Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime, has passed away

Thank you for the memories, Mr. Cullen.  You were one of the best voices of my childhood.

Til all are one!

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It seems everyone is paying tribute to Tim Curry...

The magnificent Tim Curry passed away two days ago.  The tributes have poured in, from his legions of fans that he made across more than five decades.  So many things that I could say about Curry.  I think my favorite performance of his was when he played Pennywise in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King's It.  Nobody could pull off that kind of malevolence like Curry did in that movie.

Well, there is something I'd like to offer up as a token, a gesture of appreciation to Tim Curry and his work.  I went looking for it and sure enough, YouTube has it.  This is from the Eighties television movie The Worst Witch.  It features Curry as the Grand Wizard.  There is no thing that I could say that would adequately prepare you for what you are about to behold.  This is... the single most INSANE music video in the history of anything.  It is positively bonkers!  It would have been wild as all get out on its own but having it be Tim Curry singing and performing in this well... that just makes it all the more bizarre.

Here it is.  The music video from The Worst Witch.  You have been warned.

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Farewell to Silver

This past weekend was a bittersweet one for me.

As of five days ago I am the owner of a brand new car.  It's the third Toyota Corolla that I've driven and it's the very first car that I've gotten on my own.  All the others that's have come over the course of my life I've had help with or co-owned.  This new one is all mine.  And when I have time I'm going to properly go through the owner's manual and familiarize myself with all the gizmos and do-dads that are part of a modern automobile.  I regret to say that my father would be mighty upset at me, that I've bought a vehicle so apparently overly-laden with technology.  Dad hated computers and he especially hated computers in cars and trucks.  I can still hear him now: "A car only needs gas, air and electricity, it don't need no stupid computer!"

I tried Dad, I really tried.

So I said hello to a new car.  But it only happened because it was time to retire a vehicle that has seen me through thick and thin for almost twenty years.

This is the 2004 Toyota Camry that I had been driving since December 2007.  It replaced the Corolla that I had been driving from the time I was working as a reporter in Asheville.  That car was totaled on the way to a wedding, it was rear-ended by an off-duty sheriff's detective.  A few weeks later my wife at the time and I got this Camry.  It was still practically new, had very little mileage on it.

It never had a proper name, but I liked to call it "Silver".  After the paint color of course, but also because it was as trusty as the Lone Ranger's horse.

When my wife and I separated, I wound up with the Camry as she went to another state.  And it and I have been together all this time.  I drove it all around Reidsville and the surrounding area.  When I was dating my girlfriend Kristen I would drive it up to Roanoke, Virginia at least once a week to see her.

Slowly but steadily, the mileage crept up.  It hit 100,000 one night on my way back from getting a sandwich at the Sheetz in Eden.  And still Silver went on.

Then came 2016.

I wrote about it in my book.  About how one night that February, God spoke to my heart and asked me what was I doing?  That I knew Dad wasn't coming back (he had passed away a little over a year earlier).  That I wasn't going to be happy where I was, that I knew these things and I needed to accept them.  Then God put something else on my heart: "Go.  Just pack up the car with Tammy and the essentials and Go!  Let Me lead you to where you are supposed to be.  Don't plan it.  Have faith Chris, as you never have had faith before."

A few months later I filled Silver up with clothes, my Bible, my iPad, my dog Tammy's belongings, as well as a pocket compass and a black cast-iron skillet (you simply do not go onto a journey into the wilderness without a cast-iron skillet) and we headed off into literally God-knew-where.  June 12th, 2016.  It was Sunday morning.  We left the hotel we had been staying and when the car hit US 158 out of Reidsville I started playing Lee DeWyze's "Blackbird Song" over the car stereo.

We were headed into the unknown.  Smack toward the edge of the map.

That turned into a year-long odyssey across America, through eighteen states all the way to California.  And though we didn't settle down anywhere out west, we did eventually find a place to be.  It took us a year and more than 10,000 miles but we ended up in South Carolina.

Tammy and I spent over a year staying with friends, giving me time to figure some things out as I never could before.  Eventually I was able to find work and land my own place.  Sometime after that I began my career at the state department of mental health.  A few years after that ended I wound up finishing writing my book and seeing it get published.  I recently began a new job.

And Silver had been with me all along.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end.  My trustworthy Camry began to succumb to age and mileage.  It needed repairs that would have made it more economical to find a newer vehicle.  It had come to a point where going out every time became something to desperately pray for safety.  I knew when a mechanic told me last week that the timing chain was causing the knocking under the hood, that it was time to bid farewell.

But we had some glorious times, Silver and I did.  Over 232,000 miles.  There were only two real significant incidents that she was involved in.  One was when I hit a deer one night on the way back to my parents' home, where I was living for awhile.  The other happened in California, when I shredded a tire and ruined a wheel trying to get to a garage (something that cost me a few hundred bucks).  Other than that, Silver went untouched by anything other than foul weather... and she handled that pretty good.

During our last Christmas together, my wife gave me a Yoda dashboard ornament.  It's the kind of thing that speaks to you when it's turned on.  I only did that a few times before Yoda's voice got too much while I was driving.  But I still kept it on Silver's dash.  I've still got that ornament.  I'm going to get some fresh Velcro and put it in my new car, so that the spirit of Silver can be transferred to the Corolla (I'm trying to come up with a name for it).

And so I took a few last photos of Silver at the Toyota dealership.  And if the meds would have let me, who knows but I might have shed a tear.  It was like saying goodbye to an old friend.  But in the past few days I'm also coming to see that embracing the new can be a good thing, too.  Silver served me during a long stretch of my life.  That time is something that I'm ready to move on from, and come to discover new things and new experiences.  I think I was holding onto the car because there were a lot of great memories that I was still clinging to.  Memories can be good.  But they shouldn't stifle one from making new ones that can be just as wonderful.

And that's what I want, what I need, to do now.

Silver, you were a good car.  The very best of them even.  With a grateful heart, and thankful to God for His provision, I salute you dear friend.

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Rest in peace Dolly Parton

A truly amazing woman.  She began with nothing but her family's love and the gifts that God blessed her with.

She then became one of the most beloved people in the history of American entertainment.  I don't think anyone ever had a bad word about her.

Dolly Parton was, and forever will be, a legend.

See you in Heaven, Miss Parton.  Thank you for sharing not just your talents with us, but also your heart and soul.

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My latest article at American Thinker: Kids, don't play with communism

This morning the website American Thinker has published my latest essay.  "Young People, Listen to Your Gen-X Elders: Communism Sucks!" is something that's been percolating for awhile and  I suppose recent events in the American political realm made it time to deploy.  This article is a few things: history lesson (has it really been thirty-five years since I was a high school senior watching the attempted coup against Gorbechev?), recap of the rise of extreme socialism in this country, and finishing off with a stark warning to the young people of this land.  Take it from someone who was there during the height of the Cold War: communism is NOT something we should want to entertain notions of accommodating, much less adopting (or having it forced upon us).

From the article...

The ad begins with a poor Russian peon, bundled up for the harsh winter, cautiously asking a stern sentry about what he is guarding.

“Is toilet paper.”

“Is good?”

“Is cheap,” replies the soldier.

The word spreads down the ranks of the people standing in line at the store. “Cheap toilet paper!” they say in astonished turn. One gets his hands on some: it bends and folds, as if it’s not toilet “paper” at all but lengths of semi-raw wood pulp.

For some reason that television commercial from the mid-’80s has come to mind quite a lot lately. It was played for laughs. But it was based in a very tragic reality, one that most people in the free world readily grasped. The Soviet citizenry, for all of the power that their government boasted of having, were utterly miserable. Toilet paper and nearly every comfort enjoyed by their Western counterparts were in dire shortage. Including food in its usually sumptuous variety.

How we laughed at the sight of all those people, in lines stretching out the building and down the block, waiting to get inside GUM—Moscow’s biggest department store—because rumor had hit the street that a shipment of canned potatoes or new stockings had come in. 

For all of the fear of World War III that many of us in America harbored, we also understood fully well that “they” were in fact quite a pathetic lot. The Soviet people wanted for canned goods and toilet paper, but it was an open secret that their leadership abounded in such luxuries and more. They were a people who nobody in their right mind would ever dare dream of emulating. How did the Russians get into such dire straits to begin with, anyway?

Mash down here for the rest of the essay.  And welcome to everyone who's visiting this blog from the link on the essay's page!

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Another memory: Breaking Bad in Albuquerque

This is starting to make me regret that I didn't blog all along the epic journey ten years ago.  I could have shared about so many neat places and people.  But then again it really was a time of introspection, a journey of self discovery and trying to chronicle that as it happens, well... it takes something away from the experience.  But I think I could be forgiven for sharing them now, all this time since.

These photos were taken at a store called The Candy Lady, in Albuquerque.  And they are rather famous for a certain special confection.  Because it was The Candy Lady that supplied the "Blue Sky crystal meth" during production of the television series Breaking Bad.  The good folks at the store are very proud of their connection to one of the greatest TV shows ever, there is all sorts of Breaking Bad memorabilia they offer.

Well, it so happened that they had just finished a batch of Blue Sky (it's edible and perfectly safe) and they always keep Walter White's hat and glasses handy.  Here is Yours Truly as Heisenberg:

When the people running the store found out that I had a dog, they invited Tammy in too.  And that's when we took this next pic.  One that I call "Barking Bad":

Incidentally, I have yet to finish watching all of Breaking Bad.  I watched the first season and enjoyed it but that was a few years ago.  Maybe I'll try it again sometime sooner than later.

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"But finally I arrived at the world famous ALBUQUERQUE HOLIDAY INN!!!"

Yesterday my Facebook suggested sharing a memory from ten years ago.  It's almost incomprehensible that it's been that long since this photo was taken.  But I was on a respite from blogging for awhile as Tammy the Pup and I crossed America.  So now I'm sharing a few photos from the journey that I hadn't before.

On the evening of August 17th 2016 we arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  And the very first thing we did when we got there was to look for the Holiday Inn, just as "Weird Al" Yankovic sang about in his long song "Albuquerque"...

"Where the towels are oh so fluffy!    And you can eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna.  It's okay they're clean!"

(Interestingly, there were a few places there where the air did smell like warm root beer!)

I might post a few more pics from the New Mexico stage of our adventure soon.

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