The Midnight Citizen

Hey folks — I recorded a show in studio this week, and when I was listening back, I had a crazy weird tech difficulty that I’m still trying to figure out. While I do that, enjoy this ENCORE from 10 years ago — a visit to Nashville, Indiana to see Joe Bob Briggs, years before his triumphant comeback on Shudder. No way he would do an event so small in such an obscure place these days!!

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Show Notes: Mike is back from his Midwest trip! Topics include: Coca-cola “Mike” bottles urban legend; shark week; comedy central in the 90s; the secret to warding off sharks; field audio from Indiana including notes about the town of Nashville and the B Movie Festival; meeting MonsterVision host Joe Bob Briggs; thinking of moving some place else sometime soon; audio from Joe Bob’s introduction of midnight movie at festival, “Silent Night, Deadly Night”, and more!

Music for this episode by Wade from the album “Midnight Soundz” (CC license, BY, NC, SA) and The Black Parrot (available on Jamendo.com; CC license, BY, NC).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike United States License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released August 2014, on The Overnightscape Underground and The Midnight Citizen.

Thanks for reading Mike's Bonfire! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Join Mike for coffee at night in the studio, and later for a cocktail outside on the patio.

Topics this week include a lament on the university building where I had my first college class some years ago being demolished this week in a spectacular Las Vegas-style kind of violence; thoughts on why it’s important to temper our nostalgia, because nostalgia has led us down some uncertain and shady paths lately; reviews of two druggy movies I watched recently — “Requiem for a Dream” and “Trainspotting”; what is a drug?; heroine chic; the wild spirit of 90’s indie-filmmaking; drug trafficking in modern America and a book review of “Among the Bros” by Max Marshall, which is about that very thing, and much more!

“The Midnight Citizen” drops every Saturday night, so be sure to, ya know…

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Well, I got a meeting out West!”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released August 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.

Thanks for reading Mike's Bonfire! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Join Mike for a morning cup o’ joe on the back patio, and later for a night drive and after-work drink.

Topics this week include Alabama’s dumb education laws and how a recent one could hold back as many as 4,500+ 3rd graders in the state; a kind-of “Deadpool and Wolverine” review; the “Miami Vice” soundtrack makes you feel comfortably depressed; sketchy elevators and “LA Law”; the built-in exploitation of delivering for gig companies, and how you just accept it; the “hot” medium of radio and podcasting, and more!

“The Midnight Citizen” is a free, non-commercial podcast. So be sure to, ya know…

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”And where is the Batman? He’s at home — washin’ his tights!”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released August 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.

Thank you for reading Mike's Bonfire. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Join Mike for a drink outside on a Friday night, as he recalls the legendary crime fighting ex-wrestler-turned-cop of Corinth, Mississippi Buford Pusser, and the long-standing rumor that he ran out of town one of Alabama’s longest-serving and most-revered mayors. Is it true or bull-scat? Also, who else is opting out of watching the Olympics in favor of spectating its ugly-but-more-entertaining stepsister, The World Games?

Later, I discuss odd rainbow myths, Thomas Pynchon and Elmore Leonard, and yeah…ughhhh…politics.

“The Midnight Citizen” is a free, non-commercial podcast. So be sure to, ya know…

A new show drops every Saturday night!

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Leonard is the filet of the crime genre, you know…”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.

And hellooooooo, everybody! Time to go back down again to the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE — return some old tapes, check out some new ones. For the newbies — or, just as a reminder — this is a weekly anthology of all the random awesomeness that is our analog tradition. Enjoy, and if something moves you to, please leave a comment — or suggest a video for future shows!

For these future episodes, as well as the big show I do on Saturday night, THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN podcast, be sure to, ya know…

Here’s what’s up this week…

VIDEO #1 📼 “John Stossel Gets the Open-Hand Slap”

After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump last week, and the outpouring of conspiratorial gossip that followed, I thought it’d be a good idea to revisit this notorious 20/20 segment from 1984. Here, wrestler Dr. David Schultz assures correspondent John Stossel — and the skeptical public at large — that there is no fakery in “professional” wrestling, demonstrating his truth by open-hand slapping Stossel across the face so hard that the reporter falls to the floor.

Of course, it’s not that Shultz was proving himself; he was just tired of weenie elitists asking him the “standard” question, and he just lost his temper.

Most of this segment focuses on demonstrations of wrestling stunts by Shultz’s former wrestling partner Eddie Mansfield. Mansfield, who had recently been blackballed by Vince McMahon and the WWF, shows Stossel a number of the tried-and-trued wrestling moves of the stars, and pretty much exposes the sport, which was having a golden age in 1984, as a high-end stunt show. One notable move Mansfield reveals is the concealed razorblade technique, the old trick that many conspiracy theorists believe Trump, 2013 WWE Hall of Fame Inductee, pulled last week when he held his hand up to his nicked ear and brought back a gushing amount of blood. Whether or not Trump actually incited this “secret” wrestling trick, he certainly proved that the old wrestling promoter’s mantra that “red turns to green” is as true now as it was back in ‘84. I mean, how much money did he raise last week?

(Side note: While Stossel did, as he does now, have a very slap-able face, I do not condone violence in any form!)

VIDEO #2 📼 “Fast Times at the Fantastic Food Factory”

As Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987) and pretty much any sitcom post-Happy Days and Alice will have you believe, the diner is a primo-American institution, a home base where we meet, eat, and scheme before going out into the chaotic world. Still, the goings-on behind-the-scenes of the typical American diner are rarely documented — unless you count all those Food Network shows where the hungry hipster storms through the kitchen like Kong and demands they feed him!

In any case, I’ve been a fan of this short doc about the Fantastic Food Factory since I first saw it some 15 years ago. Because it’s made by amateur college students, it’s pretty rough and bare bones, but there’s also a charm factor here — a slice of late 70s Bostonian-life. The filmmakers, three college students at Boston U., are clearly fans of Direct Cinema, and therefore scrap any narrative devices that provide context. So it’s not clear why they were drawn to document the Triple-F for their senior thesis. But I have to think there were probably two main reasons:

One. The wacky restauranteur stylings of David Greenstein, sort of a cross between an Old Towne soda fountain jerk and late night radio DJ, with the look and personality of Gene Shalit after he’s had too much ice cream.

…and Two. The all-together normalcy of the diner, with a standard greasy spoon menu of burgers and sweets, but with the odd gimmick of porno on the side. As Greenstein proudly proclaims, “This is the only ice cream shop in town where you can get Penthouse, Hustler, and Gallery, and good food at the same time!”

VIDEO #3 📼 “Can’t Stop the Madness”

And finally, on the last episode of the VSVS, I featured a stalwart of the 80s video variety — a Satanic Panic short, one that was pure exploitation masked as “information,” chock-full of graphic images, bogus statistics, and a lot of finger-pointing in the wrong direction. This week, I give you another brother from the same video-mother, the anti-drug PSA — that b*****d stepchild of 80s neo-McCarthyism that emerged from the Reagan White House, thanks to first lady Nancy, who appears (briefly) at the end of “Stop the Madness”, bopping and dipping to the hip beat. (After Kid Rock performed at last week’s RNC, it’s fun to see that whitie Republicans can still get down after all these years!)

Just like the Satanic Panic trend, this video and its endless spawn misinformed and misdirected, placing the blame on the black and ethnic street-pushers who sold the drugs rather on those who were supplying them in the first place. Of course, as we now know — and have known for a long-time — the drugs filtering into the U.S. since the mid-60s were made possible by the U.S.’s laissez-faire foreign policy toward drug-rich countries fighting communism.

You’ve probably seen “Stop the Madness” before, but, if you’re like me, every time you go back to it you notice something new. This time watching it, for instance, I noticed that the teenage girl who buys drugs off the leisure-suit Larry living in her closet is none other than Claudia Wells, Marty’s girlfriend from Back to the Future. Also, Stacy Keech, who would be busted for cocaine possession shortly after filming his celebrity cameo in “Stop the Madness,” does a Hollywood first — community service before you actually commit a crime.

Well, that’s it for this week’s VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE! Again, be sure to, ya know…

A new episode of the VSVS drops every Wednesday throughout the summer, and, of course, be sure to check out THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN, your late night broadcast from Birmingham, AL, hosted by me, Mike Boody, every Saturday night. Keep your eyes open!

Thank you for reading Mike's Bonfire. This post is public so feel free to share it.

“The Midnight Citizen” is a free, non-commercial podcast. So be sure to, ya know…

A new show drops every Saturday night!

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”…”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.

Hey folks — I wasn’t able to record a show this week. I’ll be back next Saturday night with an all-new studio show, but until then, enjoy this encore from April of 2017!

Show Notes: Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he ponders the question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one takes a picture of it, does it make a sound? Also, a look at the new “It” trailer.

“The Midnight Citizen” is a free, non-commercial podcast. So be sure to, ya know…

Also: I got an idea for a movie; existential dilemmas of our times; if no one’s listening to my show, is it worth doing?; Disney World; “All That Jazz” (1979); bad finances; lighting a Midnight Citizen Tobacco Coffee candle; playing “Jeopardy” with Alexa; “Highlights for Children” magazine; a follow-up on favorite movies poll from last week’s show; Music Break; the new trailer for Stephen King’s “It” annoying “Can You Hear Me Now” guy switching teams; we need to stop the whole “mic drop” thing; a trip to the Video Street Video Store; Books-A-Million in 2003.

*Music Break: “Subway Cameo” by Pete Lund; “Could It Be So Hard” by The Degs.

**Video Street Video Store: “Apple in 1985” (1985).

Backing music for tonight’s episode is the Midnight Cassette System (CCO 1.0 Universal, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike).

Check out my buddy Josh’s web comic over at RGBros.com.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released April 2017 on The Midnight Citizen and The Overnightscape Underground.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and April 2017 The Overnightscape Underground.

Join Mike on his latest mini-vacation, housesitting for his folks and throwing a steak on the grill. Hear about his latest run-afoul with his unfriendly neighborhood crime ring, and Watch some bits n’ pieces of “RoboCop” from ‘87, including the part where Kenny gets eviscerated by ED-209. Also, why is the crime boss Boddicker WAY scarier than that AI killing machine. Is it his glasses?

Later, I review the latest book I’ve been reading — “Fletch” by Gregory Macdonald, and discuss — at length — the fraught reality show, “Project Greenlight”.

“The Midnight Citizen” is a free, non-commercial podcast. So be sure to, ya know…

Oh, and, also, please

A new show drops every Saturday night!

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Can somebody please call a paramedic!”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.

And hellooooooo, everybody! Time to go back down again to the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE. I’m a day late this week, but ya know what, the way my schedule’s working out lately, Wednesday may be a pretty good home for this show.

For future episodes, as well as the big show I do, THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN podcast, be sure to, ya know…

A new podcast drops every Saturday night!

Here’s what’s up this week…

VIDEO 1 📼 SATAN IN MY VHS SOUP

I’ve been wanting to include a Satanic Panic video on the VSVS for a while now, but just never could seem to find the perfect tape to sum up all the essential elements of that very strange time in American culture. Until now.

“Satanic Cults and Ritual Crime” has everything you want in one of these tapes made for paranoid, suburban helicopter parents — or, what we just call today, “parents”:

✔️ A blame game of alleged “satanic” influences such as Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal pushers like AC/DC and Slayer.

✔️ Homosexuality as a tell-tale sign your kid is a satanist, and that he’s lumped in with other practitioners of sinister perversions like beastliest and necrophiliacs.

✔️ Completely false and arbitrary statistics.

This last checkmark is my favorite, as some of these numbers the video’s producers manage to pull out of their watertight plugholes are truly laughable. I mean, “There may be as many as 60,000 human sacrifices per year in this country.” Really. I guess it’s nice that they at least used the “may” modal…in the same way I might say, “There may be as many as 60,000 dogs with two ding-dongs walking among us at any given time.”

By the way, Professor Al Carlyle of the Utah State Prison System and, later, Brigham Young University, who supplied this statistic and also told them that “Most lawbreakers engage in the occult” (he didn’t even bother with a stat there), died in 2018 after a long career studying serial killers like Ted Bundy. I typed into Google “professor al carlyle + utah + b******t” and nothing came up, so it seems like he and his reputation escaped the Satanic Panic unscathed, just as many so-called experts always do whenever neo-McCarthyism rears its ugly head in our culture.

VIDEO 2 📼 THE MILLION DOLLAR VOICE OF DON LaFONTAINE

Maybe it’s just me, but with each passing year, as mass media continues to devolve into a fractured jig-saw puzzle of micro-niche, it becomes more difficult to remember a time when only a few voice-over artists commanded our attention during television commercials. Even though many of us were out of the room between segments of Friends, Seinfeld, or whatever else, we could still hear these voices thunder through our living rooms and bounce around all corners of the house. Sure, they were annoying at times, but in a lot of ways, they also defined an era. I think back now and remember how these unseen actors were our gateway to the newest movies and TV shows. Before the Internet, and even later, when Internet advertising still came in a distant third behind television, radio, and movie trailers, they were the first people to tell us about something we oughta watch.

The bulk of this Fox 11 spot from 2004 focuses on Don LaFontaine, who had risen to the top of the VO game with his ubiquitous and much-parodied “In a World” pitch. Ironically, the segment could actually be called an early eulogy to LaFontaine and the Movie Trailer VO industry. When LaFontaine died a few years later, in 2008, the job kind of went with him. A major reason for this is that LaFontaine kind of had a monopoly on the dramatic voice-over, and when he died, advertising was changing en masse. This is not to say, that we don’t still hear Voice-Over all over the place; we just hear less artists who have dedicated their lives to the craft. When we watch commercials now, for instance, we’re likely to hear celebrities with unmistakable voices, like Brian Cox as the current spokesman for McDonalds.

VIDEO 3 📼 SAM PECKINPAH AT THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER

After recently revisiting the 1971 fortress-defense classic Straw Dogs starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, I’ve been looking up some old interviews with its director, Sam Peckinpah. Peckinpah, who made Dogs on the heels of his ultraviolent western The Wild Bunch (1969), became (and still remains) one of cinema’s most controversial directors with his depiction of unflinching violence. With such overt statements on violence and its inextricable connection to sex that these two films made, as well as his subsequent post-Hayes code bloodbaths like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1975), Peckinpah was understandably restrained and stoic during the few interviews he gave. …Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find this long, uncut sit-down with the director and a local TV host in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The host, Dennis Hunt, comes across as an avid and curious fan of Peckinpah’s. Though Peckinpah appears reluctant to answer questions at first, Hunt smartly resists the temptation to fill much of the dead air that comes after he asks his questions, practically forcing his subject to expand on his initial stock answers. When Hunt queries him about Straw Dogs, for instance, and how he was able to create such an entertainment that gave the audience their money’s worth, Peckinpah goes from simply praising his producer to suddenly laying out his opinion of the “auteur theory,” which he calls nonsense, and that, to make a great picture, “I beg, borrow, and steal any kind of talent I can get.” Peckinpah also becomes quite uncensored about the cheap “former used car dealers” who had recently produced his last film The Osterman Weekend (1983), and how he is considering litigation against them for mangling the final cut of what would come to be regarded as his last, worst, and most forgotten film.

This interview is probably Peckinpah’s last meeting with the press. A short while later, in December 1984, Peckinpah succumbed to the downward spiral into alcoholism and substance addiction that had consumed him in the last decade-or-so of his life. It’s also sad that Peckinpah is plugging in this interview the production of a film that would never be made, with or without him. Taping at the World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe Casino, Peckinpah appears here with Nick Behnan, son-in-law to the casino’s owner Benny Binion, to discuss a movie about Binion’s life, one that was fraught with greed, violence, and intrigue as he went from being a mob associate in Texas to suspected murderer to one of the young Las Vegas’s pioneering entrepreneurs. To date, this movie has never been made, but I can recommend to you the book that tells the whole story — one that, when the film hopefully does get made, they can base it on: Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Las Vegas Poker by Doug Swanson.

Well, that’s it for this week’s VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE! Again, be sure to, ya know…

A new episode of the VSVS drops every Tuesday Wednesday throughout the summer, and, of course, be sure to check out THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN, your late night broadcast from Birmingham, AL, hosted by me, Mike Boody, every Saturday night. Keep your eyes open!

Thank you for reading Mike's Bonfire. This post is public so feel free to share it.

On America’s birthday, Mike takes a few minutes to remember another historical milestone — the 20th anniversary of “Fred’s Oasis,” the low-budget, low-class exploitation film he made with some friends in college. Listen along as I recount its conception, production and aftermath, which lingers with me to this day, and forces me to ask that eternal question: am I right to be overwhelmed with shame?

Watch “Fred’s Oasis” and you tell me!

Also, I recount my disastrous history with fireworks, which may be the result of a genetic disorder, and review the new trash can from Target I bought my wife for her birthday.

Music for this episode: “You Shake Me” by Stompin’ Riff Raffs; “Toxic Revenge” by Shannon and the Clams ***Backing Music: “The Stevie Shuffle Remix” and “Be Cool” by Mr. Smith; “Beer Blues” by Koi Discovery.

Video Street Video Store: “Satanic Cults and Ritual Crime” (1990); “The Making of The Monster Plantation” (1981)

Remember to check out bigger, longer episodes of the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE every Tuesday over at mikesbonfire.substack.com.

…And be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Base Up You Blockheads!.”

Watch video of this week’s show over at the Youtube channel.

Watch the pre-show below — an extra 15 minutes that includes my thoughts after watching Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F —

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2024 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.