Dust Devil Dreams and Visions

OKLAHOMA CITY –   Just last night, I was researching background on a band I liked in college named Dillon Fence. They were a likable, indie-rock outfit out of North Carolina. I caught them in early ’93 when they played the Georgia Theatre in Athens with Dreams So Real. While researching Dillon Fence, I learned that Dillon Fence and the lead singer, Greg Humphreys, contributed music to a low-budget horror film titled Immortal . While the movie apparently was seen by maybe two people in 1995, the synopsis on IMDB is interesting. A rock guitarist discovers he’s a vampire – and immortal – and he is struggling to understand his bloodlust. There are plot issues related to a mysterious pocket watch and a train crash. The audience is essentially told that the guy – named “Dex Dregs” – can’t die and quits his band, playing the streets for loose change. A rather sad story, really. He is immortal but essentially miserable. Oh, and Dillon Fence? I listened to their best album, Rosemary...

OKLAHOMA CITY – A few days ago I attended a college football game in Norman between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Kansas State Wildcats. I am not a big college football fan, but I was able to get tickets that allowed me to stand on the field behind the goal posts – down amidst the action. Someone with me noted that country music superstar and Sooners fan Toby Keith was standing in front of us. And sure enough, he was. I could tell he was not too happy about his team’s lackluster performance. I began to think back 20 years – to 2002 – when Toby Keith released the jingoistic hit “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American)” where he was able to boil down the sentiments of many Americans in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. It was the opening song on his album Unleashed . Back in the summer of 2002, when the album was released, there was a lot of hubbub about the song, which featured the line “ we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way .” To...

  OKLAHOMA CITY – Back in late 1998, I was sleeping in my lonely apartment in Waxahachie, Texas, when I was startled awake by a loud explosion outside. I peeked outside. Seeing nothing, I went back to my bed and laid down for a bit until it was time to get up and get ready for work at my low-paying job as a newspaper reporter for The Waxahachie Daily Light. Going to my desk later that morning I mentioned the explosion to my editor. He didn’t know anything about it. So, I called up the local police department and I was told that action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme was in town and they were filming scenes for his next film: Universal Soldier: The Soldier , the third in the series. It was being filmed in the Super Conducting Supercollider site that had been abandoned a few years earlier. The project was moved to the French/Swiss border where CERN and the Large Hadron Collider are now located, looking for the “God particle” and bosons and so forth. Specifically, the Universal Sol...

  OKLAHOMA CITY – I am only vaguely familiar with the video game Minecraft . I know it is popular with kids and I recall seeing a Minecraft T-shirt a few weeks ago and wondering about it. After a little research, I learned that Minecraft was launched in November 2011 (11/11) and would go on to become the best-selling video game of all time. Essentially, players So, it was interesting that I had a dream involving a tool that Minecraft players can put together, called a “golden hoe.” Now, I am not sure if the “golden hoe” in Minecraft – which is created by using two sticks and two gold ingots – is the “golden hoe” in my dream, but it is interesting to learn more about it, as it is created to help survive in that blocky, online world. Although some players consider the golden hoe to be largely useless. Anyway, in my “golden hoe” dream, I am in a Los Angeles-esque residential neighborhood. It reminds me of the neighborhoods that Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) visits over the co...

  OKLAHOMA CITY – Walking this morning I searched for the Moon. I did not see it, but I did see it last night and was thinking about it. The Moon has been on my mind quite a bit lately. After all, efforts are being made in recent days to send NASA’s Artemis 1 to the Moon, complete with a mannequin named “Moonikin.” Sounds ritualistic to me, particularly when there have been a number of false starts. Which got me to thinking (after reading Christopher Knowles’ revelatory new post at The Secret Sun ) as I walked around the early morning dawn thinking about the synchromystic clues in yesterday’s reported death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 96 on the eve of the Harvest Moon . I am not going to delve into my personal feelings about Her Majesty (a short song about, well, you know, written by *cough* “Paul McCartney” for the Abbey Road tombstone. But we do know her husband, Price Phillip, repeatedly and gleefully said he would love to be reincarnated as a deadly virus and take...