THE BANGOR CHRONICLES: CHAPTER ONE

After a couple weeks embedded in the second biggest town in Maine, I have made some keen observations.

Bangor is the kind of town where:

.....all the half decent looking chicks are knocked up, and half the decent looking chicks are too.

.....EVERYBODY still smokes, but apparentely almost nobody showers.

.....every conversation on the bus is either about probation, child support payments, or a social security check.

.....people are small-town-nice, but still have a little bit of a New England chip on their shoulder.

.....you can still find a mailbox and a phone booth.

.....they don't have a rush hour.  It's more of a saunter hour.

.....welfare and disability are both considered viable career options.

.....everything is stuck 50 years ago.  Technology, social attitudes, vehicles, and (fortunately) prices.

.....there is still a video game arcade (look it up on Wikipedia if you've never heard of one) at the mall with a couple functioning pinball games.

.....a high school diploma still means something.

.....the most exciting thing that ever happened was when it burned down one hundred years ago.

.....you've never heard of it, but it pops up in songs all the time.  King of the Road, I've Been Everywhere to name a couple.

.....the most famous resident is the King of Horror (you can read more about Bangor in his books.  He calls it "Derry").

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

It's time for another installment of separated at birth, where we examine pictures of two people and try to determine if they are long lost twins.
Enjoy!

 Here is Aaron from Intervention.  He is a mixed martial arts fighter who started acting in pornos, then got addicted to meth and masturbating while watching porn (great episode).  The insert is his possible twin, actor Josh Brolin.

 On the left is Jenni Pujols from Flipping Out (hilarious show), and on the right is her identical twin Julia Louis Dreyfus.

 Here we have Sig Hansen from The Deadliest Catch, and his doppelganger Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players of all time.

I usually stick to reality shows for the celebrity look a likes, but there were a couple from the sports world that I couldn't ignore:

 Jim Carrey is coaching the Dallas Mavericks???!?

Little Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused grew up to be San Fransisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecom!

Stay tuned for more......

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS

I used to do a one line movie review blog called Cut to the Chase.  It was short lived, but fun.  I got the idea after reading a beautiful one word review in The Onion of the Eddie Murphy vehicle Boomerang (1992).  The review was simply "Boomerwrong."  That remains a classic, and inspired me to write concise, accurate, one line reviews.
Some of my favorites:

Momento (2000)  .movie cool fucking Pretty

The Pink Panther (2006)  This remake is an hour and a half of single entendres.

Minority Report (2002)  My only regret is that I have but two thumbs to give this movie down.

Unbreakable (2000)  Unbearable.

Bowfinger (1999)  Steve Martin's funny little flipping of the bird to Scientology and Anne Heche.

Some of my favorite guest posts:

Avatar (2009)  "Avatar blue."  -JJ Bowman (this one is meant to be said out loud)

2012 (2009)  "A touching story of the end of the world that helps an eight year old girl get over wetting the bed."  -J. Van Dreason

Chairman of the Board (1998)  "Chairman of the b-o-r-e-d!"  -Norm MacDonald  (Norm MacDonald was not actually a guest reviewer.  He said this on Letterman, so I stole it.)

Now that I live in a town with $6.25 matinees (you heard me right- first run movies, all shows, every day, before 6pm are $6.25!!) I'm going to be seeing a lot more movies.  Here are my one line reviews of the two most recent:

The Hangover 2 (2011)  Formula falls flat in Phillip's follow-up to phenomenal first film.

X-Men: First Class (2011)  This movie should have been called X-Men: Third Rate.  It was like the director ate every comic book and crappy movie cliche and then vomited them up on the screen in a huge technicolor yawn.

Feel free to comment with your own one line reviews......

THE ROAD TO BANGOR

On our journey through life there are many types of signs. They can be omens, harbingers, or foreshadowing of things to come. In the case of my journey to Bangor, they were actual, physical signs.


When I got on the small West's Coastal Bus, the driver informed us that there was a new policy. He even tapped one of the sheets of paper that were taped up all over the bus. They said "No food on bus and beavages in plastic containers only." I don't know what a "beavage" is, but I guess it doesn't mean what I assumed it meant, because what I was thinking of doesn't come in containers at all.


I saw a few more signs along the twisting Route 1, including no less than three stores that advertised "Welding and Live Bait." Apparently that's a popular combo down east.


There was a store in a strip mall called "The Libinski Dance Studio." Wishing it was called "The Big Libinski Dance studio" was hoping for too much I guess.


My favorite though, was a simple, crudely hand written sign stuck in somebody's yard that just said "guns wanted." Now there's a twist.


When I got to Bangor, the signs continued. I got on the Bangor Area Transit bus (BAT for short, and yes, they have a huge silhouette of a bat on the side of the bus). There was a sign that said "Floors slippery when wet" and had a hilarious stick figure that looked like it was jumping up and clicking it's heels together while simultaneously throwing it's arms out like a joyous Keith Haring painting on meth. Next to that was a sign that said "No talking to driver." People blatantly defied that one. Everyone seemed to know each other. Unfortunately, the bus smelled like stale cigarette smoke, booze, and body odor, in equal amounts. Maybe that was an omen of what kind of town Bangor was going to be.


It seems to be the kind of town where burnout kids still actually play hackeysack. It's one of the last places where there are mail boxes and phone booths. It's the kind of place where there is a crazed person on every corner just waiting for you to make eye contact so they can ask for money or try to sell you something (I'm a little disappointed that nobody has actually offered me anything. I must be getting old). It's the kind of town where I read this in the BAT brochure's FAQ:


Q: Can drivers accept personal checks?


A: Yes, please make them out to “BAT Community Connector.”


Personal checks?!?? On buses?!?? Where have I landed? What century is this?


I have to admit that after a couple days, the place is starting to grow on me. After all, the other day I saw The Hangover 2 for $6.25! I've already met the town crazy lady, who walks around downtown shouting gibberish and pantomiming in a strange mix of sign language and charades. She is a dead ringer for The Simpsons cat lady. In the land of the Bangor, the one toothed man is king, and I feel like a Nobel Prize winner in every category here. Just when I started feeling a little too cocky, I went to a wine tasting at a shop where I had applied for a job, and they were using Reidel glasses and had a well planned and executed flight of sophisticated wines. There are surprises around every corner.


Hopefully a sign of things to come.