Pork Brains in Milk Gravy.

You might be inclined to think this is fake.  But it’s not.  This is not Photoshopped.  It actually comes from an article I ran across in The Consumerist.

Where to start?  I guess the name’s as good as any.  Now, sometimes it helps to give your item of food a literal translation.  Cashews, for instance, tell us that we are likely to find delicious cashews within the jar.  Beer-battered fish indicate that the fish on the menu has been lightly battered with beer.  Even pig feet let us know quite literally what is inside the jar, a delicacy that appeals to a very select demographic.  But “pork brains in milk gravy.”  First of all, what is a pork brain?  Is it the brain of a pig?  Is it the brain of another pork product?  Are there other porky animals besides pigs?  And if there are, what is milk gravy?  I know what country gravy is, I know what black pepper gravy is.  Hell, brown gravy works for me.  But milk gravy?  I’m going to assume that’s the creamy variety, but again, not a term I’m readily familiar with.

So the oh-so-literal name refers to two things, neither of which I am actually comfortable saying I know what it is.  Okay.  Now let’s consider the packaging.  What is that a picture of?  It looks like Indian food, if Indian food laid eggs in you which hatched into shit-weasels that tore their way out of your asshole six years later.  But it’s garnished with a bit of parsley.  And really, that makes anything.  Week-old chinese?  Bit of parsley should fix it up.  Riceball you vomited up after a night of heavy drinking?  Bit of fucking parsley.  Works like a charm.  A little, leafy, almost tasteless charm.

You will also notice that “pork brains in milk gravy” account for 1,170 percent of your recommended daily cholesterol intake.  Now, call me crazy.  I’m not a math major.  I can barely count to five – part of the reason she always makes me pull out.  Zing!  But 3,500 mg of cholesterol cannot be healthy for the average human.  3,500 mg can’t even be healthy for this guy:

Who actually lost weight and now looks like this:

But presumably still uses one of these phones:

That much cholesterol can’t even be good for a fucking orca whale.  Which should definitely be a red flag.  When you find a food that poses a danger to an animal that can more or less ingest MTV Spring Break, you have a pretty goddamn serious health problem.

But the delicious taste is worth risking the health hazards, right?  After all, one of the listed ingredients is Sodium Nitrate.  Which is, of course, a raw material for the manufacture of gunpowder.  Admittedly, it also works as a meat preservative.  But when I think meat preservative, I think canned ham or tuna.  Not, you know, canned pork brains in milk gravy.  Serving size is only 2/3rds of a cup, though, so the taste shouldn’t be overwhelming.  That, and you’ll probably already be overcome by the noxious fumes of a motherfucking pig brain stewing in milky, runny gravy.  Hell, chances are you’ll be out cold before you have your first bite.

Lastly, you’ll notice it’s produced by The Dial Corporation and its sub-manufacturer, Armour.  Where have you seen these names?  Oh, etched in your shit-stained soap bars.  Nothing like a mega-corporation that specializes in both personal hygiene products and pork brains in milk gravy.  This is why the concept of ‘comparative advantage’ exists.  You think the Japs could have come up with something like this?

Probably.  They’ve been eating weird shit for centuries.

1.  Eunuch.

Ah, sitting at the royal table.  Eating a royal feast.  Guarding royal concubines (maybe even sneaking a peak or six at their nubile dwellings.)  Enjoying the benefits of royalty.  What could possibly be bad about this job?  I mean, you get all the roasted boar you can eat.  You get to chill in some nice fucking silk threads all day.  And you get to see plenty of beautiful, nude women prancing about and giggling.  How could this be a bad job?  Well, turns out the king claims his concubines for his use only.  He doesn’t trust you, with your ways of the royal boner.  So he gives your junk the ol’ chop-chop.  And then feeds it to his dogs.  Any job that requires cockcapitation automatically makes a ‘worst jobs’ list.

2.  Circus Freak.

Your job is to get laughed at and generally degraded.  The public pays to witness the horrible crime against nature that you are.  Midget or crab-boy, and especially conjoined twins.  Every day of your life, people pay to remind you how much your life really fucking sucks.  You grotesque perversion of science, you.

3.  Gallery Slave.

Being any kind of slave is a bad job.  Being a gallery slave is the worst.  At least plantation slaves could mostly work at a reasonable pace, outdoors, singing and communicating with others.  Gallery slaves are confined to the gallery of large ships, whipped repeatedly and forced to row at a frenetic pace in unison.  They can’t talk to each other and a couple of them are probably gonna die on the journey.  As far as being a slave goes, gallery slaves pretty much have it the worst.

4.  Urine Collector.

According to worst-jobs.com, 13th century fashion moguls had a difficult time figuring out how to soften wool.  They figured out how to get it off of sheep (after many unsuccessful attempts, presumably involving hand grenades, barbed wire and laser beams), but they couldn’t figure out the part where it was dry and itchy and generally uncomfortable to drape over human skin afterward.  Ever so eager to cash in on the latest fashion craze, these moguls sought the magic of science (and the Bible probably) to figure out how to soften the wool.  And science came back with such an obvious answer: two-week old piss.  Cue the rise of the urine collector, whose job was to collect two-week old piss and apply it to wool.  The sad part is, he probably just got the job for the store discount anyway.  Drench the wool in piss and buy it back when it’s a little dryer.  There’s no justice in that.

5.  Cat Killer.

Back in the days of the Plague, Europeans – they of little hygiene and female armpit hair – were convinced that all those goddamn cats roaming the city streets were responsible for the epic rash of deaths associated with the Plague.  After all, the cats were bewitched!  So naturally, they spent the money they could have used to advance medicine of the time to encourage children to beat all the cats to death.  With sticks.  Seriously.  I’d imagine it’s akin to having a paper route these days, except back then, instead of delivering papers, you just bashed kitty skulls in.  Minor difference.

6.  Guillotine Collector.

How lazy were executioners back in the day?  Seriously.  All they were paid to do was swing an ax or work a guillotine.  It’s not that hard.  It even has nice medical benefits, oddly enough.  But they couldn’t be troubled to retrieve the heads afterward?  I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit.  The fact that someone else had to clean up after them is a historical travesty.  The smart play by the collectors would have been to unionize, but then they were probably afraid they’d end up on the chopping block themselves, with all their friends refusing to collect their decapitated heads.  And the government – sorry, monarchy – getting in a royal clusterfuck over the whole situation while the head just sat and rotted out in the sun for an entire summer and was reduced to a maggot-infested, hollowed-out shell of skull before…aw, fuck it, just take my word that it was one of the worst jobs.

7.  Barnyard Masturbator.

Yup, it’s a real job.  You jack off animals.  You collect their jizz.  You drink a little when no one’s looking, then you ship it back off for God-knows-what.  There’s really not much more to say about a job that centers around jacking off animals, unless you’re into bestiality.  In which case, you probably enjoy a lot of the other ‘worst jobs’ too.

8.  Porno Theater Janitor.

It’s like being a barnyard masturbator, except instead of inducing, you’re cleaning up.  And instead of being just kind of grossed-out, you’re terrified for your life that you’re going to get AIDS.  This job better have the best damn medical benefits on the planet.  It also better ensure that you get sucked off for free at the third stall to the right in the men’s bathroom every night when your shift ends.  ‘Cuz, damn, there’s just no glory in this.  No glory, and a potentially long, painful death.

9.  Upstart Hooker.

“It’s who you know, and who you blow.” — James Doakes, Dexter.

Being a high-class hooker would be awesome.  You just have regular play-dates, scheduled ahead of times, that result in you faking an orgasm over the course of a couple hours and walking out a couple thousand bucks richer.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  But every hooker has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is often a truck stop or the back-end of a Red Light District.  Chances are you’re probably already “experienced” (meaning your anal ring can expand to the diameter of roughly a fucking cruise missile), but still, your johns will want to do freaky shit.  And you saw Se7en like everyone else, so you know there’s the off chance that once of them will have a sharp-edged dildo.  Even if your dream is to work your way up the ranks to high-end hooker, do you really want to chance being fucked to death in the process?

10.  Nike Employee, Cambodia branch.

Hey, pal.  Happy birthday!  How old are you?  Five.  Wow!  Five years old.  You know what that means…off to work, you little bastard!  And don’t bother coming back until you can afford to buy daddy a new air hockey table.  Yes, I realize you’ll probably be in your twenties by then and have severe pain in most of your joints.  But tough shit.  Daddy needs a new air hockey table, and the stimulus package sure as shit isn’t paying for it, so you better find a way to make it happen.  Or I’m turning you over to Coke, and they just straight up kill anyone who complains about their sweatshops!

Okay, maybe too aptly.  See if you can guess what the “American” title is after reading its Chinese translation.

1.  His Powerful Device Makes Him Famous.

What powerful device, pray tell?  A death ray?  A time machine?  Fucking green-to-white technology?  This could have implied several things.  But it’s much simpler than most folks would think, it just defines the massive tool hanging from between Marky Mark’s legs.  I heard it was a prosthetic, actually.  And to this day, I wonder who had the job of fitting Marky Mark’s cock with a prosthetic penis addition.

Translated from: Boogie Nights.

2.  Mysterious Murder in Snowy Cream.

I was disappointed with this translation.  Too vague!  First of all, “snowy cream” could imply several things: snow, artificial sweetener, ice cream, jizz.  The list is Boogie Nights dick long.  And was the murder really that mysterious?  It seemed pretty straight-forward to me.  Wife, woodchipper.  Woodchipper, wife.  Done and done, now let’s get some goddamn Rally’s!

Translated from: Fargo.

3.  I Will Marry a Prostitute to Save Money.

No, this is not my personal credo.  Though it’s not a bad idea.  Especially for those graduating into this economy.  It’s a stimulus package…all over her face!  But it just doesn’t make Richard Gere sound that dreamy.  Granted, Gere is getting a little too old to be dreamy any more.  I think he needs to pass that torch to Clive Owen or something, because Owen can be both dreamy and fucking awesome as shit.

Translated from: Pretty Woman.

4.  Who Is Face Belonging To?  I Will Kill You Again, Harder.

Probably the most obvious one on the list.  I applaud the Chinese here, this is a near-perfect translation.  Except for the “kill you again” part.  Can you kill someone more than once?  And can you proceed to kill them harder that time?  That line of thinking is a little sketchy.  I suppose you technically could kill someone, revive them, then go Takashi Miike on them – but who has that kind of patience these days?  I can barely wait for the next episode of Degrassi!

Translated from: Face/Off

5.  I’m Drunk and You’re a  Prostitute.

We’ve all uttered this gem at some point in our lives.  It’s just a clarification of sorts, an acknowledgement of reality.  You have to affirm that you’re about to make a horrible decision that will lead to the acquisition of skin-eating bacteria, right?  So get the facts out of the way: you’re drunk, and she’s/he’s/shehe’s a prostitute.  Good.  Now give me my fucking Academy Award before my sex rots.

Translated from: Leaving Las Vegas

6. Run!  Ruuunnn!  Cloudzilla!

Is this one real?  Are any of these really real?  It’s hard to say.  But I find that putting things in terms of Godzilla to Asians is always a wise move.  Asians are smart, but they don’t ‘get’ things like wakeboarding or fun.  They do, however, get things in terms of giant lizards that rise from the depths of the Pacific.  And more to the point, if Bill Paxton had recited this line at any point during the movie, it would be an instant classic and another addition to the repertoire of a man who already has the legendary “game over” quote in his acting arsenal.

Translated from: Twister

7.  Big Dumb Monkey-Man Keeps Whacking Tree With Genitals.

Wow.  Yeah, that was pretty much this movie, as far as I remember.

Translated from: George of the Jungle

8.  Come to My Cave and Wear This Rubber Codpiece, Cute Boy.

Replace ‘cave’ with ‘master bedroom’, and you have a Michael Jackson biopic.  Rimshot!  No, that’s awful.  I really wish there was a more obvious person to make gay pedophile jokes about than the King of Pop.  But not that many celebrities get outed for fondling young boys.  I mean, I guess there’s the guy who plays the reporter in Deadwood, but who in the cast of Deadwood hasn’t diddled a kid at some point in their careers?  They got into their roles, and that’s how America was back then, dammit!  Oh yeah, and Joel Schumacher probably translated this himself.

Translated from: Batman & Robin

9.  Imaginary Dead Baseball Players Live in My Cornfield.

Such a common problem, especially here in the Midwest.  You think you’ve got the perfect, quiet plot of land.  Nice place to raise the kids, have a few dogs, build a baseball diamond.  And then the fucking dead guys come out of the cornstalks.  Seriously, what was wrong with the McNulty farm?  They have four-wheelers over there!  Wouldn’t ghosts rather spend their restless days riding around on four-wheelers?  You’d sure think so.

Translated from: Field of Dreams

10.  Oh No!  My Girlfriend Has a Penis!

This is both a movie and the first thing I told my roommate after I came home Wednesday morning.

Translated from: The Crying Game

I love the three comments of encouragement.  They were obviously written by family members or the guy on the other end of the suicide hotline.  Because nobody could honestly enjoy this shit.

I’m all for exploring creative talents.  We wouldn’t have some of the great music we have had artists not taken chances and mixed things up a bit.  And it is possible to successfully cover a rap song with just an acoustic guitar on hand.  The best example of this, of course, being Mat Weddle of  Obadiah Parker’s cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya.”

Now see?  That was a good cover.  That was a great cover.  It took chances, but it still came out sounding good.  You might think that such a successful cover is an anomaly, but there are other examples.  Check out The Fray’s cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless.”

Or I Call Shotgun’s cover of Nelly’s “Ride With Me.”

Hell, Nina fucking Gordon managed to cover NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton”

And Nina Gordon, if you don’t know, played Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  You know, the bratty-ass girl who ended up turning into a blueberry?

You’ll notice that, with the examples provided, there are a few key staples to making a successful cover:

1. Rhythm. There has to be some sort of rhythm to the cover.  You are effectively altering the rhythm of the original track in order to suit your own interpretation.  So the rhythm of your vocals has to go along with your instrumentation.  As you see in the MIA cover, the vocals and ukele are clearly not on the same page.

2. Vocal Talent. Even if underplayed, you have to have some sort of singing ability.  It doesn’t even have to be great, it just has to be serviceable.  The MIA cover sounds like the chick is straight-up singing in the shower.  That usually does not make for a good cover.

3. Incorporation. You have to incorporate all the elements of your cover into a unified sound.  These girls clearly had no game plan.  One girl just randomly started playing the ukele, the other started belting out shower-tunes and the third girl sits creepily in the background, between them.  Probably wanting to be the “good friend” and tell them how horrible they are, but not wanting them to reveal to all of her Facebook friends that she totally fingered another girl last summer.

This cover is simply wretched, and as a result, has to be featured at TTATWT.

]]> http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/the-worst-cover-of-an-mia-track/feed/ 1 ttatwt Dont make her act a mothafuckin fool. http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/the-worst-news-mishaps/ http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/the-worst-news-mishaps/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:51:59 +0000 ttatwt http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/?p=59 ]]> It might come as a shock to most of us, but newscasters are human.  Though they display the chiseled faces of porcelain demi-gods and speak with the eloquence of the smartest person at a Victorian-era cocktail party, they are just as prone to mistakes as you or me.  And, it turns out when they happen, it’s pretty damn funny.  For all of us!

1.  Wanted: Rodney Stranger

Imagine that you’re Molly Bish’s parents.  You’re watching the six o’clock news, hoping to catch the segment where the police finally release that sketch of the lead suspect in your daughter’s disappearance.  You’ve haven’t slept for days, you’re worried, confused, scared.  You just want to know who took your daughter.  Well, somehow I’d imagine you’re going to have a hard time buying into the ol’ “hamster abducted my daughter” scenario.  You’ll see through that ruse quickly, and realize that maybe the police don’t quite yet have a viable suspect.

2.  I’ve Got Some Candy In My Weather Van!

Another embarrassing misuse of infographics.  My favorite part of this, though, has to be that he continues without any hesitation.  It’s almost as if he’s accepted the fact that, yeah, he’s a child molester.  So what?!  He can still forecast the shit out of your work week, and if that costs the innocence of a few third-graders here and there, is it really that big of a deal?

3.  Fuck You Mother Whore Shit!

Hey, if you’re gonna get fired, this is how you do it.  Go out with a bang!  Why get some boring-ass pink slip when you can ruin the days of every mother who has a television on within earshot of their cereal-chomping children?  If you do this, of course, you must smile like a complete lunatic for the 10 seconds immediately following your outburst.  It’s the only way to show that you damn well meant what you said.

4.  For the Love of God and All That Is Holy!

This is particularly horrible because it starts out as a shitty philosophy lecture and ends up as a shitty dramatic plea.  Just think about the cold, people!  Think about the nature of cold!  Cold is just so damn…cold!  Holy Sweet Jesus, who resides in the highest of Heavens, cold is cold!  It’s fucking cold!  Do you understand?  Sweet mercy, for the love of God and all that is HOLY, cold is cold!  It’s not a fucking tropical lagoon!  It’s cold!  Do you understand what I am telling you?  Do you understand that the fate of the motherfucking free world hinges on this concept?

Not only is it cold, it’s expletive expletive sub-zero!  Do you know how cold that is?  That’s much colder than cold.  That’s negative cold, that’s how cold that is.  HOLY SUB ZERO!

So do you people see, huh?  Do you fucking see?  SUB ZERO!  That’s the kinda shit that happens at Sub Zero.  People get frozen and shit.  Their heads fall to the feet of mysterious Asian men.  And God knows what they do with those heads!  Do you really want that for your children?  HUH?!

5.  A Man’s Man.

I’m not a betting man.  Far from it.  But I think it’s safe to say that this guy won’t be stealing your woman anytime soon.  Not that I have a problem with the GLBT community.  Be yourself, I say!  Not only might you win an Oscar for it, but you can end up on YouTube as well.  And really, isn’t everyone’s ultimate life goal to be immortalized somehow on the Internet?  (I already have, undoubtedly, through leaked sexting pics that surely have been sitting proudly on the hard drive of pedophiles nationwide since 2004!)

6.  Naughty Girl!

Infer all you want as to her sexual preferences.  All I know is, I want this woman reading me the news every morning.  At exactly 7:37 a.m.  And if she’s even a second late, it’s a spanking for her.  Oh yes.  You like that, don’t you?

7.  Bulging.

This isn’t necessarily funny because of the anchors, but rather, because you can imagine how this field assignment went for the cameraman.

Cameraman: So, what do you want me to do again?
Reporter: I don’t know, it’s a story on vasectomies.  What’s vasectomy-related?
Cameraman: Well, uh, dicks I suppose.
Reporter: Great.  We’ll get some shots of those.  Let’s start with mine!
Cameraman: Um, I don’t think we can show dicks on live television.
Reporter: Touche.  Damn.  Can we show crotches?
Cameraman: As in clothed crotches?
Reporter: Yup.  Full-on bulge.
Cameraman: Well I guess, but…
Reporter: Then get this fat-ass walking down the sidewalk!

I hope this cameraman has better clips than this one to show should he consider applying for the same position at a different station.  Unless his new boss is just really into that sort of thing.

8.  Top Cock.

Honestly, this isn’t that funny.  But let’s note Shepard Smith giving Janie a hard time about her Freudian slip.  He opens with an assholish laugh and just lingers on the issue, rubbing it in as much as possible.  And he looks so damn smug in the process!  Could this be a call for karma?  Might this coming back to haunt the one-and-only Shepard Smith?

9.  JLojob!

Yeah, that’s right.  Sit down Shepard Smith.  You’d better be sorry, implying that J Lo is a tranny.

10.  Maybe If It Was Mike Hunt…

Pride cometh before the fall, Shepard.  That’s two blatantly out-of-place sexual references for you.  Are we seeing a pattern?  Look, Jonathan Hunt probably got enough crap growing up.  Sure, it’s not as bad as Mike Hunt per se (and Mike Hunt is foul, it’s just a disgrace that anyone’s parents would ever designate them as Mike Hunt), but still, kids are cruel, and we know how those junior high years surely went.  But to bring that back as an adult?  Traumatizing.  Especially when you really have to make the effort to confuse ‘Hunt’ with the c-bomb.

I’m sure Jonathan will take him up on his offer to “shoot [Smith] in the head”, though.

]]> http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/the-worst-news-mishaps/feed/ 0 ttatwt http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/the-worst-cover-of-a-ludacris-track/ http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/the-worst-cover-of-a-ludacris-track/#comments Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:47:16 +0000 ttatwt http://thingsthataretheworstthings.wordpress.com/?p=51 ]]> Kids.  One day they’re arguing about whether Wolverine could beat up Scorpion, the next day they’re covering a Ludacris track for a live studio audience.  They just grow up so damn fast!  Unfortunately for our friend Oliver, the result of said maturation is not a good thing.  Haha, maturation.

Do I know why the host is speaking German and Oliver is clearly rapping in an urban American dialect of the English language?  I do not.  Just like I do not know why Oliver insists on imitating a chicken while dancing, or why he seems to bring his hand to his thigh when clearly referring to a “big ol’ ass.”  Does he not know where his ass is?  I feel like that’s Rapper 101 kinda stuff.  I also wonder whether or not Oliver knows what sticky icky icky is.  I would assume the studio audience does, as they seem to be completely entralled by this boy’s performance.

The undisputed best part of this worst cover, though, occurs at the 2:45 mark.  Oliver really drops the ball here.  If you’re a 10-year-old white boy and you want to immediately silence an otherwise supportive crowd that has been clapping along to your performance thus far on stage, then all you have to do is stop moving and yell “nigga what!” into the mic.  BAM!  Instant uneasiness abounds.  And nobody knows how to react for the rest of the act.

Then, oh shit!  The ending.  You find out this kid, who sounded straight out of Bed-Stuy to me, is really German!  Seriously!  Which must make Germans racist, which should come as little surprise given their checkered past.  Is this a sweeping generalization on my part?  Perhaps, but all of the judges gave him a ’5′.  I’m not sure if a German ’5′ is the same as an American ’5′ – metric system and umlauts, you know – but this is definitely the worst Ludacris cover ever, so I’m going to hope the Krauts got at least one thing right and scaled this out of 6,000,000 or something.

EDIT: Alright, so I had to include this.  I did a little Googling to see what our buddy Oliver is up to these days, and came across OthenticO’s MySpace.  OthenticO, of course, being his stage name.  I guess it’s more intimidating than ‘Oliver.’

A couple of things strike me about this page.  One, sadly, he has much better taste in hip-hop than I had before my nuts had dropped.  Two, he has roughly 1,500 more friends than I ever had on MySpace.  Three, this kid is positively g’d up from the feet up.  Four, “Say No” is the first and therefore only anti-pedophile rap I’ve ever heard.  I think this is an area of hip-hop that has a lot of potential.  Five, holy shit, he’s young-style Brother Ali on “The Pope Track”, which is both inspiring and creepy to think about – mostly because Brother Ali’s childhood was presumably spent locked in an attic away from all the non-albinos.  Six, Oliver…sorry, OthenticO…has better production value per track at age 17 (seriously? I just did the math, probably wrong like usual) than Soulja Boy and/or Dem Franchise Boys has/have ever had.  Seven, I better start watching what I say out my mouth because his friends – at first glance – look much more imposing than my friends (who are, admittedly, a collection of fireflies and worms I keep in a big jar.)

And eight, this picture will now make my day every day for the rest of my life:

1. Troll 2 – Oh My God!

There is no possible way to have a ‘worst movie scenes’ list without this gem.  Honestly, even as an admitted film geek, I have no idea what the hell this movie is all about.  Presumably a troll, or from the looks of the clip, multiple trolls, though I’m more inclined to believe we’re dealing with goblins here.  Either way, never scene the flick, but this scene has been since preserved in Internet lore.  It has also taught me the proper reaction to basically anything.

2. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 – Garbage Day

Pretty much my favorite scene of all time.  I’ve noticed this emerging pattern that indicates 90 percent of the worst movie scenes were made in the 1980s.  Was it the glitter or glam, or maybe just the black Michael Jackson?  I don’t know.  But horror sequels, trilogies and eight installments were dished out on a daily basis, and American cinema wasn’t caught up in silly things like plot or characterization or sensible decisions.  It was all mullets and cokelines off boners, baby!

3. Enter the Ninja – Death Takes Approximately 20 Seconds.

While “Garbage Day” is a classic, this is easily the best death scene of all time.  From the techno riff accompanying the projection of the suspiciously-plastic-square-looking throwing star to the look of shock and betrayal in the victim’s face to the submission to fate as he drops his gun and begins his fall to the shoulder shrug halfway down that seems to be an acknowledgement that he probably had it coming (for wearing that ridiculous suit, we’ll presume) to the ninja’s “WTF was that” look when the dude finally hits the ground.

4. Running Scared – For Everyone Else, There’s Mastercard?

Okay, admittedly, I think Running Scared is the shit.  Does it have any clear plot direction?  No!  Is the acting pretty much horrible?  Yes!  Is it an incredibly fucked-up action flick that drops the F-bomb upwards of 200 times?  It sure as hell is.  I don’t know if it was supposed to be a mob story or an undercover cop story or a hard-hitting drama about drug-using parents or serial killer pedophiles or owning a hockey team or what, but it has pretty much all of those things in it, and almost everyone involved gets shot at some point (or otherwise beat to shit in a blacklight hockey arena.)  This scene, though, is one of the film’s more clever moments, a play on the famous Mastercard commercial.  Somehow I don’t think they had the same closing line, though.

5. Cabin Fever – Pancakes!

I assure you that you are missing nothing here.  There is no inside joke, no allusion to something said or done in the first 10 minutes of the film.  No, this is the first mention of pancakes at any point of this movie, and it seems just as isolated watching the whole movie as it does just watching this clip on YouTube.  Eli Roth is…messed up to say the least.  I’m in the camp that believe that’s a good thing.

6. 2001 Maniacs – The Boy Wants His Bitch.

2001 Maniacs is basically the same thing as Cabin Fever just with (incredibly) lower production values and a lot more Robert Englund (always a good thing.)  In fact, Eli Roth appears in both, as the same character.  The two movies are connected!  Continuation!  But you don’t watch either movie for its plot, you watch it for the terribly terrific death scenes with a side of racial humor.  I don’t remember his name, but this black dude from 2001 Maniacs is one of my cult cinema heroes.  Especially when followed by a band of merry minstrels.  Tiredadisshit!

7. Malibu’s Most Wanted – Yo Momma

One of my more embarrassing secrets is that I actually like this movie.  I try to convince myself it’s because I like Jamie Kennedy and think the performances by Taye Diggs and Anthony Anderson are comedic gold, but everyone still just shakes their heads and spits in my face.  Despite my admiration for this movie, though, even I can admit that this scene is pretty horrible.  It does, however, feature Kumar and the guy who plays Lem in The Shield.

8. Sleepaway Camp – SPOILER: Penis.

Now what was more shocking – the dubbing or the cock?  Either way, this scene is terrible.  That said, I think it’s also a lot deeper than most people understand.  It’s effectively the visual demonstration of the fear that all that rampant screwing in the 80′s will inevitably result in you having boned a dude without knowing it and getting AIDS as a result.  It’s the imagination of an entire decade’s sexual consequences.  Or it’s just a really, really bad ending, that’s more shocking as a result of a penis after 1.5 hours of boobies than anything else.

9. Bad Love – Zero on 11!

Fact: Tom Sizemore is badass in everything.  He’s like Tom Selleck, minus the mustache, plus a few pounds here or there, but was in Saving Private Ryan instead of Westerns.  In that way, of course, he is nothing like Tom Selleck, but they have the same first name and first letter of their last names.  The second clip in this trio of bad clips courtesy Watercooler is just an amazingly horrible clip.  There’s nothing like going from “fuck you” to “goofball.”  It’s like saying “excuse me, ma’am, but would you shut your bitch ass tits up for a moment?”

10. Session 9 – Oscar for David Caruso.

It’s funny that I would include anything from Session 9 on here because (A) it’s one of my 10 favorite movies and (B) it’s still the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.  That said, this was just a horrible effort on behalf of Brad Anderson and the editing team, and a little-too-amazing effort by David Caruso.  When those two things are combined, bad things happen.  And by bad things, of course, I mean the most epic “fuck you” in the history of film.

1. The mosquito

Yellow fever.  Malaria.  Is there any disease the mosquito hasn’t been responsible for spreading at some point?  As a result of this fact, mosquitoes are the deadliest insects on the planet.  And don’t give me some shit about them providing nourishment for frogs or whatever, they serve no point but to infect and annoy.  Am I allergic to mosquito bites?  You bet I am.  Do I get golf-ball sized welts every time I’m outside after 7 p.m. during the summer months?  Every time.  I don’t know what they want with my blood, anyway.  Honestly, it’s not that great.

2. The black widow

One of those creatures that exists solely to kill people, particularly small children.  How can you not see the evil inherent in that?  Black widows is scary shit.  Don’t believe me?  Try mountain biking sometime and, after a series of accidents that leads you to the conclusion that mountain biking might not be your thing, falling to the forest floor inches from a black widow nest.  You will shit your pants exactly 600 times.  Just looking at this picture makes me shit my pants, actually.  Murderous bastards.

3. The tick

You will find a common theme of my dislike for certain members of the animal/insect/dinosaur kingdom is the inability for a creature to do things for his own damn self.  Lazy doesn’t pay, and all ticks do is feed off what everyone else has.  They also like to fuck with your dog on a daily basis, which results in you spending a half-hour of every day combing through your pet’s hair and struggling to hold the little guy down while you tweeze these bloodsucking assholes out.  Ideally, my afternoons would be spent doing something else.  Like reading, or learning a new language, or discovering new porn sites.

4. The wasp

Wasps need to just chill the fuck out already.  Seriously, they have to be one of the most enraged creatures on the planet.  They never just stop and think!  I think wasps are akin to Crips.  They get all pissy about some really minor beef, get heated and then put their own lives on the line to settle the score.  Maybe that’s the one satisfaction we can get out of our struggle to co-exist with wasps: every time they sting you, they’re immediately doomed.  But still, I’d like to reach out to one of them sometime and let them know that it’s just not worth it!  Perhaps even start an outreach program.  Or, alternatively, just terminate any and all of those bitches with extreme prejudice (or Super Soakers.)

5. The brown recluse

Another picture that makes my balls shrivel.  Why am I doing this to myself?  Brown recluses aren’t quite as deadly as black widows, but being one spider that’s not quite as deadly as another is like being one politician that’s not quite as corrupt as another – either way, they are on a mission to poison your children.  Brown recluses make the list specifically because they like to live in sock drawers.  This sucks, because it’s hard to avoid your sock drawer, unless you’re (A) white trash or (B) in a climate conducive to sandals.  Neither applies to me, though I do thoroughly enjoy fireworks.  And dammit if I’m going to die for my socks.

6. Box jellyfish

Box jellyfish are responsible for the highest amount of deaths of any marine creatures in the entire world.  They have huge tentacles – tentacles that can grow up to three meters long – and give horrible reacharounds.  This may be due to the fact that their sting is highly venomous and potentially fatal.  They also tap the kegs before the party ever really gets started, break all your expensive shit and rail your mother.  But what pisses me off more than any of that is the fact that they just float around all day not doing anything.  They’re kind of like a biker gang, I guess, if that biker gang crashed the local retirement community.  Box jellyfish will fuck your shit up, but they’re not even going to go out of their way to man up in order to do it, they’re just going to float all over your Spring Break plans.  I think I speak for humanity when I quote the ever-eloquent Abigail Adams: “fuck jellyfish.”

7. The koala bear

Aw, they’re so cute.  How could you hate koala bears?  That’s an easy one: they’re completely worthless.  They spend 22 hours a day sleeping.  People who voted for Obama don’t even spend 22 hours a day sleeping, and none of them even have jobs to go to!  How unnecessary is it to only be conscious for two hours of the day?  I spend two hours a day on the crapper alone.  It’s hard to imagine that, in those two hours, koala bears make any worthwhile contributions to this planet.  Besides beating off at the zoo, I mean.

8. The leech

Similar to the tick, the leech just feeds off what everyone else has.  Unlike the tick, though, they’re much bigger, much more noticeable and result in much more bloodshed when extracted.  I probably didn’t give a second thought about leeches until I saw Stand By Me.  Believe me, if you have ever had a penis at any point in your life, you’ll understand why leeches are scary, as is evidenced by the below clip:

I first saw Stand By Me when I was 13 years old.  And I have refused to enter any murky creek, pond or lake ever since.  I guess my last job required being in a river at least one day a week, but it was more a breeding ground for anacondas, alligators and mutated goldfish than anything else, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

Good marketing teams answer these questions in a way that satisfies their employers and advances the agenda of the goods or services being promoted.  Bad marketing teams come up with this kind of shit.

1. Duracell – People Run on Batteries?

In the future, man will run on batteries.  Apparently they will also be candy-glazed and finished off with a healthy coat of wax and Rocky-from-Mask chin.  This does not make me want to buy Duracell batteries, and it does make me want to become Amish.  Somehow I don’t think that was the goal of the marketing campaign.

2. Don’s Guns – Nothing Shady About This One.

Don’s Guns is a personal favorite, because it’s in my neck of the woods.  Indiana, I’ve found, is rich with horrible commercials.  There are quite a few things to note in this terrible commercial.  First is the constant presence of the Spanish phrase “se rentan armas”, or translated: we rent/sell guns.  I’m not going to make a widespread accusation that anyone needing to interpret that message in Spanish is probably an illegal alien who should not be purchasing firearms…but, yeah.  ‘Nuff said.  I can see El Diablo walking into the store now, guitar on his back and snake tattoo on his bicep.

The most striking part of the commercial, though, is the completely unnecessary evil laugh at the end.  Surely that’s not ol’ Don’s real laugh, is it?  If so, Don might be Satan.  And I’m not an advertising major, but I would have to believe that having Satan endorse your product/service is generally not good for business.

3. Xbox – Half Pederast Fantasy, Half Fatalist Wet Dream.

I’ve never been quite sure what to make of this commercial.  It starts at childbirth, which is generally a process that nobody wants to see in reality when their own kids are being rocketed out of the womb, let alone in a commercial.  Yet, defying that logic, we start with a woman who is in excruciating pain, in the process of birthing her child.  Except he doesn’t just slide out like a regular baby, he launches out.

The commercial is then 10 or 15 seconds of a prepubescent boy screaming and covering his junk as he flies through the air.  Was this commercial targeted at NAMBLA or something?  You wouldn’t think a product aimed at 12-year-old boys would use a nude 12-year-old boy as a selling point – my campaign probably would have focused more on a hot female character, given that demographic – but I don’t know, kids these days are pretty gay, so maybe that’s not too out of line.

Then he becomes a man, and does a poor job covering up his balls.  So we’re left staring at some guys’ balls as he careens hopelessly through the air.  Is this making me want to buy the product any more?  It is not.

Finally, he mutates into a creepy old man with meth-mouth and ends up landing in his own grave.  I didn’t know video game consoles were so heavy into fatalism.  They would have been just as well off calling the system The Shit Happens Box or something.  It all just feels so steeped in pessimism.  And what’s the overarching message, anyway?  That we should play Xbox because life is short?  I think playing too much Xbox is a causal effect of life seeming short.

4. Snuggle – Bear Wants to Hump Baby, Then Eat It.

Had I seen that as a child, I would have woken up a cold sweat every night expecting to see that creepy ass bear staring back down at me, beating off.

Snuggle commercials always seem a little suggestive for all the innocent ambience they attempt to portray.  First, that bear clearly cums on that blanket.  Routinely.  Look at the way he holds it to his face, eyes rolling back at the initial stages of orgasm.  It’s…so…soft!

What makes this commercial extra horrible, though, is not the presence of a masturbating bear.  Masturbating bears are actually decent selling points, ask Conan.  But this commercial enters terrible new territory when the bear spends the majority of his time leaning over the crib, pawing dangerously close to the baby’s face.  Does he want to hump the baby?  Does he want to eat the baby?  He probably wants to do both, because he’s a goddamn perverted bear.

5. Nintendo 64 – Incest, Transvestites and Horrible Thoughts in Your Head.

If the Xbox commercial was marketed at fatalist pedophiles, then who the hell was this marketed at?  Surely not kids, who almost assuredly don’t pick up on the blatant sexual suggestions made within this 30 second span of awfulness.  Was it aimed at people who find incest funny?  Because incest is one of those things that’s often too gross to really be overly comedic.  You might want to laugh, but seriously, “grandpa” was fucking tranvestite “dad.”  That’s not an image you want in your head.  Not at all.

This commercial gets extra props, by the way, for introducing the concept of a bribe to children.  Apparently, the message of this advertisement is that your dad will buy you a video game if you catch him post-coitus, with your grandpa cleaning his old crusty junk off in the bathroom sink.  Will that message sell N64 games?  Only if your dad is the daughter your grandpa never had when mommy’s out of town.

6. Mr. Bucket – Put Your Balls In My Mouth

I should clarify that I’m mostly using commercials I remember from my childhood.  Since I was raised on Nickelodeon, they are mostly game-and-toy-related.  And this is one I remember all too well.

I thought this was a dicey commercial back then.  Any commercial with a Mister Anything asking children to put their balls in his mouth is by default a bad commercial.  The fact that this one takes so much glee in hammering audiences over the head with sexual innuendos earns it a nod on the short-list for the very worst commercials.

7. Montgomery Flea Market Rap

Okay, so this one might be the most obvious on the list.  But how could you not include it?

It’s nice to see that Bruce Bruce launched a rap career, or at least I assume that’s him.  Possibly Sherman Klump from The Nutty Professor, I’m not 100 percent sure.  Either way, just look at the shit he’s peddling.  If they choose the cream of the crop items for the ads, I’d hate to see what the real shit he’s hawking looks like.  The commercial also gets kudos for completely unnecessary zooms, in and out, and directly into Sammy Stephens’ face.

There is also a certain point in this commercial where I’m almost certainly being condemned to an eternity in Hell (or Montgomery, Alabama – which is more or less the same thing.)

God help us all.  Because after viewing this, Sammy Stephens certifiably owns your soul.  Is he the type of guy you want to own your soul?  Probably not.  Only because he’ll sell it back off to a meth-head that will piss all over it, though.  Forever!

8. Bob Rohrman – I’m At Your Front Door!

Bob Rohrman is another hometown hero.  His commercials are my reason for living at 6 a.m.  Well, that and an inherited genetic defect in my per2 gene.  But enough about that.

This commercial is horrible for many reasons, not the least of which is Bob’s utter insanity.  Try as I might, I will never be able to shed the image of Bob Rohrman standing on the other side of that elaborate sliding peephole, looking back at the camera with every intention of fondling the audience and then slitting its collective throat.  One of these mornings, you’re going to hear a knock at your door.  You’re going to slip on your bath-robe and descend the stairs, wondering who it could be at such an early hour.  And when you look through the peephole, you’re going to see that face staring back at you.

There’s only one Bob Rohrman.  And he’s going to gut you like a fish.

10. The Hottie and the Nottie

By definition, any movie in which Paris Hilton isn’t brutally murdered sucks.  That includes her shitty porn tape, by the way, which I spent 30 minutes searching for my sophomore year of high school just to be completely underwhelmed at the sight of a nightvision blowjob.  Honestly, I never saw this movie, which completely discounts my opinion on it whatsoever.  But I can just feel my eyes rolling at the “oh just kidding, everyone is beautiful inside” revelation that’s surely rolled out in the last five minutes of the film, justifying the previous hour-and-a-half in which teenage girls are led to believe that they need to suck dick like a pro in order to ever have any real friends.

9. Prom Night

You know your movie sucks when even Stringer fucking Bell can’t save it.  I wonder how this conversation went down at Sony Pictures.

Executive 1 – okay, so we need to re-make another 70′s horror flick, what do you fellas have?
Executive 2 – ‘Halloween’
Executive 1 – Rob Zombie already butchered it.  What else?
Executive 3 - ‘Prom Night’
Executive 1 – Is that a real movie?
Executive 3 – Yeah, um, it had that one actress in it.  You know, the one with the dick.
Executive 1 – Jamie Lee Curtis?
Executive 3 – Yeah, that one.  And get this, we could case two guys from The Wire for the flick, too.
Executive 1 – Excellent.  They’ll play well off our cast of unknown 27-year-olds playing 17-year-olds.

But don’t sweat, people.  Director Nelson McCormick is lined up for a remake of the pivotal 80′s slasher The Stepfather next.  Look for it on ‘The Worst Movies of 2009′ post next year.

8. Mirrors

Here’s a secret about Mirrors director Alexandre Aja – he’s not really that good.  You see, he makes extremely gory flicks that are highly stylized, but fall back on the old horror tradition of reducing their characters to annoying stereotypes who are practically begging to end up being raped in the ass in the back of their camper.

But logically, by inserting Kiefer Sutherland in the mix, you would bring a lot more animation to your main character.  Right?  Uh, no.  The only thing more ridiculous than Jack Bauer in a horror flick is Amy Smart in a horror flick.  One can’t lose, the other can’t eat, and ulimately, neither one can act.

7. Babylon AD

Another conversation that’s just a little too easy to imagine.

Executive 1 – This script is brilliant!  A perfect Vin Diesel van!
Mailboy – Um, sir, that’s actually a copy of ‘Children of Men’ you’ve been using a coaster for the last week.
Executive 1 – Really?  Oh well, that can be easily fixed.
(takes out sharpie, draws line through ‘Children of Men’ title)
Executive 1 – But what to call it?  What sounds, like, really futuristic and bad-ass?
Mailboy – Sir, I don’t think it’s ethical to…
Executive 1 – I’ve got it!  We’ll call it “Babylon A.D”!  Way to go, mailboy!
Mailboy – You can’t just re-make a movie that was made three years ago.  People will notice!
Executive 1 – Sure we can.  We’ll just make them look different, all futuristic and shit.
Mailboy – I don’t think that would fool anyone.
Executive 1 – Nonsense.  Everyone will wear trenchcoats and cool sunglasses!
Mailboy – Um, they did that in ‘The Matrix’, and that was set in 1999.
Executive 1 – Yup, trenchcoats and cool sunglasses…

Children of Men was a beautifully-choreographed, well-acted, thought-provoking science fiction film.  Babylon AD is pretty much the opposite of all those things.

6. The Air I Breathe

Oscar bait.  It’s a term used to describe movies that were obviously made for the sole purpose of catering to the Motion Picture Academy of America, in order to draw Academy Award attention.  Unfortunately, a high percentage of “oscar bait” films end up trying too hard and becoming convulated, trite pieces of cinematic garbage in the process.

The Air I Breathe is like that, only worse.

Of all the films on the list, I probably felt the most physical hatred toward this one.  You would figure a movie with Kevin Bacon, Andy Garcia, Emile Hirsch and Forest Whitaker would be decent enough.  But then, you didn’t figure it would be a movie where the characters’ names were Love, Pleasure, Fingers, Happiness and Sorrow.  That might have worked if it was one of those faux-arthouse porn flicks in which Chloe Sevigny domes some dude up for her undying love of cinema, but in this case, based on a Chinese proverb I’m sure would be way cooler played out via tree-jumping swordfights and crazy kung-fu shit, it does not.

Additional note: movies where butterflies are supposed to symbolize things will always make my ‘Worst Movies’ lists.

5. Funny Games

When Funny Games first came out in Austria back in 1997, director Michael Haneke was praised as a cinematic revolutionary, introducing a film that criticized the brainless American slasher years before it even hit its lowest point, and breaking standard cinematic conventions, such as the breaking of the fourth wall which separates the characters from directly addressing the audience.  The original Funny Games was more or less one of the biggest cinematic ‘fuck you’s of the last couple decades.

So naturally, it was logical for the same director to make the same damn film, shot-for-shot, ten years later…just in English this time.  What, can we not process subtitles in the good ol’ US of A.  And even if so, is this really a film that need to be re-introduced to the contemporary filmic culture lexicon?  Anyone pretentious enough to concern Haneke regarding the reception of his message already saw the damn thing 10 years ago.  Bringing it back with new actors and the same script is just rubbing in a message whose point was already received loud and clear.  No one’s going to give Haneke credit for doing the same thing twice.  Shit is weak, son.

4. Righteous Kill

Sorry, but it has to be done.  Again.

Executive 1 – Well, we’ve got Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on board.  But how can we make the movie better?
Escaped Mental Patient – Get 50 Cent in there too!
Executive 1 – Wait, who the hell are you?
Escaped Mental Patient – Executive 2.
Executive 1 – Oh, right.  My bad.  Okay, so 50 Cent.  Who else?
Escaped Mental Patient – How about John Leguizamo?
Executive 1 – Brilliant!  Can we throw in the retarded Wahlberg brother too?
Escaped Mental Patient – Sure thing, Stonewall Jackson.

Righteous Kill might have featured the most frustratingly random cast of the year.  Sure, De Niro and Pacino have put out some clunkers lately, but you had to figure, together, it would be like Heat all over again.  But it wasn’t Heat.  It wasn’t even close.  For one, there was no Val Kilmer, which is pretty make-or-break in my book.  And for two, a serious 50 Cent has all the personality of…a serious John Leguizamo.

The one thing Righteous Kill had going for it?  Melissa Leo, who should have won Best Actress for Frozen River, made a performance.

3. 88 Minutes

Remember when you first saw Phone Booth and wondered what you ever found intriguing about that premise?  Well, 88 Minutes is pretty much the same thing, only somehow much, much worse.  I’m fairly confident that I could have made this movie if I had just followed Al Pacino around in a parking garage for an afternoon and instructed at him to yell loudly into a phone every five seconds.  The best thing you can say about this flick is that it was only 88 minutes long, and the vast majority of films run north of 90 these days.

2. Disaster Movie

I think it’s great that there was such an abundance of creative material for 2008′s Superhero Movie that they decided to edit the deleted scenes and out-takes into a brand new movie and call it Disaster Movie.  Look, I don’t know Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer personally.  But I kind of hope they contract ebola.  Say, in the next three months.  These guys and anyone else granted the creative “opportunity” to head up one of these flicks should be ashamed of themselves.  They’re taking away studio space from folks who might otherwise introduce something worthwhile to the cinemascape.  The audience – and I can’t figure out who the hell that constitutes to this point – should be even more ashamed.  I feel supremely confident calling you retarded if you ever dish out a 10-note to see one of these epic pieces of shit.

The one thing I do appreciate about these films, though, is that – if Friedberg and Seltzer can make money doing this – anyone can make money directing films.

1. The Happening

Oh, M. Night Shymalan.  I don’t know how to spell your name!  And guess what, since you’ve become so irrelevant, I won’t even bother to look it up.  Seriously, talk about a trainwreck.  The Sixth Sense was very good, no doubt.  I think Unbreakable was even better.  But from there, it was just a steady decline to Signs and The Village and Lady in the Water.  Eventually, somehow, we arrived here.

Mark Wahlberg looks very confused – say hi to ya motha for me, okay?  Zooey Deschanel looks very emo.  And John Leguizamo wasn’t content with just helping to ruin one movie this year.  Maybe something gets lost in the transition from concept to screenplay to big screen, I don’t know.  But this is like the shit I would have come up with when I was 10 years old.  Except I wrote better screenplays than this when I was 10 years old.  I also likely would have cast Chris Tucker over John Leguizamo, which might have made all the difference in the world.