Last week as you know I presented to you the first annual Vern’s motherfuckin Outlaw Awards. I really wanted to make a real event of this, to bring more attention to 1999 Outlaw Award Winner for best picture since I got out of prison Fight Club. so I had that cokehead Walter Leno whip up a press release about it, real professional and all. I sent it out to a couple people, one of them being the ain’t it cool news since they had been Positive enough to print my Curtis Mayfield piece the week before.

Well to my surprise this Father Geek charcater must respect my work, either that or he’s making fun of me because he posted the press release as is. (Well, at the end he Wrote “catch you later” which neither me or walter actually Wrote, that was pure fabrication.)

Now I think some of you motherfuckers might be kind of concerned about ol’ Vern. Here he is on a popular mainstream type sight, he’s got some pretty boy cokehead Writing everything for him all slicklike. That motherfucker has SOLD THE FUCK OUT!

So for you worrying motherfuckers, I have a little story. Most of you have probaly heard by now I was in prison for a while up until last August, well that is where this tale takes place. You see, in the joint we had special entertainment evenings about every month or so. What they do is they hire some poor sap standup comedian to perform for a “captive audience” if you know what I mean. (Meaning we were in prison.)

I don’t know where they get these guys. I don’t even have a clue what kind of scene or school of comedy they might come out of, or if they are good or bad. for all I know these guys could have been the next Richard Pryor but the thing is, you can’t hear hardly a word they say! The moment they step out on the stage and start crackin wise, the audience eats them alive. FUCK YOU COCKSUCKER I’M GONNA STICK IT SO FAR UP YOUR CORNHOLE etc. etc.

You got about 100 deep voiced bank robbers, rapists and killers overlapping vulgarities at the top of their lungs and the poor comedian doesn’t know what hit him. This is what it sounds like:

Good evening gentlemen it’s good to be here… well, for me anyway, probably not SHUT YOUR PRETTY MOUTH YOU MOTHERFUCKER YOU COCKSUCKER KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER GET OFF THAT STAGE AND COME SIT ON MY LAP BABY HAVE YOU ON A LEASH SLIT YOUR THR always going to the bathroom in groups FUCK YOU GONNA KILL YOU TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS COME DO MY LAUNDRY PUNK ASS BITCH MOTHERFU b-because old people d-d-drive really slow, you ever notice how WHITE BOY GONNA STICK MY BIG COCK UP YOUR ASS MOTHE oh jesus sweet jesus please take me away from this nightmare BITCH ASS WHITE MOTHERFUCKER etc.

And of course, the guy eventually runs off the stage and you never see his ass again. But then one time, we did! This motherfucker, just a typical standup comic as far as I could tell, didn’t have a good build or anything. He seemed just as terrified as anyone but nevertheless, he stood there and told jokes for the full 45 minutes, and better yet one month later he comes back for more abuse. And I mean we gave it to him. You wouldn’t think he could take it once, let alone twice, but he did. Shaking, quivering, nervous as hell but he does his time like a man, he clocks out and the motherfucker even comes back ANOTHER time!

Another month later, as god as my witness, he’s back again. Third time. So we gave it to him again like I’m sure he expected and we got more and more graphic with the stuff we yelled at him. We had passed the first and second date with this guy, we were ready to get more intimate. STILL he takes it.

Four months in a row this guy ends up coming, and although nobody admitted it at the time, I think there was an understanding among the prison population that this standup was a standup motherfucker. You had to admire him for standing up to us and trying to tell us jokes, or stories, or recite the pledge of allegiance or whatever the fuck he was mumbling up there underneath our crudities, blsaphemes, death threats and what not.

Unfortunately, on that fourth booking, about 35 minutes into what would have been a 45 minute set, the dude just snapped. Sweat was dripping down his face, he had a crazed look in his eyes and suddenly he just does this high pitched squeal like a pig, sprints right across the white line into the crowd and starts wailing on J.J. Rooker. J. J. would later confess to me early one morning during kitchen duty that he was a big fan of the dude’s work and that this incident continued to haunt him for years. We all saw J.J. hesitate that night, and it was clear that it broke his heart that he had to break the funnyman’s nose.

Despite and because of this incident, the funnyman became a legend and mythical hero around the yard. People always talked about him, how resilient he was and how god damn funny he was. If you tried to tell a joke they would compare you to him, and it was hard to measure up. Most people admitted that they had secretly liked him, and we hoped that he would come back after his nose healed. We even thought about trying to send him a get well card or putting together a petition to bring him back in case the screws didn’t want it.

Well, he never came back. And then one evening, less than a year later, the jay leno program was playing on the tv, and what do you know? There is our funnyman telling jokes at the end of the show! His nose was healed, the scar was barely noticeable and he was getting his big break right there on live tv. And the audience was listening to him!

I was excited to hear what his jokes were like for the first time, but I didn’t get my chance. As soon as people recognized that this was our guy, over in LA on some stage somewhere, broadcasting out to the world, they started yelling “SELL OUT!” and then the usual shit about big cocks and bitch motherfuckers and etc.

I watched him, smiling, comfortable, not knowing what we were yelling at him. But I knew his work was still important. I was in the minority, but I felt then and I still feel to this day that that man did not sell out. I mean, assuming his material was in the same spirit of what he was doing before – I have no idea. But if it was, the man didn’t sell out because through jay leno he is broadcasting out not just to our facility, but to facilities all around the world, wherever the screws also turn it to leno. He was not just performing to us, he was performing to everyone from riker’s island to walla walla, everyone all at once!

I know you like to own him for yourself, you want him to be your punk, but even your punk you are willing to share with your friends, right? This is the same thing. We are sharing him with the world and he is getting his message across to more jockers, and they too are able to appreciate his services. (metaphor)

That said, I don’t think anybody has to worry about sharing me either because the whole ain’t it cool deal went PRETTY fucking sour in my opinion. On that sight they have a deal called the “talk backs” where all the aint it cool newsies can respond to the story and basically what they say is “Harry you suck you are a big fat sell out why do you print this garbage your sight is horrible and vern is the worst thing that has ever been on it and I will NEVER read this crap again.”

Okay that was a paraphrase but I’ll give you some actual quotes:

“Somehow I think Joe Bob Briggs has the trailer park reviewing locked up so this person can just go home.”

“Harry, is posting this crap really necessary?”

“I agree… It this necessary ? What’s next? Verns awards for ‘best movies I’ll never get to see because I’ll have to spend the rest of my miserable life in the slammer’. I mean. Come on…..”

“Not anything funnier than things about 15 talkbackers post every day…What gives this guy any credibility?”

“thanks Vern but no one asked for your opinion. It’s amazing to see how much growth the internet has had in Alabama.”

“Well, guess we should be glad Vernetta didnt see Any Given Sunday – woulda been some kinda ‘guy I’d like to soap-assist’ award . . . Let’s have another Badass list when he remembers where he left his balls………”

“Vern sounds about as smart as a cardboard box and needs to go back to prison. Maybe if he is raped a few more times, then it’ll knock some sense into his stupid convictass.”

“I say again, with emphasis, this is gay.”

Then later there was something about I should be banned from the ain’t it cool for life and suck on a syphilitic set of camel balls but I didn’t save that one so I can’t get the exact quote. One guy said I was retarded, several said I was gay, one guy said I was 14 years old, one said I was 12 and another said I was ten. And things only got worse after I went on and called them “a bunch of drunk fucks” and “KKK motherfuckers” which in my opinion may have rubbed them the wrong way. Anyway I would like to thank the three or four of you who actually stood up to the geek boy lynch mob on my behalf (you know who you are). You really make me proud and keep me going in the hard times such as this.

In retrospective it was naive of me to feel that the ain’t it cool newsies would accept someone who was different from them. I feel that I am a Frankenstein or King Kong type individual, who is too strong and too unrefined to exist peacefully among polite and/or geek society. This type of fish out of water scenario inevitably leads to tragedy and we should all be grateful that this was on the internet so no one was hurt or killed. If I had tried to present the Outlaws at one of their fan conventions it might have been a different story.

Anyway there is a happy ending to all this. Yesterday I checked my e-mail and what should be in there but a response to a letter where I told Mr. Bruce Campbell of the Evil Dead and Army of Darkness pictures that I had Written a column about his works. He quoted part of my column and then said:

Hey vern,

Thanks for the support, big guy. Just hope you never have as bad a life as Ash…=)

Best to ya,

Bruce

Thanks Bruce, best to ya as well and a sideways smiling dude right back at ya. It is moments like this that you realize what it is really all about. It is not about pleasing everybody, it is not even always about getting your message out to everybody like the funnyman on jay leno or the ex-con on the ain’t it cool news. It is about individuals such as Bruce and myself who work hard for what we love and hopefully I, like Bruce, will be able to get my work out to people who appreciate it, whether that’s ten million people across the world or two unbathed heroin addicts in an alley somewhere. As the sun sets in the west or whichever and the beauty of morning blossoms, I can truly say that I am proud to be a Cinema appreciater and reformed ex-con film Writer such as myself, even if it makes those bitch motherfuckers think I’m a ten year old gay retard.

Have a good one everybody

–Vern