Facebook is sooo 2009

One Last Christmas Post Before The Season’s Over

Sketchy Santa’s. Click through for muchos hilarity as creepy dudes are paired with sometimes terrified children for our internet amusement!

A brief selection of some of my favorites:

I’ve never heard of a Santa mask, but there’s more than a few of them on display at the site. Very wrong.

I swear I’ll be good forever, and ever, and ever. See, I’m smiling just like you wanted…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen “abject terror” displayed so poignantly. It warms the heart.

Merry Christmas

Off the wall? Here’s Jim and Tammy Faye’s PTL club – Christmas Day 1985!

Christmas Shoes Remix!

The song “Christmas Shoes” by Newsong has been ubiquitous the last few years, even spawning a crappy tv-movie with Rob Lowe – as in how Lowe can you go?

Anyway, I’ve been consciously looking for someone to put this chees-tastic song in its place and I believe I finally found it. For some reason, good parodies of this song are hard to come by.

Here goes:

Tipper Gore, Jimmy Swaggart, and a Completely Unappreciated Song

Cinderella – the rock group – always sorta sucked.

But really, I think they were a victim of their own time. Forced into the 80’s hair-metal mold of the era, they complied like lemmings.

However, in their last charting hit, “Shelter Me” in pre-Nirvana 1990, they left behind many of the musical trappings of the hair-metal that made them famous, but it was too little, too late.

Or was it?

A return to pure Rolling Stones-inspired Rock n’ Roll, the little-known song “Shelter Me” (could a RS salute be more obvious?) references the Jimmy Swaggart scandal, who really was trying to be the next Billy Graham. I recall his very well-attended revivals and services being televised multiple times as I was growing up, often in prime-time on the local independent stations. Swaggart was caught masturbating as a hooker posed for him. After the scandal broke, the hooker posed for Penthouse magazine while Jimmy Swaggart pled for forgiveness from the nation, but we failed to heed his call.

“Shelter Me” also references Tipper Gore’s crusade against pop music. Inspired by Prince’s “Darling Nikki”, Mrs. Gore and her Parent’s Music Resource Center (to be cool they initialized it as the “PMRC”) managed to get Frank Zappa to appear before congress in opposition to her.

You may recognize this…

Thanks to the parental warning stickers she fought for and won, Tipper Gore introduced a whole new level of filth to pop music. Now that there were warning labels artists felt free to express themselves as obscenely as they possibly could in the knowledge that such filth would never reach young, impressionable ears thanks to her stickers. Yayyyy, Tipper! Music is so much cleaner now than it ever has been before!

In other news, Tipper also inspired a band to name itself Tipper’s Gore. Who knew the woman would have such an effect on Rock n’ Roll!?

Tipper led the war against the record industry
She said she saw the devil on her mtv
To look into the cabinet, it takes more than a key
Just like Jimmy’s skeletons and his ministry

We all need a little shelter
Just a little helper to get us by
We all need a little shelter
Just a little helper ooo, and it’ll be alright

Sing it, Dudes!

The embed option of the actual music video is disabled by the record company, however, I do encourage you to click through on this paragraph to the actual music video which is an entertaining and well-produced piece of music video history. It also has Little Richard…. !

Some Thoughts On “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”

3 out of 5 cookies = some really good stuff but its got issues.

Let me just say right off, I am not an X-men fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to be. I picked up a few of the comic books when I was a kid, but they seemed so involved and soap-opera-ey that halfway through I either put them down because I didn’t know what the hell was going on, or I just didn’t care. As far as the movies? I took the kids to the first one and remember not a single thing about it. I took the boy to the second one, only because of its “blockbuster” status and remember the blue guy crawling around the White House and how it looked pretty cool, and then I remember a pleasant nap. The third movie? I didn’t even bother.

And so with that in mind it must be understood that I approached the Wolverine game not as a fan of the X-men – (as a matter of fact I would hedge to say that, if given a choice, I would probably avoid X-men related stuff, not out of hatred, but just because in my prior history I feel I can safely say that its just not my thing) – but as a fan of video games. In gamer circles, magazines, and on game-centric websites the Wolverine game garnered quite a bit of lip-service as being quite a satisfying game – surprisingly satisfying considering it was made as a tie-in to the recent Wolverine movie. It is a well-known fact that, for the most part, movie games completely suck. In Hollywood, video games are seen not as a product in and of themselves, but just another movie tie-in product, like an action figure or t-shirt. Lots of movies spawn mediocre games in the marketing machine that is Hollywood, but rarely do they spawn games that garner great reviews and even better word of mouth among gamers. Due to the shadow of Hollywood hanging over the game, the Wolverine game is recommended almost apologetically by video game fans – but still they highly recommend it.

(As a quick, opinionated, gleeful footnote, Hollywood is quickly finding out that instead of being the main event, more and more often, it is they that are becoming the tie-in product. In fact, after the highly monetarily successful team-up of Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer for those Pirates of the Caribbean films where have they turned to next? Why, the Prince of Persia series – based on a video game series. Furthermore, in the first 5 days of its release the latest Call of Duty game sold a staggering $550 million worth of copies – whereas the first 5 days of the latest Roland Emmerich movie, 2012, have garnered only $65 million. Of course, with 2012 that is only a USA domestic total, and when the DVD’s start going on sales, and later the tv rights, I’m almost positive it will compare to the latest Call of Duty game – but still, that ain’t chump-change especially in an entertainment medium. Needless to say, the ‘bastardization’ of games and gaming by Hollywood is quickly coming to an end and with it, so too, hopefully, are the days of Hollywood ‘art’ without a single technical talent.)

Okay, back to Wolverine. Is it worth your time? The answer is yes – and no. I think it became a highly over-rated game due to the utter surprise that is actually playable. The controls are fun and easy, its bloody and violent, and, hell, its Wolverine! The drawbacks are that the graphics tend to look very last generation. The story is told in flashbacks and most of those take place in the African jungle. Which is great for a level or two, but it seemed like we kept returning to the jungle.

Will I Ever Get Out of This F@#$%^N JUNGLE!?

I’m not sure what happened to this game in development because it became obvious rather quickly that the cinematics were worked on by two different teams with two different budgets. About half of the cinematics are amazing, hi-def, detailed pieces of animation, and the other half are very standard, non-hi-def, almost last-gen looking productions. I actually wonder if the game was in development on its own, apart from the movie and the high quality cut-scenes are from this point in development, and then the movie people got involved and made it a “movie” game and the budget was pulled. I don’t know, but the game is worth a play just to check out the work of the two different sets of people and wonder what in the hell happened.

Ultimately what will be remembered about this game is its sheer playability. You can lunge, leap in the air, and use Wolverines claws to dismember your opponent so he’s left rolling around on the ground holding the stumps that used to be his legs – and all of this comes very naturally and intuitively. It is a fun experience, but there are other games that get the intuitiveness down and do it better – for instance, Assassin’s Creed, the most recent Prince of Persia, and Ninja Gaiden II. However, what those games don’t have is the beloved Wolverine, and an ease to completion, meaning that I think even game newbies would be able to finish this game. There is no point where it becomes frustratingly hard, and it is easily finish-able in a 6 to 8 hour span of time. In fact, as the holiday time is here, I would recommend this game as a gift for inexperienced players. It would function as a great gateway game to bigger and better things. After all, there’s nothing worse than sitting down to play a game and finding it either too complex, too hard, or just plain boring. In spite of its flaws, Wolverine is none of these.

Lastly, for those who like to kick it old school, within the first few levels you are able to begin opening up the old school 1970’s comic book Wolverine costumes and get rid of the Hugh Jackman – although he does still turn up in some of the cut-scenes. I personally used the yellow Wolverine costume – it seemed to have the most street-cred and almost felt like something out of Watchmen.

Where is Hugh Jackman, cuz I’m gonna rip him a new… well, something or other, ’cause this is a family comic…

I’ll admit my excitement of this game was diminished since right before I began playing it I had attempted Ninja Gaiden II – a gamer’s game with jaw-droppingly detailed and gorgeous imagery, and a playability that rivals the Mario games. Unfortunately, by the third level’s final boss, Ninja Gaiden II proved to be so impossibly hard that I ended up returning it and getting my money back. (In fact, Ninja Gaiden II is notoriously hard and any professional game review will tell you just that. Furthermore, when I bought it the Gamestop clerk even remarked – ‘hard game’ – which almost sent me scurrying back to re-shelve it. As far as reviewing games like Ninja Gaiden II, as a rule I generally don’t write-up a review for games I don’t or can’t finish, so there are actually several games that I try for each game that actually gets a write-up)

Anyway, Wolverine may have gotten an unfair shake considering what I had played right before it, but either way, at least Wolverine gave me the satisfaction of having finished it, not to mention the satisfaction of kicking a few helicopters out of the sky…

…Which goes something like this – and is incredibly fun!

Decapitation! YaYYY! Had the developers really had balls they would have had Wolverine take on Iraqi insurgents and Al Queda!

Here’s two dudes who got Wolverine’s claws implanted in their hands… but without the mutant healing! (The game, as it loads, explains that Wolverine’s claws, in fact, pierce his skin every time they shoot out from between his knuckles – the wounds they inflict on his hands heal only with a special mutant power. But you knew that already, didn’t you? You geek.

Kurt Cobain was a Tool

Honestly, I know I’m swinging an axe here, but ever since I saw that his skanky wife twittered that she was going to sue Activision over his character in GH5, I can’t even play the game without getting pissed. (I just got done playing the game for a couple of songs and had to remove his character cuz it kept pissing me off.)

“WE are going to sue the shit out of ACtivision we being the Trust the Estate the LLC the various LLCs Cobain Enterprises.” (sic)

I think Cobain’s come to represent everything I despise. His fans play Youtube videos of his GH5 character playing “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi and marvel at the irony of how Activision could do such a thing when he called Bon Jovi “evil”…

Granted, Bon Jovi is cheese, but is he truly evil? I mean the dude supported the following charities:

* BID 2 BEAT AIDS
* Children Affected by AIDS Foundation
* Dream Foundation
* Elevate Hope Foundation
* Habitat For Humanity
* Hannah and Friends
* HELP USA
* Keep Memory Alive
* Live Earth
* Love Our Children USA
* Memorial Sloan-Kettering
* Musicians on Call
* Philadelphia Soul Charitable Foundation
* Project HOME
* Stand Up For A Cure
* Stop Global Warming
* Valerie Fund

Link:

Yup, nothing more evil than that, Kurt.

I don’t listen to the Bon Jovi’s music, but I’ll admit, charity wise, Bon Jovi is far from evil, and in fact is pretty cool.

Whereas Googling “Kurt Cobain charity” brings up this:

Rock offspring Frances Bean Cobain stunned train passengers after launching into a vicious tirade when her travel plans to New York derailed – because she refused to pay for a reservation.

None the less, was Cobain really in a position to pronounce people good and evil?

Is he really worth all this hero worship? Is GH5 really such a travesty when you can do the same exact thing with “characters” Johnny Cash, and Carlos Santana? How come their fans aren’t freaking out? (Johnny Cash in particular, to me, has much more street cred than Cobain will ever have…. the dude actually served time in jail a time or two, not just ‘the jail of his mind’ like Cobain.)

Even Cobain’s supposedly progressive “anti-homophobic” stances of wearing a dress during his MTV Headbangers Ball appearance and in the video for “In Bloom” pale in comparison to the stances taken by Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in Too Wong Foo who truly performed “in drag” – and, seriously, I have no doubt that in his heyday, prior to their appearances in that movie, Cobain also would have lumped Swayze and Snipes into the same categories that he did Bon Jovi…

Cobain takes anti-homophobic stance in dress – fails miserably as he merely looks like the frat-boys that he despises.

Swayze and Snipes show Cobain how to take an anti-homophobic stance in a dress and succeed. Cobain pronounces Dirty Dancing “evil”.

I find Cobain’s world a sad world based on stereotypes – a very closed-minded world that he truly thought was open. And there is the crux; It’s one thing to be merely closed-minded, but even worse are those that, like Cobain, proclaim themselves open-minded and then proceed to use their supposed “open-minded” liberalism to judge everyone and everything around them that doesn’t conform to their worldview. In light of this, as of late, I find his music shallow and immature – that’s not to say I don’t recognize his poetic talent – just that it was and is shallow and immature – and to paint him as messianic is just mis-guided at best.

Funny, even after all this ruckus, Teen Spirit was just released for download in Rock Band two weeks ago. So much for street cred. Love and Grohl jumped on the music game bandwagon by the second Guitar Hero game and even made songs available on the first Rock Band game. With the release of Guitar Hero 5 and its inclusion of Nirvana’s biggest hit, Teen Spirit, every single charting hit by Nirvana is in one of these games. Interestingly, now that their are no songs left to sell, Courtney decides to bite the hand that feeds.

God I hate Kurt Cobain, Nirvana and Courtney Love – and Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters are right on their tail.

Lesson to be garnered from this post:

Bon Jovi = evil, evil, evil loser

Kurt Cobain = totally awesome, non-homophobe, open-minded, father-of-the-year-1994, WINNER!

Total loser Bon Jovi builds 6 houses with Habitat for Humanity. LOSER!

Awesome Winner Cobain succeeds in having 15 million boys and girls cry in front of their tv’s for 24 hours straight in April of 1994! WINNER! – And so are those who sat crying in front of thier tvs!

Lastly, Kurt’s final statement to Jon Bon Jovi:

And Johnny Cash’s final statement to Kurt Cobain:

My final statement to Kurt Cobain: Click the picture below for a link to all of Nirvana’s music for free! (Doing my part to make sure the parasites that are Cobain’s daughter, widow, and former bandmates make as little money as possible in the future.)

Why South Carolina?

Recently, a poster at a message board I frequent commenting on Ohio wrote:

“Seriously why are people so proud to live in Ohio. The only other armpit people are so happy to be in is South Carolina, and I don’t get that one either. I mean really, really?”

Besides coming off as rather dickish – (and I officially decree the whole “really? really?” thing dead now that Saturday Night Live has stomped it into the ground) – his comment left me wondering exactly what perfect, utopian state of the union he lives in. Honestly though, I have to admit, he sort of has a point. Particularly politically speaking, South Carolina is surely becoming (or maybe has been all along) a national embarrassment.

But is that all there really is to an entire state? It’s politics?

Yesterday, in the early morning – just after 7AM – I peeked out the bedroom window as I was waiting for the computer to come up and I took this quick footage in the backyard:

I’ve lived in several states in my life including Connecticut, New York, Michigan, Indiana, North Carolina, and even Hawaii as a child. Each of them have their pluses and minuses – but between you and I, (shhh), I like South Carolina quite a bit for more than a few reasons – the free roaming deer being just one of them.

And yes, believe it or not, even politically, sometimes South Carolina gets things right. In the 90’s, due to tax incentives and the South’s historical resistance to unions, South Carolina got BMW to open an auto plant in Spartanburg, and even Honda is mulling an ATV plant in the state. Boeing will be opening a plant in North Charleston, which need I mention is a beautiful place and hardly the cesspool the above-quoted message board regular probably assumes it to be.

The Boeing plant itself has created quite a bit of consternation among Seattle locals, Boeing’s hometown, many of whom’s jobs will now be performed by South Carolinians. Instead of looking at what their own state could have done differently to convince Boeing to build in its own backyard, union organizers and the local media have launched a full-on editorial assault on South Carolina based mainly upon stereotypes:

Because that’s really what its going to be like at the new Boeing plant. Do you really want to fly on a plane built by white trash? That’s not just satire but real reality portrayed in these cartoons, you know. The name of Seattle’s local paper is “The Intelligencer” – dare you doubt the opinion of such a paper? And, mind you, Boeing will not just be hiring redneck, white trash, these hicks will be – gasp – non-union! R-yed-necks a-taken ovuh!

On another tangent, I wonder if Boeing had chosen to move their plant to a predominantly black area, like say Atlanta, if the editorial cartoonists and union heads and other local media types would have relied on stereotypes of the local population to bolster their case that the new employees would have been too stupid to do their jobs. Although I’m sure Washingtonians consider themselves to be a much more enlightened people than South Carolinians, one wonders exactly what sort of ideas they have about black people since blacks make up only 8.4% of the Seattle population, while they make up 29% of South Carolina’s population. So much for tolerance. I suppose we can count on a larger proportion of Boeing’s Charleston employees being black, so I’m guessing the cartoonists will have to practice drawing the “nappy hair” to make sure they get it down as good as they have the overalls down in these cartoons lampooning South Carolina’s white population. (No really, we do all wear over-alls ALL the time…shhh, that’s a secret too.)

Although the racial angle may seem untoward on my part and in reality I doubt that Seattleans are any more or less racist than any other population, it is handy to illustrate the point that these editorial cartoons and stereotypes are actually a plea for Boeing to base its multi-billion dollar – Yes, that is Billion - decisions on stereotypes and caricatures that in many other cases wouldn’t even receive newspaper ink because of their sheer ridiculousness, not to mention their offensiveness.

It’s sour grapes and I will even concede that the editorial tantrums in Seattle are completely understandable in a Dr. Phil kind of way, but the sad fact is that the petulance completely ignores the facts, not just about exactly who South Carolinian’s are, but what kind of workers they are – they seem to have worked out great for BMW.

The petulance also ignores the fact that the decision is made, the plant is moving to South Carolina and there’s nothing to be done about it but go back and get a cup of Starbucks and do some Cobain-esque soul-searching to see what Seattle and Washington state did wrong – because obviously whatever South Carolina did, it was the right.

In the meantime, keep up the stereotypes, keep up the armpit metaphors – and to our dear South Carolina politicians, please do keep up the sex scandals whether they be in Argentina or with prostitutes in cemeteries with dildos.

I often joke with Mrs. Smirk that the reason our politicians are so embarrassing on a consistently grandios scale – often at a national level to boot – is all part of larger South Carolina conspiracy to keep newcomers out by portraying the state as unattractively as possible, thus keeping the cool things that South Carolina offers – whether that be playful deer, or awesome jobs with Boeing and BMW – all to ourselves. This, from a carpetbagger…

The Story of How Smirk and Mrs. Smirk Met

For further info I recommend this NPR report here (Can you believe it, the rubes in South Carolina actually have NPR!)