Category: No Politics Friday

Happy No Politics Friday ™!

So hopefully you'll get as big of a kick out of this as I did. In the 1980s, when America was still in the throes of its "support brutal autocrats as long as they oppose (democratically elected) Marxists" phase, our aid to Nicaraguan Contras took many forms. You're probably familiar with the more salacious aspects of our covert involvement (and somehow Ollie is still wringing a career out of that one big break) but we also tried to make subversives out of ordinary Nicaraguans.

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Enter the CIA-produced leaflet "Freedom Fighter's Manual." Illustrated in a child-like cartoon style, the pamphlet urges ordinary people to topple the Communist oppressors from within through subversive activities like "Dropping typewriters," calling in fake sick days, and making phony hotel reservations. If fake sick days could bring a government to its knees, I would have reduced America to anarchy and a barter economy when I was working in collections.

The best part is how slowly the pamphlet unfolds (pun intended). It starts the reader out with puerile, college dorm style pranks. Then it moves on to damaging property (and a particular obsession with puncturing tires).
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By the final page they're illustrating how to make a Molotov Cocktail, which the reader is instructed to throw into a Police station. That Cold War-era CIA, you've gotta hand it to them. They had tremendous faith in the intellectual abilities of those they tried to brainwash and use. To expect people to make the leap from phony sick days to killing cops in 15 comic book pages is pretty amazing. They also had faith that the citizenry would somehow forget these skills once the Dictator-of-the-Month was back in power.

Then again, that would imply that they thought ahead to the future ramifications of their actions. Snicker.

(Incidentally, and not to creep anyone out here, but that is a terrible way to make a Molotov Cocktail and it stands an excellent chance of setting its user on fire. The rag only gets stuffed into the bottle opening in A) movies and B) CIA manuals. The proper technique involves a sealed container to preclude the possibility of pre-ignition with a robust ignition source like storm matches or a powder wick taped to the bottle.

Just sayin'.)

Life can be imperfect. It's not exactly the best time to be putting a house on the market, but it doesn't appear that Fred Phelps has much of a choice.

Do these people even have million in assets?

I mean, after the IRS seizes and auctions off a dozen double-wide trailers and their contents (let's go ahead and assume there are no priceless works of art in the Phelps households) I think the tab is going to be closer to ,000 than million.

But seriously, kudos to the family and the judge for breaking it off in the Phelps family's ass.

Morris Dees and the SPLC have bankrupted many a white supremacist using the same tactics, and God smiles every time it happens.

So in what can only be called an unmistakable billboard on the road to old age, I threw my back out on Thursday morning. As in I-am-completely-unable-to-move thrown out. Something tells me I'm going to be paying for playing high school football for the rest of my life.

As enduring stabbing back pain is about as diametrically opposed to a good mood as the human mind can get, I struggle to think of something funny to brighten up the week on No Politics Friday ™. So I have two quick comments/requests/whatever for the regulars.

First of all, I don't have any pretensions of being Famous on the Internet. 28 long years of real life have taught me that I am an acquired taste. Approximately 1 out of every 500 people I meet will enjoy me. However, I've been trying to spread the gospel of ginandtacos for the last couple of months, and it's given me some sense of purpose (which helps tremendously with my actual for-paychecks work) to know that more than 2 people read this. Those of you who are regular readers, I ask a favor: spread the word. Tell a friend. Or an enemy. And, if something on here really amuses or entertains you, it's very helpful for you to submit it to whomever is doing the Crooks & Liars Blog Roundup for the week. I've gotten a few plugs in there and it's been very beneficial.

Second, any of you who live in Bloomington…I encourage you to come out and celebrate Ed Turning 29 at a guaranteed-to-be-awesome Halloween themed cover show at Fester's on Kirkwood. The date is Saturday, 10/27. My band will be performing a cover set as McLUSKY. It will possibly be the bestest thing ever. It will be packed (although not with people who care that it's my birthday; I could comfortably hold a birthday party in a phone booth) and it will warm my heart if anyone comes out to toast me getting old. Other great bands will be performing cover sets as AT THE DRIVE-IN and THE CURE. Half-priced admission to anyone in costume. Huzzah!

I had a brief moment of hesitation about posting this as a No Politics Friday ™ entry, because it walks a very fine line between funny and sad. Or, more importantly, between funny and social commentary.

We try to avoid the latter on Fridays at all costs around here.

If you haven't heard this 911 recording (and yes, Snopes tells us it's real) I think you need to listen to it right now. Let's not focus on the fact that it's a sickening example of what kind of people we breed in this country; instead, just marvel at the superficial comedic value of gems like:

Woman: Well…..you're supposed to be here to protect me.

Dispatcher: What are we protecting you from? A wrong cheeseburger?

Just remember, out of the 1000 people you see on an average day, a good portion of them are this stupid.
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(PS: After I received this blast from the past on Wednesday, I was fondly reminiscing about years gone by and recalling how hard I used to rock the shit out of this during the karaoke era)

Normally I would not include a children's film on this list – after all, movies intended for little kids are more often than not going to be considered stupid, poorly-acted, and boring by adults. But Mac & Me is special. Sweet baby jesus, is it special.

First (and believe me, this is the least of its sins) the movie is a flat-out plagiarized version of E.T., the blockbuster released just a few years before Mac & Me. The original title of the former was in fact E.T. & Me. Like E.T., Mac & Me is the story of an alien and a young boy ("Mac" is an acronym for "Mysterious alien creature"). Although I have never seen E.T., I am fairly certain that it does not deserve to have been mentioned in the same sentence as this film. My apologies.

Second, Leonard Maltin described this film as "more like a commercial than a movie" for a very good reason. Mac lives solely on Coke and Skittles, each proudly displayed about 100 times in the film. And "Mac" is of course a reference to the McDonald's menu – unsurprising, once you realize that Ronald McDonald is one of the movie's main characters. Not to mention the way the film manages to place its characters in a McDonald's approximately every 5 minutes. This film is a monument to subtlety.

The legendary moment from this film has thankfully been edited and preserved on the interweb. I will let the Wikipedian introduce the clip:

One scene in the film is a large, impromptu dance-off with the main character, MAC the alien (dressed in a teddy bear costume), a football team, Ronald McDonald, and various other people inside and outside of a McDonald's restaurant.

You need to see this. Really. If you're at work, the sound is pretty irrelevant.

If you're wondering how in the world a dance-off between a bunch of black kids, some gay Boston College football players, and an alien in a horrifying teddy bear costume could advance the plot, rest assured that it doesn't. In this film, scenes succeed by merely failing to inhibit the plot rather than actively advancing it. This is a relatively easy task given that there is no plot of which to speak.

Mac & Me is one of those special films that transcend a normal movie-going experience. It's so bizarre, so completely untethered from reality, and so grotesque that it can only be A) the worst film of all time or B) a masterpiece of surrealism. The film's decision to focus on children and Ronald McDonald a lot makes it legitimately disturbing…like Gacy in the clown costume. For 90 minutes.

Fittingly, the movie ends with a freeze-frame and the words "We'll be back!" Thankfully the pitiful box office returns prevented the producers from carrying through on that threat. Apes with Super-8 cameras could make a better film.

It's time for another audience participation No Politics Friday ™.

My last band practice featured a heated* debate regarding the infamous Britney Spears performance at an MTV award show this week. Video of it can be found here (although Viacom is deleting YouTube videos approximately as fast as users can add them, so the link may not last.

Just search 2007 VMA.) I strenuously argued, prior to having seen it, that it could not possibly top the 2002 Guns 'n Roses MTV performance in which a fat, cornrowed Axl Rose subjected the world to 5 screeching, off-pitch minutes of his art.

After seeing the Spears video, I see no reason to back down. Watching her lip-sync and look like crap is really nothing new.

Note to American men: if you have any Britney-based masturbation fantasies you want to indulge, I'd do it soon if I were you. In another few years her ass is going to resemble the rear of an AMC Gremlin in both size and shape. Axl wins. Or loses. Actually, we all lose just for having watched this.

Anyway, now it's your turn to nominate – with linked videos, please – the most appalling, embarassing live performance by an artist who is at least moderately well-known.

I don't watch a lot of TV and I don't pay attention to things like MTV video awards, so there is probably a lot that I am missing. Correct me.

*It wasn't heated at all, but it's inherently pleasing to describe an argument as "heated" in prose.

I like bad movies. They fascinate me. But I like unbelievably bad movies, movies that actually hurt to sit through. Some movies are passively bad (X-Men 3, Maid in Manhattan, Ghost Rider, etc). They're just boring, dumb, poorly acted, and so on. I like movies that are aggressively bad. They're so bad it's actually shocking, and they inspire reactions like "My God, what were they thinking?" In an effort to lighten things up around here, I'm going to share some of my favorites with you – films that blast through the "awful" barrier with such force that they come full circle back to "entertaining."

So. Battlefield:Earth. I firmly believe that every man, woman, and child on the planet should watch this film. It simply needs to be seen to be believed. And if I can get everyone to watch it, it will greatly reduce the chance that such a mistake could happen again. It took me three tries to make it through this film.
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Honest to God. It is physically difficult to watch.

Battlefield:Earth is based on an L. Ron Hubbard novel. As if that wasn't enough to doom it to the "shit" pile, it stars (and was bankrolled by) Hubbard spawn John Travolta. A friend once asked me what made this film so exceptionally bad – what was wrong with it? The short answer is everything. Everything is wrong with it.

Start with a movie about 9-foot tall aliens called 'Psychlos' and their plucky, enslaved human charges. Add the worst special effects this side of Stargate SG-1 and high school play-quality costumes. Spice liberally with ridiculous, nonsensical plot and a script that sounds like it was written in Urdu and translated into English with a free online translator. Have all the characters act and make decisions like they are recovering from a series of massive strokes. Top it off with jerking, headache-inducing cinematography. Watch until nauseous.

Barry Pepper (who, along with Forest Whitaker, I simply pity throughout this trainwreck) stars as the ringleader of the humans. He is the optimistic one who will show his downtrodden bretheren how to rise up and defeat their Psychlo captors. By the end of the film, he succeeds. I have kept the plot summary brief simply because most of what goes on within that framework is so idiotic that it actually makes one forget what the movie is about.

I will share only one scene, one that captures everything that is stunning and inimitable about this film.

Psychlo leader Terl (Travolta) is trying to educate the pluckiest human Johnny Goodboy Tyler (Pepper) in the Psychlo language to make him an effective manservant. He decides that the best way to motivate the dirty, starved human is to tempt it with the promise of delicious food. Unfortunately, Psychlos do not know what humans like to eat. So he decides that the best way to figure it out….is to let all the humans escape and use a hidden camera (secreted in the button of Pepper's shirt) to see what they eat. As my movie-watching companion exclaimed, "That's the worst plan I've ever heard." Anyway, the escaped, starving humans end up eating rats in desperation – leading the Psychlos to think that humans like rats!
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Hilarity ensues! The icing on the cake is when Pepper discovers, and destroys, the hidden camera. Forest Whitaker leaps to his feet and exclaims "MY GOD, THEY FIGURED OUT THE BUTTON CAM!

"

Yep. I find it hard to believe that this film could have been made by members of the same species as me. It just boggles the mind. I'd like to say that was the worst part of the film, but about 20 minutes later some illiterate, loincloth-clad cave men were flying Harrier jets. In the context of everything wrong with this movie, such unbelievable nonsense barely even registered at the time.

See this movie. It is, in the literal sense of the term, amazing. I promise you will be amazed by it.

I have a particularly strong and morbid sense of curiosity, and I also have the unfortunate habit of thinking "What would I do in that situation?
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" as a standard reaction to observing things. This occasionally creeps people out, as normal people apparently don't read a book about the Oklahoma City bombing and think aloud "What would I have done if I was Timothy McVeigh?" It doesn't mean "I would like to be in that situation" but most people hear it that way. Oh well.

So I'm not going to lie, Dead Man Eating (also in blog form) is sort of my new favorite thing. It's an oddly obsessive compendium of the last meals of condemned prisoners. I often wonder which path I'd choose in that situation.
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On the one hand, I could attempt to enjoy one last sumptuous, earthly delight on the state's tab. On the other hand, I could have 30 White Castles and 2 gallons of scalding black coffee. Let's just say that would provide a big parting "fuck you" to the correctional system. I'd have people quitting their jobs over me.

Since Texas executes about 20 people for every one person executed elsewhere, I find that their Dept. of Corrections website is a virtual Wikipedia of creepy execution-related crap. If you go here you can read the last words of each prisoner, although the grand prize in that category (and here's where I bring the entry full-circle) goes to Thomas Grasso of Oklahoma. His last words were "I asked for Spaghetti-O's. I did not get my Spaghetti-O's, I got spaghetti.
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I want the press to know this."

This is the kind of stuff that entertains me when I can't leave the house for a week. Hopefully next week I will get back to posting as usual.

One of my favorite old posts on ginandtacos is Erik's take on the realdoll community, as it was presented to us by a salon.com article that started a whole Internet meme fest on what it means to spend over $5,000 on a masturbation toy. Realdolls, in case you don't know, are 'realistic' looking rubber dolls (see picture of 'davecat' below) that cost a large sum of money, that tend to get purchased by people who are acting out a relationship with them. Do read the ginandtacos post, it includes some great comments from the readers.

One thing that was linked to in the article was, from the Realdoll's webpage, was the Realdoll FAQ (not work safe). It is quite disturbing to read, as it quickly switches from (real examples) "Question: What sort of people buy REALDOLL? Answer: REALDOLL customers include …scientists, health professionals, housewives" to questions such as " Question: Tell me more about the doll's entries. Answer: The inside of the Vaginal and Anal entries use a different grade of silicone than the rest of REALDOLL's body…" – you don't want to go any further. It goes from normal to disturbing quickly. As Erik put it in his entry: "I honestly could not read any more than a fraction of it before I had to close the browser."

Eventually we all started daring each other to read it, and the entire FAQ was read, and though it was years ago, it still freaks me out to think about it. And now there is this:

"Guys and Dolls" (hat tip to feministing). Evidently someone wasn't satisfied by reading a salon article and making fun of these losers; they had to go even further and sponsor a British documentary crew to interview as many subjects as they could find and investigate the factory. The video is 46 minutes and it is virtually impossible to watch. It is like the Realdoll FAQ to the tenth power. It is probably the best accidental horror movie ever made.

So have any of you been dared, or dared someone to watch a horror movie? Junior-high sleepovers, "What are you, chicken?!?!?" For Politics-Free Friday, my dare to you audience, is to start watching and note what time and/or event freaks you out to the point where you had to stop watching. I tried, and I mean I tried to finish the thing (I am in fact daring you), but my on my first try I could only make it to minute 15 when a guy from Virginia starts showing off his collection of AK-47s and Mac-10s along with his realdolls ("that's three [automatic] guns and two realdolls I own…"). He waves a glock in the air above a Realdoll taking a "nap" in his bed, and talks about the Mac-10 he "would carry around". It is way too much. In the first couple of minutes you get to see Davecat (goth kid above) mention something like "the problem my dad has with her is that she's not alive" in my-dad-is-a-bigot-teenage-righteousness way.

The second try I made it to minute 20, where you get to see the factory where the dolls are made, and the endless torsos and pelvic areas hanging from chains or moving along assembly lines is like something out of a slaughterhouse. Forget Saw and J-Horror flicks, this is seriously the most disturbing horror movie I've ever seen.

I'm in a particularly tuneful mood on this No Politics Friday ™, as I am about to drive to Chicago for Pitchforkfest.
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Friday night only, but what a Friday night – Slint (Spiderland), GZA (Liquid Swords), and Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation) each playing one of their albums start-to-finish.
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Alas, I cannot stick around for Battles, Mastadon, and Yoko Ono (Not performing together. Were they, I think I would pretty much have to see that.)

Occasionally, in celebration of what phenomenal taste I have, I will make some suggestions that may enrich and broaden your musical spectrum. Some of it is old, some of it is brand-spankin'-new. Most (but not all) of it rocks an awful lot, so if you're not into that sort of thing you may need to rely on other websites for a supply of emo bitch yodeling. If you're bored on Friday afternoon, you love stealing media files off the interweb, and often wonder "How can I make myself a better person?" then have at this mix.

1. The Cows, "Mas-No Mas" – Whorn (1996)

2. Don Caballero, "Don Caballero 3" – What Burns Never Returns (1998)

3. Dead Prez, "I'm A African" – let's get free (2000)

4. Drive Like Jehu, "Future Home of Stucco Monstrosity" – s/t (1991)

5. The Bled, "Hotel Coral Essex" – Found in the Flood (2006)

6. The Chariot, "Yanni Depp" – UNSUNG (2006)

7. Public Image Ltd, "Four Enclosed Walls" – Flowers of Romance (1981)

8. Parts and Labor, "Fractured Skies" – Mapmaker (2007)

9. Trenchmouth, "Power to the Amplifier" – Inside the Future (1993)

10. Strike Anywhere, "We Amplify / Blaze" – Exit English (2003)

Enjoy. Guys, when you master this list (plus any other musical suggestions I provide) and find yourself neck-deep in pussy, feel free to thank me. Nothing gets the ladies throwing themselves at me quite like my urbane, trendy tastes in inoffensive music.
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