Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 278
As America tops 4 million COVID cases, the cult of Donald Trump has become a death cult
People who refuse to wear a mask are bolstering their sore egos. Their national motto is not 'E Pluribus Unum,' it's 'You're not the boss of me.'
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 276
So why is the Trump administration sending into American cities officers who aren’t appropriately trained for the mission, are acting on legal authority that will require litigation to defend, and are being deployed to address a problem that the federal government could address by means far less provocative and in a fashion far less likely to escalate disorder?
The answer is unfortunately obvious. Having given up on controlling the pandemic that has now killed more than 140,000 Americans, and faced with dimming reelection prospects, Trump is doing his best to substantiate the tough-guy vision of the presidency that has always appealed to him. During earlier stages of his administration, he played out this fantasy along the southern border of the United States by deploying troops to the American Southwest and warning about “caravans” of travelers illegally entering the country. Now, as officers typically tasked with enforcing the border have been deployed into Portland, Trump’s apocalyptic warnings about the need for a brutal response to any perceived threat have also moved from the edge of the country into American cities.
The message is as simple as it is ugly: The caravan isn’t just coming north through Mexico. It is already here—in the efforts to take down statues, in the protests, in the pockets of disorder in American urban areas and in the gatherings of people exercising their First Amendment rights to object to police misconduct. The caravan, in fact, is the city. And only Trump can protect you from it—whether it is what you see when you look south or what you see when you look downtown.
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working. Last night in Portland, as happened last month in Washington, D.C., peaceful protests only grew in response to the federal show of force. If Trump follows through on his promise to export the federal muscle to other cities, the anonymous agents may be met with more large crowds defying Trump’s efforts at vilification and coercion.
Nothing Can Justify the Attack on Portland
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Monday, July 20, 2020
#gorenoise vol. 26
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — A Provo, Utah woman -- arrested recently for desecrating a body -- has been arrested at least seven times since she made headlines in April 2019 for asking police officers to smoke a bowl of marijuana before they took her to jail for kicking the windows out of her boyfriend's car, all while being drunk on mouthwash.
Woman arrested for desecrating body has 7 arrests since 2019's drunken mouthwash bust
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Thursday, July 16, 2020
#gorenoise vol. 25
Saleh's decapitated and dismembered body was discovered in his luxury Manhattan apartment on Tuesday, and the crime scene made it seem like a "professional" job, according to The New York Post.
The body was cut with a power saw, which cops found at the scene and was still plugged into an electrical outlet.
“This is ugly,” a police officer at the scene told The Post.
Saleh's remains were found by his sister, who called 911, according to The New York Daily News.
She made the traumatic discovery around 3:30pm.
It was revealed on Wednesday that she may have interrupted her brother's killer when she arrived at his home.
“We have a torso, a head that’s been removed, arms, and legs," NYPD spokesman Sergeant Carlos Nieves told The Daily News.
"Everything is still on the scene. We don’t have a motive."
Surveillance footage shows Saleh in the building’s elevator with another person who was wearing a black suit and black mask, according to The New York Times.
TRAGIC SLAY
Who was Fahim Saleh and why was he ‘decapitated’ in his Lower East Side apartment?
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 273
"So are White people. So are White people. What a terrible question to ask. So are White people, More White people, by the way. More White people."
Asked why Black Americans are killed by police, Trump responds, "So are White people"
when's Jim Goad joining the campaign?We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 393
Before it became the “Law & Order” channel, the USA Network was once a place where you could find some of the most unique entertainment programming on cable television. Whether it was low-budget drama, series adaptations of eighties sex comedies, or cult animation, USA Network defied viewer expectations. “Up All Night” was a colorful, and raunchy, show that hosted some of the most obscure and trashy genre films of all time, all the while the hosts generally visited odd attractions around Hollywood, and fell in to odd scenarios for the audience.
Whether or not you liked the hosts was up to you, but “Up all Night” reveled in being a late night novelty that appealed to anyone that appreciated a good laugh or two with their films. The weekly series garnered a shockingly eclectic library of movies that were video store fodder back in their day. Taken out of the context of its time, “Up All Night” showed films that, to this day, have never been on DVD or Blu-ray. It aired so many really good and unusual movies that ranged from horror, science fiction and schlocky monster pictures to comedies and trashy exploitation.
USA Network
Kept Us
“Up All Night”
at a Time When
Cable Television
Was So Much
More Fun
[TV Terrors]
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Monday, July 13, 2020
NERRRRRRRRD! vol. 111
There have been many conversations over the past month about how to change the culture of the comics industry. But June’s storm of allegations is not a sign that the comics industry is broken. It's a sign that it's running precisely as designed.
Inside the Comic Book Industry’s Sexual Misconduct Crisis—and the Ugly, Exploitative History That Got It Here
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Friday, July 10, 2020
Awwwwww Yeah vol. 169
It’s also a sensation on TikTok, where people joke about trying to get themselves kidnapped in Italy and post memes answering the mafia boss’ catchphrase, “Are you lost, baby girl?” (Sometimes they respond with an enthusiastic “Yes, daddy!”) Many have also shared their wide-eyed reactions to the film’s “yacht scene,” where the pair have vigorous sex in multiple positions.
Zazon pointed out that young people in much of the United States have very little access to comprehensive sex ed, while domestic violence remains prevalent across the country. One in four American women, as well as one in nine American men, experience physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking involving an intimate partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
"We’re not really taught what healthy love is; we’re just taught to stay away from sex. And that is not helping anybody," Zazon said, adding, "We have a person running our country right now that has said just grab her by the P-word. It’s very apparent that we have a serious issue going on."
Zazon pointed out that young people in much of the United States have very little access to comprehensive sex ed, while domestic violence remains prevalent across the country. One in four American women, as well as one in nine American men, experience physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking involving an intimate partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
"We’re not really taught what healthy love is; we’re just taught to stay away from sex. And that is not helping anybody," Zazon said, adding, "We have a person running our country right now that has said just grab her by the P-word. It’s very apparent that we have a serious issue going on."
TikTok teens love the film, which tells the story of Italian mobster who kidnaps a Polish woman.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 392 / U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 271
For most of “Starship Troopers,” humanity, in every possible facet, gets its ass kicked. A culture that reveres and communicates exclusively through violence—a culture very much like one that responds to peaceful protests with indiscriminate police brutality, or whose pandemic strategy is to “dominate” an unreasoning virus—keeps running up against its own self-imposed limitations. Once again, the present has caught up to Verhoeven’s acid vision of the future. It’s not a realization that anyone in the film can articulate, or seemingly even process, but the failure is plain: society has left itself a single solution to every problem, and it doesn’t work.
Donald Trump didn’t empty American politics of everything but violence; he’s just what was left afterward. He is more an emblem of American defeat than its author. The world of “Starship Troopers” aligns with our moment in its wastefulness and brutality, and most of all in being so helplessly recursive. At the end of the film, the human survivors of the bug siege become the heroes of a bombastic military-recruiting ad. A splash of onscreen text cheers, “They’ll keep fighting . . . and they’ll win!” The second promise is extraneous. All that’s left to win is the chance to fight more, and to fight off the realization that the fighting itself has become the point.
How “Starship Troopers” Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat
Monday, July 6, 2020
Sunday, July 5, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 270
At Mt. Rushmore and the White House, Trump Updates ‘American Carnage’ Message for 2020
His ominous remarks were a reflection
of his political standing: trailing in the
polls, lacking a booming economy or
a positive message to campaign on,
and leaning on culture wars to
buoy his loyalists.
well now i've seen the face that has peered down at a Boko Haram Ransom Demand's worth of aspiring beauty pageant contestants.of his political standing: trailing in the
polls, lacking a booming economy or
a positive message to campaign on,
and leaning on culture wars to
buoy his loyalists.
seriously... choke that visage down. burn it into what's left of your grey matter. it's what emerges in the biopsied-wake of a child molesting fast food mascot bricking into a vat of radioactive chum.
we're dying... for THAT.
Thursday, July 2, 2020
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. Q69
Google searches for “QAnon” also began to soar in mid-March, as Mother Jones reported, along with searches for “deep state”; “Fall of the Cabal,” a popular QAnon video explainer series; and “WWG1WGA,” the movement’s slogan, meaning “Where We Go One, We Go All.” The number of visits to qmap.pub, a website that catalogs Q’s posts, has likewise erupted during the pandemic. The page had more than 10.5 million hits in May, compared to 4.1 million in January, according to the analytics tool SimilarWeb.
This surge in traffic appears to represent a staggering wave of new interest in QAnon. Although it may seem like a bizarre, low-level threat given its #PizzaGate-style theories, QAnon has an outsize real-world impact. As it has bubbled up from the paranoiac cesspools, it has shown time and again its insidious ability to disseminate disinformation to the masses — including, recently, anti-vaccine propaganda, the promotion of bleach as a COVID-19 cure, and hoaxes targeting front-line health care workers.
This surge in traffic appears to represent a staggering wave of new interest in QAnon. Although it may seem like a bizarre, low-level threat given its #PizzaGate-style theories, QAnon has an outsize real-world impact. As it has bubbled up from the paranoiac cesspools, it has shown time and again its insidious ability to disseminate disinformation to the masses — including, recently, anti-vaccine propaganda, the promotion of bleach as a COVID-19 cure, and hoaxes targeting front-line health care workers.
QAnon’s Coronavirus-Fueled Boom Is A Warning Of What’s To Come
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 390
stand-out viewing for the month of June (spent simmering to a boil in a cauldron of frustrated uncertainty about myself and the world around me. weeeee)
(May)
THE BAR (2017, dir. Alex de la Inglesia)
hey look she's swimming in the Birds of Prey script. Inglesia brings the shit (pun un/intended) with his take on the locked-in-a-vacancy narrative.
THE BEAVER TRILOGY PART IV (2015, dir. Brad Besser)
a charming eye-opener about the tape trade artery traversing oddity from Trent Harris (Rubin and Ed).
BLOOD GAMES (1990, dir. Tanya Rosenberg)
inconspicuously situated between rape-revenge waves, Blood Games plays like the most hateful grindhouse offering you can imagine (Rape Squad, Fight For Your Life, etc.) wearing the toned up work-out body flesh of a boners 'n boobies late night cable timeslot warmer. none of that is an insult.
GUNS AKIMBO (2019, dir. Jason Lei Howden)
a way more violent, way less irritating Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that would feel at home alongside the Crank films and the woefully underappreciated Shoot 'Em Up.
INHUMAN KISS (2019, dir. Sitisiri Mongkolsiri)
in a better, more just universe, this unendingly imaginative gem would be in the Netflix Top Ten and the insultingly execrable rich guy rape-fantasy wish fulfillment dook-grenade that was 365 Days would've been devoured by the tentacled viscera of an angry monster woman's floating head.
KILLING (2018, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto)
Tsukamoto artfully channels his obsession with the corruptive influence of archetypal masculine identity through the scowl-faced testosterone theater of the samurai film.
PALE BLOOD (1990, dir. V.V. Dachin Hsu, Michael W. Leigton)
a surprisingly subversive entry into the pantheon of 80s-90s urban vampire tales. just try to get this out of your head afterward.
PATTY HEARST (1988, dir. Paul Schrader)
this might be the most horrifying film Schrader ever made. where as the nightmare imagery of Schrader's Cat People is rooted in suppressed carnal frenzy, the terror of Patty Hearst owes more to compartmentalizing stress related to avoiding violent retaliation. and the soundtrack? the noise scene fucking wishes.
SPLIT SECOND (1992, Tony Maylam)
if you're sick to death of waiting for some cinemaniac to deliver the goods on a Judge Dredd film with Judge Death as the villain, then just give up the ghost and watch Split Second instead.
VHYES (2019, Jack Henry Robbins)
more like VHehs amiriteyouknowwhatimtalkingabout? some funny skits and dedication to the visual recreation, but it feels more than a few years too late jumping on the Everything is Terrible / Tim and Eric's Awesome Show. Great Job! post-ironic nightmare TV bandwagon, not to mention the already played out video store nostalgia that's been over-explored by any number of interchangeable "geek culture" commentators who confuse generalized sarcasm with biting wit.
(May)
hey look she's swimming in the Birds of Prey script. Inglesia brings the shit (pun un/intended) with his take on the locked-in-a-vacancy narrative.
a charming eye-opener about the tape trade artery traversing oddity from Trent Harris (Rubin and Ed).
inconspicuously situated between rape-revenge waves, Blood Games plays like the most hateful grindhouse offering you can imagine (Rape Squad, Fight For Your Life, etc.) wearing the toned up work-out body flesh of a boners 'n boobies late night cable timeslot warmer. none of that is an insult.
a way more violent, way less irritating Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that would feel at home alongside the Crank films and the woefully underappreciated Shoot 'Em Up.
in a better, more just universe, this unendingly imaginative gem would be in the Netflix Top Ten and the insultingly execrable rich guy rape-fantasy wish fulfillment dook-grenade that was 365 Days would've been devoured by the tentacled viscera of an angry monster woman's floating head.
Tsukamoto artfully channels his obsession with the corruptive influence of archetypal masculine identity through the scowl-faced testosterone theater of the samurai film.
a surprisingly subversive entry into the pantheon of 80s-90s urban vampire tales. just try to get this out of your head afterward.
this might be the most horrifying film Schrader ever made. where as the nightmare imagery of Schrader's Cat People is rooted in suppressed carnal frenzy, the terror of Patty Hearst owes more to compartmentalizing stress related to avoiding violent retaliation. and the soundtrack? the noise scene fucking wishes.
if you're sick to death of waiting for some cinemaniac to deliver the goods on a Judge Dredd film with Judge Death as the villain, then just give up the ghost and watch Split Second instead.
more like VHehs amiriteyouknowwhatimtalkingabout? some funny skits and dedication to the visual recreation, but it feels more than a few years too late jumping on the Everything is Terrible / Tim and Eric's Awesome Show. Great Job! post-ironic nightmare TV bandwagon, not to mention the already played out video store nostalgia that's been over-explored by any number of interchangeable "geek culture" commentators who confuse generalized sarcasm with biting wit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
