Chi-Town Smokers - The Madcap Laughs

Who the hell are the Chi-Town Smokers you ask? A new roller derby team? That tough looking bunch of guys standing around in front of the Willow smoking Marlboro's and Kools? The name can conjure up several images. It is in fact a competition BBQ team I formed a couple years ago with Perry Bax ( the podcast guy) . I got the idea for the name from all those great old drag racing commercials for Chicago Area dragstrips from the 60's and 70's that would blare forth from the old transistor radio.(you rememeber..Sunday! Suuunday! at Great Lakes Dragaway and US 30 Dragstrips!!..) The announcer would scream out the names of the drivers and the cars that would be appearing on..you guessed it ..on Sunday. One that always stuck out for me was Chris Karamesines and his Chi-Town Hustler. Imagine that..a Greek guy racing a Funny car and who was from my Dad's hometown of Alton Il. That could not have hit closer to home for me. So with that in mind Chi-Town Smokers was born being Im a Greek guy who has roots in Alton and cooks authentic bbq (smoked meat ..get it??). Anyway myself , Perry, and a co-worker of mine headed out to Shannon Il all prepared to flatten the competition with our great tasting bbq ....and failed miserably. Our next competition was a scant 2 weeks in Rockford when my co-worker opted out of going (shine on you crazy diamond) so Perry suggested an old college buddy of his to fill in. I figured what the hell..as long as he could sharpen knives and wash dishes then why not? So in stepped Rob Cisneros. Well needless to say we went up well against the big boys of BBQ and come home with some trophies and a little dough in our pockets. It seemed we found a winning combination of cooks and meat prep so the fax was sent to "Syd" and Rob , after a small ceremony,became a "made " guy with our BBQ crew. So now the three of us go out on a few weekends a year and sit in a field or parking lot with several other crazed bbq fanatics and cooks from all over the country and compete for who has the best BBQ..and we are still failing miserably.

Radio Sucks

One of my worthless past times is trading cd's of live concerts with people. I started doing this a few years back on a regular basis . Since then I have aquired a couple hundred or so live concert recordings many of which sound like they were recorded from the third balcony by some mook with a (circa 1960's) Craig portable cassette player. In the last two years I have not really been actively trading but I did receive an email recently with a trade request who had noticed I had some old Triad radio shows on my list. For those of you who are not from the Chicago area Triad was what called a "free form" radio station. It came on the air in the early 70's and went off the air a few years later. They played an impressive mix of rock, kraut rock, space rock, prog rock, jazz, spoken word, and other significantly strange music that you would never hear anywhere else. I mean cmon..when is the last time you heard a radio station play Kapt Kopter & His Amazing Twirlybirds? Anyway this trader sent me like a 3 -4 page list of underground radio shows he had collected over the years and I was floored. Shows dating back to 1968 and through the 70's . After trading with him it got me to thinking of how lame radio has become (at least in the Chicago area) since the "golden age" of radio where stoned out dj's could play whatever they felt like at the moment and went by ominous sounding names like Scorpio, Pysche, and Spoke. Thank you Clear Channel and others for all the bad generic stations out there now. They are like bad theme parties..classic rock channels that think they are cutting edge when they play Dark Side Of The Moon for the umpteenth time (oooh how renegade!). The new thing now is the "we play whatever we want" theme. Well sorry Blaine..or Brent or whoever the tassel shoed , Docker wearing radio mook who is responsible for these programming decisions..the old radio regime were doing this same concept light years ago and doing a better job.
Anyway this whole rant leads me into a very blatant plug for a friend and and one of the members of my BBQ team , Perry Bax (the kid in the 3rd balcony with the portable cassette player)..
Perry has been pod casting a show from Chicago called The Best Radio You Have Never Heard. I am including the link to his shows so that you can give them a listen yourself. This is a good example of what radio used to be and what it still could be...you may not hear Kapt Kopter but you never know when Wild Man Fischer or M. Frog Labat will make an appearance. Please let Perry know what you think..heck you can even post your thoughts here too...

http://bestradioyouhaveneverheard.com

Movie Of The Week - High Tension

High Tension is a French made horror film and throwback to the good old days of early 70's era horror films before the whole genre was taken over by "suits" producing cookie cutter horror films or the umpteenth sequel starring Jason or Freddie Kruger .
The film pretty much starts out with two girls engaged in conversation while driving along the French countryside to visit one of the girls parents home. Once they reach the house in question its only about 5-10 minutes more when a late night doorbell ring from a portly guy driving a delivery van of some type starts the bloody festivities off in high fashion by dispatching everyone in the house save a character or two. The mayhem that follows literally does not let up until the end of the movie some 80 minutes later. I know im being vague but to say anything more would pretty much spoil the film for anyone who has not seen it. But one minor spoiler: rest assured a dresser can be used to remove a persons head! It does have the obligatory twist ending which im still not sure I liked. I almost felt cheated at the end but the more I think about the ending it makes more sense to me. I would love to hear other peoples opinions on it. All in all great stuff and the only thing I missed when viewing this was the crackly drive-in speaker next to my left ear .
The Reg 1 DVD boasts several versions of the film on the same DVD but the one to watch is the unrated directors cut in French with sub-titles. Those of you Joe SixPaks that dont like subtitles and will watch the dubbed version will only miss out on 40 some seconds of gore in return for your lack of reading skills. Those extra 40 seconds make staying awake through Miss Landers reading class when you were a young'en all worth it

Well?...How Did I Get Here?

I figured the first post should be to get all the obligatory introductory crap out of the way. Right now yours truly is temporarily walking the earth ala Kane from Kung Fu. I figure since rent is free on the World Wide Web that I would "build" my own place that I could come and visit, set a spell, take my shoes off and discuss/rant about my favorite subjects without a 75 year old landlady banging on my my door screaming 'Rents due at the end of the month Tiger!!!"
Some of my favorite subjects will include (but are not limited to) film, music, and BBQ. Yea there are multitudes of film and music blogs out there but how many include the zany world of BBQ?
Anway please feel free to stop in and partake . I cannot give back any minutes of your life that you waste reading my pointless posts but I wont make you bring your own jar of olives either!
Deke