Before ipod...There Was Boombox

I just recently jumped on the whole portable mp3 bandwagon when I picked up a cheap little player on Ebay and I gotta say, it's pretty cool. You can put it in your pocket, buy one of those things that you can use to attach your player to your wrist or arm, or just toss it on the table while you're rockin' out. It may be portable but as far as any type of "coolness" is concerned...it falls way short.

Back in the days of my youth we also had portable ways to play our favorite music. Unlike the mp3 player where you store all your fave tunes in this little player though, back in the day you had to carry your music around with you separately. But it was worth it and added a little groove to the average swagger. Of course the portable player I'm talking about is a boombox and the music? Piles and piles of cassette tapes.

While I had cassette players and even a small cassette player with AM/FM radio before, it wasn't until 1979 that I got a boombox - a big (but not the biggest) Sanyo box with cassette, AM/FM radio, external mics and a handle that went from one end all the way to the other. What I liked best about mine was that it was mainly black with hints of silver where all of my friends boxes were pretty much all silver. Now all I needed to do was dub some records onto tape and maybe even hit up the Post Exchange for some new tapes. But before I hit the streets crankin' my tunes, there was one accessory I so desperately wanted to add to my new boombox. A little decor, if you will.

A foxtail to hang from the handle!

So with foxtail hooked in place, I grabbed my boombox on one end of the handle, so it would tilt slightly towards the ground giving me that "I could care less" air of coolness, and sauntered down the stairs of our apartment stairwell and onto the sidewalk of the American housing area I lived in. I was blasting Ted Nugent's "Weekend Warriors" when I heard an unfamiliar voice calmly say "Cool, the Nuge." It was this new long-haired kid, Pat Barron, who had moved to the neighborhood while I was gone on holiday with my folks. Pat was a tall long-haired skinny guy who wore blue denim from head to foot. Years later when I first saw pictures of Metallica's Cliff Burton I often thought how much Burton reminded me of Pat. But anyway...

Here was this new kid hanging out on the front stoop with MY friends when my new rockin' boombox and I should have easily been the hit of the day. Pat wasn't carrying a cool set of tunes. But he was definitely cool. In the end we all headed to the park and talked about whatever cool stuff 13-15 year olds talk about with the soundtrack for our youth provided, although briefly, by me and my rockin' jukebox!

Years later Pat and a couple of other friends including my buddy Wayne Smith who lived right across the hall from me in Germany, also ended up in the area. Pat in Evans and Wayne in Hephzibah. Both of those guys joined the military. Wayne is still in the service I believe while the last I heard Pat traded in his Marine stripes for coast guard ones.

I may not have that boombox anymore...but I got the last laugh...

...I still got the hair! (for now)

Slithery Sssssssinema

I tend to have a soft spot for many things from the 70's. The music, the television, and of course, the movies. For every world famous movie like Star Wars or Saturday Night Fever, there are a ton more "cut-out bin" level movies that went on to be forgotten. (cut out bin-a display in a store filled with "clearance" items, most commonly used in reference to music records that have a corner of the cover cut off or punched by a hole punch to mark them as clearance items.) Luckily for me, and others who love these old B and C rated movies, most have been released on low cost DVDs in recent years making it possible for a new generation of film fans to "suffer" through them. Many have achieved some level of cult status, others just exist to fill a nostalgic void.

One such "lost" film from my early childhood was an eerie horror film called Sssssss.



Originally released in 1973, I actually had the pleasure of catching this movie for the first time on the Armed Forces Network in the mid 70's in Zweibrucken, Germany in 1976. With only one English language channel you were kind of stuck with whatever was on TV which was usually made up of second rate movies and episodes of TV programs well past their original debuts in the U.S. For the remainder of my childhood and teen years Sssssss would remain a must watch every time it came on late late movie television programming. Sadly sometime in the late 80's TV thought itself too sophisticated for overly crappy movies and the showing of rare movies that failed miserably at the box office (or even failed to make it to the theater going straight to TV before even "straight to video" was thought of) slowly faded away leaving those box office bombs lost in film limbo. But let me offer a quick description of Sssssss.



Dr. Carl Stoner (cool name, played by Stother Martin ala Slapshot, Up in Smoke)is a seemingly nice old guy who experiments on animals for the betterment of science in particular snakes and to move things along Dr. Stoner hires an assistant, college student David Blake played by up and coming actor Dirk Benedict (Battlestar Galactica, The A-Team).

To protect David from the venomous snakes, Dr. Stoner injects the eager assistant with "antibiotics" which immediately brings a change, which Dr. Stoner insists is normal, in David's appearance and health. The first to notice is Stoner's daughter Kristina (played by Heather Menzies of Sound of Music and Piranha fame) who has grown fond of David which apparently she tends to do with many of her father's assis...um "experiments."

Now you may already see where this is going. The kind Dr. Stoner is actually a mad scientist who is wildly occupied with perfecting a method of turning humans into King Cobras. David is not his first attempt and so far, Dr. Stoner has failed miserably creating several "half human half snake" people which he disposes of by selling to a carnival to be used as part of their sideshow. Somehow Kristina ends up roaming around the carnival at night and comes across "Snake Boy" who she immediately recognizes despite the reptilian dude being completely hairless, blueish green and missing half an arm and both legs. This is easily the most chilling part of the movie.

In the end Stoner finally manages to get it right and turns David into a King Cobra. In turn "King David" turns on the good doctor and swallows him whole. Unfortunately for "King David" (and Kristina who somehow knows that this big ass snake is her boyfriend David) a mongoose from the lab escapes and puts its own "bite" on big Dave essentially bringing a chiling end to the movie.

Does this sound unbelievably too out there to actually exist? All it takes is a quick search on Ebay and you can pick up a copy of the film for probably less than 10 bucks and see for yourself. But I gotta warn you, Sssssss may slither its way into being one of your guilty viewing pleasures!

Tasty

by John "Stoney" Cannon

I found you sitting here
Chilling out with the others
In my possession imported beer
We’ll share this night together

My attractions usual go much deeper
But I’m struck by your snug presentation
Wrapped in colors bold and much sleeker
No other could be competition

So quickly, my chariot awaits
Just a second I’ll open the door
My senses so do salivate
Loudly my engines they roar

To my castle it can’t be too soon
For my keys I impatiently stumble
Such decisions I find in the room
The counter, the couch, or the table

Let’s strip you of all of your trappings
Soon you’ll be burning inside
On deaf ears and eyes fell your warning
Suggesting the heat first subside

Minutes, seconds lead to the moment
You’re dealing with no mere beginner
The alarms arrive so convenient
Now it’s time for my microwave dinner