YOURS TRULY ON THE INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE

That indispensible aid to film fans everywhere, the Internet Movie Database, has a section where users can post their own comments and critiques of movies, and you can find mine from my EL BUNCHO days at http://us.imdb.com/CommentsAuthor?ur1468830

THE WORST SONGS THAT EVER MADE IT INTO THE BILLBOARD TOP 100

While there is so much terrific music out there, I have to ask myself why I take such pleasure in truly awful recordings. It’s easy to understand when it comes to various loopy novelty songs, but what is it about the truly pain-inducing pop songs that are not only flat-out horrible but are also completely serious?

I recently pondered exactly what were the absolute worst records ever to make it into the top 100 of the Billboard record chart, a thankless task if ever there was one, and here are the songs that make me feel ready to commit violent, messy homicide. Your opinion will no doubt vary from mine, so please write in with other aural offenders.

PATCHES-Clarence Carter

A very strong contender for the title of "Most Depressing Song Ever Recorded," this tells the tale of a dirt-poor Southern black guy who sacrifices everything for his family due to a promise made at his father's deathbed. Not only depressing, it's just plain maudlin:

(spoken) I was born and raised down in Alabama
On a farm way back up in the woods
I was so ragged that folks used to call me Patches
Papa used to tease me about it
'Cause deep down inside he was hurt
'Cause he'd done all he could

(sung) My papa was a great old man
I can see him with a shovel in his hands, see
Education he never had
He did wonders when the times got bad
The little money from the crops he raised
Barely paid the bills we made

For, life had kick him down to the ground
When he tried to get up
Life would kick him back down
One day Papa called me to his dyin' bed
Put his hands on my shoulders
And in his tears he said

(CHORUS) He said, Patches
I'm dependin' on you, son
To pull the family through
My son, it's all left up to you

Two days later Papa passed away, and
I became a man that day
So I told Mama I was gonna quit school, but
She said that was Daddy's strictest rule

So ev'ry mornin' 'fore I went to school
I fed the chickens and I chopped wood too
Sometimes I felt that I couldn't go on
I wanted to leave, just run away from home
But I would remember what my daddy said
With tears in his eyes on his dyin' bed

He said, Patches
I'm dependin' on you, son
I tried to do my best
It's up to you to do the rest

Then one day a strong rain came
And washed all the crops away
And at the age of 13 I thought
I was carryin' the weight of the
Whole world on my shoulders
And you know, Mama knew
What I was goin' through, 'cause

Ev'ry day I had to work the fields
'Cause that's the only way we got our meals
You see, I was the oldest of the family
And ev'rybody else depended on me
Ev'ry night I heard my Mama pray
Lord, give him the strength to face another day

So years have passed and all the kids are grown
The angels took Mama to a brand new home
Lord knows, people, I shedded tears
But my daddy's voice kept me through the years

Patches, I'm dependin' on you, son
To pull the family through
My son, it's all left up to you

Oh, I can still hear Papa's voice sayin'
Patches, I'm dependin' on you, son
I've tried to do my best
It's up to you to do the rest

I can still hear Papa, what he said
Patches ...

Patches, hand me the double-barrelled shotgun and let me blow your fucking head off!


WE BUILT THIS CITY (ON ROCK 'N' ROLL)-Starship

Do I really have to explain why this song sucks most egregiously? So bad that it inspired a vicious drinking game in which each player is given a six-pack and they have to finish the whole thing while the song plays. If the player finishes before the song ends, they can leave the game. For the players who remain, if they don't finish the six-pack before the song ends, the song is started again and they can't leave until the beers are done. Sheer evil.

(YOU'RE) HAVING MY BABY-Paul Anka and Odia Coates

The song that single-handedly set back the Women's Movement by 500 years, this horror actually made it to #1 for three weeks back in 1974 and was utterly inescapable at the time. During an era that gave the world some of the most ass-kickin' rock 'n' roll ever recorded by sentient life forms, how the fuck did this atrocity ever become a hit? Get a load of this:

PAUL: Havin' my baby
What a lovely way of sayin' how much you love me
Havin' my baby
What a lovely way of sayin' what you're thinkin' of me
I can see it, face is glowin'
I can see in your eyes, I'm happy you know it

BOTH: That you're havin' my baby
PAUL: You're the woman I love and I love what it's doin' to ya
BOTH: Havin' my baby
PAUL: You're a woman in love and I love what's goin' through ya

PAUL: The need inside you, I see it showin'
Whoa, the seed inside ya, baby, do you feel it growin'?
Are you happy you know it? That you're

BOTH: Havin' my baby

ODIA: I'm a woman in love and I love what it's doin' to me
BOTH: Havin' my baby
ODIA: I'm a woman in love and I love what's goin' through me

PAUL: Didn't have to keep it
Wouldn't put ya through it
You could have swept it from you life
But you wouldn't do it, no, you wouldn't do it

BOTH: And you're havin' my baby

ODIA: I'm a woman in love and I love what it's doin' to me
BOTH: Havin' my baby
ODIA: I'm a woman in love and I love what's goin' through me

PAUL: Havin' my baby (havin' my baby)
What a lovely way of sayin' how much you love me

FADE
PAUL: Havin' my baby (havin' my baby)
ODIA: I'm a woman in love and I love what's goin' through me (fade)

I'm all for motherhood, but I haven't heard this song in many, many years and I still want to bludgeon both Paul and Odia with a baseball bat.

WHAT'S UP?-Four Non Blondes

The lead singer's wildly off-key warbling brings to mind a modern day Mrs. Miller (look it up), but it's the chorus of "HHHHHY-YAAAAAAY-YAAAAAAAY-YEEEEEAAAAYEAH" that really puts this one in this list.

RADIO GA GA-Queen

Next to "I'm In Love With My Car," this is definitive proof that even a group as excellent as Queen could turn out some seriously wretched shit. Meant as a protest against the cookie cutter garbage that infests the airwaves, this song ends up being exactly what it complains about.

RUN JOEY RUN-David Geddes

One of the great bad songs of the '70's, this is the story of a young girl who gets pregnant, and her crazed, gun-totin' dad goes after the guy who's responsible. The unforgettable chorus and the twist ending make this worth requesting from the local oldies station (thereby tormenting innocent listeners); read these lyrics and judge for yourself:

(off key as hell) Daddy please don't, it wasn't his fault, he means so much to me
Daddy please don't, we're gonna get married...just you wait and see.

She called me up, late last night, she said Joe, don't come over
My dad and I just had a fight, and he stormed out the door
I've never seen him act his this way, my God, hes going crazy
He says he's gonna make you pay, for what we've done, he's got a gun, so

Run Joey Run Joey Run
Daddy please don't, it wasn't his fault, he means so much to me
Daddy please don't, we're gonna get married...just you wait and see.

I got in my car and I drove like mad, till I reached Julie's place
She ran to me, with tears in her eyes, and bruises on her face
All at once, I saw him there, sneaking up behind me, WATCH OUT!
Then Julie yelled, he's got a gun, and she stepped in front of me
Suddenly, a shot rang out, and I saw Julie falling
I ran to her, I held her close, when I looked down, my hands were red,
and heres the last words Julie said...

Daddy please don't, it wasn't his fault, he means so much to me
Daddy please don't, we're gonna get married.....aaahhh..ahhhh
ahhhh....ahhhhh (ethereal, heavenly music)

Run Joey run Joey run Joey run Joey run Joey run (ad infinitum)

LONELY BOY-Andrew Gold

The sad tale of a loser, and Andrew Gold honestly expected us to empathize with the sorry son of a bitch. There are a million songs like this, but this one stands out for the sheer wimpiness that will turn you into a total pussy just by listening to it:

He was born on a summer day 1951
And with a slap of a hand
He landed as an only son
His mother and father said what a lovely boy
We'll teach him what we learned
Ah yes just what we learned
We'll dress him up warmly and
We'll send him to school
It'll teach him how to fight
To be nobody's fool

Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy

In the summer of '53 his mother
Brought him a sister
And she told him we must attend to her needs
She's so much younger than you
Well he ran down the hall and he cried
Oh how could his parents have lied
When they said he was an only son
He thought he was the only one

Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy

Goodbye mama, goodbye to you
Goodbye papa I'm pushing on through

He left home on a winter day 1969
And he hoped to find all the love
He had lost in that earlier time
Well his sister grew up
And she married a man
He gave her a son
Ah yes a lovely son
They dressed him up warmly
They sent him to school
It taught him how to fight
To be nobody's fool

Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy

I'VE NEVER BEEN TO ME-Charlene

The worst piece of female soul-searching ever committed to vinyl, this is a prime example of what is meant by the term "so bad that it's good." I honestly believe that it is impossible to intentionally write a comedic song like this. Ultra-schmaltzy and pretentious, read the lyrics to this one and be amazed:

Hey lady, you, lady, cursin' at your life
You're a discontented mother and a regimented wife
I've no doubt you dream about the things you never do
But I wish someone had a talk to me like I wanna talk to you
Ooh I've been to Georgia and California, oh, anywhere I could run
Took the hand of a preacherman and we made love in the sun
But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free
I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

Please lady, please, lady, don't just walk away
'Cause I have this need to tell you why I'm all alone today
I can see so much of me still living in your eyes
Won't you share a part of a weary heart that has lived a million lies
Oh I've been to Nice and the isle of Greece
Where I sipped champagne on a yacht
I moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got
I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things
That a woman ain't s'posed to see
I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

(this part is spoken...) Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie.
A fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be.
But you know what truth is?
It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with this morning,
the same one you're going to make love with tonight. That's truth, that's love.

Sometimes I've been to cryin' for unborn children
That might have made me complete
But I, I took the sweet life and never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet
I spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that cost too much to be free
Hey lady, I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me
I've been to paradise - never been to me
(I've been to Georgia and California, and anywhere I could run)
I've been to paradise - never been to me
(I've been to Nice and the isle of Greece
While I sipped champagne on a yacht)
I've been to paradise - never been to me
(I've been to cryin' for unborn children...)
(fade)

PLAYGROUND IN MY MIND-Clint Holmes

A nauseating reminiscence of childhood that would have been bad enough on its own, but it’s the cloying and over-the-top segment where the children in the singer’s mental playground sing about themselves that acts as musical syrup of ipecac:

My name is Michael/I got a Nickel
I got a nickel shiny and new
I'm going to buy me all kinds of candy,
That's what I'm gonna do!

My name is Cindy/When we get married
We're going to have a baby or two
We're gonna let them visit their grandma
That's what we're gonna do!

Don't it just make ya wanna puke?

COME ON EILEEN-Dexy's Midnight Runners

During high school this was my least favorite song. Not only is the record truly irritating, the band looked like a head-on collision between a pack of Lower East Side junkies and a bunch of homeless leprechauns. From the never-to-be-forgotten blockbuster album “Too-Rye-Ay," this record forms part of the bedrock of why I gave up on listening to pop music radio.

FOR THE LOVE OF WARREN: HOW I DISCOVERED REALLY GOOD HORROR COMICS, AND SOME FERVENT RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEGINNERS

Was there ever a greater friend to the young horror fan than Warren Publications?

Livingston, Alabama, 1974. Imagine the plight of a nine-year-old boy, dragged along to yet another family gathering in the middle of Alabamian nowhere with nothing whatsoever to do except be doted over by oddball relatives who were about two minutes away from taking the dirt-nap. Let me set the mood: a television with questionable reception which, if memory serves, got only three channels (this was before cable, for all you young whippersnappers reading this) and ran nothing but soap operas or what seemed like an endless loop of "The Price is Right." The ominous four-foot cattle prod suspended in the gun rack of my uncle's pickup truck. The vicious mother hen, a bundle of pissed-off poultry that ran around the yard and would descend upon you like a crazed harpy if you looked at her chicks the wrong way. Being told with absolute certainty by a scary old lady with skin that looked like a dried-up river bed that "toads will give you warts, so you better not be handlin' 'em, boy!" My "touched" older cousin who wanted nothing more than to show me his "jockey strap." In short, a Tennessee Williams-esque hell of killing boredom and inescapable strangeness.

Begging for any sort of diversion, I asked my parents if I could buy some comic books; in other words, familiar friends that would rescue me from the all-black version of Deliverance crossed with the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We made it to the local dry goods store and I surveyed the periodicals rack with an eye like a hawk on the hunt. By Crom, if I were going to get some comics I'd get some good stuff that I could read over and over during my weeklong sentence!

Some favorites were readily snagged, such as Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and the now mostly-forgotten Jack Kirby epic of the post-apocalypse Kamandi-The Last Boy On Earth (which is in sore need of color collected editions). Then there was a magazine-sized comic roughly squeezed into a rack slot that was too small to accommodate it. I picked it up with the intention of putting it back where it presumably belonged, but then I noticed the rather lurid cover. It featured a painting of a buxom woman on an obviously alien world, held in the slimy tentacles of a multi-eyed Cthuhluoid wiggly. And what was most intriguing to me was that she had a sort of dreamily relaxed look on her face like she was kind of digging the attentions of her molester. The magazine in question was Eerie # 60, from Warren Publications (a company I knew for giving the world one of the greatest monster movie mags ever, namely Famous Monsters of Filmland) and I blame it for forever changing how I looked at not only horror comics, but also horror in general.

I've always appreciated good illustration and contained in the pages of that comic was art the likes of which I had never seen. No superheroes were present, but that perceived oversight was made up for with an abundance of ultra-violent b&w gore and mayhem, a knockout color section that turned out to be my first exposure to Richard Corben (whose art I immediately fell madly in love with) and the non-Mad work of Wally Wood (illustrating the Gerry Boudreau-scripted "The Man Hunters", the story upon which the painted cover was based), and the icing on the cake, the first installment of the classic "Night of the Jackass" serial which contained the holy grail for young lads: pictures of nekkid women! I treasured that issue of Eerie and read it until it fell apart.

Over the next seven years I got hooked on not just Eerie, but its companion publication Creepy, and even the Heavy Metal-inspired (read "rip-off") 1984 (later retitled 1994), yet the only member of the Warren family that I never was able to find much love for was Vampirella; excellent art notwithstanding, the main character's stories smacked too much of mainstream comics for my growing tastes (if I wanted super heroic soap opera, I had Marvel for that, thank you very much), although the unrelated backup stories were frequently incredible. Featuring art by mostly South American talent, these books boasted visuals of such a high standard that there is perhaps no equal to the Warren talent roster other than that which spawned the classic E.C. line in the early 1950's; in fact several alumni of the E.C. years would go on to contribute to the Warren line (Alex Toth, Reed Crandall and Frank Frazetta spring instantly to mind).

The writers also had a scabrous claw firmly wrapped around the throats of readers, regularly doling out heaping helpings of demons, man-made monsters, anti-social psycho killers, the dangers of time travel and anything else their evil little imaginations could vomit up. My personal favorite was (and still is) the disgracefully underappreciated Bruce Jones; perhaps best known to comics readers for his terrific recent run on The Hulk, Jones's stories had intelligence and creepiness to burn, with a number of shock endings that would have had Rod Serling kicking himself for not coming up with anything even half as good. Looked at now, his stories haven't aged a day.

There are too many Warren stories and serials worth reading to attempt an in-depth analysis here, but the bottom line is that they raised my standards of expectation for horror in general; in fact, if I had to give Warren a motto it would be "If you're gonna go there, GO THERE. Don't pussy around." That said, what follows is a list of the Warren tales that will stay with me until the day I give up the ghost. You can't go wrong with any of these, and they are well worth the sometimes-steep back issue prices.

"Pinball Wizard" (Creepy # 66, November 1974)- from writer Doug Moench (of Master of Kung Fu fame) and Richard Corben, this is the story of nice old man who runs the neighborhood malt shop, but he is constantly harassed by mob thugs who rough him up for protection money. When the thugs kill the kindly old duffer, a pinball-loving young boy takes matters into his own hands, proving that you'd better be nice to kids (and those they love) because you never know what kind of powers are at their disposal...

"Thrillkill" (Creepy # 75, November 1975)-writer Jim Stenstrum and artist Neal Adams team up for what is considered by many to be the single finest hour for the Warren stories. A horror story of an all-too-human nature, this chronicles a sniper with a hunting rifle who perches atop a building and starts picking off random innocent passersby. While shocking carnage is depicted in ultra-realistic detail, the script relates what leads up to the bloodbath. It sounds pretty sparse, but this is hardcore stuff with an excellent script and is one of the highlights of Adams's already impressive career. Simply put, this is one of the best stories ever printed in the comics medium and if created in the post-Columbine environment it would probably never see print.

"The Super-Abnormal Phenomena Survival Kit" (Creepy # 79, May 1976)- when the Warren crew did humor it was usually pretty funny, but this entry stands out head and shoulders above their other comedic efforts. Written by Jim Stenstrum and lushly illustrated by E.C. alum John Severin, this is pretty much an eight-page ad for a kit that contains everything you'd ever need to hand any supernatural threat its ass. The framing device involves a family holed up in their house as every kind of monstrous bugaboo imaginable lays waste to the neighborhood (in a laugh-out-loud panel that depicts among other things a giant ape crushing a car, assorted nasties happily rampaging and a bunch of monsters roasting some poor bastard on a spit at the start of the walkway). Fortunately their son had the presence of mind to order the aforementioned kit, which is handed over by a one-eyed, tentacled horror that matter-of-factly states, "We just ate your mailman, kid." Once Junior has the kit, we are treated to a crash course on monster slaying that will delight horror fans of all stripes.

"Harvey Was A Sharp Cookie" (Creepy # 83, October 1976)-my favorite Warren team was that of writer Bill DuBay and the finest illustrator ever to grace the b&w page: Jose Ortiz. Talented to an unfair degree, Ortiz's use of heavy black and command of visual storytelling was enough to nearly drive those who sought to imitate him to douse themselves with gasoline and spark up; underrated is not a strong enough term for the guy's work. Working in territory similar to "Pinball Wizard," "Harvey" tells of an amusement park owner's troubles with extortionists, and when they decide to send him a message by disfiguring his lovely daughter with a box-cutter horrific revenge is just around the corner. You'll never look at ground beef again without thinking of the finale of this story.

"Process of Elimination" (Creepy # 83, October 1976)- a Bruce Jones and Russ Heath tour de force about a man who meticulously murders his wife and children with a silenced pistol while wearing a look of overwhelming concern on his face. Why the wholesale slaughter of his loved ones? When you get to the ending, you'll realize that he was doing them a favor that only someone who really loved them would have been capable of.

"In Deep" (Creepy # 83, October 1976)-gruesome and tense to the point of delirium, this is the infamous Bruce Jones/Richard Corben tale of a young couple stranded in the middle of the ocean, clinging for dear life to a safety float. Hope of rescue is bleak and the only sustenance between them is a bottle of ginger ale. And then the sharks arrive. Since the rest of any given issue of a Warren mag is in black and white, the color sections were usually reserved for the stories that would be most unsettling in color. Nowhere was that more evident than here, with Corben's fleshy hyper-realism allowed off of the leash for one of his most stunning works. Have a barf bag at the ready for the final panel.

"Orem Ain't Got No Head Cheese" (Creepy # 85, January 1977)-nothing warms the heart like a story of graphically depicted cannibalism, incest and a monster composed of rotting human offal. DuBay and Ortiz strike again, and the scene of two inbred hillbillies preparing and cleaning the corpses of freshly-killed city-slickers for the smoke house with the nonchalance of professional abattoir-workers is one of the watermarks of bad taste in comics and it totally roasted my mind when I read it at age eleven. Highly recommended!

"Night of the Jackass!" (Eerie #s 60, 63-65, 1974/1975)-Bruce Bezaire and Jose Ortiz put a terrifying spin on the whole Mister Hyde thing with Hyde 25(m), a drug that when administered into open wounds causes the user to develop super-human strength and endurance, lose all morality whatsoever and rape and kill with unholy abandon, a practice that comes to be known as "jackassing." Under the baleful influence of the serum, the disenfranchised poor of Victorian-era London would take over whole buildings full of people and work their way up, floor by floor, taking revenge upon the society that allowed them to live like vermin and since the drug proves fatal after 24 hours, the users face no repercussions from the law. A trio of heroes (including the female scientist who developed the serum) sets out to field-test a potential anti-serum, but they must throw themselves headlong into full-blown jackassings and fight hordes of super-human maniacs in order to see if the antidote works. The most appalling of these jackassings occurs in issue # 64 with "The Children’s Hour," and depicts what happens when the Hyde serum falls into the hands of boys in an orphanage and they decide to check out what the big deal is. The reader must then suffer along with the heroes as they face the horror of child-monsters who commit atrocities such as gang raping their stern governess, stopping only due to the inconvenience of her unplanned expiration. Truly hellish, this would make one hardcore horror flick.

"Within You, Without You" (Eerie #s 77, 79, 87, 1976/1977)-Bruce Jones and Richard Corben provide the last word on time travel in this terrific three-parter. To say more would spoil things, but the run-in with a T-Rex in chapter one is scarier than anything in Jurassic Park.

"You're A Big Girl Now" (Eerie # 81, February 1977)


Another classic from Bruce Jones and Richard Corben, this one puts Corben's talent for illustrating lush-figured beauties to very good use. It's the tragic story of beautiful young girl named Rachel who is a giantess in the most fantastic sense of the word: at birth she weighs upward of fifty pounds (the image of her dead, splay-legged mother with blood everywhere as the huge infant lays squalling near her is one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen) and by the time she reaches young womanhood she is a mercilessly exploited freak of around eighty feet in height. Like any young woman she longs for love, but finds none from the father who has hated her since birth and can't find romantic/physical love since there is no one else of a compatible size. Looking like a Jolly Green Giant-sized blonde surfer goddess in a cute yellow bikini, her only friends are a pair of humpbacked whales (who stick around because she keeps them free of barnacles) and the man who has acted as her biographer since her infancy, a man whom she develops an impossible crush on. This one is a real heartbreaker, and it only gets worse once it is determined that Rachel will never stop growing and that she will eventually break through the ionosphere, thus endangering the entire world. If ever there was a character that deserved a happy ending it was poor Rachel, but this is after all a Warren horror magazine...

"Rex Havoc and the Ass-Kickers of the Fantastic" (1984 #s 4-6, 9, 1978/1979)-from the twisted minds of Jim Stenstrum and Abel Laxamana sprung this hilarious series about a team of experts at handling paranormal threats. Operating under the staggeringly honest team name "the Ass-Kickers of the Fantastic" (complete with a team emblem of a boot print superimposed over a pair of butt-cheeks), our heroes are lead by Rex havoc, a fearless adventurer who somehow manages to run the crew despite suffering from serious brain damage wrought during an ambush by a golf club-wielding vampire. Their globetrotting adventures pitted them against all manner of weirdness and it would be criminal of me to give away any of the details. Note: three of the four Rex Havoc stories were collected in Warren Presents #14 (November 1981) as "Rex Havoc and the Raiders of the Fantastic, so it might be easier to look for that.

"Yellow Heat" (Vampirella # 58, March 1977)-this is without question the best backup story ever to run in Vampirella. This compelling Bruce Jones/Russ Heath story of an African tribesman's trials against a lion in order to win a luscious young girl is rendered in pencils that verge on the photographic and may just be the finest work Heath ever produced (and that ain't hay, amigo!). The ending will shock the living hell out of you, and once you read it try to put yourself in my place, reading this just shy of my twelfth birthday. When I finally found this again via EBay in 1999, I showed it to my co-workers in the DC Comics production department and they almost fudged their undies over how gorgeous it looks.

Every one of the books mentioned are well worth your hard-earned bucks and no serious comics fan can consider their collection worth its salt unless it has a strong showing from the Warren stable. Trust me on this one, get out there and start hunting! And why the hell is this stuff not collected in all of its magazine-sized, b&w glory? When duds like the disastrous attempt at relaunching Adam Strange and that screamingly ludicrous landmark of hubristic insanity Marville can find a place on the shelf and these gems languish in growing obscurity there is simply no justice to be had. The E.C. classics like TALES FROM THE CRYPT and THE VAULT OF HORROR had their kickass reprints. It is now time for Warren's turn.

THE MOST DEPRESSING BROADWAY MUSICAL EVER?

There's an excellent documentary series on the history of Broadway musicals currently airing on PBS (check your local listings!) and when it inevitably got around to Rodgers and Hammerstein's CAROUSEL I got to thinking. Compelling though it may be, CAROUSEL is a world class downer.

Let's look at the show for what it is: a Stanley Kowalski-esque carnival barker falls in love with and marries a pretty young millworker. Upon tying the knot the barker becomes physically abusive to his wife who continues to love him anyway. His violence gets worse and worse, and he returns to associating with the sordid local criminal element. Then his wife informs him that she is pregnant. The barker's tender nature is passionately expressed in song as he is empowered by the thought of having sired a boy, but he really gets gushy when he considers the possibility that his child may be a girl and immediately decides to get a lot of money — by any means available — to raise her with luxuries. When a robbery attempt goes horribly wrong, the barker commits suicide rather than face a life sentence (that was changed in the movie to him falling on his own knife while fleeing from a cop); skip ahead fifteen years and our "hero" is allowed to leave purgatory for one day to tie up any unfinished business, so he checks out what became of his wife and child. The wife has grown older in lonely misery and their child — a daughter — leads an even more miserable existence bearing the stigma of being a criminal's offspring. The wife can sense the barker's presence and pines for him, while the barker tries to inspire his daughter; that encounter leads to him slapping her in the face. Anyway, it all ends with the girl being a bit more self-assured, the wife is still miserable and the barker returns to purgatory.

Pass me the cyanide.

After CAROUSEL introduced the downer musical, many others followed with dark elements such as racial prejudice (SOUTH PACIFIC), prostitution (SWEET CHARITY), Nazism and decadent sexuality (CABARET), cannibalism (SWEENEY TODD), and even choreographed rape scenes (SWEENEY TODD again, and MAN OF La MANCHA). Yet while these elements render their respective shows edgier than most, they are still not as flat-out, stick-your-head-in-the-oven depressing as CAROUSEL. So what I wanna know is are their any musicals that can compete with it as a sheer tour de force tear-jerker? If any of you out there are experts on the history of Broadway shows please write in with your opinion on this.

THE FINAL FATE OF THE RISING CAFE AND THE CONTINUING DOUCHEIFICATION OF PARK SLOPE

In my days as the resident male in a crew of hella-fun lesbians, we all used to hang out at the good ol' Rising Cafe on 5th Avenue in Park Slope, but that sanctuary fell victim to the changing landscape of the neighborhood (translation: neuveau riche douchebags moving in and turning every goddamned thing into boutiques, antique stores or overpriced eateries with sucky food). It has lain fallow for nearly two years, and as I was walking past it not ten minutes ago I saw that the place was open and a work crew was gutting it. I asked the nearest worker what was going to be taking the Rising's place and he answered me with the dreaded words "Tex-Mex."

Yep, a former summit of Sapphic philosophy and hookin' up is now slated to be just another of the dogshit-on-a-plate restaurants that riddle the neighborhood like cancer, a restaurant that in all likelihood will open for a month or two's worth of curiosity seekers and quietly close when their ridiculous prices and almost-certainly terrible fare forces it to give up the ghost. Many such establishments within a ten block radius of my apartment have come and gone in the past few years, and no one shed a tear when they left. Some sad examples of this trend are:

• The little Korean convenience store that once occupied the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and Union Street became first an overpriced bar with pretensions of grandeur, closed after six months, re-opened as a bar/restaurant called the Gowanus Lounge and swiftly shut its doors after another three months and is now another faceless boutique for twenty-somethings whose taste in fashion makes them look like life-size Barbies and Kens.
• The former dry cleaners on the corner of 5th Avenue and President Street closed to become the blazingly offensive Bibi's, an outrageously expensive chow house with retro furniture and food so mediocre that a Swanson frozen dinner becomes gourmet by comparison; it closed after four months, closed for renovation when they mistakenly believed their lack of patronage was due to the retro look, re-opened with less business, died two months later and has been gathering moss for over a year.
• The chi-chi pizzeria that recently opened which has the unmitigated gall to not sell slices, instead forcing you to by a "personal" pizza for a minimum of fifteen bucks.
• The mediocre Arab-run convenience store that was across the way from the former Korean store is being renovated into a real estate agency, an establishment that this neighborhood already has a surplus of.
  

And there's no end in sight. As Manhattan becomes less recognizable each day, the sickness makes its way to the other boroughs and soon this place will be an unlivable breeding ground for nondescript yuppie shitheads and their pod-like offspring. Please, gods, let me make enough cash to flee this madness...

LIVE DEVO CONCERT ALBUM: I WAS THERE!

Remember my heartfelt post about seeing Devo in Central Park during the summer, the one that can be found in my archives section under July 2004? Well the show was recently released as a limited edition double-CD and I had to have it for my uber-completist Devo collection (selling DVDs at Kim's Video coming in very handy for quick cash). I have a shitload of live albums in my collection, but this is the only time where I can say that I actually attended the performance in question. It's a fun listen, but the boys are in their fifties and are running out of steam a bit and this album can't even come close to the two far superior live recordings, namely DEV-O LIVE (1980) and NOW IT CAN BE TOLD (1989), but so what? I was actually there for the latest one! How fucking cool is that?

SIDE DISH IN EXCELSIS: THE MACARONI AND CHEESE OF THE GODS

Prepare to kiss this shit goodbye!

A few years ago, yet another person moved into the studio apartment across the hall from me; not much of a surprise there since this building has a staggering turnover rate, leaving myself and two other people as the only residents who have lived here for more than a few years. I didn’t see the new neighbor move in but one evening I heard the all-too-familiar strains of Devo’s “Snowball” coming through the paper-thin wall and had to introduce myself.

I knocked on the door and was greeted by a blonde twenty-something guy named Tim Holden. I think he expected me to request that he turn the music down, but I put his mind at ease by telling him of my rabid Devo-tion and invited him to drop in any time. During the time that he lived here Tim and I became good friends, sharing much music and many recipes, including his secrets for the perfect — and I DO mean perfect — macaroni and cheese.

At this point I would like to make a statement of priorities. My favorite things in the whole world are pussy, good food and rock ‘n’ roll. As rock ‘n’ roll is utterly irrelevant to this post, we’ll just leave that one out and return to the other two favorites.

There are very few things that I enjoy eating more than pussy, and this macaroni and cheese is one of them.

When I lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side there was a rather chi-chi delicatessen a couple of blocks away from my apartment whose prices were what one would expect for the area and I would have totally ignored it if not for rumors of them making an exemplary macaroni and cheese. Now it’s a well-known fact that something as seemingly simple as macaroni and cheese can vary widely in terms of tastes ranging from mouthful-of-paste to the final word in sharp, cheesy goodness, so I purchased a half-pound of the deli’s offering with no expectations whatsoever. Let me just say that the flavor that I experienced that day was a life-changer, and whenever I find myself in that neighborhood I always buy a pound of the stuff, but I’m seldom up there so I was totally screwed if I wanted some truly holy m & c. That is until Tim Holden hooked me up with the following recipe. If you are looking to avoid carbs and cholesterol, stop reading now and go eat a fistful of wheat germ; this one’s for us hedonists!

INGREDIENTS

24 OZ. EXTRA-SHARP CHEDDAR CHEESE
2 CANS EVAPORATED MILK
4 EGGS
PASTA (YOUR CHOICE OF NOODLES)
POWDERED MUSTARD
2 TABLESPOONS OF BUTTER

NOTE: these are the basics for simple mac and cheese, but you can tweak it with shredded ham of crumbled bacon.

Boil your pasta of choice; I recommend either standard elbow noodles or hearty flat noodles. Drain and set to the side.

Take the cheese and if it isn’t already shredded, shred it and put it into a saucepot. Add two cans of evaporated milk and four eggs; slowly cook over low heat, stirring until the cheese has melted and the whole thing is velvety creamy. Next add powdered mustard to taste, but the mixture should have a certain tang to it. Then add the butter and blend it all together until smooth. Add to the drained pasta and mix thoroughly. Put the gloppy sludge into a baking dish and bake in an oven (no, duh!) on broil for a couple of minutes until the top browns. After that, let it sit at room temperature for five minutes and then stuff your fat face.

Spring this one on your family at Thanksgiving and be prepared to join the annals of holiday legends. Just remember to play to your audience and use the “better to eat than pussy” comment at your discretion.

CULINARY PORNOGRAPHY AND A DELICIOUS MINESTRONE SOUP

Watching the Food Network as I often do, I recently realized that for foodies like myself much of their programming amounts to culinary pornography. Loving close-ups of glistening and juicy fresh-from-the-oven roasts and such, recipes rendered into soft-voiced sweet-nothings, the chef’s deft hands gingerly kneading and folding and applying spice rubs and oil, the borderline-erotic “money shot” of the cook sampling what they have just prepared with undeniable, closed-eyed pleasure unashamedly smeared across their face… You get the idea.

The program that really drove home the one-handed cookery aspect of these shows is EVERYDAY ITALIAN, hosted by the stunning Giada DeLaurentiis, a Guinzo-licious kitchen goddess who is so cute that you forget her head is disproportionately large, giving her the look of an anthropomorphic bobble-head statue; the second I see her on my TV screen I am hooked for the next half-hour. Giada is utterly charming and clearly takes great delight in what she is doing, making her that much hotter. I often watch her and wish I could say to her “Oh, beautiful Giada, won’t you please come to my kitchen wearing nothing but an apron and share your tasty stuff with me?” but unfortunately I don’t speak Italian.

A couple of days ago I caught her show from the beginning and she announced that the day’s recipe would be her homemade Winter Minestrone soup. Now while I am not much of fan of Italian cuisine — it’s a bit too heavy for me — I am a major freak for Minestrone soup, always keeping at least one can of the Progresso brand on hand at all times. I watched the goddess DeLaurentiis and jotted down her recipe as she walked the viewer through it. Let me tell ya, it’s really simple to make, is absolutely delicious and has made me kiss the canned stuff goodbye from now on. Don’t be intimidated by some of the ingredients; your average eight-year-old could make this with supervision, so what’s stopping you?

INGREDIENTS

OLIVE OIL
PANCHETTA (ITALIAN SORTA-BACON)
ONIONS
CARRROTS CELERY GARLIC
1 RUSSETT POTATO
BEEF BROTH
SWISS CHARD
ROSEMARY (1 BRANCH)
CANNED CRUSHED TOMATOES
CANNED BEANS (BUTTER BEANS, WHATEVER)
FRESH GRATED ROMANO CHEESE
FRESH PARSLEY

This recipe is pretty much a “by instinct” jobbie, so measure quantities of the ingredients for how many people you want to cook for; I recommend making a big pot of this for yourself and having it around to heat and eat whenever you feel like not cooking. Anyway…

Pour olive oil into your soup pot and let it get hot enough for simmering. Dice your onions, celery and carrots and drop them into the pot, simmering until the onions get translucent. Then add as nay cloves of garlic as you like, making sure that the cloves have been burst and can allow their flavor to escape. Add a pinch of salt and simmer while stirring.

Make sure that you have had your pancetta thin sliced, and then dice it up small. Add it to the vegetables and allow the fat on the pancetta to melt; simmer and stir for ten minutes.

Peel and cube one Russett potato and add it to the simmering goodies; simmer for another ten minutes and add a pinch of salt. Take the Swiss chard and fine chop it, adding it and one branch of fresh rosemary to the simmer. Stir and add a couple of cans of crushed tomatoes along with a pinch of salt and some fresh ground pepper. Simmer for ten minutes, covered.

Once you have figured out what kind of canned beans you like — I highly recommend butter beans — take three-quarters of what you intend to use and either puree or crush them until they have a paste-like squashedness. Drop the pasty beans into the simmer, along with enough beef broth to make the soup as thick or thin as you prefer; remember that the crushed/pureed beans act as a thickener so keep that in mind when determining consistency. Add as much fresh ground Romano cheese and stir well. Simmer for fifteen more minutes and then add some finely chopped fresh parsley and the remaining quarter of the uncrushed beans; adding whole beans at the end is strictly a presentation thing, so if you don’t care how it looks you can ignore this bit. But why waste perfectly good beans? Throw the fuckers in there!

And that’s that. I suggest serving it the day after you cook it so it can find its flavor overnight. Damned tasty soup! Now come to me, Giada, you saucy little pomidora...

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE: MY MOM’S ELECTION DAY CRACKER ENCOUNTER

White folks reading this, get ready to put a paper bag over your head after you absorb this and be glad that your folks raised you right.

I often complain about the ordeal of growing up black in the affluent wasteland and bastion of casual racism that is Westport, Connecticut, but my mom has been stuck there on a daily basis for thirty-two years and has had to deal with far more fucked up bullshit than I ever did so maybe I should just shut the fuck up; Mildred's a seventy-one-year-old brainiac who went to college at fifteen, earned several degrees in teaching,counseling and hypnotherapy, yet when I was a kid the parents of several of my schoolmates asked me if she was available to "do their houses," in other words be a maid.

Let’s face it: although many people who grew up alongside me from 1972 through 1983 were active bigots and morons — same difference, I guess — most of them grew up, left Wasteport and gained a bit of life experience outside of an East Coast “90210”-made-real (translation: they had their asses kicked, either physically or verbally, by a variety of non-white ethnics) and kicked that tired bullshit to the curb. Sadly, a large portion of my hometown’s residents who are my mother’s peers will never find enlightenment of any sort and continue to perpetrate outdated and unacceptable behavior based on ignorant assumptions and generalizations about us highly-rhythmic individuals that will probably be standard practice until they have the basic decency of falling over stone-cold dead.

An all-too-common example of this charming phenomenon would be the time mumsy went shopping at the local Barnes & Noble book store and a “helpful” saleslady spotted her. This junior Stepford Wife saw her browsing, tapped her on the shoulder and cheerfully noted that “The books from Oprah’s book club are over that way.” As she gets closer to taking the dirt-nap herself, my mother’s legendary Chernobyl-style meltdowns directed at other people have been put to the wayside since she’s fought this losing battle her entire life and simply just does not give a fuck anymore; consequently, the saleswoman lived to see another useless day.

Similar incidents have occurred at every conceivable type of store or public venue since the second our family landed in Fairfield County, and they just don’t end. Case in point, this past Election Night.

Mom went to the polling booth, did the Kerry Futility Dance, and walked out. One of the local blueblood cunts walked up to her, placed a “socially conscious” hand upon her shoulder and said “Now wasn’t that a nice experience, honey?” My mom is definitely in her Autumn years because just a decade ago such treatment would have earned a public display of invective that would have made the possessed Regan McNeal appear from out of nowhere and wash her mouth out with a whole bar of Irish Spring; rather than give the old crow a lecture about how she was most definitely NOT a domestic, mum went into a lengthy and utterly sarcastic rumination upon the merits — or lack thereof — of the assorted candidates, a move that apparently gave the coffin-dodging twat a mild shock, presumably driving her home to the dusky attentions of her houseboy, Rakeem Al-Mandingo X. Me, I would have gone for the old Amos ‘n’ Andy “Now lookee here! I’s votin’ fo’ de nex’ Prez’dint uv de Yoo-nited Stakes, an’ I ain’t payin’ no taxums or no stipends!”, but I guess her way was more effective when used upon someone of her own age.

Fuck, I hate that town.

AMERICA FUCKS ITSELF IN THE ASS AGAIN

As I write these words I am numb right down to my very soul.

I spent the past few days marinating enough ribs for Missile Dick Chicks political fund-raiser and last night was the event itself, held on Manhattan’s Fourteenth Street in a psychedelically painted dance studio; there was a bank of TVs each broadcasting up-to-the-moment presidential election results and a projector that cast a wall-sized image of the slowly unfolding disaster. During the event I ended up behind the eats table, serving the crowd and accepting their cash. The available fare included my ribs (a certified hit for which many people requested my recipe), potato salad, and an assortment of store bought baked goods, including the amusingly monickered apple “occu-pie.”

For the most part the attendees were cheerful and polite, many in satirical politically themed costumes, the notable exception being an extremely obnoxious dominatrix who complained endlessly about being charged for admission and food despite the fact that the event was a fund-raiser; I first noticed her when I overheard a portion of the conversation that she was having with some blonde cutie, a conversation which included gems such as “Ever see a big, hard cock go straight up an ass?” Little did she realize that just such a violation was unfolding on a national scale right before our bleary eyes.

As the evening progressed and the inevitable results of the election began to become crystal clear, I took full advantage of my status as a staffer at the event and drank much booze to alleviate the agony. I even ended up with Steve Hughes and a bunch of the other attendees in a stairwell where we smoked this fucking enormous joint provided by some guy in an Uncle Sam outfit. Maybe it was because of the influence of the alcohol but when the whole thing ended Hughes and I walked five blocks to the twenty-four-hour savior of the wasted, Gray's Papaya, a dirt cheap and excellent hot dog joint (I recommend the "special," namely two grilled hot dogs and a drink for less than three bucks), and while Hughes and I devoured our meal we both realized that we hadn't been so fucking stoned in years; the guy's weed was incredible and helped to keep us awake as we made our way back to Brooklyn.

As we waited for the train, Hughes began one of his characteristic Irish rants about how he now has absolutely no faith in the American public — it took him this long? — and how we have doomed ourselves to another four years of international sadism, to say nothing of the potential worsening of our own country's multitude of ailments. He left the train at Carroll Street and I eventually attempted to transfer to the train that would drop me off on my side of the Gowanus River; unfortunately it was very late at night and there were many unannounced service changes, so my own train was not running and I was forced to leave the train station and walk the rest of the way home, not a fun prospect since I was completely wasted and I had a fifteen block walk to look forward to during the threat of an imminent rain storm. I had about twenty minutes of walking in which to contemplate all of our fates during the next four years and let me tell you it was depressing. I finally made it home at about 4:45 AM, and just as I entered the door it began to rain like something from the Bible. I passed out shortly thereafter and was out cold for the next nine-and-a-half hours, staying in bed in a hazy condition until just before 3PM, and awakening to find out that I couldn’t even take refuge in an episode of “Passions” since the major networks had devoted themselves to covering John Kerry throwing in the towel.

I have just witnessed Bush's acceptance speech and had to change the channel to absolutely anything else. I cannot stomach looking at his inbred face, and the only other things on local television are the various Spanish channels and the Food Network. I have to just sit here and process all of this. A couple of days ago I voiced the idea of moving to Canada as a viable option to my mom and she was horrified at the thought that I might move; I do not have the resources to make such a move but if I could I would be up North within a few days and would kiss this fucked-up land goodbye.

So now the horrifying and destructive regime of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney continues to roll on like the ignorance-and-fear-fueled juggernaut that it is, with yet more economic ruin, racist and religiously fanatical foreign policy and waste of lives inevitable. Hopefully this term will allow Bush and company to stumble even more obviously than they have in the past, perhaps knocking the blinders from the collective head of the American public, but just knowing that we have insanely relegated ourselves to four more years of this madness is some soul-destroying shit indeed. Once again the American public has given itself the government that it so richly deserves, and I for one do not welcome it.