Local bastard

How to make a Star Wars bomb: Take two fluorescent light tubes and fill each with gasoline. Light the ends on fire, give your best friend a good solid Obi-Wan upside the head and then … proceed directly to the emergency room. Local Bastard can’t take credit for this bit of ingenuity, though; two young Brit Star-geeks in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, actually thought they could make their own light sabers and are now in the burn ward. Maybe they were reenacting the pre-Darth Vader lava scene from Revenge of the Sith and will now be rebuilt in black plastic with built-in “breaker-breaker” voice-boxes. That would be so cool.

Speaking of sex… your Local Bastard has veered away from the sex pervert stuff for a couple weeks, but don’t panic. After visiting Android World (www.androidworld.com), we’ve jumped right back on the track. Before you type in the URL, turn your speakers on because the site talks, and it’s kind of sexy … robot sexy. “Hi, I’m Valerie. What’s your name?” Despite its chilling welcome, Android or Humanoid or Anthropomorphic Robot-World is actually a really cool place, with links to every imaginable circuit of innovation and research in both the pro and amateur worlds of human-like machines.

“Where no man has gone before…” But, that voice, coupled with the eerie blow-up-doll-looking “life-like” androids got this bastard’s wheels a-crankin’—there had to be a nerd out there making machines for that final frontier. (You know where this is going.) Oh … my … Gawd. There are monsters under my bed. If this Web site’s address doesn’t creep you out— www.cyborgasmatrix.com —rest assured, there is not one sentence within its chilling lair that is not horrific. Examples: “See the new image in our Torso Gallery,” “…the doll may be warmed to body temperature by wrapping her in an electric blanket before use,” “fold-back teeth.” But the worst is the eye page, where there’s a variety of “prosthetic quality” choices—with or without veins.

TO DO: Flatfoot 5ifty6ix (straight-edge Scottish punk) at Veterans Hall (Thurs, 5/26, 7pm); Drive (Bike)-in Movie Night at Crux Arts —showing Stealing Beauty and Fellini’s 81/2 (Thurs, 5/26, 9pm); D.J. Johnny Rainbow at Off Limits (every Tues. night).

TWO MORE: www.freezetagbasketball.tripod.com (two Red Bluff dorks makin’ up stuff); also, hip-hop-papa Aye Jay Morano sent word this week that Detroit live-beat manipulator Doug Surreal is coming to Off Limits June 24—the show will be a good ol’ fashioned Chico summer party, with the Becky Sagers, Boy Tiger, Rev. Shelby Cobra and none other than favorite son Kelly Bauman coming home for a solo set.

Can’t we just talk?—