Monday, June 30, 2025

Edgar Cayce: The Most Documented Psychic in History


This documentary tells the basic story of the life of Edgar Cayce, best known as the most documented psychic in American, and probably all, history.  He lived from 1877 to 1945.  

In his 20's, Edgar Cayce learned to put himself into a trance-like state, where other people would ask him questions, and he would tap into some other levels of information, including something he called the Akashic Record.  Over 14,000 of these readings, as they were called, were documented by a stenographer, and then transcribed and organized.  The material covered was mostly health readings, to diagnose and find treatments for illnesses and injuries for thousands of different people.  But he also gave "life readings," which dove into the history of individual people.  It was those readings that spoke of past lives, reincarnation, ancient Egypt, the "lost" civilization of Atlantis, and many other topics.  

Edgar was a devout Christian throughout his whole life.  At age 13, he decided to read the Bible, the whole thing, start to finish.  During the rest of his life, he read the entire Bible once for every year of his life, 67 times in total.  He taught Sunday school from his teen years on.  He worked several different jobs, but spent many years working as a photographer with his own small shop.  He moved a few times around the eastern U.S., and at one point tried to use his abilities to strike it rich in the oil boom in Texas.  He married a woman named Gertrude, they had two boys, and eventually settled in Virginia Beach, Virginia, led by suggestions in his psychic readings.  

With the help of some investors from Wall street, he opened a small hospital in Virginia Beach, where people could be treated by doctors and nurses, using the treatments suggested in his health readings.  Thousands of people, including Edgar himself, and his oldest son, Hugh Lynn Casey, were helped by Edgar's health readings, through serious ailments and injuries.  When Edgar woke up from his readings, he had no idea what information had come through him, which is why a stenographer (a woman writing in shorthand, taking detailed notes) was necessary, to accurately compile the information received.    

Edgar's readings predicted the stock crash of 1929, earlier that year.  He predicted in the early 1900's that some day doctors would be able to take a single drop of blood and diagnose what's wrong with a patient.  He predicted that the obscure Jewish sect, the Essenes, would become more prominent in the future.  Many years later, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in Israel, which shed light on the Essenes.  He also predicted things that didn't happen, like the Earth's poles shifting in the 20th century.  But he said that the future is not predestined, it can change, depending on what we do in the present.  

Near the end of his life, in the 1940's during World War II, Edgar Cayce did as many as 8 readings a day.  The readings took a lot out of him, and he pushed himself to physical exhaustion, while trying to help as many people as he could.  Edgar Cayce died in 1945, months before World War II ended, at age 67.  

Below are talks given by different scholars of Edgar Cayce's readings, on a few different subjects.  There are dozens more talks on many different subjects that came through the 14,000+ psychic readings of Cayce.  This post is just a little introduction into the life of this regular man who could tap, somehow, into extraordinary pools of information and knowledge.  

If you find him interesting, you can research more about him on your own.  You can also join the A.R.E., the non-profit Association for Research and Enlightenment, which Cayce started late in his life, and which continues on today.  The link to their website is below.  There are also several books, most published in the mid 20th century, on different subjects, based on information in his many readings.  

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Half a million page views and over 1050 posts...


This blog just crossed the 500,000 page view threshold.  Cool.

As I said in the post a couple of days ago, I don't know where the big chunks of page views are coming from.  This has been happening over the last 1 1/2 to two years, maybe.  This blog has 1,062 posts, but there are a few I started and never finished, so the real number is 1,050 to 1,055 published posts, just on this blog.  This blog has about 200,000 or so "normal" page views, which is damn good for a weird, niche blog.  Then it has around 300,000 page views that have come in big chunks, thousands in a day, from around the world.  Bots?  AI searches?  People using VPN's to check it out?  Something else?  I don't know.  

On all the blogs I've done since my first, really lame, taxi blog in 2007, I've written somewhere over 2,800 blog posts, most pretty meaty, at least 400-500 words, sometimes more than 1,000 words.  Those assorted blogs have pulled in over 800,000 total page views.  For all intents and purposes, I've made almost no money off of all of that writing.  I have a handful of people that support me on Patreon, about $65 a month total, for a year and a half or so.  A number of people have given me small amounts here and there, mostly because I've been homeless much of the time I've been blogging.  I really do appreciate that support, and I thank all of you who have read my posts, and helped me out.  

I have sold well over 100 Sharpie Scribble Style drawings, many of them to readers of this blog, over the last ten years.  But that income isn't directly from the blog itself.  I've written all these posts because I enjoy doing them, and because I wasn't able to find "a real job" for many years, after working as a taxi driver.  So I had a lot of time on my hands.  

I'm building up my Substack site, which is designed to actually earn money as a writer, and I'm working to earn a decent income from that, at some point.  I will shamelessly ask all of you for your support on Substack (probably about $7 a month or so) when I can get a bank account, and the other things needed to get the paid subscriptions working.  

Thanks again for checking out my blog!  Again, I don't know where these big groups of views are coming from, but the counter hit half a million.  I'll keep adding a post now and then here, as I write mostly on Substack.  So check out my Substack for longer, in depth posts on a bunch of different subjects. 


Click on "No thanks" on the first page, to see the latest posts.  If you subscribe for free, it just means each post will come directly into your email.  I appreciate all subscribers, and when the paid subscription option happens, there will still be lots of stuff to view for free, but some posts and series will be for subscribers only.  

Right when I noticed the number of views, we had a little earthquake, a 2.7, right under this part of The Valley.  It felt like someone picked up the library a couple inches and dropped it.  I'll take that as a thumbs up from the Earth on hitting a big blog milestone.  Thanks again... enough babbling... onward!

Steve Emig
The White Bear
June 24, 2025 

Saturday, June 21, 2025

I honestly don't know what's going on with the page views on this blog... as it creeps towards 500,000


 AI?  Bots?  Thousands of people finding this blog while using VPN's?  I don't know.  Steve Emig: The White Bear blog has about 200,000 "normal" page views, and now nearly 300,000 in huge chunks from all over.  I spend most of my time and effort on my Substack now, and just put up blog posts here once in a while.  If anyone knows what's going, let me know.  






Friday, June 20, 2025

People living in commercial buildings and alternative scenarios to save money or create dream homes


When it comes to alternative living spaces, there's one that goes way back.  Ever wonder just exactly what it was like down in Oscar's trash can on Sesame Street?  Of course you did.  It turns out Elmo got a quick peak at it once.  

As a grubby little kid who didn't care much about cleanliness, I definitely could relate to Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street a bit.  When the drama was high in my house, there seemed times when living in a trash can like Oscar might be a good idea.  I'm only half joking.  Alternative housing, when you live in a tense household, was appealing as a kid.  I couldn't wait to grow up, make money, and have my own place to live.  OK, things didn't play out quite like I expected.  As a result, I have lived in a wide range of "non-normal" living situations, as well as several cool apartments and houses, in my adult life.

It was the late 1970's TV detective, Dan Tanna, who really turned me on to the idea of living in a commercial building.  In the TV private detective show, Vegas (See 20:06, 30:38, 38:14). Tanna lived in a warehouse/industrial building in Las Vegas, and drove a classic, red, 1957 Ford Thunderbird into his living room.  When I was 12 or 13 years old, that seemed like the coolest bachelor pad ever.  Tanna, being a TV detective, was always surrounded by beautiful women, which added to the idea.  My dad, a serious car guy in his younger years, owned a red, 1955 Ford T-bird, and two 1957 T-Birds, which was another reason Dan Tanna seemed super cool to me, as a kid.    

A few years later, and about 1,500 miles west, in Boise, I got into BMX bike racing and freestyle while I was in high school.  A year after I graduated high school, in 1985, my family moved to San Jose, California.  With no money for college, and with BMX freestyle being the driving force in my life then, I started publishing a BMX freestyle zine, financed by my low wage job at Pizza Hut.  Old School BMXers remember that the BMX movie Rad came out in 1986.  The whole plot of Rad seemed pretty hokey to me, but it was cool that BMX made it onto movie screens.  

Another bicycle movie came out about the same time, the Kevin Bacon movie Quicksilver It was about a stock broker who loses big, goes broke, and becomes a bicycle messenger in San Francisco.  Personally, I liked Quicksilver better than Rad.  In that movie, Jack and his girlfriend lived in a big, industrial loft turned into an apartment.  Again, that just seemed like a really cool place to live.  I thought, "if I lived there, I could freestyle in my living room."  It wasn't like I suddenly started dreaming of living in an industrial building, it was just something that seemed cool, and the idea stuck in the back of my head.  

Years later, as I lived in a bunch of different places with BMXers, and backyard ramps became a thing, the idea grew.  In addition, I was living cheap all through the 1990's.  During that era, I was working odd jobs, reading dozens of books, and just trying to work through my shyness and personal issues.  Then, after an injury in 1999, I wound up living in a taxi, and in a whole lot of unusual places, in the early 2000's, and beyond.  In high school, I had expected to live a pretty typical life.  But BMX took me off in another direction, and I'm glad it did.  Over my adult years, I've lived in two houses with 10 or more roommates at a time, in an office, in RV's, in an indie art gallery, in an industrial building, in my personal car and several taxis, and a whole bunch of different homeless scenarios, ranging from shelters, to a tent in the woods for several months.  It definitely wasn't the plan, but I became very experienced at cheap and "alternative" living situations.  

Now it's 2025, and nearly everybody, at every income level, is complaining about how high rent and mortgage payments are.  And they are right.  Mortgage and rent affordability is worse than it has been for most of your lives.  For a while now, I've been writing a series on my Substack site about the tens of thousands of vacant and abandoned buildings in the United States.  I call this issue the "Simulpocalypse."  You can check my Substack posts, to learn more about that idea.  At this point, after many years in and out of homelessness, I just want to find a decent place to live and work.  But that old idea has grown.  Getting an industrial or warehouse building large enough to create a live/work/art studio place, one big enough to put a mini ramp inside, sounds really, really cool.  It will probably never happen, but the dream is still there.  

In any case, housing affordability is a huge issue for millions of people now, not just me.  At the same time, there are more and more warehouses, industrial buildings, stores of different sizes, and now entire office buildings, becoming vacant.  One possible option to save money on housing, or to build a dream house scenario, is to look to these vacant and abandoned commercial buildings, sitting empty around the country.  

It turns out YouTubers seem to be leading the charge with this idea.  I think we're heading into a long, pretty gnarly, recession. I think people finding cool ways to live in vacant urban and commercial buildings will grow into a decent sized trend.  It's not the only option to save money on housing, but it's one interesting option that's out there today.  As traditional homes and apartments have become more and more expensive, a huge number of commercial buildings have become vacant, even totally abandoned.  Many are much cheaper to lease than apartments in the same area.  Sure, you're not supposed to live in commercial buildings.  But building owners need tenants, and some may let a decent tenant live in the building, and not sweat it, so they have some rent coming in.  

So here are a bunch of different people who are, or have lived in, commercial buildings, in one way or another.  Check out the ones that sound interesting.  






OK, enough of the crazy places, here are some much more down to Earth homes in commercial buildings and other alternative living spaces.  





This real estate investor "became homeless," and lived in his office to save money, after the real estate market crashed, during the Great Recession.  He credits the time spent living in the office with helping him to get his business going strong again.  









I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:











Friday, June 13, 2025

Inflection Point Weekend- June 13th-June 15th, 2025

Generation X was grew up under the threat of a potential, worldwide, nuclear Holocaust at any time.  A holocaust that never happened.  Not yet, anyhow.  What can I say, it made us a bit jaded.

Generation X, of which I'm one of the older members, was the last generation to be raised in the Industrial Age, when the factories of America were still thriving.  By the time we hit our teens, and the first Millennials were being born, the factories were closing down, and we were visibly in the long transition into the emerging Information Age.  

By the time the Millennials started hitting their teen years, the internet came along, and democratized communication around the world, in a way that had never happened before in human history.  At that time, the earliest Gen Z kids were being born.  Gen Z was born into a fully digital world, with Web 2.0 in full effect from childhood, and social media and smartphones coming along in their childhood years.  Through all these last few decades, the pace of social and technological change has been steadily increasing.  The power brokers of the Industrial Age world have been desperately clinging to what power they could, while the paradigm shifted around them.  

There come times when the slow grind of change builds up pressure, and a major, sudden shift happens.  An earthquake in society, you might say.  A major inflection point.  

The pace of changes becomes social inflection points when a great deal of change happens in the mentality of large numbers of people.  Or changes in mentality that have already happened make themselves known.  It looks like this weekend, June 13th through June 15th, 2025, will be one of those major inflection points in human society in the United States, and perhaps around the world.  Pay attention kids, we are all living history this weekend, however things play out.  I'm simply calling attention to the importance this weekend will play in society overall.  And somehow, it all starts with a Friday the 13th.  Crazy.  


Here are a few songs to set the mood for what looks to be a pretty crazy weekend, one way or the other.  















Blogger's Note- Monday, June 16th, 2025- It turns out that all those AR-15's owned by 2nd Amendment activists have been completely useless in preventing the drive toward authoritarianism in the United States of America.*  The push by the American Right away from a constitutional democratic republic, and towards an authoritarian state, continues.  Guns are useless in a war of ideas and culture.  The NRA is MIA in the fight to preserve democracy.  But we all knew that already.  

Here are some new reports from today (6/16/2025):


Democracy Now- "No Kings" report- Monday morning, June 16th, 2025 - The pro-democracy majority in the United States of America now has a face.






And on the lighter side, here's a parody music video: 


Was this weekend, June 13th-June 15th, 2025 an actual inflection point in the United States, or society as a whole?  Time will tell if democracy or authoritarianism wins in the U.S., and elsewhere...


* Just for the record, I am 100% for legal gun ownership.  If you own guns, you need to be a responsible gun owner.  









 

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Rumble in Richmond 2025


Here's the Dig BMX edit of the Rumble in Richmond BMX day O' fun, put on by Steve Crandall and posse.  If you like BMX, and you ever get the chance to go to one of Steve Crandall's events, do it.  It's as simple as that.  Check out RAD Share, and help them out if you can.  Bikes to kids who need them.  

Just for the record, I was not at the Rumble in Richmond.  But I lived there a while back in 2018-2019.  I went to the DIY World Championships event in October of 2018, and it was epic, even as an old guy with no bike.  That's why I recommend checking out any event Steve Crandall puts on.

Saturday, June 7, 2025

The "Lost Cities" of the Amazon


Have you ever heard about the "Legend of El Dorado," the city in South America that was made entirely of gold?  The very first European explorers in the Amazon in the 1500's reported huge cities.  When more explorers made it into the Amazon area about 100 years later, those cities couldn't be found.  Over centuries, a legend was born that there was a Lost city, built entirely of gold, somewhere in the Amazon basin.

An explorer in the early 1900's, named Percy Fawcett, became obsessed with a lost city in the Amazon he called "Z."  A few months ago, I read the book, The Lost City of Z, about Fawcett.  On his 8th expedition into the Amazon, looking for the lost city of Z, Fawcett disappeared, in 1925.  Dozens of other explorers later went into the Amazon, looking for both Fawcett, and "Z," and disappeared themselves.  Fawcett never found the Lost city of Z, but he did report finding earthen mounds, and ancient pottery in places.  In reality, he actually did find parts of the "Lost Cities of the Amazon," but they weren't built with stone, with huge temples, like the cities of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas.  Fawcett didn't recognize the earthen mounds and bits of pottery as remains of the cities he was looking for.  

But now, partly because of the massive deforestation for cattle ranching, and LIDAR scans showing huge, shaped, earthen mounds under the jungle cover still remaining, there is a lot of evidence that large villages and cities once existed there.  More and more signs of these societies are being found on a regular basis.  

If you're interested in the lost cities of the Amazon, the 7 minute video above gives a good overview of what has been found.  There are many more videos that go into more depth on the subject, as well as interviews and talks with Graham Hancock, who has written a book on this subject.  

I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, check it out:



There are no paid links in this post.



Friday, June 6, 2025

Top Ten Reasons The White Bear Sucks


Op cord short shorts for guys.  Izod ankle socks, yeah, they actually had the little fucking alligators on them.  Nike Pegasus running shoes because I sucked at running cross country before I sucked at BMX.  The Vuarnets are cool, I found them in a field.  This is me as manager of the tiny Boise Fun Spot amusement park, balancing on my Skyway T/A, in the summer of 1985.  Yep, a lame freestyler (one of three in Boise then), running racing frame pads while doing balance tricks.  Let's face it, it was all downhill after this photo was taken.  Photo by Vaughn K., my co-worker at the Fun Spot.  

Top Ten Reasons The White Bear Sucks

(One) He looks gay as fuck in that photo from Boise in 1985 (above), he must be a fag.  (Actually I'm just a lame straight guy who's been fat, ugly, broke, and had bad teeth for the last 20-25 years, so it's not like women have been beating down my door or anything).  

(Two) He had terrible, shaky camera work in this video, although the ending is cool.  "Somebody fire that cameraman right now."  Heh, heh, heh...

(Three)  He spent way too much time writing about trying to do bunnyhop tailwhips in his blog, and never, EVER, pulled one.  Bill Nitschke invented that trick, let him enjoy the props for being the first guy to land it.  

(Four) He's a loser... anybody who can manage to be homeless for 17 or 18 years must be smoking crack or meth or something.  How could anyone not get a job for 17 years?  (Actually no alcohol, no drugs, I even kicked my Diet Coke habit a couple of years ago.  I do have a serious 7-11 pepperoni pizza habit though, after my years driving a taxi, and then being unable to find any job in NC for ten years, I actually have no work history to even put on a resume' at this point).  Either I manage to get a little, one man publishing/content creating business going, or I'll do the work for free.  Time will tell which way it ultimately works out.   

(Five) He hasn't been able to jump anything at Sheep Hills since about 1992, when The Bowl was still a thing.  And he had the audacity to write a "History of Sheep Hills" post on his Substack.  What the fuck is a Substack, anyhow?  

(Six) He writes like he's still a BMX guy, but he hasn't ridden a bike since like 1995 or something.  (Actually I rode nearly every day from June of 1982 until August of 2003.  The last trick I learned was nollie 180's on a speed bump, in a parking lot in Garden Grove, across the freeway from the Van's Skatepark and The Block of Orange.  I started gaining weight working as a taxi driver in late 2003, got really fat, and haven't ridden hardly at all since, that's true).  

(Seven) He's fat, ugly, and he smells bad.  I know you're homeless, but damn dude, jump in the ocean once in a while or something.

(Eight) He wrote FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog and totally pissed off everyone at Wizard Publications.  (Yep, I wrote that blog in 2008-2009 (over 100 posts).  Then I wrote the original Freestyle BMX Tales blog from 2009-2012 (over 500 posts).  I deleted both of those blogs completely from the internet in the fall of 2012).  

(Nine) He actually admits that he used to work in a porn store.  He must be a perv.  I bet he has sex with goats, aardvarks, and transgender pygmies or something.  (Sorry to disappoint everyone, but a little free lesbian porn when I get a motel room keeps me away from the goats, pygmies, and such.  I do find aardvarks cute, though, but in a purely platonic way).  

(Ten) The guy made like three low-budget BMX videos, waaaaay back when, and they all sucked.  And he acts like he's some big Hollywood producer or something.  What an arrogant prick!  Here's the Steve Emig: The White Bear's Film Festival.  You can decide how much they all suck.  Feel free to go off on Facebook to make it official.  

(Bonus) The guy is 58-years-old, and he still calls himself "The White Bear," a nickname from 1992.  Who the fuck does that?  He writes blog posts making fun of himself, in the third person.  Who does that?  Besides, the guy is so damn sarcastic that I can never tell if he's kidding or he's serious.  What a fucking kook!  He's a fucking NEVER WAS sell out.  And he draws pictures of other people's photos and calls it "art."  What a loser.

Blogger's note- June 9- 2025- Everything on the list above is a reference to things that have been said to my face, said about me in social media comments, or said behind my back that I heard about later.  My life has been really weird for about 25 years now, and I've been plugging through a whole lot of bullshit, sometimes my own, but also a lot that came at me from outside sources.  It's a crazy world, shit happens.  I'm still plugging away at trying to create pretty cool stuff, to the extent I'm able, every single day.  I will continue to do that, as long as I can.  In this post, I just decided to address a bit of the mud that's been slung at me, in my usual, sarcastic way.  


When not writing self-deprecating posts while Old School BMX events are happening elsewhere, I do most of my writing on Substack these days.  It's an online platform designed specifically for writers.  To find more reasons to hate me, click the link below:

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack 



Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Which was weirder: the year 2024 or "A Boy and His Dog" - set in 2024?


In 1975, before cell phones, personal computers, the internet, social media, Miami Vice, and most video games, a sort of kinky, weird, post-apocalyptic movie set in 2024 came out.  It was called A Boy and His Dog, and starred a young Don Johnson.  Working on an unrelated substance post, I just learned that movie was set in 2024.  Well... we didn't have World War III, or World War IV.  Civilization is still around, we didn't live through the end of the world.  But the real world in 2024 was something they couldn't possibly have imagined back in 1975.  Which was crazier?  A Boy and His Dog or real life 2024?  You decide, and let me know on Facebook.  


The year 2024 in review by NBC News.  I'd say the real 2024 was a hell of a lot crazier than a talking dog helping a guy get laid.  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  

I'm doing most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out sometime:


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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

A few weird and funny songs... something to piss off everybody


I'd like to thank the Sunday afternoon Grateful Dead/jam band show on KPFK radio (90,7 FM in L.A.) for turning me on to this song in the early 2000's.  The single best band name and song title combo I've ever heard of.  The Ominous Seapods with "Bong Hits and Porn."  They seriously do ROCK, by the way.  

This blog post it NSFA (Not Safe For Anybody) 
You have been warned...

No long ramble.  Here are some songs I've heard of that are weird, sometimes funny as well.  At least to my warped sense of humor.  

















"Sponge Bob Sqarepants theme song"  (... absorbent and yellow and porous is he...)

















Dr. Seuss/Albert Hague/Thurl Ravenscroft- "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" (seriously, listen to the lyrics, "You're a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce")




















Censorship?  Pretty much everyone who checks out this list would want to censor some of these songs, but everyone would pick different songs.  That's the whole point of free speech.  Ponder that for a bit.

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, check it out.  But it's not near as funny as these songs.  


There are no paid posts in this post.



Monday, May 19, 2025

Greenwich Village folk singers scene of the early 1960's


Dave Van Ronk with "Dink's Song" in the early 1960's.  

I just picked up a new book at the library, Talkin' Greenwich Village, by David Browne.  It's an incredibly well researched look at the folk singing scene that emerged out of Greenwich Village, in New York City, from the late 1950's, through the 1960's.  This scene was full of young singers and guitar players, enamored by the earlier folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, and the folk musician tradition in the U.S. that went back 100 years or more before then.  From public singalongs at the fountain in Washington Square Park, these young musicians began to perform the songs they heard from Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, and a whole slew of the folk and blues players of the early 20th century.  

By 1957, when the book dives into the scene, the Greenwich Village district in New York City had a history as home to several prominent writers, going back decades.  At the time, the small clubs and coffee houses of the Village were where jazz greats like John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk performed in small clubs while in NYC.  The coffee shops were the stompin' and reading grounds of the beat poets, Jack Kerouac being the best known to most of us now.  The young folk singers began to play gigs at these clubs and coffee houses, which were often hassled by police and city officials, because of neighbors complaining about the noise.  

A legendary scene evolved, as more young folk singers were drawn to the scene.  They all played music, drank, argued, worked odd jobs, fell in love, broke up, marched in protests, and got followed by the J.Edgar Hoover FBI in some cases.  Most of them were on the far Left side of the political spectrum, often socialists and in some cases, actual communists.  I'm more interested in the music scene, but the politics of the time was a part of it all.  

In the early 1960's, with Village newcomer Bob Dylan being one of the first, they began writing their own folk songs, in addition to singing the classics.  Ever heard of Dave Van Ronk?  Neither had I.  But he was an early and constant part of the scene, and taught several others to play guitar when they showed up on the scene, as well as writing many songs.  The book marches through the happenings, and Van Zonk is a major thread in much of it.  Browne chronicles the comings, goings, interactions, and key events of the main musicians in this scene, year by year.  

I picked up the book for a couple of reasons.  As a goofy, young kid in Ohio, I was a fan of guitar playing singer/songwriters.  The first album I asked my parents to buy me as a gift (Christmas or birthday, can't remember), was John Denver's Greatest Hits, Volume 2.  Our family had moved to a farmhouse outside the tiny burg of Shiloh, Ohio.  Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" became my theme song.  OK, we didn't actually work the farm, we just rented the house, but I wandered that farm, the creek, and woods every day.  I did have to help chase the cows back into the pasture two or three times, when they got out.  That was the extent of my actual farm life.  

At 8 or 9 years old, I was a fan of bluegrass that I heard on Hee Haw, like Grandpa Jones, Roy Clark, and Glen Campbell.  While I didn't like most of the country music coming out of my mom's radio in the kitchen, I did really like the music of Johnny Cash.  So acoustic guitars, folk music were my favorites in my grade school years.  

The other reason for picking up Talking Greenwich Village is because as a BMX freestyler in the 1980's, I developed an interest in what I call "Creative Scenes."  To me, a Creative Scene is any group of people who come together on a regular basis to do something creative.  That can range from a couple of skateboarders at a skatepark, to people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple Computers in the 1970's.  Art, music, creative businesses, action sports, there are creative scenes in all these things.  I witnessed the early scenes of the BMX freestyle world, when there were little pockets of riders in different locations, promoting our weird, new, little sport.  Since I moved around, and became a part of several different BMX and skateboard scenes, I saw how they helped riders and skaters progress, and how these scenes ultimately influenced many other people, and helped the sports grow and evolve overall.  Over several years, I realized there are all kinds of different Creative Scenes, and that most of the progress in society comes from various Creative Scenes that spring up and thrive for a while.

The Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960's was one of the most influential musical scenes in the history of the United States, and that influence continues to ripple outward, in today's young singer/songwriters, like Alice Phoebe Lou, Jenn Fiorentino, and many more, covering the songs they grew up on, and then writing and performing their own.  Generations of singer/songwriters in the U.S., and around the world, were influenced and inspired by the 1960's Greenwich Village folk scene.  

I'm only about halfway through the book, but it has already turned me on to a whole bunch of singers and musicians I had never heard of.  First, here are several of the people who inspired the early Greenwich Village folk music scene, people who were in and around the Village, coming out of the 1950's.  Then I've linked a whole bunch of the early musicians that were part of the Village folk music scene in that era.  If you have an interest in folk music, Greenwich Village, U.S. music history, or guitar picking, Talkin' Greenwich Village is well worth the read.    

The inspirations







Greenwich Village scene folk singers of the early and mid 1960's






Carolyn Hester- "I'll Fly Away" (with Bob Dylan on harmonica)


Bob Dylan Live at the Gaslight (recorded at the Gaslight, in Greenwich Village, in October 1962)




Harry Belafonte- "Midnight Special #1" (With Bob Dylan on harmonica)












There are no paid links in this post.

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Saturday, May 3, 2025

That time I edited a snowboard video in 1990...


Once upon a time, there was this guy named Gerard who lived in Hermosa Beach and ran a small surf video distribution company.  Gerard was a kind of shady salesman guy, but he sold A TON of videos for all the independent video surf film producers, so they loved him.  He also sold a lot for the bigger companies, like Vision Skateboards and Sims Snowboards.  Because he sold so many videos for other people, he would call them up and say, "Hey, I'm making a compilation video, can I use a clip from your new video in it?"  They'd always say, "Sure, go for it."  He would say as many of his compilation videos as he did their videos, and he made twice as much money per video on the compilation videos.  Shady... but it worked out for everyone involved, including me.  Gerard hired me to edit and work for him for a while, and he sold 500 copies of my BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend, in the fall of 1990, in the U.S., and a bunch overseas as well.

As skateboarding and snowboarding took off in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Gerard's little distribution company also sold a ton of skateboard and snowboard videos, as well as surf flicks.  After I left Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, in 1990, I met Gerard, and wound up editing three videos for him.  We did two issues of Skateboarder's Quarterly Video Magazine, and that was nearly three years before 411 (skateboard) video magazine came out.  I also edited this first issue of Snowboarder's Quarterly.  

Most of these video clips are from other people's videos, edited with the mini-interviews Gerard and I did at the Action Sports Retailer trade show in San Diego, in the fall of 1990, as I recall.  The Snowboarder's in Exile premier was great.  There were maybe 100 to 150 people in the room watching the premier, and nearly every top snowboarder in the world was there.  I watched that video probably 100 times over the next few years.  In Snowboarder's Quarterly #1, above, you can see our quick interviews with the future 1992 Penthouse Pet of the Year (and Damian Sanders' then girlfriend) Brandy Ledford at 18: 12, and Sims Snowboards team rider Chris Roach at 35:12, among others.  

At the beginning, you see ski/snowboard fimmaker Bruce Benedict, and producer Laura Mickelson, my former co-worker at Unreel, talking about their snowboard video, 20 Tricks. Laura Mickelson is now a working artist here in SoCal (which I just found out), as well as a long time video/TV/documentary filmmaker.  Damian Sanders, one of the main guys in Snowboarders in Exile, did a ton of snowboarding, some motocross freeriding.  He went on to start the Pimp N Ho Ball and the bi-weekly Club Rubber, with business partner Jon Huntington, in Costa Mesa, California, which turned incredibly profitable.  Both the night club and the ball got so popular that they moved to Las Vegas.  Check out this interview for a deeper look at Damian.  

Damian and Brandy lived in Huntington Beach in the early 1990's, and even next door to the P.O.W. BMX House, in Westminster, for a little while.  One night in 1992 or so, I was riding my BMX bike down Beach Boulevard in H.B., and got pulled over by the cops, since I didn't have a light on my bike.  For some fucking reason, they called for back-up.  The second pair of cops walked up, as the first pair was checking my ID.  One of them said, "Last night we pulled over some crazy kid right here, driving a hearse, and he had "666" shaved in the back of his head."  I said, "You guys pulled over Damian?  I saw him and Brandy around downtown H.B. sometimes, and I knew Damian was driving a hearse then.  The cops said, "You know that guy?"  I said, "Everyone in H.B. knows who he is, that's Damian Sanders, he's one of the best snowboarders in the world."  The cop just shook his head.  I never actually met Damian, but I'd see him around town over the years, through the 1990's and into the 2000's, when I was a taxi driver and picked up lots of fares from Club Rubber.  I think I got another ticket for riding my bike without a light, but I can't remember for sure. I got a few of them back in those days, but usually got off with just a warning.    

This morning, I went digging into YouTube looking for Skateboarder's Quarterly #2, which is pretty hard to find.  I haven't found it yet, but I ran into this Snowboarder's Quarterly video instead ( Finally found it later, fuckin' algos these days!)  I haven't seen this video since probably 1991.  I was the cameraman for all the little, in between interview and trade show footage, and I edited this video together, using big blocks from Snowboarders in Exile, 20 Tricks, New Kids on the Twock, and a couple other videos that came out at the beginning of the 1990-1991 snowboard season.  

This was one of the weird little projects I worked on in 1990-1991, between the Vision Skateboards video guy years and the S&M Bikes/ P.O.W. BMX House years of my life.  

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Lincoln SUV's that SHOULD exist...



The actual Lincoln Navigator promo that I originally put in this post was taken down.  So here's some guys driving on a slippery bank with a Navi. Lincoln makes the Navigator and the Aviator, so I had some ideas for other cars in that line.  (Since the Trump presidencies have shown us that there are tens of millions of complete fucking morons in this country, this is a parody post people.  A joke.  Just for entertainment purposes).  

Here are some potential ideas for new Lincoln SUV's...

The Lincoln Gator- A affordable, family-centric SUV that comes with a small wet well in the back, and every SUV comes with your very own pet baby alligator.  Oh... they're so cute!  Watch it grow as the kids grow up.  Take it to the park in the summer for picnics!  When it gets too big to handle, you can kill it and cook it up, or haul it out to the Everglades to live out its golden years.*

The Lincoln Instigator- A large SUV made for the urban wannabe baller.  It comes with 28 inch rims, and a  boomin' sound system that randomly shouts insults wherever you go.  Get out, act tough, get your ass knocked out, all in the new Lincoln Instigator.  

The Lincoln Masturbator- This is a self-driving, classy SUV aimed at the upscale women's market.  It has incredibly comfortable seats, plenty of cup holders, five different places to put your cell phone so you can text, a wine glass holder, and outlets in the center console so you can plug in your sex toysOh yes!  OH YES! This is the SUV the discerning woman NEEDS.  Every SUV comes with her choice of one of the latest rabbit vibrators.  



* Alligators are wild reptiles, and they will eat you if given half a chance.  This post is a joke, in case you haven't figured that out yet.  

Saturday, April 12, 2025

A bunch of my favorite song covers


While Amanda Palmer has been working as a solo artist for years, she teamed up with former Dresden Dolls drummer, Brian Viglione, during the pandemic for this digital show.  They're performing a cover of "Science Fiction/Double Feature" from the Rocky Horror Show.  No that's not a typo, Rocky Horror was a stage play before it became the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie that most of us know.  

The internet.  Some people swear it's the best thing that ever happened to human communication.  Other people see it as evil, a horrible abomination.  Some see it as a mind killing collection of porn, cat videos, and "Liberal" propaganda, promoting terrible things like equality, human rights, and transgender people.  They think the internet is ruining society.  

The internet and social media are indifferent platforms, not inherently good or evil.  Those effects come depending on how we use these communication platforms.  One of my many odd jobs was working as a porn store clerk way back in the 1990's.  Do you know what the most popular form of porn was (and probably still is)?  Transexuals.  Or transgender, using today's term.  That really surprised me back then.  Chicks with dicks, cocks in frocks, hoes with hose, and "summer girls" videos, because some 'r girls and some are not.  Those were actual video titles in the 1990's, by the way.  In 2023, Porn hub was getting 2 billion views per month.  During any given week, tens of millions of people are watching trans porn (mostly Baby Boomers).  There's a ton of trans porn because people watch it.  And there are a ton of cat videos because people watch them.  The 2 million+ cat videos on YouTube have over 26 billion views.  People watch tens of millions of cat videos per week, as well.  

Trans porn and cat videos are two HUGE categories of content on the internet.  But you don't have to watch either of those kinds of videos, and neither do I.  I've never been a big fan of either of those, but a lot of people are.  A LOT.  I used to rent VHS videos to them back in the 1990's.  The trans smut fans, that is, not cat videos.  Nobody was renting cat videos on VHS back then that I know of.  That would have been weird.
The point here is, there are all kinds of things that are popular on the internet, but none of us has to watch those categories.  

Personally, I see the internet as the greatest collection of human information ever compiled, in human history (with the possible exception of Atlantis).   All of this information and creative work, 181 zettabytes worth (that's 181 trillion gigabytes, kids!), was collected, compiled, created, cataloged, posted, and mashed up, mostly by amateurs, and largely for free.  All of that was done in roughly thirty years.  The Library of Congress?  The Encyclopedia Britannica?  Even the legendary lost Library of Alexandria in the ancient world?  They don't even begin to compare to the vast array of cool stuff and legit information and creative work available on the internet.  Yes, there is a lot of bad information, misinformation, and disinformation, too.  But we don't have to watch it.  

But the good info and really interesting content is out there.  Stop whining about the lame stuff, and look at the good stuff.  You don't have to watch trans sex videos or cat videos.  You can learn about quantum mechanics, triangle numbers*,(Pythagorus loved these things), the odd ancestry of aardvarksFrench Canadian slang, how to start a home cupcake business, and a few billion other things.  There has never been a better time to learn more kinds of information in all of human history.  But you're sitting on the couch smoking weed and playing GTA5.  Lame.

Among all the great content on the interwebs, there is an amazing collection of songs covered by other artists.  Here are a bunch of my favorites.  

"Hallelujah" by K.D. Lang (Leonard Cohen cover)

"Dream On" by Morgan James/Postmodern Jukebox (Aerosmith cover)

"Son of a Preacher Man" by Joss Stone  (Dusty Springfield cover)

"Paint It Black" by The Big Push (Rolling Stones cover)

"Nothing Compares To You" by P!nk (Prince cover)

"Landslide" by Kerry Getz (Fleetwood Mac cover)

"Tainted Love" by Imelda May (Gloria Jones cover- yeah, I thought Soft Cell did the original too)

"Lola" by Lake Street Dive (The Kinks cover)

"Tainted Love" by Marilyn Manson (Gloria Jones cover)

"Seven Bridges Road" by Foxes and Fossils

"The Weight" by Various artists/Americana Awards 2012 (Robbie Robertson/The Band cover)

"Angel From Montgomery/Sugaree" by Susan Tedeschi/Tedeschi Trucks Band (John Prine and The Grateful Dead covers)

"Jackson" by June Carter and Johnny Cash (Billy Edd Wheeler cover)

"House of the Rising Sun" by Puddles Pity Party (Animals cover)

"Rich Girl" by Lake Street Dive (Hall & Oates cover)

"Ob-la-Di Ob-La-Da" by No Doubt featuring Eric Stefani & friends (The Beatles cover)

"Heartbreak Hotel" by Johnny Cash (Elvis Presley cover)

"Ring of Fire" by Mike Ness (of Social Distortion, June Carter Cash cover)

"The Crowd" by Jenn Fiorentino (Operation Ivy cover)

"Strong Reaction" by Rise Against (Pegboy cover)

"Oi to the World" by No Doubt (The Vandals cover)

"The Kids Aren't Alright" by Jenn Fiorentino (The Offspring cover)

"Lose Yourself"- Robyn Adele Anderson (Eminem cover) 

"Sweet Child of Mine" Slash featuring Fergie (Guns n' Roses cover)

"I Shot the Sheriff" by The Big Push (Bob Marley & The Wailers cover)

"Sympathy For the Devil" by Popa Chubby (Rolling Stones cover/mash-up)

"Hey Joe" by Popa Chubby (Jimi Hendrix cover)

"All Along the Watchtower" by The Indigo Girls (Jimi Hendrix cover/mash-up)

"Cry Baby/Take Another Piece of My Heart" by Joss Stone and Melissa Etheridge (Janis Joplin covers)

"All Summer Long/Sweet Home Alabama" by Kid Rock (Lynyrd Skynyrd/Warren Zevon cover/mash-up)

"Stairway to Heaven" by Heart, Jason Bonham, & ensemble (Led Zepplin cover)

"Let's Do It" by Joan Jett & Paul Westerberg (Cole Porter cover)

"Miserlou" by Dick Dale (1927 Greek wedding song cover)

"Miserlou" by Agent Orange (Dick Dale cover)

"Pump It" by Black Eyed Peas (Dick Dale cover/mash-up)

"Madman Across the Water" by Brandi Carlile (Elton John cover)

"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Foxes and Fossils (Elton John cover)

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Guns n' Roses (Bob Dylan cover)

"Simple Man" by Shinedown (Lynyrd Skynyrd cover)

"Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin (Kris Krisofferson cover)

"I Put a Spell On You" by Chinchilla (Screamin' Jay Hawkins cover)

"The Chain" by The Highwomen (Fleetwood Mac cover)

"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Alice Phoebe Lou (Cher cover)

"Creep" by Daniela Andrade (Radiohead cover)

"Everybody Hurts" by Puddles Pity Party (REM cover)

"People Get Ready" by Jeff Beck featuring Joss Stone (The Impressions cover)

"Walk Away Renee" by Kerry Getz (Left Bank cover)

"Summer Wine" by Lana Del Rey (Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra cover)

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Tori Amos- (Nirvana cover)

"Southern Cross" by Foxes and Fossils (Crosby, Stills, and Nash cover)

"Walking on Broken Glass" by Laike Street Dive (Annie Lenox cover)

"Jailhouse Rock" by Meatloaf (Elvis Presley cover)

"Knowledge" by Green Day (Operation Ivy cover)

"End of the World" by No Doubt (REM cover)


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* Two consecutive triangle numbers equal a square number, every time.  For example, 6 + 10 = 16, or 4 squared.  Crazy.
 
Did you find the Jay and Silent Bob Easter egg in this post?  Why not?  

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

R.I.P. Val Kilmer


Here's Val Kilmer as Tom Van Allen, who is living as Danny Parker, in the Pooh Bear breakfast scene in the little known movie, The Salton Sea.  Danny is trying to get Pooh Bear on tape agreeing to a big drug deal for some crank.  But this isn't Pooh Bear's first rodeo.  This is an incredibly well made movie, chock full of really memorable characters.  You should watch this movie.  If you're in recovery from meth, crank, or coke, this movie will probably knock you off the wagon.  So people in recovery from hard drugs should probably avoid this movie.  Luckily, I'm a pizza addict, drugs aren't my thing, so I can watch this movie with reckless abandon.  After you watch The Salton Sea movie, look up the actual place, the Salton Sea, it's story is just as crazy as the movie.  

"The greatest words on written page
Only come to life when you're on stage"
-
excerpt from "Actress," a poem I wrote about 1990.  I wrote the poem for my sister's best friend, who's been a dedicated actress since a young age.  I lost all copies of this poem years ago, and have forgotten the rest of the poem, unfortunately.

I'm really sorry to hear about the death of actor Val Kilmer.  He just died at age 65.  I'm generally not huge a fan of specific actors, male or female, but some actors would just keep showing up in movies that became my personal favorites.  Val Kilmer was one of those.  

Of course, the Hollywood press, like in this Entertainment Tonight tribute, reminds everyone of his best known roles, Iceman in Top Gun, Bruce Wayne and Batman in Batman Forever, Jim Morrison in The Doors, and Doc Holiday in Tombstone.  All great roles.  But none of those roles are why I've been a fan of Val Kilmer's work since the late 1980's.  

It's easy to talk shit about actors in general.  People say they're all shallow, self-absorbed, and narcissistic.  People say actors just want to be movie or TV stars, and live as glamorous prima Donna's.  People say that the top actors make way too much money.  These things are true for some actors.  But then there are the hardcore, devoted actors.  They take a writer's characters, described only in words, or maybe simple drawings in some cases.  The great actors flesh out and literally become those fictional characters, taking the rest of us on a believable journey, for an hour, two hours, or maybe through a whole TV series.  That's a pretty amazing thing to be able to do well.  Val Kilmer was one of the greatest at this.  Rest in Peace, Mr. Kilmer, in whatever realm the greatest move into after an inspiring journey here on planet Earth.  

Here are the main roles that made me a big fan of Val Kilmer's work.





The Saint- 1997- Simon Templar- trailer  He played about 15 different roles in this movie.










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