Homemade Fireworks

BLOOD BEACH!

2006-10-19T01:15:00.001-04:00

Look at that movie poster. How rad does that look? Well, don't get excited--never has a movie promised so much and delivered so little. Oh, it had it's beach swallowings, but they were some of the most lethargic beach swallowings I've ever seen. I'm telling you--I've seen people panic more when they've driven half-way to work and realized they left thier coffee on the roof of their car. I remember how, when I was a kid, I would go absolutely insane when my hamster bit me or I got a splinter from our wooden deck. I'm pretty sure I'd take those fits at least a tad bit further if my favorite vacation spot straight-up ate me. Not the guys in Blood Beach, however. These guys gave barely a struggle, as if they lived in a world where there everyday routines consisted of their morning coffee, a few minutes on the treadmill, and--eh--another beach-eating. Honestly--these people did not care that they were being eaten by a sand creature. I think I even saw one of the victims look at his watch and roll his eyes on the way down. Like he was thinking, "Great! Now I'll never get to the store on time!" The worst was when, honestly, as one of the characters was being swallowed, he simply looked at another character and said, "help me" in the same tone of voice I'd use to ask someone to help me open a pickle jar. You see that bitch in the movie poster? She's not screaming...she's yawning.

There's a HUGE difference between bad-awesome and just bad. The biggest offense of Blood Beach was that, at it's core, it simply wasn't scary. However, a low budget, bad creature effects, and terrible acting don't translate into a low Shocktober Spectacular rating--In fact, it's usually the opposite. However, Blood Beach was not only not scary--it was not fun.

To Blood Beachs' credit, I can say one thing about it that I've never been able to say about another movie in the entire Shocktober Spectacular: the acting was phenomenal. Burt "Paulie" Young and John Saxon were on time. They were so good it was almost as if someone forgot to tell them they were in a movie called about a vacation destination whose favorite food is LADIES!

Back to the great acting, though, let's be honest...no one rents a movie called Blood Beach for great acting. The rent it for blood beachings. It's like that move The Gift. It was a fantastic film all around, and Keanu Reeves gave what was inarguably the performance of his career. To bad the only thing you remember about The Gift is Katie Holmes' tits.

Blood Beach is The Gift without Katie Holmes' tits.

One Jason Head. Because if you call a movie "Blood Beach," it damn well better have some blood in it.

NIGHTBREED!

2006-10-03T20:44:00.000-04:00

Every now and then I actually end up enjoying the horror movie I'm reviewing. This, obviously, is good news for me while I’m watching the film, but bad news for me in the long run, because it means I don't have much to make fun of in my review, and long-time followers know that pointing out others' misfortunes is my bread and butter. This was sort of the case with Nightbreed. The movie wasn't bad at all, but all was not lost, for I had to look no farther than the movie's box to find that sweet lifeblood of the Shocktober Spectacular: unintentional hilarity. Here's what I'm talking about:

"A NEW REASON TO FEAR THE NIGHT!!!..."

...screams the movie poster, and it wasn't kidding! Right under that very warning stands a troupe of genetic atrocities so repugnant—so foul—that the very site of their deformed visages would turn even the hardest man’s soul black. Let's have a look:

Pictured, from R to L: Porcupine woman; Satan (aka "The Devil"); fat man with snakes living in his stomach; Lizard-Man (with parts of your little sister still probably stuck in his teeth from lunch); Craig Sheffer, girl with cat for half a head, man with….uh…wait a minute. Can we go back a couple of people? Craig Sheffer?!

What part of that dreamy coif and those chisled cheekbones give me a "new reason to fear the night?!" I know Craig must be tough because he's wearing a leather jacket, but I should probably point out one more time that standing behind him is A LIZARD-MAN!!!! That guy is a new reason for me to fear the night, the day, and pretty much any open spaces in general. Craig Scheffer?! He's a new reason for girls to cross out Jon Brandis's name on their Trapper Keepers, replace it with his, and surround it with tiny little hearts.

You know what my favorite part of this picture is? Imagining the fortitude Craig Sheffer's character must have had to stand in the company of these guys, right up front, in that pose, with that mad-dog look on his face, like he's actually the scariest one in this photo. Craig's never had a zit in his life! On the contrary, two people to his right is a man with a moon for a head.

I don't want to ruin things for Nightbreed fans, but I'm very excited about Nightbreed 2, in which the breed will be joined by two more reasons to fear the night:

Cindy Crawford, and

Elmo.

In all fairness, when Craig’s character gets angry, his eyes go red and he gets some lines on his face, but that’s when the real horror starts--when you realize that the monster Craig Sheffer is still better looking than you are.

Another thing about Nightbreed that had me rolling my eyes and uttering a heartfealt "What the hell?!" was the "mysterious" town of Midian. According to the movie's lore, "Midian" is a town inhabited by the abovementioned monsters. It's shrouded in secracy...while obviously dismissed by the sane as "myth," some people still beleive it to be real. Craig Sheffer's character has devoted his life to discovering Midian, but to no avail, which is why I thought it was absolutely hilarious that, later in the movie, Midian was INSTANTLY located by:

his girlfriend
a bar-hopping floozy (?)
Craig's psycologist
a backwoods store owner
a batallion of cops (?!)

I honestly believe you could put Stevie Wonder behind the wheel of a car and he could take you to Midian. Some seceret...hell, most people have a harder time finding the mall’s bathroom.

All kidding aside, I will now tell you what was really wrong with Nightbreed. It wanted to be more than it was, and, at some point, it very well may have been, but in the end, it wasn’t. The problem was, even after the end result, the director and the producer kept insisting it that it was, when we, the viewing public, had just watched the proof that said it wasn't. Get that? Clive Barker really wanted Nightbreed to be the one thing in the world that pisses me off the most: a horror movie metaphor. However, someone needs to tell Clive that just because you really want something to be something doesn’t mean it actually is, and no amount of jumping up and down and pointing at it and saying it is is going to actually turn it into one. Nightbreed wanted really badly to be legit, and at one point it actually almost achieved it. There’s a delightful scene in which one of the characters is decending into Midian, all the while glimpsing it’s grotesque inhabitants for brief seconds, each one more insanly disfigured than the last, but the scene wasn't frightening. With Danny Elfman’s score behind it, I'd go as far as to call the scene "playful." The monsters weren’t scary—it was almost as if creatures from Beetlejuice had accidently wondered onto the set of Nightbreed. This is due, in part, to the fact that the monsters were never really malicious in the first place, which brings us to the question the movie’s box itself asks, “In the battle of good versus evil, who is man, and who is monster?” I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that by the end I wasn’t rooting for the monsters, and I’d also be lying if I didn’t notice the irony of the movie’s real villain--a human who would don a horrifying mask to give him the face of a monster. Nightbreed was, in essence, a “it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” movie, but with one too many horror movie elements added. The end result was 50 percent horror movie, 50 percent not, and this undeciceviness created a distracting tone that made a possibly brilliant movie only mediocre.

HOUSE OF WAX

2006-10-01T23:38:00.000-04:00

You know how sometimes, in the $50 round of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, they’ll ask a ridiculously easy question and give four multiple-choice answers: one of which is obviously right, two that are just kind of there, and a goof answer that is so obviously wrong that you could have birth defects that haven’t even been discovered yet and still not pick it? For example, the question will be something like, “What color is a fire truck?” and the choices will be, “red,” “white,” “yellow,” and “your uncle’s penis in a shopping cart.” Well, if you decide to watch House of Wax, be prepared to spend ninety minutes with a group of kids who not only keep picking “D,” but keep acting surprised when they find out they’re wrong.

I’m not talking about typical “let’s split up—you go check out the woods while I go stick my head in the Iron Maiden and look for clues”- type shit. The characters in House of Wax are so slow they would need an even Specialer Olympics designed for them. For example: imagine you’re posed with the following question. “You’re all alone. While looking for your missing friend, you happen upon a completely deserted town. At the center of the town is a creepy house made of entirely of wax. Despite having just learned that the town was once populated by a wax-sculpture obsessed psycho and the huge “CLOSED” sign on the door, your best plan of action would be to: (A) Realize your friend is hanging from a meathook somewhere and go back home and call dibs on his "X-Box" before anyone else can, (B) regroup with your friends and notify the authorities, (C) Both A and B, or (D) Pick the lock and proceed into the house of wax. Two things worth noting: this type of shit happened throughout the entire movie, and this was actually one of the smarter instances of it happening.

I don’t care how sweet Paris Hilton’s death scene was…this constant moronic logic mentioned above completely ruined the movie for me. That, and the fact that the lead characters are a bunch of asshole punks that you will hate if you are any type of decent human being. By the end of the movie, they’ve chalked up three accounts of breaking and entering, one account of damaged property, and one account of assault. The film itself was molded from the same template as Hostel and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, almost scene-for-scene, right down to the elongated, no cutaway, torture and death scene that all the horror movies of the early 2000s had. The only difference was that in House of Wax, the characters had to break into the house of the killer to get it. I’m telling you: these kids really had to work to get killed. Hopping over fences, tearing down “closed” signs, breaking windows, picking locks—you’d have an easier time escaping from Alcatraz, and even then, your prize for success would be freedom. I honestly believe that if this house’s welcome mat was a pool filled with alligators, these kids still would’ve found a way to get in, and what did they receive for their efforts? Hot wax in their orifices.

I give House of Wax TWO JASON HEADS, and I consider that generous for a movie who’s tough guy is Chad Michael Murray. That’s like saying Justin Timberlake is the toughest member of N’Sync. Maybe he is, but he’s still a member of N’Sync.

I should also note that a good one-and-a-half of those stars were earned by Elisha Cuthbert’s tank top.

Up next, a movie who’s title is only three letters away from being “Night Feeders.”

THE 2006 SHOCKTOBER SPECTACULAR!

2006-10-01T23:32:00.000-04:00

My favorite holiday, by far, is Halloween. In fact, the only two things I enjoy more than Halloween are bad '80s horror movies and making fun of things, which is why, every Halloween, I decide to combine the three into one ultimate explosion of spookily-rad comedy.

For the last two years, I've pained my way through a ton of awful, awful horror movies, made fun of them, and called it the Shocktober Spectacular. It's my favoritest thing in the world to do, and I'm excited to announce that the 2006 edition of the Shocktober Spectacular will be beginning on Monday, October 2. I do at least two reviews a week, but since I'm a struggling, out-of-work actor who would, at this point, gladly sleep my way into a Miss Cleo infomercial, it looks like this year I'll be putting up three a week, and maybe even four. Of course, this year's edition will be especially rad because the finale will be a review of Night Feeders, the Citizen Kane of horror movies which stars...me.

If you're new to the Shocktober Spectacular, you can view the groundrules here.

And to get you in the spooky state of mind you can click here and here for a couple of my favorites from years past.

Stop by on Monday for the 2006 season opener!

The Dong Suite?

2006-08-03T22:46:00.000-04:00

Here in Hollywood, entertainment is a huge industry. Whenever a new movie or album is coming out, studios go to amazing lengths to promote them.

My favorite promotion is the "building poster." A studio will rent out the entire side of a huge hotel or office skyscraper and slap a movie poster or album cover on the side. Imaganie a 30-story album cover.

The funny thing is, sometimes an album cover is just a picture of a person. For example, there's a 30-story picture of JAY-Z on the side of a hotel about a block from me.

I just think it's funny that someone will be staying in a room who's window is in the exact position as JAY-Z's dong.

I wonder if you can actually request the dong suite. I know I would. If "Night Feeders" ever hits it big and my picture ends up on the side of a hotel, I want all of you to come to Hollywood and request my dong suite.

The Worst Goddamned Myspace Bulletin I've Ever Been Forwarded

2006-07-17T00:48:00.000-04:00

Remember how, back in eighth grade, you'd sit by your phone all day waiting for the girl you gave your number to to call you? Remember how absolutely batshit you went when the phone finally rang, and remember how disappointed you were when the call turned out to be just your mom? Myspace bulletins are the exact same thing. You're so happy to log in and find something new on the board, but youre so disappointed when you find out that the new message is only a cut-and-paste forward from someone who wants to kill you.

Every one of these bulletins are bad, but about four month ago I received in my inbox the worst goddamned bulletin Ive ever gotten. I was going to let it go until just last night, when I received the exact same bulletin again. Its so absolutely insane that I had to share it with all of you. It appears in all of its grammatically incorrect entirety below.

My commentary appears in bold.

5 PPL ACTUALLY GOT KILLED BY NOT SENDING THIS PIECE OF MAIL. [Bullshit. The only way that's possible is if they weren't forwarding this while falling out of a plane.] THE CREATOR OF THIS MAIL HAS A PROGRAM THAT WILL TRACK DOWN UR ADDRESS. [Nice. I have a finger that can use the phonebook to do the exact same thing. Plus, my address is printed on my curb. While Mystery Bulletin Creator was hopped up on Meth, hacking into government mainframes to discover where my issues of "Teen People" are sent, my neighbor was getting the same results by opening his blinds. Plus, how is someone going to kill me by knowing my address? I'm convinced that this bulletin is the first time "good memory" has ever been used as a murder weapon.] WHAT DO U HAVE TO LOSE? UR LIFE. PLZ REPOST! [With all those IM abbreviations, I have come to the conclusion that the person who wrote the program that learns my address and then kills me is either a 13-year-old girl or Kelly Clarkson.] THANK YOU AND HAVE A MEANINGFUL REST OF YOUR DAY. [Jesus.]

Sorry, but because u opened this you will die in 3 days. sorry. [After admitting to someone that you're responsible for their death, I'm not sure "sorry" quite cuts it. Neither do two "sorrys." The fact is, you could drive a dump truck full of sorrys right up my ass and as much as I'd appreciate it, I'd still rather be alive to watch tomorrow's episode of "Maury."] the only way you can reverse this is by reposting it within 5 minutes. good luck [What's the "good luck" for? Are you implying that I may have a hard time re-posting a bulletin? Thanks for the good luck wish asshole, but I'm pretty sure I could move the mouse and click on the "send" button even if I didn't have any Goddamned hands. Come to think of it, I've actually seen computers for paraplegics whose mouses operate on a "puff of air" system, but believe me. Instead of forwarding this bulletin, paraplegics' time would be much better spent blowing whatever the puff equivalent of "suck my fat one" is in an e-mail to you.]

By opening this chainmail u have been given bad luck for 2 months. [Which is sort of like adding insult to injury since I'll be dead in three days. I guess that means that not only will I be dead, but in Heaven I'll catch all the red lights.] If u repost this message then the bad luck will turn good. [Well get you some of this: I didn't repost this motherfucker about a month ago when I got it, and not only am I not dead, but last night I was flipping through TBS and I came across the Senior Skip Day episode of Saved By The Bell where Kelly Kapowski was in a bikini. If thats not good luck, youre going to have to send me a very detailed description of what is.]

Here are the rules.

Give the bulletin a name that has nothing to do with a chain letter because this letter is a trap. The more people that you trick, the better luck you will have
MAKE A TITLE TO THROW SOMEONE OFF [If there is any truth to the sentence "the more people you trick, the better luck you'll have," I should start buying some lottery tickets right now, because I spent three years of college convincing girls that I was a J-Crew model and Josh Hartnett's cousin (I'm not kidding). Not to mention, it doesnt matter if you give the letter a name that has noting to do with a chain letter or not, because this describes 99 percent of the things that appear on the Myspace bulletin board anyway. I've learned my lesson. I dont care how many times you put the words "Galaxain" or "Jean Claude Van Damme" in your title, I'm not clicking on it.]

So thats it. Basically, I got a forward from a guy who wanted to kill me so he could have good luck. The bulletin said "the more people you forward this to, the better luck you'll have." I looked at this guys page and he had over 500 "friends," which means right now, if that statement is true, hes sitting at his computer sending forwards from a land populated by candy and blowjobs.

And oh yeah. If you dont forward this blog to all of your friends by next Friday, your dong will explode.

NIGHT FEEDERS SCREENING IN CHARLOTTE, NC!

2006-07-11T16:11:00.000-04:00

I fucking hate aliens. They're always coming here and stealing our water and blowing up our landmarks. Before October 2004, my saving-the-earth exploits were pretty much just me making fun of a girl in my Economics class who looked just like the aliens from Independence Day. But in October 2004, I starred in a movie called Night Feeders, which was produced for less money than you payed for lunch today. In Night Feeders, I wear really tight "Wranglers" and kill a lot of aliens.

Night Feeders will be having its WORLD PREMIERE SCREENING in Charlotte, NC on July 29 at 8:00 p.m!! Come out and watch me stick a shotgun in a lot of aliens' whatever thier alien word for "mouth" is.

Financial liabilities wont allow me to attend, but if youre a friend of mine and decide to go, promise me youll do two things:

1.) Get good and drunk before you go, and

2.) Go absolutely batshit when my name comes up on the credits.

WHAT: Night Feeders Big Screen World Premiere Screening
WHEN: Saturday, July 29, 2006, 8:00 PM
WHERE: Indievision parking lot. (Its an outdoor venue, so bring chairs, blankets, and a cooler full of PBR. Beer and food will also be available for purchase.)
1318 Central Avenue
Charlotte NC, 28205
704-373-7432

Dont miss your (probably only) chance to see Night Feeders on the big screen.

Fuck yeah!

Check out the NIGHT FEEDERS TRAILER at www.thefeedingmovie.com

To Train Up A Child

2006-06-15T17:20:00.000-04:00

TO TRAIN UP A CHILD: A BOOK REVIEW

Anyone who has ever listened to Whitney Houston or seen Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome knows that children are our future. Thats' why I consider it a kick to the world's futures groin that no one has written a book that will teach kids how to help Mel Gibson reclaim a post-apocalyptic wasteland from Tina Turner and a midget who rides around in a big retarded man's backpack. Instead, we get To Train Up A Child, which is undoubtedly the catalyst that will lead to the previously mentioned post-apocalyptic world.

Ever since the invention of children there have been books written to help parents raise them. Of these books, the most effective seem to be the ones written by child psychiatrists, counselors, or people who have never smeared animal feces on each other and made furniture out of the femurs of dead people. The authors of To Train Up A Child are disqualified on all three accounts. To Train Up A Child is ironic because it is a book on how to raise children written by people who probably shouldnt be allowed to live in a country that has children in it. In that respect, this book is a lot like that 300-pound fat guy at your gym with the tube socks and sweatband who tries to give you tips on how to do your crunches. And much like that fat guy, this book will make you want to put your foot in its ass.

To Train Up A Child was written by Michael and Debi Pearl. The book's forward tells us they have 6 children, but fails to mention whether any of them have lived past the age of 3. Since this book has no less than three chapters with the word "rod" in the title, plus one with the word "whip," I'm going to guess "none."

The majority of the advice in To Train Up A Child revolves around beating your kids, which is simultaneously the most rad and disturbing thing I think I've ever seen. The Pearls want you to beat your kids so badly that the very first words that appear in this book after the forward are SWITCH YOUR KIDS, in big bold letters. Now that's comedy. Thatd be like the first words in How To Win Friends and Influence People being KICK PEOPLE IN THE GROIN AND TELL THEIR GRANDMOTHERS TO BLOW YOU. Before we go any further, perhaps its necessary to mention that Michael and Debi are Amish and live in an Amish community. Im sure that explains a lot but, if youre like me, it probably doesn't.

When beating your children, To Train Up A Child recommends a belt, a ruler, a tree branch, or a shoe, and I swear to God I'm not making any of this up. That's one hell of a checklist. If you plan on following the advice found in this book, allow me to make some recommendations of my own to add to that list: a wicked set of venetian blinds (preferably closed), a passport, and a good alias. I usually use "Alistair Gillis."

In chapter 3, Michael and Debi take a break from telling you how to beat your children just long enough to explain how to beat your pets. I don't know how they know so much about beating animals, but my guess is because all six of the Pearl children had already been knocked unconscious by the time Michael and Debi had finished writing the forward. "If you kick [a cat] hard enough and often enough it will become sufficiently wary to obey while you remain on guard, but will still bolt through the door when it sees the opportunity," writes Michael. It was at this point in the book that I realized that the Pearl's solution on how to cure anything was to hit it. "If you want your child to fall into the New World Order and wait his turn in line for condoms, a government funded abortion, sexually transmitted disease treatment, psychological evaluation, and a mark on the forehead, then follow the popular guidelines in education, entertainment and discipline, but if you want a son or daughter of God, you will have to do it Gods way." And according to the sub-title on page 38, "God spanks his children."

The only thing I took from To Train Up A Child is this: if you ever see the Pearls anywhere doing anything but hitting something, its not the Pearls. If it's not their children or their pets they're pummeling, theyre rearing back and giving our very minds a big old bitch slap with more child-rearing advice like that in the above paragraph. Luckily I wont be quoting any more of it, because certain government regulations limit the amount of To Train Up A Child quotes that can appear on one Web page and Im afraid this one is pushing the limits as it is.

SMACK!

Face Transplants?

2006-01-09T03:22:00.000-05:00

One of the funniest things I’ve ever heard anyone say was said by my sophomore-year roommate. Of course, it was said at the expense of the ugly. Otherwise, we usually don't say it.

One day we saw a girl with the most amazing body walk by, but when she turned around, I swear to all things holy she had a face that would make a freight train stop dead in its tracks and turn off on a dirt road. Even more so, it looked like it had been hit by that freight train. While we we’re all frozen in utter fear my roommate was the only one able to speak, and out came the funniest words ever spoken by man: “Well, it was a great song…too bad about the video.” To this day, we say that every time we see someone who fits the above description.

Things haven’t gotten any easier for the ugly since my Sophomore year. Nowadays, their "people"--with their hideous physical features and appetite for destruction--have no choice but to envy us normals from their special labor camps. Plus, I’m pretty sure that if we still had dinosaurs, we’d offer them our ugly as food. But things may be about to change. Their problems of the ugly may soon be solved by science, the very force that brought us Mr. Wizard and The Hulk on one hand and everything that’s been predicted by movies to destroy the human race on the other.

According to an article released by the BBC, reconstructive surgeons in France have recently completed the first partial face transplant, while American surgeons say a total face transplant is not completely out of the question.

I don’t trust or like science. I don’t trust science because it’s evil, and I don’t like science because it’s no fun. I mean, it’s 2006. Where are the laser guns? The flying cars? The floating cities? Unless it’s been doing it while I’m at work, my car cannot yet transform into a killer robot warrior. But no. Instead of working on something rad like that, science decided it would rather devote it’s time and resources to making ugly people look better. Bitch, I can do that on my own by drinking a six-pack of Pabst.

The BBC article reveals that the face transplant surgery took place in order to repair a woman’s face after a severe dog attack. Doctors stress that the woman will not look like her donor, but nor will she look like she did before the attack. Instead she will have a "hybrid" face. While we’re on the subject of the donor, I should probably mention that she was still fucking alive at the time. Actual quote from the article:

"The transplant would have to come from a beating-heart donor. So...say your sister was in intensive care. You would have to agree to allow her face to be removed before the ventilator was switched off."

I’m sure you would agree, Freddy Kruger, but I think you may want to check with the donor as well. I’m sure when she filled out her organ donor card, she was all “yeah, I guess I only need one kidney. Why not?” Could you imagine waking up from a coma to discover you were the donor of your face?

Face Donor: How long have I been out?

Doctor: You’ve been in a coma for approximately ten years.

Face Donor: Ten years! Wow! So what’s new in the world? Did Alf ever win an Emmy? Did that Elton John ever get married…he was always such the ladies man!

Doctor: There have actually been many advances in the world of science since you’ve been under.

Face Donor: Sweet! Like what! Robot gorillas! Lightsabers? Portable Ataris?

Doctor: Uh, no. Why don’t you grab this mirror and see for yourself.

The article went on to note that the woman - who wishes to remain anonymous - was in "excellent general health" and said the graft looked normal. The article did not mention if she looked “normal” for a normal person, or “normal” for someone who had just had someone else’s face put onto their own. I, for one, thought the guy in Robocop who fell into that vat of toxic waste and came out half-melted looked perfectly normal for someone who just fell into a vat of toxic waste, but that doesn’t mean that if he got a job at McDonald’s and I was the manager I’d put him behind the counter.

“There is no difference between a face transplant, hand transplant, or indeed receiving blood from another,” the article went on to say. “Yeah, except for the fact that when the surgerys done you look like someone fucking else,” I added. The only thing they have in common is that they’re both surgeries. Motherfucker, Hellraiser II and Muppet Babies both come on TV, that doesn’t mean you need to be showing them as a double feature at you’re kid’s 10th birthday party. Not to mention, when it's over you've got something on your head that can be described as a "hybird face."

"It is not clear whether an individual could be left worse off in the event that a face transplant failed," said Dr. Stephen Wingmore. This is an actual quote from the article, which only proves my theory that the number of Masters’ degrees you have hanging on your wall has nothing to do with the ratio of your brains that have completely dried up.

The article never mentioned if the purpose of the face transplant was to heal the woman’s face from the dog attack, or simply to disguise her from the dog should they cross paths again.

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES Isn't About Company or Wolves

2005-10-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

[Warning: For this review, I took the places where there'd usually be comedy and replaced it with intelligence. I did it because "smart" is the new sexy. And comedy is the old "fat."]

Every now and then the Shocktober Spectacular tries to outsmart me. I hate it when it does that and I really wish it’d stop. When I’m watching a horror movie, I want to see Jason take something, preferably Manhattan, and I want to see him take it from naked girls and stereotypically jive-talking black guys with red leather jackets and boom boxes on their shoulders. With that said, when I’m in college, I’d prefer it if Jason didn’t walk into my class and try to machete me. The point is, I don’t want my horror movies to teach me anything just like I don’t want my PSYC 101 class to try to kill me.

Check out that movie poster. If you put that picture on your movie’s box, your movie goddamned well better be a horror movie. The Company of Wolves is not a horror movie...it's the scariest type of movie of them all…the metaphor. It’s even the worst kind of metaphor because it’s a metaphor that poses as a horror movie. That’s like seeing what’s obviously a Nintendo game under the tree on Christmas, and then unwrapping it and finding out its Winter Games. Thanks, Grandma. I'd rather've gotten fucking socks.

The Company of Wolves is a modern (read: 1984) take on Little Red Riding Hood. It centers around a pretty girl who is obsessed with the occult, and, more specifically, werewolves. Not helping the matter is her grandmother, who is constantly telling her werewolf-related stories. Each time she does, the movie cuts away from the main story and shows the events of the grandmother's story as its being told. The first story is about a boy who tries to buy a love potion from a mysterious traveling stranger (The Phantom Menace’s General Zod): a potion that ends up turning him into a wolf. The second story is told by the girl herself, about a pregnant Victorian wench who crashes her baby’s daddy’s wedding-day party and gets revenge by turning the hoity-toity attendees into wolves*. The movie ends with Steven Tyler, pictured above, seducing the lead girl, then turning into a werewolf, and then carrying the girl away with a band of wolves, who, I’m assuming, were all also once metal singers too.

* In all my years of trying to be funny, this intended-to-be-serious sentence is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever typed.

In its defense, The Company of Wolves is an absolutely beautiful film. The movie is hazy, mystic, and dreamlike, and with its shattering porcelain head decapitations and bird eggs that hatch tiny human babies, it totally wins this year's “what the mother fuck?!” award. The Company of Wolves was an abstract artistic masterpiece--a smart, clever, and dare I say genius film that, in it’s time, received loads of critical acclaim. Unfortunately, this is the Shocktober Spectacular, where we money shot all over critical acclaim’s face. Alas, it’s time for my review’s shocking twist ending.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “film metaphor,” think Signs. Signs was advertised through and through as an alien movie. The truth is, the alien ad campaign was just a gimmick to get people into the theatres. Signs is as much about aliens as The Warriors was. Signs is really a movie about a misdirected preacher’s redemption of faith, but NOBODY would’ve went to go see it if it was advertised as such. And The Company of Wolves isn’t about werewolves. It’s about…well...

In tonight's (HALLOWEEN NIGHT'S!) movie, werewolf-ism (a word?) was a metaphor for the onset of adulthood in our heroine. Consider that once a month, there's a “full moon" that turns werewolves, otherwise normal people, into frightful monsters. Sound familiar? The tip-off was when, at the beginning of the film, the heroine was said to be "in bed with cramps.” My acting teacher once stated so correctly that "every single thing, no matter how little it is, appears in a movie for a reason." In the endless writes and re-writes, the word "cramps" could've just as easily been "a cold," or "mumps" or "the herp," but it wasn't. It was "cramps." Plus, the running thread of the main story of the movie was some boy who was obsessing over the girl, and her hemming and hawing about whether or not to give in to his advances. Each "side story" that was told was somehow sexually themed, and they both ended with the characters turning into wolves—or suffering—as a result of their "adult" choices or actions. Werewolves are scary. For the teenager, adulthood—more specifically, the acceptance of responsibility that come with it—is also frightening.

If you're looking at this picture right now, you're totally learning about the birds and the bees.

The knockout punch of my interpetation comes at the end of the movie, when the wolves swarm the girl’s cottage. The film makes a point of showing them tearing up her room and trashing all her shit. I think this destruction of all her childhood trinkets represents the onset of womanhood. She’s fallen for the abovementioned boy, no matter how much she doesn’t want to admit it to herself: she kicks and screams as the pack of wolves overwhelm her and carry her off. Face it girl…from now on out it’s gonna be guys, not dolls. It sucks. I distinctly remember the day when I stopped playing with G.I. Joes and got into girls. Last Tuesday.

Aw...aw...awwww yeah, bitches! You like that? You like that? Don't think for one second that just because I have more Transformers toys sitting on my computer than I have girls' phone numbers in my phone that I won't drop some science on your ass in a second, because I will. I am SO on to you, The Company of Wolves. You think I’m not, but I am. Audition tried to pull this same shit last year, and you saw what I did to it.

Fuck you, film metaphor. I’m your worst nightmare, and you are my bitch.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE Hates Fat People

2005-10-27T11:26:00.000-04:00

Alice isn't really a bad girl. When it came down to it, all she was guilty of was being a bitch while on her period and putting roaches on a fat guy. Let's be honest--all girls are bitches on their period, and I think you're doing society a huge disservice if you're not putting roaches on fat people.

The devil really got it bad in the movies of the late '70s, but only Alice, Sweet Alice had the balls to make God the antagonist. That's why I liked it, because sometimes, isn't that just how it is? You know how actors are always thanking God in their Oscar acceptance speechs? Why doesn't anyone ever blame God when they lose?

Alice, Sweet Alice is about a girl in an over-religious family who, of course, is presented to be the movie's lead villian a la The Good Son, even though the majority of her family spend the majority of the movie slapping the shit out of her and totally deserve any knifings they may possibly be getting in the future. Typical horror-movie killings occour until about halfway through the movie, when we find out who the real killer is. It was someone who was wearing the exact same costume that Alice liked to wear, and it's important to note that the movie's characters spent the whole movie investingating the murders, but they still swore up and down that the killer was Alice until the real killer revealed themself at the end. Their detective work involved an entire police force and it's modern equipment. It apparently didn't involve looking at the killer and noticing the person was three times taller than Alice.

I only write about things that I can joke about, so I'm not going to go into detail about the greatest movie death involving a shoe I've ever seen, but it was awesome. Aside from this, the creepiest thing about Alice, Sweet Alice was Alice's 450 lb. (at least) landlord who would've been plenty disgusting WITHOUT the huge piss-stain on his pants.

One of my favorite things about Alice, Sweet Alice was how Brooke Shields' name was in a bigger font than the movie title's on the box, but she was in the movie for about five minutes. It figures that a movie about girls would lure me in with this bait-and-switch treachery, because real girls do this to guys all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've been to Dixie's and bought shot after shot for the hot girl at the table, only to find out the one who really liked me was the fat friend.

You know what? I've been watching these movies all October, and Alice Sweet Alice was the first creepy movie I've seen all month. Three Jason heads. And lest you think my writings have no social value, the moral of this review is this: put down that twinkie and hop on the treadmill right now, or somewhere, when you least expect it, a girl will put roaches on you. If you think she won't, you're only lying to yourself.

Yes, RETURN TO OZ is a horror movie

2005-10-24T12:33:00.000-04:00

In theory, Return to Oz is the greatest movie ever made. Consider this: You've got perhaps the most well-known movie of all time, which has survived decades being widely accepted as THE quintessential family movie, and some guy was presented with the task of producing a sequel. This guy, who I imagine has the biggest balls ever and is probably Sam Elliot, says, "Okay, I like the original, I understand they show it every Christmas and Thanksgiving, I know that this is usually the first movie kids ever see, but it's just a little too faggy. I say we ace the munchkin dance sequences and replace them with:

- Dorothy narrowly escaping electroshock therapy.

- Evil howling clowns with wheels for hands and feet.

- A desert that turns anyone who steps on it into sand.

- A queen who decapitates her victims. Also, make sure she collects the heads, and if you can, try to show her walking around without a head and have her try to take off Dorothy's head and put it on her body.

- A room where people who touch anything are turned into antiques forever.

- Scary, scary fucking living rocks.

Plus, how perfect is it that the little girl who plays Dorothy is Fairuza Balk, known for her role as lead witch in The Craft, as well as for just being her generally creepy self. This is how sequels need to be done: by taking out one thing that sucks about a movie and replacing it with about ten things that are bad-ass. All thats missing was tits. Honestly, at the rate they went at, I can't beleive they didn't work in a Dirty Sanchez or two.

I'm kind of cheating here because I saw this movie once when I was a kid, and I HAD TO LEAVE THE THEATRE. No bullshit. The sequal to The Wizard of Oz has actually been firmly established in my personal lore as one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Having finally re-faced my fears, I can still say that it's alot creepier than today's fare, and certainly not for kids just as much now as it was back then.

I'm not sure what this Japanese subtitle translates to, but it's probably "HA! Now you prepare for ultimate super brain cook!"

Return to Oz made me long for a time when we all weren't a bunch of pussies. I was going to do a whole post on this topic, but for starters: we're all a bunch of pussies. You know how people see "shocking" movies like The Devil's Rejects and say, "there's no way a movie like that would've--or could've--been made twenty years ago."? Bullshit. One of my favorite examples is a rare NBC miniseries called Something is out There, that had more blood and rad face eviscerations than Alien Vs. Predator and Freddy Vs. Jason combined. The perfect example is A Clockwork Orange. I know A Clockwork Orange may seem tame compared to today's movies, but today's movies never would've existed if A Clockwork Orange hadn't set the precident. I don't believe some other movie would've eventually been made to set the precident, I believe a precident would never have been set. To rephrase, imagine A Clockwork Orange had never been made, and a movie producer in 2005 was given the script to A Clockwork Orange as we know it. It never would've gotten made without being toned down to one of the lamest things to ever make you roll your eyes and say, "man, that was gay." It would've joined the hundreds and hundreds of "that could've been good, but..." movies I've seen in the last few years, because executives are scared to take chances. They're scared, unwilling, and unable to dare to offend, due mostly to a split-second nipple sighting at a Super Bowl halftime show, which further infuritates me that the public finds nipples so offensive. I've found that when you try to make everyone happy, you just make more people pissed. There's no way in hell Return to Oz would've been made to day, considering that it's scarier than any horror movie I've seen since The Ring. And it for damn sure wouldn't have been marketed as a kid's movie, which it so shamelessly was in the '80s. Because today's kids are pussys. If you're reading this and you're under 10 and don't believe me, go call your dad a fag and see if he spanks you.

Viva la '80s.

Three Jason heads.

CHOPPING MALL!! Robots...with lasers!

2005-10-20T03:48:00.000-04:00

Mall security guards. Those three words conjure in your mind the image of nature’s most wondrous combination of hiked-up pants and birth defects. Malls hire these people because, well, we have to put them somewhere. The America of the 2000s says, “Give people a chance.” The America of the ‘80s says, “Fuck that, pussy.” Chopping Mall asks the question you and I have been asking for years: “why hire the retarded when you can hire robots with lasers?”

Chopping Mall is about a group of kids who throw a party in a mall after it closes, only to have their awesomely mulletted heads literally handed to them by the mall’s malfunctioning robot security guards. The robots are so born to kill that I’m surprised no one in Hollywood is jumping all over an Alien vs. Predator vs. Chopping Mall. Let’s look at the technical readout. Our robotic rent-a-cops are armed with tasers, and retractable metal claws capable of removing 80s catch phrase-spouting larynxs from throats. I also think they’re equipped with stealth technology, considering that no one in the movie seems to hear them until they’re heads are being crushed by the robots’ commerce-protecting treads. I know the above arsenal could take out a police force or two—much less the guy who takes an extra toothpicked sample from the food court’s Chinese restaurant—but if these weapons didn’t work, the robots also have—when they’re not spending half the movie forgetting that they have them—laser beams. Laser beams that sound like this: “Peeew! Peeew! Na na na na!! Peeeew Peeeeeeeew!”

Just because I’m going to spend the rest of this article talking about the robot’s lasers, don’t think that that was my only problem with Chopping Mall. It wasn’t. I had a lot. But people, let me tell you something. I’ve lived through two “wars,” and in all the media coverage I watched at work when I should’ve been writing horror movie reviews during time I should’ve spent working, I never saw us deploy anything that shot lasers. But apparently, in 1986, there was some mall that has three laser-shooting robot security guards. Motherfucker, South Park Mall is the nicest mall in North Carolina and just last year they got toilets that flush by themselves. Speaking of, they also have a guy with a tip jar in the bathroom. I stiff him every time I go in, and I've never had to duck anything that looked like a laser beam because of it. And what kind of crimes are going on in malls that require robots with lasers? I know that every now and then someone will bring a coke into Ambercrombie. I know that sometimes, kids think it’s funny to walk up the “down” escalator. You could put an end to both of these with signs. Last time I checked, Osama was flying planes into our Trade Centers, not our Orange Julius’s. Let’s get those robots out of the Kay-Bees and into the front lines where they need to be.

Perhaps Chopping Mall was a metaphor for the American government’s missallcoation of resources, or perhaps it was just a great way to show me tits, robots, and head explosions. The answer to that question we may never know, but we will know this: I give Chopping Mall three Jason heads, making it this season’s highest scorer. Here’s why. Movies just don’t come any more fun than this, especially 20 years after they were made. It earned all three of those stars because it’s a huge clusterfuck of ‘80s film stereotypes that, at the time, were cool, and to think I live in a country were there was a time when this shit was ever cool really makes me smile.

BASKET CASE!!!

2005-10-17T02:23:00.000-04:00

[If you're just joining us, welcome. What's going on here is, I spend every October reviewing horror movies. It's called the Shocktober Spectacular. If that's not your bag, come back in November, when I get back into the normal swing of things. Like making fun of the poor.]

You know how sometimes you’re flipping though the cable stations late at night, and you’re unlucky enough to flip by HBO during one of those Real Sex documentaries at the exact moment that a circle of old naked men are wearing Indian headdresses and standing around a campfire? You wish you could un-see it, but you can’t. Stretch the shock of that eyeball trauma over 90 minutes, and that’s what Basket Case is. 90 minutes of old man penises.

My friend Kevin has heard me talk about this movie for years, but I’ve never pulled the trigger on it. When I finally confirmed that the movie’s main villain was a head and arms, it became pretty obvious that I wouldn’t be leaving the video store with anything else. The joke was on me, however. I’ve been where few men dare to go, and I’ve seen things that would turn the very soul the darkest black, but I’ve never seen anything like Basket Case. I mean, this shit is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s.

I’m going to tell you what Basket Case is about in as few sentences as possible, and please understand that I’m not making any of this up. Basket Case is about a guy who was born with an extra head and pair of arms growing out of his side—an incomplete conjoined twin. The head and arms were amputated but somehow continued to live, despite not having what scientists refer to as a “respiratory system” or “organs.” In the movie, the normal-looking other brother walks around with this glob of play-doh in a wicker basket, unleashing him on the doctors who performed the amputation years ago. The ball of paper mache kills them in ways that defy the very laws of sanity, as we’ll discuss in a bit, but DO NOT LET THIS DISSUADE YOU. If I ever, ever have a head and arms growing out of my side, I’m giving you permission to amputate immediately it with whatever you have on hand. A knife, a spoon, your wallet, a Nintendo controller, I don’t care. That was my problem with Basket Case from the get-go: why would you want to kill the people that saved you a lifetime of P.E. class shower humiliation? From me you’d get a Playstation II and bottle of Dom in the mail as thanks for the operation, plus a lifetime of gratitude. If, immediately following, a head and arms did happen to show up and kill you, I promise you I would have had nothing to do with it.

It's almost impossible to understand what I'm talking about without a visual aid, so there you go. There were four things about Basket Case which I thought were absolutely hilarious. One: the "Basket Case," as we'll call him, had a head, so I'll buy that he had a brain, so I wouldn't really get that worked up if he just spent the whole movie beating people at chess. That, however, was not the M.O.. The thing has foot-long arms and no legs, and yet it spent the entire movie throwing couches around, breaking tables in half, and busting through more walls than Kool-Aid man. Plus, it ate packs and packs of raw hot dogs, even though it didn't have a stomach to digest them in or an ass to shit them out of. Two: since the budget of Basket Case is a few dollars over what you put in the meter today, the “Basket Case” is a disaster of terrible terrible stop-motion animation—either the animators forgot to include about 50 poses in between shots, or God gives all people born as just a head and arms the power to teleport across rooms as a consolation. Three: midway through the movie, the “Basket Case” escapes the basket. His brother finds him just 30 or so minutes later, on the other side of New York City. Someone with legs never could've walked to where he was that fast, which means the “Basket Case” had to have cabbed it. Not only is that a hilarious visual, but it probably really pisses Danny Glover off, with his whole “why can’t black people get a cab in New York?” thing. Apparently the pecking order among cabbies is white people, heads, and then maybe black people. Four, just like in the howevermany other movies I've reviewed, no one can defeat the "Basket Case," even though their kids probably spent all day Saturday kicking something about his size around a field before enjoying Capri Sun and orange slices.

Basket Case has put me in a serious quagmire. Reading the paragraph above, one would think that this would be right up my alley, but I got a really ill vibe from watching it. The movie didn’t laugh at itself, it took itself seriously, and seriously, it’s a pretty sick movie. The effects are horrible, the acting atrocious, and the film would’ve actually cost more if the sets would’ve been built out of Legos, but the tone is there, more speciffically, in the demented closeness and love between the normal human brother and his killer head counterpart . Basket Case is just not fun. In fact, it’s pretty depressing and hideous. 2 Jason heads worth of depressing and hideous.

Up next, Alice Sweet Alice for Liz, followed by Truth or Dare?, for mystery woman Stephanie.

Today's Holiday Special Brought To You By X-Entertainment...PART II!

2005-10-12T02:30:00.000-04:00

I'm really busy. No review today. In the meantime, peep these...I got some more in my jacket. Man what are these, condoms? Uh uh, Sex Packets.

Click here for another yearly foray into X-Entertainment's Halloween insanity, entitled "A Spooky Conversation." That's all it is--nothing more. Also, click here for the hilarity I linked to for last year's XE Halloween special: A Christmas Story II: Ralphie Goes to Hell. Note how it makes fun of the exact same thing I pointed out in my Dolls review. Now is my shit together or is my shit together?

Become a fan of this guy's site. He's a genius.

That is all.

Five Years Later, I Still Won't Like THE GRUDGE

2005-10-11T01:46:00.000-04:00

Do you know who The Grudge is? The Grudge is that black guy at your gym with the Iverson jersey and the Jordans who can't hit a fucking shot.

The Grudge really really really wants me to think it's scary, and it will show me whatever I want to see in order to convince me that it is. It had all the 2000's horror movie staples : a rainy, drab look, tons of shock scares, and scary Japanese girls. But you can touch first, second, and third all you want, but you damn well better touch "home" before you run over and slap Jeff Kent on the ass.

Here's the deal. The Grudge had one of the creepiest shots I've ever seen in a movie. In fact, let's take a look at it right now.

Don't look away. Take a good long stare. It's okay. We're adults. You can admit it. That's some scary repugnant shit you're looking at. But do you know why I could sit two feet in front of my TV and watch it with Eyes Wide Open starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Because The Grudge showed me something scarier than this 45 minutes ago. And then again 10 minutes after that. And than again and again and again. By the time it got to it's climax, which is what's pictured above, I had already seen that same thing 10 times. In my opinion, Clea DuVall's death scene ursuped Martin Hendersens in The Ring (My vote for creepiest scene in a movie ever), but it didn't happen at the end, it happend 30 min. into the film. And then they did it again, and again, and again, thus detracting from the punch of the first scene and the future shock of the movie's finale, which would've been on time had it been something new for us to look at.

Plus, this film couldn't have ripped off The Ring more if it starred Namoi Watts and called itself The Circle.

2 1/2 Jason heads.

DOLLS is just two letters away from "Troll."

2005-10-10T00:39:00.000-04:00

As far as I’m concerned, everyone who’s died during this year’s Spectacular has deserved what they’ve gotten, and in my opinion they haven’t gotten it bad enough? Why? Because last year, people were dissolving in the innards of tons and tons of gelatinous mass. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s how I want to go—either like that or in a lightcycle duel. This year, however, people are dying in housefires set by monkeys. Man, there’s even more honor in getting snapped in the ass with a gay towel by Freddy Kruger than in dying in a housefire set by something that flings shit at you at your zoo.

Dolls was on cable, so I watched it. It was a genuinely creepy movie with a lot of wicked deaths, but the point is: none of them should’ve happened in the first place. Do you realize that the combined heights of the killers in the last three reviews comes to just under three feet? In a weird way, though, that’s why I love Dolls.

In Dolls—and in Troll—whenever a character saw the title villain approaching, they threw up their hands and screamed like their dicks were on fire. I find this hilarious, because, in the three Hellraiser movies I’ve seen, every time Pinhead aka The Lord of Pain, shows up, whoever’s in the room at the time casually strikes up a conversation with him. I am not kidding. No one has ever flipped out when the walls of the room split open and an eight-foot tall man with blue skin and nails in his head appeared. I’ll tell you what—for a manifestation of pure evil Pinhead is pretty chatty, and if you’ve at least skimmed How to Win Friends and Influence People, you can probably talk yourself out of an eternity of underworld face-hookings. On the other hand, I wouldn’t laugh at you if you didn’t, cause he's Pinhead. But dolls who come to life?

Imagine for a second that your G.I. Joes came to life and tried to kill you. You shouldn’t be doing anything else but tying them up, putting little blindfolds on them, and saying, “Alright, solider. Knowing is half the battle…and the other half is this firework up your ass! And by the way, while you all were oversees, I was home fucking your wives!” before blowing them to action figure hell. And in the above sentence, anything else especially includes “getting killed by them.”

"Alright Pinhead, maybe Connery was a better Bond than Moore, but you have to admit, Walken was great in A View to a Kill. And don't tell me Tonya Roberts didn't create a little movement down below, if you know what I mean!"

Vs.

"NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! AHHHH SWEET HOLY JESUS, IT'S AS IF IT'S EATING MY VERY SOUL!!!"

I liked Dolls a lot. It was fun, it was great to crack on with the friend I watched it with, and it had some really awesome shit in it, like that scence depicted in their movie poster above, which is an actual death scene in the film. 2 ½ Jason Heads.

TROLL was on Cable. So I Watched it. I'm Sick.

2005-10-07T04:09:00.000-04:00

[Sorry for the delay—I’ve been out sick. Plus, I’ve got the most unbelievable Full Metal Jacket story to share, but you’re gonna have to call me to hear it. Shocktober Spectacular aficionados, I’ll make it up to you this weekend, I promise—ed.]

Some people are terrified of midgets, which is understandable—they have really creepy hands. I was going to review Marley’s Revenge yesterday, but I honestly didn’t know enough synonyms for “it was like a groin kick to my eyes” to complete the review, so I thought maybe I’d watch Troll to help me think of some. And oh boy did I!

It’s not hard to usurp Troll in the comfort of your own home. You can re-make it for more money then they spent on the original if you simply buy a flashlight and re-enact it on your wall with shadow puppets. If you can change the pitch of your voice when alternating between the male and female characters, you’ll have better acting. And if you watch yourself do it, you’ll have more of a fan base. Even better…if any of your friends walk in on you while you’re doing all this, they won’t laugh at you as much as they would’ve if they would’ve walked in on you watching Troll. Editor’s note: if you’re watching Troll, reading this review, or any combination there of, you probably don’t have that many friends.

I’m not saying Troll is terrible, but the only reason I’m not saying that is because you can pretty much come to that conclusion on your own after reading the first two paragraphs. What I am saying is that Troll is the worst kind of bad—the type of bad that’s not even fun. The perfect illustration of the difference: last year, when I saw the first ménage a tois I’ve ever seen between one boy and two Killer Klowns, I said, “What the fuck am I watching?!!” But when I was watching Troll, it was just, “What the fuck am I watching?”

Troll is about a troll who takes over a previously troll-less apartment complex and turns everyone in it into trolls. Tenants in this “most celebrity loaded apartment complex since the one in Friends” apartment complex include Sonny Bono, June “fucking” Cleaver, and Julia-Loius Dreyfuss, in what I call her “Feeding.” The best thing about this movie is Dreyfuss, rising above her material. The worst thing about this movie is everything else, aside from two points which I will touch on now.

The main character’s name is “Harry Potter.” It was so awesome to watch a movie with “Harry Potter” in it and not have to keep thinking about how hot Hermione is going to be in five years. But let’s not let that distract from how nuts it is that this came out in ’86. Everyone who knows me knows how Zach Braff stole Garden State from me, which gives me and Troll a certain, special, genital fondling kinship.

Nobody can beat up the troll. Anyone who’s ever watched WWF and tried to do the moves on their friends has found out that they can’t, because their friends weigh too much. If the recipient of these moves is three feet tall, however, all bets are off. In Troll, seven people are overtaken by the troll, and only one of them is under 30. I watched this movie for an hour and a half, and I never once saw the troll get Tombstone Piledriven, which I do to the majority of people I see who are under 4 feet anyway, regardless of if they're trolls who are trying to kill me or not. It's a 3-foot troll, people. Anyone--even Daniel Larusso--could've kicked it's ass in any number of ways. Much to my dismay, the only move anyone used against him was to raise their hands and say "Nooooooooooo!!!!" Regarding it's effectiveness, well, they were all trolls seconds later.

In summary, Troll is probably the lowest-budget movie to happen since the Empire Strikes Back flip book I made in the back row during Social Studies in 4th grade, but it’s a lot less entertaining. For those of you keeping score, this year’s Shocktober Spectacular is 0 for two. The Shocktober Spectacular hates it when it’s 0 for two. If anyone is reading this, and I know they aren’t, but company policy requires me to ask anyway, someone PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT A RECOMMEND A “GOOD” BAD HORROR MOVIE!!!!

1 Jason head. Is. Your. Rating.

Oh. MONKEY SHINES.

2005-10-03T00:39:00.000-04:00

In California, money doesn’t grow on trees. Unfortunately, neither does gas or horror movies, which really makes me wonder why so many people come out here. After yesterday’s day-long expenditure of funds, I realized that I was just one day away from October 1st, which, if it was a movie starring Tom Cruise, would be called O:1, and I still didn’t have a movie to review or enough money for gas to go rent one. Grabbing the remote, I fell back on my only option: your Earth “cable.” Beggars can’t be choosers, and I’ve never thought of myself as either, but I still had to settle on whatever movie Satan and his minions of Halloween Horror Demons felt like dealing. I definitely got the “Asshole” hand with all the 3s.

Since this intro is shaping up to be longer than most of the actual reviews I write, I’m gonna quit pussyfooting and get down to what really brings the boys to the yard. The only movie on TV was Monkey Shines. You know the Shocktober rules: I’m only allowed to review movies I’ve never seen before. Which means Showtime couldn’t have picked a better movie.

Monkey Shines has a VERY creepy movie poster, which cleverly plays off of America's fear of cymbals. But that's it. It’s very hard not to be prejudice against a movie that’s about a killer monkey. When that same movie shows you male nudity in its first 10 seconds, it’s like a gay black midget taking the nuts out of his mouth just long enough to heckle an Alabama civil war reenactment. But the Shocktober Spectacular review committee is fair and just. In fact, Monkey Shines took a turn for the better when it took something that would normally suck—getting hit by a truck—and made it look ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS.

Monkey Shines is about a quadrapalegic man who is assigned a monkey to help him perform his daily functions, which is why I hope I never become quadrapalegic. I can think of at least 10 things I do daily that I’d hate to have to rely on a monkey to help me perform. What the quadrpalegic didn’t know was that his particular monkey was, in a past life…a lab monkey. It spent months being injected with a serum made out of human brains, which made it smarter, which I thought was interesting. Is that how things work? If it would’ve been injected with bicep, would it have gotten stronger? If it would’ve eaten kidney, could it have held its liquor better? I’m gonna call bullshit on this theory because I know a guy who spent a few months in jail, and he doesn’t smell any worse at all, even though I’m sure he ate his share of…never mind. Just you never mind.

So anyway, the monkey develops some sort of a mind connection with Quad City DJ, which he uses to do 90 minutes of things that weren’t in the least bit scary. The monkey only kills two people, and both of those deaths are off-screen. And in the first movie of the Spectacular, nonetheless. Here I am at the World Series, and I’ve got my worst batter hitting leadoff. This movie was whack-tacular. I know we’ve been rubbing shampoo in rabbit’s eyes for years, but damn it, this movie should spawn at least five special interest groups protesting animal’s cruelty against us.

On a side note, this movie’s subtitle was, seriously: an experiment in fear, which are both the raddest and least true words to ever be used to describe a movie about an evil monkey.

Monkey Shines gets ONE out of five Jason heads just for showing up, because the Shocktober Spectacular is a lot like the Special Olympics. Everyone who finishes the race gets a hug, no matter what place they come in.

For Tuesday: Twenty years before the Sith were getting their revenge, Marley was getting his. Tomorrow, I’ll be getting mine.

The Top Ten Worst He-Man Names Ever

2005-09-01T20:38:00.000-04:00

The He-Man toys of the ‘80s had the tagline of being “The Masters of the Universe.” Now that I’m older, I’m thinking about their names and hoping a group of our stray astronauts never happens to stumble upon the universe they were the master of. If they did, I'm pretty sure the inhabitants of Eternia, and not our astronauts, would soon be the ones "boldly going where no man has gone before."

Mattel was somehow able to avoid my, and the FBI’s, scrutiny with their action figure names for years, but, and this is a true story, I literally woke up this morning and said to myself, while still in bed, “I should write an article about the top 10 worst He-Man names today.” Point being, that shit will sneak up on you.

The ten worst He-Man figure names are, in order from least likely to traumatize a kid to most:

Ninjor
The inhabitants of Eternia had this terrible habit of naming themselves after what they were. Beast Man was a beast man, Roboto was a robot, and Ninjor was, of course, a ninja. The problem with him specifically is that ninjas are supposed to be shrouded in secrecy, and you can’t go around fooling anybody when your name is “Ninjor.” John Wilkes Booth didn’t introduce himself as “President Shootor.” That’s why he accomplished his crime. I watched He-Man for years, and Ninjor never successfully killed anyone. People would’ve been less prepared to block a bostaff to the head or a katana to the groin if the guy they were talking to wasn’t named “Ninjor."

He-Man
Not since WWF’s Brutus Beefcake has there been a more egotistical name as the one owned by Eternia’s hero himself. Despite the fact that he never wore pants, He-Man wanted to make absolutely sure that you understood that no one out there has more testosterone than he did. I think it’d be a lot easier to just scratch your balls a lot and fart than to name yourself after your own gender. Twice.

Man-E-Faces

Man-E-Faces had, well, many faces. This unfortunately earned him the name of a McDonalds character. Man-E-Faces was this guy in a huge purple “special” safety helmet who would either have the face of a monster, a robot, or a human, depending on his mood. The funny thing was, the box described Man-E-Faces as Eternia’s “Master of Disguise,” but when he changed faces, the only thing about him that changed was his face. Not his clothes, size, height, odor, and so on. How many times could this trick have worked? Certainly not enough to make him a “Master of Disguise.” I’m not saying the people of Eternia are mentally handicapped, I’m just saying that if I’m having a conversation with my friend Dennis, and for whatever reason he put on a lizard mask in the middle of it, I’d know that I was still talking to Dennis.

Buzz Off
Buzz Off was a human bee whose name sucked because it was Buzz Off. Whenever someone called your name, you didn’t know if they wanted to see you or were telling you to fuck off.

Moss Man
Sort of along the same lines as Ninjor, there’s really no need to restate the obvious. Moss Man was a man made of moss, so his name was “Moss Man.” I think that’s hilarious, but I guess it’s really no big deal if you live in the redundancy capital of the galaxy. I’m just glad someone had enough good sense to name me “Mike” and not “Skin Guy.”

Fisto
“Fisto” is not the name of a hero. It’s the name that gets the most laughs when you and your friends sit around seeing who can think of the funniest porn name. Imagine going though life with a name that’s also an insult. I imagine Dick Butkus had the same problem.

Webstor
Webstor was a villain. So was Darth Maul. Darth Maul had a wicked name. Face paint, horns, all-black clothes, and double-bladed lightsaber nonwithstanding, I would not be too excited about fighting a guy named Darth Maul. I can’t say the same about a guy named after a 40 year old black man/boy ‘80s child star who called the man he lived with “mam.”

Clawful
HA HA HA! Oh….I get it. It’s a play off the word “awful.” The M.U.S.C.L.E. line did a similar move with their villain, “Terry-Bull.” The difference was that Terry-Bull was a tough-as nails champion wrestler. Clawful was a human lobster. Terry-bull’s special power was that he could put you in the figure four and make you tap out. Clawful’s special power is that he tastes great in melted butter.

Stinkor
We’ve already established that He-Man characters are either named after what they are or their most defining trait. This can be cool if you destroy things (Destructor), but it’s not so good if your contribution to the fight is that you "offend." Plus, you know how some people are really insecure about a flaw they may have, and they do their best to cover it up and hope people won't notice? You can untuck your shirt and wear vertical stripes all you want, people are gonna notice your spare tire if your name is “Tublard McFatty.” And on a totally inappropriate yet obvious sidenote, “Stinkor” is probably the absolute worst name to yell during sex. But if you ever find yourself having sex with Stinkor, or even the action figure based on his likeness, what you're yelling while doing it is probably the least of your worries.

Ram-Man
I have nothing at all against homosexuals, and I certainly have nothing against porn, but “Ram-Man” is a special He-Man character indeed. “Special” because he’s the second character on this list to wear a “special” “protective” helmet, and like the thirteenth to have a enviable porn name, gay or otherwise. You know how, according to those plaques sold at kiyosks you sometimes see in the mall, peoples' names mean something? Well, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the only meaning one can derive from "Ram Man" name is, “I will put my balls in you.”

Tounge Lashor
That’s it. I refuse to accept an action figure line where one of the character’s names is Tounge Lashor. Mattel was teetering on the edge with this one. If nobody’s going to alert the authorities when they name one of their toys “Tounge Lashor,” what’s stopping them from releasing one named “Fondlor” or “Plen-T-Fingers?” In the words of Jackie Chan in Rush Hour…”absorutery nuhsing.”

The Last Season's Hottest Gift!

2005-08-14T22:59:00.000-04:00

[Written 7 months ago. Posted tonight, with modernizations.]

Until now, the best thing to ever come out of Japan was that line in Karate Kid II when the villian takes of his shirt, thows it at the girl, and says: "You rike, no? You keep...for your correction!" But things have changed.

This season's hottest Christmas gift is not the illustrated edition of The DiVinci Code, but it's very, very similar. Both products provide hours of entertainment while giving you an accurate and intreguing look into a foreign culture, and both leave you questioning the existance of God.

Much like the Furby before it, this year's hottest gift combines the wonders of technology with the insanity of the Japanese. The year's hottest gift is the "76-in-1." It's the year's hottest gift because the "76" in the title refers to the number of old-school Nintendo games it includes, and the "1," I think, refers to the number of amazingly low prices you have to pay to get them all. Don't get me wrong--even though I'm about to spend 3,000 words making fun of it, the 76-in-1 totally beats out Jesus as the reason for the season.

There's the 76-in-1 as I first saw it--being demoed in the mall by Tom Cruise from Collateral. It was being marketed at a kiyosk by some totally stereotypical and generic foreigner who probably made every one of them in his basement. As you'll see, the 76-in-1 breaks many of our country's import/export and copywright laws, and many of humanity's sanity laws. The 76-in-1 is all the proof I need that the Japanese haven't completely forgiven us for Pearl Harbor. The event or the movie.

Here's the first example. I've long believed that the best way to sell anything is to put a picture of a lightsaber battle on the box, but please understand that I say this in jest. But right there on the box is the classic duel from Star Wars: Episode I. This is hilarious because NONE of the games are Star Wars themed, or, to my knowledge, even take place in space. The only connection the 76-in-1 has with Episode I is that the guy who sold it to us sounded just like Watto. But don't worry...I'm sure the use of these characters was granted with George Lucas' COMPLETE approval.

I'm not going to waste your time reviewing the games, because you already know and love most of them. But it's impossible for anything to be completely rad: for every Elm Street 1 and 3 you've gotta have your 2. Mixed in with your Super Mario Bros., your Contra, and your Excitebike are your lesser known "hits," lesser known because they've probably been banned for safety purposes.

For example, you may have heard of the classic "Galaga," but when you have a 12-year-old Taiwaneese girl assembling your product in your closet between handjobs, you have to take some liberties to negotiate copywright laws. Hence: "Galaza"

Next up is "Pooyan," which until tonight was something I thougt you had to pay for from a Vietmnamese hooker. Pooyan stars you! as a pig on an elevator who moves up and down and shoots flying wolves with a bow and arrow. Pooyan is what killed the dinosaurs.

I was happy to see the 76-in-1 included Tekken, probably the prequel to the Playstation classics! But yet, when I select it, the title screen said "YIE ARE KUNG FU." Perhaps that's Japanese for "Tekken." I found out it was actually American for "YIE ARE KUNG FU"--that's what game it actually was. As if you didn't have enough of a reason to laugh at the 76-in-1, they named the first guy you fight in this game after genitals.

You get the idea. By the time you get though 28 games of bullshit, the 76-in-One knows you'll want to take out some aggression. That's why the 29th game is Wild Gunmen. Yeah, we'll see how wild those bastards are when I show them how we slang dem gats in my section. Of course, my showing them involved me holding the gun sideways. Ride or die, biatch. I'm your huckleberry.

Motherfucker, of course I didn't get the part of the guy who shot Jesse James in that movie I auditioned for--I can't even drop this guy from two feet away. And look at him, he's almost as tall as that mountain. Since I'm playing the 76-in-1, and since this game session AND this review were written on a Friday night, I'm not sure if in this picture, Wild Gunmen is talking about this game...or life.

When the 76-in-1 became the only thing I've ever reviewed that's ever insulted me back, I had had enough. Before coming into this, I knew exactly what to expect from a product that was coming from a country where you can buy used schoolgirl's panties from vending machines. I went home with my head hung low, leaving my friend The K-Man to enjoy, in private, what has gone on to become his favorite pasttime.

The SECRET OF NIMH Was The Shits!

2005-07-31T14:24:00.002-04:00

[This article was originally written three weeks ago, but posting was put on hold due to a Wilmington beach trip and a "Stephen King's The Stand"-caliber stomach virus. It was also, sadly, the last article ever written in Charlotte, NC. I live in Hollywood now.]

I’ve got a really bad stomach virus right now. In fact, I ran to the bathroom three times before I was able to finish typing that last sentence. Earlier, fearing eminent death, I genius-ly attempted to neutralize whatever nauseous terror was threatening to launch out of my stomach by laying down and putting in the least nauseating movie ever made: The Secret of NIMH, which I haven’t watched in a while.

Understand that I, for the most part, prefer things that are badass to things that are faggy. After today’s viewing of The Secret of NIMH, I can honestly say that this animated movie about a female mouse is one of the most badass things ever. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right--where I’m from, saying shit like that will get your head dunked into a toilet by the captain of the football team at best or dropped into a snake pit full of cobras at the worst, and believe me, there’s a lot more of those around here than you’d think. But in the Secret of NIMH’s case, I’m willing to back up my claim of it's toughness. Most of this back-up comes purely from nostalgia: The Secret of NIMH was my favorite movie when I was six years old--not Return of the Jedi, not Tron, but the Secret of Goddamned NIMH. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I called it when my parents asked me which video I wanted to rent from the store. It was a sweet little movie about a cartoon mouse who is forced to conduct dealings with cartoon, genetically-enhanced rats, who are the only ones strong and clever enough to move her cement cinderblock home to evade a (I always assumed Nazi and probably child molesting) farmer’s impending seasonal plow. And that's it. There's no zombies, no lightsaber decapitations, no not talking about Fight Club.

Clearly, a mere plot summarization of the film isn’t going to convince you of my case, which is why I’ve decided to list the three reasons why The Secret of NIMH is the greatest thing to ever happen to animation, rats, and any combination thereof. I was also going to include directions for building your own shrine to this movie, but honestly, you probably wouldn’t be reading my site if you didn’t already have one. Assuming you do, let’s begin.

1.) The Secret of NIMH is Not for Pussies

If you are a male in his 20s, the number of musical numbers in an animated film is directly related to the number of times you should be kicked in the balls for having that film in your collection. Not only does The Secret of NIMH have zero of these; it takes the places where a cartoon movie would normally have singing and fills them in with sword fights, blood, or this motherfucker:

That's The Great Owl, kids, and right now he's in your closet.

The only thing remotely gay about this movie is the main theme (Flying Dreams, sung by Paul Williams, written by Jerry Goldsmith) which I have no problem admitting KICKS SO MUCH ASS. Because sometimes things that look really gay on the outside turn out to be badass, like Mrs. Pac Man or my old roommate Will.

2.) The Secret of NIMH stars Shannen Doherty and Wil Wheaton

Stand By Me's Wil Weaton and 90210's Shannen Doherty both provide voices for animated kid mice in this film. This paring is hilariously ironic, because in their future careers, Wil would go on to famously have a leech’s mouth on his balls, while Shannon would famously have her mouth attached to balls like a leech.

3.) The Secret of NIMH has an Awesome Villain

Jenner, the evil leader of the rats, is one of my favorite movie villains of all time, animated or otherwise. Because while Disney movie villains are prancing around like Sigfried and Roy, singing about how dastardly they are in a duet with their talking dinner set, Jenner is either killing someone or snarling about how much he’d rater be killing someone right now.

Pictured above: Jenner knifing his unarmed, overweight, probably diabetic best friend with some sort of magic laser sword. Pictured below: Oh fuck! I'm next!!!

So that's that. Five stars to you, Secret of NIMH.

[HILARIOUS UPDATE: After reading this, my old roommate sent me the following E-mail: "If you are going to use my name in a movie commentary, it should be used in a way that may look like this: If you could combine Yoda and Storm Shadow into one person, that person would probably be like my old roommate Will." ]

I Saw LAND OF THE DEAD Before You!

2005-06-22T22:17:00.000-04:00

...and it was rad, but when there's zombies right there on the movie poster you don't need me to tell you that. Reviewing this movie would be like using 1,000 words to convince you that Rebecca Rojimn looks better without clothes than with, when all you really need to make that point is a finger to point at the screen when X-Men is on. Oh no, I'm not here to talk about the movie...I'm here to talk about one of the rarest and most celebrated events that one should ever hope to be blessed enough to attend.

The free movie preview.

You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been the 12th caller to your local pop station. Radio stations give away free tickets to advanced media screenings of upcoming films. Since my acting teacher is part of the above-mentioned media, he gets these free tickets to every movie, and we've worked out a deal--he keeps the ones for the movies that have talking, I get them for the ones that have head explosions.

You can't bring cameras into the theatre, and the lack of pictures really takes away from this article, but let me try to paint the picture for you. Normally, when you go to the theatre, you pick what you're going to see, but when you have a free ticket, you're going to see whatever the hell that movie is, whether it's your normal cup of tea or not. I don't know who was giving out these free movie passes to the public, but I'm pretty sure it was the same guys who cast the group of friends in Afterschool Specials. There were people of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and ages there--old white men and little mexican babies--but dispite thier gender differences, they were all tied together by one common bond: none of them had ever seen a horror movie. Do you think the ninety-year-old Turkish sultan behind me knows which Friday The 13th movie Kevin Bacon was in? He needed a team of translators just to order the popcorn. There was one woman there who we thought was just getting into the spirit of things by dressing up like a zombie, a la Star Wars premiers. However, as she got closer, we noticed that she was just a normal person who was about 107 years old. We kept a close watch on our brains regardless.

The middle row of the theatre was plastered with "reserved for media" signs, and since Homemade Fireworks is a Web site I figured they probably meant "me." Since the majority of the tickets were given out by radio stations there was this radio DJ there , and I'm convinced that his sole purpose was to make sure everyone in the theatre hated him in as less time as possible. I have no idea why and I'm not making this up, but for some reason the radio DJ was dressed as Indiana Jones...but since he was about 50 pounds overweight he looked more like the boulder that chased him in Raiders. I was seriously thinking about yelling out some Indy lines at him when he got on the mic, until I remembered that the person in front of me in line wasn't dressed up and still looked exactly like Redd Fox, meaning Indy was the most normal person there. Now I'm not saying Redd Fox is a bad looking man, but I should probably mention that the person in front of me in line was a white woman.

Land was no original Dawn, but it was pretty damn sweet nonetheless. I'd make a side-by-side comparison of it to the recent Dawn remake if the recent Dawn remake would ever come up from sucking my wang. Until that day happens, and trust me, I don't see it happening any time in the near future, let me leave you with this...it doesn't matter what movie you're seeing, if you're seeing it at a free movie preview, the ambiance alone adds at least a star and a half. And it doesn't matter what mall parking lot carnival you've won a goldfish at, you'd probalby catch less diseases making out with the carnie that gave it to you than from sharing an armrest with someone at the free movie preview.

Excluding me, of course.

The Sidewalk Art of the Underprivileged

2005-06-10T10:14:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, when the comedy is elusive and the jokes just aren’t flowing, inspiration must be sought. When I’m in this situation I don’t pussyfoot. I turn straight to the poor. Poor people are comedy gold. Bring poor children into the picture, and Dave Chapelle better think about adding a few banana-peel slips to his Rick James shit if he wants to go toe to toe. TV’s Bill Cosby was right—kids DO say the darndest things! They draw some pretty hilarious shit too. When they haven’t ingested anything besides Food Lion store-brand soft drinks and second-hand smoke for the last few months, things go from hilarious “ha-ha” to the kind of hilarious that causes your mom to pull you aside and remind you that it’s not polite to stare. Check this out, bitches:

From a safe distance this playful little pavement mural looks like a whimsical collection of mirth and merriment from the magical mind of a child, but while the sidewalk art’s tractor beam of insanity slowly draws you in, you come to a frightening realization as you approach: “That’s no moon. Its a space station.” Let’s take a closer look at some sidewalk chalk art from the hands and minds of the children living at Charlotte’s most prominently underprivileged apartment complex. Please note that in the above sentence, the term “Charlotte’s most prominently underprivileged” can be interchanged with “my.”

Wow. I’ve always thought that kids’ drawings were reserved for their favoritest things ever, like dinosaurs or lightsaber battles. I don’t remember exactly what I was drawing on my Trapper Keepers in the back row during social studies, but I guarantee it wasn’t coupons.

You know you’re the head of a broke-ass household when your kid is so into discounts that he fantasizes about them in his chalk art. Don’t get me wrong, I went batshit crazy when Harris Teeter knocked their PBR tallboys down to 89 cents, but I didn’t come home and write about it on the pavement. Shit, I didn’t even draw a picture of Katie Holmes’ tits on my driveway after I saw The Gift, much less the fifty cents I saved by buying the large popcorn and the drink together.

Considering that the word “discount” is celebrated three inches to her left, I’ve decided that the picture of the girl crying her eyes out is our artist’s self-portrait. Or, it’s very possible that the artist is from the richest family ever, and her bedroom just happens to be right beneath my bathroom. Either way would explain the crying.

The.

Well said, Corky.

Look—kids don’t just write the word “Anis” in the parking lot. They just don’t. I don’t care if this kid’s mom and dad are both the world’s leading butt surgeons, this is just not acceptable.

Right now you are reading an article written by a guy who lives at an apartment complex where the word “anis” is prominently written in a parking space. And it never fails—that space is always the only one that’s ever free. Whether I’m coming home or going out, I always seem to get stuck with it. Motherfucker, I pull in and out of the “Anis space” so many times a day that by definition I could probably accurately be called homosexual.

In all seriousness, you don’t have to be Indiana Jones to see the hidden message here. Discount…picture of a girl crying…followed by the words “the anis. Ahhh!!!” Looking back, I probably should’ve phoned Social Services after viewing this sidewalk art. There’s more than enough evidence in it to get a conviction. Instead, I stood around and laughed about how that thing towards the top of the third picture down totally looks like a penis.

The Worst Picture Ever

2005-05-31T11:43:00.000-04:00

There it is. The worst picture ever. That sound you’re hearing right now is your eyeballs frying.

I have no idea where, when, or why it was taken, but one thing is perfectly clear: this picture wants to see you dead. I understand that right now, everything in your head is screaming at you to look away, but I invite you to take a deep breath and just give this picture one good, long stare. I was reluctant to review this picture, knowing full well that nothing I write about it could ever be as funny as the picture itself. Plus, judging by the look on our hero’s face, it might even be socially unacceptable to make fun of it. It’s very possible that what we’re dealing with here are record-breaking levels of retardness.

Whatever. I’m still going to make fun of it. From left to right, check out

Buckwheat
He’s on the far left, wearing an “Othello” board as a t-shirt. We can’t see Buckwheat’s face, but I’m pretty sure that on it is the most genuine “what the fuck?!” look the world has ever experienced. His afro is twice the size of his head, but I’d bet that his hair was flat when he came in and it literally exploded out like that when that homosexual banana pranced out on stage. The last time I saw an afro like that was on the Black Panthers in that movie Dead Presidents. If this guy is a Black Panther, and this concert was held as a peaceful gesture to convince his people that Whitey is a-okay, I think it’s safe to say we failed miserably.

The bricks under the speaker
I was going to make fun of how ghetto the entire stage setup was, until I realized it had to be. No legitimate facility would ever sanction this event. Shit, I’m sure there are some P.O.W. camps that would even balk at this as a form of torture in favor of less-brutal testicle shockers.

Check out that stack of empty refridgerators in the background. This event is being held in a landfill.

Afro Businessman
There’s so much wrong with this picture that you really owe your brain an apology after looking at it. One of the most disturbing things in it is Afro Businessman. A living, breathing clusterfuck in and of himself, Afro Businessman dares to combine the professionalism of a coat and tie with the "I live with my parents" admission of an afro. A comically oversized afro. He’s also sporting a moustache on half the surface area of his face. Afro Businessman is suspiciously overdressed for the occasion, which means he’s either Yellow Jumpsuit’s manager or he hilariously flip-flopped the dress code lines on his Star Trek Singles event and Special Education Talent Show invitations. Either way he should be shot.

Look how, from left to right, the picture’s demographics go “adults, Afro Businessman, children.” Now, I’m not implying that at least three of those boys are going home with Afro Businessman in the back of a white van with or against their own will, but….yo, check this out. That’s exactly what I’m implying.

Dickhead
Let me try to put this in perspective for you. You know how you sometimes see a guy who accidentally put on mismatched socks, missed a belt loop, or skipped a button? You have a quick laugh at how ridiculous he looks and then forget about it. Now imagine you saw this guy. He was somehow able to—from head to toe—get everything as wrong as you could possibly get it. The saddest part is—he did it on purpose.

That haircut is what happens when a man sits down in the barber’s chair and says, “give me ‘the penis.’” The look on this guy’s face and the chambered Tiger Woods fist-pump is reflective of how happy he is with the success of said haircut. Butterfly collars sucked, even in the ‘70s. But this guy’s hilariously oversized butterfly collar screams, “please karate my face.” He’s got serious balls flaring that collar out so far when a master as renowned and deadly as Afro Businessman is right there on the front row.

I am honestly convinced that the yellow sequined leather jumpsuit is not of this Earth. I hate to fall back on this crutch, but there is seriously nothing I can say about it that will be as funny as the jumpsuit itself. However, I can say this. When this guy called up the store and requested a tight leather yellow jumpsuit with sequined circles on it, I hope the clerk notified the authorities immediately afterwards.

I see the microphone, but I see no band, amps, or speakers except for the one center stage, which poses a very important question…what the fuck is this guy doing? Perhaps the answer lies in that empty cardboard box in the middle of the stage. It’s possible that this guy is the world’s gayest prop-comic or the world’s gayest cereal tester. As you can tell, I have no idea what he is, but I'm pretty decisive about the fact that whatever he is, he’s the world’s gayest one of them.

After all of that, the black socks with the white shoes are almost forgivable. In fact, I don’t blame this guy for the fact that I’m looking at those white Cousin Eddie Griswold shoes. I blame everyone else, because when someone walks out on stage wearing shoes that bad, it immediately becomes the duty of everyone in that audience to take those shoes and shove them in his ass.

Homemade Fireworks Cuts The Russian

2005-05-12T13:50:00.000-04:00

There is no movie more ‘80s than Rocky IV. The opening scene of the U.S. boxing glove and the Russian boxing glove hitting head-on and sparks flying everywhere says it all. One: intros this gay are usually reserved only for ‘80s movies, and two: this is probably the only movie in existence that could’ve only been made in the ‘80s. You won’t be in the movie theatre watching a jacked up white man in American flag pants beat the shit out of a porn-mustached Iraqi boxer, his turban-wearing trainer, and veil-wearing wife in a stadium full of Iraqis after running through the desert and bench pressing camels anytime soon, even though you totally wish you could. Rocky IV, however, was fortunate enough to beat the pussification of the American media by about 10 years, giving us the most politically incorrect and ultimately rad movie of all-time.

Yeah, Rocky beats up a Russian. We all know that. Here’s a look at some of the less noticable things that are unfortunately overlooked but contribute equally to Rocky IV's greatness.

The singing robot
When you’re watching Rocky III, you’re thinking “This is the Goddamned 80est movie ever.” It had Hulk Hogan, Mr. T., pinball, I even thought I saw The Muppet Show in there. Stallone instantly usurped his predecessor by tossing the “fuck off, Reds” theme on Rocky IV right off the bat. Then he threw in an unprecedented two musical montages. When you thought the laws of the cosmos made it impossible to make anything more ‘80s, Stallone went absolutely batshit and threw in a singing robot. There is no question in my mind that the ending was originally supposed to be John Cryer breakdancing on a Q*Bert machine.

There’s a scene in the movie where the seductively female-voiced robot interrupts Rocky’s dinner to tell Rocky how cute it thinks Pauly is, which proves suspicions I originally formed way back in Rocky II. Pauly will stick his penis in anything.

Apollo Creed’s Wardrobe
Until I saw this movie, I thought the basis for judging how good a fighter someone was was how many articles of clothing that person had with the American Flag on it. I can’t believe I was so blind to not notice that an American Flag top hat is only going to make people want to beat you up more. I know this girl who hikes her pants up to her breasts. Of course my friends and I make fun of her liberally, but that’s where it ends. That damn top hat got Apollo killed.

James Brown’s Face
I honestly stayed around for the credits because I had to know whether or not James Brown was played by a catcher’s mitt. His face honestly looked like a cowboy boot that had been left out in the yard all summer. No wonder they call this guy the godfather of soul…he looks like he’s old enough to be the father of everybody. But he lives in America, and he feels good about it.

2000 PSI
According to Drago’s awesomely stereotyped Russian trainer, Drago’s punches max out at 2000 pounds of pressure per square inch. For reference purposes, Mike Tyson was throwing punches at 750 psi in his prime. I imagine 2000 psi would be like getting hit by an SUV full of fat people. He manages to hit Rocky in the head about 50 times and Rocky still survives 15 rounds.

And finally, I’ve saved the best for last.

Duke
You know how Boba Fett was only in the Star Wars movies for a total of five minutes, but now he somehow became this iconic figure with a huge cult following. That’s what Duke is to me. In fact, all of that introductory bullshit was just so I could write about “the black Mickey.” I wasn't even paying attention to what I was typing until now.

Duke (brilliantly played by Tony Burton) was Apollo’s trainer. He joined Rocky’s camp when Apollo died because Apollo really didn’t need a trainer any more. When Rocky finally makes Drago bleed, Duke jumps up and down and yells, "he's cut, he's cut!,” seizureing his way into catchphrase history. Back in Wyoming, whenever one of my friends did anything that was seemingly impossible, we “cut the Russian.” Usage example: “You got an ‘A’ on that physics test?!” “Yep. I cut the Russian.”

I think the entire “Rocky” character was just a front. These movies were made to tell Duke’s story.

So there you have it. What better way to end this review than with Rocky’s own finale words: “In here there were two guys killing each other but I guess thats better than fifty million. What I am trying to say if if I can change and if you can change, everybody can change". I have no idea what that means, but it offered an inspirational end to the most ‘80s movie of all time, and almost made me forget that I just watched a two-hour political cold war allegory that centered around a retarded boxer from South Philly.

Oh yeah. Don’t think I didn’t notice that there are two songs on Rocky IV's soundtrack about flaming hearts. Because there are.

The Worst Bathroom Graffiti In Charlotte

2005-03-13T16:42:00.000-05:00

I honetstly believe that reading was invented soley for the purpose of giving people something to do while they're on the toilet.

Bathroom Graffitti is an art form. It's a thing of beauty. There should be books of collections of it. However, as big of a fan of bathroom graffiti I am, the terrible bathroom graffiti at Charlotte's Brick and Barrell almost singlehandedly ruined an entire genre. Here's a look at the worst bathroom graffitti in Charlotte:

"Go ASU!!"
I hate to think that I live in a world where a guy is such a big fan of a bunch of kids who play sports for a team all the way across the country for a school he's probably never seen that he felt the need to write about it while he was using the bathroom. Me, I couldn't give a shit about ASU. Rebecca Rojimin could be my girlfriend and play for ASU, and I still probably wouldn't even stop at the game as I flipped through the channels to Deadwood. I'm sure they appreciate your support, but I don't think any of the players are going to be in the Brick and Barrell bathroom to personally experience the inspiration. All I'm saying is that crap like this makes that poem about the guy who left broken-hearted because he came to shit and only farted look like Walt Whitman.

"Wake owns UNC and Duke! Go back to Walmart bitches!"
Alright...I can't make fun of this, because this was obviously written by a guy with chart-topping levels of mental problems. That's the only logical explanation for this. It was either written by him or the guy who was assigned to him by social services to help him pee. Either way, I just want to go on record as saying this is the worst fucking thing ever.

"Doug Whitaker rocks. Scott Hoch rules!!"
Okay, let's analyze the circumstances behind bathroom graffiti in general. I'm pretty sure that whoever writes it doesn't walk into the bathroom with the sole purpose of writing something on the wall. They come in to use the bathroom. Most bathroom graffiti is probably written as an afterthought. The inspiration to write "Doug Whitaker rocks" struck someone while they were urinating, which means that someone was thinking about Doug Whitaker while they had their penis in their hand.

"Charles Marshall Knows Dickheads"
Look...the joke here doesn't revolve around the quality of the character of individuals Charles Marshall knows. Well, it kind of does...I'm not going to waste my time and yours by telling you that "Charles Marshall Knows Dickheads" is the funniest thing ever written, because it is. That sentence is way funnier than any joke I could write about it. The real joke here becomes evident when you look at the picture and note that "Dick" and even "Heads" was added later by someone else. That means that before "Dick" and "Heads" was added, somebody held their junk with one hand and used their other hand to make absolutely sure that every male in the Queen City that stopped here for a piss knew that "Charles Marshall Knows." Why in the fuck would someone write "Charles Marshall Knows" on a bathroom wall?I have no idea who Charles Marshall is, but unless he is working on a formula for a pill that will make my roommate's dog fart less or has sat in on a meeting regarding the possible release of Roadhouse 2, I don't give a fuck what he knows.

Just know that he knows.

Whoremonger-iffic!

2005-03-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

While we here at Homemade Fireworks proudly and shamelessly make fun of a lot of things, you’ll never catch us making fun of God. That’s a no-brainer. The guy created nature’s most destructive forces, including dinosaurs, ninjas, and the Predator. If he can do that, he’d have no problem replacing my toilet water with cobras or turning my PSII into a PSI, and I can’t have that. Yep−the Father, the Son, and even the Holy Ghost are all completely off-limits here. That’s why it was so hard for me to think only holy thoughts when some guy handed me this brochure last weekend. Check it out.

So what does the bible say about sex before marriage? Apparently not enough, which is why I have no idea what the answer is. You know how they have Christian rap groups, skateboard teams, rockers, and other things that are less cool versions of cool things to try to make The Bible more inviting to a younger, hipper audience? You’d get the job done a lot better and save a lot of D.C. Talk t-shirt wearers a lot of ass beatings by just adding more sex. What's the one thing you remember about that movie The Gift? Katie Holmes' breasts. The Gift was an alright thriller and Keanu Reeves even gave the performance of a lifetime, but the only reason any of us sat through it was to see Katie Holmes tits.

Here’s some of the highlights:

I hate when people blame the media for anything. Why is a TV show using its reach to glorify sex any more wrong than a book that uses its reach to vilifiy it? Beacuase it was written by God? Some people say the same about "Star Wars."

Plus, by the time someone is a teenager they’re not trained by the media that they like sex, they’re trained by hormones that they like sex.

”Whoremongering” is pretty much the sweetest word I’ve ever heard. It makes me think of that guy Swearingen from Deadwood. That’d be such a rad nickname for a pimp whose gimmick is that he dresses up like a dictator. The Whoremonger. The brochure got big ups for using this word in a sentence, but instantly lost them when it started quoting Bible verses to prove points. I’m not knocking Christians or their beliefs, just their shitty double standards. Why do people who themselves use the word "faith" as a synonym for what they practice when they sit around quoting book passages to each other get pissy when the rest of the world doesn’t validate and accept these very same quotes as facts? Yeah, so according to you The Bible explicitly says I shouldn’t have sex, but I’m sure if I looked hard enough I could find at least three paragraphs in Karch Kiraly’s Championship Volleyball that prove why the Gamecock cheerleaders should be servicing me right now.

I can’t really argue with this, because I use this exact same argument every Saturday morning to explain to myself why I didn’t get any phone numbers the night before. The difference here is that I’m sure God means it when he says it. For me it’s just kind of a sorry excuse, like when I get scored on in Madden and I’m like, "Dude, my controller wasn’t plugged in all the way.”

You’re right, and I totally agree, but this doesn’t say anything about mocking his brochures, which I've decided to use this entire article to do.

Is it a waterslide? I hope it’s a waterslide! Weeeeeeee!

I’ve never been less compelled to click on a URL than I am with www.FEARGOD.us. Doesn’t exactly sell the site. You could’ve named your site www.CLICKHEREIFYOUSHOWERWITHYOURSISTER.com. and I’d have been more compelled to visit it.

You’re more than welcome to click on either of the above links at your own discretion. Only one of them will save you from the horrors of pre-marital sex, however, and I’m not going to tell you which one.

Homemade Fireworks: Tournament Champion Ultimate Edition!

2005-03-06T21:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been a month. Where have we been all this time? Exactly where you thought--on a magical, mysterious journey throughout the reaches of space and time. Our mission: to locate, retrieve, and combine into one Web site the infinite constants of hilarity that caused the cavemen to piss their loincloths and that our robot slave masters will one day exchange around the watercooler when they're not turning us into fuel for their killing machines. While the mission was a success, the universal constants of hilarity apparently involve run-on sentences.

Enough pussyfooting. HF is back, and as you can tell by the new logo, courtesy of Eric Hill (or as he's known in the future: LORD DISTRUCTOR!), it's not fucking around.

And it didn't return alone.

When I meet people who read the site but don't know me in person, they sometimes comment that I'm not as dorky as they thought I'd be. To make sure that never happens again, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you HOMEMADE FIREWORKS...THE BLOG. You can check it out now if you want, but only if you want to see the most anti-climactic debut of anything since "the shockmaster." There's nothing there. But don't fret...no later than this time tomorrow, HF The Blog will be a bustling metroplis of mirth and merriment, and it will be updated a lot more than this site.

Speaking of, stop by tomorrow for the first article of Homemade Fireworks: Season II. It has nothing to do with Transformers, and everything to do with sex, both of which are huge draws here.

That is all. As always, feel free to drop a comment or email me.

Gillette, Wyoming, Part I

2005-02-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

I grew up in Beaumont, Texas. I spent my last two years of high school and all of my college years in South Carolina. The lost years in between were spent in Gillette, Wyoming, and they were pretty weak. It’s easy for anyone to imagine how bad it sucked living in Wyoming. Just imagine living where you live now, but also imagine that you’re on fire and that zombies are currently eating your brain.

If Wisconsin is the heart of America, Wyoming is America’s sweaty ballsack. The town of Gillette was strange because it wasn’t backwoods, country, Western, country-western, or Midwestern. In fact, it was extremely progressive and clean. The thing that made Gillette so surreal was that it was completely out of touch with the rest of the country. It was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing. It played by it’s own rules, and to my knowledge, very few people have ever made it out, which…holy shit…makes it just one Tina Turner and retarded man with a midget in a backpack away from being Bardertown.

Gillette is tied with the first-place spot on the winner's podium at the World Alter-Boy Ballet Championships as the last place a 14-year-old boy should be. The closest shopping malls were two and a half hours away in opposite directions. Even those towns were about the size of Pineville, for you NC readers. The closest "big" city was Cheyenne, and that was six hours away and half the size of Charlotte. If I remember correctly there were about 8 high schools in the entire state so when we played sports every game was an overnight trip.

A pretty douchey comparison can be drawn between Gillette’s geographical isolation and my time in Gillette’s isolation from the rest of my psyche. I learned nothing in those three years, found out nothing about myself, did nothing memorable, and I don’t keep in touch with anyone. All I took out of Wyoming was a kick-ass jump-shot which I don’t have anymore and a huge tolerance for pretentiousness which I don’t have anymore, either. As far as my "lore" is concerned, I never even lived there. It’s part of the Director’s Cut of the movie of my life, but my scenes in Gillette would definitely be left on the cutting room floor for the theatrical release.

If there’s one thing I remember about my Wyoming high school, it’s that the guys were assholes and the girls…were…bitches. My friend Cassidy summed up this point, and this entire article, with one sentence, "Do you know why you shouldn’t sweat that girl? Because she sucks. Alright, so she’s hot—but she’s hot in Gillette, Wyoming." After that, Cassidy made me put him in a backpack and run through the woods while he taught me about the force.

With that, let’s meet me, circa 9th grade. If you’ll look slightly below this sentence you’ll meet the star of the show:

In 9th grade I liked hair product, white shorts, and not much else. I have no idea what Chris and I were discussing right here, but it probably had something to do with which Saved By The Bell chick we’d bone first and the things we’d call her while doing so.

Also, notice how I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt and that girl a few seats ahead of me is wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. That's because it's very possible that by the end of the day, the entire school would be buried in snow. This picture was taken in June, but that means fuck all. In Wyoming, you respect Mother Nature.

I don’t have a picture of our Wyoming house, but I remember it was huge and it cost my parents just over $100,000. That sounds like a kick-ass deal, until you learn that for 250 miles in every direction we were surrounded by this:

Plus, I’m pretty sure this was out there somewhere, too:

That was our family dog, Beau. Remember that movie The Beastmaster? I don’t think even he could’ve got Beau to stop shitting on the carpet.

I was on the swim team in 9th grade, which means it’s very possible that there are pictures out there of me in a speedo. Instead, I decided to post this photo of me cautiously backing away as our trainer is eaten alive by his hair:

The one cool thing about Wyoming was that we were so close to Deadwood, S.D.—a town based on the hit HBO series. It kicks ass because a few of the actual buildings were preserved. They’re all casinos now, making Deadwood a Wild West Vegas. It’s as awesome as it sounds.

The Whackest '80s Rap Lyrics Ever

2005-01-25T15:06:00.000-05:00

Ahh...the '80s. Apparently this was "the day" rappers keep telling us to remember back in. Many purists say hip-hop's golden age was also it's glory days, but this article says it wasn't. Sure, lyrics are a lot more violent nowadays, but at least when Eminiem tells us his headless mother is in his trunk, he lets us know exactly how many times he stabbed her and then raped her eyesockets before he put her there. All '80s rap told me was that Salt N'Pepa's here, and they're in effect. In no particular order, here are more of the worst rap lyrics NOT said by Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks during the end credits of "Dragnet."

"Basketball"
- Kurtis Blow

"Basketball is my favorite sport
I like the way they dribble up and down the court
Just like I'm the King on the microphone so is Dr. J and Moses Malone
I like Slam dunks take me to the hoop
My favorite play is the alley oop
I like the pick-and-roll, I like the give-and-go,
Cause it's Basketball, uh, Mister Kurtis Blow"

Kurtis Blow really likes basketball, according to the recording studio janitor's 8-year-old retarded nephew who wrote these lyrics three minutes before the recording session. Does he like it in a boat? Does he like it in a moat? Does he like it in a can? Does he like it Sam I Am? I like slam dunks take me to the hoop...my favorite play is the alley oop? Jesus. Last night's Subway sandwhich order was a better rap than that.

"Dopeman"
- Ice Cube

"If you smoke cane you a stupid mother fucker.
Known around the hood as the schoolyard grucker."

Trust me...the last thing I want to do is call AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted a liar. However, I'm willing to bet that NO ONE in Ice Cube's hood is calling the crackheads "schoolyard gruckers." You know why? BECAUSE THERE'S SO SUCH GODDAMNED WORD. Unless "grucker" is ebonics for "mountebank," I'm not buying it. Sources close to ebonics say it isn't. My rewrite of the line:

"If you smoke cane you a stupid mother fucker.
Fishin' for the blow just like Darius Rucker."

Is genius. Pure genius, and it took me less than a minute to think of. Since I really liked Three Kings, I'm not even going to point out to Ice Cube that I'm white. And from Wyoming.

"The Fuck Shop”
- Too Live Crew

“The Fuck Shop…it’s where it’s at.
The Fuck Shop…the place to splat!”

The place to splat. I see. Don’t get me wrong—this line is shittier than a Taco Bell bathroom, but what bothers me most is the lethargy with which it was written. Let’s be honest—the “at” sound isn’t exactly the hardest sound to find a rhyme for. The Fuck Shop could’ve just as easily have been "Where I chase the cat,” “Where I fill my Jimmy Hat,” or “The place to play Combat.” But the place to splat? That’s awful. Unless they actually meant to say that The Fuck Shop is the happening place to make fart noises. Then I totally apologize.

“The Freaks Come Out At Night”
-Whodini

“Hut one! Hut two! Hut hut hut!”

Nobody will ever really know why Whodini decided to call football plays in the middle of their rap. I think it’s one of those things that mankind isn’t supposed to understand, like Jesus or The Next Karate Kid. What cracks me up is that Whodini’s not just calling for a snap here. Hut one? Hut two? Whodini’s calling plays. Are they going deep? Are they taking it up the middle? For whatever reason, they don’t want you to know. They want to keep you guessing. I guess that’s why they call themselves “Whodini.”

The Decepticons: The '80s Most Disfunctional Terrorist Organization

2005-01-21T07:45:00.000-05:00

The Decepticons suffered from the same ailment as every other cartoon terroristorganization bent on world domination in the ‘80s: misdirected focus of resources. That blame falls entirely on the shoulders of Megatron, their leader.

Megatron was a 25-foot tall robot with a cannon on his arm that was two-thirds as big as he was. Remember WWF’s Andre The Giant? I wouldn’t even want to get bitch-slapped by that guy, much less shot by a laser gun as big as two of him. But that’s not all. According to the bio on the back of the box the "Megatron" toy came in, that cannon could tap into black holes for power. Not your car's cigarette lighter... black holes. Plus, Megatron was in charge of an entire army of similar robots, with similar weaponry, who turned into things like tanks, jets, and thirty-foot long flying laser guns. For an idea of how lobsided the battle between the Decepticons and Earth should’ve been, imagine Daniel LaRusso in a dress trying to stop 30 charging steamrollers by pointing his finger at them and screaming "pow!"

So why is Megatron's face not on our dollar bills right now? Terrible implementation of even worse plans. Instead of simply ordering his men to shoot to liquify, Megatron thought his time would be better spent building a satellite that could somehow seize control of Earth’s weather, allowing him to freeze the oceans, thus cutting off our tuna supply and punishing us into submission by forcing us to eat dinners that weren’t quite as tasty with lemon juice. Sure, he thought of other ideas, but when it came down to it, they were really just kind of variations of that first idea.

Megatron, if you are reading this right now, pay particular attention to this next sentence: you and your army have laser guns. Use them. To add insult to insult, Megatron transformed into a gun himself, and he still never shot anybody. I’m not saying that’s inexcusable, I’m just saying that if I had the power to turn into a time-travelling poontang attractor, you damn well better believe that I’d be making more than a few trips to 2027 with Halle Berry and the closest thing I could find to her lesbian twin sister.

Fast-forward to Transformers: The Movie, which was the ONE TIME Megatron and his army used ther guns. They took out about ten of the good guys in less than a minute. They even did it over a kick-ass ‘80s metal song and talked a little yang while they were doing it. I’m assuming the cartoon TV series took place in the 1980s. The narrator on the Transformers movie says the movie takes place in 2005. That means it took Megatron 20 years to realize that one of the ways to win a war is to actually cause causalities on the other side. Hell, we lost more Americans in the Gulf War than we did in our battle vs. the Decepticons, and Iraq didn’t even have a twenty foot tall robot that transforms into a twenty foot long robot alligator on their side, as far as I know.

“Wow…who would’ve thought the President, the Pope, and Bono would all be in the White House on the day we decided to destroy it. Alright, America! Prepare to EXPLODE!!!"

“Wait! Cease fire! My mechanically malvolent mastermind has concocted the ultimate plan to take over the world!”

“First we taint the earth’s water supply using the shit launcher we built with the money we stole from Fort Knox!”

“You mean the one we built with the money I suggested we use to build a robot dinosaur ninja with Death Stars for hands?”

“That’s the one! Secondly, I’ll need…uh...a giant bowl of soup! Speaking of...why are you still standing around listening to me talk about it? MAKE IT HAPPEN!”

“When that’s in place, I’ll use this golden stop light changer to cause traffic jams AT EVERY INTERSECTION IN EVERY STATE IN EVERY COUNTRY AROUND THE GLOBE!!! HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

“I’ve spent the last three months building this nuero-helmet to protect me from the humans' deadly mind control powers! There will be no stopping us this time!

"But humans don't have..."

"When the time to strike is upon us, I’ll finish mankind forever with this…something something cube!”

“Megatron, you are aware that I’m a thirty foot tall robot, and according to this picture, you turn into a pistol that’s at least half that size? And according to the box that your toy comes in, you can tap into black holes for power?”

"That bowl of soup isn't going to cook itself."

"For fuck's sake."

"When you're done with that come help me point this thing at the ocean."

My favorite Decepticon was a guy named "Soundwave." He looked the coolest, but his very existence negates my entire previous argument about the Decpticons and their bad-assness, because Soundwave transformed into a cassette player.

In a war for galactic supremacy, a tape player is the most useless thing you could possibly turn into, except for maybe a toilet bowl, or a smaller, less functional toilet bowl. Hey Soundwave—it doesn’t matter how cool you look—until they make a guy who transforms into headphones, you’ll always be the Decpticon who the other Decpticons tie to the flagpole and pop in the ass with their towels after gym.

Actually, there was a group of Decepticons that had it worse than Soundwave: the guys who turned into Soundwave’s tapes. At first, all I could think about was the endless shit these guys got from the other Decepticons, but then I realized they probably didn’t get any at all, because transforming into a tape was probably the equivalent of being a "special needs" Transformer. I figure the other guys just avoided eye-contact with them in the hallways and that was it.

What the animators didn’t think about in the ‘80s was that in 2005, when the Transformers movie supposedly takes place, tapes will be outdated. That means that by 2005, the tape squad would have no reason to even leave Decpticon headquarters. They’d be hanging out in the back room playing Connect Four with the guys who transformed into DeLoreans and Frogger machines. The only time they’d ever see action is if Megatron devised a plan that involved taking over the world one music store discount bin at a time. Holy shit—I was kidding around just then and I still came up with a better plan for world domination than Megatron ever came up with. And I don’t even have an intelligence rating of "10."

On a side note regarding the tapes, I couldn’t help but notice how the producers would use the exact same song whenever they needed rock music on the cartoon. Apparently it was awesome, because whoever was onscreen when it played, human or robot, would break into the Molly Ringwald Breakfast Club dance the instant it came on.

[thanks to www.transfan-asylum.org for the pictures]

Another AUDITION I Didn't Get

2005-01-19T13:33:00.000-05:00

[It's always cool to know that people read my site. Here's a massive movie review for Beth, who requested this way back in October. Thanks for reading. ]

The Japanese film Audition made one thing obvious--Japan has absolutely no interest in building foreign relations between themselves and me. I'm trying, Japan. I eat at your restaurants. I play as you guys in Axis and Allies. Hell, one of my favorite movies is about a ninety-year old janitor who beats up a bunch of teenagers in skeleton costumes using your most rad and lethal export, but I guess that's not enough. I've sent Japan my ambassador, but Audition was the peacemaking equivalent of their ambassador punching my ambassador's grandmother in the face.

Audition opens in a hospital room where our hero and his son watch their mother die. Cut to seven years later--the son, now seventeen, notices that his dad has been upset lately and mentions that maybe he should consider remarrying. The hero, who we'll call Aesop, thinks this is a good idea, but soon gets discouraged because he can't meet any nice women. His strategies for doing this, by the way, have so far included not dating, not talking to women, not making eye contact with women, and making sure to never appear in a room with anyone who has ever met a woman. It's then that a movie executive friend of his comes up with the genius idea (I'm not being sarcastic. I seriously think it's genius) of holding a fake audition for a fake female lead in a sort of real movie, in which the hero could sit in on to screen applicants for a wife. I think.

Something really needs to be pointed out here before I continue. See how my review was able to get to this point in the story in one paragraph that probably took you less than five minutes to read? The movie took 45 minutes to get me to the same place. I was even kind enough to toss a few jokes into the opening paragraph. All Audition gave me was 45 minutes of this:

(Reviewer Re-enactment)

Another thing I noticed is that in Japan, their horror movie characters are just as fucking moronic as ours. After the hero picks a shy, soft-spoken girl as the winner, his movie executive friend checks out some of the cryptic answers she gave during the audition. He's even nice enough to point out that she lied about her:

- address
- family
- studio contact
- place of employment
- favorite food not being "people."

He goes so far as to beg the hero not to call her, but I've seen enough horror movies to know that things just wouldn't be right if directly after this plea, the camera didn't instantly cut to a close-up of the hero smiling while on a date with the girl anyway. Which it did.

The guy and the girl go out on two or three dates, and somewhere around this point in the movie was THE GREATEST SHOCK SCARE I'VE EVER SEEN IN A MOVIE EVER. The movie had been completely docile up to now and I never NEVER fall for the shock scare, but in all the horror movies I’ve ever seen, I've never been scared as bad as I've been at that moment. If I sound kind of ambiguous describing exactly what happened and why, it's because it didn't make any damn sense at this point in the movie and makes just as much sense today, but that doesn't mean it was less scary. Just ask my underwear.

Anyway, I guess that doesn't really matter though because nothing else scary happened for the next thirty-five minutes. Nothing. I'm not kidding. The guy even confesses that the audition was less than genuine, and the girl is totally cool with it. They even go on another date, and at this point I realize that this Japanese doughboy has squeezed three more dates out of a fake audition than I've gone on in the last six months. I'm an hour and twenty minutes into the movie, which, disregarding the above paragraph's half-a-second, has been a fucking love story. It might as well have been your common chick-flick fare with Hugh Grant as the hero, Sandra Bullock as the girl, Haley Joel Osmont as the son, and my middle finger as the film's most honest critic.

It's not until the man has sex with the girl at a beach getaway and wakes up the next morning to find her gone that the movie starts to get a bit weird. As he walks around town looking for her, discovering where she lied about working, lied about living, and lied about not making sandwhiches out of peoples faces, he starts to uncover bits of her shady past, but still nothing too shocking by horror movie standards. By the way, according to the timecode that's been on top of my TV screen the entire time thanks to me losing my VCR remote years ago, we’re an hour and forty minutes into the movie.

At the 100-minute mark the girl sneaks into the guy’s house and poisons his drink. The guy passes out, and for the next ten minutes…

I’m not a cultured man at all, but by the time this movie’s end credits finished rolling I had learned something very important about Eastern civilization that they don’t mention on those Zodiac menus they hand out at their restaurants: The Japanese don’t play by the same rules we do. Case in point: our cartoons make people laugh. Their cartoons give people seizures. I was about to learn the hard way that Japan wasn't all Mogwais and Bonzai Trees, which, until tonight, I totally thought it was.

…for the next ten minutes we get a first-person look into this girl’s past through a sequence that, unless you’ve happened to catch a glimpse of the aerobics class at the Steele Creek YMCA, will be the most disturbing thing you’ll ever see. Although I can’t find any screen caps on the Web, you can turn this into an interactive review right now by shoving your finger down your throat. Without giving too much away, we find out what really happened to her family, her studio contact, her place of employment, and oh yeah...a guy eats vomit.

So after this dreamy montage the man awakes on the floor of his house, fully aware and concious but unable to move, to find the girl standing over him in full Catwoman regalia. Apparently she's decided that this time, saying she can't go out because she has to wash her hair tonight, asking if they can still be friends, and then later giggling with her friends about the size of his genitals won't be sufficient enough of a breakup. True story: in 10th grade, this girl I barely even dated was so mad that I liked her best friend instead that she wrote that I was an asshole in huge letters on her locker. I thought this was a little extreme until I saw the Audition chick slowly sink acupunctue needles into the guy's stomach. Again. And again. And Again. And Again. And Again. Apparently the Japanese haven't developed "zoom out" technology for their cameras yet, because every one of these are shown in excruciating close-ups. Do you know what the worst part about all of this is? The guy didn't even do anything wrong. He hooks up with her, and the next thing I know, he's getting acupuncture needles shoved in his gut, which is why I came to the conclusion that this must all part of the natural Japanese courting process. Next she shoves one in his tongue. It's also very possible that she put one in each eye, but it's around this point that I quit watching.

I don't consider myself a pussy by any means. I've jumped out of moving automobiles, broken concrete blocks with my hand, and even had a stripper give me her phone number, but I'm not ashamed to say that as of press time, I've still never seen a girl in oversize prophylactics put needles in a Japanese man's eyes. So now I'm literally laying there with my face under the covers listening to this girl's creepy chirpy dialog when I hear a strange noise. "Hmmmm," I say to myself. "That noise sounds a lot like...a Japanese man getting his feet sawed off with piano wire? Could it be?" I pull down the covers. Yep.

The guy's son finally bursts through the door to find his footless, pin-filled father lying on the floor who, if he could talk, would say "About fucking time, Captain Punctual!" After a brief struggle the son pushes the girl down a flight of stairs, and that's Audition. No, really. That's it.

Audition was, without a doubt, the most whacked out thing I've ever seen. It didn't make any damn sense from beginning to end. Unless, of course, the two end sequences were visual metaphors illustrating what the man feared would happen if the relationship failed, and his equally horrifying fears of what would happen if the relationship actually worked out. In the reveal of what really happened to the girl's ex-boyfriend, the horrific severity of the imagery was necessary to convey the severity as it existed in the hero's head. If things didn’t work out he's worried she'll go batshit--an understandable conclusion drawn by the vague answers and cautionary advice he constantly received when asking others about her past. Of course, his mind went to work, inflating just how batshit she went in the past to hyperrealistically horrific levels like our minds always do. If things DID work out, he’s so in love with her that he knows she’ll get under his skin "deeper and deeper" (the transration of the Japanese word she says as she pushes the acupuncture pins into him) until it will be painful to even look at another girl (the needles in the eyes). He’d gladly surrender his very independence over to her without thinking twice about it, living every moment of his life for her (his paralyzation). The problem is, he realizes that once he does this he won’t have enough power over his overwhelming emotions to ever walk away (his amputated feet), and he doesn’t know if he’s absolutely ready to give up that independence. The reason Audition sucked as a horror movie was because it was not a horror movie at all. It was a When-Harry-Met-Sally type guy-meets-girl love story with an unprecedented, unique, and dare I say genius plot denouncement that American cinema would never allow or understand.

But what do I know?

-GONG!-

The Assters: A Slice Of Americana

2005-01-14T08:28:00.000-05:00

When you’re Charlotte’s most celebrated and lusted-after Internet personality you’re going to have a huge social circle. To satisfy the masses I try not to focus on a certain group of friends, but what I found on the Internet yesterday was so hilarious that I had to break the first two rules of HF. I apologize in advance to everyone reading this who isn’t one of the two people who will find it funny.

I have a group of friends who golf, differentiated from my other group of friends who golf on XBOX and only XBOX. The previously mentioned group is hilariously retarded, "retarded" being extremely conservative and generous. Every year they have a three-day golf tournament between themselves called "The Assters" (get it?). It’s a huge event, the agenda consisting of three days of beer, golf, and beer. Of all the excuses we give ourselves to drink for three days straight, The Assters is certainly the most regal.

Anyway, I was on the Internet yesterday, checking out http://www.worldofquotes.com/ to find the best phrase to use to tell people to reach for the stars, believe in themselves, and take the "I" out of team. As I was browsing the list of quote topics I was shocked to see that one of them was, you guessed it, "Asters."

I knew The Assters was huge among my friends, but I had no idea it was so grand that it inspired a handful of America’s literary superstars to immortalize it in timeless prose. I clicked on the link, curious to see what Ralph Waldo Emerson had to say about a golf tournament named after the area from which farts come.

As was expected from such renowned artists, the three quotes listed on the site perfectly captured the heart, the glory, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat that one could only find at The Assters. Here are the three quotes, analyzed, interpreted, and broken down into their true essence by the historians here at Homemade Fireworks.

Quote #1
"Chide me not, laborious band! For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought."
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

To realize just how poignant and prophetic this quote rings, one has to break it down and examine it phrase by phrase. Like The DiVinci Code, the story isn’t told by the quote: it’s hidden in the quote itself. Let’s take a look:

"Chide me not, laborious band! For the idle flowers I brought;… -- Okay…this sentence doesn’t really belong here. Take it out.

Every aster in my hand goes home loaded…: Exactly.

…with a thought." That part doesn’t belong either.

Quote #2
"The Autumn wood the aster knows, The empty nest, the wind that grieves, The sunlight breaking thro' the shade, The squirrel chattering overhead, The timid rabbits lighter tread Among the rustling leaves. "
Author: Dora Read Goodale
Source: Asters

This sentence is a gay as a sentence can possibly be without actually including the words " hot butt sex." What interests me here is the source. Apparently this quote was spoken at The Assters itself, which means it could only have been said by one of six people. Read the quote again. Grieving winds? Squirrles chattering overhead? Only one man talks like that.

Quote #3
"The aster greets us as we pass with her faint smile."
Author: Sarah Helen Power Whitman
Source: A Day of the Indian Summer (l. 35)

Ah yes. "The aster greets us as we pass with her faint smile." The Assters is indeed a glorious spectacle to behold. No sporting event captures the gamut of human emotion quite like this, and no words could capture its royal prestige better than these eleven. Like America and the Millennium Falcon, The Assters is definitely a girl. She faintly smiles upon us and welcomes us as we walk from hole to hole, a PBR in one hand and a big old bunch of the American Spirit in the other. When you look upon The Assters and its noble participants, you are gazing upon a little something I like to call "beauty." The Assters is a gift from God. A drunken, dick-joke filled gift from God.

The Hotlist, 1-13-05

2005-01-13T16:25:00.000-05:00

(Last week's position, movement, weeks on current list)

Hot

1) Stereophonics "Just Enough Education To Perform" (2H, +1, 2)
What John Mayer would sound like if he was Scottish and cool.

2) Gameboy Advance (3H, +1, 2)
This Christmas gift was so rad that it almost edged out Jesus as the reason for the season.

3) Industrial
The new trance

4) Amy Cobb
Hey Amy...I scored 145,000 on Galaga.

5) Patrick's New Crew
Now 50% metrosexualer!

6) Trance (5H, -1, 2)
7) www.totalrock.com
8) Boxing
9) Glamorama
10) Liquor

Cold

1) Getting cast
5 auditions. 0 callbacks. 1 more case of Ramen Noodles.

2) Dating
I totally got dumped last week…

3) Interest (1C, +2, 2)
...but don't really care.

4) Steele Creek YMCA (10C, -6, 2)
Everyone there is fat. Either they’re coincidentally filming a secret "before" commercial every night I go, or the damn equipment just doesn’t work.

5) The Man
Starting next week I’m gonna spend all my time looking for ways to stick it to him. Figuratively.

6) VHS
7) Uptown Charlotte (2C, +7, 2)
8) Volleyball (6H, -5)
9) The Tailgate Union Bulletin Board
10) Da Ali G. Show (9H, -2)

Part Stoplight! Part Cameraman! All Hero!

2005-01-11T07:33:00.000-05:00

Say "cheese," crime! You're photo-finished!

Anyone who knows anything about crime knows there's only two ways to legitimately stop it. You can either get bitten by a radioactive animal and use that flipper that used to be your hand to bitch-slap crime in the face yourself, or you can leave the job to your city’s police force. I recommend the latter, because there’s a good chance the police force just might build a Robocop. Now, I know this is America, and you’re free to choose either option you want, but I’ve seen movies about both, and based on them I can tell you with authority that only one of those options will result in gratuitous shower nudity and rad-as-shit toxic waste head explosions.

The city of Charlotte chose option "B" because, like me, the lawmakers of Charlotte realized the unstoppable fusion of man and machine was the only logical answer to cleaning up the Queen City. However, in true Charlotte fashion, good idealization gave way to poor execution, and they didn’t quite get it right. Instead of turning our policeman corpses into invincible cyborg badasses with awesome catchphrases, they turned our stoplights into photographers. At the risk of editorializing here: pussy retarded photographers.

I recently received a blurry picture of the number "4" in the mail, stapled to a bill for $50, courtesy of "Project Safelight." The project is rumored by the NCDOT to promote safety. It’s rumored by me to promote laziness. Think about it. How many jobs would let you turn in photos of things instead of actual things? I can think of one. Photographer. That’s about it. Man, that shit doesn’t even work for made-up professions. Remember Return of the Jedi? What if Boba Fett would’ve shown up at Jabba’s palace, shrugged, and handed him an 8" X 10" Harrison Ford glossy? Remember that beige guy in the alien band whose face looked like a fat person’s thigh? That guy would still be picking parts of Boba’s blown-up ass out of his clarinet every time a Jawa requested "My Way."

I’ve never received an envelope from the city of Charlotte containing a picture of me helping an old lady across the street, a sheet of G.I. Joe stickers, and a pack of McDonald’s gift certificates, but I run one red light (allegedly) and all of a sudden the light at South Tryon and Arrowwood is motherfucking Annie Lebovits. Installing cameras in stoplights?! Hey NCDOT, if you want to see some really illegal shit install lip-readers in mailboxes. I’d still be paying for all the things I said I was going to turn sideways and shove in NCDOTs ass as I dropped in my check to pay my project safelight fine.

The other thing that kills me about Project Safelight is the ambiguity of the photos. Confession time: I have never run a red light in my life, but I run yellow ones all the time, which is about as illegal as me eating lunch at Taco Bell only ten times less dangerous. This leads me to believe the picture of my plate was taken in that instant the light turned from yellow to red. Of course, the light could’ve been mauve for all we’ll ever know, what with that close-up shot of the top half of one of the numbers in my license plate. It took me an extra year to graduate college, from the U. of S.C. no less, and even I know the reason that picture is of just the license plate is because that’s the only part of the car that was just barely an inch in the intersection when the light turned from yellow to red. But they say the picture in question is of me running a red light? That same logic inspired me to put a picture on my refrigerator of just my leg.

"Why do you have this picture of your leg posted on your fridge?" my friends ask.

"Why do you think?" I say. "Because it’s a picture of me karate chopping through a stack of flaming concrete blocks with one hand and giving Jack Nicholson a high-five with the other. All while launching through a city of cyclopses in my rocket shoes, asshole."

My point is this: if the Queen City is going to spend tax money to combine one thing with something else that will help it fight crime, why not spend it on something awesome, like a boxing glove on a spring that shoots out of an ATM to punch criminals in the groin when they try to rob it. Trust me, Charlotte. I’ve been all around this country, and from what I’ve seen, nothing, and I mean nothing, rallies a community quite like watching crime being punched in the sack real, real hard by the powerful spring-loaded fist of liberty.

Since my computer blew up last week, I can't scan the actual picture of my "truck running a red light," but for a visual aid just imagine a huge black-and-white blur of the top 1/8 of what may be the letter "Y." However, I can post:

This picture of me on top of Mt. Everest holding the head of Ohmar Kadhafi…

…and this one of me two seconds before jumping out of Air Force One with a parachute made completely out of Rebecca Romijn’s bras.

BONUS PHOTO FUN!!!: Hey Homemade Fireworks fans! Guess who that is to the right of me! Initials will do. Winner recieves a 12-pack of PBR c/o me. Hint: It's someone I went to high school with.

Homemade Fireworks Gets Serious About Comedy

2005-01-07T07:42:00.000-05:00

I’m going to break the first two rules. I’m going to talk about Fight Club.

I think Fight Club is a very funny movie, but Roger Ebert thinks it’s "…a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw, and beat one another up." So who’s right?

Well, we both are. Fight Club is violent in the literal sense, but the violence is so absurd in logic yet taken so seriously (and outlandishly far) by the characters that it becomes funny. Fight Club is a satirical commentary on the state of American consumerism and vanity. The very last thing Fight Club is about is a club for fighting. It’s not about men beating each other up, it’s about men wanting to be beaten up. Really really wanting to be beaten up. That’s comedy.

Look! Brad Pitt thinks it's funny!

If I remember correctly, Fight Club had a body count of 1 (one more than Children of the Corn). The reason it’s singled out instead of, say, the exploding heads and melting Marines of Starship Troopers (which is also a hilarious satire), is because the violence isn’t cartoony and faceless. It’s real, raw, and true. So true that it forces us to laugh at ourselves out of spite for living in, and maybe even personally adhering to, a culture where we place physical beauty on a pedestal and judge our success on how expensive our bed spreads and kitchenware are. Like it or not, Fight Club is making fun of us. Our laughter may be nervous as we realize that, but its laughter nonetheless.

American Psycho is Fight Club polarized. It’s equally violent and equally hilarious, except this time the spotlight is on a man so self-conscious that he breaks into a dousing sweat when he discovers that a colleague has a better font on his business card. As an actor I understand the preparations one has to go through while preparing for a role— makeup, wardrobe, and mental exercises are all used to assume the identity of a certain person from a certain background in a certain situation. American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman undergoes this same series of transformations every morning to prepare for everyday life. From the "exfoliating facial gel scrub, followed by the herbal mint facial mask, followed by an anti-aging eye balm, and then another protective moisturizer," to the rows of Armani suits hanging in his closet, Patrick becomes a caricature of a person every single day of his life. It’s the only way can cope with the world he’s immersed himself in. He even admits that he doesn’t have any real emotions, and that the real Patrick Bateman "simply is not there." He spends hours becoming the man he thinks the world wants him to be, when in fact the world couldn’t care less. That’s comedy.

Jared Leto thinks it's funny, too!

Patrick Bateman axes up a colleague, drops a chainsaw on a hooker, and shoots a cop or two, so, like Fight Club, American Psycho is violent in the literal sense. But, and I’m not ruining the movie here, all the violence, while depicted in full glory on screen, is really only taking place in Patrick’s head. It’s his only escape from the mundane superficiality that he has grown to depend on to survive—and it’s so over-the-top that you didn’t have to get your masters degree from the university of the fucking obvious to realize that. It’s in the violence’s over-the-topness that it becomes non-violent—absurd, even. American Psycho is telling me a joke, and I’m laughing because I get the punchline.

Not everyone always gets the punchline. I imagine in any other movie, a guy getting axed in the head would be pretty disturbing. Trust me, I fucking hated when the rich 15-year-olds behind me at Regal Cinema laughed through The Ring, but the difference between American Psycho and The Ring is the context in which the violence occurs. People who blast American Psycho for being violent must have stepped out of the theatre for a piss when Patrick delivered the line "As we arrive at [restaurant] I'm on the verge of tears as I'm certain we won't get a decent table. But we do; relief washes over me in an awesome wave," or when he went into a five-minute monologue about Huey Lewis and the News before the previously mentioned axing. Patrick Bateman is not a killer. He’s a bigger pussy than the biggest pussy you know—even bigger than Daniel LaRusso. He’s just so engulfed in a self-induced social stigma that he can’t escape from if he wanted to or not. The effects of that social stigma, while traumatizing to him, are hilarious to us. At least, to me.

If you take anything from this article, I want it to be this: that all comedy can easily be interpreted as non-comedy if the viewer chooses to take it too literally. Hell, according to the AFI’s top 100 comedies, Some Like It Hot is the funniest movie of all time, and that movie is about a couple of guys who dress up like women, which, if taken literally, is pretty fucked up in itself.

It’s very easy for Homemade Fireworks to fall victim to the same misjudegement of character as Fight Club and American Psycho, even though any of the previously mentioned obviously shouldn’t. Homemade Fireworks is NOT a site about a guy who uses video games to pick up girls…it’s a site about a guy who uses video games to pick up girls. When I read that article I don’t see a player looking to score chicks. I see a guy so lacking in game that he does what may be the dorkiest thing ever to prove that "game" isn’t really what’s important, and fuck if we don’t laugh at his (my) expense. I know I did. I shook my head in disbelief a couple of times while I was doing it. The Galaga article was my humorous commentary on the retardedness of "club guy" and their laughable desperate attempts to impress girls with their huge wallet, hair product, and black leather jacket. If you’re still not convinced, I should point out that that article appears directly above an article about the career merits of William fucking Zabka and directly under something that lists the Gameboy Advance as the third most important thing in my life.

If you’re offended by anything on this site, well, while you’re on the Web, stop by Merriam-Webster online and look up "satire." While you’re there, you may also want to look up "uptight."

Hard Drive Down

2005-01-05T10:55:00.000-05:00

And it went down like the Hindenberg. I came home yesterday to find my computer literally smoking. Everything on it is gone. The greatest collection of '80s music ever Molly-Ringwald-in-Breakfast-Club danced to--gone. Over three hundred old school arcade, Nintendo, and Intellivision ROMs--gone. My Bea Auther photo collection. Gone.

Luckily, Dell customer support is on hand 24 hours a day. Unluckily, the support turned out to be the same support I gave my friends when they’d call me because their Atari wouldn't work. Anyone who’s ever had a Nintendo knows the classic universal fix I’m talking about…check out how Dell suggested I fix my hard drive in this actual conversation with their customer service guy, who was either "Apu" from The Simpsons or the guy who does the voice for Apu.

Dell Guy: Turn off your computer. You can do this by pressing the power button on the tower.

Me: Done.

Dell Guy: Now unplug your computer by removing the plug from the wall socket.

Me: Alright.

Dell Guy: Now open up your computer. Do you know how to open your computer?

Me: Yeah.

Dell Guy: Now locate the hard drive.

[So I find it and it’s the most technological looking thing I’ve ever seen. It’s surrounded by wires and cables and computer chips and I’m thinking "Not even Tron could figure this thing out, and that guy lives in one of these."]

Dell Guy: Now locate the (some fancy name for a cable). It’s the ribbon-like cable leading from the hard drive to the mother board.

Me: Got it.

Dell: Now dislodge the cable and the corresponding something something cable from the hard drive.

Me: Done.

[At this point I’m excited because I’ve got my hands in the computer "dislodging" shit like a S.W.A.T. team guy and I feel like the shit I’m about to do is going to be seriously high-tech. Until the guy says…]

Dell Guy: Now blow on the connectors to remove any dust, and re-fasten both cables.

Me: What was that?

Dell Guy: Blow on the connectors to remove any dust, and re-fasten both cables.

Me: Blow on them to remove dust?! That’s it?! Dude, don’t you think I should first blow on my hard drive to remove fire?! Did I mention my hard drive is smoking right now?

Dell Guy: Yes sir. Three times.

So that’s that. Goodbye, old friend. We’ve wasted many a year together.

What this means for Homemade Fireworks fans is that you can expect a shitload of pictureless articles. Or articles featuring whatever random pictures I have on CD, like this one of me getting my degree in "badass."

The Homemade Fireworks Hotlist 1-2-05

2005-01-02T22:20:00.000-05:00

Hot

1) Kenny Chesney's "Anything But Mine" video.
The most beautiful thing you'll ever see.

2) Stereophonics' "Just Enough Education To Perform"
The Stereophonics are the new Shins.

3) Gameboy Advance
Though the miracle of modern technology I can now play video games even when I'm nowhere near video games.

4) American Psycho
The book, the movie,...and the medicine cabinet.

5) Trance
Thanks to Internet radio every second of my day, from the time I get up to the eight hours I spend at work, can be like I'm in The Matrix.

6) Volleyball
7) The Feeding teaser trailer
8) The Tinderbox at Southpark Mall
9) Da Ali G. Show
10) The Karate Kid

Cold

1) Interest
I really don't care about much of anything anymore

2) Uptown Charlotte
I don't care about uptown Charlotte

3) "The 2-day rule"
I really don't fucking care about the 2-day rule

4) The Craig Shoemaker Show
I don't care about the Craig Shoemaker show anymore, either

5) Grid Iron Waitresses
And I would totally not be into the Grid Iron Waitresses anymore...if I cared.

6)Playstation II
7)Dixies
8)Jim Rome
9) "Playing four quarters"
10) Steele Creek YMCA

Girls and...Galaga?

2004-12-22T08:27:00.000-05:00

Over the years, hundreds of hobbies have been created specifically to keep girls away from men’s genitals. I have been unfortunate enough to partake in every one of them. The fact that I can tell you the first and last names of all the Cobra Kais and the guys who played them isn’t going to make anyone’s pants spontaneously combust, and I’m never ever ever going to get any girls’ phone numbers because I can get the high score on Galaga.

Or am I?

The more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. "Is it possible to pick up a girl using nothing but video games?" Most experts say "no." However, after mulling it over and thinking it through, I arrived at a much different conclusion: oh hell fucking no. At that moment, it went from a question that needed to be answered to a challenge that was about to get its ass Tombstone Piledriven.

The laws of nature say that girls usually don’t go for gamers...I decided it was my duty to change that. I developed a plan, and to ensure that it was my video game skills and nothing else that were doing the picking up, I designed three rules:

ONE: I would take $10 worth of quarters, find a video game somewhere, and play it until either the quarters ran out or a girl talked to me.

TWO: I was not allowed to make contact with anyone until they made contact with me first.

THREE: If someone did approach me, the first couple of things I said had to be video game related.

There it is. Basecamp. The original plan was to post up at the Galaga cocktail table machine at Charlotte's all-'80s club at 11:00 p.m. with $10 in quarters and a can of Jolt Cola. Since I got there at 12:15 and they were sold out of Jolt, it became $5 of quarters and a ‘fucking’ Mickey’s Big Mouth.

As you can (sort of) tell by this picture, The Breakfast Club was not what Maverick would call a "target rich environment." The odds were stacked against me. I put in my first quarter and started to play.

Of course, a guy sitting alone in a corner by himself with a camera and huge stack of quarters on the Galaga machine is going to get some comments from people walking by. About 15 minutes into it, people had to come over and get their 2 cents in.

CONVERSATION #1: On their way upstairs, two girls stopped and watched me play.

GIRL #1: Hey, it’s that game. Gal…axian?

ME: Yeah. Do you play much?

GIRL #1: I used to, forever ago.

ME: You see that high score? That’s totally me. I’m not bragging or anything. I’m only telling you that because I know girls go for guys who get high scores on video games, right?

GIRLS: Ha ha ha.

(they leave)

CONVERSATION #2: About 10 minutes later the owner of the bar walked by.

OWNER: You know, people are going to think you’re a nerd if you play that game all night.

ME: Maybe you can tell me what’s nerdy about a hundred and twenty five thousand on Galaga.

OWNER: Damn.

ME: Exactly…

(After he left…)

…bitch.

CONVERSATION #3: About a game and a half after that I thought I had stumbled onto the set of Lethal Weapon 5 when the most hilariously mismatched couple, this hot-as-hell black girl and this stereotypical-in-every-way-white redneck stopped by.

GIRL: Oh shit! It’s that game…uh…Galaxia.

GUY: Damn! I used to play that shit all the time, yo!

ME: You see that high score? That’s all me, but I didn’t want to say that too loud in front of your girlfriend because girls totally go for guys who get high scores on video games.

GUY: I hear you, dog. I hear you.

GIRL: Look! It’s Galaxia!

And that was it. Ten more minutes passed. Then twenty. Then thirty. And much to my surprise, not one girl had hopped up on the Galaga machine and seductively began removing their clothes to, we'll say, "We are the World" like I totally thought they would.

The stack of quarters was getting smaller. The patrons were getting sparcer. The clock was ticking, and another Mickey’s Big Mouth had joined the table.

1:30…what Campbell Scott refers to as "winning time." I was seconds away from dismissing video game skills as a viable way of picking up girls when the first two girls from earlier made a return appearance.

Girls: You’re still playing this?

Me: Yes I am. You guys wanna get in here? I’ve got plenty of quarters.

Of course, the obvious answer was:

And there you have it. At the buzzer. For the next 30 minutes we talked. We laughed. We drank. And my pickup line was…Galaga. Nothing more. Nothing less. This girl and her friend weren’t that bad at Galaga, and they were even kind enough to get in this picture.

The ice was totally broken. What do I chalk it up to? My striking good looks? The "gun show?" Nope. It was all this:

The Tao Of William Zabka

2004-12-15T11:33:00.000-05:00

In what can only be chalked up to alcohol- and retarded-fueled negligence, William Zabka has yet to receive a lifetime achievement award from the AFI. Since my article on Elm Street II was moving enough to get the S.C. Senate to remove the Confederate Flag from the Statehouse Grounds and delete all their emails with "re: re: secret homo battle" in their subject lines, I’ve decided to use my powers of persuasion once again to hopefully correct a more politically correct but equally fucked up injustice.

You know who William Zabka is, you just don’t know who he is. Will punched, dove, karated, and punched again his way into America’s hearts in the 1980s—over and over and over and over. I can’t think of an actor that personified the entire "80s" mentality more than William—in fact, to me he is THE definitive 80s icon. If you’re reading this, Pac-Man, and you probably are, I wouldn’t recommend you argue…unless you want him to PUT YOU IN A BODY BAG!!!! YEEEEAAAHHHH!

Billy Z. was the perfect 80s antagonist. He was such a cock in every one of his movies, but what’s interesting is why. Look at him. The movie-going public could never relate to that guy. On the contrary…he personified the collective guy who flushed the movie-going public’s head in the toilet after gym class. 50 times. A day. Nobody wants to see this guy get the girl. They’ve been losing girls to guys like this all their lives. That’s why I pumped my fist and almost wet myself when Rodney Dangerfield Triple Lendinged all over his ass. Think about the heroes in any Hughes movie of the 80s—they were underdogs, and were always somehow flawed. Not Big Willie Style. All he wants to do is sweep your leg. And if you punch him back he’ll just smile before he kicks your ass, breaks your bike, makes fun of your mom’s car, and then fucks your girl.

No audience will ever rally behind William Zabka because he just looks like someone you want to hate. With that said, he owned Karate Kid. The last few times I’ve seen it I even rooted for Johnny, and you can read all about why here.

With that, Homemade Fireworks gives it’s first-ever lifetime achievement award to 80s movie staple William Zabka.

Required Reading, Day 2

In continuing with today’s theme, check out Matt from X-E’s hilarious tribute to the unsung heroes of Star Wars.

Eighties Week Starts...NOW!!

2004-12-13T07:59:00.000-05:00

That's right! It's that time of the year agian! Welcome to "HADES IN THE EIGHTIES II," a week-long celebration of all things '80s! Every day this week, we here at Homemade Fireworks are going to pay a new, much-deserved, and impossibly hilarious tribute to the decade of Debbie Gibson, The Goonies...and Gorf.

To kick things off, we're going to hop in the Delorean and set the Flux Capacitor to "Reagan." We're going to take a peek into the formative years of Charlotte's most celebrated Internet personality me, and maybe, somewhere along the line, we just might be able to find out were things started to go wrong.

As my mom rambled on and on about how big a bounty Jabba had on my head, I slowly raised my blaster pistol.

Seconds earlier, this pool was full of evil Wing-Kong foot soliders. You don’t see any of them in there now, do you? You’re welcome, pool.

When I looked at the Dolphin Lunch Menu and saw that "face" was the main course, I had no idea they were talking about mine!!

When the word came down that my parents were Communist double-agents, I had no choice but to liberate my kitchen with extreme prejudice.

If another birthday party tried to tell me it was the best birthday ever, I'd show it this picture and then wait for it to admit it was lying.

The rebels crapped themselves when they discovered they had crash-landed on Romper Roomulus 10, the planet of huge children, but by then it was too late.

So there you have it. Stop by tomorrow as "Hades In The Eighties II" continues!

Victory Tastes Like Pabst

2004-12-09T07:42:00.000-05:00

My friend Will has a huge problem with Cyclops from the X-Men, more specifically, how he's always getting his ass kicked. The logic behind his theory is that if you're an X-Man, you fight crime. That's what you do. Think about your job. You come home tired, right? You may not be all about hitting the gym or going for a jog, and I'll buy that. Cyclops, on the other hand, has no board meetings, no TPS reports to forget to put cover sheets on, no videos of fat people falling down to forward to the other X-Men. Cyclops has no excuse to not spend every minute of his day karateing a punching bag shaped like crime, and when he's not doing that he should be doing something else...we'll say push-ups. Despite all this training, Cyclops is ALWAYS getting his ass kicked, even by his girlfriend. And when he's not doing that, he's getting it kicked by an evil girl X-man disguised as his girlfriend. Fuck.

All that to say I'm the exact same way. I don't have a girlfriend. I'm always broke. As you can see, I really have no choice but to spend every moment of my life playing video games, and I do. But for some reason, despite a lifetime of preparation, I have NEVER beat my friend Kevin at our traditional pre-night-out game of Madden '97. Never. Until now. Bitch.

Homemade Fireworks field reporter me gloats over his first Madden victory in three years. Immedatley after the win he yanked the game out of the Sega, signed it, and handed it to his publicisit in the stands.

If the look on the K-Man's face appears to be that of a man who's just been forced to assume the position of obedience and ask for another and another and another, it's because that's exactly what just happened.

The Cup Of Quarters Part II, Starring The Transformers

2004-12-06T13:24:00.000-05:00

Small Transformer: Hey Windcharger. Don’t you think it’s strange that Transformers as insignificant in the action figure storyline as us got assigned to guard all this money?

Windcharger: No, not at all…uh…what was your name again?

Small Transformer: I have no idea.

Windcharger: Hey, wait a minute! This doesn’t look like $150! What happened?

Breakdown: Sorry, guys. I hope you don’t mind. I took some of the money and spent it…on THE WORLD’S LARGEST MARGARITA!!!

Windcharger: SWEET!

-SPLASH!- ...glug...glug...glug...glug

Breakdown: ...

...glug...glug...glug...glug...Ahhhhhhhh!

Breakdown: Wow. I was totally kidding. That wasn’t the world’s largest margarita. It was Optimus Prime’s urine sample. And you drank it. Speaking of, I think I’m gonna take off. I don’t hang out with guys who drink pee.

Windcharger: Fuck you.

So there you have it. Optimus Prime’s uralysis and Windcharger’s stomach pump came to approximately $143.95. Here’s what I spent the rest on:

P.S. You know you’ve made it when Little Lost Robot gives you a shot out. Just another reason why Portland owns the Web. Thanks LLR!

The Cup Of Quarters, part I

2004-11-22T11:46:00.000-05:00

With everything I've had going on you're going to think I'm kidding, but I'm so serious when I say that for the last two months, the single most important thing in my life has been filling up this cup with quarters. Not watching movies about clown puppets. Not poppin’ and lockin’. Not even hilariously defacing my office's guestbook:

Nope. It’s been filling up this cup with quarters.

I chose this particular cup because there ain’t nothing like that Jacket pride. I chose quarters because every time I say their name it reminds me of football and I really like video games about football. Especially Super Tecmo Bowl. Anyway, filling up this cup has become an obsession, to the point where I’ll buy shit I don’t need just so I could get the change in quarters. I promised myself I wouldn't count it until it was completely full. Well guess what? SUNDAY WAS THE MOMENT OF TRUTH! I can’t really describe what it felt like seeing that cup finally full, but I imagine it probably felt a lot like what it must feel like to see Rebecca Rojmin naked. I even thought about pouring them out on my bed and having sex on them like Woody Harleson and Demi Moore did in Indecent Proposal, but three hours later, after that idea had completely passed, I decided to just count them instead.

When I first began, I predicted the cup would hold about $50 worth of quarters. Oh sweet Jim Caveziel I was wrong. When I hit $50 the cup was still half-full. The grand total—$150.00—almost half the budget of The Feeding.

So what did I do with all this money? Stop by Thursday to see what happened when Homemade Fireworks invaded Carolina Place mall with the unstoppable combination of $150.00 and me. You see that, bitches? My Blog posts have teasers.

*Speaking of Jacket pride, we had a cheer that went "Jack-et pride. Jack…Jacket pride." So during a pep rally my Junior Year, this guy named Jack Draper runs into the middle of the gym out of nowhere and starts looking at his watch and scratching his head. We had no idea what was going on until about fifty guys started yelling, "Jack…you late! Jack….Jack you late!" Get it? So then he starts taking off his letter jacket, and the same guys yell, "Jack-et off! Jack, Jacket off!" I swear to God. I even more swear to God that later that day, all fifty of those kids got called to the principle’s office, one by one. And it wasn’t until the end of this paragraph that I realized for the first time that I spent nine years of my life at schools best known for the sexual innuendos you can make with their mascot's names.

MORE THE FEEDING!!

2004-11-16T08:14:00.000-05:00

I was in a made-for-cable movie called "The Feeding." Here's part two of the wildly erotic photo recap.

You'd think that after blowing up the Death Star he'd at least get a planet or two named after him, but all he got was a street in South Carolina. Even Buzz Aldren got an elementary school named after him, and all he did was walk on the moon. He didn't even use the Millenium Falcon to get there.

For the second take, director Jet Eller asks if I can do it again, except try to make my ass look just a little less luscious this time. He always asked the impossible.

The owner of the general store where we shot set up this room like an authentic '50s diner. That pinball machine is older than I am. Here, I show my respect by eating fried chicken on it.

Wow! That's almost as much latex as my friend Chad used to carry around in his wallet.

This guy is not baked. This scene called for him to appear medicated and docile. He is acting.

This is the reason why "The Feeding" is going to be your girlfriend's favorite horror movie.

THE FEEDING!!

2004-11-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

I've spent the last 8 weekends of my life filming a made-for-cable movie called The Feeding. I think mankind owes me a pretty big thanks since at least 7 of those weekends were spent with me inserting various guns into various aliens' mouths and pulling the trigger, and yes, it was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. I can't even tell you how fun this shoot was--to use the cliche it was a dream come true. What's more, I got to play the badass of the group, which basically amounted to me imitating George Clooney from Dusk Till Dawn. The vibe on the set was awesome. The cast and crew were the coolest group I've ever worked with and every day was a blast. Plus, our two effects guys were pretty big time. This movie is going to absolutely rock your face off, but until then, here's the (very) brief pictoral review.

The slate from the first day of filming. I don't know why those bottom few lines are blacked out, but I'm sure the government has their reasons. Perhaps they reference communisim.

One of these guys lives in the backwoods of North Carolina with his hounds and owns a pork rind business. The other is a loose cannon pretty boy who likes bench pressing volkswagens and killing aliens. You decide which is which.

Pictured Above: Alien buffet, me. What you can't make out is all the rusty torture devices that were hanging from the canopy of this general store, making this place look about one woman skin suit away from being a Silence Of The Lambs set.

The effects guy's continuity card. You didn't have to get your masters from the university of the obvious to see that the guy in the lower left gets his shit rocked.

And finally, yeah, that's me covered in dirt and blood, but by this point in the movie my character had broken every horror movie law at least twice, so I kind of deserved it.

Da Ali G. Post

2004-11-08T10:53:00.000-05:00

My friend Eric Hill isn’t just Charlotte’s most dangerous man…he’s also a brilliant graphic designer. I hadn’t checked the site in a couple of days, and when I logged on this morning I saw the new logo he put up, which is the bomb. I’m talking Hiroshima.

Since I look exactly like Ali G. in the picture Eric added to my logo, I’ve decided to hire Ali G. himself as a temporary Homemade Fireworks corespondent to review the commercial I filmed on Sunday.

"Allo. It’s da Ali G. Me represent de UK. Big ups Wesside. Today we iz gonna bang about commercials, like the ones they show on the radio. Movies have commercials too but check it, sometimes dey don’t have commercials, like the ones I get from the back room at the video shop. The sign above the room say "adults only" but it don’t really be pacific of the selection, cause some of da films have high school cheerleaders in im and some have animals like sheep and doggies. I don’t like dem particular cause the dogs don’t show respect and wear a connie.

Hear me now check it. Da cinagropher and da protector on dis particular advertisement wiz from Sweden which is a place very far from here, over 100 miles away from Charlotte. Dey wiz behind da camera dis day but I seen em in front of the camera one time else when they took over the plane in dat movie "Die Hard." Carl Weathers BIG UPS!!! [Makes a "W" with his hand].

Bein on da set of commercials iz wickid cause the bitches is da fittest. One even asked da Ali G. if he knew where da talent wiz supposed to sit between takes, and I pointed at me tool. She promptly told da five-oh and dey threw me out even though I told dem over and over dat I wasn’t even supposed to be there.

It took 8 hours to film the commercial which was the longest half-day of my life…or would’ve been if I wasn’t totally mashed. In summary commercials iz aight but as I found out iz a wrecked place to get jiggy with Mr. Biggy. Big ups yasself and keep it real. Booyakasha. Massiv."

Da Ali G. Show comes on HBO. Check it out.

DROP A COMMENT! If you have anything to say about any article, click on "comments" at the bottom of the post and drop some science. If you don’t have a "Blogger" account, no problem, click "post as anonymous." We’d love to hear from you.
-Mike

PHANTASM Can Predict The Future

2004-11-02T13:57:00.000-05:00

Phantasm is a mystical, mysterious enigma of a movie. I’m not talking about its plot elements or subject matter, I’m talking about the movie itself. It scares you, makes you laugh, grosses you out—it even predicts the future. Of course, a movie this ambitious and clairvoyant can’t be weighed down by things like coherency or continuity, which is why Phantasm, from beginning to end, is a collection of insanity so random that I had to rewind it three different times to see if I accidently missed something. I didn't. Join me as we attempt to unlock the mysteries of Phantasm scene-by-scene in this double-length movie reveiw.

Phantasm opens with Tommy having sex with some chick in a graveyard, which is right up there with the DMV line and while trapped in an oversized garbage compactor as the least romantic places to have sex. The girl, by the way, had the teeth of Tim Curry and the sexuality of a sasquatch, and if that combination doesn’t create some movement down below, it probably won’t help to know that she knifes Tommy in the gut after sex (after he has the most lethargic orgasm in film history, by the way. It's the exact same look I have on my face while I’m grocery shopping, folding my laundry, or doing anything else that doesn’t involve orgasms).

Cut to Tommy’s funeral. Bad-boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-who-only-plays-by-his-own-rules Jody and ice cream man (not kidding) Reggie mourn the loss of their friend and their hairline, respectively, while Jody’s little brother Mike shows his respect for the cemetery where Tommy is buried by riding his motorcycle through it. While he’s doing so, he sees a cloaked, growling midget run through the cemetery. You know how in some horror movies you just see rustling branches or hear a strange noise? Not Phantasm. This kid actually sees these things in all their glory for at least five seconds before they slowly walk behind gravestones. I just assumed that Mike lived in a town that’s populated by both people and cloaked, hooded, snarling midgets, because this doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. After the funeral, though, Mike receives a shock as Phantasm’s franchise villain, THE TALL MAN, single-handedly picks up Tommy’s coffin and flings it in the back of a hearse. In reaction, Mike hilariously mouths "What the fuck." The director must’ve loved this scene as much as I did because he used the exact same scene again ten minutes later and again towards the end.

Oh. Yeah, look, could you like, go hide behind a tombstone or something? I'm trying to ride my bike through this cemetary. Thanks, bro.

Later, Reggie and Jody reminisce about their friend during a groovy guitar jam session. Afterwards, the camera slowly zooms in on the goal-post looking thing Reggie uses to tune his guitar, and gives us an unusually long close-up of it, as if to say, "make sure you see this, because this simple tuning of the guitar is a little more significant that you think and will be of importance in the future*.

*It wasn’t.

Continuing his mourning, Jody retreats to a bar, where the only people in it are conveniently him and some woman. Now I’ll be the first to admit that Jody looks awfully dreamy in those acid-wash jeans, but I had no idea how much of a lady killer this guy was until I saw him in action. From the time he sat down next to this girl to the time they left together it took, and I rewound and counted, less then ten seconds. When they left I noticed that it was the same girl Tommy was shagging in the beginning, but no matter how many times I yelled, "Watch out, Jody!" he didn’t respond, so I guess he didn’t mind. I didn’t either, because it lead to one of the funniest scenes in horror movie history:

Mike is spying on his older brother from the woods and smiles when the girl takes off her shirt. Since he’s standing behind about ten feet of woods and is a hundred yards away, I just assumed he was smiling because he thought of that scene in Blazing Saddles when everyone's farting at that exact same moment. Anyway, he hears a noise behind him, and as Mike hightails it out of there and sprints past his brother, Jody looks up, panties in mouth, and in a close-up shot says, I swear to God,

"What the heck?!"

Now take a few seconds to soak that in. Have you ever said, or known anyone who’s ever said, "what the heck?" Is this really the sentence that would jump out of your mouth if you were in the middle of a cemetery with panties in your mouth and your little brother ran by out of nowhere? I was glad to see that a movie that had already given us two tit shots, half a dozen "fucks," and a future death-by-embalming was language-conscious. This wasn't the first time Phantasm's insanity rocked my mind, and it wouldn't be the last. I barely had time to recover from "what the heck?!" before:

PHANTASM PREDICTED THE FUTURE (PART ONE):
While trying to convince Jody that the midgets from the graveyard are trying to kill him, Jody says, "Are you sure? Maybe it was just that retarded kid Timmy from up the street." Until then I thought I was the god of pop-culture references. However, my delusions of granduer were vanquished as soon as I heard Jody make a South Park reference 20 years before South Park even came out.

By now Mike expects that strange things are afoot at the town’s mortuary, so he’s watching The Tall Man with an eagle eye. One day in town, Mike notices The Tall Man go into convulsions as he passes by the unusually heavy and lingering amount of cold mist coming out of Reggie’s ice cream truck. He seems to be bothered by the cold! After a five-minute close-up of The Tall Man shakin’ and twitchin’ kind of like he was smokin,’ we get a close-up of Mike’s ruffled brow, deep in thought, as if he’s thinking, "This guy seems to have an adverse reaction to cold. Maybe this knowledge will come in useful later if we ever need to stop him.*

* It doesn’t.

So Mike decides to investigate the funeral home, where he doesn’t really see anything out of the ordinary. Oh…except for this:

Pictured above is another cornerstone of the Phantasm lore: the silver sphere. It’s the most laid-back weapon in horror movie history--what’s notable about this thing how much it procrastinates before it actually gets around to killing you: first it uses blades to stick to your head. Then it kind of disrespects you by making you wait as this drill slowly rotates towards your skull. Then, and oh yeah I think this would probably be the worst part, it embalms you. By the way, I have no idea who the guy in the above picture is. He just showed up in the movie literally ten seconds earlier.

Wrapping things up, Jody, Mike, and Reggie invade the mortuary, where:

PHANTASM PREDICTS THE FUTURE, PART 2:
As Tall Man is chasing Mike, he says, "You play a good game boy, but now the game is over!" Earlier in the movie I saw the Tall Man lift a fucking coffin on his own (three times), so it didn’t really surprise me to hear him compliment Mike’s Gameboy skills, even though Gameboy wouldn’t come out for another fifteen years. This entire article was written while I was kneeling, by the way, and chanting praises to my new god. Which goes by the name of Phantasm.

Anyway, check this out: Reggie is knifed in the stomach and killed. I know he’s dead because he’s shown dying. And because he has a knife in his stomach. So Jody and Mike escape and get the idea that the only way to kill The Tall Man is to throw him down an old mine shaft. As Mike lures him in, Jody pushes a boulder on top of the mineshaft from a hill above, and is shown raising his arms in victory as Mike smiles. And this Mike smiled, too, because I thought the insanity was over, until one second later, when:

The movie instantly cuts to Mike crying as him and Reggie (what the fuck?!) mourn Jody’s death (Oh holy what the fuck?!). No, I didn’t leave anything out. We learn that a week or so has passed and Jody died in a car wreck. The movie ends with Reggie and Mike hitting the open road in Reggie’s ice cream truck. And that’s Phantasm.

The punchline to this entire review: you know how DVDs have deleted scenes? I went back and watched them, and all Phantasm’s mysteries were answered in the deleted scenes! All the subplots actually were resolved, the characters who randomly showed up at the end were introduced earlier, there was even an entire alternate ending where the tall man was killed with a fire extinguisher, playing off his distaste for cold. So why in the hell did the editors of Phantasm cut out the most important scenes in the movie? Perhaps it will always be one of those things we just weren’t meant to understand, like how come Whodini suddenly starts calling out football plays in the middle of "The Freaks Come Out At Night." Congratulations Phantasm. You’re a fucking mess. Four Jason Heads.

So that was the Shocktober Spectacular. Hope you liked it. To re-visit my favorite review click here. We’ll be back to normal format on Thursday. Hope to see you then.

Thanks for reading!

The CHILDREN OF THE CORN Are Ugly As Hell

2004-11-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

This movie is average. In fact, it’s the most average movie I’ve ever seen. In even more fact, Children of the Corn actually stands out in how average it is.

Children of the Corn is the story of Sarah Conner and her husband, who was played by the guy who started in Side-Out, the greatest beach volleyball movie ever.* I don’t know his name, so we’ll call him Karch. While driving through Nebraska, Sarah Conner and Karch run over a kid, and after worrying about it for just under zero seconds they decide to toss him in the trunk and look for help. The movie wants us to believe this vehicular homicide was an accident, but judging by the way Karch bitchslaps one of the Children of the Corn later in the movie, I’m starting to think it may have been on purpose.

So we see one average murder and thirty average time-lapse photos of the sky and various average suspenseful things which take place over an average score which averagely tries to hide the fact that it was totally obviously 100% ripped off from the Halloween theme. It’s not until Sarah Conner gets captured by the Children of the Corn that we get our first look at the cornfield-worshipping tykes of the same name. It was here that I made an interesting observation:

The Children of the Corn are ugly as shit. All of them. Even the extras. The main bad guy has teeth that could open a Campbell’s Soup can and a face that could probably stop time. Every time I looked at the prophet kid, it was as if his face was kicking my eyeballs in the groin. Even the bit players were hideous. They all could’ve been wearing Gizmo costumes and holding a kitten in each hand, and they’d still be ugly as sin.

Pictured from left to right: Sarah Conner, Yeti.

Through the course of events we learn that all the kids killed all their parents, but it’s never explained why. No not once never. Maybe they cover it in one of the 7 (seriously) sequels. If this movie doesn’t seem too scary up till now, it’s because it wasn’t, but there was one awesome scene: the fight between Karch and the kid pictured above, whose teeth are each about as big as a coffee table. Karch pretty much vacumms the cornfield with this kid’s face while the rest of the kids watch, and to add insult to injury, Karch sits on the kid after he’s down and bitchslaps him. Again. And again. And again. And again. Not one real punch is thrown in the entire fight, just a series of “get back in the kitchen and warm up my dinner” bitchslaps.

After Karch gives the kid the Tina Turner, the rest of the children instantly convert from their corn-worshipping religion and they join forces to battle the monster who lives in the cornfield. The monster, by the way, looked like this:

The kids decide that the only way to stop the monster is to set the cornfield on fire, although numerous shots of the cornfield show us that it’s on fire already. So they burn it down (again), and after the most uninspired and unnecessary afterthought of a surprise ending to ever make me roll my eyes and say, “that was gay," the movie ends with Sarah Conner, her husband, and a couple of the kids riding off into the sunset, leaving, if I’m reading my Body Count Calculator 5000 correctly, 0 people dead. Hey Hollywood: if you’re going to call your movie a horror movie, you better damn well have someone die in it.

There’s two types of bad movies. Bad movies that know they’re bad, and bad movies that don’t know they’re bad. I don’t know why I just told you that, though, because this movie wasn’t either of them. It was just…average. Two Jason heads. And that’s today’s review, which, honestly, was just kind of okay.

As the Shocktober Spectacular comes to a close, stop by tomorrow for Phantasm…the movie review to end all movie reviews. Literally.

* Side-Out supposedly took place on a pro circuit. In one scene, the guy from COTC aces his opponents with an underhand serve. I played beach volleyball for four years in college and I never once aced anyone with an underhand serve. Not even when I played on Wednesday nights at the YMCA, which, according to the sign on the gym door and the unusual number of players with crutches and respirators, was handicapped night.

KILLER KLOWNS is my New Religion

2004-10-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

Just by looking at this movie’s title it may surprise you to learn that you’re already 16 words into this review and at least 10 of those words weren’t “bung.” Honestly, I am at a complete loss for words. All I know is what I saw, so I’m just going to walk you through what I spent last night watching and let you try to wrap your head around it yourself. Before you read the following paragraph, understand that none of the words in it are made up, and all the scenarios described happened in the same hour and a half.

A spaceship shaped like a circus tent crash-lands in a rural town. Out of that tent emerge four 8-foot tall blood-drinking clowns and one midget clown who terrorize the townspeople by, in order of least rad to most rad:

- Shooting them with popcorn.
- Turning them into cotton candy
- Punching their heads off.
- Turning them into puppets.
- Eating them with shadow-puppet dinosaurs.
- Throwing pies at them.
- Watching them shower.

If you try real hard and believe in yourself, you can maybe convince yourself that you can't see that arm in that Killer Klown glove.

In Disney’s The Black Hole, Dr. Kate McRae said, “Dr. Reinhardt is walking a tightrope between genius and insanity.” Killer Klowns From Outer Space is doing the exact same thing. I have two explanations for why I absolutely love this movie. The first: you know how, in races like NASCAR or the 1600 meter run, it’s possible for one of the guys to get his ass kicked so bad that if you look at the track it actually looks like they’re ahead? I think, on the scale of one to ten, Killer Klowns is so far below zero that it’s actually just above ten. The second reason is that I can’t make fun of it, for social reasons, kind of like how you just can’t make fun of “special needs” people. See? I can’t even bring myself to type "retarded." Damn my social conscious.

When I first saw the title I really wanted to hate this movie just so I could write that it was “Krap.” But I loved it. Something that annoys me more than anything are "club guys" (and "club girls," too, I guess) who try way too hard to make me think they’re cooler than they are and come off as unpersonable dumbasses who I hope Dennis throws up on at some point. On the other hand, I tend to gravitate to (and try to be) a person who’s not afraid to laugh at himself every now and then. Killer Klowns knows how Goddamned bad it is and runs with it, making it not bad-bad, but bad-brilliant. This movie is a damn blast. And everytime, after someone gets killed in an espically malevolent manner, a kick-ass gituar riff plays. Three and a half Jason heads. That extra half is because this movie was given to me by someone who actually had it in their personal movie collection. On DVD. When I gave it back to that person, I also asked that person if they would be so kind as to turn my water to wine and bring back the dinosaurs because that person was obviously God.

Okay…tomorrow’s review is An American Werewolf in London. I swear.

P.S. Personal victory: Last Saturday I finally got a phone number from a girl who I've loudly and liberally proclaimed to be hottest girl ever for the last two years, with the appropriately hot name of Kaitlyn. I’d go into more detail if I didn't think that everyone in Charlotte read Homemade Fireworks, but I’m pretty sure they do.

CUBE is not square!

2004-10-21T09:51:00.000-04:00

Cube is not about the black guy from Anaconda or anything that Christian Slater would gleam. It is about Canadians getting sliced into hundreds of tiny pieces and having their faces melted off, and…holy shit, why am I even continuing since everyone who was reading this is on their way to the video store right now.

Cube is the story of a group of strangers who wake up in separate, empty, cube-shaped rooms with no idea how they got there. There’s a door on each wall, each door leading to…another cube-shaped room, and so on and so on and so on. When all the people finally converge, they try to figure out how they got there. Well, the ones whose heads haven’t exploded.

Cube is probably my worst nightmare come true. It’s about a group of people put into a life-or-death situation where their only hope for survial lies in their knowledge of…algebra. Since I spent FOUR YEARS trying to pass algebra you’d think I’d be fine, until I tell you that I spent the majority of those four years drawing kick-ass space battles on the inside of my Trapper. I finally passed because I copied off Ryan Morrison on every single test, so unless Ryan Morrison or an equally-intelligent graphic calculator also happened to be a prisoner in the cube, I’d think I’d get an "F" for "fucked."

Since I can't find any screenshots for Cube check out this re-enactment, starring popular Canadian sensation Dave Coulier

This movie cost less to make than I paid to rent it. According to IMDB, Cube was filmed using one 16’ by 16’ set and nothing but handheld cameras. You can’t tell, though. The effects are awesome, and the movie works because it revolves around a concept that’s so simple it’s genius. If you’re noticing a trend to the Shocktober Spectacular it’s that the high scorers either have Rowdy Roddy Piper in them or have a strong story to fall back on. Cube does a brilliant job creating the paranoia and claustrophobia it set out to create. If you’ve never seen this movie, see it.

How sweet was this movie? Sweet-ass-sweet. Three and a half-Jason heads.

I’ve spent all week writing…as you can probably tell I’m shit out of jokes. I’m taking tomorrow off. Monday’s review—An American Werewolf in London, courtesy of Craig "Hitman" Hurt.

If you need your daily horror movie reviews, calm down, Pooky. Wait till tomorrow and then click here for the greatest horror movie review ever written. More hilarity from the guy at XE. Check out his site. It’s the most bestest. I insist you all become fans.

Late.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES

2004-10-20T09:42:00.000-04:00

Just because you call something something doesn’t mean that’s what it is. For example, whenever someone asks me what my MP3 player is I tell them it’s a time-traveling poon attractor, but no matter how much I insist that it is, it still hasn’t sent me to 1834 to tame the wild west with Halle Berry and the closest thing I could find to her lesbian twin sister.

Numerous Web sites call The Hills Have Eyes a "classic horror movie." They are 1/3 right. The Hills Have Eyes is, in fact, a movie. It’s as "classic" as those "Sweet Pickles" commercials that used to come on during the USA Cartoon Network and just about as scary. It receives praise as being one of the first movies to feature cannibals, but come on, dicks. Theodore Rex was the first movie to feature Whoop Goldberg in leather starring alongside a talking rubber six-foot dinosaur, and if you thing that’s a classic you better not be allowed to leave your house unless you’re under constant sniper surveillance.

THHE, as it will subsequently be referred to for simplicity’s sake, is the story of a group of, judging by their wardrobes, either child molestors or guys who were on there way to a party where everyone had to dress up like child molesters, whose RV crashes in the middle of a nuclear test zone or something and are attacked by a group of cannibals. I think. These guys were wearing some really tight shorts, and I’ll be honest…it’s hard trying to focus on baby-eating cannibals when you've got a dude trying to act in his sister's gym clothes. I’m not really here to talk about The Hills Have Eyes, anyway. I'm here to talk about this guy.

It's pretty easy to be the coolest guy in The Hills Have Eyes when you're the coolest guy ever. As far as I’m concerned, if your movie has this guy in it you’ve got an "all-star cast," end of story. Remember that movie "The Fifth Element?" Well, if there really is a Fifth Element, I imagine it probably looks a lot like this guy.

THHE has some pretty insane death scenes, I guess, but it’s just not scary. It really wants to be, and Wes Craven really wants me to think it is, and maybe at one time it was, but it just doesn’t hold up in today’s society, where I see guys scarier than the villians every day in my office’s break room. One and a half Jason heads, due to a half-a-head penalty for posing as a classic and for having the worst name for a movie since, now that I think about it, "Theodore Rex."

Tomorrow’s review is for a movie that so so so kicks ass, and, despite it’s title, is not about video game systems or South Central rappers.

To THE BLOB You Are Lunch

2004-10-15T10:15:00.000-04:00

Go back a couple of posts and check out the three movies I originally planned to review for today. See how all of them were foreign, exotic, and critically acclaimed? Well Blockbuster didn’t have any of them, and you didn’t have to get your Master’s degree from the University of the fucking obvious to see that The Blob was the evident fourth choice.

In the last year I’ve seen Freddy Vs. Jason, Alien Vs. Predator…I’ve even heard rumors of a Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash movie. Yeah, it seems like everyone wants a piece of everyone in this free-for-all era of dead ‘80s movie monsters challenging other dead ‘80s movie monsters to the death, but I’ve noticed that no one’s knocking down the Blob’s door looking for a fight. If you were to view video footage of Steven Segal’s home, you’d also notice that no one seems to be bursting in on him while he’s on the toilet, handing him a samurai sword, putting him in a wrist lock, and daring him to try to get out of it, pussy, either. That’s because these are the first- and second-worst ideas in the world, respectively.

I had no idea how omnipotent the Blob was until last night, when I saw it kill people in ways that defy the very laws of a) Hollywood and b) the cosmos. Not to mention, the fact that you were just eaten by something that looks like Pop-Tart filling adds insult to injury and is even somewhat ironic. The Blob is the new king of horror because:

1) The Blob will break the laws of physics…while he breaks your ass!
Freddy Kruger controls your dreams, which means that if he wants to kill you in your sleep by cutting out your veins and turning you into a human marionette, he can and will. I’ve seen him do it. With that said, I’ve never once seen him grab a grown man by the face and pull him down a two-inch sink drain. The Blob's done it, and he was even polite enough not to point out to Freddy that he wasn’t in no damn dream world while he was doing it. But you could tell he was thinking it. Later in the movie, the Blob bent a man in half, backwards, and yanked him through a door window no more than a foot in diameter.*

2) The Blob fucking hates kids
Have you ever seen a kid under the age of 12 killed onscreen in a movie, ever? No, you haven’t. Unless you’ve seen The Blob. While chasing a pair of kids though a sewer, the Blob extends it’s middle finger towards Hollywood and their unwritten but firmly established horror movie rules by finally catching and killing one of them. On screen. Of course, this is the Blob, so he couldn’t just eat the screaming kid without slowly dissolving off all of his skin first. On screen. Man. If I ever find myself sitting next to the Blob on a subway, I’m just going to avoid eye contact, pretend like I’m reading my paper, and wait for my stop.

3) The Blob was made in the U.S.A
I know it sounds like I am, but I’m totally not ruining the movie by telling you that the Blob turns out to be a chemical weapon engineered by the U.S. government to fight—you guessed it—the Soviets. Yeah, if the Blob would’ve been released under the unsuspecting Iron Curtain as planned we may have been able to save Apollo Creed’s life, but don’t hate the Blob for escaping. Hate the system that failed to contain it. So if you ever find yourself being digested by the Blob, it may make you feel better know that when he’s eating you, he’s doing it with a dose of the good old American spirit.

According to John Travolta, this is what the Blob is called in France.

The Blob is so badass that his movie is the only movie to ever give me nightmares without me even seeing it. Remember Fangoria magazine? True story: I saw a few pictures of the Blob’s aftermath in it one day as a kid and I literally couldn’t eat for two days after because they were so disgusting. I figured there was no better time to fight my fears than now. After finally watching the movie that caused me to prejudicially judge amorphous government-designed chemical weapons as a kid, I must say that the blob oozed his way right out of the screen and right into my heart. Yeah, I still fear the Blob, but now I don’t fear him out of fright. I fear him out of respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

The Blob is what the Shocktober Spectacular is all about. It’s the most fun movie I’ve seen yet. Three and a half Jason heads.

* the guy who got yanked out the door was Paul McCrane, who was notorious in the ‘80s for his gruesome movie deaths. He was guy in Robocop who fell in the toxic waste vat and then got hit by a car so hard it made his already-melting head explode against the windshield. He finally achieved mainstream success in 2000 as a regular on E.R., where it probably wasn’t long before his character was stabbed in the eye with an AIDS-infected scalpel and then thrown out of a window just before his corpse was anally violated by an elephant.

The Homemade Fireworks HALLOWEEN SPECIAL, provided by X-Entertainment

2004-10-14T08:05:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I watched a movie last night, but I've been so busy that there's no way I'll be able to get the review up. Today's halloween hilarity comes to you courtesy of the geniuses (genius)at X Entertainment. Click here for the most long-overdue movie crossover ever.

If you were to hypothetically ask me what kind of Web site I'd build if I had an unlimited amount of money, Internet knowledge, and access to information, I'd describe X Entertainment. Luckiy for me, that site already exists. X Entertainment is hands down my favorite site on the Web. It's a huge site dedicated to all things '80s. The one guy who writes all the reviews is freaking hilarious, covering everything from Star Wars figures to M.U.S.C.L.E. Men to V:The Minisiries to The Corey Haim Diary. There's even a collection of 80's commericals, one of which stars Rowdy Roddy Piper. You could spend weeks at this site, and I guarantee you the guy has written a review about whatever you type into his "Search XE" search engine at the bottom of his site. Try it. Now.

Big ups XE.

As for me, I'm writing a review of two night's ago's movie right now and everything will be back to normal tomorrow.

HELLRAISER II Will Take Five Years Off Of Your Life

2004-10-12T10:50:00.000-04:00

Apparently there’s some huge backstory behind the monsters from Hellraiser that I don’t know, but I’ve been able to form an opinion on who my favorite character is based on my limited knowledge. My favorite character in the entire Hellraiser mythology is the guy at the distribution company who looked at the other guys in the boardroom after the Hellraiser II test screening and said, “Hmmmm. You know what? I LIKE IT!” This guy obviously has titanium balls the size of watermelons and fears nothing. As bad as I want to believe this guy really exists, I know he doesn’t. The only logical explanation on how this movie came to be is that the janitor jokingly signed off on it while the rest of the guys were out to lunch.

It’s hard to be funny reviewing a movie like this. Hellraiser II is not creepy, scary, or stylistic at all. It’s just straight-up sick. The entire film is so vile, so disturbing, and so nihilistic that it’s single-handedly responsible for my fear of the dark, the light, the night, the day, and pretty much any general open spaces.

From a critical standpoint Hellraiser II is crap. It may or may not be about something, I don’t know. The majority of the movie consists of the various characters wandering through the corridors of hell, experiencing a series of images so horrific that you shouldn’t watch this movie unless you have immediate access to a defibrillator and Noah Wylie to yell “CLEAR!” as he hits you with it.

Pictured above is a woman with no skin. It's also the least fucked up thing in this movie. When it comes down to it, Hellraiser II is nothing more than a graphic portrayal of the uncomprehendable pain and suffering that infinitely torments souls in hell, and we’re not talking lake of fire here. The reason this movie scares me so much is because, while I may not be the most religious guy to ever put up a list of the top 10 gratuitious movie nude scenes on his blog, I honestly have no problem believing that there might actually be a Hell, and that the people who end up there have to spend an eternity having the things that are done in this movie done to them. You feel evil just for watching it. That's why Hellraiser II made me hug my mom and help an old lady cross the street the second it was over.

Horror movies are fun because they’re scary, but this crosses the line in literally the first ONE SECOND OF THE MOVIE. Everything from that point on is so disgusting and repellent that it no longer can be considered entertainment. I would hate to meet or even live on the same planet as anyone who had this in their personal video library. Hellraiser II gets two Jason heads, both of which would be covered with maggots and then slowly torn apart by a series of rusty torture devices if they appeared in this movie.

Since Homemade Fireworks is a bastion of racial equality, tomorrow’s review will either be Ringu, The Eye, or The Devil’s Backbone.

P.S. I don't know if Pinhead has Internet access or not, but if he does...uh...I was just joking about that whole "Hellraiser II is crap" thing.

Elm Street II...You'll Have A Gay Old Time!

2004-10-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

S. & M. bars. Naked P.E. coach asses. Male sleepovers. It theoretically could be the story behind any movie, but it could only be the TRUE story behind A Nightmare On Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge, which will subsequently be referred to, for simplicity’s sake, as ANOESII:FR.

You know how most reviews of sequels include the sentence “the sequel picks up right where the original movie left off?” Well you could also use that line for Elm Street II’s review, as long as the “original movie” you’re referring to is any other movie besides Elm Street I. The director must’ve never seen the first movie, because this one has nothing to do with it or with anything else, really. Like most directors, this one chose to compensate for lack of story and characterization by including tons of male nudity.

ANOESII: FR is the story of Jesse Walsh, the horror genre’s most simply fabulous hero. He’s the new kid in town who instantly hits it off with cute Lisa because they’ve got so much in common—they both like rock music, they’re both into “The Cosby Show,” and they both have vaginas. One night when Lisa visits Jesse, probably to do some scrapbooking, they discover the diary of Nancy, Jesse’s house’s former occupant, and find out that the same house also used to belong to Freddy Kruger, who shows up in this movie for just over four seconds. Jesse puts two and two together and realizes that Kruger is the scary man who has replaced Scott Baio in Jesse’s nightly dreams. But it gets worse. As it turns out, Freddy is trying to possess Jesse and take over his body so that he can escape the captivity of the dream world and finally be able to tounge-kiss the captain of the football team from beyond the grave.

I’ve heard that the unspoken theme of Freddy's Revenge is Jesse's attempt to come to terms with his closet homosexuality and I know what you’re thinking--that I watched this movie and unbiasedly looked for anything even remotely queer to make fun of for the sake of this review’s humor. Not necessary. Let's get one thing straight: I have no problem whatsoever with homosexuals, but I have a huge problem with things in my horror movies that aren't horror, gay, straight, or otherwise. Folks, this movie is gay. I’m talking Steel Magnolias Sigfried and Roy gay. Which leads me to the most "did I really just see what I thought I saw?" moment in motion picture history.

As Freddy continues to take over, Jesse’s gay decent into madness causes him to stumble into a gay S & M bar that plays really gay music. As luck would have it, this is also the bar that his gay gym teacher secretly frequents. The scene then cuts to the still leather-clad P.E. teacher watching as Jesse runs gay laps around a gymnasium, which was probably also gay.

Since the filmmakers included no warnings in terms of disclaimers on the box to inform me of what was about to happen, I’m not going to pad this with anything and just rock you in the face with the facts. Please understand that I’m not making up anything in this paragraph. The P.E. teacher goes back to his office, where he is attacked by a variety of…balls. Then he is dragged to the showers by a pair of jump ropes where his clothes instantly and automatically strip off his body, followed by his bare ass being repeatedly whipped by a ghastly flying towel. Yep. That’s really what happens. But guess what? This is not the gayest thing in this movie. There’s a solo dance scene where Jesse mimes masturbation with a pop-gun, followed up by him bumping desk drawers closed with his ass. It was a scene so homoerotic that not even Roddy Piper could watch it without suddenly craving dong.

I’m never one to judge a movie simply based on where it’s target audience likes to stick their penis, and let’s be honest…I had a blast watching this. The problem was that it just wasn’t scary. Add to that the fact that Freddy really didn’t show up in his own movie until the end. Even though I’m I die-hard Elm Street III and IV fan, I can only give this one two and a half Jason heads. That half is because there’s an exploding parakeet in this movie that's totally rad.

I’m breaking my rule again for one last time tonight with a Shocktober Spectacular favorite. It’s a movie so batshit that you could watch it while eating babies and rubbing feces over yourself and still be less fucked up than anything happening on the screen at any given time.

Oh, Man! THE OMEN

2004-10-08T14:43:00.000-04:00

(disclaimer: Homemade Fireworks is NOT down with the devil. It most certainly is not!)

Only three days in and the Shocktober Spectacular is already having an affect on my psyche. The Omen creeped me out so bad that I seriously thought about calling the whole thing off. For reals.

Apparently Satan was a huge box office draw in the late seventies, and I’m sure he’s happy to see that both of his movies received scores well over “7” on the Internet Movie Database. I, on the other had, hate movies about the devil because I totally believe in that stuff. I didn't think The Omen was as scary as The Exorcist while I was watching it, but it certainly had a worse “aftertaste,” if you will, as you’ll find out later.

The Omen has no monsters, no blood, no CGI, no animatronics…and no freaking mercy. It did have a score that made me shit egg rolls every time I heard it, though. The music was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who is now dead, which can only mean one thing: The Omen is totally cursed.

BONUS UPDATE...FROM HELL!: The Omen really WAS cursed. This comes as no suprise to me. Click here to read about how pretty much everyone involved with it died horrible, probably Satan-influenced deaths!

I consider The Omen “top-shelf horror.” I imagine it was the What Lies Beneath or The Ring or The Others of it’s time, because of it’s A-List stars. The Omen starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, the Antichrist’s father, and a young Angus Young as the Antichrist himself. It also starred Tron’s David Warner, who had the best death scene in the movie that made him dead as…Dillinger! OH HO HO HA HA HA HA HO HO HA HA!!! * Ahem. Anyway, these type of movies usually trade effects for mood, which translates to way more scares. The Omen was no exception. I’m going to reluctantly give this one 4 and ½ Jason heads. Reluctantly because it was too good at what it did. That’s why Monday’s review is going to be Elm Street II. I hear it’s the horror genre’s most simply fabulous! movie.

TRUE STORY: It took me literally less than FIVE MINUTES to have nightmares about this movie. I went to sleep right after watching it and had the freakiest dream about that kid Damien, all of which I still totally remember but don’t want to get into. So here’s the kicker…I knew I was dreaming but I couldn’t wake up, and it just kept getting worse. It was like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre when that girl got hung on that meathook and you kept waiting for the camera to cut away but it didn’t. So here’s the double kicker: when I finally woke up, I couldn’t move. I was completely paralyzed for like ten seconds. I am so not joking. You know what? Give me back my Jason heads. I hate you, The Omen.

*Click here for an explanation of that joke which probably went totally over your head, and then prepare to kneel before my unequalled ‘80s movie references!

Jeepers Creepers...When Bad Names Happen To Good Movies

2004-10-07T08:22:00.000-04:00

Lets be honest…a stupid name can mean bad news for good people. In further establishing himself as the George Castanza of our group, my friend Kevin once refused to date a cute girl because she had a terrible name. Hell, I’ve always been a pretty popular and personable guy, and even I had to endure an entire summer of David Hamm calling me “Mike Monzeeter with the millimeter peter” when I was a kid, which used to piss me off even though "Monzeeter" is nowhere even close to my last name.

Anyway, I never saw Jeepers Creepers because I always avoid movies that are named after baby talk. That was a mistake, because this movie was on time.

As you can tell from the picture above, Jeepers Creepers stars David Schwimmer and Drea De Matteo, who were on a road trip, probably to go visit Joey. About 10 minutes into the movie they get run off the road by a creepy old truck and bad things begin to happen. Now that I think about it, the same truck ran them off the road two more times later in the movie…it was like they were always stuck in second gear.

My favorite thing about the Jeepers Creepers Creeper, as we'll call him, is that he really doesn't care who sees him. You know how most horror movie monsters lurk in the shadows? The Jeepers Creepers monster knows he's so bad-ass that he justs walks right up to a car in the middle of a well-lit gas station full of patrons. And why does he do it? To make a kill? No. To feed on brains? Nope. To sniff underwear. Man...that takes balls.

Anyway, this movie’s got more scary shit than a Taco Bell restroom. It didn’t beat your senses into submission like the new Chainsaw Massacre, and is was nowhere near as creepy as The Ring, The Others, or other “top-shelf” horror of the time. Still, it didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t, but it knew just what it was, and it delivered in good old-fashioned monster-movie manner. That’s why I give Jeepers Creepers 3 ½ Jason heads. Plus the chick in it was hot and my friend Kevin would probably totally date her.

Unless, of course, her name ended up being something like “Cocktease McHerpes.”

Tomorrow's Review: "THE OMEN!!"

Aliens Plan A Corporate Takeover Of Earth In THEY LIVE.

2004-10-06T08:41:00.000-04:00

They Live is the absolutely true story of what would happen if an ex-pro wrestler found a special pair of sunglasses that revealed that aliens were living among us. It’s also the toughest movie ever made—that’s it, that’s all, that’s what I did on my summer vacation, end of story.

All John Carpenter is doing with They Live is telling the world the exact same story I’ve been telling girls on our first dates for years: that hideous aliens are living among us and are planning a corporate takeover…OF EARTH!!!! They’re also using TV and stoplights to lull us into a trance. The girls usually walk out before I can get to the part about how the only way we can tell the difference between humans and aliesn is by wearing sunglasses, but that part's pretty important to know, too.

I don’t care how much of a cinematic purist you are, They Live has two scenes which have become classics. The first happens right after Roddy Piper uses Ray-Bans to discover that rich people are really hideous aliens. Now let me ask you, “how would you react to this revelation?” If you’re answer was not, word for word, “I’d shit myself,” than you’re totally lying right now, liar. Of course, this is Roddy Piper, and he reacts to things differently than most people would. Instead of contacting the nearest authority, Roddy arranges a welcoming committee of his own. He walks into a bank with about five guns and one equally lethal haircut, cocks his shotgun, and says what were probably the same words God spoke to initiate creation:

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.”

I kind of want aliens to invade just so I can say this. The movie also contains another absolutely classic line (“brother…life’s a bitch. And she’s back in heat.”) but after that “bubblegum” line, the “bitch in heat,” line could’ve been delivered by Rebecca Rojimn naked in a hot tub full of warm jello and it really wouldn’t have mattered.

The second classic scene is the fight between Roddy Piper and a huge guy with two first names. Like all fights, it starts because the one guy won’t try on another guy’s sunglasses. It’s the grittiest, most realistic, most hard-to-watch fight I’ve ever seen in a movie to date. There’s no CGI or wires here. Are you kidding me? This movie stars the same guy who was in a boxing match against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. Nope--this scene’s gimmick is that the punches are real. And the other gimmick is that it goes on for about 20 minutes. And yes, the fight has wrestling moves in it.

I’m not going to give this movie a score. Instead, I’ll end with some facts and let you score it yourself.

1.) Before this movie came out, Rowdy Roddy Piper was my favorite wrestler.
2.) After I saw this movie in seventh grade, I drew 55 full pages of comic about it in my Texas History notebook (which I still have and maybe someday I’ll link to).
3.) Whenever I turn on my computer it says the “bubblegum…” line, and when I turn it off it says the “bitch in heat…” line.

You know what? Fuck this, I am going to give They Live a score. One hundred million billion Jason heads.

Tonight’s movie/tomorrow’s review: Whoah, Scoob! It’s, like, Jeepers Creepers! Ruh Ro!!

The First Annual Shock-tober Spectacular Starts...NOW!!!

2004-10-05T16:43:00.000-04:00

Much like my biceps, my Halloween celebrations have grown to almost unmanageable levels over the last three years. What started out as a viewing of a single horror movie on Halloween night has evolved into the FIRST ANNUAL HALLOWEEN SHOCKTOBER SPECTACULAR--26 days of murder, mayhem, and movie reviews! And holy shit, this thing will totally eat your children.

THE DEAL: Every night from now until November 1st I'll watch a new horror movie and write a review on it. Movies from the discount bin are stongly favored, and the trend I've noticed is that the movie's production value, level of how serious it takes itself, and number of years after 1989 it came out is usually inversely rated to how much I love it. Through the magic of the Internet, every review will be posted here for your reading pleasure the following day. Don't thank me. Thank Al Gore.

THE GIMMICK: Usually I break out my old favorites and revisit them. This year all 26 movies have to be movies I've never seen before. Bonus points for movies I've never even heard of.

THE SCORING: Last year I logged onto a Web site that scored horror movies using "Jason Hockey Mask" graphics instead of the more traditional stars. Totally stealing this idea, every movie I review will get a score between one and five Jason heads, but since I have no idea how to make this graphic, I will probably just type out how many Jason Heads it would have gotten if I could. For reference purposes, a "one Jason Head" movie is one in which people like Neve Campbell and Jerry O'Connell (who I'd both totally bone) play 25-year-old high school kids who talk about nothing but horror movies and don't realize this is totally annoying except for when I do it. And if you want five Jason Heads, well, your movie damn well better include at least five head explosions or at least have "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in it.

THE FINALE: This Halloween is especially cool because I'm actually starring in a horror movie myself, which will finish shooting right around Halloween. The Shocktober Spectacualr will conclude with a photo retrospective of the entire shoot.

So stop by tomorrow, where I'll instantly break my only rule and start the Shocktober Spectacular off by reviewing "THEY LIVE"

Boo

After These Messages...We'll Be Right Back!

2004-09-21T09:05:00.000-04:00

Sorry, kids! Homemade Fireworks is going AWOL this week as we gear up for the first annual Homemade Fireworks Halloween Shocktober Spectacular!!!, an event that kicks so much ass, numerous Web site saftey ordanances require a minimum of no less than three exlamation points to follow it's title. It's going to be the most bestest.

Late,
Mike

It’s a Gun Unlike any Gun Before. It Uses Light.

2004-09-14T09:15:00.000-04:00

This weekend Peetie, Tick, and I went to USC, watched the Gamecocks lose, and played checkers with shotglasses full of alcohol, all with hilarious results. However, since I don’t have a digital camera yet, you won’t be seeing any of it. Instead, I’m going to talk about Looker.

I first saw Looker on HBO in ’84 or ’85. It was a milestone in my life because it was the first time I ever saw breasts. Sadly, it was also the last.

In an amazing dose of myopic irony, Looker stars Albert Finney, who would later star in Big Fish, and The Partridge Family’s Susan Dey, who has a mouth like a sea bass. With that said, don’t think for a second the sea bass in question is not one I wouldn’t slap on the ass and ride like Aquaman. Because it is.

The new movie poster above suggests that you’re in for a typical 1990s suspense-techno-thriller laced with murder, suspense and intrigue, while the original box art below suggests you’re in for big hair, a couple of Kim Carnes songs, gratuitous tit shots, and a man whose face looks like it’s being slowly eaten alive by his moustache. So which is it? Well, you could put a golden collar and a tiny Versace sweater on my parents’ dog Max, but he’s still gonna be shitting on the carpet tonight.

I think Looker has something to do with TV commercials, but I’m not quite sure, because in the first 10 seconds this chick flashes us.

.

I’ve got to be honest, though. Not only does Looker contain a pair of breasts so perfect that I believe they should replace the blue square with all the stars on our nations flag, it also has one of the coolest things in any movie, ever. The "Looker Gun."

If you’re trying to piece together what a movie who’s plot centers around TV commercials, guns, and breasts could possibly be about...don’t. No one knows. Just know that the The Looker Gun will rock you Amedeaus. There is an insane scene in the movie where they try to explain the science behind the Looker Gun, but since the gun itself defies all logic, I’ll try to break it down for you right now. The Looker Gun shoots a beam of light that puts whoever sees the light into a hypnotic trance. And when you pull the trigger it makes a really cool sound: “Phffffffffffffft….nananananana.” Oh holy shit that’s exactly what it sounds like. Oh yeah, and whoever's holding the gun is sometimes invisible and sometimes not, depending on whether or not the director of the movie happened to remember the Looker Gun powers on that particular day of filming. One last thing--if you’re wearing huge sunglasses you’re immune to the trance-inducing light it shoots, meaning the Looker Gun doesn’t work on child molesters, the aliens from “V,” or my Grandma.

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(Thanks to www.british.nerp.net for this kick-ass gif.)

I think the biggest fan of the Looker Gun has to be Albert Finney himself. When his character first discovers it, he really wants you to know that what he’s holding is in fact a gun, that it works using light, and that it’s pretty fucking cool. In fact, he takes about thirty minutes and five words to tell you that. Here’s the scene where him and Susan Dey break into the lab and discover the gun, word for word.

Albert Finney is flipping though the blueprints, reading: “It’s a gun that fires a beam of light which induces a hypnotic trance.”

(Susan Dey walks around looking through cabinets)

“The gun works with light. It puts you in a trance.”

(Susan Dey flips though some file folders)

“This is a gun unlike any gun ever made before. It works with light.”

Susan Dey is like in the other corner of the room.

“It uses light to put you in a hypnotic trance. Light! It’s not like any gun I’ve ever scene.

And then, I swear to God, he picks up the gun, and says, “This is the gun. It works on light.”

Anyway, I know all this because I saw Looker again just this weekend, and it holds up about as well as skinny ties and Martika. However, Looker will always have a special place in my heart because of that kick-ass gun.

“Phhtttt……nanananananana!!!”

You Come In Peace?! You Leave in Pieces, Asshole!

2004-09-02T07:40:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like the human race has a new savior, and, luckily for the human race, it's motherfucking me. My agent called me yesterday with an audition that was so badass it apparently defied description, because when I asked him what it was for, he said "check your email," and hung up. So I did, and when I opened his email, I saw the three sentences I dream about seeing every time I open any email, but I never do. Except this time. I quote:

Synopsis: Four hunters on a weekend camping trip are stalked by small alien creatures intent on nothing but eating any living thing in sight. The hunter's only chance of survival lies in the alien's fear of light. If the quartet can survive until daybreak, they can escape the deadly forest, if they can survive. Your part is for the lead.

Anyone that knows me knows I love horror movies more than damn near anything, so I roll up to the audition with my most hard-as-steel alien-killing face, which, since I don't have a digital camera yet, looks alot like this. And even though I didn't get to say any bad-ass lines like, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum," you for damn sure better believe I used my five minutes of audition to send alienkind a message they won't soon forget. That message, by the way, was "pain." Will I get the role? I don't know, but if, in two weeks or so, you notice that the majority of your face is not being torn apart by the razor-sharp jaws of an alien feeding machine, then the answer is "yes." You're welcome.

Thank you for coming, we’ve got a wonderful show planned for you this evening…

2004-08-25T14:24:00.000-04:00

The Internet is a disease-ridden shit pile of misinformation at one end and sheep porn at the other. Homemade Fireworks is my miserably failed attempt at trying to somehow combine the two.

Me and my site come to you live from Charlotte, North Carolina, which is also sometimes referred to as the "Queen City," hopefully for reasons which have nothing to do with me. The name of this site, Homemade Fireworks, was, we’ll say "borrowed," from this article.It’s obscure placement on the site and kick-ass title made it perfect for my blog to, we’ll say, "borrow" from.

That’s all the back story you get because, well, that’s all the back story I’ve got. Except for about two years ago I was on that show "Elimidate" with this girl, who's hobbies include talking and apparently the Winston Cup series. Anyway, halfway thorugh the show she asked me what kind of animal I’d be in bed, and I told her "an Elephant." That was two seconds before I took my pants off and flossed them between my legs like that kid from American Pie so fast I can't believe my boxers didn't catch fire. You probably need to know that, too.