NO-FI "MAGAZINE"
"Walken In A Winter Wonderland"


As I write this, I just got back from the taping of Comedy Central's "Last Laugh 2005" and at the start of the show, William Shatner came out on stage as Satan and performed the song "It Was A Very Good Year" in that way that only Shatner can do. There were dancing girls. There was Vegas lighting, ...uhhhh...ummm...video clips. It was dazzling. It was perfect.

But there were a couple technical problems so they did it all over again.

So, here we are close to the end of 2005 and I say good riddance. I really wish we could do over this year on so many levels. The U.S. and U.K. governments are screwed up and we're involved in a war that was started by our president to make money for himself and his friends. What's worse (but not really) is that We DIDN'T vote him in in 2000, but then we did in 2004. Even Jimmy Carter'll tell you that he doesn't believe Bush won the first election (but what does he know? He only oversees elections all over the world). Global Warming rolled out its own red carpet in a slew of hurricanes, earthquakes, and random water balloon fights. Former pimp and crack dealer Fifty Cent is getting his own video game. The rich buy their way out of punishments for laws they broke and the poor just can't seem to be able to properly wash that stinky area behind their ears.

I just don't know who to blame.

I guess I'll just have to blame the entertainment industry. Damn those evil actors!

By the way, the show was great. I finally got to see David Cross perform outside of being a guest at a taping of MR. SHOW (where I forgot his name to his face... "Well, the show IS called Mr. Show with Bob and David" ...I was so embarrassed). Oh and I finally got to see Sarah Silverman live. Sadly she didn't climb up to the front row balcony (oh, yeah I have connections) to make out with me. She was funny though and she looked great. If you've seen her new movie JESUS IS MAGIC then you'll be familiar with her live performance of "Amazing Grace" she did at this show. That show debuts Sunday, December 11th on Comedy Central. Check your local listings and all that jazz.

Oh, Sarah...

Anyway, 2005 was an ok year for me. I made new friends. Most of my old friends stuck around for another year. I managed to see less of those Girls Gone Wild commercials because of Tivo. I bought a new cheap DVD recorder...and after returning it to the store twice, the THIRD ONE actually worked!!! Technology is amazing. Now I can finally record all of those movies that I never would have bought in stores that are clogging up our Tivo space.

I also went to Florida a few weeks ago. Orlando, Florida specifically. Well...Disneyworld, Florida to be even more specific. I was there fro a week (courtesy of Holly-Tron's dad who was very cool to send us there). That was fun, being immersed in Disney for that long, but it was really strange at the same time. Everything at the hotel and at the parks was so bright and covered with plastic. Yes, even the hotel. We only went to our room to sleep. The hotel we stayed in was the newest Disney hotel called "Pop Century" and it was themed to reflect the trends of the last 50 years. There were buildings for each decade. Well, actually there were TWO buildings per decade, but the 90's only got ONE building. Pretty smart because who wants to stay in a hotel where you'll no doubt, think of former President Clinton getting a sloppy blowjob or about Kurt Cobain learning all the tricks from his punk influences except not to takes drugs. What's the point you ask? Kurt Cobain needed more blowjobs and President Clinton would have been rad as the first presidential porno star. C'mon you KNOW you want to see THAT guy's Paris Hilton-esque "stolen" tape released to the public.

I liked Clinton over all. He never caused the deaths of hundred of thousands of innocent lives and soldiers. Anyway, back to Disneyworld. SIlly me.

So when we checked in we found ourselves in one of the 80s buildings. Each side of the building was bookended by four story tall Rubik's Cubes which hid the stairwells contained within. The sides of the building were covered by pac-man characters. We only stayed in that building one night.

We wanted to move to a building closer to the main building where the refreshment area, store, and arcade was. The next day we rechecked into one of the 70s hotel buildings. The shape of the building was the same, but it had different decade specific catch phrases and terms lining the top of the building and disco dancers, mood rings, and platform shoes lined the sides of the buildings. These buildings had giant 8 Track cassettes book-ending them. In between the two halves of the 70's building were giant foozeball men waiting to kick unsuspecting children into the goal area. Each building had its own trophy too. The one we were in had a 3 story Big Wheel bike and across from us on the other building was a giant Mickey Mouse Phone. Across the way were the 60s buildings with giant yo-yos and play-doh and the 50s building with its "bowling ball shaped" pool (aka "round pool") and giant bowling pins at the end of those buildings. This was truly the vision early man imagined when he first stepped foot of of the caves and into destiny.

The parks themselves were fun, but I still prefer Disneyland to all of the parks combined. In fact, in a way, all of those parks combined WERE Disneyland as each park had a ride or two from out own park here in California. We liked Epcot the most with its many lands from around the world. I bought a fez in Morocco and milk tea in Japan...all in one park.

Disneyworld Magic Kingdom park was fun, of course. I had been there before when I was 11 or 12. Oddly enough everyone else I know seems to have been there when they were 11 or 12. Maybe we all saw each other and gave one another dirty looks back then. Who knows? I think my favorite ride was Space Mountain, but it's different from the one in California. In fact, ride-wise, it has more in common with the Matterhorn since those same two tracks were recreated for the inside of Florida's Space Mountain. (They have no Matterhorn there.) It's an oddly familiar experience. If you know the tracks from the Matterhorn, just imagine those in Space Mountain and there you go.

Coming back home from Disneywold was not unlike what I imagine what Vietnam vets went through when they returned home (including the memories of killing countless Vietcong soldiers). Having become used to being surrounded by brightly lit plastic, the world was now fantastically muted down and things didn't look and feel like plastic (well not as much as in Orlando anyway).

So here we are in issue #52...and what do you know, I'm actually doing the intro BEFORE we do all of the articles. Amazing. Late last month marked the "technical" 10 year anniversary of No-Fi "Magazine" as it was at that time that I started creating the magazine back in Torrance, California as a way of promoting mine and my friends bands. My band at the time, EAR BEYOND, was on its last legs and I was about to start an all new band called POPULAR GIRL with Ernie who draws the It's Menso comics you sometimes see here. We played mostly with bands from the Silverlake area even though we lived way down the 110 freeway from them. The website came into being around issue #4 or 5 I think, but it was only used to archive past issues and was pretty bare-bones at the time.

I was going to write more about all this, but maybe I should save it for the 10 year anniversary of the debut of the first issue. Consider this a preview I guess. Huh?

Ok so in THIS issue you'll find all sorts of Holiday goodness from all us silly kids. I have an interview with Alain Whyte who is promoting his newest band RED LIGHTNING in between collaborating with Morrissey. Roger Boxx has an article about his girlfriend's crazy flatmate. Kitty Diggins reveals an X-Mas story about having to deal with family problems, and we'll have a lot more before the end of the month including all our usual movie and music reviews, and No-Fi "Radio" too.

And how about that cover? That's a new shot by Don Spiro of Miss Lyssa who hails from Northern California. (HAILS...get it?) I had a hard time getting that cover together. In fact it took me drowning Santa Claus to finally be happy with it (look closely at Santa to see what I mean). Now I love it and the feedback I've gotten already suggest that many of you feel the same way.

So let's get behind it then. Ready, steady, GO!!!

Yr. No-Fi Pal ,

Chris Beyond
(read chris beyond's blog on myspace here)

(Chris Beyond is the creator of No-Fi "Magazine" and likes snowflakes, but not flaky people.)


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