Before I get all of your hopes up, no I'm not done with my hibernating yet. The site still needs to be worked on & aside from the mass archiving I did & the personal BS I had to deal with offline I still need a rest. Don't worry, Blogbabble will return soon, I assure you that. Until then here's something to hold you off. This 'Blogger' page is only a temp site so check up on here for more updates, especially cause now I got post blocked on Facebook. Fuck facebook.
This will be proofread once or twice because I want this out on the day of September 11th so excuse the grammatical errors that may appear.
The only other time I felt the world around me change was when the Columbine shootings happened. Before that parents were comfortable buying their kids cap guns & me and the other neighborhood kids would play vice cops within the vicinity of the neighborhood. Then columbine happened & I recall one time my mom took me to school so she could pick up my older sister. This is what lead to this picture here.
Who's this trappin' ass kid? That's me with a toy gun outside of a public school. I never told this story to anyone but there was a concerned parent who came up to my mom & told her why letting me play with a cap gun was wrong. Oh if this were a few years ago most assuredly this would be an angry Karen shouting under the guise of being a concerned parent, but we all know they'd be using that as an excuse to let out their angry racist aggressions out on easy targets. Well this guy (it was a man) just didn't want me playing with a toy gun & traded me my toy gun for a Power Rangers toy! Wow! At that age that was awesome, but looking back if I were a greedy cunt I would have begged for a Megazord, those huge ones. I should remind y'all, my parents weren't well off financially. They couldn't buy me any toy at Toys R' Us because they knew I would break it easily & oops! There goes $30 in 90's money down the drain because I couldn't take care of my stuff. I feel the idea of buying your kids a new toy when they've proven they can be responsible is a very outdated concept. In my opinion the lack of that has spoiled many children today. I look at all these Twitch fails of these kids breaking their keyboards & headsets when they die in Minecraft & I swear if I were a parent I'd smack them upside the head. The parents bought them this $100 keyboard with LED lights & they just break it like that. To quote Ice T when asked why they don't break their instruments like other rock bands (Paraphrasing): “We clean our instruments. Shit's expensive.” So most of what I got was either hand me downs or toys they got me at a liquor store, like the toy gun. Well for a trade I got a black Warrior Wheel from 'Power Rangers ZEO'.
It was clear this was a piece of a
bigger toy but I still enjoyed it. What I was getting at was after
Columbine changed the world changed along with the realm of
children's media. You'll notice characters could not hold or wave
guns or gun-like objects in children's TV shows after Columbine.
Movies & cable were a different breed. There was a bit more
lawlessness on Nickelodeon & Cartoon Network than on network TV,
which is why I call those two on par with HBO, edgy entertainment but
for kids whereas network TV was more safe. Not saying kids shows need
guns to make it entertaining, in no way am I asking the NRA to
influence kids programming (thought that would be funny) but I do
have a problem when they sloppily censor guns out of things. Take a
look at the censorship that occurred in 'YuGiOh' by '4Kids
Entertainment'. Oh I'm sooooo scared. Two guards are pointing their
fingers at me. Here's my take on it, if nobody gets shot, then don't
censor the guns out of kids media, though nowadays after 'Regular
Show' had epsiodes where robots get shot to pieces by cops, I think
standards & practices have loosened up over the years. It's like
the adults of that time were saying “If we edit out the problem in
media, then the problem will no longer exist in society.” This
whole 'Clean up the media & we clean up America' bullshit. That
is why the DVD release for 'E.T' removed the guns from the FBI guys
in that one scene. In Spielberg's words he said “Guns don't belong
in kids movies.” But it was okay when it was done in the 80's? It's
like they were saying “It's okay for us. It's not okay for you.”
Right? At least Spielberg added in the guns back into the newer
releases of the film. If the guns don't result in death, then don't
remove it! Then again the only time that can be accepted in
children's media is if it's trying to prove a point like in the
'sorta' banned episode of the Disney 'Gargoyles'. In the episode the
young imp character is watching some 50's western, idolizes the hero
who weilds six-shooters, then he takes hold of Eliza's gun thinking
he's the hero of the show & accidentally shoots Eliza Maza. The
episode was banned because of the scene where he accidentally shoots
her. She doesn't die so the scene is played pretty tasteful due to
how non-graphic it was while driving the point to the audience as
clearly as it could. Disney aired that episode once on their
Afternoon block & never again until airing again on Disney
'Jetix' (Remember that?) but in a very heavily edited, almost poorly
'pan & scanned' version where they were trying to hide the fact
that the imp used a gun & the Eliza got shot. That's censorship
to a ridiculous level. The point of that story was how horrible guns
are! It was trying to differentiate how glamorous gun violence is in
movies & TV while in reality gun violence is brutal &
horrifying, a lesson many kids today should learn since they are now
being raised off Fortnite & Apex Legends. That's how sensitive
the world got when it came to children's media after a real tragedy &
I'm here to say cutting out scenes where buildings are destroyed in
the 2000's was stupid. Around 2001 I was watching Godzilla movies in
the afternoon, so why was that okay but banning an episode of giant
Pokemon kaiju? I felt hiding it & hoping the problem disappeared
was not the right way to go about addressing tragedy, especially to
kids. Kids aren't as stupid as you think.
As I wanted to get to
before I deviated here, Columbine was the first time I came to notice
that real world tragedy could affect everyone everywhere, no matter
how distant the tragedy was. People are shaped by it for better or
for worse. Which brings me to the first topic for the day, 9/11.
Everyone my age or older has either asked or been asked: “Where
were you when the twin towers fell?”
The first time I heard
someone ask that question, I will be honest I didn't see the point of
asking that to people who weren't in New York in 2001. Now that I'm
of the age where I can clearly remember where I was at that moment in
time, I grew an understanding about that question. It has less to do
with figuring out if people felt the same reaction at that moment &
more about trying to grasp at a bigger picture about the reactions
from different perspectives around the nation or world. This is the
20th anniversary so I guess now is a right time to talk
about such a tragedy, such a catastrophic event.
I've been wanting to talk about 9/11 for a while, but many times I was either busy with other commitments or the day passed by me.
Think about it, the last foreign attack (Leave aside domestic terorism) we had on U.S soil was the attack on Pearl Harbor in the 40's. So 9/11 was a shock to the system (I'll be honest, not saying the attack was deserved but America was getting a bit egomaniacal before this), people thought this was the beginning of World War III & looking back I could fully see why.
So 2001, it was my first semester in second grade so I was no spring chicken but I certainly wasn't an old fogey yet. I just woke up & the morning was as typical as any other day. Wake up, dress up, eat breakfast; the usual morning routine. My parents were watching the news on TV & there was the image of a burning exploding building. The image didn't at all scare or offend me, I just assumed this was a news story about a building catching fire. Living in LA it wasn't at all uncommon to see a news story involving arson & explosions. Even at that time we were still inundated with annual forest fires, but I will say there weren't as many of them as there are now. Global warming & some generic as straight couple having the need to burn a state just so they can figure out if their kid will play with Tonka trucks or Barbies. So here I am eating breakfast, not really understanding what was going on until finally my mom takes me to school at 7:30 or 7:25. I didn't live too far from the school so a trip on foot only lasted 15 minutes. By that point my older sister was starting her first year in middle school so she was walking to school with her friends while my mom escorted me to grade school. It was business as usual, kids were walking to the playground to hang out with our respective classrooms & all we did was talk about random kid stuff. What happened on tonight's episode of WWF or whatever. What video games we played after our homework or what we did in our neighborhoods. All that jazz. Then the teacher's aide escorted us to the classroom. Upon reaching our classroom we saw our teacher, Mrs.Hoffer (R.I.P) sitting in front of a television set mounted on the upper corner of the classroom. It was tuned to ABC News & of course this broadcast was constantly replaying footage of the plane hitting the twin towers as it exploded on impact. She was sitting there, silently bawling as to not depress any of us kids. Then she shut off the TV, wiped the tears off her face & just went about her business as usual. Looking back at that I can't really blame her for that, in her own way she was not trying to bring in the real world tragedy to the classroom full of colorful posters & city carpeting. For all I know her job was keeping her mind out of the depressing reality. We were young but we also knew deep down this wasn't some random nothingness. Later that week a buddy of mine was drawing the twin towers with the building exploding & little burning stick figures falling, we were aware what was happening. That afternoon every TV station was airing continuous coverage on the rescue efforts happening on Ground Zero. It was at that moment I knew this wasn't just some building on fire, nor was any of this going to be resolved overnight. My parents weren't the kind of people to sit us down & talk about our 'feelings'. The TV was off, everyone was silent & we ate our dinner. Not trying to put my parents under the bus or anything, but they had a very lax outlook when it comes to stuff like this. They weren't really the type to be easily manipulated by fear, hence why when the whole Y2K thing happened the only thing my parents were worried about is whether there was milk in the fridge or not. At that age I saw both the humanity & the inhumanity of the world after that point. On one side you had a country coming together to help those who were severely affected by these terrorist attacks & on the other you got a quick uprise in racism against Muslims or anyone who happened to be dark skinned & 'arab looking'.
This may have been several weeks or a few months after the 9/11 attacks, my mom was taking me to school & on our route we were stopped by an Indian woman in her sari speaking her language which neither of us understood. So this woman was communicating to my mom with gestures & my mom finally understood what she wanted. The woman wanted something extracted from her eye. My mom reached her two thumbs into the inner corner of the woman's eye & began to squeeze like she was popping a zit & what came out of the woman's eye was a crystal. Not exactly a crystal but a glass-like droplet. I seen this once on one of those 'Caught on Camera' shows like 'Real TV' or the much more absurd 'Max X'. I didn't think this condition was true but that experience taught me so much about not just my mom but of human nature. I'm not going to say my mom is ignorant or racist because she's not. Nowadays she looks at the LGBT movement with more a confused outlook rather than an outlook based on hate. She's like Edith Bunker, she doesn't understand it but because she doesn't get it doesn't mean she hates it & in many of these examples she looks at it using her personal experience with sexism and racism as a point of reference. A little wake up call to many of you who post shit like “If they don't get it, then that means you're the enemy.” Fuck off you internet ass pat fucks! My mom dragged me & all her other work friends to her job because the assholes employers were cheating these women out of decent pay. Along with that ballsy strength, the interaction between my mom & the stranger taught me not just about my mom, but also about how you should maintain your humanity in a time when day by day people were becoming inhuman. It's easy to brush with broad strokes, but it shows you have time, patience & understanding when you paint in the little details. My mom could have succumbed to the fear mongering that was booting up in the news media, but she didn't. I'll admit after a few years she became a worry wart as me & my older sister grew older, but not so much to the point where she became a racist asshole. Then again being scared is not the same as being racist. You know what I mean! The message still stands, never become the people you hate, which is why I can never understand the thought process behind Mexicans who were racist against Muslims. Like, just yesterday we were considered less than human because of our race & now you're calling other people the same shit you were called? Like, you're not fucking prize either! Never become your oppressor. Take that into your bong & smoke it!
Well that takes care of that soap box,
now to end off this entry is another 20th anniversary of a
personal thing which led to something that would change my life.
Don't worry, this segment will be light.
THE NIGHT I WATCHED
MORE TV THAN I SHOULD HAVE AT THAT AGE
I won't say the 9/11
attacks booted up my anxieties or anything. At this point I'm willing
to believe I was born with these anxieties, still haven't been
diagnosed though. This lead me to feel a certain way about staying up
past my bed time. I can't really explain it but at that age I felt
like I was committing a crime or something on that level. I guess
it's the fact that I was technically alone while the world slept in
their hibernation pods. 2001 marked that first year I experienced a
kind of insomnia that led to staying up all night. Now I can't say
this is the first ever time in my life I stayed up past the
appropriate bedtime because there were plenty times as a kid like
when my mom was pregnant with my younger sister & I was at the
hospital up until 11 at night. Then of course the many times where I
got sick at midnight with either a stomach ache or a case of the flu.
Despite that I felt like I was comitting a crime if I stayed up on a
school night. Going back to when my mom was pregnant I remember
walking out of the hospital & there was a half awake elderly man
watching 'The Simpsons' in what looked like a waiting room with a TV
screen as big as a theater screen.
The first time I stayed up all
night was on a Saturday, me and my older sister shared the same room
up until our teens when we moved to a place with two rooms. My older
sister was watching 'Mad TV' (There was a parody of Moulin Rouge.
How's that for topical) & for some reason she decided to turn off
the TV after that sketch. Normally she would watch the whole show
until shutting off once the end credits rolled. Maybe she had to wake
up early, I don't know. I could not sleep that night for one reason
or another, then I decided to wait until 12am to grab the remote once
she reached deep sleep. She always slept with the remote at hand so I
had to be silent like Solid Snake. That's all I could do at that age
since I was not much of a reader & of course this was the days
before I had a game boy. I didn't have a computer until much later,
until I reached my tweens so there was no web surfing. The TV was the
only source of insomniac entertainment I had & in 2001 the
landscape of television wasn't as bland as it is now. By this point
there were still networks catering to insomniacs by way of midnight
movies, first run programming, SNL still had 'TV Funhouse' but also
at this point infomercials were becoming a prominent. Early on
Infomercials were a bit outlandish & at least trying to grab your
attention. Anyone my age or older remember the infomercials for the
'Magic Bullet' blender? The things you watched that you would never
watch had there been other choices. What makes this infomercial
strange is the whole thing is set up like a sitcom where you got this
couple (Named Mick & Mimi) letting neighbors into their house &
while there they happen to introduce them to this new invention
called the Magic Bullet by making food like bean dip, nachos, chicken
salad & drinks for them. This was on par to watching food porn &
I loved every minute of it! The whole thing is like an AMWAY
salespersons' wet dream of having people be interesting in their
wares. So from what I could recall the people that appeared in this
infomercial are a typical white couple, a burnout drunk who clearly
has a hangover, another generic white couple & a old woman with a
raspy voice and a cigarette in her mouth. I'm here to tell you, that
old lady is a mood. She looks like the kind of old lady who spends
her days collecting social security, spending that social security on
weed & Janis Joplin albums to vibe out to and in her old age she
manages to score gentlemen callers or use the pool boy as a main
squeeze. Fuck yea! Fuck it up, Agnes! Now unless the infomercial can
manage to do something unique, I do not watch any of the new shit.
Surprisingly if the product is still being manufactured, from time to
time I'll catch the same old infomercial that I saw back in the day
like that Walk Fit one with the Lloyd Kaufman/Mel Brooks looking guy.
Jack Lalane has been dead since 2009 & I still see his
infomercial floating around the airwaves! Nowadays infomercials have
gotten too real, there's infomercials for law offices advertising
class action lawsuits. Yeah, that's what I want to watch in my free
time, hearing people talk about how they were diddled by catholic
priests or dying from baby powder. That's no fun, give me Mimi &
Mick! They seem like the couple who you see at a bar eyeing you, then
when they offer you drinks they immediately follow that up by saying
“Me & the missus are swingers. Would you like to come to our
place...” and what could have easily become a great night for wild
sex turns deadly or they're like Cathine Devenue & David Bowie
from 'The Hunger'. You're vampire food!
Gerald's Game, starring
Karens.
Rated G.
I also saw the infomercial for 'Girls Gone
Wild' and giggled at that because, well, I'm a boy. Boobies are
funny. Thank goodness for internet porn because I don't think I'd
survive with just B-cup generic blondes.
That wasn't the only
infomercial I saw that night, this next one was an infomercial that
would shape me for years to come. I was not joking when I said there
were a few infomercials that were not only trying to entertain, but
there were items, aside from gimmick items, which I'm sure you
couldn't find at any store at that time. Ebay & Amazon were there
but they weren't as big as they are now. Believe it or not there was
an infomercial for a Pink Floyd album collection & I'm here to
say this was some mind altering shit I watched. I never heard of Pink
Floyd before that moment & what I saw both interested me &
freaked me the fuck out!!! The cover art for their albums only
scratched the surface, the moment I felt like I was watching some
kind of terrestrial signal was when the infomercial began playing
clips from 'The Wall' film since the sales pitch included a recently
remastered DVD copy. That scene of the face emerging out of the white
brick was that defining moment in my life where I knew there was
weird media out there & it was my job to track them for not just
my enjoyment, but also for people who were also curious. Even if you
did have internet there was no YouTube so the only way you were going
to watch the movie was on Cable, because network TV never aired
anything esoteric like that. Thus brings me to the next aspect of my
midnight odyssey, the two movies that were on TV that night. CBS was
airing 'Species 2' or was it the first one? I caught a piece of it so
all I recall was a bunch of flashing lights & a weird female
designed by Giger. It may have been the second one. Telfutura didn't
come to the airwaves until 2002 so there was no midnight movie from
them, but there was a midnight movie on Telemundo & it was an odd
little film by the name of 'Frankenstein Unbound' where John Hurt
travels back in time in his silver futuristic car. He arrives to the
18th century where Frankenstein creates his monster. I
haven't seen it since 2001 but I remember most of it being fish out
of water stuff with this future man walking around Victorian England.
You know what? I'd love to travel to the medieval ages wearing Lord
Humungus BDSM leathers. I may not be attractive now but I'm for sure
I'll be considered sexy in the 18th century because I
won't be covered in horse shit.
Aside from the movies &
underneath the infomercials there were a few local affiliates airing
quality programming whether it be reruns of first run stuff or just
weird stuff that was never going to show up during the day. I recall
watching an episode of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' on a local FOX or
NBC station. I don't know the specific episode but it had Buffy
walking a dog & this huge ass demon shoots some laser or fireball
leaving the dog in exploded chunks. Look, I don't find cute animal
death funny, but there's moments where it's so over the top I
couldn't help but laugh. Of course a local FOX affiliate aired
'Stargate SG1' & 'Star Trek Voyager' around that time. At that
time I just was not up for watching 'Voyager', though Stargate was a
hit or miss for me. At that age I just wasn't prepared for talky
programming or talky movies. Then we get to the strangest thing I saw
on PBS, that being an educational program on nuclear fission &
nuclear power, or maybe it was about A.I machinery. I can't remember
clearly but I can tell you it was narrated by a machine. All I know
was it was narrated by a robot voice talking about how nuclear bombs
were made, eventually ending with the robot voice telling the message
“We will end all humanity in a single press of a button.
Hahahahahh!!!!” That has stuck to me since forever. I don't know
the title, I don't even know if this was a NOVA documentary or what.
I saw it that night, never forgot it & it has never rerun ever
again.
By this point I think I was well into renting video games for the weekend so with me I had a copy of 'F-Zero X' that I rented that Friday night from the video store. There was a stage called 'Devil's Forest' and I came to the idea that if I turned on the N64 & played that level, a portal to hell would open in the bedroom & suck me in. I was prepared to go the whole ten yards. So there I was in front of the TV, changing to channel 3, inserting the cartridge into the system & flicking the switch on. You get that awesome guitar riff accompanied by the N64 logo & finally the main menu screen. My mind was bringing up imagery of myself playing Devil's Forest & flames would emerge from a burning pentagram as a devil emerged asking for my soul. My reasoning was the indecipherable lyrics in the song that played on that level were satanic scriptures that when played at midnight would activate the portal. So I played the level & of course nothing happened. The things a child could think of. Now you know why I write fiction.
After the tampering with Satan & the dark forces that be I then changed the channel to the religious channel known as 'TBN'. The only time me, my older sister & my friends watched that channel was to make cheap jokes. I remember once during a commercial break while watching WWF, my older sister changed the channel to TBN & what followed was comedy gold. They were holding a telethon with this southern woman saying crap like “God wants y'all to donate money so we can buy a jumbo jet.” then out of nowhere came Ronald Mc.Donald asking to donate in a very desperate, almost tired voice. I was young, my nuts didn't drop so what I did was shout in a high pitch voice “Hey look, it's Ronald Mc.Donald! AAAAAAAAAA!!!!” I screamed like a girl & both my older sister and my neighbor laughed as hard as they could. So going back I changed it to TBN & was introduced to this guy named 'Carman' (Carman Licciardello) who wore suave 90's clothes & rapped about god. This was corny, but it was the kind of corny you could respect rather than cringe at. I'll agree with Brad Jones, the man has charisma & compared to all the pro-religion nuts out there his job was to entertain than to fear monger. On the surface it felt like a half-assed attempt to market to the youth but it felt more like an earnest attempt to entertain the youth who were already converts. He was described as part evangelist & part Vegas showman which perfectly sums up the guy. In no way was I one to be easily converted, but I will acknowledge catchy music & amazing stage presence when I find it. The music videos were the right kind of 90's corny & as a kid I found it entertaining in a 80's Cannon movie way. Sad to say but Carman died as recently as early 2021 in February due to complications related to surgery & I will say though I'm not relgious the world of Christian pazaz is worse off without him. Who do they have now? I don't see Kirk Cameron spitting bars, rather I see him bitching about useless shit on Twitter because he's a fucking anus.
This must have been an early morning children's block for the east coast people because it was 3am here in the west. After that they began airing a Christian anime by the name of 'Superbook'. To all of you religious people or anime fans who didn't live near a comic book shop or a Best Buy, remember that anime? It's anime!
Mom, can we have anime?
We got anime at home.
Even at that age I thought the idea of
Japan making an anime where three kids & a robot experience bible
stories was odd seeing as the majority of that nation worshiped the
Shinto religion. Christianity makes up a minority of the population,
but then again the anime was early to mid 80's where they had that
bubble. Japan made anything & everything into an anime during
that time because they were rolling in the dough. So I watched an
episode of Superbook then my dad came home from work & told me to
shut the TV off. By that point I was getting very sleepy so I knew it
was a good a time as any to call it a night.
Ever since that
night I never forgotten what I had seen. The weird imagery, the
smells, the sights; it was truly an adventure to behold. At that
young age midnight was an uncanny valley full of strange stuff you
would never see in the dayt. Ever since that night I felt like I
belonged in a choo choo train with other insomniac kids, like the
Polar Express but without the dumb ass singing or uncanny valley CGI.
That movie blows. We would share weird stories, weird movies, weird
music & even have drinks and snacks. Nowadays in my 20's midnight
has become as common as breathing. At times I do forget people don't
run on my time. So whenever I have to attend something early in the
morning I sometimes have to remember that not everyone is a night
person. All us vampires, ghouls & street samurai are night
people.
Anyways, I hope all of you enjoyed this little brief
'Blogababble', clocking in at six pages. For now this Blogger page
will be a temp emergency home for BlackTime E-Press, which I just
discovered since I activated it in 2012 but returned to it until now.
It will take a while before I get to creating a website. So on here
expect to see some reposted older blog entries. Like I said earlier I
might also use it to post updates or even mini-short stories I could
think of. I might consider doing a weekly short story about whatever
comes to mind, whether good or bad. So that might be an interesting
thing to do, just so I can keep busy. I am still on my vacation here
so don't expect everything to come immediately. Stay tuned on here,
like I said on my last Blogbabble before the hiatus, I am not giving
this up.
All of you have saved me in the past & I will not
forget that.
'BlackTime E-Press' is reaching 10 yrs in 2022.
Believe it.
Email: (New Address coming soon)
Facebook: facebook.com/BlackTimeEPress
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlacktimeEPress
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