No I think youre here.
That was good. I think that looks cool.
All right.
Yeah. Great, great, great, great.
See this stray here. All right.
Um, Garry's got the story board.
There's a never ending battle between good and evil
as to which side I'm on.
I'm not on either side.
You should never leave home without your time bomb
remember that.
I make my own decisions.
I never do.
I don't take orders from anybody...
Anybody.
Oh no.
I do what I want
I do it when I want to.
Yes, this is a time bomb, and we may use it.
My name is Jonah.
I heard about him quite a while before I met him.
The West Coast is raving
who's the phenomenon called Jonah.
Man, he's just an animal
on the stage and off. Always gives a 100%.
A bad man.
I wish I could use the nunchucks like Jonah.
When I found out he had an alter ego
of some sort of superhero, holy shit.
Kathy Washnis: There's something
definitely demonic going on.
He was wearing a Wolverine outfit.
You couldn't tell he was a human.
You want to it turn physical
you're going to really, really regret it.
Uh... He was a strange cat, right off the bat.
Those are real Uzis and real AK 47s
and real, real weapons.
I knew right away Jonah was something special.
He is an original guy.
There's, there's nobody like Jonah.
He is Jonah. Nobody like Jonah.
Dont know anybody like Jonah.
When you meet Jonah for the first time...
You wonder what you're getting yourself into.
He doesn't sit around
and let life happen to him, you know.
He tries to take it by the horns and
bend it to his will.
Hes quite different.
That's a good way to put it.
He'd be good on uh, with Chuck Norris
as his sidekick.
As Jonah's sidekick. Yeah.
Jonah versus the predator
predator be careful.
I mean I haven't seen a guy that looks like that
since Schwarzenegger in Predator
or Rambo.
I'm not sure Chuck Norris is real
where Jonah is.
He said he, uh...
it was the early 70s when he, uh, was in Vietnam
which was a very dangerous time. Yep.
He, uh, had a top secret clearance also
and, uh, he was involved with some things
that were classified.
They would just drop him alone in the jungle
and he would go carry out some mission.
When you look in the eyes of someone
that has the 1000 yard stare
you can see that one, he doesn't care
two, he'll do anything he has to
to protect himself.
I kind of said
You used to work for the President of United States
in security, and he brought me a card.
He showed it to me and it said
"If you're holding me for any reason"
let me go or youre going to be in a lot of trouble.
I don't think I could last five minutes
in the jungle of Vietnam alone.
So my hat's off to him big time.
Nicest guy in the world
and hed give you the shirt off his back.
Once you get to know him
there's so much inside of him that just like explodes out.
It's like Dorothy opening the door into Oz.
Sup. You're here for Jonah, huh?
Guys come on in.
Here step up.
Hey! Hey!
Lights.
Who's who?
Okay, well, uh, my name is Jonah.
Uh, I'm kind of like got at a first name basis with everybody
like Madonna, you know. Nobody says "Jonah who?"
They just go, "You know, Jonah."
Nobody says "Jonah who." Its like saying "Madonna who."
Yeah. You know.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York August 18th 1953
at 7:25pm on a Tuesday night.
What I try to do is give everybody the extraordinary.
Yeah, I can do ordinary things, who can't?
I can sit here and breathe oxygen,
who gives a fuck?
Well, let's see... the bathroom
You might want to know where that is, right?
And the kitchen and the dining room.
This is my roommate Mike.
I am Michael Galton. I am Jonah's roommate.
Hey Mike. Hows it going?
And this is the workout/computer room.
Modest.
Every day.
My dad had told me when I was really little
that if you do 10 push-ups and then 10 sit-ups every day
you'll always be in good shape and you won't be fat.
And there was that little gear inside my head
thinking what if I do 100 or a 1000, you know.
So Ive kind of always been like that.
Jonah was always one for, uh
running the laps around the fence
around the, the school and...
He had metal, weightlifting shoes that he wore
and hed carry a sledgehammer.
He was a well-conditioned athlete.
When I get to his age
I want to be as good a shape as he is.
I-I don't do heavy weights.
I don't deal with more than my own body weight.
I don't need to bench press 500 pounds.
I weigh 167. If I can move 167 pounds quickly
that's all I care about, you know.
If I'm at the top of a burning building
and I need to jump to a tree branch
to get off the burning building, I can do it.
He's very, hes very level headed.
It's not that he's a crazy person.
But I do know
that if I saw somebody trying to hurt one of my friends
or an animal or something, even if I didn't know it
if I saw somebody trying to rape some chick
or something like that, I'll beat the fuck out of him.
A combat situation where you're fighting hand to hand
is really just a chess game with stamina
because you're trying to out think the guy
at the same time you're expending energy.
It takes more energy to throw a punch and miss
than it does to hit.
Kathy Hayes: I've seen him
kick ass in four, five guys by himself.
When he was in the service
he came out of a gym one night
and three guys attacked him they were gonna rob him.
I guess he was walking a friend out or...
a girl was getting jumped by three guys.
He said, Dont, don't.
I suggest you guys don't do this.
Three big guys, little Jonah.
These guys were armed
there's three against one, you know.
They ran off and, um...
I don't know if they were robbing her
or what they wanted to do with her.
I snap kicked this guy in the larynx.
So what happened then was...
One guy just barely lived
and the other two were in the hospital
for a really long time.
I grabbed this fucking guy by his balls
and put my hand in his mouth and I fucking jerked, jerked him up.
I ran him right into a tree
three or four times and broke all of his ribs.
Now, that's the way Jonah is. But he warned them.
It was at that point
that I realized how dangerous I was, and, um...
I was very hesitant to go out to bars and things like that
because you know, I just was
you-you gain a self-awareness when stuff like that happens.
There's no, there's no, no glory to hurting someone, you know.
If, it, it's good to know how to do it
but does it make it right.
Killing or anything like that.
There have been situations where one of the...
one of the group had, had problems with wannabe gangsters.
A few of us had to go calm a neighborhood down.
Uh, like everything else, uh...
Jonah was uh, efficient and methodical.
We didn't get in-in trouble much as individuals.
There were times where, you know, somebody younger
and, uh... a little bit, uh, bigger than us
would try to, you know, say something stupid.
Wed just look at him and go, you know,
You don't realize, you know, who you're screwing with.
The Inhumans.
That was a moniker
that was hung on us on Avis Street.
I used to call the, the group of...
you know it was four maybe five, five guys "The Inhumans."
Chips had come up with the Inhumans thing.
And if you're a Fantastic Four fan
you know who the Blackbolt and Karnak
and Gorgon and all that. Medusa.
And...
That's about all I can tell you.
We don't want to get either one of us
you know, talking to lawyers.
So we'll just leave it at that.
All right, maybe you want to be able
to strike back at the establishment, but you can't.
Maybe you're one of those peasants in a Robin Hood movie
and you can't strike back at the Sheriff of Nottingham
or Prince John.
But Robin Hood's got the balls to do it.
So what do you do? Give him some food, hide him
you do stuff like that. And I think what happens
is I think people are rooting for me
because I'm really not a bad person.
I just do all this crazy stuff.
But I think people want to see me succeed.
So when I got on Myspace
I pretty much dumped like 30 years worth of shit
on the whole world in about a week.
And everybody's like... "Who's this guy," right?
And, and everything just kind of happened.
I heard about him quite a while before I met him.
Particularly with the Christmas cards
he was kind of legendary about those.
Hi, I am Skip Evon.
I've been a friend to Jonah's for close to 10 years.
My dad does like everything for him.
He's got stuff in the basement set up
to help edit his videos
and hes got the posters and all his music.
Jonah is, um...
After Id known him a while had this idea about a calendar
and thats, uh, when I got this and started videotaping.
Calendar is a kind of fantasy warrior theme.
The name he came up with for it was Warriad
about a princes quest to find a crystal to save his princess.
I usually the one making the video clips for him
or helping him with the JPEGs.
Okay, uh, Danielle, get a little angry.
I try to help him manage his business and, you know
look out for him as far as you know
trying to help him succeed basically, that's all.
Wow, we got Jonah's phone number?
No, no area code or nothing no bruh?
You don't need it. Its 5, uh, 505...
Hes a Dansville cat, right?
Yes.
Good morning. Jonah!
How are you doing?
You wacky son of a bitch. Yes, I am.
I-I consider myself a real life adventurer
and a warrior and a musician because I am.
Adventures don't come knocking at your door.
You've got to make'em happen.
Jonah, are you taking an armor
in case they don't serve our burgers right?
The stuff that you think is normal
is not normal to the rest of us.
What you do is stuff that we see in the movies.
There's other musicians, there's other people they've CDs,
there's other martial artists,
but how many of them do you know?
Okay.
Marisa, you can get in closer.
Marisa Cameron, Im here in Rochester, New York.
Um, let's see...
I met Jonah
through an ex-boyfriend
in the early 90s.
Marisa Cameron, she's like my best friend.
I, you know, she's such a sweet lady.
I mean, her boyfriend Brett is a very, very lucky guy
to have somebody that nice, you know.
I met Marisa when I had gotten out of the service
and was working as a janitor in my old high school
and I think at the time
she was either a freshman or a sophomore.
I know I got about six years on her.
I didn't know about Jonah's cards
before I met him.
You know, I, he'd show me his cards from last year
or he'd show me the whole series that he's gone through.
Cheese Cake, cheese cake.
I'll have a slice.
And maybe if you get smacked in the face
with it right away with the weapons
and the this, and the that.
Get a couple of those assault rifles somebody.
Maybe that-that would kind of push people away.
But if you know him first and then you just understand
that this is just part of his whole personality
and, you know, its, it's not anything to be scared of.
He's a great guy. He's honest, hes funny, we laugh.
What?
I just cant believe were doing this.
Whatever Jonah wants to do, he pretty much does.
And, uh, when he tells you that something's going to happen
it pretty much does happen just that way.
Thats right folks.
This is proof positive that I'm in the Ukraine.
Nikolai, to my arch enemies at the INS, I mean friends.
I don't really get a chance to interact
with Jonah and the rest of his clan
unless we're doing something, you know, like, uh, I'm videoing
and they, you know, they're doing uh, calendar
or modeling, photos or something like that.
Stagger yourselves so I can get both of you in the picture.
You know I bought the video camera
more for doing stuff for Jonah than for doing stuff for me.
The viewfinder image is black and white
but when I open both eyes
the viewfinder image is in color.
Quite amazing.
He documents everything he does.
When I met him, I understood this right away.
If he's gonna to do something
I'm usually there with the video camera.
Nice job.
Pre-recording session.
Pre-recording, pre-burn.
And uh...
Pre-Russia.
Its good to be king.
This is the beginning of my rock stardom.
I'm Jackie Kasperson
and this is Dave Kasperson.
And he's really the fellow who met Jonah to begin with,
so you should talk about how you met Jonah.
Well, what are we saying?
Like 27 years ago I think was when Jonah
first came into our studio with a group called...
Cruise Control. Cruise Control.
Tim, Tim Coon.
I play the bass. They call me the big ugly man.
A better part of 30 years anyway - 25, 30 years
I was going through a bunch of bands in this building downtown
and Jonah was in one of them and I was in another one
and, you know, guys switch and swap around bands
and finally ended up in the same group and the rest is history.
A lot of people come in studios
and they, they freeze up
and they are like afraid of being at the studio.
But not Jonah. He was a natural.
A lot of times
bands will ask him up to play with him
and they wind up not liking him
because he just steals the show.
And, and he's not trying to do it on purpose or anything.
It's just the way he is and...
He's got some attraction...
of some kind thats all I can say.
Listen, I'm a mercenary.
I'm not signed by anybody.
I tell everybody Im a mercenary musician.
You know, I'm not signed by Atlantic Records,
Capitol Records, anybody.
I'm, Im an unsigned artist
and I can play as well as anybody.
He gets going so hard on a harmonica
that he'll blow it out.
Hell wreck the reeds on a harmonica.
And he's blown a couple out here
and as a matter of fact, he's given them to me.
Ive seen him one night
ripped a hole on the side of his lip open
with the front of his harp... Kept playing. That's punk.
He's proving and showing people
that that you can get notoriety with music
and at a, uh, you know,
in your 50s basically, you know, which is not typical.
I'm very excited about tonight.
Jonah is going to be performing shortly.
We're at the Stumblin Inn
in beautiful downtown Elba, New York.
Believe me when Jonah starts playing
this place is gonna take note.
I started playing the harmonica
when I was in the service, um...
and I just took to it.
In 2002, I recorded my CD.
I've been playing harmonica for about 33 years
and a good friend of mine told me about Myspace
and I said, Okay, fine, I'll go on there.
It's actually, even though I had a website up on the internet
Myspace being as popular as it was
afforded me a vehicle to people.
Amen! Amen!
I have three different pages.
I have my main Punisher page
and then I have my music page
and then I have a page for my dog.
He's got his own page.
He's a dog and he's dead
and he's got more hits than most people..
What do you think of Jonahs Myspace?
Its great.. All right.
I really think it's great!
So cool!
What's your favorite part?
I love the pictures! All right.
Did you check any of the videos out?
No, I didn't know there were videos there.
Oh yeah. Check the videos out too.
All right.
I take these quizzes on Facebook
and if I like...
if I like them I'll put them on my MySpace page.
What soldier type are you? Special forces.
What badass are you? Chuck Norris.
What Marvel character are you? Wolverine.
How tough are you? Wow, you're hard,
youre the type of person the army sends in first
to sort out a war.
You're so tough that if 50 skinheads are fighting you
and you shouted Stop, they'd run away crying.
Your middle name is danger, right?
What animal represents your spirit? The tiger.
Yeah, what animal are you? A fucking bear.
What rockstar are you? Angus Young from ACDC.
What dead rockstar are you? Jim Morrison of The Doors.
I mean, I mean, its like, ya know, isn't that funny
just by answering these questions
I turned out to be like all of my heroes.
You know, I'm so much like these guys.
Its why I really don't belong in civilized society.
Are you ready to rock?
Yes!
Believe it folks.
You people are weak!
Now, we went to your, uh, MySpace.
Yes, sir. And, uh...
According to your friend who called us
you're getting all kinds of MTV and radio stations.
Now we went to this place and we understand
once we looked at why people would call you.
Thank you. That's the scary part.
Because you don't know if they're making fun of you
but in all honesty, if you end up on a reality show
obviously you don't care if they're making fun of you.
So there's a lot of shit.
That's why I said, told Steve, I said tell these girls I said
this is a big deal if you get on this poster,
because its a really big, big deal. It really could.
Youre going to be somebody.
Brother Wiese just interviewed me.
I did an interview for Mob Scene Magazine.
Yeah. The Doug Lando show I'm gonna be on in Montreal.
Remind me to get your autograph before you leave
because if I ever see you again, I want to have it.
You'd think that somebody'd want to sign me up
before somebody else does.
You know, if you're MTV
you want to get me before the Sci-fi channel.
If youre the Sci-fi channel
you want to get me before HBO does
because somebody that's not stupid
that sees that potential is going to say
Listen, we can make some money with this motherfucker.
He's got people who are already wanting to see him.
Numbers equate into dollars.
I mean, I remember one day
I think I got a whole High School in Colorado.
I had like 224 friend requests. I couldn't even keep up with it.
Tuesday alone, I hit 263 new friend requests.
Wow.
He was getting thousands of hit a day.
You know, he was up over 100,000 within a few months.
But it's the same way when FHM Interview
uh, magazine found me on MySpace.
They interviewed me, I'm writing a column
for a magazine in Australia.
Ask Jonah.
Recently I bought my first car.
The other night it was keyed
the side mirrors snapped off and a window smashed.
I'm sure the culprits were a gang of kids in my neighborhood.
Theyre very hostile, so I don't know if I should confront them.
What do you think? Brimbo Dromana, Victoria.
Well, let me share a similar experience.
I used to have a red 78 Thunderbird.
I just moved into the hood
and noticed several cars have been broken into...
Windows smashed, side mirrors broken off.
I saw the local gang members scoping out my vehicle
and I introduced myself.
I said, You see that red Thunderbird over there?
Well, if anything happens to it
I'm going to hunt each and every one of you down
and end your lives as you now know it.
They figured I was crazy enough to do it.
So, if they even saw anybody near my ride
they got the fuck out of dodge.
So get some of your bros to discuss matters
with the street urchins.
They only respect toughness.
Be tough, or move.
I don't know if you want to call it the starving artist thing
but I do all the things I do, because I have a passion for it.
But I'm, Im still...
I can still succumb to the same things as the rest of us can.
I mean, in, within the last...
I mean some bad things happened to me in the last year.
You know, my mom passed away, my dog died.
My wife left me.
You know, I wound up having my house foreclosed upon
and they repossessed my car. That little piece of shit car
out there is what I'm driving around right now
because its, I, I got to eat just like the rest of us.
And maybe that's the connection that I have with everybody else
because a lot of times I feel very out of place
in the normal world.
This is not the kind of car
you want to take chicks on a date in, man.
Unless you want to hope they pass out from the fumes
and have sex with them or something, I don't know.
Like built-in ecstasy.
No, I mean you know this...
Is just, like I said, I'm, I'm, Im fortunate I have wheels.
Skip and another friend of mine got this
or I wouldn't have a way to get back and forth to work.
I mean its beat, man. Skips always laughing.
That things still running? You know?
I spent the money when I had it and I don't regret doing it.
Its just like the stuff we do in the magazines
and stuff I do on the internet.
You never know who's gonna hear it
and what's going to come from it.
You know, maybe that one person
happens to be a record industry guy
or a movie producer or a TV director
or a magazine editor.
So I just put myself out there.
That's why I said, I don't hide anything about me.
If anything, I'm flaunting everything I got, you know.
I show everybody everything
in hopes that somebody will pick me up.
Pick me up and get me the fuck out of reality here, you know.
Uh, my father used to work for the post office
and he, um, he wound up moving to Buffalo.
I think he got transferred.
I had a brother that was born there.
And then they wind up again moving to Rochester
uh, where I had two sisters, Karen and Kathy.
Uh, so I'm the oldest child.
Karen Lagraff: I'm Karen Lagraff
and I'm Jonah's younger sister.
We grew up in a house in Rochester in Greece, New York.
It was a pretty small house by today's standards.
We each kind of found a spot to call our own
because we didn't have our own bedrooms.
My younger sister Kathy
my brother, Jimmy, who's seven years older than me
and, uh, and I each kind of took a part of the attic.
So we kind of made it our own little cool rooms
if you will put the, you know, black light posters up
and stuff like that.
And Jonah had, he had a spot down in the basement.
Near the coal cellar.
It was just a dark closet with a big heavy wooden door on it.
Karen Lagraff: But that was like his little room
at the bottom of the stairs
where he hung out and hung up his stuff.
And that was his Fortress of Solitude.
The Fortress of Solitude.
All right, well, this is my room.
This is where I live.
I mean, this is the Fortress of Solitude or the Batcave.
I mean, I was fortunate that there were shelves over here
that I was able to put some of my knickknacks on and again
I always stress the point that I had a whole house
that looked like this and the Adams Family has nothing on me.
So this is basically a whole house full of shit
that I can't fit where I live right now.
Someone from MTV, I'm not sure of the gentleman's name
contacted him and said they were interested
in possibly doing like a cribs episode.
I mean, it really would have been a great opportunity for MTV
because his house in Danville was...
I mean, it was like a museum.
This here is my house at 6th Clay Street in Dansville.
When I got in here
I didn't really care what the carpeting looked like
the wallpaper, the paint on the walls.
Nobody was going to pay attention to it.
The rooms were so busy
with action figures and weapons and paintings
you didn't really even think about what was behind them.
I knew how I was going to flood the house with stuff.
Now, I've been here a couple of years before I got married.
So you know, it was just one of those things.
Well, the reason that I bought this house
is because of this gigantic bed that I had made
at a Renaissance Fair.
And if you could have seen his bed...
Unbelievable.
I think, I think most women
would be afraid to sleep in that bed.
The headboard is seven foot three
and it's almost two parking spaces wide.
So it's a king sized bed and a half.
Uh, he commissioned the guy to make it.
He actually drew it. Jonah is very good at art.
Very... awesome... sleeping quarters.
Its beautiful.
Did you get your bed?
I got my bed but Ive got...
Life is good if you got your bed.
Yeah, well I've got the mattress and box springs
because where I'm living the, the actual bed will not fit.
So I've got a lot of my stuff in a u-haul storage bed.
The bed, the bed is one of the things.
Well, its in there, man.
I mean this, you're not going to be able to...
I mean you might be able to see sections of it.
The headboard is really buried.
Parts of it are, well...
I'm sorry that it's all so buried.
There's nothing I'd like better than to have it out
and actually be, be using the whole bed, you know.
I mean this is part of the situation I'm forced into.
I've just got everything in boxes.
I had to duct tape everything up
and just get it sealed up so I could get the hell out.
I got as many of my favorite things
which are all to me symbolic things
uh, in this little room here.
Over here I've got uh...
the poster from the Warrior on the Edge of Time
which is the tattoo on my right arm
you know the headboard of my bed and the URL from my MySpace site.
There's Tonru my dog up in the Chimney Bluffs on Sodus point.
Jonah got a dog but it wasn't just uh, a dog.
It was a Tibetan Mastiff.
I mean, I saw a monster movie called 'Man's Best Friend'
and it was a movie that was kind of like a canine Terminator
you know, your Grade B monster movie.
One of those ones I like to watch.
Lance Henriksen's this mad scientist
and he spices the DNA of all these animals
into this Tibetan Mastiff.
And I didn't even know what the breed was at the time.
And Ally Sheedy is like this reporter
doing an animal rights thing and they let this dog loose
and they don't know the dogs like this Frankenstein monster.
I want that dog back.
We're not talking about some street mutt here.
We're talking about a million dollar research animal.
He regresses and becomes more predatory.
And of course he can do things other dogs cannot do.
So I really became in love with the dog in the movie.
And uh, I guess he had to go to...
Minnesota or somewhere to pick him up.
And he did that and came back with him.
He was just a tiny bundle of fur.
He was just a little fluff-ball.
He was this big. He was adorable.
You know, we just went everywhere together.
I took him to work with me
you know, we went, we walked all over the place
and you know, he was my pal.
Big 22 by 36 poster of me as 'The Punisher'
from my '94 Christmas card shoot
and 'The Avengers' Captain America.
When Jonah and I were first, just met
this was one of the comics we were trying to find.
And it was one of the ones
that he and I both really liked a lot.
We liked the group 'The Avengers'.
He gave that to me and...
I hope you get a chance to see Gary
because Gary is the one that took a lot of these pictures
that you're looking at.
My name is Gary Bader
and I was born and raised here in Rochester.
I worked for Kodak for 30 years.
Uh, okay I, I have 'X-Men'
one through 10 in here that I've had for a long time.
Here they are here. There's 'X-Men number one'
from 1963 and number two
'Nothing Can Stop the Vanisher'
and 'Beware of the Blob' number three
X-Men number four 'The Evil Mutants'
and then 'The Angel is Trapped' number five.
'Special Guest Star the Submariner' number six.
'Return of the Blob' number seven.
'Eunice the Untouchable' number eight.
Um, this is where they tangle with 'The Avengers'
number nine.
And 'Ka-Zar Lord of the Jungle' number 10.
They're all original
although that one got drawn on a little bit.
I was 9 years old when 'Amazing Fantasy 15' came out.
You know, so Spider Man and all that stuff was brand new.
It was a real...
real left side of the brain creative time to be growing up.
I first met Jonah through a friend of mine George Kaidas.
And it was through trading comics
and they showed up at my house unannounced
one Saturday afternoon
carrying a box of comics under their one arm.
And they said, "George sent us."
I said to my mother, "Who are these guys?"
And she goes, "I don't know."
So I let them in and we traded comics
and they took, took me for a ride.
They took every good comic that I had and gave
me a bunch of lousy ones.
Hey! Whats going on man?
Believe me if you met my buddy Gary
he's nothing like me.
But he likes the same kind of stuff.
It's just that, again I do stuff other people read about it.
Other people think about it. I do it.
What's going on here? A wedding?
Oh yeah. Somebodys decorated our lot.
That cool, man?
All right.
What year was that, John?
Um, 1997
and this is where we did the... Oh, here they come
'Robin Hood' Christmas card shoot.
The first time he said
he was going to do a Christmas card of Robin Hood
I had no idea what the man did.
He wanted the most impressive looking bow.
Marcia: Which was Which was
an Oneida Eagle Bow with Michigan Autumn Camo on it.
And uh...
he had his side painted up special paint extra for that.
Well, it's like, I'm almost to where the dragon is.
You'll be able to see some of that.
This is the over length arrow
that I used for the Robin Hood shoot
purposely so you could see the end of it
hanging off the uh, from the front of the bow for the picture
but normally you wouldn't.
The arrow would be closer to where your hand is.
But for effect, I had this made so it's kind of a special arrow.
Howard Hill tip too, of course.
Oh! Somebody gave me that because
because it looks a lot like Chips.
It looks, see Mr. Chips.
It looks just like the guy
that made all the weird taxidermy.
I was bored to the point of tears one day
and I decided to make Jonah something that wasn't normal.
So I made him what would turn out to be
we called it the Chernobyl Woodchuck.
And the guy was weird. I mean, like he'd make...
he had a thing about killing animals.
From deer to skunks.
You know, if it had fur or feathers, I did it.
He made a clock
and that and the 12, the 3, the 6 and the 9
were squirrel's heads.
I don't see him. I don't see him
or know him or call him or anything.
So that's fine with me. He's just goofy.
So he's a trip that guy...
Mr. Chips...
Insane. He's just insane, you know?
You know, just another thing for Jonah's menagerie.
So that's Chips.
All right. Well...
He had a Robin Hood sword that he ordered in Spain,
and Jonah is so short and the sword was so long
when he drew it out of the scabbard
he couldn't get it all the way out.
That picture out in the other room
we have hundreds of people every year
that ask us "Who is that?"
And we tell them, "Oh, that's Jonah."
And explain a little bit about him.
And, and he does a Christmas card every year.
And one year, he wanted to be the Robin Hood character
and uh...
they look at it just like
"Wow, you know, crazy guy."
Well, not crazy
just somebody's that got an idea and a dream
and just makes it happen.
Like probably a lot of people would like to do.
Well, I started doing the Christmas cards in 1976.
Yeah, I mean, it got to be a real cult phenomenon.
I guess that, you know, we're, were at that juncture now
where, you know, it's gotten so big.
And really, in 2006, when I got on MySpace
all I really did was dump 30 years' worth of shit
on everybody at once.
And then everybody was like, "Who the fuck is this guy?"
You know? And that's basically what it was
because there were all Christmas card pictures
and to go back again
the Christmas card really was just something that I thought of
because they used to have an ad on TV for Polaroid
and it was mom and dad and the kids
and they said, "Make your own card."
And then a little idea light bulb goes over on my head
and I'm thinking I'll make my own card
but it wont look like this.
And I decided to do the action adventure thing, you know.
Thank you very much for the horn!
So um, you know...
Playing on that theme
would do my take on different characters out of the movies
or comic books or whatever.
And um, it turned out really well.
I also had to accumulate things I needed prop wise.
And again, out of pocket expense.
And not being independently wealthy
it would take me time to save up vacation
pay or money out of my paycheck to order swords
or have somebody custom make leather capes or sheaths
or a mask for my dog kind of a thing.
Dave: I've known Jonah over the years.
It's, it's he comes, he used to come in here every Christmas
with a new set of Christmas cards all handmade special
with all special photographs, all these beautiful women
and always some kind of theme.
Kathy Hayes: I was in the very first one.
The very first one, if you go to the website "Have Harp, Will Travel'."
It's me when I was like 27 or something.
The very first one was just like a Polaroid.
And then they get really elaborate
and you know, models and horses
and he's an amazing kind of character.
Just amazing.
I delivered them by hand because I always loved to see
the people's reactions when they open the card.
Because let's face it, you've got an ordinary card
and you open it up and it's like, you know.
Everybody always like, wait for a second.
After a while, just to see...
Because they know it's going to be something wild, you know?
You could be a swashbuckler
or you could have been a barbarian.
I was fortunate enough to be in a few of them.
Yes, even the very first one.
Last name is Ferguson
and everybody just called me Ferg from then on.
Ferg.
And I've known Jonah since 1963
just after the assassination of President Kennedy.
His brother was my best friend
and pointed him out to me in the hallway as we were passing by
and that was the first time I really saw him... Yeah.
Uh. Just if he belonged there or somewhere,
incarceration or something.
From, from my observation
okay, I think you know, my brother Jimmy
and he'll tell Im sure hell tell you more about this
than, than I will but, he was always very athletic.
You know, he, he kind of almost looked like, you know
had like the Joe Nemeth kind of thing going on back in the day.
He was quarterback of the football team
he had a lot of girlfriends.
Uh, he was very popular.
Um, Jonah was more, um, reclusive, I would say.
What happened was my mother remarried
and I end up moving just on the same street
but five houses away from them.
So from '66 to whenever he went into service
I was practically living at his house.
I actually started seeing his brother Jimmy
because we were into football
and we'd play catch in the front yard and stuff like that.
But the more I hung around
I realized Jonah was into 'Spies'
and 'Man from U.N.C.L.E' and comic books
and all those things and I kind of liked that as well.
So I would, you know
go over and start hanging around with him
and eventually that's all I did is hang around with him
and Jimmy went on his way to do football and stuff.
I played varsity when I was a sophomore.
First play, I came in, I called for a bootleg pass
it was against Eastridge. I came in, I took the snap,
and as I turned like this
the pulling lineman tripped my feet
and I lost about four yards.
Now, I got second and 14 so I call for a screen pass.
So, I drop back to pass and as I'm in the pocket
and I'm sitting there, this big lineman is coming right at me.
He's about to cream me and my running back
is over here in the flat
and there's a linebacker waiting right behind him
to intercept the ball.
So I had to think fast.
So I pump fake like this and got this guy up in the air.
That guy moved over to intercept but I never threw it
and I turned around and ran this way
he missed me.
And as I was running to the right
I saw the tight end going down straight down the sideline
I just rifled him a 40 yard ball right on his fingertips.
He ran all the way for a touchdown.
The crowd went nuts on a broken play.
It was a broken play.
My name is Jim Washnis.
I'm Jonah's brother by blood.
I was given a lot of God gifted abilities in sports.
My brother harbored a lot of jealousy
toward me because of it.
We lived right next to a schoolyard
you could jump the fence and you're in a playground.
And we're throwing the football around.
My brother was standing on top of a slide
they had a pretty big slide at this playground.
And I threw him a pass, about a 30 yard pass.
It was a nice tight spiral right between the numbers.
But my brother didn't have the athletic, uh...
prowess that I had.
And when he went to catch the ball
his fingers were all stiff and it kind...
hit his fingers and stubbed him.
So he reached in his pocket
and pulled out something shiny
and threw it at me, and I didn't know what it was.
I'm waiting, no I'm down on the ground
I see the shiny thing. I move, it was a knife
that stuck right in the ground, right where I was.
And that's not the first time that he did something like that.
He tried killing me a lot of times.
A lot of times!
There's a lot of history between my brothers.
Sibling rivalry, Cain and Abel
whatever you want to call it.
I remember when I was a little girl
and I was upstairs in our attic.
And I was looking down at the bottom of the steps
and Johnny, Jonah was at the bottom of the steps
and he kind of motioned
he kind of went like this, like to be quiet.
I remember him taking a bow and arrow
and shooting at up the steps
and Jimmy, who was in the back part of the attic
was sitting there.
And I remember him
you know coming out like, What are you doing?
Like you could, you know, you're going to kill me.
And he just started laughing
and I'm glad I kept quiet
because who knows if he would have gotten up from that chair
what could have happened?
This man, isn't a man, he's a monster.
He's not a brother.
He's not a brother to anybody in my family.
He hasn't been a good son to his mom or dad.
His friends are more important to him.
His friends as a community, on the internet and everything
the image that he portrays as Jonah.
There's John and there's Jonah.
John is a good person.
My brother John, as I knew him as a kid
before he became into this Jonah.
John was a very honest and good person.
Jonah is a conceited
deceitful, narcissistic rat
that I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him.
I call him Johnny because I like John, you know.
Johnny's my brother that, you know...
And Jonah is somebody that I feel like
he's more or less he named himself.
Yeah. I know his real name, but he's Jonah.
Everybody that knows him and jams with him, he's Jonah.
Uh, yeah, that was kind of a...
a weird transformation, actually to me.
And the next thing I know he's going, "call me Jonah."
I can't explain that. That just happened to him.
They started calling him that
one weekend down at the playground.
And uh, it just stuck with him.
Ever since then, he was just Jonah.
He had totally you know, gone away from Johnny.
Unique name for a unique character. Yeah.
Um, well, if I go back to elementary school
I mean I don't think I was ever normal.
I don't know it was a normal growing up period or not.
I've always kind of done my own thing
and heard a different drummer
and probably more situations, you know
even in high school where people just didn't accept me.
Fraternities, drama club
sports, uh... whatever.
The honor roll society.
I just don't give a shit about this stuff.
He and his best friend were Romulus and Remus.
And they were Gothic.
I mean, back then, back in the '60s it was unheard of.
They always wore black, you know
they just were more into being the outsiders.
They wore the black t-shirts, black jeans
black shoes, every day, all day.
All the time with holes in the shirts.
That's all they wore. No showers.
People, you know, gave them a wide margin
and they didn't understand them.
But they were great people.
Prayed to the devil. Good athletes.
Just stayed to themselves.
He used to call out
demons names and stuff when we were kids.
I remember he did that one night
and the door slam shut during a rainstorm.
It scared the living shit out of me.
It scared the shit out of me. I'm telling you the
God's honest truth.
I mean, Jimmy was...
you know, very good at you know, football
you know, he was attractive and had no problem
you know, getting the dates and such.
And Johnny, I think was a bit jealous of that.
And I don't think that ever really kind of got resolved.
I think it just escalated into a lifetime of bad blood.
He, he treated me differently than everybody else.
He didn't treat me like a brother.
He treated me like "You're the person I've got to beat."
I never really got along with my brother.
Um... I don't know why he...
he's, you know, he's mean spirited about me.
I don't know if he's jealous
or he feels that I'm downplaying him or whatever.
I often think to myself, you know
if I had somebody like me for an older brother,
would it be the coolest thing in the world
or would I have somebody that Id have to try to live up to
and I could never do. I don't know.
When he found out that he wasnt getting any attention
he changed.
You know, three days after Jonah turned 18
he enlisted in the army.
So I think he was doing what he wanted to do just to get out.
It was August 21st, 1971.
And I remember it very well, I was about 12.
So it was... it was very traumatic
especially for my mother.
I remember my mother crying herself to sleep
that night when he left.
Happy Memorial Day, everybody.
Happy Memorial Day.
So, could you tell us what you're wearing.
Oh, I just thought I'll wear some, um...
quasi green military kind of stuff
to honor all of our veterans
who have passed away making the ultimate sacrifice.
And uh... I thought that since I'm a warrior myself
that it would just be very apropos
to sit in front of my castle here
and have a nice drink out of my skull mug
of whatever I'm drinking.
I'll let you figure that out.
You want fast action?
Outdoor action?
Real man-sized action?
Well, here's action that tops them all
in the combat branches of today's army.
Well, Jonah spoke to me
about his years in the service in Vietnam.
Not a lot. He doesn't go into a lot of detail.
Well he was in Special Forces.
You know, from what I understand
he was in special operations
and basically they would just drop him alone in the jungle
and he would go carry out some mission.
I did stuff that was classified, and you know
I just don't need any of that come back to haunt me.
But I don't like to think about some of the stuff that happened then.
I had a war movie on, I think 'Saving Private Ryan'.
He's like, "Yeah, I was hearing all the gunfire and stuff"
and they were kind of giving him flashbacks there
"from listening to all the bullets and stuff flying by."
I got out of the service August 21st, 1974
three days after my 21st birthday.
I don't know that I really had a plan
when I got out of the service.
My plan was just to, you know
let my hair grow and...
definitely not being told what to do.
To this day, I don't like taking orders.
I don't care if it's a wife, a boss, I don't take orders.
You can give me a suggestion
you can ask me nice to do you a favor
but Im not your dog.
And I will not be anybodys dog.
The establishment or anybody else.
You know youre in for a fight, for sure.
I mind my own business
and I respect other people's property
and their pets, and their kids and everything else like that.
I'd probably be the first one to step right up
if I saw somebody trying to rape a girl or kidnap a kid or something like that.
Shooter ready? Yep.
Standby!
It's all lies.
Whoa! Easy does it.
Rack it. Just rack it. Rack the slide. Rack the slide.
Whoa, tripped on a log.
You all right? Yeah, I'm all right.
Im stuck in the wood or something.
Thats what happens when you miss the whole target.
Stuck behind here.
Oh, man!
He was never in Vietnam.
He was in Germany selling hash and doing acid.
In Ansbach, Germany.
He was never in Vietnam.
He was not in ning bang dang or whatever all that crap was
and I've got all the paperwork right down here to prove it.
It was off an internet site.
I really don't know.
I don't have information about when, you know
the specifics of when he was in the army, other than when he was um...
You know, in Europe.
I know he was in Germany and I know he went through Fort Dix.
But other than that, I really don't have that information.
If you are going, if you're doing any covert operations
if you were like in a train, you'd be in a sealed car.
They didn't want you to see where you were going
they didn't want anybody else to know you were there.
You did whatever you had to do and you came back.
I, I've never known Jonah
to exaggerate anything that he says he has done or can do... ever.
He tells you he can do it or has done it, I think you can pretty much believe it.
They would intercept your mail that you got and read it before you read it.
We used to send cassettes back and forth to each other.
We at that time, we had a relationship where we could talk.
And we actually kind of missed each other at that point in time
because that's probably the first time in our lives
that we were ever really separated.
So a lot of times, I might have been in one location
and they may have actually forged a letter from me
to say I was someplace else.
He wants to be somebody that nobody else is like.
You know, he wants to, that's more important to him than family.
It's more important than going and visiting your dying mother
or helping your father up the stairs.
The family has turned their back on him
because he's turned his back on the family.
He had 10 years to go up and see my mother.
He showed up there for her funeral
10 years later.
Where the hell were you?
Where were you? Your mother's dying.
Where are you? Nowhere.
I was there all the time when I had the job for Suburban.
I was in the vehicle during the day, I'd stop and visit her.
I even took the dog there. My dog Tonru.
We went into the elevator and freaked everybody out, you know.
I got permission, I had to sign a thing
the dog could come to the freaking home, you know.
But my mom had Alzheimer's. She didn't recognize me anyway.
You go there to visit somebody that can't feed themselves and all this.
Its very sad to watch somebody deteriorate like that.
It's harder on the family than it is on the person that's got the disease.
That's not a hero to me.
It's like if you're in the woods and...
And you, you got your arm pinned under a tree, you got to decide
do I stay here and freeze to death, or I cut my own arm off to get away?
Because nobody's going to come rescue me.
So you either die or you amputate yourself.
And it's one of those things where I've got to take care of me
so that I can take care of people in the future, you know?
He's filled to the brim with hate
and jealousy, and sibling rivalry
and it showed up at the wake.
When he went to shake my hand
that was for a show in front of everybody
almost to make me look bad.
I just looked right through him. Never said a word.
Some people thought that was wrong of me.
To me, it was one of the most wonderful points in my life.
You know, there were other challenges growing up that...
You know, I, I probably wouldn't get into but let's just say
we, you know, we had some challenges growing up as a family.
Mrs. Washnis? Mrs. Washnis: Yes?
Mom kept her family together. She took no shit from my father.
She might have been a small little woman
but she took no shit from dad.
I'll tell you what, mom was, mom would stand her ground.
Dad would drink a half a gallon of whiskey and four cases of beer a week.
It was very difficult growing up in the house with an alcoholic for a father.
And my father was a big man he's 6"3 and 230
so that was a little imposing and intimidating to you know, young kids.
We made a point of not, not hanging around a lot of times
if he was, if he was there and running around, you know.
Because he had a, every once while he'd tip, tip the bottle a little bit
so, I don't know if I should really say that but he did and
And, and because my brother Jonah was the oldest he probably, you know,
he had to deal with it more than any of us.
There's something inside Jonah driving him
Umm...
because he felt inadequacies growing up.
I mean, I mean you got to remember like...
You know, if you're growing up in a...
In a, in a pseudo dysfunctional household
and you're having, you know, you're looking for role models
I can't think of any better role models than superheroes
Zorro, Superman, Robin Hood.
I mean, you're looking at people who have abilities
and they're helping other people.
They're not asking for anything in return.
You've got a faction that is suppressing
I don't care if they're the peasants, or serfs, or regular people
or they're criminals going after victims or the rapists or whatever
you've got somebody willing to stand up against them
and not expecting any remuneration in return.
I don't even care if I get a thank you.
It's not about that. It's just about me being me.
If I can help somebody out, fine.
I think of myself as the quintessential warrior.
I mean, I got this tattoo on my 38th birthday.
And I got it in my right arm because it's my sword arm.
Which is from an album cover of the 'Warrior on The Edge of Time'
a psychedelic group from Britain called Hawkwind which I really like.
I think we get a lot of our creativity from my father.
I went to school to be a video artist.
My sister actually
has a pretty incredible singing voice that a lot of people don't know.
And now Jimmy's learning keyboard.
My father actually even wrote a book.
It's called 'The Ballbreaker'.
So anyhow, my wife is at the hospital giving birth to Kathy
and I got this shot at babysitting again.
And I had to change Karen's diaper
but I was afraid of doing it after that experience with Jim.
So I didn't change her diaper for three days
so she got back from the hospital.
When she was coming home, Karen was getting a little raunchy.
So I gave her this putty knife, I said
"Go in the toilet scrape yourself up before your mother gets home."
And I don't know whether the putty knife disintegrated or what happened to it
but I never saw it again and I want it back.
I remember he made a... it is a big deal
I mean, he made a big deal that he had written a book and...
That I had to go buy it.
And I believe Ive probably got it here someplace.
But whether I actually read the whole thing I don't think I did.
That's the exploits of his father growing up in Pennsylvania
in a coal mining town.
Different situations, and then he's going into the military from there.
His father's got like a whole chapter
on having anal sex with this lady that he picked up.
I served with the seventh Infantry Division in the Pacific
back in 1945 and 1946.
And that I believe is what inspired me to write this story.
But this is not a war story, not at all.
I mention my military service
only to lend credence to some of the events that take place in this story.
My dad sent him $50 for his birthday, he sent it back, return to sender.
My sister Kathy calls him he doesn't return any calls.
My sister Karen calls him he doesn't return any calls.
And I certainly don't want anything to do with him.
I don't want to be a burden to anybody
I don't want to be around people that don't like me.
It doesn't make any sense.
I don't want to go to a party
where everybody's going to say bad things about me.
I know the way he thinks.
And I know the way he thinks
probably better than anybody does because I grew up with him.
I grew up in that same house with him, with that alcoholic father
and my mother who kept their family together.
You know, I grew up in that house.
It's, I, I know it sounds weird
and I probably, people are going to look at this and say, "This guy's crazy,"
but I miss the dog more than I miss my mom.
I didn't see my mom every day.
When I was a kid I saw my mom every day.
But the dog is my kid.
I got my dog Tonru, I got him from a breeder out in Nevada.
That's right, Nevada
The name that I got for the dog which is Tonru
I got it from an old Star Trek episode.
It goes... I am Tonru. I am the other.
I thought, well, I'm one and Tonru is the other.
I named him Tonru.
Who do you think uh, would be a better Captain Kirk?
Oh, I'd be Captain Kirk.
Well, I'm sure my brother would want to be Captain Kirk.
The kids in high school called me Captain Kirk.
They signed my yearbook Captain Kirk.
He did tend to be a leader being the quarterback.
So I guess if you looked at it that way
you would say he'd make a good Captain Kirk.
I mean, Jim had a, an excellent Captain Kirk imitation.
Jonah'd be a Klingon.
Jonah would be a Klingon.
I'd probably be like a Klingon, you know.
Definitely rebellious. Definitely evil
There is something cool about being the bad guy, you know.
And definitely wanting people to believe in his theories... Oh, yeah.
Where as Jonah would be good as far as...
If he was in command of a, a group of people like when we did the photographs.
And there he is, the man himself.
But I can see Jonah in that position.
Yes, uh, pursuing some hostiles through space.
That's a toss up. That's a toss up.
Its the cali... genetic caliber of the, of those, from that family.
His father's a great man and...
His mother was just a, just a wonderful person.
And, uh...
The genetic stock of the Lithuanian-Italian, they're just...
Invincible, invincible.
I remember as a younger teenager, he wasn't into physical fitness.
He was a real thin, uh just regular kid.
And then I...
I started working out and I started developing
I had these big forearms and he liked that.
And then he went into the service.
He went into Germany
he had talked with his parents about what his future would be
and they figured that'd be a good, a good move for him.
We didn't know anybody that was going in the military at that time.
In our age group, nobody volunteered.
There was a draft that was going on, but he volunteered.
So, if you're for fast action,
if you're an action kind of guy
take a long strong look at today's army.
What's the next step? Into your army recruiter's office.
But while he was in the service
he was big time into weightlifting and working out
and he'd walk all over Europe.
So when he came back, he was a transformed...
You know, from a little kid to this big muscle-bound
you know, what you're seeing now basically.
When he came back from the army, he was definitely different.
He was much more outgoing than the person I remember when he left.
Jonah... Jonah... Jonah... Jonah...
Used to do a lot of uh chemical enhancement back in the day too.
Enhanced his performance with mind-altering stuff.
I got into the drug stuff when I was in the military.
And when I got out I stayed with it probably for about 10 years.
I was doing stuff. And then again, you know, I'm like Mr. Abuse, you know.
You know, let's see how much you can do.
I didn't, uh, ever do anything like that with him to be honest with you.
So that apparently was with, with Mr. Chips.
Oh, that's Mr. Chips.
This guy with the beard.
Yeah. That's-thats Chips.
That's Chips, that's my buddy Dan, that's Ferg.
Dan was the best man at my brother's first wedding.
Ferg was the best man at my brother's second wedding.
He accused both of them of sleeping with his wives.
And that's my brother with crutches on him.
We were all, uh, unmarried, and, uh, just, uh, a very lively place.
Just the music and the laughs and...
A good core group of people. It was like a haven of adolescence.
Just stop by Avis St. To see whats going on.
And it was always somebody making something to eat
or making a strange piece of art or playing music or something.
The whole sense of the whole group was trust each one
could totally rely on the other.
And Jonah was the core.
He was the, he was the heart, the heartbeat of the Avis Street, yes.
We partied a lot together, you know...
He always had to do more than anybody else.
My brother would roll big fat joints, he called them Jonah joints.
And we were smoking, uh, Jonah joints
which were small telephone poles, you know.
From what I understand they were quite thick like a-like a tornado
if you can picture that.
Whirlwinds of sensations, yes.
You put this much pot in a joint and you take a hit,
and you're, youre burning it all into the air and just wasting it.
But he did it because it was bigger than anybody else's
like his dog was bigger than anybody else's
like his gun was bigger than anybody else's.
That's what he's all about.
Making sure it's bigger than anybody else's.
Jonah did extensive drugs.
He did Angel Dust, he did heroin, he didn't do much cocaine.
I never really liked doing cocaine or anything like that.
I mean anything that would drain down my nose
and make me, make it harder for me to breathe when I was playing the harmonica.
I just didn't care for it.
It was an expensive drug and it, didn't, didn't last very long.
Meanwhile, you know I could spend like a little bit of money
on a pill about this big and be high for 18 hours, you know.
I didn't feel full, I just had a great time.
We did a lot of partying back then.
We smoked a lot of weed
but I think more than anything Jonah did a lot of acid.
I'd do, five hits of acid.
Not one, he would eat five; five hits of blotter at once.
And Id see what I could do, you know
kickbox or go see the ACDC or something like that.
But there wasn't anything I did.
So I-I-I don't know when they did it, how they did it or anything.
I had nothing to do with that.
Kathy Hayes: To me, for someone to do six hits of acid and you can't even tell
I was amazed.
I remember I was in a band with Tim.
Called Cruise Control.
Back in 1982, and we were on our way to a gig
at a bar called the Orange Monkey.
And it was snowing outside.
And I didn't know how to get to the bar.
And I always figured, "let's see if I drop the acid now
and in about a half an hour it'll hit me
and Ill have just enough time to get to the bar", right?
It hit me before I got to the bar and there was a blizzard.
And I got this wild costume on and my face is all flushed, and you know
I'm watching the snowflakes melt on the windshield and I go,
"Oh man, it's getting really hard to see between the lines on the road", you know.
And then I stopped to ask directions, you know.
And Im this wild eyed crazy guy
dressed up like a freaking renegade Indian, you know...
I had a feather and I wore like a black headband to keep that
because that was before contact lenses.
I wore my glasses and everything.
My hair was longer and I had like a Ted Nugent belt I made.
You know, I had like fox tails, raccoon tails and bear claws.
I had buck skin boots on and I just came in and played the harmonica
like Jimi Hendrix would, would do with the guitar.
He's a terrific harmonica player. Bar none.
Probably hes maybe the best I've ever even heard.
But he puts a little bit too much into a bridge instrument.
Hed be, you know, literally laying on his back
and flipping around on stage while he was playing harmonica
and he just had, you know, endless energy.
He started his act in a cage.
He was wearing a Wolverine outfit, you couldn't tell he was a human.
And came out of the cage playing harmonica
and it terrified people in the audience.
It was, it was just a great act.
We don't well, know him well enough to know
that all his highs might be natural highs or...
You know... Assisted highs.
You know something, I don't, I don't, I really don't believe
- Jonah would do drugs. - Jackie Kasperson:
I don't think so. He's, he's too natural.
Maybe I'm-maybe I'm wrong
but he's got that natural energy. I don't know if he needs it.
And I realized that I was burning the candle on both ends.
I just said, Look, I gotta make a choice.
Do I want to go this route or this route?
And I just dropped the other thing.
And I did, completely just like that.
People that saw me party couldn't believe I just didn't want to.
Theyd go-theyd go to hand me a joint
and Id say, No, I don't do that anymore. I just don't want to do it, you know.
It was just that easy for me.
Jonah hasn't done drugs in a long time.
He's probably extremely physically healthy person.
I mean, health wise, he's probably extremely physically healthy
except for mentally. Mentally, he's delusionary.
But I have a strong mind.
You have to have a strong mind to be able to say no.
Im going to get my, a refill here.
Having my cranberry juice and rum.
That's my normal Saturday if I don't have any place to go.
That's what I do. I just like to make some cheeseburgers...
A little sliced red onion, little...
Little uh, based in Worcestershire sauce
with a little, just a hint of fresh garlic.
They're good.
It doesn't take long if you preheat the bun.
Messy part of the video.
It was a great honor to film Jonah and Annas wedding.
Well, the first part of the video was, was a montage that I created.
I took little bits of video of Anna's preparation for the wedding
and the audio was terrible.
It was all people talking and, you know, it was in a hair salon
there was all kinds of distracting stuff going on.
And I-I couldn't think of a good way to present this as part of the video
and not have it be terrible to listen to.
So I deleted the audio track and just put in Jonah's music in the background
and then I, once I started doing that and blending scenes
I actually figured, while she's probably thinking a lot about Jonah
while she's preparing for a wedding so why not put a few things of Jonah in there too
just to kind of show the flow of thinking
and, and you know, try to get the mood.
And I thought it came out great.
I gave your bag to, to him. Okay.
Stay right there, now.
Oh...
They are all watching...
I can't now speak.
He had met, uh, a young lady in the Soviet Union
and, uh, carried on a relationship with her long distance at first.
He met Anna online.
It was, I believe, russianbrides.com or something like that on the internet.
Jonah...
Found Anna on the internet.
They corresponded for a long time on the internet before anything happened...
And so then, then he told me he was saving up his money.
He was actually going to go to Russia and get her and bring her here.
He started writing her and she was writing him and of course, they had never met.
So I thought that was a little, little odd
but being a friend, I supported him with it, you know.
I'm not going to tell him, "don't do it", you know
"It's not going to ever work" or anything like that.
I never thought that way.
So and he went over there and...
met his, met her family and, and spent quite a bit of money.
You have to pay their government, our government
this, that, the other thing, all these forms...
Uh, was she going to be a citizen? This, that, the other thing
and he had to pay a ton of money to do this.
He bought her a beautiful Emerald ring.
And, uh, and she...
It all came... to fruition.
I mean, he brought her home and married her.
I was, I was maid of honor.
And they lived together for, you know, down in Dansville
they did wind up moving to Dansville and which I was sorry he did that
because I-I didn't get to see him as often.
And I, and I think a lot of his friends, we didn't really get to see him as often.
And, um...
And that, and that was it. I-I would see him, you know, off and on and...
You know, as it got later and later I-I wouldn't see him quite as much.
No, no, I was-I was ecstatic for him.
He was, he was happy and I was happy for him.
I just missed him.
This whole hallway was like the night gallery.
I had 22 by 30 posters of a lot of the pictures you've seen on MySpace
which were my Christmas card pictures.
And they adorned both of these walls all the way down.
This was the room that my wife used to use.
I had an old, I still have, its in storage.
An old organ, you know, they used to play church music on it.
And I was trying to learn how to play "In A Gadda Da Vida", you know.
So you could see where all the water damage had happened.
Pieces of plaster would be falling.
And I started feeling really bad about all that, you know, because it was...
It was just uh, you know, one of those things.
Things were happening faster than I could deal with them.
Uh, I'd been working and then I got laid off.
And then, you know, you start dipping into your 401k and your bank account
pretty soon there's nothing left to dip into.
And not really living beyond my means either.
Just trying to eat and keep the heat on...
And, you know, there was a week we, it was like 10 degrees outside
and we had no heat.
We had these little space heaters. We moved from room to room
and I know, I - I finally...
Because I was going through some hard times and stuff
I never thought I'd go through the heat thing for, um, gas electric benefits
and food stamps, you know, you know, all that stuff
you know, getting free baked goods from the church.
I mean everything I could to keep us going.
I would also like to just say that Id like to...
Promise to Annas mother and her sister
that I would do my best to try to take care of her
and be a good husband and maybe a father someday.
And do my best to just be the best person I can for her in her life.
Sword cane.
I remember when I was in rehab for my knee, the guy at the rehab place loved me.
He goes, You know, this guy's done. He's coming here to work out every day.
You know, he's, you know, he's gotten his leg good again
and he's using all the weights and everything.
So they finally stopped doing it.
But I-they loved me because I had sword canes and stuff, you know.
You could fence, right? Yeah.
Could you show us a couple moves with that?
Well, I mean, look, you know, I mean we-we did fencing stuff.
I did stuff like that, but, you know, a lot of it...
It's hard without somebody else actually fencing with you, you know.
You get a lot of parries and thrusts and stuff like that.
But, you know, it's not a lot of the hack and slash stuff
you see in the Conan movies, you know.
A lot of it is real, just, you know
tipping somebody that way so you can jab at him, you know.
They were made for stabbing, they weren't made for slashing.
They werent made for slashing.
This is what my buddy Tim Baxter was holding under his arm
when he was, uh, Little John for the Robin Hood thing, you know.
Actually found this too when I was working on the garbage truck.
Somebody was throwing it out. I just thought it was cool and brought it home.
Leave it in the room... But it's for real.
I would get on the writing step and grab one of the handles.
And I used to do pull ups when we're going down the road
at 60 miles an hour, you know.
And I'd stick my foot in the mouth of the barrel
because the barrel to the passenger side
if you hit a bump and it rolled off the curb
it's going to roll up in somebody's lawn.
The one on the driver's side would roll in the path of an oncoming vehicle.
So by me riding on the drivers side
and standing in it, it's not going to take off.
The last thing that I did for him
I helped move him down to his house to Dansville and I bought him tickets
to a Blue Oyster Cult concert.
Before he bought the house in Dansville, he was in a really bad accident.
We were parked.
Dark blue truck, bright sunny day.
And they were facing due east.
So as the sun got to the top of that hill
you were totally blind because the sun was right on the horizon there.
This girl had her visor down and was doing her makeup
and she was 19 years old
on her way to the deli department of the supermarket where she worked.
She's flying down the road and nobody knew it, you know.
And we just, well we just stopped
I just threw some trash in the back of the truck
and hung my cart on the little hooks that we had on the back
put my foot in the mouth of the barrel and my other foot right here
I just pulled myself up, my partner was getting ready to move the truck
and all of a sudden it was like a shark attack.
And all of a sudden it was like a shark attack.
She hit the bottom of the barrel.
She hit the bottom of that barrel.
Mouth of the barrel hit me in the ass, and drove my knee into the cast iron tread.
I spun as high as the winch cable
came down on the hood and windshield
and trampolined to the opposite shoulder of the road.
And I was conscious the whole time.
He bumped off the hood of the car and woke up unconscious.
When he woke up he was inside the hospital with a fake knee.
Meanwhile, I'm still in the road.
So now my partner hears everything, looks in the rearview
I'm gone and there's a car where I used to be.
So now traffic stops and I'm in the middle of the road.
My partner thinks I'm dead. He comes running out.
The girls already out of her car on the other side of the road crying.
I'm so sorry. She's crying, right?
My partner, Mark, comes out of the car and he goes, Are you alright?
No, I'm not okay. Call an ambulance, you know.
I'm thinking, "I got to get my sandwich."
How am I going to get to eat my lunch
because if they're gonna operate on me, they won't let me eat any food.
You know, so I'm trying to get to my sandwich
and then goes, He's in shock. No, I'm not in shock.
I'm in pain, you know, There's a big difference.
He doesn't even remember it because he was unconscious.
And I never got my fucking sandwich.
He's got a, a knee that's completely rebuilt
because the car shattered his kneecap.
I'm not one to go running to the doctor.
Pretty much go to work with a gunshot wound
unless they make me go to the hospital, you know.
So, I have injuries that people don't know about that I deal with.
Hey Vasca... What? Youre scared?
Whats the matter? Whats the matter, huh?
You want to play with the happy face man?
You want to play up here? Come on.
One of the most relaxing things that I do is just playing with my cat.
You know, I just need a little bit of time where I smile.
It's-its just nice to know that somebody or something cares.
You know, for whatever reason, you know.
The cats really all I've got left from the house in Dansville
after the house got foreclosed and the bank took it.
You know my wife, we went our separate ways too, you know.
Financial duress, sometimes people bail out instead of...
You know, sticking with the ship, you know.
Well, I had gotten, uh, a lot of, uh, cards from customers on the garbage route
saying how much they missed me. They used to call me the designer garbage man.
So this guy just runs the whole time.
He's out there and they say that, after you left
they got a pickup truck and three other guys to replace you
because nobody could keep up with you.
And then, you know, I was wearing a leg brace a donjoy brace
for about 10 years and I still have a big scar
where they cut all the way up my leg here.
My whole right knee got destroyed.
He sued and got some money from it and bought an Eagle Talon car.
I ordered it. I paid cash for it.
I ordered from the dealership.
So I had the, I had great custom leather bucket seats
it was a black car, I had the Jonah1 license plates.
That's the first car those came on.
You know it had cruise, and air, and a killer stereo, and turbo charger.
You know. Excuse me.
It was really nice.
He had uh
An extravagant...
Flair and...
A great imagination.
State. And I, I ended up, uh, being able to borrow one of the saddles
Oh excellent.
Yes, we do have horse trainers in this cart.
We have everything.
Videos, TV. I hope.
When I did something
permitting a lot of artistic license
that's why the cards turned out as well as they did.
If I, like I really went all out.
When I did the Sinbad one, it, I had written Sinbad Jedi Knight /Time Traveler.
That accounts for the dinosaurs and Sinbad
having a light saber as well as a sword.
And it was a great combination of things.
I had one girl dressed up like a pirate
Marisa was dressed kind of like Xena
we were traveling through time battling monsters
time, space dimensions, whatever, you know.
I don't know where he got all the people to be honest with you.
Some, some he must have just met at, you know, the corner store
"and said, Do you want to be in my picture this weekend?" Or something.
Its gonna be a porno film. I can tell, man. Oh boy.
It's like, "Oh, did you get Jonah's new card?"
"Oh, did you get Jonah's new card?"
And I used to look at them and I think to myself
there's nothing more ridiculous than a fool busy in a project.
Occasionally, somebody would say
"this doesn't have anything to do with Christmas."
And of course, my...
You know, my response is always, It has everything to do with Christmas.
It has to do with giving.
It has to do with giving without expectation of reciprocation.
You don't have to say thank you.
I'm giving it to you because I want to.
He just wants to do things for people
and he wants it to be meaningful and wants them to appreciate it.
I really, I really wasn't trying to tread on any toes.
I was trying to have a good time and share my...
feelings and things I liked with the people I cared about.
Its amazing how the people that know about these Christmas cards are.
He, he does like 250 of them.
They go to Japan, everywhere.
You make that many cards
not everybody's going to be home when you stop by.
So Id stick them in the doorway.
A week or two after Christmas, I don't hear anything.
I call, Did you get the card? Oh, yeah.
Did you like it? Yeah, it was great.
Then why didn't you say thank you?
Why didn't you at least acknowledge that you received
it even if you didn't like it?
And I started feeling like people were taking the card for granted.
You know, it's like going to the faucet
and turning the sink and expecting the water to come out.
And he just pulled the plug on the whole operation.
I'm trying to think when Anna came into the picture.
That might have been...
that might have been when the cards stopped.
Hey! Welcome to the Ukraine.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Enjoying a late meal
after watching some hearty videos
of me and Christmas card pictures
and CDs.
And now, for the rest of the evening
were trying to do our first installment of a video of us live and in color.
And Annas favorite color is
lts green.
Look at the camera and tell them
Say.
Are you nervous?
I would not like to think that she went through all that
just to get into the United States and get citizenship
and, you know, but it appears that way.
I don't know whether or not there was a scam.
I-I don't think well ever know.
Kathy Hayes: So I heard that he was, when he was moving
he, he quit his job and got a job with...
He was working for a paper service or something.
He wanted to do more with his life.
He quit the job and spent money going back and forth to Russia
with her and that's where all the cash went and lost his house.
And he was moving.
And he was like, No, nothing. So now I hate her.
"If I ever see her, shes going to pay."
He married that girl, Anna from Russia.
She had to learn the English language.
When she learned it good enough
and she probably learned that every sentence didn't begin with the letter 'I'
that's probably when she realized that this was not going to work.
I mean, at the same time Jonah was going from Johnny to Jonah
I think Jimmy was going from Jimmy to whoever
because he's just not the same person that he was.
I mean, not at all.
It seems like they have rev-reverse personalities.
Jonahs becoming more extroverted and Jim's becoming more introverted.
When they were growing up, it was just the opposite.
Remember that, remember the song'Glory Years by Bruce Springsteen?
All right, after high school football, that was it.
That was my brother's big thing. He was a quarterback in high school. That's it.
That was the passion of my life, football. I still love it.
I still think it's the best game.
I mean, I wasn't satisfied with just stopping there.
I keep doing things. I'm doing things to this very day.
I love sports. I love music.
I just recently picked up the keyboards about five years ago.
Um...
And now I'm really getting to figure out things
so I'm ready to play in a band now.
Im gonna jam. Here we go.
You want to talk about Jonah, how egotistical he is?
That Christmas card is to put the attention
he, this guy actually wants to put himself
more important than the real meaning of Christmas.
The real meaning of Christmas is about Christ.
It's not about Santa Claus, an anagram of Satan
who comes down a fire chimney in red
and robs his glory from Christ.
It's not about that. It's not about anything else
but the birth of our Savior who came to save us.
It's not about Jonah. He wants to be it.
Worship Me, I'm Jonah, the second anti-Christ.
He is in the spirit of antichrist.
I'll tell you something very interesting that you can keep right on this footage.
The number 666 adds up to 18.
Jonah was born on the 18th.
Jonah was born in 1953, which adds to 18.
Jonah graduated in 1971, which adds to 18.
Jonah worshipped the devil.
Jonah is an apostate of Satan.
I believe that.
I don't think he realizes...
How, how evil or bad things are.
I, so, yeah, there's something definitely demonic going on for sure.
I-I think there's a battle going on. Definitely.
And so I don't know where he's gonna end up in the afterlife.
I'm praying for him because right now he's on his way to hell.
He's magnifying himself in an antichrist type of fashion.
He is in the spirit of antichrist Jonah.
He wants people to worship him.
Were not, he's not the one to worship. Christ is the one to worship.
Wow.
This is the sword that I got for my 40th birthday.
Man: Yes! Huzzah! The will of steel!
I actually had my buddy Don use it for his sword in the calendar.
Don: What do you guys want? What do you guys want? What do you want, Jonah?
Whatever dude. There you go. Two handed. There you go. Two handed.
Don: Two handed? Yeah.
Thats good!
Hurry up. I cant hold the stuff forever..
We did, we had done stuff
on a, like a big lazy "Susan" in front of a blue screen.
And we're, you know, we, you know we take several pictures of us
as they, as they kept turning the, the carousel we were standing on.
So that if you put it on the internet, you move the mouse, you could spin us around
and see what the costume looks like from all different angles.
Im-Im like, my mind is like, you know
way, left side of my brains working real hard, right?
That's a calendar, right Jonah?
- Jonah. What?
That's a calendar, right? Thats a calendar I hope.
But, eh I think the guy that was going to do the printing
one of the guys, the characters
actually worked at the print shop and lost his job, so...
I guess he was doing it behind the scenes, you know
not really with the, the total permission of the company
and he got fired for it.
Now look at Don. Is that Errol Flynn or what?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, right.
We were waiting for that to come out
for where we could see if we could sell some of them
and that kind of fell through. It was a big disappointment.
Seen some better years.
Things are getting a little rusty out here.
But I've got all the stuff in the can.
Well get it eventually. Yeah, eventually we'll get it done.
But it was a great, I had said just like this...
These guys are thinking about like doing a cartoon of my skull ranger character.
Wouldnt that be great? Or a video game?
Sure.
You know, without really knocking a lot of things over
if I pull these blankets aside, you can probably see the lion and the wolf.
And again, the, the bed that I'm sitting on is the...
the mattress and boxspring, because the actual bed wouldn't fit in this room.
It's too tall and too wide.
And you know, maybe someday again, I hope someday again before I die
I'll be able to set the whole thing up.
And it's, it's an edifice to look at much less sleep in.
And that's, uh, pretty much my room.
Pretty much.
- Stay. He wont even know.
Well do it so smooth he won't even know he's turning.
Yeah? Stay there.
- Good boy. I hope. - Female:
Stay.
Despite Jonah's best efforts to, to help him Tonru developed some cancer.
It was it was truly one of the greatest losses I've ever experienced.
I carried him when he died on his own terms.
And I called Skip and took a day off from work the next day and we buried him.
And he really hurt, hurt a lot when he died.
It was a real sad thing.
I had a large dog myself, Scout
that actually passed away...
a year or so before Tonu, Tonru did.
They're buried side by side and got crosses on their graves out in our hunting camp.
Yeah it's funny how animals can be so much a part of your life.
But you know, you don't see people all the time
but you see the animal every day.
And uh, like I said, again
he was a lot more...
a lot more important to me than most people.
You know, I, you know, I don't know how many real friends you guys have.
I don't even know how many real friends I have.
But I know one thing, this guy was really my friend.
And I could count on him.
Oh, they're sorely missed. That's for sure.
Yeah. Good friends. No doubt about it.
Man's best friend.
Amen.
Well, you know, I had a lot of bad things happen.
I mean, I mean, you know any one of these things
could have pushed, you know, I don't want to say a normal person
making me superhuman or abnormal
but, you know, boom boom, but it's like being in a fight.
Every time you get up, somebody knocks you down
again, but you keep getting up. You keep getting up.
Jonah really showed the strength of his character.
I mean all within the space of less than a year and a half
you know his dog died
he lost his house
had to declare bankruptcy and lost his wife.
He still kept smiling.
You know, I mean, I...
I'm not saying he ever got sad or depressed or anything
but I mean, they were momentary.
I mean he just...
Hes too much into life to let anything get him down for too long.
You know hes really a indomitable spirit
like nobody I've ever known.
I know that the only value that I have in this life is one of entertainment.
It's taken me a long time to accept that conclusion.
Nobody really gives a shit about me as a person
just what I say or wear or what I can do.
I've created me and I have to go on being me.
There's no turning back.
With great power comes a great responsibility.
Words of wisdom for me to live by.
I've spent more time alone than I do around other people.
And maybe that's why I've been able to delve within myself
to harness those powers that most of us have but never tap into full capacity.
Pedal to the metal and volume at ten is all that I know.
I'll continue to be over the top until I drop.
Maybe I spend too much time alone, but you know how we punishers are.
I've already run the different question and answer scenarios in my head
if I wind up in Conan O'Brien, Leno, Letterman or Stern
although I am not camera shy and have no mic fright whatsoever
and Im wildly spontaneous.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
God how I love that phrase.
As The Doors Jim Morrison once said in The Celebration of the Lizard
Now night arrives with a purple Legion; retire now to your tent and to your dreams.
Tomorrow, we enter the town of my birth; I want to be ready. And I will be ready.
Okay action, Jonah.
This is what I should be doing, you know.
I shouldn't be working a real job.
I mean I really shouldn't. I don't belong here.
You know, I mean...
You know, there's a place for that, there's a place for people,
but I just have, I just have too many other skills to be stuck doing that.
And I, even if I made the same pay, it'd be better doing something I like.
My hobbies are what gets everybody's attention.
That's what I tell everybody
Even though people want to know what makes me tick for the documentary,
they don't want Sylvester Stallone, they want Rambo.
They want Rocky; they want the character, so I give them the character, you know.
So I'm gonna have fun tonight, I'm really like looking forward to it.
Where's the gig?
It's some shitty ass little town called Elba.
It's between Albion and Batavia.
Oh, Okay. And it's a ro, ts a roadhouse.
Its called, um, The Stumblin Inn.
I think, I think its time.
Whats your name? Jonah.
Jonah. We have to...
Are you serious?
Crazy about you over your documentary.
Oh yeah, Ive had the TV crew... You're really not Jonah.
Yeah, thats my name. Youre really it...
because I thought you were somebody else like imposing.
Youre the shit and youre carrying your own stuff?
Well, yeah. Let me help you.
Can we help you carry your stuff? Oh, yes, if you want.
Come on, Jonah. All right. All right girls.
Should I carry your tuba? Uh, no, thats okay.
Female:
Where am I going with this?
Uh, around the corner. I guess.
Do you not color your hair? Because Im a hairdresser.
Uh, I don't color my hair but I might...
Because, you know what? Its a fucking wig, Jonah.
Yeah. I can tell.
You think?
What do you got underneath that shit? Take it off.
And why are you still making me carry this?
I don't know. You offered.
Some of the stuff I saw
some of the people I met, some of the places I traveled to
you know, it's priceless.
It's it's there, and some of it because of me being me
having the mindset to document things
throw that camera, run that video.
Yeah, it is a legacy. I mean, let's face it, my whole life has been...
You know, documentation of incredible events.
You know, things that I, that I do or how I look or how I sound or how I think.
I mean whats that phrase
"Destiny go confidently in the direction of your dreams"?
Henry David Thoreau.
That that's what I do, you know.
My destiny is just being confident and following my dreams
and trying to just enjoy life
instead of, you know, being shuttled into a particular direction.
Yeah he's uh, has a chance to...
To enjoy some, a little bit of fame.
He's led a life of anonymity and then now it's time for him to...
blossom and...
And become something that he's always wanted to
maybe be, to share his talent with everybody
and then just break out of that mold of being by yourself all the time.
It's almost like he knows he has the potential
to be out there because people appreciate him
people want to see him, people want to talk to him.
And he just wants to get that step
just make that step for those 15 minutes of fame.
He's hes worked for his whole life.
Nothing's going to stop Jonah. Nothing will stop him.
So...
Douchebag!
Youre putting your shit in the back of a fucking station wagon. Really?
Yes. Its not a station wagon.
Yes it is. Its a Subaru.
Its a goddamn outback. Thats thats
Jones.
Thanks, sweetie. I love you.
I love you too. I'm glad I got to see you tonight.
Thank you. Have a wonderful night.
You too. Thanks for helping. Dont grab my ass.
Oh, I didn't. Can I? Grab my ass.
You want me to? Grab it.
All right. Thank you. I love you.
I love you too. You take it easy, Erica.
You take it easy. All right guys.
That was, uh the, the the crescendo at that point.
I had the beautiful girls roadying my stuff back to Skips car.
Ah well, it's been a, it's been a long day.
Now I'm losing my voice.
I got the Ted Nugent scream at the end of cat scratch fever
and I think that finally killed me.
Ted always screams.
Cat scratch fever baby!
Thank you very much!
Wild thing, I think I love you. Yeah.
How did the show go? Are we on? Oh, the show was great.
- It was phenomenal. Erica was awesome.
Yeah, Erica was awesome.
Uh, the girls were, yeah, definitely in the palm of my hand.
I had a great time.
I lost uh, lost myself in the monitor a little bit
when I do the switch to the wireless mic.
I went on stage, I couldn't hear myself over the guitar
but I went with just instinct.
Jumped out on the dance floor and just started rocking with the girls.
A la Angus Young of ACDC.
So I started running around and playing and they were loving it
and I was loving it and everybody wanted their pictures taken
and I was getting kisses and uh, you know, it's a total rock star thing.
What can I tell you? Phenomenal day right from the beginning to the end.
You guys are great. I'm great. It's good, man.
What are you gonna do now? Be greater.
Uh, die.
Yeah, no, we're gonna go uh go back put my stuff back
and I'm gonna try to get some sleep.
I'm, Im whooped, man. It's been a long day.
Really has.
I'll tell you the first thing I'm going to do though
is eat those three pieces of that tuna club
that we had at the restaurant because Im starved.
Can you turn around and walk that way towards the car?
Yep. Good night gents.
Party on!
Rock and Roll will never die!
Okay, now I'm fried, dude.
I am fucking fried.
Are we heading out?
Yeah, let's go. I'm freezing.
I'm soaking wet from being on the dance floor
and I got a nylon tank top on.
It's probably 40 degrees out here.
You people are weak!