or the people who went to work at the Pentagon or either WTC tower that Tuesday morning.   They didn’t believe they’d  wake up that morning to die.    But 19 radical America hating Muslim zealots had different plans for them.    And then on United Flight 93, The Free Will of Man that existed on that plane became a tug of war.  Everyone on  board knew they were going to die and like the jumpers on the burning floors of the towers,  they received the ultimate Sophie’s Choice—-they got to chose how they’d die.  Again, I shake my head.

I don’t know.   I’m told that to try to understand God is feeble.   We’re not meant to understand God.   Well frankly, that sounds just a little too convenient for me.  Tolerance is more relevant than love and I can’t and won’t judge who or what you believe.  we must tolerate each others others different beliefs and yrs, even our doubts.    I know this;  a power far bigger than me exists, I’ve felt it; I’ve seen it in action minus the angelic choir in the background  and while I’d admit an existence, exactly how and why this entity operates as it does confuses the hell out of me.

 

 

 

9/11: Fifteen Years Later

The phone rang in my Houston home that morning, a few minutes before 8:00.  A friend mine called about some journalistic so tasks on my nerves”to do”list.     I have to sleep,with s TV or radio on because after years of wearing headphones or an IFB decide in your ear for decades, that annoying high located tinnitus  is usually th end result.    Usually it’s just  a par of blihering idiots talking about then zoo’s newest baby momkey or that it’s Jello’s 75th birthday and there are an unimaginable number of deserts or salads you can make.

But not thatbmorning…..

The screen showed one of the  world trade centers on for with smoke billowing from it.      “Am accident”‘ they said.     ??”A small committee airplane hit the building”, they said.  “But how?”, they’d ask.  “Tuesday morning, 9/11 didn’t have a cloud in the sky.”

“Osama bin Laden”‘ I said.

I  wasn’t an expert on the man and west hating  minions,      I had been a political talk show host that summer and  bin Laden’s name was mentioned everyday as was his hate for the west.      He said as far as the  US was considered, he’d make no distinction between an Americsans’ gender, or age, or whether they wore uniform or not.     It would be a war, but fought half a world away.

To some in Washington, this was saber rattling.     Osama’s war affort were a ragtag bunch of men, mostly from the Provences, armed with what they could scrounge through the remnants  weapons used during the Afghan/Ruseian war fought a few years earlier.     But what modes of war alQaeda had in post war -Afganistan changed:    bin Laden’s millions and the wicked creativity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammmed.    It was the portly sheik’s idea to use America’ smug vulnerability against her.     Use four Boeing 767s scheduled for transcontinental flight……that meant full fuel tanks….. And use them as bombs ahainst buildings vital to our economy and security.   

It was easy enough to find 19 matyrs willing to be fed grapes by 72 virgins just to learn to fly a plane and serve as muscle hijackers,    Thy moved here, assimilated to look and appear western and a a select few were chosen to take flying classes.      Some indicated they only wanted to learn to fly and plane, not land or takeoff.     This was a red flag.     A few of the hijackers here learn to kill  Americans  had overstayed their visas.   Another reed flag.  And there were other matters that could create more red flags then outside the Kremlin.
But if the FBI knew any of this., it wasn’t talking.   If the CIA knew something, it kept quiet, as did the NSA.      Information wasn’t shared and oh how things might have been different had they just done their jobs.  Why didn’t they shared info?      The reasonnsppearsbrombe a petty as each organization arrogantly refused to  what each knee as if all infor was proprietary.

But these are just a few facts that lead up to 9/11,   What happened afterwards is just as intriguing.   

I wrote  this piece on 9/11 several years ago prior to the completion of the new One World Trade Center.   It’s long  and exhausting but is a very complet, heartbreaking  and sad.

Please copy and paste this address:   lauriekendrick.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/sixteen-hallowed-acres- 91113/

Something For Jimmy

Jim Pruett.

Great Name.  I always liked it.  It sounded suave, debonaire, like a cool British MI6 agent, not unlike the name, Brit Hume.    Both like their Shirley Temples’ shaken AND stired.   No straws, well…..maybe one.

But Jimmy wasn’t with MI6 and I seriously doubt Brit Hume is even half as cool as his name sounds.       But Jimmy was.

To me, Jimmy had one genuine personality and about six to tentacled ones.     He’d come to  work for weeks in s sleek suit; hair slicked back as if ready to do a deal with Trump.   Then weeks would go by and he’d grow his hair along and dress like motorcycle gang member.      then sometimes he’d come in wearing different aspects of clothes, a little something from all of character types listed above.

Mark and Jimmy were in some ways are like a married couple…love, hate, agreement, disagreement, it’s all part of the schtick.     Partners of all kinds endure these issues.    if I had to compare them to a married couple, Id say George Burns and Gracie Allen comes to mind.    For those old enough to remember this famed showbiz couple, he was the straight man and Gracie was his ditsy comedic foil.    It was something like that with  Mark and Jim though Jimmy was never ditsy.   He was funny and wick witted and smart.

And above all, he was kind.

I’ll admit that I was closer to Mark, I knew him better or rather I knew what he allowed me to know.    Mark in all his on air bravado could be a shy and quiet man.   Some General Managers with whom he deal with  (loudly) might argue that point, but that’s the Mark I knew.    Jimmy’s who’s mind was ike a tornado; not an surperecell F-6 like the late, great Robin Williams, but a damn strong F-3.    Jimmy could impose comedy damage.     Spit takes, stomach aches after hearing a rom a line so perfectly delivered.   Broken tables from banking them so hard from laughing after a perfectly delivered line.    Hitting the table with each guffaw.   He knew what was funny.   He knew humor and it it worked and when it didn’t work and even when it didn’t work. he could makes giggles out of what  normally would be disappointing groans if said  by anyone else.

Shrinks and an assortment of other white coated clad people say that truly funny people are probably born quick witted, but life either perfects or defects how the humor will be defined.     Sad kids, abused kids, neglected kids, lonely kids, kids from dysfunctional homes—the very ones that would have been perfect fodder for a Lifetime channel movie.

Jimmy came from dysfunction and often spoke about it.  I remember him telling us on air about this childhood and there was an abusive uncle or  father perhaps being involved in an attempt assault.     Jimmy was in his early teens  around this time.   He then told us about working as a kid at a carnival.  He must have met some first rate people there.   He was in charge of righting the wooden milk bottles from the classic carnival milk bottle game.   There were more stories  Im sure, but I can’t remember them.   All I know is that Jim’s hardened backstory would have made a perfect Lifetime Original movie about a traumatized woman’s who went from helpless weakling to  a ballsy walking backbone who find the strength and courage deal with brute in their lives.    And in true Hollywood magic of a two hour movie,  the victim becomes the survivor, who then becomes the ultimate victor and in the end,  clutches the metaphorical Golden Kotex Award for having done so.   If it were Jimmy’s movie,  t we called him there very things e’d herald John Wayne with in his movies fuss as  victor, conquerer, savior, hero, survivor.

Jimmy?   Hero?  Yes..    Golden Kotex recipient?  Not unless it was part of an Uncle Waldo bit.   Oh,  had Had Jimmy only been born a girl!!

But Jimmy was like John Wayne in that he loved this country.  He was a true patriot.       Jimmy adored his wife, Joy, radio was his mistress, his sons were his pride and joy, guns were a gift from God, fast cars were stocking stuffers and his country was almost his life’s blood.   Jimmy was in Vietnam and I think worked with Armed Forces Radio (my apologies if I have this wrong)   but I think it was there were Jim’s love of radio began. and the love of his  of country as well..  I imagine he honed his humor there too, considering all he saw in that war torn region,   Kmowing Jimmy, to him  ABC probably wasn’t a network,  it stood for ABLE BAKER CHARLIE.

He then came back to Texas.   Was a jock, maybe a Program Director in Brownwood perhaps, and then ultimately made it to Houston where he came one of the original members of “Mother’s Family”, the original DJs,management and staffers of KLOL back inthe early 70’s when FM was considered underground radio and the only commercials you’d hear were about head shops, free clinics and where you could get tickets for an upcoming concern).  Again, I may have Jim’s E! True Hollywood Story a little bit of sync and off by a few years  but it’s been almost 20 years since Ive heard these stories so get over yourself.  I was in in radio, Dammit!)   Neural issues and shit!

So, he and Houston’s  premier Audio Maven, Pat Fant give birth to Mother’s Family, the name of KLOLs original employees Hippies. Peace. Love. Dope.    The FM station along with it’s sister AM news station KTRH were in the original Rice Hotel.   In fact, Fant, dropped the needle on the very first records played at KLOL.    “I’M Free”  by The Who    Consequently, it was also the last song played before some corporate idiots changed the KLOL format and killed it.

Fant was  KLOL’s first Program Director, but in the parlance of the era, ”the gig was getting’ too heavy for the cat”. Fant tired of dealing with all the hassles and details that came with being a radio PD, so he gave the job to Jim and Fant then he then became Music Director which for two young 22 year olds had to be two truly fun gigs.     And thats how it started.  The station that Houston went through puberty with, the young adulthood…..thirty somethings and beyond..

Jim’s on air name was Tony Raven. Then sometime after this and to be honest, I don’t know the details, Jimmy and Mark got together and  Houston radio due known as Hudson and Harrigan was created and and on an AM station which I think no longer exists.   But it was at this point I think these two brilliant minds realized that comedy could reach much farther advanced than other storied Jocks of the era.  The silly Cousin Brucie one liners.  Don Imus and whatever his mode of comedy was.    Mark and Jim realize the comedy could indeed be one liners and also short stories with defined beginnings, middles and ends and sound effects..Radio Theatre For The Ear and Mind….and to make it work, it  must ALWAYS end on the funny.

The comedy law of three had to apply.

For example:     Out of the blue, Jimmy asked me he names of the first three men I had sex with.

I replied with the fictitious names:    Bill, Mike and some guy from Poteet.

And then we’d laugh and go to commercial.

The rule of three.

From Jimmy, I also learned a lot about philanthropy.  There was the Humane Ranch for Boys and Animals which he established..     He saved many horses which were near death…and many wayward teens on  their way to sad,  unhappy endings,.   Perhaps for Jimmy the was part of his redemption, from a life as a teen carnie to a well paid, well known disco jockey beloved by minions.

Jimmy was loved and Jimmy loved.   He loved his God and made no apologies for it.   Gave him glory for everything and with Jim, God did a very nice job,   Jim was far from perfect, but his intentions to help his fellow man were.   The education his life taught him which he NEVER could have learned in a classroom was used in all aspects of his life. And one more similarity to John Wayne, Jimmy was a patriot.      He loved this country.   We weren’t working together during 9/11, but I knew what happened have to have taken a piece of his heart.

And what a heart.  I lost track of the number of actual attacks he had but if having a huge heart,enlarged by so very much love, then I guess I can understand it had to have its limitations.

Jimmy, was a wonderful enigma to me and everyone who knew him   He trusted me with being funny and I thank him and bMark both for taking a chance on a small town South Texas girl, who saw life just a little differently, but exactly as they both did.

And now a personal note for Jim;:  I love you, I will always love your life energy that I still feel surging around me. And when it’s my time to head skyward, (well, lets assume it’ll be skyward), I hope you’re one of the people there to welcome me,  and you’re there dressed like a freak, still deaf as a stump, asking me just “who exactly was this guy from Poteet?”

I’m going to end this homage to now you Jimmy, but I’ll do so in the way you and Mark taught me.

For starters. I knew I’d be in radio or TV or both since I was six.  I did everything in my life from taking speech lessons to majoring in Broadcast Journalism in college just to get there.   You not only have to want it, you have to do it.   When I was in the radio phase of my broadcast degree program at SWTSU (iI refuse to all it TSU), one of the first courses we had to take was about all the different genres of radio that existed at the time….talk, rock…pop and a new form of radio that was quite controversial, called blue radio….adult oriented content and one of the morning shows which was were becoming increasingly well known in blue radio was a Dallas based show called the Stevens and Pruett Show.    I’d never heard of them at the time and and  Howard Stern could have been a Jewish lawyer for all I know.

So, anyway, we were in a stadium or theater classroom and it was filled with at least 200 students.   So the professor is about to play a sample of this controversial form of radio that I’d never heard of either.      It starts off with Mark asking Jim about ways to get around FCC rules by calling people offensive names using words that sounded like they were in a another language.     So, Mark  asked Jim for an example of how he could get away with calling a woman the vulgar  “C” word , but in French.   And  without missing a beat, Jim said, soont.

One hundred and 99 students in the theater classroom were silent.   horrified..  I was the only one who laughed and out loud, mind you.  I remember thinking that day, with my salacious personality, I could one day work with these guys.

And seven years later, I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things I Don’t Like

Technically,   ex-boyfriends would take the  top five….count’em….top five spots,  but I want to talk specifically about the sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations  we have as humans that illicit a very unpleasant visceral response   Though some things people do (( or don’t do) will undoubtedly make the list as well.

Some, I’ve had since chilfdood, others I’ve just recently discovered I had.

1.  I hate the feeling of having my nails filed.    i Ivan  file them myself with a mild case of repulsion.     But a file in the hand of soneome else’s on my nails and I’m reaching for  a Xanax.
2. I hate lying on a corduroy pillow and hearing  movement on the other side..   It could be something  as innocent as a slight move as mybarm underneath the pillow but when the sound is scratching, I go crazy.    Hearing this  will elicit screams of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre variety.
3. People who chew and talk with their mouths full of food.
4. People who who cut their meat  with their with their fist fully wrapped around the knife handle and held straight up..     So interesting.   I’d love to meet the wombats who raised the people.
5.  Using a toothpick after eating a meal, then making this insipid sucking sound made when when the toothpick finally dislodged pay dirt.
6. Dirty fingernails.    Males, females  infants, I’m not picky.
7.  Lines of makeup foundation along the jaw line.   Blend, people…..blend!!
8. Poor grammar…..”He ain’t got no money…”lHe done took it with him”.      “They’s coming for vittel’s at 8′
9. Eyebrows plucked to 1/16 of an inch.      What’s that all about?
10. People who don’t say please or thank for even the smallest kindnesses
11. Fanny packs.  Lots of people don’t like these things,  handy and convenient as they might be.   Wearing one could be fatal.
12. A dead tooth.   The gray ones.    You can’t help but stare at it.    If money is an issue, I’d glue a big white Chicklet to the offending tooth if I fad to.
13. Visible earwax in an ear.
14. Sneezes that stink.   Someone people don’t cover their faces when sneezing and your forced to smell their pulmonary innards.  Not pleasant.
15. Clumps of irregular holes….such as in a lotus pod.     Tt actually has a name called Trypophobia.   It actually prompts a visceral response.   Here’s an example if I can find the strength to look one up and post it.

Now, I far from perfect and Ive got more flaws than I can count.  I just felt like sharing some things  that bother me, get me…ot freak me out.

I know someone who breaks  into tears at the  mere picture of a clown.   One good friend recently told me she has a phoba of the pointed ends of fingernail scissors.  Regular sized scissors  are no problem, just fingernail scissors.   She  couldn’t explain it.   Very people can.

I would imagine few could offer any explanations because most phobias are considered to be completely irrational..   Some in the psychiatric community have mixed feelings about their legitimacy, but Ive read read recently  that more and more shrinks aren’t poo-pooing phobias it as they once did.    A fear has to begin somewhere, even the most illogical, irrational ones.

So,if you would, please feel to share some of your phobias,,netbooks or betanoirs.     I’m fascinated by the odd little things that cause so much mental and physical discomfort.

Thanks,

Laurie

 

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