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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Clown Terror Has A New Face

After hearing for years about American Horror Story, about 3 weeks ago, my friend Terri DVR'd the first show of the new season. We sat. We drank wine. We drank more wine...and we were both were introduced to our latest craze. I spent the next 2 weeks on Netflix catching up on the past seasons.

Prior to watching American Horror Story, the most terrifying clown I'd EVER come across was Pennywise the Clown from the book "It" and the mind of Stephen King and played to the hilt by Tim Curry in the film adaptation.


Pennywise hid in the sewers of the requisite creepy Maine town and his favorite food of choice was...kids. Sure it's a bit ghoulish but who am I to criticize the culinary quirks of clowndom's citizens? So Pennywise liked to eat kids. Kids can be annoying. John Wayne Gacy was a real-life killer clown and he creeped me the fuck out. I don't think he developed a taste for kids but if you were a handsome, young gay man, you might end up buried in the crawlspace beneath his house.

I LOVED Homey the Clown. He was hilarious. He belted kids across the chops with a quarter-filled sock. I was delighted by Caesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker:
I even liked the band, Insane Clown Posse a little bit.

I liked clowns. OK...I did want to kick Ronald McDonald in his clowny little gladbags. But most clowns were OK...until I happened upon Pennywise. Pennywise fucked it all for me.

In the previous seasons of American Horror Story, I was introduced to a host of scary characters. But holy fucking shit! The thing that scared the living shit outta me and gives me nightmares is a character called "Twisty the Clown". Twisty doesn't talk...at all. He performs like a normal clown. Makes balloon animals, pulls bouquets of flowers out of his sleeve, has the eternally long string of knotted scarves in his pocket. The thing about Twisty is he can go into a murderous rage when his balloon animal pops or you don't find his antics particularly amusing. And sometimes he just murders for no reason...or maybe he has a reason we're not privy to. We have absolutely no clue what's going on in Twisty's mind. Because he doesn't talk. His creepy clown suit is filthy. Twisty doesn't seem to care about personal hygiene. Oh yeah...Twisty doesn't pull rabbits out of hats either. Usually...it's a head. A human head. He DOES appear to be wearing a real clown hat...made out of a real clown. In episode 2, we got a glimpse of what is under that giant rotten grin.

I would hand-feed my kids to Twisty. Morsel-by-morsel. Twisty is not mocked and I find his silence far more menacing than any clown I've ever encountered. The character actor behind Twisty's visage is John Carroll Lynch who last scared the crap out of me in the HBO series "Carnavàle". He has definitely upped the ante.

As a kid, I remember after Halloween trick or treating, sitting down with my parents to sort through the candy to check for tampering. No doubt if I had gone to Twisty's house, I'd have come home and dumped my candy on the floor...and human heads would have rolled out of my sack. I seriously doubt they teach "Head Severing 101" in clown college.


Go ahead and fuck with Twisty. I dare you. I double dare you. I triple dog dare you.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN BITCHES!

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Curiosity Doesn't ALWAYS Kill The Cat...But Sometimes You Wish It Had

While watching a TV series on Netflix, they mentioned what I deemed a sexual term I was unfamiliar with that started with "Cleavland" and ended with a guy saying to three prostitutes, "There's a glass top coffee table right there. Two of the three hookers said, "Uh uh...I'm outta here." The third said, "OK. But it'll cost you $1,000 extra."

Well, I'm sure you can guess what I did. I sat down at my computer and I went straight to:


Then I gagged.


I had stumbled on a Mother Lode of repellant, offensive, disturbing, disgusting, and deviant terms for what I had always considered a pleasurable act of love between consenting adults.

I. Had. No. IDEA! OMFG!!!! And all this in spite of working for six months at a print company that made boxes for porno videos (and kids video games under a completely different company name of course!)

I was responsible for inputing new orders for these videos and each order was accompanied by a sample of the box. I'm no shrinking violet, but I've never been into porn. I mean I was curious when I was young so me and my high school chums snuck into The Pussycat Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to see the infamous "Deep Throat" triple feature.

And you know what? It bored us. Plus, the floor was sticky. Extra sticky. Plus, the audience was chock full of men...in raincoats. We barely made it through all of Deep Throat and didn't stick around for the other two features.

So that was the depth my porn education. Sure I had boyfriends that tried to get me to watch but I truly didn't understand why they always had to show two women together but never two men. Frankly (pun intended), I would prefer to see a veritable sausagefest than the proverbial up-close-and-personal vag shots. I'm sorry. I just find vaginas kinda gross...except mine. I'm very fond of mine. (No wonder I have so much in common with gay men.)

I am a proud Gayboy Bunny. But girls licking each other just never did it for me. I wondered why man-on-man shots were never in "straight" porn. So I asked my boyfriend and the reply was always, "That's gross!" I so said, "But two women is OK?" Apparently this turns straight men on. OK. But I don't get it. I mean no disrespect to my lesbian friends and relations by any means. I love them. I love everyone. I don't mind looking at boobs. It's just a matter of personal preference I guess. So...I own no porn. None.

The print company was run by a mostly female staff (no pun intended). Nearly all the office staff, the general manager and CFO were all women. We also had lunch together every day. Let's just say that my porn education was a source of a amusement for them. I had NO clue there were so many varieties of porn. We had titles that ranged from "Puffy Nipples" to "Spank My Fanny, Granny". I know. Ew. But sometimes we got things that were rejected. One title came in with a picture of a guy with a florescent orange traffic cone stuck up his butt.

I was constantly in shock. And we discussed my shock every day at lunch. One title had a man on the cover with let's just say, a plethora of testicular and penile piercings. I have no clue why a dude would want to stick spikes through his dick. I was fascinated and horrified at the same time. We had titles that were high-end and artsy but we also had our share of low budget porn and I don't think I've ever seen more bad boob jobs in my entire life. One poor unfortunate had boobs that looked like Marty Feldman's eyes:


Seriously. I think this was the birthplace of my distain for unnecessary plastic surgery.

One day, I brought a title into the lunchroom with my eyes brimming with tears. I asked the general manager if I could reject the title because it showed a woman on all fours, smiling but her anus was so enlarged that in near tears, I said, "But how does she not poop herself constantly? She must have to wear diapers! Oh my God! We can't print this! This is cruel that she has a handicap and has to support herself in porn!" I didn't know what her condition was called, but I was appalled at the exploitation of this poor soul!

Oddly, my outburst was met not by compassion and empathy but raucous and hysterical laughter. I didn't understand! I would never laugh at someone with such a horrible disability! They laughed so long, and so loudly at my indignation, umbrage and outrage that the CFO came in to tell us that even with the door to the lunchroom closed, she couldn't hear her phone calls.

This was the mid-1990's and I was unfamiliar with the term "digitally enhanced" or "airbrushing" photos. This was before Photoshop was in wide use. They were familiar with the title in question, but I was seeing it for the first time. This was the only job I ever truly loved going to. We had so much fun and laughter. It paid well. Sadly, it was destroyed by internet porn.


Fuck Me. Pun intended...but NOT in ANY of the terms expressed on those lists!

I never did find out what "Cleveland" had to do with coffee tables.

Mea culpa.

I am in possession of a macabre sense of humor and graced with a creative potty mouth but this...this...was...no.

I have no intention of including hyperlinks to ANY of those lists herein.

You're on your own.


Sunday, April 20, 2014

CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE #2

A friend of mine just last week asked me why I hadn't blogged in a very long time. The last few years haven't exactly inspired a lot of happy thoughts or creativity. My imagination was as dry as a menopausal vagina truth be told. I took a nap today, awoke at midnight and had this retro real-life dream that I thought I'd share:

CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE #1: When I was a kid television was still in its early adulthood and I could no more distinguish what was real and what wasn't exactly real. I recently posted on my Facebook wall how I failed at my first television-inspired experiment.

After watching the 1968 Summer Olympics, the first time I encountered a swimming pool, I jumped in fully expecting to swim like Mark Spitz. As I stood at the bottom of the pool, completely devoid of any panic; contemplating why my limbs weren't magically making me perform a spectacular butterfly stroke worthy of an Olympic champ; all I felt was letdown. Had my Swim Fairy Godmother been having her mani-pedi? Nope...it was the first time I realized that maybe...just maybe...things that happened on TV weren't altogether true. A lot of things were! Like commercials for certain toys, bicycles, talking and urinating dolls, Tonka trucks, The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family (or so I thought -- turns out the Brady dad, Robert Reed was gay), etc. Though I never could get my motherfucking Slinky to walk down the stairs like the commercial promised: Fuckers!

Anyway, suddenly a giant hand reached down, grabbed my arm and snatched me from the water. In partial panic and partial anger, my dad yelled at my mother, "Why weren't you watching her?" She had been busy getting my little sister into her swimsuit. My father looked at me and screamed, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" Completely devoid of guile I answered, "On TV whenever someone jumps into a pool they start swimming! I thought that's what was going to happen!" His look said, "I've-spawned-an-imbecile / her-egg-was-fertilized-by-a-Special-Olympics-sperm!!"

OK...back to CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE #2:

My second fail arrived a few years later. Our family now consisted of me, my little sister Linda and my new baby brother Russell who was probably less than a year old. Who incidentally made me and my sister's life a misery.
Whenever we tried to play with him, he would emit this high-pitched whine and my parents in unison would yell, "STOP TEASING THE BABY!" We were only trying to play with the little enfant terrible.
Mom and Dad didn't believe their lives should come to a screeching halt just because they shat a few vag poops into the world. They took weekend trips, they took separate all girls weekend trips and all boys weekend trips. My mother was on one of her all girls trips. So dad had us for the weekend. We were pretty good kids but one night, my dad was out working in the garage with his macho power tools creating something wondrous (he was really talented with building things incidentally), but it always worried me too.

TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD MEMORY #90: When I heard the song "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens, I thought it was about a grisly industrial accident by moonlight. A lovely little ditty about a blinded, toothless, mouthless quadruple amputee! I worried about my dad working in the garage after dark with his circular saw, goggles & improper lighting at night for years.

But I digress. Back to CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAIL #2:

Worthy of mention, some years later, when I became old enough to babysit solo on occasion, this is what they came home to:
Enough said. So I was left in temporary charge of my younger siblings. The night in question was much earlier in our young lives. My brother started screaming his lungs out. I tried bouncing him on my lap, making funny faces and sounds, rocking him and nothing I did abated his ear-splitting caterwauling. So, I did what I had seen repeatedly done on TV. In any and all situations on 1960's and 70's television if someone was having hysterics -- you slapped them and they promptly came around. I had seen this done repeatedly on all the TV dramas. So...I slapped my little brother in the face. *FAIL* He just screamed several octaves higher and quite a few decibels louder. My sister, "The Snitch" ran outside to tell dad that I had just slapped Russell in the face. I don't think she did it to curry favor or anyting. She was just being brattily informative.

Well, Dad was livid. He snatched my little brother from my arms and screamed at the top of his lungs, "HAVE ME OR YOUR MOTHER EVER SLAPPED YOU OR YOUR SISTER IN THE FACE? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF I SLAPPED YOU?" I answered in the negative. No, I would prefer not to be belted in the chops. He took a deep breath and asked why I had smacked my brother. I answered honestly. "Whenever someone on TV is hysterical, someone slaps them and then they're OK again." Dad wasn't mad anymore and looked at me with an expression that said, "Me-and-my-wife-have-given-birth-to-a-retarded-boob."

He was rendered speechless and shook his head and walked away with my screaming little brother in his arms. As I've said before, I had to test theories to find their truth. I still do. I'd have either made a brilliant scientist or inadvertently ended up menstural wall goo by trying to come up with a better recipe than my professor. C'est ma vie de merde!