Janet Jackson ‘Rhythm Nation 1814’

Yes, I know that I haven’t done a whole lot of updating recently. I’ve plenty of excuses and I still have Lucky # Slevin from Netflix in my possession. No, I haven’t been able to watch it for over a week now. So that should be quite obvious as to how busy I am these days.

I managed to squeeze in some old friends and I met them for lunch one day last week. Jonathan Everett and Tracy Thornton (ttpan.com) met me at Terry’s Deli between 68 and Wendover Ave. It was cool catching up and BS’ing with each other. There’s nothing like an hour of arrested development to put you in a good mood despite the hustle and bustle of life. Sure, we’ve grown up a little bit in the last 20 years, but there are still the occasional attacks on each other’s manhood and heterosexuality. And we get to use and awful amount of “bad” words.

Jonathan, Tracy, and myself formed a rock n’ roll band back in high school. Of course, it didn’t go anywhere, but it manage to define where we were going in life. Jonathan found out that he didn’t like the lifestyle and ditched it for a safer and brighter career as a computer guru. Tracy, the only one of us with the drive that met his talent, has gone on and made a nice career out of playing steel drums. He’s become an underground success with his latest CD, ‘Pan Is For Punks: A Steel Drum Tribute To The Ramones’. As for me, I never truly had the talent, but was destined for a career in music anyway. I’ve been a concert reviewer for the Greensboro News & Record and I work as a DJ at Rock 92.

Tracy’s Ramones CD is available at Amazon.com and his own website, ttpan.com. His highly popular Christmas CD is also available on his website.

Friday night, Adam Korn, Patrick the Intern (don’t know Patrick’s last name), and I set up for an appearance at Cox’s Harley-Davidson in Asheboro. Deidre from the Two Guys Named Chris show came out and met all of her adoring fans. The AHDRA (a Harley Drag Racing Series) had some of their racers out there showing off bikes and signing autographs. There was some good barbeque pork to be had as well.

During our 2 hours, they cranked up one of the Harley-Davidson dragsters. It was LOUD! Every time the guy hit the throttle, Deidre would jump. And that’s when I noticed something… There weren’t too many women standing around watching this exercise. I had seen women there before, they were right along side their men. And as I kept looking at these guys watching the motorcycle being revved so loudly that folks back in Greensboro could hear it, I leaned over to Deidre and said, “You know… If you just took a picture of these guys without the motorcycle in it, you’d think that they were staring at a beautiful naked women dancing seductively before them.”

Those guys were watching intently and with little or no blinking. It was hilarious how much these guys were into watching a guy rev up a motorcycle so that it would blow the dust off the pavement. Of course, I’m the same way when I see Chicken Planks hoisted out of the deep fryer at Long John Silver’s.

Saturday night, I was the emcee at Fashion Rox over at The Garage in Winston-Salem. Cheryl Wiegert put this event together and from what she described to me… It was going to be a blast. Live bands and fashion models strutting the wares of Envy Shoes, Wild Flower Boutique, Samadhi Designs, and Putting On The Ritz. It was something daring to be different.

I was looking forward to it.

But that all changed as soon as I stepped up to the microphone.

I don’t get nervous in front of crowds. I’ve been getting on stages my whole life without any problems. It’s in my nature to attract attention to myself and if there’s a microphone in my face, I’m more than happy to use and abuse it.

I introduced myself and there was nothing but complete silence and blinking faces out in the audience. It was so quiet, I thought that I heard the International Space Station zip by in its orbit around the Earth. I realized (and why I didn’t before, I don’t know) that these folks had no idea as to who I was. I got nervous… And if I didn’t have it written on paper before me, it totally went out the window. So the first announcement didn’t go so well. I even had some folks from Wild Flower Boutique hassling me from the bar about the way I pronounced their establishment’s name.

Whenever I got on the stage after that, the nervousness was all gone. I didn’t care and we were going to have a fun night. Stratocruiser, Autohypnosis, and TK IV II I (TK 421) rocked the house and the fashions were strutting up and down the red carpet.

None of us knew what to expect and it turned out fine.

At one point during my announcements, I told the crowd that they didn’t know who I was because they didn’t look like much of a .38 Special kind of crowd. I even dropped the fact that, I, Eugene Sims, the Self-proclaimed Bad Boy of Rock 92 was so bad that I have been banned from the Two Guys Named Chris show. Still nothing. These fashionable types apparently don’t own radios.

Despite everything we all had fun and things went very well.

I did learn one thing that night… It’s nearly impossible to get a taxicab in Winston-Salem at 2:30am. I waited and waited for 45 minutes for that damn thing. I called and called and I’d either get “10 more minutes” or “it’s just around the corner” from the lady on the other end of the phone. They were damn good about picking me up at Cactus Jack’s on Deacon Boulevard around 7:45, but they pissed me off early on a Sunday morning. I didn’t take a jacket and it was a bit chilly outside as we waiting for the cab that never came.

Kinda sounds like a yuppie horror movie doesn’t it? The Cab That Never Came!

Kim Thore once again came to my rescue and she gave me a lift back to the hotel. Next time, I’ll program all the cab company’s phone numbers in my cell phone so that I can pit them all against each other. The first driver there will get the fat tip.

Here’s a picture of my niece Chloe with my bass guitar. My sister has asked me to encourage her interest in the guitar so I broke it out, plucked on it a bit, and let her toy around with it. She played with the thing for about 30 minutes and that’s longer than I have played it in over a year.


I have an idea for the “ultimate cover band”, but I can’t get Jonathan Everett on board with it. I would love to start playing music again and yet I can find no one that shares my vision.

During the course of my hectic week, I managed to finish season one of Monk. I’m giving it 4 out of 5 stars. Although it predictable at times, the show is funny and enjoyable.

I also watched the teen horror movie Stay Alive.

Stay Alive is a video game where the stakes are very real. If you die in the game, you will meet the same fate in reality. It’s rather generic and bland, but I’m giving it 3 out of 5 stars.

But I have noticed something, or the lack of something in teen horror flicks these days… Where is the nudity?

Sure, drug use is still running rampant and violence still invokes an R rating, but what happened to the bare breasts?

Back in my day, just about every teen horror flick had some bare boobage in them. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon here, but I want nudity back in horror movies! Just like we had in the good ol’ days.