It’s no wonder that everyone is developing more and more negative biases towards twenty-something hipsters. First there is all the exhibit-A photo evidence at “Look At This Fucking Hipster”.  Second, we’ve got all these so called “indie” bands that keep popping up on Jimmy Fallon. Today I watched some band I’ve never heard of called “Bats for Lashes” and they were really sour. Triple H was the other guest on the show and I’m sure as he was watching from the sidelines he was thinking, “So this is what those hipster fags are listening too. Beating them up is now justified.” And as if that wasn’t enough, now hipsters are punching defenseless shit.

The Chicago Tribune reports that a 21 year old snob named Pablo Fernandez left the Lollapalooza music festival and proceeded to begin petting a horse. Seems innocent enough, but then the officer that was sitting on top of the horse told him to knock it off. The kid refused and, instead of just walking away, punched the horse!!! The horsed reared onto its back legs in the middle of a huge crowd and the 21 year old equestrian terrorist was sent to jail for the night.

Here’s a re-enactment I found:

runner up

I have tons of problems with this shit. Has this kid never read “Black Beauty”? Of all the animals to punch, why pick a horse? Why not a cat? I’d punch a cat for sure.  Actually, I take that back. The cat would likely be on the ground, so I would probably just kick it. I’d kick a cat no problem. You’ve got a cat? No questions asked, I will kick that thing. Same goes for cocky pigeons. But I would never kick a horse. I’m sure Pablo Fernandez wouldn’t kicked a horse either. That’s just asking for trouble. Trouble in the form of a hoove to the throat, if you know what I’m saying. The horse is just too big to get a good kick in. Really if you are going to attack a horse, punching is the way to go. Let’s see are there any animals out there that I would punch, rather than kick… well first, they would have to be out of my leg reach. You can kind of just slip in a quick squirrel kick without breaking stride, but any animal above the waistline is going to need some fist-attention. I mean obviously a human face would be a perfect target for my fist, if it were on the right person. But this contest is strictly limited to the lesser animals. Maybe an ugly whale. I don’t think my fists have the force to penetrate the blubber, so I’d be safe from getting stuck in its intestinal goo. Though a whale punch seem somewhat anti-climatic. It’s like punching a big couch or a snowdrift. Maybe a walrus. Just POW! Punch a walrus right in the side of the head and walk away. I’ve always had something against walruses. Don’t they seem a little bit high and mighty? I think walruses kind of just lounge around thinking that they’re the “kings of the sea.” Fuck that. Emperor penguins are the kings of the sea and I would never punch an emperor penguin (because they’re back in the kicking category). I’d like to punch a walrus right off its high horse.

Still, there must be a better option…even though the more I think about it the more tantalizing punching a walrus becomes. How about this: I punch a cheetah while it’s on the move. Like that stipulation? A cheetah is running by at 65mph and KA-POW! a punch right in the side. Even the most lackluster punch would knock it off its feet at those speeds. Again, I would just walk away after impact. I guarantee that video would go viral.

But, nah, I like cheetahs enough. Not worth it. Plus, when am I going to find the time to do that.  Come on Roy, think! There must be some punchable animal out there. Mhmm. You know what would really set people off? If I punched one of those guys from the new “Were The Wild Things Are” adaptation. People are already going nuts for this movie. I’m sure if I were to punch one of those totoro knock-offs people would be up in arms.  Perhaps even more so if I punched the child star. But I don’t want to do any of that,  I’m just saying I’m sure it would get quite a reaction. I need an animal that I could punch and people would be like, “Oh, OK, he punched a  _____. I’m fine with that.” I’ve got it! A yellowjacket. I know it’s thinking outside the box, but stay with me here. Yesterday my brother and sister came running to me saying that there was a HUGE yellowjacket in the basement and I needed to kill it. Their definition of huge was 1-inch, which for a yellowjacket is pretty huge. So I went into the basement and killed the thing with a newspaper. But wouldn’t it have been cooler to just punched it dead? Nobody would ever bat an eyelash if I went around punching bugs into submission. Hiking through the woods I’d look like a paranoid schizophrenic, but really I’d just be getting rid of all the pesky mosquitoes.

What was I talking about? Oh right, the kid (re: person my age) who punched a horse:

No doubt he was running up to the beast to drunkenly get an I-Phone picture of himself petting it. It would prove to his Twitter following that he liked animals and justify his PETA t-shirt. If you are wasted enough to punch something, don’t punch the giant mammal punch the pig riding it. What made this guy make the jump from massage to brute force? Let’s be honest, do cops need anymore reason to distrust youngsters? If the cops up in my college town of New Paltz got word of this I’m sure they would invest in a whole fleet of ponies, with the hope that some idiot would punch one and they would get a chance to pelt a crowd of students with rubber bullets and electrified nets.

I should also point out that I have no reason to identify this kid as an authentic hipster. I just figured that since he was at Lollapalooza he must have been. I’ll also assume the name “Pablo Fernandez” was meant to be ironic and his actual name is Conrad Pinskey and he looks like this:

That snapshot isn’t even from “Look at this Fucking Hipster,” but when I came upon it a couple days ago I knew that I’d be able to use it for something before the week was done (and before anyone says, “Hey, that picture could just as easily be you”, let me rebut: 1) I don’t go to Music Festivals; 2) I would never wear that dumb outfit because it would draw too much attention to my failing biceps and irregularly tanned thighs; 3) I don’t dance with my eyes closed because I like to observe all the looks of astonishment and glee that my gyrations conjure.)

(One more point about that picture: What is the girl scoffing at? Yes she’s attractive enough, but she’s still got white nail polish, a little mermaid boob-mask and ruffled granny-panties….so I mean come on. At least the retard behind her is having a good time. Maybe she’s coming to the realization that she has chosen the wrong social-stereotype to adopt.)

OK. I don’t know how much more time I can devote to these morons.

The moral of the story:
-Don’t try to punch something you’re not.

Hello all: In our efforts to provide an ever-better site for you, the crew here at SAR INC has decided to make another web-page revamp. However, this time the site change isn’t cosmetic, it’s content based. If you are a long time follower you probably remember our first content change. Initially the site was just metal music interviews, but in an effort to broaden our horizons we started writing about anything we wanted with no real continuity (aside from authorship) between posts.

Well, after punching the numbers, DJ suggested that we may have made too big of a jump. Apparently moving from very specific to infinitely undefined didn’t help us establish the regular foundation of readers we’ve been looking for.

It makes sense if you give it even a half-second of thought. When I do my rounds of the internet I make my stops in very categorized ways. E-mail, social networking site, indie-music blog, celebrity gossip news, fake-news, entertainment site….etc.

So how do you categorize SmartassRadio?

Well, it’s a frankenstein monster of things DJ and I find hilarious and/or noteworthy. Which would be fine, if DJ and I were an established brand of humor. But alas, outside of our group of friends, we are not.

So, in order to make the site more directed, legitimate and (hopefully) visited, we’ve decided to say that from now on: we’re a vegetable-porn music-based website.

It’s not a tremendous change really…I’d say we’re already 75% music-based, but from now on you won’t be seeing any more posts like, “What Angelina Jolie Would Be Thinking If She Drove By Me While I Was Running One Of My Intermittent Three Mile Runs”

(I mean let’s be honest, if Angelina Jolie drove by me while I was running one of my intermittent three mile runs she would probably just think, “Wow that guy looks terrific, I’d like to give him a massage” and then she’d just start thinking of something else.)

Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ll be abandoning humor (if that’s what you want to call this). We’re just saying, “HEY, all these posts are about music.” Connections. Full circle.

So, that’s the announcement as announced by me. Why am I announcing it? Why don’t I just make the change without informing the readers explicitly?

Well, that’s the SAR difference. We put ourselves on the same level as our delicious readers. Does Billboard make these kind of personal announcements? No, Billboard.com is written by a robot. Would Pitchfork be this gracious? No, they would just make fun of you for not realizing that they are just called Pitchfork now instead of Pitchfork Media. Would some snobby-blog be this up-front? No, they’d just post some shitty mp3s, provide some tour dates, give a lousy review of a lousy album and call it a day.

So, that’s it. You might be seeing some more reoccurring segments now (I’m planning one called “Rewinding with Roy”) and of course the podcast and interviews will be going strong!

As always dear reader, comment if you have any suggestions, because our real goal is to become a pleasant stop on your internet hit parade.  And to continue rocking, but that has never been a problem.

Many of you may not know this, but I’m a pretty well-read guy. I’m not implying I’ve read any particular library of classic books – I’ve made it a point to never read a single Charles Dickens book no matter how many I was assigned throughout high school, I have a particular disdain for Ernest Hemmingway and, frankly James Joyce can suck my hog (I assume based solely on his name that he’s of the homosexual persuasion). However, I do read the news every day. The real news. The New York Times – not Metro NY, The Post, anything posted on CNN or any of that other silly hogwash. (Morris Day and) The Motherfucking Time(s). That shit is the MAD notes!

Anyway, I was reading an article yesterday about Michael Jackson’s memorial (Michael Jackson: The Memorial, rather) and I came to a phrase that was totally worthy of a tweet, however Twitter tells me “Arrow_on_red” and to “watch a video,” which I never do.  So, unable to share this hilarity in my normal manner for quips of such insignificance, I decided to let it stir for an entire day and be evacuated from my body in a long form post. My original tweet will be followed by my elaboration:

yesterday the ny times referred to the michael jackson memorial as an ‘orgy of mourning’ http://bit.ly/ZSqkY sounds like an awful goth band

(Note how I refuse to use proper punctuation for my tweets.)

Indeed, Alessandra Stanley decided to equate the ramblings of a bunch of aging stars and the sobbing of a child to a sex act involving three or more people. For this, I cannot fault her. I’m almost positive it’s the first time I’ve ever laughed while reading the Times – unfortunately for me, I was drinking hot coffee and ended up with second degree burns inside my nose, but that’s neither here nor there. What I can fault her for, is the exact words she used. An orgy of mourning carries a ton of possible connotations. For one, had her left pinky slipped and hit the shift key, she would have ended up with an “orgy of Mourning,” conjuring images of retired Miami Heat basketball star Alonzo Mourning having all kinds of kinky sex with other people with the last name Mourning.

Pimp.

As my tweet above will inform you, though, this was not my initial reaction. At first, I thought it sounded like a bad high school “goth” band. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what the term goth actually means. In middle school I know we used to call anyone who listened to KoRn goth. I don’t think I used it in high school, but if I did, I’m relatively certain it was in reference to the fat asses who watched Anime (and by association Hentai). In college, I realized both the definitions were wrong as I became more entrenched in what I know as “metal” and listened to idiot girls refer to other idiot girls who happened to be wearing a black t-shirt as goth.

Now, I tend to associate it with darker rock acts and (at the risk of upsetting either a frigheningly fat or skinny mongrel of an outcast) some more feminine black metal acts and people who still insist on wearing trench coats and ponytails. (Ghaal, I’m looking directly at you.) With that, let me set the scene for how Orgy of Mourning came to be:

Greg Schmidt (or Devastatorious as he liked to be called, not realizing how retarded and off-base it was) was a skinny lad, aged 15. At one time, he was very much into N*SYNC, but never told anyone. As a direct result, he was driven head first by the denial of his own homosexuality to black metal. First it was just once in a while, when he was bored of his Metallica CDs, but with the advent of high speed Internet and P2P networks, he found he needed to own and know everything about every band ever, which brought him to his current position in life – trolling message boards, blogs and news sites to point out whenever someone forgot to mention the latest Abigail Williams release.

One particularly rainy afternoon, Devastatorious was ham-handedly playing something resembling a ham-handed Mayhem song on his Line6 Pod Pro, which he got on eBay for “like half of list price.” As he came to what some would call a chorus, his buddy Mike Shea (Khhal for our purposes) came running down with a great idea, “Let’s start our own band!” Of course, this sounded like a great idea to Devastatorious. “Ok, well first things first – we need a totally bitchin’ name,” he explained.

“Well, yeah of course. What should we call ourselves?”
“The most dark and hardcore thing ever.”
“Nothing was darker than when my mother mourned the loss of Sprinkles (the shivering family Teacup Something or other).”
“Fuck yeah, the idea of mourning is deep as hell.”
“What else should we include?”
“How about something sexual? Not because we’ll end up having sex six months from now, or anything.”

As he said this, Greg shot a look to the right to avoid eye contact with his new bandmate. Mike continued looking at him awkwardly for a moment before breaking the silence:

“This might not be cool, but check it out.”
“Ok”
“Remember that totally gay band from back in the day Orgy.”
“Yea, they suck.” No they don’t, he thought to himself.
“Well, how about we take ‘Orgy’ back and make it cool again?”

As if they had both sprung rods simultaneously, Greg and Mike looked up from their in-progress black painted nails and exclaimed triumphantly:

“ORGY OF MOURNING!”

-END-

And that’s how I imagined that going.

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"]

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.

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.

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I’ve been hanging out with Regis Philbin a lot recently and he has been chatting my ear off incessantly over his favorite college football team the “Notre Dame Fighting Irish.” I happen to be a pretty Irish fellow (50%), and if you need more proof than just genetics consider this: last St. Patrick’s Day I watched a parade in Cork, Ireland, got drunk off Guinness, saw old men with brogues play jigs with fiddles and woke the next morning to kiss the Blarney Stone. I’m sure I ate a potato and got in a enormous brawl somewhere in the middle of that too, so rest assured that I am familiar with Irish stereotypes. But you know who isn’t familiar with mass generalizations? Theodore W. Drake, designer of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish Leprechaun Mascot.

Who is this schmuck?

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