Local Band Defies Space/Time Continuum - By Rockin'

Spartanburg, South Carolina (AP Wire)
Local heros Tuff Shitz haven't always had it so good. Lead singer and whore wrangler Bobby Blazer puts it this way, "We haven't always had it so good."

South Carolina's answer (but who asked any questions?)to Poison, Stryper, Accept, and Warrant have been toiling in obscurity in Blazer's parents' garage ever since he and bassist/bong inspector Mickey Maxxipad first heard Ratt's "Round and Round."
"When we saw how cool those guys looked, we knew we had to quit our jobs at Baskin-Robbins and get down to doin' some serious rockin'."
The first step for the fledgling hair band was to tear off the sleeves from all their shirts.

"That's right. They all had to go. Do you think Randy Rhoades or Ronnie James Dio needed sleeves to rock? Did you ever see Stephen Pearcy with fuckin' sleeves? Hell, no! Sure it got a little cold sometimes, and I did go over board by tearing off the sleeves to all my winter coats and sweaters, too. But hey, when in Rome, right?"

Then the uncertain linguists needed to score the perfect band name.
"Yeah, we had to come up with somethin', well, rockin'" says Maxxipad. "And we wanted to be tough. So we tossed around a lot of good ideas for a while."

Indeed, the band went through a number of names in the beginning. Blazer recounts:
"First we were Bareknuckle Masturbatorz for a while, 'till I realized that only sounds tough to junior high schoolers. Then there was Eatin Stoolz, Punchdrunk Donkeyfuckz, Grannypantyz, Pecker Trackz, Menstrual Cyclez, Sweaty Nutsackz, and The Vagina Monologuez.

None of those names stuck though until one fortuitous day when the band was being turned down for yet another gig during the dreaded "grunge era" when hair bands were at their lowest.
"Yeah," says Blazer. "We were walking out of this dude's office and he yelled 'Tough shit, dirtbags. You guys are fuck ups!' when it hit me. I turned and said to Mickey 'Dude! That's our new name!"
"Yeah," says Maxxipad. "I thought DirtBagz would be cool or Fuckupz. But he meant the tough shit part."

That day Tuff Shitz were born. Immediately things began changing for the band. They moved out of the garage and into more fitting rehearsal space in Blazer's parents' basement. And they began to get the hang of "that internet thing" as Blazer says.

Also, Blazer gave up his addiction to drugs which was a personal turning point for him, but has caused friction anew within the intricate balance of the band's internal dynamics. Blazer says, " I now see the danger of drugs and how they can interfere with the "rockin'" However, not everyone sees things Blazer's way. Maxxipad had this to say:
"Speak for yourself Bobbi, but you should get off your damn soapbox man. Me and Ron are getting sick of you always preaching about how drugs are bad and how we shouldn't do them, then running all the groupies away with your I'm better than you cos I don't do drugs. How quickly you forget about the people you stepped on and screwed over when you were doing coke hardcore. We never gave you any crap over what you did with your body, and you should give us the same respect. And yeah, I'm still pissed that you threw my 20 bag across the practice room the other night. That was totally uncool man. Better not do it again or you can find yourself another bassist."

Can there be harmony within this group of semi-talented throwbacks to another era? Will they ever achieve success in a world which continues to pass judgement on Tuff Shitz simply because they "suck?" Will the band ever figure out what an MP3 is?
Tuff Shitz have managed to hang around this long so it's likely that as long as Bobby Blazer can afford a poodle perm, Tuff Shitz will stay tuff. And shits.

Hong Kong Cinema Rocks!

Chinese filmmakers seem to have imagination out the damn yin yang (so to speak) because just when Tarantino or Rodriguez makes a hot shit film, some Chinese movie comes along and blows them out of the water.
Not that Sin City isn't cool or Kill Bill doesn't kick ass, but Stephen Chow completely dominates with his new movie Kung Fu Hustle. The difference is that even amidst the overkill, cartoon craziness of this movie, there are also very subtle touches like the similarities to early Gordon Lieu, the homage to The Shining, or the ever present MGM musical references.
Kung Fu Hustle is wonderfully entertaining moviemaking and further cements Hong Kong's reputation as maybe the leading center for film today. Crap like Guess Who or Man of the House is a waste of time and effort. Go see Kung Fu Hustle instead of wasting your money on Hollywood drivel.

Hair Metal Scholars Set World Straight on Global Issues

Luckily, just when America seems poised on the brink of utter chaos and ruin, when our leaders seem brutish and out of touch with the common people, when Third World countries have the audacity to attack our pristine shores and disgrace us with their "weird religions," some true America heros have stepped up to the plate to drive our great country to home plate with a mighty grand slam of good old, rock-n-roll common sense.



True leaders like Dennis Madalone have "rocked out" and given us a heartfelt reason to believe in America once again.



Dudes like Bobbi Blazer and Mickey Maxx of Tuff Shitz are not afraid to stand up to cowards like Osama Ben Laden and say "America is rockin' on and looking sweeter than molasses coated vagina."

And now a real American hero is poised to become our next leader. Ted Nugent has never been afraid of pansy-asses whether it was in the late sixties when the "Nuge" would tell those dirty hippie scumfucks to "shove that damn grass straight up yer keyster, buddy!" or here in the new millennium when our Ted doesn't back off from liberal, lesbian, pro-choice dirtbags who want to take our guns away and use them to kill babies! If anyone is gonna do some killin'...let it be Ted.

"Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em!" he screamed at a recent NRA (Nazis Rock America) rally. "To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. Will and Grace? Dead! I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."

Woman Beats Off Burglar

Weaverville, NC (AP) --
A grandmother stopped an intruder from entering her home by sexually gratifying him, police said Friday.

Jean Collop was woken early on Tuesday morning by the sound of an intruder on the roof of her home in Weaverville, North Carolina.

"I grabbed the first thing that came to hand -- a bottle of hand lotion -- and grabbed at his fly and pulled out Johnny Winkler," she recalled.

"He lay there and I began to scream. I went back into the kitchen and found a beer for him in case he came too fast. I didn't want to beat him off again."

A neighborhood good samaritan, one Jackie Lope


alerted police who arrived shortly afterward who arrested this man:

Cletus Strongsmellow, professional bar stool.
Strongsmellow allegedlly told police, "I weren't trying to steal nuthin'. It's just how I get my jollys." Local police chief Nut Goneflake, Jr. III admitted, "Cletus does this shit all the damn time."
He added: "Our usual advice would be not to get involved, but to contact the police straight away," said a spokesman for the Weaverville Police.

"We do appreciate that in the heat of the moment people react to that situation, and if it results in a happy outcome that's great."

Bad Burger King Breakfast

NEW YORK (CNN/Money)
The No. 2 fast food chain debuted its Enormous Omelet Sandwich Monday. The sandwich has one sausage patty, two eggs, three gallons of lard, two American cheese slices, fourteen bull testicles, and three strips of bacon.


That works out to 17,130 calories and 4780 grams of fat -- way more than a Whopper sandwich, which the Burger King Web site lied about and said has 700 calories and 42 grams of fat.


Critics were quick to spring on the latest breakfast offering.

"Americans do not need an Enormous Omelet Sandwich," said Penny Kris-Etherton, a professor of nutrition at Penn State, who has a firm grip on the obvious. "That's too many calories."

A Burger King spokeswoman defended the giant egg sandwich, saying "Fuck you, we'll sell whatever we want! This is America and that's the law, right?"

"It's designed for people who like to start the day with a nauseating heart attack on a bun," said Denny Post, chief product officer at Burger King.

Post said Burger King has a variety of food choices on the menu and that many of the people who liked the sandwich in focus groups were young men with active jobs. "These are not faggoty paper-pushers," she said. "These are real shitkicker men who aren't afraid of hopelessly clogged arteries and a shortended lifespan"

Post said Burger King decided to offer the enormous omelet sandwich -- which goes against current trends in the fast food industry of offering more healthy choices -- in response to customers who said they were drunk and wanted more goddamned food at 3:00 AM in the drive-thu.

Hey Joe

Why is this man smiling?

Randy Dandy Drinks Shandy - Why?

IndyGirl, as she is known to do, led me to look up this Stringfellow chap myself, and I found this amazing picture. Even more amazing was the site I found it on. I thought it was a joke at first, then I remembered someone once telling me about ginger beer before, but what the fuck is Shandy? Is it beer? Is it soda pop? Is it lemonade? Well, the answer is yes to all the above questions. Shandy is some nasty ass English shit that women, mainly, drink. Fill a glass half full with your favorite beer. Lighter ales are better, supposedly. Then fill the rest with lemonade or ginger ale or 7Up. That's a Shandy. It sounds disgusting. Now I'll probably get drunk one night and try it.

Shock Theatre!

When I was around 11 or 12 years old, this ridiculous-looking man and his even sillier-looking sidekick completely dominated my Saturday nights. Dr. Shock (actually the station's programming director) was the host of a local television station's attempt at being creative with some unused airtime and a few cheesy horror movies. Add in Dingbat, a stupid bat puppet who spoke in a retarded hillbilly accent, and you had pure Southern, half-assed genius. So great did the the pair's influence become they were asked to numerous grocery store openings and are directly responsible for local weirdos Dr. Shock and the Go-Go Monsters:

Every city during the 70s had some form of creature feature horror theatre cheese-fest. (A Google search reveals a frightening number of Dr. Shocks alone). Spending Saturday night learning to be a smartass by laughing and ridiculing some clown on TV was a very cool way to spend that time in youth when you were too old to play with toys anymore, but too young to get drunk or do drugs. Oh, yeah. Shock Theatre also used a Black Sabbath song as their theme music! Ya-Hoo!

Chris Nolff- SuperGenius

Bad Hair Day

Bad Fur Day

Go to KICKASS now.

Popeman Is Coming to Kick Ass

Como estan, bitches! Pope John Paul George Ringo has been reborn into: Popeman the Invincible, protector of what remains to be seen. Will he go for the big bucks or chose to protect the small people? Well, I hope he goes for the latter.

A Genius Maligned

Peter Sellers is amazingly, for someone so popular and successful in his day, one of the most underrated actors of all time. He was a master of dialect and body movement, and even his worst performances contained nuances beyond most actors working then or now. Mike Meyers would seem a perfect example of slavish devotion to Sellers' legacy. Check Sellers in Dr. Stranglove, among others, for an actor performing multiple roles in one movie for Meyers' Austin Powers antecedent.
So why is Sellers so poorly represented on DVD? Sure The Pink Panther series is available in a boxed set, but there are several terrific Sellers films still languishing in the vaults and only currently to be found on ancient, fuzzy VHS tapes somewhere on EBay.
The one I would most like to see released on DVD is Sellers' 1968 film I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, a very funny, admittedly Hollywood, look at the counterculture scene of the late 60s. Sellers plays an uptight Los Angeles lawyer who tunes in, turns on, and drops out (people really said this kind of thing back then) of mainstream society when he gets a dose of some free love courtesy of a very young and lovely actress named Leigh Taylor-Young. I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (the reference is to writer, poet, playwright, feminist Gertrude Stein's lesbian lover who concocted a famous pot brownie recipe) actually works as a subtle satire of the changes society was encountering at the time, and even tough the movie is probably pretty dated, and viewers today will see the film as more camp than anything else, Sellers' performance is never less than amazing. Besides, the pot brownie scene still works well enough that the makers of the recent Starsky and Hutch flick stole the idea outright.
So whoever owns the rights to this movie needs to release the damn thing so I can immediately add it to my Peter Sellers collection (right in between The Party (1967) and Being There (1979) Sellers' last performance and one of the best movies ever made. And if you try the brownie, Bon Appetit!

Holy crap, what a movie!
First off, let's get this out of the way: No, Sin City is not going to be roundly hailed as a masterpiece example of film noir (which it is) or Stanislavskian acting style ( again, yes). This is film noir updated, but still faithful to the pulp fiction of the 40's and 50's. If you miss Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, well, I'm sorry. I guess Mickey Rourke and Jaimie King will have to do; this the 21st Century, by the way. But at the very least, this is the best movie to be released in America in the last 4 months hands down.
For many, the violence is going to be a problem. It is, to say the least, pulverizingly violent. I must admit, I'm a little relunctant to endorse a movie that is so over-the-top violent in an era when aggression is being championed by every Nintendo-raised, beer-swilling, Toby Keith-loving Republican ape who enjoys watching internet videos of innocent Iraqi civilians being blasted limb from limb and screaming "That's extreme!" and "They deserved it for fucking with our country, by God!"
However, Sin City is not about realism. It's about recreating the visceral one-two punch of Frank Miller's graphic novels, and, buddy, does Robert Rodriguez ever succeed. Yeah, people are going to yell "It's all style over substance," and charges of misogyny and exploitation are not unfounded, I suppose. There is a lot of female nudity, but they are hookers, after all. And I wouldn't necessarily say women who chop men into small enough pieces to fit into the trunk of a car are victims, either.
Sin City is really what an action movie should be. This is truly escapist fun and not some lame Hollywood popcorn-fest set to a throbbing rock music soundtrack featuring orchestrated explosions and actors who should be relegated to Gap commercials.
Style over substance? I have heard that one ever since Resevoir Dogs. Tarantino and Rodriguez are each equally fascinated by the actual process of movie-making as pure joy, as well as the effort to create a work of art. Why not let such talented men enjoy themselves?