Avert your eyes, lest ye be turned to stone

Michele Marie Bachmann, Born April 6, 1956

I’ve said many times before that I don’t follow politics outside of watching Stewart and Colbert, mainly because it’s like investing in a company that already went out of business.  The only time I do care is when a politician whose ideas or motives are guided by theology and stupidity may potentially become the leader of the free world.  Enter Michele Bachmann.  Michele Marie Amble was born in Waterloo, Iowa to a family of Norwegian Lutheran Democrats (which sounds like the plot of a weird Christian sitcom), but the family moved to Minnesota when she was young.  Bachmann’s father David moved to California after her parents divorced in 1970, while Michele and her three brothers stayed in Minnesota, where they were was raised by their mother Jean.  After graduating from high school, Michele went to Israel for a short time with an evangelical youth group, and then went on to attend Winona State University.  She joined the college’s evangelical Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, where she met her future husband Marcus Bachmann.  Michele also recalls that she became a Republican during her senior year at Winona State after reading Gore Vidal’s Burr. The book is described as a, “historical novel challenging the traditional iconography of United States history via narrative and a fictional memoir of Aaron Burr.”  So, in other words, she based her political beliefs on a fictional book that provides a revisionist’s history of the United States’ founding fathers.

Bachmann graduated with a B.A. from Winona State, then enrolled at Oral Roberts University to study law.  She has said her goal there was to “learn the law both from a professional but also from a biblical worldview.”  While attending the university, she studied under John Eidsmoe and has described him as, “a professor who had a great influence on me.”  She would also assist him on his 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which asserted the notion that “the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again.”  The idea in Eidsmoe’s book shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, however, since it’s widely-known that most Christians are against evolving in any shape or form.  She graduated in 1986 with a law degree, then briefly worked for the IRS before quitting to become a full-time mom.  She and Marcus have five children, and Bachmann also stated that she has “raised 23 foster kids.”  An employee for the states Department of Human Services said that, “She makes it sound like she got them at birth and raised them to adulthood, but that’s not true.” He went on to say that most of the placements were certainly short-term, sometimes only lasting a week or so. Her and her husband Marcus also own and run a Christian counseling practice in Minnesota. One of the things they try to do at the practice is “curing” homosexuals. When asked about it, her husband replied, “”Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to go down that road.”

Instead of getting into her muddled and questionable political career, I am going to close by listing some of Bachmann’s best bat shit crazy quotes from a compilation that appears on the website Buzzfeed.  While I usually like to add my own response to other people’s insanely idiotic quotes, Bachmann’s lingual lunacy pretty much speaks for itself.  In fact, by comparison – and even though it pains me deeply to say this – Michele makes Sarah Palin look like Marilyn vos Savant:

- ”I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money because we’re running out of rich people in this country.” (As of 2007, 20% of people owned 85% of the countries wealth. And 8 of the 20 richest people in the world are from the U.S., while no other country has more than 2 on the list)

- ”Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of The Lion King for instance, and a teacher might say, ‘Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?’ The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.”

- ”If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” (Or more likely, the workforce would basically be one giant sweatshop)

- ”And what a bizarre time we’re in, when a judge will say to little children that you can’t say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.”

-”[Nancy Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 years ago.”

- “I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I’m not a scientist.”

SNL parodies Bachmann’s Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address:

Michele Bachmann Says the Darndest Things:

Today’s Hall of Shame inductee is the nephew of a famous film director, and an actor who has seemingly played the same role (badly) for the last 15 years or so.

Nicolas Coppola aka Nicolas Cage, Born January 7, 1964

I am not really in the biographical writing mode today, so Cage’s background will be short and sweet – unlike a majority of the movies he has been in.  Nicolas Coppola was born in Long Beach, California to August Coppola and Joy Vogelsang. Cage was the youngest of three boys, one of his brothers, Christoper, is a director (of some movies I’ve never heard of) and the other, Marc, is an actor/DJ for WAXQ in New York.  Fame is apparently strong in the Coppola gene cesspool, as Cage is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppolla and Adrian Balboa, and cousin of Roman and Sofia Coppola, Robert Carmine, and Jason Schwartzman.  Nicolas attended Beverly Hills High School, and was probably a frequent patron of The Peach Pit during his four years there. After graduating, he went to UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television.  Cage first appeared on an ABC TV pilot titled Best of Times, a Laugh-In type variety show that also featured Jackie Mason and the freak show that is Crispin “McFly” Glover.  His first movie role was one of the few truly great films he has acted in, and I don’t even know if he had one line - Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).  I will (reluctantly) give acting props to Nic Cage for two of his performances: (1) H.I. McDunnough in The Coen Brother’s 1987 cult classic Raising Arizona, which is one of my favorite comedies, and (2) as twin brothers Donald and Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation.  Other than that, his movies are either watchable in spite of him – The Rock, National Treasure – or conjure up anger upon realizing he wasted hours of your life that you’ll never get back – Wicker Man, Ghost Rider, 8 MM, Snake Eyes, Face/Off, Con Air, Drive Angry, and about 20 others.

On April 15th, Cage was arrested in New Orleans for suspicion of disturbing the peace, domestic abuse battery, and public intoxication.  A local police sergeant recalled that he saw first saw Nic, “on a street in the city yelling ‘Get the police! Get me outta here! She’s trying to kill me!’ and banging on vehicles.”  The cop drew his taser, but unfortunately, he decided not to use it after he was able to calm the actor down.  According to the police report, his wife then came over to talk to the cops, and said they were fighting because he, “walked over to the door of a neighboring residence and demanded that she let him inside.”  Although she tried to convince him that they were at the wrong house, Cage “grabbed her right upper arm and pulled her toward the door he thought was theirs.”  It was also reported that later in the night a drunken Cage fell while holding their 5 year-old son Kal-El (which is Superman’s “Kryptonian” name. “Thanks, dad!”), causing a minor abrasion on the child’s knee.  He was held in police custody until his $11,000 bail was posted by Duane “The Douche” Chapman.  Yea, I don’t know what the fuck that’s all about either.  He is scheduled to appear in court on May 31st, and <sarcasm> I am sure he will be given a harsh penalty like other rich and famous people who have broken the law <sarcasm>. 

There is some pretty pedestrian security footage showing an agitated Cage at a tattoo parlor earlier in the night, but the following clip probably best represents what his wife had to put up with for most of that night:

I guess Cage is huge in Japan, or maybe he just needed the yen:

I know the Hall of Shame video section is historically reserved for spoofs or parodies that poke fun at the inductee, but like I said, Raising Arizona kicks ass:

Patrice Wilson, Founder of ARK Music Factory

Today’s Hall of Shame inductee is a pimp, I mean, an aspiring music mogul who dabbles in the kiddie flesh trade searching for the next Hannah Miley Montana Cyrus.  I’d never even heard of Patrice Wilson until early this morning, but it turns out this is the asshole who is responsible for unleashing what many have called “the worst song ever” onto the airwaves.  Thirteen-year old Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” is currently the most disliked video on YouTube, and deservedly so, but I see her as the innocent victim in this whole ordeal.  Young Rebecca and her parents (who probably deserve some of the blame as well) simply fell for Wilson’s sales pitch, and his patented brand of Disney-esque auto-tuned pop took care of the rest.

Patrice Wilson was born in Africa, where his mother was a minister and his father worked as a chemical engineer.  He then moved to Europe where he attended medical school, which he did not pass, and trained in track-and-field for the 2000 Olympics, which he did not qualify for.  Since Wilson began singing at a young age while attending his mother’s church, his next logical career path was in the music industry.  He went on to tour as a backup singer with an Eastern European pop star named Ibrahim Maiga.  According to an interview with the LA Times, Wilson said he then went to Whitman College in Washington state to learn “the business side of entertainment.”  However, Whitman only has five programs for music majors, and none of them have anything to do with business.

Patrice soon moved to Hollywood and created the ARK Music Factory, which is obviously a nod to his favorite pop group.  For a mere $2,000 – 4,000, Wilson and his team of one other person will give kids “a song to record as well as time with a producer-engineer (his partner, Clarency Jey), a photo shoot, image consulting, a music video and promotion.”  Once the parents sign their kids life away, they are given the rights to the master recording, but Wilson and ARK retain publishing rights.  If you think about it, this is really genius on Wilson’s part.  The parents and kid are given the rights to a one-hit wonder that no one will remember much less want to sample or whatever, and Wilson makes money every time it is played and handles all the incoming royalties.  No wonder many have dubbed him as “a kind of Suge Knight of the preteen schoolyard.”  Wilson has apparently heard all the criticisms about his song “Friday,” and knows he has a reputation of being someone who exploits parents and their kids for his personal gain.  So he decided to set the record straight, and record a video so that people could learn more about Patrice Wilson and ARK Music Factory.

I really can’t believe Patrice agreed to this interview, because this lady asks all the the hard-hitting questions people are interesting in finding out.  It’s impressive how he manages to maintain his composure during this brutal interrogation…ha ha, just kidding.  If you need any more evidence that this guy is a slimy scumbag who is preying on people’s dreams and adding shitty music to an already diluted pool, this should be the clincher:

The crew at Bad Lip Reading turn “Friday” into a song about chicken and gang fights:

Have a good day and remember Patrice Wilson’s wise words from his lyrical masterpiece: “Today is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards…”

It’s been a busy past few weeks for me, so I have fallen behind on writing about some of the current events that have been making headlines.  One major oversight was the massive earthquake in Japan, subsequent tsunami, and possible nuclear fallout that has devastated the country.  Then to make matters worse, Hater Hall of Shame alumni Glenn Beck had to open his big fat yapper and let all of his loyal nutbags hear his take on why this “natural disaster” occurred.  I’ll give you one guess as to why a born-again Mormon who’s made his name on Fox News through fear-based political analysis, which is littered with theology and insanity, believes was the cause.  That’s right, God did it.  Of course, he didn’t come right out and say the big man upstairs used Japan as his own personal Shake Weight.  He just danced around it like a hippie at a drum circle, and dropped not-so-subtle hints (his viewership isn’t very bright) about an impending end of times.

On his radio show last week, Beck went through his usual “America is going down the shitter” spiel by referencing the horrible catastrophe in Japan.  Then he began to connect the apocalyptic dots in his pea-sized mind and uttered this gem:  “I’m not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes,” but then went on to say that he is “not not saying that, either.”  What a gloriously ambiguous mindfuck that is, right?  You either say/imply something, or you don’t.  Grow some balls Beck, for crissakes.  I could say, “I’m not saying that Glenn Beck couldn’t pass a 4th grade Science class (which is around the time I learned about this “theory” that’s been around since the 50′s called plate tectonics), but I’m not not saying that, either.”  That’s called covering your ass through semantics, and it’s a tactic that Beck and other “Revelationists” have been using for years.  Yet, this was only a small part of Glenn’s cryptic prophecy, and he continued to speak in a code that would confuse Da Vinci himself:

“I’m not saying that Jesus is coming, I’m just saying things are changing. The world, I mean literally, the world is moving under your feet. I mean, could there be a bigger sign than — oh, by the way, I mean, in casual conversation somebody said, ‘did you hear the earth moved off its axis?’ No.”

I agree with Beck that the world is changing, but it has always been this way, and now those changes are being compounded by the 7 billion or so people who continue to shit on Mother Nature with each passing day.  When you build civilizations and nuclear reactors on or around volatile fault lines that shift and will inevitably cause earthquakes, catastrophic events such as this will always be a part of our lives.  Glenn Beck prefers to deflect all of the blame away from mankind, however, and place it squarely in the hands of The Big Quake Maker in the Sky:

God — what God does is God’s business, I have no idea. But I’ll tell you this: whether you call it Gaia or whether you call it Jesus – there’s a message being sent. And that is, ‘Hey, you know that stuff we’re doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.’ I’m just sayin’. And – yesterday I got home and I was thinking about all the messages that I could bring in, all the things that I could tell ya, and oh I’ve got stuff on Hezbollah. Oh, I have stuff on radical Islam in America that’ll make your eyes fall out. Or I could just tell you the answer, and the answer is: Buckle up. Buckle up, ’cause it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Do you see the contradiction in this statement?  If “What God does is God’s business,” then we shouldn’t concern ourselves with what happens in the world.  If it all goes back to this idea of “God’s plan,” then that means our course has already been set, and our actions are of no consequence.  Goddamn, now my head hurts.  And for those of you out there who are scared that earthquakes, war and famine means that the end of the world is nigh, just remember the sage advice of Glenn Beck, and “stop doing some of that stuff that you’re doing.”  It’s true that life is and always be a “bumpy ride,” but in my opinion, it’s simply a man-made attraction that is bound to break down sooner or later.

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, Born July 3, 1962

Today the Hater Hall of Shame welcomes a man who was once one of the most popular actors in Hollywood.  Tom Cruise (not to be confused with the inventor of the Hoveround) was born in Syracuse, New York, and was the third of four children born to Mary Lee and Thomas Cruise Mapother III.  Before Tom began the sixth grade, his father took a job as a consultant to the Canadian Armed Forces (who knew there was such a thing); the family then moved to Ottawa, Ontario.  While attending Henry Munro Middle School, he became an avid hockey player and first became interested in acting.

Tom’s big screen career began in 1981 after he secured a small part in the romantic comedy Endless Love.  His breathrough role, however, would come two years later when he was cast as Joel Goodson in Paul Brickman’s Risky Business.  After this film’s release, Cruise became a household name and starred in numerous blockbuster films throughout the 80′s and 90′s -such as All the Right Moves, Legend, Top Gun, Rain Man, and Days of Thunder.  He also revived the Mission Impossible franchise on the big screen, and then proceeded to beat it to death for the next decade – and there is another one coming out this year.  Really, the only good thing he’s done in years that I can recall was his bit role as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.  In 1987 he married actress Mimi Rogers, and it is believed that she is the one who first introduced him to the Church of Scientology, a belief system created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.  Although he and Rogers would divorce in 1990, Cruise became a devout member and outspoken advocate of this “religion”.  Coincidentally, this is also around the time Cruise’s persona and behavior began to take a turn for the weird.  He claims that Hubbard’s teachings helped him to overcome his dyslexia, and has campaigned for Scientology to be recognized as a religion in Europe, particularly France and Germany.  Those countries legal systems classify Scientology as a business and cult – which I would say describes pretty much every religion, but hey, that’s just me.  According to Andrew Martin, who wrote an unauthorized biography about the actor in 2008, Cruise is currently “second in command in all but name” in the Church of Scientology.

One of the major tenets of Scientology is the belief that every human is inhabited by alien spirits known as “thetans”…which seems just a tad bit cooky.  But after seeing how Cruise’s attitude and behavior has changed over the course of my life, it’s entirely possible that he could be Kang or Kodos from Rigel VII.  The full Wiki bio on this fruitcake can be found here – LINK.

MUST SEE – Cruise’s IAS Freedom Medal of Valor Video (Hit red play button, close pop-up, then hit green play button to view video):

Parody video featuring Jerry O’Connell:

The creators of South Park explain what Scientologists believe in, and well, it’s unbelievable (Click on video to play):

Full “Trapped in the Closet” episode can be viewed at South Park Studios.

Today we welcome the youngest member inducted into the Hall of Shame thus far, proving that a person can be annoying regardless of age:

Willow Camille Reign Smith, Born October 31, 2000

Willow Smith was born in Los Angeles, California, and is the youngest child of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.  Like other celebrity kids, Willow was photographed by paparazzi basically from the time she came out of the Fresh Prince’s nut sack, and soon became famous by genetic association.  At the age of seven, Willow made her acting debut in the 2007 film I Am Legend, a movie which – by pure coincidence I’m sure – featured her father playing the lead role.  According to Will, Willow wanted to be an actor after seeing her older brother Jaden in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. This is not unlike the feelings I had about flying a fighter jet after seeing Tom Cruise as Maverick, but unlike Willow, my dad didn’t have connections with anyone in Air Force’s TopGun program.  Willow’s next role was in the 2008 children’s film Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl; she played the role of Countee Garby, a girl during the depression era who lives in a “hobo jungle” in Ohio.  The film received mostly positive reviews, but had only moderate success in terms of box office numbers.  If Willow made a name for herself by acting in movies I’d never see, and designing outlandish clothes under the guise of being a young “fashionista,” this post would have never come to fruition.  But like her father before her, her aspirations soon included a career in mainstream music.

Back in June of 2010, Jada Pinkett Smith was a guest on TBS’s Lopez Tonight, and at one point she informed the audience (and the tens of people watching on TV) that Willow would be releasing an album.  By September, her first single titled “Whip My Hair” was “leaked” on the Internet, and quickly became a viral hit.  Since I rarely listen to the radio anymore, it took a while before I was subjected to quite possibly the most annoying pop song of all-time.  First of all, upon hearing Willow’s vocals on the chorus of “Whip My Hair,” I was positive that it was produced by one of The Chipmunks.  And when I say chorus, in this case that translates to about 95% of the song.  Over the span of her four minute song, Willow repeats the line “I whip my hair back and forth” 67 times, which equals about 17 times per minute.  In other words, it’s more of an Auto-tuned brainwashing than it is an actual song.  I could chalk this up as a ten year-old who has yet to develop a strong vocabulary, but she didn’t have anything to do with the writing of the song.  According to Wikipedia, the song’s lyrics “have motivational undertones, speaking of self-love and assurance, and referring to letting your hair down as a representation of this.”  And here I just thought it was kid-pop’s way of reinventing the 90′s heavy metal headbanging craze.  The song soon became a fixture on music charts like the US Billboard Top 100 and United Kingdom’s Midweeks chart, and eventually resulted in a record deal with Jay-Z’s label Roc Nation.  The Jigga man claims he signed Willow without knowing she was Will Smith’s daughter, which is about as believable as the “that’s not mine” excuse you hear on pretty much every episode of Cops.

I know there are a lot of people who think I’m a deplorable human being for belittling a young girl, and others who think my opinion is just a by-product of jealousy.  To the first kind of people, I say if you’re old enough to be in the spotlight and consider yourself an artist, then you’re old enough to be criticized and judged by the same standards as other celebrities.  The “You’re just jealous because she’s more successful at ten than you’ll ever be” is a popular sympathy, but overlooks one small thing.  My parents were middle class, and not a fixture in Hollywood like Will or Jada-Pinkett Smith.  It’s not like Willow was singin’ at malls before being discovered by a recording company executive.  If you have money and clout, you can tell a movie studio they need to cast your offspring.  And when they decide they wanna be a singer, you can buy time at a state-of-the art recording studio, hire artists to write songs, pick producers to make the album sound good (relatively speaking), and pay radio stations to play it.  In other words, if you’re born into fame and fortune, then you have to go out of your way to not end up successful.  Only time will tell if Willow successfully navigates the path of fame and fortune that her parents have fast tracked her to.  All I know is, it’s going to be interesting to see if she grows up to be as well-adjusted as other former child stars like Michael Jackson or Lindsay Lohan.

Rock legends Neil Young (Jimmy Fallon) and Bruce Springstein cover “Whip My Hair”:

“I Locked My Keys in the Car”:

It’s obvious this young girl understands the secret of success:

It is time once again to check in on a couple of people who have been enshrined into the Hater Hall of Shame, and see what kind of antics have thrust them into the headlines recently.  Today’s update involves two of the biggest voices of “conservative America,” and some comments they made that sound completely crazy, even by their lofty standards.

Becksaggeration

Pundits and politicians alike have been trying to make sense out of the pointless and tragic shooting that took place over the weekend in Arizona, which left six people dead and 14 wounded.  And of course, by “make sense,” I mean pointing the finger and trying to lay blame at the feet of whoever doesn’t fit their demographic.  Instead of looking at the tragedy as a whole, and viewing it as yet another example of senseless violence, everyone has their own opinion on the motive which drove a 22-year old nutjob to gun down innocent people.  At one time or another, the person behind the shootings has been described on TV as a “Loner Schizophrenic Conservative Republican Democrat Atheist Skinhead Pot Smoker who read Mein Kampf and Marx’s Communist Manifesto.”  No one knows the true motive as of yet (I say the smart money’s on “insane”), but more than a few people believe the hyperbolic rhetoric that’s often spouted by politicians like Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin was a contributing factor.  Some point to the fact that Palin targeted certain state representatives that she wanted to lose during mid-term elections, and her penchant for gun-related quotes, like “don’t retreat, reload,” or the famous “We’ll keep clinging to our Constitution and our guns and religion – and you can keep the change.”  Now, I don’t know if there is another person alive who despises Sarah Palin and everything she stands for as much as me, but it’s ridiculous to think that her idiotic actions or words had anything to do with what happened in Arizona.

In the wake of the shooting, TV personality and prophet of doom Glenn Beck felt the need to publicly give his support to Sarah Palin on his talk show, and offer her some words of advice.  In a response to her critics, Palin emailed Beck and had this to say: “I hate violence. I hate war…Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence.”  It’s hard for me to believe someone who hates violence so much would have as many different pictures of themselves packin’ heat on the Internet as Palin has, but I’ll take her at her word on this for now.  The part of the exchange that really caught my eye was Beck’s response to Palin, in which he said: “I want you to know you have my support…But please look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down.”  First of all, I kind of see this as a slap in the face of the six people who died (which included a judge & a 9 yr-old girl) and the fourteen who were wounded (like US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords), because it downplays the importance of their lives.  Neither an attempt on Ms. Giffords’ life or Judge John Roll’s death “brought down down the republic,” and both of them were actually government employees.  So why would an attempt on a former beauty queen-turned-VP candidate who enjoys hunting and making up words crush the entire country?  People who think like Glenn Beck always say this nation is unified by the blood, sweat and tears of all those hard-working Americans who came before us, and yet they continually put their faith and support behind people whose only mission is to divide and conquer through the use fear and bipartisan politics.  But then again, Glenn Beck isn’t the smartest guy in the world either.  I mean, could anyone look at this picture, which was found on Beck’s website right next to his thoughts on the shooting, and honestly say this guy knows what’s best for America?

Bill O’Rei the Non-Science Guy

Last Tuesday on The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly invited a man by the name of Dave Silverman to be a guest on his show.  Silverman is the head of the American Atheists, a group that caught O’Reilly’s ire-filled Christian eyes after putting up billboards in various states that promoted their organization of non-believers.  Now, everyone has their own reasons for believing life was brought about by an omniscient being, big bang, extraterrestrials, or whatever other theory in which you happen to prescribe.  Yet one common thread among all of these groups is that inevitably they think they are right, and will defend their position using logic they learned or were taught when anyone disagrees with them.  Bill O’Reilly employed this tactic while speaking with Mr. Silverman, and sought to prove God’s existence by bringing up the patterns of the oceanic tide:  “I’ll tell you why [religion is] not a scam, in my opinion,” he told Silverman. “Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”  This sounds like a mystery fit for Scooby-Doo and his van-dwelling pals, right?  Well, not really.  However, it turns out Bill’s response did change my opinion about him in one way.  I used to think paying this blowhard money to voice his opinions in a televised setting was the worst possible job he could have.  But just imagine what the downtrodden state of our current education system would be if O’Reilly ended up becoming a middle school science teacher:

“There must be a God, because I don’t know how things work.”

I don’t normally like to criticize the elderly or people with speech impediments, but I’m gonna make an exception in both cases this time:

(The weird thing about this pic, it was taken in March)

Louis Leo Holtz, Born January 6, 1937

Louis Holtz was born in Follansbee, West Virginia during a simpler time in the United States.  A gallon of gas cost 10 cents, a new car was $760, and people had just discovered that traveling by way of rigid airships filled with hydrogen gas was not a good idea.  I couldn’t find out much about Holtz’s early life, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to work the microfiche reader at the library.  But I do know that when he was young, his family moved to Ohio, and he would eventually play football for East Liverpool High School.  After graduating, Lou enrolled at Kent State University, where he was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity and studied history.  The 5’10″, 150 lb. Holtz also played backup linebacker for the university’s football team, and probably struck fear into the hearts of absolutely no one.  He graduated from Kent State with a bachelor’s in 1959, and then went to Iowa in 1960 where he began his football coaching career as a graduate assistant.  Over the next 8 years Holtz would work as an assistant for four different teams, which included a national championship while working under Woody Hayes at Ohio State in 1968.

In 1969, Holtz received his first head coaching job at The College of William & Mary, where he compiled a 13-20 record over the course of three seasons and led the team to one bowl game.  His next position was with North Carolina State, and it was there that he began to experience success as a college head coach.  During his four year tenure, the team’s record was 31-11-2 and they played in a bowl game every year under Holtz.  Lou initially accepted a job with Tulane in 1976, but later decided to turn down the offer and accept a job with the New York Jets.  Unlike his previous stops, coach Holtz’s style didn’t seem to translate well to the pros; he ended up resigning with one game remaining in his only season, and the team ended up at 3-10.  He returned to the college ranks in 1977 with the University of Arkansas, and would stay there for seven seasons before eventually being fired.  Although Holtz says no reason was given, it was believed to be motivated by some TV ads he did from his office that endorsed the re-election of Jesse Helms – a politician from South Carolina who at one time came out in opposition against issues like civil rights, disability rights, and feminism.

After a short stint with the University of Minnesota, Holtz received his dream job when he was chosen to take over at Notre Dame.  Holtz continued to coach the Fightin’ Irish over the next 11 seasons, and became a well-respected and popular figure on the college football landscape.  He lead the team to an undefeated season and national championship in 1988, and his overall record of 100-30-2 included five major bowl game victories.  In 1996, Holtz walked away from a lifetime contract with Notre Dame and said he was retiring from coaching.  He was hired on as a commentator at CBS Sports, but after only two seasons with the network, he came out of retirement to coach at the University of South Carolina.  The year before he arrived the Gamecock’s finished the season at 1-10, and were 0-11 in Holtz’s first year back.  But the team finished his second year at 8-4 with a big win over Ohio State in the Outback Bloomin’ Onion Bowl, and the 8 win improvement ranked as the third biggest turnaround in NCAA history.  In summation, there is no question that Lou Holtz was a great college football coach; but his coaching ability is not what earned him a spot in the Hall of Shame.  It’s his career path after coaching as the easily excitable, least understandable, and most bias sports commentator on television that has put Dr. Lou on my operhating table.

Here are a couple of reasons why Lou Holtz deserves a verbal flogging:

1. I would have to be an asshole to hold Lou’s speech impediment against him, and it does kind of bring back nostalgic memories from old cartoons involving Sylvester the Cat – I’m still holding out hope that one day he’ll work, “Sufferin’ succotash” into his commentary.  But when you not only have a speech problem, but also get riled up very easily, and talk fast while the pitch of your voice tends to rise to the level of a Screech Owl when you are excited, that’s the trifecta for a TV disaster.

2. Every week, Lou Holtz and a fellow commentator try to pick the winners of the weekend’s upcoming college games.  And as sure as the saliva that flies out of his mouth, he will choose South Carolina and Notre Dame to win no matter who they are playing.  The one thing I am waiting for is a South Carolina vs. Notre Dame game, which would inevitably lead to him looking like Swarzenegger when he’s disguised as that chick in Total Recall.

It says in his Wikipedia entry that Holtz is known for his “quick wit and ability to inspire players.”  So first, to illustrate his rapier’s wit, I will give a you few quotes attributed to Holtz and offer my own response:

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.  Actually, the songs that most birds sing are usually either a question or answer.  For example “Tweet tweet” in the bird kingdom could mean “Who wants to come over here and mate?” or “This is my tree, bitch.”  If I ever hear a bird whistling “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses, I might be more inclined to agree with him.

“If he’s got golf clubs in his truck or a camper in his driveway, I don’t hire him.”  What if you are the person in charge of hiring for the PGA Tour, a country club, driving range, outdoor store, or RV lot?

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.“  I’d say the people who built the pyramids, and African American slaves who were brought over to the United States against their will to work on plantations would disagree.

“I have never heard a successful man or woman get up and say, “I owe my success to drugs and alcohol.“  I guess Holtz has never heard of, I don’t know, Salvador Dali, Timothy Leary, Cheech and Chong, or pretty much every rock and reggae band in the history of music.

As far as his motivational skills, I guess they are referring to the famous “Dr. Lou’s Pep Talk”, which always sound a little something like this:

The best Lou Holtz impersonation ever, from The Rick and Bubba Show:

Robert Ritchie aka Kid Rock,   Born January 17, 1972

Robert Ritchie was born in Romeo, Michigan, his father William worked as a car salesman, and his mother was a homemaker named Susan.  Robert was the youngest of three kids, and he lived the hard knock life on a six-acre orchard farm that his family owned.  At age 11, young Robert joined a breakdance group known as the Furious Funkers around the same time the movie Breakin’ was released – coincidence?  A few years later, he taught himself how to use a turntable, probably by watching and ripping shit off from people like Grandmaster Flash.  In high school, he began DJ’ing parties for beer, and later joined a company in Mt. Clemens, Michigan called Groove Time Productions.  He started out doing basement parties for $30 a night, and soon earned the stage name “Kid Rock.”  According to Ritchie, the name came from the party goers who liked watching “that white kid that can rock” – I think he misinterpreted what they were actually saying, “I’d like to see that white kid get hit with a rock.”  Not long after he began working as a DJ, Bob became interested in rapping and joined a local group called The Beast Crew.  As a result of this endeavor, he met and became friends with a man named D-Nice, who was a producer for Boogie Down Productions.  At the request of Mr. Nice guy, a rep from Jive records showed up to watch Ritchie perform one night, and this eventually led to a demo deal.  At age 17, he signed a recording contract and was soon performing alongside legends like Yo-Yo, Ice Cube, and Too Short on the Straight From the Underground Tour.

In 1990, Bob released his debut album Grit Sandwiches for Breakfast, because as we all know, this food is a staple of any Midwesterner’s breakfast (3/4′s of grits sold in the US are bought in the South).  Jive Records didn’t promote the album, and strangely enough it wasn’t because of the name, but rather the “Vanilla Ice” ripple effect that plagued white people in the music industry who were trying to be black.  Jive released him from the label one year later, and he returned to Detroit.  He was eventually picked up by an independent label called Continuum Records, and in 1993 he released his second album The Polyfuze Method.  Even with catchy songs like “Balls In Your Mouth,” it received only minimal amounts of airtime on the radio and sold a total of around 15,000 copies.  Like Jive, his new recording company didn’t think Kid Rock would become a successful artist, and they released him from his contract in 1994.

His luck began to change in the mid-90′s after forming a back-up band, Twisted Brown Trucker, which included a DJ by the name of Uncle Kracker, and a diminutive dynamo named Joe C.  I attribute much of the success from his 11 times platinum 1997 album Devil Without a Cause to Joe C., because if the TLC network has taught us anything, it’s that people are drawn to anything involving little people.  I will admit that I bought Devil Without a Cause and listened to it quite a bit, because his blending of rap and rock was something that was still relatively new – even though “Walk This Way” came out in 1986.  Yet, all six of his albums since DWAC have gotten progressively more terrible; and Bob’s off-stage antics like brawling at a Waffle House, or being one of the hundred guys to be married to Pamela Anderson reeks of someone who is desperate to embody the redneck to riches story he’s concocted.  Now, instead of “resting on his laurels” like other entertainers who have achieved fame often do, Rock has apparently decided to just steal (or sample) other artist’s laurels and pass them off as his own.  And with each new hit that used to be someone else’s hit, his sense of self-worth seems to be growing, too, as evidenced by the following quote from a past interview:  “I could care less if I can’t be part of your scene, because I am the scene.  I am everything that is.”  All hail the mighty Kid Rock, King of Everything That Is and the newest HHOS inductee.

A clip about Ritchie’s rise to fame from VH1′s newest show, “Behind the Music That Sucks”:

The next two videos revolve around one of his most successful (or most annoying, and least creative) songs, “All Summer Long”:

No, you da man who sucks

Emmit Perry, Jr. Born September 13, 1969

Emmit Perry, Jr. was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Willie Maxine and Emmit Perry Sr.  At the age of 16, he changed his name to Tyler to disassociate himself from his abusive father.  From what I have read, Perry did have a very rough childhood, and I truly do feel bad for anyone who has endured the horrific things he went through early in life.  Yet that does still not excuse him from all the awful shit he has made, and will continue to make.  So, much like a little boy who has to pee really bad, I just can’t let it go.  Tyler eventually earned his GED, and at 20 years-old he was first inspired to write after hearing of its therapeutic effects while watching – what else – The Oprah Winfrey Show.  Perry’s writing career began when he started writing letters to himself, and this material would eventually become the basis for his first musical, I Know I’ve Been Changed.

In 1990, Perry moved to Atlanta, and two years later he spent all that he had so that his musical could run at a community theater.  The initial offering was panned by critics and was a financial failure.  Over the next six years, Tyler continually reworked the musical; and in 1998, the show finally achieved success at the House of Blues in Atlanta, and later at the Fox Theatre.  His next play in 2000, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, introduced audiences to his most famous character, Madea – who is basically an African-American Mrs. Doubtfire.  This also marked a time when Perry began to self-promote his work, and made sure no one forgot who made the productions by adding “Tyler Perry’s” before every title.  He continued to sell-out theaters over the next four years, because apparently audiences couldn’t get enough of the sassy, cross-dressing, creepy looking grandma character he portrayed.  Around 2004, Tyler received a $5.5 million budget for the big screen adaptation of his play Diary of Mad Black Woman.  The movie grossed $50 million in the states despite receiving mostly negative reviews, but it would only gross $19,000 in all the other foreign markets combined.  Almost exactly one year later, the sequel to his debut effort was released, and reached #1 at the box office on its opening weekend.  He has made 10 other movies since that time, but they’re all pretty much the same – take love stories and religious themes, add humorous stereotypes and cliches galore.

In 2006, Perry introduced his works to the small screen with Tyler Perry’s House of Payne – which is fitting, because it’s so damn payneful to watch.  The show began a 10 episode run in syndication on WTBS, and was eventually picked up by TBS as part of a 100 episode, $200 million deal with Perry.  The show premiered in June of 2007, and now the promos run continuously on TBS’s network.  Personally, my favorite promo is where the lead character is heard yelling at his wife in a foreboding tone, and when she comes in to see what all the commotion is about, he asks, “Where’s the remote?”  What can be funnier than some guy who can’t find his TV remote?  I mean, where does Perry find the inspiration to come up with this stuff?  What’s next, maybe the character loses his car keys, or wants to know when dinner will be ready?  Now that would be fuckin’ hilarious.  The inexplicable popularity of this show then lead to Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, and has reportedly opened the door for two more shitcoms in the future.

I am not the only one who views Tyler Perry’s endless parade of Tyler Perry productions in an unfavorable light, as evidenced by criticisms from other people like Spike Lee.  In an interview, Lee once described this brand of humor as “‘coonery’ and buffoonery,” and believes it “harkens back to Amos n’ Andy.”  When Perry was asked about these allegations, he responded by saying: “I would love to read that [criticism] to my fan base…That pisses me off.  It is so insulting.  It’s attitudes like that, that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist, and that is why there is no material speaking to them, speaking to us.”  While I agree that characters like those on his show probably do exist in real life, that doesn’t mean they are a) funny, and b) should have a show or movie based on them.  In other words, the stereotypes don’t piss me off nearly as much as the fact that his shit just isn’t funny.  I know it’s just a coincidence, but I think it’s pretty appropriate that his initials correspond with the abbreviated term for shit paper.

The Soup announces Perry’s latest project:

The tribulations a white woman faces while trying to make it in the world of Tyler Perry:

The Boondocks is one of many great cartoons in the Adult Swim lineup, and this particular episode takes dead aim at our newest HHOS member (Click red play button, close the inevitable pop-up, hit green play button):