Mount Crapatoa

     This is a story about a simple man with a simple message and the simple filmmaker who helped him spread it.  The simple man was Estus Pirkle, leader of Locust Grove Baptist Church in New Albany, Mississippi.  The simple message was an attempt to rouse the patriotism of Americans by proclaiming that most of us are pure evil.  The simple filmmaker was Ron Ormond, who got his big break collaborating with Lash La Rue in the 40s and spent the next 30 years working his way to the bottom.         These two simpletons made three movies together in the 70s. The first, and most famous, is inscrutably entitled If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?   It focuses on the insidious communist menace that is always threatening to crawl up our sacred American buttholes and drag us all to that hot gulag in the ground.  To say that Estus demonizes communists and American culture is to make an understatement of Pinteresqu...

Spiking The Pillow I don’t often praise the lobotomized jackals that run our television networks, but they do deserve credit for one great service.   They really know how to facilitate a nap.   This is especially evident when it comes to televised sports, many of which seem to exist merely to put the audience to sleep.   How can insomnia hope to triumph when faced with the following forms of athletic Ambien? Golf Next to competitive accounting and synchronized typing, golf is the most boring spectator sport in existence.   It seems odd that an activity invented by men for the sole purpose of escaping from their wives for an entire day should become a televised event, but here it is.   There is little about golf that isn’t conducive to swift sleep.   The limp ping of the ball as it’s struck.   The funereal silence of the crowd.   The gentle whisper of the announcer.   I’ve been hopped up on an afternoon of speed and fear, only to ...

I saw Night of the Comet in the theater during its initial release. Twice. I'm not sure how many people can make that claim. I'm not sure how many people want to make that claim. The movie was released upon an unsuspecting populace in November of 1984, a wonderfully weird year in the world of cinema. The preceding months had already borne witness to questionable classics like C.H.U.D., The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Red Dawn and Friday the 13 th : The Final Chapter (sic). The hair was big. The spandex was tight. The girls were from the valley. It was a totally tubular time to be alive. Night of the Comet revolves around two sisters named Regina and Samantha. Regina is a video game queen (partial to Tempest) who likes to make it in theater projection rooms and kick post-apocalyptic zombie ass. Samantha is a refugee from a Jane Fonda workout video who longs to make it with anyone and can't even kick the scrawny ass of her wicked stepmothe...

There are many things in this mean old world of ours that I don't understand.  I don't understand why people want vampires that send them FTD bouquets.  I don't understand why people like music without melodies.  I don't understand Mandarin Chinese.  I could fill a book with all the things I don't understand.  And I think I'd have to dedicate a chapter of that book to the subject of alcohol snobs and their expensive follies. Those of us who drink professionally understand that the goal of the entire imbibication process is inebriation, not another extraneous culinary experience.   Anything that gets in the way of that inebriation is the enemy, and there are several things that can get in the way.  Sugary, fruity, girly drinks, for example.  You can't drink very much of that stuff without losing your ethnic cuisine in the nearest alley, and puking is enough to dampen any sensible person's fun.  Some people never learn that lesson....

Many of you probably aren't aware of the miraculous fun to be found on Christian television. You likely have three or four or more of these channels being beamed into your home free of charge, but you skim by them as quickly as your sinful fingers will carry you. I'm here to suggest that you pause a moment and revel in the horrifying display. I vow that you won't be sorry, because finding entertainment on Christian television is as easy as drowning in the river Jordan. Consider this a covenant. Let's begin with Jack Van Impe. I quit believing in God when I was 14, and I started watching Jack Van Impe Presents at around the same time. For a kid hooked on the horror of The Omen , Jack was like manna from heaven. He would sit there and predict the end of the world every week. And, sonofabitch, he's still doing it over 20 years later. The format of the show is delightfully unchanged after all these decades. Jack's chronically chipper wife, Rexella, reads brief ex...

Do Not Think Thoughts So, there's this movie about a race of idyllic creatures who live in a forest and take soul-giving sustenance from their natural surroundings. There's an evil force that wants to destroy nature and make all the noble savages get real jobs. The movie was filmed using some weird technique that makes everything look the way nothing in life has ever looked. You've probably already guessed the movie I'm talking about. Yes, it's Warriors of Virtue . I first heard about this film when I read that it made a film critic vomit . In my world, that sounds like high praise. I had to see it. I was not disappointed. Or rather, I was disappointed, which for me is the same as being satisfied. The movie was released back in 1997 as a joint venture between Chinese and American “filmmakers”. I'm not smart enough to know how they filmed it, but I do know that during the action sequences the figures on screen look both slowed down and sped up and fuzzy. I...

We suffer from a perpetual shortage of awesome. There are only so many Shakespeares, Mozarts, Scorseses and DeBarges to go around. And yet our days are filled with all these endless empty hours that cry out to be filled with diversion. That's why I decided in my youth to embrace crap. Because crap is eternal. Crap is cheap. There is no shortage of crap. I've spent much of my life in the pursuit of bigger and better crap. I am a crapoisseur. It seems a shame for me to allow my accumulated crap to simply putrefy, unshared. I have determined that I shall no longer hide my crap under a bushel. A wise man once said that if you love your crap, you have to set it free. That wise man was me. Of course, I won't be writing about just any old crap. There are already plenty of places where the undiscerning garbage-monger can wallow in the popular sewage-sucking mainstream. No, I reserve my time for the crap that goes above and beyond the call of crap and plops down in a place of awf...