Oh yes, these are the salad days.

If Matt Engelbert bitches about anything, you’re going to send Steve Clark out to interview him, and run it as a legit story before the weather?

If you hadn’t canned him, I’d almost worry about you sending Steve Wilson out to pester me on my way to work, now that I’ve posted about this guy twice.

Click this to see the first act.

Off the top of my head, I really only remember two blow-out Halloween parties, so that’s never been a huge component of Halloween for me. However, I seem to haul out the same series of movies during the month of October.

This year, I decided it was probably time to pick up the Blu-Ray version of The Crow, but alas, the powers that be have not seen fit to make a Blu-Ray version. I’d say “my loss”, but I really think the loss extends to everyone.

Maybe I was just the right kind of kid at the right time for it, but for my money, The Crow is right up there with The Rocky Horror Picture Show for must-see October viewing.

Just thinking about it got me firing up the soundtrack, and getting carried back to the summer of ’94. And for the nonbelievers, the soundtrack alone is one of the most wonderful and special things to come out of the mid-90′s. I shit you not.

Honestly, it makes me feel bad for the kiddies today. What do you have? Some fruity vampire movie, about ten knockoffs, and the soundtracks are warmed over mall goth music “reimagined” from Marilyn Manson B-sides. You guys have it rough.

Well, that may be true. But it’s Detroit. You’re nuts if you think they’re so “with it” that they’d stop me from registering to vote.

Anyway, Mikál says he’s an engineer and a lawyer, and that makes him qualified to lead in this century. (Yes, really.) But apparently, engineers and lawyers don’t care so much about checking their ads for spelling errors before running them on TV:

His ads are the most prevalent, though the “bullet points over the RenCen” format seems to carry over across all candidates.

The more depressing part of this, is that this same ad has been running for about a month now.

The closest I can figure, is the incredibly caucasian woman who seems to be oblivious to the fact that you’d need to accept Sprint’s shitty service to use one.

She’s just so calm, and happy at the same time. She makes me believe that her e-mail shows up on her phone instantly, and that she can probably use her Exchange calendar properly — two things that my iPhone kind of sucks at.

I want one.

And yet, I’ve never seen one in person. Closest I’ve come was looking at the dummy phone at Best Buy a couple of days ago. But she’s sold me, as soon as they come out with a GSM version.

The News is something that happens on Channel 7. Channel 4 is sensationalist bullshit, and watching the news on Channel 2 at 10:00 makes me feel like I’m watching news for old people. Old people who are not edgy enough to stay up ’til 11:30, and will miss out on anything that happens later than 11:00.

Sunday is like the catchall for soft news. Even their Sunday weather guy seems like he doesn’t really believe what he’s talking about. I certainly don’t believe him. He’s no Hodak, you know. “The Chief”, Diana calls them. I am on a first name basis with her. With the whole team. There’s investment here, damn it.

They’ve got this lady, JoAnne Purtan. She may be Dick Purtan’s wife. Or daughter. That’s the only plausible answer for her being on TV, let alone “The News”. I would probably shit myself in disbelief if someone could prove that she’s ever done anything other than provide ditzy narration over some meaningless AP story over stock footage from 1989. (Note: after writing this, I decided to look at her bio, and learned that she is, in fact, Dick’s daughter. That explains everything.)

Sunday is like her featured day. But not today.

Today, there was a big INTERNET ALERT, which on Channel 7 usually means that somebody forwarded JoAnne a virus alert from Bill Gates and Jared from Subway, or that she just stumbled over Friendster and wants to warn you about your teenage daughters becoming stupid and throwing caution to the wind as they fly off to Florida to suck off middle aged car salesmen.

But today was different. There was no JoAnne on this one. In fact, they put Steve Clark in the driver’s seat on this one. So, I paid attention. Despite his cheesy and sometimes painful segues, I am willing to believe what he says.

Steve wanted to tell me… well… us… about two ten year-old twins. Ariel and Zoey, from Ann Arbor. They sing, and in his words, if you look up “cute” in the dictionary, you will find them. More precisely, Steve fired up the Dictionary app on his Mac and they ran with a graphic of it with the two girls Photoshopped on it.

As a slight aside here, nobody at Channel 7 understands that DVR’s exist. That, or I’m the only person who thinks it’s funny to look at things they’re not supposed to show on TV. A while back, it was the full contact info for someone who won a drawing. Today, it was the actual definition of “cute” in Mac OS, which says “informal: sexually attractive.” Look it up on a Mac, nonbelievers.

Apparently, they’re well known for singing covers of Muppet songs. If you ask me, they’re Detroit Famous (more on that later), but I’m just speculating.

Well, someone sent them a horrible, scary, and perverse e-mail! THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILDREN! There were threats! Well, sort of. CLEARLY, THIS PERSON IS DISTURBED!

Skipping back a bit, here’s how they sold it on the bumper. Words on the screen in huge letters are bolded for your convenience:

Two young twins targeted by cyberstalkers. An e-mail too frightening to ignore. Too disturbing to reveal! The biggest shock? Who wrote it! Steven Clark shows you what you need to to to keep your kids safe online!

The bumper, by the way, had scary Nightmare on Elm Street type music, with random bits of text scrolling outside a purple window with lightning. I’m not even sort of making this up, and I am stone cold sober.

Back to the story… Their dad is completely blown away by the e-mail. His family has been “terrorized”, he says. Every douchey “INTERWEB SCARY!” sentiment was out there on the table, while he sits on the couch with his surprisingly attractive wife who looks somewhat frightened, either by this man’s lunacy, or by the terrifying e-mail.

Oh, and back to the e-mail that’s “too disturbing to reveal”. Well, Channel 7 revealed it, superimposed on the twins’ web site. And here’s your money shot:

Name: Sam and Hailey

Email: horsecraZe301@aol.com

Comments: Hey ariel and zoey!!! We love you so much and saw you at tamarack and it changed our lives!! Everywhere we go we always try to fund the rainbow connection. I’m 35 years old and I listen to your inspiring music every day. My mom can hear it from the next room and tells me to turn it down or I won’t be able to live with her anymore. So I turn it down and turn on Kitten Sex Noises. which is her absolute favorite. You should do a song of sex noises!!! Lol then my mommy and I could listen and Enjoy together! I dropped out of college to pursue my lives dream of living on the moon and in the sea will you join me? You do not have to bring any clothes. I have that covered. wink wink. I have the lyrics
to Massachusetts embroidered on a quilt and I sleep with it every night. And I never ever wash it because then the magic will wear off. You should get a twitter so I can follow you every second of every day. Not like I don’t already but sometimes your windows are tinted and they’re hard to see through.
I LOVE YOU! ! ! I visit you website every 3.5 hours for updates. I look at your pictures and imagine you wearing whipped cream and jello then I pretend to lick it off but mother yells at me for having fantacisms. can I borrow your hair just for a day?? I just want the smell. You can just leave it on your doorstep. when I think of you I get a special feeling in my pelvis. Then I faff to get it away. I pretend that in my dreams I’m riding a pegasus in mid evil times and your the pegasus. I wanna rip off your skin and wear it to my birthday party. I want to bottle your sweat and wear it as perfume. I wanna photo shop my face into all your pictures so everyone can see how we are best friends. I love you.

I’m at your door. Come and get it.
Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxo
Xoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxox
Xoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxox

First thing that popped in to my head: “That’s kind of funny.”
Next: “I wonder which forums the person who wrote this came from. Seems Farkish to me. Not nearly sophisticated enough for Something Awful, and too few non sequiturs for YTMND.”
Then: “What an incredible douche their dad is.”
Finally: “Holy fuck, this is the worst story I’ve ever seen them dedicate this much time to.”

As it turns out, Daddy knows someone at the FBI, who tracked the fucking message down. If I become this dense when I’m in my 40′s, just kill me. And if I have an even more dense friend who will do my bidding, kill us both. (Note to self: This guy almost certainly Googles himself, and will probably take this as a legitimate threat / suicide note. Fuck. I’ve got a bet with myself on this, so let’s roll the dice with keywords: Hi, Matt Engelbert from Ann Arbor, Michigan.)

Well, The Feds found that the message came from two teenage girls in West Bloomfield, who they probably scared the ever loving piss out of, with Special Agent Dickweed busting in to their English class demanding answers.

While I don’t advocate sending messages like that to 10 year-olds, I super don’t advocate flipping out about it. Or calling the fucking news.

And now, Steve Clark’s earlier-promised advice for protecting your children: “…”

Not even a “You should watch what your kids are doing online.” He did, however, mention that Daddy wants the Legislature to come up with a law to prosecute people who send e-mail like this. Again, I’m not making this up.

What has this world come to?

I guess the track Minimum Wage is a little telling in itself. I associate it with $4.25/hour, and now it’s… uh… $7 something? I don’t know, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me now, because I don’t make minimum wage and therefore can not relate. And here’s that circle again, showing that I’m just old and out of touch, and I can’t possibly understand what kids today are going through. (Although I’m told it has something to do with those fuckwits Heidi and Spencer who are on some MTV show that’s staged, but not staged, but totally staged.)

Christopher Walken and Grace Jones. Seriously. I dare you to deny the awesomeness of this movie now.

So right now, I’m watching A View to a Kill, which is the only James Bond movie I’ve ever liked. And again, this has everything to do with me becoming a senior citizen sometime over the past year.

For my money, Roger Moore is the only legitimate James Bond, because I’m too young to feel strongly about Sean Connery having played the role before. And while I realize that makes me “too young” for something, he’s like 90 years old now, so there’s not a whole lot of comfort in that.

I think it may be a combination of the soundtrack by Duran Duran, or the fact that this is an extravaganza of innuendo and foreign lady nipple to a 10 year-old. Regardless, it makes me kind of sad that there hasn’t been anything similar to hit my radar. And one thing’s for damn sure… they don’t make movies like this anymore.

Just a side note here… I actually own the soundtrack, which tries to convince you that it’s basically a Duran Duran album. In reality, there’s the theme song “A View to a Kill”, which is by Duran Duran. Followed by things like “Romance Theme from A View to a Kill”, “A View to a Kill – Reprise”, “The Blimp Incident (A View to a Kill)”, which are not. When you’re 9 or 10 and have been saving up allowance to buy this album, this fucking sucks.

God damn kids today can just download it for free…

“While not myself old, I am a long-time listener of The Cranberries.”

Fuck you. You little 19 year-old sprite.

Unfortunately, the local news can’t shut the fuck up about it.

I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt like such a hayseed by association.

GOSH! DO YA’ THINK HE MIGHT TELL US WHAT CITY FOLK ARE LIKE?