Monday, October 12, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Oh, Otto!
Covers of two German comedy albums. How is it that the same country that was responsible for the Holocaust also produced this pussy? He's like Gallagher on estrogen pills. If Birkenstocks took human form, the result would look a lot like Otto.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Read Hard or Die
The Beginning of the End by John Hagee (Thomas Nelson Publishers 1996)As an evangelical, John Hagee, a pastor and televangelist out of Texas, believes that the end of the world will play out exactly as outlined in the Book of Revelation and other biblical passages. In The Beginning of the End, he makes the argument that the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1996 was the first step towards the end times. Like most religious fanatics, his logic is a little convoluted, but basically his reasoning is as follows: Before his death, Rabin was making serious progress towards a peace accord with the Palestinians and Hagee argues that in honor of Rabin's memory, Israel would finish the work he started and end the conflict with Palestine. On the surface, peace in Israel sounds like a good thing, but for those in the know like Hagee, it is actually the first of a chain of events which ultimately lead to the end of the world. Although I have always thought that the end of the world would be just a one act play, it is evidently much more complex, involving several phases. I wasn't able to follow it all but let's just say that it doesn't sound like much fun. How does he know all this? Like a magpie with a magical decoder ring, Hagee is able to cobble together his prediction of the end times from various inscrutable bible verses about fantastic creatures like dragons and sea beasts with seven heads and an animal that is a mixture of a bear, a leopard, and a lion. It kind of reminds me of a nerdy fantasy novel. Who knew there were dragons in the bible? Of course, God and Jesus kick the bad guy's ass at the end, and everybody lives happily ever after. Well, most do; the rest spend eternity in endless torment, but hey, you can't win them all.
It's been ten years since Rabin's assassination and the publication of Hagee's book, and neither peace in the Middle East nor the end of the world seem to be on the agenda any time soon. One would imagine that Hagee's prophetic ineptitude would spell the end of his preaching days, but nothing could be further from the truth. He keeps truckin' along, ministering to his 19,000 member flock in person and on the boob tube every week. Although I would like to think that Hagee and his flock of sheep are an anomaly, the truth is that their ilk are now part of the mainstream. Exhibit A: In what has got to be a low point for U.S. foreign relations, bible banging George W. invoked the names of Gog and Magog, two players in the biblical end times according to Hagee, when he attempted to persuade then-French president Jacques Chirac to join the invasion of Iraq, reportedly telling Chirac that "the biblical prophecies are being fulfilled." Mama mia!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Visual Nose Candy
What the fuck?!?!? Could there be any other possible explanation for the cover of Kansas vocalist Steve Walsh's 1980 solo album Schemer Dreamer besides massive amounts of blow? God, my face gets numb just looking at it.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Read Hard or Die
Sometimes God Has A Kid's Face by Bruce Ritter (Covenant House 1988)The word on the street is, johns prefer chicken.
Father Bruce Ritter was a Catholic priest who rose to prominence in the 1970's and 80's as an advocate for sexually exploited children. His most well known project was the Covenant House, a group of shelters throughout NYC for runaway and homeless children and teens. An outspoken critic of pornography, Ritter was especially vocal about the depravity of the Times Square area. Like many anti-sex zealots, he failed to differentiate between child pornography/prostitution and sexually explicit material made by and for adults, going as far as claiming that Dr. Ruth was a pernicious influence. As it turned out, Ritter himself had failed to walk the righteous path. In 1990, a former male prostitute who had also appeared in pornography alleged that Ritter paid his living expenses in exchange for sex. Several others, including employees and residents of Covenant House came forward with similar accusations. He was eventually forced to resign from the organization that he started. It was the first of many child sex abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic throughout the 90's.
Sometimes God Has A Kid's Face was a short book released by Covenant House as a fundraising tool. In the book, Ritter recounts the beginnings and daily workings of his organization in short diary-like entries. Incredibly, Ritter practically outs himself as a chicken hawk over and over again. I can't believe it didn't raise any eyebrows when it was originally published. For example, although Covenant House cared for both boys and girls, and commonsense would lead one to believe that far more underage girls are sexually exploited on the streets than boys, Ritter writes almost exclusively about boys, particularly those in their mid-teens. His descriptions are all somewhat strange, almost inappropriate. For example, he describes one boy as wearing "skin-and-muscle tight brief cut-offs and a body shirt unbuttoned to the waist" while another is "not exactly skinny, but not well muscled. Not exactly effeminate, but not strongly masculine either. Sexually indefinite..." You can almost see the drops of drool on the page! At one point, he recounts a trip to Ft. Lauderdale during which for hours he cruises a strip popular with male hustlers, checking out the action. Eventually, he stops to pick one up who has asked him for a "ride." Here is Ritter's description of the encounter:
"Do you want to give me a ride?" he said.
He was a nice-looking kid, 16, maybe 17, I thought. Nice eyes, nice hair. A little scared , maybe.
"Sure," I said. The kid opened the door and slid gracefully into the front seat. It took my foot off the brake and the Mustang moved slowly up A1A. By now it knew the way.
"Are you a cop?" he said.
"No," I said and laughed-mostly to put the kid at ease. "Do I look like a cop?" I said.
"You never can tell," he said.
"I guess not," I said. "I'm not. My name is Bruce," I said.
"My name is Dan," he said.
"Where're you from?" I said.
"Minnesota," he said.
"How long have you been in Fort Lauderdale?" I asked and turned of A1A on to Las Olas.
"Three weeks," he said.
"Where are you staying?" I said.
"In a motel," he said, "but I lost my room."
I drove south on Birch Road and made a decision to continue the conversation.
"How are you surviving?" I said. "How are you making it?"
"Hustling," he said.
"Are you hustling now?" I said.
"Yes," he said.
"How much do you go for?" I said.
"$80," he said and hastily added, "but I do everything for that. I can go for less," he said.
And then my eyes began to burn and then they began to glisten and blurred oncoming headlights and I was glad it was dark in the car and he couldn't see the tears forming.
"How old are you?" I asked. It was getting hard for me to talk.
"Eighteen," he said, although there was not much conviction in his voice, as though he didn't expect me to believe him. (I didn't.) He was a nice-looking kid. A gentle face. "How long have you been hustling?" I said.
"I ran away to L.A. when I was 15 and got into it there," he said. "I've moved around a lot," he said.
The blue Mustang seemed to drive itself up Birch Road, and I pulled it over on a quiet side street a couple of blocks from where the kid jumped into my car.
I turned to face the kid, and I guess he could see the tears in my eyes. He looked at me a little uncertainly.
"Hey," I said, "I enjoyed riding with you. Thanks," I said. I reached into my pocket for a $20 bill. "This will help you with your motel room," I said. The kid became very still, his eyes frozen for a moment on nothing I could see.
"This is certainly different," he said.
"I know," I said. "Be good to yourself," I said. "Take care of yourself," I said. The kid hesitated-he didn't want to get out of the car. He opened his mouth to speak and then changed his mind.
I touched him on the shoulder. "Be good to yourself," I said again.
"Thanks," he said. "I hoped you wouldn't hurt me," he said.
The boy got out of the car. "Thanks," he said. "Later," he said.
I am sure this is exactly how the encounter played out. Only Ritter forgot to mention that the kid sucked his dick right before he gave him the $20.
Here is his description of another encounter with a different hustler:
In the jargon of the street he's known as "rough trade," and he plies his wares, himself, up and down the Minnesota strip. He is 15 and looks 18, and he's seen the elephant.
We faced down each other across my desk, casually, relaxedly, while I carefully arranged my face and my eyes and my mind so that nothing I said or did or thought or felt in the next hour was spontaneous or unconsidered. He offhandedly, with the practiced skill that needed no explanation, probed for my weaknesses, inspecting my jugular with the guileless eye of the corrupted young. Slow waves of depravity and innocence washed in shadows of darkness and light across his face.
He used the shreds of his innocence with a kind of detached, hapless malevolence to evoke my sympathies. By turns he was cynical and callous, winsome and desperate-for knowing moments at a time, vulnerable. He drifted in and out of reach, in and out of touch, constantly probing, watching for that moment of advantage.
Jesus, could his description be any more homoerotic? You could cut the sexual tension with a knife. Half the book reads like gay porn with the sex cut out.
Read Hard or Die
Blue-Collar Aristocrats by E. E. LeMasters (The University of Wisconsin Press 1975) In Blue-Collar Aristocrats, LeMasters, a college professor, details the lifestyle and mores of what is now an almost extinct species: the highly paid skilled blue-collar worker. From 1967 to 1972, the author became a regular at a Wisconsin tavern frequented by local workers whom he befriended. Through this contact, he was able to piece together a portrait of the lives of his subjects and the picture that emerges is not a pretty one. These men love fucking, drinking, gambling, watching sports, hunting, and polka music. They hate women, blacks, gays, and book learnin'. The book is ultimately pretty funny because the subjects are such unbelievably stupid assholes that they almost come off as caricatures. Here they are in their own words:
On Women's Liberation: What in the hell are they complaining about? My wife has an automatic washer in the kitchen, a dryer, a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a car of her own-hell, I even bought her a portable TV so she can watch the goddamn soap operas right in the kitchen. What more can she want?
The goddamn women are trying to take over this town-they're just like the niggers: give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
On Rape: Did you ever try to screw a woman that didn't want to screw? It ain't easy, I can tell you. They can put up one hell of a fight. Take my word for it.
On Child Rearing: My boy came home from school the other day with a cut lip. I asked him what happened and he said this other kid hit him. I told him that if he didn't go back and lick that other kid the next day I would whip him when he got home.
On Integration: I realize that something has to be done for the black bastards, but I sure as hell don't want them living next to me. I don't care to work with them either.
On Interracial Dating: You should have seen the pretty white girl I saw with a big black jigaboo on the campus today. Sonofabitch if I can see how those girls can do it.
On College Campus Protests: I think we should get our shotguns and go down there some night and teach those bastards a lesson.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Read Hard or Die
Body Count is an autobiographical account of one woman's sexual exploits during the 1960's. Unfortunately, those exploits are less than noteworthy to say the least. Although the author seems to see herself as something of a emancipated woman and sexual outlaw, her own words paint a somewhat different picture. For much of the book, she is more of a neurotic Helen Gurley Brown Sex and the Single Girl square as opposed to a hipster. The sex is hetero and vanilla, and considering that it was the time of "free love," the number of men she engages in trysts with seems quite average. Since this pre-dates the 70's Women's Lib movement, the men in her life treat her like complete shit, which she strangely seems to be fine with. Worst of all, the author considers herself something an sexual intellectual, but her writing is for the most part vacuous drivel. Simply put, she is no Anais Nin. Then again, what can you expect from a book about sex written by someone named Francie Schwartz, possibly the least sexiest name of all time.
The book's saving grace is the chapter in which she details her brief time working for Apple Records and her affair with Paul McCartney during the recording of the White Album. Her depiction of Sir Paul is a far cry from the cheery, "cute" Beatle we all know and love. Rather, he comes off as burned out and depressed. Befitting the harder edged sound of some of the White Album, his drugs of choice are the scotch and speed of his Hamburg days as opposed to the pot and LSD of the psychedelic Pepper's era. Most shocking of all, he is not afraid to get a little physical when he feels that his woman has stepped out of line.
As a side note, this book only adds to my mystification regarding Paul's tastes in the lady department. Ok, Linda can be explained as proof that love is blind, but judging by the picture on the cover, Francie Schwartz was not exactly what I would call a looker. Then you have his second wife, the one legged model. Yes, she is attractive but SHE ONLY HAS ONE FUCKING LEG! On top of which, her post-divorce behavior leads me to believe that she is something of a psycho. Adding to the confusion, I remember hearing a radio interview once where Paul said that Yoko came to him first but he sent he over to John, apparently because she wasn't up to his standards!?!?!?! The mop tops should have taken a page from the Stones' playbook: Bianca, Anita Pallenberg, Jean Shrimpton, etc. etc. How is it that when the boys were at their peak, arguably the biggest rock stars of all time, George, the ugliest Beatle, had by far the best looking wife?
Body Count was published in 1972 by Straight Arrow Books, a small press that only put out a limited number of titles, all of which have been out of print for some time. Most of the titles deal with some aspect of the counter culture, including the wonderfully titled Acid Facism and an autobiography by Hunter S. Thompson's lawyer, immortalized in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This particular title seems to fetch a pretty penny among collectors, dealer's prices on Amazon ranging from $40 to as high as $150. I can only imagine that it is the Beatles' connection rather than the quality of the book itself that accounts for the interest.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Hell Rocks!
REPENT SINNERS!
Times are tough, and when the shit hits the fan, a lot of people turn to the man with the master plan: The Notorious GOD. Every day, the Broadway Junction subway stop plays host to a variety of street preachers spreading the good news. Unfortunately, their take on the good news is somewhat apocalyptic. The end is nigh, my brothers and sisters...Repent or ye shall spent eternity in the fiery abyss. Below are some of the pamphlets they hand out.
I like how confident they seem to be that judgment day is coming considering the fact that it has been coming for the past 2000 years. They are like somebody who has been stood up for a date. If they just wait a little bit longer, the other person is bound to show up. Unfortunately, God probably isn't having car trouble.
They could have saved some printing costs with this one. Is it really necessary to inform people fundamentalist Christians' views vis-a-vis homosinuality. In case you aren't hip to the low down, I will give you a hint: They are not big fans of San Francisco.
I can't figure out who the little mountain climber man driving the spike into Christ's forearm is supposed to be. Historically, it would be the Romans, but the lack of a toga rules that out. The artist does score some points on the historical accuracy scale by depicting the spike being driven through the wrist as opposed to the palm. I do like the fact God throws a "please" in there. Yes, he will sentence you to an eternity of unimaginable torment if he finds you lacking, but he probably feels kinda bad about it.
In the end, it is important to realize that God does love you. Just don't fuck with him or you will regret it.
Jesus does look like a pretty cool dude, though!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Combat Academy
If the first thing you thought upon seeing the dvd cover for Combat Academy is "Gee, I bet there are a ton of hijinks in that movie!", you would be 100% correct. In fact, Combat Academy is nothing but one big hijink, and how could it not be with that cast. You have got Richard Mull aka Bull the bailiff on Night Court, Sherman Hemsley aka George motherfucking Jefferson, Jamie Farr aka Klinger on MASH, and John Ratzenberger aka Cliff Clavin on Cheers. The types of trouble that this collection of knuckleheads could get up to makes the mind reel. In fact, I would even go as far to say that the cast of Combat Academy is on par with what I consider to be the dream team of zaniness, the cast of Canonball Run 2.
One of the love interests is played by Dana Hill aka Audrey Griswold in National Lampoon's European Vacation which is an odd choice considering the fact that her face has the same look of bloated swell as that of Jerry Lewis when he was taking steroids. Oops, according to IMDB, Hill suffered from severe diabetes which led to her premature death at 32, and I am guessing was also probably responsible for her strange looks. Now I feel bad...still an odd choice though.
Keith Gideon who played Rodney Dangerfield's son in the classic Back to School is one of the leads, and let me tell you, he is one hairy ass motherfucker. There is this scene in a pool where it looks like he is entangled in seaweed, but upon closer inspection, what I thought was seaweed is really his extremely long back and shoulder hair. Shave that shit, bitch.
Oh, and George Clooney plays one of the villains, but unfortunately he does not display the genius that was to come when he played Matt Stevens in Return of the Killer Tomatoes!. Oh, Mr. Clooney, how far we have traveled...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Read Hard or Die
There was a magical time called the 1980's when you could walk into your neighborhood Brantanos Bookstore (Do these even exist anymore?) and buy joke books that made fun of black people, gays, Mexicans, etc. Then it became the 90's and this thing called Lollapalooza happened where everybody wore flannel shirts and all the girls were grrrls who just wanted to talk about how you were oppressing them with your penis. Nobody laughed at racist/homophobic/etc. jokes anymore because of something called being politically correct. The movie PCU pretty much explains it all. It's got Jeremy Piven when he was funny before he was on Entourage and became a total douche bag. What happened to you Piven?!?!?!? Remember how you were in Say Anything and were all funny and shit. That was awesome. Try and be more like that. Does anybody actually write joke books? Maude Thickett, I am calling shenanigans on you! Is it just me, or does Maude Thickett sound like a made up name?
5 Outrageously Offensive Jokes from the 1980's:
1. What do flowers and Len Bias have in common?
They both die two days after they've been picked.
2.Why did Dwight Gooden give up so many walks last year?
He liked freebasing.
3. What do you call a dead baby born in the morning in Ethiopia?
Good eating.
4. What do you call rich people pissing on you?
Reagan's trickle down theory.
5. How did the Statue of Liberty get AIDS?
From the mouth of the Hudson.
If you weren't alive in the 1980's, you probably don't get them. Even though I was alive in the 80's, I was in grade school so I didn't really know what was going on so I asked my dad to explain these jokes to me. Here are his answers:
1. In the 80's there was this magical drug called cocaine. It was so popular that even people who didn't really do drugs were pretty into it, and if you didn't do it, it sucked because it made everybody who did do it into a total asshole but they didn't realize it because they were too busy going to the bathroom every five minutes to do more blow. Anyway, there was this college basketball player named Len Bias who was really good, and he got drafted to play in the NBA. To celebrate, Len decided to do a little blow. Unfortunately, it made him have a heart attack, and he never got to be a famous basketball player who made lots of money. Boohoo. Ironically, even though everybody was doing cocaine in the 80's, Ronald Reagan, who was a bad actor who became the president some how (See explanation #4), decided to start this program called DARE to keep kids of drugs. Len Bias became the poster child for why you shouldn't do drugs. My mom told me that you should never do drugs because Len Bias only did drugs once, and he died. Now, I am pretty sure that my mom was lying. Shame on you mom!
2. Another joke about athletes and drugs. Dwight Gooden was a really good baseball player who fucked himself up doing cocaine. If you were really into coke, you graduated from putting it up your nose to something called freebasing. Freebasing is basically like smoking crack, but not exactly. I have never been really sure what the difference is.
3. There was this country in Africa called Ethiopia where everybody was starving to death. For some reason, people seemed to think that this was hilarious so there were a lot of jokes about starving Ethiopians in the 80's. I am not sure if the Ethiopians ever got anything to eat, but you don't really hear much about them so I assume they are doing better.
4. Ronald Reagan was a really bad actor who made a movie where his co-star was a monkey. Since he was such a shitty actor, he decided to get into politics. First he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, then he was governor of California, and finally he was elected to president. All the hippies from the 60's became burn outs in the 70's who started to feel guilty so they got all religious and became just like their parents who they were rebelling against in the 60's. There were also these young people who grew up in the 70's when everybody was having orgies and doing drugs and dancing to disco music. Because young people like to rebel they decided to become conservative assholes who drank a lot of Perrier. These horrible people were called yuppies. So the lame ex-hippies and their evil spawn the yuppies thought it would be a good idea to make this shitty actor president...twice. He was even worse at being president then he was as an actor. He cut government spending so poor people got even more poor, pretended that the Russians were evil commies who posed a threat to the USA even though the country was basically falling apart, and ignored this new disease called AIDS that people started to get. Rich white people liked him, though, because he wanted to make them even richer which was supposed to be good because of something called the trickle down theory. He ended up getting Alzheimer's disease, and it is thought that he might have begun to suffer from the disease while he was still in office which could explain a lot.
5. AIDS was this new disease that made you sick and then killed you. Nobody cared about it first because it seemed like only gay people and junkies got it, but then some straight people got it and all of the sudden it was a big deal. Everybody started to freak out that they were going to get it, but that never really happened like they said it would. It turns out that gay people and junkies are pretty much the only ones who get it.
Thanks, dad. It's all clear now. The jokes still aren't that funny.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Mexican Madness
They sell these value packs of Mexican comic books in a lot of the kiosks in the NYC subway system. I don't know Spanish, but I love the cover art. Since I have no idea what they are really about, I like to imagine their story lines based on the covers alone.
This one is about a cop named "Brass Balls" Baxter who doesn't play by the rules. He is always getting hassled by his captain because of his unorthodox methods, but at the end of the day, he always gets his man. Whenever things start to get hot, Brass Balls always says that he is "getting too old for this shit," which everyone finds to be kind of strange considering that he is 29, but Brass Balls only calculates his age in dog years, making him 203. 
Here we have the story of a cabal of evildoers who get all of their power from their amazing mustaches. They are heavily into white slavery, which as you can tell from the picture is quite profitable now days. They specialize in kidnapping girls with enormous breasts from their villages and selling them to yuppies who like to beat them with leather belts when the Dow Jones falls.
The brunette at the top gets school girls hooked on the dope. She goes to playgrounds where she gives all the cute girls free samples in order to get them strung out. When the girls begin to jones real bad, they are forced to perform unnatural acts with donkeys while being filmed in order to get a fix. The blonde guy goes undercover as a donkey salesman so he can find his sister who has become the star of a very popular fuck flick called Debbie Does Donkeys in Dallas.
This one is about a deranged killer who is driven into a murderous fury by the sight of a man in bikini briefs. He must be stopped before every German tourist in Mexico is gunned down.
The story of the unlikely love that blooms between a millionaire and his maid when they discover that the both love collecting leaves which they press and keep in scrap books.
This is about a virgin who gets a summer job as a towel boy at a posh resort. As you can imagine, all sorts of shenanigans ensue as he tries to get laid. He finally scores with one of the resorts cleaning ladies, a sixty year old named Roselita. It was truly a magical summer.
The raven haired beauty was raised by her conductor father in a train yard. Because of this, she develops the strange sexual quirk that she can only come when she masturbates with model trains. She is kidnapped by a debauched millionaire who has the world's largest model train collection, and it is up to Brass Balls Baxter to save her.
Bubble Letters
Bubble letters are the really fun chubby girl of lettering styles. I found this among pages of math homework in a notebook that some student had either lost or discarded outside of a stop for the J line in Brooklyn.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
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