Blog Posts for Bob David Calhoun

2012 vs. 2112: CGI Apocalypse vs. the Ayn Rand Rock Opera

Bob David Calhoun — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:35:58 -0800

Roland Emmerich has built a career by putting the event in the event movie. His most famous film, Independence Day (1996), set the pattern by giving us Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith thwarting an alien invasion with a Mac laptop (presumably running OS 7) on the Fourth of July. With the exception of an anorexic Godzilla in 1998 and the Mel Gibson colonial gorefest The Patriot in 2000, it’s been ...

Judo Gene and My Martial Arts Publishing Meltdown

Bob David Calhoun — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:33:25 -0700

First book missteps. Oh where do I begin with this one? The phone woke me up on 7am on a Saturday morning. It was Fiaz Rafiq. He was calling from Bolton, England. He wanted me to ghostwrite The Toughest Man Alive, the autobiography of martial arts and Hollywood stunt legend “Judo” Gene LeBell. I didn’t really know Gene all that well, having only talked to him on the phone a couple of times. ...

Schwarzenegger hears the lamentation of my salary

Bob David Calhoun — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:29:06 -0700

I work for a major California public university. My pay is probably going to be cut by eight percent next month. I’m one of the lucky ones. My fellow state workers at the DMV and other state agencies have been eating an eight per cent pay cut for months already. Now they are told they have to up their sacrifice to 15%. But those of us with jobs, no matter how devalued, are luckier still. At ...

Pro Wrestling's Grim Anniversary

Bob David Calhoun — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:49:54 -0700

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Today marks the two year anniversary of the suicide and crimes of pro wrestling star Chris Benoit, the most bleak tragedy in a segment of the entertainment industry that is unusually prone to them. A few days after the incident, I wrote the following essay in an attempt to get my thoughts straight on something that was both staggering and surreal. Although I sent this piece to ...

Amazon's Accidental Fatwa

Bob David Calhoun — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:58:13 -0700

I wonder when the overlords of Amazon.com (or maybe mere hackers) will realize that my punk wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal, deals with GLBT themes? I mean it has gay characters and parodies of gay characters. It also has a pic of a man’s wiener reproduced in full color (IE: He Who Cannot Be Named of the Dwarves in all of his public and pubic glory). As of right now my bestselling ...

On Reeducation Camps

Bob David Calhoun — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:59:13 -0700

According to Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann and other rabid right wingers, the Obama Administration is in the midst of planning Maoist style reeducation camps plucked right out of Joe McCarthy and Jack Webb’s cold war fevered imaginations. Now what about these reeducation camps? Will financial aid be available for them? Can you pay for their tuition with Pell Grants? What about scholarships? For ...

Who's Batting the Batmen? My Wondercon Wrap-up.

Bob David Calhoun — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:53:17 -0800

THE WATCHMEN WERE EVERYWHERE and nowhere at last weekend’s Wondercon. At least half of the vendor booths on the main floor were pushing some form of Watchmen memorabilia but surprisingly none of the rabid fanboys and gals dressed up as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ dark, depressing and nearly washed up post modern heroes. I saw several platoons of stormtroopers, all presumably being told that ...

Roctober Keeps Rollin'

Bob David Calhoun — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:02:30 -0800

JAKE AUSTEN DON’T TAKE NO MESS. While such zines as Psychotronic and Punk Planet have folded in their tents due to the corporate rape of their distribution system, Austen still grinds out hard copy of his Chicago based music and pop culture zine Roctober, has them printed on pulpy newsprint that deposits a healthy amount of ink on your hands, stuffs them into envelopes and mails the mags to ...

Beer, Burns Night and Haggis

Bob David Calhoun — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:16:09 -0800

THE EDINBURGH CASTLE on Geary Street has been dubbed "a literary fortress in the Tenderloin,” but rumors that the Castle would no longer host lit readings have been swirling around for a while now. While these rumors are not true (Alan Black is planning a reading series and the next Bond night will actually feature readings of Ian Flemming’s prose) this beleaguered atmosphere made last ...

An Ex-wrestler's take on "The Wrestler"

Bob David Calhoun — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:43:14 -0800

My review of the new Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler was an editor's pick on Open Salon this morning.I wrestled for and emceed the San Francisco punk rock/lucha extravanganza Incredibly Strange Wrestling for seven years and wrote the review with an insider's take on the indie wrestling subculture depicted in the film. Here's the link...http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=76453# If you're a ...