NEW YEAR CHEER

ADVENTURES IN SCAM BAITING, PT. III:

ROWSDOWER. ZAP ROWSDOWER.

This scam bait is an eclectic hodge podge of themes: Mystery Science Theater 3000, Led Zeppelin, Brett Kavanaugh, Lorenzo Lamas, Pauly Shore, and The Red Green Show, to name a few. I don't plan these out in advance, I just go with the shit that pops into my head when I'm messaging with these morons. Spontaneity is the spice of life. (So is variety, I guess.) 

This guy puzzled me, because he seemed to be a native English speaker and his grammar didn't make my brain all hurty. That's faint praise, but still, he was something of a rarity. 

Zap Rowsdower is a character from The Final Sacrifice, a Canadian film that was riffed by the guys on Mystery Science Theater back in the '90s. The movie is a big steaming pile of poo until about 25 minutes in, when Zap Rowsdower shows up. Then, it becomes awesome. (Plot in a nutshell: nerdy kid finds out his dead father was in a cult, cult comes after nerdy kid, nerdy kid meets Zap Rowsdower, a mustachioed, beer swilling, bemulleted drifter and he and nerdy kid battle the cult and discover shit, blah blah blah.) But ladies and gentlemen, Zap Rowsdower is the true reason for the season.

OMG, some awesome MST3K fan made a Rowsdower action figure. 

Is it too late to add this to my Christmas list?  

The guy compliments me on my beautiful name. I should've just said my full first name was Zap, but I feminized it to Zapressa (which is a name that actually exists, according to the internet).

Below: Zeppelin song lyrics: "I come from the land of the ice and snow....." If I'd quoted lyrics from some Ariana Grande Latte song (do her songs even have lyrics?) he'd probably catch on, but he's too dumb to recognize Zeppelin. My youngest nephew is well-versed in Led Zeppelin, and he was born in 2002. I thought Zeppelin was just part of the collective consciousness by now?

Yes, "Over the Hills and Far Away," another Zeppelin song dumbass! I guess he's too busy pretending to be taken with my name to notice. 

I had to throw in some references to Rowsdower's love of beer. It's a running joke in the MST3K episode. 

Above: a mashup. "I wonder if there's beer on the sun," (a Rowsdowerism from the show), and "Yes, we drank beer. My friends and I, the boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer." I'm quoting that bitchy old boozebag Brett Kavanaugh, of course.

Below: yes, The Festival of Trout, that sacred Canadian holiday. I almost wrote The Festival of Flannel, but I thought that would sound too ridiculous. He probably wouldn't have noticed.  

Above: somewhere in Hollywood, Lorenzo Lamas is beaming with pride at being called the greatest actor alive today, because that sentence has never been written until now. 

Below: I hope the guy just consulted imdb.com and didn't really know all those Lorenzo Lamas movie titles by heart. My Grease joke sailed right over his head, anyway; Lorenzo Lamas played a big dumb football player who didn't have any lines. 

Below: The cultural impact of Pauly Shore movies in the late 20th century. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty proud of that one. 

Above: UGH, Liberty University? If you're not familiar, it's a Christian college founded by Jerry fucking Falwell, which tells you all you need to know about it. I don't understand, the guy's an internet scammer, he could've claimed to be an alumnus of any college. Why not some Ivy League establishment, if he's trying to sound impressive? 

Above: thanks for the sermon, freak. Just my luck, I get a scammer who's also a God-botherer?

Below: More Zeppelin lyrics in response to his "are you married?" question. Again, it's a question that could be answered with a minimal amount of digging on my Instagram, but the guy's too lazy. Ah well, Zap Rowsdower likes to be mysterious anyhoo.

Below: I'm starting to get tired of the guy, so I try to provoke him. I was actually impressed by his English skills, though, so that comment was genuine. His spelling sucks ass, but I guess you can't have it all. (Again, faint praise, but English as a first language is uncommon among these dickheads.)

Below: has he not been paying attention? Zap Rowsdower is as Canadian as it gets!

Above and Below: asking me about kids. Dude, I'm 45 years old. If I wanted kids, I'd have procreated a long, long time ago. It's not like I never had any chances. And for the record I DO like kids, I have stepchildren and stepgrandchildren and nieces and nephews and I adore them all. And it's not limited to kids I'm related to through blood or marriage, either. I've babysat many times for friends who have kids, and I happened to love it. In fact, I was just talking to a friend from Minneapolis about babysitting her daughters (aged 4 and 6 at the time), and all the fun we had singing songs and making up dances and running outside to meet the ice cream truck. (Those kids are in high school now, unbelievably. Where does the time go?)

Oh yeah, I got him to chat about music. One Direction and Maroon 5? No wonder he didn't know any Zeppelin. He listens to musical diarrhea.

I listed all Canadian bands as my favorites, because why not, eh? Fun fact: I actually saw two of those artists in concert back in the '80s. Can you guess which ones? Bet you can't! ;-)  

A few days passed between the messages above and below. I'd all but forgotten about the guy, and then he messages me with some more bullshit.

Obviously, I was no longer in the mood to entertain his ridiculousness with fake answers. So I cut the crap and started asking him some questions. 

Below: oopsie, did I hit a nerve? I think maybe I did. So this is where it ends. The dream of Lorenzo and Zap is no more. I decided to close it out with some Rowsdower humor and, lastly, a quote from the Canadian national treasure that is Red Green. 

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RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY:

"LIGHTS OUT! UH HUH!"

It's too bad this song doesn't get more love. I remember it being a big hit on the radio and MTV, although according to Billboard it only peaked at #24 on the Hot 100. The problem may have been that "Dancing in the dark," (the song's refrain) happened to be the title of another song that was also in heavy rotation during the summer of '84. You know the one. I will say that Peter Wolf's dancing is--ahem--pretty much on par with Bruce's (i.e. not very good), but Peter gets points for at least throwing in a few spins.  

"Lights Out" has been on my mind a lot since John hooked up the Amazon Echo to our new living room lamp. See, now instead of reaching over to pull the chain, I have to say "Alexa, lights out" (or on) and the device complies. John loves it because it's all space age and he's a techie. I'm more of a tactile type, so I've had some trouble remembering to keep my hands off the chain in order for the lamp to stay in sync with the commands. But my learning curve has had the added bonus of reminding me of this song, because every time I talk to the lamp, I hear "Lights out! Uh huh! Blast, blast, blast!" playing in my head. Weirdly enough, when I try to get Alexa to play "Lights Out," she pleads ignorance, telling me she can't find it. Thankfully, YouTube usually comes through in situations like these.

   

Of course, Peter Wolf is better known as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band. I like their work, but it's a bummer that most people only seem to remember them for "Centerfold." Personally, I much prefer "Freeze Frame." It's way more fun, and I adore that wacky ass video, a shining example of early MTV at its finest. But most people only know "Centerfold." Tragic. 

During the past week that I've been listening to "Lights Out," I recalled a few odd facts about Peter Wolf that I had to Google to make sure I was remembering correctly. The first is that he was roommates with filmmaker David Lynch in college. David didn't care much for Peter, because he found him too weird. Seriously! I mean, what a freaky badge of honor to be too weird for David Lynch. 

  

Another awesome Peter Wolf factoid is that he was once married to Faye Dunaway. Yes, Peter Wolf and Mommie Dearest were married! 

Don't make her angry. You wouldn't like her when she's angry.

Actually, they looked surprisingly good together, like your typical kooky bohemian '70s celebrity couple. 

I'm kinda digging the facial hair.

But they were only married from 1974 to 1979, which means they'd split up by the time Faye starred in Mommie Dearest. However, that does mean they were together when Faye made the epic campfest The Eyes of Laura Mars in 1978. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor, 'cause it's a real hoot. You got a bunch of generic disco-era fashion models getting all nekkid and murdered, you have Tommy Lee Jones sporting David Cassidy hair, Faye runs through a warehouse shrieking "Donaaaaaaaald!" about 75 times, and Raul Julia hams it up with lines like "Ah, but YOU! Instant star in the world of chic!"

No decade did camp quite like the '70s.

But this is about Peter, not his ex. And Peter's pretty awesome. This is another forgotten gem, the title track from his 1987 album, Come As You Are. The video is similar to Janet Jackson's "When I Think of You," made to look like one long continuous shot, peppered with a few disguised edits to maintain the flow. Also, Peter appears to be hopping through the set of The Truman Show, a film that wouldn't be released for another 11 years. He was ahead of his time, that Peter Wolf.

  

ADVENTURES IN SCAM BAITING, PT. II: 

THE LEGEND OF BALLSACK GIRL

Well, at least he's not pretending to be Rod Stewart, but he's still a trolling POS. 

This one messaged me out of the blue under the pretext of "Nice Guy looking for love." If you haven't seen my Instagram--and there's not much reason for you to follow it unless you know me in real life--it's just photos of my cats, John and me, and whatever else I feel like posting. This guy obviously didn't look at my Instagram before messaging me, which is typical; I've deduced that most scammers just message several random women without looking at their profiles, then wait to see who bites. Lucky for robert_paul124, it was me. 

This is where I decided the theme for this one would be lyrics to John Mellencamp's Small Town, hence my name-checking Seymour, Indiana. 

It's pretty clear from my Instagram pics that I'm married. Lazy ass can't even be bothered to check. But whatever, I'll play along with some confusing responses. 

I think this asshat just copied and pasted a bunch of words. That's still no excuse for that hideous sentence structure.

Below: yes, I used "Nail Polish Tester" as my job title again. I pulled that out of my ass, thinking it couldn't possibly be a real job. Then I Googled it and turns out that it actually is, according to spammy clickbait site Mashable. 

ALSO, note that he claims to be a badass bomb disposal specialist in the army. What is it with these jackasses pretending to be in the military? 

Yes, I have a special man, you nipplehead. He's called MY HUSBAND and if you'd bothered to scroll down on my Insta, you'd see the evidence. And nice question about whether I rent or own. That's not obvious at all. 

Below: buckle up for the best part, "I invented Post-Its"! It's a reference to Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, because that movie is fabulous as all hell and I happen to love it. 

If you haven't seen it, a bit of background: Romy and Michele are two ditsy L.A. girls who travel to their hometown for their 10 year high school reunion. At the last minute, they decide their lives are not cool enough to impress the popular douchebags who harassed them back in the day, so they cook up a story about how they invented Post-It notes and (presumably) became multi-millionaires. No one at the reunion buys it, of course, but the girls still triumph in the end, and it's awesome. There's also some flashback scenes with everyone sporting hilarious '80s hair and clothes, an insane dream sequence, and a choreographed dance to Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."

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Word to the wise: never trust anyone who can't have fun watching Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. 

And now, back to our story.

And here are some more Mellencamp "Small Town" references. I love the notion of someone becoming hugely rich off their invention and choosing to stay in a cow town like Seymour, IN. "Welcome to my estate. It's so peaceful here, most days you can barely smell the hog farms! Would you like to see the tennis courts?" 

There are some quaint, picturesque towns in Indiana--Ferdinand, for example, and James Dean's hometown of Fairmount--but Seymour ain't one of them.

***BTW, that song is misleading, because Mellencamp didn't stay there as the lyrics imply. I know he's got a place outside Bloomington, Indiana, and probably Beverly Hills or somewhere, too, but not Seymour. But anyway....

"Dancing to the oldest music." Yeah, I don't know what the fuck he means by that, but it gave me something to riff on.

Re: "Shadow Chant" below--that was an autocorrect gaffe--the oldest known song is actually the "Shaduf Chant." I learned this from Duran Duran's "Planet Earth" video. (Everything I needed to know, I learned from Duran Duran.) 

Sure, Wayne Newton, Nine Inch Nails, and The Osmonds. I'm wasting all my smartass answers on this guy, he's not even reading them. 

Asking for a photo of me because, AGAIN, he hasn't looked at my photos on Instagram. That's really a good thing, though. I don't think I want him rooting around in there.

So I Googled "weird model photos" and found this meme:

I cropped out the poor girl's hair, trying to make it look like a "selfie" (although it still doesn't look like a selfie, the angle is all wrong). 

And here's where the story ends. He never replied after seeing this pic, like he's too good for Ballsack Girl? It's not her fault some asshole hairstylist decided to give her that nasty 'do for a runway show. I feel strangely protective of Ballsack Girl. Sure, her hair sucks but she's got nice skin and her bone structure is poppin'.

I got news for robert_paul124. Ballsack Girl wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. She is still miles out of your league, with or without ballsack hair. Besides, she heard from her sister's ex-boyfriend's brother that you have gross backne and your breath smells like French onion soup. 

So there. 

Oh yeah, this is also the point where I blocked this guy and reported him for spam, natch. 

***OMG, you guys, I just remembered that John Mellencamp is dating Meg Ryan. What a weird, random celebrity coupling that is, no? Although, I can see their '80s versions hooking up: 

Oh yeah, DEFINITELY.