Killin a little time before I head to work…

Film Fans, especially horror/shock:  After long and intense consideration I have decided that there is a point beyond which vomit is no longer funny/shocking, but just gross and gratuitous, even if the point is to over-do it.

I believe that Stephen King and Rob Reiner reached this saturation point in Reiner’s adaptation of King’s novella “The Body,” which became the film “Stand by Me.”  In the story/film one of the protagonists, Gordon “Gordy” LaChance, makes up a story called “The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan,” which revolves around a pie-eating contest in which a particularly Reubenesque lad decides to exact revenge on the people who have mercilessly teased him about his weight by deliberately gorging himself sick at a pie eating contest.  The result is, to quote the movie, “BARF-O-RAMA!!” in which an entire small-town fair convulses in a case of mass sympathetic vomiting.  (Trivia:  “The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan” was actually published in a men’s magazine – Cavalier I think  - long before “The Body”…under the psuedonym Gordon LaChance.)

In recognition of this achievement by Messers. King and Reiner, and of the fact that we need an objective scale with which to measure the intensity and effectiveness of a puke scene in a film, I propose the following:

The “Hogan Scale.”

The “Hogan Scale” is a proposed method of measuring reactivity to vomit scenes in cinema.  The scale is graded in standard numbers with no upper limit, with one “Hogan” being the inducement of nausea, happiness, or whatever one experiences when viewing the “Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan” scene in “Stand By Me.”  This may or may not be directly relative to the volume of excreta on-screen; this isn’t about how sick the guy on the screen is, but how sick you get watching him.  Values in excess of 1 are to be considered less-than-optimal; we are agreeing here that SBM is the best of these scenes, so if you score higher in your scene you’re almost certainly running people out of the theater or otherwise grossing them out more than you intended.

Por exemplar, consider this popular and funny sketch from the old TV show “Kids In The Hall” called “The Ham of Truth"

I would rate this sketch at 1.2 Hogans, because while we get that a) it’s supposed to be funny because he’s spewing like Vesuvius and b) it’s supposed to be funny because it’s so overdone, it still manages to be just barfy enough to stop being funny about half-way through the gag.  So it overshoots the mark by a fraction; still funny or effective, but not as much as it would have been with less pea soup.

You’re welcome.

Other Stuff:  Lots of folks back at Wastern this weekend, so that’s cool.  Got to see my buds Karli and Lianna, and that’s even cooler.  Have met a few females this week that I could get interested in under the right circumstances, but generally right now I’ve just got too much going on to be bothered…although one in particular could turn out to be significant in a few months when we’re both ready.  She’s got a lot of crap going on right now as well.  And either way…I’m kinda past the point that every female I meet is either a potential sex partner or ignored.  I’m making what I hope will be lasting friendships with quality people, helping people as best I can and doing what’s within my power to make the world a little better place, and that’s what matters to me.

That said it would be nice to get some LOL

Working slowly on this whole music scene thing.  There’s so much work to be done, but the vast majority of it is almost psychoanalytic in nature.  It’s like there’s a collective case of the low self-esteems around here.  Which is understandable – Michigan’s taken a few more hits than the country as a whole.  There’s just not a lot of fire in eyes right now; I’m hoping that since I’m ‘tagging in fresh’ I can light some energy and creativity and get things rolling again…but it sure isn’t gonna happen overnight.

That said, I have a number in my head.  50,000.  That’s how many people should be downtown in Kalamazoo for NYE.  This year there were 20K, maybe.  I’ve already reached out to a couple of you, and will with many more as time permits and things develop to the point there’s a reason to bother reaching out.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to work all of these notions into a sort of proposal that details all of the issues as I see them, and the steps I believe we can take to turn this thing around.  This includes EVERYTHING pertaining to arts, entertainment, and media in SWMI; if you can competently play an instrument, if you own recording or editing equipment, if you were part of the various sub-scenes that we now tend to just call “the scene” back in the day, if you own a bar with a stage in it, if you work for the press in this area…you’ll be hearing from me.

Gotta bolt, ride’s here.  Be safe.