Who is Ron Nastie?

The first Nastie in the US was a German fur trapper who came over with French fur trappers thru Canada. His name was Ralf Naustie. He settled in North Dakota. His grandson join up with the explorers Lewis and Clark. James Naustie traveled with them until they were caught in a blizzard and were starving when the Shoshone/Hidatsa tribe found them. James fell in love with a native maiden and did not make the trip with the famous duo.

The small Georgia town of Naustie was founded by a distance relative who had a lumber yard. It is said much of his lumber help rebuild Atlanta after the burning in the Civil War. During that time the “u’ was dropped and the “e’ was turned silent.

Ronald J. Nastie was born August 23rd in the late 60’s in Birmingham, Alabama. Growing up at the end of the Civil Rights movement, Ron saw many things change. He does remember the tension between races. The name calling and anti- black statements even rang out in church he went to. Ron recalls the preacher telling “black” jokes before the sermon on Sunday. Even at 6 years old he knew something was not right about that.

During the first year of school Ron stood back and watched. Then at 15 his parent moved to Death Valley California to a town called Trona. There he met the niece of game-show host Bob Eubanks and he fell in love. Several movies and TV shows were filmed there and Ron was in several. His girlfriend took him to several auditions and he was in crowds scenes in the Six-Million Dollar Man and other police shows.

As he got older Ron was in a few other films, and most notable, one called “Fear No Evil.” He knew people who where going back to Alabama to shoot a film and as his parents were moving back there he went too. He was in a Osmond TV movie called “Kent State” shot in Gadsden Alabama.

There he met his wife. He also worked part-time as a DJ at a radio station playing new punk and new wave songs. He changed his name for the radio to the spelling “Nasty”. It fit with music artists like Johnny Rotten, Richard Hell, or Sid Vicious becoming popular.

He continued to work in films and then was hired by a theater chain to help in their new midnight movies. Ron had a blast pulling odd cult films and rock and roll documentaries to air beside the classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Warner Brothers Films saw this run and made it a package to sell to other theatres during this time. It was a hit. Several theaters made more money on midnight movies than the regular run film they had.

It was during this time that Ron’s first child was born.

Video players had not started to surface yet but as they did the older films where now not as popular. Ron saw a chance and went in with a partner to run a small chain of video rental stores in a town on the Gulf coast. It was a great idea as the vacationers needed something to do while it rained on them.

It went well until his partner and one of the sales girls had an affair. Both were married and funds disappeared.

One of his friends from the early years of films was in Florida to shoot a movie as asked Ron to star in the film The Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space. Ron looked at the script and turned it down. He knew he did the right thing.

Ron moved on and worked for the local UHF station as a download engineer.

Then an Alabama TV network needed help and Ron and his wife and child moved back to Birmingham.

Ron has worked there over 20 years and had two more children since.

With the TV network, Ron was able to use his satellite knowledge and rent out their satellite truck. This was a source for extra income for the TV network.

Ron has worked for CNN, ESPN, NBC, ABC, FX (Foxnews), Weather Channel and more. He was worked with Oprah, Phil Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jesse Raphael and other talks shows. In tabloid he has worked with “Inside Edition”, “A Current Affair”, and “Hard Copy.”

The worst event he had to help cover was for ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel. It was the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Ron started building websites in 1996 as he was interested in the internet as saw what it could become.

In June of 2006 Ron and his partner, Jeff Burson decided to create a new podcast.

They both loved music, movies and TV but a review of those were being done. On of the things Ron has always done is it to see who has died and share that knowledge with co-workers and family.

It seemed like a good idea for a internet radio show. Ron wanted to call it the Morgue and to pretend to be someone who works there. He dropped the spelling of Nastie to spell it “Nasty” for an on-air sound just like he did in the 80’s as a DJ.

Burson after the first show thought the name Final Taxi was better. The final taxi is the last ride that you pay for and there is only on destination- the graveyard.

It stuck. After a few shows it got an audience. In October of 2006 Burson got the idea to do a daily show during Halloween week. It was hard work but Ron and Jeff did the research and it paid off.

During that time, the New York Daily News highlighted the audio podcast.

After that several other newspapers picked it up. Also iTunes highlighted it on their main podcast page.

The Final Taxi continues to roll out with weekly audio show and a daily blog on Wordpress.
The blog recently was noted as one of the top 25 growing blog on WordPress .

Ron worked for a while on a radio show called Electronic Warfare on a station called Fried Green Radio. This was a 3 hour show playing Industrial and Goth music.

Ron also works part-time with an outdoor movie company showing films in the park. It is called Flix and Backyard Movie Parties

Many ideas are ahead for the Final Taxi according to Ron Nastie and Jeff Burson.