Everyone has heard the sad news about Michael Jackson and I like to think that everyone was at least somewhat saddened. I mean if you don’t like Michael Jackson songs, then what’s the point? While everyone was upset, some people, some very deeply devoted fans, were nothing short of devastated…physically , emotionally, spiritually. One of these people was our good friend Megan Riebesell.  She won’t be able to see Michael in London this summer, but the least we could do was let her share some words with you. – Roy

Hello.  My name is Megan Riebesell and I am here to talk to you about the biggest tragedy this planet has ever seen.  As you must have figured out by now, I’m referring to the death of Michael Joseph Jackson.  During this period of confusion, referred to by psychologists as “Stage 1: Denial” in the model for the five stages of grief, it is hard for people to see clearly to the issue at hand.  In hopes that this article will make it easier to cope, at least for the mere few it may reach,  I am going to use this forum to share some of my experiences with Michael, and discuss how his passing has affected me, Megan Riebesell.

It was obvious from a young age that Michael was probably not supposed to have ended up on earth.  Something went wrong, somebody messed something up.  Whoopsies!  Typo, wrong planet, something like that.  People kind of started to realize this when the J5 made their first appearance on Ed Sullivan in 69.  If you saw this you’d probably notice what could develop into a debilitating overload of soul and groove.  Certainly too much to be contained by the small, frail body of an11 year old.  If you went even further and watched this one you’d additionally notice that he’s not moving the way that a child who probably just advanced to having legible handwriting should move.

So lots of people were sort of catching on, J5 ruled with 4 consecutive number one hits on the billboard chart, which was the first time this had ever happened.  I have to assume that people who actually lived through his emergence were desperately rationalizing: “Okay this kid will probably grow out of it in like 4 years when he’s a fucked up teenage mess.”  I think a lot of people would have been more comfortable with that scenario.

Instead, Michael decided to fucking unleash his maniac talent on everyone full throttle.  By the time when most kid stars would start to totally burn themselves out, realizing they completely missed out on childhood and collapsing beneath the pressure of the limelight and everything, Michael invented a new way of dealing with all of it.  He figured since he was irreversibly damaged and would probably never fully work through it, he might as well use the one thing he did get out of it, which was being raised as a fucking psychotic perfectionist.  So he decided to just like create everything.  He focused all of his dysfunctional shit as well as his superhuman talent-energy, and took music and entertainment to a level that didn’t even exist yet. Flawlessly.  Pretty much: wake up, think of the bass line to Billie Jean, brush your teeth, oh start doing THE MOONWALK, um go downstairs, grab a banana,  redefine music videos , and then finally head off to work at the studio inventing pop music, etc. Day in the life of MJ.  No biggy.

By 1994, Michael has already released Thriller, which is still the top selling record of all time, and is onto his 4th best selling album already (and has done all that other shit that you’ll wikipedia later.)  People as a whole are immersed in the new world of entertainment he has created.  I’m starting to feel a little weird about how many consecutive times I can jump all over my couches screaming to the Free Willy theme and still get emotional at the end.  Ironically enough, this is around the point when everyone starts to turn on him.  He’s just doing his thing, inventing everything that people ever like ever so that everyone can copy him forever.  Yea, he’s fucking crazy as fuck considering everything, but he’s still just pumping all of that into amazing visual and auditory masterpieces for the whole world to enjoy.  He’s touring selling out shows on every continent by now and it’s a little bit daunting for humans to discover that one being can pretty much hypnotize a good amount of their entire species at one time.  It’s to the extent where an alarming amount of people literally become incapacitated or unconscious, sometimes needing medical attention, when in his presence.  I mean yea, I know, Beatlemania and everything, but seriously this is different.  Full grown men had to be lifted out of the crowd, sobbing and hysterical. The physical reactions people had just to seeing him on stage was unsettling.  Humans detected an unmistakable cause for concern.

If you’re going to watch one video in this post, watch this one. With the lights off.

Everyone flipped out when they realized Michael Jackson had too much power over the human race.   So we just did the thing where we criticize someone until we bring them down to our level.  We thought it was weird that he was had a chimp named Bubbles, wanted to buy the elephant man bones, made his house into a peter pan amusement park,  cried at the end of Men in Black, etc.  Personally,  I don’t see what’s so weird about being a fucking CRAZY person after having a dramatically shitty life, and having to be a vessel for all of those insane songs and dance moves that needed to reach earth somehow. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty confident that a normal, psychologically sound person would not be capable of even one of his countless feats.   Still, most people were feeling uneasy about the whole situation.  We felt compelled to exploit all of his quirks until we had completely forgotten about all of his contributions.  On top of being the victim of a really unfortunate skin disease analysts agreed that MJ suffered from another shitty condition, body dimorphic disorder.  Jeez, what a weirdo, feeling like he needs to change his physical appearance.  Anyway, as it turned out, no one could see past his physical appearance, so his music became secondary to gossip about his strange lifestyle, and he was slandered for the rest of his life. After this, Michael decided that he would rather hang around chimps and little kids only.  Again, to me this seems like a pretty basic cause-and-effect type situation we have here.  However, the masterminds of mankind determined that he must have been molesting kids.  Not the monkey though, oddly enough.

So somehow by the time his last album hit, which was of course no Thriller, but still better than most things, lots of people were too embarrassed to go into a record store (remember those?) and ring up the latest from the world’s  most renowned child-molester at the time.  And who could blame us?  The trials got way more publicity than, lets say, when he founded the Heal the World foundation, whose mission was to  provide medicine to children and fight world hunger, homelessness, child exploitation and abuse.  Or his being a major contributor to 39 additional charities in his career.  They got even more coverage than when all of the profits from smash hits “Man in the Mirror” and “Heal the World” went to charity.  Probably even more well known than the “We are the World” video, which he coordinated, gathering the biggest musicians at the time to record a song that raised millions of dollars for famine relief.  Or how on the 123-show world tour for “Bad” he invited underprivileged children to watch for free and sing with him on stage, and then gave donations to local hospitals, orphanages and other charities in every place he visited.   The trials, which were unsuccessful in providing any actual evidence of molestation, are still more widely acknowledged than how the “Dangerous” world tour, where he danced like a fucking maniac for 65 shows and then gave all of the proceeds, I repeat, all, ALL of them to Heal the World.  After that he sold the broadcast rights for the show to HBO, took that money and put it towards HIV/AIDS research.  And remember when his afro caught on fire during the filming for that Pepsi commercial? Haha ha ha!! Guess what?  He took the money from that lawsuit and gave it to the hospital where he was treated and started a burn ward for research and technology in severe burn treatment.  Then he got plastic surgery because he was self-conscious about his scalp and we made fun of him for the rest of his life.  And said that he touches babies.

So after trying to withdraw from the public eye, (unsuccessfully, as tons of brilliant journalists and psychoanalysts made whole careers out of obsessing over his weirdness) Michael comes back at the world and announces “THIS IS IT.”  A 50- show tour taking place at the 02 stadium in London, possibly his last performance ever.  In tradition of MJ, he had invented some kind of crazy 3-D background scheme that would transform the experience of seeing  a live concert.  He committed to giving the world one last show, granting everyone the chance to forget all about the baby-dangling and plastic surgeries and just enjoy the fucking immaculate presentation of all of the songs that make everyone dance no matter where they are.   He agreed to subject his 50 year old body to putting on 50 more seizure-inducing performances which would have allowed millions of people to enjoy the same magic that had possessed them for decades.  It would have given millions the opportunity to experience the intense, uplifting energy that looks more powerful and mind-altering than any drug trip.  An experience that is unexplainable, but proven by concert footage of full grown adults losing the ability to hold themselves up.  I was going to be one of these people.

Michael Jackson has left behind a whole world of humans who were touched by his timeless legacy.    I’m sure that even those of you who didn’t spend $750 on airfare to London have the same feeling of emptiness in your lives as I do right now.  But remember, we are all in this together.   Take advantage of your neighbors and comrades who have probably all have attempted the moonwalk at one time or another, and might need someone to commiserate.  Talking it out feels good.  Even if it leads to both parties drunkenly agreeing that Michael Jackson was more important than Jesus, or the holocaust, and then the conversation becomes a little uncomfortable.  Just get it all out.  Letting yourself come to terms with how you feel will help you to reach the final step in the grieving process: Acceptance.  Make this tragedy easier for yourself and those around you.  Heal the world. It’s what Michael would have wanted us to do.  We’re all going to get through this.

Every viewing of the Back to the Future trilogy provides the audience with something new. I don’t think I need to go into much depth as to why Back to the Future is one of the greatest series of films ever put to the silver screen. The creation of Back to the Future was a watermark in the history of entertainment; they are nothing less than legendary. At the end of every single Back to the Future movie I cannot help but think “this is true art.”

Absolute Perfection.

The beauty of the movies is the plethora of questions, conundrums and paradoxes that they conjure. I just breezed through the first couple Back to the Futures this weekend and I noticed a couple things. First a quick one: What is going through Jennifer Parker’s head at the end of the first film? This is what we know about Jennifer Parker: 1) She is dating Marty McFly, 2) Though they are dating it can’t be too serious yet because Marty is so pumped just to get her grandmother’s phone number, 3) Jennifer and Marty plan on going to “the lake” soon…and I think it’s safe to assume that they are so excited about this because it will be their first time sleeping together…don’t tell me that no one else thought that was implied.

So, that’s the little bit about Jennifer Parker that we hear early on in the movie, during the “exposition” if you will. Then everything else happens in the movie and we don’t see Jennifer Parker again until the end of the film, the “conclusion” if you will. Everything seems hunky dory; Jennifer and Marty are ready to “go to the lake” in Marty’s “new car.” Wait, wait, wait!!! BAM!!! The Back to the Future guys are already sure they are making a sequel!!! Doc Brown pulls up in the new DeLorean and has news to tell the young virgin Jennifer Parker.  He so discretely announces: YOU TWO GET MARRIED AND THEN SOMETHING GETS FUCKED UP!!! QUICK HOP INSIDE MY FUTURE CAR AND LET’S GO ALTER THE SPACE TIME CONTINUUM.” Doc Brown then added, “So you won’t be able to go to the lake yet.”  Then, looking towards Jennifer Parker, he says, “Hello, my name is Emmet Brown. I built this future car. Nice to meet you.”

Jennifer Parker has roughly eight seconds (while Doc Brown loads old beer and a banana into the future car) to think about what she has been told. Without much delay she loads herself into the future car with her future husband and heads off into the future. What, I ask, is Jennifer Parker thinking?

Feel free to respond with your own thoughts in the comments. For now I’ll go with my first instinct: Marty McFly is just that good-looking.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, THE MAIN EVENT!!!  Here are my top three times that a member of the Tannen family got covered in shit. Let the games begin!!! The third place prize goes to:

3) When Buford Tannen Gets Covered With Shit

By the time the audience reaches the last movie in the trilogy everyone is asking the same question, “How is a truck full of shit going to crash into Biff Tannen?” As you should know, the movie is set mostly in the Wild West, a place devoid of Biff Tannen. But lo and behold! Buford Tannen is Biff’s great-grandfather and he is also a dick and he also has a grudge against the McFly family. Parallelism!!! Let me fast forward, Buford Tannen eventually gets covered in shit. It is still a gratifying scene, but I have some problems with it. First, it’s not a truckload of shit. When I see a Tannen get covered in shit I like it to be a literal truckload of shit. I understand there are no trucks in the Wild West, but I would have also accepted a train full of shit crashing into Buford Tannen. Also, the shit that he gets covered in is too green. I like the 50′s style brown shit. It has much more of a “classic shit” appeal.

My qualms aside, it is still a terrific scene. Getting completely covered in shit is such a horrible fate. No one ever wants to get covered in shit. I don’t know what you do after you get covered in shit. Well, I guess, shower. Showering is a good first step, but what then? You still always know that you have been covered in shit at some point. Shit, something that another being has deemed useless and smelly, now covers your entire body. Think about that.

2) When Biff Tannen Gets Covered With Shit Again

My second favorite time a Tannen gets covered with shit is in Back to the Future Part II. After unsuccessfully chasing down a hover-boarding Marty, Biff crashes right into a huge truck full of shit!!! Ha ha ha!!! Perfect!!! Biff really deserved it too. He had this great, powerful, villainous, Ford sports car and he had a good quarter mile to catch up with Marty, who is foot-pumping a floating skateboard. Of course, Biff fails and then comes the shit. The beauty of this scene is that Biff’s car gets covered in shit….RIGHT AFTER HE GOT IT BACK FROM THE SHOP THAT CLEANED THE SHIT OUT OF IT!!!

Shakespeare himself could not write that kind of irony.

1) When Biff Tannen First Gets Covered With Shit

Yes, of course, the big winner. My favorite time that a Tannen gets covered with shit is the first time that Biff Tannen gets covered with shit. A terrific scene. Marty stands up to the Biff crew, thereby sparing his father a lifetime of shame, and then invents skateboarding. The chase ends with Biff careening into a massive truck full of shit. Hilarious. Some of Biff’s goons could have easily died. Imagine getting covered in so much shit that you died? Not even metaphoric shit. Not an end-of-the-semester “Oh, I have so much shit to get through.” No, literally buried in shit. I wonder what Biff would say if you told him that in just a week or so he would be getting covered in shit again. I think I know what he would say. He’d say what he’ll eventually say, “I HATE MANUREEEE.”

Let me ask you this, reader: How many times per year does an American get covered with shit by surprise?
I’ll explain those stipulations. I say American because, let’s be honest, for all I know those other countries are jumping around in shit all day. Next point: they have to be completely covered. Getting a bird crap splatter does not count. If a flock of birds unleash a hailstorm of shit that leaves you immobile, that would count. You have to be completely covered, so that only your head and shoulders reach the surface. Lastly, it has to be by surprise. Maybe there is some job out there that involves shit-swimming. That wouldn’t count. It must be a surprise and/or accidental shit burial.

I’ll go through some other memorable times people have been covered with shit on film (all of these don’t fit my criteria above):
8 Crazy Nights: One of the characters gets covered in shit from a port-a-potty, thus creating a “Poopsicle”.- Disqualified because it is animated and unrealistic.
Slumdog Millionaire: The kid falls into shit in the beginning.- Disqualified because it is not in America.
Shawshank Redemption: Andy Dufresne crawls through shit to his freedom. -Disqualified because it was not an accident or surprise…Andy planned to crawl through that freedom shit.

I can’t really think of any other instances. Maybe the guys from Jackass jumped in shit once; I can see that happening. I asked DJ this question and he guessed 150 or something per year. I figured 30-40? But, I’m thinking about it now and even 30-40 times per year seems high. I can’t think of a situation aside from falling into a cesspool somehow. Also nowadays we don’t have those troublesome shit-trucks that Biff kept running into.

I’ll leave the voting up to America. We got to vote for “Dancing With the Stars” and we got to vote to decide if Jon and Kate would get divorced, so why not just vote on a statistic:

[poll id="10"]

Charlottesville, VA: In a ground breaking court case, Virginian resident Todd Sampson took 36 individuals to court under the charge of “making him feel bad.” What’s more surprising: he won.

The story began two years ago when Sampson, 47, took the Subway sandwich company to court for “making him feel fat.” Sampson, an avid television viewer, felt that recent Subway advertisements “glorified healthy lifestyles” and made less fit individual feel “lesser.” The case was widely publicized, but the verdict was returned in favor of the corporation. Sampson had lost the battle, but not the war.

In early February of this year, Sampson set his sights even higher, taking on many of his closest friends, family and neighbors in one massive law suit.

Sampson was born and raised in a small suburban Virginian town where he works as a substitute teacher. He is the father of two girls and a boy, but is now divorced from his first and only wife, Jean Nibbons, 43. Mrs. Nibbons and the three children have each had charges brought against them during the proceedings.

The frustrations for Sampson began in the summer of 2008, when his mother encouraged him to attend church services to help with feelings of depression which developed following his recent divorce. After attending several Sunday services, Sampson was not impressed. He claimed the sermons were often “too moral” and “made me feel like I wasn’t doing the best I could.”

Sampson’s neighbor, Bob Yunak, had a different story, “Todd is a lazy fat ass. He doesn’t do much at all. He drives a shitty car and he let’s his dog shit on my lawn. Also he’s got a kiddie pool in his backyard, and I think it’s got mosquitos.”

Whether the rainwater collected in the pool has indeed breed mosquitos is yet to be affirmed.

Sampson’s became more fed-up as time went on and conflicts began to arise with many other town members. Accusations included: a $4000 charge against his son for “not really ever looking up to me much,” a $10,000 charge against his old friend Andy “for beating me in bowling and that made me feel like shit” and a joint suit against 22 women in the tri-state area for “not being interesting in what I had to offer.”

Sampson even went as far back as his fourth grade teacher, who once gave him a C- and “made him feel bad.”

After the verdict was reached this passed Tuesday in favor of Sampson, many were outraged and an appeal is almost certain. One town person, who wished to remain nameless for fear of being sued, said, “Todd doesn’t deserve any money from anybody. He’s worthless. I’ve seen him smoke cigarettes he picked out of the dirt. He’s an awful, awful person and I think he’s racist.”

Incidentally Sampson did sue Marques Esposito, a Social studies teacher at the local High School, for “making him feel racist.”

Sampson’s father lost $140,000 to his son after being charged with “never taking me fishing or anything, which sucks”

Still some people stand behind Sampson, in particular his mother who, it is estimated, will lose a quarter million dollars in the case. Though upset with her son’s actions she claims that “had [she] known that the advice [she] was giving [Sampson] on the phone was hurting his feelings, [she] never would have said it.” She added that she regrets encouraging her son to meet new people, mow his lawn and maybe take some time off to travel.

Still many feel that had Sampson taken the initiative to meet new people, mow his lawn and travel he “may not have been such a dick” and “rereading the Harry Potter books again and again isn’t going to help anything and he should know that.”

The case is sure to be a watermark in the American judicial system. Already there have been reports of similar instances cropping up in courtrooms across the country.

Nevada couple Nikki and Samuel Dwarf have recently filed a case against Caesar’s Palace casinos for “lowering the morale of their livelihoods, hampering their financial ability to raise a traditional family and ultimately making them feel bad” after losing several hundred dollars gambling on their honeymoon.

Ty Sandler, a college student at Rhode Island’s School of Design, has gone to court against the Anehuser-Busch Brewing Company whose products, he claims, have only helped to exacerbate his “bad feelings on multiple occasions.”

In total Sampson will be coming away with $1.2 million in compensation. When asked about his feelings post-trial, Sampson claimed that he was “actually feeling a little better.”

This has been a SmartassRadio news report.

It’s my understanding that we have a lot of international readers. So for their benefit, I’ll briefly describe what we in American call an “election.” You see, once every few years, when hack comedians run out of bad jokes about our beloved president, another man challenges his throne. Then we watch “pundits” bicker about the merits of these two men on TV for about three years. When the American people decide they can’t take it anymore, the men choose other men as their partners through civil union and the pundits argue about the partners’ merits for another six months or so. Finally, if the groundhog doesn’t see its shadow, three states get to choose who our next president will be. This year, the man who won wore black face in tribute to the great minstrels of our country’s glorious past. Of course, he’s not any different than you or me or the last president, for that matter.

Apparently they’re holding erections in Iran now- Did I jus- HAHAHAHAHAHA. OHHHHH WHEW! Wow… that was crazy. Iran is holding elections over there now. As with any election, this one has had its fair share of problems. Held on Friday(?), the elections were really important, I guess. According to some reliable sources, Iran has been fucking around with nuclear weapons, or something. Unlike in the good old US of A, the Iranians couldn’t choke down the cold hard facts. Instead of realizing that they are a silly display not unlike the WWE, Iranians expected the words “change” and “hope” to actually mean something. It’s like they believe every movie they see over there. In their defense, there are only three movies available in Iran and they’re all documentaries.

You really want the Iranian Steven Spielberg running your country? Didn’t you see the last Indiana Jones?

So, in an unprecedented display of machismo and huge fucking nuts (being the opposite of giant, crying, pussy), Presidential Candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi claimed the elections were rigged in favor of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To be honest, I don’t see it. I mean President Ahmadinejad did get 62% of the vote (a total of 13 voters made up mostly of his own staff) versus 33% for Moussavi and the obligatory 5% of crazies split between Ron Paul and Ralph Nader.  Mr. Moussavi, you should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously, your country is suffering from riots, its citizens are having their rights taken away and war with a super power is imminent and all you can think about is how you didn’t win an election? What are you going to tell me next, that this Pall Mall 100 isn’t going to soothe my sore throat? Puh-lease!

You see, here in America, we accept the harsh truth that a puppet government forces us to – we have no control over what happens ever. So what? You want to be burdened with making decisions which might affect someone other than yourself? Say Moussavi got elected and turned out to be a total nutjob and didn’t wear pants to work every day. You want to be responsible for that? Didn’t think so. A wise ex-English teacher once taught me a valuable lesson: the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Which generally holds true, unless that devil has demonstrated his inability to lead or string together coherent thoughts time and time again, James.

This guy gets shit done.

The point is this – it doesn’t matter and it never will. In fact, I’m fairly certain that every event I just mentioned was entirely fabricated by the media for their own amusement. No shit. For instance, I caught Anderson Cooper saying the following at dinner the other night:

We make everything up. There are more factual events taking place on Spike’s Deadliest Warrior.

I may or may not have actually heard that at dinner the other night. Come to think of it, I’ve never even met Anderson Cooper, but I did once hear his voice set to ominous music in a documentary on Google Video, so he might as well have been sitting in my living room revealing all his dirty, silver haired secrets, of which I’m sure there are many. According to some of his peers, that old queen hides a secret about as well as an elephant hides its trunk.

In the end, what will probably happen is the American people will once again be forced to watch the same view of the Missile Command championships in night-vision on CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS (yeah, assholes, you got listed after Fox), and a plethora of other shit-stain networks as our country bombs the fuck out of Iran for one reason or another. After two weeks of that, it’ll probably be football season and, frankly, most of us can’t be bothered – with the way the league is shaping up this year (what drama!), who could even blame us? Football rules and Iran drools.

Hey all, here’s a bitter-sweet podcast (or “Bittersuite” as Motley Crue would have you believe, Nikki Sixx is a god damned poet) – the recording of my last college radio show. Honestly I think it’s one of our best ever. Tommi-Grace Melito sat in with us and we had a really good time. Thanks to everyone for all the love receiecved last night, it really meant a lot to me.

 

Click here for .mp3

I also decided to include the last ever In-Crowd from the night before. The In-Crowd was my other show with Tommi, and Jesse “NoWonder” Martinez. Again, definitely one of our better shows. For once, I think I can say I was on my game two nights in a row… you be the judge

 

Click here for .mp3

If you aren’t an alarmist FoxNews viewer, you’re probably not familiar with the term “sexting.” Clearly, I am. Sexting is the awful play on words that describes when one individual, by their own choosing, takes a naked picture of themself and sends it to someone else via SMS (Short Message Service). The solution to this scourge? Giving the sweet naked pics to this guy. What kills me about the following quote is the use of the sentence structure to create a scene which resembles that of a real job and attorney should be doing, like reviewing photos of the scene of a murder, rape, minor traffic violation, etc.:

Photos of their semi-nude or scantily clad teenage daughters were stacked before him. Mr. Skumanick said the images had been discovered on cellphones confiscated at the local high school.

I can’t believe this is really an issue parents (or anyone) is shocked by. It’s 2009 – could you dolts really be so naive to think your kids aren’t using every piece of technology almost exclusively for personal sexual gratification?

The first text ever.

Read more »

There is a ton of evidence stacking up against me and it’s high time I acknowledge it. I’m becoming a piece of white trash human garbage. In the four years since I’ve left High School, I have absolutely let the semi-freedom of college destroy me as a person. While, I’m very comfortable with the latest incarnation of me, I think it’s important to look back at where I came from.

Here’s the earliest picture of me on Facebook:

Look at this sweet boy with his girlfriend enjoying a delicious lollipop after a day at the mall. Oh, look he has a Metallica cap on. You bought it where? Hot Topic? Precious.

I dare you to follow the jump and keep reading.

Read more »