The Midnight Citizen

And hellooooooo, everybody! Time to go back down again to the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE — return some old tapes and pick up some new ones. This week, we’re doing something a little new. To celebrate the 4th of July, we’re showing a whole television movie, which I think, will really get you in the mood to shoot off some fireworks and scare some shell-shocked vets.

So sit back and enjoy! And if you’re new to this here Substack, feel free to go back and check out previous episodes of the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE, a regular feature that drops every Tuesday here at Mike’s Bonfire.

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 — DON’T GET CONNED BY THE MILE BUSTERS

With the 4th of July coming up, and all the sales that are going on its honor, it’s important to stay up-to-date on all the latest flims and flams of the used car salesman variety. That’s why we’re kicking it off this week with a 60 Minutes report from September 1991 about “mile busters,” the shifty folks who crack odometers and roll back the miles to inflate a car’s value. It’s funny that such mile busters were played for laughs in movies like Used Cars and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but correspondent Steve Croft is not laughing here at all!

Croft’s main target in this piece is Bill Whitlow, “the heavy-set fellow in the Boss Hog hat,” an auto wholesaler who Croft says is “the granddaddy of the Houston Mile Busters.” After rolling back miles on cars he buys from trade-in lots, he’ll turn right around and flip that car to a different dealer. Theoretically, I guess he can then re-buy that same car he just sold, and do the same thing all over again until the car’s value is totally depleted. Not a bad racket.

Of course, with the onset of digital odometers, it’s become ostensibly harder for Whitlow to mile-bust in the 21st century. Also, he’s most certainly dead by now, which makes it all the more difficult for him. Still, the grift goes on, and these days with much less hand shaking between the con and the mark. It’s odd that this piece makes me nostalgic for another time, when conmen still had to look you in the eye while they were screwing you.

VIDEO 2 — JEAN SHEPHERD’S “THE GREAT AMERICAN 4th OF JULY…AND OTHER DISASTERS”

A year before MGM released the film A Christmas Story, a blockbuster flop that would go onto become a pop culture phenomenon perhaps unlike any the world has ever known, writer and former radio host Jean Shepherd put together this small television movie based on some more of his humorous works he published in Playboy throughout the 60s and 70s.

Now, if you’re a long-time listener to THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN podcast, you’ll know that Jean Shepherd is pretty much the whole reason I began doing the show. I’ve admired the guy since before I even knew who he was, and my mom and I would watch another TV movie he did in the mid-80’s, Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss. I just loved the way he was able hone in on the timeless minutia of suburban life. As most of us go through our lives with no grand adventures to relate to fellow conquistadors down at the Explorer’s Club, Jean Shepherd was our fellow traveler in the mundane. And in “The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters,” which aired on public television in 1982 and is hosted, in-person, by Shep himself, we see that with just a little bit of creative writing, anyone — even the town drunk — can be immortalized as Gods of a Forgotten World. With his trademark hyperbole, Shep elevated the nondescript block of Cleveland Street in Depression-era Holman Indiana into something akin to the Roman Empire, and the “Old Man” into a Caesarian figurehead.

For folks who have become cozy over the years with the pitch-perfect cast of Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story, it may be hard at first to get used to a whole different Parker family in this film — especially with the rosy-cheeked 10-year old Peter Billingsley swapped out for a teenage Matt Dillon. But I’d encourage you to put the classic Christmas flick outta your mind, just as the holiday itself is a distant memory when you’re lighting off cherry bombs and throwing them in the street. With this understood, a stand-out in this film is James Broderick — Matthew’s dad — as the Old Man. Like Darren McGavin in the 1983 classic, Broderick brings a similar sympathetic grumpiness to the role, but a different interpretation that is far more childlike, especially as he is raiding his brother’s fireworks stand.

As a final note, see if you recognize that music that runs through this film. Can you put it together with another 4th of July summer classic?

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 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.

Join Mike on an epic excursion of summer slacking. After returning from a long delivery trip for Amazon that took him deep into the country and the town where he grew up, he sits out back and reflects on growing up in small town Alabama, and wonders what might have happened if he’d stayed there. Prison maybe?

The next day, I venture out into the world to work, but end up at the mall drinking coffee and playing pinball, then go hunting for discounted movies from the Criterion Collection.

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”My little black medical book!”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released June 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 and pick up some new ones. I didn’t have time to do write-ups this week — you know, go into detail — but that doesn’t mean these three tapes aren’t worth holding up to the light. We’ve got a solid promo video for a summer camp in West Virginia, the kind to make you nostalgic about it even though you never went there, as well as not one, but two vintage film strips about the making of some iconic rides down at Six Flags over Georgia that me and my buddy Dave talked about on this past week’s MIDNIGHT CITIZEN podcast (definitely check it out if you haven’t yet!)

So sit back and enjoy! And if you’re new to this here Substack, feel free to go back and check out previous episodes of the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE, a regular feature that drops every Tuesday here at Mike’s Bonfire.

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.

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

Mike’s out of the studio this week, but he’s not lettin’ that stop him. He’s got a guest! Hang out with him and his friend Dave in the backyard, as they discuss all things past and present — how they met as roommates in a mutual friend’s “home of wayward children”, the spaceship in the basement of that house that became a favorite drinking spot, Dark Rides, ghouls, memories of Six Flags Over Georgia in the 80s and 90s, and way, way more! Well, maybe just “way” more…

Thanks for reading Mike's Bonfire! For more podcasts, as well as writing and videos, be sure to, ya know…

A new show drops every Saturday night!

Be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Take a good look at that sign… Those proportions are correct.”

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

If you like the show and haven’t yet, consider sharing with a friend, and comment. Let’s get the word out already!

Enjoy the full cut of last week’s show, including my pre- and post-shows — a full 20 minutes of extra material not heard in the original cut! Sorry — this is audio only. Substack kept crashing while I was trying to upload. Still, for the video of the regular show, check it out on my Youtube channel, or just watch down below! And be sure to, ya know…

After 14 years, let’s REALLY get folks listening to this dang show!

Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he wonders why kids aren’t taking summer jobs as much as they used to, and if this means that child labor should be reinstated? Chick-Fil-A tried it this week, and got some mixed responses.

In other news, I tried some child labor of my own the past couple weeks, running a playwriting sweat shop in a theater summer camp. There were also some sharks in the Gulf that attacked two teenage girls from Birmingham, and I recount my eerie experience walking through the quiet and unsettling “backrooms” of an old country church last weekend (what the Internet kids now call a “liminal space”).

See my discussion with Bob LeMent on his show STATIC RADIO!

Music for this episode: “Gee, I Really Love You” by Heavy Trash; “Hey Lowdown” by Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys ***Backing Music: “Balanced” by 1st Contact; “Country Boy” (Instrumental) by Lobo Loco; “Late Nite Train” by Vans in Japan; “Double Tunnel” by Checkie Brown; “Swampland” by Chris Haugen

Video Street Video Store: Saturday Night Live — Albert Brooks — “Fall Preview” (1979); “Terminator 2 3D” Discovery Channel Excerpt

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! …”I can’t believe I used to like these guys.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released June 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.

And hellooooooo, everybody! Time to go back down again to the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE — return some old tapes and pick up some new ones. This week, we’ve got our longest show yet, but that doesn’t mean we’re thinning out the quality! No way, man. We’ve got a short film from Albert Brooks, some behind-the-scenes magic of a Universal Studios fan favorite, a wimpy kid who complains about violent movies on television, and a depraved director who makes them.

So sit back and enjoy! And if you’re new to this here Substack, feel free to go back and check out previous episodes of the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE, a regular feature that drops every Tuesday here at Mike’s Bonfire. 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.

And now, down to bi’ness!

VIDEO 1: ALBERT BROOKS PRESENTS NBC’S 1979 FALL LINE-UP

As I say in this week’s episode of THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN podcast (which you should definitely listen to if you haven’t yet), most of the comedy from Saturday Night Live’s early days has not aged well. Of course, that’s a rule of thumb for a lot of stuff SNL has given us over the years — up-to-and-including what just went live on-air as recently as last week. Not that it’s the cast and crew’s fault; the show, by design, is meant to be timely, and as soon as culture moves on, the funny just becomes…irrelevant. While the first 5 years of the show gave us the men and women who were the faces of comedy throughout the 1980s and 90s, the stuff they did on the show now comes across as outdated and, sometimes, embarrassing — like-your-unfunny-parents-trying-to-entertain-your-friends-at-a slumber-party-embarrassing. Just look up any “Coneheads” sketch and you’ll see what I mean.

While this week’s first video may have dated itself with the title alone, I think you’ll still find this short subject Albert Brooks did for SNL pretty spot-on. In fact, if you laugh at all, it’s proof that the comedian was then what he later became known best for — a master satirist whose biggest target was always the medium that fed him.

Before Brooks sent-up movies with his first feature, Real Life (1979), he was given a contract by SNL producer Lorne Michaels to produce a series of short films. The deal was Brooks’s preferred alternative to what Michaels really wanted from him, which was for him to be the permanent host of Saturday Night. Brooks’s deal kicked in immediately, and his first film — a repackaging of the short that had initially brought him to Michaels’ attention, “The Famous School for Comedians,” is probably the best thing of the show’s pilot, which featured George Carlin as the host, and introduced us to Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gila Radner, and all the rest of the original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players.”

For the next several years, Brooks routinely churned out short films. I may be a little biased, because ever since I first saw Lost in America (1985), I’ve held the guy up as one of my greatest comedy influences, but I believe all his early SNL shorts still hold their value — especially the one we’re watching this week, a pointed satire of the homogenous banality of network television programming. Though you can see Brooks being funny as the proverbial man-in-the-middle in “The Three of Us,” my favorite gag here is the promo for “Black Vet,” about a scarred Vietnam vet who becomes an animal doctor in a small, racist southern town. They don’t make em’ like that anymore…which is probably a good thing.

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

VIDEO 2: THE COMPUTER “MAGIC” BEHIND “T2: 3D”

I’m embittered by this week’s second tape — partly because it gives me the bad memory of finding out in the mid-90s, at the height of my prepubescent “Terminator” fandom, that a new one was being made, but that I’d have to go all the way to stupid Universal Studios in Florida to see it. Mostly, now, it irritates me at how much this Discovery Channel documentary kisses the asses of the computers that generated all the effects for this stage show that combined live stunts with pre-filmed ones.

There was definitely a golden age of computer generation — where not only were they a marvel to behold on the silver screen, but the public was captivated with how much movie magic could be achieved without ever having to build a practical model. This era of the public’s fascination with CG began around 1989 with James Cameron’s The Abyss, and really hit a fever pitch a couple years later with his follow-up film, Terminator 2, which gave us mind-bending visual effects of Robert Patrick as the T-1000 morphing, contorting, and folding his liquid metal self all over the damn place. For the next few years, you couldn’t flip the dial on your TV without seeing some behind-the-scenes special about how they generated this or how they manipulated that. When Jurassic Park came out in ‘93 and became the biggest movie ever, it was commonplace for years thereafter to see a documentary special about how they merged live-and-computer effects to create the realistic dinosaur action.

I think a major reason for why we were fascinated with computer generation in the ‘90s is, well, because it was the 90s and the computer was the machine of that era. Who knew what all it was capable of? But, also, I believe we were awed by specials like this week’s “T2: 3D” tape because we saw computers as something that could add to the action — not be the whole damn equation. I think if you go back and look at the extensive archives of TV specials like this one that go behind-the-scenes on production, as well as all the DVD special features for effects-heavy movies like The Abyss, as well as Independence Day, Twister, The Mummy, et. al, you’ll find a general slowing down of “How They Did That” documentaries by the early 2000’s. At some point, we just got tired of looking at guys sitting at their computers in some boring office in Burbank, California, showing you how they built wireframe dinosaurs. It was like watching the magician explain to you over and over again, using the same words, how he pulled the rabbit out of the hat. As a young 20-something who had grown up watching Discovery Channel’s “Movie Magic,” fascinated by how they did stunts like the helicopter crash in Cliffhanger, the in-camera forced perspective tricks of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and, of course, the CG effects in Terminator 2, I got extremely tired, and eventually, very irritated at any big summer movie that came out that only used CG. I especially remember seeing Star Wars: Episode 1 in 1999 and saying to myself, “So, is this what it’s gonna be now?”

I eventually did get down to see “Terminator 2: 3D” at Universal Studios-Florida in 2016, just a couple months before it finally shut down. I sat there in that old, cold theater and marveled at how the show, meant to look so futuristic, was ironically a time capsule of an era that was not too far in the physical past, but, by today’s standards, might as well have been an exhibit from one of those old World’s Fairs where they showed you how great technology is and how grand the future will be. Seriously, it felt like I was on the Carousel of Progress. I couldn’t believe how antiquated the effects looked, how cheesy it looked to have the live actors interact with their on-screen counterparts, how clumsy and ill-convincing the old CG looked. To really enjoy it, I just had to put myself in the mind of a pre-teen me who, in the 1990s, had something that I so rarely find myself possessing today: an optimism for entertainment. It made me sad that the “movie magic” is kind of over, that we can no longer expect to go to the movies — or theme park attractions — and be wowed by what we see there.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m looking too much into this tape. Let’s talk about another flick from the early 90’s that captivated me every bit as much as T2: Judgment Day. I’m talking, of course, about…Batman.

VIDEO 3: “BATMAN RETURNS” GETS CRUCIFIED ON DAYTIME TELEVISION

A few weeks back, I showed you the tape from 1991 where actress Sean Young had a come-apart on The Joan Rivers Show after she wasn’t cast as “Catwoman” in Batman 2. Continuing the theme we’ve got going here on The VSVS of “Batman” and Daytime talk shows, here’s a tape from June 1992 of the angry parent mob dismissing what was by then the decade’s most anticipated sequel as vile, violent filth.

The 1990s was the heyday of parental backlash, and don’t you miss it so much? As opposed to today when parents just give their kids phones so’s the tykes won’t distract them when they’re on social media, protesting how much of a rot social media is? Back then (again, it seems so long ago now), the parents mobilized, man. They went before Congress, pressured the music and video game industries into rating their content, and ultimately inspired my favorite number from 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (“Come on, you know the words!”).

My mom, God bless her, was not one of these moms. She had me there on opening day, June 19, 1992 — first show — to see what I had probably refused to shut up about for months:

“But mom!!! It’s the Bat, the Cat, and the Penguin!”

Of course, this morning show is not about what the parents think, but what, um, the “kids” think about the controversy surrounding Batman Returns — how it’s marketed to young kids, and how, as USA Today Junior Movie Critic, 10-year-old Danny Slaski, says, “Everything that kids love is used against them — clowns…. Even the penguin had a ducky boat.” Come on, Danny. That’s what you think. Really?

I’m sure if they pulled the camera back just a few feet, you’d see his mom — or Bradley Curl, the “head of an organization that promotes family home entertainment” — sitting just behind him, stuffing their hands up there.

Sure, Danny had a point. Batman Returns was, up to that point in my 9-year-old life, the most violent movie I had ever seen. But man did I love it. It wasn’t that the movie was very good. I watched it recently, for the first time in years, and really thought it was kind of average. However, back in 1992, Batman 2 was the first movie I had ever gone to where I was consciously aware of the rating — PG-13 — and I felt like seeing it was a right-of-passage of sorts to teen-hood. I remember even pressuring my mom to sit alone in the theater so I could feel more independent. She obliged, and for the next two hours, I felt a little bit older.

And isn’t that what violent movies made for kids are all about? Allowing them to test their ever-expanding freedom in a controlled, safe place?

When I watch this tape, I just can’t help but feel sorry for Danny, and how every time he says things like, “It’s just too violent for kids,” the camera cuts to reaction shots of bemused kids in the audience, who clearly can’t wait to catch that kid in the lobby and kick his ass.

Today, we have controversy that’s so clearly engineered (just see the Chick-Fil-A summer camps story I talked about on this week’s show), and if this talk show clip from 1992 proves anything, it’s that nothing has changed in 30 years.

VIDEO 4: “HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A CANCELLED FILM”

If little Danny Slasky was horrified by Batman Returns, but not by the MUCH-more-violent Terminator 2, then I wonder where he stood on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John McNaughton’s movie from 1988 that was so vile, so violent, so debauched that hardly anyone saw it until the mid-90’s.

Seriously. Not even the Motion Picture Association of America would touch it.

As McNaughton says in this interview with local Chicago television — and two of the most Chicago people who ever lived, like SNL’S super fans on steroids — it wasn’t so much the violence that the MPAA objected to, but the tone. And, yeah, I see what they’re talking about. I mean, I’ve seen Henry only twice, and have been so disgusted and disturbed by it that I’ve sworn it off for the rest of my life. However, I consider it one of the greatest movies ever made. The title says it all: this is the “portrait” of a serial killer. It is not the distillation of a murderer you see on A&E or listen about on true crime podcasts, where detectives and criminologists can explain to you m.o.’s and motivations. The film is like looking into the uncanny valley of an artist’s self-portrait, looking for some meaning — some expression — that explains it all, and feeling disheartened to find that there is none. It is just instinct that the animal in that painting has that you don’t, and never will.

Is this making sense? If you’ve seen Henry, I think it does.

At the end of the day, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is not exploitation in the "True Crime” podcast sense. It is a mature film that really tries to examine the perversion, psychopathy, and senselessness that is baked into some of humanity’s random brains, and also why we began to see such proliferation of these violent people in the second half of the twentieth century. The film seems to be searching for Henry’s motivation, as well as that of his sidekick Otis Toole. Is it their collective poverty? How they linger and lurk in a bleak urban landscape? Ultimately, the film comes up with nothing — just Henry leaving Chicago — and Otis’s head — behind him, and moving onto another town.

This interview with McNaughton and his distributor is an excellent capsule of what I think it must have been like to live as true filmmaker in the 80s. At the time, many of the restrictions on sex and violence had been regulated thanks to the MPAA, but to have your art probe something deep about the human psyche, getting to a place so dark that not even light can escape it, well, there’s really no way for Blockbuster to categorize that.

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 throughout the summer, and, of course, be sure to check out THE MIDNIGHT CITI

Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he wonders why kids aren’t taking summer jobs as much as they used to, and if this means that child labor should be reinstated? Chick-Fil-A tried it this week, and got some mixed responses.

In other news, I tried some child labor of my own the past couple weeks, running a playwriting sweat shop in a theater summer camp. There were also some sharks in the Gulf that attacked two teenage girls from Birmingham, and I recount my eerie experience walking through the quiet and unsettling “backrooms” of an old country church last weekend (what the Internet kids now call a “liminal space”).

Check out the new home over at mikesbonfire.substack.com, and be sure to, ya know…

You’ll get exclusive stuff — like this week’s complete “SUB CUT” (coming soon), the full podcast, plus the pre- and post-show.

Did you know I video tape all of my studio shows? It’s true! Check out the complete video of this week’s show on my Youtube channel, or just watch it right here…

See my discussion with Bob LeMent on his show STATIC RADIO!

Music for this episode: “Gee, I Really Love You” by Heavy Trash; “Hey Lowdown” by Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys ***Backing Music: “Balanced” by 1st Contact; “Country Boy” (Instrumental) by Lobo Loco; “Late Nite Train” by Vans in Japan; “Double Tunnel” by Checkie Brown; “Swampland” by Chris Haugen

Video Street Video Store: Saturday Night Live — Albert Brooks — “Fall Preview” (1979); “Terminator 2 3D” Discovery Channel Excerpt

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

If you like the show and haven’t yet, consider sharing with a friend, and comment. Let’s get the word out already!

…And be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”I can’t believe I used to like these guys.”

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

Join Mike out back for a drink as he decompresses from a hectic week of teaching summer camp and remembers the life and times of Wayne Newton, who’s still alive, but, ya know, kinda forgotten these days…

In other news: we’re watching Joe Bob Briggs host “Donnie Darko” (2001) on his late night horror show, “The Last Drive-In”. Also: what the h-e-double-hell is “Donnie Darko” about anyway? And recounting the career resurgence of Drive-In movie critic Joe Bob Briggs — how he’s gone from a forgotten 90s TV celebrity to doing personal appearances for 10 people in Corn Country to suddenly being on top again — at least, in the so-called “horror community”.

Check out the new home over at mikesbonfire.substack.com, and be sure to, ya know,

A new show drops every Saturday night!

Join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released June 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 in the studio late at night, where he remembers the time he met the cast of 1987’s “The Monster Squad,” and how they took off with his social security number. Also, are movies over? That’s the question after the mega-budget “Mad Max” movie bombed last week. Mike investigates, though he gets sidetracked by how much a Youtuber talking about the same subject looks like a werewolf. Anyway…

In other news: the real-life “Dennis the Menace,” awaiting trial for terrorizing his neighborhood with a slingshot, dies at 81; remembering “Creepfest,” my late-night horror hosting show; making a whiskey sour (sans egg white); how to pick up girls with magic!

The Midnight Citizen is completely commercial-free and always will be. Consider sharing with your friends…or enemies. I don’t care!

Check out the full episode here — complete with the pre- and post-show!

Music breaks: “Garden Sounds” by Lobo Loco; “St. John’s Cemetery” by Secret Lover.

Video Street Video Store: “Super Dave Osborne’s Wrecking Ball Stunt”; “Flirting with Magic” (1990).

Backing Music: “Balanced” by 1st Contact; “Sunset Drive” by DayNightMorning; “Double Tunnel” by Checkie Brown; “Harley Davidson” and “Lonesome Nights” by Beat Mekanik; “Small Steps” by Mr. Smith.

Check out the new home over at mikesbonfire.substack.com. For all the updates, as well as the behind-the-scenes of this episode, featuring the pre/post-show, Be sure to, ya know,

A new show drops every Saturday night!

Join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! …”Wolfman’s got nards!”

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

Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he mulls over the mental gymnastics of playing violent video games. Does good karma extend to the virtual world also?

Be sure to…ya know… A new show drops every Saturday night!

In other news, I’m sequestered in my house lately due to (yet another!) car issue; my absurd back-and-forth with a service lady at the dealership; a new “Adults Only” library in Idaho; what the Kevin Bacon movie “White Water Summer” (1987) can teach teachers about teaching; the collatoral tragedy of Sean Young’s firing from Batman, and much more!

Music breaks: “Vampires of South Dakota” by Forget the Whale; “Beyond Belief” by Jon Shumaker

Video Street Video Store: Sean Young on The Joan Rivers Show (1991); “BTS: Sitcom Laugh Track Expert” (1983)

Backing music for this episode: “Lonesome Nights” by Beat Makanik | “Abstract Technology” by Scott Holmes | “Get Your Kicks on Future 86” by Blue Wave Theory | “Anemoia” by Sedative” | All music for this episode is Creative Commons (CC/BY/SA) and is available at freemusicarchive.org.

Check out the new home over at mikesbonfire.substack.com, join the Facebook page! …“Nice place you got here. Lots of space.”

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

The Midnight Citizen is completely commercial-free and always will be. Consider sharing with your friends!