FOUND: Bin Laden satire from 2002

 

(I wrote this 23 years ago. I just found it in directory of essays and college papers. I was reading a lot The Onion and SatireWire back then. Bin Laden's 68th birthday is as good a time as any to finally publish this.)

 

Jan 18, 2002 

Tampa, FL-- US Central Command General Tommy Franks said Friday Osama Bin Laden is either "dead or alive"- not undead as reported by several Afghanistan news sources. 

News of Bin Laden becoming "undead" by way of an ancient Islamic ceremony reached US servicemen in Camp Rhino last week, scaring many. 

"I was shocked," commented one Army soldier. "Not only can we not find him, now we can't kill him if we did find him."  

These Afghan reports scared more than just US servicemen- people across the world pondered the ghastly possibilities of an undead Bin Laden.  

"If is this is true, Bin Laden could commit his own suicide attacks and walk away completely unharmed," stated a military strategist. "I am glad General Franks dispelled these ugly rumors." 

When approached for comment, several Islamic clergymen would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a ceremony transporting mortals into the world of the undead.

Book signing - The Gilded Page Bookstore, Tarpon Springs, FL, Friday March 7th, 2025

 

My Spring 2025 Tour continues at The Gilded Page in Tarpon Springs on March 7th from 6pm to 9pm. This signing is a long time coming as Julia, the owner, and I have been talking about the best time to make this happen. We agreed the beginning of baseball season is the best time to do a signing of a baseball book. So I will be at The Gilded Page in conjunction with the Tarpon Springs downtown vendor fair. The Gilded Page is near the vendor fair so hopefully we get plenty of walk-ins.

I am excited and I hope to see everyone there!

 

Book signing Water Street Book Fair - March 12th, 2025

 

New date! The March 5th book fair was rescheduled until March 12th!

Big announcement!

I am part of the inaugural Water Street Cover to Cover Book Fair in downtown Tampa on Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. I have never been to Water Street, Tampa's new downtown district, so this is a great opportunity to explore and be a part of something new and exciting and hopefully sell a bunch of books.

Hope to see everyone there!

Book signing at Motorworks Brewing March 2nd 2025

 

 

I am super excited to announce my latest book signing will be at Motorworks Brewing in Bradenton, Florida on Sunday, March 2nd from noon to 5pm. My goal is to be there before, during, and after the Pittsburgh Pirates spring training game a few blocks away.

Longtime fans will remember that I did a book signing at Motorworks way back in 2022 during an FSU football game. That was a very good night for sales and Seminole football. Happy to return to Motorworks and have a few of their great beers.

Hope to see you there!

Not so Serious movie review: Paganini Horror (1989)

 

I've been doing a lot of reading about Nicolo Paganini recently. For those who don't know, he was a17th Century violinist who may or may not have been in cahoots with the Devil. He took violin playing to another level so naturally many critics and influencers of the day thought he got his gift from somewhere dark. Because of course no one should be able to play so well. Perhaps he sold his soul.

Yes, the roots of Robert Johnson and the Blues lay deep.

Soul selling and interplay with Satan are at the root of this low budget Italian horror. A female rock band who sound a lot like Bon Jovi are in a rut, at least according to their producer. In order to find the thing that will make their next song into a mega hit, they send their drummer to buy an ancient scroll from Dr Lumis of Halloween fame. The scroll is the sheet music of a never before played or recorded song by Nicolo Paganini, the Devil's Violinist.

Of course the girls want to play the song. Of course, their producer wants the song in a video. Of course, they pick a creepy old castle to film the video. Of course, they play the song in the castle. Of course, all breaks loose.

Slowly but surely, everyone dies in some low budget fashion or another. The ghost of Paganini has an interesting dagger that emerges from his violin that does the job to a few of the victims. One girl gets subsumed by ancient wood fungus. Another woman is killed by an invisible wall. Did I mention Satan or the Ghost of Paganini has surrounded the castle with a electro-shield that holds their prisoners on the castle grounds.

There is a fun twist at the end that I wasn't expecting. There was also a comment about trying to play the song backwards to reverse the curse. But that never happens.

Overall, I enjoyed Paganini Horror. It was cheesy. It was poorly acted. But it was low budget. But it did have an interesting premise. Stay tuned to see a similar premise in my next novel.

Grade: 3 Devilish Violins out of 5

Not so Serious Movie Review: The Devil's Nightmare (1971)

 

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

Seven tourists traveled by bus

Into the Devil's web 

The driver was a buffoon,

Who forgot the way.

An old farmer points them to a castle

Where they can rest until the following day.

 

While there they meet a succubus, 

Brought back from many years.

She has no problem killing the tourists,

Playing on their fears. Playing on their fears.

The Devil was the farmer who also controlled the castle, and he collects the souls

Of the priest

The glutton too,

The adulterous man and his greedy wife,

The sleepy blond

The angry old man and the lustful brunette,

Here in the Devil's Nightmare!

Books I Read in 2024

 

2024 was a big reading year for me. I typically set a goal for 15 books in a year. In 2024, I read 27. According to Goodreads, I read over 7,000 pages.

I read 18 non-fiction books and 10 fiction novels. I read a smorgasbord of topics, from war to business, sci-fi to horror. I read a few biographies and a few books about music. I read best sellers and debuts by independent authors. I read a book written in the 16th century and another published in fall 2024.

Overall, a great year for reading.

By the way, I think pages is a better stat to measure reading. Some books are longer than others. 7,000 pages is now my standard. That's 19 pages a day, every day, for 365 days.

Books I Read in 2024:

Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy – Bill Gates

There's Just One Problem...: True Tales from the Former, One-Time, 7th Most Powerful Person in WWE – Brian Gewirtz

The Stelari – Andrew Denn

Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain – Ed Simon

Dr. Faustus – Christopher Marlowe

My Real Dad Was A Stripper – Angela Scott

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century – Paul Krugman

Knuckler: My Life with Baseball's Most Confounding Pitch – Tim Wakefield

Return with Honor – Scott O'Grady

Practical Demonkeeping (Pine Cove, #1) – Christopher Moore

Mail Order Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery #1) – Leslie Meier

Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles – Anthony Swofford

The Howling of the Dead – Stephanie E. Jensen

Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America – Jason Tanz

Whose Blues?: Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music – Adam Gussow

The Blue Nowhere – Jeffery Deaver

The Wall that Heals – Jan C. Scruggs

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage – Clifford Stoll

Secret Tampa Bay: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure – Josh Ginsburg

The Republican Playbook – Andy Borowitz

Five-Minute Mysteries: 37 Challenging Cases of Murder and Mayhem for You to Solve – Ken Weber

Outlaw Summer, Cyber Dreams: A Hacker’s Journey Through Crime And Redemption – Eddie Miro

From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi (From a Certain Point of View, #3) – Elizabeth Schaefer

Forging the Modern Age, 1900-14 – Reader’s Digest Association

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip Heath

Why Climb the Corporate Ladder When You Can Take The Elevator?: 500 Secrets for Success in Business – John M. Capozzi

Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

Not so Serious Movie review: Mondo New York (1988)

 

Every so often I watch a movie and I have to ask myself, "What the hell did I just watch?". Since I started reviewing movies here a few years ago, there have been many low budget disasters, poorly acted catastrophes, and problematic documentaries. But none, none, come close to the weirdness that is Mondo New York.

Mondo New York is in its own class of unusual.

Mondo New York is part documentary and part whimsical journey into the depths of the mid-80s New York City underground. I am a big fan of underground art, but even some of the artists or performances here were extreme for me.

The Virgil in this journey through the levels of underworld is a silent blond girl who walks from place to place, weaving in and out of each scene like a voyeuristic tourist. Sometimes she stays for the whole scene, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes the artist or performers interact with her, sometimes they don't. But she remains the Virgil to our Dante.

Our tour guide starts at a punk rock bar, which is always fun. Then she strolls into an S&M art show, a poet exploding fireworks on his body, a rapper in a junkyard full of art, a spoken word performance that includes raw eggs and glitter, a cockfight, an Asian slave auction, and a voodoo ceremony in which the lead worshiper eats the head off a chicken.

All of this, and an array of crackheads, hookers, and other denizens of the streets.

(My late friend The Mutant is supposedly in the movie according to IMDB. Although I am not surprised he would be around those underground scenes, I couldn't find him. Perhaps he is in the background somewhere.)

As a snapshot of the strange and unusual of New York City, Mondo New York is a gem. I wouldn't recommend it to my mom or anyone's mother. Or anyone who isn't open minded. But as someone curious about alternative art and weirdness, I enjoyed it.

By the way, I would think other cities have similar scenes. Maybe not as many or as often, and some might be more hidden than others, but there is probably the potential for a Mondo everywhere. But I don't think I would want to watch more than one.

Maybe I'd watch Mondo Vegas or Mondo Miami. I would definitely watch Mondo Tampa Bay.

Grade: 5 chicken head stars out of 5.

You can watch it on SuperCultCinema's DailyMotion page here:

 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x944nru

Enjoy!

Not so Serious Movie Review: The Legend of Bigfoot (1975)

 

My most recent cinematic misadventure was The Legend of Bigfoot (1975). I was tricked into watching this. I thought it was a movie. It wasn't. It is a documentary that moves like Bigfoot walks - slow and plodding. Although there are some great nature shots, it adds nothing to cryptozoology or to the layman's belief in Bigfoot.

But I did learn something. Did you know mountain goats commit ritualized suicide so Bigfoot can eat? It's true. Ivan Marx says so in the documentary. He also says a lot of other bupkis and blather that is irrelevant at best, mind numbing at worst. For an hour and a half. That's a lot of not seeing Bigfoot.

An avid traveler and self-proclaimed tracker, Marx was a polarizing presence in the cryptozoology field. In the 10 years of this documentary, he claims to have some real Bigfoot footage. But is it real? It is really Bigfoot, a species of tall, hairy, man-like creatures who have stayed hidden for thousands of years across the globe? Or is Bigfoot actually an afro-clad creative writer in a hairy suit?

Things that make you go hmmm ....

Grade: 1 massive missing mammal out of 5

Book Review: Devil's Contract by Ed Simon

 

My Goodreads review: As much a philosophy book as a history book, Devil's Contract is a very interesting look at the concept of deals with the Devil in fiction and in history. While informative and very well researched, some of the philosophizing can be a bit wordy and there are also some parts where I feel the analogy was stretched to fit the narrative. But otherwise, I enjoyed this. Fun read.

As much a philosophy book as a history book, Devil's Contract is a very interesting look at the concept of deals with the Devil in fiction and in history. Throughout history, the idea of dealing with the Devil has been a part of the human experience. Author Ed Simon reminds us that the first humans in the Bible, Adam and Eve, dealt with the Devil, exchanging their eternal life for knowledge and an apple.

Needless to say, deals don't often go humans' way. Many times, humans need divine intervention to get out their deals with the Prince of Darkness. Simon discusses examples in which the Virgin Mary helps sinners get out of their hellish predicaments. Sometimes God has to get involved and sometimes the human is damned and has to live with their unfortunate choice.

Devil's Contract definitely made me think. I would never have thought that Satan's meeting with Jesus in the desert in the New Testament was an attempted deal with the Devil. Satan was appealing to Jesus's human side, which is always vulnerable. Simon goes through thousands of years of examples of vulnerable humans, from Marlowe and Goethe's Faust characters to the real Faust, to show this trend. The book is extremely well researched.

But as I mentioned in my Goodreads review, Simon can lose the reader in his philosophical points. There are a few sentences that just didn't make sense, no matter how many times I read them. There were also several sentence fragments that had me scratching my head, thinking I missed a word. Although these grammatical faux pas made me stop, they didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the book. But it means Simon's editor could have used another look through.

Some of Simon's analogies were a stretch. I still don't understand how capitalism is a deal with the Devil and if it is, what about other economic systems? Are they better? And the section on the atomic bomb wasn't very clear. What about other weapons? Does mutually assured destruction mean we have all signed deals with the Devil?

I did however really like Simon's conclusions on "terms of service" and other agreements we automatically sign in exchange for the ability to use our phone and apps. The power of these devices and programs comes with a choice. Usually it means we agree to send our user data and sometimes our personal data to companies that don't have our privacy in mind. Is that a deal with a Devil? Maybe not in the Biblical sense, but maybe in a modern, technology sense.

That's the point Simon wants to leave us with. As we no longer believe in demons and Devils as they did five hundred years ago, are there still Devils in our society and we still dealing with them?

Recommended. 4 Devil horned stars out of 5.