And in hindsight, there's really no explanation for the title.
posted by wil forbis 12/27/2002 04:42:44 PM

Tuesday, December 24, 2002
I'll tell you one thing I don't get: the phrase, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." How did we come up with such a ghastly abberation. I'm sure that somewhere in mankind's history there's and explanation but I don't want to hear it.

Hears a couple more phrases I don't get:

"I can't count the ways you can flay and broil and armadillo."

"Like a knife through the still trembling throat of a spider monkey!"

"I was caught between a rock and a onrushing hippopotamus dying of AIDS."

Man truly is the worst of all...

posted by wil forbis 12/24/2002 09:52:45 AM

Monday, December 23, 2002
Here's a pretty interesting article about how blogging can get you fired, referred to me by Jenn.
posted by wil forbis 12/23/2002 02:00:33 PM

Sunday, December 22, 2002
Hey, it's movie review time again!

I know what you're thinking: When was it movie review time before? You must have already forgotten about my now-classic review on the film "Hannibal" presented in these fine pages some 2 years ago. Check it out near the bottom of this page. Man, that thing still cracks me up, hombres.

Actually, I dunno if this really is a review, but I just saw "Gangs of New York" and figured I relate my thoughts. It's a flawed movie, but still thought provoking. Much time is wasted with this stupid revenge plot that Scorsese himself throws out the window towards when the film gets to its heart - a 4 day riot in New York prompted by the Union draft for the civil war. I was somewhat familiar with this historical event before seeing the film, but it's definately brought to life in a way that redeems the other 150 boring minutes of the film.

I found myself watching "Gangs..." and trying to grasp the moral framework. Was this about how the Irish were unfairly exploited by the nativists of Civil war era America? Kinda, but those same Irish go apeshit at the end and kill lots of black people. Was this about how all the underclass were exploited by the rich and powerful of New York*? Once again, kinda, but that same underclass goes apeshit at the end and kills lots of black people. (If I were a black guy watching this film I'd be saying, "With all these niggas being hung why should I give a fuck about the Micks?" Then I'd probably make some loud remark about how "All niggas are hung, and you know what I'm talking about. Ha ha!" at which point I'd be escorted out of theater. I'd be a pretty obnoxious black person.) Presumably, Leo Decaprio's character would be out front and center in the final anti-black riots were he not so concerned with enacting vengence on Daniel Day Lewis' Bill the Butcher. Which makes me wonder if the film is ultimately just a hand sweeping comdemnation of male violence throughout history.

*I couldn't help but be reminded of the L.A. riots where hundreds of justifiably enraged people responded by stealing from their neighbors and killing dozens of innocents.

I gotta say, Day-Lewis character is one of the best bad guys of recent mainstream cinema, and the film does a lot to explain his motivations. I've always had it in my head that he played pretty faggy characters, like whathisfuck - the guy who paints with his toes - but here, he's one hunnert percent all-man. You can't help but share his delight when he gets down to torturing pretty-boy Leo with a molten-hot blade.

Just like "Die Another Day," I also can't help but see a 9/11 message in this film. (As well as a comical send up of the balloting in the 2000 presidential election.) There's a point in the midst of the riots and ensuing Kent State style clampdown from the Federal Government, that Leo and Daniel are rolling around dodging cannon fire. They look up at each other and seem to have this expression of "What were we fighting about?" Once again, I can't be sure what Scorsese is saying. "We have to all get along because now we have bigger enemies?" Or that "New York should take stength from the fact that it was born out of trauma?" It's not that the film doesn't wear it's message on its sleeve, it's that it wears too many messages om its sleeve. Which one do we pick?

Nonetheless, If you've got a several hours to burn, you could find worse ways to spend your money.
posted by wil forbis 12/22/2002 11:03:22 PM

I finally realized who Colin Powell reminds of. Mr. Spock.
posted by wil forbis 12/22/2002 11:50:11 AM

Friday, December 20, 2002
Man, this is just my luck. If you were born before 1971, you were inoculated for smallpox. Guess what year I was born?

We better nuke all brown people, pronto!
posted by wil forbis 12/20/2002 06:29:38 PM

It seems I have a real tendency to type ".xom" when I mean to type ".com." They should start offering the ".xom" domain name.
posted by wil forbis 12/20/2002 11:07:39 AM

Thursday, December 19, 2002
Hey, you can check out a mp3 version of a new song I've been working at here: pop song
posted by wil forbis 12/19/2002 10:17:44 PM

Monday, December 16, 2002
I have found myself getting genuinely scared while listening to various strains of scary music lately. For instance, I was just listening to the sounds track to "Psycho," and I half jumped out of my chair when the slicing violins of the shower scene hit. And last night I was listening to this creepy Buckethead album, "Monsters and Robots," and was really getting weirded out.

I like getting frightened from music... it doesn't happen very often. Fear is probably the one emotion music is least able to conjure.
posted by wil forbis 12/16/2002 04:52:27 PM

Saturday, December 14, 2002
Man, I've just been going through my tape collection and I don't even know how I ended up with some of this stuff. The Best of the Turtles? Music Inspired by the Motion Picture, The Air Up There? What kind of fag am I?
posted by wil forbis 12/14/2002 03:53:04 PM

Top 5 Most Overrated Bands.

I thought I'd take the opportunity to tell you what I think the top five most overrated bands are so you can properly assimilate my opinions into yours and stop sounding like such a know-nothing oaf. Keep in mind, it's not that I necessarily dislike these bands, I just don't think they're anywhere near worth the acclaim they get/got.

Nirvana - I'm pretty sure if Kurt Cobain's zombiefied corpse came back to life, 90% of the music critics would line up to felate him and swallow his swarthy man chowder.

REM - Whathisnames' lyrics are nonsensical - but not really all that interesting. There seems to be a strange fascination on the part of the pseudo-intellectuals to revere smart people who pretend to be schizophrenic. Why not give the real crazies their due?

INXS - You may not remember it now, but in the mid 80's these guys were huge. At best they were a decent nightclub band with a Jim Morrison clone for a singer.

Which brings me to...

The Doors. They had a couple decent songs, sure. But most of their supposedly spiritual appeal was tied up in the fact that Morrison was a hot piece of ass. If it had been some fat, balding guy spouting out Jim's "Lizard King" horseshit, no-one would have looked twice.

The Velvet Underground - Holy Satan! I can't believe how many people go apeshit over this bunch of no talent hacks.

It's interesting to note that 4 out of 5 of these bands have had a prominent member die before their time... but usually after the band had hit their epoch.

Honorary Mention: Biggie Smalls.
posted by wil forbis 12/14/2002 12:44:51 PM

Friday, December 13, 2002
Looks like they cancelled the Guns and Roses tour, though I can't really claim to give a satan. I thought "Appetite for Destruction" was one of the great quintessential rock albums, but at this point, nothing's been done to Axl Rose that he didn't do to himself. In fact, I'm kind of glad the tour got cancelled; maybe it'll bring that guy down to earth. I respect him as a performer and an iconoclast and someone who didn't get swept up in the pc bullshit of the nineties, but you really get the impression he thinks he's some demigod who doesn't have to answer to his audience. The first place he fucked up was by getting rid of Izzy, and then Slash. Those two guys were a big part about what made that band cool.

I was driving home last night thinking about this, and I realize how important the GnR "look" was. Poison was just a bunch on blonde guys, and L.A. Guns was just a bunch of black haired guys, but each member of GnR stood out from the others. Axl was this crazy, snake dancing red-head. Slash was the fuzzy haired, top hat wearing, black guitarist. Izzy actually had kind of short hair and looked kind of like a pirate. Steven Adler and whathisname, the bass player were the only real traditional LA metal looking guys.

Yep, you fucked up Axl, you dumb bitch.
posted by wil forbis 12/13/2002 02:51:31 PM

Thursday, December 12, 2002
In a way, you gotta hand to Microsoft. They've developed a successful business model, even though at least a third, if not half of all instances of their software have been pirated.
posted by wil forbis 12/12/2002 02:36:07 PM

Hope you don't mind if I get momentarily serious here. I was watching the new James Bond flick, and things were being blown up and lasers were going off and suddenly I was rereminded of what had happened on September 11. I was like, "Holy fuck, here I am in a movie watching all this destruction and it's a fantasy, but this isn't far off from what really happened on that day. I mean, some guy was there, sitting in his office and he looks up and a plane comes crashing in through the window and there's a huge explosion. Was he killed by the concussion or did he feel his fleash literally get flayed off him bones by the heat? How long did it take him to die?" And I started thinking about the people that watched the second attack from afar. As many have commented, it must have looked like a James Bond film, but with horrible, real repercussions. Suddenly I became truly amazed that anyone could watch that and not go insane. And I started to think, what am I doing here? I should be out there trying to enjoy what precious moments of life I might have left. I thought, "Why am I not making sweet, sweet love to Halle Berry, star of this new James Bond flick." So I went Halle Berry's house and said "Halle, why are we not making sweet sweet love in the precious moments we have left?" And she said, "Oh my God, I have been waiting all my life for you to say that." And she invited me in and we made sweet, sweet love until her husband came home and I said, "Beat it, queer!"

Like I said, hope you don't mind if I get serious for a moment.

I guess you probably heard that James gets pretty fucked up in the beginning of the film. The North Koreans torture him for 14 months. I wonder if that's suppose to symbolize what America's been through this past 14 months. We, like James Bond, had been used to getting out of jams with a devilish wink, but in life, as in the film, suddenly we were reminded of the grit and blood of suffering. And, like the film, we will rise again and defeat Osama bin laden with the aid of kung fu skillz and an invisible car.
posted by wil forbis 12/12/2002 10:54:45 AM

Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Man, I think I've finally perfected the art and science of getting free coffee at Starbucks. What you you need to do is order their "small" coffee. It's actually not on their official menu, but it's a coffee they serve in the same 8 ounce cups they use for the various espresso drinks that come in that size. Of course, sometimes you'll order a small and they'll try and serve you a "tall" (12 ounces) and you have to throw the searing hot coffee in their face and laugh while they scream and roll around on the floor in pain. But the point being that half the time they won't even charge you for the small since it's not worth the trouble. (If they do, try pulling out a charge card intimating that you plan on making 'em run it through the point of sale machine - that'll make 'em think twice.)

Even if you have to pay for the first cup, you should get the refill for free. (Money for nothin... and you're refills for free!)

Think of it, great tasting corporate coffee as opposed to the mom and pop swill the pinkos want you to drink. And for free!
posted by wil forbis 12/10/2002 05:43:45 PM

Monday, December 09, 2002
So alex tells me that Debbie Harry bought the remake rights to "Alphaville" in the eighties. She was probably trying to one-up Pat Benatar for doing the theme song to the redo of "Fritz Lang's Metropolis."
posted by wil forbis 12/9/2002 02:33:21 PM

Sunday, December 08, 2002
Holy... dog... vomit.... You gotta check this out. It's some loony chick who's apparently trying to find a husband online even though she's clearly about 17 (physically) and 5 (mentally.) Despite all that she appears to at least found a live-in, whom she chose on the basis that he had lots of broadband internet access. (I got nine inches of internet access right here for you honey.) Not quite sure it's real, but Lord, I want to believe.
posted by wil forbis 12/8/2002 11:07:29 PM

Did you see Dinero on SNL last night? Learn your fuckin' lines, asshole! (Not that the lines they gave him were worth learning.)

This seems to be a recurring theme whenever SNL gets an "acting legend" on the show. They just figure, "Hey, he's totally famous so there's no point to us actually writing good material."

I'd like to sodomize somebody for this. I dunno who... but somebody. How 'bout Cheri Oteri?
posted by wil forbis 12/8/2002 03:57:09 PM

You know, we keep hearing about these al-Qaida web sites that post warnings of upcoming attacks, but where exactly are they? I wonder if they'd like to be part of the acid logic family of blogs.
posted by wil forbis 12/8/2002 11:18:12 AM

Saturday, December 07, 2002

Man, you gotta check out "Alphaville," a weird French film by Goddard. It's truly an awful piece of crap that proves that all French cinema is garbage and that the French should be enslaved, but it does have this great talking computer who speaks in this really low voice that sounds like his throat is filled with mucous. Of course the whole film is in frog-speak, so it becomes even more alien. I actually spent a chunk of today sampling some audio tidbits from the film just to have them on hand. You never know when you'll need samples of a French, mucousy, talking computer.

But the film itself is terrible!

posted by wil forbis 12/7/2002 08:56:03 PM

Holy Christ, have you seen Strom Thurmonds' wife? She's like half his age!

He deserves a woman at least two thirds his age.
posted by wil forbis 12/7/2002 05:32:45 PM

Friday, December 06, 2002
Ha! Check out these stupid freaks. (Note: I use the term "stupid freaks" in the most endearing way possible.)
posted by wil forbis 12/6/2002 11:01:09 AM

Wednesday, December 04, 2002
I tell you what's great: Starstream Comics! They were a short lived series in the 70's that adapted science fiction stories to the misunderstood comic form. A friend of mine tracked down the collection on Ebay and passed on a few to me. There's a great story about robots in the future who are contemplating the myth of "Man." At one point, one of them shoots a dear and another compliments him by saying, "Congratulations. You should have some good emotional reactions to store in your data vault."

Y'know, I hope all of you walk away from each entry of My So-called Penis with some good emotional reactions to store in your data vault.
posted by wil forbis 12/4/2002 06:45:54 PM

Tuesday, December 03, 2002
For some reason, I was just reminded of the film My Sweet Satan which I saw about 6 years ago. Ever seen it? Man, it's totally fucked up. The version I saw, was actually three collected movie shorts under the moniker "My Sweet Satan" but the it's the first short that really goes by the name and I hear it's been distributed alone. It's based on a real life killing where a bunch of "satanic" teenagers took some friend of theirs into the woods and beat him to death. (I originally typed "bit him to death," another great concept for a horror flick.) But the classic scene in the MSS short is where this killing is recreated and the kids literally crush their friends head with their boots. I bet that was most of the FX money for the film right there.

The next segment in the compilation version was about this guy who kidnaps some hitchhikers, kills the male, then puts the chick in this cage about his oven and presumably cooks her - I can't really recall. Really gruesome stuff - you should check it out.

The final episode wasn't gory at all, more like a bad outtake from Linklater's Slackers. Just a bunch on punk high schoolers sitting around drinking beer and discussing life. Yawn.

But what I remember most about watching My Sweet Satan was the people I was with. It was some friends of mine, Ashley and Mica and Ashley's sister and her boyfriend. None of the are really "My Sweet Satan" kinds of people and I started feeling really uncomfortable as we watched it... like I'd brought this hideous thing into their lives.

I seem to be coming up with all sorts of good sci-fi-horror film ideas lately. Like today, I noticed my girlfriend putting cream cheese on only half her bagel, so I came up with this idea about a woman who starts to notice all these half filled in circles in her life. Like a half covered bagel or a tire painted half white. Eventually she realizes that her parents were kidnapped by a weird cult that had a half filled circle as its insignia.
posted by wil forbis 12/3/2002 06:37:02 PM

Monday, December 02, 2002
Interestingly enough, not long after I wrote that recent blog slagging off local band, Magnolia Thunderfinger, I receieved a pretty humerous email from one of the band members. And today, while I was at the local Starbucks, I noticed that one of the barristas whom I've made fun of in the blog seemed rather tepid in his treatment of me. Suddenly it dawned on me: If one guy from around town can track me down when I deride them in the blog, why not more? Maybe this barrista is an avid reader of the blog, checking in daily to see if I've maligned him. Perhaps I should cool my jets?

But then I thought: what a great audience building technique! I spend all day blogging about local Sacramentians and then wait for them to discover the blog and turn beet red with rage. It can't miss!
posted by wil forbis 12/2/2002 07:40:07 PM