Tag Archives: fake rap

2012: The Sketchbook

I had to move recently, hence the hiatus. If you’re a writer or an artist, moving is extra hell because of all the books. Big glossy ones for the coffee table (if applicable), thick reference tomes, and oodles of little half-finished sketchbooks.

Not an exaggeration.

In 2012, my friend Chay and I worked as audience members for the taping of a popular game show, hosted by Steve Harvey. We helped to provide a diversity that was wholly absent from the proceedings.

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Robot Toy Fetish

Mad Doctors of the Late 20th Century

Mad medicine was everywhere in the 80s and 90s. There were toys and playsets endorsed by mad doctors, for use by kids. Every time you watched cartoons, you saw a skinny dude with crazy hair in a white lab coat, maniacally mixing chemicals and potions for some nefarious purpose. Under the influence of this, I created my own mad medicine man; Dr. Kill-Everybody.

Dr. K (no hair), with Fronkin Steen and Psuto Moto.

Either the trope became shopworn around 2001, or something happened that discouraged children from playing with chemicals. You don’t see mad doctors and scientists like you used to. Maybe this is a good thing; maybe the concept was subconsciously driving impressionable kids away from lucrative STEM-field careers. I don’t know.

What I do know is this. Mad doctors once flourished in our society, even though they were annoying, and generally sucked.

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All

I Never Liked You: 2 Live Crew

Can I let you in on a little secret?

Nobody actually likes 2 Live Crew. They stank. They were the kind of fraud that today, would be secretly sponsored by George “Fuck Everything Good” Soros. 2 Live Crew was just garbage.

I don’t know what a “puxxy” is, but I bet if you popped one, it would make a bad smell.

It was humiliating to stock, sell or even see 2 Live Crew albums in the record store. As soon as a customer brought one to the counter, you knew there would be a problem. The customer was always under 18, and thus forbidden to purchase the music; no one older than 18 cared about it. If they enjoyed rap, they had already moved on to something actually good.

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

“Rappin’ Rodney”

You can offend a rapper the same way you can offend a cartoonist; by implying that their career “looks easy”. Cartoonists must compete in the public eye with Internet doodlers who draw in their ample free time, and rappers have to battle the false impression that they’re just boopity-bopping over a beat loop.

Before hip-hop and rap were widely understood, they were exploited as “novelty” records; a passing trend, not something that would dominate and rend asunder every other type of fucking music on earth. Rap was not a “lifestyle”. It was a fad, like the hula hoop and the Twist. So, like many other musical fads before it, rap became a haven for bad comedy.

rappin1

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

Mazzy Star

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Worst Of All

Queen

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club