Monday, December 06, 2004
Toes On The Nose (Hangin' Five)
Yes, we start out with an old surfer term, back when boards were nine feet long or better, when you could hang 5, sometimes 10 toes over the nose of the board as you rode along. Fun to watch, fun to do.
I'm seeing the "Sane" Democrats/Liberals coming out of the bomb shelters now, sniff the air, look around. I've deliberately avoided some of them because I didn't feel like losing their friendships in a hail of vituperative commentary, outgoing or incoming. Campaign time for me is the time to cut loose, bust heads, accumulate evidence to refute accusations against my boyz running for office, yell and scream with the other out-of-control types, be unreasonable at all times, piratical when an opportunity shows.
Know what I'm hearing from the Dems?
"Why did we run that jackass?"
"When is our leadership going to wake the hell up?"
"Is all this a ploy to make Hillary look like a breath of fresh air in 08?"
"What if Jeb Bush decides to run and gets a good Veep candidate?"
I think, if they take back their party from Hollywood, Beijing and the Kremlin, they could, indeed, regain a lot of the power they lost. If they drop this politically correct SHIT and quit telling us that every little Muslim, Buddhist and Rastafarian can practice their religion unpersecuted, but Christians can't, they might win back some voters. If they find some candidates that actually DO believe in God, especially if they're NOT fundamentalists, they're going to regain a swath of middle America.
The tricky part? Radical feminism now is pointed toward destroying the nuclear family in its longest running form. They feel like the Father/Breadwinner/Final Ruler of hearth and home is a slavery concept. They strongly advocate lesbianism, and are therefore tightly allied with gay causes, even though they don't always want to be.
The gay community? Oh, man. They want it ALL, total equality and acceptance into the community. They're not gonna stop, but they're not gonna get it, either. I dunno what to do about them politically. Personally, let 'em live their lives the way they choose. Encourage the use of curtains. Thick ones. I believe that ingestion of seminal fluids somehow unbalances the male mind. Not having a degree in Biochemistry, and not knowing of any studies on the subject, that's just my theory. But I'm stickin' to it.
People are forgetting that one of our other minorities has decided to quit being 3rd Man Out. The Latinos are now a Force in American politics. In Florida, we're used to that. The Cuban community, for all practical purposes, owns Miami and environs. I've been there. If you speak relatively fluent Spanish, which I do, you find that they open up to you a lot sooner, correct your Spanish for you, help you any way they can. Of course, some of the streets are better than others, and since I had a Concealed Weapons Permit, I carried a Colt .45 on me. I also carried it around Orlando, Tallahassee, Tampa. It's a little hard to expect the Latino community to receive much discrimination when your Governor is married to a Mexican woman and speaks fluent Spanish. It's a little harder to gain credibility when your Democrat attorney general sends in federal agents that point MP-5s at little tiny boys named Elian and his family, takes him away, and ships his ass off to Cuba. Ask Billy-Bob and Janet Reno.
I am SO anxious for that goofball Fidel Castro to fall over dead. Hopefully, the people of Cuba haven't been so cowed and Communisted that they won't throw a revolution and toss out the rest of the pinkos there, and start up a democratic government. For one thing, all the Mafia types would head back down there, hoping to restore it to a Caribbean Las Vegas. They should be put on a palm log raft, tied with vines and inner tubes, and sent out to sea. Give 'em a compass rigged so that when they go east it says north. Once Fidel finally begins his long toasting in hell, it's going to be fascinating watching Cuba rebuild itself. People wanting to go back, reclaim what he stole, people NOT wanting to go back, people not even born there, but having to go out of curiosity. If you don't know a bunch of Cubans, you've really missed out. They're an amazing people. They make terrific Communists and Insurrectionists. Castro has been sending Cubans all over the world for special training and to stir up trouble, and they always do a good job. BUT, if you know some Cuban-Americans...they also make great Capitalists. 40 years ago your Cuban maid was going to night school. So was your Cuban gardener. Before anyone noticed, you had Cuban professors, Cuban engineers, Cuban teachers (teaching English!), Cuban just about anything you could name. Many stayed in the Miami area, but as their business grew, they had to transfer people, including upper management, around the country and they blended right into their communities. They don't change their names, they don't lose their knowledge of where they came from, but they take their citizenship damn seriously in THIS country, too.
Out west, there's a growing group of Latinos who want to take back California, Texas, etc., saying we stole that land from them. Doesn't seem to bother them much that THEIR Spanish ancestors stole it from their Indian ancestors. Check on La Raza in your search engine sometime.
They're gonna be really disappointed in the overall American reaction, though. We have this collective honkie guilt over what we did to the Indians. Most of the land we got from Mexico, we either bought it or offered to buy it, and if they took the cash, great. If not, we kicked their asses out and TOOK it, and we don't feel a bit bad about it. So sorry, no sorry.
Almost 30 years ago, I began formal Karate training as a college course under Sensei Sam Palmer of the Shorin-Ryu Matsubayashi-Ryu school. Generally, I didn't get it, and they didn't seem to care. That's the old traditional way. What I DID have going for me is a "Character" face, blonde hair almost to my waist, and a working knowledge of Judo techniques. Sensei Sam liked to go visit what later became Fox television's affiliate, on a show dubiously named, "Uncle Hubie's Penthouse Barnyard". It was a kid's comedy show, sort of a poor man's Captain Kangaroo, and extremely popular with kids. It was also popular with after-school stoners. Uncle Hubie told me that he found out from their manager that The Who always tuned in his show when they were in this area for concerts.
Sensei Sam would have the class do various Kata in unison, some of the more advanced students demonstrate unarmed or weapons techniques, then he'd drag me up to demonstrate how he could toss somebody around like a rag doll if the spirit moved him. He liked showing his technique off so much that I got some serious TV time in. Some of it I was flying without wires!
It was very cool, being stopped on the street or back at school. "Hey, man, I've seen you somewhere before. On TV maybe?" "Dude, I've seen you on that Uncle Hubie show! Man, that old guys kicks your ass. Don't you ever get hurt?" It was a great attention getter, especially with somebody inquisitive like that, because sometimes I'd wind up with a group of people all talking and asking me questions, and I'd pick out the hottest girls, show them how to toss my ass around, and pop back up uninjured and smiling. It didn't do my ego any harm to have 3 or 4 of them offer to go to lunch with me either. I don't think we ALL want to be actors. I DO think we all want to be on TV.
For years now, I wanted to get my hands on tapes of the shows I was on. I tried various search engines, with no luck. Finally, now that AOL had the good sense to hook up with Google, I typed in "Uncle Hubie's Penthouse Barnyard", and Uncle Hubie has a website! It included his home phone, so I gave him a call. His wife screened my message, then picked up and connected me to The MAN, Uncle Hubie himself! We had a great hour-long conversation! He's a lot older now, but his mind is sharp and totally clear, as is his voice. He has a Magic show now. He's a wonderful, friendly guy, easily as nice in person as he is on TV. He filled me in on a lot of the history of the show, and how things progressed later, as he moved from station to station. I got to finally ask him if there were any tapes of the show.
"No", he said, "I'm sorry to say, we couldn't afford tapes. Everything was live, including our goof-ups. Those 3/4 inch tapes were just too expensive." I should have known. That would explain why there were never any repeats, and I never got to rush home and catch the show.
So, no videos of me as a healthy young lad flying around and making violent contact with the ground. I'm bummed about that. Sensei Palmer is dead. Even though I had to go to another school to learn my karate, he was my first Karate Sensei, and I'm bummed he's dead. But, by golly, Uncle Hubie, aka Hugh Turley, is alive, well and having a great life. Enjoy, Mr. and Mrs. Turley. It was a pleasure meeting you.
