Owlbear Fever

NOT originally published at Route 96. You can't comment there.

The Owlbear Challenge:
http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=1002

The Entrants So Far:
http://www.1km1kt.net/results.php?terms=24-Hour-RPG-Owlbear-challenge

The Only One I've Read Yet:
http://kallistipress.com/blog/2006-08-01/mark-twain-versus-the-owlbears/

Ohio: The Sleeper State

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

Oh, sure, it may not garner the same media hoopla as a Rhode Island or an Idaho, but Ohio has a lot more going for it than you think. When written in capitals, its name is symmetrical along the x-axis–can Delaware say that? Ohio was the setting for Family Ties, WKRP in Cincinatti, and Mr. Belvedere! [2006 Edit: Actually, I just made that up about Mr. Belvedere. In 1996, there was no easy way to check an obscure pop culture assertion like that, and little reason to think anyone would ever bother. Today, of course, time spent verifying inane pop culture minutia absorbs nearly half of our GDP. Look it up if you don’t believe me.] And last, but definitely not least, Ohio’s symbol is the buckeye, which Ohio spokeswomen Renee tells me is “some kind of poison nut, I think.” How cool is that?

If I can’t air guitar, I don’t want no air at all.

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

Bobby: No, Mr. Gorgenchuck, I will not stop rockin’ in your classroom. You’re sittin’ there telling me about the food chain, well, how about the rock chain? Instead of a cow at the top there’s, like, maybe a guitar. Cause Mr. Gorgenchuck, if I don’t feel free to rock, be it here or anywhere, you might as well cut off my limbs and mail them to Mother Russia. Cause if I can’t rock, I don’t want to walk. If I can’t air guitar, I don’t want no air at all. Mr. Gorgenchuck, if you really want me to stop rockin’, I hope you’re prepared to sand off my face. Are you, sir? Are you prepared to grind me up, burn my bones, and scatter the ashes in the far reaches of the universe? Cause that is what it’s gonna take, sir. You and I are mortal, but rock and roll will never die.

Mr. Gorgenchuck: Now that’s just where you’re wrong, Bobby. Recent studies show that rock and roll is, in fact, dying.

Bobby: … What??

Mr. Gorgenchuck: Popular music has been on the wane since 1974, the year of the first Bad Company release.

Bobby: I have that album!

Mr. Gorgenchuck: Ha ha ha, of course you do, Bob.

Like Huey Lewis says, the Heart of Rock and Roll is in Cleveland, and is anybody in my car about to argue with Huey? I think not. Hard-rocking rebels that we are, the Jenkinauts could hardly pass up a chance to see the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located in beautiful downtown Cleveland in a monster-sized I.M. Pei creation of steel and glass. It’s a huge, expensive complex with lots of buttons to push and video eyecandy to gawk at as well as genuine artifacts and relics fro all of your fab faves. It was also about as “rocking” as a Wall Street banking firm. Don’t get me wrong: it was fun in a gee-whiz multi-media kind of way. If, however, you held any illusions that there remained a shred of True Rock and Roll Spirit not yet co-opted or commercialized or bought and sold by the Man, this would be just the place to squash that quaint little notion.

Would it bother Janis or Sid or Kurt or Jerry Lee to see themselves sanitized and digitized and repackaged as the rock equivalent of the “It’s a Small World” robo-dolls at Disneyland? Who can say? I’d like to think they’d just be glad that all those hard working record company conglomerates and corporate sponsors have finally found a way to make some much deserved money from their art.

Viva Columbus, or, Fun With Spastics (part 1)

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

Our crash pad on the first night out of Canada was Renee’s Ponderosa Bungalow in Columbus, Ohio. Renee is a pop culture history chick (and I use “chick” in the empowering sense) with a Wonder Woman fetish whose own personal superpower appears to be ecstatic enthusiasm about everything. She didn’t seem to mind us visiting. She was also playing hostess that night to the Tonawandan Mafia, in the form of Steve and Joe. Readers of King Floyd #1 already know my amigo bueno Steve (aka Dr. Sinatra). Joseph, who happens to be Renee’s significant baboo, is another wanabee Canadian like Steve, one whose list of favorite stuff is even closer to mine than Dr. Sinatra’s, if that’s possible. Now if only we could turn them on to Mexican Wrestling…

HaloGeneration-X

Pete and Derek had never met our American hosts, and I had some fears that the ongoing Olympic Games would whip both Yanqui and Canuck into a nationalist frenzy. Would Bob Costas’ mushbrained analysis of the mens 4×100m relay trigger an ugly international incident?

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