Pulp Love

Paperbacks Galore has an excellent collection of exploitation paperback covers. I recommend the "Hillbilly" and "Drug-themed" sections.

Product Review: Bud Light Lime

Bud Light Lime, Anheuser-Busch's (InBev?) answer to Miller's Miller Chill is a light beer that "combines the superior drinkability of Bud Light with a splash of 100% lime flavor". I believe it was the Mexicans that put lime in their beer originally to protect said beverage from flies. Although it may have added a nice citron flavoring to the beer I'd like to think it was more to evade flying insects from getting in their bottles. The fad caught on so it seems and many a drunk college student on spring break or perhaps even you (the reader) or I have enjoyed a Corona with a lime or even a lemon wedge lodged in the bottle. Bud Light Lime takes this idea and just mass produces it.

The first sip of Bud Light Lime tastes nothing like the most popular beer in America (Bud Light) for the simple fact that it tastes like pure lime with a splash of Bud Light, but perhaps this is an obvious observation. I did not buy this beer however I tried one at a friends house last evening (you can purchase Bud Light Lime for about $6.99 a six pack at your local grocer) and I have to say I wasn't dissapointed because I wasn't expecting much. Like your Coca-Cola to your Pepsi, your Dorito's to your generic store bought nacho cheese flavored chips there probably isn't much of a difference to Miller's Miller Chill, unless these tiny discrepancies truly bother the consumer. I haven't tried Miller Chill but I like the name more.

Rating: 3.5/10

I have selected this rating based on the taste of the beer, the idea that this is the only thing Anheuser-Busch has produced all year besides being bought out by Belgian InBev company and the pure lack of creativity behind the actual product and it's marketing campaign. I also think the "last" new thing from Budweiser was Budweiser Select; a grown-up, fancy version of regular Budweiser and I've only seen the boys on "Entourage" drinking them in those sneaky product placement parts of the show which happens to be every other scene. This is supposed to be a fun, summertime beer for anyone on a modest budget. Unfortunately in the end it fails to live up to that because although one may be fine, multiple in a row may be a little daunting.

That's Hot

I think Paris Hilton is great.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Fashioning Hatestyle

Aryan Outfitters by Anthony Karen

That Crap Danny Listens To

What was the number one song on your birthday? You can find out here. Mine was "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince & the Revolution from the motion picture soundtrack to the movie Purple Rain. Do I remember this? Of course not.


"Prince is lame," cried the world when I was growing up and I believed it. Perhaps he was everywhere in 1984, but by the early '90s when my memory began he was nowhere to be found. I didn't consciously listen to a Prince song again until freshman year in college.

Now I listen to a Prince song nearly every day.

"Prince is lame?" But we were perfect together. As an infant did I subconsciously absorb the then ubiquitous Purple Rain soundtrack over FM radio, only to have it repressed during my childhood?

Innocent unconscious > repression > rediscovery > guilty pleasure > unrepentant conscious celebration.

A few years later I discovered that Jonathem Lethem's Tourettic private eye, Lionel Essrog, was a kindred spirit. He hears "Kiss" on the radio for the first time:

... twitching and throbbing within obsessively delineated bounds, alternately silent and plosive. It so pulsed with Tourettic energies that I could surrender to its tormented, squeaky beat and let my syndrome live outside my brain for once, live in the air instead.
"Turn that shit down," Minna said.
"I like it," I said.
"That's that crap Danny listens to," said Minna. Danny was code for too black.

Too black but too powerful to be ignored and Lionel tracks the record down. His reaction to what he finds makes perfect sense to me:

Prince's music calmed me as much as masturbation or a cheeseburger. When I listened to him I was exempt from my symptoms. So I began collecting his records, especially those elaborated and frenetic remixes tucked away on the CD singles. The way he worried forty-five minutes of variations out of a lone musical or verbal phrase is, as far as I know, the nearest thing in art to my condition.

Faced with the absurdity of rational life in the modern world? Let's go crazy indeed. Zizek must have had Prince in mind when he advised us to enjoy our symptoms. Simultaneously unrepentant and devout, there is no line between prayer and orgasm. Horror movie screams live side by side with trite romantic couplets; wanton dominatrices masturbate in public, luring unsuspecting innocents back to their castle for a night of mind blowing pleasure; the drives and desires are looped ad infinitum, endless variations on endless themes.

A throbbing, twitching world, exulting in exhaustive repetition. Nothing is complicated.

One week later, "I Just Called to Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder was number one ...

Artists Are Pussys

Man On Wire Trailer

The trailer speaks for itself

____ Is Dead

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

According to occasionally accurate pre-production details on The Internet Movie Database it seems Martin Scorsese's next big biopic will focus on a young pre-presidential Teddy Roosevelt. The film, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is set to star non-other than his new best friend and De Niro replacement, Leonardo DiCaprio as a youthful Roosevelt. The source material from the film will be taken entirely from Edmund Morris' original 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the same name. Morris' book is simply fascinating--including journal entries by a nine year old Roosevelt and a glimpse into the pre-pubescent years of a boy fascinated by natural history and a borderline almost unhealthy love for athleticism. Edmund Morris is clearly the foremost expert on the subject of the twenty-sixth President of the United States and has authored two other biographies an other on Roosevelt, Theodore Rex and Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.

The real focal point in this story is young Teddy's relationship with his father Theodore Senior whom he admired greatly. This excerpt taken from an early journal entry by Teddy:
I bit my elder sister's arm. I do not remember biting her arm, but I do remember running down to the yard, perfectly conscious that I had committed a crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, got some dough from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. In a minute or two my father entered from the yard and asked where I was. The warm-hearted Irish cook had a characteristic contempt for "informers," but although she said nothing she compromised between informing and her conscience by casting a look under the table. My father immediately dropped on all fours and darted at me. I feebly heaved the dough at him, and, having the advantage of him because I could stand up under the table, got a fair start for the stairs, but was caught halfway up them. The punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope-and believe- that it did me good.

There is a lot that occurs in this early look at a president from a young child to a man well into his thirties. He falls in love multiple times, graduates from Harvard, and soon takes on many public positions before succeeding President McKinley in 1901.

Some facts about Theodore Roosevelt:
He was the youngest governor of New York
He was an Imperialist
He suffered from extreme asthmatic problems as a young child
He was an avid boxer, hunter (despite his conversationalist views) and swimmer
He graduated 21st from Harvard out of a class of 177
He spent two of his teen years in Europe becoming fluent in both German and French
He originally wanted to pursue a career in natural history but was persuaded by a professor at Harvard to go into politics
His father was a noted philanthropist
Theodore Senior established the Metropolitan Museum of Modern art and Museum of Natural History in NYC
Theodore Senior died from a bowel obstruction when Teddy was a Sophomore at Harvard

Happiness

If I could go back in time - or anywhere in time - I would want to go to a place where I could feel like one of the children at this puppet show: unselfconsciously wonderful.

From Les Quatre Cents Coups by Francois Truffaut


This clip never fails to make me smile, then feel a little sad.