Author Archives: Michael Chasin

Automobile Modifications

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

My informant’s grandfather worked in auto shops, and had a lot of friends who did the same. Between them, they passed around tricks for modifying cars.

One technique was to put a spark plug in the exhaust pipe so that when pulling on the choke, the fuel would come out partially unburnt, causing fire to emerge from the exhaust.

Another was to turn around the back seat of the car and put belts on the steering wheel, then driving the car in reverse by using the belts to steer.

Apparently these men are frustrated that cars are no longer manufactured according to methods they understand, which makes sense, especially considering they can no longer use their know-how to modify their cars in the ways they might want to, as if a community they were a part of has been partially erased by industrial and technological progress. All that they really have left are their memories of the way people used to treat their cars, and perhaps their own preserved vehicles. As time marches on, traditional mechanics will likely find themselves left by the wayside even more, only strengthening the folk bonds that remain between them.

Madison Sword Murder

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/10/12
Primary Language: English

My informant related to me a story from her hometown in Madison, Wisconsin about a man in a gang of some sort who was bothering his neighbor. The neighbor killed the gang member with an ornamental sword and left his body on a playground near the informant’s house. The informant never saw any kind of official report on it, but remembers everyone at school talking about this “sword guy.”

This story speaks to a fascination with murder, crime, and dark happenings in settings once thought innocent. I feel like I hear a lot of stories of someone utilizing a katana that was meant to be ornamental in a more practical fashion, but the notion of a skewered corpse left on a playground is a macabre little twist on the idea.

Grandma Movietime

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

While working at Metro Theaters, a Santa Barbara movie theater chain, my informant heard about “Grandma Movietime,” an elderly woman who wears a diaper and brings objects to prop theater doors open so that she can leave to go to the bathroom easier. She gets mad at people when they tamper with them.

Everyone at the theater chain knows about her and warns new employees to watch out for her because “she’s crazy,” although my informant never encountered her himself.

Employees discussing the most memorable or troublesome recurring patrons that they have to deal with and sharing these accounts with each other seems to me to be an integral part of service industry culture.

Nude Bicyclist

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

Transcript of interview with informant:

“If you can share this, like, um, there’s like a legend of sorts in my town–like it’s not a legend, but several people I knew, like, from different areas of my life all talked about–supposedly there’s this guy who like a town away would ride around naked on a bicycle and masturbate. And people have ran into him and are like ‘Oh, don’t go certain places at night because people have seen the masturbating bicyclist…guy.”

Informant lives in Santa Barbara. The reports as he’s heard them indicate the bicyclist resides in Montecito. If this has happened even once, let alone multiple times, it’s certainly no surprise that the story has proliferated due to its highly sexual and comedic nature.

“Pazzoria”

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian

Informant’s Sicilian grandfather would, in hectic social or familial situations, exclaim “pazzoria,” or something to that effect, a loose Italian translation of “madhouse” in order to indicate the lunacy of the environment.

The informant was unsure of the exact spelling and was unable to find an authored example while I spoke to him, but he distinctly remembered his Grandfather saying “pazzoria” in the context he described.

“Pazzo” can indeed mean “crazy” and the suffix “ria” in Italian certainly suggests an establishment that deals in a particular thing, so the idea that a Sicilian man would say this sounds entirely plausible.