When most people think about the Summer season, certain images come to mind: The beach, the sun, vacations, and backyard barbecues. Not me. Nope. To me, the very word "Summer" conveys an entirely different kind of image. It makes me remember the girl who ripped out my heart, ate it, spit it out and stomped on it... laughing. Let this be a lesson to all the guys out there: NEVER fall in love with a girl named Summer. I met Summer on a blind date set up by a friend of mine back in 1994. He saw I was kind of down as far as the dating situation was concerned and knew this girl liked me. We went out and instantly hit it off. After the first kiss, I knew I was in love. I had never felt so intensely about anyone in my entire life. She was perfect... funny, smart, beautiful, very social and super confident. She had blond hair (which is almost a prerequisite for anyone named Summer), emerald eyes and skin that tasted like cocoa butter. Saying I was blinded by love would have been an understatement. It was more like love had come along and replaced my eyes and brain with that red goo found in Stretch Armstrong toys. One warning sign came on our first date. I told her that the only thing that was really important to me in a relationship was total honesty. She said: "Well, to be totally honest with you, sometimes I don't always tell the truth." Damn! That was the most honest thing anyone had ever said to me, and I knew I was in trouble. She inevitably grew bored with my doting on her and left me for the keyboard player in my old band. I was devestated, but the worst was yet to come. Ever try to put someone out of your mind when relationships come to an end by taking a drive? Well, that's what I did. Driving down the street, everywhere I looked, I saw her name: END OF SUMMER SALE!, YOU CAN'T BEAT THESE SUMMER DEALS!, SUMMER SPECIALS!, COOL OFF FROM THE SUMMER HEAT IN OUR AIR-CONDITIONED BAR!, BUDWEISER: OFFICIAL BEER OF SUMMER! It was like the universe was taunting me. I turned on the radio. Do you have any idea how many songs have the word "Summer" in them? It's probably second only to "love", "baby", and "yeah yeah!". There's "Summertime", "Suddenly Last Summer", "Summertime Rolls", "Summer Nights" (from "Grease"), "The Boys of Summer", "Summer's Almost Gone", "The Last Rose of Summer", "The Summer of Love", ad nauseum. Even movie titles were no help. It was as if every time I turned on the TV, "Endless Summer", "Summer School" or "The Long Hot Summer" were on, each film featuring blond girls kissing guys who seemed to resemble my keyboard player. The curse of Summer took years to get over. Years. OK, I'm not really over it even now. Pathetic, right? Well, if my situation can serve as a warning to others, then my suffering would not be in vain. BEWARE OF PEOPLE WITH OMNIPREVASIVE NAMES AND NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH ANYONE NAMED AFTER A SEASON! Have a great Summer.

Name that movie: War is declared and tensions are high. In the center of the chaos is one small city which has deemed itself "neutral" to both sides of the conflict. Within this city is a nightclub where most of the movie's action takes place. The owner of the nightclub is a strong-willed no-nonsense type who on the outside doesn't take a stand one way or the other politically, but who secretly has ties to the resistance. One night, the owner's ex-lover appears at the club with a new romantic interest. This new romantic interest happens to be a crucial leader of the resistance and is almost instantly threatened by the enemy. The deperate couple turn to the club owner to help them get out of the city alive. What follows is a conflict between the emotional attachments and sacrifice for the greater good as the club owner has to decide between helping the two lovers to get out of town safely and turning the tables for personal advantage. Sound familiar? If you answered "Casablanca", you'd only be half right. There is another movie with the exact same plot that you might have heard of. The movie is called "Barb Wire" and starred Pamela Anderson Lee. Don't believe me? It's true. The "Baywatch" star's almost universally panned screen debut as a super hero clad in leather with tattoos and a motorcycle is actually an honest to God remake of the Bogie/Bergman classic. Never mind the boobie shots that greet viewers almost instantly during the opening credits. Forget about the goofy catch phrases like "Don't call me babe". "Barb Wire" is an action movie bastardization of one of the greatest films of all time. If you see it, you'll learn that in the year 2017 the USA is involved in a second civil war (probably with one side fighting for silicon breast enlargements while the other favoring saline. It's never really explained what started the war, but who cares? Pam Anderson is NAKED!!!) The evil Congressionalist Army has taken over most of the country except for the small city of Steel Harbor, where Barb Wire has her biker-goth bar named The Hammerhead. It may seem like a far cry from Nazis, Morocco, and Rick's place, but you can see the parallels. When Barb Wire's old boyfriend Axel shows up with his new wife Cora D, a resistance leader who is crucial to defeating the Congressionalists, it's up to the augmented one to get the couple out of town to the safety of peaceful Canada. She does this by using lots of explosions and nudity in favor of secret dealings and innuendo, but the times have changed since 1942, and so have the movies. One can imagine film teachers in college screening "Barb Wire" and "Casablanca" for their students and asking them to write comparative essays on both movies. Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing after all, as the Baywatch/V.I.P. star may even get some of the legions of her drooling fans to discover cinema by default.

Almost everybody has a friend of theirs who's into weird conspiracies, UFOs, Bigfoot, and unexplained phenomena. I have a few buddies who are up on this stuff, and one of them let me in on a few tidbits I feel I should share with you. Whether or not they are true remains to be seen, but if I disappear next week and this turns out to be the last Toon Talk you ever see, it will probably be more than a coincidence. Here is the latest buzz from the classified files of the paranoids: 1. VECTOR ZERO - A theoretical (?) electromagnetic point that creates a 4-dimensional gravitational charge that not only enables one to harness anti-gravity, but possible time-travel and teleportation as well. Vector Zero, from what I could understand, is the state achieved when protons and neutrons are constantly changing back and forth, one becoming the other. In doing so, they become nucleons. This somehow fluxates particles from electrical to gravitational magnetism, enabling super-fast travel if only one can regulate the changes in the correct manner. According to "inside sources", the government has been testing electro-gravitational vehicles for some time now. Perhaps these are UFOs... Or perhaps the person who thought this up smoked a lot of weed and watched too many episodes of "The X Files". You decide. 2. TESLA DEATH RAY AND FORCE FIELD - Perhaps you've heard of Nikolai Tesla's Death Ray, but did you know The Russkies actually built a giant one in the early Ô70's? Not only that, but the thing could be used as an electromagnetic force field as well, stopping any bombs from reaching the lower atmosphere. This one might actually have some basis of fact to it, believe it or not. For more info, check out http://www.cseti.org/bearden/part1/teslaweapons.htm 3. THE TAOS HUM - A low-pitched sound heard around the world (especially in the US and UK) that is usually only heard in quiet environments that sounds like a distant diesel engine. This sound is undetectable by recording devices of any kind and its source remains a mystery. One possible explanation: If it sounds like distant diesel engines, that's probably exactly what it is. The whole thing reminds me of tweakers who say: "Listen! Shhhh!!! Quiet! Do you hear THAT?!? That noise! That really low sound... What the hell is that? Do you hear it too? DO YOU?!?!" ... Idiots. 4. THE MATRIX IS REAL - Many people really think life is really a computer simulated 3D virtual environment. I can believe that to a point, as it would explain the success of the Olsen Twins, but does that mean Keanu Reeves REALLY is the chosen one? Well, he did play the Buddah (in "Little Buddah"), and Bill and Ted were worshipped by the people of the future (in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey")... He was even the son of Satan ("Devil's Advocate")! Perhaps Keanu's movies are trying to tell us something... That he IS a being of great power and either the savior or the antichrist in the guise of a bad actor. So, in closing: Watch out for fanatical followers of Keanuism with their anti-gravity space craft and death rays emitting those low frequency diesel engine hums... They may be out to get you!