Category Archives: Bizarre

Weird Wednesday

8 Replies

Welcome to WW. I should make this a new category, because really, as difficult as it may be for you to believe…people are awfully strange sometimes.

Today’s weirdness: Jose Canseco.

Why was Jose smuggling fertility drugs across the Mexican border into the US? Gee, I wonder. How about just because he’s a nice guy and wanted to help doctors in San Ysidro dispense the medicine to childless couples? Or maybe his wife wants to conceive and he’s short on cash for a fertility clinic visit. Yeah, that’s probably it.

Because it most certainly wouldn’t be because the drug “helps restore production of testosterone lost in steroid users,” now would it? Actually, it would. And the man’s not ashamed to admit it. He loves what steroids have done to his body and his life. In this disturbing 2005 review of his book, Juiced, Bryan Curtis pretty much sums it up: the guy is bizarre. In fact, the more I read about him, the more my creepy meter jumps.

Can’t put my finger on why, exactly, other than quotes like this, perhaps:

Certain steroids, used in proper combinations, can cure certain diseases. Steroids will give you a better quality of life and also drastically slow down the aging process. I’m forty years old, but I look much younger.”

Well, rock on. I’m sure the WWE was happy to hear that. And Lyle Alzado might agree, too (but you know, we can’t ask him now).

Maybe it’s just that Jose doesn’t have a healthy self-image. He wants to make sure he retains his girlish figure. So, you know, he might someday look like the picture of natural beauty.

Yeah. Love me some weirdos.

Fink out.

PS – This just in. More weirdness, but not of the gross-out kind. Check out Math Chuckleheads from Forbes magazine. Heh.

The Most Awesomely Awesome

4 Replies

Every once in awhile, somebody brings up Orson Welles. You remember him…he was a large man in his later years, and never went anywhere without his big ol’ nasty stogie.

He was a polished actor — viewed as one of the best of his generation, starring in what has over and over again been voted the best black-and-white-era movie of all time: Citizen Kane.

But do you know (certainly you do) that Welles was also responsible for the biggest Halloween hoax — and most dramatic episode of public panic — of all time? I can never get enough of this story. I just wish I’d been there.

Ok, not really. I probably would have been one of the people hiding out in their bathrooms with a vial of poison, ready to end it all. Mulder and Scully would have loved it, though.

I have often imagined what it would have been like to have my ears glued to the radio (no TV in 1938) when the Mercury Theater show started. Nice music, some commercials for deodorant or whatever, then back to the show. All of a sudden, an “announcer” breaks in:

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas…moving towards the earth with enormous velocity.”

Would you have freaked? Or at least been concerned? I have no clue as to the dangers of “incandescent gas,” or incandescent anything for that matter, but it sounds ominous. Back to the music.

What followed was an amazing parade of bulletins — each one becoming more dramatic, frantic, and out of control. And even though Welles, who accurately suspected the possibility of public hysteria, dropped in announcements that the show was just pretend, people still flipped out. According to transparencynow.com:

People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens, oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in a radio play.”

War of the Worlds. Awesomely awesome. You should really read the whole script. Poor folks, though. Talk about punk’d.

Fink out. BOO!

Photo credits: imdb.com; war-of-the-worlds.co.uk

Truly creepy timing

Leave a reply

“Bizarre” is about the only word to describe it. It’s the same week of the same month that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast back in 2005. Now they’re talking about Gustav hitting New Orleans.

If you live there and survived Katrina, you have got to be feeling extremely anxious right now, because truthfully, as this CNN raw video of Gustav arriving in Jamaica shows, nothing can stop the sea. Those retaining walls are holding back that water because the water wishes it.

Here’s hoping that the damage is minimal.

This morning might be a good time to revisit some truly shocking numbers and facts. The Hurricane Katrina FAQ has a lot of information. It seems that the government has learned its lesson as well; both the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana have been given lots of face time on television, telling folks to prepare. But, like they both stated in various news conferences I’ve seen, it’s up to the citizens to save their own hides.

I saw one clip of a couple on their way to a Saints game. The guy’s comment: “We’ll make our decision tomorrow.” I hope that gives them enough time.

Fink out (watchin’ the weather radar).

So that was awesome

Leave a reply

…she says, in her best Chris Farley voice.

I’m still trying to find the words to describe the bizarro/creepy/tear-down-the-entire-house-to-change-a-friggin-light-bulb factor of yesterday’s post comment. Let’s just call it “special.” I had thoughts of deleting it, preferring only positive karma in Finkville, but I decided to keep it for posterity’s sake. Who knows, maybe someone will need that information someday….anyway, I’ve edited the post to remove all traces of the fact that I did not post his complete resumé or know his correct album count (whatzat tell ya, sweety?). I live to avoid offending tender sensibilities.

Subject change to a humble, nice (but sadly, no longer with us…how poignantly unfair) celebrity.

I’m reading The Chris Farley Show, the new biography written by Chris’s brother, Tom, and Tanner Colby.

The poor guy — a comic genius, characterized as such by every person affiliated with Saturday Night Live who was interviewed for the book — suffered with demons that we should all thank the Lord we don’t carry around with us. Under the constantly-joking, fun exterior, there lived a sweet, gentle, insecure boy who desperately wanted to win the approval and affection of those around him — especially his father.

Admittedly, I didn’t watch a lot of SNL during Farley’s tenure on the show. That was when the comedy wasn’t real funny to me. It was just one b**** wh*** sl** joke after another, and I got tired of it. But what I saw of him — especially the “Motivational Speaker” and “Super Fan” sketches — was hysterical.

The most compelling, and oft-repeated, fact in the book from the interviewees is when they comment about “what Chris was really like.” Many of them said the same thing: “Watch Tommy Boy. That’s Chris.”

Having seen Tommy Boy a couple of times, Chris was someone I would have liked. I recommend the book highly, especially to SNL fans.

Fink out (on the town today).

Holy incoherence, Batman

1 Reply

Remember Crispin Glover, who played George McFly in 1985’s Back to the Future ?

Well, Crispin is now a writer and director. Oh, and a wackjob. Don’t forget wackjob. I triple-dog dare you to sit through this interview without wanting to gouge out your eyes with a melon baller.

Especially freakish (and equally as disjointed) is his answer to the fan question, “Why did you cast actors with Down Syndrome in a movie that isn’t about Down Syndrome?”

In case you don’t want to endure the actual video, imagine yourself in a situation which, unfortunately, many of us find all too familiar: You ask a person a simple question, and fifteen minutes later….

Gives new meaning to the phrase, That’s twenty minutes out of my life I’ll never get back.

Fink (running) out (into the street, screaming).