Welcome to the wonderful world of Radio…

I truly love all that we have accomplished at Jackalope Radio. I love the station and I love how large it has grown. It all started with Nightwatch, my radio show that began almost 10 years ago… I didn’t even know how to do a show – but I was asked (and declined 4 times) so I started into the wild world of radio… Art Bell was a great help in those days as he really pushed me to do it!  Nightwatch grew and grew – gaining affiliate stations worldwide over the years until it was truly one of the first and largest shows of it’s kind produced.  As the show grew, so did the production needs and the guests and the old producer Juke had a few other businesses to run, including a full time band gig… so he decided to basically put his station on hold and when I was put in a position to produce my own show and things were winding down at my old station, I started up Jackalope Radio with some amazing people… at first we were just one in a thousand small internet stations, but now – things are NUTS. We have more original programming than darn near any station I can find, we have a huge archive section and we are doing over 3 terrabytes of downloads a month. The amount of traffic we get on the website blows me away – literally hundreds of thousands of people a week are listening to shows on Jackalope Radio worldwide.

My only complaint is that while we grow, I am still the main person and sometimes the only person doing the station duties. Amanda is a producer at the station as well, and she has been doing a few shows, but the majority is on my shoulders. This is where both my business law training and my years in school learning the ins and outs of psychology both come in handy. Now I am VERY glad to have the shows we have and I am not angry with anyone – but sometimes people act as if they are the only ones that I deal with. The reality is, we have over 40 shows in production, and I actually hands on produce over 50% of them, I edit them, I archive them, I upload and download files, I handle the website in every capacity…. the station takes about 50-60 hours a week. I do almost all the website graphics, I do promotional graphics for 85% of the shows, I handle promotion to over 60 forums and websites and I also keep as current as I can on our social media pages, promoting there too! The success is awesome and I wouldn’t trade it for any reason… but I sure wish people would sometimes put themselves in the shoes of others.

This week alone, I have had one show host say she was having a crummy week and didn’t “feel” like doing a show as her heart wasn’t really into it this week. Another show host threatens to stop doing their show about twice a month for one reason or another. One show host had some business going on and a few personal matters back in August and September and then came back and did 3 shows between Sept and DEC. I finally said that we need to shit or get off the pot. LOL. He then resigned and said he was on hiatus and would contact me after the first of the year. Still waiting. Another show host had excuses every week why it couldn’t happen… I would go to the studio and wait and they would not show. I finally stopped it by saying that in 6 months we had 8 shows done. I liked her, but it was just not good for the station. She aid she would regroup and be back in October. Still waiting.

I have always said that at Jackalope Radio, we are all family and I want people to leave the ego at the door. I mean it. A few hosts have had ego problems… most of them don’t make it long as I cut them loose fast. A couple I still have and I am trying hard to deal with “diva” like attitudes. This is one area that I am the most impatient and I really don’t play well with ego maniacs.

But the good news is that the MAJORITY of the show hosts on the network are amazing. We all interact like I want – like a tight family business. We work together and co-promote things and have each other’s backs. And when it works right – this is an amazing business to be in. The stress is high, the workload is never ending – but I love it…. even on bad days.

Thanks to Amanda for the great Production work she IS able to do, to Cassandra for saving me every week and handling the iTunes, for all the amazing shows and hosts who work so hard and love what they do, and for the hours each week we all work so damned hard to entertain people. None of us take a salary yet, and the station runs about 800 or so dollars a month in bills… mostly out of my pocket. On top of that the licensing fees and everything else do get overwhelming…. so Thanks to everyone who lends a hand – I couldn’t do any of this without you!

I just hope more people will learn to look at the big picture, put themselves in another person’s shoes for a bit – and see how it all works…. this is just the beginning of something very huge!

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Up Smokey! Russ Meyer’s Chainsaw Massacre… almost

Up Smokey

Family Home Video (damn!) – 97 minutes – year unknown – directed by Rudd Meyer

Next up, we have “Up Smokey” directed by Russ Meyer. The film starts with a crazy naked chick sitting in a tree played by Kitten Natividad, who seems to always be in Russ Meyer movies. She seems to basically be the narrator of this fine flick. After the credits we cut to a castle with some german guy getting whipped by an Indiana Jones wanna be The German guy looks like Hitler (!) and some Asian women come in and sit on his head and the German guy tries to talk but can’t.

Next scene we cut to a tree where two lesbians are having a special meeting and one does some tongue exercises, if ya know what I mean. Then one of the women drives off in a big rig. Then we cut back to the Hitler guy as some gloved maniac throws Piranha fish into the tub with him and blood fills the water and ol’ Hitler thrashes around like someone threw an electric clock in the water and then he dies.

Now the naked girl from earlier comes back on and spouts some lines like “Choosing, comparing one with another..” and “A misty phantom of passion wallowing in the sea of carnality.”. I have no idea what the hell this means. But when she is done talking we meet a sheriff and he is driving along and tries to pick up a hitchhiker with huge garbonzas, only she isn’t ready to accept a ride. Then we get some shots of the killer, I guess it’s the killer anyhow, wearing a black leather sex mask and eating a banana through the zipper mouth part. I am sure that this is either symbolic or very important to the plot. More Naked woman talking follows, telling us about something but I kinda tuned her out as she has a tendency to ramble.

Now we cut to a diner where our Indian Jones guy is working. I guess that being Indiana Jones is his hobby and this is his real job. He watches the sheriff pull over a girl with a big afro and she follows the sheriff to his car and they work out driving violation if ya know what I mean. She makes him blow the toes out of his shoes. Then he goes into the diner and acts like nothing happened and we get some more BS dialogue. Then everyone starts coming into the diner, including some axe guy that orders double chili with honey mustard. Then the hitchhiker girl walks in and they hire her to help out in the diner.

Next thing I know, we cut to the sheriff in some bedroom with a girl dressed like Pocahontas. She bounces around the bed and grabs a light that hangs over head and shocks the hell out of the sheriff and herself then runs away naked into the woods. Then the hitch hiker waitress comes over and looks at the sheriff and sees his vulnerables and says “you’re all read, you’ve been screwing that damned Indian.”  Then we get that naked tree girl talking some more, only this time she’s go-go dancing while talking in a lake someplace. She says all kinds of strange stuff that makes no sense.

Meanwhile back at the diner, the place is packed and Indiana Jones is very happy about the business, but he thinks someone is a killer. Then the axe guy shows up all pissed cuz someone stole his axe. So the diner people find him another one and he celebrates by slamming the table and screaming “beer! beer!” until the hitch hiker girl decides to do a dance for everyone. Bad jazz plays on the jukebox and she starts doing some bizarre dance, Now, I figure this must be some special fertility dance of the axe gods or something because the axe guy gets all worked up and grabs her. Pretty soon he throws her onto the table and starts making the double slamming flamingo with her right there. Everyone starts cheering in the bar. Indiana Jones sees this and thinks it’s really disgusting and we cut to the sheriff speeding to the diner with Lone Ranger music playing. The sheriff jams an axe in the axe lovers back and blood sprays out. Then the axe dude rips the axe out and slams it into the sheriff so he can see how it feels. More blood spews then the axe guy grabs Indiana’s girl and the hitch hiking waitress and kicks out a wall and leaves. Then the sheriff yanks out the axe and gets up. He is mad at the nasty red stain on his shirt and grabs a chainsaw from off the wall. Indiana follows him as they pursue the axe freak.

Indiana is madder than ever after he notices his white pants are dirty. The sheriff catches the axe freak and says “Rosebud!” as he slams the saw into the guy. Blood goes everywhere and the saw pops out the axe freak’s back. Then the sheriff and the axe dude fall off a cliff and the girls sob a second then start fondling each other and soon they are working out them tongues. Indiana finally comes along and sees them and smiles and says “Aw shucks.” Then the hitch hiker goes home and takes a shower and some gloved maniac with an axe comes in and tries to kill her only she pulls off her mask and she turns out to be one of the lesbians we only saw in that one scene at the beginning. I have no idea why she is the killer. Neither does she. Pretty soon both girls are naked and fighting in a lake and they talk a bunch while fighting to try and make sense out of all of this. They fail.

Finally, the naked tree girl comes back and says some crazy stuff, including “cocoa!” a bunch while she flops around on a fallen tree and dances around and finally has sex while finishing telling the story. The end credits roll and my mind is still reeling. What a crazy, screwed up movie! It had FOUR epilogues! I have no idea why, but it just kept going and going. I never drink and have never taken a drug, but I figure the world might seem like this movie if I did. This was one massive party for me watching… and I bet most people who love Grindhouse type movies would love it like I did.  If you happen to drink, then please get sauced major big time and watch this one twice in a row.

5 / 10 / 8

Attack Of The Beast Creatures

Attack Of The Beast Creatures
Western World Video – Unrated – 83 Minutes

I dug deep and found this very rare little splatterfest to review for this month, and though it may be hard as hell to find, it is a cool little low budget oddity that surprised me.

OK, the film starts off with a ship sinking, kinda like a Z-Grade Titanic deal, during the opening credits. The amateur actor survivors all row a boat to a nearby Island. Before you can say “Gilligan,” these castaways are convinced they are all alone on the Island… only we know different because we get some hand-held POV shots that are suppose to be someone watching from the nearby bushes.

Next we get some people screaming at each other for a few minutes kinda like on the WWE nowadays cuz they save all the actual WRESTLING for Pay-Per-View and just yell a bunch on free TV,and this one old man character is like Archie Bunker, only an amateur version.

Director Michael Stanley has set this film in the 1920’s and one character is a flapper. The plot starts to bog down here so Archie Bunker gets thirsty and decides he needs a drink, only when he bends over and takes a swig of the lagoon, it eats his flesh off in a cool gross out effects scene. Face melts, hands drip, gooey slime and blood pour everywhere. We’re talking first class chunk blower here. The rest of the flick zips along at a fast rate from here on out as crew members off-screen throw these creatures at the cast that look like that Zuni demon doll thingie from Trilogy of Terror with all the big sharp teeth that chased Karen Black all over. Same kinda thing except different. These demonic little dudes ain’t dolls and they hunger for a lot more than Karen. We’re talking absolutely no plot from this point on, just some great scenes of people getting attacked and swarmed on by these creatures. I haven’t seen flesh eating swarms of little killers like this since Piranha! I could go on, but I don’t wanna ruin it in case you are lucky enough to dig it up someplace.

I will say that the director and screenwriters must have done some way crazy drugs and watched Gilligan’s Island before making this thing… Original and way off the wall.  A true surprise!

6 / 8 / 2