DAY OFF ADVENTURES: DE-EVOLUTION IN TOYLAND

During my weekly trip into Manhattan I stopped by the current location of the once mighty Forbidden Planet, a comics/sci-fi/general geekery emporium, in search of a comic book that I have been having difficulty getting my hands on. Sadly, the Planet was the third store I went to that didn't have what I was after, so I was about to leave when I decided to check out the new collectible toys that infested the shelves. A plethora of Japanese monsters, superheroes, giant robots and STAR WARS characters assaulted my eyes and for the most part didn't catch my interest, so I made a beeline for the door. Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks, my attention riveted by a sight glimpsed peripherally. There, all by its lonesome on a shelf, partially wedged behind a toy from the upcoming Superman flick, was a beautifully sculpted Devo figure.

Yes, you read that right. An honest to God, motherfucking Devo figure!



My love of most things Devo is well-documented so I won't go into that again, but when I saw that toy the first thing to come out of my mouth was, "No WAY am I leaving this place without you." I grabbed the doll, plunked down the cash and headed home.

Now, I thought it was nuts about ten years ago when the Ozzy Osbourne figure came out, but the existence of a Devo toy just goes to show that if you wait long enough someone will manufacture a replica of just about anyone.

The figure is ostensibly of Mark Mothersbaugh, bespectacled frontman of the group, but it also comes with replaceable heads for the other four members of the original lineup — the likenesses are merely so-so — but since Mark is inarguably the face that most people associate with Devo, his head is definitely the one to go with.



And adding to the kitsch value, the manufacturers kindly provide a bullwhip and one of those red flower pot helmets — and "energy dome" to those in the know — as accessories.

The figure stands about nine inches in height, and the bright yellow of the jumpsuit makes it eyecatching no matter where you have it on display. I'll be putting mine on display next to the Ultraman toy that I have adorning the sill of the kitchen at the barbecue joint. Now all I need is an equally well-made GG Allin doll...

PARTY TIPS OF YORE: THE TWO GREAT ALBUM COVERS FOR CLEANING YOUR WEED

During the now bygone days of me living in an apartment large enough for me to throw a debauched get-together, I quickly discovered that when friends and guests arrived with smokeable “party favors,” one had better have a surface ready for cleaning the stems and seeds out of the merry-joo-wanna soon to grace the bowls of pipes and bongs or be turned into huge joints. In the days before they more or less died out there was nothing better for this purpose than a good old twelve-inch vinyl LP cover, the act of weed cleaning on an album cover helped to reinforce the ancient covenant between stonage and music.

Many people favored the Beatles' “White Album” as their surface of choice, but I always frowned upon that one since weed tended to render that stark bit of cover design dingy over time, and the Beatles catalog had also become a bit of a cliché when associated with music for getting high, so why go there?

My own favorite cover for this purpose is without question the eponymous B-52's album from 1979; while the musical content is admittedly not for all tastes - an uneven pastiche of throwback surf/dance music, wildly screechy/effeminate vocals and some of the most ludicrous lyrics ever scribed - the cover is a bright canary yellow, absolutely perfect for keeping your righteous buds visible in most party-lit situations, even including the often misused black light.


The other great choice is “Trout Mask Replica” by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, an album that even fans like myself find nigh unlistenable without Herculean effort.


This item is a double album, so when unfolded it provides enough space for three to four expert stoners to work their art in a most expedient fashion. The visuals are undeniably strange, and that helps keep the rabid hop-heads occupied while awaiting the illicit lungfulls to come. And when finished, make sure to treat your guests to the head-scratching tracks “Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish, "The Blimp,"” and my personal favorite, “Old Fart At Play.” TRUST YER BUNCHE!

BIRTHDAY GIRL STRIKES AGAIN!

Since the weather has gotten nice and I occasionally have enough downtime to enjoy it, I recently bought one of those high-end folding chairs for sporting events that you can chuck into a shoulder-slung carrying sleeve, and have taken to parking my beige ass either out in front of the barbecue joint or I open the back door in the kitchen and sit in there enjoying the hood fan-coaxed breeze. Armed with a cold beer and with my leather Kangol baseball cap pulled down over my eyes it is a brief respite from the smoky, porky grind. That is until my reverie is fisted in the colon by an annoying douchebag.

Our Sunday shifts tend to be the torturous definition of endlessly boring agony until around six PM, so until that hour Jeff the bartender and I amuse ourselves as best as we can, vainly attempting to find something decent on the tube - no easy feat in the programming wasteland that is NYC - watching DVDs, listening to music or reading whatever is at hand. On this particular Sunday, Jeff was at the bar jotting down new song lyrics in his notebook and I was in the kitchen reading an excellent book on the Black Plague (I'm really into feel-good reading), when we both heard the electronic chime that alerts us to the front door opening.

I briefly craned my neck in the direction of the bar and noted a buxom blonde planting herself on a bar stool. Something about the woman struck me as familiar, but I ignored the mild rumblings of my “looney sense” and went back to my book.

After about fifteen minutes I noticed that the door chime kept going off every five minutes or so, and since we clearly were not being overrun by rabid barbecue-holics I looked out and realized that it was the blonde chick going in and out to constantly yack at people on her cell phone. At that point Jeff (pictured) came back into the kitchen, and if his eyes had rolled any further into his skull they would have rolled down his esophagus and fallen out of his asshole. I asked him what was bugging him and he said, “This fucking annoying psycho bitch is outside and she just WILL NOT FUCKING SHUT UP!” Once he had composed himself, Jeff elaborated:

“Okay, so she comes in with a hello as if she were Rolls (NOTE: one of our regulars who has become family) but pissed off at life. All familiar like, and she's like, 'I'm pissed…' I give her a menu she says, 'No thanks, I know what I want,' then I'm like, 'Oh, okay. What would you like?' She says she doesn't know and then asks for something with lots of raspberry vodka. I make her a raspberry vodka martini and then she's all, 'I went to this Russian bar — I'm Polish — but them Russians… Ya know they only drink shots of vodka, so me and my girlfriends were SOOOO hung over...' Then she's like, 'We were at a wedding, and this guy tried to charge my mother a ton of money and he's like a millionaire...'”

At that point I opened my mouth to say, "Exactly what the fuck does that have to do with anything?” when Jeff beat me to it and blurted, “Yeah, I had no fuckin' clue either as to what the fuck she was talking about, and what the connection between the two stories was! Then she said that her stepfather 'slapped her in the face,' I think at the wedding. In response to my offering her a fourth Chesterfield ale she boasted, "Yeah, I'm not even plastered yet!"

At that point the alarms in my head went off, and I screamed, “OH, SHIT! IT'S BIRTHDAY GIRL!!!” and I swiftly strode out of my smoky sanctum to verify my deduction. Sure enough, it was her, the horrific subject of a previous post, and the second she saw me she happily exclaimed, “Hiya! Remember me? I'm the birthday girl!” I nodded in acknowledgement and immediately returned to the kitchen, staying there for the next few hours while she irritated the living shit out of poor Jeff and Sal, another of our regulars.

When Birthday Girl comes into the barbecue joint, she's on the prowl for dick with a lack of subtlety that would make a she-mink in estrus blush. Pussy a-droolin', she worked her way about the bar, repelling the few men who sat there and attempted to watch the Mets game, even lamely propositioning Sal with a from out of nowhere,”I haven't had sex in a year,” followed up by the world's oldest sports related come-on, namely trying to get him to explain baseball to her since she was just a mere female. Sal instantly twigged to her “strategy” and shot her down in flames with a swiftly executed, “Nah, it'll take too long,” which he punctuated with a long pull on his Schaefer tall boy. The finality of the exchange was as obvious as a thirty-ton bank vault door slamming on someone's skull.

Soon, an aggravated Jeff returned to the sanctuary of the kitchen and immediately vented again: “She didn't like the sausage platter, had me pour sugar in her martini, and when she couldn't finish it said 'Next time! Tee hee!' Whatever, man! Then she asked, 'What are the guys in here, because my girlfriends are all single…' FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!!!!!”

As if this tableu weren't enough to give any guy a headache and a permanent “man-gina,” Birthday Girl kept trying to gloss over her hyper-annoying drunken behavior by mentioning the fact that she's Polish about 400 times, spicing that huge “who gives a fuck" moment with the killer combo of "Hey I'm Polish AND blonde!!!” Then, after what seemed like an eon, the bar hag left, presumably to haunt some other unsuspecting watering hole and hopefully find some inebriated horn-dog to give her the ol' pork plug.

Ladies, let this serve as an object lesson in how not to go on a quest for Johnson. Take it from me, even as horny as I am at the moment, I wouldn't have gone for what she was offering.

IN THE INTEREST OF CLARITY: WHAT IS “GERMAN?”

After reading my post on adventures in ye olde porne shoppe, many of you wrote to me both here on the site and on my email account asking exactly what “German” porn is and why it was better not to ask if you didn't know what it is. Well folks, “German” is anything relating to shit and the enjoyment thereof.

Yes, you read that right. I'm talking shit, and not the way most niggaz usually talk shit. I'm talking the 98.6 degree payload that emerges from one's distended asshole in direct, inevitable response to a hearty meal. Yes, there are people who love to rub human doo-doo all over themselves and their (presumably) willing sex partners, even worshipping poop to the point of eating the goddamned stuff and washing it down with their own equally warm piss.

I first heard the dark rumblings of such practices when I was a dirty wee youth, but never thought that such horrors could be for real. Then, while in college at a university that was notorious for all manner of deviant sexuality running rampant, I met various people who drunkenly admitted to the previously mentioned chocolate charm and was horrified to the very soul.

Hey, I'm all for you exploring whatever the fuck you want to do, so long as no one gets hurt, but doody games just plain gross me out. It's that simple.

Then, during my infamous years in the Marvel Comics Bullpen, I actually saw a German porno film, entitled “Das Kaviar Dinner,” and what little innocence I had left went up in flames. The photo on the box featured a wide-eyed, attractive young redhead being spoon fed a heaping helping of freshly laid turd cable from a beautiful silver serving dish. The friend who obtained this video Chernobyl claims that the turbaned Sikh porno dealer — in the heart of Times Square during the last days of its true sleaziness, no less! — recoiled in horror when he saw the box on the counter, and screamed, “Aggggh! No! NO! It is too horrible!!!,” after which he scooped it into a plain brown bag so fast that I swear to Christ that there must have been a sonic boom.

I will spare you the details of the “film” in question, but let me assure you that if I ever see any of the onscreen participants walking down the street I will drop whatever else I may be doing and kick them to death in middle of the tarmac in an effort to keep their possible spawn out of the gene pool.

What really blows my mind is the fact that German porn has become so available thanks to video and DVD that many people who don't normally pursue such diversions know what it is; you know something is truly no longer as underground as it once was the second that jokes are made about it in the popular media, and “South Park” has famously disclosed that resident asshole Eric Cartman's indiscriminate hosebag of a mother once starred in German “scheisse” movies. NOTE: “scheisse” is the German word for shit! Isn't international cultural exchange a wonderful thing, boys and girls?

So now that you know what German is, here are some other kinks that can instantly be identified by the mere mention of the countries with which they are associated:

German = “fun” with doody.
English = bondage and discipline, with the emphasis on discipline, caning and birching specifically.
French = all things oral.
Roman = puking; a reference the historical institution of “vomitoriums” during the days of imperial Rome.
Spanish = the fucking of a lady's titties.
Greek = all things anal.

If you can think of any that I forgot, please write in to the comments section and share the wisdom!

DAY OFF ADVENTURES: AT THE YE OLDE PORNE SHOPPE

Points subtracted for gratuitous apostrophe use.

Usually on one of my two days off per week, I venture into Manhattan to do some DVD shopping or scour book stores and comic book shops in search of yet more stuff with which to pollute my already cluttered noggin and apartment. (Believe me, my flat is so choked with all manner of stuff that it looks like the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is stored at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.) Today my plan was to hit Kim's Video on St. Mark's Place to peruse the week's newly available DVDs, and then on to Jim Hanley's Universe to pick up a collection of commission sketches by one of my favorite illustrators, namely Steve "Nexus" Rude, but on my way into the city I decided to do something I haven't done for a while: check out the wares on display at the first porno shop I could find.

For those of you who don't live in the NYC area, it is no longer kosher to flat-out honestly and openly run a porn shop. Instead of being able to name such an establishment "Scurvy Mike's Cunt-U-Copia," a proprietor must do away with all blatant displays of flesh and just call the place "Videos" or something equally inoffensive in an attempt to keep NYC safe for the kiddies (thank you ever so much, Giuliani administration). While I can understand such a motivation, I am rather saddened by such sanitation of the once "most dangerous city in the world" because when I was an impressionable child it was the birthright of kids in the Tri-State area to come into Manhattan — specifically Times Square — and have our innocence irrevocably shattered by the rampaging filth and violence on view right next to stands selling cheap replicas of the Statue of Liberty to tourists. Thus the appalling whitewashing of the area strikes me as especially idiotic since kids today have the Internet to browse, and there are infinitely more ways to be utterly fucked up by pornography and whatever other material one may find objectionable online than there were when I was a wee young 'un. I mean, I didn't know what fisting was until I got into high school, and that is a shame of epic proportions. Today's youth is simply much better (?) informed and whether or not they are engaging in any of the activities their research may expose them to, at least they have some sort of a clue.

But I digress.

One of the ways the porn entrepreneurs in the Big Apple got past not being able to openly flog their wares was to fill the display window with innocuous family videos — Disney and such — or ultra-cheap kung fu flicks, and stock such items for the first five feet or so of the store. That's all well and good but once past those first five feet, it's a smut freak's paradise. Every conceivable manner of filth unfolds itself before one's stunned and occasionally grossed-out eyes; disturbingly realistic PVC vaginas that would make excellent beer cozies, wobbly dildos in all colors and textures (and in some cases, flavors), "German" flicks (if you don't know, don't ask), peep show booths, "bukakke" extravaganzas, multi-volume video series explicitly depicting women old enough to be your great-grandmother getting a righteous plowing from uber-buffed young studs (most notably the horrifying BUST A NUT IN GRANDMA'S BUTT), human/animal pairings (the immortal RAPED BY A DOG standing tall in the forefront of that particular sub-genre), dwarf porn (a field that goes all over the place, even branching into the combined joys of dwarf/transvestite/fisting/golden showers, a la THE LITTLEST SQUIRT, starring Bridget "the Midget" Powers) and who the fuck knows what the hell else. And the real beauty of it is that in spite of the attempts to rid the Disneyfied tourist nightmare that is the new Times Square of such Sodom and Gomorrahesque detritus, this kind of vile fun can be found right next to the big theaters running exhorbitiantly priced blockbuster musicals such as ELTON JOHN WHORES HIMSELF OUT YET AGAIN. Me, I'd rather shell out ten bucks for a copy of EIGHTEEN AND NASTY-VOLUME 10 — which I highly recommend, by the way — than pay $150 bucks for some fucking musical, and I can take the dirty movie home to be "enjoyed" again and again. Take THAT, Broadway!

So as I made my way up the Bowery, I encountered one of the previously described "video" stores and dared to venture in. As expected, the front area was loaded with VHS tapes for sale that had obviously been untouched since approximately 1992 and were covered with dust and cobwebs, a condition that only helped to further the allergic misery I had been suffering from the moment I walked out of my apartment this afternoon. But all was well when I made my way past that section and stumbled into the extra-sleazy rear of the store. The DVDs were stacked floor-to-ceiling on racks of cheap industrial shelving, all with their covers displayed to maximum anatomical impact, regardless of what the customer's taste or orientation may be, one of the things that make even the most scabrous of such establishments one of the great equalizers of humanity. After a few moments in such an environment, one adapts and can peruse the covers without discomfort (unless, like me, you find "German" flicks and violent/torture stuff off-putting).

I gravitated toward the more outrageously titled items and found a couple of gems, namely BIG, WET, STICKY HOLES (self-explanatory) and AMAZING PENETRATIONS WITH AMAZON WOMEN, which featured a buxom brunette cheerily navigating an enormous, veiny, as-thick-around-as-a-beer-can dildo into her seemingly incompatible cooch. I decided to purchase both since I had wandered in on five-bucks-per-DVD day and seeing as both features were four hours in running time, it was a win/win situation all the way. And there was one DVD there that wins my vote for "Porn Title of the Week," but I figured that two such purchases in one day was probably enough, though I may go back and get it just to have as proof of its existence: the cover was an outrageous closeup of a woman splaying her Mighty Pinkness to such an alarming degree that her vagina appeared downright cavernous, so much so that you could see a great deal of space between its introitus and its back depths. I almost expected to see cars marked just inside of her, positioned to watch a drive-in movie being projected upon her cervix. The name of this landmark in American cinema? SUPERSIZE THAT PUSSY.

An epic worthy of Cecil B. DeMille.

As I was making my choices, I heard the unmistakable sounds of skin flick moaning emanating from a curtained booth, obviously a peep show kiosk. Those moans were soon accompanied by the obviously live vocalizings of the clearly enthusiastic customer within, noises that soon culminated in a breathily-grunted "Unggh," after which the customer sheepishly emerged from the booth only to have the Pakistani shopkeeper ask him if he was "done." The customer nodded in affirmation and swiftly departed, at which point the shopkeeper grabbed the nearby mop and pail and set about making the compartment ready for the next patron. When he returned I paid for my items and left, wondering how the guy not only kept his sanity on that job, but also wondering how he kept any possible interest in women since he was inundated with illicit images and sounds from nine to five. The worst that I have to deal with during the work day is crazy patrons and coming out of the place reeking from head to toe of barbecue smoke, and thank the gods that all I have to use a mop for is getting rid of any grease or food prep residue that may have hit the floor during the day...

THE TRAILER REEL FROM HELL

Movie trailers, also known to the layman as "Previews of Coming Attractions," the short highlights reels designed to lure filmgoers to the boxoffice and part them from their hard-earned cash. The point of trailers is to get you interested in seeing the flick, and if the trailer fails at that then the film itself will likely crash and burn into painful obscurity.

I love trailers because they're short and usually to the point, and when done right they are a hell of a lot of fun, sometimes more memorable than the features that they precede. Even a bad trailer can be a total riot, such as the jaw-dropping preview for KUNG FU FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, a ludicrously outrageous horse turd of a supernatural kung fu flick whose trailer is replete with such mangling of the English language as "Human heart used in sacrifice! Evils are deadly scared!" and the incredible "EVEN COMES THE VAMPIRE!!!," at which point we hear a voice shriek, "I'm coming!!!," immediately followed by the unforgettable sight of Count Dracula flying through the air and interrupting a kung fu battle in the middle of the street.

I collect trailer compilations, mostly the cornucopias of crap available from the unimpeachable SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO, and on volume two of their "Dusk To Dawn Drive-In Trash-O-Rama Show" series I found what may just be the worst trailer I have ever seen, bar none. It is incoherent, poorly edited, rife with early-1970's hippie types, and to add the icing to this monumental shit cake, the film is actually entitled THE HIDAN OF MAUKBEIANGJOW. I swear to Sam Peckinpah that I am not making that up; look it up on the Internet Movie Database if you don't believe me. I ran the trailer late the other night at the barbecue joint for a bar full of appalled regualrs who refused to believe that it was for real, hence this post. Since most of you cannot join me here in the depths of the Vault I have kindly transcribed the trailer and described the mishmash of its visuals for your benefit (?).

As the trailer begins, cheesy, generic "acid" rock plays on the soundtrack while random scenes of violence, mayhem, escape attempts, people riding motorcycles, drunk hippies wielding machetes and guns, women being tied up and strapping men down in what looks like a well-lit dungeon, a white-robed cult leader, and a zombie whose back is riddled with multiple bloody bullet holes flash onscreen. Then we hear a series of voiceovers:

STONER #1: Hey, man! Help me think of a name for this movie, willya?

STONER #2: Sure! What's it about?

STONER #1: Well, it's about tender young love, see? Between a boy named Casper and a girl named Prudence.

STONER #2: Oh, WOW, man! For that ya want something simple, ya know? Like, not too hokey or overworked. Like, "CASPER AND PRUDENCE!"

STONER #1: Yeah! Hey, hey! How about a movie with lots of violence, greed, murder, suspense and intrigue, hunh?

STONER #2: Hey, far out man! Ya want somethin' really super that'll really gett out and grab 'em, like, "THE KILLERS."

STONER #1: Yeah!

STONER #2: "THE KILLERS," man! That's it!

STONER #1: Great! Now suppose it's a comedy, see? Where everything everybody does works out all wrong, hunh?

STONER #2: Yeah!

STONER #1: Hunh?

STONER #2: Yeah!

STONER #1: Hunh?

STONER #2: Yeah!

STONER #1: Like, uh, like the Marx Brothers, hunh?

STONER #2: Yeah!

STONER #1: Hunh?

STONER #2: Yeah!

STONER #1: Wow, like, uh, like slapstick that you see on TV! Let's see, how about, uh..."LAUGH TIL IT HURTS?"

STONER #2: Oh, WOW!

STONER #1: That's it, man!

Now at this point it suddenly turns more incoherent than before:

STONER #2: Right arm! Hey, but what if it's about a magician and people from another planet trying to take over the earth by killin' young chicks and makin' zombies outta them?

STONER #1: Wow, man! 'Ey, that's the neatest of 'em all, man, like, zombies! Oh, wow...How about, "THE ZOMBIE PLOT?"

STONER #2: Yeah!

STONER #1: Hey, man! That's it! "THE ZOMBIE PLOT!"

STONER #2: Yeah! Hey, yeah, and what if it's got lots of music in it? Hard rock, country, ballads!

STONER #1: Oh, wow, LADY, man!

STONER #2: Oh, hey, that's easy. Just call it..."MUSIC!"

STONER #1: That's it, man! That'll take care of all of it!

STONER #2: Out of state!

STONER #1: Hey, but what would you call a movie with all this stuff in it? Ya know, all the killing and comedy and the music and the zombies and all that shi...

STONER #2: Hey, I got it! I GOT IT! "CASPER AND PRUDENCE LAUGH TIL IT HURTS AT THE KILLERS AND THE ZOMBIE PLOT: A MUSICAL!"

DEEP VOICE FROM OUT OF NOWHERE: How about..."THE HIDAN OF MAUKBEIANGJOW?"

STONER #1 (confused): The what?

STONER #2: Where's that coming from?

DEEP VOICE FROM OUT OF NOWHERE: "THE HIDAN OF MAUKBEIANGJOW!"

STONER #1: Aw, man, I like "CASPER AND PRUDENCE LAUGH TIL IT HURTS AT THE..."

STONER #2: Yeah, but that won't fit on the sign out front, ya know?

STONER #1: Aw, man, I hadn't thought of that...

DEEP VOICE FROM OUT OF NOWHERE: See "THE HIDAN OF MAUKBEIANGJOW!" Coming soon to this theater!

STONER #1: How about "GONE WITH THE WIND?"

STONER # 2: (giggles)

DEEP VOICE FROM OUT OF NOWHERE: "THE HIDAN OF MAUKBEIANGJOW!"

STONER #2: (giggling) "MAFIA MADNESS," man!!

DEEP VOICE FROM OUT OF NOWHERE: "THE HIDAN OF MAUKBEIANGJOW!" If you can't say it, go see it!

STONER #1: "THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY?" "THE ODD FATHER?"

STONER #2: "MOON OVER MY ARMY!"

STONER #1: No, it's, "Moon Over Miami."

STONER #2: Hey, who was that masked man?

STONER #1: I dunno, but he left a sliver toilet seat...

Can you believe that shit? I mean, I'm no stranger to the joy of bonghits, but how much were these guys smoking?