nigerian spam scam scam
The heroes at windwood theatricals, savings and loan, got us another booking for next Jan 24 y Jan 25 in beautiful Largo, Florida at the Largo Cultural Center. After adding it to the schedule at spamscamscam.com I realized that we will be doing this years’ entire season (except for next week in reno) in the space of three consecutive weekends.
We’ll also probably be doing the showcase the 3rd week of January. (Unless jewtopia fucks it all up again)
We’ll basically be on the road over four wees. Sort of like we’re on tour or some something. That’ll be pretty cool. Unless I have a job. Sucks to be Victor!!!
Reno Art Town
Ringo Starr & Nigerian Spam Scam Scam
I’m talkin’ Ringo god damned Starr!!! Ognir Ratts, if you remember that show back a million years ago.
Plus, our official photo was taken with a camera phone.
It’s a great world, ain’t it?
WTC Bounce House Slide
In fifty years, less if we factor time compression, there will be a World Trade Center bounce house. It will be really tall and kids can jump from windows to the bounce house pavement below. There will probably be some really cool technology then so there will be fire and you can feel like you’re hundreds of stories high.
Why is this in your head, you aks?
To wit:
Mister Snickers is a Commie!!!
Victor and I have a couple of spamscam shows coming up so I figured I’d try to make some extra cash like the pro’s do with MERCH MERCH MERCH!!!
This is the link to the actual shirt
Lucky?
I enjoy watching shows like Video Justice, Shockwave, World’s Wildest Videos and other real crappy crap crap crap t.v.
Why in the hell would you call a helicopter pilot whose helicopter crashes lucky? Why do people thank god when their houses are destroyed and say they are blessed? Do they not realize that their house was fucking destroyed?
I consider myself lucky. I’ve never been in a plane crash (if you don’t count that foaming the runway thing) and have never had my home destroyed. I’m lucky. Not a guy who has been hit by an 18 wheeler and been through a year of rehabilitation in the hospital.
Next caller.
Dr. Belknap
Oddly, one of the things that kept me alive growing up in Norman, Oklahoma was the boy scouts. I ended up becoming an eagle scout and then went on and was in an explorer post. the things we did at that time would cause national scandals now, but it was the 70’s and things were different. regardless, it was great fun and i made lasting friends and learned some good stuff and can still recite the trustworthy helpful-friendly-courteous-kind… thing.
One of the “dads” who spent his spare time wrangling a bunch of insane kids was Dr. Hal Belknap. He was insane and a great guy. He was a great man who never forgot what it was like to be a boy. Dr. B. died this week and, you know, that happens, but I’ve been thinking about him a lot more than I thought I might.
When the streets in Norman snowed over, he would tie a big plastic bowl/sled thing to the back of one of their cadillacs with 15 or so feet of rope and drive. I played in a band with his son, Hal, and lived fairly close by so I was one of the lucky ones who got invited to go sledding. Dr. Belknap would drive like a crazy person (which he basically was) around the neighborhood with a kid on the sled, rounding corners until the person on the sled bit it violently into a tree or parked car or something. Then some other fool would jump out of the car, get on the sled and hang on until physics made it impossible to do so any longer.
Down jackets would be ruined, pants ripped, soaked with ice and snow. hands would be so cold you couldn’t close or open them. we would have cuts and bruises and scratches everywhere. you could even lose a shoe or a boot. it was violent insanity with Dr. B. at the wheel and that is exactly what was called for. He was able to provide that on more than one occasion.
For at least 2 years in a row, the explorer post would travel to South Padre Island, Texas, for the pre christmas fishing trip. The trip never materialized because the seas were always too rough, but Dr. Belknap would somehow enlist at least one other poor sucker idiot dad to drive another car full of 15 year old boys for a weekend camping on the deserted sand dunes.
The drive down was stupid insane and, again, would cause a national furor now. you had at least two cars full of kids throwing water baloons, trash, fruit, bags of urine, cups full of tobacco spit (we all “dipped” skoal at the time) at each other. the cars would get trashed.
then, we’d hit the texas/oklahoma border. they sold fireworks year round so we would buy gross upon gross upon gross of bottle rockets and roman candles; literally buying all of the bottle rockets & roman candles a stand had in stock. many of those would be shot at the cars and if you were in Dr. Belknap’s car, you were assured a “victory” as he didn’t mind laying back for a while and then making a 100 mph ambush on another car. Or, he’d exit the freeway and then floor it so he could get back on the freeway ahead of the other cars so we could throw shit at the other kids in the cars who had sane people driving them.
once we hit the dunes of south padre island, Dr. B. would find a spot to camp conveniently far, far, far, far away from us. Us would be 10-15 guys and a couple of the girls in our explorer post. (No, we didn’t do any sexy time with them.) They were cool girls who were in our post. We were insane, not assholes.
The rest of the night was a bottle rocket war. it was beautiful. thousands of bottle rockets being shot at your best buddies in the crisp december air of south padre island, texas. bundled up with layers of clothes, goggles, hats, gloves… the air was cool enough so it wasn’t too hot… the layers protecting us from the few bottle rockets that would hit. the hits were surprisingly few and the injuries were zero. not a one. and, you know, there might have been a 7-11 about a mile away that someone might have been able to buy a case of beer from.
i’m thinking how, in this ultra-safe padded world, if one were to read on the news about an explorer post who drank beer and shot bottle rockets at each other, there would be a national outrage. bill o’reilly’s plastic face would be stretched beyond the breaking point and all the hippies would be shaking their heads at how we were probably gaybashing hitler youth who didn’t have enough love. but dr. b knew that he was taking us to an enormous bounce house for 15 year old boys (and a couple of really cool girls) and knew that we were responsible enough not to do something truly stupid. plus that the dunes were soft and forgiving enough and we were strong enough to take on anything that another 15 year old who had downed two beers, wearing two down jackets, trying to stop laughing long enough to “aim” a bottle rocket over a windy sand dune could dish out.
i am waxing sooo nostalgic, but it was absolutely the perfect definition of ‘innocent fun’.
So yeah. So… dr. belknap is gone. long live dr. belknap. and, you know, he wasn’t just a crazy freak who knew how to drive like an idiot in the snow, he was also a genius doctor who did trailblazing stuff in his field.
the picture of him here should give you an idea about how he was. look at his face. those smile lines. happy. excited to be there. the kind of doctor who would take your temperature, look at the thermometer and say “yep… about a quart low…” the photographer was probably laughing and having a hard time holding the camera steady, right? dr. belknap just told him a joke; said something really funny. maybe not. maybe i’m romanticizing the past. i doubt it.
i was reading his obituary and he had started another boy scout troop. even after his son was long gone. he was just a guy who was part of norman. i’m sure the behavior became “appropriate”. that’s good. we were a rare breed. we knew how to deal with freedom.
back then, both sides had that unspoken agreement about pushing the envelope.
i will manage to not write “these kids today” but i wasn’t able to keep the tears in.
they broke the mold with him. he was a great guy. look at that smile. man.
tater-hole
The first few times I saw this billboard, I would do a doubletake, literally, because I thought the O was an anus. I’m wondering if it’s some very clever ad… You know…the character in the “O” (i’m guessing a guy in a fat-suit doing a modern day minstrel act) is an asshole or something.
Maybe not. Like I always say, I’m an optimist when it comes to others.
But really, if you drive by a poster or a billboard with this ad, I defy you to not think it looks like a tater-hole.
Or is it just the 15 year old nitwit inside of me?
wow
that napa show was great. holy crap.
i realized that thing penn jillette talks about is so true:
audiences in l.a., ny and to an extent, the fringe fest, are jaded and, much like myself, generally have seen more crap than good.
the audiences who come to see us, haven’t filtered the crap we have and aren’t jaded and instead of preparing oneself for crap, are prepared to have a great time.
playing l.a. is like swinging a lead bat. not that these audiences are “rubes” or anything by a longshot. they’re just not assholes like me.
it makes for great shows, that’s for sure.
i bet i could learn something if i thought about it for a second.
off to nyc.
back in a day or something.
sheesh.
pure fame
http://intraweb.stockton.edu/pac/indexmain.asp
I TOLD THEM “SPAM SCAM THEN HUNDRED YEARS OF BROADWAY!!!”
Hello Tucson
I used to live here the first half of third grade. Then my mom packed us up in her VW bug and we moved to beautiful Oklahoma City.
We’re doing spamscam here for three nights. There’s a nice, full page article in the local l.a. weakly type paper, which is excellent and the nice interviewer used some of my better “quips” like the one about how if I had been sitting around bored on the Mister Sterling set in the 70’s I would’ve been out of my mind on blow instead of screwing with a Nigerian 419 scammer via email.
We’re downtown, so it’s sorta remeniscent of the dreaded Minneapolis experience. If we happen to tank here, the outlook is not good.
We rented a PLANET KILLING SUV BECAUSE WE’RE EVIL to drive here. I started nodding off almost immediately so I got Victor to take over and he drove the entire way. Very cool beans.
Going to play the new audio clips at the end of the show. They’re not really integrated, but it will be a cool experiment. I think I have a fairly good template for Spamscam II. Not sure. Hope so.
If I don’t get all lazy over the next few weeks, I can have it at fighting weight for the New Jersey show.
Speaking of shows….
Coreyoke is killing. Our audience doubled this past week. We took bribes to bring people up. It was insane. We’re going to have to sign peeps up before we start and lock the list. Great problems to have. Really, really very cool.
There have been some excellent folks who have been showing up from day one who helped it along as we limped along. Steve, Ginger, Allie, Jeff, Corey (coincidentally) have all been instrumental in “keeping the coreyoke dream alive”… *sniff* *tears*… butt seriassly, I hope the past two weeks haven’t been anomalous. Then I will kill people.
Now all I have to do is learn the songs!
You know, there’s nothing like travel and a hotel room to make one really miss their wife.
Whine, whine, whine… I’m excited about the shows.
Oh. one more whine… slowest internet connection in the history of internet. i’m replicating my 2400bps modem with this wireless connection. fascinating. truly.