north carolina

Chris Knight's avatar

Holy cow!! Now I have seen everything.

Years ago there was a local television station called WGGT Channel 48, broadcasting from Greensboro. This was back when unaffiliated stations were extremely independent in their programming and such. Well, WGGT might have been one of the last to have what many people will fondly remember as a “horror host”: a home-grown character who presented various scary movies and sci-fi flicks on Saturday afternoons.

Except that WGGT did things a little different. It’s “horror” host was a goofy redneck named Billy Bobb, and his show was called Billy Bobb’s Action Theatre.

And believe it or not, someone somewhere has a trove of old recordings of Billy Bobb from WGGT and is now putting them on YouTube.

Here’s a set of promos for Billy Bobb’s Action Theatre…

And here are some commercials featuring Billy Bobb for area businesses…

I wonder whatever happened ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Nestled away on a tree-lined side street in Durham, North Carolina is one of the most rollickin’ fun discoveries that I have made in recent months. And if you didn’t know that it was there or were searching it out already, you could easily overlook it. But that seems to be such with so many good things in life, like a hole-in-the-wall restaurant or small bookstore.

I first heard about Sci-Fi Genre late this past fall, mostly by word-of-mouth over the Internet. At the time I was getting back into playing BattleTech and was looking for someplace nearby that sold more of the miniatures. And more than a few times, Sci-Fi Genre kept coming up as a place that I should check out. So one Saturday afternoon I headed out east on I-40 and started seeking out this joint.

I have to admit: my first glimpse of the place was ...

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Some things in life are just too wonderful for words to do justice. But I’ll give it my best shot…

Take, f’rinstance, Jericho: The Promise Fulfilled, a 28-minute long film – done in stop-motion animation with LEGO bricks – about the fall of Jericho from the Book of Joshua in the Bible.

I first wrote about this movie a few weeks ago. And also about Anthony and Jessica Rondina: the brother/sister pair who have earned widespread praise and official acclaim for their work on the film. Well, after I posted that I got a really nice e-mail from Jessica Rondina letting me know that they would be hosting a free public screening of Jericho: The Promise Fulfilled at StoneBridge Church, their home church, on the evening of July 31st.

Now, some people might think it’s a bit crazy to drive two hours one-way just to see a ...

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I’m planning on being at HyperMind in Burlington, North Carolina tomorrow for most of the day, doing videography for their big Monsterpocalypse store-wide event but also gonna finally play this game for the first time ever. Here’s the promo video that I made for it (which is also in the Top Ten for the Monsterpocapalooza contest!)…

Anyhoo, the festivities start at 9 a.m. at HyperMind, located at 3396 South Church Street in Burlington, North Carolina. It’s a family-run store with great atmosphere and good people always stopping by to play Monsterpocalypse, Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars Miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons and just about everything else 🙂...

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They work with a medium found at any typical Toys R Us… but their vision is as grand as Cecil B. DeMille’s.

Anthony and Jessica Rondina are a talented brother/sister pair out of Huntersville, North Carolina that got into animation with a high school project. A few more films under their belt and now their feature Jericho: The Promise Fulfilled is sweeping up film festival prizes and earning the duo widespread acclaim! Christian-Movie.com interviews the Rondinas about their Gideon Production Group, how they animate with LEGO minifigures, their future projects and how they dedicate it all to God. And if you wanna see more of the Rondina pair’s awesome work, mash down here for their official website!...

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Last week this blog received a nice e-mail about Play! A Video Game Symphony. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a full symphony orchestra playing a selection of music from a variety of video games. The accompanying press release had details about the concert’s performance later on that weekend in Cary, North Carolina.

So on Saturday afternoon fellow blogger and gaming junky Matt Federico (who wore a t-shirt reading “I GAVE UP VIDEO GAMES and it was the worst 15 minutes of my life” for the occasion, and is a very cool guy even though he is dead wrong about daring to think that Fallout 3 is a bad game) and I high-tailed it to Cary and the Koka Booth Amphitheater there. There was even a very neat press pass waiting for me since I’m an established journalist by way of this blog! Kewl aye?

Well, that was still...

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Chris Knight's avatar

What? An orchestra playing a concert of music from a wide variety of video games? That’s exactly what PLAY! A Video Game Symphony is.

And it’s coming to the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area this Saturday, July 11th, courtesy of the North Carolina Symphony and the Concert Singers of Cary. The performance will be at the Koka Booth Amphitheater.

Here’s the e-mail that I received this afternoon from Lauren Trojan:

Hi Chris,

I read your recent post about the “Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer,” and thought you might be interested in another never-before-seen event in Raleigh. For the first time, Play! A Video Game Symphony will be presented by the North Carolina Symphony at Koka Booth Amphitheatre on Saturday, July 11, 2009. Since this is a non-traditional Symphony concert and would be of interest to your blog following, I hope you will consider mentioning the event on your blog.

PLAY! is a

...
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Many people have told me that on Sunday night’s television broadcast of What Does The Bible Say? on WGSR – or as I call it “The Martinsville Taliban Show” – local cult leader Johnny Robertson of the “Martinsville Church of Christ” claimed that there are now four robust congregations of the “Church of Christ” (which is nothing like the mainstream Churches of Christ) meeting in this area. Those would be his own Martinsville group, one at the old post office on The Boulevard in Eden, the one that has been coming together in Reidsville at the Holiday Inn Express, and a group meeting in Ruffin.

Robertson alleged that the Ruffin “Church of Christ” had been meeting for “over a year” (his words).

Curiously, the July 5th 2009 broadcast of What Does The Bible Say? on WGSR was the very first time that Robertson or anyone else with the “Church of ...

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So for the past several days I’ve been engulfed in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects and whatnot. Hard at work for some good friends: HyperMind in Burlington (click here for the first write-up I did about ’em). Well, among the very popular games that HyperMind carries is Monsterpocalypse, and this summer its publisher Privateer Press is having a mondo ginormous event called Monsterpocapalooza. As part of the festivities leading up to the release of a new add-on for the game is a contest where game stores are invited to make a promo video for their Monsterpocalypse events.

So anyhoo, here is HyperMind’s entry. I thought it would be neat if we spoofed Cloverfield. And it came out pretty good!

Thanks to everyone in the HyperMind extended family for making this video possible! And if you enjoyed their efforts, please feel free to give a high ...

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Sounds like a bad Fifties B-movie, doesn’t it?

But in reality, something slimy and ominous is lurking in the sluiceways of the capital of North Carolina.

Behold the horror that was recently discovered by a maintenance “snake camera”…

This video has gone viral bigtime in the past day or so, with some speculating that there might be an alien organism breeding beneath the streets of Raleigh. Personally, I thought it looked a lot like something out of the video game Dead Space, or maybe the insides of that giant worm from Gears of War 2.

But as it turns out, it’s actually a colony of tubifex worms, which are said to be common in sewers but rarely documented in such up-close detail.

Still looks pretty dang deees-gusting though 🙂

(Thanks to Lex Alexander for the fascinating find!)...

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