Tales of my Childhood #4295782

More like "Ernest Goes to DEATH Camp," am I right?

I was a strange child.

But I'll get to that in a minute, because I have to provide a little background here. There was this dude back in the day. His name was Josef Mengele. And for those who only had a high school history class or don't watch The History Channel on the regular, that guy sucked. Like seriously. As the chief Nazi mad scientist of the holocaust, this guy was pretty much the worst guy ever. How bad? Well, he's the inspiration and sole subject matter for the most evil song Slayer ever did, for starters. Think about that, while I say it again: This dude inspired the most evil song Slayer ever wrote. Do you even realize the kind of ground that covers?



And this is a song about real shit that really happened. That dude was basically the most evil dude in a time and place that was pretty much a giant sea of evil dudes. Like a great white shark in a Pacific Ocean of assholes. Terrible.

But I didn't come here to express the daring and unpopular opinion that Josef Mengele was not a good man; I'm here to share something from my childhood. There was this movie that came out when I was seven that was one of the greatest films ever to be made: Ernest Goes to Camp, starring misunderstood genius Jim Varney as the title character. And in it, there's this scene, which I couldn't find a clip of specifically, but someone threw the whole movie on YouTube, and the moment in question is right at the beginning of part two here:



If you don't feel like watching or are on dial-up internet welfare or something, I'll explain: Ernest has to get vaccinated, and covers for his fear of needles by talking up what a bad motherfucker he is. When he gets stuck, though, he freaks out and starts screaming out wild confessions, specifically, "I did it! I took the Lindbergh baby! I am Josef Mengele! OOOWWWWWWW!"

But you see, as a small child, I knew this scene was funny, but I had no idea as to what was really going on. I knew nothing of the Lindbergh baby, and I damn sure didn't know about Nazi war crimes. Shit, I was seven; all I knew was G.I. Joe and the Transformers. (and speaking of war crimes and G.I. Joe, the U.S. basically banned flamethrowers for being hideously evil in like 1978, yet the G.I. Joe team had like three or four different flamethrowin' dudes all the way up into the 1990s. Makes you wonder if Cobra was right all along.) As far as I knew, Ernest, having just been stuck with a needle, was freaking out and screaming wild, meaningless crap, that might as well have been gibberish to my young ears. And for some reason, the second half of the quote really stuck with me as a hilarious thing, and like most little kids who don't know any better, I repeated it a lot. Like this one little dude who saw a Ninja Turtles cartoon where someone said something about "big league gear," and kept repeating "this is 'biggly' gear!" all day long, except what I said was said with better pronunciation and was working on a completely different level altogether.

What I'm trying to say here is that in the late 1980s, at the Hill apartments in Cleveland, Mississippi, it was really not all that uncommon to see a bunch of little kids standing around, and have the oldest and largest of the group suddenly yell "I AM JOSEF MENGELE! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Looking back, I have to wonder how many adult minds I completely blew with that.

I was a strange child.

BIG FOUR OMG!!!!!!!!11111ONE

I know I'm about a week late this one, but when I had my website-updatin' mojo working last week, the whole thing with the socks-with-sandals crowd gathering en masse to watch doctors, lawyers, and business executives jack off their flutes was more time-sensitive. Anyway, they had this big rock festival thingy going on, and the big attraction was the "THE BIG FOUR" were playing a show together for the first time ever. And seeing as out of the maybe seven people who read my crap, there has to be at least two or three with no clue of such things, I'll explain. Back in the eighties, heavy metal was blowing up all over, and somewhere underneath the wall-to-wall glam rock coverage, thrash metal was pretty much the king. And amongst these bands, a "big four" emerged, meaning four bands that everyone generally agreed were head and shoulders above everyone else, and these four bands were Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax. (But since this is the internet, I'm assuming there's someone in a black metal t-shirt with an unreadable band logo reading this right now and thinking, "no, it's Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, and Tankard, fag!") And somehow, despite the obviousness of the whole thing (and despite Metallica not getting too far up their own asses to tour with anyone not in heavy MTV rotation until sometime in the late 90s) such a thing as all four getting together at once had never happened before.

And well, when the big shocking finale of getting all four bands onstage to play Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" happened, (That was that YouTube video that you didn't watch up there.) it wasn't perfect, but I suppose it could have gone much worse. There was only one person who really embarrassed himself, and the logisitcs of having six guitar players, three bass players, three singers, three drummers, and Lars Ulrich never went as haywire as something like that is usually supposed to. But let's take a look at what happened, with my stupid little observations on a band-by-band basis:

Metallica then and now: Robert Trujillo sure looked different 27 years ago.

Metallica - The stars of the show, by virtue of having sold as many records as the other Big Three combined, maybe even with a zero on the end of the other bands' total, despite not putting out a decent album since 1991. And when everyone took the stage, they had wo of the best metal drummers ever, plus that thoroughly competent dude Dave has playing for him in Megadeth now, and they STILL insisted that Lars had to be the guy sitting behind the only real kit. Just damn. It boggles my mind to think of how good Metallica would have been back in the day if they had ever bothered to hire a professional drummer, and when given a chance to see what it might have been like, they just make the other three dudes pound on snare drums like a bunch of damn apes. Meanwhile, that turd Lars will just just slowly go "BOOM, TSS, BOOM, TSS" to his heart's content, even when the rest of the band is going a million miles an hour. Also in regard to the rhythm section, recurring theme of the night was how odd it seemed to have a big nostalgia reunion with so many newer (and usually way younger) members in some of these bands, but I figure Robert Trujillo fit in nicely, since Suicidal Tendencies probably would have at least been in the Big Fifteen, if such a thing existed. On that note, they need to put together a Big Thirty show someday, so my boys Sacred Reich can be on a DVD sold at Target. Lastly, it seems so odd to me that even though his band has sucked balls for like fifteen years and we all now know that he's a twelve-stepping, midlife crisis-riddled Republican, James Hetfield still comes off as the coolest guy in the room, no matter where he is. It's like some sort of superpower. Also, he's starting to sound really Canadian lately. Possibly related? Must investigate further.

James Hetfield only has a midlife crisis. Kerry King IS a midlife crisis.

Second - Slayer, The Big Four member who managed to hang on to most of their metal scene credibility longer than any of the other bands, and hasn't put out a decent record since 1990. And well, um... So... Where were these guys? Dave Lombardo was the only band member to take part in the big finale, and Tom Araya came out for the curtain call, but that was it. According to internet heresay, Jeff Hanneman just didn't do it, because he isn't into making a spectacle of himself or whatever, which sort of flies in the face of being in a huge heavy metal band that puts out a CD called God Hates Us All, but whatever. If I had to guess why Kerry King didn't come out there, it's because he's way too into that "true metal till death, motherfucker" image, and couldn't be seen in the same place as a band like Metallica. Which, once again, flies in the face of him being that dude from the late 90s, bouncing around the stage in huge pants like a lost member of Limp Bizkit. On the other hand, I've heard that both King and Araya might have stayed away from the thing due to both of them having personal issues with Dave Mustaine. Which makes sense, seeing as he's always been a huge, giant asshole.

I just found out that Dave Mustaine used to be in Metallica. No, seriously, this is new information that has just now come to light. I know, right?

Megadeth - Dave Mustaine's solo act, recently joined by former Megadeth bass player David Ellefson, who haven't put out a decent album since... Um, September last year. But they had sucked since about the mid-nineties, and even broke up at one point, so nyeah. It's crazy as hell seeing both Megadaves back together now, after Ellefson was trying to sue Mustaine's pants literally off a few years ago. I guess Big Dave's new-found Jesus powers got everything smoothed out with Dave Junior in time for the Rust in Peace 20th anniversary tour. It's just too bad he couldn't have made the phone calls and promises of huge cash prizes necessary to get Marty Friedman to stop playing music for Japanese pedophiles and to get Nick Menza to take a few months off from the styrofoam peanut factory, or whatever the hell he's doing now. And speaking of bizarre reunions of relationsships once sundered by alcoholism and assholery, Dave Mustaine and James Hetfield actually hugged. I don't even know if I can make a joke about that. That's not supposed to happen. It's like seeing Superman taking Lex Luthor out to a titty bar or something. Maybe all that 2012 crap isn't bullshit, and this is the first sign of the End Times.

WE RIIIDE! WITH DEATH! TOOOONIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGHHTTTT!

And finally, Anthrax, the only Big Four band to ever fall on hard times, despite never really putting out a bad album. Thing is, I'm pretty sure no one will actually manufacture or distribute their stuff anymore, so their last decent one was from 2003. And all there is to say is that you fuckers out there have been wanting Joey Belladonna back in the band since 1992, and you really ought to be careful with wishes like that. That dude looked less like a capable frontman than he did some old dude who wandered onstage and stole a microphone, possibly by shooting magic laser beams out of his big, ridiculous 1986 bracelet... things. According to Joey Belladonna, the song "Am I Evil" actually contains the following two lyrical snippets:

TAKE A DOW NOW
I DON'T SEE YOUR FACE
A BLASTING ON OUR BOWELS
I'LL HIDE IN DISGRACE

A TAKE NO CHANCES
COME WITH ME
SPLIT YOU DOG GO BOOM
HELP YOU SET YOU FREE

Jesus H. Christ, are you telling me that not only has this guy never heard what's become one of Metallica's biggest songs, but also that no one bothered to hand this dude a lyric sheet? And as far as the actual vocal performance, I'm probably the last human on Earth who gets really excited when hearing of an impending Anthrax record release. But after hearing this and realizing that half of the new CD was originally written for that Phil Anselmo impersonator who was in the band last year, I just don't know, man. I mean, I know, Anthrax has made no secret that they've been wanting that guy back in the band for a long, long time now, and the last 15 years of completely snakebit dealings with record labels and band members have pretty much reduced Anthrax to the Bill Dauterive of the Big Four, but goddammit, they should have known better than to let Lenore back into the band. Or something.

(And if you're keeping score, Metallica is the Hank Hill, Megadeth is the Dale Gribble, and Slayer is the Jeff Boomhauer in this whole King of the Hill analogy.)

Things Sarah and I find at the store

Have you ever fought with the idea of taking the time and trouble to fix a sammich or make some hot dogs, when there's a part of you that just wants to chew some dang gum? WELL NOW YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL:



Yes, bubble gum shaped like tiny bologna and tiny hot dogs. If Walgreens ever gets tiny bread bubble gum and some sort of mustard candy paste, we are fully in business.

But going from false meat to true metal, Kerry King having his own clothing line was one thing, but this is just taking things way too far:



Just the perfect thing to serve your favorite dips and sauces at your next sadistic feast.