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June 17, 2009 1400cc Quadrozontal! His Most Eminence (and noted Phoenician) Matt Farnham sent me this gem. Is this not the oddest car ad you've ever seen? As a person who has raised four Subarus in his life, it is particularly hard for me to comprehend someone thinking it shrewd to market them to turtleneck-wearing, yacht-enthusiast, self-styled playboys. And by using such strange, borderline creepy prose, replete with Oedipal innudendo, no less! Let me attempt to translate these paragraphs for yous: The Subaru GL Coupe. Like an independent-minded woman who needs to be put in her place. You are a shallow, materialistic, self-absorbed male desperately in need of validation from women. The Subaru GL Coupe wants you to fuck it. This car has a great body. It wants to ride you. It wants to be your mommy. Now you get on top. Now it is time for you to be a commanding sexual partner. Pound her relentlessly. Put her into uncomfortable positions [quadrozontal, you see]. Dominate her. Overpower her and squeeze her breasts aggressively. Doing so will cause her to be more submissive. Soon you will experience simultaneous orgasm. You have now broken her spirit and established dominion. Now you don't have to buy her drinks anymore. But on a more automotive note: quadrozontal?!? What the falafel is that? And "relentless power"? A former girlfriend of mine had a Subaru exactly like the one in the ad, and I can say from experience that it was anything but relentless. You were lucky to maintain 30 mph going up even the slightest incline. Add Comment | View Comment June 01, 2009 The Unholy Genius of Maria Bamford It turns out that I'm a stand-up comedy connoiseur! Who knew that this is how the Yale Kaul saga would unfold? It actually probably has everything to do with the proliferation of non-cheezeball comedians over the past 10 years or so. There was, you may have noticed, something of a Great Schism in the stand-up world at some point in approximately 1993. Pre-then, a comedian could expect to make a handsome living doing the same tired jokes about airline food and parenthood, and if they were marketable enough, maybe even a sitcom would come out of it (which still doesn't explain how Roseanne Barr got to be famous, but that's a whole 'nother exploration). Pre-then, a non-cheezeball comic such as the estimable Bill Hicks could be expected to toil in obscurity because most Americans just didn't want their yuks served with any social commentary or evidence of neuroses. And if you're a Bill Hicks fan, you know that his thing is almost entirely social commentary and blatant evidence of dark neuroses. (And as further evidence of life before the Great Schism, check out the documentary Bill Hicks Live, which features commentary by several such 1991-vintage cheezeball feather-mulleted, bolo-tie-festooned comedians.) Now I don't know exactly what occasioned the Great Comedy Schism, but I have a hunch that it might be the same cultural force that made bands like Nirvana, et. al. to suddenly become palatable to mainstream Americans. Thenceforth you started seeing more of your Patton Oswalts, your David Crosses, your Maria Bamfords, and you also started seeing comedy shows in rock clubs instead of those creepy comedy clubs that all seem to have names like Laffs and The Chuckle Bucket and so on. And so it was that I found myself at Denver's very own But anyway, currently, and for the past two years or so, Maria Bamford is my favorite comedian by a mile. Her schtick is nominally voices and characters, but that doesn't do her justice; the genius lies not only in how astonishingly she nails the voices, but in the content added to the characters. She takes peoples' weird hangups and bullshitisms and flings them back at them. Some of her best material involves her parents, whom she portrays as clueless, brain-on-auto-pilot Midwesterners. Some would say that Maria Bamford has perhaps an unhealthy fixation on her parents for a 38-year-old woman, but it makes for such great material that you'll not hear me gripe about it. ================================================================  Muscle March Trailer Not since the Mr. Sparkle episode of the Simpsons have I been so blown away by such an unrelenting display of Japanese culture weirdness. Effeminate bodybuilders accompanied by a prairie dog, a yak, and a polar bear in a Speedo, all dancing in front of rainbows? Check. Add Comment | View Comments (4) May 18, 2009 Little Fyodor A couple months ago I was thinking it might be time to get back into playing music, on a strictly recreational basis. Whilst perusing the Musicians Wanted section on Craigslist, I came across an ad for this guy Little Fyodor who was looking for a drummer. Little Fyodor had apparently been featured in those Boyd Rice books ("Incredibly Strange Films", et. al.) that I used to spend hours leafing through at Freddy's Feed & Read in Missoula back in the mid-90s. It sounded like something right up my alley, plus apparently the guy lives not too far from me. But alas, he was looking for someone who could do some touring, and that ain't a possiblity for me at the moment. Woulda been cool though, eh? ============================================= Also, just so you know, this site was, for a brief time, the top search result for the phrase "White Apple Booty Asses Munster Curves". Add Comment | 0 Comments April 21, 2009 Fuck You eWeek: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Adventure  If you're a software professional, you've surely managed to somehow finagle a free subscription to eWeek or some other such trade rag. Each issue essentially amounts to ten or so full-page IBM or Microsoft ads and a handful of fluff pieces about the latest enterprise collaboration suite or some other such malarkey. These things proliferate like prairie dogs, and I'd estimate --charitably, yo-- that maybe 0.8% of the content in there is of any interest or use to me. I don't know how I got a subscription, but it keeps coming month after month like a yeast infection. Recently I got a notice saying that if I didn't pony up another $195 (!!!!!!!!), my subscription to eWeek would end!!!!! THE HORROR!!! I ignored the warning and it still kept coming. Eventually one of the Ziff-Davis phone marketeers called me and asked if I, a "preferred" reader, would want to renew my subscription at no charge. I politely declined, and when she persisted, I interrupted her spiel and begged her to stop sending the magazine. That was four or five months ago and still they keep sending me that utter waste of low-grade pulp newsprint every month. So should I: a) Mount a grassroots protest campaign in hopes that other software peoples feel similarly? b) Smear feces all over the next issue, put it in a manila envelope marked "REFUSED"? c) Call the customer number and threaten to kill myself if they don't stop sending their vile pagan screeds? Add Comment | View Comment |
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