Okay, I’m crying a little.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Category: Uncategorized (Page 172 of 1031)
Motherfuckers wanna act like the Playing>Wheel>Playing isn’t the true hero of 2/26/77. Noobs talk about the surefooted debut of Terrapin; basic bitches go for the Eyes; wieners love the Estimated. But the muscle of the show is within the P>W>P.
ALSO: Read this: Lying Upwards for Fun and Profit.
- Jaime Torres, a Hispanic for Trump.
- Mookie Carter, a Black for Trump.
- Elliothimr, a Dark Elf for Trump.
- Injured Servicemember. (“Not the face. Nothing wrong with the face, okay? Missing an arm is good. No face, because the cameras cut to him and no one wants to see that, and Melania doesn’t like looking at that sort of thing.”)
- The Mooch.
- Boris the Hungry Spider.
- Wally Walters, who is being teased at his high school because of his name, and that’s Nancy Pelosi’s fault.
- James Woods, who lights a cigar and then gets in a fistfight with the cop who tells him to put it out; screams “You can’t tase me, I’m James Woods;” is tased. (The President and the Republican members of the Congress cheer on the scuffle. There is wagering.)
- A guy who Junior plays Call of Duty with online that goes by Pussyfarter and refuses to give the Secret Service his identification.
- At least two life-like androids being piloted from within their chests by super-intelligent possums.
- Dracula.
- Not a dracula.
- The Dracula.
- In his evening dress with the big medal and the cape, the whole shmear.
- Cackling and nodding and occasionally shouting “FEED ME BLOOD.”
- Melania’s parents, Tuvt and Moof.
- Allen and Amy Feldman from Boca Raton, members of Mar-A-Lago and winners of the “Attend the SOTU” raffle.
- Dick Dastardly and Muttley.
- Tobin and Squee.
- A pork chop that can start fires with its mind.
“Remember the dinosaur that kills Newman in Jurassic Park? He had the neck frill thing?”
Yeah.
“Spat the goo?”
I remember. It’s a very good impression. Lemme ask you a question.
“Is it about my clothes?”
Oh, yeah.
“Great. Shoot.”
Are you the Douche Daddy or the Daddy Douche?
“Pardon?”
You are dressed like the quasi-popular rap tweens from the 90’s, Kris Kross. Your trousers are perfectly misaligned.
“My pants are not backwards.”
They totally are.
“No, the pockets are just attached to the leg instead of inside the seam.”
Right. Like on the back of pants. Where’s your zipper?
“In the back, but that’s because they’re Japanese.”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“You know nothing about fashion, and you’re poor.”
Ow.
…
“You’re on with John.”
“John. You know who this is. You know what I can do.”
“Oh, goddammit.”
“Years ago, my cousin Ioan placed an order for Chinese food. The meal arrived both late and without the moo-shoo pork. For three months after, I clotheslined delivery boys off their bicycles. I had a mighty forearm, and it held rage within.”
“Liam, we don’t really know each other at all, do we?”
“We absolutely do. You’re teevee’s Mark-Paul Gosselaar.”
“Close enough.”
“Once, in the late 80’s, a Pakistani man beat me at pool, so I climbed into the homes of sleeping Pakistanis and crept upon their beds and made my shit proudly.”
“Liam–”
“I shat upon them!”
“–first of all: I want to know who gave you my number. Second: you need to stop talking about this stuff, at least to reporters. Trust me on this one: discussing race in public is a high-stakes game.”
“I have never met a Hindu I didn’t kick.”
“Jesus, man. Why?”
“They know what they did.”
“Okay, pal, I gotta go. At a photo shoot.”
“Don’t cross me, Gosselaar. If you insult me, I’ll hunt and beat douchebags for a month.”
“I’m not a douchebag.”
“Then why are you wearing your pants like that?”
DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
…
“Excuse me.”
Yes?
“Can I not be the straight man for the little ‘topic of the day’ skitches?”
I’ll take it under consideration.
That’s the Swing Auditorium. It was in San Bernardino and was a rock n’ roll victim of aviation hijinx just like Buddy Holly and Lynyrd Skynyrd and that poor tour bus that Randy Rhodes crashed into. 1981. Hit by a twin-engine Cessna going 200 miles an hour. Pilot and his son died, and the building was razed after the fires were put out.
Before that, Sammy and Dean and Frank played there. Bob Hope brought Jerry Colonna and some pretty girls and a new armful of jokes for 13 years straight. San Bernadinans always did like that wholesome, patriotic material. The Sisters Andrews and MacGuire came through, and the King. The kids filled the hall, too, when Alice Cooper and KISS and Zeppelin played. Rock Stars loved the gig: close enough to Los Angeles to make it to Last Call at the Whiskey after the show. Stones did their very first American show here in 1964, one of those early tours with the tiny amps and the teenies down front pissing themselves.
The Dead played there on 2/26/77, which is the new Dave’s Pick, but you can listen to it for free because of the First Amendment. It was their first show in almost two months, having gotten deeply strange over New Year’s at the Cow Palace and then been (literally) locked into the recording studio to finish up Terrapin Station. You can tell: there is bit-champing, and there is leash-straining. The drummers are syncomeshed, and Phil is approaching the heaviest tones of his career, and Keith isn’t bored. Plus, this is Garcia’s first tour with his new Mu-Tron pedal and he’s putting that fucker through its paces. (The Mu-Tron is the effect that Garcia applied to his guitar starting in 1977 that made it sound even more Garcia-ish.)
Is there a heaven for venues? And if there is, do the other venues make fun of the Swing Auditorium?
“How do you get hit by a plane?”
“Dude, shut up already.”
“The odds are so against it!”
“I said ‘shut up!'”
And so on.
GOVERNOR’S MANSION – VIRGINIA, DAY
“Governor Northam, thank you for meeting with me.”
“Always time for the Virginian–Pilot, Gordon.”
“Let’s get right to it: in the past 48 hours, it’s come to light that you posed in either blackface or a Klan robe in your medical school yearbook. Additionally, your high school’s yearbook has you listed under a racist nickname.”
“Gordon, I was the first member of my family to attend medical school. My people are simple hill folk, often lacking in knowledge. Most of ’em are also lacking in pinky toes due to a genetic hiccup caused by close-breeding. My cousin Junie’s neck doesn’t go up-and-down; it goes side-to-side. Doctors puzzle over the phenotypical spasms that biology takes in my home, but we were honest people and we were right with the Lord.”
“Okay.”
“There you go.”
“Sir, you didn’t answer my question.”
“Repeat it. I was thinking about Junie.”
“Was that you in the blackface photo in your yearbook?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not. I remember precisely where I was when that photograph was taken, and it wasn’t there.”
“How could you remember that?”
“I kept my schedules and calendars. I couldn’t have taken that photo because I was working out with Squee and Tobin.”
“You know Squee and Tobin?”
“Different guys with the same names. All prep schools have a Squee and a Tobin. Plus a Mooch and a Rosie.”
“You were working out with Squee and Tobin?”
“Yes. In blackface.”
“What?”
“We would routinely cork up for our workouts. To pretend we were powerful black bucks.”
“I’m sorry what now?”
“I am not the person wearing blackface in the photo, but I did regularly don the ol’ warpaint for most of my adolescence and young adulthood. And also occasionally nowadays.”
“You do know that you’re speaking into a recording device, right?”
“The voters will understand that my use of traditional minstrel makeup was out of respect. It was a tribute!”
“A tribute?”
“Yes. I went as Soulja Boy for Halloween seven Halloweens in a row. That was because I was a fan, not out of racism. Look, I even learned to Superman Dat Ho. Watch.”
EXASPERATED WOMAN ENTERING THE ROOM NOISE
“Ralph! Do not Superman Dat Ho!”
“Not cool?”
“No, dipshit. Not cool. Fucking moron.”
EXASPERATED WOMAN LEAVING THE ROOM NOISE
“That was my wife.”
“Yes.”
“Rest assured, I know the dance. Don’t ask me to twerk, though.”
“No, sir.”
“Although I should just get ahead of that and tell you that there will be video of me twerking coming out soon.”
“Oh, that won’t be good for you.”
“No. And I am, of course, in full-body blackface during the video.”
“Of course. I just need you to confirm this one more time because I need to make sure I’m not insane: your argument is that you weren’t in blackface in the photo, but you were during almost every other moment of your life?”
“Yuh-huh.”
“Now what about the other yearbook?”
“Which one?”
“The one where you’re called ‘Coonman.'”
“Again, that goes back to my upbringing. Raccoon was our prime protein back in those days. My uncles Jezroath and Feelings taught me to tree them. We were bare-chested and heroic and, as you might have expected, in full-body blackface. I had a knack for it, and would come home with dead ‘coons slung from both shoulder. Sometimes, I would distribute finely-sliced fillets of the varmint meat to my classmates and teachers. Thus, I became known as the Coonman. Nothing racist about it.”
“I guess that’s more believable than the rest of it.”
“There you go. Anyway, I got a lot of important Virginia business to do, so–”
“Sir, what is that behind your ear?”
“–if you’ll excuse…what now?”
“Your left ear. There’s a black smudge.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s just ink from the mimeograph machine.”
“Were you in blackface right before I arrived, Governor?”
“I got nervous!”
“We’re done here.”
“I’m not resigning!”
“See you Monday afternoon at your resignation.”
Why are you like this?
“I sensed danger, and instinctually turtled up.”
That’s your instinct?
“More muscle memory. See, my toppermosts are all bulletproof.”
Really.
“Yeah. They’re stoppermosts.”
You’re unbearable.
“The cotton is impregnated with kevlar, and then carbon fiber is weaved in. It’s not easy to weave with carbon fiber. Most looms break.”
So that thing is bulletproof?
“It can take a shot or two.”
Awesome.
BANG!
“OW! It still hurts! Don’t shoot me!”
Wasn’t me.
“Then who did it?”
BANG!
“OW!”
“Little to the left, Ray, and then give ‘im the old bingle-bangle flizzum flop!”
“All right, then.”
BANG!
“OW! Hey! Jackass!”
Moi?
“Vous. This is stupid, and don’t take Bill Cosby out of the Problem Attic.”
I’ll pull down the steps to that place for whomever I choose, thank you.
*Admit it: you were surprised when you saw him.
- Some of you reading this have families, friends, careers, rich and rewarding social lives, hobbies, maybe you volunteer; you’re members of the community in good standing.
- Suckers.
- Live that way and you don’t have seven hours in the middle of the day to get high and rewatch Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy.
- I am a sick man; I am a spiteful man; I am a weak man; join me!
- Set fire to your family and join me.
- We’ll entropize together.
- Not a word, and I need you to be less weird.
- I need you to be “fewer” weird.
- Stop it and talk about the stupid-ass children’s movies, please.
- The Raimi Trilogy (Spidey-Man, Spidey-Man 2: The One With Doc Ock, and Spidey-Man 3: Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off) are movies from, if not another universe entirely, a different era.
- The style of the films, which came out in 2002, ’04, and ’07, is more in-line with 1978’s Superman than with the barrage of Marvel films that would follow.
- Sadly, Marlon Brando does not appear via disembodied voice to mispronounce the word “Krypton.”
- From scene to scene, the tone shifts from camp to corn; occasionally, like every second Willem Defoe is on the screen, these aesthetics mix; these are chipper movies.
- They are also, as befitting the superhero genre, incredibly dumb.
- Mind-meltingly, pulse-poundingly, neck-nibblingly dumb.
- None of the villains have any good reason for fighting Spider-Man: two of them (Green Goblin in the first and Venom in the third) just hate him because they’re eeeeeeeeevil, and the other two (Doc Ock in 2 and Sandman in 3) keep running into Spidey accidentally.
- A quick note on superhero/bad guy conventions: each hero gets his or her own rogue’s gallery, generally themed to match the hero’s abilities.
- Except for Flash: he can run really fast, so his villains include a guy who throws boomerangs and a psychic gorilla.
- Otherwise: themes.
- Superman uses his physical powers to fight crime, so his bad guys are smart: Luthor and Brainiac.
- Batman is a man with a code, so he gets agents of chaos like Joker and Riddler and Two-Face.
- Iron Man’s enemies, to a man, can be found wearing stolen or reverse-engineered Stark technology, because Tony Stark is the cause of every single one of his own problems.
- And as his powers are derived from the animal kingdom, so too are Spider-Man’s bad guys’.
- There’s Doctor Octopus, and the Vulture, and the Scorpion, and the Man-Bat, and the Cobra, and The Lizard, and Rhino, and Chameleon, and Jackal, and Tarantula, and also quite a few goblins.
- (Full disclosure: Spider-Man has also fought a guy who throws boomerangs. Which makes more sense, honestly. Spidey’s quick, but you could probably wang him with your ‘rang once or twice during a fight. Flash can run so fast he travels through time. There’s no reason some bogan who knows how to fancy-toss a stick should be able to fight the Flash.)
- But the bad guys are the backups here: the Raimilogy is first a romance.
- You are not correctly recalling how much Peter and Mary Jane bullshit there was in these three films.
- James Franco wanders in and out of their love, but then he gets his face melted and Peter and MJ get married, maybe, I don’t remember.
- So much longing.
- So many shots of someone standing in a window, sadly.
- Peter loves MJ, you see, but he also wants to be Spider-Man, so he dumps her four or five times.
- I may or may not have entirely checked out of the kissy-kissy part of the trilogy halfway through the first flick, except for the scenes in which Kirsten Dunst was clearly not wearing a bra.
- Nobody could not wear a bra like Kirsten Dunst.
- (An aside, and then a note: to defend my indulgence of the Male Gaze, you will note that in the scenes I refer to, Ms. Dunst’s thingamabobs were so evident that it must have a conscious decision on the part of the filmmakers. She’s literally wearing a wet tee-shirt at one point. The note: these are some of the last tits in any Marvel movie. The men take their tops off in the MCU, not the women.)
- If there is a fatal flaw with these movies, it is Tobey Maguire, and his face.
- It is round and soft with blubbery lips, and he has eyes like cow vaginas, moist and rheumy.
- And he speaks his lines like a simpleton.
- He is not, admittedly, given much to work with: the dialogue is basic and consists mostly of characters declaiming to one another, and there are very few jokes.
- Here, Spider-Man does not taunt his opponents while fighting them.
- He just kinda mopes.
- The Raimilogy follows the pattern established by the Godfather films: two excellent chapters, and then complete insanity.
- One, in short: Peter gets bitten, Uncle Ben gets shot, Willem Defoe is all kooky and wackadoo, Mary Jane gets captured by the bad guy, and then dangled, punching!
- Sam Raimi thought I wanted to spend a lot more time getting to know Uncle Ben and Aunt May than I actually did.
- It should be noted that the Aunt May in these three films was the proper Aunt May.
- Aunt May is a million years old.
- Aunt May has always been a million years old.
- I disagree with the new, hot Aunt May.
- Aunt May is not an AILF, Kevin Feige.
- Macy Gray is in the first film; she does not make a return appearance.
- Two, in short: Doc Ock strikes, James Franco plays Hamlet, Willem Defoe shows up a couple times even though he’s dead, Mary Jane gets caprtured by the bad guy and then dangled, punching!
- Just like in Superman II, Peter loses his powers.
- Not to worry: he gets them back just in time for the third act.
- Why?
- And where did they go in the first place?
- Those are great questions!
- If we show you a scene of Jumping-Around Guy fighting Tentacle Man, will you stop asking those questions?
- This installment features the best action of the three, and CG that still holds up 15 years later.
- It was better than Black Panther, at the least.
- And then there’s Spider-Man 3.
- Oh, you poor thing.
- Look what the bad men did to you.
- Common movie nerd wisdom is that Raimi was screwed by the studio; they made him include Venom.
- But no one made him include the jazz club scene.
- Or Kirsten Dunst’s two musical numbers.
- Two.
- We are also treated to James Franco and Kirsten Dunst making omelettes while dancing about an enormous kitchen to the sound of Oldies but Goodies.
- And Gwen Stacy, who does not die.
- Which is absurd.
- Gwen Stacy is the Chekhov’s Gun of the Spider-Man mythos.
- You can’t introduce her and not chuck her off a building.
- And the studio did not make Sam Raimi cast Topher Grace as Venom.
- There was too much going on, and yet not enough; the movie is at once rococo and jejune.
- Yeah, I called a Spider-Man movie “jejune,” what are you gonna do about it?
- Next up: the Andrew Garfield years!
- Oh, no.
- Oh, yes!
“One, two, three, four–”
DON’T YOU DO IT, MOTHERFUCKER!
“–I declare a Rando War.”
Goddammit. Rando War is like the herpes of this site. So it makes sense you’re responsible.
“I don’t have herpes.”
Lie to randos, Josh, not me. You have at least one of every herpe. You collect watches, clothes, and herpes. You’re like that seed bank in Norway, but for herpes.
“I can’t hear you. I’m winning Rando War.”
“Rando War back on? We’re in.”
“Look at these randos! We got four. Beat that, Meyers!”
“Yeah, beat–”
“SPEAK WHEN SPOKEN TO, NEW BRENT!”
“Not in front of the randos, Mick.”
“You wanna keep flapping your gums, boy? You’re getting clogged!”
PERCUSSIONIST CHASING KEYBOARDIST WITH A PAIR OF ATTACK CLOGS NOISE
…
“Are, uh, we doing a Rando War?”
Bobby, that’s your family.
“Ah.”
Doesn’t count.
“Well, you know, they’re randos to somebody. Like Doctor J.”
What about Doctor J?
“He’d consider both women to be randos. He’d, uh, probably be nice to ’em ’cause they’re pretty, but they’d still be of the genus rand. So, uh, pretend I’m Doctor J.”
Absolutely not.
“Remember that ball we used to use in the ABA? The red, white, and blue one? Stylish ball.”
Stop it. You are not Doctor J.
“Oh, yeah. I can slam that rock. Put that biscuit in the gravy.”
“Does Bobby think he’s Doctor J again?”
Who’s that?
Oh, hey: it’s Bobby’s Parish, Matt Busch.
“That’s not my job title.”
It’s not wrong, though.
“No. Anyway, does Bobby think he’s Doctor J again?”
Yes.
“Dammit. Ah, well, it’s better than when he thought he was Marvin ‘Bad News’ Barnes.”
I didn’t know Bobby was so into the ABA.
“He’s obsessed with failed sports leagues. The ABA, the USFL, that soccer league that had Pele for a while in the 80’s.”
Wow. Never would’ve guessed. Oh, yeah: what are you doing here?
“Rando War.”
That’s George R.R. Martin. He writes the books with the snow and the zombies and the castles and all that shit.
“Sure, but he’s a rando to someone.”
NO. Not entertaining this stupid argument anymore.
“I win Rando War.”
Yes, you do.
“I’m a dog now.”
Yes, you are.
Walk me through what’s happening here.
“Well, uh, I’m in a theater somewhere playing Looks Like Rain. Same as most nights.”
I meant your outfit.
“Layers, man.”
That’s just a blanket, Bob. You’re wearing a blanket.
“Oh, no. This is, uh, a tactical serape.”
Not a thing.
“Sure it is. You just wouldn’t have heard about it because, you know–”
I’m poor.
“–you’re poor. Yeah. This is one of those secret garments for rich people. Like my bobbermost, which I am wearing underneath the tactical serape.”
What’s so tactical about it?
“Pockets.”
Okay.
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