The Dark Side of the Home Video Paradigm Shift

First Portable Video Camera: Ampex VR-3000 Portable Quadruplex VTR (1967)

There is a reason most people should never be allowed to operate a video camera, and this is it:



There is so much to love/hate here, but I think one of the best moments is when the clowns go to their "favorite restaurant" and it is clearly the employee break room at whatever shit-factory the lead singer/producer/director/lyricist/composer/lead clown works.

What, Silly Sally the Clown couldn't use her clowny charms to convince the who-gives-a-shit manager at some Little Caesar's in Podunk Fucksville to let her pop-off one measly shot in a place where people actually consume hot food? I mean, it's not like they planned on setting up any lights or doing anything too serious!

Or maybe it wasn't authenticity they were after here...


That being said, if you are going to go to all the trouble of composing and recording a song in your laundry room on a Casio keyboard, you should make sure to follow through on that bitch by figuring out a way to convince the clowns starring in your music video to show at least one iota of enthusiasm when the camera rolls.

Otherwise, you might as well throw that $16 budget down the toilet, spend the weekend watching Home Improvement re-runs, and leave the video production to the professionals.


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The World's Most Uncomfortable Green Room?

Pedophilia has been in the news a lot these days, thanks to those pervy Catholics, and I feel it is my duty to take this opportunity to warn you all that pedophilia does not always happen behind closed doors or confessional curtains--sometimes it goes on right in front of your eyes, on national television.



Just Like Mom was the longest-running game show in Canadian history, even though it was only on the air for six seasons (How quaint!-Ed.).

The last five seasons were hosted by famed Toronto Blue Jays announcer Fergie Olver, who was the husband (now divorced) of the show's creator, Catherine Swing--which is an unfortunate name, considering what follows (Zing! -Ed.).

Now, I am the first to admit that I don't know much about Mr. Olver--including whether or not he is still alive--but that is only because his wikipedia profile has been deleted and scouring the internet has mysteriously (?) turned up no leads.

Most likely that is a result of his camp's reaction to the following video, which no doubt has made life extraordinarily difficult for Mr. Olver, if he is still alive:



Keep in mind that this is what happened when he knew the cameras were on.

What happened backstage after the show? What happened during casting sessions? What happened when he took the winning kids to Walt Disney World?

If anything more sinister ever happened besides these televised kisses, I hope he died a painful death, bled dry as a result of repeated slashes of his penis with a dull, rusted knife wielded by a vengeful victim.


Can you believe the good people of Canada let this go on for so long? Did they think it was cute that it seems all Fergie was after was a kiss on the lips from little girls?

I mean, I know it was 'a different era' and this is a heavily-edited video, but still--if an unwanted kiss happened even once it would be worth mentioning, and that is clearly not the case.

Hmmmm...methinks once again, as with 'the Catholic situation,' the rise of the military-industrial complex, the lip-service of modern-day politicians, real-estate speculation, the health-care situation, Social-Security raiding, and the current omnipotence of guilt-free corporations, previous generations were asleep at the wheel and future generations must pay the price.

So sad...

(Thanks to Videogum, btw, for introducing me to this ass-clown!)

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Gwyneth Paltrow Is Unhappy With Her Body

Ever the trend-setter--just another side effect of her unstoppable genius--the lovely Gwyneth decided to leapfrog all those plastic surgery fools and go straight to the cutting-edge shit.

Since her legs were getting "icky," she decided to just cut them off and have a couple anatomically-correct, scientifically-miraculous, animatronic legs attached in their place.

Expect the blindingly-glossy sheen to be cut way down with the upcoming second generation.

Until then, for your own safety, please try to avoid looking directly at Mrs. Paltrow's legs--especially if you are operating heavy machinery in her vicinity. Her legal defense fund will thank you.

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This Is What a Douchebag Looks Like

Ventral view

Dorsal view

I wonder who would win in a douche-off--Mr. CooL ICE or the Governor of California.

Before becoming Governor, Herr Schwarzenegger used to freeze things for a living

I'd say the odds are 50/50, considering these days Arnold walks around like his entire body is broken, and as long as the proceeds went to a charity that didn't spend 90% of their donations on operating costs, I'd sure buy a front-row seat.

Does Don King still do this shit? If so, give that motherfucker a call for me...

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Hollywood 2.0

In light of the dearth of originality that continues to plague Hollywood these days, here are five movies that will probably be made in my lifetime:


Real Housewives of Superheroes
What happens on the home-front is even more fantastic, in this out-of-this-world comedy from Robert Zemeckis.


He's Just Not That Into Your Mom
Cougartown meets The Graduate, as Taylor Lautner must fend off a feisty Diane Keaton in his quest to win the heart of her daughter, Taylor Swift.


Back to Back to the Future: 3D
An obese movie nerd/computer geek (Jonah Hill) accidentally finds himself inside the 1985 cinema classic and hilarity ensues as he tries to cover his bumbling tracks without blowing it for Marty and Co.


Twitter: The Movie
Meg Ryan discovers that love really is blind when she discovers her number-one-follower-cum-love-interest is none other than Taylor Lautner, who happens to run a rival flower shop in idyllic Martha's Vineyard.


2 Many Jessicas
On the eve of his wedding day, Jonah Hill is forced to choose between Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel.


Since I am nothing but a whore, I promise not to slam these movies when they ultimately hit the megamultiplex--as long as I get 2% of the gross.


Dessert:

Dances With Wolves to Become a Broadway Musical!
(and remember--The Onion AV Club is not fake news)
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WOW.

Not sure what this site is all about, but it's where I found that...thing...above...

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The Religious Trap

If pedophilia happens, doesn't that mean that it was God's will, as people so often say when tragedy strikes, since he is omnipresent and omnipotent?

If that is the case, then isn't there nothing we can do about it, since judgment is His job and not that of a mere mortal?

Also, as long as the guilty pervert priests confess, aren't they absolved of their sins and granted entry into heaven?

It's enough to make your fucking brain explode trying to make sense of religion...


Dessert:

Evidently, I'm not the only one with some of these questions...

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Jim Cramer and Glenn Beck Simultaneously Rupture Brain Aneurysms During Intercourse

In the wake of the recent--and, admittedly, surprising--indictment of Goldman Sachs for fraud, Goldman alum/boot-licker Jim Cramer has had a particularly hard time keeping his famous temper under wraps.

During such tough times, when nobody else understands him, when everybody reminds him how often he's been wrong in the past, and he loses his voice from screaming too much, he has no choice but to call in sick and cry on the shoulder of his secret lover, Glenn Beck.


After all, if anybody understands a crier, it is Glenn Beck; if anybody understands the unfair situations that televised liars are put in, it is Glenn Beck.

But these two unfortunate media behemoths have had to be careful about their treasured trysts, since freedom-haters everywhere would love nothing more than to catch them in the act and ruin their lucrative careers by propagating lies in the liberal media.


This being the case, they wisely borrowed a page from the Book of Cruise/Travolta and only engage in homosexual liaisons while flying in a private plane, high above the prying eyes of truth-seekers.

And so it is that, just yesterday, after the inevitable crying-on-each-other's-shoulder foreplay at 30,000 feet, while deep in the throes of unbridled hate-fucking, Jim Cramer tried his best to scream--but no sound would come out!

Not one to go down without a fight, our Jim heroically summoned all his reserve energy and was finally able to emit a dog-whistle-pitched high-C-above-high-C-above-high-C.

Unfortunately, this superhuman effort also ruptured one of his numerous brain aneurysms and he immediately collapsed into a lifeless pile of bones and skin.

Always ahead of the game, Glenn picked up on Jim's death before it even happened, and had already begun the most hysterical crying jag of his entire life.

As soon as poor Glenn realized there were no cameras around to record his magnum opus, it was too much for him to handle and his own brain aneurysm finally fell victim to the communists.


Sadly, the tragedy did not end there, folks.

The dog-whistle screech emitted by St. Cramer shattered not only the eardrums of the two heroically-discreet pilots and the Tibetan-midget fluffer, but also every bit of glass in the entire plane.

The sudden loss of cabin pressure, inability to hear barked emergency orders, crazed midget, and mass confusion sent the luxurious, windowless Learjet 45 into a tailspin.

The doomed plane crashed to Earth somewhere in remote Tea-Bagger Appalachia, exploded on impact, and burned itself to dust, which was fittingly spread by the four winds over the country they loved perhaps too much, thus depriving the world of any evidence this ever happened.


As far as the rest of the world knows, thanks to the fine folks at FOX Propaganda, these two pillars of the American community merely had their fill of all the liberal bullshit choking America to death and bravely fled to Cayman Island obscurity--where the financial-criminal expats and descendants of slave traders know a thing or two about real freedom--to live out the rest of their lives in aristocratic peace, as historic heterosexual heroes who only have gay sex in private.

-God

April Fools!

Wait, I'm not late for that bus, am I? Oops--sorry!

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Sometimes Atheists Make Me So Proud...

Two prominent British atheists--Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens--have huddled up with their lawyers and plan to make the case that The Fucking Pope should be arrested when he visits the UK.

For what? Crimes against humanity, for his part in the cover-up of Catholic Church Inc's heavenly history of sex-abuse.

Now, I am not naive enough to think this plan will actually work out the way it should, but I love the fact that we finally live in an age where somebody is trying--publicly--to shake the plebians out of their delusional slumber and slash a chunk of flesh off the arrogant church monster.

How great are these two dudes? Check this out:

Last month Dawkins wrote a scathing article for the Washington Post in which he called the pope:

A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.

Hitchens told the Sunday Times of London: "This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."

"A leering old villain in frock." Huzzah!

And on a related note, check this out, also courtesy of HuffPo:

A prominent Old Testament scholar has resigned from a professorial position after he was recorded on video endorsing evolution.

Until several days ago, Bruce K. Waltke was a professor at Florida's Reformed Theological Seminary. But after the school found out about his video blog (the video has since been removed at Waltke's request) on the website of the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes harmony between science and theology, he lost his job.

According to several people who saw the video, Waltke said that Christianity's continued denial of evolution will "make [them] a cult."

Circle the wagons, religion, cuz the word is out--you're a cult!

It's no big surprise, I'm sure, but I take great satisfaction in the knowledge that at some point in the future, the religions of today will be as reviled as the pagans of yore. To each era of humanity their own, I guess.

Speaking of, I wonder what the future religions will be like...robots that smile beatifically as they grab you by the throat and squeeze until you swipe a credit card through a magnetized slit in their crotch?

Why not, right?

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Probably Should Have Seen That One Coming, Ma'am

According to Der Spiegel, a German prisoner murdered a woman during an unsupervised six-hour-long conjugal visit on Sunday, using two knives and a wrench to stab and beat her to death.

The prisoner also slit his own wrists but doctors were (fortunately?) able to save him and continue spending tax dollars to keep him in good health for the next thirty years or so.

Why should this woman have seen it coming? Because the prisoner was serving 19 years for raping a 9-year-old girl and beating her to death.

Probably not the best guy to start a relationship with, definitely not the best guy to break-up with during a conjugal visit, especially if you have knives in your purse, especially if he looks like this:


Not quite Darwin Award material, but it sure is close.

The scariest thing about all this, however, is that the brutal murder could have a silver lining for the victim's now-orphaned child.

Instead of this monster being released next year and moving in with them--which surely would have resulted in this child's rape/death at some point--s/he can now live a long and fruitful life in foster care, in constant pant-wetting fear of the inevitable day this psycho escapes from prison--when the guards send him out to buy them some lottery tickets--and decides to finish the job.

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So Much Better Than the Actual Show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjwhBkDegA4&feature=player_embedded

Although using Kevin Connolly to play E was a missed opportunity for even more delicious parody, if you ask me...

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Vegas, Baby

Remember all those whacked out Dungeons and Dragons dudes who used to beat you up in high school?

Well, those harmless little cuties went on to college, where they graduated to fighting each other with cardboard swords covered in tinfoil on the Quad. After college, the mighty diehards among them carried the torch all the way to Ye Olde Renaissance Faire.

Those few, fortunate rogues chosen by the very Gods above, who eventually found these hilarious affairs tortuously tame, advanced further still, to the penultimate step--killing people with "a medieval-style battle ax."

Viz:

LAS VEGAS — Sonia Lisset Castro said she pleaded for her life and that of her baby but the stranger attacking them with a medieval-style battle ax on a residential street only mocked her and kept hacking.

"I was saying in English, 'Please, please leave me alone!' But he wouldn't listen to me," Castro testified through tears and a Spanish translator Monday about the Feb. 11 attack that left her 4-month-old son, Damien, dead.

"Every time he would hit me, he would laugh out loud," she said. "I was begging him to let me go, and he was mocking me."

Castro peeled back a gauzy white scarf to show a Las Vegas judge the scars on the right side of her head where surgeons reattached her face and jaw. She said her right eye was irreparably damaged.

Montague is facing one charge of murder with a deadly weapon and three charges of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.

He is accused of stabbing his profoundly disabled sister-in-law at least 20 times in their home, then bursting outside and randomly attacking Castro as she walked past on the street with her son in a stroller. His sister-in-law, 36-year-old Monica O'Dazier, was treated at a hospital and released.

Montague told police he had no memory of the attacks, and defense lawyer Norm Reed has characterized his client as delusional and paranoid. But neither Reed nor defense lawyer Andrea Luem has sought to have Montague declared mentally unfit for trial.

A neighbor who dialed 911 as she witnessed the attack from her home also identified Montague as the assailant. Teresa Garner testified Monday that after Montague ran back inside his home, she went to Castro's aid near the curb and the overturned stroller.

"I saw the baby lying in the street, dead," sobbed Garner, a 52-year-old disabled former hotel worker. "I saw the mother, her face was completely gone ... bleeding profusely."

Garner said she later suffered an emotional breakdown and spent seven days in psychiatric care. She said she continues to take several prescription anti-anxiety medications daily. After appearing to fall asleep for a few moments during questioning by Luem, she said the medications make her drowsy.

On the 911 call, which was played for the judge, Garner is heard shrieking, "Oh my God! Her face is split open where he hit her with the hatchet!"

Police have said the ax had been hanging on a wall in Montague's home before he used it in the attack.

Montague's wife, Erricca Montague, testified that Harold Montague spent several sleepless nights pacing the floor, wasn't eating well, and appeared dehydrated the day of the attack.

Harold Montague had served since 2004 as the primary caregiver for O'Dazier, who Erricca Montague said has cerebral palsy and mental retardation, suffers seizures and can walk only a few steps with assistance.

Under questioning by Luem, Erricca Montague said her husband has smoked pot but never took other drugs or drank alcohol. She testified she didn't feel her husband was a danger to her, their three children or her disabled sister.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

One would hope that had fair young Harold realized the final step was 'execution by obese former high-school football players poured into correctional-facility uniforms' he would have humbly duct-taped his weapon back onto the otherwise-blank wall above his Playstation/masturbation chair and played with something for a while instead.

Even if it could have been colored as cowardice, it would have been a much more fruitful way to take his mind off how dreadfully boring his life is these days (ie, every day since he was born).

But we all know those guys were never actually very smart, so, you know, here we are...sitting in a chair somewhere, wishing his mother would have had an abortion all those years ago...

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Coffee, Booze, or Benzedrine?

I guess it depends on what you're writing, what kind of chemistry you got goin' on in your body naturally--but what is most interesting about the list below is how unsurprising it is that so many writers depend/ed on some kind of drug in order to be productive.

Believe me, I can relate--if you knew how many horse tranquilizers I was snorting every day, your puny little unenlightened mind would explode.

(courtesy Lapham's Quarterly)

Most of these associations are not terribly surprising, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning on laudanum? That one caught me off guard.

Good for her.

Bad for us:

Until the 20th century, laudanum was available over-the-counter, despite the fact that it contains opium, morphine, and codeine. Today, only infants born to heroin addicts or people with Guinness-record diarrhea can get permission to have a taste of that bitter delight.

Even more reason to try that muy picante salsa...


Dessert:
Much like laudanum, Benzedrine sounds like it was a whole lotta fun as long as you didn't know what it was doing to you in the long run...

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Trojan Horse Capitalism

Sit down here on my knee, little boy, and let me tell you a story. Don't worry, I'm not a priest--you have nothing to fear.

That's a good boy...now where was I...oh, yeah:


Once upon a time, there was a successful family company that got a bit too big for its britches, was bursting at the seams, shall we say, and one of the owner's sons, the greedy one, decided this company had a great opportunity to balloon into a massive money machine. After much in-fighting, and maybe even the death of the old man, the greedy son got his way and sought the advice of a greedy banker, who was more experienced in this sort of thing.

In exchange for a large sum of money, the banker advised the company to seek outside capital in order to expand at an unreasonable rate, undercut competition, corner the market, and raise prices. Once the company went public, there was no turning back and everything went according to plan. The stock became increasingly valuable, the family grew wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, the wolfiest wolves in the wolf business acquired as much stock as they could get their hands on, and they quickly began hounding the executives for increasingly outlandish profits to satisfy their bottomless appetites.

Manufacturing was streamlined, raw materials were either bargained down to extortionate deals or vertically integrated right into the monster, labor unions were fought tooth and nail, pennies were pinched, and still it was not enough.

Over time, the family and its loyalists were either phased out, neutered, or converted. Hired guns were brought in, unsympathetic to the needs of other humans, and the successful business was rewired from the ground up.


Manufacturing was outsourced to China, customer service inquiries were fed to call centers in India, benefits were reduced for every employee not in the executive ranks, millions of dollars were spent in order to avoid responsibility for environmental damage, taxes were dodged, and lawyers and lobbyists were hired by the dozen to insulate the new company from all responsibility, to protect it from all restrictions.

Millions more were funneled to media conglomerates through Madison Avenue, in order to make this cold behemoth appear friendly. A revisionist vintage logo was drawn up, folksy commercials were produced, corporate practices were greenwashed, the truth was buried, and what had once been a profitable family company with visible virtues and flaws, with a sense of community, a (relative) sense of decency, is now little more than a cuddly, helpful, responsible wooden horse with a perverted profit monster inside, lying in wait for the best opportunity to murder the entire world in their sleep, as soon as there is a buck in it.

Now, who wants a fucking Twinkie?


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Just Deserts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah--impressive...but what's the food like on this one?

Breaker: A second Titanic nearly sunk recently--in the Caribbean, of all places.

Brass Tacks:

A sinking yacht called the Titanic avoided the fate of its tragic predecessor, thanks to an international rescue operation co-ordinated from a do-it-yourself store in Wales, it emerged today.

Three crew were rescued in the Caribbean after one of them dialled from memory the number of a friend in Aberystwyth who serves as a volunteer on the local lifeboat.

With their yacht listing badly, short of power and too far from the nearest island, Grenada, to use VHF radio, the crew members cheered when the 4,000-mile call from their satellite telephone got through.

It was only after heartfelt reassurances that he swung into action, co-ordinating the rescue from the store's kitchen section. He took down grid references for the 79-metre, 1,700-tonne yacht on a till receipt and phoned them through to Milford Haven coastguards.

The alert was passed to Falmouth, which deals with international emergencies, and within an hour a French spotter plane located the Titanic. A United States coastguard cutter arrived at the scene shortly afterwards and towed the damaged vessel to port.

The yacht, which was playfully renamed after its previous owners decided to transfer its old name to a new ship, had taken on two and a half metres depth of water in the engine room by the time rescuers arrived.

(courtesy The Guardian)

Now, this is hardly a tragedy of Titanic proportions (oh, SNAP!), but it bears mention simply because it will now serve as proof that somebody was stupid enough to name a ship after the biggest embarrassment to float the Seven Seas.

After all, it's not every day one comes across such a perfect example of idiocy and I think posterity can learn a great deal from this debacle, if they stop sexting each other for a second and tell their one of their robots to read this article aloud to them.

Are you there posterity? It's me, Margaret...

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Satchmo Wednesday

Make sure to listen to some Louis today. Why? Because you should.

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The Final Word on Sandra Bullock

How far does one need to bend down while wearing naught save a camisole,
so as to show some cleavage? Must be before the boob-job...

I can't even believe I'm talking about her, but I guess one man can only take so much fucking mindless bullshit from the blaring media before he has to silence the crowd, down a thirsty throat-full of Pellegrino, belch in the satisfied manner of a man of the world, and speak his mind, once and for all, so here goes:

Sandra Bullock is not worth a damn.

The evidence:

1. She has never been, nor will ever be, a credible actor, despite a recent Oscar win for her performance as a skinny white woman with breasts and a questionable accent in 'Precious for the Suburbs.'

2. She was stupid enough to marry Jesse James, a white-trash custom motorcycle dawg with a penchant for porn stars, despite the fact that she had her pick of the litter, and expected it to turn out well.

3. She counts George Fucking Lopez among her closest friends, which is proof that she has absolutely no taste whatsoever, since that guy is a comedian who has yet to realize the only joke he has given the world is himself.

4. She thinks the world cares whether or not she has a sex tape.

No talent, no taste, no clue. And she wants my sympathy?

I say, "Fuck that bitch."

I said it once, I'll say it again. Either raise your glass or begin the slow but fruitful process of learning how to finally accept the truth--anything else is just unnecessarily self-destructive.

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What's So Creepy About Religion?

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it has something to do with the uniforms, conformity, mob mentality, indoctrination, intimidation, selfishness, certainty in the face of the unknown, and the overall intense creepiness.

(photos courtesy of The Guardian)

Happy Easter weekend, everybody!!! LOL!!


Dessert:



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Fat Friday, Vol.5

Due to intense lobbying by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, KFC has finally bowed to the pressure and combined the deliciosity of bacon, cheese, and fried chicken into one artery-clogging pseudo-sandwich wad of grease their membership has been clamoring for lo these many years.

Fried chicken as bread, huh? How come nobody thought of this before? Oh yeah, because chicken used to be real meat with bones in it and people didn't use to require bacon with every meal.


So, whether you are lean, mean and unhappy, or maybe just a bit pudgy and finally looking to get serious about becoming obese, then KFC's soon-to-be-released Double-Down is for you.

To be on the safe side, I recommend lining up outside your local KFC by midnight on April 11th, so that you are fully prepared to arrest your heart with this deliciously fried, 99% non-meat super treat at the very first opportunity.

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