First of all, before I get into the holy religious holiday of Easter and all, I want to say WHO THE FUCK is this jackass Chris Gore, and how many times should I stab him? If I was a violent person. You see today I was watching the FX channel over there on the cable, minding my own business, when suddenly I see this ad for The Man Show or whatever his thing is called. Now I have seen this show before and the less I say about it the better. So I will tell you a lot about it. It is shit. I will get into that in a minute.

Let me just mention as an aside, a dude in the guestbook says I was featured in a british dancing music magazine called Jockey Slut. Was Chris Gore ever in Jockey Slut? I don’t think so. Was Harvey S. Karten ever in Jockey Slut? I don’t think so. Was I? According to this guy, yes. If somebody could please send me a scan of this or something I would REALLY fucking appreciate it.

Anyway back to this motherfucker on FX. What got me mad is not that this show is even worse than Access Hollywood. It is that on the ads, the dude says, “Finally, a critic who tells it like it is.”

Now does that remind you of anyone? Can you think of any other critic (or, in this case, Film Writer), who Tell’s It Like It Is? Has there ever been one before? One who has written a new column every week for 28 straight weeks, each with one hundred (100) times as much insight into the Artistic Works of Cinema as an entire season of Chris Gore’s moronic TV show?

I mean, jesus.

(I’m talking about me, by the way, if you didn’t catch that. I am the one who “tell’s it like it is.” That is the name of my column.)

The trouble is, to tell it like it is you gotta be an Outlaw like yours truly. You gotta not care what anyone thinks about you. I mean your talking to a motherfucker who would piss on himself in public if he felt like it. I don’t care what anybody thinks. Chris Gore would not piss on himself. Because it’s not “cool” to piss yourself.

Chris Gore is a dude who cares what you think, he wants to be the rebel version of Siskel and Ebert. The trouble with rebels is they’re always reacting to try to get a reaction. They think they are standing up against the conformists, by conforming to what the conformists don’t do. So this bitch and his panelists, they just sit around and give two sentence joke reviews of the movies where they try to say something cynical, like, “this movie is good because it has explosions, ha ha ha let’s admit it, we like explosions. Take THAT establishment, HA!”

On Roger Ebert’s show, I always wish it was longer because they have two people and like 5 movies to talk about in 22 minutes. You do the math – it doesn’t divide up too well. They say some good stuff but they don’t really get to go as in depth as the Art of Cinema requires. Chris Gore’s The Man Show has this problem much worse because now it’s five people, and all of them are nitwits. If any one of these retards made an intelligent point on the episode I saw, it must have been edited out.

And like entertainment tonight, they spend half the episode talking about what they’re going to talk about later. “Later on, we’ll discuss nudity in the movies.” I thought it was going to be some kind of report. Discussing the Issues. But no, they just spend about a minute talking about how horny Fast Times at Ridgmont High used to make them.

These are the kind of people you used to hang out with when you were younger, the guys who always thought they were alot more rebellious than they actually were. The guys who work in little comments that are supposed to sound self-deprecating but at the same time make them seem cool, like, “Dude, that movie is REALLY fucked up and TWISTED. But that’s how I like ’em!”

Or…

“If you’ve got a TWISTED sense of humor like me, ‘American Psycho’ could be the year’s best COMEDY!”

(Actual quote from Chris Gore.)

Despite all the show off rebel cynic business, these guys are still from the box office is king school of movie criticism. Here is an example of one of Chris’s “tellin it like it is” reviews from his web site:

“And while the box office won’t be huge, keep an eye out for potential sleeper hits like ‘Love and Sex.’ This smart romantic comedy’s story is enough for me. This is definitely one to check out even without a big explosion at the end.”

That’s not an excerpt. That’s the whole review.

Anyway, screw that bastard. Now let’s talk about the Lord. At easter time I think about a couple of different things. The first one is The Wicker Man with Christopher Lee. This is not a Batman movie or an X-Man movie, it is about a cult that does human sacrifices.

I don’t know if you remember that movie. It’s been a while for me. I’m not sure if it takes place at Easter or not but I think it might. What I do remember is this dude flies to a pagan commune island to investigate a dead girl. When he digs up her coffin, I think there was a rabbit inside it. Then they make all kinds of pastries and play music and a naked gal is dancing against the wall. They dress up in masks and march this motherfucker to his death. “You have an appointment.. with the Wicker Man!”

The other thing I think about is Jesus Wormwood from back in the can. Not Jesus like Hey-Soos, the mexican name, although there were a few of those in there. This is Jesus like Geezus. His christian name was Eric I think, but he got the name Jesus on account of an incident involving being resurrected from the dead and what not.

See Wormwood got in a fight over property rights I believe, one of his punks or something, don’t want to bore you with prison politics. Point is, P-Dog and some of that whole clique beat Wormwood flat into the concrete, and crushed his larynx with the side of a lunch tray. Wormwood coughed up blood for three days straight, and didn’t stop until old Dog Dick Bronson shanked him over an unrelated grudge. Dog Dick wanted Wormwood to apologize for something (prison honor thing – hard to explain). God knows if Wormwood would’ve apologized but the important thing is, he COULDN’T. Like I said his larynx was crushed and he couldn’t even say, “help, I’m on fire!” let alone “I’m sorry, Dog Dick.”

It was a lunch tray that made him mute and ironically it was a lunch tray that killed him as well, for Dog Dick had cut out a triangle from a lunch tray about 3 inches long and sharpened it by scraping it against the walls and holding it to flames. Poor bastard had been bleeding already for 72 hours and this shanking business was too much to take. Still it took another day and a half before he finally passed out, and another day before he passed on.

Word spread around the yard, poor Wormwood. Rookie motherfucker was just too soft. And they buried him out back.

Exactly 7 days later, or 2, or whatever it is in the Bible, everybody’s out in the yard and there’s Wormwood lifting weights.

“What the FUCK!?” everybody asked.

I mean there were a couple different possibilities of what could’ve happened. Number one, he didn’t really die. He was pronounced dead too early, and since he couldn’t talk he couldn’t argue with them. When they went out to bury him, he started wiggling or something, they figured out their mistake, and threw his ass back in jail.

Number two, it was a failed escape plan. Dog Dick, and maybe even P-Dog was in on it. They hurt him, but didn’t kill him, and he did some kind of transcendental yoga meditation to make his heart stop beating so they would bury him, and then somebody would dig him up later and he would be a free man. But the guy who came to dig him up was a narc, and threw his ass back in jail.

Number three, he was resurrected like Jesus or a vampire and scratched his way up from underneath.

“What the fuck, Wormwood? What happened?” We were dying to know.

And he said, “hhh…. …. ee….. hrrrr.” The motherfucker still couldn’t talk. So we never found out what happened, but we called him Jesus from that day on.

Happy easter, motherfucker.

–Vern