Sunday, October 30, 2005

Halloween Costume Suggestion:

If "killing a hobo" is the funniest phrase in the English language (I recommend making it an all-purpose metaphor for anything you do in life: on your way to the bathroom, announce "I'm going to go kill a hobo..."), then it stands to reason that the best possible Halloween costume would be a murdered hobo...or, maybe a hobo murderer. (For those wondering "what kind of costume would a hobo murderer wear? My guess: a gory shirt, a knife, and a handful of blood-stained bindles.)

What did people actually wear as costumes this year? Keep in mind that whatever you picked, it wasn't as cool as killed hobo/hobo killer.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Who said off-year gubunatorial elections aren't hilarious?

For some dumb reason, Viriginia elects it's governor on the year AFTER each presidential election. So, that means that they're campaigning hard right now in the lead up to the November 8th vote. The Democratic candidate is the current Lieutenant Governor, Tim Kaine. The Republican is current state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. The race is a dead heat going into the last two weeks of the campaign.

None of this is, as of yet, hilarious.

However, by watching a few slices of the televised debates and some broadcasted publicity events, I've discovered something hilarious: Kilgore, the Republican candidate, has an EFFEMINANT Southern accent. I'm sure that everyone is familiar with the "effeminant Southerner." There's nothing inherently funny about this...although the fact that Kilgore is the candidate of the infinitely heterosexual Republican party is worth a chuckle or two. What's funny is that fact that, because of the noted anti-gay bias of your average knuckledragging Republican voter, Kilgore's campaign has used his actual voice and image extremely sparingly in their ads. The McCain-Feingold-mandated "I'm Jerry Kilgore and I approved this message" is the only time he actually speaks in any of his ads.

The question this raises is: did Kilgore realize on his own that he sounds kind of fruity and opted to keep his twangy lisp out of the public domain, OR, much more humorously, did one of Kilgore's campaign flunkies have to break the news to his boss that he sounds a bit too lavender for the cracker barrel of southern Virginia, and couldn't do his own spots?

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

One more post about cartoons and I'll be forced to renounce puberty.

The absolute worst thing about Fox getting the broadcast rights to the baseball playoffs, including the World Series is that it has postponed the Simpsons Halloween Specials until November. That's just lame. Halloween-based programming is the the television equivilent of delicious taffy.* But that's only if it thrillingly anticipates the coming of October 31. If it's being shown in November. while people are already taking down their skeletons and putting up pictures of those adorable religious-fanatic-leprechauns, the Pilgrims, it's just sad, like a sack of drowned puppies left over fromthe traditional drunken Labor Day pet sacrifice. This is, as I wisely pointed out earlier, lame, but necessary if the World Series lasts through the end of October.

However, last year when the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in four games, there was no baseball on the last Sunday of October, leaving a big, juicy space for the Simpsons Halloween special. But since Fox had been advertising their Simpsons Halloween special for the first weekend of November, they ran some bullshit, non-Halloween-related reruns on the last Sunday of October. It was a sacrilege on par with shitting in your mom's mouth while she's passed out on the couch. And, worst of all, they're going to do it again this year! The Sox just won the Series (I'm pleased: Fuck Houston, Fuck Barbara Bush's reptilian jaw gnashing behind home plate, hurray for the smashing of jinxes!), so there won't be any baseball THIS Sunday, either. And yet, because they've already been advertising the special for November 6 (a Halloween special on November Sixth? Christ!), they'll probably dump some horseshit on this Sunday instead of sweet, sweet Simpsons Halloween creamy goodness. Goddamn it! That's all I've got to say. Goddamn it!

Fuck.

*Christmas-related programming, on the other hand, is the television equivilent of being force-fed rusty barbed wire wrapped around pages of John Grisham novels.

Monday, October 24, 2005

"Hey, what's wrong, baby?"








Bill Frist announces his candidacy for Earth Overlord.


John Carpenter, a seminal master of schlock cinema, capable of spinning the most tired genre premises into compelling, atmospheric, ass-kickingly entertaining films. "Halloween" essentially invented the slasher genre. "The Thing" contains an aura of suffocating paranoia and some of the best special effects of the 1980s. And what can be said about "Big Trouble in Little China" that hasn't already been said by a room full of stoned hipsters? However, somewhere around the late 80s, Carpenter lost his commercial appeal, his budgets and distribution dried up, and he's now scampering from one underfunded retread idea to another. If he directs another movie before he dies, I'd be surprised.

There has been a recent trend in Hollywood, one on par with the Tuskegee Experiment and Napoleon's invasion of Russia, to remake John Carpenter movies with big budgets, blank young actors, and helmed by hack video directors. Instead of giving that money to a proven craftsman like Carpenter to make a movie that will undoubtably be more interesting than anything these uninspired, glorified salesmen could ever dream up, they throw the cash at a pack of chimps and set them to work fucking with Carpenter's movies. It's a monumentally dumb idea, because the reason that these films are memorable isn't their thin, gimmicky plots, it's the eye that Carpenter brought to them. So, by remaking his films with suck-ass hacks at the helm, they're left with nothing more than the thin, gimmicky plots.

The two examples released so far speak for themselves: "Assault on Precinct 13" and "the Fog" bite dog wang for weeks.

However, in violation of everything I just wrote, there is one John Carpenter film that I really hope the Hollywood jizz-sacks get around to re-making, because it has a thin, gimmicky plot that happens to be AWESOME!

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper, wrestling super-star, plays a drifter in Los Angeles who discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the Truth: which is that there are hideous, bug-eyed aliens living amongst us in disguise. They compose the top 1%, the movers, the shakers, politicians, lawyers, media figures. All advertising is, under it's colorful exterior, a simple order: OBEY, CONSUME, REPRODUCE. This reality is obfuscated by a microwave that makes the aliens look like people, and the stark, black-and-white orders look like media content. The sunglasses, manufactured by an underground cell of human rebels, block that wave. Roddy eventually joins these fighters and takes out the main microwave dish, revealing to the horrified human population the reality they've long ignored. You don't have to be Umberto Eco to get the symbolism here.

However, the movie featured crappy special effects (the alien's walkie talkies were clearly left-over PKE meters from "Ghostbusters"), less exposition of the alien control mechanism than I would have liked, and it starred Rowdy Roddy Piper. So let's remake this fucker: throw in some WB rent-a-hunks, decent CGI, and finally make a disposable Hollywood action time filler with an actual idea in its celluloid head.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Sons of Aqua Teens

The certified comedy geniuses who brought us "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (also known as the greatest invention of Western Civilization since slavery), Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, have split up temporarily to produce two new shows for the justly worshiped Adult Swim lineup. Both of these shows premiered last week. This offers those of us who consider ATHF to be a piece of brilliance a chance to see which member of this animated comedy powerhouse duo is the Simon, and which is the Garfunkel. Below you shall find the definitive evaluations of these programs, and the human worthiness of their creators, based on the two episodes of each that I have seen.

Squidbillies







"I don't consort with those of the robot race."

This is Dave Willis' creation. 50% more plot driven and 50% less random than "Aqua Teens", but, so far, approximately 90% as funny. It's the tale of a father-son team of hillbilly squids. Lots of the expected humor at the expense of dumb crackers, mixed with plenty of casual violence and a goodly dose of absurdity. However, it also figures set ups, punch lines, and an extensively realized universe with a buttload of humorous ancillary characters, including a snake with a mullet whose only goal is swallowing and digesting the town sheriff. In short, this is exactly the show to rebut the criticism of people who claim that Adult Swim humor lazily gets by on random absurdity. Clearly, thought and imagination went into every joke in this show.

Funniest Lines so far:

"For the next ten years, Early was raised by wolves...horribly" (cue wolves eating Early's face)

"Man Flavored Baby Tacos!" (Cut to picture of smiling Mexican) "So delicious, I was glad to die for it!"

Twelve Ounce Mouse







Maiellaro's contribution. This show, on the other hand, is almost a parody of Adult Swim-style comedy, even more reliant on lazy absurdity than the harshest Swim critics would dare to suggest. In significant ways, its the same show as "Squidbillies" in that it follows a protagonist, the "12 oz. Mouse" in question, who, like father-squid Early Kyler, is prone to alcohol abuse and random gunfire. The difference is that it sucks with a white-hot intensity rarely found among earth-bound periodic elements. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some galactic suckiness involved in this thing. As you can see from the jpg, the show is insultingly poorly drawn, basically demanding that you concentrate on the cutting edge dadaist dialogue. Too bad the dialogue is as sloppy and uninspired as the animation; a string of non sequiters devoid of any characters, plot points, set ups, jokes, or pay offs. The essential truth that Maiellaro seems to have forgotten is that out-of-the-blue absurdity is only funny if it stands in contrast to some sort of ordered universe. Aqua Teens works because, although the idea of living foodstuff renting a house in New Jersey is ridiculous, it's nevertheless a coherent world, and the madness of the characters pops out only in relationship to that consistently presented premise. 12 oz. Mouse is an fifteen minute long, unrelated string of the most off-the-wall moments of Aqua Teens, devoid of context or characters. The shit of it is that there's bound to be a bunch of comedic avante gardists who are going to champion 12 oz. Mouse for it's "bold" anti-style. But fuck those guys.

The Verdict:

After two episodes, it is crystal clear that Dave Willis has been carrying Matt Maiellaro like a sack of wet manure for years. In much the same way that Paul Simon would write, arrange, and play the instruments on each song while Art Garfunkel dropped in to lay down some high, fruity vocals that Simon couldn't reproduce, Willis lovingly crafted each Aqua Teen episode's character, comedic set up, the jokes and punch lines, then brought Maiellaro in to sprinkle a few out-of-left-field lines to make it all come together perfectly. Now, this isn't to say that Maiellaro isn't a valuable part of the Aqua Teen process, just as it's hard to imagine those classic Simon and Garfunkel songs without Art warbingly along. However, it's now painfully clear which member of the duo is capable of a strong solo career, and which one doesn't have the complete comedy skill set necessary to sustain their own creative vision.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Overrated or Underrated?

You. Make. The. Call!

Explorers:

Vasco De Gama

Ponce DeLeon

Henry Cabot


Snack Foods:

Funyuns

Candy Corn

Pudding Cups


Presidential Assassins:

Leon Czolgoz

Charles Giteau

Lee Harvey Oswald (wink, wink)

John Wilkes Booth


Sexual Fetishes:

Tea-bagging

Armpit Humping

Scat Munching

Taint Scrubbing


Ass-Based Insults:

Asshole

Dumbass

Assface

Assbutt


Human-Animal Hybrids:

Turducken

Jackalope

Mandingo (no, not that one)

Chimpizard


Friday, October 21, 2005

Another Question for the Ages: Who Wins in a Fight?

Bloodthirsty Zombie?


Or

Kool Aid Guy?

The zombie thirsts for human flesh and blood, and the delicious red Kool Aid within the Kool Aid Guy would probably serve as adequate motivation for the zombie to attack him. However, the Kool Aid Guy has no similar desire to attack a zombie: he is only interested in serving delicious Kool Aid to children from the inside of this giant head, so the zombie gets points for determination. On the other hand, the Kool Aid Guy is ostensibly made of a sturdy glass which is, in all likelihood, impervious to the zombie's tooth-and-fingernail-based assault. If we're dealing with an evolved "Land of the Dead"-era zombie who has learned rudimentary tool usage, then it could easily cracked the Kool Aid Guy's shell with any available metal impliment. Still, the Kool Aid Guy has shown repeatedly that he is both boisterous and resilient.

I'll put my money on the Kool Aid Guy, especially if he get his hands on a shotgun.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

A question for the ages:

Which one of these indicted or soon-to-be-indicted (fingers crossed) nutsacks would you most like to see sodomized in the shower room by the Aryan Nation while they're serving time?

The Contestants:










Dr. Douche











Turd Blossom










Grimma Wormtongue









Lord Scum...ah, forget it, I'm not that lucky.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

"And it done got a bun in it..."







"My water broke!"


Babies are small, meat-filled noise-makers. You can hang around with one or less of them at a time and it can actually be entertaining, but once they start stacking up, it turns into a pants-shitting "Dawn of the Dead" re-enactment. As with zombies, the prime rule regarding children is: never get outnumbered.

Ignoring these sage words, basic common sense, and centuries of birth control advances, some toothless yokel in Arkansas has just popped out her 16th young 'un. Unless you're using some of them for spare parts, I think that's overkill. Somehow, I don't think these rubber-headed crackers are going to make up the world's greatest rock band or combine to form some kind of Hillbilly Voltron. Most likely, they'll just end up building the biggest meth lab in the lower 48.

But the best part is that all of the kids have names starting with a "J". According to Associated Press, those names are:

Jehosaphat

Javalin

Jhonny Peralta

Jizzblast

Jasper

Jerk Store

Jodhpur

Jazz June

Jesus H. Christ, give my battered vagina a rest!

Juan Valdez

Jake and the Fat Man (kid with partially developed twin brother protruding from shoulder)

Jukebox Hero

Jezebel

Junk-in-the-trunk

Jam Band

Just another day, livin' in the hood, just another day in the neighborhood, today...

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

There is a very real chance that we are witnessing the destruction of the Republican Party. Fueled by astonishing amounts of corruption, , incompetence and imperial overreach, the political machine which has strangled American government for nearly a decade, enforced a vulgar capitalism not seen since the Gilded Age, and purged all remaining elements of traditional liberalism from the mainstream political landscape, may very well be falling apart before our very eyes. That’s hard for a lot of folks who've been paying attention for the last five years to process. We've watched as this band of cutthroats, fueled by sadism and rampaging greed, unencumbered by shame, conscience, respect for truth, or basic human decency, utterly destroy their nominal Democratic opposition and impose an unprecedented one party rule. Their allies have been the inherent ignorance, insecurity and fear of the American people and a Democratic party utterly without mandate, direction, or decent leadership. They've exploited fear and spread around corporate cash so effectively that, until very recently, they seemed totally invincible, on the verge of permanently recreating the American political landscape: slashing and burning all the old growth forest and turning it into an asphalt hell of mega-churches, army recruiters and big box retailers.

But the past few months have shown that all that concentrated power has fed a deadly sense of invincibility. Having unaccountable control for years on end tends to make one sloppy, and the chickens are starting to come to roost. Currently, a perfect shitstorm of political horrors has engulfed the Republican party: an increasingly unpopular Iraqi quagmire, stunning federal incompetence dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, two indictments of the House Majority Leader, a supreme court nomination that reeks of cronyism and has seriously alienated conservative activists, SEC investigations of the Senate Majority Leader, rising gas prices, and major corruption scandals among the state Republican power structures in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois. Not to mention the promise of coming indictments in the Plame investigation that could likely reach Karl Rove and the office of the Vice President. All in all, it's shaping up for an historic comeuppance for the Republican party in next year's congressional elections; a shift in the electorate that could rival the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 in impact.

But maybe not. The Republicans have been in this situation before. Many people, myself included, were certain that George Bush was headed for an asskicking last year. We underestimated the depth and fanaticism of Bush's "Christian" base as well as John Kerry's utter lameness. No matter that the war in Iraq had already revealed itself to be a monumental cock-up and that the debates highlighted Bush's pettiness and blinkered ignorance; people just don't pay that much attention, and a campaign with the lack of scruples and media influence of the Bush machine, not to mention the corpses of 3,000 Sept. 11th victims to rape, is usually going to win.

Still, the 2004 election was probably a case of good timing for the Bush volk more than anything: they managed to avoid any real reckoning on their myriad criminalities and fuck-ups: Delay's corruption machine hadn't been outed yet, the Plame grand jury was still in the middle of investigations, and Iraq hadn't become self-evidently lost (at least not to the majority of Americans). You've got to believe that, if Bush were up for re-election THIS November instead of last, Ted Kennedy's enlarged liver could probably beat him like a rented donkey.

Thinking about the situation NEXT November, it's hard to imaging the Republicans being in better shape than now. In fact, it's likely that they'll be stewing in an even bigger crock of shit than they are currently. Karl Rove could be facing prosecution, Tom Delay might be in jail, or at least on trial at that point, the myriad state-wide Republican scandals will have doubtlessly led to indictments and/or convictions, and the Iraq occupation will continue to ruin American and Iraqi lives by the thousands. Not to mention all the people who got hypothermia in the North-east due to prohibitively high heating oil prices, and the people skipping lunch to pay for $5 a gallon gas. There are already stories about the difficulty that the RNC has had in recruiting prime candidates for competitive races in '06.

So let's bow to the reality around us, defy our innate pessimism and assume that the '06 elections are the beginning of the end of Republican domination: the Republicans lose seats in the House, maybe even lose control of the Senate, the Democrats start investigating the several kajillion Bush administration crimes of the past term and a half, and the 2008 election becomes the Democratic candidate's to lose. Frankly, I think that such a scenario is the only hope for the nation: if the Republicans can weather the current political shitfit and STILL scrape out a win, then the public is apathetic and hateful enough and/or the Democrats are vapid and incompetent enough that even the trappings of representative democracy in this country are done with.

Anyway, if that happens, if the next five years sees the demise of the Republican Death and Greed Cult, a lot of people, including myself, will find themselves dehydrated from all the spontaneous ejaculating we'll be doing. In the ecstasy, there will be a real danger of thinking that the battle has been won. In reality, the fight will have only begun.

One of the most pernicious effects of Republican hegemony has been to identify the imperial, corporate capitalist state exclusively with the Republican Party. Since the Democrats have been pathetically powerless for years now, they have become the all-purpose dream depository of those who are repulsed by the current regime. It's been easy to forget given the madness of the Republican powers that be, but it needs to be stressed: the Democratic Party is essentially the same as the Republican Party. They represent the interests of corporate capitalism, the continuation of the drug war, are largely supportive of an imperial foreign policy. In fact, their very purpose in being is to provide an illusion of contrast, emphasizing cultural issues and the finer points of running a mixed economy (tax cuts! social spending!). In effect, the very existence of the Democratic party helps to retard social change, especially in our current situation: once the Republicans are out, many of your leftier types are going to be happy just to have those fuckers gone, and will probably tolerate all manner of slack-ass centrism from the national Democrats.

Even if the Republicans finally get the Gas Face they so richly deserve, it’s going to be our job to ensure that the Democrats get their feet held to the fire and actually present an alternative mode of governing and society than that offered by the Grand Old Pud-wackers.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

The Perfect Name for a Hipster Male Porn Star:

Lester Bangs.

(It's not that far-fetched. Apparently, there's already a porn dude with a Master Shake tattoo.

Friday, October 07, 2005

"Bring out your dead!"


In 1918, a virulent strain of influenza spread across the world like a brush fire. World War One helped it along: massive numbers of soldiers, packed ear to ear, shipped half-way around the world and back, served as perfect transmitters of the disease. Every country on earth was affected. Unlike most flu viruses, this one killed not only the very young and very old, but those in the prime of life. People in their twenties and thirties made up the bulk of the dead, who numbered somewhere north of 50 million. Even in the United States, which was spared the worst of it, horse-drawn ambulances trotted through major cities, calling for people to deliver the corpses of their dead family members.

Analysis of the 1918 flu strain has shown that it was a mutated version of bird flu which combined with a human variant to become a super-virus.

Right now, there's a bird flu strain going around Southeast Asia. It has killed more than 60 people so far: it's more than fifty percent lethal, just like the 1918 strain. The only difference is that the current strain can only travel from birds to person, but not from person to person. However, it is likely only a matter of time before this avian flu strain does what the 1918 strain did: combine with a human strain and make the leap from person to person. Then, international air travel will do what the troop ships of WWI did before: send the virus across the globe. At that point, the World Health Organization has estimated that such an outbreak could kill anywhere between five and ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY million people.

Now, this is scary shit, especially since I'm right in the fat part of the death bell curve of the 1918 flu. But goddamnit it if the prospect of an apocalyptic flu pandemic doesn't get me a little bit jazzed. I know that makes me a bad person. But, what makes me an even worse person is my deepest hope: that the flu strain mutates to go from person to person, then mutates to go from live people to recently deceased people, which it turns into bloodthirsty zombies.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Funniest Phrase in the English Language?

"Killing a hobo."

Why?

1. Killing things is funny.

2. "Hobo" is a funny sounding word.

3. It's funny because it's true.



Seriously, who wouldn't want to kill that?

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

"Oh, I´m afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive."


Anybody else concerned that Bush has nominated Emperor Palpatine to the Supreme Court?


I don't know what this means for the future of abortion rights, but Alderaan better shape the fuck up in a hurry.

Personally, I was pulling for Admiral Akbar, but I guess he was too much of a judicial activist.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Droppin' the Can't Miss Movie Pitch Bomb, Bizznitches!



Uber-Awesome Movie Idea #1:

FahrenChrist 3:16: The two most profitable films of 2004 were The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 911. Logic dictates that a movie combining elements from both of these blockbusters would be the biggest film hit of all time. It's a shot-for-shot remake of Mel Gibson's Passion, with Michael Moore playing Jesus....and Nick Nolte playing the evil suckling infant.

Stu-tacular Movie Idea #2:

The Fartening: The fart, nature's perfect comedic vessel, finds its ultimate expression in this tour de force of body function-related hilarity. A mysterious space virus causes an epidemic disease which makes everyone on earth fart uncontrollably. The high point of humor is a twenty minute montage of people from different nations farting in culturally-specific ways. It's up to Nick Nolte and a super-intelligent, sentient fart to find a cure before the built-up methane causes a global explosion of apocalyptic proportions.

Spec-pendous Movie Idea #3:

"Goddamnit it!:" The Nick Nolte Story: At turns humorous, heart-breaking, hair-raising, alliterative, and inspiring,this is the tale of one of our finest film actors. We chronicle his triumphs, his loves, his losses, and his heroic struggle with the demons of his psyche. Featuring Chris Rock as Eddie Murphy, Kathy Griffin as Vicky Lewis, and starring Steve Buscemi as Nick Nolte. Nick Nolte plays Barbara Streisand.

I just made a cream-cicle in my pants.

Tom Delay indicted...AGAIN! This time for money laundering.

If this keeps up, I'm finally going to have to buy a new pair of underwear.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

What does Mick Jagger's dong have in common with Christian Slater's shattered pelvis?

I just watched a criminally stupid movie called Mindhunters, a recent box office bomb directed by Cutthroat Island and Deep Blue Sea auteur and Euro-trash knucklehead Renny Harlin. I'll spare you the details of the moronic plot. Sufficed to say that there's a serial killer on the loose: the kind of serial killer who creates incredibly convoluted traps with which to slay his victims, in other words, the kind of serial killer who only exists in movies. His first victim is dispatched when he trips a Rube Goldberg domino contraption that results in him being blasted with a tank of liquid nitrogen which freezes his legs. Then, his legs snap, his body falls to the floor...and shatters into several pieces. It's more hilariously dumb than watching two retards hump on a beanbag chair. You have to wonder what is going through the mind of a director who shoots that scene. Is he really thinking: yeah, the guy freezes, then falls over, then shatters on the ground! Critics will call it "heartstopping!" My guess was that the filmmakers went through with this idiocy because it hadn't been done before. Sure enough, when I watched the scene with the director's commentary on, Renny Harlin said that his main obsession during the film was to find creative ways to kill the cast. It's the exact same reasoning as the makers of Swordfish, a festering wound on the ass of cinema from about five years ago starring noted air travel enthusiast John Travolta. In that film, there is a scene in which a city bus is hooked up by cables to a helicopter and flown around Los Angeles. Trust me, it's as dumb as it sounds. The makers of that crap pile were proud as punch to have thought up something as unprecedented in an action film as a flying bus! Cinematic history had been made!

This kind of competitive idiocy is the inevitable consequence of the action/thriller filmmaking mindset. When films are nothing but empty spectacle, the only real creative endeavor left to a director or screenwriter is to come up with inventive spectacle, endless variations on the same tired setpieces.

It reminds me of the old story/urban legend about Mick Jagger and David Bowie. According to legend, sometime in the mid-70s, one of Mick's wives caught him in bed with Ziggy Stardust. Neither of them were really gay, they were just curious about what it would be like. Personally, I have a hard time keeping my lunch down at the thought of all that pasty white English skin and protruding ribs, but hey, maybe it was wonderful. The point is that both of these men, Rock n' Roll gods at the peak of the sexual revolution, were able to spend years humping their way through every size, shape, race, pigment, deformity, and handicap of woman on earth, and in every conceivable numerical permutation. As such, they eventually exhausted their own capacity for excitement in conventional heterosexual sex, so they decided to bang each other. It might not be particularly sexy, but at least it would be novel!

In both the Jagger/Bowie case and the Swordfish/Mindhunters one, the common failing is reducing the activity involved, be it sex or filmmaking, into a rotely technical exercise. When sex is emptied of love, or movies are empty of emotional resonance, the result is an inevitable spiral of diminishing returns.