Category Archives: Books Music Movies & Entertainment

Book reviews, music news, movie trailers, and other entertainment.

Odd Disappearances

Odd Disappearances in the woods

Missing-411 is the first comprehensive book about people who have disappeared in the wilds of North America. It’s understood that people routinely get lost, some want to disappear but this story is about the unusual. Nobody has ever studied the archives for similarities, traits and geographical clusters of missing people, until now.

A tip from a national park ranger led to 3+ years and a 7000 hour investigative effort into understanding the stories behind people who have vanished. The book chronicles children, adults and the elderly who disappeared, sometimes in the presence of friends and relatives. As Search and Rescue personnel exhaust leads and places to search, relatives start to believe kidnappings and abductions have occurred. The belief by the relatives is not an isolated occurrence; it replicates itself time after time, case after case across North America.

Missing 411 bookThe research depicts 28 clusters of missing people across the continent, something that has never been exposed and was a shocking find to researchers. Topography does play a part into the age of the victims and certain clusters have specific age and sex consistency that is baffling. This is not a phenomenon that has been occurring in just the last few decades, clusters of missing people have been identified as far back as the 1800’s.

Author David Paulides detailed the story of a two-year-old boy named Keith Parkins, who vanished near Umatilla National Forest. The child would eventually be found an astounding 12 miles away after being gone for only 19 hours. The journey, Paulides said, would require the toddler to venture over two mountain ranges, as well as fences, creeks, and rivers. The case, he revealed, is just one of many where children disappear and are later found “several hundred percent” outside of the grid system carefully designed by search and rescue teams.

The manuscript for the research was extremely large so the story was split between two books, Missing 411 Western United States and Canada and Missing 411 Eastern United States. The Eastern version will be released in late March and will include a list of all missing people in each edition and a concluding chapter that draws both books together for conclusions.

Some of the issues that are discussed in each edition:

• The National Park Service attitude toward missing people

• How specific factors in certain cases replicate themselves in different clusters

• Exposing cases involving missing children that aren’t on any national database

• Unusual behavior by bloodhounds/canines involved in the search process

• How storms, berries, swamps, briar patches, boulder fields and victim disabilities play a role in the disappearance

• The strategies of Search and Rescue personnel need to change under specific circumstances

(Information via author site and CoasttoCoastAM)

Monday Music Rewind: Dramarama

DramaramaDramarama is a Los Angeles, California-based alternative rock/power pop band. The band was formed in New Jersey in 1982 and disbanded in 1994. “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You)” is a 1985 song by the alternative rock band Dramarama released as the first single from their debut album Cinéma Vérité. The single was featured on the Nightmare on Elm Street 4 soundtrack and is one of the most requested songs in the history of Los Angeles radio station KROQ. Download it here.

The band formally reunited in 2003 following an appearance on VH1’s Bands Reunited reality show and consists of all original founding members. They will be releasing a new album this year.

I’ll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills…

Video clips of people biting it on treadmills

Watching people get owned by exercise equipment is a great way to kick off the work week. I hope the pain and humiliation from these videos makes you feel better about yourself. 🙂 Oh, and if you like the song that accompanies this video, you can download it here.


(via Irene’s Internet)

Hunger Games movie announcement

An entertaining way to deal with limited tickets for The Hunger Games movie (and a favorite method for thinning out the Twilight herd).

hunger games
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The Marshall Amp Mini-Fridge

Marshall soon will be selling a fridge that looks like a guitar amp stack (and yes it goes to eleven). According to the Marshall Fridge’s website, the product won’t be available until October and will cost roughly $300. Other Marshall gear can be found here.

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Related: An awesome guitar shop storefront made to look like a Fender amp.

Carol Kaye

Carol Kaye (born March 24, 1935) is an American musician, best known as one of the most prolific and widely heard bass guitarists in history, playing on an estimated 10,000 recording sessions (bands and TV theme songs) in a 55 year career. Here are some of the acts she’s worked with.

The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, The Doors, Ritchie Valens, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Sonny & Cher, Joe Cocker, Barbra Streisand, Ray Charles, Frank Zappa, Ike & Tina Turner, Johnny Mathis, Simon & Garfunkel, The Righteous Brothers, The Marketts, Herb Alpert, The Buckinghams, Paul Revere & The Raiders, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Monkees, Buffalo Springfield, Joe Pass.

Carol Kaye bass instruction materials here.

On the set of Jaws

These photos give a rare look behind the scenes of a movie that was blamed for ruining tourism in many parts of the U.S. during the summer of 1975. Buy the Jaws (Two-Disc 30th Anniversary Edition) here.

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Movie trailer: Prometheus

Here is the trailer for Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated Alien prequel.

Plot summary:

As two superpowers fight each other on Earth for the remaining natural resources throughout the solar system, a giant spaceship, known as the Prometheus, is sent to the distant planet of Erix to terraform the world, but problems arise when the crew discover the uninhabitable planet’s indigenous life of bio-mechanoid killers.

The movie is set to be released on June 8th.

(via)

Monday Music Rewind: Material Issue

Jim Ellison pictured far right

The band Material Issue formed in 1985. In early 1991, Material Issue broke onto the national scene with their debut album International Pop Overthrow (IPO) which sold over 300,000 copies. In the summer of 1995 the band co-headlined the first Edgefest in Somerset, Wisconsin (named for its sponsor, Minneapolis alternative radio station 93.7 The Edge). Material Issue was the brainchild of frontman Jim Ellison, who also played guitar, sang lead vocals, and wrote most Material Issue songs. The band came to a tragic and sudden end when Ellison committed suicide on June 20, 1996 by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. No one knows for sure why he did it but the loss of their record label in 1995 as well as an end to a long term relationship were rumored to be contributing factors. A suicide note was found by police, but the contents of that note remain known only to Ellison’s family. Because of this suicide, we may never know what this band could have accomplished. Here are two of my favorite songs from the Modern Rock era that Material Issue gave us. Buy them here.


Monday Music Rewind: Fury in the Slaughterhouse

Fury in the slaughterhouseFury in the Slaughterhouse was a German rock band founded in 1987 and broke up in 2008. In 1993, the band had its first international success with the hit Every Generation got its own Disease from the album Mono. This is one of the great lost songs from the 1990s. The haunting undertones and lyrics are still relevant today. You can buy the song and the album here.

Related:
Monday Music Rewind: Imperial Drag “Boy or a Girl”
Monday Music Rewind: Ginuwine – Pony
Monday Music Rewind: Grant Lee Buffalo
Monday Music Rewind: School of Fish
Monday Music Rewind: Gino Vannelli – Wild Horses