PRODUCT NAME: Axe Devitalizing Shower Gel
ARTWORK: “Psycho” shower scene with axe-wielding maniac in silhouette behind a curtain.
REASON FOR REJECTION: This is more an idea than a product parody.
Besides, Axe is for men, and the sudsy nude in the shower is cleary female.

PRODUCT NAME: BloodGeyser
ARTWORK: Brown bottle spraying blood from top.
REASON FOR REJECTION: Not bad, but pun is too easy.
It would help if the bottle wasn’t jaggedly broken in half
and embedded into Smokey the Bear’s chest. (Huh? Yellowstone, maybe…?)

PRODUCT NAME: Ball Park Frank
ARTWORK: Puffy male head, carrots, and bones bobbing in cannibal pot…along with hot dogs.
Caption reads “He plumps when you cook him.”
REASON FOR REJECTION: Getting close. But I see no reference to a “Ball Park”…wait…there’s a baseball cap, filled with…scalp? Ugh. We can’t print this.

PRODUCT NAME: Neumann’s Own Dressing
ARTWORK: Soiled gauze. Literally. A used bandage.
REASON FOR REJECTION: This is biomedical waste, not art.

PRODUCT NAME: Killette! The Blood a Man Can Jet!
ARTWORK: Silver razor embedded in a blood-spraying throat.
REASON FOR REJECTION: Close again…but another blood spray?! Lame. Besides, everyone knows that disposable razors aren’t straight razors.

PRODUCT NAME: Drunken Donuts
ARTWORK: Chubby moustachioed maniac pulls a hacksaw through a wino’s leg. The oblivious wino drinks from paper bagged bottle. Caption reads: “Time to make the donuts, Daddy!”
REASON FOR REJECTION: We’ve done this one before (xref the ‘lost 1992 series’)…only in a much more palatable way.

PRODUCT NAME: Wonder Head
ARTWORK: Human head, pre-sliced, wrapped tight in white plastic. “Fortified with 666 essential sinerals.”
REASON FOR REJECTION: What the hell is this? “Sinerals?”
Is that the president’s face behind the plastic?
Why the fake beard?

PRODUCT NAME: Wack-ee Package
ARTWORK: Square chrome object on shiny silver paper — a machete glinting in a mirror?
REASON FOR REJECTION: I don’t get….

***

[ Note: My "Wack-ee" Packages are not to be confused with authentic Topps brand Wacky Packages. Visit their web site for fun online games and samples...and you'll even find a link to buy their awesome new coffeetable art book (comes in waxpaper wrap!)  Also drop by WackyPackages.Org for more parody-loving bubble gum-smelling Wacky Fandom than you could possible handle. ].

Googee Monster
He chaotically throws fistfuls of cookies into his mouth, munching wildly, growling “Gooooogeeee.” Sometimes you can see his razor-sharp teeth cutting into his own bloody gums. And sometimes you see human fingers jumbling in the mouth fuzz, and they’re not the puppeteer’s.

Clownt von Clownt
Combining the worst elements of a vampire and a clown, Clownt von Clownt’s lofty domed forehead broods above the eyes and mouth painted not with grease but with the blood of the innocent. But he is tortured with immortal irony. He loads the chambers of his revolver with five blanks and one live round, playing Russian Roulette in front of the camera. “Uh-one,” click. “Uh-two,” click! “Uh-three…,” BAM! And the pointy teeth go flying.

Big Dead Bird
His yellow feathers are fading and falling out. Patches of death-pale gooseflesh are visible everywhere. But worse: large earthworms writhe in his Big Rib Cage. His enormous eyes are always closed. He smells. Badly. The children avoid him.

Shuffleupeatus
This shy wooly mammoth is oh so cute…and everyone thinks he’s just Big Dead Bird’s imaginary friend, until he shuffles up within trunk-grabbing distance of you. His trunk is always larger than the children calculate. He teaches them how to count with each determined mash of their bones between his perfect, poisonous tusks. They never really get past three.

Burnie and Dirt
Burnie died in the apartment building fire, but now he’s back from the grave along with his old pal Dirt, his old roommate, who he now carries around in a funerary urn. Dirt perpetually reminds Burnie that the fire was all his fault and that he warned him and he should have listened…when he’s not otherwise whining about having to share his urn with Rubber Duckie. Together they roam the streets, forever homeless, seeking a bathtub.

Scar the Grump
There’s nothing but scabrous tissue where you thought you’d see lips. He’s still a grouch, but at least his nonstop complaining is less annoying, all mumbles and muffled screams behind that stretchy scab where his mouth should have been. His trashcan abode bears the placard for biomedical waste.

Smellmo
No one wants to tickle this stinky scab-colored creature (especially not in those nasty underarms), but that doesn’t stop this monstrosity from sitting in the alleyway, tickling himself in the dark shadows, chortling with perverse glee.

O-ver
This skinny blue corpse dons his grim reaper cowl and scythe. He has come back to the Street, with a lesson to teach the little ones….

***
Related Viewing:
Tickle Me Emo

But me? I’m fascinated by the open display of butchery and cold meat.

Standing behind the sneeze guard glass makes me feel like I’m in a surgical theater, watching doctors operate as they slice bread with their long knives and handle meaty tissue in their latex-covered hands. They spritz and drizzle dressing along the cut like they’re cleansing an open, foot-long wound. Sometimes it’s a messy affair, when the sandwich spills its contents across the counter like the mess you’d see on a coroner’s table during a lunch break. But I forget all that as they wrap up the meal in paper, twisting it up tourniquet-tight, like they were saving a bleeding leg.

Those creepy latex gloves they wear. That’s what sends me into this fantasy.

And they don’t change them often. They don’t scrub in. They don’t sterilize their instruments. They might put on fresh gloves when you place your order, but they rarely change them when they pick up a dirty butcher’s knife handle or press a button on a crisping oven or a microphone transmitter to the drive-thru window, or — worst of all — handling the cash register or all your filthy lucre before they are finished making your meal.

It’s like they think the gloves are there to protect their hands, rather than the sanitation of your sandwich.

And eating all that contact residue is like — I dunno — like you’re on the subway, licking the seats or something.

***
I fear raw meat and cold cuts. For more of my opinions on such culinary delights, here’s an oldie from The Goreletter

GNUCKS
Knucklebone Beaded Curtain

HOOGAFLOOF
Neck Pillow Stuffed with Ukrainian Owl Eyes

NOZZOIKS
Teflon Glove for Throwing Electric Chair Switches

JYMJONZ
Paper Cup Dispenser

SM

It’s called MyBlade.

And this fantastic device is literally on the cutting edge.

MyBlade is the world’s first electronic knife. You heard me right. This is no mere “electric” knife simply intended to carve your way through a tough turkey. It can do that, true, and more! But no, MyBlade is not electric. MyBlade is electronic. Inside its handle is a 3.4gHz microcomputer with 8 Gigabytes of memory and a wireless network card interfacing directly with a 16-inch stainless steel surgical-quality blade.

MyBlade will entirely change the way you slice, dice, chop and fillet.

Intrigued? Let me tell you all about it.

The “brain” of MyBlade allows any chef, camper, or craftsman to set the slicing speed at just the right level — from a slow-saw that carves so gently it massages — to a rapid cutting motion that puts conventional chainsaws to shame. I’m talking up to 30,000 slices per second, more than the naked eye can see, even up close.

MyBlade can either heat or cool the steel to a temperature you select — or it can recommend just the right level of heat for what it’s about to cut. Your cold cuts can truly be cold, if you like. Or you can you can treat yourself to a hot pot roast sandwich with only raw beef and a loaf of bread. MyBlade is the first cutting instrument to actually cook the very meat it slices, as it slices it!

And if you happen to somehow cut yourself or someone else, you won’t need to worry about dialing 911. The wound will instantly be cauterized!

But yes, even if you still want to dial 911, it can do that for you, too. Did I mention that MyBlade is wireless? And networked? Indeed, it is always online and can easily be used as a phone, a pager, a web browser, a weather station, an emergency medication alert and an IM communication center. You can throw away your cell phone. The metal blade can receive vibrations from your voice and the handle has an earpiece you can use as either a speakerphone or a private line. You simply need to hold it correctly.

It’s an amazing communication device. But MyBlade is still, ultimately, a knife. The greatest piece of cutlery ever invented. It will cut on demand or your money back.

MyBlade is entirely self-cleaning and self-oiling. MyBlade even automatically detects if its edges are dull — and it self-sharpens while it rests in its charging bay.

MyBlade has a brain that can be voice-activated. It can be remote controlled, or operated with an internet browser from your office. Prepare your dinner while you’re still at work!

Or if you like to do it yourself, you can listen to over 1000 songs while you chop, sheer…or even shave!

Amazed?

And that’s only a small segment of what MyBlade can do. I haven’t even mentioned it’s main breakthrough, one only made possible by the invention of something so remarkably unique as MyBlade.

Sonic slicing. And sonic slicing will revolutionize the way you literally make cuts.

The speed of MyBlade is so fast that its subsonic frequencies literally spread the molecules around it.

We could have stopped there, but we didn’t.

MyBlade also records sounds while it slices, saving unique sonic footprints that only MyBlade itself can hear. This is cutting up close — closer than its ever been before. Press the silver button on its grip, and you can save every chop, hack, and stab you make to the copious mp3 storage drive built inside its form-fitting handle.

Cut a sandwich or cut a track — the choice is yours. It is the first musical instrument of its kind, and butchers around the world have already begun composing some amazing new music. You can hear them — and join them by sharing your own cuts — online at the knife’s hone page.

Did I say hone page? I meant home page. And MyBlade logs on instantly, BladeCasting to the world.

Still not sold?

Well, let me demonstrate. Here, put these MyPhones in your ears.

Now give me your arm.

Don’t worry. MyBlade cauterizes. And trust me, MyBlade is faster than you’ll believe.

That’s right, go ahead and sing along. We’re BladeCasting live.

And it’s MyArm now.

***
Note: I was going to call MyBlade an iBlade, but someone beat me to it! See this AMAZING apple peeler with an attitude for yourself at this Mac-lover forum: http://www.theapplecollection.com/design/macdesign/iBlade.html

[ Thanks go out to Karissa Kilgore for inspiring this month's Blather by pointing me to the freakouts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopia ]

Take a pensive moment under the fluorescent glare of the pet food aisle to contemplate the fact that you’re surrounded by more dead meat than you’d find in some morgues. Try not to imagine all the chopping, carving, slicing, cubing, mashing, and grinding that went into each and every one of those perfectly stacked cans. The chow packets are as bulky as body bags. Don’t be fooled: there’s nothing “tender” about a “cut.” There’s no gourmet Navy chef at work behind the “Sea Captain’s Stew” of salmon guts commingling with cow testicles in a broth of poultry gizzards. Take a whiff — smell all that yumminess? That’s the fine odor of dismemberment, dried and fortified with “more great taste!”

If cats had taste they wouldn’t lick themselves clean. If dogs had taste, they wouldn’t drool all over my fine carpet.

But I digress. Sometimes it’s the dried foods that are the worst of all. They come in all shapes and sizes — little formed fishies, tiny X’s, teensy squares. More than “nine lives” are in them, their bodies stewed together in some giant vat to produce a brown muck that is subsequently formed and baked and bagged. All traces of life are removed and transformed into a magic “formula” that animals would never find in nature, but which pet nutritionists are more than happy to endorse. Imagine pouring milk over your breakfast cereal and spooning up a brown pellet of soggy meat. That’s what you’re doing to Fido every day, when you’re not otherwise teasing him with a dog biscuit that’s shaped an awful lot like a skinned human leg bone.

The more you think about these things, the more repulsive they become. But we don’t want to think. We want to feel good about spending less on our pets than we do on our own meals, and we want to feel loved for selecting them the fanciest of feasts. But what really creeps me out is the happy little packaging that leads us to believe we’re somehow making the right choices. I’m talking about all those picture perfect cats and canines, from the snarky fatcat models like Morris to those dopey-but-lovable Alpo dogs. Like famous athletes on cereal boxes, these are celebrities in the animal kingdom, right? Wrong: Morris would be dead meat in an alley fight and Lassie would get so mauled by the pack she’d single-handedly redefine the meaning of dog biscuits. Even when the animal sponsors are cutely drawn, they’re kind of creepy to me. The “Meow Mix” brand logo is, essentially, a dismembered cat, it’s alphabet soup of body parts formed into letters that spell the brand name. The happy-go-lucky names and slogans don’t help. Like, do I really want my animal to be “Friskie”? Couldn’t that get me arrested in some states?

No, there’s nothing cute and cuddly about the pet food aisle — all those perfect pet faces on the packages are utterly unnerving. Look at them, lined up in rows and columns like some animal cloned pet army — gazing up at us, head cocked to one side with unknowable intention, licking the Pavlovian drool from their lips and baring their sharpened, pearly white teeth! It’s a bad veterinarian’s living nightmare.

And did you ever notice that in every pet package, the animal is smiling? Smiling! Animals do NOT smile! They don’t waive hello and say “howdy-do” or “it’s grrrreat!” or “hmmm…snuggle!” They snarl and champ and would bite the hand that feeds them if they weren’t so preoccupied by the puzzling sound of food pouring into a ceramic dish. Seriously — the “photoshop tricks” on the pet food packages don’t fool me. I can still see that look in their little kitten and puppy dog eyes. And I recognize it. It’s the same look you see on Wild Kingdom or Animal Planet, when they show lions tugging a string of bloody muscle from fresh kill. The glint of primal satisfaction from gnawing on all that gamy goodness.

Now, I know there are a lot of “alternative” pet foods that are out there — from scientifically formulated dietary mixes to “vegetarian” snacks to chocolate covered dog biscuits. But the more that pet food becomes like human food, the more human food becomes like pet food. Most of the prefab stuff you buy at the grocer’s is close enough already, thank you very much. And until Fido can pick up the tongs properly, he isn’t getting any of my salad.

So I guess we have little choice but to slop it all out in a pretty little dish and leave the stinking dead meat in the open air. It sits there in a puddle in the corner like a torn carcass in the Serengeti, drawing flies. Fluffy comes and goes as she pleases, lapping at the corpse cuttings, happy that her owners have provided her with every morbid morsel.

Mange! And I mean that both ways, carnivores.

And don’t even get me started on the TV commercials. Where you see puppies hopping on laps like happy little children, licking their owner’s faces, I see wild animals getting a little taste of their prey before the bestial mauling and fanged carnage begins. Dogs love bones. And we are pet food. Don’t forget that.

Replaceable Fingers
I think there’s much more we can do with the human hand. Particularly the fingers. I think our fingertips should be replaced with jacks that allow us to screw in and swap all sorts of prosthetic devices, right from birth. As a writer, naturally, I’d love it if I could press a secret button on my palm and click a ballpoint right out from the tip of my finger. Got a kid who likes to suck on his thumb? Give him “fingernips” instead. And we call all be really wild Freddy Kreugers with insertable blades. We could embed cell phones into our palms and literally “talk to the hand.” Set it on vibrate. Imagine the possibilities!

Stomach Paperclips
You’ve heard of stomach stapling before, right? Same idea. Only temporary. Sometimes I like feeling so full I have to open my belt.

Mobile Airbags
When a car gets impacted, airbags inflate and save lives. Why can’t we embed a similar technology in our flesh? Someone punches you — boom — your shirt explodes and a large pillow of air absorbs the blow. Slip on the ice — bam — a large buttock inflates and you land so safely you could go tubing down a mountain on your own rear end. We could all play suicide with trains and tall buildings. What a thrill! This invention would make the automobile airbag useless, so it would even save us millions.

Tongue Implants
People get all sorts of things implanted into their mouths — braces, bridges, fillings. Why should the teeth have all the fun? Let’s accessorize our mouths with extra tongues. Clone ‘em, take them out of cadavers, make ‘em out of vinyl…it’s all good. Maybe get one pierced that wouldn’t always get in the way; or mod them both to play mouth maracas. We could even invent a new language when we’re not too busy French kissing. Wait, that wouldn’t be “French” kissing anymore. But you get the idea. I’m sure you’ve even got some ideas of your own now.

Related Link:The Daily Show: Rob Corddry’s HealthScare (streaming Windows Media Format movie)

The first slide observed by the inventor of the microscope was smeared with his own nasal discharge. An enigmatic notation in the margin of his lab report reads: “God is cold.”

Weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, another plane beside the Enola Gay carried the atomic bomb to Asian shores — but this early flight was lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Neither the B-29 bomber nor its payload have ever been discovered. One military legend suggests that they were actually sent on a supernatural mission to destroy whatever force was behind the triangle itself. Another has it that the plane was swept up into a hurricane that still swirls untracked in the Atlantic, waiting to strike American shores.

It’s a little known fact that in 1883, the first iron gynecological instrument was used to torture a man.

“Fido’s Follicle Folly” — the first hangover remedy available in a dog-shaped medicine bottle — was patented in 1812 by Georges Catostrand. This popular medicine contained one knife tip of plaque scraped from the teeth of a feral canine suspended in a pint of grain alcohol.

On the eve of his execution in 1974, Gary Bronson Davis gleefully requested “Human Head Cheese and Whore Haggis” for his last meal. It was granted.

The first flyswatter was actually a cat, swung by its tail to smash a pesky housefly.

A boy was born with six breasts in 1962. Only two of them survived.

Secret Vatican scrolls reveal that the first human baby was named neither Cain nor Able, but Cainable. He was actually a conjoined twin, before one side ate the other during a violent argument (hence the term, “cannibal”).

Few realize that the invention of the handkerchief predates men’s underwear.

After his beheading at the climax of the French revolution, Louis Bastarte’s dismembered head is rumored to have delivered the phrase, “Sacre Bleu! I can still feel my legs!” hours after they carried it away in a bloody basket toward its burial site. Some French claim to have been kicked by the phantom legs, which they believe stick out from the head’s grave site. A woman in 1911 also claimed to have been impregnated by “The Kicking Bastarte.” Her baby, of course, was invisible to the naked eye. She was diagnosed with hysteria, and continued to breast feed “Little Louis” at the asylum. Psychologists could never explain the cause of her spontaneous lactation.

Enormous marbles were swallowed by ancient Romans in order to cleanse the bowel. Games involving the stones soon followed. Today we call it Bocce.

Cats are two-faced by nature, but this is still a pretty wild invention. I sort of wish it was a Siamese, and not a tabby, however, just for irony’s sake.

Gemini isn’t a genetic experiment, per se, but the offspring of what the breeder calls a “miniature cat” and a full-sized feline. Male cats have spiny genital organs — barbs that actually hook inside the female to hold on to the squealing kitty long enough to conceive. I don’t know which mate was the “minature” cat, but I’m sure the consummation was exceedingly painful. Geminis.

Hey, if I had a two-faced feline, I wouldn’t call it “Gemini.” What is this, the 70’s? I’d probably go for something much more schizoid. Like “Tragicomedy.” And I’d pet only one side of the creature, just to make that side smile and purr while the “tragedy” side just sadly scowled.

Oh, the possibilities. And I don’t just mean “His and Her” water bowls. Imagine the uncanny set of double eyes, glowing green at you in the dark. Imagine the frightening shock of its stereo hiss. Imagine the unspeakable horror that rodents would experience, torsos torn asunder in the multiple mandibles of this double-mouthed mouser.

And when the dopplekitty did something bad, like claw my couch to hell (due, perhaps, to an preternatural sense of depth perception), I’d have to send Cerberus, my three-headed demon dog, out to chase it. Mayhem would ensue, but I’m sure Tragedy would win the battle.

But all of this is rather moot. I think a schizocat wouldn’t survive very long after birth. And not just because its biology is an affront to all that is natural. No, I think the thing would surely go insane and claw itself to death. Cats can’t stand their own reflection in a mirror, let alone one glued to their own cheek. The itch of hidden whiskers, tickling somewhere secret inside, alone would be madness. And I seriously doubt that one face would deign to be cleaned by the other side’s spit-laden paw. No, Tragedy and Comedy would want to go their separate ways, but each would learn the hard way that nine lives simply aren’t divisible by two.

***
Postscript: Shortly after writing this article, poor Gemini died of natural causes, with less than a month of life. Only one funeral was arranged. Double frownie: ::–((
You can still see her and read all about this freakcident here:
http://www.newsreview.info/article/20050616/NEWS/50616015

+ If the early bird gets the worm, then that means the lazy worms who just sleep in every day are the ones left running the show.

+ I hear that God watches over us through the eyes of little birds. I suspect God also pecks our eyes out through the beaks of little birds, too.

+ Why do birds settle for the whimsical birdhouse, when the big kahuna is often right next door? Are they “bird-brained” or just modest?

+ Birds will fly directly into large windows and brain themselves if you don’t use curtains. I like to trick them by taking out the pane of glass entirely and letting them in. Then I might swoop down from above with my frying pan, or throw the cat in the air from below and see what happens.

+ Man wishes he had wings so he could fly. Bird wishes he had hands so he could drive, instead.

+ If the woodpeckers organized, we’d really be screwed.

+ Why do people panic when a bird gets free inside the house and flutters about? The house IS the cage!

+ Birds twitter and tweet at each other in some stupid sort of Morse code that has only three or four letters. This explains their curious look when they gather on phone lines.

+ If birds ate enough seed, in theory they could kill off the very plant kingdom that produces the seed in the first place. Are they aware of this?

+ Ostriches and other tall-standing birds that walk on two feet creep me out because they look too much like muppets made flesh.

+ Birds pivot and snap their heads to and fro instead of rolling their eyes. Beyond their little leathery talons and sharp little beaks, this is what truly makes them monstrous.

+ I can understand why birds fly south for winter, but I really don’t get why they come back. And you’d think hunting season would give them a clue.

+ The world is the bird’s toilet. They’re kind of like children that way.

+ Some birds, predators like the hawk, eat other birds. They’re cannibals, I suppose, but they’re also just like us.

I don’t mind a good monster mash, but the stuff I’m seeing on the screen lately is more like a boxing match than a graveyard bash. These types of stories are nothing new — in fact, they’re almost a hundred years old. After the 1930s, Hollywood was smart to capitalize on the success of Universal Studios’ Dracula and Frankenstein very early in the game, culminating in such campy hits as House of Dracula, or Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. Back then, too, they were smart enough to know the story was irrelevant and that the whole affair was a glorified conceit — they typically went for the laughs rather than any pretense toward seriousness. And while it’s true that today’s monster mash is still nothing more than an excuse to return some famously fun monsters to the big screen, I think they’re making a huge mistake by taking the “vs.” in their titles way too seriously and packaging them as some sort of combat film. You get the sense watching these pictures that the special effects crew is still playing with army men when they’re not programming CGI.

Hollywood movies try to maximize their profits, so they tend to blur genres together to get as many different audience personalities into the theater as possible. Every big studio production is a sort of “mash” in its own right. This explains why a movie like Van Helsing comes across as an action/mystery/adventure/horror/love story for kids (though it doesn’t necessarily explain why the writing was so bad). But a real monster mash is a genre film tried and true because it appeals exclusively to a genre-savvy audience who knows these characters well.

Besides, as a film genre, horror is more than a century old and there’s plenty of material out there they could put to better use than, say, the Predator, which, while a good commando flick, was merely an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle and not a famous monster horror movie by any measure. There are lots of monster mashes I’d like to see. Some of them could even make good comedy stories. For example, just off the top of my head…

Regan (The Exorcist) vs. Damien (The Omen)
It’s evil against evil when the antichrist incarnate battles the rebellious demon Pazuzu. The day care center would never be the same.

Hannibal Lector vs. The Mummy
Is mummy meat too dry or is it simply cured? And how will Lector match his literary wit with a creature who speaks only in grunts and hieroglyphics?

The Hand vs. Thing Addams
An arm wrestling match unlike any you’ve ever seen. I can see the final shot now: one of them, popping up from out of a grave. But which one is it?

Chucky (Child’s Play) vs. Fats (Magic)
Some ungodly is bound to happen when these two smart alecks are in the same room: Who’s the dummy now, big boy?

Young Frankenstein Meets Dracula, Dead and Loving It
Watch good horror comedy battle bad in this opaque attempt to resurrect Mel Brooks’ career.

The Green Slime vs. The Blob
Hot gelatin on gelatin action! Let’s see, red plus green equals…um…viscous terror!

Norman Bates vs. Norman Bates
Watch Anthony Perkins try to slice Vince Vaughn trying to slice Anthony Perkins. Schizo slashers in the shower!

Okay, so I can only think of silly examples, but that’s what monster mashes should be: silly fun. They’re charming in the nostaglic way that old friends are, even if they’re dripping with evil. A good monster mash reminds us of what we love about the movies of the past, not what we dig about the technologies and fixations of the present. And they’re ultimately about the characters, not the big screen fireworks. Bring them back from the dead with some decency, Hollywood!

Obviously, this is a frivolous lawsuit. I don’t need to argue how silly it is, or to go into details about how he hand-wrote the complaint (rife with errors) or how he refuses to speak about the suit “unless it is a paid-interview situation” (his words).

Clearly this guy’s case will be laughed right out of court. But I don’t want it to be. I want it to be taken seriously. I want them to make the jury watch the episode and decide for themselves whether or not they feel nauseous. No, better yet: I want the court to make him chug frothing rats directly from the glass blender as a test to see whether or not the jury bumps their heads on their way to the deliberation chamber. If so, give him the same amount that any contestant would get. After all, his case is as much a publicity stunt as any stunt that’s performed on the show itself.

But I have to admit, on some level, I do feel sorry for the guy. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I can’t stomach some of the things that pass for entertainment on “realiTV” anymore, either. Sure, I can write about people getting their guts hand-twisted in some psychopath’s fists. And I even get a good laugh out of seeing someone spectacularly dismembered in a splatter movie every now and again. But when it comes to real life scatology on TV, I’m often physically repulsed.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a good dark documentary once in awhile and they often inspire me as a horror writer. In my line of work, they’re research. When I started getting serious about the genre, I systematically rented every video on the “horror” shelf as a form of self-study, and I remember watching tons of “shock-docs” and pseudo snuff — that whole “Faces of Death” genre. I even try to keep up with these things as they’re released or dig deeper into the archives — and in the past three months alone I’ve screened movies that only folks with stomachs as iron clad as a battleship could possibly enjoy (for the bold and curious, those would be: Sick: The Life of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (Kirby Dick, 1997), The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971), Never Say Die: The Pursuit of Eternal Youth (HBO Films, 1996), and Taxidermy: The Art of Imitating Life (Eva Aridjis, 1998)). Heck, I even browse around websites like showmeyourwound.com once in awhile, just to keep my chops.

I know that half of you are firing up your web browsers right now and typing in that internet address. But stick with me for a minute.

You’d assume from all that I’ve confessed that I would have a strong tolerance for images of grue and gristle on the TV screen. And I do. But here’s the difference: a documentary is a concentrated study, usually with some point to it (one that typically goes beyond just watching people making a spectacle debasing themselves for profit). Plus, once you start the film rolling you know that you’re in for a surprise or two, so you can steel yourself up for it in preparation, almost daring them to make you sweat. But on television, even so-called “extreme TV,” you never expect it to actually go over the top and hit you where it hurts, do you? Due mostly to sponsorship pressure, TV has been mainstreamed to the point of banality and you can hardly expect anything to be more edgy than, say, a PG-13 cartoon.

I know what you’re thinking. If those shows “got” to me, then they must be effective chillers. So why aren’t I celebrating gross-out realiTV? Normally, I’d be a champion for twisted stuff, subverting the public airwaves. And I do like some of it. But today’s reality shows are dumb and they make what I do as a writer look dumb by association. So I’m through with them. They’re what John Skipp calls “Stupography?” — like porno plots, their premises lack the meaning we get from well-crafted storytelling, and they make us more stupid the longer we watch them. Shows like Fear Factor are arbitrarily manufactured nonsense (”hey, let’s make them eat creepy X or dive in a big vat of crawly Y!”) for brain-emptied knuckleheads. It’s almost like the generation who grew up watching characters get buckets of slime dumped on their heads on Nickelodeon’s cult game show of the 80’s “You Can’t Do That on Television” have come of age…only their taste hasn’t grown up at all. Watching these shows, you get the sense that the creative team behind these programs is a bunch of fraternity laddies, cooking up challenges when they’re not watching a Girls Gone Wild video or surfing for BumFights online for something dehumanizing to laugh at. Stephen King’s “The Running Man” was prescient. There’s very little difference between the attraction of these shows and the terrorist decapitation videos we see on the nightly news.

Okay, go ahead — go over to bumfights.com or ycdtotv.com — but promise you’ll come right back once the rush of juvenilia wears off.

I’m being harsh, and probably making myself sound like a defensive media wimp, but there’s more behind my repulsion than just “stupography.” The stuff I like to read and write and watch is art. This stuff isn’t. A lot of people I know think it’s quite ironic that I have a hard time stomaching “reality” shows that feature medical operations, birth procedures, and even animal rescues because what I write is far more disgusting. But you gotta remember that the stuff I write and enjoy is fiction — it applies the imagination in artful ways. I think it’s even more ironic that these same people relish such gore and grizzle under the auspices of “reality.” As though reality makes it more permissible, less taboo. Please. The creepy part of gross-out game shows isn’t the rats in the blender — it’s the willingness of the programmers to exploit people who are desperate for their pinch of TV fame and fortune.

And what disgusts me more, sometimes, is the commercials for dish soap or underarm deodorant that pop up right after the carnage (even though I do sometimes feel the need to clean up afterward).

My wife — perhaps the gentlest person on the planet — hates those exploitative gross-out shows as much as I do, but she enjoys watching reality programs on cable. Discovery Channel or Animal Planet are virtual presets on our remote and she often views educational programs like Maternity Ward or anti-cruelty shows Animal Rescue. I admire her intestinal fortitude, because, for me, sometimes, these are the stuff that screams are made of. I’ll never forget the time she called me downstairs: “Mike! Come down here! You might want to see this!” I leapt from my computer, thinking there was breaking news. When I stepped into the living room, and heard Leonard Nimoy’s voiceover, I thought it might be a campy episode of Star Trek or something. Instead, there on my living room screen, was close-up footage of an “orchiectomy.”

Go ahead and google that one. I dare you.

I still wonder what my wife was thinking. And I’m still very, very nice to her.

Have you seen Extreme Makeover? This is the show that rearranges ugly people’s faces for free. It’s a two-for exploitation that way. Plastic surgery makes for the worst TV entertainment, but I admit that I do find these shows the most compelling to watch, possibly because there is still SOME artistry involved, if only the overpaid doctor’s. Plus I learn some things. A face lift requires literally ripping one’s face off and tugging it back like snuggling up a sock on the skull. I also learned that liposuction is NOT worth it. Doctors wield these long harpoon-like metal vacuum tubes under the flesh like they’re fencing. And while they pur饠and touch鬠there’s nothing quite like watching the camera pan over to show the clear jars filling up, as the lipids clot out of a plastic tube, clump by bloody clump. The end result looks like an extra large cup of pink custard you’d get at some horrible deli. I’d rather keep it inside for now, thanks.

There’s a lot to be said for showing that which we should not — or cannot — see. One of the things I love about the horror genre is that it dares to look. It dares to probe the unknown, the unreal. I’m not afraid. But I don’t want to actually hurt anybody, except, perhaps myself. That’s the crux of what bothers me, I think. When it’s “real” entertainment, it’s not only not art, it’s also an exercise in giving me pleasure (or even displeasure) at the expense of someone else’s pain. Or even at the expense of all those cute little rats.

One of the many things that good horror stories remind us is that there’s no giving the faces of death a face lift. You can turn the flesh into a mask all you like, but there’s no covering up the truth. It’s all ugly.

Even more related viewing:
Stupography
Taxidermy: The Art of Imitating Life
One for the Rats

Think about it. It’s not the breathing that’s bad. If it was, they’d make lung mints and everyone would smell of vapo-rub when they spoke. No, “bad breath” is a clever euphemism we use when we really want to say: “I believe my nose has detected evidence that something has died inside your upper gastrointestinal tract.” Whether it’s gum disease or something rotten that you recently ate — or a symptom of some larger systemic failure altogether, like gangrene of the throat — much of the unpleasantness of one’s mouth odor stems from its ghostly association with death and disease. From unhealthy dental habits to simply the rotting tissues of old age, bad breath is bad because our culture likes to celebrate health — fresh, minty life — not death.

And death stinks. Do you really expect your last breath to be minty-fresh?

Of course, some malodorous breath stems from eating foods that are unfamiliar to the nose. You can blow pepperoni and beer in my face all you like, and I’ll forgive you, but if I detect anchovies and J