Remembering Jack Van Impe (1931-2020)

The Internet Is In America pays our respects to the greatest counter-cultural televangelist of all-time

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CD Review - 'LIE: The Love and Terror Cult' by Charles Manson (1970)

To commemorate the passing of Charles Manson, we take a look back at his one and only studio album.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

"You wouldn't know what crazy was if Charles Manson was eating Froot Loops on your front porch."

- Suicidal Tendencies, "You Can't Bring Me Down" (1990)

"So how do you communicate to a whole group of people? You stand up and take the worst fear symbol [swastika] and say 'There, now I've got your fear. Now I've got your fear.' And your fear is your power and your power is your control. I'm your king of this whole planet. I'm gonna rule this whole world."

- Charles Manson, Penny Daniels interview (1989)

By the time you're reading this, Charles Manson will either be dead, or almost dead, or in the final throes of death, or maybe still alive but way closer to being dead than he has at any other point in his life. So while this pseudo-epigraph might be a tad premature, we all know the guy's gonna' kick the bucket much sooner than later, so we might as well start printin' out the obituary notices and get a jump on things.

Ol' Chuck is one of them guys that - in an alternate reality - probably would've been a bigger act than Bob Dylan. Alas, he started taking The White Album a bit too literally, and I think we can all agree - getting your goons to butcher a pregnant woman to death during a "creepy crawl" really isn't the best way to get your name in the papers.

Before you fucks start thinkin' I'm going to give this guy post-mortem praise, the fact of the matter is that Charles Manson was a five-star lunatic, which makes his idolization by acts like System of a Down all the more befuddling. This was a guy who literally thought the Book of Revelation was a secret handbook for starting a race war, who is said to have forced his doped up followers to perform sex acts on their own infants. Lord knows how many horrible things he got away with, and needless to say - this cocksucker's demise shoulda' happened a looooong time ago.

Of course, it's a little weird combing through the Twitter-verse commentary on Manson's (near) death. I've seen this GIF comparing Manson's facial gestures to Donald Trump's hundreds of times by now, as the liberal hive-mind (the unthinking brain in a vat it is) keeps making the same joke over and over about assuming Chucky was trending because Trump gave him a cabinet position (an aside, but the fact these people can't interpret ANYTHING without dragging Trump into the equation seems to smack of a very Manson-like manic obsession, doesn't it?) My favorite comment by far, however, has to be the wise mullings of professional racial grievance peddler Tariq Nasheed, who tweeted why the media never brings up the fact Charles Manson is a "white supremacist." Long story, short Tariq: because he wasn't sentenced to life in prison for being "a white supremacist," he was sentenced to life in prison for ordering his stooges to slaughter six innocent people ... a fact which, as evident by its absence from Tariq's tweet, would seem to suggest the tweeter in question doesn't find sextuple murder anywhere near as immoral or ghastly as thinking black people are generally inferior to white people.

Oh, there's plenty of great Manson-related material on the Web. His interview with Geraldo Rivera is pretty much required viewing come Halloween time, and I'll be goddamned if there isn't a HUGE Wikipedia page outlining what Manson thought "Helter Skelter" was really about. Trust me - this shit right here is WELL worth the read. 

Alas, as we wait impatiently for Chuck to keel over, perhaps it would serve us well to revisit the music he left behind. Yep, Charlie did indeed record an album, which was released after the 1969 Sharon Tate and company murders. The collection of Charles M. originals was ultimately titled LIE: The Love and Terror Cult, a riff on the famous Life magazine cover which featured him in stark black and white looking like - well, what everybody thinks of when they think about Charles Manson.

Granted, it was a pretty rare little oddity back in the day, but thanks to the magic of Internet uploads, you can no listen to the whole album whenever the hell you want. But assuming you just don't have the 32 minutes in your schedule to listen to the album the whole way through (but, for some reason, you do have the 32 minutes to read this article), I've gone on ahead and given you a track-by-track review and summary of every song included on LIE. So, on this, the precipice of Manson's exit from the mortal coil, have you ever wondered what kinda' aural treats you've been missing out on over the years? Well - wonder no damn more, you morbidly curious motherfuckers, you ...

Now who's ready to boogie!

TRACK 01

"Look at Your Game Girl"

We start the CD off with probably Charles' most famous composition. The song is probably best known for being covered by Axl Rose for The Spaghetti Incident? as a hidden track, and I'm not gonna' lie - I think this is a downright beautiful fuckin' song. It's such a soft and sweet little ballad, that sounds like something you'd hear in the background of a Billy Jack movie. In fact, in high school, I even made a "mix tape" of me singing the song while playing the bongos - if I ever find it, I'll be sure to upload it for ya'll to hear and obsess over.

TRACK 02

"Ego"

"No, it's in the back, no it's in the front," Manson repeats over and over again while violins and a mad bongo beat blares in the background. He also drones on and on about Freud and the subconscious being the "computer" of the brain and naturally, none of this shit makes any sense, but then again, everybody was on acid back then so I guess it was never meant to make any sense in the first place. That said, it's still better than ANYTHING the Beatles ever recorded, and that's an objective fact.

TRACK 03

"Mechanical Man"

"I am a mechanical boy, and I am my mother's toy" - shit, if you thought the last track was opaque, just wait 'til you get a load of this shit. I'm pretty sure everybody on the song was high on crystal meth at the time of the recording. You've got this weird, out of rhythm drum beat going on the whole song, with everybody humming and moaning in unison. And just when you think the cacophony of sitar plucks and idle chatter can't get any weirder - then Chuck starts singing about his pet monkey getting hit by a train and the London Bridge. And in case you're wondering - yes, this is where the lyrics from Marilyn Manson's "My Monkey" come from.

TRACK 04

"People Say I'm No Good"

Another sentimental, downbeat acoustic song in which Charles tries valiantly to play the guitar but, by golly, he just can't figure out how those tricky frets work, it appears. Also, this song is probably exhibit A for what I like to call the "Charlie hum" style of singing, in which every stanza of the song ultimately concludes with the last syllable turning into five-second long hummingbird impersonation. "Those diamond rings, they're all the same," Manson laments - which, yeah, I guess is kinda' true, when you really think about it. "You've got more sicknesses than you've got cures for - cancer of the mind," he concludes the song, after going on a rant against "cough medicine" and "wonder drugs," which is pretty dang hypocritical considering this man's bloodstream is STILL about 65 percent LSD to this very day. But then again, if you're looking for sense out of Charles goddamn fuckin' Manson, you lost the game of life a long time ago.

TRACK 05

"Home is Where You're Happy"

"Home is where you can be what you are," Manson declares, "so burn all your bridges and leave your old life behind ... as long as you've got love in your heart, you'll never be alone." Man, what lovely words from a man who told his drugged-up followers to murder half a dozen people because they wouldn't give him a record contract. I mean, it almost brings a tear to your eye.

TRACK 06

"Arkansas"

This song starts off with Manson's acolytes talking about nondescript "struggles." This one actually has a pretty cool acoustic guitar twang to it - it almost sounds like a Dick Dale song at points, if Dick Dale was a fucking psychotic sex criminal. Anyhoo, the song is about living in abject squalor in, you guessed it - Texas. More "Charlie humming" ensues, so if that ain't your bag, go on ahead and hit SKIP right now.

TRACK 07

"I'll Never Say Never to Always"

We get a creepy as fuck all-female chorus opening the song, with babies crying in the background and there's this eerie echo that sounds like they recorded it out of a bucket 20 feet underground. It's only a couple of seconds long, but shit, is it unnerving.

TRACK 08
"Garbage Dump"

Holy shit, this sounds JUST like a G.G. Allin song - no wonder he wound up covering it. Anyhoo, this is a song that, well, is about a "garbage dump," which is a term that apparently confused Manson, since the chorus is "garbage dump, oh garbage dump, why are you called a garbage dump?" Umm - do you think it's because it's usually a place where people dump their garbage, guy?

TRACK 09

"Don't Do Anything Illegal"

Huh - an ironic title, eh? "Beware of the eagle, in the middle of your back, don't be illegal," Manson begins the track. "They've got you in a sack, and they keep you looking back." So I take it this is an early anti-police song? "Every time I go to the store, I've got to have an I.D. with me so they can see what they want to be," Manson wraps up the song, "I'm free." Man - this is the perfect song to steal cars to so you can convert them into dune buggies in anticipation of the upcoming racial holy war!

TRACK 10

"Slick City"

This is probably the best guitar work on the whole album, which is kinda' like having he highest test score in remedial math, but whatever. The weird thing is that Charles actually does have a semi-decent singing voice, when he's trying to be low key. Alas, he just has to hum-mumble his way through this track, thus turning what could've been a legitimately decent song into one that's just sorta' kinda' alright. You know what Manson really needed? A producer to keep him in line. Can you imagine what sort of A-plus material this dude could've cranked out with Phil Spector calling the shots behind the soundboard? Baby, there aren't enough Grammys in the world for stuff like that. 

TRACK 11

"Cease to Exist"

Yep, this is the infamous Manson song that the Beach Boys pretty much stole and released as "Never Learn Not To Love." It's funny how that one little act of recording industry malfeasance eventually resulted in Chuck becoming a psycho cult maniac. Had they given him his props, who knows? Maybe the asshole actually WOULD have had a real career making and writing music, and Sharon Tate would still be alive today and maybe Roman Polanksi never would've raped all those 14 year-olds and there's an alternate reality where the soundtrack to Ice Pirates was done ENTIRELY by Charles Manson himself. Shit - it really makes you think, don't it?

TRACK 12

"Big Iron Door"

If you like onomatopoeias, you'll love this one. This is Chuck "clang-banging" his way through a tune recounting his earlier forays in the clink. It's also barely a minute long and sounds like it cuts off halfway through. You know - not that it's necessarily a loss or anything like that ... 

TRACK 13

"I Once Knew A Man"

This one has a sorta' Western, classical guitar bent to it. I think there's also somebody blowing into a jug while Manson sings, and there might be a dude drumming on a milk crate somewhere in the background. Alas, something seems like its missing. Oh, I know what this track needed - a nice, long kazoo solo.

TRACK 14

"Eyes of a Dreamer"

"All the songs have been sung," Manson begins the album's concluding track. "And all the saints have been hung." So I guess it's kinda' of an anti-war song, or an anti-corporate song, or an anti-government song, or hell, maybe an anti-capitalism song. "A thing is just a thing, that's a thing," he continues, "it's all in the eyes of the dreamer ... and you are the man." Well ... the fuck if I have any idea what this goof's talking about here.

Your life was like a candle in the wind - a candle that forced drugged up 14-year-olds to have sex with animals.

Well, what more can I say about that? For years, LIE has been one of the most coveted "true crime" albums out there, probably second only to Jim Jones horrifying recording of the night he gave 900 people poisoned Flavor Aid. As far as kooky, way off the beaten path albums go, you'd have a hard time finding anything that manages to out do this in the "dude, that is some fucked up shit" department.

Objectively, you can't really call Manson's music, well, good. This is pretty much the definition of a one-track album - "Look At Your Game Girl" is legitimately, unironically outstanding, but everything else on the album is just sorta' meh, with the last four or five songs pretty much melding into an indistinguishable pile of blandness. You can see that Manson had at least a modicum of musical talent, but the fact of the matter is that even here he was too zonked out of his mind on drugs to be coherent. Had he not started drinking peyote 14 times a day, maybe - just maybe - he COULD'VE gone on to become a real recording star. But, as they sometimes say, that just wasn't how the cookie crumbled; amazing how thin a line there is between somebody becoming Neil Young and becoming a psycho cult leader and unborn child skewerer, huh?

Yeah, it's probably in bad taste to pay money for the CD, even if the royalties never went to Manson or his adherents. Moreover, the music itself really isn't worth paying for, so I'd suggest snagging "Look At Your Game Girl" off the Internets and leaving the rest of the album for others to drudge through (your sins, I paid for, you ungrateful pricks.)

So all that to say? Yes, Charles Manson indeed COULD kinda sorta sing and play the guitar, he made at least one truly great song and now - he's dead as shit. Or getting close to being dead as shit, or at the very least taking considerable strides to being dead as shit. 

Which, regardless, I think we can all agree is long overdue.

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Paying Tribute To The Godfather of Gore ... and Direct Marketing

Herschell Gordon Lewis wasn’t just a pioneer in exploitation movies and aggressive advertising. Indeed, his long, unsung career embodies everything that makes America truly great.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Unless you are somebody really into either gory 1960s B-movies or general advertising copywriting, you've probably never heard of Herschell Gordon Lewis, who died Sept. 26 at the ripe old age of 90. But if you do know who Lewis was, he probably made some sort of palpable impact on your life. Indeed, if you've ever watched a John Waters movie (or tossed a handful of direct mail in the garbage), you are indirectly feeling the second-hand impact of the man himself.

Nicknamed "The Godfather of Gore," Lewis is probably best known for helming 1963's Blood Feast, a drive-in classic often considered the first true "splatter" film in the annals of American cinema. The pastel-colored horror flick (legend has it, the entire thing was filmed in just a couple of days) was notorious for its groundbreaking (and stomach-churning) violence, including scenes in which nubile young women have their tongues bloodily sawed off and their eyes gruesomely plucked out by, of all things, an evil, Egyptian-deity worshiping … caterer. Believe it or not, such fare was probably a step-up from Lewis' previous bread and butter, a series of nudist colony "musicals."

While Lewis' directorial oeuvre only span from 1959 to 1972 (although he did make a few cheapies in the early 2000s), he nonetheless managed to produce a high volume of all-time degenerate cinema masterpieces. Who can forget his 1964 hillbilly magnum opus Two Thousand Maniacs!, which centered on a bunch of Yankees traveling down south only to be held captive by Confederate ghosts (cleverly discussed as Georgian rubes) and mutilated and tortured to death via such ingenious execution methods as being rolled down steep hills in barrels lined with razor sharp nails? Or what about 1970's Wizard of Gore, about a magician who brutally murders women on stage while the audience thinks all of the neon blood splashing all over the place is just a larf? And that's nothing to say of his other genre works, including the moonshining epic This Stuff'll Kill Ya!, the wife-swapping "drama" Suburban Roulette and the juvenile delinquency-fest Just For The Hell Of It. Heck, he even made a couple of kids movies while he was at it, stuffing in offerings like Jimmy the Boy Wonder and The Magic Land of Mother Goose in between A Taste of Blood and She-Devils on Wheels.

Ever the renaissance man, Lewis gave up the B-movie trade in the early 1970s and promptly began his second career - this time, as one of the pioneers of "direct marketing" advertising. Indeed, he wrote no less than 21 books about his experiences in copywriting, many of which - such as Open Me Now and Marketing Mayhem - conveyed the same sensational bluntness that made his cinematic exploits so (in)famous.

Clearly, they don’t make them like Lewis anymore, that’s for sure. The living embodiment of the practically deceased Protestant Work Ethic, the man immortalized as “The Godfather of Gore” was utterly obsessed with production. Whether or not what he churned out was particularly good was an afterthought; the important thing was that he got that damned movie out about a dude who paints pictures of posies with hobo blood or that manual about antique dinner plate collection out under-budget and ahead-of-schedule. Some say he was a cheapskate, others say he was a brass-balled exploiter. Indeed, many call him a legitimate con artist, seeing as how he actually spent three years in prison for running all sorts of schemes to finance his film ventures, including a fake abortion clinic. But the one thing you can’t ever call him was “lazy.” While many of his contemporaries were layabouts complaining about “a lack of funding,” Lewis went out there and made movies, regardless of the budget, the filming locations or even the actors’ basic ability to speak decipherable English. Lewis was a man who was hell-bent on fulfilling his grandiose visions, and no trifling matters like “a lack of equipment” or “the ability to pay the cast” was going to stop him, either.

Lewis was really the reverse hipster. Instead of reveling in the dull irony of modern existence and worshipping effortlessness as virtue, he was dedicated to getting something out there, no matter the costs or production limitations. The artistes out there can spend three months trying to get the lighting on their abstract macaroni noodle portraits against sexism just right, but for a man like Lewis? Life was too short for “perfectionism,” and instead of wallowing in his own idealism as an excuse for never trying, he was more than content pushing out less-than-high-quality works if it meant being able to move on to the next even better idea. The man was an absolute degenerate cinema (and later, direct marketing) machine, pushing out material like a diarrhetic goose. Sure, nothing he produced can rightly be considered a cinema masterpiece, but then again, Lewis wasn’t in the cinema business - he was in the movie-making industry. And that, ultimately, is what separates him from other cult auteurs like Ed Wood and Ray Dennis Steckler - he was actually a competent filmmaker.

It’s utterly impossible to watch something like The Gore Gore Girls and Monster A-Go Go and not be entertained. Lewis may not have had the storytelling chops of Kurosawa or Fellini, but when it came to making nudity-filled, psychotonic, hyper-technicolor bloodbaths, his work remains unparalleled. Try as they may, not even the heavy hitters of Italian gore cinema like Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci could successfully replicate that redder-than-red meat and potatoes aesthetics of Lewis’ filmography. Even trash cinema icons like John Waters continue to sing Lewis’ praises - when it comes to nailing the atmosphere of Vietnam era, burlesque and acid grindhouse blood and guts jubilee low culture, nobody has ever been a better curator of the times.

While Lewis may not be the greatest American filmmaker of all-time, he may very well be the most American filmmaker ever. Nowhere else in the world could a man like Lewis - an advertising professor turned B-movie kingpin turned white collar felon turned copywriter extraordinaire - ever possibly blossom. No other culture or society on earth could have laid down the soil from which films like Blood Feast or Color Me Blood Red - those idiosyncratic time capsules/condemnations they are - could have sprouted. Only in America, as boxing promoter Don King oft states, would someone like Herschell Gordon Lewis not only have an opportunity to make such out-there movies, but actually complete them, sell them and make enough money off them to live in relative financial security for the rest of his life.

Many, many moons ago, an interviewer asked Lewis what he wanted his epitaph to read. His response? “He seen somethin’ different. And he done it.”

Indeed, I can’t think of a better way to encapsulate what made the life of this cheesy horror movie director-turned direct marketing guru so noteworthy. He was just a normal - albeit incredibly dedicated - man, who wanted to make movies and even more money. And where he lacked both financial and technical capital, he responded by pumping out a faster glut of “the advertising sells itself” B-movies than anybody else, with an emphasis on the prurient, the icky and the proletariat baiting so keen, one can’t help but consider Lewis a sort of anti-commercial hero - a DuChamp, if you will, who was really, really deft at making no-budget shlockers involving lots of blindingly bright crimson flying all over the place.

Or as the man himself so elegantly put it?

“History books will point out Columbus as the person who made the Americas available for exploitation,” Lewis once remarked. “I guess I can make the same kind of ridiculous claim.”

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A Petition to Change the Name of the Atlanta Braves…

…to pay respects to Cobb County’s most outstanding citizen.

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

In case you haven’t heard, the Braves’ 2016 season will be their last playing in Atlanta. Come Opening Day 2017, the National League squad will begin play at SunTrust Park in Cumberland, Ga., which technically, is an unincorporated part of neighboring Cobb County.

Ever since the announcement was made in 2013, controversy has swirled around the move. The $1.1 billion stadium – anchored by one of those trendy, ultra-modern mixed-use entertainment district developments – will cost Cobb County citizens and businesses almost $400 million. Concerns abound regarding the viability of transportation to and from the stadium, which is being constructed right next to one of the busiest Interstate junctions in the metro Atlanta area. Some have even accused the organization of engaging in “white flight” to attract more suburban – read: upscale Caucasians who are too afraid to drive to south Atlanta – to games.

Alas, while those disputes are likely to continue long after the Braves unpack their bags in Cobb County, an entirely different matter concerning the team’s migration remains sadly unmentioned.

Clearly, Cobb County has a very different culture and history than Atlanta. Seeing as how Cobb taxpayers will be splitting almost half the cost of the team’s relocation, I believe it is more than fair that – due to their financial contributions – they should be in charge of renaming the team, as well.

Of course, the geographical aspect is hardly worth debating. Yes, the team very much should be called The Cobb County Braves – reflecting the nearly million citizen strong taxpayer base, whose ranks swell from the ever-gentrifying streets of Marietta to the protected RINO habitat of Kennesaw (complete with its unabashed pedophile ex-mayor) to the starving Hispanic populace of Smyrna to the largely African-American working class purgatory of Austell to the meth-tastic environs of Acworth. But why stop there? If Cobbers are going to foot the bill for the pro sports team, shouldn’t they be in charge of said team’s nickname as well?

Make no mistakes, calling a team “the Braves” is – at best – kitschy cultural appropriation and – at worst – racist stereotyping. I mean, using a logo colloquially referred to as “the screaming savage,” in the year 2016? Get out of here with that, as the kids today call it, “noise.”

So, what can the team be rechristened as that reflects the rich, noble tradition of Cobb County that doesn’t also bring to mind the Trail of Tears and one of the more disappointing tracks off Arabia Mountain?

Oh, I think we ALL know that one thing – and one thing ONLY – personifies everything that makes Cobb County great. And that thing, of course, is the Big Boss Man.

Of course, the Big Boss Man – without question the most beloved Cobb Countian of all-time – has been known by several monikers over the years. The Guardian Angel. Big Bubba Rogers. For a while, he was even referred to by the namesake “Ray Traylor,” even though I’m pretty sure his actual birth name was Big B. Man. As a humble, dedicated jailor in Cobb County, a young Boss Man was responsible for virtually stamping out crime in Cobb County altogether in the early to mid-1980s. While muggings and drug running and all sorts of other lascivious behaviors ran rampant in Atlanta, Cobb’s homicide, larceny and sexual assault rates were among the lowest in the nation, all thanks to Boss Man’s tough-yet-compassionate stance on law enforcement.  “If you ever take a trip down to Cobb County, Georgia,” an old folk song declared, “you better read the signs, respect the law and order or you’ll be serving hard time.” Indeed, many believe it was Boss Man himself who is solely responsible for the long-held public safety aphorism, “for criminals, C.O.B.B. stands for ‘count on being busted.’”

By the late 1980s, however, the Big Boss Man – perhaps inspired by the crack cocaine epidemic engulfing the U.S. at the time – decided that his pro-civility message needed to find a national – nay, a global audience. Thus, he decided to join the world’s premier professional wrestling organization to extol the virtues of the law-abiding lifestyle – primarily, by handcuffing people and hitting them over the head with a billy club when the referee’s back was turned.

To help promote racial harmony, he aligned himself with both African-American entrepreneur (and self-professed “jive soul bro”) Slick and African nationalist Akeem – who, ironically, was a reformed motorcycle gang member from Louisiana. Who was also a Caucasian.

Just as tough on white collar crime as he was street crime, Boss Man soon turned his eyes towards combatting corrupt police officials in Canada and tax fraud in the accounting business. Having done his part to successfully rehabilitate violent criminals (largely via a series of “night stick on a pole” matches), Boss Man then ventured to the nation’s second largest wrestling operation, where he infiltrated a Satanic cult and briefly waged war against a violent insurgent group known for repeated gang assaults and vandalism.

After several years working in private security, Boss Man officially retired from the business in 2004. Unfortunately, his foray into politics was short-lived, as his bid for Paulding County Commission Chairman was sunk amid allegations that he once fed a mentally ill man his own pet Chihuahua and engaged in grave robbing, although local media conveniently left out how he also defeated Freddy Krueger during the same timeframe.

Tragically, Boss Man died in Sept. 2004. Equally tragic, Cobb County never formally celebrated the life and legacy of its favorite son, which makes the Braves’ migration the perfect opportunity to right the wrongs of yesteryear.

An inductee into the 2016 WWE Hall of Fame class, I believe Boss Man and the surviving Boss Man family deserves similar recognition from the Cobb County community on this, our twelfth Bossman-less year.

Rechristening the Atlanta Braves as the Cobb County Bossmen doesn’t just make sense, it’s the only thing that makes sense. In addition to the new moniker, the team’s uniforms can also be tweaked to reflect the Boss Man’s iconic azure regalia. The foam tomahawks can be replaced by foam truncheons. Instead of imitating the old Florida State war cry, the Bossmen faithful can instead imitate the sirens of a squalling police car. The entire park can be nicknamed “The Big House,” and the snack bar nomenclature writes itself: sidewalk slam sandwiches, night club nachos and, of course, the house specialty, the Big Boss Burrito, made fresh to (law) and order.

Participatory politics are often laborious and unnecessary squanderings of valuable time and effort, but for once, the democratic process may indeed result in something worthwhile. Over at the official White House petition page, I have created an online requisition for Cobb Countians – as well as those from afar who believe in the values and ideals promoted by the Boss Man – to formally ask President Barack H. Obama to change the name of the Atlanta Braves to the Cobb County Bossmen by executive order. Or any other kind of order, but come on, it’s just easier that way.

150 signatures are required before the petition becomes available on the site's front page. If the petition can gather 100,000 signatures before April 8, the White House will issue a direct statement regarding the renaming proposition. 

Please consider joining me in my efforts to formally recognize not just one of the greatest men to ever call metro Atlanta home, but indeed, ensure that future generations – by proxy of a Major League Baseball moniker – never forget the impact and valor of one Big Boss Man.

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B-MOVIE REVIEW: “Million Dollar Mystery” (1987)

Have you ever wondered just how good a movie made by a trash bag manufacturer can be? Well … wonder no more, fellas. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Back in the 1980s -- no matter how stupid the premise -- it seemed like film studios had a hard time saying “no” to any movie script. This, of course, is the same decade that gave us “Megaforce,” “Leonard Part 6” and a Superman movie featuring both a robot devil woman and Richard Pryor visibly high on cocaine in every scene. Apparently, the producers figured there was no such thing as “too much” for movie-going masses in Reagan’s America. That philosophy, along with the aforementioned cocaine, explains how we wound up with big budget adaptations of both “Howard the Duck” and the motherfucking “Garbage Pail Kids,” I’d presume.

Which brings us to a guy by the name of Dino De Laurentiis. One of the most iconic producers in the history of Hollywood, he began his career by helping import world cinema classics by the likes of Fellini, Mario Bava and King Vidor to the U.S. Then, he just went off the deep end in the 1970s, alternately producing some really great flicks (like “Serpico,” “The Serpent’s Egg” and the first “Death Wish” flick) along with some really misguided, bloated misfires (most notably the 1976 “King Kong” remake, but also, the notorious slave drama “Mandingo.”) By the early 1980s, he was stuck producing mostly B-level genre-fare, which included some respectable offerings (“Halloween II” and the first “Conan” movie) and an absolute shit-ton of crappy Stephen King adaptations.

It can be argued that Dino hit his career nadir in 1987, when his distributing company released one of the absolute weirdest concept movies of the decade … and considering the out-there shit that DID prove lucrative at the box office in the ‘80s, that’s saying something.

At heart, “Million Dollar Mystery” is little more than a brazen rip-off of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World,” only without the appeal of a star-studded cast. But much more than that, it’s one of the most mystifyingly bad marketing ploys in mainstream film history. You see, the title “Million Dollar Mystery” is no joke -- the producers of the film actually DID offer $1 million to viewers who could solve a puzzle posed at the end of the movie. And helping put up the financing for the flick -- and with a premise like that, who wouldn’t? -- was the Glad trash bag company. So, yes, this is a film that LITERALLY had rubbish built into its celluloid.

So, yeah, it's pretty much the exact same thing as "Fury Road."

The film begins with Tom Bosley (when THAT’S the biggest name in the cast, you know you’re working with scant materials) hiding out in a safe-house, stuffing wads and wads of cash into … you guessed it, Glad trash bags. After that, he hightails it to a hole-in-the-wall diner, which just so happens to be populated by the following: an angry family complete with a dad with a mullet haircut, a rock and roll dude and his blonde bimbo harem, a just-married nerd couple that want to bone bad (the dude is played by the guy who voiced Mandark on “Dexter’s Laboratory”) and an old cowboy fellow and his … sister? Wife? Girlfriend? Daughter? Honestly, I‘m not sure what the relationship there is supposed to be. Anyhoo, Bosley flirts with the ginger waitress for a bit, then he suffers a heart attack and keels over. However, before he punches his ticket to that great Mattress Firm in the sky, he lets all of the patrons know that he’s scattered $4 million in cash throughout this great county o’ ours. And the first cool million? Apparently, it’s located somewhere in “the city of the bridge.”

Oh, by the way, Tom Bosley is actually a bit of stunt casting here, since he portrayed a character known as “The Man From Glad” in a series of old school trash bag commercials. Forget being remembered as Howard Cunningham or a Tony Award winning stage actor -- this dude will forever be linked to plastic sanitation consumer goods in my mind.

From there, we’re introduced to the tertiary members of the cast. There’s a duo of bumbling federal investigators hot on the trail of Bosley’s loot and a Vietnam veteran commando-for-hire named Buzzard. Following a way-too-long sequence in which a pick-up truck rolls down a plateau, the family from earlier drives their station wagon into a retention pond … which nearby lab techs note is actually a toxic waste pool. As their Volvo disintegrates in the caustic chemical (apparently, it can depressurize metal but doesn‘t do shit to human skin tissue),  one of the lab workers decides to drink the stuff, and automatically turns retarded. Interestingly enough, the character is referred to as “the toxic werewolf” in the film’s closing credits.

After that, the rocker dude and his comely lasses get arrested, while the family sans a ride gets a lift from an RV commandeered by two pro wrestlers pretending to be evil Ruskies and Iranian sympathizers (an oblique nod to the infamous Iron Sheik/Hacksaw Jim Duggan weed incident, perhaps?) After that, the extremely nerdy (and horny) couple try to make the sign of the three-legged Armenian mud weasel, but since they can’t figure out how a Murphy bed works, they just run around in fast-forward mode for a few minutes. In the pokey, the rock and roller dude and his lady pals trick an officer into doing a series of horrific impersonations (complete with arguably the worst Woody Allen imitation you’ve ever heard) so they can escape.

Strangely enough, all of the treasure seekers wind up at the secret location (a pipe bridge out in the desert) at the same time. The clues are written on a few eggs, but since one of the eggs got dropped, the hunters are left with an incomplete puzzle piece. After nearly plummeting to his death, one of the treasure chasers notices something wedged inside an actual pipe near the bridge. As it turns out, it’s a briefcase filled with one million dollars! But, uh, a strong wind picks up, and all of the cash flies off into a ravine. Thankfully, there is a SECOND one million dollar briefcase located elsewhere, an enigmatic clue in the briefcase reminds us.

It's a LOT queasier when you realize a stunt like this KILLED
one of the actors in the movie.

From there, its subplot city. The federal investigators show up and mill about for awhile, then the local
police arrive and an overweight female cop gets stuck in a hole in the bridge because, shit, that’s funny. A woman being a police officer … har-har! We meet a new character -- a private investigator -- whose scenes are filmed in a black and white filter. Eventually, he sets his own office on fire because he is a nitwit … such highbrow humor, I know.

So, Buzzard attempts to hotwire a truck, can’t, and decides to jack a fire truck instead. The family steals a rental car (which, for some reason, speaks Spanish) and their kids decide to team up with the pro ‘rasslers following a hammy, forced anti-materialist spiel (played entirely for laughs, of course.) The rock and roller’s blondes pull the old “American Graffiti” trick on a few squad cars, and a bunch of Boy Scouts watch the nerd couple bump uglies in the bushes. The blondes, some old fellows and the now corrupted local po-po decide to join forces, and they arrive at the second hidden money site -- a random houseboat -- just in time to watch all the money get chewed up in a paper shredder. There’s also a great bit with the money-hunters discovering the loot inside a fish tank. How’d they manage to keep the bills from getting soggy, you may be wondering? Well, you will never have to worry about the money you stole from the U.S. government ever getting damp when you stow it away in aquarium displays, thanks to the magic of Glad-Lock trash bags.

But wouldn’t you goddamn know it, there just so happens to be a THIRD million dollar briefcase, hidden somewhere in the London Bridge (which is actually in Arizona, in case you didn’t know.) Next up, we see the federal investigators attempt to jack civilian aircraft (the joke is, everybody onboard has a gun and is secretly part of some sting operation), and the cops decide to steal a tour bus filled with Asians (although I spotted a couple of Italians near the back of the Greyhound.) Some motorbikes and even a hot air balloon gets stolen, while the nerds engage in more horny shenanigans. Following a long motorcycle chase in which soccer balls play a prominent role, the little kid discovers some mysterious markings on the bridge, revealing the location of the third briefcase. Of course, the hot air balloon owner decides to yank  the money away from him, and in his getaway, he accidentally unlatches the briefcase and watches all of his dough flutter away. The impersonator cop then imitates Bill Cosby (it’s every bit as awful as you’d imagine it to be) and all of the money-seekers start swimming after a boat that floats by called “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Then, the federal agents speak DIRECTLY to the audience, letting them know there’s one more million dollar briefcase out there. As the credits roll, they talk about Styrofoam ice chests and cherries -- completely worthless banter, or subtle clues about the location of the hidden million? As it turns out … yeah, it’s actually just worthless banter.

According to the Internet, the unquestionable repository of knowledge that it is, the theatrical version of the film actually had a completely different end credits sequence, in which the federal investigators gave out clues pertinent to the location of the real-world hidden loot. As it turns out, the million dollar prize was hidden inside the bridge of the Statue of Liberty’s nose -- as determined by some dame out in Bakersfield, who was then given pretty much the film’s entire box office take as part of the contest/marketing stunt. On a side note, some theaters supposedly handed out a couple of mock, promotional dollars for the film, featuring Dino’s mug in lieu of a deceased president or Benny Franklin. My goodness, the absurd amount of actual money I’d pay to get one of those on my bookcase.

Despite producing the second and third “Evil Dead” movies, Dino never really had another “hit” movie after “Million Dollar Mystery.” During the ‘90s, he was relegated to making stuff like “Rumplestiltskin” and the ironically titled “Unforgettable,” and it really wasn’t until the early 2000s, when his production company took over the reins of the Hannibal franchise, that it seemed like Dino’s fortunes were reversing. And then, he dropped dead in 2010.

Unsurprisingly, the film was a critical and financial flop. Despite taking $10 million to make, the film barely recouped a million in ticket sales; this more or less ended the career of director Richard Fleischer, whose resume up to that point -- having directed “Fantastic Voyage” and “Soylent Green,” among other works -- was very impressive. Even worse, this movie KILLED Dar Robinson, the man universally recognized as one of the greatest stuntmen in Hollywood history. Considering the ungodly damage this movie wreaked (for heaven’s sake, even the Glad brand itself got bought out shortly after the film’s release!) maybe we ought to start referencing it as “The Conqueror” of the ‘80s, no?

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Let’s Face It: Kurt Cobain Sucked.

Two decades after the Nirvana front man’s self-administered demise, we reflect upon the grunge icon’s hallowed legacy. And as it turns out, he probably doesn’t deserve any of the reverence. 

It’s an illogical statement, I know, but I’ll say it anyway: I’ve more or less always been a pretty big fan of Nirvana, but at the same time, I’ve always detested Kurt Cobain.

Yes, as a ‘90s child, I’ve always fostered a certain affinity towards the “Nirvana sound,” if you will, but I never really bought into Kurt’s retroactive deification, either. From a musical standpoint, Kurt was clearly the least talented of his bandmates, and his faux-philosophical, anti-Guns N Roses, new-new-wave, ultra-liberal shtick more or less opened the floodgates for a million, billion wusses like Trent Reznor and that crybaby from Radiohead to make miserable, woe-is-me alternative the default setting for mainstream rock to this day.

Here, on the 20th anniversary of Cobain’s suicide -- or, depending on how much of a crackpot you are, the date Courtney Love either killed her husband or hired somebody (but not that dude from The Mentors, of course) to do it for her -- I believe it’s a most opportune time to reflect on just how overrated Kurt Cobain was, on every conceivable level.

First and foremost; Kurt Cobain was a shitty guitar player, a fact that doesn’t keep him from routinely being ranked on top 100 all time greatest guitarist lists, you know, just ‘cause. With a voice that sounded like dual recordings of Edward Furlong’s screaming outtakes from “Terminator 2" and Pepe Le Pew doing a drunken karaoke ballad, Kurt’s “signature” singing style was similarly a less-than-impressive display. It may not have been as imitated as the “Vedder Voice,” but seeing as how easily fourth-rate alt rock acts like Seether and Puddle of Mudd were able to faithfully recreate that soulful Cobain howl, I think it’s safe to say we weren’t dealing with an all-time crooning legend, either.

As for Cobain’s music, I think the entire Nirvana discography is horrendously overrated. Cobain himself absolutely hated “Nevermind” and “In Utero,” considering the first to be an overproduced turd and the second a reluctant compromise between him and the record company. All in all, the band was responsible for perhaps only one and half truly decent albums -- the beautifully unpolished “Bleach” from 1989 (a grimy, under-produced classic that stands out as the band’s one truly uncompromised release) and the glorified B-side collection, “Incesticide” -- and before you give that one too much credit, just recall that half that album more or less consists of cover tunes, which is also a criticism you can lob at the band’s much revered “Unplugged” set, too.

For a composer that’s frequently hailed as the voice of a generation, Kurt’s lyrics were suspiciously cryptic, disjointed and largely apolitical. Whereas Bob Dylan at least referenced social issues in his “decades-defining” songs, Cobain’s lyrics were really just a grab-bag of fragmented poetry pieces, seemingly tossed together at random. In fact, he actually said that’s how he wrote his songs, on numerous occasions. For an alleged voice of an entire decade, old Kurt’s music had astoundingly little to say about anything at all.

As far as the much-acclaimed “Nirvana sound,” by now, we all know it was mostly just a restructuring of classic rock tunes -- “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is basically just “Louie, Louie” and “More than A Feeling,” only played faster and shittier, while even early Nirvana tracks “Spank-Thru” convey a certain Credence Clearwater Revival-esque vibrato. Cobain’s adulation/imitation of the Pixies is well-documented, so there’s really no need to drudge up how much of the Nirvana discography is derived from “Surfer Rosa” and “Doolittle.” However, I’ve always thought the Nirvana’s “iconic” sound was actually more of a rip-off of Steve Albini’s post-punk outfit Big Black -- just take out the synth and amp up the distortion, and you’ve more or less got “Nirvana” before there was a “Nirvana.”

And of course, how could I talk about Kurt Cobain’s revolutionary “creativity” without talking about the second-most iconic track off  “Nevermind?” A song, by the way, that is a direct rip-off of the Killing Joke song “Eighties,” which itself is a rip-off of The Damned’s “Life Goes On.”

Compared to the glut of Seattle-area bands, I still find it weird that Nirvana, out of the deluge of groups, is the one that gets the most credit for kicking off “The Grunge Revolution.” Yeah, “Nevermind” is said to have been the turning point, but a lot of people tend to forget that both Soundgarden and Alice in Chains’ big mainstream breakthroughs were released long before Nirvana’s 1991 opus. And any number of bands -- from The Melvins to Green River to Mother Love Bone -- could rightly lay claim to pioneering the “grunge movement,” years before Nirvana was even a fully-formed idea in Kurt Cobain’s noggin. The theory I’ve developed over the years was that the Grunge Takeover had always been something of a ploy by David Geffen and his kindred to supplant the dried-out hair rock movement, and Nirvana was just the right act at the right time to get all of the engineered publicity to turn the tide; with enough mass marketing and enough sound mixing, really ANY of the Seattle area bands could have had a “Nevermind” sized breakthrough. Clearly, Cobain’s ascension as pop icon had a whole hell of a lot more to do with luck than it did talent...and most certainly, ambition.

And what about Kurt Cobain, the individual human being? Well, for starters, he was bold-faced hypocrite, the kind of soul that liked to champion himself as a defender of women’s rights when he himself admitted to once molesting a developmentally disabled girl in his youth. His notebooks were filled with hateful diatribes against “jocks,” decrying their meat-eating dispositions, when Kurt was responsible for intentionally killing cat when he was a kid. He routinely mocked the macho excesses of the hair metal movement, even though he was pumping lethal drugs into his veins habitually and publicly priding himself on his own sexual conquests, too. And the ultimate tragicomic punch line to the Cobain life story? After literally making a fortune regurgitating the same-old, same-old “my parents are sell-outs and the break-up of our family royally screwed me up” drivel, he then proceeded to become a sell-out himself who voluntarily decided to break up his own family by blowing his brains out.

A lot of people like to speculate how Cobain’s music would’ve progressed had he not played the shotgun clarinet that fateful spring morning in King County. Odds are, he probably would’ve progressed down the Metallica path, abandoning the tried-and-true Nirvana sound for something a little more radio-friendly. Legend has it that the never to be “last” Nirvana album was going to be a stripped down, mostly acoustic, “Automatic For the People”-inspired detour, which is exactly the kind of thing you hear before a band starts playing half-hearted, bland-ass music that clearly indicates the outfit’s lack of good ideas anymore. The “In Utero” studio follow-up, as such, would have likely been Nirvana’s “Monster” -- a critical flop that signified the slow, boring downfall of the formerly influential and inspiring.

Of course, that scenario skirts perhaps the most important aspect of who and what Kurt Cobain was, and that was a sad-sack junkie. In reality, any fantasizing about what Cobain would be up to “today” is just pointless, since had Cobain not offed himself when he offed himself, he no doubt would’ve been dead before he turned 40, anyway. Perhaps the allure of Cobain is that he had the good sense to kill himself at a time when it was still fashionable and attractive -- going down at one’s peak is a hallmark of the legends, while disappearing into a decade of drug dependency, only to resurface as a bloated, O.D.’d corpse five years after last releasing an album just makes you Layne Staley.

What is Cobain’s lasting legacy, ultimately? Well, for one thing, he made suicide and flannel shirts fashionable -- at least one of which is still considered en vogue at the moment. And his stardom went a pretty long way in “normalizing” heroin addiction as a common occupational trait among rock stars. Musically, he’s probably the most culpable party responsible for the rock and roll industry’s shift away from good-time, nostalgic party and driving music to music more befitting anti-depressant-fed teens that paint their nails black and cut themselves on the third floor of their suburban mansions. Yes, he was responsible for eliminating the grandiose vapidity of Guns N Roses from the national consciousness, but nobody really brings up the fact that all Nirvana really did was replace it with a more nihilistic form of grandiose vapidity.

At the end of the day, though, I suppose Nirvana had some good songs, and if given the option of listening to a decade of bands that sounded like Silverchair and Oasis or a decade of bands that sounded like Trixter and Firehouse, well, shit, the answer ought to be downright obvious. But all of this retroactive mourning and retroactive reverence -- now stemming from youths who weren’t even born when Cobain made the choice to end his own life -- that he gets?

Well, that’s just stupid, and unfortunately, contagious.

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