Showing posts with label weirdos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weirdos. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Same thing, different particulars

Baton Rouge (La.) State-Times, Sept. 18, 1969

I like to look through old newspapers, which to me is a much cheaper way of revisiting my long-lost youth than combing my remaining hair over the bald spot, buying a flashy convertible and having an affair with a nearsighted woman much younger than myself.

Which brings us to the nearsighted, much-younger woman part.

I remember what a media sensation it was when arch pop-culture weirdo Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki . . . on The Tonight Show.


MISS VICKI, otherwise known as Victoria Budinger (or "the pretty New Jersey teenager"), was 17. Tiny Tim, otherwise known as Herbert Khaury, was 37, but everybody thought he was a decade older. In 1969, "Me Too" was more like "Me Can!"

As I said, it was a media sensation.

At this juncture, your woke-ass, under-50 self might be thinking "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Exactly.

You see, we westerners -- particularly we Americans -- always have been all about the weird shit. 1969's "Isn't that cute? Kinda weird, but cute" has become 2019's "Lock him up and cut his nuts off! Then sue!"

On the other hand, we fail to bat an eyelid at believing there are something like 73 genders today, that "men" can have babies and that we all must state our preferred pronouns. (Mine is "My Lord and Master / My Lord and Master." If you don't think that's an actual pronoun, you are a hater, and you're making me feel threatened.)

AMID ALL the suckage of middle age and aging, the one benefit is having developed (at least one hopes) a finely tuned bullshit detector and an appreciation for the waves of bat-shit crazy that periodically roll through -- and roil -- what's left of our society. So, if you're just floating through postmodern America right now, and you think everything looks pretty normal to you, boy is your old self gonna be embarrassed by your young self in about 50 years.

Assuming, of course, we survive the absurdity that is President Donald Trump. That right there is a big-ass assumption, so we'll see.

Friday, April 27, 2018

We dropped some brown acid, man

"To get back to the warning that I have received -- you may take it with however many grains of salt you wish -- that the brown acid that has been circulating around us is not, specifically, too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that. Of course, it's your own trip, so be my guest. But please be advised that there is a warning on that one, OK?"
-- Chip Monck
Master of ceremonies,
Woodstock, 1969

Many odd and sometimes disturbing things about the 1960s and '70s, for those of us who came of age during those decades, can be explained or put into context merely by saying "It was the (fill in the blank)."

If that explanation does not suffice, blame the brown acid, man.

As we consider the person and "music" career of the late Tiny Tim -- seen here in a record-label ad from the June 8, 1968, edition of Billboard magazine -- I'm going straight to the brown-acid excuse.

Dude. Tiny Tim, born Herbert Buckingham Khaury in 1932, was the brown acid. Listening to Tiny Tim on your AM or FM radio . . . watching him on your 21-inch Magnavox . . . it was like being in the presence of an off-key castrato undergoing electroshock treatment.

Boy howdy.


MY UNFORTUNATE double- and triple-knit sartorial choices from the end of 1969 until marrying into a wardrobe-control regimen in 1983? "It was the '70s."

That Tiny Tim sold records and was all over network television and the radio, too? "The brown acid that had been circulating around us was not, specifically, too good."


Seriously. It was some bad shit, man.


You bet your sweet bippy, it was.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

1 Adam-12, 1 Adam-12 . . . chlorine leak,
Hyatt Hotel. See the giant raccoon. Code 2


When one is confronted with somebody releasing chlorine gas at a furry convention in Chicago, you can try to act like this isn't seriously, mind-blowingly absurd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom
You can try to pretend this is just another, unexceptional entrée in our American smorgasbord of criminal "mass incidents."

You can try to suppress that regressive, normal-normative little voice tormenting your modern, enlightened mind, saying "This is some seriously weird s***, dude!"
 

You can click the heels of your ruby slippers together three times, repeating "It's just another valid lifestyle choice! (click) It's just another valid lifestyle choice! (click) It's just another valid lifestyle choice! (click)"

Yes, you can try to pretend that bat-s*** crazy ain't crazy at all.

You can try.


OR . . . you can do what MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski did Monday morning on Morning Joe . . . as Joe Scarborough sat next to her giggling into his hand. And in doing so, she found that she had become -- for one day, at least -- the voice of a nation.

It's too bad that "I RUN SCREAMING INTO THE NIGHT WITH MIKA" is too long to put on a bumper sticker. On the other hand, "I GIGGLE WITH JOE" isn't.

It's also too bad that whoever put the chlorine powder in a stairwell at the furries' Hyatt convention site just couldn't see the fuzzy, cuddly humor in it all. Or run screaming into the night. One or the other.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Beer may be hazardous to your manhood


I could be wrong (though I really doubt it), but I think there's a metaphor for contemporary American society squirming around somewhere in this Ohio story.

Also everywhere in this story is a sharp sympathy pain down the groin of every living man . . . and probably a few dead ones, too.

Brace yourselves and read on. Or not.
Lorain Police say a homeless man was Life Flighted to the hospital after cutting off his penis.

Cops were called to the area of East 21st Street and Access Road Tuesday around noon after an unauthorized man was seen on CSX Railroad property.

Officers found the man with his hands and gym shorts covered in blood. He told officers that he had just cut his penis off. According to the police report, he said he tried to use an old rusty saw, but he used a broke bottle when the saw didn't work.

The man told police that "Busch (beer) made me do it."
YOU KNOW WHAT? I'd love to hear a contemporary Don Draper's sponsor pitch to the Busch beer people with that one stuck in his mind. And close to his heart . . . which you know if you're a Mad Men aficionado.
"Gentlemen, I'll probably never see you again, so I have to tell you something.
"I didn't enjoy Busch beer on a sun-splashed sandy beach with a blonde on each arm. That's what every American man would like to think of whenever he pops the top on a cold Busch. Get it? (leer) No, the truth is, I grew up in a whorehouse in Pennsylvania, and I was raised by a stepmother who didn't want me. 

"After I'd go through the pockets of johns while the whore were otherwise, shall we say 'entertaining' them, the girls would pay me off with a cold Busch beer. And I savored every golden drop of that cheap-ass beer because, gentlemen, your beer was the only thing that could kill enough of my brain cells -- dull enough of the psychic pain -- so I could somehow cope with growing up in a whorehouse with a stepmomma who couldn't care less if you lived or died, which, let me tell you, is kind of like cutting your own tallywhacker off with a busted beer bottle. Probably an old Miller High Life bottle. 

"Frankly, if I had my way, I'd tell you not to advertise your beer at all. Because if Busch beer is good enough to kill the pain of growing up in a whorehouse . . . if it's good enough to anesthetize you while you cut off your own tallywhacker, it will sell itself with no help from Sterling Cooper and Partners. 

"Gentlemen, thank you for your time. I'm going around the corner to get loaded."

Monday, April 08, 2013

Keep Lincoln weird


Sometimes, when you go to a ballgame, the least interesting thing is the ballgame -- am I right?

Never is this more true than a spring football game. One, you know your team is gonna win. Two, you're not gonna see much of the playbook.

Think of it this way: You go to Baskin-Robbins, only to find the 31 flavors have been reduced to chocolate, vanilla and strawberry . . . but you can get strawberry for only the first 30 seconds after you walk in the door.

That's your typical college spring scrimmage.

Saturday at Nebraska's spring game, you had little Jack Hoffman's touchdown run for the ages, and then. . . . Exactly.

So I was thanking God that at least He showed us the tender mercy of putting our state university in Lincoln, because them people there just ain't right. And when people just ain't right, things are about to get interesting.

Take the picture above, for example. Every coffee shop in the world has a wall o' fliers. Many people overlook walls o' fliers like this one at the Scooters in downtown Lincoln.

But this is Lincoln, and that would be a mistake.


I MEAN, the Kicker Country Stampede in Manhattan, Kan., or the Widespread Panic concert at the Pinewood Bowl might not be everybody's cup o' joe. People in Lincoln, a progressive and diverse state capital and college town, understand this. That's why Christopher H. Merritt of our fair capital city invites you to drop by his April 24 arraignment in Lancaster County District Court.

If we're lucky, there will be a little contempt-of-court action. If we're really lucky, maybe somebody'll get tazed, bro.

Let's just hope Mr. Merritt doesn't decide to play it like George Jones and not show up at all. Alternatively, though, let's do hope he plays it like George Jones and putts into the courtroom on a lawn tractor.



OK, I JUST as well confess that I'm all about the Husker-striped overalls.  I want me some scarlet-and-cream striped overalls.

But you can overdo it . . . or underdo it, as the case may be. I only wish that the kid had a really stupid tattoo on his chest or, at a minimum, a little hair. Maybe he should drink a little of my coffee -- that would help.



YOU WANT PROOF that this country is is dire need of a dictatorship of the proletariat, or at least a little Fabian socialism? Dude's probably only making minimum wage to wear a giant weenie on his head.

The running-dog bourgeois establishment clearly has gone too far this time.

Power to the people now! And let it begin in Memorial Stadium.



ON THE other hand, sometimes the people are freakin' idiots. Giving them too much power might not be the best idea.

I'm not sure what's worse here, the sentiment behind "I'd Rather Have A Lesbian Sister Then Be A Hawkeye Fan" or the violence done to the king's English. I am assuming that the dude is linguistically challenged and thinks that having a lesbian sister is a fate worse than death -- but better than being an Iowa fan.

Of course, it is possible that the shirt means what it says, and Joe Football really, really wants a lesbian sister and swings both ways when it comes to college athletics. After all, this is Lincoln, where all things not only are possible but, indeed, probable.



FINALLY, after the spring game, we headed to the outskirts of town and Pioneers Park. Saw a herd of buffalo . . . and this.

Luke A. Heritage hearts Jennifer. That's very sweet, and I'm sure Jenny is a lucky gal.

Now let's hope some of her luck rubs off on the lovestruck Luke. Otherwise, he's totally going to get his identity stolen. But at least he won't be able to blame me.

Because being from Omaha has its advantages.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Shine + meth = this


Back when I was a little bitty boy down on the bayou, my daddy gave me some advice I've always tried to live by, lo, these many years.

"Son," he says to me -- that's what he always called me, "Son" -- "now don't you go mixin' no corn liquor with no crystal meth." And I remember asking "How come, Daddy?" You know how 4-year-olds are . . . a bottomless font of questions.

Right then, though, Daddy backhanded me right across the chops.

"Because mixin' corn liquor and crystal meth is bad sh*t, that's why!

Message received. 

A lot of folks in Kentucky never got that message, I'm sad to have to tell you. I mean, look at this YouTube video by some poor soul with chemically induced Swiss cheese for brains.

APPARENTLY, he's calling himself the Blue Nation Clown, and given a certain resemblance as noted on the Dr. Saturday blog, if I were he, I'd avoid midnight movies for fear of nervous types with concealed-carry permits. Or, this being the South, steel magnolias who don't need no stinkin' concealed-carry permits to keep "jes' the cutest little .22" in their purses. 

But back to the video . . . ewwwwww. Can you imagine anyone getting into such a state over Kentucky football? Geez, if Kentucky basketball ever starts to stink up Rupp Arena, this guy will be legion.  

And the Dynamic Duo will have their work cut out for them.

Because, son, mixin' corn liquor and crystal meth is bad s***.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Bradypus is a girl's best friend


Show-business people: They ain't like you and me.

No, they're not.

Take Kristen Bell, for example. That is, if you're properly certified to deal with people who are properly certifiable.

"The day of my birthday, we're sitting in the living room and I hear a knock at the door. He says, 'Your present is here. Why don't you grab the dogs and go in the back room?'" Bell tells Ellen DeGeneres on her eponymous talk show (airing Tuesday). "I was immediately overcome and I thought, 'There is a sloth near! There is a sloth here! It's close! It's gonna happen!'"
I MEAN, I'm minding my own business, checking out the latest news on MSNBC's website, and I see the headline "Kristen Bell cries hysterically over sloth gift." What was I supposed to do?

I did what you would do -- I clicked it.

My God, Hollywood people really, really,
really ain't like you and me.
Bell explains: "I didn't know how to process that because my entire life had been waiting for this moment where I would get to interact -- I'm serious! -- with a sloth."
OHMYGAWD! Ohmygawdohmygawdohmygawdohmygawdohmygawd!

Now you know.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

The truth-telling properties of agitprop


When pro-life propagandists seek to condemn Planned Parenthood by tying it to Occupy Wall Street, it says nothing about America's biggest abortion enthusiast and everything about how unserious advocates for "life" have become.

It says everything about how utterly fatuous my side of "the culture war" has become.

For God's sake, you can make a million reasoned, devastating critiques of the philosophy and shady history behind Planned Parenthood, a group founded upon the same principles that gave us Adolf Hitler's "master race" lunacy. Of course,
LifeNews.com did none of that.

Why focus on eugenics, profiting from the misery of disadvantaged women and horny teen-agers and serving as the chief logisticians of America's long march toward Gomorrah when you can slam them for tangentially associating with hippies who allegedly shit in the park.


That's right, Planned Parenthood deserves your opprobrium and outrage because it is trying to latch onto the meme of the moment, Occupy Wall Street. It, in turn, is to be judged by reports that some of its more eccentric enthusiasts . . . are shitting in the park. And by reports that some of its more lewd enthusiasts pleasure themselves.

In the park.


OK, I can see why Planned Parenthood might be all over that last one, but still. . . .


LISTEN, I am a Catholic. Despite the best efforts of some who lead my church, I still believe what it has proclaimed for 2,000 years. Among those sacred proclamations is this one -- all human life is sacred.

All human life must be defended, particularly that of the weakest members of society, and you don't get any more defenseless than a fetus.

Basic biology tells us that life begins at conception.
If not then, when?

Common sense tells us that a Homo sapiens fetus is a human being. And if you don't think a human being is the same thing as a person, you have just entered the philosophical bizarro world of those who would enslave Africans and murder Jews.

So there's that argument to be made against the United States' leading abortion provider -- Planned Parenthood. It's sound, it's simple and it's politically agnostic. It's hard to go wrong condemning an organization for methodically cheapening human life . . . via multiple methods . . . for money.
Including a nice chunk of your tax dollars.

LifeNews.com could have done that Wednesday. Instead, it blogged this:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has become the subject of public skepticism after numerous well-documented cases of anti-Semitism, sexual assault, drug abuse, public masturbation, public defecation, vandalism and violence. Among the movement’s supporters and sponsors are the Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party, Socialist Party USA, Industrial Workers of the World, International Bolshevik Tendency, Marxist Student Union, 9/11 Truth groups and more.

The fact that Planned Parenthood would encourage its supporters to attend a rally “in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the larger Occupy movement” despite the widely known abuses taking place at Occupy sites and ties to such disreputable organizations, just further calls into question Planned Parenthood’s credibility. It’s unconscionable that an organization, which receives millions of American tax dollars each year, would encourage supporters to rally alongside groups like the American Nazi Party.

Additionally alarming is that by participating in a rally in solidarity with the nationwide Occupy movement, Planned Parenthood, which purports to be pro-woman, has turned a blind eye to widespread cases of sexual assault at Occupy sites. On Sunday, a 24-year old Occupy Dallas protester was arrested after sexually assaulting a 14-year old girl.
ADDITIONALLY ALARMING is that some vocal pro-life supporters have been clergymen accused of molesting minors. We always knew those damned pro-lifers were up to no damned good, right?

And commies and Nazis are trying to latch onto something that's much more an abused public's primal scream than it is a political movement?
Who'd have thought such a thing? Let's immediately demand that Occupy Wall Street form a coherent national leadership council for the express purpose of formally disavowing itself from every nut drawn to a protest like a moth is to a light bulb.

Or not.

You see, a pro-life movement far more devoted to Republican politics than redeeming a lost culture -- or saving babies . . . and their mothers -- needs some useful idiots with which to tar Occupy Wall Street.
So it then can tar Planned Parenthood for being a moth. Really?

I mean, really?


Actually, as I read the
LifeNews.com screed, I couldn't quite figure out what the main target was -- Planned Parenthood or Occupy Wall Street itself. That I could ask that question gives me its answer.

Are some pro-lifers a lot more worried about Occupy Wall Street than Planned Parenthood? Is much of the American pro-life movement just whoring itself out to principalities and powers . . . and the GOP?

Does a hippie shit in the park?

Thursday, November 11, 2010

I'll give you my $516.32 worth


I am a late Boomer. Either that means I was born in the year of our Lord 1961, or that I had red beans and rice for supper.

Take your pick.

But as a member of a now-aging generation, one facing the creeping shadows of mortality -- and occasionally the discomfort of gastric distress -- I am increasingly compelled to explain myself, my generation, to those who follow. I suppose this is part of the human need to leave a legacy, to live on in defiance of one's biological expiration date . . . ultimately, to not be forgotten.

To be understood is to, in some way, be less alienated from the rest of humanity. To offer a glimpse into one's thoughts, into one's soul, into one's influences and eccentricities is to seek common ground with generations who find us as mysterious as we find them.

And, yes, The
Gong Show winners above were that Oingo Boingo. Oingo Boingo may be another thing that needs explaining, but not right now.


CHILDREN, look. This is who we were. Deep inside, somewhere, this is who we are.

This is who we were before we began to take ourselves so damned seriously. The sum of what you see here is the totality -- or at least a reasonable facsimile -- of today's molders of the world you know.


HERE WE ARE. Understand us. Come to know us a little better.

And please do not gong us after 20 seconds have elapsed.

If you want to know why the world is the way it is, look at the . . . on second thought, avert your eyes. Ignorance
is bliss.


WE, THE BOOMERS are not just a generation that now worries about heart health and contemplates bladder-control products.

We once were young. We once were 10 feet tall and bulletproof. We once rocked out. We once laughed.

And we once loved weird s***.
Just like you.


TAKE IN what is before you now. Understand that this represents my generation's hopes, fears and insights into the human condition.


UNDERSTAND, too, that we once smoked dope. A lot, a lot of dope.

Which may or may not explain the tea party.

Good night, good luck . . . and I think I'll let Gene Gene the Dancing Machine take us to commercial.

One for Depends, no doubt.

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Weird . . . even for Al


Mix "Weird Al" Yankovic and Japanese television . . . and you might -- might -- have the weirdest thing that happened in 1984.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The accidental Van Gogh

If you're at a party, and you're having a fine time but suddenly get the notion to tell some chick she's fat . . . don't.

It could be that there's a very good reason she packed on a few extra pounds.

Like . . .
SHE EATS GUYS' EARS!

YOU CAN just go ahead and file this story from The Associated Press under "People in Lincoln, Neb., Are Just Weird."

And hungry, obviously:
Police say a 24-year-old Lincoln man is missing a chunk of his right ear that was bitten off by a woman who didn't like being called "fat."

Police spokeswoman Katie Flood says officers were called to a Lincoln hospital around 3:25 a.m. Wednesday to talk to the injured man.

He told them that he'd been bitten at a party.

Flood says officers later learned that the injured man and two others had been arguing with other people at the birthday party. Flood says the man or one of his friends told 21-year-old Anna Godfrey that she was fat.

Officers say Godfrey then tackled the man and bit his ear.

Flood says the ear chunk was not found.
NOW, Miss Godfrey -- who is kinda cute for a girl who absolutely, definitely IS NOT fat, not in any way, shape or form . . . no way, no how, no siree, Bob -- is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and must not be prejudged, etc., and so on (and please don't eat my ear).

But if it does turn out that someone saw her putting a little bit of mustard on a chunk of ear and scarfing it down like a Cheez-Whiz canapé, the young lady has just lost the argument.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Oki-poki my eyes out now!


If you want to see weird s***, one of your Facebook friends -- in my case, a classmate from Baton Rouge High -- sooner or later will come across some prime Weirdus Maximus and throw it up on his "wall."

This has happened to me once again, and I had to, as they say, share.

NORMALLY, I'd advise that this is the kind of thing best viewed with a buzz on. Uh . . . not this one. You couldn't handle this one after having a couple or three.

Trust me.
You may not be able to handle Yogi Oki-Doki and his "farmyard yoga for kiddies" sober as a judge. To tell you the truth, it made me want to go out and commit a crime.

Then again -- and I'm not 100-percent sure about this -- Yogi Oki-Doki just might have during the taping of whatever it is this is. Who knew that FFA stood for Future Freakazoids of America?

BUT IT IS POSSIBLE (also through the magic of YouTube) to turn this cringeworthy display of dexterity into some snarky techno hilarity:


THAT . . . is all.