Ryan "Mouth-hole" Cassano
This weekend I played host to a friend of mine, Ryan “Mouth-hole” Cassano, who was visiting from my beloved home town of Nevada City, California. He had come to investigate 1980’s video arcade games and literature concerning it for some future enterprise that I’m not at liberty to divulge but involves alcohol, supermodels, and rooms of plastic balls.
He met me after my hard but spiritually fulfilling shift at Amoeba Music Hollywood, waiting out the last few minutes of my shift by browsing the clearance section of soundtracks, where he found two items that made him squeal like a flame-covered, 500 pound, chocolate gorilla who sounded like a happy little girl: the soundtrack to the film Kill the Moonlight (which features some very early work by Beck), and to the documentary King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters.
The latter was serendipitous, as it was related to his arcade quest. In fact, he was traveling with a copy of that very film and insisted I watch it with him. I told him he wasn’t the boss of me and I can do whatever I want and I hate I hate him I hate him, then we drove back to my place for a home-cooked dinner of gimlets.
Just like Ma used to make!
I introduced him to the refined art of Tom of Finland, who’s work is so lovingly collected in my Taschen art book. He found it deeply educational and oftentimes frightening. Imagine my embarrassment when, half way through flipping through the book, I realized it was a souvenir photo album of my trip to the Anne Frank House! A common mistake, sure, but no less silly.
Puzzler: Can you tell which one is which?
After half an hour of explaining to him the difference between gay sex and the methodical genocide of six million people, we decided to go to bed.
r, which will then be embedded on Youtube. Sounds like a publicity stunt to me-- somebody’s making some cash off of this unholy union. Oddly enough, I might just be right for a change; rumor has it that Sony is currently developing a Ghostbusters 3 for a 2012 release. Spengler, Stantz, Venkman, and Zeddemore! ... I just hope it's better than the sequel, and I hope to hell all the original actors return. Who are you going to call but the original crew ... in fact I’ll take it a step further, I want Larry King, Joe Franklin and Casey Kasem making cameos again.
