121 Violence And Boobs

121 Violence and BoobsA “man-crush” is what an average straight cis guy gets when he sees another man who’s so beautiful that he can understand the attraction. Back in the 80’s, a young Skullard started going to the theater every week that his favorite movie Flash Gordon was playing. And as he watched the sexy-hot Princess Aura kissing Prince Barin, he found himself admitting that they were both getting a pretty good deal there.
Timothy Dalton
Not long after that, CBS came out with this great fantasy sit-com called Wizards and Warriors. So taken was our young Skullard with the show’s villain Dirk Blackpool (Duncan Regher) that he started walking around wearing his black ski jacket with the collar pulled way up like he was trying to receive satellite transmissions.
duncan_regher2
Of course, now-a-days our boy just watches Stephen Amell of Arrow doing that pull-up bar routine of his and rewinds it over and over.
Stephen-Amell-
Nothing wrong with any of that, right?

Speaking of man-crushes, Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton) came back this week in Showtime’s new Victorian horror series Penny Dreadful. Can’t say much about it yet because there’s only been one episode, but it does have Victor Frankenstein, Dorian Grey and Timothy Dalton in it. Did we mention it features Timothy Dalton? Timothy Dalton.

This is the trailer for Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) that we deemed a little much for our Facebook page. To be honest, it’s a bit much for any page, but we trust you not to watch if you can’t handle it. Skullard couldn’t. He’s in the corner right now hugging his knees and asking Hello Kitty to tell him a pretty story please.

You may think this is a simple classroom discussion film about rumors and the dangers of jumping to conclusions, but it’s actually a complex allegory. Jean and Laura are best friends who call each other “best friends” several times a day to tamp down on the smoldering passion of a love that dare not speak its name. Frida is a foxy little slattern who dishes dirt all day, privy to all the ins and outs of high school intrigue. Laura (President Obama) is in a position to nominate Jean (Susan Rice) for the position of Pep Club President (Secretary of State), but Foxy News Frida tries to queer the deal with misinformation and “I’m just telling you what I saw” rumor-mongering. Will Obama stay the course and nominate his first pick for this vital cabinet position, or will he cave to pressure cooked up from right-wing pundits? Find out in The Gossip (1955).

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: Meet Mervin and Marva Mopes of Torkle, AK. No kidding. Their motto: “Good Behavior For Your Savior”. Still not kidding. Luka and I may not be going anywhere on this vacation, but thank Shaundakul we aren’t traveling anywhere with these people. Though to be fair, when these people pimp their ride, they don’t scrimp on the stereo equipment. Or does a roof-mounted bullhorn count more as mono than stereo? I tried asking but couldn’t hear the answer because my eardrums were bleeding.
christistheanswer

120 Just Leave

120 Just LeaveHappy Easter. Jesus was married!?! According to recent archaeological findings, our Lord and Savior was some lady’s “Special Guy”. He was not only the Son of God, but the husband of Tracey. He had a mission to reconcile mankind to their Creator and a “Honey-Do” list. “How is it you work all week as a carpenter, but this table you promised to fix four months ago is still wobbly? And don’t think I’m going to be the one cleaning the wine stains out of the bathtub again. Just how does that happen anyway? I swear, your mother sure did a number on you. You walk around here like you’re Yaweh on earth, but you can barely keep your own feet washed. And speaking of that, who was that woman I saw you with? Oh don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about that whore who was crying all over your feet and wiping them with her hair. What have you been up to!?! Sure, you say you’re just going out with all your loser fishing buddies, but people keep saying they see you with tax collectors and hookers. Are we in some kind of financial trouble? And what’s with all this ‘suffer the little children to come unto me’ garbage? Just how many women have you been with? Christ! Yeah, I’m talking to you, mister!” And then, on the third day, the stone was rolled away from His tomb and Jesus rose from the dead. He appeared to his disciples who were in shock and disbelief, and to them He said, “All these things I have done so that man may know salvation. But don’t tell my wife, okay? Just give me a few days to enjoy this.”

Hello Kitty is oh so happy to show you our new What Could Go Wrong? business card. Coming soon to a restaurant fish bowl near you.
kittycard

Take it from Mr. Murray, the debate coach who can’t speak a sentence and a half without looking down at his notes. Ray knew how to win speech tournaments and how to almost touch Marilyn’s boobs while standing too close. But when Marilyn wins the big contest, Ray’s compassionate dad makes him feel like some little girl’s bitch. Will sour-puss Ray learn the wisdom of the words, “You can win a lot of respect and inner strength by becoming a good loser”? Or will he figure out that’s bullshit. Find out in The Good Loser (1953).


From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: When the Night of the Lepus comes, it’s time to fight fire with fire. Or fur with fur, as it were.

yippieyiyay

119 Triple Word Score

119 Triple Word ScoreThe Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry using a 5-7-5 syllable pattern and usually touching on traditional or classic Japanese themes. For example:

Cherry blossoms fall
Landing softly on her cheek
Don’t fuck your sister

Watching Strike Witches
The girls fly and shoot big guns
But where are their pants?

In the Maid Café
The girls bow and say “Master”
I need more money

I chose you on sight
Together we battle dweebs
You’re a Pokémon

With her cheeks blushing
The tentacles everywhere
That’s some fucked up porn

In 1986, poor Kristy Swanson got suckered into doing the robot by Wes Craven who was in turn suckered into making a half-assed horror film out of an ill conceived sci-fi/romance along the lines of Romeo and Julie-8. So many people couldn’t be blamed for this tragically bad movie, but Deadly Friend was crappy nonetheless, and not even murder by basketball could save it.

We keep talking about NBC’s Hannibal like it’s some exercise in horror/art. What could have ever given us that impression?
hannibalstree

In last week’s educational short we learned about The Bully. This week, the bully is the narrator who badgers and berates a little wallflower for not conforming to the group. Remember, different it bad, individualism is worse, and if you can’t go along with the crowd than you’re wrong-wrong-WRONG! Now toe the line and watch The Outsider like you’re supposed to, you ostracized freak.

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: understandable reactions to Skullard’s haikus.
seespeakhear

118 Unconventional But Not Impossible

118 Unconventional But Not ImpossibleWe got April Fooled in so many ways this year. The weatherman told us it was Spring. Pffft, yeah right. The landlord said he would fix the roof. Whatta prankster. The grocery store keeps moving expired food to the front of the shelf. Almost got us with that one, clever Stock Boy. AMC put out a new show called Those Who Kill and tried passing it off as an AMC show. Hardy-Har, funny guys.

This week’s bad movie was The Tingler (1959) which isn’t a bad movie at all, really. It’s a William Castle joint, which means schlock and gimmicks galore. When this movie was in the theaters, people got their asses buzzed. For free! And Vincent Price played the part of a scientist/coroner in a very low-key way . . . until he took a hit of acid.


Want to celebrate Drop Everything And Read Day but don’t have time to Stop Everything? How about a book on the go, and here’s a bunch of free audiobook stories from Skullard’s favorite author P. G. Wodehouse: click here.

Sometimes it’s hard for us to shut up about our love of the Batman of 60’s TV. They just don’t do cameos like that anymore.

Boy, that guy Chick is sure shit-heel, always pushing around the smaller kids and riding new bikes with no hands. What makes him such a douche? Could it be that his parents named him “Chick”? Find out what happens when Chick and his gang of midgets haul buckets of mud from one park to the next in The Bully (1952).

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: this guy died laughing.
deadjester

117 A Drop Of Vengeance

117 A Drop Of Vengeance“You don’t know what true love is until you’ve had a child.” Damn, we thought we knew. Geez, we’ve been messing around with all this fake love all these years, thinking we were happy, just being loveless losers. We wish somebody would have told us. What other things are we completely ignorant about?

“You don’t know what happiness is until you know Jesus. You don’t know what pampering is until you’ve had a spa day. You don’t know what chocolate is until you’ve had a Godiva truffle. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. You don’t know what’s gone until you’ve checked the inventory. You don’t know what drunk is until you’ve been plastered on Jaeger bombs. You don’t know Einstein’s theory of special relativity is true until you’ve observed the light rays of stars bend from the force of the sun’s gravity during a solar eclipse. You don’t know True Detective until you’ve worked out who the Yellow King is. You don’t know what porn is until you’ve watched All Natural Nurses 3. You don’t know how a book ends until you’ve read it. You don’t know what taking an interest in others is until you work for the NSA. You don’t know trivia games until you’ve played YOU DON’T KNOW JACK. You don’t know what other people think of you until you’re dead, and then you find out they never really thought about you much at all. You don’t know what to eat until you’ve seen the menu. You don’t know true pain until you let me show you. You don’t know what true poverty is until we swap your life with a rag-picker in Calcutta that we’ve had our eye on.”

We do know what true self-importance is because we’ve talked to parents of children.

Belial, the more charismatic of the two brothers from Basket Case, gets on his dancing shoes (after a fashion) and shows you his moves. He’s only seventeen!

Employers beware; your workers may be nursing a grudge against you. Why don’t you all sit down together and talk it out before somebody gets mad and complains to the union? Learn your lesson by watching The Hidden Grievance (1957)!

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: “Someday, Trudy, you’ll have a bun like this in your little oven, and then you’ll be a real woman.”

“Aw, but I wanted to be an Olympic shot-putter when I grew up.”

“Don’t be stupid. Now shut up and bake, wench.”
bakingbuns

116 A General Stink

116 A General StinkBack when we were in school, on St. Patrick’s Day you were expected to wear something green on your person. If you were caught without some green on you, other people were allowed to pinch you. It was never clear if this was official policy or whether school administrators simply looked the other way, put this punitive system was vigorously enforced. You either conformed to the arbitrary one day dress code or you were pinched. And it was up to whoever was applying the fingers of justice where you got pinched and how hard. Some of these people were rank bastards about it. And it wasn’t a one-off either. Anyone catching you without green got to squeeze a bit of your flesh regardless of how many welts you’d already endured by that point. What this system had to do with Ireland or Catholicism was anybody’s guess, but when the morning of March 17th came around, you sure weren’t thinking about saints. You were digging in your closet and sock drawers for anything that would save your skin. But once you were properly attired, there was no guarantee you wouldn’t get micro-groped by those overly enthusiastic assholes who lived by the maxim “Pinch first, ask questions later.” So perhaps you went on the offensive, snapping out at others and playing color-cop in order to forestall any assaults on your own person. Or maybe you just hunkered down, wearing three long-sleeved shirts and a jacket, waiting for lunch recess when the worst of it would be over. Either way, it was a relief when you were finally old enough for St. Patrick’s Day to become a drinking holiday which has everything to do with Ireland and Catholicism.

This is Echo, one of Luka’s role-playing characters. She’s leveled up and up to the point where she’s so powerful, she’s one the verge of the divine, much like her cleavage. But she can’t just become a goddess by filling out an application at the post office. She needs to attract worshipers by performing godly acts. Luka would like your help coming up with godly acts for Echo to perform (beyond the pornographic ones that Skullard has already provided in full and horrendous detail). Please go to our Facebook page and give your suggestions for how we can elevate Echo to the heavenly realms. Because this is important. Vital, even.
Echo_by_skullard

The secretary is an invaluable asset to every office environment, performing her duties with prompt efficiency and foresight. If she does her job properly (and it is, of course, a “she“), everything runs so smoothly that you would hardly notice she’s there. It’s only when she screws up or is a slob that she draws attention to herself, and who would want that? Certainly not any man she works for. Learn how to keep your head down and work like a good little drone in A Secretary’s Day (1947).

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: Here’s a couple of precious snowflakes being protected by a celestial guardian and a useless dog. So nice of Kensington Funeral Home to remind us to keep our kiddies safe, isn’t it? Seems like such a public service runs the risk of cutting into their bottom line. But look at what they’re promoting: “Leave it in God’s hands. Trust the survival of your children to the angels and various loyal animals. Every thing will be fine now that you know heaven’s winged bodyguards are on the job. So let your kids play in the street with abandon.” Thanks Kensington Funeral Home.
kensingtonfuneralhome

115 Back-Up Plan

115 Back-Up PlanThere is a saying among high wire walkers that if you put up a net, you’re going to use it. No, this isn’t some neo-conservative rant attacking food stamps. Rather, this is about the lie we’re told by those who have put security over happiness and would hate to see us succeed. Most people don’t get what they want out of life because they want to play it safe. If everyone else around them does the same thing, they can make themselves feel like they made the right decision to be miserable. This week we share the opinion that these fuckers shouldn’t hold you back. Cut the net. Be like Cortez and his men and burn the boats so you have no choice but to march forward into victory. (We’re not saying you should actually do what Cortez did, though. Destroying cultures and slaughtering natives is kind of a dick move.) Follow Plan A. Plan B is a slow death.

Even as much as we’re preaching “live your dream” in this episode, maybe there’s a limit to that. For example, the dream of Blondie Bennett to become a living Barbie doll may not have been . . . wow. Okay, some dreams are a little fucked up.

Prepare yourself for the most thrilling trailer you’ve ever witnessed.

A smartass little boy boasts that he knows more about safety than the average adult. Please tune in to Safety Patrol (1937) for instructions on how to survive. Especially if you’re a woman. You know how women are.

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: Regardless of whether they are in the chair or behind it, there isn’t one person in this picture who is living their “Plan A”.
dalebrahms

114 Get In The Trunk

114 Get In The TrunkWhere is the future we were promised? Sure, sure, it’s in the future, we get that, but what about that past future that supposed to be now but isn’t? Flying cars, unlimited life light bulbs and batteries, slammin’ one-piece outfits that glitter, all these things we were promised in movies to have by this time. Okay, movies also predicted several dozen world-ending disasters and societal collapses that we’ve managed to dodge, so maybe we shouldn’t use cinema to build our wish-list. But still, where’s our food replicators? Where’s the teleportation to Moonbase Beta and back? Where’s our universal health care? Regardless of whether they’re controlled by the laws of robotics or SkyNet, where’s our amblitory, humanoid robots and androids? It’s 2014, fer chrissakes, we should at least have holographic television and a chip in our head. What do we actually have, Google glasses? Well, we don’t. Only special people have those. Is that the way it’s going to work from here on? Only privileged people get to enjoy technological innovations while the rest of us sit and wait for next-gen hand-me-downs? That’s a future that sounds a lot like the past, actually. Revolution, we say! Let’s take back our future from those hoity-toity one-percenters. Give us our techno-toys and science wonders before we use some old school tech like bricks and sticks to take them from you. How much good is your Google glass going to do against an axe handle? The future is now . . . OR ELSE!

Inside No. 9 is our new fascination. Here’s the merest taste of what we’ve been gushing about.

Skullard mentioned that his favorite emotive guitarist was David Gilmore who has a birthday this week. What does he mean by emotive? Take a listen.

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: The High Tide Lounge – Where Friendly People Meet. And drown, apparently.
hightidelounge

113 Snow Day

113 Snow DayLike gossamer feathers of small frozen birds the snow came down. And down it came. And even more of it came down because it couldn’t go up, not even back to that huge flock of naked, shivering birds who most likely hate Winter even more than we do, poor things. Such a mighty pile it made, and that over-abundance of crap blocked all access to the road and the world beyond. After a few hours of sisyphian labor trying to carve a path to freedom, both Skullard and his boss said, “Fuck it,” and that’s how we got ourselves a snow day. It’s the first we’ve had in many a year, and though it was paid for dearly in sweat and snot, we gladly made the most of it with hot food, cinnamon coffee and a leisurely afternoon podcast. Join us for a semi-carefree hour of bitching in the warm confines of not-work.

Some people use shovels to move snow. Others would rather carry a shovel around like a beloved pet, giving it a guided tour of buried parking lots and walkways. We have a message for those who are too protective of their special shovel friends.
dunderhead

Every so often we fall accidently into a hobby that could, if not guarded against, take over our lives and body/mass indexes.
Yummers

Season 2 of House of Cards is worth whatever you’re paying for Netflix and then some. Are you really reading this when you could be watching Frank Underwood redefine evil? Shame on you . . . and it is on you, because Frank knows no shame at all.

Oh no! Do you have to make an important speech at that big business meeting? Are you trembling with yellow-bellied terror at the very idea? Of course you are, you worthless coward! Perhaps this week’s educational short will help you grow a pair. Please enjoy Speech: Stage Fright And What To Do About It (1949)!

From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: Combining both “Pig Day” and “Plan A Solo Vacation Day”, here’s a pig humping a scooter. That’s one road trip that won’t turn into a horror movie. OR WILL IT!?!
girlswannahavefun

dead-horse

112 Best Of Luck

112 Best Of Luck It is Valentine’s Day. Expectations are very high. Whatever you attempt to do to appease your sweetheart will likely not be good enough. Fool! Why didn’t you give them something they would really enjoy, like a tube of Blowpaste, or a bacon-flavored soda? You don’t deserve love! You will die alone and afraid, just like Gumby did!!

Here it is! The great people at Blowpaste took Skullard’s jingle and made commercial magic. Share this video around to all of your fun-minded friends and visit cheekychacha.com to get some Blowpaste of your very own . . . to share, of course.

Skullard and Luka know that Valentine’s Day is not a time of romance, but a day of brutal horror! It is true. If you have any doubts, please enjoy a musical montage of gruesome cut scenes from this week’s bad movie; My Bloody Valentine (1981). Oh no! People are getting killed, eh?


It is best of avoid romance as much as you can. No good will come from it, especially if you decide to marry your high school sweetheart or that fat chick from church. Need more information? Why not watch a fantastically helpful educational short; How Do You Know It’s Love (1950)?



From Skullard’s Postcard Collection: Here’s a lovely photo of Harry Warden today. He’s quick to point out that all those stories of cannibalism and murder were hooie made up by the locals to jigger up some enthusiasm for that Valentine’s shin-dig. Everybody needs a villain, right? And besides, he only really killed about five or six people in total and they were all ninnys and fat-heads. And he only ate people the one time and didn’t much care for it, most likely because one of the guys was Tony Balducci and he never much cared for Italian.
miner