Wednesday, October 29, 2008

I now formally announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America

Democrats, Republicans: you’re idiots.

Like idiots you’ve been swallowing every random lie your political overlords have been feeding you.

Like idiots, you continue to abide by a two-party system that often places in power somebody that a lot people don’t want to see as POTUS. I can’t begin to recall how many times I’ve heard people saying they don’t like either candidate running for president (and not just this election) but have been guilted by society into voting for one of them (Vote or Die? Really Diddy? Does that make sense to anybody?).

Well, fret no longer idiots. It’s time for you to be represented by an idiotic Commander-in-Chief! It is for this reason that I formally announce my… wait for it… candidacy for President of the United States of America.

My platform will be based on strengthening our pitiful economy and making America a kick-ass country that people respect and love again, instead of just a place the rest of the world hates and fears because of our insane obsession with forcing democracy on the unwilling, (because honestly, has democracy done us much good recently?)
As president I will:

• Legalize a basic broadcast porn channel. Nobody should be without access to porn 24 hours a day.

• Put watchers in bathrooms to make sure everybody washes their hands. These people will have tasers they will be allowed to shoot into the naughty parts of violators.

• Make all gas stations sell gas for the same price. No more getting gas at one place then looking across the street to see it 5 cents cheaper. That’s so frustrating!

• Allocate money to scientists to create the Flux Capacitor.

• Crush all will and hope of people around the globe in an iron fist! (Oops, how did this one get in here?)

• Give more funding to figure out alternate fuel sources, like solar or hamster power.

• Legalize weed. That’s right, I said it.

• Use all of our recycled soda and beer cans to create giant robots to guard our border. Not the border with Mexico, the Canadian one. Those crafty bastards have been up to something for a while now.

• Outlaw any movie with the word “Movie” in the title, like “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Superhero Movie,” and “Movie: The Movie.”

• Force Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly to train as MMA fighters for two months. Then at the end of those two months, they’d have to go into the Thunderdome. Two men enter, one man leaves. Whomever wins gets to be the official spokesman for my white house press conferences.

• Do Bai Ling in the Lincoln bedroom and Rosario Dawson in the Oval Office. That’s called international relations bitches!

• Send some covert ops people to take out anybody in the world I didn’t like. I’m not talking about World Leaders here, just people I don’t like. I’m looking your way - guy who kicked me in fourth grade.

• Learn another language. Not for any specific reason, I’ve just wanted to learn Spanish or whatever and I think I’d have enough free time as the President to get that done.

Let’s get serious here. People are going to demand honest changes, and I’m the guy that can make those changes happen. Our economy right now is crazier than Lizzie Borden* on meth and it’s up to a strong leader to slap that bitch sane again, and since there are no strong leaders around, I’ve volunteered to take responsibility!
So on Tuesday (two days after my birthday, represent) step boldly into that voting booth with pride in your heart, a pen, marker or crayon in your hand, and be sure to cross out Barack Obama and John McCain and write in Joshua: President of the Eighty-Four Glyde, with a big ole check mark next to it! You’ll be doing this country a favor.

I’m Joshua Hutcheson and I approve this message.

*Let it not be said that I don’t keep it topical!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Forgotten Heroes of Yore: Rudy Ray “Dolomite” Moore



Dolomite was his name and *#$&ing up mother $*#*%^ was his game. He’s the one who killed Monday, whooped Tuesday and put Wednesday in the hospital. He called up Thursday to tell Friday not to bury Saturday on Sunday. And you could tell he meant every word of it.

Dolomite was the trash-talking, poem-spewing, ass-whooping, lady-seducing human tornado alter ego of comedian Rudy ray Moore.

Born in Cleveland on March 17 1927, Rudy Ray Moore spent his life as a comedian, singer, actor and Blaxploitation icon. His performances were a mixture of clever wordplay (see the opening paragraph) and witty rhyming. He was an early pioneer of rap. He’d get up on stage and tell funny, lyrical stories in a complex rhyming style.

I once did a blog where I simply copy and pasted an entire story of his, The Signifyin’ Monkey. It’s the only time I just used a poem that was written by somebody else. Part of it was laziness (duh) and part of it was it stood very well on its own and anything I added to it would just lessen its impact.

Back in the early 70s, Dolomite was framed for smuggling drugs by two crooked cops: Mitchell and White and his arch enemy: Willie Green. Dolomite was forced to give up possession of his club “The Total Experience,” as well as all of his prostitutes.

After five years in jail, Dolomite is pardoned by the warden (I didn’t know they could do that) due to a story told to him by Queen Bee (Dolomite’s bottom bitch) about Dolomite’s nephew being killed in a drive-by shooting. This story, as well as the current socio-economic problems in whatever city this takes place in, thaws the warden’s civic-minded heart and he sends Dolomite out to clean up the streets of the town.

Armed with a wardrobe full of flamboyantly tacky 70s-era pimp fashion (made of 50% Polyester, 50% Awesome) and an army of kung fu fighting hookers, Dolomite was able to fight for control of his club, bang a bunch of chicks, cleanup the neighborhood and rip a man’s heart out of his chest with bare hand. Defending the pimp lifestyle in American culture, Dolomite has done much for the pimps up, hoes down way of life.

That movie is so absoludicriously bad, it’s great. It’s nothing more than boom mics in shots, bad overdubbing, actors looking at the camera, forgotten lines and terrible acting. I love it. It’s always great at parties.

Dolomite spawned an equally bad sequel called The Human Tornado, in which Dolomite bangs some white chick so hard that the bed spins, the ceiling shakes and it looks as though the room is possessed by poltergeists. It was also an early role for everybody’s favorite ghostbuster, Ernie Hudson, back when he was a swingin’ 70s cat.

I heartily recommend that everybody check out Dolomite at least once. Though watching it twice to catch all the lines you’ll miss from laughing so hard the first time, wouldn’t hurt. Another good Rudy Ray Moore movie is Petey Wheatstraw the Devil’s Son-in-Law, which is as ridiculous as it title suggests.

Rudy Ray “Dolomite” Moore died earlier this week at the age of 81. He died from complications due to being too much of a badass for this world. I’m not sure where he died, but I like to picture him as not waking up after a night of satisfying dozens of women.

However he died, Moore heavily influenced black culture in America, and to a lesser degree our country’s culture as a whole. His style and wordplay were very unique and can’t be duplicated. He is survived by his family and the Cheeseburger Pimp.

And now, as I am oft want to do, a haiku in honor of Mr. Moore.

Dolomite the great
His pimp hand is the strongest
It falls like thunder

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Joshua’s Tales of Bathroom Horror: Trapped!

This is the most recent of my horrific bathroom tales. So recent that I still fume about it. But I got tired of telling people this story and having them laugh about it while I just got more frustrated. So I decided that sharing it will help me to separate from the awful experience and see the humorous side of things.

About a month and a half ago, my inconsiderate roommate (as featured in my poem: “Requiem to My Forced Shared Living Space Counterpart”) redeployed back to America, leaving the room entirely to me, to enjoy in naked, dingle berries-dangling-in-the-breeze happiness.

Of course, since he’s an thoughtless bastard, he left a ridiculous amount of trash that he didn’t feel like throwing away and personal stuff that he didn’t want to take back with him. Took awhile to clean. But at least it felt like my own room.

But this story isn’t about my roommate leaving, it’s about what happened a few days before he vamoosed.

Allow me to set up a little about the trailer in which we lived. It was a pretty decent-sized room with one door for an entrance, one door for a walk-in closet and one door that led to a bathroom that was shared by an adjoining trailer, where two other people lived. Since it was a shared bathroom, with a door leading to each living area, it only made sense that the doors had locks on them so people couldn’t just walk into other rooms and steal all of their precious…whatever (I honestly have no idea what I would steal from the other room. Since they were soldiers, it was very likely that the only things they had were copious amounts of MMA DVDs and Toby Keith albums). However, due to the fact that these trailers were built in Iraq, by the lowest bidder, (somebody who obviously got all of their construction knowledge from episodes of Bob the Builder) the locks were on the wrong side of the door.
At the time, my roommate was working a regular 9 – 5 shift and I was working the 11:30 – 8 pm swing shift. Which meant that I was able to sleep in and shower at my leisure. This allowed me to enjoy hot water and privacy.

One morning, while I was bathing my glorious, Adonis-like body, in what I thought was privacy, my roommate knocked on the bathroom door, yelling that he had to take a piss. I didn’t know why he was back in the room when he should have been at work and I really wasn’t down with him being in the bathroom at the same time as myself, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of an answer. So I didn’t say anything. He came in, did his business and left, closing the door once again behind him. I finished my cleansing ritual, (which is more complex than Patrick Bateman’s) wrapped myself in my towel and proceeded to exit the bathroom so I could get dressed and go to work.

Only, I wasn’t able to exit the bathroom. My roommate had locked the door behind him. I was trapped in the bathroom!

You see, with the locks on the wrong side of the door, it wasn’t possible to lock people out of the bathroom, for privacy’s sake, but it was very possible to lock people in.

At first I wasn’t too worried, I figured he was probably in the room packing to leave, or perhaps watching one of his many, inane skateboarding videos. So I knocked on the door to get his attention. No response. I knocked harder and still no answer. I started banging on the door furiously - all in vain.

I turned my attention to the opposite door, hoping that somebody in the other room was around and would be able to let me out. I knocked in their door, cautiously at first, but with increasing fervor. There was nobody home.

Realizing that I couldn’t depend on others to help me get out, I decided to use my own skills at breaking into buildings to break myself out of my bathroom. I tried prying the door open, I tried removing the hinges, I even tried taking off the doorknob. Nothing worked.

It was at this point that I began to panic. I was trapped in a room with no air conditioning, no clothes and no way to get in touch with anybody. I couldn’t contact people at my job to let them know where I was and it looked like I was going to be a prisoner until the end of the work day, when somebody came home. I wasn’t claustrophobic, just pissed. My anger at my roommate grew by the second.

Fast forward to 40 minutes later. Sitting despondently on the toilet, I suddenly heard a sound. One of the people in the adjoining room had finally returned. I knocked on the door and he opened. I was free! I explained my situation to the guy and thanked him for letting me out. But it wasn’t over yet.

I realized that my roommate had not only locked the bathroom door, but he had locked our trailer door as well. I had gone from being trapped in a bathroom, to being locked out of my room…while wearing nothing but a towel.

The next step was to get a back up key from the billeting people, a five-minute walk to another part of the compound, through heavily trafficked areas. Not an appealing prospect. Fortunately, I was in a bit of luck there. An hour earlier I had taken a load of clothes to the laundry trailer to wash. I only had to make it as far as the laundry trailer in the towel; I could then (as long as nobody was around) change into some clothes and go get the key. So that’s what I did. With each step I grew more and more angry at my roommate, fantasies of vengeance playing in my mind. A speech wrote itself in my head, waiting to be yelled at my roommate in a public place.

I made it to work on time that day, no thanks to him. I encountered him in our work place, but because I’m a sucker who doesn’t like confrontation, I toned down what I said and delivered it with a touch of barely controlled rage. I told him what he did and told him to stay far away from me until he left for America.

Telling other people what had happened only made me madder. Because, honestly, it’s hilarious to hear stories of somebody locked in a bathroom, (unless it happens to you). If it had been a closet or just about any other kind of room, the humor factor wouldn’t exist. But bathrooms are naturally funny. It’s just the way things are.
Now, many people believe in karma. Somebody does something bad to you and something bad will happen to them at some point down the line. You probably won’t be around to see it happen, or get any satisfaction from it, but you just have to believe that it’s going to happen.

I don’t buy it and I don’t outsource my revenge to cosmic forces, I like to take care of business myself. Luckily, I’m an Evil Genius™ so vengeance comes naturally.
I won’t go into details of what I did to the guy. Suffice it to say, I did something to his boots and some of his favorite DVDs. I set up some treats in his baggage for customs to find as he was going through Kuwait. But my favorite part was what I did to his precious, precious lotion. From that day on, each time he applied lotion to his face (which he loved to do at least twice a day) he was applying just a little bit of my own special ingredient to his skin. I hear it’s high in protein, so maybe I did him a favor. Perhaps I should market a brand of “Josh’s Own Baby Batter Lotion.” I think it’ll be a big seller.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Only In My Dreams

Dreams are crazy things, aren’t they? Can’t be predicted, can’t be controlled, hell they can’t even be understood, let alone explained (though a lot of people make money off of doing so anyway.)
What are dreams? Why do we have them? Why do so many of my dreams involve zombies?
It’s typically at this point where I’d turn to my friend and long-time contributor Dr. Gooch for answers, but we’re currently in the middle of salary renegotiations and he refuses to appear in another Eighty-Four Glyde until he gets paid more. Greedy bastard.
When Dr. Gooch fails me I turn to that glorious thing known as the internet for help, but unfortunately, due to recent false online voter registrations I did for Acorn, (who knew they’d notice Mickey Mouse doesn’t live in Michigan? I thought I was being slick.) my internet privileges have been revoked. So I guess I’m just going to have to speculate wildly about the nature of dreams.
The first time I had a dream, I was asleep. Of course, in the elusive nature of dreams, I can’t remember what it was about. I can’t remember what 90 percent of my dreams are about and I bet you can’t either. From what I understand about dreams, they occur in a part of the brain (the clitoris, I think it’s called?*) that doesn’t really deal in memory. Also, when talking about dreams, it’s important to throw in words like subconscious and unconscious. Not really too sure what the difference is, but they seem pretty damn similar and make me sound like I know what I’m talking about.
Dream experts (which is a totally made up term, like financial expert) say that the best way to remember dreams is to keep a “dream journal,” or “dream log,” next to your bed, on your “dream bedside table,” and every time you wake up, immediately write down what you remember with your “dream pencil” or, failing that, your “dream cheap-ass Bic pen that fell down behind your mattress like 6 months ago that you’ve been too lazy to get.” It seems that writing down what you remember helps train your brain to remember more.
There are a lot of different kinds of dreams. Some of the most popular are dreams involving falling, flying, being chased, sex, people from your past, what you’re going to get for Christmas (or equivalent holiday) and in my case, those damn zombies.
Dreams that people rarely have, yet have somehow been made popular by Hollywood, involve not studying for a test, forgetting to wear pants to school, getting everything you want only to see it taken away and getting it on with a totally perfect female form with Abraham Lincoln’s head.
From previous research I’ve done on dreaming, “experts” say that dreams are any number of things, from entertainment for our brains while our bodies recharge, to a download of everything you observed during the day (both consciously and unconsciously) for filing away in your mind. Considering that we use only around 12 percent of our brains (Joe the Plumber and people who enjoyed Beverly Hills Chihuahua, use significantly less) there’s plenty of room in our heads for useless stuff, which is probably why I know so much about bad movies.
Of course, in the end, we really don’t understand our minds at all. I know I certainly don’t, and I’ve been eating the brains of my enemies for years to absorb their knowledge!
They say that different dreams mean different things. Dreams about falling probably have something to do with an unaddressed fear of being overweight. Likewise, dreams about flying deal with an irrational fear of gravity. Dreams about being chased represent a subconscious feeling of guilt about something, or a subconscious desire to be a track star. Dreams about people from your past are really about unresolved issues that continue to haunt you, or maybe they’re about a love of fishing. I’m not too sure. And, of course, dreams about sex are really about an urge to do your taxes and roast a turkey until it’s really dry and tough.
As previously mentioned, I have an inordinate amount of dreams about zombies. I honestly have no idea why. In some of these dreams the zombies are people I know (but gladly kill anyway) and in others people that exist only in my mind. The oddest thing about the dreams though, is that I remember them clearly, down to the last detail, and can recall them at will, years later.
I’ve always had a theory about dreams. While dreaming, I can never tell that I’m in a dream. I mean, I know things aren’t right and that the last thing I remember before I went to bed isn’t being a superhero in New York, but I can never put two and two together and say to myself “Hey, I’m dreaming!” All I know is that I never really have to fear or take anything seriously in a dream because I can somehow tell that it’s not true.
My theory is that if I can realize I’m in a dream while dreaming, then I should be able to control the dream, much like Neo can control the Matrix. It’ll be a Battle Royale between my conscious and subconscious. Two parts of my brain fighting it out over control, kinda like being able to sneeze with your eyes open.
Once, a few months ago, I actually realized that I was in a dream and decided to take advantage of it. I started off small, changing the color of a nearby mailbox, and graduated to turning myself invisible to engage in shenanigans. The problem though, is that when I woke up, I didn’t know if I actually had control over elements in my dream, or if I only dreamed that I had control. My subconscious is a wily devil!
I hope I answered all the questions you had about dreaming. And I did it all without the help of Dr. Gooch or actual research! I’m so proud of myself.
Now why don’t you take a nap and dream a little dream of me?


*I’m not that stupid! I know the clitoris is in the gastrointestinal tract, what kind of idiot do you think I am?!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Josh’s Guide to Making a Movie: The Horror Movie

Hi! And welcome back to my multi-part Guide to Making a Movie. Today I tackle making a favorite genre of mine, the Horror movie.

Done right, the Horror movie can inspire fear and pants-wetting across the country and spawn generations of copy cats. Who knows, If you’re good enough, you can make the next Evil Dead flick!

The Horror Movie: Horror movies are simple. There are two main types: Supernatural and Psychotic. Supernatural horror movies usually have a villain, or villains who are other-worldly in nature. Ghosts, monsters, religious items, leprechauns, dead slaves with hooks for hands; these are all examples of supernatural elements. Psychotic horror movies usually involve crazy people, serial killers, long, sharp objects that poke through people and leave bloody holes and radiated and/or mutated animals that go crazy and attack people.

Key elements to horror movies are: A large amount of blood. A virginal and innocent female lead who lives to the end. A strong male lead who looks like he could take care of business and therefore is killed in the first five minutes. A comic relief character who elicits sympathy but gets killed anyway. A bunch of stupid white people to get killed during the course of the movie. And at least one smart black person who decides to get the hell out while the gettin’s good, (but is killed anyway because WPs are jealous they weren’t smart enough to do the same thing.) Due to Affirmative Action, if there’s more than one minority in the movie (black, Latino, Asian, Indian, well-bathed European) then at least one must live.

When it comes to the gore factor, there are two approaches. You can either make the gruesome elements subtle and leave most to the audience’s imagination, or you can go the opposite direction and put way too much gore and blood in the script. Either approach works and what you decide should depend on what kind of audience you want to go for and if the straight-to-DVD market is up your alley.

On another note, torture porn is a very tiny niche of horror movie and really shouldn’t be considered if you’re going to make a movie. The market is over-saturated and cannot bare another of these flicks.

Nudity is vital. Your dialogue and special effects will probably be subpar, and the best way to keep people attentive is to include bewbies and sex. You shouldn’t consider yourself above it, nor should your actors consider. Remind them that there’s a paycheck involved, so they’d better get to debasing themselves with the quickness.

On the other hand, don’t hire actors and actresses based on how they look or how sexy they are. Otherwise it just seems like a soft-core porn flick with a little horror thrown in for good measure. The size of an actor’s/actress’s physical attributes is inversely proportional to their acting ability. Just ask Misty Mundae.

Be sure to add plenty of fake scares in your movie. Have people slowly open closet doors with a dramatic music build up, just to find the closet empty. Then, naturally, put the real scare less than five seconds after the fake one.

There are two types of endings to horror movies. In the first type, the bad guy kills everybody and wins. This is a pretty typical ending. It’s expected. You can’t go wrong with it. In the second type the villain is thought to have been killed, but one last lingering shot reveals to the audience, with dramatic irony, that the bad guy is still alive and just itching for the sequel.

The horror movie is a good movie to make because you’re guaranteed at least two sequels. And that’s more money in your pocket. But avoid remaking Japanese horror movies. Those have a short shelf life and Sarah Michelle Gellar is getting kind of tired of starring in them.

Join me next time, when I explain how to make a Sci-fi movie.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Forgotten Heroes of Yore: Don Knotts


Throughout the history of Hollywood, there have been comedic geniuses, Buster Keaton, Danny Kaye, Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Jim Carrey, Dave Chappelle, Bill O’Reilly, Dame Judi Dench and of course, Don Knotts.

But it wasn’t always that way for Don Knotts. He long harbored dreams of being a Shakespearean actor in British theatre.

Don Knotts, born Julius Aloysius Thumington Knottsbury the Third, came into existance in 1924, while his family was summering in the south of France, specifically their summer villa and winery in the Bordeaux region.

The acting bug hit young J. Aloysius early in life. While in preschool, he took on the role of Baby Jesus in the St. Jean-Pierre Church production of the Nativity. Unfortunately, others in the congregation felt that a four-year-old was too aged to be playing a newborn. They also took offense with the fact that the Knottsbury family was actually Zoroastrian. The congregation stoned them (and not in the good way) and chased them out of France, all the way to Morgantown, West Virginia.

Destitute and smelly, the Knottsburys shortened their last name to Knotts and took over managing a manure farm, (human manure, unfortunately) making them even smellier. To rid themselves of their outsider status, J. Aloysius and his brothers, (Thurgood and Chesterford) changed their names to Don, Ron and Jon, respectively. They all attended Spittle County Public School (grades: 1 – until people get tired and leave) when they weren’t shoveling manure.

While in school, young Don Knotts continued to practice his acting skillz. He starred in a locally-aired commercial for “Knotts People Poop Fertilizer.” A small-time producer saw Don’s portrayal of a hungry child smeared in human excrement and was blown away by the sheer acting genius. He hired Don for his first big time acting gig as Deputy Barney Fife in The Andy Griffith Show. Here’s an excerpt of Andy Griffith’s memoir, The Space Between Two Big Ass Ears:

“The first time I met Don was very interesting. He affected this British accent that he said he cultivated during his childhood in the champs of Southern France. This was a bit of a problem since none of us could understand a lick of what he was saying! Not to mention I don’t even know how you get a British accent from living in France. So for the first three and a half weeks Don ended up working with a dialect coach to rid him of his accent and make him sound a little more down home. You might notice in early episodes how he doesn’t talk that much…he does grunts and other wacky noises.”

After a few seasons as Andy Griffith’s bumbling sidekick, Don Knotts felt that it was time for him to move on to more sophisticated fare. In the mid 60s, he decided to move to Hollywood to work in motion pictures.

This was the best time to break into movies because Hollywood was going through a renaissance. Dramatic and sweeping epics were becoming huge and extremely bankable. It was the exact type of acting that Don dreamed of doing. The first role he auditioned for went back to his early acting roots when he attempted to play Jesus once again, this time in MGM’s production of Jesus Saves Easter.

Unfortunately, due to his jittery, emaciated countenance, he was unable to secure the role as the Messiah and ended up playing an animated fish in the Disney movie The Incredible Mr. Limpet. The pain was compounded as the actor who did land the role of Jesus, Tommy Kirk, won the Oscar that year for best actor. This turn of events led Don into a deep spiral of depression that could only be alleviated by his blossoming addiction to sniffing people’s chairs.

After a series of semi-popular Disney movies, including The Apple Dumpling Gang, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, and The Apple Dumpling Gangbangs Annie Oakley, Don was feeling used up by Hollywood.

He moved to New York to clear his head and try to make it onto Broadway. He felt that the fast lane lifestyle of smelling chairs and doing “zany” movies was the wrong direction for his career. He remembered his early dream of being a Shakespearean actor and felt that the NYC theater scene could catapult him onto the British stage.

He started off Broadway, playing a small bric-a-brac giraffe in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. During the climactic scene his character is swept off a table and crashes to the floor where he breaks into a thousand shards of glass. His performance was immediately noticed by theater critics, who hailed Don Knotts as the best non-gay man on Broadway.

Don was able to use this praise to land a starring role in Carnival of Souls: The Musical! It was a smashing success and for the first time in his life felt like he was living his dream.

He then decided to quit bullshitting and moved to England to act in theater. His first and only role was as the Necrophilia-obsessed Vicar in the lesser known Shakespearean tragedy Vicars. Bollocks & Spotted Dick, at The Globe in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play was considered extremely bad by everybody in the audience. In a violent rage they burned down The Globe, dug up Shakespeare and desecrated his body and lynched any member of the cast they could get their hands on. Don barely escaped with his life and only survived due to his amazing skills as an actor and his ability to fit in anywhere.

He moved back to America and ended up taking his second most famous role as Mr. Furley in Three’s Company, from 1979-1984. As Mr. Furley, Knotts was able to use his fame to bed any women on the set, and many men as well. It was at this time that his terrible addiction to seat sniffing reared its ugly head, stronger than ever.

Regardless of personal problems, Knotts soon became immensely popular and was mobbed everywhere he went. It wasn’t the fame and success he craved. It barely filled the big gaping hole in his soul. Over the next 20 years he slept walked through roles in Scooby Doo, That 70s Show and much more. He became a hollow mockery of the great actor he once was.

Don Knotts died by auto erotic asphyxiation February 24, 2006. He was found by his maid, laying naked in bed, his head in a plastic bag, and a tube of KY on his bedside table. A nation mourned for a full week and the government would have declared February to be Don Knotts month, but was scared of black people rioting and corrupting all of their innocent, nubile white daughters.

In the end, the people of Morgantown, West Virginia, erected a statue of Don Knotts in their town square. Unfortunately decided to depict him as he was found: strangled to death while masturbating.

That’s messed up.

I end this testament as I do with each of them, by haiku:

Don Knotts is the man
He seemed to have the palsy
Like a shaky stick

Sunday, October 05, 2008

WTF is a “finance”?

Hello and welcome to another episode of What The F*ck? In this episode, our financial expert and economist Dr. Gooch will answer all of the made up questions posed once again by you: the made-up readers! Got a question about the current state of the American economy? Then worry not friends! Dr. Gooch is here to allay all your fears and worries.

Q: Lay it out for me doc. What the F*ck is going on with the American economy? Say it in a way a typical, God-fearing, PBR-drinking, gun-shooting, wife-beating, minority-hating, English-speaking, child-abusing, meth-taking, red-blooded, patriotic white American male like myself can understand. Homer S.
A: Not a problem Homer. The American economy is doing about as well as a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest against the Rockettes. In other words, pretty soon the Peso is going to make the dollar look like so much toilet paper.

Q: How did we get this way? Suzie O.
A: It didn’t happen overnight Suzie. You see, for the last forty years American businesses have secretly been funneling money to Santa to keep his operation in the North Pole afloat. It works for both parties, Santa gets to send toys to the kiddies and the businesses get free advertising for their products. What happened was Saint Nick went bankrupt a long time ago due to a mixture of extremely high overhead and an addiction to gambling. That’s when we stepped in to bail Santa out, for the good of boys and girls all over this great Christian nation of ours.

Unfortunately, Santa just couldn’t stop looking for some action. He got in over his head with the Yakuza while betting on the ponies and three-fourths of his work force was kidnapped by the Japanese as forced labor in animation studios to churn out cheap Hentai cartoons. So, in order to buy Santa’s elves back in time for Christmas this year, American businesses had to hand over ass loads of money to the Yakuza. That’s why they’re broke, and by extension, you’re broke.

Q: Are we in a recession? And if so, will that lead to a depression? Alan G.
A: Yes Alan, we are in a recession. You can tell because the price of MacDonalds’ Big Macs and Popeyes chicken have gone up. So has Amish clown porn. It’s a sad time indeed.
As far as a looming depression, my Magic Eight ball says all signs point to yes. The only way to prepare for this is to take all your money out of banks, hide it under your mattress and hope that you don’t accidentally burn your house down while smoking and drinking all day due to being laid off from your job at the novelty squirting toilet factory.
See you in hell.

Q: What will the Bailout package do for me? Isn’t it just paying off the people who put us in this situation in the first place? Barney F.
A: The bailout package is actually a stroke of political genius. You see, the government is going to give large quantities of money to those who deserve it most: the people who barely have enough cash to fuel their private jets or maintain upkeep of their many palatial homes. We have to make sure these people are able to continue living the lives they’re accustomed to. After all, they’re living the American Dream and represent the very best of us. Don’t be jealous. Just keep eating your sugar sandwiches, using your food stamps and only having enough water to bathe once a week. It builds character.

Q: What stock market advice do you have? Nancy P.
A: Good question Nancy! This is a great time to play the stock market if you know what you’re doing. First of all, buy up all the stock you can. It doesn’t matter what stock it is. The cheaper the better. Take any money you have and sink it into the market. While everybody else is scared and selling their stocks, you’re in a prime position to diversify your portfolio. May I suggest you load up on the stock of various banks? They’re due for a boost. You can ride this bull market to a financial orgasm!

Q: What does “finance” mean? George B.
A: If you don’t know it means by now, then don’t worry about it. Only a few months left to go, jack ass.

Join us for another episode of What The F*ck? When we answer all your questions on a whole range of subjects. From how to change the oil in your car, to how to recombine Deoxyribonucleic acid to give yourself super powers.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Josh’s Guide to Making a Movie: The Romantic Comedy

So, you want to make a movie? Good for you. If you’re gonna make a movie, you’ll have to figure out what kind of movie you want. It’s really not that hard, there’re only a few different types and they’re all pretty easy to figure out. This is Hollywood, where nothing is new or experimental. Everything follows a specific formula that never changes. Let’s explore the first one…

The Romantic Comedy: (Not to be confused with the Chick Flick, though it is a sub-genre.) This movie is important in American cinema. It’s much needed filler, in between the action, horror and comedy movies, that arrive in theaters. Much like a drink of water in between dinner courses at a fine restaurant, or eating a rice cake, the” rom-com” is a palate cleanser. It’s just so much fluff. Without the “rom-com” theaters would be so full of movies that people actually want to see, that people won’t be able to make up their minds, and society will collapse from indecision (if it hasn’t already collapsed financially.)

There are some important elements to a romantic comedy: At least one person in the couple-to-be needs to have some kind of quirky or off-beat job. This job should require very little work, but provide the character with all the money they’ll ever need. The characters who are to be romantically linked cannot meet in a normal way, like at a bar or at work. They have to be thrown together in a way that doesn’t make a lick of sense and is most likely impossible. Examples include:
Time travel

One person is a ghost

One person is an angel

One person pretends to be a chick but is actually a dude

The characters win the lottery together somehow

Make up your own unlikely ways for your characters to meet. Don’t worry if it seems totally outrageous, women will still flock to the theaters in droves. Hell, make one of ‘em a cartoon character. I don’t think that’s been done yet, (though I could be wrong, there are literally 3 billion romantic comedies out there.)

Also your movie needs to star either Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson or, most likely, Drew Barrymore, as the female lead. The male lead can be Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, or some other non-threatening white male, possibly with a foreign accent.

A rom-com with just two people falling in love is really nothing more than a romance flick. So you’ll need a wacky family member or wacky friend/neighbor. This side character is there simply to say what’s on the mind of the audience members (“Kiss the bitch already! Put me out of my misery!”) and gets most of the laughs. Often, this poor soul will carry the film.

Most rom-coms also include at least one ruined wedding and typically have one of the main characters having to leave an established relationship to enter in a new one so that the movie can exist.

The rom-com can end in one of two ways. The first way is one person in the relationship does something completely outrageous and stupid to demonstrate their love for the other person. Of course, in real life, such action is highly unrealistic because, to be honest, nobody is really that much in love, or that committed to a relationship to run across a baseball field barefoot, or purposely lose a career-making court case. Besides, behavior that is considered romantic in a rom-com is considered obsessive in real life.

The second type of ending is the most common and is the simplest. It simply involves one character running to or through an airport to stop the other person from leaving his/her life forever. It should be an airport, although, bus stations, train stations and cabs are also acceptable.

The most important thing is to end the movie right when the couple gets back together, but before we can see any awkward fights, or the inevitable break-up that will occur within a few months. This is the best way to confirm the concept that love is the best thing in the entire world and is totally worth all the crap you go through. It’s upbeat and saps in today’s audiences need that.

Join me next time when I explain how to make a horror movie.