The first movie to spoof slasher-horror flicks? It came out long before Scary Movie, Scream, or others that come to mind. In the early 80′s, a film by the name of Student Bodies hit theaters. Scenes from this movie would pop into my head occasionally over the years, but I always had difficulty remembering its name. Well here it is! I can distinctly remember watching this when it made it’s way to late-night HBO. Even with an on-screen murder count and its creative selection of weaponry (horsehead bookends anyone?), I guess this movie just wasn’t meant to stand the test of time. You still have to love a murderous psycho disguising his voice by talking through a rubber chicken. (And no, I’m not the person responsible for posting it on YouTube.)

Another fictional account of my time on the road. This fourth narrative was posted between the dates of Sep 29 – Oct 2, 2011 as I drove to Phoenix and back. I invented some very special characters to help me out (and also spent a great deal of time on the computer). Lots of technical questions were sent in via facebook, and that interaction was also quite enjoyable.

Step III – Get out on the road and… and… wait a minute. You know what? This hitchhiking thing is ridiculous. I own a car, so I’m just going to drive. No outrageous storyline, no goofy pictures, just regular documentation of a roadtrip through Arizona! Just a good old-fashioned trip where everything is good, everything makes sense, and nothing off-the-wall happens. For once.

Oh yeah! Nothing quite like the open road.

THREE!

Thanks for coming along everyone… see you next time!

At this point, I have set an expectation that all travel adventures will be accompanied by a simultaneous fictional storyline posted to facebook. At least it gives me something to think about while on the road. This third narrative was posted between the dates of June 18-25, 2011 as I drove to Myrtle Beach and back. This trip’s theme was a video-game storyline. I believe my original album title on facebook was something like “GTA 3 – Myrtle Beach”. I’m thinking I could have done a lot more with this one, but these evolve with the trip. Nothing is ever predictable. Once again, thanks to everyone who participated!

Bartles & Jaymes will need no introduction if you watched television in the mid-1980′s. How all of this ends up on YouTube, I’ll never know… but I’m glad it does. We thank you for your support.

Another flashback to the early days of MTV. The appearance of this video coincided with my first crush on a woman with a mohawk. Chance of this song getting stuck in my head? At least 80 percent.

When I was a kid, the silliness of Monty Python would make me laugh for hours on end (and I still find most of it pretty darn funny). The “Spanish Inquisition” episode was one that really stood out for me, and resulted in a new catch phrase being forever implanted in my vocabulary. Do I really need to say it?

Why this song suddenly popped into my head is beyond me. Released in 1990, the song is built over a collection of familiar classic-rock riffs and drum fills. I was glad I could find it on YouTube, but apparently I never saw the video before. To be honest, I find the video to be a distraction. It’s still a fun song.

And in my case, they stole voicemail passwords, too! OK, so maybe “steals” isn’t 100% accurate. We probably agreed to let Facebook do this when installing the app or clicking “Agree” for a software update. But this one definitely caught me off guard.

I saw a couple of status updates yesterday claiming “FACEBOOK HAS ALL OF YOUR CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS — EVEN THOSE WHO ARE NOT ON FACEBOOK”. I initially dismissed these as I normally do (thinking people were over-alarmist and had been duped by another status-update scam). Late in the day, though, I tried to disprove them by going through the motions, and, uhhhh… THEY WERE RIGHT! I was shocked.

Did you install a facebook app on your iPhone or Android device? From the standard web interface, click on Facebook’s “Account -> Edit Friends” menu entry. Then select “Contacts” from the far left-hand side of the page. I was quite surprised when I did this. There it was, staring back at me. *ALL* of the contact information from my smart phone.

Is this a big deal? Maybe not for some people. It is for me, though, since my contact list contains speed-dial entries with voicemail passwords. Facebook downloaded all of that. You would think Facebook would realize people might react strongly to this, and give us a major “heads up” before just doing it quietly behind the scenes.

I guess not.

Care to join me on Google+ yet?

For quite some time, I have wanted a method for pulling share-counts from facebook and Google+, and using them to identify the most “highly rated” posts on my site. Unfortunately, I was not savvy enough to figure it out on my own.

Imagine my pleasure upon finding the Most Shared Posts plugin for WordPress by Tom Anthony. It does exactly what I was looking for, and the setup couldn’t be any easier. Simply install the plugin, display the “Most Shared Posts” widget on your website, and you’re done! You should be able to see it in action on the right-hand side of this page.

Writing this post was more complicated than setting up the new plugin. Many thanks to Tom for making this available!

Flashback for today? Men At Work! I haven’t seen this in ages, and yet I still found myself anticipating the different facial expressions from each band member. Funny how these things can be burned into the back of your memory. Definitely an iconic video from the early days of MTV (when video-production budgets were an afterthought).