When Megaton Leviathan went on tour some months ago, I got to see a lot of the country that I hadn't seen in a number of years. I'm hardly a patriot, but I love America. Not in the football, bipartisan, "tookerjerbs" kind of way, but in the way that it's a vast land of absurd cultural variety.

For about 5 years or so I spent a great deal of time travelling the states by a variety of methods. That was nearly a decade ago. Perhaps it's refracted through the lens of youthful idealism, but what I remembered was vibrant; troubled like any nation, but despite my inherent misanthropy and pessimism, there was a sense of endless wonder. Like I could travel forever and just stop somewhere for a little while and explore whenever the mood struck me.

What I saw of the country this time around was practically frightening. Large swathes of the land, even cities or suburban areas I've seen numerous times were either ghost towns, pitted with or comprised entirely of abandoned, decaying buildings and overgrown plots of land, or cities that mostly seemed either split down the middle with clearly defined areas of wealth and poverty, or cities that looked straight up on the brink of financial collapse.

Nowhere was I so shocked at this stark change of climes as I was in NYC. Bushwick was... full of fucking hipsters, and I could literally smell the American Apparel hounds circling, just waiting for all the monied people to move in so they could then price out the hipsters and what was left of the people of color and build a bunch of luxury condos. I saw this in other cities, but The City is MY city. I was born there. I may have spent most of my youth in it's mountainous backyard (aka, the Poconos), but New York runs through my veins as sure as the dwindling street hustlers, Rockaway Beach, downtown before The Great Cleansing, that shitty roller coaster at Coney Island, pizza, Times Square at Christmas, pizza...

Seriously, fuck this thing.

I moved when I was six, and I only sporadically made it back for family gatherings and the occasional uh... "recreational substances" purchase later on in my young adult life. That never stopped NYC from being my home in my heart, and I never stopped admiring the fierce, independent, artistic, working class social melting pot that city stood for. Birthplace of No-Wave, Hip Hop, co-author of Punk and Death Metal and a million stops in between... I don't know maybe I'm waxing romantic. For better or worse, New York is a very, very big part of who I am as a person. 

So it saddens me greatly when I read something like this:

https://np.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/2ryxv2/reshaping_new_york_from_buildings_to_bike_lanes/cnkpcec

(For those unfamiliar with reddit, the link at the very top of the page with the thumbnail next to it is a link submitted by a reddit user, shared for the consideration of the rest of the userbase. All the posts below it are comments and discussion regarding the original link. In this case, the link to the NY Times article at the top of the reddit page should be visited for maximum comprehension of the comment displayed beneath it.)

Not just because it literally pains me to watch my city being dismantled by corporate hagfish, but because a comment mentioned later in the reddit comment section about "national economic trends of de-industrialisation and financialisation" is unequivocally true, and the country that I also love is being further divided into a kind of modern feudalism by which it will be ever increasingly harder to escape the crushing trappings of poverty and crime unless you're either born into, or magically ascend to the domain of the wealthy elite.

As far as I can see, there is no cure for this. Money and special interest rule the land, and maybe not tomorrow, but in some foreseeable next week, we'll be a nation of homogenised, rich white people, littered with the detritus of our criminal poor, while the handful of the middle class that manages to hold on desperately tries to climb the economic ladder in an effort to escape the bought and paid for media scaremongering of the growing "poverty menace."

It's not a future I look forward to. Much as I love touring, it's also a very heavy sense of foreboding that tempered much of the enjoyment of the gloriously bohemian fix for my insatiable wanderlust that playing live music in a different city every night provides.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope digital fabrication matures quickly and becomes commonplace, and steals the thunder of laissez faire capitalism before it sucks us all into a black hole of binary social economic order. We'll probably bomb ourselves into new and unimagined realms of primitivity before that happens though, so I guess that's something to look forward to. 

And here I thought it'd be at least a month before I broke my New Year's resolution to be more positive. 

Last Night My City Let Me down

On the night of March 30th, 2014, I went to a concert to see one of my all time favorite bands nearly flawlessly perform a downright amazing set of their best material from a long and storied career. Unfortunately, something happened that drew my focus from their performance, and to a greater issue on the whole. I wish this review could have been about a great band performing a killer set. Instead, what follows is a lot of disappointment and some soul baring. Not necessarily the domain of The Cheeto Factory, but we'l return to your semi-annually scheduled buffoonery sometime in the near-ish millennium. This essay/editorial (what? I'm the editor here...) was originally posted on facebook, and is here being reposted, slightly revised, for greater visibility and posterity. [Mort]

Last night, a portion of a Portland metal audience unironically cheered when a staunchly anti-fascist, pioneering extreme-metal act made a barbed comment about Portland being the seat of caucasian racial prejudice the last time they came through town some 20 odd years ago, and it solidified everything that’s wrong with this town for me. You should be ashamed of yourself, Portland. I honestly don’t know what else to say.

Usually, when one says that their city has let them down, they mean that their sports team lost an important tournament, or one functionally identical binary political party member is elected to some ineffectual position of imaginary power in favor of the other. It’s not often that one can say they’re morally disappointed in the entire city in which they live, especially when one is something of a moral blank oneself.

Last night, a legendary British band came through town for the first time in over two decades. Over the years, Carcass have pioneered a variety of extreme metal styles, and endured hardships that would break feebler bands. Throughout all this, a major lyrical theme of the group has been the rejection of authority and systems of oppression and torture, amongst a wide variety of other topics. Rejection of authority and rebellion may very well be overblown teenage constructs that lose their potency in the stolid march toward adult responsibility, but there is a kernel of truth in youthful anarchy, and I believe it remains relevant regardless of what age you are. Nevertheless, themes of antifascism are timeless and Carcass have penned a number of very powerful songs refuting oppression and torture.

In fact, here’s an excerpt from a former Carcass website F.A.Q. regarding the matter of fascism:
“Carcass are a vehemently anti-fascist band, if you are a right-wing nazi racist - please don't bother showing up to our shows or buying our records, you are sadly missing the whole point.” [1]

And another excerpt from an interview with Bill Steer:
“[…]All of us detest sexism, racism and bigotry in general[…]” [2]

So when bassist/lead singer Jeff Walker cracked a joke last night that “The last time we came through Portland, you guys were the white power capital of the world…” and a not insignificant portion of the crowd (roughly 20-25% by my entirely non-scientific estimate) cheered, I was not only heartbroken, but confused and angered.

The metal and punk I grew up listening to, for lack of a better explanation, came from a place of moral high ground. You could listen to metal and punk and it addressed important social issues like corporatist greed, and governmental corruption. It was a call to arms to challenge the human race to deny its sad history of nationalism and persecution, and to educate people in an effort to bring about a general sense of egalitarianism. I don’t know, though… maybe I’m just some kind of idealistic prick who read that all wrong and it was only meant in a “rights for whites” kind of way. I always had friends who were people of colour who listened to metal, and it never seemed any other way to me, so the very idea that forms of extreme music are exclusionary is absurd to me.

The extreme metal music climate I grew up in had a very strong antifascist core. 90s era east coast hardcore had its share of skins, but everyone I knew was firmly on the side of antifascism, and skins were persona-non-grata at most shows. In the event they did show up, there was conflict and it was made known they weren’t welcome. Bands like Sepultura, Candira, God Forbid, Body Count, Orange 9mm, Biohazard, Rage Against The Machine (yeah, yeah, they get a lot of shit for being corporate sponsored, hyper-popular metal hypocrites, but for all the metal hipster “too popular!” chatter, I personally think they were a solid band the entire way through, and they were a great mainstream source of antifascism… also, I was 17), Corrosion of Conformity, Rollins Band, etc. all featured either strong members who were people of colour and/or an avowed message of antifascism and equality.

It was never even a question of “should I be a racist dimwit?” when I was a growing up in extreme music, I always had amazing role models who crafted strong music that fostered a spirit of equality and justice to guide me, and friends of a variety of nationalities with whom to share the experience. That, and racism is idiotic, and if you can’t see why it’s inherently, logically wrong, you have the mental comprehension of can of soda. A very stupid can of soda.

Which is why, when I discovered that a book entitled “What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal” [3] exists, it brought about a very profound sense of dismay in me. People of colour were always welcome in metal and punk events in the area in which I grew up (NYC, NE Pennsylvania, and northern New Jersey). Again, it wasn’t all copies of By Any Means Necessary and flowers and shit. We had a racist contingent and we dealt with them. Their pride was a shameful thing. They were unwelcome. That they continued to show up to events was morally problematic for us. It never occurred to me that elsewhere, hell, even in other metal scenes, racism and the pervasive creep of real (as opposed to projected, knee-jerk, “I toss this term around to sound socially proactive”) privilege cast the shadow of exclusion on people of colour in the context of styles of music I love dearly.

Since then, my unfortunately, circumstantially naïve brain has come to conclude that metal has a problem with racism (and homophobia and sexism as well, but that’s another subject entirely). In a bizarre twist of irony, given that its birthroots are blues and rock and roll, metal and its subgenres are almost overwhelmingly populated by white, male musicians, most of whom are perfectly nice guys with no fascist agenda whatsoever, who will happily tell the racist skins to fuck right off should they turn out to shows. Indeed, there are disturbing pockets of propaganda machines in bands like Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, and Skullhead, but many of those bands are shunned outright by the majority of most metal fans. Still, statistically, when you look at the numbers, white musicians and fans comprise the vast majority of the experience. Which isn’t inherently a bad thing; it’s largely a cultural construct, especially here in the states. The problem is that white people simply don’t understand racism from the receiving end because they’ve never experienced it. That, in all honesty, is the true definition of “privilege”. It’s not a term meant to shame white people, it’s simply a very real concept. A concept that illustrates that a certain group of people will never experience the lifelong consequences of casual or outright exclusion, derision, belittlement and violence that comes from being a visible minority; plain as that.

So when I stand, in my city, amongst a group 300 strong (at least), enthusiastically enjoying the music of a band who is avowedly antifascist, and that group cracks a joke about our city's shameful past and NO ONE fucking boos or jeers, and, in fact, a largely audible portion of the audience applauds and cheers… I have no fucking words for you Portland. None at all. I’m horrified, in fact. You should just… know better.

Not long ago, I was talking to a good friend of mine who is black, and we got to the topic of his experiences of racial prejudice in general and eventually that of his experience in Portland. He told me a story about how his mom came to visit him from out of state, so he took her to a nice restaurant so they could have dinner together. Along the way, someone shouted “NIGGERS!” at them from across the street. My heart fucking sank. Imagine the experience of taking a loved one out, simply to enjoy a freedom that everyone in the country has a right to. Now imagine that experience being overshadowed by a group of ignorant shitheads shouting the most demeaning, irrelevant insult at you that you can think of. Now imagine that it’s not an isolated incident. In fact, this, and several shades of more and less subtle disparagement pervade your entire life. It changes the way you experience the world.

Could the above incident happen in just about any town in the US, pretty much at any point in history? Sadly, unfortunately, the answer is yes. The fact that it happens at all in what is, today, considered one of the most progressive towns in America is despicable. It is not an isolated story.

I hear anecdotes of subtle and not so subtle racism in my chosen hometown frequently enough that I can’t simply ignore it. I, myself, frequently experience other white people whom are very obviously racist, but since it’s at least somewhat of a social faux pas to be a visible racist these days, they couch their bullshit in socially digestible nice-isms, acting like they’re being responsible community people, helping to keep a healthy buffer from a “bad element”. And truthfully? I don’t know how much more of it I’m willing to tolerate. The fact that I tolerate it at all is a source of great internal struggle for me. Often, I’m presented with these issues in the workplace, and I’m forced to put my financial stability before my sense of equality and fairness.

It is not my lot in life to be an activist in the traditional sense. I’m a DJ, a musician and a music engineer. That’s my passion, and it’s very clearly my path in life. It’s a very time consuming career and goal and it leaves little in the way (currently, at least) for me to both make a living and support my dream and my burgeoning career. I support antifascist charities and events when I can, but being on the front-lines isn’t really something I have the ability to provide a consistent, sustained focus for. Creating awareness is my small attempt to overcome that, to help educate people when I can. It’s a personal struggle for me, as I hate armchair activism, but in essence, I'm little more than an armchair activist myself. I suppose we all have our issues.

Honestly, I hope that perhaps my reading of the entire situation is simply mistaken, and the crowd were just cheering blindly at the words coming out of the mouth of someone they respect. That, in and of itself, presents its own very vexing problems and parallels, however.

Portland most certainly DOES have the capacity for great things. I’ve seen and am participant to a number of amazingly artistic and beautiful cultural events here in this city. There is also, undeniably, a very real problem with a very ugly demon that rears its head far too often to be a topic that is swept under the table as much as it is. What is to be done about that problem is a question I am unable to answer. Education is the best form of combat against intolerance, but how do you educate people who refuse to see they even have a problem? I don’t know, and it very seriously calls into question my continued, long term residence in this town.

Get your shit together, Portland. Seriously. Not for me, and not because I’m some kind of moral force in the world, or even this town, but because it’s the right thing to do.

1. http://www.goddamnbastard.org/carcass/faq.html
2. http://www.goddamnbastard.org/carcass/interviews/nucleargore.html
3. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935950053

Musings and Wisdom From Night Ranger Guitarist Brad Gillis (circa 1984)

The year is 1984 and the timeless monolith of a power ballad "Sister Christian" is bigger than 80 of Shane Diesels cocks combined into one massive black schlong. Brad Gillis is pretty much supreme ruler of the universe right now. His rippin' solos keep the framework of the cosmos from unraveling. The amount of tail Brad Gillis gets can't even be tabulated with human numbers. If God were Brad Gillis, I wouldn't even be able to finish this sentence because I'd be too busy listening to Night Ranger non-stop.

These are the thoughts of 1984 Brad Gillis.

"I hope LA Gear never goes out of business."

The Room. Live.

For those not in the know, The Room is an independently produced, low budget American romantic drama film that has gained a participative midnight movie screening cult audience, not unlike The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Vanilla Sky. Except the whole “cult phenomena” thing never happened to that piece of shit second film and rightfully never will. Why it happened to The Room is beyond the comprehension of anyone, living or dead, ever, in the history of this or any other universe and is possibly the result of Satan worship, international bribery and/or telepathic brain manipulation. The frightening billboard Wiseau maintained off an LA highway might have something to do with it as well.

ALRIGHT. FUCK! I’LL GO!

Listed among wikipedia’s "List of films considered the worst" (not a long list, by the way), nearly anything that can be said about The Room has already been written, so I’ll briefly address some of its main points. At face value, The Room is the age old story of a man betrayed by his best girl and his best friend. He also kills himself at the end, so there’s that too (lolSPOILERALERT).  How anyone manages to kill themselves with an Airsoft gun, though, is incomprehensible. Admittedly, sense is not the domain of The Room. Pretty much everything about The Room raises the bar for the term “suspension of disbelief”. Subplots and characters are introduced and dumped quicker than Jennifer Anniston at a lame horse auction. The music sounds like everyone who was ever rejected from an O-Town audition smoked a bunch of shitty weed and covered an unreleased Nsync album. Dialogue is… uh… you can’t call it that. It’s not dialogue. It’s basically moonspeak. And when the not-dialogue isn’t moonspeak, it’s like someone who had only a rudimentary understanding of a non-existing gibberish language made up of mangled aphorisms and folk wisdom phrases plugged several of those phrases into Google Translate and then farted at a piece of paper to fill in the blanks. What characters The Room does decide to chronicle, it does so in such an unbelievably amateur way as to render them zero-dimensional. I know that’s hard to grasp, zero dimensions, but it’s imperative that you don’t give it much thought, lest The Room win and your mind be assimilated into whatever unearthly force is making Tommy Wiseau’s left eye lazy to the point of being indicted for unemployment fraud. What I’m saying is that The Room is a difficult film, though it isn’t challenging in any cinematic sense like, say, Begotten or Possession. The Room is more like an endurance test, like trying to play QWOP with one’s fingers stuffed up one’s own ass. I’ll take a juice break while you attempt the aforementioned feat, just make sure to wash your hands before you return to the keyboard.

Directed by Tommy Wiseau.

The creators of both QWOP and The Room clearly intended to produce something of creative value, but failed miserably, somehow inspiring car wreck decapitation levels of rubbernecking at their colossal missing of the mark. That missing of the mark is what delivers us to the midnight screening cult phenomena of The Room. Reportedly the result of a word of mouth, “OH GOD I CAN’T STOP WATCHING THIS” campaign, independent of the director’s actual advertisement campaign, the film spilled out of its LA “Friday Night Is All Anal Hardcore Night” theater confines and people were soon ridiculing the film internationally. However, Canada will watch anything and post-modern irony is still a good twenty years away from their collective conceptual understanding, so they actually think it’s a good film. I’m just playin’ witchoo Canada, we cool.

I can no longer remember how I was introduced to The Room. Wiseau has clearly taken over the part of my brain that controls why anyone would think it’s a good idea to actually watch The Room, but I think it was the aborted child of my love of shitty cinema and drunken, late night internet trolling. I acquired a copy of the film, watched it… and then watched it like three more times. All totaled, I’ve probably seen The Room about fifteen times, possibly more. When I heard The Room was playing at Cinema 21 in NW Portland, I was oddly compelled to go. The thing about The Room is that it’s much better to watch with other people. I should know. I’ve watched the film alone at least three times and I’ve wanted to commit suicide by pellet gun myself each time. When there are others present with which to commiserate your shared agony, it seems there may be hope and light in the world. But then, for some idiotic reason, you watch it by yourself again, drunk at 3 AM and it’s the filmic equivalent of consuming an entire bottle of aspirin and chasing it with a bottle of extra strength own brand Draino.

I didn’t really expect there to be as many people as there were, but there were a fuckton of people there. The line was around the block. Wiseau was late, but when he showed up he gave everyone in line a high-five, stopped to cavort and play “football” (a Room in-joke) in the middle of the street with a few attendees and got scolded by the cops for doing so. Indoors, Wiseau had set up a merch-table pretty much directly in the entrance of the theater and a small crowd gathered to collect autographs and interact. Interacting with Tommy is fucking bizarre. I get the impression that no one has any idea what that man is talking about, ever. Asked for advice about success or some such topic, Wiseau said “Always give twenty percent. Never one hundred. It goes twenty percent, forty percent, sixty percent.” I did the math in my head later and realized that’s 120 percent. What the fuck? In the Audience Q&A before the screening Tommy claimed to be from Mars, insulted the theater for lack of preparedness even though he was fifteen minutes late, and improvisationally mock-directed a skit loosely based on his film with a group of people who had come dressed up as characters from the film. He made absolutely zero sense until dropping the line “The Room is about expressing yourself.” At that moment, I realized Tommy Wiseau was actually insane.

Solely on the merit of his film being mocked and publicly ridiculed has Tommy Wiseau achieved success. He refuses to tell us about his past. Funding for the film’s six million dollar budget may or may not have come from child labour. His film is considered one of the worst of all time. And I asked for his autograph.

And I posed for a picture with him.

He refused to have buttsex with me though.

The Plot Of Voltron Is Hard To Follow

Since I’m still a little hesitant to revisit the mind-numbing horror that has become the “Tribute Of The Year” review, I’m typing this review of the first two episodes of Voltron with a hangover and only four hours of sleep because it seems like a really good idea and maybe it’ll make me want to pass out again before I go get my ass thoroughly kicked by Swans tonight at the Roseland.

Here’s my thesis:

Voltron makes no goddamned sense.

I know, I know… you’re like, “But Mort, it’s a show about magical robot lions! It's not like it needs to make perfect sense.” True. However, not only is your grammar questionable, but even a show about magical robot lions needs at least a semblance of coherency. Shit just makes no fucking sense AT ALL. My guess is that the source material was too culturally specific, violent and lengthy, so the people tasked with re-writing the thing were just like “Pbbbth… fuck it. This is a mess. Let’s get shit-hammered.” And oh, how they got shit-hammered.

We’ve got problems right out of the gate.

“From days of long ago, from uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend. The legend of Voltron: Defender of the Universe! A mighty robot. Loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron's legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy. On planet Earth, a galaxy alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the solar system, they maintained peace throughout the universe, until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy. Voltron was needed once more. This is the story of the super force of space explorers. Specially trained and sent by the Alliance to bring back Voltron: Defender of the Universe.”

That’s the opening voice-over. While your kid-mind is watching awesome robots fly around in space and make swords out of pure light and shit, your big-person mind doesn’t notice that Peter Cullen is spewing raw word sewage straight out of his lower face hole.

OooOOooh, shiny! Huh, plot?

“From days long ago...”

Uh huh, gotcha. I’m on this shit.

 “From uncharted regions of the universe, comes a legend…”

Stop. He’s just a legend? Has anyone even seen this motherfucker? Because that’s seeeeeeeriously imperative to the next two sentences making any kind of sense what-so-ever.

 "A mighty robot. Loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron's legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy”

No really, has anyone SEEN this fucking thing? What kind of robot is so bad ass his mere legend brings peace to the ENTIRE UNIVERSE? Depending on character designation, everything in known existence either shits its pants in washing machine destroying terror, or immediately ejaculates rainbow-powered dolphins and fluffy singing kittens at the mere MENTION of this guy. He’s gotta have mad robot bitches on his robot jock! (Robot Jox jokes, aka "verbal pantie remover")

 “On planet Earth, a galaxy alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the solar system, they maintained peace throughout the universe.”

Oh. Okay, so wait… what? Who brought the peace? Was it the legend of the robot, or… you know, the people of Earth and the other good planets who actually did shit? I don’t…

 “Until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy.”

Oh shit, I take it this motherfucker never heard of Voltron. Someone want to email this assjacket and tell him ‘bout a whole fucking bucketful of VOLTRON?

“Voltron was needed once more.”

Where the hell did he go? I mean bringing peace to the universe is no small feat, so I guess it’s cool he took a holiday or whatever, but how long did he expect universal peace to last? You can’t put five people in a room stocked with Totino’s Pizza Rolls, a high def TV and the known library of PS3 games without some motherfucker gettin’ socked in his jaw over what Call of Duty game you’re going to play. The universe is a big place. Eventually someone’s gonna try to run game.

“This is the story of the super force of space explorers. Specially trained and sent by the Alliance to bring back Voltron: Defender of the Universe.” 

Well, he doesn’t appear to be defending shit at the moment does he? Where the fuck did he go?! How the hell do you maintain the title “Defender of the Universe” when five mongoloid non-robot lions have to go drag your ass out of bed TO DO YOUR JOB? 

Alright, Lucy got some ‘splainin’ to do and the show hasn’t even started yet, so maybe this will start to not be pure brain rot when we get the ball rolling.

Annnnnd, no. We’re barely a minute into the show and we already have Space Explorers (technical name, mind you) who are completely incapable of discerning terrestrial phenomena from non-terrestrial phenomena. The Space Explorers are on their way to the planet “Arus”, presumably because that’s where the Alliance thinks Voltron is. Approaching the planet it becomes apparent that “something’s wrong” which is an actual Space Explorer assessment of the situation. Two highly trained astronauts debate whether or not Arus is being “hit by an asteroid shower” or volcanically erupting before they come to the conclusion the planet is actually under attack.

"I honestly can't tell if it's some kind of planet wide 'casual Friday', or if it's the second coming of 

Star Jesus. We just didn't get this kind of training in space camp!"

Let’s just stop right here for a minute. Despite the fact that these people would seriously need to know their shit about pretty much every branch of science known to man, TWO, fucking TWO of them can’t discern whether the planet is being destroyed by rocks from outer space, or if a catastrophic volcanic event is taking place? I guess it doesn’t matter anyway, because it turns out some iron-balled dickbasket named Zarkon is laying waste to everything above ground. We’re talking about an attack that literally decimates every civilization on this planet in a MATTER OF ONE MINUTE. Seriously, I can’t even piece together the timeline here but I’ll try, because I know it sounds like I’m leaving something out or just not understanding a vital piece of the plot. However this entire scene is maybe- maaaaaybe- 2 minutes long. Here’s a breakdown of what just happened:

1. Astronauts mistake a planet-wide military strike for possible natural phenomena.

2. Astronauts deliver explanatory dialogue regarding a hostile planetary invasion instead of oh, I don’t know… immediately radioing for fucking backup.

3. We’re treated to some footage of several “weird attack ships” (actual Space Explorer jargon) and troops entering the cities of Arus, as well as a number of snakes and dragons who are apparently either part of Zarkon’s attack plan or simply being mind controlled by the dude. I’d also like to point out that Arus’ entire military defense force seems to consist of four terrified mice who were presumably obliterated in the enemy invasion’s warp speed destruction of everything in sight.

When you reach down into a pile of mouse droppings that used to be your best friends face, 

you'll know what to do!

4. Astronauts finally DO radio the Alliance and tell them THEY’RE GOING IN BY THEMSELVES. I imagine the half of the conversation we missed went something like “I think we got this. Y’all just chill out and get some mojito’s or something.”

5. The whole planet of Arus is nuked by Zarkon. WHY DID HE SEND TROOPS?

6. Astronauts finally arrive on planet Arus.

7. Astronauts are immediately captured by the dude who just bombed the planet back to the corn age.

Here’s what I don’t get. Twice in this opening scene it’s mentioned that the Space Explorers have what are called “telescanners”. It’s later shown that these “telephonic scanners” (yeah, I don’t get it either, but apparently they do some kind of reconnaissance “scanning”) have the ability to detect other ships. If they’re that sophisticated how the fuck did they not know the planet was being completely destroyed by enemy forces at the onset of this whole ordeal? They couldn’t just “telescan” the giant fucking fleet attacking the planet? Not to mention the Alliance had no military presence in that part of the galaxy or even any kind of intelligence what-so-ever with regards to an army LARGE ENOUGH TO DESTROY A PLANET moving through what would almost certainly have to be Alliance regulated space? How the hell you fuckwits managed to keep any kind of peace without that giant magical lion robot for any period of time at all is beyond me.

So our heroes have been captured by a guy who is either an evil reptilian king or a space pirate (both back stories are proffered in the same expositional sentence), a peaceful planet has been destroyed in an act of unprovoked terrorist aggression, and our brick shithouse magic robot is nowhere to be found.  Let’s check in with the military geniuses back on Earth. I’m sure they’ve got some kind of plan.

Nope.

Not even shitting you. I have no idea who these people are in terms of what their rank or role in the Alliance is, but basically these military guys spend about ten seconds making the decision to say “fuck it, let the Space Explorers fend for themselves”. Then the head military guy comes up with the most brilliant plan ever: Fucking Voltron! Voltron could totally save their asses! That’s seriously his plan. And here’s where I need about fifty bajillion Excedrin. Weren’t the Space Explorers on a mission to find Voltron? Furthermore Voltron is supposed to be on Arus, the surface of which is now nuclear toast and the Space Explorers are being carted to Zarkon’s prison planet which is “2,000 light years away”. Maybe, just maybe you numbnuts should send another goddamned team to Arus to get Voltron instead of relying on the team that just got captured to somehow escape a prison planet and fly an alien spaceship back to the planet where Voltron lives?! AGHKJAHAKJHGWG!!!!

How did I watch this shit when I was a kid? Oh yeah… bitchin’ robot toys.

Calm… Calm… nice cuppa tea. Got another seventeen minutes or so to go… CALM… CALMMMMMMTTTGHHH…

So, apparently the reason Zarkon sent troops to the surface of Arus was to grab some slaves before he destroyed the planet, which actually explains why the troops were shown marching into Arus’ major cities before Zarkon went all Fatboy and Little Man on their asses. That the troops were there to capture slaves could have been visually represented as it was happening, but whatever. It’s the only thing that makes any sense at all so far, so I’ll take it and cherish it and pray it blossoms into a big strong tree called “Oh, Now The Rest Of This Shit Is Intelligible.”

At any rate we’re treated to some footage of the slave ship returning to Planet Doom (which is seriously the most badass name for a planet EVER) and some dialogue about preparing the slave quarters and then we cut to Zarkon’s throne room. Here, Zarkon delivers some lines that make me question exactly how this universe works:

Zarkon – “Planet Arus is defeated and I, Zarkon, rule the entire universe!”

Hold up. You nuked a planet that had ZERO, and I mean fucking ZERO military force and that was the crux of your plan to RULE THE FUCKING UNIVERSE? How the hell does that work? That was the ONLY THING ZARKON DID. He blew up a peaceful planet and now he rules the universe. No one in the universe has ANY kind of weapons or bombs or military ships? Anything? For serious, a couple of spitballs and one of those paper clip launchers made out of rubber bands would give the Alliance at least some kind of a fighting chance. Here, check out this next bit of dialogue in case you thought that perhaps Zarkon just overlooked the Alliance’s militaristic capabilities.

Zarkon – “And with the capture of the Space Explorers, I need no longer fear the Alliance!”

That was it. The mental giants who decided to FLY INTO A PLANET WIDE NUCLEAR ENEMY ASSAULT with NO BACKUP were the ONLY thing resembling an armed force in the entire UNIVERSE, and they were captured IMMEDIATELY.

Oh, by the way, since they’re just sitting around in a dungeon like jackasses, let’s take some time to get to know our service-men, shall we? That way we know exactly how much asparagus to eat before we piss on their memorial:

Commander Keith Cogane – Mullet. Appears to be the leader.

Lance – Appears to be CroMagnon. Also mullet.

Pidge – Gay midget. How do I know this? Ascot and hairband. Vocal predecessor to Meatwad.

Sven -  Incredibly racist Norwegian stereotype. I wish him to die.

Hunk – Fat loudmouth. When not stating the blatantly obvious, his abysmal attempts at humor are likely to earn him a blanket party.

I should probably mention another character that was introduced here named Haggar. She’s a witch and she has a cat that is unsettlingly interested in the arrival of the Space Explorers at the castle dungeon. Zarkon quipping “Kitty is excited!” is literally the grossest thing I’ve ever heard in a children’s cartoon.

"VAGINA IS LUBRICATED"

So now we learn that Zarkon has captured these slaves ENTIRELY for entertainment purposes. He’s built a giant arena and the creepy people of whatever the hell this nation is called all gather to watch the comically under-armed, potato-headed combatant/slaves get mercilessly slaughtered by the “Robeasts”. What are Robeasts, you ask? I don’t know either, so fuck you. The more pressing question is why Zarkon kidnapped slaves just to murder them for entertainment. That reallllly seems like a giant waste of resources. We’re talking about manned, intergalactic space missions to capture the slaves, housing and feeding the slaves, cleaning up slave guts, maintenance on Robeasts should they get damaged, etc. I’m not quite sure what Planet Doom’s chief export is, but shouldn’t the slaves be put to more constructive work than just getting liquified by the blue Robeast (who is actually more of a dark purple hue, by the way)? Shit, have the slaves BUILD Robeasts. At least that way you get some kind of compensation for their expensive, yet ignoble deaths.

Back in the dungeon, the Space Explorers have temporarily decided to take some time off from being the universe’s worst and only line of defense, and brute force their way out of their prison. Using a rope made of bed sheets that only exist because the writer discovered he needed them to, the Space Explorers begin to descend down the castle wall. Twenty seconds later they’re set upon by the GIANT VULTURES that were clearly visible from the prison window. As noted by Keith, this actually turns out to be something of a boon as the vultures deliver them from the castle to a… festering pit of blood and bones. Sven remarks “I’ll always think they’re beautiful” in his horrendous mockery of what someone who has never heard one thinks a Scandinavian accent sounds like and our intrepid spacemen sit around praying for some reason before wobbling off to do something else extremely stupid.

Not realizing the guards who frequently patrol their cellblock might notice they’ve gone missing, our bumbling crew of ass-tronauts (had to do it, I swear I did) IMMEDIATELY head BACK INTO Castle Doom instead of using the survival skills that the Alliance bigwigs have told us they’re so proficiently trained in to camp out for a night and assess the situation.  The crew comically jump-flips into an air duct and, since they’re all masters of stealth, instantaneously set off a booby trap consisting of spiked iron doors and FLYING SWORDS that also attracts the attention of the guards. A quick fight through a few paper thin sentries and the Space Explorers actually manage to pilot one of the alien slave ships out of the landing bay. In a fit of brilliance that I’m sure he must’ve later justified with “Dude, I was just really in the moment, you know?” Commander Keith Cogane SMASHES THE SHIP INTO ZARKON’S TOWER, for a quick, “Hey, fuck you dude!”  This alerts Zarkon to the escape and further endangers an already extreeeeemely dodgy plan.

Cut to Castle Doom.  Zarkon is mega-pissed at a guy I didn’t even know had a name until now. Zarkon’s all, “YOU BUNGLED AGAIN, URAK!” and Urak is like “Yeah, my bad. They’re not terribly hard to catch though, so I’ll just nip right out there and grab ‘em right quick.” Turns out, Urak is actually pretty good at that shit and he hits the fleeing vessel with “ALL LAZERS!” which has to be the coolest weapon ever. ALL LAZERS is like a bajillion times more powerful that SOME LAZERS. You might as well bring a fart sandwich to a fight if you’re gonna try to battle ALL LAZERS with SOME LAZERS, cause that shit is weak.

Now, you’d think that maybe since this shit started making a little bit of sense that perhaps we’d be treated to a trend of shit making sense. Not so. Shit stops making sense quicker than you can push a giant business suit-wearing David Byrne to the ground and yell “THE FOREST SUCKED!”. A tractor beam takes hold of the damaged ship and… I don’t know. I’m real fuzzy on this part. Arus is like a completely different planet, right? So somehow, the Space Explorers are tractor beamed from inside the gravitational field of Planet Doom ALLLLLLLLLLLLL the way to Planet Arus, where they’re brought to the fabled Castle of Lions.

How do I know it’s the fabled castle of Lions? Let’s let the dialogue do the talking:

Sven - “Look, our power (I presume he means the tractor beam) is coming from that statue of a lion!” Immediately after uttering this phrase he’s beaten to death with a length of Norwegian horse sausage. Well, not really, but I imagined he was and I was immensely pleased.

Pidge – “Huh… A castle! I’ll bet that’s the legendary CASTLE OF PIGFUCK! No wait… I mean lions! I bet that’s the legendary Castle OF PIG-FUCKING LIONS.”

From there it just devolves into Hunk fisting Pidge for like an hour and a half.  

Then Hunk shoves about a billion sliders into his mouth and says something like, “MMMPHABLAPABLAB MOLTRON?!”

And YET AGAIN we’re told about how MOTHERFUCKING BADASS VOLTRON IS. I GET IT OKAY, HE’S LIKE A ROBOT SHAFT ON TECHNOCRACK. GOT IT. NO MORE PLEASE.

Then we find out that the witch with the sexually deviant cat broke apart Voltron into a bunch of magic lions. Why she didn’t just destroy him is beyond me, but legend has it, according to Keith, that if they can find all the hidden lions dens the lions will “all come together and attach somehow”. Somehow? What? You don’t know how they fucking attach? What the hell are you assholes doing?!!!!!! GFJGHAEJHJGKGLJWBB!!!!!

Ed. Note: I found Balzac in a puddle of bloody urine and this was about as far as he got. I’m pretty sure it’s the end of the episode, so here you go. I put him on some meds and I’ve ordered a dialysis machine. Once he’s better I’ll try to get him to crank out the review of the second half of this two parter.

"Show Me On The Doll Where The Black Eyed Peas Touched You."

Initially I had planned on writing a fairly short and straightforward critical analysis of the Super Bowl  XLV half–time show. Featuring one of my least favourite musical acts ever performing twelve minutes of what very well may be the worst televised audio/visual spectacle since the Star Wars Christmas Special, I allege a great wrong was visited upon my mental faculties. What follows is pretty much the police report my brain filed after surviving what could easily be argued as “Aggravated Mental Assault And Battery” in a court of law. You’ll pardon me now while I go to Mexico to pay a guy I know in Juarez to replace my brain with a brain shaped bag full of time release heroin.

It's not as if the paragons of taste that organise Super Bowl half-time shows have a history of not producing forgettable, snooze inducing spectacles, but I'm almost certain that I very briefly experienced what it's like to have narcolepsy at the start of this show. "Tonight", or whatever the fuck it's called (because I'm seriously not going to Google the words to a song that consists almost entirely of the word "tonight") is the epitome of songwriting laziness and cringe inducing lyrics. The track recycles the same tired progression for five IQ lowering minutes while Patty Wets-Herself and crew blather on about "the night" and "spending up" the freight ships of money they make from passing aural smegma off as music people should tolerate. Here we have "Tonight, Good Night (It’s Gonna Be A Good Night, It’s Gonna Be A Real Good Night, It’s Gonna Be A Good, Good Night)" condensed into less than a minute, proving that not only is the track is un-listenable at any length, but... what the fuck are you people wearing? You look like rejects from the set of “Mad Max 4: Kegger At The Discodrome”. I'm not quite sure how Will.I.Am got a hairnet from the year 2089, but if The Black Eyed Peas can time travel then we might as well just nuke ourselves into oblivion right now. Wait a minute, though... What if they catch wind of the impending nuclear holocaust they’ve sparked, time travel to right before it happens and install themselves as some sort of pop demig... OH MY GOD. MARTHA, GET MY GUN! THIS ENDS HERE.

"See this thing on my head? It cost more than a Prius."

Only being vaguely familiar with the second song of this... football medley? I know I've interrupted at least three of my sentences so far, but seriously this shit is short circuiting my brain. Do other countries, or even sports for that matter, pull this shit? What the hell does this have to do with the game? Are football fans so goddamned brain-dead they need 15 minutes of whatever this shit is just to pump them up for a bunch of guys smashing into one another and playing grabass for 4 hours?

At any rate, since it was endlessly repeated for the duration of the minute and a half cum eternity of the snippet, I surmised that the title of the second bit was called “Boom Boom Boom”. Curious, I actually Googled this one and found out it's called "Boom Boom Pow". At this point I went to my happy place. My happy place is kind of like the very end of "Stand By Me". In my happy place I had an epic, cinematic adventure as a young adolescent and it powerfully shaped my life in dynamic and meaningful ways, and now I'm a successful writer with a loving wife, a beautiful home and children and I don't write about things I hate for comedic effect or possible republication on an hilarious online website. Then, through this beautiful dream of a satisfying life of hard work and savvy choices, I hear Fergie’s autotuned "voice" choke out the line "I'm so two-thousand and eight, you so two-thousand and late!". And with a pitiful whine, not unlike that of a dying dog or a morbidly obese person whose just realised they've run out of deep fried cake at the "Fuck the American Heart Association" buffet, I return to reality and continue to watch the people on my screen fail miserably at entertaining me.

I have to admit the "glowy" people are kind of neat though, which scores this comedy of terrors at least one point for a review I wasn’t even aware I was keeping score in. For the record, I'm not. For those of you who haven’t watched this monstrosity, the “glowy” people I refer to are hundreds of dancers in formation, wearing what I assume to be extremely sophisticated remote controlled light-up LED suits. I say “I assume” they’re extremely sophisticated because, at times, large swathes of the formations are blacked out. It’s a bit like the hugest, most expensive "hunt for the busted Christmas light bulb" in history. Remeber all those colour-guard kids that even you used to pick on while wearing your 16th level Paladin costume? Yeah, they work for the Super Bowl now.

Alright, so that garbage is over and... OH GOD TURN FERGIE’S AUTOTUNE BACK ON RIGHT THIS FUCKING MINUTE! If it wasn't a technical call on Fergie's part to turn off the autotune when she horridly screeched "PEOPLE IN THE PLAAEIAIACCE" (translation mine) then I bet the guy running the sound on Fergie’s channel had his throat slit at the end of this performance. At the beginning of the show the volume on her vocal channel was at zero for nearly a full second and now this. I'm betting his forensically disfigured corpse is being buried somewhere under the astroturf of Cowboys stadium by Fergie herself as I write this review. Actually, I think it might have been her that made the call to sing without crutches. What the fuck is she doing? It sounds like thirty cats with terminal feline AIDS in heat are having some sort of deathmatch orgy in her larynx. And why the hell is she imploring Will.I.Am to "drop them beats, now"? He's not even doing anything aside from looking like a bedazzled Luftwaffe general and kind of, sort of singing with the help of computers. Gods this is painful. Wait, is that... Oh wow, I guess they're going to cover "Sweet Child Of Mine".  Annnnd Slash just rose up from beneath the stage on a smoke filled platform. If I were him, I would literally hike my guitar at Will.I.Am's throat (he's got that protective head gear on and we're looking for a disabling blow here) and drop kick one of Fergie’s tits into the end-zone. Well, since he's not doing that, let's see how this goes (protip:  it goes badly).

Alright, for starters, did we really need a giant neon arrow of glowy people pointing at Slash? I mean, yeah, I guess in the nosebleed section motherfuckers were like "Slash! Where!?" and the arrow was kind of helpful. At that point, however,  you couldn't fucking see anyone else anyway so it's completely redundant. I find the fact that the neon arrow pulsates like a bioluminescent deep sea squid horrifyingly hilarious. I’ll just go ahead and assume Cthulu choreographed that bit.

"Up next on Blue Planet: Life At The Sea Vent, Slash performs a medley of songs from The Little Mermaid."

So by my estimate I’d say, note-wise, Fergie had about a 60% accuracy rating in her butchering of forty seconds of the first half of the first verse of “Sweet Child Of Mine”, which is approximately 59.5% more than I expected her to hit within an estimated .5% margin of error. It’s actually kind of frightening that Axl's vocal range is well above hers. Have we confirmed that Fergie’s not really a dude? Not that it would matter. I mean, it’s not like it would make her any cooler or anything, but it might explain the shoulder pads. What’s with her vocal inflection here? She sounds like she’s channeling Scott Weiland via Eartha Kitt on Quaaludes and she seems to be hanging onto Slash like he’s an upended chaise lounge. I’m half blinded by his goddamned DIAMOND ENCRUSTED TOPHAT, but think I can see Slashes paycheck jutting out of the headband and it’s got more zero’s than the national deficit (loldeficit). Also, if you listen closely, Slash totally fucked up the vast majority of the song. Virtually none of it was in time and he even flubs a few parts. To be fair, I mean, dude is wearing black sunglasses at night and he seems to be smouldering, suggesting that perhaps his underclothes are have caught fire. So I guess, for what it’s worth, he did a somewhat respectable job. Rock stars never die, they just whore themselves out for vacuous shit like this so they can afford that next sweet hit of liquid crack-amphetamine.

Okay, that was painful. Extra super duper, paper cuts over 75% of my body painful. What fresh hell is nex… ALLAH FUCK ME WITH A CHAINSAW, NOT MISIRLOU TOO!!!!

Ow.

Owwwwww.

Hold on a second. Where the fuck did Slash go? No, seriously. He just disappeared. I thought he might have been playing Misirlou but A: the guitar was in time with the beat and B: when they cut back he had vanished.  I was kind of hoping he would comically descend back down to whatever pit of nude women and cocaine he was elevated from at the start of the song, but I guess he just unceremoniously hopped off the side of the platform to go freebase super-heroin with an unemployed cheerleader or something.

Getting back to Misirlou, this sucks. I was not aware this Black Eyed Peas song even existed, so again I put my trust in a shadowy multi-billion dollar search corporation and came to find that it’s a song called “Pump It” they released in 2006. I love Misirlou, don’t get me wrong, but it’s one of the most played out surf songs in the history of surf music. In fact, it’s not even a surf song. It’s a traditional Greek folk song that Dick Dale rearranged on a bet that he couldn’t play a rockin’ surf banger on one guitar string, going to show that you should never bet Dick Dale shit, ‘cause he’ll smoke your ass for breakfast and make a bajillion dollars off the resultant hit song.

The above information isn’t really common knowledge, but the song is incredibly popular. Even if you’ve never heard another surf song in your life, most people with any sort of pop cultural reference have seen Pulp Fiction.

Apparently not Will.I.Am.

According to Will.I.Am¹, not only had he never even heard the song until sometime in 2005 (an event which apparently inspired him to ruin it), the compilation CD he bought that it was featured on wasn’t even something he intended to buy. Then via a kind of musical “Planes, Trains and Japanese Parks & Recreations Divisions” he put the song together on various modes of public transit and recorded the vocals in a park in Japan. And that’s how we went from:

My Misirlou your sweet glance

Has lit a flame in my heart.

Oh, My love, Oh, My Night

Your two lips are dripping honey, ah.

-Traditional Greek lyrics

To this:

When we play you shake your ass

Shake it, shake it, shake it girl

Make sure you don’t break it, girl

Cause we gonna

Turn it up

-Something Will.I.Am scribbled on a discarded bento napkin

Alright, focus. The research for the previous song provided me with enough of a distraction that I think I might be able to muddle my way through the rest of this pabulum. Up next is the innocuous “Let’s Get It Started”. Truth be told, this song doesn’t really inspire in me the kind of vitriolic hatred that most of the other Black Eyed Peas songs do. Other than the fact that it was the one boring, unfunny part of Hot Tub Time Machine, “Let’s Get It Started” is just a pop flat-line for me. Let’s see if there’s anything I can ridicule in the Pea’s glorified million dollar karaoke of the thing. Well… they’re still wearing those stupid light-up clothes.

And the basic concepts of Tetris seem to have escaped them.

What’s next? Oh hey, Usher! He’s a bit of alright in my book. He’s got some tunes I like, actually. Annnnnd, this is not one of them. Kind of like “Let’s Get It Started”, this song is just boring and predictable. The dancing is pretty tight, though. Usher does this massive jump split over Will.I.Am at one point that I’m pretty sure he needed surgery for after the show. If not for nothing, the brave face he put on after a five foot drop directly to his man-purse is the highlight of the show so far. Is this songs title an internet acronym? It is. Those new BMI character restrictions on song title lengths are fucking Draconian, man!

Moving along, next we have the obligatory, bleeding heart, “shave the homeless, kids shouldn’t live out of the trunk of a Honda Civic, Mr. President jam your finger up the countries collective rectum and stimulate our job prostate” song, “Where Is The Love?” Those last two boring songs lulled me into a false sense of complacency. I was almost certain I would have nothing to spew acrid complaints about for the rest of the video (three minutes and counting, still), but lo and behold they shat this saccharine turd directly into my ear canal. Aww, Taboo’s light-up jacket has a little light-up red heart on it. He looks like an S&M tin man. I have no desire to find out what kind of lube he’s got in his “oil can”. On a serious tip is there anything more reprehensible and obnoxious than rich pop artists lugubriously vomiting another "peace anthem" into the collective public consciousness? I'm no warmonger, but the the line "makin' wrong decisions, only visions of them dividends" is so staggeringly hypocritical it both honestly calls into question the writers sanity² and is enough to drive anyone with half a brain to write in "Pol Pot's reanimated corpse, Haile Mariam, or maybe even Gaddafi if he survives this Libya thing" on the next presidential election ballot.  Did Will.I.Am just rhyme “mama” with “mama”? Someone really needs to fucking tell that guy that rhyming a word with the same goddamned word isn’t rhyming. Its brain damage and he needs to see a neurologist immediately.

Speaking of brain damage, let’s say you’re the music director for a massive sporting organisation and you’re in charge of coordinating a 13 minute medley of boring or downright awful songs. Where do you put the sensitive “save the world” song? A song wherein its authors plead to God to “send some guidance from above”? Directly after Usher flies down from the ceiling of a superdome to sing a song about how he fell in love with a girl at a bar that contains the line “Honey got some boobies like wow, oh, wow”, of course. Come on people, this isn’t Farmville here. These decisions affect people’s lives.

Oh god. What’s happening now? Are they going to sing “Time Of My Life”? Luckily they can’t really ruin that song because it was crap to begin with. I never thought I’d say this but this is the first time I’ve ever been glad to hear this song. Well, not glad. Something approaching “less enraged than I currently am”, I guess would be the sentiment I’m searching for. Oh sweet, the Blockheads from Gumby are here… prancing to the chorus of a song off the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack. What the fuck is happening? This is like the collective bad trip of a million dead party kids. Ah, it’s the bookend to the medley. Good, this shit is over.

The Dada horror, however, can not be unseen.

The whole field turns into a rave, the squarehead showgirls trigger a cough syrup flashback in a part of my brain I don't think even existed before I watched this crap, the Peas start naming off days of the week and implore the nation to “party everyday” and four hours of my life I can never reclaim are wasted writing about an event everyone in the known universe will forget completely in a month’s time. I hope you’ve enjoyed my agony. I sure as hell haven't. But the lulz, people. Where is the lulz? They was inside you all along.

Good night, and good lulz.

¹http://umusic.ca/blackeyedpeas (ah shit, link’s broken, let’s just trust Wikipedia on this one)
²http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1484775/making-black-eyed-peas-where-love.jhtml