Tag Archives: 1990s

Bad Cinéaste

I have a confession to make. Though I consider myself quite the erudite film scholar, in many ways I have no cause to place myself above the average lumpen moviegoer.

  • I confuse the name ZaSu Pitts with Zuzu Petals, a minor character from the execrable Andrew Dice Clay comedy The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.badcin1
  • I am inexplicably incensed at the sight of the cover of the film Metropia, and Audrey Tautou’s picture on the front of Amélie. To date, I have not seen Amélie, even though it’s from a director I like, thanks to its coy, nauseatingly precious cover shot.
  • I haven’t seen Precious, except on YouTube, because apparently I laugh at the wrong things.
  • I can’t stand whispering in movies any more than I can in the theater. A notable exception would be 1982’s Poltergeist. M. Night Shyamalan has abused whispering so much his actors should be forced to use air horns.
  • I’ve never seen Avatar. Any movie that uses a default computer font for its title isn’t worth a billion dollar budget, let alone my attention.
    Continue reading →

Comments Off on Bad Cinéaste

Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All

“Retrovertigo”

In 1999, four years after their previous album, Mr. Bungle released California. My friend George and I were/are slavering fanatics of Mr. Bungle. That shirt that says “There’s a tractor in my balls again”? I had that. I wore it so often I destroyed it, even after it survived a GWAR show in 1997.

This is the same one I had. The big B on the back was once stuck to my skin with GWAR semen and blood. Who amongst you would admit to such a thing?

This is the same one I had. The big B on the back was once stuck to my skin with GWAR semen and blood. Who amongst you would admit to such a thing?

So let’s just say we were very excited about Bungle’s third album. The band’s website teased this excitement, with minute-long samples of each track on California. This was 1999. I was using my first PC, the one I got from Gateway, which came with a set of Boston Acoustic speakers that I now use with my Xbox 360. Good, long-lasting speakers, my point here would be.  Continue reading →

Comments Off on “Retrovertigo”

Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club

A Fart In The Face

Earlier this year I crossed a boundary with the dog.

A different dog.

This is a different dog.

I’d eaten some godawful fried thing or another, and feeling a buildup of gas, I leaped over to the dog, crouched directly above his face, and knocked a king-size fart across his nose.

Triumphant, I turned to face the dog, expecting adoration for this generous gastric flotilla. Instead, the dog regarded me with a reproachful look, the kind I expect people receive when they jiggle their comatose grandmother’s breast for a family photo.

“What’s the matter?” I asked the dog in plain English, as though he would reply in kind. “Don’t you, a dog, enjoy the smell of shit?” Continue reading →

Comments Off on A Fart In The Face

Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Worst Of All

Lao Che

Lao Che (1885-19??) was a Chinese crime lord, who made several attempts on the life of archaeologist Indiana Jones in the 1930s.

Lao Che (c.), with sons Kao Kan (l.) and Chen (r.)

Lao Che (c.), with sons Chen (l., Chua Kah Joo) and Kao Kan (r., Ric Young)

Lao’s nightclub, the Club Obi-Wan, was a front, and the headquarters of his criminal empire. The Manchurian government hired Lao to secure an urn holding the cremains of the first Manchu emperor, which had been stolen by thieves in 1903. Jones brought the urn to Club Obi-Wan, trading it with Lao for a huge diamond, but Lao double-crossed Jones by poisoning his drink. Thus begins a thrilling action sequence as pandemonium and balloons overtake the club, while Jones flails to recover the antidote Lao had taunted him with. Continue reading →

Comments Off on Lao Che

Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Late To The Party, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

When Mike Replaced Joel

By the year 1993, I was hooked something fierce on a cable show called Mystery Science Theater 3000. It combined everything I adored about weird television; puppets, obscure humor, cheesy sets and B-movies. One could learn about the golden age of TV from the well-rounded cast and writers, through their rapid-fire gags and “riffs”. Nobody knew it was a show that would shape the world of entertainment, and become a household word. It was just this wonderful thing we all watched for two hours on Sunday morning, instead of church.

Then word began to spread that the host and creator of the show, Joel Hodgson, was leaving.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on When Mike Replaced Joel

Filed under Faint Signals, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

I Don’t Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)

"The sedative for coughs", until 1913.

“The sedative for coughs”, until 1913.

Here in Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood, we lost another local musician to heroin. I won’t write his name here, because I don’t want to inextricably link him with the drug that killed him. But there’s an anguished frustration every time this happens, when the needle takes yet one more.

Junk has been a cancer on music since before Charlie Parker played a note. It has taken too many casualties to list here. It seeps into cinema and art like toxic groundwater. No one does better work while on heroin. It improves no experience; it only makes one atrophy. What it does, is put your soul in terrible pain, and then dulls it. Nothing it does helps you or anyone else in any legitimate way. Continue reading →

Comments Off on I Don’t Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)

Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Worst Of All

Reborted

Moviegoers today act like naked Kate Winslet in Titanic, coyly demanding Leonardo DiCaprio to draw her like a French girl. A preternatural relationship has been forged between audience and studio. A production falls all over itself to seduce a fandom, because that’s where the blindly loyal dollars are. If a popular intellectual property is even slightly altered for a motion picture adaptation, it’s headline news, even above mass murder and election-year chicanery.

Eventually, this film will be remade, and this scene will feature different actors, pretty much just to fuck with you.

Eventually, this film will be remade, and this scene will feature different actors, pretty much just to fuck with you.

The movie industry has become such an intellectual wasteland that the 80s era of numerical sequel-mania looks dignified by comparison. Honest promotion and word-of-mouth don’t work anymore; attention span is dead. The only way to really sell a remake is to get people steamed. Take the things viewers loved about an original film, and subvert them. Serves the suckers right anyway, for falling in love with a fictional universe. The names P.T. Barnum and J.J. Abrams aren’t similar for nothing. Continue reading →

Comments Off on Reborted

Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All

Tool

BIUL_Tool

Check it out, I wrote my very own Tool song:

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Tool

Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals

Guiltiest Pleasure: Natural Born Killers

In 1994, a severely truncated version of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers was released to theaters nationwide, after a long and brutal production. It grossed about half its budget on opening weekend, and broke even in 2007. It was based on a story written by Quentin Tarantino, who was currently ablaze in Tinseltown thanks to Pulp Fiction. It starred former sitcom bartender Woody Harrelson, and Geoffrey Lewis’ daughter Juliette (the nymph in Scorcese’s Cape Fear remake), as mass-murdering marrieds Mickey and Mallory Knox.

nbk2

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Guiltiest Pleasure: Natural Born Killers

Filed under Bad Influences, Girls of BIUL, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

Thatch

thatch10

Do you still read comic strips? If so, where?

If you read them in a metropolitan newspaper, you are reading syndicated comic strips. This is the traditional method by which comic strips are published. Syndicated cartoonists can make big bucks because they get a fee for every different newspaper they appear in, and then there’s the merchandising. Seventy years ago, it was not uncommon to see syndicated cartoonists living large alongside movie stars. They were feted as a new style of raconteur. At his peak, the artist of Dick Tracy got a shiny new Cadillac, every year. Syndication is the ultimate goal of the working cartoonist. Continue reading →

Comments Off on Thatch

Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack