Category: Andrew Earles

I’ve returned

Yard sale, crap work, and a day in the country fishing (one bass in a windy, algae-filled lake…middle of the day, I know how to fish, lemme tell ya). Back to writing and JFAL work, both of which are 2 – 3 days behind schedule. How’s that for blogging?

A re-run:

This was “editedâ€Â (there’s a joke or two here that I would never make) a little too much for my tastes, but it’s….sort of funny. 

(Pasted from cracked.com)
FAILED FAST FOOD MASCOTS
by Andrew Earles 
The new Burger King ads are all the rage with the kids these days. Or at least kids stoned enough to understand why a gigantic expressionless plastic headed creep is so damn hilarious. But for every fast food mascot who can pull off “funny creepy,â€Â there are the Ronald McDonalds of the world who are “I want to pull off your little brother’s pantsâ€Â creepy.

Well, as bad as some real fast food mascots have been, there are some that never even made it past a couple of test screenings. Here, CRACKED presents a comprehensive list of the worst fast-food mascots ever conceived.

“Roid Rage Chicken,â€Â KFC
Bred without a beak or an asshole, this steroid-saturated, four-foot tall chicken flies into a violent tantrum, beating its spouse and threatening the cameraman when it’s character is questioned. It then writes a best-selling memoir, exposing fellow mascot chickens of also beefing up. Then its genitals implode.

“Applebee’s Strumpet Waitress,â€Â Applebee’s
When she’s not working a double, sporadic nursing student “Amyâ€Â has unprotected sex with random men who wear visors and barbed wire tattoos. Her latest child, Trey, is named after that dude who makes the salads who is probably the father. Her catchphrase: “The optimistic slogans on the buttons I wear help me get through the day without crying!â€Â proved to be one of the least successful catchphrases of all time.

“‘Let It Go’ Larry,â€Â Carl’s Junior
After a failed attempt at using a bikini clad Paris Hilton to make burgers topped with onion rings sexy, Carl’s Junior adopted a resounding “fuck itâ€Â stance with Larry, the antithesis of Subway’s Jared. Addicted to Carl’s Junior’s Rodeo Burger and tattered word jumbles, Larry is 380 pounds of food-stained, slow-moving apathy.

“The Ghost of Dave Thomas,â€Â Wendy’s
While initially envisioned as a good natured cross between the Family Circus’ “Not Meâ€Â character and the Coz’s “Ghost Dadâ€Â the decision to portray Thomas’ face as realistically decomposed, along with his catch phrase, “Oh oooooooh, oooooooh how I miss the natural world! I’d suck dick for a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger,â€Â lent the campaign a creepy air of necrophilia that proved decidedly unappetizing.
“Harold McRib, Deadbeat Dad,â€Â McDonalds
To accentuate the McRib’s intermittent appearances on the McDonald’s menu, the fast food giant tossed around the idea of a transient, suitcase-toting father/husband figure, desperately trying to re-acclimate himself into the family fold. The pilot advertisement featured the mascot banging on the front door, yelling his never-to-catch-on catch phrases, “Baby, I’m back, please give me another chanceâ€Â, and culminated with Harold sulking at the OTB, solemnly addressing the audience with a closing statement, “Don’t make the McRib go away again.â€Â

“The Horse,â€Â Arby’s
To alleviate a restaurant-wide surplus of “Horsey Sauceâ€Â packets, Arby’s briefly ran an ad featuring an electroanimatronic horse that approached tables with baskets of “Horsey Sauceâ€Â, repeating the gleeful claim, “It comes from meeeeeee!!!â€Â However, actors’ inability to get through dress rehearsals without vomiting ensured that the campaign never got off the ground.

“Have You Seen The White Castle Ads?!?!?!â€Â White Castle
Riding the wake of Burger King’s recent and wildly successful what-the-fuck?? ad campaign featuring the King and the giant droning, cowboy hat-wearing tooth, White Castle launched a confuse-off that was apparently too intense for focus group participants. Promos focused on an eight-foot, African-American cowboy with a mechanical arm and a glowing red eye that crashes into private homes through the wall or window, extracts the residents by the backs of their necks, takes them an unknown distance to a White Castle location, and throws them into the dining area through the plate glass window. The gargantuan cowboy then joins the bedraggled, moderately injured party at a table and begins to recite dialogue from the 2002 Robert Duvall film, Assassination Tango. Campaign was also designed to provide work for young, creative, funny, and pop-culturally literate idea people that insist on wearing New Balance sneakers with blazers.

 

 

 

 

Even more depressing than….

….the continuing existence of Southern Culture on the Skids or The Reverend Horton Heat is the hard truth that there might be an audience for Kickin It Old Skool. At this point in the game, the only demographic that could possibly find this movie entertaining would be….what? I don’t even know. A frat boy after an eight-month, freon-induced coma? As the preview played on the tube (just now), I was hit with a sadly familiar â€Âwhy?â€Ââ€¦..the same â€Âwhy?â€Â that Coffee and Cigarettes, the Starsky and Hutch movie, and The Naked Trucker and T-Bone Show spurred. Creative Bankruptcy indeed.

The cars that I’ve driven.

1978 Pontiac Lemans (first car, 15,000 orig. miles, subtle and wonderful, bent the frame and front axle screwing around, totalled out)

1987 Buick Century (second car, the running dog, 2.8 L V-6, fast, loud A/C Delco stereo, I destroyed this car before it was ultimately taken away due to a DUI/other offenses)

1982 Honda Accord (four door automatic, classic blue, third car after long period without wheels, loved this one, too, paid $400 for it, never quit on me, self-installed Sparkomatic stereo and speakers, drunk woman totalled it from behind on a Sunday afternoon, in hospital overnight)

1985 Honda Civic (five speed, hatchback, drove all over the South to see good and bad bands, amazing stereo, eventually died from an odd engine moisture problem)

1988 Honda Accord (four door, gold, this was my father’s car, inherited after he passed, I totalled it making a u-turn)

1991 Ford Escort (Hatchback, high miles, emergency cheap-o after totalling the Accord, installed nice stereo, timing belt popped in the middle of traffic)

1991 Nissan Pick-Up Truck (lots of problems, bad memories)

1993 Ford Ranger (good memories, strong, great stereo, crazy family of assholes ran stop sign and briefly changed life for the worse)

TO BE CONTINUED…..

Tone it down, Earles.

Here is a previously-published installment of my current (and only) metal column, which can be read in its corrected/edited (though I had some pretty amazing free-reign with this one….please note, so as not to scare off potential/future editors) form by picking up the last issue of……DIW Magazine…….the one before the issue that you just looked at (where there is a second installment). Ok, so who out there wants a big care package of metal promos (I’ll forget to mail it, so don’t bother)?

(complete with notes to the editor!!!)

 

Proposed names:
 “So You’re Not A Metalheadâ€Â
 

or….
 “Another Indie Rocker Writing About Metalâ€Â
 

or something really funny, like….
 “Faceplant: The DIW Metal Columnâ€Â
 

“Back Alley Beatdown: The DIW Metal Columnâ€Â
  “Pussy Eraser: The DIW Metal Columnâ€Â
 “Whisker Biscuit Repellent: The DIW Metal Columnâ€Â
 

An intro disguised as a disclaimer, or vise versa….

I pitched a no-thrills metal column to my editor hear at DIW and he went for it…obviously. I am perhaps a little too aware of the negative and positive attention hoisted upon “hipster metalâ€Â (as a round table discussion in Decibel and a piece in Guitar Player magazine refer to such things) and the simple act of non-metal people getting into metal, or saying they’re into metal, or dressing like they’re into metal. I don’t know where I fit in, and would rather not waste the energy trying to figure it out. I have never considered myself a metalhead, tried to look like a metalhead, or tried to pass myself off as a metalhead. Unsurprisingly, I come from an indie/college rock/post-hardcore upbringing (in terms of taste, not creation), but have been writing about metal, on and off, since 1998. The best I can give you, dear reader, is a fair knowledge of the word and its innumerable sub-genres…AND SOME LAUGHS.

The Column
 

There is a built in problem that unites the progress of the otherwise very different Mastodon and Lamb of God, and this problem has reached a head on their respective new albums. Both bands are gradually getting worse, moving away from the interesting places that they were once taking metal, and in the context of “extremeâ€Â metal, that means that the pressures of popularity (from labels, increasing size of fanbase that is now very meathead-heavy, etc) have changed the music itself, for about half of each record, into the LCD crap that wouldn’t be out of place entertaining semi-literate halfwits in the playlist of your local date rapist X-rock station. You have plenty of places to turn after giving up on those two superstars, and if you want to confuse the hell out of people, start espousing the wonderment of the Harvey Milk discography. Like Mastodon, they are from Atlanta, unlike Mastodon, they make little sense in terms of consistency, alternately perfecting the difficult and the great. Special Wishes, on Megablade (Troubleman’s “we’re into metal now, too!!â€Â imprint), is the latter. Isis are back with In The Absence Of Truth. I can help that problem by hereby declaring Isis the next Tool. There is your truth. Seriously, take out the ever-decreasing element of guttural vocals, and all of the pieces are now in place: The palatable, slower-moving prog parts, the not pretty/not ugly singing, jazzy-song construction. Mark my words, and if more proof is needed, head over to the latest In The Fishtank EP (#14, on Touch and Go/Konkurrent) – a pairing of Isis and Aerogramme that sounds exactly like a Mogwai mini-album with occasional screaming. With help from the two guys that make up Big Business, The Melvins clean house with (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac). Fans of Stonerwitch and Stag take note, or at least unstrap that Baby Bjorn and take note. Size 4XXL’s rejoice, Dream Theater mark their 25th anniversary with a 3-CD live set, complete with (big surprise) an orchestra. They were, at one time, a metal band. Load Records has once again taken a detour into structure and released the new one by The USA Is A Monster, titled Sunset At The End Of The Industrial Age. It’s like Dream Theater, or Fate’s Warning, or Meshuggah done by two crustcore holdovers that live in a refrigerator box. No matter the praise that Striborg accumulates, the colorfulness of its Tasmanian rain forest origin, or the popularity of one-man BM outfits, Embittered In Darkness (Southern Lord) sounds like Mortiis, late-period Christian Death, and any sociopath with a keyboard battling it out with 400 slot machines on Senior’s Day. What I meant to write is that it sounds really fucking silly. It immediately makes me thirst for this column’s token non-metal entries, Planes Mistaken For Stars’ Mercy (Abacus) and The Hope Conspiracy’s Death Knows Your Name (Deathwish). The former: Barely metallic, but very hard, Midwestern post-faux hawk rock and roll. The latter: Total 90’s hardcore without a Metalcore meathead in sight. No matter your current stance with Tom Araya and Co., everyone should be a little curious as to what a new Slayer album sounds like in 2006. I’m a Seasons in the Abyss man myself, choosing the 16-year-old underdog of their “seminalâ€Â period as a fave, and Christ Illusion (American) should have, and could have, been the follow-up. Across Tundras’ Dark Songs Of The Prairie (Crucial Blast), despite their frosty name, foreboding title, band member pedigrees, and original origin in a Midwest hellhole, is only metal in the way that Bitch Magnet was OG indie-metal in 1989. In duty to the temporarily unknown, Memphis’ Evil Army (s/t CD on Get Revenge! Records) make real-deal crossover magic (Accused, Hirax, Misfits, S.O.D., and early Metallica) and Clevelend’s Skeletonwitch follow-up their full-length with the Worship The Witch EP (self-released), one of the better Blackened melodic thrash attempts out there. To conclude, I was sent the new Mushroomhead CD, Savior Sorrow, but you have got to be fucking kidding. Really.

-Andrew Earles

 

 

 

 

 

What I thought about the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie

No complaints, really. Like the Strangers With Candy movie, which sadly disappeared from party discussion about three days after release, the ATHF feature is as good as…..a good episode of the show. Not a great episode; a good episode. Maybe I’m being a little harsh. Maybe it’s just a little better than that. I was never scared of its failure. There was really no logical way that it would all-out suck. The only aspect that scared me was the idea of being in a theater full of Aqua Teen Hunger Force fanatics. 

This Slate review is as ignorant as the writer professes the subject to be. The film stands on its own without a front-to-back knowledge of the show (though it might help). I’ve missed big chunks of the past two seasons. Before that, I kept up, and even unsuccessfully auditioned for a peripheral character V.O. via phone. That was August of 2003. Before that (I think), I interviewed the creators for Chunklet Magazine. In February of 2005, during a particularly fucked-up period of my life, I blew town and went to Atlanta as a guest at the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Appreciation Party. The guy that voices Master Shake looks exactly like you’d expect, though series DVD owners/renters already know this. My point is, as a lapsed fan that almost entered an outer fold of sorts, I used to know the show. Through no fault of its creators or content, it appears to have attracted a Burning Man/Complete Dumbass/Stoner audience (what percentage of the full audience this accounts for, I don’t know), though it’s still smarter than (and a totally different animal from) the vastly-improved South Park. It takes quite a wit and gift for dialogue construction to write ATHF.  Belly laughs? A couple. I laughed especially hearty at the “Will you answer that fucking phone?!?!â€Â line. Look for it when you go see the film. That brings me to another thought. It was a little jarring, then really funny, to hear the characters unleash a torrent of fucks, fuck-you’s, and fucking’s. And in a rare instance of pop-cultural name-dropping (a crutch that the show has always brilliantly managed to avoid), director Bob Clark gets a shout-out (eerily, he died in a car accident on April 4th).  So yes, I liked it.  

 

Kicking myself? Not so much.

David Dunlap Jr. thinks that I’m upset at the cleverness of this. Maybe.

My readers….have you seen this?

“Ratâ€ÂÂ Pete Postlethwaite, Imelda Staunton [2000] A woman becomes furious when her husband arrives home from a bar and metamorphoses into a rodent. [1:45]. [PG/TV-PG] ** 

Lastly, is this enough to finally dismiss The Hold Steady?

 

K.V. – R.I.P.

Already off of CNN’s homepage? It was there at three in the morning, when I was up….and shouldn’t have been.

Truth be told, it’s been some time since I’ve cracked a Vonnegut book. I still own some, so that means something.

Boy, Hollywood could destroy a Vonnegut book. Easily a 100% shit rate. Chime in. Any of you get hoodwinked into renting Breakfast of Champions? On paper, Slaughterhouse Five looks ok (meaning, it was made in the 70’s, and I’ll watch anything from the 70’s), but of course, another misstep.

 

Everyone Loves Re-Runs

An open apology to WFMU re: my laziness. I once made some entries on WFMU’s “Beware of the Blog.â€Â Not sure why I stopped, nor do I know if they’d ever let me start back up. I max out at 2 – 3 blogs (in terms of regularity).

Previously and currently available here.

July 05, 2005

The Cable Report 07/05/05 (TV That Scared the Crap Out of Me)

In tribute to TV Land’s “Greatest Made-For-TV Movies Of All Timeâ€Â campaign (this week, and next, I believe), I’m firing up a Cable Report.

The Day After
The preceding parental advisories were more than warranted. I’ve begun to mentally compile a list of grocery store freak out scenes, and The Day After has a spendid one. Watching this again, I was knocked back by the unrelenting bleakness, the degree of bickering insanity amongst the characters, and the special FX are not too shabby – look for the signature explosion scenes in which victims are x-rayed as if part of a cartoon. Additionally, who can argue with ANY Jason Robards appearance.

V.
This mini-series did nothing if it didn’t convince me that my parents were face-peeling aliens. The scare lasted weeks, and was eventually replaced by the belief that my Mom was trying to abandon me in the middle of Sears.

Salem’s Lot
I’d venture a guess that some of you didn’t even know! It sucks so bad now, because it was a TV movie then. Not to discredit TV movies as a whole, but you wanted scary and gory, and this is neither. To note: Salem’s Lot did prominently feature Geoffrey Lewis, father of Juliette, and the ultimate on-screen sidekick. Speaking of character actors, and as such, getting completely off track here, who knows the name Michael G. Hagerty? Let’s end with a nod to Michael G. Hagerty:

For years, I was hell bent on the misconception that Michael G. Hagerty was John Candy’s brother. The pop-culturally semi-literate will know him as the Mike Duffy in the “AAMCOâ€Â episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. His bio on IMDB.com reads as follows:

“Graduated from the University of Illinois. He worked at Chicago’s Second City. He now lives in Los Angeles.

Often plays vendors or merchants.â€Â

June 13, 2005

The Toughest Movies Ever Made

Prime Cut (1972)

Simple. Gene Hackman runs hookers out of a meatpacking plant and Lee Marvin (in a suit) chases him through a field with a machine gun. Not only is this the toughest movie ever made, that was the toughest sentence ever written.

 

 

Death Hunt (1981)

Again, this is very simple. Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Carl Weathers, and Ed Lauter run around in the middle of a Canadian nowhere and a lot of blood flows. A lot of blood…in a Peckinpah way. A man gets his arm caught in a bear trap, and in lieu of getting morphine or any sort of treatment, he gets PUNCHED OUT. Lee Marvin repeatedly kicks the dead body of a comrade, yelling, “You dumb son of a bitch!!!â€Â


The French Connection (1971)  

 

There’s really only one scene in The French Connection: When Popeye Doyle (a 41-year-old Gene Hackman) leaves a bar at dawn, trashed, and manages to pick up a beautiful girl riding her bike around his crappy neighborhood. This scene is tough…tough to believe.
 

Love Liza (2002)  

 

Tough. Tough to sit through.
 

Cannonball  (1976)  

 

Paul Bartel’s unfunny account of the elicit coast-to-coast race was the first movie that disturbed me with violence. A good example of how PG-rated violence in the 70’s would be R-rated violence today. Cars crush people, and they bleed from the mouth. Drivers are head-shot by snipers, and it contains a Carradine.

June 03, 2005

Capsular Reviews of Anything 1.1

Out of the Blue  (1980)

Dennis Hopper runs up and down the hallway, waving his hands and screaming. Dennis Hopper sits at the breakfast table, drunk, waving his arms and screaming. Linda Manz, later of Gummo “fameâ€Â (Solomon’s mom), runs away to carouse around with a “punk rockâ€Â band. Not much fits in-between the (these) lines, here. An entertaining wreck (no pun intended).

The Ice Pirates (1984)

This is the eleventh or twelve movie that I remember seeing in the theater. Condorman was the fourth, and The Black Hole was the first. The all-knowing North Pole glowing crystal that creates the universal star rating system is pulling one over on me. This movie got two stars. The climax is loaded with pre-MTV scatter-brained editing tricks. Oddly “nameâ€Â cast with Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Ron Pearlman (ok, ok), and a Carradine.

The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber (2004…it’s a book)

Best true crime I’ve read in months, and I read the living shit out of true crime. This past Christmas, I went on a cruise with my mother. When I wasn’t drunk (afternoons at pool and prior to daily nap), I read the 2003 and 2004 editions of The Best American Crime Writing in the space of a week. Totally engaging, easy, and addictive. Scary Monsters and Super Freaks is in the same territory, but more entertainment biz related. Perfect vacation fare. In order to fit in better on the pool deck, I purchased Robin Cook’s Seizure from the duty-free shop, but I couldn’t dance with that thing. The Nashvillian real estate agent sunning next to me was engrossed in Robert B. Parker’s Stone Cold, but we’re veering into fiction here, with my only point being that THIS BOOK, the story of Attila Ambrus, is a must and erases all other true crime…for now.

Do’s & Don’ts: 10 Years of Vice Magazine’s Street Fashion Critiques

Do your research. There is a picture of a corpse-painted Black Metaller. The caption refers to him as “Speed Metalâ€Â and goes on to make a tired joke about metalheads huffing glue or suffering from incest down the line or something. Practitioners of speed metal do not wear corpse paint. I felt like I was reading Andy Rooney on Metal, if, of course, that existed.

Every Thin Lizzy album before and including Chinatown

…is worth owning. Why, at this late stage in the game, do I have to keep telling people this?