The Dissociated Evil Impulse

My friend Ken made this:




"It has always been recognized that if you split Being down the middle, if you insist on grabbing this without that, if you cling to the good without the bad, denying the one for the other, what happens is that the dissociated evil impulses, now evil in a double sense, returns to permeate and possess the good and turn it into itself."
-R.D. Laing

Roger Ebert Reviewed My Video

"There's a lot of love in that video."

- Roger Ebert - The King of All Film Critics - December 10, 2010 8:49 PM (look in the comments section of his blog post)

The Double Dare Story - 1/11/1987

My father grew up with Geraldine Bond Laybourne, who was the President/CEO of Nickelodeon Television in the 1980's. When I was eleven years old and my brother was eight, she sent us tickets to see a taping of Double Dare. Somehow, my mother got us a day off of school and she drove us down to Philadelphia to see this:







I shouted out "Harvey!" at the top of my lungs. This picture doesn't capture it, but he was annoyed! Harvey was the announcer of the show, very much beloved by me and by many kids of my generation.



And here is the host of the show, Marc Summers. Years later, he was in the news talking about having OCD, and I often wondered if this story had something to do with it. Did it make him worse? Was he trying to repress this memory as much I had tried to? I don't know. But Marc Summers  was the host of Double Dare, one of the biggest kids game shows of all time.



It was a kid's dream come true! Before the big obstacle course event at the end of one of the episodes (we saw four being taped), Marc goes into the audience and talks to some of the excited kids in the audience. He picked me! I was so excited!



But then things got ugly...

Of all the questions that the host of the most popular kids game show in America could ask me, he asked me if I had a boyfriend. He slipped. He made a mistake. But the damage was done...



I was a weird kid in the 80's. These were the days of "Nerds" and "Geeks" and "Dweebs" and John Landis movies. I was teased more than most, I fear. Of all the questions in the world he could ask me, why did he ask me if I had a boyfriend? I asked myself that question many times over the years. And I never really talked to anyone about being on everyone's favorite show, at least not until several years had separated me from the pain and humiliation.

I'm not homophobic now. I wasn't homophobic then. This has nothing to do with homophobia. I was just pissed that Marc Summers gave all of the 'popular kids' in school a reason to tease me. Yeah, it had a lot to do with pride and ego, but hey...I was eleven years old. Forgive me, please.

Well that's another amazing story from the life of the current King of Funny Faces.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Warm Regards,

Erik B. Anderson
Independence Township, New Jersey, USA
Established 1782

UPDATE:

TheMainMeal on Miserable Men Show - 9/12/2010

I saw this hilarious video yesterday. It was so good that I posted it on a few of my friends' facebook pages.



One of those friends is Sirius/XM Radio Personality Shuli Egar. I had a feeling he would like it, so  I decided to listen to the Miserable Men Show on Howard 101, hoping there might be a chance to hear it. And they did.

I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time. My neck was hurting.

Erik Hung Out With Tom Hayden

In the Fall of 2003, Tom Hayden spoke at West Chester University as part of a book tour. His autobiography, Rebel, was being reissued. He spoke about a lot of things. Being there with Martin Luther King, Jr., organizing a number of Demonstrations in Chicago in 1968, starting the Peace Corps, how he was supporting Howard Dean for President. After his speech was over, I introduced myself, saying I was the President of the College Democrats and here are my friends. He was so relieved. It was not a big crowd that night, and he didn't want to go back to his hotel, so we hung out in Asplundh Hall for about two hours.



He talked about how he liked the show 24, and where he was on 9/11 (in a hospital bed recovering from heart surgery). I told him I actually owned the book he wrote about Zapatistas and I was dumbstruck because I didn't even know he was the author. Then, much like I did when I talked to Ann Rule, I could feel my heart drop to the floor with a thud when I told him I didn't even read it, that it was at the bottom of a box somewhere in my storage shed. He comforted me, though. He said, "It's okay. That's where books are supposed to go!" I was taken aback, but I was still ashamed. I showed him a trick with a 20 dollar bill that he had never shown anybody. I pretty much shocked the room when I made the 20 dollar bill look like an airplane.

Tom Hayden was just fun to hang out with. He was a lot different than William F. Buckley, Jr., who was a total jerk to me in that same building seven years before. I wish Tom Hayden could have had as big an audience as Buckley did. What's funny is: I don't remember talking about the protest I organized there with Tom. Maybe I was too scared. It was a dark period in my life. I'll never make that mistake again.

I hope I can see him again someday. He's still very active today. Check out his own biography.

Erik Met Kofi Awoonor - Poet, UN Ambassador

Formerly known as George Awoonor-Williams, Prof. Kofi Awoonor is one of the most celebrated Ghanaian and African writers. A poet, novelist and critic, Awoonor was born in 1935 and educated at the University of Ghana, the University of London, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he bagged a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature.

Former Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Stony Brook, and Head, Department of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Cape Coast, South Africa, he has served as Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and Ghana's representative at the United Nations. He was awarded the National Book Council Award for poetry in 1979.

MORE: Wikipedia

MORE: "What, then, is the way forward?"

"The words of FDR have never rung more true." -Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey

Host of a nationally syndicated radio program discussing personal finance topics. Strongly emphasizes reducing, avoiding, and eliminating debt.

He also writes books, holds seminars and has a show on the Fox Business Channel.

Find out more about Dave. Your life might bet better.

http://www.daveramsey.com/

The King Helped "the best True Crime writer of all time" in 2002.

After I did what I could for Ms. Rule, I told her that I had read one of her books. When she asked me what I thought, I began to cry because I hadn't been able to finish it. She told me I should "finish it!"

I'm happy to say that I did finally finish The Stranger Beside Me in June. It's a difficult book to read, but definitely worth it. Her thesis statement is based on Hamlet's To Be or Not to Be, which as you know, is my favorite scene to act out.

Warm Regards,

Erik B. Anderson
The King of Funny Faces
Independence Township, New Jersey
Established 1782

EBA vs. WFB, Jr.: "This is the reason America will never get anywhere."

When he was but a prince, The King of Funny Faces asked William F. Buckley, Jr. a question when he came to speak at West Chester University, April 1996:  "What is your stand on the "Timber Salvage Rider?"

The father of modern conservatism rolled his eyes, and a room full of two-hundred rich white people with nice watches and BMW's shouted at the King of Funny Faces. They screamed "Go home!" "Why don't you get out of here!" and worse. The King was scared.

When William F. Buckley, Jr. spoke, he said, "The world is a giant ashtray we put things into..." and then gestured as if to extinguish as cigarette out on the podium.


Click on image to read full article.

Then he said something about, "I question the juvenile nature of people who treat all animals as pets," but the Timber Salvage Rider wasn't about animals, it was about trees.


Click on image to read the full article.

That summer, the King of Funny Faces spent two weeks (one in June and one in July) aggressively lobbying over 200 Congressional offices to repeal the Timber Salvage Rider with a group of activists from all over the country (mostly the Pacific Northwest) led by Former Congressman Jim Jontz of Indiana. The head of the Forest Service gave the King of Funny Faces a dirty look at a Congressional hearing at which only one dissenting voice against the Timber Salvage Rider spoke, and he sat right next to the Secretary of Agriculture in his conference room in the Department of Agriculture Building.

It was a good time, but it was bittersweet. Not only did the King of Funny Faces find out that his cat died on the last day of his first trip to D.C. We ended up losing the vote by the closest margin possible, two votes! The final tally was 211-209. It was a very sad time for us, and for the trees and wildlife that depend on the trees in areas that now look like this.

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