Live Round-By-Round Coverage of UFC 202: Diaz vs. McGregor 2!

Keep refreshin' that browser folks ... we're going to keep you keyed into the most anticipated rematch of the year (and the undercard bouts, frankly, you couldn't give less of a damn about) all night long.

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

This is what we sometimes like to call "the MMA re-do." You see, back in March, million-dollar UFC posterboy Conor McGregor was supposed to fight Rafael dos Anjos in a fight that would've possibly made him the first person in UFC history to hold two belts in two weight classes simultaneously. Alas, things went awry and dos Anjos pulled out of the bout just days before the PPV, so Dana White and company instead whipped together a 170 pound catchweight main event with McGregor moving up three weight classes to go toe-to-toe with Nate "I Try When I Want To" Diaz. The rest, as they say (who is "they," by the way?) is history: after McGregor drubbed Diaz for the first five minutes, he gassed hard, allowing Diaz the opportunity to start landing fist-burgers of his own before reversing Conor's ill-advised takedown attempt late in the second round into a rather-easy-looking rear naked choke submission victory. 

Needless to say, that is not the outcome the UFC wanted, nor probably expected. Their big breakout star was supposed to mop the cage with the younger Diaz, but oops, he got choked out instead. Even now, if you press your ear hard enough to the Western wind, you can hear the Fertitas lamenting just how much fucking money that fight cost them in the long haul. So what we got here at UFC 202 out in Las Vegas is a highly touted rematch, not cobbled together with hours to go before the PPV proper begins, but with ample time for both competitors to get their camps together and adequately prepare to do battle with one another. That first fight, the narrative goes, was a fluke. Now that both men had the time and the resources to get their shit together, whoever wins will definitely be considered the better overall fighter, and ain't no excuses going to cut it. 

So yeah, there is a lot of hype behind the main event at UFC 202, and considering the dynamic fighting styles of the headliners, we very well could have ourselves a war for the ages. Granted, the undercard isn't exactly the pinnacle of mixed martial arts, but we've still got Donald Cerrone and Anthony Johnson fighting, which usually means somebody is about to get hit in the head really, really hard regardless. Anyhoo, be sure to bookmark this page, as we'll begin our patented, one-of-a-kind, industry-standard-setting round-by-round coverage at 10 p.m., New York City time. And we ain't bullshitting about hitting the refresh button - this here blog is going to be updated faster than a Demetrious Johnson uppercut, with keen analysis and lighting-quick results posted before the blood even has time to dry on the canvas. 

And we are coming to you LIVE from the new hockey arena out in Vegas. As always, our hosts are Mike Goldberg (sporting a stupid Ryan Seacrest spiked hair gel unicorn hairdo) and Joe Rogan (who is sans hair, of any variety.)  

Rogan recounts the weigh-in shenanigans over the week, when McGregor tossed water bottles at Diaz. He says Conor's trash talk has no effect on Nate, because growing up with Nick made him naturally immune. No, really. 

Welterweight Bout

Tim Means (25-7-1-0) vs. Sabah Homasi (11-5-0-0)

Yes, the Sabah "The Punisher" Homasi is being featured on a PPV card people are expected to pay money to witness. If you're not familiar with Homasi or his opponent, long-time journeyman Tim Means, you don't need too much background, I reckon. Homasi was on TUF 21 and had literally one fight in Strikeforce, went 1-1 in Bellator and has largely been dicking around in the minor, minor leagues for the last two years. Means, on the other hand, has been fighting professionally since 2004, with notable UFC victories over such illustrious competitors as George Sullivan and Dhiego Lima. But, hey you never know: with the spotlight on them, they might just surprise all of us and roll out something that doesn't resemble wholly interchangeable, Fox Sports 1-caliber prelim ennui. Like I said, though, maybe.

Homasi comes out to "Without Me" but Eminem. Now Goldberg is telling us his nickname is "The Problem" and not "The Punisher." Means comes out to some slow-ass hip-hop song that sounds like either DMX or Ja Rule. Good to see neither of these guys are keen on rap music made after the year 2002, anyway. Oh, and this match is brought to you by the new movie Hands of Stone. Shit, how many boxing-related movies is Robert de Niro going to star in? 

Homasi with a good jab early. Means responds with a hard shot of his own. Sabah pushed up against the cage. He evades some hard throws from Means. Sabah back pedals. Means with a knee and Sabah responds with a takedown. Means scrambling. He's back up. Means pushing forward. Now he's working for a takedown from the clinch. Sabah connects with a few. Means tags him with a knee. Sabah backed up against the cage again. He shoots for a takedown and he gets it. Means pounding Sabah with hard elbow shots on the ground. He's back up. Sabah misses on a head kick. Means with another hard knee. Sabah bleeding like a stuck pig now. Sabah with an uppercut and Means lands a quick jab in response. Means with another nasty elbow strike. Sabah whiffs on a spin kick. Means almost connects on a spinning elbow. Another elbow from Means. A quick exchange as the bell sounds. I've got it 10-9 for Means.

Round 2. Sabah looks gassed as fuck. Means with a high kick. Sabah getting chased down. Means with a good combo. He backs off. Sabah bleeding like crazy again. Another one-two combo from Means. Sabah with a body kick. Means responds with some brutal elbow shots to the midsection. Sabah pressed against the cage. He rattles off several knees and some nasty elbows. He takes his foot of the gas again, presses Sabah to the cage and rattles off another series of beautiful jabs. He rattles off about five or six left-right combinations and Herb Dean says "that's it, folks."

Means is declared winner by TKO at 2:56 of the second round. In the post fight, Rogan brings up the fact the Means tested positive for some banned substances and even though he won, he should probably still feel bad about all that shit he did back in the day. Anyway, "The Dirty Bird" absolutely outclassed Homasi tonight, who in hindsight, probably never should have been booked for the bout in the first place. 

Welterweight Bout

Hyun Gyu Lim (13-5-1-0) vs. Mike Perry (6-0-0-0)

Lim is a veteran South Korean slugger whose biggest wins under the (former) Zuffa banner have been over the likes of Pascal Krauss and Takenori Sato, or as they are more commonly referred to, "I don't know who that first guy is" and "seriously, who the fuck is he supposed to be?" Perry is a 24-year-old organization newcomer, who is currently undefeated, having knocked out all half a dozen competitors before him while earning a paycheck scrapping in organizations with names like Square Ring Promotions and Florida Championship Fighting. So, all that to say ... I have no idea what the hell to expect out of this one. 

Perry comes out to ... rap? Of some kind? In a first, the examiners outside the Octagon scold him for having fingernails that are too long, so he has to chew them off before he gets into the cage. Lim comes out to something that also sounds like "the rap music," but I have no idea who. Or what. 

Lim, at 6'3' absolutely towers over Perry. Perry with a hard shot, and then he trips. He's back up. Perry is literally having to jump up to aim for Lim's head. This is like watching a DREAM FC fight from 2008 or something. As soon as I type that, of course Perry drops his giant ass with a hard shot. Now Perry has Lim in the crucifix mount and he's getting hit a million billion times, but somehow, he snakes out. Then Perry rocks him AGAIN! Perry dropping more bombs from the top. Perry grinding Lim out from the ground. Lim, somehow, is back up and Perry drops him AGAIN! All right, the ref has to stop this shit, and he does. Whew, that was like watching Little Mac knockout Great Tiger in Punch-Out!!

Perry is declared the winner by TKO at 3:38 of the very first round. Even better, the dude sounds JUST like Riff-Raff in his post-fight interview with Rogan.

Dwight Howard of the Atlanta Hawks is booed, while Demetrious Johnson and Dominick Cruz receive heavy cheers. Oh, time for a promo for UFC 205 in MSG - will a main event, or really ANY match, finally be announced? As it turns out ... no, no it will not. But hey, UFC 206 will be in Toronto, with the big New Year's Eve show set for Dec. 30 in Vegas, so I guess that's something news worthy. 

Welterweight Bout

Rick Story (19-8-0-0) vs. Donald Cerrone (30-7-0-1)

Hey, lookee here, a fight not only featuring people we've heard of before, but actually want to see in the Octagon! Rick Story is a guy that's been in the UFC since 2009, but there's not really a name for what kind of fighter he's supposed to be. He's not really marketable enough to be considered a gatekeeper, but he nonetheless manages to win enough to keep from falling into irrelevancy. Currently on a three-fight winning streak, he's set to tango with Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone, the longtime WEC holdover who's probably best known for fighting anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at any weight class (remember, this is the dude who fought five times in 2011 - and oh yeah, he won every last one of them.) Cowboy enters this one having gone 10-1 in his last eleven fights, complete with back-to-back victories over Patrick Cote and Alex Oliveira. With Cerrone still getting a feeling for the 170-pound division, this could actually prove an interesting little contest - with a very high probability of someone getting their gourd slapped off their neck, of course.  

Cerrone comes out to Kid Rock's "Cowboy," as always. Meanwhile, Story comes out to what sounds like a crappy post-"St. Anger" Metallica song - well, that, or some random nu-metal track you probably would've heard inside a titty bar at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday in 2008.

The two trade heavy hands right out the gate. Story appears to be the quicker man, but Cerrone quickly lands a takedown. Story is vertical, and he bullies Cerrone up against the cage. He gets a leg sweep and Cerrone goes down. But oh shit, Cerrone almost has an omoplata, then a triangle, sunk in. Story survives, then temporarily has Cerrone's back. He gets some hard knees in, but nothing too substantial. Cerrone back up, and the two are swinging again. Cerrone with a hard knee, Story with a kick to the midsection. Cerrone with a jab and a leg kick combo. Story whiffs on a high kick. Cerrone tags Story about four or five times, but Story doesn't go down. Cerrone rattles off two more hard shots that stagger Story before the bell sounds. 10-9 for Cerrone. 

Round two. Cerrone connects on a light head kick. He stuffs a takedown attempt by Story. Cerrone with another hard jab. And Cowboy gets another heavy one-two combo in. Cerrone with more leg kicks. Story gets tagged with a hard midsection shot and Cerrone swarms him with knees, kicks and heavy jabs. Story is down, Cerrone is hammering him and the ref waves it off. 

Cerrone is declared the winner by TKO at 2:02 in the second round. He dons the ceremonial ten gallon hat and can of Monster in the post-fight. He says he wants to drop down to 155 and challenge Eddie Alvarez for the Lightweight title in New York. Well shit, I'd like to see that.

David Spade and Daniel Cormier are both in the house. But unfortunately, not for a remake of Tommy Boy, as we had all hoped.

And time for the hard sell for our co-main event. 

Light Heavyweight Bout

Anthony Johnson (21-5-0-0) vs. Glover Teixeira (25-4-0-0)

Good old Rumble. The MMA vet always brings the ruckus, but usually at the expense of half his purse because the dude just can't avoid the twinkies and Burger King during weight cuts. Regardless of Johnson's inability to meet the appropriate poundage ahead of contests, he's nonetheless one bad motherfucker, having last been seen punching Ryan Bader so hard he undoubtedly forgot half the color wheel. That said, Brazilian slugger Glover T. ain't exactly a slouch, neither, as apparent by his three fight win streak, complete with impressive victories over OSP, Patrick Cummins and whatever was left of Rashad Evans' career. If nothing else, it should be a pretty intriguing stylistic match-up, with the close range "kill 'em on their feet" Johnson testing his meat and potatoes up against Teixeira's more ground and pound, submission-centric attack. Also, neither of these guys have a deep gas tank, so if this thing makes it to three rounds ... it probably ain't going to be pretty. 

Glover out to some rappity stuff that's probably in Portuguese because he's Brazilian and stuff. "He's like the Rocky of Danbury, Connecticut," Mike Goldberg says. Rumble also comes out to hip hop, and Rogan calls him the "poster boy for not cutting weight." Uh, sure you don't mean "poster boy for not making weight," Joe?

Both men swinging for the fences early. And Rumble rears back and murder-death-kills Glover with one hit. Holy shit. 

Johnson put Glover to sleep with a SATANIC uppercut just 13 seconds into round one. Glover was so out of it that when he came to, he tried to take down the referee. Johnson calls out Cormier after the fight and admonishes the fans for booing the Light Heavyweight champ. Also, it just dawns on me - Rumble look JUST like Mad TV cast member Aries Spears. 

Joe and Goldie pimp the Mickey Gall\CM Punk fight at UFC 203. Oh shit, they are doing a full fledged FS1 show about Punk's transition from 'rasslin to Ultimate Fighting. And hey, who wants them some Hands of Stone clips ahead of the main event! Speaking of the main event, let's watch one more hype video for it, why don't we?

Welterweight Bout

Nate Diaz (20-10-0-0) vs. Conor McGregor (19-3-0-0)

Well, does this one even need anymore hype? We all recall what happened the first time around (and if you don't, the UFC is screening it for free on their official YouTube channel), and now that both competitors have had time to assemble a full fight camp, we're all wondering: will all that extra prep time equal a totally different outcome from part uno? Yeah, this one doesn't really need in master salesman pitches to get you interested: it's arguably the most popular fighter in the world getting a second opportunity to redeem himself against of the most entertaining scrappers in all of MMA. Shit, even a naturally loquacious motherfucker like me understands you don't need to say much more than that: and with that in mind, howzabout we mosey on over to the cage and settle this shit on the mat instead of guesstimating what we think's going to happen on paper?  

McGregor out first to a mash-up of the theme song from Outlander (that is what that is, isn't it?) and Biggie Smalls. He gets a huge reaction initially, but it isn't as big as it has been at previous PPVs. Nate Diaz gets the first lights out treatment of the night. And of course, since Conor came out to Biggie, he HAS to come out to Tupac. So fucking perfect, right there. 

LOL at how Bruce Buffer refers to Diaz as the winner of TUF5. Leg kicks from Conor to begin. Diaz whiffs on a head kick. More Conor leg kicks. Loud "USA" chants. Diaz with a jab. More Conor leg kicks. Diaz not even bothering to check them. Conor keeps kicking. Diaz looking for some low body shots. Conor tags Diaz hard. DIAZ IS DOWN! He lets him back up. Diaz with a jab. "Ole" chants now. Conor very methodical. Diaz's face looks puffy. Conor with a good combo. Diaz looks like he is having difficulty moving forward. More leg kicks from Conor. Another hard counter shot from Conor. Another hard leg kick. Diaz really light on his lead foot now. Diaz misses on a haymaker. Conor just carving up Diaz's legs like he was 2009 Jose Aldo or something. Diaz with a shitty spin kick that doesn't even come close to landing. Conor with another hard jab as the bell sounds. 10-9 for Conor.

Round two. Diaz has a swollen face and McGregor is practically unblemished. More McGregor leg kicks. DIAZ DOWN AGAIN! McGregor lets Diaz up again. Conor drops Diaz AGAIN! Diaz back up, but he is a bloody mess. More Conor leg kicks. Diaz whiffing on his jabs. Hard uppercut to the midsection by Conor. Conor just putting on a counter-punching clinic now. Another hard leg kick. Diaz trying to chase Conor down. Diaz finally starting to land. Now MCGregor is staggered. Diaz unloading in the corner. Now it is a slugfest with thirty seconds left. A hard one to call ... maybe 10-9 for Diaz?

Round three. Is Conor gassing? Now Diaz pushing the action. Diaz rocks him and now we've got a clinch up against the cage. No dice on a Diaz takedown. Loud "Diaz" chants. Diaz gets staggered by a Conor shot. And another hard counter left from Conor. McGregor whiffs on a spin kick. Diaz in a clinch against the cage and looking for a takedown. More Conor leg kicks. Hard shot from Conor. Conor counters with a left. Minute left. Diaz with a one-two combo. He follows with a clinch. Diaz unloading up against the cage. Thirty seconds to go. Ten seconds. Conor survives, but just barely. Easy 10-9 round for Diaz.

Round four. Conor is bruised and Nate is still bleeding. More hard Conor leg kicks. Diaz bleeding heavily under his eye. Slower pace from both men. Diaz may be having difficulty seeing with so much Crimson running down his face. Conor with a good combo. Diaz with a clinch against the cage. Conor shakes off the takedown attempt. Diaz with knees to the midsection. Diaz with slow punches to the stomach of Conor. Diaz leading in total strikes at the moment. Two minutes to go. Conor flips the clinch around. Ole chant now. McGregor with a solid combo and a nice counter. Minute to go. Both dudes looked gassed as fuck. Conor pops Diaz hard twice. Twenty seconds left.  Diaz goes for a head kick and falls flat on his ass to end the round. 10-9 for Conor, for sure.

Round five - whoever wins this round WINS IT ALL. Crowd boos as Conor runs away from Diaz. Both men trading. Conor gets nothing on a flying knee attempt. Clinch against the cage. Conor has Nate's back. Diaz bleeding heavily again. Ole chants again. Another clinch against the cage. Diaz cannot get the takedown. Great defense from Conor here. Diaz with some slaps. Conor moves out of the way and Diaz flips him off. Good combo from Conor. Diaz looking for another takedown. Diaz with a big elbow. Two minutes left. Clinch against the cage, redux. Diaz just cannot get the double leg. One minute left. Conor has Diaz's back. AND CONOR GETS A TAKEDOWN! Thirty seconds left. Both men back up. Clinch with Diaz driving. Ten seconds left. Diaz FINALLY GETS the takedown as the bell sounds. 10-9 for McGregor, maybe?

McGregor definitely had rounds 1 and 4. Diaz definitely had round 3. Round 2 and Round 5 are a toss-up. Let's hear what the judges say, why don't we? It's 48-47 for McGregor, 47-47 and 48-47 for Conor McGregor. "Surprise, surprise, motherfucker, the king is back," Conor declares. McGregor says he would fight Diaz again, but only if the fight is at 155. "They can't have a motherfucker like me winning in this sport," Diaz says. "Good job, McGregor, but we're going for three." Adding to the overall "holy shit"-ness of the fight, McGregor says he fought most of it with a broken foot. 

In the post-post-fight, Rogan asks McGregor to vacate the 145-pound belt, says he doesn't know if Glover spit out a tooth after getting knocked out by Johnson and breaks "news" that Jon Jones' suspension may not be as long as expected. 

Well,  that more than lived up to the hype. That's my pick for 2016 fight of the year right there, and from start to finish, that was the most satisfying PPV I've seen since the all-heavyweight meat truck explosion that was UFC 146. Sucks to be you if you didn't catch this one live, that's all I can say. 

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I Spent Chinese New Year at Panda Express...

...and all I have to show for it is a stupid egg roll. 

By: Jimbo X American
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

George Carlin once criticized America's fast-food-chain and department-store pockmarked countryside as a vacuous, coast-to-coast shopping mall. Honestly, I've never seen what's so bad about that. You ever driven through the Appalachians before? It's nothing but trees and rocks, with maybe a dilapidated shack and a gas station operated by a guy who hates minorities every 20 or so miles. Trust me, after driving through the mountainous environs of northern Tennessee all day, you would be plum appreciative to run into a strip mall parking lot. Compared to the rustic nothingness of most of America - which, in case you didn't know, was a good 72 percent of it -  even a fucking Mattress Firm becomes something to get excited about. 

While I am generally disgusted by the unadulterated mass consumption that goes on in this country - a shocker, I know - I am nonetheless fascinated by the social dynamics of consumerism. I suppose I am sort of like an oncologist, in that regard. Looking at cancerous furuncles all day isn't fun, but to cure the disease, you have to spend a lot of time gawping at it. And that, in a nutshell, is why I spend so much damn time talking about Taco Bell and General Mills cereal and Burger King. Once you understand your enemy, you are finally able to defeat them. 

The thing is, there are just so many big box stores and fast food eateries out there that it is next to impossible to adequately tackle the entire consumer industrial complex. Even driving to work every day, at least 80 percent of the stores and fast casual restaurants I see flashing by are places I've never entered - Ulta and Cheddar's and Fry's and hhgregg and BJ's Wholesale Club and Dick's Sporting Goods or the Cheesecake Factory or Dave & Buster's or Fuddrucker's. For all I know, they could be wonderful post-post-modern utopias that would restore my faith in capitalism, but I'm guessing that's very, very unlikely. Regardless, they remain mysteries to me - parts of the shared 21st century American psyche that I just can't speak to. And what you don''t know, obviously, you can't write about. 

Which brings me to perhaps the most popular big name fast food chain I had - up until recently - never experienced: Panda Express. 

I wish I had a good story for why I've never eaten at Panda Express in all my 30 years on earth. It's not that I ever made a conscious effort to NOT walk into one of the restaurants, it's just that by some great cosmological fluke, I have never lived within close proximity to one of the chains. And maybe it is just me, or do all the restaurants just so happen to be isolated in the most difficult to reach locales? Shit, to get inside the parking lot of the one closest to my residence, I had to make three U-turns, drive behind a Wal-Mart parking lot and drive the wrong way against drive-thru traffic. Sorry, that's a lot of automotive risk for some orange chicken, and the local Taco Bell is WAY easier to get to. 

Alas, I recently encountered something that FINALLY convinced me to try out the establishment ...

...free food, naturally. In this case, it was the promise of a free egg roll to celebrate the Chinese New Year, which according to the Sacramento Kings, is somehow racist against black people. Of course, just an egg roll wasn't enough to get me to weather the elements. Indeed, Panda Express had to sweeten the proverbial pot with some additional goods, which includes a souvenir take home box (OK) and coupons for more free food (fucking fantastic.) And with the gratis two-fer staring me in the face, I decided to make a little detour on my commute home. 

As far as my general impressions of the restaurant ambiance, it was more or less what I expected. Like all decent Asian buffets, the air was muggy with steamed rice and spicy shit you really couldn't pinpoint. The furniture was very Chick-fil-a-ish, and the employees were about on par with the types of folks you'd find commandeering your friendly neighborhood Del Taco. Up until then, I had no idea that the restaurant had a Moe's/Chipotle line-item set-up, so I just kind of stood there in front of the cash register for a good ten minutes while everybody had their big ass plates of egg foo young and mandarin chicken rang up. Eventually, I produced my black and white online coupon, and the sorta chunky man in the bright red uniform told me I would have to wait eight minutes while they fried me up that commemorative "golden bar" as the advertisement promised. 

Alas, even after my long, eight-minute wait, I received no special commemorative box. In fact, those crimson-cloaked jabronis didn't even give me my coupon for additional free food, which I suppose is an accurate facsimile of Chinese government procedure: Panda Express, not unlike Chairman Mao, promises you all you will ever need, but in reality, you get nothing and they patiently wait for you to die. That might be hyperbolic, but it probably isn't. 

But to their credit, however, I did get a free "gold bar," and it was rather tasty. For starters, the product itself was pretty big ... a nice six inches, at least (which, ironically, is the exact same thing I hear from your mother from time to time.) This was no flaccid, undersized curry roll, like the kinds you find at Hong Kong buffets that are actually run by Malaysians who don't give a fuck what the health inspector tells them. It was crispy, it was flavorful, and it was filling. And, alike all great ethnic Chinese food, I had no earthly clue what the hell I was eating. 

So, uh, is that carrot and lettuce and chicken? Or maybe pork? Eh, it doesn't matter. All in all, it was a damned flavorful medley that was so  yummy it made me forget all about China's long history of civil rights violations and the fact Mao Tse-Tung killed three times as many people as Hitler did, but nobody ever talks shit about him, for some reason. Hey, if their contributions to world cuisine is this good, I say the government ought to be able to involuntarily harvest as many Falun Gong organs as they so desire. 

The real MVP, however, is the chili sauce. Fuck Sriracha, this shit right here is where it is at, where it's going to be and probably where it should have always been. You could probably dip anything in this mix and it would be delicious - meats, veggies, rice, Yummy Mummy, they all benefit from it. If only to try this stuff again, Panda Express' Chinese New Year marketing ploy worked - yes, I will be back to the restaurant, I will indeed likely pay actual people money for their goods and services and whatever I end up ordering, you better bet your bottom (and ever diminishing in value) yuan that I'm going to marinate it in so much chili sauce, it will ... uh, taste a lot like chili sauce, I guess. 

While there was a lot of stuff posted all over the restaurant explaining the importance of Chinese New Year rituals and all that jazz, I reckoned I really didn't need no cultural indoctrinatin' that evening. Alls I needs to knows about the Han is that their pollution is terrible, their upcoming senior citizen-social services crisis makes the one in the States look like a two-twig camp fire and it's only a matter of time until all that bad debt they collected during the Great Recession sends them flying off the rails (and in turn, kick-starting yet another worldwide financial crisis.) However, I did learn something very important for this, the Year of the Monkey: the food at Panda Express is pretty fucking great, I should eat more of it, and I probably will. 

Now, is the stuff at the restaurant truly authentic Chinese? Well, seeing as how it didn't give me dysentery, probably not. But again, who cares if something is genuine or not? Appropriate as much goddamn culture as you like, as long as what you are serving me is something I find palatable, nothing else matters. 

And that, my friends - whether we want to admit it or not - is true mass-consumption zhihui.

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Five FREE Horror Movies You Can Watch on YouTube RIGHT NOW

Our fifth-annual celebration of the most frugal-friendly fright flicks on the Web!

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

Since 2011, we here at the Internet is in America have paid our respects ... and sometimes, mercilessly savaged ... the absolute best/worst horror films available for free (legally) on YouTube's official "Horror Movies" channel. After slogging through old-school turds like Teenage Zombies, Suburban Sasquatch and Silent Night, Bloody Night, this year I decided to switch things up just a bit and focus on films that ... to at least some capacity ... are considered "good," "worthwhile," and at the very least, "not shit-tastic" in the eyes of the mainstream, movie-going public. 

So, what does that mean, exactly? Well, that means this year, we're turning our attention to five movies that have been described, alternately, as camp classics, underappreciated genre gems and, in some circles, legitimate triumphs of early cinema. That said, with out iconoclastic tastes for fare like International Guerrillas and Gayniggers from Outer Space, do these much-celebrated fright-fests actually cut the mustard, or are they just artsy-fartsy relics needlessly revered solely for the sake of being old? 

Oh, you just know I'm going to give it to you straight. And hard. Figuratively speaking, of course...

Nosferatu (1922)

Director: F.W. Murnau

While Nosferatu wasn't the first horror film (George Mellies, after all, was making short fright flicks as early as the late 1800s), it is generally regarded as among the absolute best of the silent era. In that regard, I can meet the critics halfway; while I think Nosferatu is a fine little feature, complete with some neat aesthetics and some truly stellar makeup effects even by today's standards, on the whole, I really didn't enjoy it as much as its contemporaries, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Phantom of the Opera and Haxan: Witchcraft Throughout the Ages.

By now, we all know the long, convoluted backstory behind the movie. Murnau wanted to make a Dracula movie, but the estate of Bram Stoker said no, so he made a damn Dracula movie anyway and called it "Nosferatu" (and by the way, in the movie, the titular antagonist is still referred to as "Count Dracula" numerous times.) This lead to Murnau getting hit by a copyright violation, with a judge requesting that all copies of the film be seized and destroyed. Alas, that didn't quite happen, and Murnau's shameless plagiarism never got the London After Midnight treatment.

The comparisons to Universal's Dracula are all but unavoidable, and in this case, I have to say I strongly prefer the later interpretation to this one. While the makeup on Max Shreck is cool and all, you REALLY have to suspend your disbelief whenever he is on screen, as all of the other actors seem totally oblivious to the fact that he is an eight foot tall pygmy Martian with antennas and four feet long incisors. I can buy people hanging out with Bela Lugosi for dinner, but agreeing to have supper with this pasty motherfucker? Yeah, I don't see that happening, ever.

The film follows the traditional Dracula story pretty well, and the set design is really good. There are also quite a few cool little tidbits, like this part when the Van Helsing analogue walks into Nosferatu's cellar and explains how he needs to sleep in the dirt he was originally buried in to stay immortal, and an even cooler scene where Nosferatu is flying around on rooftops at night, even though the scene was clearly filmed during broad daylight.  

As stated earlier, it is a solid film, for the most part, but to me, it just never seemed to get rolling.     Furthermore, there really wasn't a whole lot of pathos to be found here, which is a huge letdown (especially considering the emotional range you get out of something like The Man Who Laughs) and the general plot structure just seemed a bit too formulaic ... yes, even for a movie that came out in 1922. Really, this is one of those movies where I feel like I should like it just because it has historical merit; in that, it's a flick I can appreciate, but -- like oh so many pioneering genre works -- I don't actually enjoy as a standalone cinematic work.

White Zombie (1932)

Director: Victor Halperin

Ah, yes. The film that inspired the namesake of that classic horror-themed band, The Misfits.

White Zombie, much like Nosferatu, is a film that I can watch and appreciate, even though I don't necessarily "enjoy" what I am watching. It's always nice to see Bela Lugosi ham it up, and the black and white cinematography is downright excellent at times, but on the whole, this one is just a barely above average genre effort.

The premise is simple. Down in some unnamed Caribbean island nation, that no-good sumbitch played by Lugosi is using the dark arts to mind control indigenous folks into sugar-plantation slaves. Of course, this being the 1930s, nobody gives a shit about the practice until he starts turning white folks into zombies -- hence, the namesake, which means PRECISELY what it states.

The plot is very predictable. A woman gets kidnapped by Bela (who spends the entire movie whittling a candle into a wax statue) and it's up to your traditional white, Anglo-Saxon male protagonist to save the day (and dame.) It's all paint-by-numbers stuff, really, with hardly any plot swerves at all.

That said, the film does have some merits. As stated earlier, the cinematography is great, especially this scene early on when we see a bunch of zombies mindlessly pushing carts around and one of them even gets ground up in a gigantic wooden mixer. Then, there is the ending, where Bela commands his slaves to literally jump off a cliff to their respective demises -- terrific stuff, no doubt.

Be warned, however, that this movie has what is far and away the most annoying character in the history of horror movies -- this goddamn raven that keeps popping up and letting out this hideous metallic shriek that is eight times louder than everything else on the film soundtrack. Keep the remote control handy for this one, lest you want your cochleas to experience a thorough throttlin'.

House On Haunted Hill (1959)

Director: William Castle

Now here is a great little "meta" horror flick that is a lot more inventive and clever than most folks give it credit for. Think this one is just another generic, dime-a-dozen, pre Civil Rights -era haunted house movie? Think again, Holmes - it's actually a super subtle horror satire that was doing tremendous genre lampooning half a decade before Scream and Cabin in the Woods.

Forget that crappy remake from the late 1990s (or was it the early 2000s?), and doubly forget that crappy straight to DVD sequel that came after it (except for that part with the lesbian ghost zombies, you are definitely encouraged to remember that part.) The original House on Haunted Hill is where it's at, with a great murder-mystery motiff and some downright wonderful acting from Sir Vincent Price. 

Man, Price absolutely owns this movie. He comes off as this bizarre, reverse Clark Gable, who probably could have had a legitimate film career had he not been typecast for being so goddamn great at being theatrically creepy. As a hen-pecked husband-cum-overnight-party-host, he brings such a professional air to the production; it's still a goofy flick, through and through, but his charisma just makes it so much more enjoyable then it would have been sans his presence. Virtually every line he has in the movie is an aural delight; if he's been in a more comprehensively outstanding performance, I've yet to view it.

As for the plot line, it's diabolically simple. Vincent Price is hosting a sleepover contest in an allegedly haunted house. He's invited a whole bunch of nefarious cannon fodder over -- a journalist with a gambling problem, a virginal secretary, a businessman trying to cut his annual losses, etc. -- and if any of them can make it overnight without screaming out of the building, they each get $10,000 smackers (which in 2015 USD, is about $4.3 million.) This being a horror movie, you can figure out what happens next: a mysterious old hag starts rolling around scaring the doo-doo out of people, and my word, just why is there such a massive acid bath just laying there in the basement, for not discernible reason?

Of course, there is a swerve that takes the supernatural hokum out of the equation, and it is brilliantly executed. Overall, the acting in this one is WAY better than its genre contemporaries, and it certainly has a more unique structure and sense of pacing than most fright flicks from the same timeframe (it's also way more tongue-in-cheek, with a hyper-subtle resentment for its own categorization as a "horror" flick.) And holy shit, is it ever awesome to hear Price's play-by-play as the skeleton slowly arises from the crypt, seeking vengeance from beyond the (alleged) grave. This is just a fun, fun, fun little throwback from the heyday of the drive-in, and you need to see it. 

Dementia 13 (1963)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Here is a movie that, like Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls, peculiarly owes its now vaunted reputation to being public domain, and therefore, easily accessible to cheapskate broadcasters and compilation DVD manufacturers the world over.

This one is actually a well above average thriller from the early 1960s, with great atmosphere, a nice keep-em-guessing mystery and a lot more bloodshed than most genre offerings from the same timeframe. Oh, and it is directed by FRANCIS FORD FUCKIN' COPPOLA, only the same dude who later went on to direct The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and, uh, Jack. 

The movie begins with this dude on a boat, playing shitty rock and roll music while his wife smokes a cigarette. Then, he has a heart attack and dies, but not before yelling at her over and over again that if he dies, she is out of the family will.

So, about this family o' his: they are royally fucked up. The matriarch has dementia (hence, the title of the movie ... I think?) because way back in the day, one of her kids drowned in the family lake, but what do you know, a whole bunch of members of said family are also winding up drowning in the same lake as of late. Sure it could be just a coincidence, but if you've ever seen a horror film from ANY year, you know that happenstance and entropy can never be considered just rationales for anything. 

Having come out three years after Psycho and Peeping Tom, Dementia 13 certainly feels cut from the same blood-drenched, pseudo-psychological thriller cloth. As a whodunit, it's a bit underwhelming, but just as a creepy old school offering, it brings the goods in intestine-wrapped spades. The music is terrific, the cinematography is tremendous (especially the underwater shots!) and the pacing is really, really well done. And, faithfully adhering to the number one rule of all great horror flicks, you truly have no idea who is going to die next ... and rest assured, there is some downright excellent beheadings in this one. 

Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)

Directors: Richard W. Haines, Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman

Even if for some stupid ass reason you are not a fan of their works, you at least have to admire Troma for putting up all of their pioneering B-movie opuses online for free. In between such indie classics as Bloodsucking Freaks and The Toxic Avenger, you will find Class of Nuke 'Em High, the first in a sprawling series of progressively sillier (but still pretty awesome) movies. 

The thing that strikes me most about the original Nuke 'Em High is just how (almost) serious its tone is. Sure, it has plenty of corny jokes in the mix, but by and large, the film itself is played fairly straight. It has an anti-nuclear energy agenda, to be sure, but it's not as heavy-handed as it could be, and -- unlike Captain Planet -- it knows better than to try and force a truly serious message about a complex subject that's well beyond the scope of its own limited boundaries.

Plot-wise, the story here is simple. At Tromaville High, a nuclear gas leak at the nearby power plant has slowly transformed the student body into a gaggle of amoral, sexual degenerate criminals -- the worst being the honors-students-turned-gangbangers Cretins. We get our obligatory teenage love story (enhanced quite a bit by a subplot about atomic marijuana whose side effects are astonishingly similar to those of molly), and of course, a climactic subterranean throw down between the forces of good and evil (which, sadly, is sans a Toxie cameo, somehow.)

Stylistically, this one is much more reminiscent of something like The Class of 1984 than The Toxic Avenger, and that's a good thing. There are still plenty of puns and over-the-top visual jokes -- along with ample nudity, gore galore and some lesbian action that, while tame by today's standards, was rather cutting edge back in the day -- so it's still a palpable Troma offering, however. 

It's a thoroughly unpretentious work, with all the usual Lloyd Kaufman shenanigans. It's violent and vile and viscous and ports about a half-baked pro-environmentalist message that's straight-forward enough to qualify it as legitimate social commentary, but at the same time, it's also obtuse enough to not come off as preachy propaganda. That, and it has some pretty damn funny tidbits scattered throughout all of the gore and gunge and monster penises ... in short, making it more or less mandatory viewing for any household with a steady Wi-Fi connection this Halloween season. 

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Five Bloody (and FREE!) Horror Movies on YouTube!

Four god-awful (plus one legitimately great) plasma-strewn creature features you can watch online at no cost!

Like that first saunter down the seasonal section at Target or the precise moment the Oakland Raiders become mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, the yearly Internet is in America round-up of You Tube’s “finest” free horror movies has become something of an autumnal rite.

While in year’s past we did a random sampling of the $0.00 offerings on YouTube’s Horror Movie Channel, for 2014, we opted for something a bit more focused. Not content with reviewing five gratis genre flicks, this year, we’re taking a gander at five gratis genre flicks with a “blood” theme -- meaning, basically, that all of the summarized selections have the word “blood” in their title. And also, they all suck royally, save for one, which is probably the best place to begin our whirlwind tour, no?

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

Now here’s a movie you should definitely check out this Halloween season, and for once, I’m not being a facetious little prick about it. One of the best films ever helmed by exploitation kingpin Roger Corman, not only is “A Bucket of Blood” a great little horror flick from the Atomic Age, it’s actually one of the greatest lampoons of hippie/beatnik culture ever filmed. I guess you could say there’s two kinds of skewering going on in this flick, no?

B-movie hero Dick Miller plays the lead protagonist, a retarded busboy who works at an artsy-fartsy San Francisco coffee shop where poets with Dick Van Dyke beards spew florid logorrhea all over the linoleum. A budding sculptor, old Dicky boy accidentally kills his pet cat one night, and after he casts the entire kitty cadaver in clay, he winds up becoming an unexpected art house sensation.

This being a horror movie, I guess you can figure out what happens next. All in all, this is just a damned terrific little romp, with way better acting than the norm, a tremendous plot, and some really amusing kills. Take note Eli Roth and the rest of you wannabe auteurs -- this is how you make a goddamn horror comedy.

Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002)

In the early 1960s, shlockmeister extraordinaire Herschel Gordon Lewis made “Blood Feast,” a drive-in cheese-a-rama that was more or less the first true slasher/splatter film in U.S. history. In what has to be some kind of record, it took HGL damn near 40 years to release its sequel, which as fate would have it, is really, really fucking terrible.

While the original “Blood Feast” was undoubtedly a corny movie, it was a genuine corny movie. This is the absolute worst kind of post-modern horror flick, the self-reflexive, intentionally shitty kind. Perhaps Lewis decided to unleash four decades worth of inward hostility unto the masses with this remake/sequel/remaquel, which has ample blood, guts and T and A, yet hardly anything resembling the same goopy, goofy spirit the original film conveyed.

Still, there are some positives, I suppose. If you like food puns, you’re probably going to dig this one, and the female fodder is rather well-endowed where it counts. And like I would possibly say anything at all bad about John Waters being cast as a chi-mo Catholic priest…

Bloodtide (1982)

Woo boy, this one is a stinker. This really, really white couple decide to take a trip to Greece, where apparently, there’s some kind of weird virgin sacrifice Voodoo stuff going on, but all of the Catholics in town are acting pretty suspicious about it, too. Oh, and did I mention that it stars JAMES EARL JONES as a dude who runs around, just saying stuff in a big, booming JAMES EARL JONES voice for virtually no reason at all? Well, I should have, I guess.

This flick sets a new standard for blandness, as less than a week after viewing the film, I had forgotten virtually everything about it. There's a lot of underwater scenes, and there's a part where this chick talks about Abercrombie and Fitch, and the monster shows up for like, three seconds. And oh yeah, James Earl Jones is in it, too. Did I already tell you that? Well, shit then.

The director of the film, Richard Jeffries, would later go on to write "Cold Creek Manor," "Man of the House" and "Scarecrows," which as far as I'm concerned, is the most diverse portfolio on all of IMBD. Oh, and  Bob Morton from "Robocop" is in it, too, but it still sucks.

Legacy of Blood (1971)

I swear, I’ve seen this movie, under various titles, fifteen different times before. That’s not to say the film has a plethora of alternate titles, I mean it has a painfully familiar plot: a bunch of mendacious, avaricious pricks are hanging out in a supposedly haunted mansion for some kind of financial prize, and what do you know, a whole bunch of dead bodies start mysteriously piling up.

There’s not too much to talk about here. The only really memorable scenes involve a dude getting his head caved in with an axe (in which the camera itself is sort of used as the bludgeoning tool -- an admittedly cool and unique little optical trick, if I may so myself) and a part where two scheming lovers are killed by, of all things, a malfunctioning lamp. Hey, I guess you can only stab, impale and strangle so many people before you run out of murder techniques, I reckon.

Alas, I suppose it does have some merit, being helmed by the same guy that gave us the immortal "Little Shop of Horrors" rip-off, "Please Don't Eat My Mother." And for the truly autistic? See if you recognize any of the backdrops, since the IMDB alleges the film was shot at the same locale as the old Adam West "Batman" show.

Silent Night Bloody Night (1974)

No, it’s not the movie about the dude who watched his mama get raped and murdered by Saint Nick, only to get beaten by nuns and turn into a yuletide killing machine himself. That was called “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” and unlike this formulaic claptrap, that one was actually worth watching.

You know all of that stuff I said earlier about “Legacy of Blood?” Well, you can just copy pasta that shit right here, because it follows virtually the exact same script. A mysterious murder cover-up, coming back to haunt those who made a pact all those years ago? Check. Random cast members dropping like flies, while nobody at all suspects the weirdo stranger who just joined the party fifteen minutes ago? It’s here. A completely intelligence-insulting “swerve” ending? BINGO!

And the turd topping on top of the shit sundae? The movie doesn’t even really have a Christmas setting. Being a crappy, generic ‘70s horror flick is one thing, but being a crappy, generic ‘70s horror flick with a misleading title? Hey pal, there’s a reason why “Halloween” is considered an all-time masterpiece, beginning with the fact that it doesn’t take place during motherfucking Easter.

Of course, there are also some legitimately fantastic horror films on YouTube, which you can watch without breaking any kind of international copyright law whatsoever -- among them, bona-fide 1980s masterpieces like "The Evil Dead" and "Night of the Creeps" as well as underappreciated '70s exploitation gems like "Driller Killer" and "Invasion of the Bee Girls." And that's not to mention all of the public domain classics, like "Nosferatu" and "Night of the Living Dead," and all of the, ahem, "master works" churned out by one Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Alas, if you're a movie masochist, I reckon any of the above flicks are worthy of your squandered free time. And hey, as bad as they are, at least they're better than "The Ape Man" and "Monsturd" . . .

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Book Review: "Free" by Chris Anderson (2009)

As the costs of digital distribution fall toward zero, how can companies and content creators turn profits? According to the former "WIRED" editor and current drone manufacturer...they can't. 

In "Free: the Future of a Radical Price," Chris Anderson -- the former WIRED EIC -- doesn't take long at all to establish the book's central thesis: that, with the proliferation of the Internet and digital distribution channels, we're now living in an epoch in which a deflationary economy anchored around bits has completely triumphed over the old world order of inflationary economies anchored around atoms -- that being, tangible, real-world goods.

With a net annual deflation rate of about 50 percent, Anderson postulates that all cyberspace goods are destined to halve in price every single year. Citing Monty Python, the decline of transistor prices, early Jell-O advertising gimmicks and the pioneering "freebie" promotions of King Gillette -- who, it is perhaps worth noting, penned a weird-ass urban supremacist manifesto/unrealized "Bioshock" game called "The Human Drift" in 1894 -- Anderson feels that it's only natural that online-centric manufacturers and retailers today would flock towards new wave "freemiums" to sustain their own operations.

Via direct cross-subsidies -- "loss leaders" like popcorn generating revenue in lieu of fundamentally free films and ongoing annuities, like "free" phones with two-year subscriber contracts replacing point-of-sale streams -- Anderson argues that there is already a template readily available for online companies to base their own "free" models upon. In fact, Anderson rattles off several variations for us, including segmented markets -- basically, a "progressive tax" that allows women to get free drinks at clubs and kids to eat free at Sunday buffets -- tiered content (Flickr vs. Flickr Pro is the example he uses in the book) and even emerging "non-monetary markets" like zero-cost "gift economy" distribution networks (read: free Wiki articles) and even "labor exchange" relationships (which Anderson illustrates in the book with the example of porn sites that give you free nudity in exchange for helping them figure out CAPTCHA puzzles.)

Early, early on in "Free," Anderson introduces to something he calls the "Five Percent Rule" -- that being, this idea that just five percent of online service users will offset the business losses of 95 percent of the same online services's users not paying anything at all. And then, he immediately brings up how piracy murder-death-killed the music industry, providing us with the first of many, many in-text contradictions that should make us wonder a plenty about Mr. Anderson's allegedly beneficial "free-to-all" Tao. Furthermore, his citing of negative pricing business models -- like bands playing clubs to perform and gyms in Europe that, as long as you don't miss any weekly visits, have free memberships -- seem more like fanciful asides than genuine advice for start-up operations.

From there, Anderson gives us a history of "free," letting us know, for some reason, that the Catholic Church once condemned interest rates and that the Koran has a decisively anti-usury bent. He goes on for a bit about Paul Ehrlich's wrong-ass predictions, Kroptokin's "Mutual Aid," the Dunbar Number and New York's  Raines Law, before seguing into a passage about ASCAP and BMI and how the Haber-Bosch Process lead to the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s. If you're wondering what this stuff has to do with "freemium" business models -- well, that makes two of us, naturally.

After some shit about "corn economies" and "disposable cultures," he says that America fully embraced the "Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits" sometime in the 1950s, indicating a shift from resource processing to service jobs. Today's "symbolic analysts," he tells us, are nothing more than yesterday's farmers and manufacturers in pursuit of scarcity.

Comparing The Village Voice to The Onion, he describes how free woks as an "evolutionary stable strategy." He later rephrases the statement, with the sardonic aphorism "you can't fall off the floor."

From there, it is aside city for a good fifty pages. We learn about Kopelman's "Penny Gap," The Sample Lab! International Model, a 2007 French union lawsuit against Amazon, Mead's Compound Learning Curve and some dude named John Draper, who is perhaps most notable for having the nickname "Captain Crunch." Then, Anderson makes the somewhat controversial claim that piracy actually creates user dependency, which in turn, lowers adoption costs. Which, fittingly enough, is a great transition point to a conversation about the positive aspects of de-monetization.

The Internet, described by Anderson as a "liquidity machine," allows individuals to make money by shrinking markets. You see, free turns "$1 billion industries" into "$1 million industries" by wealth redistribution, which in turn creates more efficient markets. Of course, with lower entry barriers, he lets us know its pretty goddamn hard to turn a profit under such a system, and that more often than not, the model just results in the rich getting richer, but uh...free is still somehow good, I think?

Anderson then rattles off a fairly agreeable list as to why paid content is deader than Elvis, and then gives us a primer on impression models. Interestingly, he uses the video game market as his case study for industries that have "benefit" from freemium models, and praises Derek Webb for his "data-mining" approach to fan outreach. Oh, and he kind of glosses over how selling visitor data to third parties has become something of a monetization model, but SHHH!

With "quasi-currencies" like views and Facebook likes taken into consideration, Anderson said the market for "free" was about $300 billion in 2009 dollars. As such, he said that more and more organizations find themselves competing in non-monetary markets, where "attention" and "reputation" are considered as good as actual revenue. Except, uh, people aren't actually making money off this shit, which is the gigantic elephant turd in the punch bowl Anderson doesn't have the bait and tackle to come out and tell us.

In China and Brazil, he talks about how piracy culture has led to some innovative underground markets -- chiefly, an emerging "fake receipt" economy. And then, he lets us know that the "walls" between editorial and business boards in the journalism industry have been yanked down, and as such, we're all the worse for it.

Giving us some bullshit about "the tragedy of the commons," he tells us that many content creators will now have to look for indirect revenue streams -- like consulting, lecturing and blogs -- to stay afloat financially. Even heavy hitters like Facebook and YouTube have ongoing revenue problems, he said: pretty much putting a big, fat ~ next to his ENTIRE goddamn argument, he lets us know that, in a recession, "free can't be the only model" if organizations want to survive.

Below are Anderson's Ten Principles of Abundance Thinking, with my thoughts in red.

1. Digital things will ultimately be free. (which means unless you can't eat it or print it out yourself, you're pretty much in a fucked market.)
2. Products of physical goods make core products free by selling other stuff. (also, you can make more money if you work more than one job, too.)
3. Selling upgrades to free products can combat piracy. (except for when it doesn't, which is all the fucking time.) 
4. Free opens the door to charging consumers. (too bad he never explicitly tells us how to make that leap, though) 
5. You can sell around free services. (which means you're working two jobs, only one of which involves you actually getting paid for something.) 
6. You HAVE to be "free" before your competitors. (but what happens when ALL of your competitors are giving away stuff for free, though?)
7. Eventually, you will be competing with free, anyway. (oh, OK. But wait, how am I supposed to be making money off this shit again?)
8. You need to stop metering things that are too cheap to meter. (which under a free model, is your ENTIRE model.) 
9. Value will always migrate to the next higher layer when free becomes the norm. (so what's the FUCKING point of even being free to begin with?)
10. You should always manage for abundance, not scarcity. (translation: learn to deal with being poor.) 

Personally, I prefer Biggie's "Ten Crack Commandments," but I guess there is more sagacity in that top ten than asininity, I will admit. Then again, the fundamental rub with Anderson's entire shtick is that, compared to free, ANY financial gain is automatically profitable, so really -- what's the point with all this, again?

When I picked up "Free," I was expecting a fairly conventional primer on how upstarts could leverage temporarily free, entry-level services into more sustainable revenue models. Instead, what I got was some bullshit about how free boasts visibility and facilitates future user adoption, conveniently leaving out how a service would successfully shift from free to paid models in between. Free, this asshole keeps telling us, will pave the way to truly lucrative business models in the future, but he never even gets anywhere close to establishing a solid system for services to make that very transition. The shit icing on the turd cake was when he used journalism as a case study of sorts; you see, journalists, in the absence of traditional papers, can still make money as consultant editors for non-professional, hyper-local websites, he cheerily tells us. Of course, he never brings up the abject failure of AOL's Patch service, which was more or less that very model.

I'm not sure if I want to call Anderson an opportunist -- or better yet, a piss-poor speculator -- but "Free" is a book that feels far, far removed from reality. Maybe his ideas would gel in very, very small commerce sectors, but the tips and tactics outlined in this book aren't going to save any upstart business from insolvency. Really, the core thesis of "Free" can be summed up as "don't plan on making money, so that if you incidentally make money, it'll be awesome."

That's not a business strategy, Mr. Anderson. Hell, that's not even a halfway viable business ideal. There are some interesting ideas in "Free," but nothing that has any import on today's e-commerce world, I am afraid.

But at the end of the day, I will at least give some of Anderson's theories about "free" products some praise. After all, I picked up my copy of the book -- irony of ironies -- because a local retailer just wanted to get rid of surplus copies on the shelves.

That's right: I didn't pay a single cent for "Free." And to be honest? I still feel like I paid too much for it.

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