So this is it guys! today is finally the day that Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald have arbitrarily decided is the most representative day of everyone's life! Today we're supposed to take our digital cameras, flips, and iphones and hit the world with a smoldering heap of reality.
Apparently, any footage of your life will do, they want to get an idea of what life is like for everyone out there at this point in history. Or rather, what life is like for everyone with a camcorder at this point in history. Not to mention the total lack of poignance in the choice of day. But I suppose that's the point.
So whats going to happen when 98% of the footage is from californians (75% of which is southern california, 65% of which is in LA county) and 99.9% is from the US? With the remaining world totally left out of the loop, unaware of this projects existence, I have feeling deep down in my organ-guts that this new film will consist primarily of people swallowing lattes, then coronas, then their pride.
It'll be a lot of well-spent tears on the recent sale of the new beamer, then the saturday bbq's, maybe even some stressful ranting about potential pitfalls of being a californian. There'll probably be a significant amount of people complaining about unemployment, lack of medical care, fear of global warming, and a nervousness for the moral future of our increasingly godless society.
When the footage rolls in I doubt it'll titillate or enervate nearly as much the "Last King Of Scotland" arguably Macdonald's only real movie. But maybe there'll be something to learn as we watch our coworkers, neighbors, and ourselves talk about what makes us laugh. Hopefully he'll sift through the 45,000 "Videos on Youtube" responses that he's sure to get.
Maybe the one thing we'll see, after we watch how different each of our days are, is just how similar we all are. No, I'm just kidding, southern california is vastly superior to the rest of the earth. Thats why everyone watches movies that are written, funded, and cast by people HERE in SoCal (Southern California). One thing's for damn sure, the iPhone with a set of keys and a wallet is gonna get old really damn soon.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Woman's Sneaky Penis Power Addiction
Ok here it is, Women are now and have been the innocent victims of penis subterfuge. Too long have boyfriends wondered why a girl would be hooked on a specific ex, or that guy at Jamba Juice, but now we have the answer.
Being that not all penises are created equal, women tend to misappropriate this hierarchy of intensity with a hierarchy of emotional value. Women will become more attached emotionally to the dude who gets them off in intense ways they never knew they wanted. She will be subdued and screwed into submission under the dominion of penis power.
Apparently they can't help it. No matter how self-respecting some women are they may be susceptible to falling for the douche who knows how to work it. A woman may even settle for the man not providing anything more than a mere side of penis.
Well, women, what do you have to say for yourselves? Have we been so programmed as evolutionary psychology would lead us to think, or do you own the ability to see through the penile trickery? Hopefully, its not an all or nothing type of thing.
Maybe there are some women who will eternally chase the temporary love that can only come while being railed from behind and having such rhetorical questions as "Yeah!.. huh?" barked at you (Porn Actresses). Maybe others will see the benefit in resisting the penis power and exerting their own balanced judgment on what makes a man worthy of their emotions (Feminists). Either way ladies, be aware of the all pervasive power of intense penis radiating its heat through pants. Do not be caught off guard, unless you're into that, then it could be pretty awesome.
So this is not to say that all women are either Porn actresses or Feminists, but I guess it kind of is to say that. Just be aware ladies and gentleman. Use the power of hormones, proprioception, and evolutionary psychology for good, not just for a good orgasm.
Being that not all penises are created equal, women tend to misappropriate this hierarchy of intensity with a hierarchy of emotional value. Women will become more attached emotionally to the dude who gets them off in intense ways they never knew they wanted. She will be subdued and screwed into submission under the dominion of penis power.
Apparently they can't help it. No matter how self-respecting some women are they may be susceptible to falling for the douche who knows how to work it. A woman may even settle for the man not providing anything more than a mere side of penis.
Well, women, what do you have to say for yourselves? Have we been so programmed as evolutionary psychology would lead us to think, or do you own the ability to see through the penile trickery? Hopefully, its not an all or nothing type of thing.
Maybe there are some women who will eternally chase the temporary love that can only come while being railed from behind and having such rhetorical questions as "Yeah!.. huh?" barked at you (Porn Actresses). Maybe others will see the benefit in resisting the penis power and exerting their own balanced judgment on what makes a man worthy of their emotions (Feminists). Either way ladies, be aware of the all pervasive power of intense penis radiating its heat through pants. Do not be caught off guard, unless you're into that, then it could be pretty awesome.
So this is not to say that all women are either Porn actresses or Feminists, but I guess it kind of is to say that. Just be aware ladies and gentleman. Use the power of hormones, proprioception, and evolutionary psychology for good, not just for a good orgasm.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
mad money bitches
These days it seems like everyone is looking for a piece of me; especially those mad money bitches. Who do they think I am anyway, Waldo? On a completely relevant note however what IS the deal with this guy Waldo anyway. Why does everyone want to know where he is? If you ask me the guy’s a punk. If he were a criminal, I would hire a bunch of five year olds to find his ass. Tyrannosaur!!!! I bet if Carmen San Diego and Waldo hooked it up; their kids would come out invisible. Nice! I really think those two should invest in better disguises though. I understand that both of you are fictional and also cartoons, but let’s face it, it’s just unrealistic to think no one is going to find you when you wear the same clothes every day. Especially when those clothes are a striped red and white turtleneck and a big ass trench coat with a Dick Tracy hat. Let’s get this realism idea on the move. On a completely unrelated note, realism will never be on the move. It’s for reasons like this that I just don’t have time for these mad money bitches anymore. Mad money bitches, tricks, ho’s, work, babies, time traveling whales, or work just need to chill. I just have too much to ponder……
Copyright Daniel RobbinsWednesday, July 14, 2010
My Childhood Was More Damaging Than Your Childhood
I think it's relatively fair to say that every child of every generation was subjected to numerous cartoons, books and movies that warped our fragile little minds. Our parents were privy to the unquestionable insanity of the Looney Tune cartoons featuring, among other things, gratuitous violence, racism, and anthropomorphic animals who all wore varying degree of clothing and all of which had sexual urges that were clearly perverse in nature. Kids today get by on a steady ration of its successors with shows like Flapjack in which an androgynous young boy saddles himself to a wooden limbed monster of a sea captain whose only sustenance is an unhealthy diet of only candy or Spongebob Sqarepants which is a whole other blog post in its own. Either way, the point is that every generation is raised on a solid diet of crazy.
But I would make the argument that my generation is unique. I was born in 1982 which is part of a small block of time considered by many to be the lost generation. We are neither Generation X or Generation Y, and thus inherited the most destructive properties of both. We grew up on the first few years of reruns from our parents generation and all the new stuff that our younger siblings watched as well as a few things that belonged uniquely to us. Now it will not surprise me if you grew up with one or many of the following. If nothing else, it explains why you are fucked up enough to read this blog. Strap in and get ready because this is going to be a long read. Now let me see if I can shake loose any repressed memories of your childhood.
5. The Neverending Story (1984)
I think we can all agree that if you were born anytime between 1975 and 1990 you were privy to this little gem. This fantasy tale about a young boy named Bastian reading a book about a child hero named Atreyu was the stuff of nightmares. Atreyu, our hero, sets off on his quest to save the magical land of Fantasia.
The first step on his trek is the deadly Swamps of Sadness where he seeks out the wisdom of a giant and ancient turtle named Morla. As soon as they enter the swamp, his horse, Artax, is overcome by the depressing sadness of the swamp and begins to sink into the mud. Screaming and crying, Atreyu tries to save his horse but loses him to the overwhelming sadness of the marshes. Thats right. In a childrens movie, we just watched our main character's best friend sink into the mud, never to be seen again. He eventually finds Morla on foot and, as it turns out, he is terrifying. He speaks in cryptic riddles and could, with little effort, kill our young hero which he almost does on countless occasion. On top of which, he looks fucking scary. Even now. Marla sends Atreyu to the Southern Oracle which is 10,000 miles away. The impossibility of this hits Atreyu like a ton of bricks and, much like his trusty horse, Atreyu begins to sink into the swamp. Fortunately for Atreyu and our already fragile minds, a luck dragon named Falkor saves him and whisks him away to the Southern Oracle.
At the Southern Oracle, Atreyu must pass a test in which he walks between two Sphinxes who vaporize the unworthy on site. How do we know this? We see someone get vaporized. So now we have seen a horse drowned and a dude get vaporized. Once inside, Atreyu is told how to defeat "The Nothing" which is literally an expanding cloud that is turning everything into an endless abyss.
Think about that for a minute. He is literally fighting the absence of anything. How does one fight nothing? Its one thing to fight a villain with a weakness, but fighting nothing? By very definition there is no weakness as a weakness would be something. But nothing? That is utterly depressing which was not lost on me even at that young age. That is when Atreyu is consumed by it, but not before being taunted and attacked by a scary-ass wolf with glowing eyes who sits in a cave and tells Atreyu how hopeless things are. Thanks for rubbing it in Gmork.
Atryu passes out and when he wakes up, he is on Falkor's back flying through what little remains of his entire world. Not his city, not his planet but his entire world. Thats when he manages to find the other lone survivor. The Empress (who every young boy fantasized about) tells Atreyu that the only way to save the world is for a human child to name her. Thus begins one of the scariest sequences of my childhood.
The entire point in having Bastian in the real world reading this story was to bring us, the children, into this tale. We were given a place in the story by way of this very normal boy in a very normal place. So as a kid, it was very hard to separate myself from the emotional reality of a young girl pleading with you to say her name as tears run down her porcelain face. First, how the fuck are we supposed to know her name? Second, she's not just asking you for a favor, she's asking you to save her entire world as the Nothing is eating away what little is left of her castle and closing in on her. She's crying, pleading with you to name her. If you don't she will cease to be. Whether this is a happy tale or a genocide of epic proportions rests on your tiny shoulders. That, my friends, is fucked up. The hopelessness of the situation buried me. Luckily for us, Bastian's mom must have been a big ass hippy because he runs to the window and shouts "Moonchild!"
Im pretty sure we all know how it ends, but its is hard to deny that there is a lot of content in this movie that is a little too heavy for a little kid to wrap their minds around.
4. The Mouse and His Child (1977)
This is one of a handful of movies that I alone seem to remember. The basic story is about a wind up toy made of of a father and son mouse holding hands. They are unboxed in a friendly toy store, but after being broken are thrown out only to be found by a rat who forces them into slave labor in his casino located in a local dump. With the help of a psychic frog, they manage to escape and eventually take down the rat empire.
On the surface, this may not seem like anything worse then your average DIsney fare. I mean sure, there is a psychic frog which alludes to the psychedelic properties of licking certain species. And sure, they are forced into slave labor which, at many points, features undertones of rape and sexual sadism. But compared to many of the things we all grew up on (Secret of Nihm anybody?), isn't really that bad. No, what did it in this movie was what has become known as "The Mysterious Bonzo Can."
The can of Bonzo dog food appears many times throughout the story. On the surface, it seems like an ordinary can reused throughout the story as any normal prop would be. But even as a child, I was scared of that can. The label features an eerie grinning dog holding a can featuring an identical copy of himself. The weight sometimes read "666 grams" (which yes, I noticed as a child) and sometimes read "Heavy." But that isn't what did it. In a particularly fucked up and philosophical scene, the titular characters have become lost at the bottom of a lake and seek the help of a creepy ass turtle. What was it with cryptic and frightening turtles being the voice of wisdom in these movies?! Seriously. Anyway, at the turtles suggestion(?), they stare into the can's label and thus, into the very concept of infinite. And what do they find at the end of infinite? Themselves. As a child, this kind of stuff is what gave me nightmares. I laughed at the Exorcist when I was seven. It was the concept of infinite as illustrated through this film that kept me up at night. The can still gives me the willies.
3. Unico (1981 and 1983)
The Unico series of films were one of the first Japanese imports I remember, and what's more, they aired on the Disney Channel. Unico on the whole wasn't all that strange on the surface. I mean, it was the story of a happy little unicorn who traveled around and made people happy. Lets look a little deeper. Unico, the last of the unicorns, had the ability to make all people happy. The gods felt that only they should have the right to manipulate others emotions so they order the West Wind to banish Unico to the Hill of Oblivion. THE HILL OF OBLIVION?! This is a cute little cartoon unicorn that makes people happy and it is to be banished to The Nothing's summer cabin. Anyways, the West Wind likes Unico so instead it chooses to drop the little rascal into random places where bad shit is going down. Whenever the gods figure out where Unico is, they send the Night Wind to kill him dead so the West Wind always has to spirit Unico away to new places, wiping his memory in the process leaving him with no knowledge of who he is, how he got there, and the extreme power he has over others. I think the Russians did the same thing in the Cold War.
The first movie titled The Fantastic Adventures of Unico featured drowning (AGAIN), transmogrification, and even a lord getting a young girl drunk and trying to seduce her. No joke. Unico eventually manages to push the Lord off the top of his castle where he is run through by one of the spears atop one of the many high pillars. As his human form lays battered and bleeding, his true demon form is released. Unico is killed by this giant monster and is only revived when the girl (who was a cat) cries over Unico's limp and lifeless body. Unco transforms into a giant full grown unicorn and runs the demon through the heart with his glowing horn, sending the demon back to the bowels of Hell. After the confrontation, his friends begin looking around for him, but the West Wind has already taken Unico into her grasp, carrying him off to another land and erasing his memories.
In the sequel, its much more of the same, but now the villain is an evil witch-puppet who turns townspeople into wooden puppets and makes them do her bidding. They took a page out of the Joker handbook here and made the witch completely chaotic. The animation and voice scared the crap out of me as a kid. Watch the first few minutes to see what I mean. Unico is again triumphant when he offers to be the witches friend in the final standoff. The witch, made of anger and resent, cant handle being treated with kindness and both she and the walls they are standing on crumble. Unico literally killed her with kindness. I think the murder by horn was less terrifying to watch.
2. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981)
I will keep this one brief because, after talking to some people, I think this may be the second most popular book in the history of mankind, right after the over hyped "Bible," all you kids are reading now. This book was a collection of short scary stories for kids. Each story was 1-3 pages long and generally weren't all that scary, even for the jumpiest kids at my school. Why did it make the list then? The artwork. Stephen Gammell was the kid version of Hunter S. Thompson's artist Ralph Steadman. His stuff was trippy, loose and played on something very primal within each of us. His artwork featured such gruesome subject matter as a decapitated heads, flesh melting off eyeless faces, and spiders bursting out of a girls face.
The story/artwork that bothered me the most in this collection was titled "The Thing." The story was about two young boys who see a figure coming toward them through an open field. They run, only to decide that running was silly. They return and the thing comes out of the field. One of the boys touches the twisted smiling figure to see if its real. When he realizes it is, they both run home. Soon, the boy gets sick and dies. His friend swears that his rotted and sickly corpse in the coffin is identical to the thing that came out of the field. The artwork, featuring the smiling thing hit me hard. Really hard. It was both the warning and the cause in my mind. It showed up just to taunt his eventual demise by showing him what he would become. Something in that really struck something deep within me. I taped those two pages of the book together. Years later, when I was about eleven or twelve, I decided to conquer the irrational fear of that image and give it another look. I remember cutting the tape during a commercial for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, a gameboy game. The image still scared the shit out of me and every time I saw that commercial, the haunting smile of "The Thing," returned to my mind.
1. The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)
Now there is an interesting story behind this one. A few years ago, I was sitting in Room 5, a popular venue in LA. My friend Heather Porcaro and her band the Heartstring Symphony were playing a set. Throughout the set, her band needed to switch instruments or retune and Heather, being the social butterfly she is, would just talk to the audience. During one such occasion, she says to the audience, "I've had a very strange day. A friend of mine took me with her to a support group for kids that were emotionally crippled by this movie that came out in the 80s. Apparently, only a handful of kids saw it. The subject matter was damaging enough, but so few kids saw it that all of the kids who did spent most of their childhoods feeling alone, isolated and crazy because they thought maybe they had just imagined the whole movie. I can't remember what it was called. The Peanut Butter….something…." Suddenly, it all came flooding to the surface like a Vietnam flashback. In a quiet voice, I said "The Peanut Butter Solution." She heard me and said "Yeah! Thats it! Do you go to meetings too?" I only wish I had.
This movie had haunted my mind for years. I only remembered vague flashes of it and all of them were at the very root of everything I find to be truly scary in this world. A few days later, a bunch of friends were at my place and we were shooting the shit. We got onto the topic of artifacts from our childhood. My friend Nick said that there was only one thing that has stuck with him in any serious way but he couldn't remember the name of it or if it every really existed since all of his friends thought he had made it up. All he could remember was that a little kid was scared so badly that all of his hair fell out. My head whipped around, I stared him straight in the eye and I said "The Peanut Butter Solution." Suddenly, his face grew very dim. He remembered. In that moment I saw all of the terror he suffered through his childhood flash across his face as it all came flooding back. Most of my friends didn't understand why Nick and I were so serious and quiet the rest of the night. Nick spent the night on the couch that night.
By morning, I had tracked down a copy of the movie online. I dumped it to my appleTV so we could watch it. I feel that for both myself and for Nick, it was a cathartic experience. The movie was the metaphoric creepy uncle that molested us as children and, to make matters worse, everyone thought we had just made it up. It left us feeling hopeless and alone, questioning the difference between right and wrong and even our own sanity.
The story is about a young boy who goes into a haunted house. The next morning he is spit out of this demonic house. Although it is never quite clear what happened to him inside, what is clear is that he was so terrified by whatever it was that all of his hair fell out. His friends seek a cure for him and, with the help of two well meaning ghosts, discover a recipe that will allow his hair to grow back. The recipe comes with the warning that too much peanut butter will make the concoction go haywire and his hair will grow too fast. They ignore it and before long, the boy is growing hair faster then his friends can cut it. He has to tie it above him in a net before he goes to sleep so he isn't suffocated by it. His friends have to sit behind him in class, cutting his hair without stopping to keep it a reasonable length. But the truly fucked up part of this movie is what happens next.
The art teacher at the school who was fired due to a run in with the boy hatches an evil scheme. He kidnaps the boy, whisking him away to an evil underground warehouse where he makes paintbrushes from the boys hair. Due to the magic hair, the paintbrushes can bring anything painted with them into reality. You can literally walk into the paintings. When this evil pedophile realizes the supernatural ability of the brushes, he begins kidnapping other children in the neighborhood, forcing them into slavery. The children of the neighborhood cut, assemble and package the brushes. The forced rape is clearly implied. What makes it even worse is that none of the parents seem all too concerned. Eventually the boy wins out by using one of his own brushes to paint the haunted house and forcing the art teacher through the same ordeal he faced in the beginning of the film. He is rid of the curse and everything returns to normal.
Every once in a while, Ill bring the movie up with a new group of people to see if they had the same haunting experience as we did and on rare occasions I will see that same flash of recognizable terror flash across someones face. Those of us who experienced it as kids will never forget it, but can't quiet remember it either. It is a fog, a phantom in our childhood that will never let go.
But I would make the argument that my generation is unique. I was born in 1982 which is part of a small block of time considered by many to be the lost generation. We are neither Generation X or Generation Y, and thus inherited the most destructive properties of both. We grew up on the first few years of reruns from our parents generation and all the new stuff that our younger siblings watched as well as a few things that belonged uniquely to us. Now it will not surprise me if you grew up with one or many of the following. If nothing else, it explains why you are fucked up enough to read this blog. Strap in and get ready because this is going to be a long read. Now let me see if I can shake loose any repressed memories of your childhood.
5. The Neverending Story (1984)
I think we can all agree that if you were born anytime between 1975 and 1990 you were privy to this little gem. This fantasy tale about a young boy named Bastian reading a book about a child hero named Atreyu was the stuff of nightmares. Atreyu, our hero, sets off on his quest to save the magical land of Fantasia.
The first step on his trek is the deadly Swamps of Sadness where he seeks out the wisdom of a giant and ancient turtle named Morla. As soon as they enter the swamp, his horse, Artax, is overcome by the depressing sadness of the swamp and begins to sink into the mud. Screaming and crying, Atreyu tries to save his horse but loses him to the overwhelming sadness of the marshes. Thats right. In a childrens movie, we just watched our main character's best friend sink into the mud, never to be seen again. He eventually finds Morla on foot and, as it turns out, he is terrifying. He speaks in cryptic riddles and could, with little effort, kill our young hero which he almost does on countless occasion. On top of which, he looks fucking scary. Even now. Marla sends Atreyu to the Southern Oracle which is 10,000 miles away. The impossibility of this hits Atreyu like a ton of bricks and, much like his trusty horse, Atreyu begins to sink into the swamp. Fortunately for Atreyu and our already fragile minds, a luck dragon named Falkor saves him and whisks him away to the Southern Oracle.
At the Southern Oracle, Atreyu must pass a test in which he walks between two Sphinxes who vaporize the unworthy on site. How do we know this? We see someone get vaporized. So now we have seen a horse drowned and a dude get vaporized. Once inside, Atreyu is told how to defeat "The Nothing" which is literally an expanding cloud that is turning everything into an endless abyss.
Think about that for a minute. He is literally fighting the absence of anything. How does one fight nothing? Its one thing to fight a villain with a weakness, but fighting nothing? By very definition there is no weakness as a weakness would be something. But nothing? That is utterly depressing which was not lost on me even at that young age. That is when Atreyu is consumed by it, but not before being taunted and attacked by a scary-ass wolf with glowing eyes who sits in a cave and tells Atreyu how hopeless things are. Thanks for rubbing it in Gmork.
Atryu passes out and when he wakes up, he is on Falkor's back flying through what little remains of his entire world. Not his city, not his planet but his entire world. Thats when he manages to find the other lone survivor. The Empress (who every young boy fantasized about) tells Atreyu that the only way to save the world is for a human child to name her. Thus begins one of the scariest sequences of my childhood.
The entire point in having Bastian in the real world reading this story was to bring us, the children, into this tale. We were given a place in the story by way of this very normal boy in a very normal place. So as a kid, it was very hard to separate myself from the emotional reality of a young girl pleading with you to say her name as tears run down her porcelain face. First, how the fuck are we supposed to know her name? Second, she's not just asking you for a favor, she's asking you to save her entire world as the Nothing is eating away what little is left of her castle and closing in on her. She's crying, pleading with you to name her. If you don't she will cease to be. Whether this is a happy tale or a genocide of epic proportions rests on your tiny shoulders. That, my friends, is fucked up. The hopelessness of the situation buried me. Luckily for us, Bastian's mom must have been a big ass hippy because he runs to the window and shouts "Moonchild!"
Im pretty sure we all know how it ends, but its is hard to deny that there is a lot of content in this movie that is a little too heavy for a little kid to wrap their minds around.
4. The Mouse and His Child (1977)
This is one of a handful of movies that I alone seem to remember. The basic story is about a wind up toy made of of a father and son mouse holding hands. They are unboxed in a friendly toy store, but after being broken are thrown out only to be found by a rat who forces them into slave labor in his casino located in a local dump. With the help of a psychic frog, they manage to escape and eventually take down the rat empire.
On the surface, this may not seem like anything worse then your average DIsney fare. I mean sure, there is a psychic frog which alludes to the psychedelic properties of licking certain species. And sure, they are forced into slave labor which, at many points, features undertones of rape and sexual sadism. But compared to many of the things we all grew up on (Secret of Nihm anybody?), isn't really that bad. No, what did it in this movie was what has become known as "The Mysterious Bonzo Can."
The can of Bonzo dog food appears many times throughout the story. On the surface, it seems like an ordinary can reused throughout the story as any normal prop would be. But even as a child, I was scared of that can. The label features an eerie grinning dog holding a can featuring an identical copy of himself. The weight sometimes read "666 grams" (which yes, I noticed as a child) and sometimes read "Heavy." But that isn't what did it. In a particularly fucked up and philosophical scene, the titular characters have become lost at the bottom of a lake and seek the help of a creepy ass turtle. What was it with cryptic and frightening turtles being the voice of wisdom in these movies?! Seriously. Anyway, at the turtles suggestion(?), they stare into the can's label and thus, into the very concept of infinite. And what do they find at the end of infinite? Themselves. As a child, this kind of stuff is what gave me nightmares. I laughed at the Exorcist when I was seven. It was the concept of infinite as illustrated through this film that kept me up at night. The can still gives me the willies.
3. Unico (1981 and 1983)
The Unico series of films were one of the first Japanese imports I remember, and what's more, they aired on the Disney Channel. Unico on the whole wasn't all that strange on the surface. I mean, it was the story of a happy little unicorn who traveled around and made people happy. Lets look a little deeper. Unico, the last of the unicorns, had the ability to make all people happy. The gods felt that only they should have the right to manipulate others emotions so they order the West Wind to banish Unico to the Hill of Oblivion. THE HILL OF OBLIVION?! This is a cute little cartoon unicorn that makes people happy and it is to be banished to The Nothing's summer cabin. Anyways, the West Wind likes Unico so instead it chooses to drop the little rascal into random places where bad shit is going down. Whenever the gods figure out where Unico is, they send the Night Wind to kill him dead so the West Wind always has to spirit Unico away to new places, wiping his memory in the process leaving him with no knowledge of who he is, how he got there, and the extreme power he has over others. I think the Russians did the same thing in the Cold War.
The first movie titled The Fantastic Adventures of Unico featured drowning (AGAIN), transmogrification, and even a lord getting a young girl drunk and trying to seduce her. No joke. Unico eventually manages to push the Lord off the top of his castle where he is run through by one of the spears atop one of the many high pillars. As his human form lays battered and bleeding, his true demon form is released. Unico is killed by this giant monster and is only revived when the girl (who was a cat) cries over Unico's limp and lifeless body. Unco transforms into a giant full grown unicorn and runs the demon through the heart with his glowing horn, sending the demon back to the bowels of Hell. After the confrontation, his friends begin looking around for him, but the West Wind has already taken Unico into her grasp, carrying him off to another land and erasing his memories.
In the sequel, its much more of the same, but now the villain is an evil witch-puppet who turns townspeople into wooden puppets and makes them do her bidding. They took a page out of the Joker handbook here and made the witch completely chaotic. The animation and voice scared the crap out of me as a kid. Watch the first few minutes to see what I mean. Unico is again triumphant when he offers to be the witches friend in the final standoff. The witch, made of anger and resent, cant handle being treated with kindness and both she and the walls they are standing on crumble. Unico literally killed her with kindness. I think the murder by horn was less terrifying to watch.
2. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981)
I will keep this one brief because, after talking to some people, I think this may be the second most popular book in the history of mankind, right after the over hyped "Bible," all you kids are reading now. This book was a collection of short scary stories for kids. Each story was 1-3 pages long and generally weren't all that scary, even for the jumpiest kids at my school. Why did it make the list then? The artwork. Stephen Gammell was the kid version of Hunter S. Thompson's artist Ralph Steadman. His stuff was trippy, loose and played on something very primal within each of us. His artwork featured such gruesome subject matter as a decapitated heads, flesh melting off eyeless faces, and spiders bursting out of a girls face.
The story/artwork that bothered me the most in this collection was titled "The Thing." The story was about two young boys who see a figure coming toward them through an open field. They run, only to decide that running was silly. They return and the thing comes out of the field. One of the boys touches the twisted smiling figure to see if its real. When he realizes it is, they both run home. Soon, the boy gets sick and dies. His friend swears that his rotted and sickly corpse in the coffin is identical to the thing that came out of the field. The artwork, featuring the smiling thing hit me hard. Really hard. It was both the warning and the cause in my mind. It showed up just to taunt his eventual demise by showing him what he would become. Something in that really struck something deep within me. I taped those two pages of the book together. Years later, when I was about eleven or twelve, I decided to conquer the irrational fear of that image and give it another look. I remember cutting the tape during a commercial for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, a gameboy game. The image still scared the shit out of me and every time I saw that commercial, the haunting smile of "The Thing," returned to my mind.
1. The Peanut Butter Solution (1985)
Now there is an interesting story behind this one. A few years ago, I was sitting in Room 5, a popular venue in LA. My friend Heather Porcaro and her band the Heartstring Symphony were playing a set. Throughout the set, her band needed to switch instruments or retune and Heather, being the social butterfly she is, would just talk to the audience. During one such occasion, she says to the audience, "I've had a very strange day. A friend of mine took me with her to a support group for kids that were emotionally crippled by this movie that came out in the 80s. Apparently, only a handful of kids saw it. The subject matter was damaging enough, but so few kids saw it that all of the kids who did spent most of their childhoods feeling alone, isolated and crazy because they thought maybe they had just imagined the whole movie. I can't remember what it was called. The Peanut Butter….something…." Suddenly, it all came flooding to the surface like a Vietnam flashback. In a quiet voice, I said "The Peanut Butter Solution." She heard me and said "Yeah! Thats it! Do you go to meetings too?" I only wish I had.
This movie had haunted my mind for years. I only remembered vague flashes of it and all of them were at the very root of everything I find to be truly scary in this world. A few days later, a bunch of friends were at my place and we were shooting the shit. We got onto the topic of artifacts from our childhood. My friend Nick said that there was only one thing that has stuck with him in any serious way but he couldn't remember the name of it or if it every really existed since all of his friends thought he had made it up. All he could remember was that a little kid was scared so badly that all of his hair fell out. My head whipped around, I stared him straight in the eye and I said "The Peanut Butter Solution." Suddenly, his face grew very dim. He remembered. In that moment I saw all of the terror he suffered through his childhood flash across his face as it all came flooding back. Most of my friends didn't understand why Nick and I were so serious and quiet the rest of the night. Nick spent the night on the couch that night.
By morning, I had tracked down a copy of the movie online. I dumped it to my appleTV so we could watch it. I feel that for both myself and for Nick, it was a cathartic experience. The movie was the metaphoric creepy uncle that molested us as children and, to make matters worse, everyone thought we had just made it up. It left us feeling hopeless and alone, questioning the difference between right and wrong and even our own sanity.
The story is about a young boy who goes into a haunted house. The next morning he is spit out of this demonic house. Although it is never quite clear what happened to him inside, what is clear is that he was so terrified by whatever it was that all of his hair fell out. His friends seek a cure for him and, with the help of two well meaning ghosts, discover a recipe that will allow his hair to grow back. The recipe comes with the warning that too much peanut butter will make the concoction go haywire and his hair will grow too fast. They ignore it and before long, the boy is growing hair faster then his friends can cut it. He has to tie it above him in a net before he goes to sleep so he isn't suffocated by it. His friends have to sit behind him in class, cutting his hair without stopping to keep it a reasonable length. But the truly fucked up part of this movie is what happens next.
The art teacher at the school who was fired due to a run in with the boy hatches an evil scheme. He kidnaps the boy, whisking him away to an evil underground warehouse where he makes paintbrushes from the boys hair. Due to the magic hair, the paintbrushes can bring anything painted with them into reality. You can literally walk into the paintings. When this evil pedophile realizes the supernatural ability of the brushes, he begins kidnapping other children in the neighborhood, forcing them into slavery. The children of the neighborhood cut, assemble and package the brushes. The forced rape is clearly implied. What makes it even worse is that none of the parents seem all too concerned. Eventually the boy wins out by using one of his own brushes to paint the haunted house and forcing the art teacher through the same ordeal he faced in the beginning of the film. He is rid of the curse and everything returns to normal.
Every once in a while, Ill bring the movie up with a new group of people to see if they had the same haunting experience as we did and on rare occasions I will see that same flash of recognizable terror flash across someones face. Those of us who experienced it as kids will never forget it, but can't quiet remember it either. It is a fog, a phantom in our childhood that will never let go.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Oh that is just FONTastic!
If you are somewhat of a regular at this bar called The World Wide Web, you might have overheard conversations in different... accents. Accents that can completely change the sound of a sentence depending on the accent used. That's right people, we are talking fonts.
I remember back to the late 90s when I first started to really grasp the idea that my font was an extension of myself. Being a proud internet-er from the beginning, I was on aim, livejournal, xanga, I was even (embarrassingly) a member of the magical land of Neopets (I had a blue unicorn named Balburina. I am pretty sure if I found my username and password, she would still be "starving to death"). Each of these sites/apps/programs/etc had places to write blurbs, thoughts, or messages and you could always choose your own font. This brought excitement and stress into the life of my 12 year old self.
With the exception of one year as a very very red head, I have never made a drastic change to my appearance in my life. When I felt the need to feel reinvent myself, I didn't dye, cut, or pierce anything, I found a new font. When I was younger, my font choices were young, hip, and exciting. I started off with Bauhaus 93, I then moved on to a more sleek and stylish Bradley Hand. After that, I wanted a little more respect and so I moved on to Book Antiqua. Throw in some Impact, Lucida Sans Typewriter, and a terrible case of Curlz MT, and you can timeline my entire trip through puberty.
Later in life, I got more natural with my fonts. Nothing to glitzy, just beautifully simple enough to let my words speak for themselves. Oh Helvetica, you are my morning coffee font. Helvetica was my go to font for high school papers, that is, until I learned that Arial is a wider font and could extend my papers by at least half of a page. Goodbye Helvetica, hello wide waisted Arial.
As an adult, fonts have become a natural part of my virtual self. I tend to stick with the default font unless there is any real reason to get fancy. I thought my font woes where long behind me. Then, I got a job.
I work at a talent agency and it is my job to get all of the audition information out to our talent. I do this by phone and also by email. On my first day, as I was being trained, I notice that we are getting to the draft version of the audition email. The typographer inside of me shrieked in pain. On the screen, in bold, red, and size 14 font, was the only font unanimously hated by anyone who has ever felt an emotional connection to a font. Yes, my friends, Comic Sans Serif.
My font journey is never ending.
I remember back to the late 90s when I first started to really grasp the idea that my font was an extension of myself. Being a proud internet-er from the beginning, I was on aim, livejournal, xanga, I was even (embarrassingly) a member of the magical land of Neopets (I had a blue unicorn named Balburina. I am pretty sure if I found my username and password, she would still be "starving to death"). Each of these sites/apps/programs/etc had places to write blurbs, thoughts, or messages and you could always choose your own font. This brought excitement and stress into the life of my 12 year old self.
With the exception of one year as a very very red head, I have never made a drastic change to my appearance in my life. When I felt the need to feel reinvent myself, I didn't dye, cut, or pierce anything, I found a new font. When I was younger, my font choices were young, hip, and exciting. I started off with Bauhaus 93, I then moved on to a more sleek and stylish Bradley Hand. After that, I wanted a little more respect and so I moved on to Book Antiqua. Throw in some Impact, Lucida Sans Typewriter, and a terrible case of Curlz MT, and you can timeline my entire trip through puberty.
Later in life, I got more natural with my fonts. Nothing to glitzy, just beautifully simple enough to let my words speak for themselves. Oh Helvetica, you are my morning coffee font. Helvetica was my go to font for high school papers, that is, until I learned that Arial is a wider font and could extend my papers by at least half of a page. Goodbye Helvetica, hello wide waisted Arial.
As an adult, fonts have become a natural part of my virtual self. I tend to stick with the default font unless there is any real reason to get fancy. I thought my font woes where long behind me. Then, I got a job.
I work at a talent agency and it is my job to get all of the audition information out to our talent. I do this by phone and also by email. On my first day, as I was being trained, I notice that we are getting to the draft version of the audition email. The typographer inside of me shrieked in pain. On the screen, in bold, red, and size 14 font, was the only font unanimously hated by anyone who has ever felt an emotional connection to a font. Yes, my friends, Comic Sans Serif.
My font journey is never ending.
The Maddest Max
You may have heard Mel Gibson hasn’t been particularly nice to his baby-mama as of late. You may have heard the recorded phone calls in which he informs his fiancé that if “she gets raped by a pack of n****s” it’s her fault. He also tells her that he’s going to burn their house down but ensures her that she’ll “blow” him first. A friend accurately described the tapes as crazy person madlibs. I’m going to [verb] your [sex organ] with a [noun, preferably large object] as if I were a a [racial epithet].
5 Reasons for Straight guys to have at least one Gay Friend
It's been a good long time since I wrote anything worthy of baring the title controversial and while it isn't my intention to stem controversy, its the fact that the Gay is still a taboo word in many households.
I've said it before but I suppose this is a good time as any to repeat it: I don't care who you fuck or what gets you off, It's not my business. They only time I will step forward is when your fucking children, animals or the unwilling. Not only will I step forward, I'll smash the fuckers skull open with a pillowcase filled with soda cans.
Understandable and justified threats of violence set aside; the fact is, If your a straight male and do not have at least one gay friend in your bullpen of cell phone contact list your missing out on not only a fantastic opportunity but the genuine comedic gold that only happens with gay friends (“I'm not gay, I'm Bi-laaaarrrrious!”). What other social group can pull off the double handed wave? The Nazis? Nope. The Soviets? Nope. The Kamikaze? Perhaps, but only if they doing the double handed wave before they hit the target screaming 'surprise!!!'
So aside from the side splitting hilarity (which anyone who has an open acceptance of gays and spent time with them can attest to) I will be sharing my top 5 reasons for straight guys to have Gay friends. So if your a straight 20 something male, pay attention since I share your lens being a straight 20 something dude myself. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, this is one of my many theorys and Theorey crafting is what I do.
#5 Gays bring up property values!
To really appreciate this reason you have to either own property or understand the basic practices of real estate but to understand it you require much less. Stereotype or not, one thing the Gays excel at is home design and to top it off they have cleanliness levels that rival O.C.D. Women and middle age Texan yard enthusiast can only dream about ascending to. It is a proven scientific fact that it is absolute impossible to depreciate the value of property or just any object at all. The gays are the keepers and grand masters of the art of “bedazzaling”; and to bedazzale something is nothing more to make it worth more then it looks. Got a lame button up? Pass it off your gay friend and ask for the lite metro bedazzle job and you got your self a pimpin party shirt. Want your house to be worth 25,000 more with little work on your part? Advertise as a gay friendly neighborhood!
#4 The Gay Eye
A force so powerful it was the premise of a short lived American Television Phenomena, the Gay Eye. Just like the Gay community stealing the double hand wave and refracted light; a keen eye for aesthetics has been claimed with a rainbow flag and rightfully so. When you combine a woman's passion for fashion with the natural attention to extreme detail men posses the outcome is high quality color scheming and an overall factor of knowing whats really “Easy on the eyes.”
#3 A wink for a drink.
Men all over the civilized word has fell prey to the natural born ability women posses to get free drinks at a bar. Let's be honest here, the thought process of your average 20 something male is very simple when it comes to reading a woman's body language; shes paying attention to me, I'f I feed her liquor she will forget how big of a douche I am. If I play my cards right I can get some action! At the very least a handy in the handicap stall!” Well if you get yourself a gay friend you can extract some form of revenge but doing it to your gay friend. Like women, gay people feed off attention and a few choice words, a proper wink and a ol' fashion good game ass smack football players receive via coach could land you a night of paid drinks.
Note: You are dealing with men so beware the roofie-calaudas
#2 A Gay BFF for your girlfriend.
Diamonds may be a girls best friend but a Guy man is a girls best friend forever. Lets face it, guys are jealous by nature and since women are in a secret war with all other women the choices of people who fit in the comfort zone are limited. So when you find a guy who answers “a vagina” to the question “wheres the strangest place you had sex” you need to involve him in your relationship. Guys don't have to worry about the guy hanging out with their girlfriend when that guy can recite any given moment from Mama Mia at the drop of the pin. Women can feed that hunger of having a conversation with a man where both parties are on the same level. The fact is Gay men are relationship gold and with a little practice and a touch of finesse the outcome of a “to death due us part” relationship is within grasp.
#1 There is no better wing-man then a Gay man.
If your a single guy and you don't have a Gay man in your arsenal of tools for dating you are seriously behind the pack. Women trust and listen to gay men (don't believe me? cough sexinthecity cough) they trust gay men more then they trust other women. So when a Gay guy tells a girl that your a stand up individual and a respectable citizen, you have cut the hours of work it takes just to convince them that you don't own a rape dungeon. It's almost impossible to fail with a Gay wing-man and if for some fucking strange reason you do fuck it up after the Gay man props, perhaps you should join your new found gay friend at the new bar in town called “The Fruit Stand.”
So I suppose this is the part of the article where I come to an overall wrap up and say “you should just be friends with gay guys anyway.” But I'm not. If you got issues with gay people, that's your business of being a bigot and I'm not here to argue that argument. And the truth of the world is, gay or straight, some people are just assholes and should be shunned by society. If you don't like someone because as a person, don't be their friend. But for those individuals with an open mind, raise your property values, get a free jack coke and make your girlfriend less insane by bringing a Gay Friend into your life.
---end---....?...!...$
Ern Acosta
I've said it before but I suppose this is a good time as any to repeat it: I don't care who you fuck or what gets you off, It's not my business. They only time I will step forward is when your fucking children, animals or the unwilling. Not only will I step forward, I'll smash the fuckers skull open with a pillowcase filled with soda cans.
Understandable and justified threats of violence set aside; the fact is, If your a straight male and do not have at least one gay friend in your bullpen of cell phone contact list your missing out on not only a fantastic opportunity but the genuine comedic gold that only happens with gay friends (“I'm not gay, I'm Bi-laaaarrrrious!”). What other social group can pull off the double handed wave? The Nazis? Nope. The Soviets? Nope. The Kamikaze? Perhaps, but only if they doing the double handed wave before they hit the target screaming 'surprise!!!'
So aside from the side splitting hilarity (which anyone who has an open acceptance of gays and spent time with them can attest to) I will be sharing my top 5 reasons for straight guys to have Gay friends. So if your a straight 20 something male, pay attention since I share your lens being a straight 20 something dude myself. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, this is one of my many theorys and Theorey crafting is what I do.
#5 Gays bring up property values!
To really appreciate this reason you have to either own property or understand the basic practices of real estate but to understand it you require much less. Stereotype or not, one thing the Gays excel at is home design and to top it off they have cleanliness levels that rival O.C.D. Women and middle age Texan yard enthusiast can only dream about ascending to. It is a proven scientific fact that it is absolute impossible to depreciate the value of property or just any object at all. The gays are the keepers and grand masters of the art of “bedazzaling”; and to bedazzale something is nothing more to make it worth more then it looks. Got a lame button up? Pass it off your gay friend and ask for the lite metro bedazzle job and you got your self a pimpin party shirt. Want your house to be worth 25,000 more with little work on your part? Advertise as a gay friendly neighborhood!
#4 The Gay Eye
A force so powerful it was the premise of a short lived American Television Phenomena, the Gay Eye. Just like the Gay community stealing the double hand wave and refracted light; a keen eye for aesthetics has been claimed with a rainbow flag and rightfully so. When you combine a woman's passion for fashion with the natural attention to extreme detail men posses the outcome is high quality color scheming and an overall factor of knowing whats really “Easy on the eyes.”
#3 A wink for a drink.
Men all over the civilized word has fell prey to the natural born ability women posses to get free drinks at a bar. Let's be honest here, the thought process of your average 20 something male is very simple when it comes to reading a woman's body language; shes paying attention to me, I'f I feed her liquor she will forget how big of a douche I am. If I play my cards right I can get some action! At the very least a handy in the handicap stall!” Well if you get yourself a gay friend you can extract some form of revenge but doing it to your gay friend. Like women, gay people feed off attention and a few choice words, a proper wink and a ol' fashion good game ass smack football players receive via coach could land you a night of paid drinks.
Note: You are dealing with men so beware the roofie-calaudas
#2 A Gay BFF for your girlfriend.
Diamonds may be a girls best friend but a Guy man is a girls best friend forever. Lets face it, guys are jealous by nature and since women are in a secret war with all other women the choices of people who fit in the comfort zone are limited. So when you find a guy who answers “a vagina” to the question “wheres the strangest place you had sex” you need to involve him in your relationship. Guys don't have to worry about the guy hanging out with their girlfriend when that guy can recite any given moment from Mama Mia at the drop of the pin. Women can feed that hunger of having a conversation with a man where both parties are on the same level. The fact is Gay men are relationship gold and with a little practice and a touch of finesse the outcome of a “to death due us part” relationship is within grasp.
#1 There is no better wing-man then a Gay man.
If your a single guy and you don't have a Gay man in your arsenal of tools for dating you are seriously behind the pack. Women trust and listen to gay men (don't believe me? cough sexinthecity cough) they trust gay men more then they trust other women. So when a Gay guy tells a girl that your a stand up individual and a respectable citizen, you have cut the hours of work it takes just to convince them that you don't own a rape dungeon. It's almost impossible to fail with a Gay wing-man and if for some fucking strange reason you do fuck it up after the Gay man props, perhaps you should join your new found gay friend at the new bar in town called “The Fruit Stand.”
So I suppose this is the part of the article where I come to an overall wrap up and say “you should just be friends with gay guys anyway.” But I'm not. If you got issues with gay people, that's your business of being a bigot and I'm not here to argue that argument. And the truth of the world is, gay or straight, some people are just assholes and should be shunned by society. If you don't like someone because as a person, don't be their friend. But for those individuals with an open mind, raise your property values, get a free jack coke and make your girlfriend less insane by bringing a Gay Friend into your life.
---end---....?...!...$
Ern Acosta
Will You Die?
I will die. My heart will stop beating, my brain will stop pulsing, my eyes will stop blinking. My connective tissues will waste away and leave me a lackluster sack of ecologically valuable gumbo. Yes, my ponderings will cease, my tirades will recede, and my footprints will be bleached away. The things I love, remember, and dream of will ebb and percolate back into the sea of possibilities. My properties, t-shirts, books, and guitars will be donated and sold to the litany of friends and garage-sale surfers. My mattress will hopefully be reused. I will tuck-in, check out, and foot the bill. There will be a last morning, a last night, and a last kiss. I will die; I say this in certainty only because I know, I have lived.
There will be no gleaming cyborg body frame awaiting my thaw. There will almost certainly not be some extra-dimensional alien relative to rescue me from the throws of my feeble body. There probably won't even be a computer database containing bits of info from my mind. I'll be lucky if there's a roomba at the funeral reception. I will not be born again in an etherial beam of white light. I will not punch my hand through the earth above my corpse in ten years crying "brains, brains, brains!" because of the recitation of some haitian incantation. I'm just not coming back.
There might be a flash and a sigh. You might just scream and get fried. Its possible that we linger on with some capacity of energy, imposing feelings and giving first impressions to empty rooms. Maybe I'll get my wings when some poor receptionist ignores an incoming hotel guest. I could even replay the whole life over again looking for further insight into the meaning behind my actuality. Or There could be absolute nothingness.
Whether it be Elysium or black, purgatory or the clouds. Whether it be earthly satiation or inimitable spiritual deliverance. Whatever it is, however, and where, I can only ask that I please see you there.
Unless there are no eyes, then I guess I don't care.
Michael Minto
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