Steve Martin was a phenomenon in the seventies. He was everywhere. Audiences loved him. I was a fan, along with most everyone else in the world. To me, everything that came out of his skull was pure comedic genius. It’s interesting to look back on some of his work now. It still makes me chuckle, but I can’t say it brings the belly laughs that it used to. Consider his single, “King Tut”. I absolutely loved this song when it came out. Somehow it doesn’t have the same effect on me today. Still fun to revisit, though.

I recently came across the Postagram app by Sincerely, and was eager to give it a try.  The service makes it trivially easy to send a physical postcard through the US Mail, custom printed with a photo of your choosing.  It’s a neat idea.   Unfortunately, I am worried about what appears to be a trivially easy mechanism for a stalker/predator to trick people into giving up their physical street address.

Now, I really hope I’ve missed something here. But I experimented with it and was disturbed by what I found.  I started by creating an account on the Sincerely website. I was then given a chance to build my personal address book with which to send postcards to my friends… and this is where I started to get nervous.

One of the methods for doing this was by providing email addresses for each of my friends.  They, in turn, receive an email message from Sincerely on my behalf. They don’t receive any verifiable information at all in this message that truly indicates it is coming from me on the other side of the process. The email message looks like this:

When the user on the receiving end clicks the link in the email, they are directed to the following page on the Sincerely website:

I went through this process to send a message to another email address that I own.  On the receiving end, I filled in the relevant address information on the website and pressed the “Send Securely” button.  Sure enough, the original sender gets direct access to the street address in their online “Address Book” on the Sincerely website.

Does this raise red flags for anyone else?  A stalker needs only two pieces of information — your email address and the name of a person you trust — to effectively trick you into providing them with your home address.  Very disturbing in my eyes. Are your kids savvy enough to avoid this kind of internet deception?

It was the year 1987 when the world came to know the truth — Michael J. Fox has no Elvis in him! From the album Bo-Day-Shus!!! by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper. Hadn’t seen this video in years, but everything about it feels completely familiar. Poor quality video, but it’s still a keeper.

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.