BAD Michael Jackson Jokes

Satan Banished, November 18, 1997

2009-08-11T08:17:00.004-04:00

God love 'em, people who have something to say have more and more ways of doing it these days. One of the pleasures of working at a book store is receiving promotional emails from folks for their self published labors of love. These are often more entertaining than the Nigerian bank scams, witness this sterling example from yesterday:

Subj: GAINESVILLE, GA - Aug. 10, 2009 — Michael Castoro, Jr., stated, ‘Satan Banished, November 18, 1997’ is now available. This book, Castoro said, was written to offer advice for the mentally ill hearing voice(s), as well as to recount the events leading up to Satan’s latest banishment.

Castoro said, “Satan returned at 1000 A.D. came up against the body of believers using sciences and educations.” Satan is to die as a man on earth, while all are judged out of their books. A person’s success is based on how well they judge their books. Fire and brimstone will come out of each others mouths forever, and ever, Castoro cited Rev. 9.

Castoro elaborated, “Figuratively speaking 2 Thessalonians 2 states a son of perdition might experience a manifestation, day of visitation from God, returning upon the clouds of glory to gather the elect to reprove and correct them. The Spirit of the breath of the Lords mouth at manifest, therefore, voice(s) destroys us, however, similarly we are gathered sheep or goat in this type of sign of the son of man in heaven gathering.

And, according to his home page, Michael is a person successfully living with a mental illness. Not to make fun of people with mental illnesses, but I'd question how successful Michael really is. That picture of him is extremely creepy, too. William Blake, it could be argued, was a person sucessfully living with a mental illness and producing something of value. Michael Castoro, not so much.

SnagFilms Film Widget

2009-07-17T19:42:00.001-04:00

Cultural Dictionary of Punk

2009-07-09T05:06:00.003-04:00

my twitter buddy Nick Rombes wrote this, and sent out stickers. Manny at Daddy Kool put one on the register, and was nice enough to take a pic of me beside it. Funny that the RAMONES poster is in the background, since Nick wrote the 33 1/3 book on them. Totally unplanned, and happy accidents are the best ones.

RIP GOP

2009-07-03T06:50:00.004-04:00

we hardly knew ye - not really, we knew ye all too well. Watching the self-immolation of the GOP after Obama's election is quite entertaining. I'll be fifty this year, but I can't remember a self destructive political orgy quite as entertaining as the past, what, only eight months since the election?

This line from a CBS article about an email exchange between Sarah Palin and Steve Schmidt just seals it for me: "The Joe The Plumber narrative was the Republicans' secret weapon -- the last chance to put a chink in Obama's seemingly impervious armor." That guy was their secret weapon? The guy who recently said, ""I hope not. You know, I talked to God about (running for public office) and he was like, 'No.'" The Palin pick, and J the P as their "secret weapon", reveals the GOP to be more cynical, desperate and intellectually bankrupt than I previously thought they were.

Keep drinking tea, and listening to G-O-D, GOP and Wurzelbacher - you'll be just fine, and the rest of us will get on with the business of putting this country back together.

140 char

2009-06-30T03:02:00.005-04:00

just reading about author Alice Hoffman going bazooka on Twitter, so angry over a negative review that she published the reviewer's phone number and email address, and encouraged her followers to call Roberta Silman, the reviewer, and tell her what they think of snarky critics. Granted, according to Hoffman, the review gives away crucial plot details, which might be enough to upset an author. But this whole thing seems to be not about that, but about the fact that Silber just didn't like the book, and gives detailed reasons for her criticisms. As a critic should.

All this brings me to two points. First, the whole idea of an author encouraging her (cultlike?) band of "followers" (interesting word) on twitter to rise up with their virtual torches and burn the witch's house down. Does she have readers so devoted that they actually did this? It would be interesting to know how many called Silber or emailed. There are certain authors whose work I absolutely love, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to write and defend them from a negative review. They're all big boys and girls, and if they feel the need to do that, they can do it themselves, and more likely much more eloquently than I could. Secondly, this got me thinking about Twitter, and its 140 character limit, and how the inherent qualities of this are creating a new form of communication. Once you post a tweet, there ain't no going back. Spontaneous thoughts, possibly, are more easily expressed in 140 char or less. I have gone on rants, and tweeted furiously and repeatedly for a while, expressing most every thought on the subject in question without the taking the time for second thought. Sorry Allen, but first thought isn't necessarily always best thought, especially sometimes when that first thought can be communicated to the world with the press of a button. I haven't, as of yet, posted anything I seriously regretted, though I do regret, a bit, some of my antics on the Friday after Michael Jackson died. There are methods which have arisen for one to "recall" an email that one might regret sending, after pushing the "send" button. I haven't ever had to do this, but can see its value.

As for Twitter, there's Birdhouse for the iPhone, to save drafts, and post later. It's just too easy to get carried away at 140 char per second sometimes, especially when using the Twitter web interface or most Twitter clients I have used. From what I understand, Alice Hoffman regrets her actions, and this incident has helped teach me to think twice, post once, as the saying goes.

R-A-M-O-N-E-S

2009-06-29T07:58:00.005-04:00

wrote this to send to my twitter buddy Nick Rombes, author of the Cultural Dictionary of Punk - get it or have it ordered at your local independent bookstore. Nick also wrote 33 1/3 book #20 on R-A-M-O-N-E-S, which you should buy, well, you know where.

The RAMONES story is, 1980 or so, they were scheduled to play at a club in Virginia Beach, which was about a two and a half hour drive from Greenville NC, where I was living at the time. I was still heavily into punk at that time, so my friend Jay and I decided to make the trip to see them. A little backstory, a few months before that, some other friends and I had driven to VA Beach ostensibly to see XTC, but Andy Summers had one of his attacks of stage fright and they didn't appear that night. Needless to say, we were disappointed and a little bitter after having driven that distance to see the opening bands.

So, Jay got our "supplies" together and took off that Saturday (I still have the stub, and will have to dig it out to check the date - I'll send a photo or scan of it to you too, if you want), made the drive to Virginia Beach. This gig was a reschedule for a previous one they had had to cancel. There were some substances involved, mostly those that increase your metabolism, if youknowwhatimean. Long time ago. So, the club, whose name I'll have to dig out from the ticket stub, was upstairs - not too big, maybe 1,000 people, probably smaller. Mirrors behind the stage, beer served in heavy bottomed glass mugs. Opening bands, forgettable, played and in the meantime, Jay and I had been refueling, as had many other folks in the club. Recipe for disaster - get some punks in a club (with mirrors behind the stage), hopped up on whatever and drinking, and take about an hour and a half or two hour (times are fuzzy) break after the opening bands finish, and don't inform the crowd what's going on. The crowd was getting increasingly agitated, and finally a guy came out on stage, with some trepidation if I remember correctly, and told us that the RAMONES wouldn't be appearing that night. At some point, he started ducking and covering, which was a good thing since the place went bazooka and some of those aforementioned mugs made contact with the aforementioned mirrors. My first punk rock riot. We stuck around for a little bit of the festivities, but after a little bit Jay and I decided to get the hell out of there, and as we came down the stairs to exit to the street, they had an actual paddy wagon outside. I think they might have "prepositioned" it for just such a possible occurrence - this was in the days when punk and punks were still a little dangerous, and the memories of what happened on the Sex Pistols American tour colored the views of a lot of Americans, and I'd say a lot of police.

So, we had a long drive ahead of us, and 1 AM hadn't arrived yet, so we needed to get some supplies for the return trip. On our way out, spotted a 7-11 (and there's a song called 7-11 on Pleasant Dreams, which they were touring to support at the time) after we had driven a couple of blocks, and started to pull in. Tour bus parked on the corner of the lot. Johnny and Dee Dee walking through the lot to the bus. Walking. through the parking lot of a 7-11. In their jeans and jackets. Holy shit, is this real? So we stopped the car and my drunk and speedy ass got out and just WENT OFF, haranguing them about not playing the show, and how far we had driven, and the XTC misfire, and on and on. They were VERY gracious as I remember, especially to me in my ranting state, and explained to us that Marky had gotten up with a girl in Cleveland the night before and missed the bus, and then missed a plane that would have gotten him to the gig on time. They were so nice to Jay and I - mostly me, since when I started going off, Jay retreated a bit and just let me roll. We talked for a few minutes, the usual gushy fanboy stuff after I was done ranting. Johnny was particularly nice, Dee Dee talked a little but mostly hung back and ate his burrito or whatever. They were very apologetic, and pissed at Marky, who I never really liked anyway since Tommy was the REAL Ramones drummer, and this incident didn't do anything to improve my opinion of him. After a few, I got some autographs on my stub (in pencil, and barely visible after nearly thirty years of just being stuck in an envelope, and not preserved at all - I'll have to dig that stub out and get it laminated). I asked about Joey, who was on the bus, right at the front door in the jump seat, either nodding a little or just sleepy - I'm thinking sleepy. They roused him, Joey scrawled his name on my stub, and they drove off to the next gig. We drove back to Greenville, and I would have NEVER believed this had really happened, and wasn't just a production of the state my brain was in at the time, if I hadn't gotten up the next morning and looked at the stub. Think I turned in the stub to get my money back? Nope.

Oh, yes . . .

2009-06-29T06:42:00.002-04:00

hadn't given any though to how this phenomenon might manifest itself. Via the SP Times, MJ tattoos, this one a MJ bobble head zombie tat on a woman's thigh, in various permutations and in various places on people's bodies. I understand wanting to memorialize something or someone important to you, and this stuff seemed to me to have started after September 11, 2001, at least on a mass scale. Curious stuff going on these days - maybe the Mayans are right . . .

Oh, the humanity

2009-06-27T03:44:00.007-04:00

especially in photo 22 here.
#5 is good too - love the dollar bill do-rag. At my local McDonalds this morning, place looked like hell and it took forever to get my food, meanwhile one of the managers is running around saying "Michael's gone, Michael's gone . . ." Perspective, people. I can't put it better than a commenter at boingboing did yesterday: "In life he may have only touched children, yet in death he touches us all."

From across the pond

2009-06-26T19:50:00.002-04:00

Good article with different perspective on MJism, from The Guardian.

In non-Michael Jackson related news

2009-06-26T14:45:00.001-04:00

Mark Sanford is really a piece of work. I forget what subject he studied at Furman, but he obviously wasn't an English major - nor did he learn much in, let's say, high school, about how to write a sentence:

"At the epicenter of the administrative team really rests with the cabinet. And in as much I had not had a chance to apologize to you all personally I wanted to do so."

"And that is with or without me doing right on a given day or me doing wrong on a given day, those responsibilities still exist."

I realize that he may have felt a little uncomfortable asking someone to proofread this, since he is the chief executive of a state, but, well, he's the chief executive of a state.

And from his wife:

"She said that when the governor told her recently he needed time alone to write, she specifically warned him not to visit the mistress. She was shocked to learn this week that he'd gone to
Argentina to do just that."

Dude's worse than a teenager in love - total lack of respect for the wife who financed his political rise. I'm guessing she's the brains.

Heather Havrilesky from Salon

2009-06-26T13:58:00.001-04:00

gets it just about right here. And I love Usher's quote, in a line from another Salon article, "I would not be the artist, performer, and philanthropist I am today without the influence of Michael." Self important much?

Via Chuck Prophet

2009-06-26T12:14:00.000-04:00

who you really should listen to, if you haven't. Andrew Rush from Recycled Records in SF on a visit from MJ. I'm going to try not to be totally snarky on this subject, as hard as that may prove to be. This story is touching in its way, and illustrates the lengths to which MJ had to go to do normal, everyday things, like go record shopping.

On a more serious note

2009-06-26T11:56:00.001-04:00

Bob Lefsetz, of whom I hadn't heard until @xenijardin posted something on BoingBoing, on MJ's life and passing.

Katt Williams on MJ

2009-06-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

via ninebullets.net - NSFW at any speed, but very funny. Katt Williams on Michael Jackson

and and and . . .

2009-06-26T09:09:00.001-04:00

fake hippies from the cast of Hair, on Good Morning America, performing a tribute to MJ, with fake hippies in the crowd, too. Even hippies can be commodified and commercialized, I guess . . .

MJ=Elvis=Princess Diana=Marilyn Monroe

2009-06-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

I have thought about starting a blog for a while, and just can't pass up the opportunity this time. Maybe some observations on how MJ's death, and the reaction to it, is just the most perfect comment on our celebrity obsessed culture. Maybe. Some bad jokes too, most likely. Like, maybe MJ was just a little BEN-t, or, this one stolen from Bobby Blish at Facebook, "What's the difference between Farrah Fawcett and MJ? Little boys liked to pin Farrah to the wall . . ."