Vegan grappling sensation Daniel Bryan slaps “The LeBell Lock” on the Miz on this week’s “Monday Night RAW.”

Even at 70-something years old “Judo” Gene LeBell is still the toughest man alive, but he can’t use YouTube worth a damn.

LeBell is a two-time national judo champ and held the National Wrestling Alliance world heavyweight championship for an astonishing 12-seconds. As a martial arts master, he taught no less than Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris how to break arms. As a Hollywood stuntman he roughed up poor ol’ James Garner in more than a few episodes of “The Rockford Files” and threw Steve Martin into the pool in “The Jerk.” And yes, “Judo” Gene also reportedly choked out a certain stony faced actor with a pony tail fetish whose first and last names both begin with the letter S. When I was helping Gene write his autobiography, titled “The Godfather of Grappling,” he’d never tell me the tale of choking out a Tinsel Town tough guy who may or may not be Steven Segal. Don’t get me wrong. Gene is a sadistic bastard. He doesn’t have a problem with bruising peoples’ bodies but bruising a man’s ego is another matter entirely.

I first started working on Gene’s book in 2002. It’s eight years later and I’m on the phone with Gene, trying to coach him in the use of YouTube. World Wrestling Entertainment’s vegan grappling phenom Daniel Bryan has started calling his finishing hold “The LeBell Lock” after “Judo” Gene. The move first got noticed on the WWE’s big pay-per-view Summer Slam a couple of weeks ago. The hold didn’t have an official name then. A couple of days later on his blog, Bryan wrote: “It’s actually an omoplata with a crossface, but I’ve mostly just called it the LeBell Lock.”

I didn’t expect to hear much more of the matter after that blog. Dubbing it the LeBell Lock was a nice gesture on Bryan’s part, but surely the WWE’s brain trust would come up with a flashier name for it. As George W. Bush would say, I misunderestimated the WWE. On this week’s installment of “Monday Night RAW,” announcer Michael Cole actually called it the LeBell lock on the air when Bryan applied the face-crushing maneuver to The Miz during a post-match melee.

I didn’t watch “RAW” on Monday and was just now getting to it through the magic of my DVR. I called Gene to tell him the news. He was unaware of this. While we were on the phone, I sent him a link to a possibly illicit YouTube video of Bryan slapping that hold on The Miz. Michael Cole utters the name “LeBell lock” at the 6:20 mark of the video.

“I don’t have to watch all six minutes and 20 seconds of this thing do I?” Gene said cantankerously. The earlier bout between John Cena and The Miz held little interest for him. He couldn’t wait to see the wrestling hold that bore his name like a kid on Christmas Eve.

“No Gene,” I said, “You see the little circle underneath the screen there. Just move that until the text above it says 6:15 and let it play from there.”

Afer a couple of fits and starts, Gene moved the circle to the right place and let it play. I could hear Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler’s blow-by-blow commentary over the phone.

“It’s a neck crank where you’re key locking the guy’s arm so he can’t roll,” Gene explained.

As Bryan sunk in the hold, referees rushed into the ring to pull the two wrestlers apart. Gene laughed. “"They’ve got four zebras in there,” he said, referring to the refs’ black and white striped shirts.

Then Gene heard Cole call the move by its new name. Gene quickly figured out how to move that little circle back to the right point so he could hear it again. “Wow, they put that over real good,” he remarked.

“Judo” Gene LeBell, the toughest man alive and a self-proclaimed sadistic bastard takes time away from causing pain to feed his beloved squirrels.

When I was working on Gene’s book, he always tried to demonstrate the most painful, bone-breaking finger locks on me. “Gene, I need my fingers to type your manuscript,” I pleaded. Gene could see that I had a point, so he decided to show me knee locks instead. When I started to walk around with what he referred to as a “Transylvania Twitch,” I asked him to show me some other type of holds for a while. Gene chose to have his students put me through a series of neck cranks not much different than the one that Bryan used on The Miz. Things were a little bit easier for me when Gene took time away from causing pain to toss nuts to a family of squirrels that made their home on the roof of his townhouse. Gene often held out his hand with some shelled walnuts in it. I’d watch as the squirrels scampered down the stucco walls and ate right out of his deadly hands.

At this point in time, Gene LeBell has seen it all and done it all. He’s crashed cars, been set on fire, jumped off of buildings and has even wrestled a bear (no he really did this). As an ass-kicking renaissance man, he’s worked with every martial artist, pro wrestler and movie star that you can think of. But when he heard that the WWE had named a move after him, he was actually touched.

“You tell this Bryan guy to come by the dojo,” he said. Of course I don’t know Bryan but I could send him the link to this blog through Twitter and hope that he sees it. That’s how our world works these days.

“You know champ,” Gene said as we were wrapping up our phone call and YouTube lesson, “that really made my day.”

Me with “Judo” Gene LeBell in 2003.

You can buy “Judo” Gene’s autobiography, “The Godfather of Grappling, at www.genelebell.com. By allowing me to co-write his autobiography, Gene taught me more about my craft than any MFA program, plus there were those knee locks.

The email informing me that Governor Schwarzenegger is now following me on twitter.

Crom! Mitra! What sorcery is this! Governor Schwarzenegger is now following me on Twitter. When I first go the email from Twitter informing me of this, I thought it was likely just one of the numerous fake Schwarzeneggers populating the Twiterverse. But upon checking my Twitter followers (all 94 of them), I soon found that it was the Governator’s verified account. It has the little blue checkmark next to it and everything.

My current governor is followed by 1,747,181 people and is following 111,204. At 9:15 this morning, Arnold was “Hanging at Melody Ranch with my son and his friends.”

“It’s a great Western town,” he adds.

Even though I have been tweeting about “The Expendables” a bit over the last couple of days, it’s still hard to figure out why Gov. Schwarzenegger or the handlers of his microblogging decided to follow me. Michael Chiklis tweeted to thank my interview with him at WonderCon ran in Salon, but nothing I posted ever moved him to follow me. Here are my last four tweets:

Both Eat Pray Love & The Expendables show Americans seeking enlightenment in exotic locales. Stallone blows shit up to find tranquility. (Around 2pm today)

Expendables is No. 1: http://shar.es/0XHIk USA! USA! (around noon today)

If The Expendables somehow makes $200 million, can Lucas please make “Grumpy Old Star Wars” w/ old Han, Chewie & Luke? (17 hours ago)
Also, over the last couple of days, I’ve also tweeted my recent Salon.com article on the Saigon whorehouse outtake from the first Rambo movie.

Governor Scwarzenegger and I are both following Wil Wheaton, Jerry Brown, Paul Krugman and ArnoCorps, the ballsy punk metal band of goddamned heroes that mocks Arnold at every turn. If you’ve read any of my recent blogs about Schwarzenegger, you can tell we don’t see eye to eye, but at least the guy doesn’t shy away from differing opinions. It’s hard to picture Meg Whitman following Paul Krugman, let alone a rock band that’s sole purpose would be to bag on her through thrash metal anthems.

Okay, speaking of ArnoCorps, I need to go to their lead singer’s compound to watch WWE Summer Slam. As the Terminator would say, “Hasta la vista, baby.”

Klingons, Humans, Vulcans and Ferengie unite to enter the record books at Star Trek Las Vegas.

On Saturday morning at the “World’s Largest Star Trek Convention” in Las Vegas, 543 Trekkers put on their finest Klingon, Vulcan and United Federation of Planets apparel and crammed themselves into a ballroom at the Hilton for ten minutes in order to enter the records books for the most “Star Trek” people in one place. Even to an original series Trek nut like myself, this seems like a kind of contrived record. I mean, what about the most “Star Wars” fans in one place at one time? The most “Babylon Five” fans? Or how about all of those people in crazy, shimmering duds at the last San Francisco Love Parade? I hope those people just walk around dressed like that without an excuse. Back in those long ago days when I was a kid, the “Guinness Book of World Records” was a magical tome where you had to consume a whole crapload of live goldfish or never, ever cut your damned finger nails to gain entry onto its hallowed, pulpy pages. Being so obese that you had to be carted around on a flatbed truck when you were alive and buried in a piano case when you finally kicked the bucket, also helped.

But there was an energy in the air at 9am yesterday morning that melted both my cynicism and my hangover. The soundtrack to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” was piped in through the room’s sound system, making everything seem so dramatic. “We have 200 people in the room,” one of the convention’s organizers announced as a steady stream captains and creatures spawned by the mind of Gene Roddenberry entered the room and took their seats. The previous record of 507 costumed Trek characters was set in Germany. I actually got chills when the number got to 400 while Jerry Goldsmith’s Klingon theme was playing. When the number 450 was announced, the crowd erupted into cheers. The announcer then said that there was a greater variety of alien lifeforms trying to break the record in Vegas that day, and that the Germans mostly stuck to Starfleet uniforms. When the count stalled at 490, people were sent out into the rest of the convention to pull people in. The moment of suspense was a short one however, and the count started to go up again. When they announced that the 505th fan had crossed the threshold, the announcer said, “The record is going down! We got it!”

The enthusiasm was contagious.

“510, 511, 512… 518, 519.”

The cheers were louder than before. The enthusiasm of the Trekkers was contagious and I really felt that I had witnessed history under those fluorescent lights.

The con, which at times seemed like little more than an autograph mill, got to me again only a few hours later. Shatner and Nimoy were on stage and Patrick Stewart made a surprise appearance. The crowd went nuts and I dashed over with the other press photographers to snap some shots. For everybody in that room, this was a huge moment. Those chills were back as I looked up at the three “Star Trek” icons through my camera lens. I actually had to choke back a tear there as the claps and cheers of hundreds of Trekkers filled the room.

Sir Patrick Stewart invades Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner’s bickering.

It’s been a long day at Comic Con. I’m drinking a beer in my hotel room. It’s an Arrogant Bastard Ale. It has a devil holding a beer as part of its logo. After yesterday, this seems appropriate. I should be writing about the clones of Stan Lee or the “Spartacus Boobies and Wangs” panel that followed Smilin’ Stan, but I’m burnt. Instead, I leave you with a few more of the photos that I shot of the geeky counter-protest to Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist crazies (crazy like a fox, yes). Some readers have expressed an interest in these.

Bender from “Futurama” holds up a sign that reads “Kill All Humans” while a comparatively average looking human alleges that the Supreme Being despises baby cats.

Some counter-protesters gathered across the street from Phelps and his crew instead of along side of them, so that the Westboro Baptists could see their signs.

San Diego PD kept the Westboro Baptists apart from the nerdy counter protest.

God Hates Jedi. Spoken like true Starfleet officer.

Comic Con goers hastily make signs to launch their spontaneous counter protest.

“Odin is God. Read ‘The Mighty Thor’ #5″ Great sentiment but there is no “Mighty Thor” #5. Thor began in “Journey Into Mystery” #83. After the success of the Thunder God’s adventures, Marvel renamed remaned “Journey into Mystery” “The Mighty Thor” starting with issue 125. ‘Nuff Said.

I’ve been writing a book about conventions. This means (duh), I’ve been going to a lot of cons, tradeshows and many events that involved some degree of cosplay. I’ve been to a gun show, the International Cannabis & Hemp Expo, WrestleMania, a “Star Trek” con, a comic book con, and the 2010 California Republican Party Convention. This weekend, my convention quest brings me to Conspiracy Con X at the Santa Clara Marriott. Everyone I tell about the Conspiracy Con asks me the same set of question: How can this convention even happen? Wouldn’t the CIA or our evil reptilian overlords love the chance to wipe out such speakers as Power of Prophecy Ministry President Texe Marrs, Shaman and extra-terrestrial behaviorist William White Crow, Occult Irish History expert Michael Tsarion, AND public access TV horror host and conference emcee Mr. Lobo while they are all in ONE PLACE?

“We have never, ever been overtly harassed in some cloak-and-dagger, Men in Black scenario,” Brian William Hall, the Executive Producer of Conspiracy Con explains in a recent email interview. “We do know, however, that we are watched; that many from any given alphabet soup agency are there in attendance each year.” “

“For the price of a ticket,” Hall adds, “They can gather valuable intel from the information dispensed, and they can learn what we in the truth movement have garnered, as well.”

“It is literally a gift for both the public and the oh-so private sector within the intelligence community.”

Hall organized the first Conspiracy Con in 2001 as a way of helping to dispense information on such issues as, well, I’ll let Hall himself explain:

“UFOs and a potential non-terrestrial presence that has been here for eons; suppressed technologies that would free us from the need for polluting fossil fuels; suppressed medicine and real cures for such things as AIDS, Cancer and the Common Cold; the fact that AIDS and other emerging viruses are actually manufactured for the purposes of wiping out undesirable populations through so-called benevolent vaccination programs around the world; that 9-11 was an inside job (or, at least, that the official version is the biggest conspiracy “theory” of them all about what happened in 2001; that the OK City Bombing was an inside job; that US Presidents are not elected, but selected by the global elites to further their goals and not that of “we-the-people;” that we are being poisoned systematically with toxic fluoride in our water and oral care products, with excito-toxins like MSG and Aspartame in our food, with toxic elements in most vaccines, and last but not least toxic biologicals and chemicals being sprayed from the skies through a clandestine aerosol spraying program (aka Chemtrails) around the globe; that secret societies and powerful banking dynasties control everything we see and hear, which includes the manipulation of world monies, governments, politics, media, science, education and religion; that all banking and economic crises are scientifically orchestrated; that we are seeing a police state today and that our modern society is nothing short of an Orwellian wet dream… and the list goes on and on.”

While this all might be a lot to take all at once, Hall assures me that although the search for truth is “extraordinarily labyrinthine and is wrought with conspiracy and hidden agenda the likes of which would tower above the highest mountain on this planet,” that “the evidence, documentation, testimony and said patterns of history back (him) up time and time again.”

To cap off our email interview, Hall offered the following quandary: “The Matrix? It ain’t just a movie. Digest that one for a while.”

I’ll be digesting that this weekend at Conspiracy Con as well as the possible agendas of extra-terrestrials, the conspiracy against herbal healing and of course more secret societies than you can shake an all-seeing eye at. You can follow my Conspiracy Con observations on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bob_calhoun.

Frank Frazetta brought Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian to visual life in a way that director John Milius or Arnold Schwarzenegger could never hope to. Frazetta did it with paints and canvas, perhaps a better medium for realizing the grim Cimmerian with his arms of corded steel than perhaps movies or the bodies of Austrian bodybuilders with political aspirations. Robert E. Howard first created Conan in 1932, but the sword-wielding barbarian didn’t take on the stature of other fantasy strongmen such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan until Frazetta’s art started appearing on the covers of Lancer Books reprints of the pulp stories.

Previous printings of Conan stories had always depicted Conan in uninspiring Greco-Roman garb, sometimes even in a decidedly unmanly toga or tunic. Frazetta clothed the thief, warrior, barbarian, king in little more than a few animal skins, letting Conan’s musculature define his character. Frazetta also took the time to cover Conan’s forearms with battle scars. The barbarian’s skin had the proper leathery look that Arnold’s greased up beefcake never attained.

But Frazetta didn’t only linger on the male form in his fantasy art. He also rendered buxom fantasy babes with perfectly rounded breasts and butts to adorn the manly slaughter draped across the canvas. But the Frazetta Conan cover that fascinated me the most as a seven year old combing through endless catalog pages in the back of every issue of “Famous Monsters” didn’t have any of those women in it. It was the cover to “Conan the Usurper” and it pictured our hero with his back turned to us, chained to a dungeon floor, and straddling a massive anaconda. It’s homoeroticism only just now registers on me. Whether Frazetta was aware of it or not, the image looks like Conan has a massive, fanged cock. There is a similar scene in Milus’ “Conan the Barbarian", but Arnold hacking through a mechanical snake created by the same guy who did the effects for “E.T.” still doesn’t have the power of Frazetta’s still image, even with all of our Governor’s grunting and the movie’s excellent score.

My first encounter with Conan was through the Marvel Comics that usually sported pencil work by Barry Smith and “Big” John Bucema with inks by Ernie Chan and a whole host of others. Smith and Bucema’s imaginings of Conan were both excellent, but both artists owe their entire conception of what Conan should look like to Frazetta, as does Arnold and his wig maker. In fact, Frazetta’s work shaped the look of fantasy as a whole as much as George Lucas or Peter Jackson did with moving pictures and their digital backlots. Those paperbacks that Frazetta did the covers for, usually contained butchered versions of Howard tales, called pastiches by Howard fans and experts today, but Frank did his job and did it better than well. The fact that Howard’s original prose has finally seen the light of day, unaltered by sci-fi snobs who thought they knew better than the suicidal Texan fantasy writer, owes something to Frazetta’s artwork for capturing our imaginations all of those years ago and letting us know what Conan should be.

It’s just now being reported that Frank Frazetta died today at age 92. Only a month ago, his adult children resolved their nasty dispute over his fantasy art that involved lawsuits and charges of theft. Last November, his painting titled “The Berzerker” sold at auction for $1 million. In 2003, one of Saddam Hussein’s pleasure palaces was discovered with walls adorned with fantasy art of the type that Frazetta was famous for. None of the paintings in the Iraqi dictator’s collection were by Frazetta himself, but all of the images of warriors fighting scaly beasts and voluptuous priestesses still bore Frazetta’s influence if not his almost limitless talent.

There will never be another artist in any medium that can fill Frazetta’s boots.

CM Punk, a straight edge pro wrestler with a messiah complex, revels in the psychodrama (photo courtesy of World Wrestling Entertainment).

CM Punk has that maniacal glint in his eye. He’s gotten really good at the maniacal glint thing lately. He’s taunting the beloved masked luchadore Rey Mysterio, Jr. at the Staples Center in Los Angeles during the taping of the Friday March 19th installment of “WWE Smackdown.” The week before, Punk ruined an in-ring celebration for Mysterio’s daughter Aaliyah’s ninth birthday. In case we missed all the high drama, the WWE showed a tightly edited clip of punk wrecking the festivities on the high def big screen over the ring entrance.

But Punk’s taunts aren’t the usual kind of pro wrestling bluster bordering on histrionics. He’s not yelling, “I’ll assassinate the bum.” No, punk sounds more like someone playing a cult leader in a David Lynch movie. With his Manson-like full beard, he looks the part too. “I could save you if you could just accept me as your savior,” Punk says, urging Mysterio to join his little wrestling cult called the Straight Edge Society. Currently, this society only consists of two members: the thuggish wrestler Luke Gallows and Sirena, a plant from the audience that Punk converted during a previous episode of this macho soap opera. The line between pro wrestling and tent house revivals has always been a thin one, but Punk’s disciples still perform the task of the traditional bad guy wrestler’s entourage by interfering with matches when the ref’s back is turned.

“Straight edge means I’m better than you,” Punk continues, “but there’s hope for you. If you just join my Straight Edge Society you could somehow live up to this super hero myth these people have built up for you.”

“Usted es un monstruo,” Mysterio says in Spanish after telling Punk that he’s not human in English.

The four decks packed with fans at the Staples Center start chanting “You Suck! You Suck!” Their ire at Punk is more intense than usual for pro wrestling’s current wink and a nod “sports entertainment” era. They really hate him and Punk has transformed this one-ring circus into psychodrama.

“If I’m not getting people mad enough to jump over the rail, then I’m not doing my job,” Punk says during a recent phone interview. “When I first started out in indie wrestling, I used to get in fist fights with the crowd. This happened a lot. Of course this is uncool now. There’s plenty of security to deal with this and I just let them handle it. But I’m going out there to push every single button. If I get people throwing trash at me, that’s okay.”

“My job is to piss people off,” he adds.

But the foundation of Punk’s new cult-leader persona isn’t something just dreamed up by the WWE’s writing staff. Punk comes by his anti-drug/anti-booze straight-edge beliefs honestly. He has the words “straight edge” tattooed across his stomach and enters the ring with large Xs drawn across his hand wraps with a sharpie. The Xs drawn on the back of the hands, used by bouncers to identify underage club goers, have been the symbol of the straight-edge punk movement since Minor Threat was tearing up the D.C. hardcore scene in the early 1980s.

“(Straight edge) is the only way I know how to be,” Punk says. “I was born this way.”

“To me, there are lots of people out there who do drugs and are stupid.”

But using his own earnest ideology as a way to make wrestling fans mad enough to leap over the guard rail never gives Punk a moment of pause. “Anything I can do to get the message of straight edge out there is positive,” he explains. “Anyone with half a brain can go online and read what straight edge actually is.”

Any potential inner conflicts aside, Punk’s current feud with Mysterio will be settled during a no-hold-barred street fight match in Glendale, Ariz. this Sunday at WrestleMania, the WWE’s annual big blowout that Punk describes as the “Super Bowl” or “World Cup” of pro wrestling. “Everyone gets new gear, just like the prom,” he jokes.

Although Punk has performed at previous WrestleManias, those matches were “Money in the Bank” ladder matches that involved several wrestlers being in the ring at the same time kind of like an old-school battle royal. This Sunday will be the first time that Punk works a singles match during his sport’s grandest showcase. However, Punk feels that fans and experts alike may be overlooking this bout.

“I think they’re really sleeping on me and my match with Rey Mysterio,” Punk says, brimming with bravado. “Nobody’s talking about this match right now but they will be.”

I’m going to WrestleMania in Phoenix this weekend plus I’ve joined the 21st Century. Follow my learned observations and wise-assed remarks about all the hype and buildup to Vince McMahon’s annual cavalcade of body slams on my newly launched Twitter feed at twitter.com/bob_calhoun

E. C. Scott with her band belts out the blues on the set of her video show, “E. C.’s Jook Joint.”

Since shedding the cumbersome bonds of WB-network affiliate status, KOFY TV 20 in San Francisco has truly gone apeshit or at least a bit touched. They’ve brought back the Yule Log marathons on Christmas Eve. They’ve started showing reruns of their 50’s Dance Party which were taped in the 1980s and featured working Janes and Joes of the day shaking it to Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. The station’s horror host, the alternative rock DJ called No Name, spent several minutes of a recent Saturday night broadcast of Creepy KOFY Movie Time (their monster movie show) screaming in agony while a dominatrix shocked him through a pair of electrically charged nipple clamps. The torture being dished out in that night’s feature film, the proto-Giallo clunker Bloody Pit of Horror, seemed to pale in comparison to what KOFY’s host was enduring. I didn’t think that KOFY could shock me with any more local TV zaniness, but that was before the WTF moment brought on by EC’s Jook Joint.

The show is hosted by East Bay blues woman E. C. Scott from a shotgun shack set that (appropriately) looks like it was slapped together with some old pieces of scrap wood. A sign just behind E. C.’s left shoulder proclaims that a plate of red beans and rice goes for the low, low price of 5¢ at the Jook Joint. Scott, who also produces the show, takes on the long-lost role of media gatekeeper as she introduces us to music videos that look as if they were financed by passing around a tip jar and shot on old camcorders bought at rummage sales (AKA local TV gold).

EC’s Jook Joint quickly confronts you with the knowledge that the blues is still out there – that it’s still being produced in makeshift recording studios across the country. This show also made me realize that the blues is the most underground music in today’s America. Let’s face it: if guys like Christopher R. Weingarten or Chuck Klosterman call something underground, then it’s probably already mainstream, or at least a lot closer to it than most of the clips on the Jook Joint. The 21st Century blues player has to hustle just to get even the most barebones video out there. It’s doubtful that Animal Collective faces the same obstacles as Southern soul singer Carl Sims, who kicked off E. C.’s year-end top-ten list with his smooth anthem “It Ain’t a Juke Joint Without the Blues” on the NYE show.

Sims, garbed in the raddest champagne-colored suit ever belts out lines like “You’ve got a 40-ouncer on the table/You’ve got a trash talkin’ woman named Mable” all while a voluptuous babe gyrates on the stage behind him. Like many of the videos shown on the Jook Joint, this clip was filmed in a nightclub in a forgotten strip mall. Budweiser signs and flat-panel TVs are clearly shown in the background, but that crowd sure was moving. Similarly, a video from Texas blues rockers Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King for the song “I Saw it Comin’” was shot at the J & J Blues Bar where a large Coors emblem takes up a good chuck of stage space right next to the drummer. But again, the crowd was moving.

The blues can’t be picky. The blues can’t sit on its high horse and wait for a so-called “cool” venue to spring up to host it. The blues happens wherever there’s a sound system and a liquor license. The performers in E. C.’s collection of videos are young, old, black, white, or Latino. Concert clips of B. B. King and Etta James showed the blues legends sitting down throughout their performances; their bodies hobbled by old age or in King’s case, diabetes. Lincoln, Neb. blues man Magic Slim also performed all of his smokin’ guitar solos while seated but rose to his feet when it came time to sing, “I Need Lovin’.” While country radio has jettisoned its legends in favor of better looking young stars, the blues allows its aging players a place even when they can no longer stand. Sitting on his stool is the way that John Lee Hooker went out after all.

Sir Lawrence of Houston brings his own bottle to Double D’s for the grown and sexy.

Probably the bleakest video shown on the NYE show was “It’s the Weekend” by Sir Lawrence, an R&B man out of Houston. The song’s infectious chorus of “It’s the weekend, gotta’ get my party on” quickly gives away to verses that instruct you about managing a budget while living in grinding poverty. Sir Lawrence cashes his check at the liquor store, buys a money order for the rent and saves “a little for the water, for the gas, for the lights.” He also puts 30 dollars in the gas tank because that’s all he needs to get to work next week and he buys a Church’s Chicken 15-piece special so he’ll have some leftovers. After he’s done socking away cash for all of that plus adding minutes on his cellphone and giving a check to his baby mama (his words), he has a little left over to get his party on. The partying depicted consists of playing dominoes on a fold out table in a suburban front yard while drinking 40-ouncers or hanging out at Double D’s, a bring your own bottle joint “for the grown and sexy.”

(Unfortunately, the video for “It’s the Weekend” doesn’t appear to be online but I did find the following clip of Sir Lawrence.)

At number two in her countdown was “Love Again” by Chicago’s Ronnie Baker Brooks, which Scott describes as the “first steamy, hot blues video.” Set to a tune that resembles Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” infused with an extra two tons of soul, the video resembles one of the episodes of “Cheaters” that shares KOFY’s late night hours with the Jook Joint. After some childhood flashbacks where we learn that Brooks’ heart was irreparably broken, a grown-up Brooks is shown getting in and out of bed with several different barflies. As the inevitable catfights ensue, I half expected Cheaters host Joey Greco to show up with a camera crew. Coming in at number one was a little piece of innovation from John Lee Hooker, Jr. called “The Blues Ain’t Nothing But a Pimp.” Comprised entirely of black and white, computer generated imagery set to a brassy and defiant tune, this video resembles a chiaroscuro “Grand Theft Auto.” Cars are crashed, guns are fired, Hooker punches thugs and gets the girl.

E. C. Scott put her own video at number eight, but I hardly think that any of the other artists on the Jook Joint would mind. The Jook Joint is one of the few broadcast outlets in the US for this material and Scott’s efforts come at a time when the Bay Area blues scene has taken some big hits. The Fifth Amendment club in Oakland has been replaced by a yuppie bar for years now and last year’s San Francisco Blues Festival was cancelled due to “lack of sponsorship support.” (Several alternative rock festivals had no trouble getting sponsors, again showing that blues is the most underground music in America.) While many of these videos are available on the web, and EC’s Jook Joint itself can be watched online, I would have never known about any of this stuff without that initial channel surfing revelation, showing that there’s still the need for that old-fashioned TV host, especially where underrepresented media forms are concerned. With E. C. Scott we have a gatekeeper we can trust.

“EC’s Jook Joint” doesn’t appear to be on KOFY’s current schedule, which is a shame, but Scott is playing at Biscuits & Blues ( ) on Friday, January 22nd. Click here for details.

Illustration by Brandi Valenza

Roland Emmerich has built a career by putting the event in the event movie. His most famous film, Independence Day (1996), set the pattern by giving us Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith thwarting an alien invasion with a Mac laptop (presumably running OS 7) on the Fourth of July. With the exception of an anorexic Godzilla in 1998 and the Mel Gibson colonial gorefest The Patriot in 2000, it’s been all specific dates and times for this guy. Emmerich’s last movie was titled 10,000 B.C. (2008) and the one before that was called The Day After Tomorrow (2004). His latest showcase of computer-generated cataclysms, opening this Friday, is titled 2012 after every pothead’s favorite Mayan prophesy of the end of the world. If only Emmerich had been tapped to helm the recent Friday the 13th remake, then we could have had Jason destroying virtual models of every non-Muslim landmark with tidal waves and lava flows.

However, Emmerich may have gotten a tad too specific with 2012. If by some miracle the world is still here in 2013, blu-ray discs of the movie will seem more dated than Meteor (1979) or even Beyond the Time Barrier (1960). It’s a little like releasing a big-budget, apocalyptic disaster movie called Y2K in the late 1990s and then expecting viewers to sit through USA Network reruns of it in 2002.

One way to give this film an extra century of shelf-life would have been for Emmerich to scrap the whole Mayan-tsunami mishmash altogether and instead make a film adaptation of the rock band Rush’s dystopian, sci-fi album 2112. According to Mercury Records’ ad copy, the first side of the Canadian power trio’s 1976 opus takes us to a time of “Templevision, Megadon, twin moons, atmospheric domes.” While “Rush’s chilling vision” of a 22nd Century where “city and sky merge into a single plane” would give a director like Emmerich plenty to digitally project onto an IMAX screen, 2112 is also more topical than the seemingly more pressing 2012.

Left to Right: Ayn Rand, the goddess of unbridled capitalism and Neil Peart of Rush, her most rockin’ disciple.

In the album’s original gatefold, band lyricist and percussion virtuoso Neil Peart acknowledges “the genius” of libertarian icon Ayn Rand as the inspiration for the future-shock rock opera. Rand has been getting a lot of press lately despite being dead since 1982. Last year’s economic collapse and election of Barrack Obama have created an upsurge of interest among the American right wing in the enigmatic figure that Slate recently described as the “amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers.” Two biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—have just hit the bookstores and South Carolina Governor Mark “Appalachian Trails” Sanford reviewed both of them for Newsweek. Where powerful acolytes of Rand such as Alan Greenspan engineered a global financial meltdown worthy of an Emmerich film (if only the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy could be expressed with CGI), Peart and Rush did the even more impossible by taking Rand’s “One Objective Truth” and making it rock.

Peart joined Rush for their sophomore album Fly by Night (1975), replacing original drummer John Rutsey who left the band for a career in bodybuilding. Bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson had already shown their instrumental prowess on the hard-driving jam Working Man from Rush’s self-titled debut album (1974). By rounding out the trio, Peart made Rush the greatest instructional rock band of all time, a favorite of young rockers struggling to learn licks through music store tablature books for decades to come. Lyrically, Peart steered the band away from party songs about ice-cold beers and casual sex and to a synthesis of Rand and Tolkien that probably would have confounded either author.

2112, the band’s fourth album and Peart’s third, wasn’t the first time that the drummer used Rand as source material. The song Anthem (from Fly by Night) takes its title from Rand’s 1938 novella and its lyrics extol selfishness, Rand’s highest virtue. “Well, I know they’ve always told you selfishness was wrong,” vocalist Geddy Lee sings in the song’s concluding verse, “Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song.” In a shockingly contentious interview with J. Kordosh in the June 1981 issue of Creem, Peart explains, “I think everything I do has Howard Roark in it,” referring to the pissed-off architect of Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943) who dynamites his own building rather than compromise its design.

In the novel, Roark sums up his and Rand’s philosophy while representing himself during his trial: “I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.” During the Creem interview, Peart paraphrases Roark’s testimony as a defense of his (Peart’s) devotion to Rand. “It is a life that no amount of money can ever compensate for,” Peart explains. “That’s why I could never, ever feel guilty about the dollar I earn.”

With Peart’s uncanny drumming abilities, it’s not hard to see how Rand’s tyranny of the talented, where the masses are “second-handers” and “inanimate objects,” would appeal to him. As the eighties progressed, Peart enclosed himself within 360 degrees of percussion containing almost every chime, cymbal and roto-tom imaginable, almost as if he needed the extra gear to slow down his thought process in the same way that a speedy computer runs extra scripts to slow down a program so that a normal person can comprehend it. In order to compete, Geddy Lee played both bass and keyboards, often at the same time through a system of pedals. Alex Lifeson, whom Creem described as “the only homo sapien in the group,” seemed to pale next to his band mates, despite his comparable abilities on his instrument.

In the 2112 suite that takes up the first half of the album, Peart delves more deeply into the conflict between the collective and the individual and borrows more from Rand’s Anthem than just its title and ethos. In Rand’s sci-fi parable, global society is run by a World Council that burns people at the stake for the merest trace of individualism or innovation. In 2112, the Earth is under the heel of the “Solar Federation,” which is run by priests who cram equality down everyone’s throats with massive computer banks. Red star banners are also unfurled showing that Peart both overestimated the longevity of the Soviet Union and was oblivious to Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can be placed on a circuit doubles every two years. The Priests of the Temples of Syrinx wouldn’t have needed “great computers” filling their “hallowed halls” but could stamp out free will through a device no larger than an iPod.

The conflict in 2112 comes when “a man” discovers a guitar and learns how to play it. He shows the guitar to the priests but they smash it like a disapproving Pete Townsend. Instead of “going Galt” like any good libertarian hero, the man kills himself to the strains of a really ripping Alex Lifeson guitar solo. Then, all hell breaks loose if the ballsy crescendos of The Grand Finale are any indicator, but a voice over at the track’s end tells us that the Solar Federation has “assumed control.” The individual fails and collectivism triumphs making one wonder what was going on in 1976 for Peart to pen such a bleak outcome. Maybe he was upset by the successes of Soviet proxies in conflicts on the African continent or perhaps it was the Saskatchewan government’s takeover of the province’s potash industry.

2112 was Rush’s first album to go gold and the album cover’s image of a naked guy pressing up against a red pentagram came to represent the band in the same way that inflated lips and a wagging tongue symbolize The Stones. By making the playing of a guitar the central heresy to the Solar Federation of 2112, Peart adds a human element not found in Rand’s writing and connects with Rush’s audience of young musicians in doing so. The priests reject the man’s guitar playing as “just a waste of time” in the same way that many parents discourage their teenaged sons and daughters from wanting to be rock stars. Where Rand’s heroes are belligerent industrial tycoons, Peart’s is an everyman, the listener of the album, the kid cramming himself into an arena to see his/her favorite longhaired rock band. Even when embracing Rand, Peart and company cannot escape hard rock’s populist underpinnings.

A late 1970s Capetronic composite stereo system similar to the one that I had as a teenager. Mine had a cassette deck and I must have played the shit out of “Exit Stage Left” and “Caress of Steel” on that thing. I also wore out my first copy of “2112″ on its turntable.

My own devotion to Rush occurred when I was 16 and took up the bass guitar. Peart’s liner note urgings even had me reading Rand, but I soon found that cranking up 2112 over and over again on my cheap Capetronics stereo (purchased at Gemco) was a lot more rockin’ than plodding through Atlas Shrugged. By the time I puzzled out the meaning of The Trees from the album Hemispheres (1978), a cautionary tale of the evils of unionizing and trying to level the playing field, I was done with Peart’s politics if not his band’s music. As I watch today’s Randian supermen of the market like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claim to be doing “God’s work” while raking in millions in bonuses and inflating the bubbles of the future, it’s hard not to think that maybe the trees should all be “kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw” (or at least the return of the Glass-Steagall act), even if Peart would disagree.

Despite my ideological disagreements with Peart, I still get the chills when I hear that wicked note bend that kicks off Lifeson’s solo in The Trees or when Lee strums some bass chords during the end of Red Barchetta. I’d also be among the first in line for 2112: The Movie along with scores of math rockers, Guitar Hero enthusiasts, Canadians, and guys like Ron Paul’s son Rand (I doubt he was named after the atlas company). 2012, however, has to resort to cheap tricks to lure us into theatres like miscasting John Cusack and then drenching him with pails of water as he stands in front of a blue screen for hours on end. My suggestion is to mute the soundtrack of 2012, crank 2112 through your multiplex’s Dolby THX sound system and rock out to scene upon scene of creative destruction. It’s either that or wait for 2112: The Musical.

With acknowledgment to the genius of Darren Norris for coming up with the concept of this post.

Manny Pacquiao, the “People’s Champ” of the Phillipines, talks about the worst disaster to hit his country since World War II in the HBO Boxing documentary series “24/7.”

Manny Pacquiao is in the city of Baguio in the Phillipines to train for his November 14 fight against WBO welterweight champ Miguel Cotto. The HBO Sports documentary series 24/7 is there to show us the fighter’s training camp but recent typhoons have left half of the city underwater. In between footage of the boxer hitting the focus bag with lightening quickness are scenes of the city’s poor wading chest deep through floodwaters. Mountains of mud have crashed down upon homes leaving hundreds dead. Actor Liev Schreiber’s somber narration sounds more like something from an installment of PBS’ Frontline than your standard sports doc. Pacquiao “would have to work as his country fell apart around him,” and the disaster takes “the most from those who have the least,” Shreiber informs us. This is heady stuff from a show that’s mainly there to compel us to shell out over 50 bucks to watch two men pummel each other through 12 three-minute rounds.

But HBO Boxing’s 24/7 has always walked the fine line between documentary and infomercial since it first started by building up the De La Hoya/Mayweather bout in 2007. Since then, 24/7 has become an expensive proposition for me. Out of the six completed seasons of the show, three of them have ended with me selecting the fight through my satellite television remote control. That’s a 50% success rate (at least as far as I’m concerned), leaving me out over $150 just to watch a few hours of television. Part of this is because I’ve always been a sucker for training reels ever since I first saw Rocky when I was six years old and 24/7 is almost nothing but training reels.

Even for those seasons of the show where I’ve been able to resist 24/7’s siren’s call, I’ve hemmed and hawed about ordering the fight until the very last minute before deciding not to. Last season, we saw Mexican legend Juan Manuel Marquez prepare for his September 19th fight with Floyd “Money” Mayweather by tossing volcanic rocks around an ancient mountain and drinking his own urine. In the Floyd camp, we saw his reunion with his dad. What HBO didn’t spend too much time on was that Marquez had to come up two weight divisions at the age of 36 to meet Mayweather. There was almost no mention of how this would affect the fight. Such analysis may have dissuaded people from purchasing that PPV. During the bout, Marquez only landed 12% of his punches while Mayweather achieved a 59% connect rate. I’m glad I passed on that fight.

The show’s seventh and current season, 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto is a somewhat lopsided affair. Pacquiao and trainer Freddie Roach are struggling to train with “destruction all around” while Miguel Cotto is shown eating delicious-looking skewered meats and getting a new tattoo. The attempt by HBO to generate drama from Cotto comes not from the fighter’s present predicament but from his recent past. He quit during the 11th round of a July 2008 bout with Antonio Margarito after his face was beaten into swollen and bloody mush. “That thing that passed through my mind was stop the fight for my benefit, for the benefit of my kids,” Cotto confides.

Boxer Miguel Cotto cries “tears of blood” following his controversial loss to Antonio Margarito.

Like something out of an old film noir with Robert Ryan, Margarito was later caught using illegal plaster in his hand wraps before a January 24, 2009 fight with “Sugar” Shane Mosely. “You had to see how deep his wounds were,” Cotto’s father, Miguel Sr., tells the camera to the tones of dramatic piano music, “It’s impossible to explain. I couldn’t explain how some with gloves could do that.” Although Cotto, Jr. gets somewhat of a reprieve from the news that Margarito possibly had to resort to tampering with his hand wraps to dish out such a beating, questions as to how much Cotto can come back from such a beating remain, at least according to HBO.

HBO has three more episodes of 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto to convince me to plunk down that $54.99 for that November 14th championship match and there’s little doubt that they will pull out all the stops to get this done. In the meantime they are showing us the wealthy of Baguio (Pacquiao sadly included in this) working out in air-conditioned gyms while the poor of the city languish in Katrina-like refugee camps. With this unflinching look at economic class amidst a natural disaster, HBO just might make a documentary along the way.

The first episode of 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto can be watched on HBO’s website by clicking here. New episodes will air on Saturday nights until the November 14, 2009 pay-per-view match.