Stuff to see and do

The sound cuts out a little bit at the beginning of this 1980s Magnum T.A. interview, but stick with it, the payoff is great.


Also, if you were thinking about giving some money to starving children, stop thinking that and give your money to these guys instead so they can finish their film about the ridiculously great rock and roll combo Silkworm:

"Hello everyone-

(my apologies to anyone who has already received this and/or donated)

As most of you know, we have been making this film since August of 2006. Financed out of our own pockets as well as by our family members, we have interviewed almost 60 people including Jeff Tweedy, Steve Albini, Matt Kadane, Stephen Malkmus, Tim and Andy’s parents, Jason Molina, Gerard Cosloy, and so many more friends, family, fans, and rock critics.

So you’re probably wondering why this is of any importance to you? Well, here’s the deal:

Unfortunately, this sort of independent filmmaking always ends up taking longer than expected. We were hoping to have a finished cut by August or September of this year but with the current financing, that’s a slim possibility. We were able to make the last trip to California thanks to the 30+ people who kindly donated to the cause. There are over 200 of you on our mailing list. If everyone donated five dollars that would be a huge step towards making our final trip and beginning editing.

If you can’t donate, we would appreciate it if you could post this message on your blog or website, write about it on forums, do whatever you can to get the word out to people who would like to. Everyone who donates will be credited in the film. As soon as we’re finished, we will be traveling to festivals, independent art house theaters and rock clubs to show the finished cut. Hopefully this will happen in a town near you.

If you would like to contribute to the completion of the film, please follow the PayPal link below:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=silkworm_documentary%40yahoo%2ecom&item_name=Couldn%27t%20You%20Wait%3f%20The%20Story%20of%20Silkworm&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

THANKS

Seth Pomeroy (director)
Shawn Girvan (producer)

ALSO: if you would like to see interview clips we’ve done in addition to the trailer and performance clips, check out our youtube page: www.youtube.com/HargroveHouse

People ten years younger than me haven't heard of anything

I'm continually surprised by the complete lack of cultural reference points (or context for available reference points) my mostly decade-younger fellow students exhibit in class discussions. The immediate present (or context-free reference to the recent past) is the only thing that seems to exist. I know I'm looking at the world with ten extra years of jackassery under my belt, and I allow a lot of concessions for that. When I was 18-21, I never rented any movies that predated the late 1960s, and I hardly ever rented any non-American films. My musical taste was narrower and rooted in the present and near-past, and I stuck to the 20th century in my choice of books. However, I spent those years slowly expanding my repertoire, and I had at least heard of a lot of stuff I hadn't yet experienced. I know it's the American way to be lazy, complacent, hostile to any kind of intellectual self-improvement, and stuck in the present, and knowing a lot of cultural references isn't really that important unless you experience the work behind these references, but sweet christ, the cultural history of the twentieth century sure seems irrelevant to today's newest adults (hereafter referred to as post-pubes) (not really). Even when they know who someone is, they know him or her from some of the most irrelevant shit he or she has ever made. Examples, overheard in my classes: "Who's that guy from As Good As It Gets? Oh yeah, Jack Nicholson." A group report about the film Red River in my Life and Lit of the Southwest class included a presentation about Howard Hawks. The girl giving the presentation mentioned some of the many actors Hawks either discovered or featured in their first important roles. James Caan was one of these actors. The girl said: "He's the guy from Elf." This makes me feel 10,000 years old, even though I'm pretty new to the planet myself.
Interestingly, the reference points of the middle school kids I'm observing and student teaching this semester are much more expansive than the 20-year-olds in my classes who've never heard of Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Parker, Gary Cooper, the L.A. riots, Henry Kissinger, H.L. Mencken, the Fat Boys, Foreigner, Liz Phair, or the Sex Pistols. The middle school kids have heard of more writers, bands, and songs than my fellow English and education majors (though they claim every book is either "stupid" or "boring.") I've heard students singing 1970s and '80s metal, pre-fame R.E.M., sixties bubblegum pop, Nirvana's non-hits, and '80s gangsta rap and new wave. When I asked them about their favorite movies, Fried Green Tomatoes had a place in the pantheon. (Not a good movie, but, hey! It predates their existences!) I was baffled by this for weeks until I realized a lot of the parents of these 13-year-olds aren't much older than me. If I had more muscle tone, athleticism, stupidity, street smarts, a non-fear of rejection, a fear of latex, easier access to booze, and less access to drugs, heavy metal, and/or unrequited love in high school, I could be the father of a 13-year-old right now. So, this obsession with the present only (unless referenced on Family Guy) is a temporary, generational thing is all I'm saying, and I will stop worrying about it. Thanks, middle school loudmouth brats! You have actually heard of things that aren't really important but make Dr. Mystery feel better about the state of young adulthood and the health of this country's cultural references of yesterday, tomorrow, today, tomorrow.

Louis Black still sucks! Evidence here!

Soft-rock the Vote

I wish I could say this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, but our culture delivers gems like this every minute.

When people come up to me and ask me how to become a world champion, I say, "Forget it. It's gotta be in your DNA."

One of the only good things that happened to me last week was seeing The King of Kong.

My grandmother died this morning. It was more expected than my aunt's death, but the timing of all these recent traumatic events has definitely been a shock and my immune system has taken a long vacation from the rest of me. At the risk of sounding like those idiots who say things like, "God has another angel now," or "She always had a smile on her face," (Really? Always? And no one committed her?), I want to say that my grandmother was, and probably always will be, the best person I ever knew. She based every decision, even the tiny ones, on her moral/ethical code and never wavered from it. She had a great sense of humor and absurdity, and it always made her laugh when somebody did something foolish, including herself. She constantly read books until her eyesight got too bad a few years ago, and she was a great painter. She was my biggest fan (though she would have been extremely disappointed at all the profanity on my blog), and the last words she said to me, as I left the nursing home with my uncle and his two dogs to ride to Denver International Airport less than two weeks ago, were: "You're a good-looking man. All your female students are going to have a crush on you." Then she said she wished she was going with me. She spent the majority of her last month listening to spirituals by Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and telling us all how great we were and how lucky she was to have us. I'm glad she won't have to spend another day in the nursing home. She complained about the patronizing way the employees talked to her, even though she had more on the ball than they did.
My time alone in the cave of despair has been extended for a few more weeks. I can't wait until this blog can be about people who won't take gorilla masks off, how much I hate Louis Black, and how many nachos I can eat in one sitting again.

Return from the Great White Middle

I'm finally done blasting through the tower of babble of school work that had been piling up since everything went to hell family-style three weeks ago. After a week spent burying my 50-year-old aunt, putting my wonderful grandmother in the nursing home the day after the funeral, only to have her fall and break her hip today (which was the only reason we put her in there in the first place, so she wouldn't fall), and having my flight home delayed for several hours because of snow only to land in Austin in 30 mph winds that tossed the plane around like a ball of string slapped by a disinterested cat, I'm no longer intimidated by the middle school kids I will be teaching in a couple weeks. There are far scarier things in the world. It was an emotionally raw week back home in western Neb. (home of original member of The Eagles, Randy Meisner). A lot of ups and downs. It wasn't all misery. I went out to an abandoned ranch and shot guns with my uncles, cousin, and cousin-in-law. I hit a blue rock target dead-on the first time I've ever shot a shotgun in my life. My second shot was a complete joke, and I didn't shoot anymore after that. I went to a bonfire at my cousin's the night of the funeral and confirmed how much I like my mom's side of the family and how lucky I was to be born into such an interesting, funny, unusual group of people in such a boring, unfunny, usual town. My uncle and his late wife have a bottomless group of friends whose existence in small-town Nebraska continually surprises me. They don't seem to have regular jobs, just mysterious incomes, and can only be found at bars, weddings, funerals, my uncle's house, and isolated country roads. I never see them in town for any other reason. Most of them wear leather and/or jean jackets. I'm too lazy to give them their descriptive due, so instead I will offer a formula that helps to explain these mysterious strangers' personalities. Add the essences of the following people, fictional characters, and organizations: Charles Bukowski, Jeff Foxworthy, Timothy Leary, Jack Nicholson's character in "Easy Rider," the TV shows "Roseanne" and "The Andy Griffith Show," every member of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, the Sasquatch, and "The Muppet Show" band = my uncle's friends. They all have nicknames like Choffey, Orf, Buffalo Legs, Bones, Moo, Donkey Patrol, and Inspector UFO (I only made the last two up). These people are basically cosmic hippie redneck biker philosopher-poets and their lives make up a secret history of small-town existence. I meet a different one every time I go home for a non-holiday visit and hang around long enough. My uncle and Choffey exchange a large rock every seven years. Whoever has current possession of the rock adds a couple new lines to the poem they've been writing on it for many years. At the bonfire, one of these men regaled us with a Cormac McCarthy-worthy tale of drug deals gone bad, prison time served, and $25,000 buried in the countryside near where we were drinking. The way these people talk should be written down. Unintentional poetry. Orf started calling one of my uncles Dangerous Dan McGrew and said he rode into town with a "lion on his back for a coat and a bear for a horse." My newly widowed uncle said one of the saddest, truest things I've ever heard about loss of a family member without any maudlin wordiness. What my grandmother calls the "unvarnished truth." This is what he said about his second day without his wife: "I went to the bar. Had two beers. Went home. Fell asleep in a chair. Woke up and made myself a chicken pot pie. It wasn't any good."

My aunt Donna died this morning. She was only 50. Here's what kind of person she was: When I was six or seven, she called my house to let me know that an all-day monster movie marathon was on HBO. I rode my bike over and watched movies all day with her. When I was 17, I grew a really stupid goatee that I thought was cool. My boss at the grocery store told me to shave it off. My aunt told me to tell him, "Fuck you, Tim." She was a fun person who liked to read and liked music. She had a lot of problems the last ten or twelve years that led to her early death, but that doesn't matter. From the daily phone reports I received from my mother this last week about her sister-in-law and my aunt, I learned a lot about how to die with bravery, dignity, self-respect, and humor. I feel bad for my uncle and my cousins. I spent a lot of time over there when I was a kid, listening to their records and baby-sitting their kids. It's been hard trying to get through my week and take care of business. You should be able to pause life sometimes for a few weeks. I would like to ask anyone reading this to please not email me, call me, or personally give me any condolences. I sincerely appreciate any good thoughts and concern, but please just send it out into the world silently. The English language is woefully inadequate when it comes to condolences. I know you care. I don't need to hear it. I will probably keep to myself for a few months. That's how I get through these things best. I need the shared history, comfortable silences, and humor of my family and my own self for a while. Then I'll crawl back out of my cave and get on with it. Send all good thoughts to your families (if you like them) and enjoy their company. If any of you have emailed or left a message, etc., before you've read this post, don't feel bad. I'm weird and solitary about this stuff, and I appreciate your concern. Life is good, and I'm glad I know so many good people.

Whoo!

For the first time in 12 years, I had the flu. It sucked. I think I'm coming out of it now, but for a while, I was burning the candle at both ends, if you know what I mean.

I'm considering trying Netflix, and I was browsing their inventory this morning when I stumbled across the greatest movie title in Mexican cinema history:
7 Mujeres, 1 Homosexual y Carlos*


*For those of you with even worse Spanish than me, that translates as "7 Women, 1 Homosexual and Carlos."

Larry McMurtry on Austin

Nothing much has changed. Just replace "protohippies" with the Beauty Bar crowd or anyone's moderately ambitious local rock band. Throw the Austin Chronicle staff in the mix, too. His description still fits this town a little too snugly, and sometimes his words are even more accurate today. I like it here. I wouldn't have stayed seven years and counting if I didn't. But this is a distressingly honest summation of Austin.

"... During the last two months of my stay in Austin it was my good fortune to be thrown much in the company of (author William) Brammer. We were both, at the time, in respite of wives and money, and shared a house on Windsor Road. Mr. Brammer was at that time the local culture hero, The Gay Place having been published only two years before. He was thus a natural target for anyone in Austin who was aspiring, frustrated, or bored. The inrush of Wives threatened to wrench the hinges off the door, and Mr. Brammer faced it with the courteous and rather melancholy patience with which he would probably face a buffalo stampede. In the wake of the Wives came a sweaty and verbally diarrhetic mass of bored or bitter professors, broke or bitter politicians, protohippies with beach balls full of laughing gas, and broke-bored-bitter young journalists who looked like they had been using themselves for blotters.
"In time I sealed off my part of the house and left Bill to cope with the crowd as best he could, but during the brief weeks when I spent my nights opening the door I got, it seemed to me, an adequate glimpse of Austin. It had, among other adolescent characteristics, a fascination with its own pubic hair, and a corresponding uneasy fear that its sexual development might stop just short of adequacy. Groupiness was endemic. No one might be missing from the group, lest he turn out to be somewhere better, with a wilder, more swinging group. In such a town the person who is sure of himself is apt to be literally crushed by the surging mobs of the insecure, all rushing to confirm themselves by association. "
...
"Cliquishness can be especially insidious in a town the size of Austin, where those in favor seldom if ever receive any strong-minded local criticism. ..."
...
"The emotional activity most characteristic of Austin is, I think, the attempt to acquire power through knowledge. Accordingly, Austin is the one town in the state where there is a real tolerance of the intellectual; and yet one's final impression of Austin is of widespread intellectual confusion. Perhaps the phenomenon most expressive of this paradox is the University's rare book program. For the last decade, rare books have been sucked into Austin like particles of dust into a vacuum cleaner; the University's enormous and almost amorphous acquisitiveness remains the wonder, joy, and despair of the rare book world. No one can doubt that an extraordinary library is being formed in Austin, one whose potential usefulness is very great; yet the manner in which it is being formed leaves one a trifle abashed. The Humanities Research Center, for all its riches, comes too close to being a kind of intellectual's Astrodome. The University's almost frenzied acquisitiveness seems to stem not so much from a vision of the needs of future generations as from its own immediate intellectual insecurity. A successful acquisition brings a temporary sense of intellectual power, and it is the acquisition of books and manuscripts, rather than their use, which seems to be the dominant concern; that and the creation of a symbol of prestige (the Center) which the scholarly world cannot ignore. ..."

from In a Narrow Grave (1968)

It's time to beat up on Louis Black again

I used to do a weekly feature on this blog in which I bashed Austin Chronicle editor-in-chief Louis Black's weekly opinion columns. It got really repetitive after about five weeks, so I stopped doing it. My criticisms of his column became robotic in less than two months. That should give you some idea of the mind-numbing redundancy of his collected oeuvre. In short, he's a pathetic fuck, and that's ultimately boring. However, something about his writing has been nagging at me again. There's a lot about the Chronicle I find worthless: The film reviewers, the Mosers, the music coverage, the existence of Raoul Hernandez. There's occasionally something in the Chronicle I find worthwhile: The investigative reporting, some of the political coverage, the listings of what films, live shows, and events are going on that week. However, even in the most useless trash (anything written by a Moser, etc.), the piece usually appears to have been edited. What I'm trying to say is that the grammar is usually correct. Why are Louis Black's columns, aside from everything else I find revoltingly stupid about them, riddled with grammatical errors? It's obvious he doesn't allow anyone to touch his columns. He must think his pen jizzes literary gold. My blog may not be Johnny Grammar's Instructional Primer, but the egregious errors in Black's column cause me physical pain. Here are some recent examples:

1. See if you can read these sentences and make any goddamn sense out of what he's saying. If you can, you must have learned English from kung fu movie subtitles:
"I'm almost always more interested in reading cultural criticism when it takes a different point of view from my own, especially the more it is radically different. Reading criticism with which I agree is usually boring unless it is by a writer who matches content/thoughts/opinions to writing, creating something interesting independent of the film (Marjorie Baumgarten, Marc Savlov, and the rest of the Chronicle reviewers; Elvis Mitchell; Pauline Kael). The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, for example, is such a gifted stylist that his reviews are always entertaining to read – but they also almost never have anything interesting to say. Certain reviews whose overall positive or negative rating coincides with mine can be so inane and ill-conceived as to be somewhat entertaining."
What the fuck? That is the most incoherent shit I've ever read. I think what he's trying to say is that reading criticism that differs aesthetically from his own sensibility expands his horizons, but his tortured syntax makes me weep with rage. First, he says reading critics who agree with him is boring unless they create something "interesting" (keep that word in mind) that exists outside of the film. Then, for his example, he uses Anthony Lane, whose prose he admires except that his reviews "almost never have anything interesting to say." How is a direct contradiction an example of what you mean? An editor would have (should have) caught this sloppiness. I don't think he allowed anyone to edit his work. Let's look at that last sentence, too. In the context of his point, it's meaningless. In the context of human experience, it's insanely arrogant. If he's trying to suggest that he learns more from people with differing opinions than people who agree with him, what difference does it make that "certain" reviews coinciding with his opinion are "inane and ill-conceived"? Considering the amount of reviews for any given piece of art or entertainment in our Internet-enhanced era, the amount of "inane and ill-conceived" reviews either supporting or backing any given opinion is probably fairly large. Is he implying that he's the last word on his side of the subject? And what fucking difference does it make for his point that the inanity of "certain" reviews is "somewhat entertaining"? What does that have to do with the point he's trying to make? The answer: He's a terrible fucking writer.
2. "Having your perceptions challenged clarifies and sharpens one's thinking. Most of the tenets and strategies I use in writing criticism came from spending endless amounts of time obsessing on critical pieces, often just cataloging rebuttals." Editor, where are you? That first sentence should read 'Having your perceptions challenged clarifies and sharpens your thinking,' or 'Having one's perceptions challenged clarifies and sharpens one's thinking.' The second sentence has no tense consistency. It should read 'Most of the tenets and strategies I use in writing criticism come from spending...' I also have to ask. You write criticism? Check out this piece of criticism (from the same column):
"All this is by way of saying that, after just my first viewing of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth – a stunning masterpiece – I decided that reading and considering negative reviews or strong criticism would be, for me, a waste of time. The film is so completely unique and startlingly fresh that I just can't conceive of any objections to the film having anything terribly interesting to say. And, honestly, I don't want to taint the powerful and pure experience of watching this film by reading niggling criticisms that invariably I obsess on countering, with all the panache with which one might worry an aching tooth."
On behalf of every non-asshole reading that last sentence I have to ask: Panache? Is that the word you really meant to use?
Check out this other piece of "criticism" (from the same column):
"On some occasions, I have been lucky enough to have the flavors of a particularly outstanding meal so intensely branded on my taste buds that the next day it is as if I'm still eating it, rather than just recalling the memory. I wanted the film implanted in just such a way, only permanently. I wanted it to glaze my eyeballs, stick in my ears, catch under skin, stain fingertips until it even replaced memory, so I had no memory left except for it. I wanted the film draping me as though it were fog, to be over, around, and in me, smothering and caressing. I wanted it as though it were my very breath itself, until it was such a part of me that the next day, after first seeing it, I could still and forever after watch it."
God, that makes my skin crawl. If Harry Knowles said the same thing, I wouldn't be able to summon an erection for the rest of my life. (Though it would have to be a 418-hour film to fully drape the revolting carcass of Harry Knowles like a fog, never mind the smothering and caressing. Why does Austin have so many high-profile troglodytes who have contributed not one thing to justify a second of their worthless existences?)

If my eviscerating of a year-old Louis Black column is almost as pathetic as the man himself, here is a more recent example from two weeks ago:
"The music has always been there, has always been within us, pushing through our veins and in our heads. The very first attempts to release and invoke the music was done by banging branches and smashing rocks. It progressed from there. There's probably plenty of music we've all never heard trapped inside of us, carried by mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers, by the young and the old."
Attempts was done? Fuck! Attempts were done. Goddamnit! Let someone edit your columns, motherfucker! It wouldn't help anything, but jesus, it sure wouldn't hurt. If he cared about writing as much as he cared about flapping his wizened cock-mouth, he'd at least fix his fucked-up grammatical errors. What a philistine douche-toad from ass-town. Let's behead this fuck! Let's have an alt-weekly revolution! Demand excellence! Or at least competence! Befriending John Sayles does not make you a writer!
Here's some more atrocious, incoherent, incompetent bullshit from Bloviatus Maximus:
"At the Toronto Film Festival, I saw John Sayles and Maggie Renzi's new film, Honeydripper, in a large theatre, with a completely racially mixed audience, which is more common to Toronto than Austin."
Completely racially mixed? So every single race was represented in that theatre? Were there any Eskimos there? How about Filipino/Irish/Namibians? Oh, they were there, too? You're not writing an essay for eleventh grade composition. You don't have to pad the fucker with words like "completely" and "very" and "extremely." And why the scolding about Austin's segregated social scene from a white guy who edits one of the whitest alt-weeklies in the country? There's a black guy on the cover this week. Won't see that for another eight months. You will see at least 26 white singer/songwriters on the cover before you see anyone of color. I would gladly put money on that. Completely green money. Fucker.
This final excerpt is horrifying in its grammatical atrocity:
"Sayles is a huge music fan; listening to the car radio, talking about new releases, or even just checking the soundtrack album for any Sayles movie is a dead giveaway."
So, listening to the car radio and talking about new releases is a dead giveaway that John Sayles is a music fan? What? I listened to the car radio today. I checked the new release wall at the record store on Friday. I didn't learn a fucking thing about John Sayles. What is your subject/verb agreement in that sentence? Tony Randall likes pussy; walking the dog, eating broccoli, checking the credits for any Tony Randall movie is a dead giveaway. I'm guessing that you mean that John Sayles likes to listen to the car radio and talk about new releases and that's how you know he's a music fan. But guessing is all I can do. If I have to guess (and I shouldn't have to), I'm not going to do it for Louis Black. Impeach Taft! Throw Fat Louis Black Out! Rage Against the Machine! Don't Start Another Vietnam in Nicaragua! Whoo! I've been tearing up VIP lounges since before you were born! Some of them right here in Birmingham, Alabama! (The Birmingham crowd goes nuts.)
When I start teaching school, I am going to use Black's essays as examples of how not to write.



HATE!!!!!!!

Diamond Dave's Golden Pipes

Some wise fellow isolated the vocal track of Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil," a song I've probably listened to 5,000 times since the age of six, but this is, to use a word I hate, a revelation. This is the funniest goddamn thing I've heard since I was born. I'm not going to tell you how much or how little of this to listen to, but the last twenty seconds are the best.

Dumb

Do some people even pay attention to what they're saying? Or writing on the Internet? I know they don't, and, you know, I don't really either, but come on. Check out this book review from a user on Goodreads:
"I can definitely put this book down. So far it's 'ok.' I must say the writing is Amazing though. It seems that for the first 50 pages, he doesn't even take a breath. There is a roll of language that has so much energy. The writing is entirely impressive and lyrical even though it creates a entirely basic life."

If you think the writing is amazing, impressive, and lyrical, and the language has energy, what makes the book mediocre? Did your book come with a bland taco salad? What else is there to a piece of writing other than writing and language? What the hell are you talking about, you stupid lady? I guess because the main character is "entirely basic?" Whatever the shit that means. By the way, I didn't tell you what book she reviewed because when you approach it the way she does, it doesn't matter.

(The book was "Hop on Pop.")
(Or was it?)

We go back in your time, brother

A transcript of an interview with Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka from the early 1980s:

RIPPER COLLINS: OK wrestling fans, this is Ripper Collins. And in the 6000 years there has been wrestling around the world, every country has known its great and its greatest. We've had people like Lou Thesz to represent the world's heavyweight championship; we've had Harley Race; great people, great wrestlers go all the way back centuries ago. And we're very lucky now to have among us probably the greatest wrestling star ever, because when you mention his name anywhere in the world---and I do mean anywhere in the world---they all come up with one fantastic person: the one, the only, the Superfly, Jimmy Snuka. The fantastic star of the world of wrestling. The man who flies through the air from the top rope
from 15 feet atop a cage onto his opponent. This is the one, the only, the great, Jimmy Superfly Snuka. It's my honor.

SNUKA: Thank you Ripper, ladies and gentlemen, you wonderful people out there in TV-land. Ripper, I appreciate the compliments you just gave to these people out there. Now you know Ripper, as we go along, and standing here before you ladies and gentlemen, all you people out there: the Hawaiians, the Samoans, the Fijans, the Tongans, the Filipinos and you name it as we go along down the line.

You know, Ripper, I've just been standing out here brother, listenin' to you mentioning about all these greatest wrestlers in the past, but nowadays we talkin' about today, tomorrow, and further on. You know, Ripper, there's a lot of people that comes out and stands before this camera and talk.

(EXTREMELY long pause)

You have to realize and know exactly and put it down to a point, to a view, to make sure that you people out there understand exactly what we pointing exactly to you.

Now Ripper...now I know brother, there's a lot of things in everybody's mind wondering what's going on in this world. Well, ladies and gentlemen, only you people can realize and understand one thing, to be paying attention is the only way to know what's going on. Now, Ripper Collins, you know there's a lot of things going on in this world, but there's a lot going on in professional wrestling! And professional wrestling is the name of the sport, there it is only one of its kind.

Now Ripper, there's been a lot of men that's been coming out of the United States, come flying into Honolulu, Hawaii. Why? Because all the professional wrestlers around the world, you name it, around San Francisco---which I'm looking forward to come there---even down all over the coast. Man, you name it, everybody is looking forward to come right here to Hawaii because they know Hawaii is the beautiful paradise of one of the South Pacific islands. You don't even name the Samoan islands, which is one of the prettiest of the South Pacific; the Tongan islands which is the South Pacific; the Fijan islands, which is another paradise of all the South Pacific islands. You name all these wrestlers that come here from all over the world; you name it we got it. And standing here right before you I am one of the Polynesians that represents all the Polynesian islands.

Ripper Collins, we go back in your time brother, that you are one of the greatest and still is. But ladies and gentlemen, you name it, we got it; but there is only one thing that I just like to know deep down in my heart: what is going on here? I want to know. I have to know. Because that's the only way to find out who's got what and who's got who.

Now the most important thing to everyone in professional wrestling, Ripper Collins, is challenging and getting into the ringcircle. Because for one thing everybody is challenging each other for one thing...for one thing, and what that one thing is Ripper Collins, and that's titles. Titles are all over the world, you name the titles that's 'round the world, it might be too much. But let me tell you one thing, it only take faith and confidence to get inside to that ringcircle wherever you at and fight. If it's here in Hawaii, which is so important and so special to me. Hawaiian Islands is what we represent; I represent the Polynesian islands, and if anybody think in their mind that they could come from the mainland, here to my part of my country, and think that they can come and try to demolish the Polynesian islands and and try to take away what they think that does not belong to them---what belongs to us is what we gotta keep in the Hawaiian Islands. Ho-hano, brother.

(about two minutes later, during the next match):

RIPPER COLLINS (attempting the save): I wanna tell the fans, Snuka was talking on his interview there, and in plain simple English what he was telling the whole world is: Jerry Lawler, you're coming to my Hawaii, to my Polynesian land, and I'm going to kick you from post to post and pillar to pillar and take that belt back.


Here's some other business:

Jon Voight: Super-Douche

"God sent an angel. His name was Rudy Giuliani. He's kind of a genius."
-- actual quote from Jon Voight

Jon Voight, on "The O'Reilly Factor": When I see our president defaced, which is defacing our country… it is very concerning to me that I have heard this from, you know, from people who have great celebrity, and they talk against our president. And I say, 'Well, this is a dangerous time, fellows.' They don’t realize…
Bill O'Reilly: The downside of free speech. And that’s what it’s all about.

Another hilarious example of Jon Voight's super-douchery: In the early 1980s, John Cassavetes directed Voight in Ted Allan's stage play "Love Streams." When Cassavetes rewrote the entire play (except for the character's names, jobs, and relations to each other) and turned it into a film, he kept the play's cast. After a long, hard battle for financing, a few short days before filming was set to begin on this highly personal film for Cassavetes, Voight bizarrely demanded to be the director. Voight had never directed a film before, and his only directorial credit since has been sharing the direction of a 1995 children's TV movie starring Ally Sheedy and Dom Deluise. Cassavetes told him to fuck off and played the role himself.

Comedy gold

My brother showed this to me last month, and I laugh every time I think about it.

Fun with record covers

Check out these links from the good people at WFMU. First, to see the scariest record cover ever, click here. (Click on the small image to enlarge and see the full scariness.)

Second, this Photoshop contest to extend album covers past their borders, creatively, has many pages of funny stuff. Click here. My favorite so far involves Pink Floyd and the Kool-Aid man.

Shreddin'

I pissed my pants and had ten heart attacks laughing at these.

The desiccated, lifeless corpse of Old Man Dr. Mystery gripes about the youth of today

Today, in my Life and Lit of the Southwest class, via a show of hands, three-fourths of the students had never heard of Larry McMurtry. One-third had never heard of Cormac McCarthy. These are English majors. From Texas!!?&*!
If I return to school again a decade from now, here is what I will hear and see:
Professor Smartypants: "How many of you have heard of books?"
Youth of the Near-Future: (Two people raise their hands, tentatively.)

I will show these little bastards no mercy when I start teaching them. They will read and write until they get arthritis and vomit blood. Then we will all have cupcakes.

Curses

I recently received an email from a Jamie Bynum entitled "Want it longer?" I opened the missive and read "Make it grow," followed by a link. I've always wanted a thick, full head of hair, so I clicked on the helpful link provided by the friendly stranger. To my shock and horror, this link took me to a depraved and obscene filth-hole of phallic imagery and erotic nightmare. Mr. or Mrs. Bynum, you have won this round. BUT THE WAR IS STILL ON!!!!!!


In an unrelated bit of news, a friend of mine reworked part of his dissertation into an article for Pop Matters magazine. It's good. Here is the link (will not take you anywhere overtly phallic.)

I'm back

Hey, everybody. My editor told me that opossums are out and boobs are in for 2008.