The Kiss Army has no age requirements

Double-Barrelled Sabotage for your Wednesday

Hey, sometimes even fugly people make awesome album covers

Hey Englebert, if you're still looking for love, maybe you should think about hooking up with Joyce. I heard she's GGG.

Ladies and gentleman, I present this awesome album cover as Exhibit A in my case that French people don't necessary have better fashion sense than us zubaz-wearing slobs here in les etats-unis.

... and this would be Exhibit B.

Umm, "hat" might be a bit of an understatement in this case, Davy.

Tip o' the eyepatch to Missy for directing me to this one. Yowza!

I'm pretty sure I went to High School with these guys. Go Bears!

Televangelist Lets the Bodies Hit the Floor

I'm going to honest: I hate televangelists and I hate nu-metal (that's because I drinks hatorade, y'all!). But somehow, if you put the two the together, the result equals me laughing my ass off. Won't you join as we watch Benny Hinn do his thing?



P.S. Here are some fun facts about Mr. Hinn:

Hinn lives in an ocean-front mansion valued at an estimated $8.5 million in an exclusive gated community in Dana Point, California, travels by private aircraft, and stays in hotel rooms costing upwards of $3,000 per night.[8] In December 2006, he sent out a mailing asking for donations towards a new Gulfstream G4SP jet valued at an estimated $36 million.[9]

Starting in June of 2007, at the end of his This is Your Day program, Hinn stated he is behind in his bills to TBN and said he needs "your love gifts" so he can become current and continue to preach the gospel around the world. Hinn stated the cost of his worldwide crusades and the increased price of everything else has left him financially behind in his bills, but says TBN founders Paul and Jan Crouch have been very supportive.

Currently this ministry is receiving a "F" rating (0-70) in financial transparency from Ministry Watch.

No, YOU choose your own adventure - I'm just gonna stay right here.

shamelessly and obviously stolen from somethingawful.com, enjoy anyhoo:

Awesome Album Covers: Too Damn Sexy Edition

Before there was Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Flash was backed by the Frivolous Five. Somehow, they lacked street cred.

Oh, Gunther. With your 'stache and your killer aviators, what man could ever hope to compete with you?

Freddie Mercury, that's who, byotch! Step aside, Gunther, and take your Ding Dong Song with you!

Okay, I get the bodybuilders and the motorcycles -- but what's up with the dog?

Conan's got nuthin' on Superfreak the Barbarian.

I have nothing to say that won't earn me a punch from AC.

This one's just for you, Jackie Torture.

Okay, this is the second awesome cover I've found where a guy with an accordian was knocking the ladies off of their feet (see the first one here). My decision at age 14 to pick up the guitar is looking increasingly sketchy.

So, if you're ever feeling like you need to listen to an album recorded by Dutch cross-dressers with bad taste in wigs, I guess you need not look any further.

Will poor, poor Englebert Humperdinck ever find love? All I can say is: hang in there, Englebert, we're all rooting for you here at the Scooby Doo Mansion.

Friday Afternoon Videos + Things You Shouldn't Put in Your Trousers

Sorry for the absence, gang, I've been off raiding the Spanish Main for a few days. Hope ya missed me. For starters, we've got yet another Flight of Conchords video (because I just can't pimp these guys enough AND this song is about robots):



Next, a little culinary inspiration as the Swedish Chef shows us how to use a real salad shooter:




And finally: would it be overly obvious for me to speculate that this young man's name just might be Claude Ballz?

When Serial Killers Make Awesome Album Covers

Sure Corey, you can "borrow" rage, contempt, or ennui any time you want. How ya like them feelings?

And by "loving," what Conway really means is "repeatedly stabbing."


"The Drag 'Em Off The Interstate, Sock It To 'Em Hits"? Hell's bells, Dick Curless, why don't you just go ahead record an album called "I Kill Hitch-Hikers and You're Next, Dirty Hippy"?


Gee Freddie, how did that happen? I'm sure they all died in horrible, unexplained accidents. Yeah, accidents, that's the ticket.

It puts the lotion in the bucket or it gets the jazz flute again.

Suddenly Satan!

This clip from the documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey had AC, H-Lo and myself on the cusp of tears we were laughing so hard. By way of background, this is an interview with a gentleman named Gaahl, who is the frontman for the Norwegian Black Metal band, Gorgoroth. As you will see, Mr. Gaahl chooses his words very succinctly. You're going to need to turn up the volume because the sound quality is not so good in this clip.

They don't make awesome album covers no creepier than this

Run, Julie, run now!

Wednesday Afternoon Videos

Kinda like Friday Night Videos, but more Scooby Doo Mansionesque.

Video #1 is "Most Beautiful Girl in the Room" from Flight of the Conchords. Turn up the volume, you're gonna want to hear the lyrics. I hope Prince covers this song someday.



Video #2 is just for you, Admiral Nelson. Enjoy, you crazy bastard.



And yeah, I effing loved this song in 1986. Being the smarty-pirate that I am now, I could probably come up with a pretty convincing argument that Sigue Sigue Sputnik's nihilistic post-apocalyptic aesthetic somehow sublimated my pubescent Reagan-era anxieties about nuclear (sorry, I mean "nuk-u-lar") war. But that would be bullshit. The truth is that it was 1986, and in my mind the choice was either Sigue Sigue Sputnik or Huey Lewis and the News. I stand by my decision

Awesome Album Covers: Praise the Lord Edition, Part II

you know you want it....

Everyone? Really? Do you guys have something for my Dad's birthday? 'Cause I've got no freaking clue.

If you own a Polyphonic Spree album, you're in no position to laugh.

I'm gonna put on my music snob hat and say that as unbelievably awesome as this album cover is, the music of the Louvin Brothers is hugely influential on all kinds of people that you probably listen to. Just ask Lex-Ham Rand.

The music of Country Church, however, has had zero influence on anybody you listen to -- with the possible exception of Fannypack.

Ok, so far we've learned that Satan is real, but he's paralyzed. Which is weird, because he seemed perfectly ambulatory when we were sacrificing all those goats and virgins to him last Saturday. I bet he's just been faking it so he can park in the handicapped spot at Big Top (or, as H-Lo calls it, "the boyfriend store"). That's a sweet parking spot, man.

Speaking of faking a disability, I suspect the handless organist has got some kind of scam going too. I'm pretty sure she flipped me off outside the new Midway Target. Just as it's pretty damned hard to eat corn on the cob without teeth, I think you have to have hands to fly the bird. But that's just me, I've been wrong before.

Just when you thought a ventriloquist's dummy couldn't get any creepier... Hey, is that blood dripping from the corner of his mouth?

Can't sleep - biblical ventriloquist dummy's gonna eat me.

P.S. Remember when I tried to grow a "playoff beard" while studying for the bar exam? Well, the result pretty much sucked, but I think it might have been better than Dan Betzer's.

It's a little known fact that Jim Reeves' first Top 10 hit was "Yonder Comes a Sucker." No shit.

Hey Carl, whatcha doing tonight? Ahh, Pirate, I'm just kicking it with Jesus. Really? Can I come over? Naw man, it's Just Jesus and Me.

Is it just me, or do these guys bear a suspicious resemblance to Karl Rove?

Tip o' the eyepatch to Jeremy Hernandez

and a second tip o' the eyepatch to Dunwoody Institute for doing the right thing:

If school bus evacuator Jeremy Hernandez wants to resume learning auto mechanics at Dunwoody College of Technology, he can do so without charge.

The Minneapolis school made that offer to Hernandez’s family Saturday.

Hernandez drew national attention when he played a lead role in the evacuation of 61 kids and staff from a school bus caught up in last week’s Interstate 35W bridge collapse.

They were out a field trip from Waite House community agency in the Phillips area of Minneapolis.

In news coverage afterward, Hernandez said that he was working as a youth worker at Waite House after he’d been forced to drop out of Dunwoody for lack of money. The school’s tuition and fees typically run $15,000 annually.

This blog will return to its regularly-scheduled mirth and frivolity very soon, so stay tuned!

I Love Minneapolis

Like you, I'm still trying to make some sense out of the surreality of seeing a bridge that I've crossed hundreds and hundreds of times suddenly fall into a river. Everybody here at the Scooby Doo Mansion is safe and sound, but a little freaked out. I don't really have many pithy comments that are appropriate for this blog right now, but in keeping with the lighter touch I try to exercise here, I present this random and very incomplete list of things I love about / fond memories I have of Minneapolis:

• The massive Grain Belt sign on the Hennepin bridge;
• First Avenue - the club moreso than the street;
• pub-crawling in Northeast;
• blowing my meager paychecks at Oarfolkjokeopus back inna day;
  
• THD house;
• karaoke at the Uptown VFW;
• Surdyk's, Kramarczuks's, and the Varsity Theatre (where my first band played its first gig - we were awesome, yo);
  
• every apartment I ever crashed at when I was on a self-granted furlough from my alma mater (thanks for putting up with me, everybody);
• parties at the former House of Spitball;
• hurling magenta napalm on the lawn of Middlebrook Hall after partying at House of Spitball;
• most importantly, meeting a girl named AC after my other awesome band rocked the paint off the walls of the 7th Street Entry.

Feel free to add your own.