Greetings BLANDX readers! Welcome to this month's DXers'
Quorum. As you can see, I'm still adding more notches to my
resume as a Senior DXer!!
You've been hearing rumors about it for months. Could it be
true? BLANDX sponsoring a star-studded major motion
picture? YES!!! Bill Kyle put our entire club treasury behind
the script co-written by Ray Framus and Jack Bradbury to line up
some major Hollywood stars. Steven Spielberg himself directed
it! The Naughty DXpedition will be released in mid-
November, just in time for the big Christmas movie market. That
way it will also be fresh in everyone's mind come time for Oscar
nominations, too! The film was produced on location in
southwestern Ohio, Washington D.C., southern Texas, and Bahia,
Brazil. (Actually, there wasn't any shooting done in Bahia, but
Spielberg demanded an expense paid vacation to Brazil.) I've
been priviledged to get a sneak preview of BLANDX's
upcoming blockbuster for a review for this column. Believe me,
this is a film you'll want to take the whole family to see. Not
only does does the movie deal with serious DX issues, it reflects
basic moral values essential to your children's upbringing.
On Sunday morning as they are packing up to go home, Herb
Schuyler (Clint Eastwood) realizes that they have no logs to show
for their weekend in the woods. So, Ray Lowder, CUDX's
activities director, (an excellent acting job by Danny DeVito)
gets out his copy of the Finnish International Shortwave
Handbook, and they make a long list of logs that they think they
would have made had they remembered their receivers. Everyone
agrees that making this list of fake logs was the best activity
that Ray ever arranged for. As agreed on by the group, the
following day, Ray photocopies the logs and mails them to several
DX editors. What none of them know is that a major solar flare
completely blanked out all shortwave reception for the previous
48 hours.
Obviously, we know, the five errant DXers will eventually be
caught and punished for their transgressions, but in the meantime
several subplots intertwine with the main story. The following
week, Herb, a professional artist, has an exhibition at the
Columbus Institute of Fine Art. One of his works is a collage of
QSL cards, including several from North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba.
However, Jesse Helms (played by Eddie Murphy) finds out about the
display with its Communist content and how Herb's work was
partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts.
Needless to say, a major political scandal ensues and a bill is
introduced in congress to ban the use of QSL cards from Communist
countries in NEA-financed works of art. The major DX clubs
object, pointing out that the displaying of a Communist QSL card
does not necessarily imply endorsement of Communism. Several
DXers who work in government have their careers ruined in the
process; their lives destroyed, they form a cooperative and move
to rural Montana to raise organic sheep. Herb considers blowing
Helms away with a .357 magnum, but then realizes that's a
different movie.
In the meantime, Ray gets mixed up with a group of Texas DXers
(headed by Dudley Moore) who smuggle illegal aliens across the
Rio Grande, if they hand deliver rare Latin QSLs. Ray tries to
get romantically involved with Yolanda, the former secretary of
an Ecuadorian Catholic radio station (Bette Midler), but she
continuously stands him up. Finally Yolanda agrees to go for a
walk with him, but while they stroll hand-in-hand by a cigar
store Ray makes a fool of himself by tripping over the wooden
Indian (Sylvester Stallone at his best acting yet). Yolanda
walks off in embarrassment and Ray knows it's time to head home
to Ohio.
The movie finally swings back to the main plot. It's now a month
after the DXpedition, and the fake loggings have appeared in
several DX bulletins. Experienced DXers throughout North America
immediately recognize the bogus loggings, and SASWA puts a price
on the heads of 'The CUDX Five', as they become known. Huge
wanted posters are printed and distributed throughout the
Midwest. Two independent Toledo bounty hunters (played by
Harrison Ford and Meryl Streep) seperately set out to hunt down
the CUDX Five. Of course Ford and Streep soon run into each
other and have some heated professional arguments. But those are
put aside as they both become interested in DXing themselves and
in just a few days they're spending their evenings DXing
together. (I love the closeups of Meryl Streep switching
bandwidth filters on the R-390A!)
After working together for several weeks, Ford and Streep finally
locate the five felonious DXers walking out of an Armenian
restaurant without paying the bill. After an exciting car chase
through the VOA Bethany relay station (it's great watching those
towers crash to the ground in a blaze of sparks!), the five are
caught while trying to cash a bad check at a radio store near
Columbus. (This and the restaurant scene are the director's
subtle ways of pointing out that people who write fake loggings
are inherently evil.)
The SASWA Editorial Junta (Bill Kyle is superbly played by Paul
Newman and Kim Bassinger is a very sexy Christina Van Helder)
convenes in a DX Judicial Tribunal and sentences 'The CUDX Five'
to twenty years exile and hard labor on Baffin Island. As the
five are handcuffed and led out, two big burly Cossack-types
wheel in a giant cake, which they say is a gift from Radio
Moscow. As the movie ends, Mikhail Gorbachev (played by Mikhail
Gorbachev) pops out the top of the cake and announces that he'll
do anything for some hard currency.
Wow! That's the kind of film that makes you proud to be a
DXer!! See you next month. 73s, Bill
The above article appeared in the 1991 edition of BLANDX, the DX
bulletin parody magazine. More information about BLANDX is available
from Don Moore.
This website is maintained by Don Moore,
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DXERS' QUORUM
EDITOR: Bill Dernoff
A Review of The Naughty DXpedition
By Bill Dernoff
The Naughty DXpedition starts as five members of a
fictitious DX organization, the Cincinnati Union of DXers (CUDX)
trek out to a primitive cabin in the woods for a DXpedition.
When they get there, they discover that they all forgot to bring
their receivers. With nothing to listen to, they spend Friday
night drinking warm rootbeer and telling stories about Elly the
DX Elephant and Andy the DX Armadillo. On Saturday night, they
get adventurous and cut all the receiver pictures from the ads in
some DX magazines and pin them up on the walls. Then they sit
around the fire and each one shares some fantasies about what he
would do if he had one of those receivers in front of him right
then. It's all very intimate and surrealistic! This is male-
bonding at its best!
Association of North American Radio Clubs
DXer of the Year for 1995.