SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ APRIL 19, 2016

1. As if the previous Suggested Reading List entry from increasingly mandatory website The Intercept, featuring former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince's efforts to put together his own private offensive-capable air force, wasn't enough to get your brain's conspiracy sensors waggling, why not try this story about how the CIA's venture capital company In-Q-Tel is backing a cosmetics firm with technology to collect DNA from its users skin? Our story begins...

SKINCENTIAL SCIENCES, a company with an innovative line of cosmetic products marketed as a way to erase blemishes and soften skin, has caught the attention of beauty bloggers on YouTube, Oprah’s lifestyle magazine, and celebrity skin care professionals. Documents obtained by The Interceptreveal that the firm has also attracted interest and funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

The previously undisclosed relationship with the CIA might come as some surprise to a visitor to the website of Clearista, the main product line of Skincential Sciences, which boasts of a “formula so you can feel confident and beautiful in your skin’s most natural state.” 

Though the public-facing side of the company touts a range of skin care products, Skincential Sciences developed a patented technology that removes a thin outer layer of the skin, revealing unique biomarkers that can be used for a variety of diagnostic tests, including DNA collection. 

Skincential Science’s noninvasive procedure, described on the Clearista website as “painless,” is said to require only water, a special detergent, and a few brushes against the skin, making it a convenient option for restoring the glow of a youthful complexion — and a novel technique for gathering information about a person’s biochemistry.

2. Our old pal David Cole usually has his musings published at Taki's (not a particular favorite of yours truly's, but whatevs), but this time, it's personal. Which means he decided to unveil the latest twist in his ongoing life's saga on his personal website, which has a permanent link on this very page. And it's all got to do with the "lovely" lady pictured above, who goes by the name of Wendy Rae Leaumont. Here's a tiny taste of what David is dealing with these days:

Totally out of the blue, celebrated Burbank art gallery owner Bill Shafer posted a very kind comment about my book on Instagram. Bill’s Hyaena Gallery is quite the local institution, and his comment was a happy surprise, made quickly unhappy by Leaumont, who was one of Bill’s Instagram followers. She began plastering the thread with hostile comments. She menacingly pledged that I’m going to “get killed soon enough,” but she didn’t stop with a simple death threat. She ridiculed my late mother, who passed away after a lengthy illness in April 2015. 

One year ago exactly. So my blood is up as I write this. 

I’ve never written publicly about my mom’s passing. This is the first time I’ve mentioned it, and it’ll be the last. Suffice it to say that I have no words to describe how depraved and vile someone has to be to publicly post a taunt regarding someone,anyone’s, dead parent. That kind of evil is beyond me. Especially coming from a woman who never misses a chance to brag about what a good “Christian” she is.

There's more. Read on.

3. And finally today, I bring you a three-part podcast about "loops" (don't worry... the parts are short) from the increasingly popular audio documentary production and dissemination node known as Radiolab. This particular set of programs is described thusly:

In this episode of Radiolab, Jad and Robert try to explain an inexplicable comedy act, listen to a loop that literally dies in your ear, and they learn about a loop that sent a shudder up the collective spine of mathematicians everywhere. Finally, they talk to a woman who got to watch herself think the thought that she was watching herself think the thought that she was watching herself think the thought that ... you get the point.

Trust me... it ends up being a lot more interesting than the above sounds... even though I have to admit, the above does sound pretty fucking interesting. ENJOY! I sure did!

MEDIAVORE // FILM ~ AAAAAAAAH! WE ARE NOT MEN

You might remember Steve Oram from his decade and a half of continuous character and background work in such worthy Britcom projects as Green Wing, The Mighty Boosh, Tittybangbang and Steve Coogan Live. Or perhaps you remember him as the bearded half of the comically bumbling yet oddly endearing serial killer couple in Ben Wheatley's magnificent 2012 satire, Sightseers.

However, it doesn't much matter how--or even if--you knew of him beforehand. Because there is nothing in Oram's pre-2015 catalog that could possibly prepare you for the certifiably insane masterpiece of hyper-subversive comic audacity that is Aaaaaaaah!, his ferocious and fearless directorial debut, which he also self-financed for reasons that will become apparent as you read on.

Described by Cine-Vue's Martyn Conterio as being an "anthropological social satire/horror-comedy" that is "like a collaboration between Dogme '95 and Chris Morris", Aaaaaaaah! is, at its core, a relatively straightforward exploration of interpersonal dynamics among a small group of friends, neighbors and acquaintances in a quiet, leafy section of South London. The surreal twist on this relatively mundane premise is that all the characters behave as though they've had their brains switched out with those of great apes.

Here is the trailer for Aaaaaaaah!

There is no dialogue in this film. Or, more precisely, there is no complex language, as the characters communicate via crude, pantomime gesticulations, as well as vocalizations consisting of grunts and huffs of varying intensity. The written version of this ape language, which can occasionally be spotted on street signs and in adverts, looks like this: "// oooo / oo /// o". Discussions, or what passes for them, are often interrupted by flashes of violence and cruelty, crude sexual propositions, and the occasional fart. The score, made up almost entirely of improvisational sonic tone poems by King Crimson and Robert Fripp, compliments the action absurdly well.

The plot involves a pair of males--an alpha (played by Oram) and his submissive sidekick (played by Tom Meeten)--who wander out of a woodsy suburban copse and into a household already beset by seething familial, romantic, and inter-generational conflicts, throwing the fragile established order into chaos. The household consists of a mother and daughter, (Lucy Honigman and Toyah Wilcox) and mom's alpha boyfriend (Julian Rhind-Tutt), who has a submissive sidekick of his own (Sean Reynard). Complicating matters is the family's fifth wheel, the exiled paterfamilias, beautifully portrayed by Britcom MVP Julian Barratt.

You might think such a heady set-up would lend itself to the filmmakers indulging in a bit of heavy-handed social commentary. Fortunately, you'd be wrong about that. In an interview with HeyUGuys.com, Oram states: "There are no metaphors and no intended comments. It’s just details that I hope people will enjoy, find funny and laugh at."

And oh, those details! Aaaaaaaah!'s hilarious gross-out highlights include a store manager ejaculating on a photograph of Prince Harry, a disgusting cooking show watched by the females while the men play a primitive motorcycle simulator video game, and poor Noel Fielding getting his knob bitten clean off by an angry shoplifter.

And yet, the filmmakers' avoidance of allegory notwithstanding, there's something about Oram's walk-through of his conquest's flat during a party, wherein he continually marks his territory by pissing on every surface, that manages to transcend the grotesque and speak to certain unspoken truths about masculinity and our culture's relationship with our baser animal instincts. Perhaps it's for this reason that, in his enthusiastic review for the "men's issues" column from The Telegraph UK, Tom Fordy claims that "every man should watch Aaaaaaaah!". Meanwhile, over at The Guardian, their shorter, 3-star review chose to focus on "the film’s despair at the ways women respond to such shows of mastery".

Ultimately, Aaaaaaaah! is an incredibly bizarre and transgressive experimental film that also works as a comic entertainment, simultaneously relate-able and recognizable yet disturbingly alien, and therefore worthy to sit alongside the best of Bunuel.

If you think you've got what it takes to watch Aaaaaaaah!, you can currently download it at the iTunes website via this direct link.

***

MINI-INTERVIEW WITH AAAAAAAAH! CREATOR STEVE ORAM

After reaching out to his management via Twitter, I was recently fortunate enough to get a chance to ask Mr. Oram a few questions about his film, which he graciously agreed to answer for me via email. Here, now, is the sum total of our online exchange.

JERKY: Can I get a rough estimate of the budget? And was it entirely self-financed, or at least entirely independently financed, as I've seen intimated (but never confirmed) in various media stories about the movie?

STEVE ORAM: Yes it was an entirely self-financed movie. Paid for with proceeds from a TV voiceover I did. It was entirely independent and so without any 'creative' input from outside. The actual budget - well think of the lowest budget feature film you've seen, it's about that.

JERKY: Was the addition of the sub-titular appendix "We Are Not Men" an after-thought for the North American market, to make it easier to find in search engines? And does it have (as I suspect) a Nietzschean meaning?

STEVE ORAM: I wish! The search engine thing is an absolute nightmare. On social media anyone searching for it will just come across a thousand people going aaaaaggh! about someone's haircut or something. I wouldn't say I aligned myself with Nietzche or any philosophy. It's just the idea that we aren't as special as we kid ourselves to be. We're no better than any of the other animals at the end of the day.

JERKY: That ending... WHY?!?!?

STEVE ORAM: Well I hope the ending feels true to human nature. Julian Barratt's character is totally disenfrachised and emasculated throughout the film and this has to have its catharsis. Quite often an audience will actually laugh at the ending which astonishes me. Maybe this is an awkward thing, I dunno. Or else there are a lot of sick people in my audiences.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ APRIL 15, 2016

1. Okay, take a deep breath and dive right in...

On a crisp Saturday in November 2014, a black Mercedes SUV pulled onto the tarmac of an Austrian specialty aviation company 30 miles south of Vienna. Employees of the firm, Airborne Technologies, which specialized in designing and equipping small aircraft with wireless surveillance platforms, had been ordered to work that weekend because one of the company’s investors was scheduled to inspect their latest project. 

For four months, Airborne’s team had worked nearly nonstop to modify an American-made Thrush 510G crop duster to the exact specifications of an unnamed client. Everything about the project was cloaked in secrecy. The company’s executives would refer to the client only as “Echo Papa,” and instructed employees to use code words to discuss certain modifications made to the plane. Now the employees would learn that Echo Papa also owned more than a quarter of their company. 

A fit, handsome man with blond hair and blue eyes got out of the Mercedes and entered Airborne’s hanger. Echo Papa, who was often just called EP, shook hands with a dozen Airborne employees and looked over the plane. “He was the sun, and all the management were planets rotating around him,” said one person present that day.

Thus begins this epic Intercept investigative report about Erik Prince, founder of the "private security" (i.e. mercenary) firm Blackwater, and Grade A War Pig who will one day be crawling on his knees, begging mercy for his sins, while Satan, laughing, spreads his wings. It's an incredible story about one rich asshole's ambition to circumvent pretty much all the laws in his efforts to create a private, fully kill-capable private airforce. We're talking crop dusters outfitted with missile and bomb ports, pods for mounting high-powered 23 mm machine guns, advanced laser targeting capabilities, etc.

2. And for today's second offering, I bring you yet another incredibly important article, this one about the super-shady origins and ultra-creepy, unspoken goals of the so-called “alternative media”, in the particular case of Art Bell's Frankenstein creation, Coast-to-Coast AM. Hopefully, this detailed and devastating article will constitute the crack in the dam that precedes the deluge that ends up washing the rats out of the foundation, because a reckoning is long overdue for the vast sheeple factory that the so-called Alternative Media has turned into.

3. And now, for a feel-good story to help you recover from the two above massive injections of truth serum, here is the absolute BEST STORY EVER about how a promoter for The Rolling Stones got to humiliate Donald Trump in his own freaking house. It's also a story about the thuggish depths to which Trump is willing to sink (hired goons with brass knuckles?!) and how Keith Richards and the Rolling Stone road crew are genuine bad-ass motherfuckers, willing to back up their co-workers with whatever kind of muscle is required for the job.

MEDIAVORE: FILM ~ BULLET REVIEWS

DEADPOOL ~ You know all the hype surrounding the release of Mad Max: Fury Road? How so many critics and reviewers claimed that it "revolutionized the form" and "redefined the action film"? Personally, although I enjoyed it, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Deadpool, on the other hand, lived up to its hype and more.

Tonally perfect with its deft blend of slapstick comedy and ferocious, R-rated violence, the acting and characterizations, the overall look, the choreography, the set-pieces, the attention to the tiniest of details, and the sophisticated (for this genre) non-linear narrative, all combine to make Deadpool the most successful comics-to-movie adaptation in the history of the genre.

Furthermore, playing off Ryan Reynolds' comedic running commentary as an in-context symptom of his mental illness (note that he never breaks the fourth wall until he undergoes the horrific, torturous process that awakens his mutant powers) was probably the masterstroke in a movie jam-packed with strokes of subversive genius... and other kinds of subversive stroking, as well.

Just a brilliant, gonzo, fucked up and fucking awesome love letter to everything Fredric Wertham tried to warn us away from. I don't even care that this movie's planet-cracking popularity is making that poopy-head Rob Liefeld rich beyond the wildest dreams of mortal man. Deadpool is that freaking good.

...AND CURRENTLY, VIA VIDEO ON DEMAND...

FILTH ~ British director Jon Baird's adaptation of Irvine "Trainspotting" Welsh's novel about a dirty Scottish copper using every diabolical trick in his prodigious metaphorical book in order to secure a promotion certainly lives up to its title.

Filth pretty much wallows in the kind of hyper-stylized, surrealistic, boundary-pushing depravity that we've come to expect from the latest wave of post-whatever UK filmmakers.

All the increasingly familiar elements are here: the unreliable narrator, the constant breaking of the fourth wall, occasional bursts of 'zany' hijinx up to and including wacked-out animation, irony up the wazoo, etc.

Like the aforementioned Trainspotting, Filth's evolutionary predecessors definitely includes the likes of Nicholas Winding Refn's Bronson, Jon Glazer's Sexy Beast, and goes all the way back to Lindsay Anderson's ...if, Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, and (believe it or not) A Hard Day's Night.

In fact, Baird wears his Kubrick fetish on his sleeve, complete with a couple of direct references (a 2001 poster makes a surprise appearance at one point), which I, of course, enjoyed. However, depending on your level of Kubrick fandom, your mileage may vary. In fact, I'll be posting a detailed rundown of all the Kubrick references in Filth in an upcoming essay for my Kubrick blog, KubrickU.blogspot.com.

While Filth may be a bit much for most viewers - it's most definitely not a date film - I found it to be a sufficiently entertaining diversion, and James McAvoy acquits himself well in a somewhat risky role.

For fans of violent, transgressive, gleefully nasty British crime movies, the decision to buy, rent, or download Filth most likely won't result in regret. Who knows? You might even learn a little something about yourself by the end of it!

THE INVITATION ~ Don't let the emerging and highly exaggerated narrative of director Karyn Kusama's allegedly poor treatment at the hands of film industry types sour you to The Invitation's myriad cinematic charms. This tightly wound, slow burn thriller is a virtual clinic on how to evoke and sustain paranoia, and build level upon level of suspense.

The film starts with a couple, Will and Kira, driving to a party in the Hollywood hills. Neither one seems overjoyed to be attending. It turns out to be a dinner party put together by Will's ex, Eden, who has since married Dave, a music producer. Many of the former couple's friends have been invited to the house, along with a few new friends that Eden and Dave (whom we learn had a serious drug habit) met during some kind of New Age style "healing" retreat in Mexico.

As the party begins and the narrative unfolds, we learn that Will and Eden's marriage ended in tragedy upon the accidental death of their young son, Ty, and Eden's subsequent attempted suicide.

At one point, Eden and Dave bust out a videotape featuring what they consider to be a beautiful, transcendent moment from their Mexican retreat. It goes over poorly, with one guest describing the behavior on display as being cult-like. Dave and Eden decide to lighten the mood with a grown-up variation on the game of Truth or Dare. Once again, this only serves to freak out one of the more sensitive guests. In fact, The Invitation works best when it dramatizes the potentially disastrous consequences of ignoring danger signals in favor of maintaining an even social keel.

I can't say much more about this film without spoiling it, so let me just conclude by telling you that it begins and ends with a bang, and takes you on one hell of a ride in between, coming damn close to greatness in the process.

THE BORDERLANDS ~ Found footage horror movies and mockumentaries are a weakness of mine. From the gloriously ridiculous This Is Spinal Tap to Peter Watkins' incredible and essential Punishment Park, there's just something about the conceit and the format of the mock documentary that grabs hold of my attention and refuses to let go. One of my favorite films of the last few years is What We Do in the Shadows, which is kind of a Spinal Tap for Kiwi vampires. So feel free to read the rest of this review keeping my prejudice in mind. If you hate found footage movies, then don't even bother continuing to read. 

Now that that's out of the way, am I saying that The Borderlands succeeds to the degree that any of the above-mentioned films do? No, I am not, and no, it doesn't. What it is, however, is a pretty solid, well-acted, beautifully shot indie horror flick that is well worth 90 minutes of your time.

The story is fairly straightforward. The Vatican sends a trio of priests to a remote Scottish village to investigate a miracle that has allegedly taken place in an ancient church there. The event was partially caught on video, so the team has been instructed to outfit the church (and their rental house, for some reason) with a battery of cameras. They're even forced to wear go-pros wherever they go. The whole thing plays out like an extended game of Call of Cthulhu, that classic table top, pen and paper, role-playing game that was at the heart of the 80's Lovecraft revival.

It also ends on a note that will either leave you stunned, paralyzed, and shocked in utter, mind-numbing terror... or rolling your eyes in derision. It all depends on your level of personal investment in the characters, and maybe also on your propensity for connecting the various narrative and sub-textual dots, as well as your susceptibility to the eldritch lure of Lovecraftian awe. Personally, for me, it worked like gangbusters. Highly recommended!

***

Where to Watch: iTunes, Amazon, Charter, Comcast, Google Play, DirecTV, Playstation, SuddenLink, Time Warner, Verizon FIOS, Vudu, XBOX.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ MARCH 21, 2016

1. I love amazing art, and I especially appreciate amazing artists who work in the more traditional forms, like painters who use actual paint in their paintings. I know, groundbreaking idea, ain't it? Anyway, when I do come across an artist whose work moves me, like, for instance, this piece does...

...I like to give them a shout-out in the hopes that maybe you folks out there will enjoy the work as much as I do. And so, without further ado, here is a huge gallery featuring the obscure, broken worlds of Russian painter Sergey Kolesov, aka Peleng! Oh, and if you'd like to see his beautiful Wonder Woman portrait, just stroll on over to his LiveJournal.

 

2.  Speaking of hipping you folks to awesome stuff, it's been far too long since I last linked to Nicholas Gurewitch's Ignatz Award-winning webcomic site, Perry Bible Fellowship, which is quite possibly the most consistently funny, intelligent, and unabashedly beautiful online comic currently being published. I mean, just look at this...

Not that it can't be ridiculous for ridiculousness' sake, as in this choice example...

Sometimes, an individual strip's humor can stray perilously close to "Dad Joke" territory. For instance...

But some jokes can also be "inappropriate", NSFW, and occasionally PG-13, as in this early strip...

I guess the thing I most appreciate about the Perry Bible Fellowship is that, if you keep clicking through the archive, you're pretty much guaranteed to find a strip that will be among your all-time favorites. Probably more than just one, now that I think of it. It's that freaking good. Oh, and you should totally buy his book. Pro Tip? Get the first collection, because the second collection is going for like 800 dollars for some reason.

3. And finally for today, I bring you Citizen Shane, an amazing lo-fi documentary about a tragedy-haunted, morbidly obese, serial killer-obsessed fellow by the name of Shane Ballard who ran for sheriff of Lownes County, Mississippi, on an anti-corruption, pro-pornography platform. As fascinating as this documentary is, the story behind it is just as wild. In fact, nobody would know of its existence at all if it weren't for our old pal Don Alex of Subterranean Cinema. Don, one of the world's most respected and hardest working collectors of, and authorities on, obscure films and video, used to trade and sell tapes with Shane. One day, Shane sent Don a copy of this documentary about his life and his run for elected office, which he'd produced with the help of some friends. Shortly thereafter, Shane would take his own life, igniting a charcoal fire indoors and asphyxiating himself. So, essentially, this documentary is all that remains of Shane Ballard, a man whom I think you're going to be glad you got to know, even if only via this one hour of video on Youtube. I'd say "Enjoy", but this isn't that kind of movie. Now watch.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ MARCH 18, 2016

1. If, like me, you're curious about the kind of people who say they want Donald Trump to be President of the United States of America, you might want to take a gander at this collection of testimonials put together by The Guardian. It's jam-packed with surprises, like the "Hispanic Attorney" who claims that Trump "has demonstrated, at heart, that he is a caring person"; the "Scientist who Likes Both Bernie and Donald" who claims to be "very concerned about radical M-Muslims"; and "the Former Occupy Protester" who claims that Trump "is ripping the soul of America apart... and we deserve it". Sounds like some pretty solid thinking going on there, doesn't it? You really need to read this collection of cuckoo-bird cries for help, even if only for the sheer entertainment value of it all. Armageddon... it's the Greatest Show on Earth, and we've got front row seats!

2. Setting aside politics for a while, I was recently reminded that I don't give sufficient thanks to some of the people and sources that have influenced, entertained, or even just impressed the hell out of me over the years. In terms of cinema, I can't think of anyone whom I haven't met in the flesh that has had a bigger influence on my own taste for and appreciation of cinema than Don Alex, creator of the great (and now sadly departed) website known as Subterranean Cinema. After going through a bunch of personal issues, and coming out on top, Don Alex has brought Subterranean Cinema back in an easier to maintain blog format (sound familiar?) and the results are very much worth your time and attention. I mean, where else are you going to find a free PDF version of the classic Amos Vogel book Film as a Subversive Art, or the legendary "lost" Rospo Pallenberg script for the long-promised film version of Stephen King's apocalyptic megabook, The Stand, or a fully illustrated web version of Alejandro Jodorowsky's long out of print book, El Topo: A Book of the Film? With so much more, and still more to come! If you're a true fan of cinema, then you need to check it out, and count your blessings!

3. You know, when it comes to nationalized embodiment of Purest Evil, it usually comes down to a shoving match between Western-style Fascism (fronted by Hitler and Mussolini) and Eastern-style Totalitarian Collectivism (fronted by Stalin and Mao). HOWEVER! In terms of kicking off some truly terrible trends, or treating political foes and colonial subjects alike as though they were of a different species, or engaging in wanton sadism on an unprecedented global scale, a pretty good case could be made for the British Empire being ranked near the very topmost among despicable world historic control projects. And no, the examples collected in the above-linked article do not all come from the late-19th century (even though many of the worst crimes listed do come from that time). Somewhere in the middle of these collected atrocities sits "The Crushing of the Iraqi Revolution", in 1920:

In 1920, the newly-formed nation of Iraq was tiring of British rule. Charged with guiding the new state towards independence, the Empire had instead installed puppet leaders. turning the place into a de facto colony. Fed up with their imperial overlords, the Iraqis turned to revolution, only for the British to unleash wave after wave of atrocities against them. 

First the RAF conducted nighttime bombing raids on civilian targets. Then they deployed chemical weapons against the fighters, gassing whole groups of them. But the real horrors came in the aftermath, when the victorious British decided to use collective punishment against the offending tribes. 

From that point on, any tribe that caused a fuss would have one of its villages randomly annihilated. Specific orders were given to exterminate every living thing within its walls, from animals to rebels to children. Other villages were subject to random searches. If the British found a single weapon, they would burn the place to the ground, destroy the crops, poison wells, and kill livestock. They’d sometimes target weddings to terrorize the population. In short, the British deliberately targeted civilians in a campaign that lasted the better part of half a decade, all because a few Iraqis had dared to ask for their country back.

And guess what, folks? That's, like, one of the LEAST brutal and offensive entries on this Quasi-Satanic Top Ten List. I strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with this information. It really helps put the current "crisis" - troubling as it may be - in its proper, historical perspective. You'll be thanking whatever God you believe in that the Sun finally set on "the Empire on which the Sun Never Set".

KEITH EMERSON (1944-2016)

THE LAST HALLOWEEN: COMIC AND FILM STILLS SET TO SCORE

This is pretty great. My long-time creative partner Marc Roussel, who directed the short film version of my 8 page comic The Last Halloween based on a script we co-wrote, has put together a video to showcase our film's amazing score, which was created by our friend and frequent collaborator Christopher Guglick, pairing it with stills from the film and pages from my comic. Thanks, Marc... Now it's time to get back to work on our next batch of projects!

SUGGESTED READING LIST (TRUMP EDITION) ~ MARCH 3, 2016

1. If, like many other Americans (and citizens of the world) these days, you're sitting at home scratching your head trying to puzzle out how the USA could possibly have reached the abyssal precipice upon which it now stands poised... you shouldn't be. Because the tracks were laid for the Trump Train - which so many of our fellow humans seem all to eager to hop aboard as it

chugs with increasingly dread-fraught inevitability towards an unprecedented apocalyptic abyss - was first laid over fifteen years ago. In an article entitled Revenge of the Simple, Rolling Stone Magazine's Matt Taibi explains: 

To hear GOP insiders tell it, Doomsday is here. If Donald Trump scores huge tonight and seizes control of the nomination in the Super Tuesday primaries, it will mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party, and perhaps the presidency. But Trump isn't the beginning of the end. George W. Bush was. The amazing anti-miracle of the Bush presidency is what makes today's nightmare possible. 

People forget what an extraordinary thing it was that Bush was president. Dubya wasn't merely ignorant when compared with other politicians or other famous people. No, he would have stood out as dumb in just about any setting. ... Bush went to the best schools but was totally ignorant of history, philosophy, science, geography, languages and the arts. ... Bush showed no interest in learning and angrily rejected the idea that a president ought to be able to think his way through problems. ...  

There are educational apps that use groups of images to teach two-year-olds to recognize that an orange is like an orange while a banana is a banana. Bush was stalled at that developmental moment. And we elected him president.

The always excellent Taibi goes on to explain how Preznit Dubya's personal Svengali, Karl Rove, banked on the notion that decades of cultural debasement, combined with highly orchestrated right-wing talk radio propaganda campaigns cooked up in billionaire-funded conservative think tanks "left huge blocs of Americans convinced that people who read books, looked at paintings and cared about spelling were either serial killers or scheming to steal bearer bonds from the Nakatomi building." It's an excellent series of riffs, and it ultimately leads to a discussion about the blowback from such ambitious civilizational engineering which leads, now, to...

... Washington freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron. That's really what it comes down to. And all of the Beltway's hooting and hollering about how "embarrassing" and "dangerous" Trump is will fall on deaf ears, because as gullible as Americans can be, they're smart enough to remember being told that it was OK to vote for George Bush, a man capable of losing at tic-tac-toe.

There is no comfort offered here, folks. Taibi claims that "we're about to enter a dark period in the history of the American experiment", and yer old pal Jerky couldn't agree more.

2. Make no mistake... yer old pal Jerky is no fan of Mitt Romney. He's a New Millennium Republican after all, and is thus a willing representative of, and standard bearer for, the worst, most greedy, venal, arrogant, bigoted, ignorant, elitist, phony, limited, authoritarian and spite-fueled voting bloc in the history of American democracy. And yet his speech today at the Hinckley Institute in Utah, wherein he savaged Donald Trump with a withering volley of honest, fair and accurate put-downs and insults, was a thing of beauty, and not just because watching right-wingers devour their own makes for great entertainment. It was beautiful because, watching it, you got the sense that there's a very real possibility that the GOP may actually be disintegrating from the inside out. I mean, just watch this thing!

"His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University." Savor that. Swish it around in your mouth for a while, then swallow it. Nice, isn't it? Now consider; whether the Republican establishment's obvious contempt for Trump ultimately leads them to force a brokered convention where they pull some smoky backroom shenanigans to oust him (thereby alienating a huge segment of their base), or simply pushes Trump into exiting the party in order to mount a third party campaign (thereby guaranteeing a Republican defeat), it's all bad news for the Conservative Movement. Because, let's face it; they can slice that shit cake any way they like, but they're still gonna be left with a plate full of shit.

3. John Oliver, host of HBO's satirical news magazine Last Week Tonight, has tried his best to make his show a Trump-free zone. It was a laudable goal, but the stress and strain of trying to cast his gaze away as Trump's bloated, reptoid countenance continued to bloat, swell, and metastasize across and throughout the media ultimately proved impossible. Which brings us to the following video, which serves as yet another bit of evidence in support of the thesis that the best contemporary political news reporting comes from comedians and/or comedy show hosts. Just watch, and maybe when you're done, stroll on over to MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain.com and install Oliver's "Drumpfinator" app. It transforms all web-based instances of Donald Trump's name into his original archaic German family name, "Drumpf", for multiple reasons, all of which will become obvious once you've watched the video. 

JERKY PICKS THE WINNERS FOR TONIGHT'S OSCARS!

As some of you may already know, in my capacity as editor-in-chief and sole content provider for The Daily Dirt circa 1999-2006, yer old pal Jerky had what can only be described as an incredibly impressive track record when it came to predicting who would win at the Academy Awards, particularly in the Big Four categories (Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture).

This year, unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the fire in the belly passion required to write up my traditionally hilarious full accounting of the reasoning behind my ever prescient choices. But when I woke up this afternoon, rolled over, flicked my mouse to wake up the computer monitor and was reminded that tonight was Oscar night, I decided I had to write SOMETHING. After all, I owe it to you... the fans.

And so, without further ado, here are my sure-to-be accurate, no-miss Oscar night winning picks! You can bet the kids' college fund on these locks, folks... winners all, or double your money back!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
WHO SHOULD WIN: Mark Ruffalo, for Spotlight.

WHO WILL WIN: Sylvester Stallone, for Creed.

WHY: Duh! Because #OscarSoWhite, of course.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
WHO SHOULD WIN: Who cares?

WHO WILL WIN: Son of Saul, straight outa Hungary

WHY: *cough* HOLOCAUST *cough*

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

WHO SHOULD WIN: Rachel McAdams, in Spotlight.

WHO WILL WIN: Jennifer Jason Leigh, in The Hateful Eight.
WHY: The wanton, misogynistic sadism of the Old White Men who make up the Academy, who really got off on seeing JJL getting the shit kicked out of her for three hours straight... or was it four? Kinda felt like five, to me.

VISUAL EFFECTS

WHO SHOULD WIN: Mad Max: Fury Road.

WHO WILL WIN: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
WHY: The Hollywood Establishment needs to throw that stink burger at least a couple Oscar bones, and this seems like one of the best places for them to do so.

ANIMATED FEATURED FILM

WHO SHOULD WIN: Inside Out.

WHO WILL WIN: Anomalisa.
WHY: For proving once and for all that feature-length animated films can be just as ponderous, pointless, and dishwater dull as real movies can. Way to go, guys!

CINEMATOGRAPHY

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Revenant.

WHO WILL WIN: The Hateful Eight.
WHY: Because the Academy knows they'll never hear the end of Tarantino's whining about it if they don't at least give him this one. "70mm Roadshow Presentation" my fat white ass.

FILM EDITING

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Big Short.

WHO WILL WIN: The Big Short.

WHY: Because this film is incredibly well paced, which is a result of excellent editing, so it actually deserves to win.

DOCUMENTARY – FEATURE

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Look of Silence.

WHO WILL WIN: Amy.

WHY: Because, depressing as it may be to admit this, most people care more about an alcoholic celebrity crackhead doing herself in than they do about one of the most horrific episodes of recent history, wherein roving gangs of anti-communist street thugs swept the Suharto regime into power in Indonesia circa 1966, killing between 1 and 3 million of their fellow citizens in the process, without any of them ever having to face justice for their actions. The Look of Silence is a sequel of sorts to 2012's The Act of Killing, and both are more terrifying than any horror film ever made.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

WHO SHOULD WIN: Inside Out.

WHO WILL WIN: Straight Outta Compton.
WHY: Because, incredible as it may seem, this is the one and only nomination - in the single, solitary category - that has any relationship whatsoever to "the Blacks", as Donald Trump calls them. So they pretty much don't have a choice. They have to give Straight Outta Compton the Oscar. Which is going to be doubly hilarious when this guy takes the stage to accept his statuette...

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

WHO SHOULD WIN: Room.

WHO WILL WIN: The Martian.
WHY: Because the journey from tech geek's self-published hobby-novel to world-beating, feel-good, box-office-domination is just the kind of Cinderella story the Academy likes to kid itself into thinking is emblematic of the Hollywood "brand".  

BEST DIRECTOR

WHO SHOULD WIN: George Miller, for Mad Max: Fury Road.

WHO WILL WIN: Tom McCarthy, for Spotlight.
WHY: Because they forgot to nominate Ridley Scott for some reason.

BEST ACTOR

WHO SHOULD WIN: Matt Damon, for The Martian.

WHO WILL WIN: Leonardo DiCaprio, for The Revenant.
WHY: Dude wants it so bad, he allowed himself to get raped by a bear. Let the baby have his bottle, already. 

BEST ACTRESS

WHO SHOULD WIN: Brie Larson, for Room.

WHO WILL WIN: Jennifer Lawrence, for Joy.

WHY: Because Cate Blanchett already has two Oscars, nobody knows how to pronounce "Saoirse", and everybody in the world wants to get with J-Law. I mean, have you seen those "Fappening" snaps?!

BEST PICTURE

WHO SHOULD WIN: Spotlight.

WHO WILL WIN: The Martian.
WHY: Because the collective IQ of the global "Anglosphere" seems to have experienced a significant and distressing drop over the past several months (see the recent Republican debates for evidence of such).

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEBRUARY 18

1. Matthew Yglesias thinks America's constitutional democracy is going to collapse. On this topic, he writes:

Some day — not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies — there is going to be a collapse of the legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent. If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better, more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen. 

Very few people agree with me about this, of course. When I say it, people generally think that I'm kidding. America is the richest, most successful country on earth. The basic structure of its government has survived contested elections and Great Depressions and civil rights movements and world wars and terrorist attacks and global pandemics. People figure that whatever political problems it might have will prove transient — just as happened before. 

Rather than everyone being wrong about the state of American politics, maybe everyone is right.

But voiced in another register, my outlandish thesis is actually the conventional wisdom in the United States. Back when George W. Bush was president and I was working at a liberal magazine, there was a very serious discussion in an editorial meeting about the fact that the United States was now exhibiting 11 of the 13 telltale signs of a fascist dictatorship. The idea that Bush was shredding the Constitution and trampling on congressional prerogatives was commonplace. When Obama took office, the partisan valence of the complaints shifted, but their basic tenor didn't. Conservative pundits — not the craziest, zaniest ones on talk radio, but the most serious and well-regarded —compare Obama's immigration moves to the actions of a Latin-American military dictator. 

In the center, of course, it's an article of faith that when right and left talk like this they're simply both wrong. These are nothing but the overheated squeals of partisans and ideologues. 

At the same time, when the center isn't complaining about the excessively vociferous complaints of the out-party of the day, it tends to be in full-blown panic about the state of American politics. And yet despite the popularity of alarmist rhetoric, few people act like they're actually alarmed. Accusations that Barack Obama or John Boehner or any other individual politician is failing as a leader are flung, and then abandoned when the next issue arises. In practice, the feeling seems to be that salvation is just one election away. Hillary Clinton even told Kara Swisher recently that her agenda if she runs for president is to end partisan gridlock. 

It's not going to work.

Click on the link above to find out exactly why Matthew Yglesias believes what he believes, and try not to panic too much. Twas ever thus.

2. Personally, I have only seen just under half of the films on this list of The Fifty Weirdest Movies Ever Made. Thanks to my friend Spidey for sending me this, because the next few months of my movie watching life just got an incredible boost of weird-ass mind-bombs injected into it. I mean, who can resist such out-there fare as the recently deceased Andrzej Zulawski’s Jerzy Żuławski's On the Silver Globe, described here as: 

A three-hour spaceman journey straight into the center of Zulawski’s poetic heart, On The Silver Globe is the director’s most phantasmagorical film. In 1976, Zulawski embarked on the largest-scale film production in Polish history, and over the course of two intense years, executed an eye-popping, grandiloquent sci-fi epic concerning astronauts who crash-land on the moon and kickstart their own bizarre, primitive society. Sadly, the Polish government deemed the film subversive, shut the production down just before shooting was completed, and destroyed its film print materials, sets and impossibly lush costumes. Ten years later, using secreted footage, Zulawski was able to piece together a version of the film that came as close as possible to his original vision—and the results will defy your mind, as even in its reconstituted form, On The Silver Globe is a true brainquake that effortlessly takes you to dizzying heights, and just keeps on elevating.

And that's one of the LEAST bizarre films on this list. Watch at your own peril! Viewer discretion is advised.

3. I found the experience of reading Tony Schwartz' New York Times essay "Addicted to Distraction" to be a profoundly disturbing experience. It begins:

ONE evening early this summer, I opened a book and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over, a half dozen times before concluding that it was hopeless to continue. I simply couldn’t marshal the necessary focus.  

I was horrified. All my life, reading books has been a deep and consistent source of pleasure, learning and solace. Now the books I regularly purchased were piling up ever higher on my bedside table, staring at me in silent rebuke. Instead of reading them, I was spending too many hours online, checking the traffic numbers for my company’s website, shopping for more colorful socks on Gilt and Rue La La, even though I had more than I needed, and even guiltily clicking through pictures with irresistible headlines such as “Awkward Child Stars Who Grew Up to Be Attractive.” ... 

“The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention,” Nicholas Carr explains in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” “We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive.” 

Addiction is the relentless pull to a substance or an activity that becomes so compulsive it ultimately interferes with everyday life. By that definition, nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet. It has arguably replaced work itself as our most socially sanctioned addiction. 

According to one recent survey, the average white-collar worker spends about six hours a day on email. That doesn’t count time online spent shopping, searching or keeping up with social media. The brain’s craving for novelty, constant stimulation and immediate gratification creates something called a “compulsion loop.” Like lab rats and drug addicts, we need more and more to get the same effect. 

Endless access to new information also easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer learning to long-term memory significantly deteriorates. It’s as if our brain has become a full cup of water and anything more poured into it starts to spill out. 

I’ve known all of this for a long time. I started writing about it 20 years ago. I teach it to clients every day. I just never really believed it could become so true of me.

I urge everyone to read this essay in full. It's a sobering rumination on what's happening to all of us, at all times, in this Brave New World of ours. The ramifications are, potentially, devastating on a civilizational level.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"He broke out all over in assholes and shit himself to death."

- Nixon aid Dean Burch describes George Herbert "Poppy" Walker Bush's reaction upon learning of the existence of a document in the possession of by Bay of Pigs, JFK assassination and Watergate co-conspirator E.Howard Hunt, which he was threatening to make public if certain strings weren't pulled to help him out of a jam. Not to worry, however... Hunt's wife was soon murdered in a suspicious plane crash (which also destroyed the aforementioned document), and Hunt got a million dollars' hush money, so everything turned up roses for all involved! Google it if you don't believe me.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Please clap" supplants Hemingway's six-word story as the shortest, saddest story ever told.

- Nate Goldman makes Coca-Cola come spraying out of yer old pal Jerky's nose with this "bon mot" tweet about a recent trauma experienced by Republican also-ran (and Bush Crime Family member) Jeb Bush in New Hampshire.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ FEB 3, 2016

1. Set aside a couple hours to check out this century-plus overview of American comedy as assembled and curated by a team of comedy "experts" at Vulture.com. It purports to identify the 100 jokes, sketches or comedy moments that shaped a century of funny. While there are some entries here that I wouldn't have chosen, especially some of the new millennium selections, it's still very much worth checking out. Maybe I'll try my hand at assembling an alternate group of self-declared experts in order to put together a list of our own. Selections and volunteers appreciated.

2. Once you're done wasting half your day with the above overview of American comedy, why not spend the OTHER half wasting it with this encyclopedic overview of the greatest electronic music albums of the 1950's and 60's? Article author Joseph Morpurgo sets the ground rules:

The great electronic albums of the 1970s get plenty of kudos – but what of their predecessors? Casual accounts of the history of electronic music tend to point back to familiar sources: Suicide’s babble’n’hum; Cluster, Klaus Schulze and the rest of the Krautrock squad; the stygian mulch-music of early Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle; and of course Kraftwerk’s meticulous robot pop. Further back? Well, that’s when things tend to get a little foggy. Experiments with recorded electronic music actually date back to the 1940s (hell, depending on how you define “electronic music”, they date back to the 1880s). As early as the mid-1950s, predominantly electronic LPs were already being pressed, marketed and sold to the a willing (if slightly confused) public. Half a century down the line, many of these records still sound fantastic. Some are fascinating relics with plenty to say to the contemporary listener; others sound impossibly ahead of their time. ... Ground rules set – and inevitably occasionally broken – here they are: 15 essentials from electronic music’s Big Bang.

Check it out. No matter your tastes, you're all but guaranteed to find something that appeals to your particular, personal brain circuitry.


3. If you haven't seen The Answers yet, you're missing out on a pretty great, inventive, emotionally potent short film. Everything about this production, from the writing, to the acting, to the production values, is top notch. As a short film maker myself, I'm always encouraged when I see real, honest, worthwhile effort put into one. Kudos to everyone involved. You can watch it here and now:

MEDIAVORE // COMICS ~ THE COSMIC HORROR OF "NAMELESS"

NAMELESS (Image Comics) ~ In this miniseries' six immensely satisfying issues, Grant Morrison serves up a heaping helping of Lovecraftian science-fiction, generously fortified with his trademark juxtaposition of heady, historically-accurate occultism with genre conventions and pop culture tropes. Handling the visual side of things, Chris Burnham makes an astonishingly successful go at aping frequent Morrison collaborator Frank Quitely's style, minus the latter's glacial, deadline-mocking turnaround rate.

Experiencing this gorgeously-rendered, mind-bending-yet-familiar narrative was a tremendous pleasure, so I'll do my best to make this a spoiler-free review. In fact, I won't be engaging in much analysis at all. This is really more of a preview for Nameless, or an enthusiastic recommendation, than anything else.

The basic elements of the story are as follows: A freelance occultist referred to only as "Nameless" is drawn into billionaire space mogul Paul Darius' clandestine efforts to deflect a massive asteroid that is hurtling towards the Earth, while simultaneously investigating some peculiar markings and structures that have been spotted on its surface.

If the above sounds a bit like Constantine does Armageddon, that isn't too far off the mark. But don't be fooled... Nameless is NOT some hastily thrown together pastiche. It features an intricate, non-linear assembly of nesting narratives that demands and rewards close attention.

From the first pages, in which Nameless sneaks, Inception-style, into someone's dreams in order to steal a powerful psychic artifact, we're never quite sure where we, or the characters, stand. Forever poised at the brink of revelation, the occasional glimpses of the hideous, alien reality behind the thin camouflage of sensory perception are sufficient to send even the strongest fleeing for the comfort of blind, blessed ignorance.

Nameless includes several genuinely disturbing moments, as well as a few vividly rendered scenes of graphic physical violence. It's also packed with goodies for lovers of esoterica, amateur occultists, and others interested in such paracultural oddities.

So how "paracultural" do things get, exactly? Well, as Nameless begins to realize that our Solar System has been the battlefield for an aeons-spanning interplanetary war between the deities, demigods and monstrous abominations who populate the mythological pantheons of the Sumerians, the Mayans, and various unknown "others", he decides to protect himself and his spaceship crew using the symbolic Enochian pseudo-language devised by Elizabethan court magician John Dee... an insight that comes to him while under the influence of one of Brion Gysin's hallucination-inducing Dream Machines. There are also some majorly twisted Tarot cards on display. But I've revealed too much already.

If the above sounds as good to you as it would to me, then you're in luck! A collected edition of Nameless is coming soon, which means you won't have to keep going back and forth to your local comic shop, waiting for up to eight freaking weeks before being able to gobble up the next incredible chapter, which usually takes no more than 20 minutes' reading time. Fortunately, thanks in no small part to Burnham, Nameless improves with each reading, so it will probably have a long, happy publishing life.

I'm not being paid to say this: Buy your copy of Nameless the minute it hits store shelves. Or heck, buy it now using this link, and Amazon will toss a couple pennies in my general direction! Go on... you know you want to!