"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Nurse Betty

(released overseas as Soapdish 2000)

There has been alot of “buzz” and “Juice” as well as “acclaim” surrounding this picture. So, that I am, I decided to go see it BEFORE this week’s Badass release, Way of the Gun. I would like to apologize right now for my lapse in judgement and lack of support for the Badass movement. What in fuck’s name was I thinking. I must have been suffering from temporary trauma induced delusions like the gal of the title.

There are many surprises in the picture. For example, Betty is not really a nurse. I mean you go see a movie called Nurse Betty, you expect AT THE VERY LEAST this Betty gal is a nurse. But no, she is a waitress who wants to be a nurse, and is obsessed with a doctor on this one soap opera. Then Chris Rock and Morgan Freeman kill her fuckwad husband right in front of her, and she goes wacko and goes across the country thinking she has to reunite with her “ex-fiancee”, the fictional doctor from the soap opera. So Morgan and Chris follow her around and then she meets the actor who plays the doctor. (read the rest of this shit…)

Labor Day – interview with the porn man

Hey guys how’s it goin sorry about last week’s column. SOMEBODY woke up on the wrong side of the bed, huh? Jesus.

This week I thought I would do something kinda special in honor of the Labor Day holiday. In honor of the people. You see, there are many individuals in the world, but the ones I feel the strongest for are the working men and women. The people who bust their ass muscles every day, usually for some asshole in a tie or for some soulless corporation. Or even better, there are the people who work hard and don’t get much respect and don’t get paid shit, but in a field they are passionate about. And not working for a chain, or for the man. For some ma an pa type business is what they call it, a small locally owned place. (read the rest of this shit…)

Cecil B. DeMented

For the first time in the one (1) year since I got out, I feel like someone has heard me as I shouted to the sky my feelings about the Cinema. Or at least came up with the same ideas seperately. Mr. John Waters is the filmatist in question and this gentleman has created one of the greatest movies EVER about the movies to come out in the last year at least from the ones I have seen. Which is not many but still. This is a must-see picture for Cinema Outlaws like you and me because it takes all of our arguments and wads them all up into a big ball and then molds them into the shape of an entertaining movie.

It is kind of weird seeing a John Waters picture around the same time you see one about GG Allin. John Waters if I remember correctly had a friend who dressed up like a woman and ate poodle shit. That in my opinion is pushing the envelope further than GG Allin since Allin was only eating his own shit. When it is your own shit you got a pretty good idea what’s in it, you are able to control it. With a poodle, who the fuck knows what that poodle is shitting out. I mean jesus dogs do some pretty sick shit. Like one time I saw a dog in this rat infested junkyard, well forget it this is maybe not the best tangent to go on I don’t really want to think about all this shit eating. (read the rest of this shit…)

God damn it stop talking about Survivor

Man, is it just me or is everybody else SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT FUCKING SURVIVOR!?

I never even SEEN the fucking show I still gotta be treated like it’s the dearest thing to my heart. The one thing that makes me a man. The very center of my religion. I get up in the morning, my clock radio’s telling me about Survivor. I turn on Good Morning America or Today Show or some shit, they got a panel of experts talking about how they kept the ending a secret, what are they gonna do now, interview some naked guy that was on the show, interview some gal’s dad, show clips from last night’s episode of Dave Letterman where they also interviewed the same retards about the same boring bullshit.

And is that unfortunate or what, to have a fine comedian like dave letterman forced to spend half his show talking about some other show the network is trying to promote. I bet the cbs suits had meetings all about it, and they probaly came up with a catchy name for the format, like comedmercial or infolaffs or synerhilarity. It’s too bad entertainment tonight is a syndicated program instead of a cbs program. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to hear, “Coming up later on ET, we have an exclusive preview of tomorrow night’s ET, where we will show a clip from tonight’s episode of David Letterman, where Dave will discuss yesterday’s episode of Survivor. But first, Jim J. Bullock’s tragic allergies that almost brought his Survivor watching to a premature end.” (read the rest of this shit…)

The Iceberg is mine, motherfuckers

I wonder if any of you boys have ever read the literary works of Iceberg Slim. For those of you who don’t know, Iceberg is an individual who, like me, had some trouble with the law. He got sucked into the belly of the beast and years later, shot out its ass with 100% Writer’s blood flowing through his veins.

As you might be able to guess by his handle, Iceberg was a pimp. And a damn good one, to hear him tell it. Iceberg was born in 1918 so we’re talking back in the 30’s 40’s and 50’s prostitution scene. He worked primarily out of the southside of Chicago, a good place for pimps, apparently. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for us, he went down about three times and had to retire. He moved out to Los Angeles California and wrote his first book, Pimp: The Story of My Life which was published in 1967. It was and is a huge influence on modern crime fiction and rap music. It has been a noted influence for everybody from Irvine Welsh to Ices Cube and T. It is not only one of the greatest books ever written by a criminal, but also has the distinction of being the second best title ever for an autobiography, after Roger Vadim’s Deneuve, Bardot, Fonda: My Life With the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Cell

Oh jesus I wanted to like this movie. I am a big fan of the artists, and shit if this one isn’t made by some kind of artist. I guess the dude is a mtv music video director named Tarsem. At first I thought “Holy shit Tarsem is directing now? I thought he was dead.” Then I remembered I was thinking of Sabu. Tarsem is a different guy.

Anyway this movie is about as pretty as I’ve ever seen when Tarsem lets loose. There are fantasy world imageries of magic horses and deserts and sailboats and the virgin Mary and weird doll people and little skeleton horses and evil clowns tying a dude’s intestines to a music box and etc. These don’t look like any movie I’ve seen before, they are bright and weird and perfectly designed like some kind of psychedelic painting, the ones made by a real master artist not just some hippie that paints mushrooms and mad hatters and hangs them up at the local cafe. I’m talking the real deal. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Original Kings of Comedy

This is a new comedy concert movie directed by Spike Lee. Instead of having somebody good like Richard Pryor as the star, the gimmick here is that it’s Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac.

Just kidding bud the truth is these guys aren’t bad. I never even heard of the motherfuckers but apparently that’s what all the white people say. Sorry boys. They are popular enough to fill up a god damn stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina so they must be pretty popular there, in my opinion. Unless they just let everybody in for free but I don’t think they did.

Apparently a couple of these motherfuckers have shows on pbs or one of those type of stations that nobody watches. One is called the steve harvey show, the other is called d.l. Hughley presents The Hughleys. Now one thing I wanna know, if these motherfuckers are so funny why they can’t come up with a real name for a show. No, it’s gotta be The Steve Harvey Show. The Hughleys. The Wayans Brothers. The Jamie Foxx show. Martin. the Drew Carey Show. Seinfeld. Ellen. Roseanne. The Cosby Show. Norm. Titus. The Jeff Foxworthy Show. (read the rest of this shit…)

Ghost Dog and Titus on DVD

Well it brings tears to an old man’s eyes to point out that it has been 1 penny solid that I have been on the outside of the correctional system. 365 days of freedom. Good lord what a beautiful year. Very few brushes with the law or neighbors and many months of clarity and sobriety. It has gotten to the point where I can even wait patiently in line at a bank without much shuffling my feet or getting a sweaty forehead.

And the lord likes to bless us on these types of occasions and this week he has some doozies for me. Because GUESS WHO DOESN’T HAVE CHLAMYDIA! That’s right, thanks to all of your prayers, my test came back negative. Must be some other kind of infection. So you heard the lord girls. All ladies over 18, Vern is back open for business!

But there are a couple things in this world more important than disease-free sex, or even finishing a weekly column on time. And one of them is GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE MOTHERFUCKIN SAMURAI. Artisan home entertainment has kindly agreed to commemorate my anniversary by releasing my favorite film Ghost Dog to video as well as to the popular digital versatile disc format which I highly recommend. You see like many digital versatile discs, or “dvds” as many of us call them for short, GHOST DOG has many extra bonus type deals on it which are NOT on the tired, obsolete and embarrassing medium of the “vcr tape”. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Opportunists

What I like about this low key independent crime picture from 2000 is it’s small time in every way. I mean it’s got Chris Walken in the lead and he’s a big movie star, but everything about the story and characters goes against Hollywood’s idea of what’s exciting. The story is your usual “ex-con gone straight is running out of options and has to do one last score to survive” type deal but put in a more realistic, unglamorous, ungritty context. This is an unthriller.

Walken lives in suburban New York. I don’t remember ever seeing big buildings in this one. Here he’s a nice guy, almost timid, definitely not the King of New York. You could argue he’s a player because he goes between three places: a house with his grown up daughter, a tiny apartment above his girlfriend’s bar, and a trailer by the garage he rents out. But he’s embarassed of his past and never tries to be a tough guy about it. He’s a mechanic but he doesn’t seem to get much work and on this day doesn’t get the money because he fucked up the job. (read the rest of this shit…)

Hollow Man

You know what I fucking HATE? Chlamydia.

Just my 2 cents.

Anyway this week is an exciting week because for the first time in my career, I get to review a movie that one of my dedicated readers actually worked on. You see one of my best readers has been working over there in the tippet special effects studios where they did the starship troopers and etc. He has mentioned to me several times that they were working on a movie called Hollow Man. I think I mentioned this in my “summer movie preview” but when he saw some footage coming back he told me it looked like something they didn’t have to be embarrassed of. And I thought, that sounds like a good fucking movie.

Well now I’ve seen it and it looks like the “critical” “establishment” doesn’t agree with me on this one, but I think Hollow Man is some kind of moronic masterpiece. Well, they do agree with the moronic part. So I guess we are almost on the same page. (read the rest of this shit…)