The Gates of Hell Just Opened In Guatemala

We were in Wilmington NC this weekend, doing an overeating / overdrinking marathon. Good times.

By coincidence, Wilmington is the town where they filmed a lot of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", in which Dennis Hopper plays the crazed and evil Frank Booth. And, of course, Dennis Hopper died this weekend. So, we did a quick tour of the places which show up in the movie (and which are still around).

This is the building used for the exterior of the apartment where Isabella Rossellini's character lived.

This is a great little bar called the "Barbary Coast" which was used as the exterior of a nightclub/brothel. Word is that there are interior scenes from here in the outtakes on the DVD.

The police station was used in the movie, but was recently demolished - so recently that it's still on Google maps. And there's a coffee shop which was a diner in the movie.

Anyway, that's probably as close as I'll ever get to the late great Dennis Hopper.

Newcastle? Fuck That Shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
(from Lula's, a basement, backalley pub)

The Credit Card Concierge Experiment

Man dies of uterine cancer

Short answer: there is no short answer. There's too many possibilities for a short answer. But there's a long answer over at the Weather Underground.

Here is a pretty good wrap-up of the whole Lost arc. Apparently it was written by a writer from the show.

Spoilers below!
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Perhaps we could lower Obama down to the site of the smoke monster's birthplace oil geyser and let him re-insert the Giant Magic Cork Of Power. Sure, he'd sacrifice himself, but he would save the rest of us.

And really, isn't this the exactly the kind of thing we expected of him when we chose him to replace that last guy (George, Jacob, Jingleheimer, Schmidt - or whatever his name was) ?

Cause... this oil thing is fucking horrible.