News/Tip Line: (513)685-0554
Email Comments/Questions to: axinar@gmail.com
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Paul Johnson Of Walton, KY Takes A Phone Call From GOD
For those of you who just missed it, Paul Johnson was just on 55KRC with his nightly diatribe.
This one was particularly hilarious. He actually sent me a rough cut of the YouTube video of this one a few days ago and I've been shaking my head ever since.
He claims to have gotten a phone call from God.
Now, certainly many people claim to be acting on orders from God - Sarah Palin and George W. Bush come to mind of course, but I always envisioned that they experienced communication from The Almighty via a dream or a "gut feel" of some sort.
Paul Johnson seems to think God is in the habit of ringing people up. Perhaps God is even a Verizon Wireless customer or something of the sort.
In any event, if I understand him correctly, God seems to be ordering Paul Johnson to vote for the anti-abortion candidates in the upcoming election.
In fact, God tells him that He will be in the voting booth on November 4th.
I swear to you I am not making this stuff up.
Paul Johnson also claims that God has already scheduled a time for Paul Johnson to appear before him and, well - I imagine being held accountable for spending such staggering sums on these radio ads.
Two New Paul Johnson Spots Coming Soon To A Radio Near You
As if there were any doubt that my web production skills are starting to get rusty, the Greater Cincinnati area's favorite insurance salesman / pseudo-politician, Paul Johnson, just emailed me two (count 'em), TWO new spots fresh from his crack production team at 55KRC and I can't for the life of me find a good place to host them and post them here at Axinar's.
So, much like the Joy Rolland cable shows, I'm going to have to DESCRIBE them to you.
The first spot lists a whole mess of stuff derived from oil - roads, fertilizer, detergents, etc., that you may already know about - but did you know your TOILET SEAT was made from oil?
I don't think mine is.
It's made out of 100% U.S. WOOD there, Paul.
You certainly have a more vivid imagination than MINE if for an instant you can envision a PLASTIC toilet seat that could hold ME.
Then the spot shifts quite suddenly to the usual insurance pitch with "Anchors Away" playing in the background.
Spot #2 - well ... I'm thinking they better do some thinking about actually airing Spot #2 because *I* am having trouble keeping up.
It starts out, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth ... with oil deposits."
Oh, dear.
Now, mind you, when I was in 6th grade they asked us to write the story of the Nativity as if we were reporters there at the time and I started my piece out with a section that said, "Now all the animals are asleep - except of course for the ever alert HOGS ..." and I got thoroughly chastised for being "irreverent".
Now Paul Johnson - flag waver, Bible toter - is misappropriating Genesis himself to make some sort of point about oil.
Oh, dear.
Now, if that's not bad enough, he paraphrases the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies.
Oh, yeah ... they need to pull this spot before it hits air.
Although, while I am on the subject ...
Have any of you actually bought insurance from Paul Johnson or tried to buy insurance from Paul Johnson? What were your experiences?
Now, it's not obvious on YouTube, but I remember from having watched this on video - the Sagan clip was shot on video. It's not well known outside of the media "biz", but parts of Cosmos were shot on video and parts on film. Of course now that we have such stuff as the new Battlestar Galactica that is shot on video but computer processed to look like film, I wonder what Cosmos would have looked like had it been made in the early 21st century.
Of course the first thing that struck me is that there is a VERY long cut right after Sagan goes into the studio, but he keeps it interesting.
Oh, and that brings up the first point - STUDIO ...
Of course the Sagan piece, in turn, in somewhat reminiscent of the works of Julius Sumner Miller - but what Sagan adds is a little trick called a "hair light" that keeps things looking a little more "professional". A hair light is a 2X overexposed light from the back that tends to make a bright line at the edge of a person's hair and separates them from the background. Considering Sagan went for the "eerie" black background, that hairlight is CRITICAL.
And shooting such scenes in a studio or at least indoors is generally good advise - that way you don't have issues with turning blue on partly cloudy days.
Of course what this video really may have to lend to the Paul Johnson video is detail and plot.
Sagan takes all these things meant to represent the atoms and small molecules that make up a human body - charcoal for the carbon in our DNA, liquid nitrogen for the nitrogen in our proteins, chalk for the calcium in our bones, rusty nails for the iron in our blood, 100 pounds of tap water, and some trace elements, and mixes it all together and makes a mess - particularly with the liquid nitrogen bubbling.
What Paul Johnson needs to do for version 2 of this video is see if he can really literally get down in the dirt.
He may, in fact, need to enlist the help of PBS types - possibly even David Brancaccio himself.
There's two ways to do this video as I see it.
The one would be starting with some unsuspecting E85 pump somewhere in the Northern Kentucky / Southwest Ohio / Southeast Indiana area, wait for the tanker to come by and then follow the tanker back to where it picks up the E85, and then, of course, follow the ethanol components back to their origin.
The other way would be to start from a corn field and work your way forward.
Either way you'll discover, whether a gallon of E85 truly costs $7, $10, or $20/gallon, the whole thing is a tremendous deception because in addition to the gasoline that you need to run the machines to even make the ground useful for growing corn and then transporting to the refining facilities, you have this issue of the STAGGERING amount of natural gas that goes into the fertilizers that make modern farming possible.
Yes, although Paul Johnson's numbers may not be exactly right, on the topic of ethanol as automotive fuel, we been had, we been took, we been hoodwinked - led astray, run amok - BAMBOOZLED ...
This is Paul Johnson - I've been trying to figure out a good short description of him - sort of like Denmark Vesey calls himself the Blackest man in America - I'm tempted to say Paul Johnson is the Americanest man on the planet, but I'm sure that would get a fight started.
Onto this specific video.
Now, despite the fact that I disagree with Paul Johnson quite a bit of the time, I'd have to say he's probably on the right track with this one.
I'm not sure if his numbers are exactly right, but I'd have to say I'm pretty sure of the fact that it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you'd ever get out of it.
In Paul Johson's video, however, he demonstrates how you've got an energy, and therefore fiscal negative on EVERY gallon of ethanol produced.
He starts out with a gallon of E85 - the 85% ethanol blend that can be used in certain newer "flex fuel" vehicles - selling for $4.00/gallon at the time this video was produced.
To make that gallon of E85, you need 1/3 bushel of corn worth $2.50 + 1.12 gallon of gasoline to refine it worth $5.50 + $2.50 for labor and overhead = $10.00/gallon. Paul Johnson says the $6.00 difference comes from Uncle Sam picking your pocket every 15th of April.
Like I said - I don't know if his dollar figures are exactly correct, but, having done the experiment myself when I was in a special physics program for gifted high school students at Xavier, at this latitude the solar flux is only 700 watts/square meter and that's on a completely clear day in full blazing sunlight.
I don't think there's any way on God's green Earth that CORN is a terribly efficient solar energy converter. I've been told that in Brazil, where the solar flux is closer to 1000 watts/square meter, that sugar cane does a much better job, but I'm having difficulty believing that too.
Paul Johnson goes on to say that we ought to have "energy rallies".
Uh huh.
I sent a letter to Senator Sherrod Brown asking what steps he could take to begin work on a Constitutional amendment so that CHILD RAPISTS could be EXECUTED and this is the utterly lackluster reply I got:
No wonder people have given up trying to influence their legislators. If this is all the reaction you can get about CHILD RAPISTS, I'm betting you couldn't get a PULSE about ethanol.
Now - back to Paul Johnson's video ...
Well, in my first post about Paul Johnson I was saying I couldn't tell from his 55KRC radio spots if he was trying to sell insurance or trying to be elected to office - now I'm starting to wonder if he's really trying to be a history professor. Although, I think he's on the right track showing some of the things the Revolutionary War patriots fought with. If I ever do get my documentation together to join the Sons of the American Revolution I may have to borrow some of Paul Johnson's farm implements.
However - note to Paul Johnson's production crew - pick a white balance and stick with it, people! The shifts from blood red to pale blue ...
[[Light bulb]]
Is Paul Johnson starting to turn into the Hulk???
Also (don't you love all this free production advise - I have a degree in this stuff you know :) ) - get a 2nd camera, people - they're cheap now.
I know the syncing is going to be a little rough, but it SHOULD be possible even with MovieMaker. Some of the jump cuts in this thing are JARRING.
Don't get me wrong - you're on the right track - in some ways it looks better than some of the early stuff I produced for Public Access, but I only had TWO VHS MACHINES and a PRIMITIVE edit controller to work with, y'all. You have COMPUTERS.
But, all in all, a good first effort ... I'll have to set up an RSS feed on the YouTube ID "pauljohnsoninsurance" to watch for more of these ...
Paul Johnson (or someone CLAIMING to be Paul Johnson) Checks In
For a very long time I thought the world was very carefully segregated into right-wing sales types who don't necessarily want to attract a great deal of attention to themselves from the general public and those who have wild, creative, usually left-leaning personalities who are known to be up until 4am on a regular basis (if not awake for five days staight) working on some project that may or may not have any commercial value.
Well, along comes someone who looks as if he may span those two groups.
Yes, I got comment at 2am this morning from someone claiming to be Paul Johnson, the insurance dealer from Northern Kentucky who has a spot on 55KRC pretty much every evening about 6:03pm that consists of about 3/4 political commentary and 1/4 attempt to entice you to get a quote on a health insurance plan including, along other things, "free PAP, PSA, and colonoscopy".
Now, this person claiming to be Paul Johnson says, "It's 2:00 AM July 2008 and I woke up as I thinking about the Energy Freedom Video we may have completed in a few days."
The hit came from a IP address listed as being connected to Fuse.net in Florence. Now that's plausible that it could be the real Paul Johnson - on the other hand I'm sure there are at least hundreds of other Fuse customers that go through the Florence node.
The computer that made that hit is running XP and IE7 at a resolution of 1024 X 768 - also a very common configuration.
The search that led to Axinar's was the phrase "paul johnson in kentucky" launched from Zoomtown's search page, which is actually run by Google.
So it's certainly possible, although not conclusive, that this was the real Paul Johnson.
I was about to say the one way to authenticate the comment would be for Paul Johnson to call my "News/Tip Line" at (513) 685-0554, but it looks like he's already done it!
The Caller ID on Grand Central DOES check back to Paul Johnson Insurance.
The voice sounds quite a bit different over then phone than it does on the radio, but I think it may very well be the real Paul Johnson:
Anyway - back to the comment -
The comment is saying the "Energy Freedom Video", which I presume is the same video he has been mentioning in his radio spots, may be completed in "a few days".
Okay - don't wait TOO long - next week the CNN special where Whoopi Goldberg is telling us that 50:50 odds are MUCH worse than 1 in 2 odds will be running and I may have to devote my precious limited blogging time to THAT show and not be able to properly review the "Energy Freedom" show.
"You sond(sic) like a sharp (I would assume young man)." I don't know about young any more ... :) As for "sharp", someone once referred to me as "a staff unto himself". Dean - care to fill him in? :)
This comment is also asking if I'd like to meet him for coffee sometime.
Perhaps - but I think this one I might turn over to The Dean if he's interested.
Dean, now, so far as I know, Paul Johnson doesn't hold any current political offices, but the positions he describes in his ads, IMHO, are VERY representative of many of the business leaders in this area. An interview with him MIGHT be very enlightening as to the point of view of many other members of the business community who might feel uncomfortable speaking publicly on certain matters.
In any event, we shall certainly be looking forward to the "Energy Freedom" video ...
Paul Johnson: Insurance Salesman Or Political Candidate?
As much as I hate to admit it, one of my favorite moments of the day hits about 6:03pm when, believe it or not, I will actually turn off my Star Trek soundtrack CD's in order to tune to 55KRC (550 AM - WKRC - Cincinnati) in order to listen to the diatribe of the day of from Paul Johnson of Walton, Kentucky.
Now, ostensibly, Paul Johnson is an insurance salesman - and with a HEAVY Kentucky accent will tell you how he can sell you health plans that include (and you'd get a kick out of how he pronounces these - puts you in mind of the late Kash Amburgy) free PAP, PSA and colonoscopy.
HOWEVER, generally speaking, on the WAY to trying to sell you insurance, he usually gives you a little lecture on ultra-right wing political topics.
He talks about his web site alot too - Paul Johnson Insurance - decidedly a Web 1.0 product - with a GLARING typo of his main sales phone number in a GIF file where he's imploring the Congress to drill for oil in ANWR.
His spot today was interesting and one I hadn't heard before. There was so much political content about the oil issue he didn't even take the time to remind me of the free PAP, PSA and colonoscopy.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen - an insurance salesman from Walton, Kentucky is now setting U.S. energy policy.
I went flying to the web site of course and - yikes - no link to a YouTube video.
I also did extensive YouTube searches and found nothing.
Did 55KRC run the spot too soon?
Did Paul Johnson's crack web production team drop the ball?
He talks about the original 30' X 42' flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write Star Spangled Banner.
I saw the Star Spangled Banner up fairly close the last time I was in Washington when it was undergoing restoration.
It is somewhat impressive.
And it sometimes REALLY turns my stomach that so many young men and women have DIED so that the American people can be denied DECENT HEALTH COVERAGE so that YOUR hyper-inflated individual coverage dollars can be used to buy outrageous amounts of AIR TIME to spew reactionary propoganda.
Sometimes I swear to GOD they need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.
But, until then, Paul Johnson certain has the right to say his piece.
Now where in the HELL is the YouTube video he was talking about???
Fleeing from the tyranny of the Typical, the last epic warrior, the Axinar, leads a rag-tag, fugitive readership on a lonely quest: a good and true intent and purpose known as IMPORT!
Gripe Line: +1 (513)685-0554
Axinar's Posts
