Tag Archives: Gwar

A Date With El Duce

I assert the following to be truth. My intention for decades has been to draw a comic strip about it, but frankly, rendering it would be gilding the lily. The story and the people involved are cartoonish enough already.

Continue reading

Comments Off on A Date With El Duce

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

Styx

Continue reading

Comments Off on Styx

Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Podcastery, Thousand Listen Club

Hairway To Steven

Hairway To Steven is my favorite Butthole Surfers album. Every song on it is gold. It’s one of the greatest experimental rock albums of all time, easily on par with Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. I have the original Touch & Go release from 1988, with the impossible-to-remove MADE IN CANADA sticker. This disc is thirty years old.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Hairway To Steven

Filed under Girls of BIUL, Thousand Listen Club

Scatterbrain

Ugly Kid Joe sucked. They sucked. Ass. They fucking sucked ass.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Scatterbrain

Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Thousand Listen Club, Worst Of All

Million Dollar Extreme

I love great sketch comedy, and as demonstrated on this site, I have tremendous nostalgia for the video industry of the 1980’s and ’90s. By nature I am protective of those things, out of love. I have little tolerance of exploitation of them.

I believe the modern peak of sketch comedy came with two shows; Mr. Show with Bob & David, and The Kids In The Hall (both on HBO). Since the 1990s, these programs set the gold standard. Inevitably, new sketch comedy shows are compared to them, and they seldom hold up. I don’t think The State gelled until they became Reno 911. Broken Lizard has fantastic moments; generally one or two per film. Too many comedy groups nowadays are post-UCB; all manic energy, no focus. That’s fine if the group is performing live for an drunken bar audience. TV is a different matter.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Million Dollar Extreme

Filed under Bad Influences, Nostalgic Obsessions, Unfairly Maligned

“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

Continue reading

Comments Off on “Rappin’ Rodney”

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

Yello

BIUL_Yello

30 years ago, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out. If you build a time machine and go back to 1986, you might just enjoy that movie.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Yello

Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

The Glory Of GWAR

Gwar, often styled as GWAR, is an American heavy metal band formed in Richmond, Virginia, United States, in 1984, composed of and operated by a frequently rotating line-up of musicians, artists and filmmakers collectively known as Slave Pit Inc. [Wikipedia]

  • After seeing GWAR in 1991, my freshman buddy Chris ran into the cafeteria to meet us the following morning. He bugged out his eyes with a grin, making a hard side-glance to push his contact lenses slightly off his irises. They were stained bright red, from GWAR blood.
  • I met GWAR’s manager, Sleazy P. Martini, at a DragonCon in the late 90s. I timidly asked him, “Gee Sleazy, do you really know GWAR?” He laughed and replied “Yeah, I know GWAR. I’m their FUCKIN’ MANAGER.”

gwar2 Continue reading

Comments Off on The Glory Of GWAR

Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

“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

My First Necronomicon

By the age of ten, I had somehow managed to view both Alien and The Shining. These formed the blueprint of what I understood of the “horror” genre, which I’ve loved ever since. I often bought issues of Fangoria and GoreZone in junior high, because I was intrigued by the pictures’ ability to sicken me, and amazed that magazines existed in stores that were nothing more than full-color gross-out photos. The work of technical-effects masters like Rick Baker, Tom Savini and Kevin Yagher was lovingly displayed like bloody Playboy centerfolds.

The good old days.

The good old days, when Corey Feldman was naught but Jason’s killer.

Continue reading

Comments Off on My First Necronomicon

Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions