THE WAR: a review

By John R.
So I watched pretty much all of the new PBS documentary THE WAR these past weeks. This is a big long ass doc about that one war a while ago where we fought Germany and then China or something. I don't remember. It was a wee bit slow at times but was pretty awesome. Especially the part where the soldier is about to be beheaded by his Japanese captor and says that if he beheads him his spirit will enter his body and haunt him until the day he dies and the Japanese guy gets all scared and doesn't do it. NEWSFLASH! We could have won that part of the war with a few sheets thrown over our solders pretending to be ghosts coming towards them. Anyways the guy who made The War.....








KEN BURNS.....


















.... apparently got a lot of flack from the Latino community for not having any Latinos in it after it was done. So in return Ken Burns.....






















....added some stuff about Latinos to the end of some of the episodes. It pretty much screwed up the narrative and didn't fit in with it at all. When I first heard he was going to make changes all I could imagine was Ken Burns getting totally pissy about having to change his documentary and throwing a hissy fit like "OKFINE! HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS!!!???" and retitled it "The MEXICAN war" and played mariachi music throughout it. I also imagine whenever Keith David.....















.....was in the sound booth doing voice overs Ken kept interrupting him like "Don't forget to say all this in Spanish tooooo Keith! We don't want to OFFEND anybooooody!" in a fruity sing-songy Ken Burns voice. Then Keith goes back to talking and you just hear Ken in the background making crunching noises then yelling "OH SORRY AM I EATING TACOS TOO LOUD?" then finally Ken drinks too much tequila and just starts playing the violin in the backgound getting closer and closer until his head is touching Keith David's head and starts pushing him out of the way of the mic until we hear a struggle between the two then no music or no narration for the rest of the series.

What a pair!

LOOK AT THEM!!!!

Keith David was in THEY LIVE with Rowdy "Roddy" Piper for christ's sake!

and Ken burns.... (sound of needle scratching off record)

Holy crap look at this picture of Ken Burns I just found!!!!He's throwing a baseball and WEARING A SHIRT THAT SAYS "BASEBALL"

I also bet when he threw that he said "BASEBALL!"

Think about Keith David and Ken Burns hanging out together after work at the bar. I imagine Ken Burns sitting there sipping a margarita the size of his head and constantly going "Yeaaaaaah Keith David, MY MAN!" and making Keith David hi-five him while Keith looks annoyed into his scotch on the rocks wondering if it's going to be yet another night where Ken has 1 1/2 drinks then ends up shitting on the bar.
THE END

P.S. I know that was Ernie Hudson in Ghostbusters and not Keith David.
P.P.S. The alley from that fight scene in They Live is in downtown LA off Seventh St. I found it a couple years ago and immediately recognized it. That's better than any celebrity sighting around town.
P.P.P.S. I totally wish Ken Burns was a pyromaniac who went around all creepy saying "Ken Burns.....trees" then sets a forest on fire. "Ken Burns....houses" "Ken Burns....people" etc.

Marcel Marceau's Dead

posted by: John R.





White on black striped shirts



Back on the rack



Marcel Marceau's dead







Undead



Undead



Undead

Gregggggggg

Posted By: John R.

I just went to south of the border for the weekend with a bunch of people. I forgot the name of the country we were in but it wasn't the US Americas. We stayed at this condo resort place up on a cliff. It had a couple hot tubs and a communal pool area in the back. That's where we encountered Gregg. I suppose he probably spells his name 'Greg' but just looking at the guy makes you think "Greggggg". He was a short, tubby guy with longish blond hair. He acutally looked like the guy who sings "Life Is A Highway"

if the guy who sings that song had

been in the sun all day eating turds.

Gregg spent the entire time waddling around trying to meet & greet everyone at the resort even though he didn't work there (however if we had any problems with the security guy we were supposed to tell them we were with Gregg and we'd have no problems). He had a group of other tubby guys with him who were equally annoying but kept to themselves. Not to sound like a jerk, but when I go on vacation I want to be left alone and not make any friends. Greg introduced himself to me three times over the weekend. Once each day. He'd ask me where I lived and i'd say Silver Lake then EVERY TIME he'd respond with "Oh my brother lives up there in Hollywood! His name's Bill!" then give me this stupid anticipation look like 'waiting for me to say I know Bill' like I'd have any clue who the fuck he's talking about without giving me a last name or any sort of description. I should have just been all "Oh Bill! I know Bill! Hollywood bill!". But then later I was thinking that maybe Bill is just the Hollywood version of Gregg like if there really was a guy named Bill who lived in Hollywood and acted like Gregg fucking acts i'd probably immediately know who he was talking about.

Gregg would come over to our group a lot and ask what we were doing, who was winning the poker game etc. I guess he was being nice but when a drunk guy you don't want to have anything to do with comes up and keeps being all "oh HAI GUYZ!" it gets a little annoying (not that i'm EVER annoying when I'm drunk).

Here's what Gregg did to make me think he's the raddest guy on the planet: on Sunday afternoon there were these two lesbian ladies out on the patio having a big fight about something that happened. They're crying and screaming at each other and then out of nowhere fucking Gregg comes up and tries to get them to HAVE A THREESOME WITH HIM. He was actually saying shit like "Just tell me what I have to do or say to make this happen". He fucking really said that sentence to two lesbians who were fighting. Now I don't think Gregg is awesome for trying to hook up with some lesbians, but for how awesomely clueless he is. "Oh man. Those lesbians are over there crying and fighting. This is the perfect opportunity for me to try and get them to have sex with me!". Brilliant! Not only are they lesbians who aren't into men, but they're in the middle of a fucking fight with each other so any type of sex is the last thing on their mind, let alone sex with a little tubby troll. I wish they'd been all "Ok Gregg. To make this happen you need to fuck one of your fat hairy guy friends in front of us. Then we can do whatever you want".

Oh also on the way to ensenada we saw a guy shitting into a tin can on the side of the road. When we crossed the border we saw a zombie guy wandering in between cars with blood on his face who looked like christpher reeve as superman only with a tiny head and giant body. Also we saw some lady with a giant deformed foot that will give me nightmares. All three of those people had sex with Gregg and this is where they ended up.

THE END

Chelada!

Posted by: Bitten

In line at 7-11 last night I watched an already drunk Mexican dude pay for one of these with a fist full of nickels and dimes. Is this the Spanish version of Night Train? I think it’s pretty awesome that he decided to round off the evening with a nightcap of Budweiser and Clamato.

It looked pretty good to me so on my way to work this morning I stopped at 7-11 again and bought one. It’s sitting in a paper bag in my office refrigerator. I’m going to go to a park and pound it at the end of the day and maybe dig through a trash can or something equally disgusting.

Francine Dancer!

Posted by: Bitten

What a load of crap

What a pansy. This goddamn ad makes me want to start collecting vinyl again.

More Mac & Me

Posted by: Usher John R.

Wowzers!

Posted by: Bitten

A few days ago I was waiting at a stop light in San Pedro when I saw the filthiest bum I’ve ever seen in my life. He was covered with so much dirt and dried snot that I couldn’t tell what race he was. His one giant dreadlock looked like a tangle of soap scum coated hair you’d Drano out of a shower pipe from a locker room. There was a ring of dirt an inch thick from his hairline to his chin. Draped in at least a dozen blankets / towels / sleeping bags he sat cross legged on the sidewalk underneath a cardboard hovel baking in the heat. He looked like he lived in Fraggle Rock. I didn’t get a good look what else he was wearing because I was too distracted by the fact that he was barefoot and BITING HIS TOENAILS.

The best part about catching him was the fact that we made eye contact for probably 45 seconds before my light turned green. The entire time we stared at each other he didn’t stop what he was doing. It was almost like he enjoyed the audience, like he’d been waiting for years for someone to finally pause to enjoy the show. Once I got on the freeway I thought about all of the dog shit, loogies, broken glass, syringes, insects, cigarette butts, old gum, vomit, dead animal residue, motor oil, gutter water, and pigeon crap that had accumulated on his feet throughout the years and I started dry heaving. That night I cooked eggs and toast and started to think about the bum gnawing his long toenail off and swallowing all of the grime underneath it and covering his foot in rotten toothed homeless saliva and I couldn’t eat my dinner. Since then I’ve been able to choke down a few crackers an apple and some tuna fish.

Here are some other awesome things I’ve seen homeless people do:

A few weeks after I moved to New York I saw a wino taking a shit in a bush on my way to work. It was 8 AM and joggers were running past him pretending not to notice. He had his pants around his ankles and he was humming a tune and taking swigs from a Steel Reserve tall boy.

On a Saturday afternoon I watched an obese schizophrenic woman perched on a bus bench on Virgil & Santa Monica pull her spandex shorts down and masturbate herself into a frenzy in front of a street full of horrified drivers and pedestrians.

I haven’t seen him in years but I used to run into this transient in Downtown L.A. that looked like a member of GWAR. Everything he wore consisted of stuffed he’d picked up dumpster diving. For instance, his jacket had been transformed into a heavy metal shield with use of black spray paint, cardboard, and chicken wire. I never actually saw his face because his tangled black hair covered it and fell down to his waist. He was gigantic black platform boots so he stood about 7 feet tall. I tried following him once because I wondered where he slept, but he started walking down one of the scariest streets I’ve ever seen on skid row so I had to turn around. Once I saw him headbanging to mariachi music in front of one of those weird ranchero stereo system / strobe light / botanicas on Broadway.

I wish there was a way I could study bums in their natural habitats and get paid a zillion dollars to do it.

I Sort Glass

Posted by: Bitten!

NOT HAPPY with the way Ken Burns looks.

Posted by: Usher John R.

I'm a big fan of Ken Burns' documentaries. I get them all the time from Netflix. I really liked the Lewis & Clark one which I might have to watch once a year from now on. You know, make a day out of celebrating one group's difficult journey into unknown land while sitting on my couch eating all day like a big nerdy slob. In Sept there is a new series he made coming out about WWII (Woo hoo!) so I decided to look it up online and see when it starts. I found out when it starts all right...


and a lot more...


I found out what Ken Burns looks like. I always had a specific image in my mind of what Ken Burns looks like. Then I found out....







what he really looks like...

IS THIS:

Now Ken Burns if you're reading this do not take offense but I am not happy with how you look. I imagined you to be an elderly man smoking a pipe with a white beard, white hair, and wearing a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. NOT a weird nerdy Kermit The Frog turned into a man with a toupe and a little facial hair. Ok maybe that is your real hair. If it's not they really screwed up in the muppet factory hair dept. Also you look too nice a person. Like if you read this you wouldn't even be angry, you'd just pull out a guitar and sing me a song about accepting people for who they are. History experts are supposed to be mean. History experts are supposed to give people facts and then tell them to go to hell.

I really haven't been this dissapointed with someone's appearance since I was a kid and we always listened to the Garrison Keillor's "Prarie Home Companion" tapes on long car rides and I imaged Garrison to look kind of like Michael Gross, the dad from Family Ties. Nope. Garrison Keillor really looks like this:

"It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon because I FUCKING ATE EVERYONE"

I don't know how much more of this I can take. So please Ken Burns, I highly encourage you to get really old, grow a fuller beard, get gray hair, and stop fucking smiling.

K THX BAI!!!!

p.s. When you scrolled down to reveal Ken Burn's picture I really wanted somehow for it to go "BLEAAAAH!!!" and get all scary like Large Marge did in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Then I wanted the Garrison Keillor picture to actually pop out of your computer screen and lick your face then have his eyes haunt you in your dreams.

ROBERT LOGGIA!

Posted by: Usher John R

Ok this is probably the greatest thing ever.

Oh ok.

Posted by: Usher John R.

Why Werner Herzog Rules

Posted By: Usher John R.

I went and saw his new movie this weekend. I was doing some reading online about the real guys it is based on and found this quote from a Q&A with herzog:

Q. There have been some accusations that you’ve taken liberties with facts in some of your documentaries and in “Rescue Dawn,” particularly from the family of Eugene DeBruin. What is your reaction to those accusations?

A. If we are paying attention about facts, we end up as accountants. If you find out that yes, here or there, a fact has been modified or has been imagined, it will be a triumph of the accountants to tell me so. But we are into illumination for the sake of a deeper truth, for an ecstasy of truth, for something we can experience once in a while in great literature and great cinema. I’m imagining and staging and using my fantasies. Only that will illuminate us. Otherwise, if you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.