Occupy Halloween

Happy Halloween to you my dear readers!

A Monkey Movie Review

This film kicks all kinds of ass. It's a gleefully over the top shoot 'em up vigilante movie. If you have delicate sensibilities, and or hate violent movies, then skip this one. But if you love cartoonish over the top super sensationalized violent films, then this is your flick.

Me, I loved it. Yes, it's trash, the kind of trash they'd show last at a drive in movie triple feature, and I loved it.

Barn of the week

A Monkey Movie Review

On a remote farm in Ireland a shadowy company is running genetic experiments on cattle. When things start to go wrong, they really really REALLY go wrong.

This is a tight little taut claustrophobic thriller/horror movie. It verges and nearly veers into cheesiness but it rights itself very quickly. The performances are all good and the scary stuff is genuinely scary and the ending of the film is very disquieting.

I highly recommend this one, especially if you like horror films.

This. Yes.

We are the many, they are the few. This land is our land. It's time we reclaimed it in the name of the working men and women who built this great place.

Brunette of the week

Sharon Horgan. She's also my newest imaginary British comedy girlfriend.

Welcome back old friend

I used to love this magazine when I was a kid. I'm ever so glad it's back. I got this back issue for $2 at my local comic book shop today.

"Perhaps my dress will distract my guests...

...from the fact that I'm about to serve them puppy souffle."

Let me get this straight...

• It's okay for people living under dictatorships that we helped create and then propped up for years to demonstrate and bring down the intolerable rulers who enslave them but when people in this country demonstrate against the big banks and corporations who keep us enslaved it's fine to call out the riot squads, tear gas us, and beat us with batons?
• It's perfectly acceptable for us to invade two sovereign nations, over throw their leaders, who we at one time helped stay in power, and then spend billions to rebuild their countries that we bombed to shit but there's not any money to go to rebuild our schools, highways, bridges, parks, national monuments, and to keep teachers, cops, and firemen employed?
  
• We've got to do everything possible to make sure women carry babies to term even if they can't afford to feed them, clothe them, and meet their basic human needs?
  
• It's fine to run off people who are willing to do back breaking soul crushing labor because our prisons are full of poor folks who should be somehow earning their keep?
  
• We're supposed to rally 'round a Republican president in a time of war. But then if a Democrat inherits that war from his Republican predecessor it's now acceptable to call into question his every move and decision?

No, I refuse to get any of that straight because it's all bullshit.

He loves it when a plan comes together

Hello America, Rick Santorum here. As many of you know I hate marriage equality and I said just the other day that I'd die on the hill of this battle. That's right I'd rather die than see homosexuals get married to one another. However, I don't mind if they marry people of the opposite sex, I'm cool with that. After all, Marcus Bachmann did it and look at his marriage.

Hahahahaha, but seriously folks, I really, really, REALLY hate gay marriage. And I especially hate the ones they performed already. They need to be broken up and I've come up with a plan to do just that. In fact, my plan will end all gay marriages in the USA.

My plan is simple, it's ingenious, and it's fool proof. My plan is this: we send in secretly not gay men to have sex with one of married gays in a married gay couple. This will piss off the other partner and they'll dump and divorce the cheating gay. I believe in my plan and my hatred of gay marriage is such that I am willing to go in and have gay sex with as many gay marrieds as it takes to break up the gay marriages that swept this nation. I know that I can't be having all the sex that breaks up these marriages, so I have enlisted some of my friends, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Donald Rumsfeld, and that black minister in Atlanta who digs the younger dudes, and we're all going to go about breaking up gay marriages all across the states where it's permitted. It's going to be dangerous, hot, and sweaty work so we've all been working out and taking Viagra by the fistful. We're serious about this and with the help of Jesus Christ, we'll whip these gays and we'll nip this gay marriage thing in the bud.

And don't worry, when the lesbians see what kind of cock we're slinging, then they'll all convert and become the man loving sex machines God intended them to be, because you know just as well as I do that those women are only having sex with women because they haven't ridden the right cock yet.

So that's my plan and I'm stickin' to it. Now, where are my chaps? I need to show off my dimpled ass so I can begin the seduction of the married gays!

A short Monkey movie report

I fucking loved this film. It was as if they made it just for me.

And I have a crush on the character of Hit Girl. What? Stop looking at me like that. I'm not a perv.

A Monkey book report

Octavia Butler is a late African American writer who specialized in science fiction novels. I heard about her only upon her death when many of those 'in the know' praised her body of work. I made a mental note to one day read some of her books and recently I was finally able to keep that promise to myself. I just finished this novel of hers:

The book is about a group of vampire like beings, called Ina, who live along side of us here on earth. The live incredibly long lives and they intermingle with select humans. They're not like the vampires you've read about before, they don't kill for the pleasure of it and their bite doesn't turn people into vampires. Instead they have a symbiotic relationship with those they bite.

One of these Ina, a young dark skinned female, awakens in a cave with her memory wiped clean, all she knows is that she's been severely injured and needs food to heal. She marshals her strength long enough to kill a few creatures and eat their meat. Then after healing she meets a human man while walking along the road and he helps her. She bites him and they begin the process of falling into a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. The young Ina female, name of Shori, goes on to discover just who she is, where she came from, what happened to her before the cave, and goes on to exact her revenge to those who hurt her and her family.

I've never been a fan of vampire novels but this one was so unlike any that I have ever read that I could not help but like it. The pacing is whiplash fast and before you know it, the book is over with and it's left you wanting more, which of course is the sign of a great book. I'll go so far as to say this is not only one of the best vampire novels and sci fi novels I ever read, it's one of the best novels I have ever read period. I highly recommend it.

Not another cent

NPR denied they had anything to do with getting the host of World of Opera fired. They claimed their hands were clean and they clutched their pearls and waved off any responsibility for the dismissal of Lisa Simeone. "Oh my, not us! It wasn't us! That was a decision made by the radio show itself! Stop accusing us! You're going to give us the vapors. Leave us alone!" But when the program relented and hired her back, NPR dropped the program faster than Obama can cave to the demands of Wall Street.

So, if you're one of the tens of people who believe that NPR wasn't behind all of this all along, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

And if you were going to make a pledge to your local NPR station, then I'd think twice about it now. NPR can get people fired, they can drop shows, and I can withhold money from them too. They may not miss my $15, but they'll sure as hell miss it if 100,000 or more stop giving them $15 a year. They can shoot themselves in the foot all they like and I can keep my money too.

Fuck you NPR. I'll give you money again when you fire that Fox News talking point spewing twat Mara Liasson.

Nobody hates the 'Occupy' movement more than these two guys

Obama is bought and paid for by Wall Street and Rahm is getting ready to sic the cops with their dogs on the Occupy Chicago demonstrations.

The 'Occupy' movement shines a light on all the politicians who are owned by Wall Street, even the Democrats.

Desert storm

My name is Dr. Monkey and...

...I'm a Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Roku addict.

Sparky got me a Roku for my birthday, we'd planned to get one as soon as we dumped Charter, and I'm even happier than I thought I would be with the Roku. We can, and do, stream Netflix, Hulu Plus, and other content over the Roku. Just this past evening we watched Modern Family and the first episode of The Chamomile Lawn, an episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution that ABC never aired, and the first episode of Coupling on Hulu Plus. I also checked out all the current crop of Criterion titles Hulu Plus offers. We watched the pilot of 30 Rock and I watched the pilot of Twin Peaks on Netflix.

I seriously love my Roku. I don't miss cable at all.

Remember when this guy was our friend?

Yeah. I kind of remember when Tony Blair wasn't a toad who cozied up to war criminals. Hell, I remember when Tony Blair hadn't even become a war criminal yet.

A Monkey Movie Report

I found this little 'so bad it's good' gem on the Roku channel called Pub Hub. Don't believe the blurbs on the poster, this film stinks. But since the acting it so bad, the script so awful, the 1970's music, clothes, and sets so awful, it becomes almost good. And it's a shame that it's so bad because it's got a really chilling premise.

Stock '70's horror movie characters that include a hard charging business man and his slutty trophy wife, his daughter and her headstrong 'stick it to the man' boyfriend, and the alcoholic wife (played by Shelley Morrison who would later play Karen's sassy maid on Will and Grace) and her weak ineffectual doctor husband (played by a young Sorrell Booke best known as Boss Hogg on the Dukes of Hazzard) who works for the hard charging business man run headlong into five kids who survive a horrific car crash. The kids turn out to be from a mental institution, turns out they're mentally deranged criminally insane brats. One is a military fetishist, another is a fire bug, another is a cross dressing teen (played by Leif Garret who would later go on to become a bitter has been drug addicted former child actor) who has delusions of grandeur, another is a religious whack job who thinks she's a nun, and the last one is a little hypochondriac. And finally rounding out the cast is the simpleton caretaker (played by John Durren who also wrote the script) of the mountain mansion where all the action takes place. And yes, the simpleton keeps rabbits as pets in the film.

After causing the horrific car crash that enables them to escape the clutches of the mental health authorities, the kids make their way to the mountain mansion owned by the hard charging businessman. Slowly they start killing off the adults who they fear will send them back to the loony bin. In truth, I hated the adult characters so much that I would have helped these brats murder them even if it meant they'd kill me when we finished off the grown ups.

The murder scenes are laughable. Most of them are filmed in slow motion and they feature music that is the least scary horror film music ever, unless you find someone playing a saw scary that is. I guess the director was going for creepy and eerie but what he ended up with was the opposite of that.

The film features a few 'sexy' scenes that are the least sexual ever to be committed to film. The slutty trophy wife tries to seduce the simpleton and when she gets caught by her step daughter they end up cat fighting. The cat fighting has more sexual tension than the previous seduction scene. Later the daughter and her boyfriend make sweet, sweet '70's love and their 'passion' is nothing more than a severe boner killer, in other words it will make you want to never have sex again. And when the slutty trophy wife tries to seduce the step daughters boyfriend, well, let's just say it's about as sexy as watching your grandparents make the beast with two backs.

The jarring camera angles, the awful porno movie soundtrack, the bad acting, the stereotypes, the overt winking nods to the hip trends of the time period all serve to sink this film. It's like a time capsule of mid '70's awfulness. But if you love cheesy bad films that make you laugh when they're supposed to be scaring you, then this film is for you. It's only 70 minutes long but it feels like it goes on forever, so you'll get your money's worth.

Occupy Johnson City

Last Saturday under cool clear October skies over 200 of us took the streets of my town to show our support of the Occupy Wall Street movement and to decry corporate greed and the politicians who are nothing more than corporate stooges. As is often the case in this conservative area of east TN the conservatives hate it when we progressives take to the streets and they call us all sorts of names and make misleading slurs against us. So just who were we at the march?
We were the clever old folks.

The adorable babies and their mothers.

A leprechaun who refused to tell me where his pot of gold was. And no, I did not taste him to see if he was 'magically delicious.'

We were the smart funny people who mixed pop culture with popular outrage.

We were the employed.

The cute gals with enigmatic smiles.

We were the bearded guys with pithy signs.

Teachers and students.

Clever sign makers.

Corporate media toadies who did not like it at all when I loudly reminded anyone within ear shot that the corporate media is part of the problem. And she especially didn't like it when I kept photo bombing her when her camera was rolling.

We were the tired.

The sign coordinated.

The gals with polite signs that enjoined you to engage in the process.

The people who make cleverly worded and symbolized signs.

Mask wearers who sparked one older fellow to remark that wearing masks was illegal. I asked where he heard that 'fact' and he told me he read it in the paper. I then told him that I read in the paper that the 'Occupy' movement protests were a bad thing that was hurting the feelings of big business.

We were the sign accessorizers.

We were also dog lovers, elderly, veterans, female, male, gay, straight, young, old, employed, unemployed, able bodied, disabled, smart, sweet, brash, enthusiastic, laid back, black, white, brown, natives, immigrants, Yankees, southerners, hard working, lazy, loud, quiet, in other words, we were everyman and woman.

The response we got to our march was great, only three people cursed at us, one guy told me to fuck off when he got stuck at a red light when the cops held up traffic for us. Our local police did a spectacular job of assisting us, much to the chagrin of some of the local conservatives who had expected the cops to bust our heads with night sticks and to coat us with pepper spray. Overwhelmingly people who drove past us gave us the thumbs up and honked in support of the cause. All in all it was a great day to use our rights of free speech and assembly. It was great that so many in our area came out to protest corporate greed and the politicians who enable corporate elites.

I am proud of all who came out through out the day and to those who supported us. Now, we just need to keep this ball rolling until we knock down those that would keep us down and hold our movement back.

Onwards! Upwards!

Fuck you Charter Cable

I'm blogging from my local library because my internet is out again. It's out even after a "technician" said it was fixed. Charter continues to offer intolerable internet service, shitty digital cable, and spotty phone service. I was going to cancel just the digital cable and keep the internet and phone but the fiasco this weekend, we haven't been able to be online for more than 30 minutes in the past two days, has pushed me over the edge. Tomorrow the DSL people will come out and I'll be getting high speed internet and land line phone service from them for less than half of what the assholes at Charter wanted to charge me per month.

I'm packing all of Charter's digital cable boxes, remotes, and their little phone modem up in a box and I'm taking it out to their local office tomorrow. Oh how I wish I could shove it all up the asses of the shitty technicians they employ, the idiot customer service phone people who's first response is to blame the customers, and all the upper management of that dead awful company.

Fuck you Charter Cable. I hope you go bankrupt and go the way of the dinosaurs.

Smashing success

Our Occupy Johnson City demonstration was a smashing success. I'll do a more in-depth post about it tomorrow. I'm still buzzing over the many folks from my town came out to take a stand and the many folks who saw us and gave us a thumbs up or honked in support of our cause.

Takin' it to the streets!

It's Occupy Johnson City day! I'll be there and I'll have my camera with me. Expect a full report later.

Protest, hells yeah!

Hungry?

Then dig in!

A troll posted a comment on our Occupy Johnson City wall on Facebook and I responded to him

His comment:

Since these occupy events are all about people wanting something without working for it, I wanted to get my demand in first for the occupy Johnson City event. I would like someone to buy me a new car, prefer a new Cadillac. The SRX Crossover would be nice as the Escalade is a gas hog, but then maybe someone will buy my gas too?

I heard when Obama took office he was supposed to be filling up peoples tanks with gas, but somehow I have missed out on that program, if you can point me in the right direction for the free gas program I would appreciate it

My response:
I'm not sure what's worse, your misrepresentation of what these demonstrations are about or the fact that you blindly parrot the talking points of the right wing radio show hosts. Oh wait, I know what's worse, it's the fact that you feel so self important and puffed up with indignation against people who dare to use their rights of free speech and assembly to speak out against corporations and their ineffectual government stooges that you liked a page you obviously disagree with. Were there no puppies you could kick or poor person you could shout hateful things at?

Of course he was a middle aged white guy. They always complain the loudest when it looks like their white male privilege is going to be fucked with.

They had me at 'Organ Music Nightly'

Guests of this blog get free meals at this fine establishment. All you have to do to get yours is build a time machine so you can go back to 1968 to redeem your free meal voucher.

Sign of the times

This is my sign for the Occupy Johnson City rally that's going down this Saturday.

If the war was wrong when Bush started it, it's still wrong with Obama leading it

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Where's my change?

A Monkey Movie Report

Full disclosure: my father and one of my uncles were artists. I have a brother who fancies himself an artist. I make art but I don't consider myself an artist. I consider myself a guy who makes art. The reason I make art is one summer vacation many years ago on our way back from the beach we stayed overnight in Durham, NC and on our way back to our hotel room we stopped in a bookstore and I bought a bunch of modern art magazines and while looking at them and the art that was being produced I said to myself, "I could make stuff that looks just as good as that." So I began to make art. If I like what I make I keep it, if not I toss it. I don't make art to please anyone but me. If someone wants to buy it, that's cool. If not, that's fine too. I make art because I like to do it and making it fills the need I have to create. The internet offers a great opportunity to show my art but I'll keep making it even if no one but me ever sees it. The fact that you may or may not like it doesn't matter to me. It's all about whether I like it or not.

When I began making art I began reading many different art magazines. I read Art Forum, Raw Vision, Art in America, and many others. I also read some of Robert Hughes writings on art and I read several books about the modern art world, including some by Matthew Collings, a British art critic who writes a lot about contemporary art. I read all these things to learn about what others were making and about how they made it. I quickly figured out what I liked (mostly self taught artists, artists who didn't shy away from using color, and politicized artists) and what I didn't (poseurs like Mark Kostabi and Jeff Koons who didn't really make their own art but who employed others to do it for them and shit artists like Thomas Kinkade.)

The past few years I stepped back from making art and from being immersed in the world of modern art but a few month back I got back into making art once more and I finally got to see this film:

This film is a documentary about street artists and the evolving graffiti movement in art. It tells the story of a Frenchman who lives in the USA who manages to befriend well known street artists such as Shepard Fairy and Banksy. The Frenchman uses the guise of making a film about the street art scene to insinuate himself into the worlds of Fairy and Banksy and ultimately he makes street art himself. Once he begins making art he starts to believe his own hype. His art is, in my opinion, awful. It's derivative, schlocky, and overpriced. And yet he's lionized by the art world and by the art related media. His stuff is clearly aimed at those who want to be thought of as avant garde and hip.

I loved this film. It shows exactly what goes wrong when people start to believe what the media says about them. It shows what's wrong with the whole fame whore world of modern art and how artists produce art that's calculated to get them media attention, fame, and piles of cash. It also shows the insufferable asshole modern art collectors who rush around trying to stay on top of who's hot and who's the next top art monkey in the art zoo.

This is one of the few documentaries that made me laugh out loud. It made me hate modern artists while keeping me in love with modern art. There was some speculation that this film might be a hoax, but this article sent to me by a friend says that the story was pretty much true. I highly recommend this film. I suspect that you'll enjoy it even if you're not an artist, don't make art, and aren't into modern art.

Hey Oliver Willis...

...I'm curious, do you think this old guy should dress a little nicer while at Occupy Wall Street? Or should him and his dirty dope smokin' pals go home and shower up and let Obama and the rest of the corporate stooges in the Democratic party do their thing?

It's Super Caption Fun Time!

"It's true honey, mommy was in Hustler magazine before you were born. And as soon as you get all better and start school again, I'm going back in the porn biz."

"This is what I do to yapping little neighbor dogs. Keep that in mind when your folks take you to the pet store Susie."

Karen could finally relax once all the evidence was ablaze in the fireplace.

These truths should be self evident

• You can fire as many workers as you like, you can ship all those jobs over seas, you can cut the benefits of the few workers you have left, but in the end, if we can't buy your products because we're laid off, fired, had our jobs outsourced, and our benefits and pay cut, then you've only shot yourself in the foot with all those things you did to please Wall Street.
• If the cops start beating 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters after getting millions of dollars from a big Wall Street bank, then people are going to connect the two and assume the NYPD now works for Wall Street and not for the average working stiff.
• If you want to ruin a country's economy then you should start two wars abroad and cut taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations at home. If you don't want to do that...oh wait, it's too late. Bush fucked us and didn't even kiss us first.
• If you're selling something, like oh, let's say a health care overhaul or a jobs bill, then you don't start where you want to end up. You start out by asking for the moon and then negotiate down from there.
• If they're going to call you a big government socialist, then you should grow a pair of balls and start governing like one. We've needed FDR and Obama has given us Herbert Hoover.

A Monkey Movie Report

In late 1960's Britain in a Ford plant a group of union women were paid substantially less than their male co workers were, once they found out out about it, they went on strike and they brought Ford in the UK to its knees. This fine little film tells the story of this fateful working class victory.

All the principals acquit themselves quite well and as usual Sally Hawkins turns in another fine performance. Geraldine James, Bob Hoskins, and Miranda Richardson also are stellar in this film. Also the soundtrack, which is full of period music, is quite nice too. I loved that they used a couple of Desmond Dekker songs in it.

We had to watch it with the subtitles on because the accents were a bit impenetrable at first but once my ear got used to them I tuned out the subtitles and I got on with enjoying the film.

This film is an inspirational little gem that should stand along side other great films about unions and unionizing, such as Norma Rae and Bread and Roses. I highly recommend it.

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for...

...Robert Goulet!

Animals in advertising

I'm really loving these animal themed posters. Click on each poster to enlarge it, then click on it again to appreciate it in all it's glory.