Baron Ambrosia

Those of you outside of the NYC/Metro area may not have heard of Baron Ambrosia. Hell, I live nearby and I had never heard of him until Wednesday night.  Now...everything has changed.

Who is he? Well, he's the screen alter-ego of NY filmmaker Justin Fornal. What is he? That's a much harder question to answer. Equal parts pimp, vampire, Anthony Bourdain, Kid Rock and William Shatner.  He hosts a cooking/travel show called Bronx Flavor on local public-access television.  A "quaffer of culinary consciousness" as he likes to say. It's kind of like "No Reservations", but with much shittier production values, campy bits and the Baron's odd and over-the-top voice-over.

I may get sick of it very quickly, but it also may be MY FAVORITE TELEVISION PROGRAM OF ALL-TIME!!!  And I've only seen one episode so far!

Check it out on the website for full episodes. All I can think of is that line in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about Dr. Gonzo.

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." - Raoul Duke

Here's a clip of the opening credits. It's just...so odd. I can't look away.  

Lucky Number

I deal in coincidence all the time. Sometimes I even dabble in deja vu or "holy crap, did that just happen?" stuff.

Yesterday was one of those latter instances...to the nth degree. I usually work with Pandora radio going in the background, as I've mentioned before. And yesterday was no exception. I also take a bunch of mini-breaks during the day to catch up on the stuff in my feed reader. Yesterday was no exception there either.

I was doing that, reading White Rabbit's latest blog post about Bob Marley, This is England and ska. He even embedded a ska classic, 54-46 (That's My Number) by Toots & the Maytals. This one here:

Not a song that comes along in my life very often. If I wound up hearing it later this week or found myself reading an article about Toots Hibbert next month sometime, I would think to myself "Wow...that's weird. White Rabbit recently posted something about that song." I would find it odd because neither the song nor the artist come up that often in my life.

But as I was reading this particular blogpost, something was striking me as familiar. So I looked up at the TV (that's how I listen to Pandora) and I saw and heard "5446 That's My Number/Ball and Chain" by Sublime. A remake of the same song that White Rabbit posted on his blog.

Randomly playing on Pandora.

AT THE SAME EXACT TIME AS I WAS READING THE BLOG POST!!!

That, my friends, is some freaky cosmic shit.

I don't play the lottery all that often, besides the occasional Quick Pick when the jackpot reaches 9 digits. And I never play "the numbers". Pick 4 or whatever it is that it's called.

But I'm playing 5446 tomorrow. Oh yeah.

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. Right now, somebody else has that number.

Cosmic Coincidence

So, do you remember how I said that in 2010 I was gonna try to read a bunch of Hugo Award-winning novels that I had never gotten around to reading in the past? Sure you do. Well I finally started yesterday. Picked up a copy of "The Forever War", the 1976 winner by Joe Haldeman. I had never heard of the novel or the author before combing through the list of award winners for that post.  But it seemed like a good starting point for my literary quest.

And do you remember my post from earlier this week in which I talked about the Epsilon Aurigae binary star system and your mother?  Sure you do.  Well I had never heard of that solar system until I read about it and its eclipse period on some geek website that I often peruse.  It intrigued me enough to write a post about it.

Alright...think about those two separate posts written just days apart for a moment.  Then I'd like for you to imagine my surprise when I read that the conscripted genius soldiers of Haldeman's novel were heading to a planet in the star system...that's right...Epsilon Aurigae!

What kind of crazy coincidence is that?  I mean, I pick up a book that is almost 40 years old...out of the blue...and it mentions an obscure star system that I had just heard of for the first time only a couple of days before?  That's fucking crazy!

So I'm gonna start thinking real hard about tonight's winning lottery numbers.  Ya know, just in case.

PS - Oh, and I added a widget on my sideboard to track my progress. I'll cross each book off as I read them. Maybe I'll even post about the good ones. And I already shortened the list by one title. I already read "Startide Rising" by David Brin, but I had forgotten.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Honestly, shit like this happens to me all the time.