Tom MacDonald Had a Pharm

 

Billy Corgan vs. Father James Mitchell: Are You High?

 

Getting kicked off The CW has caused Mr. Corgan some...Melancholy and Infinite Sadness.

James Woods: Million Dollar (Cry) Baby

 

Barron Trump, Who Has an Interesting First Name Considering How His Father Is Governing

 

Tom Powell, Jr. vs. Aaron Pendergraph: Court Battle of the Ages

 

If Aaron Pendergraph threatens to sue you, just ignore him. He's all sizzle and no steak, all icing and no cake. Actually, he did have a cake, but he used cocaine instead of baking flour, so I wouldn't eat it if I were you.

Matt Riddle: The Reason We're #SpeakingOut

 

Roman Reigns (WWE) vs. Conor McGregor (UFC)

 

Lucy Butler (Millennium) X Xavier (Chandler & Co): The Kidnappers in Question

 

Lucy loves to break the spirits of young men and Xavier is a cokehead who has no future. They're perfect for each other! AWW! By the way, the lyrics are from "The One You Love" by Glenn Frey.

Final Fantasy

VERSE 1

Magical woman says, “I did a line of cocaine

It numbs all the pain in my outer space brain”

Magical woman says, “They hate my penis

They either shout shit at me or pay me to see it”

Magical woman says, “I haven’t showered in weeks

Every shirt I’ve worn is covered in blood streaks”

Magical woman says, “You have very pretty eyes

Is it okay if I look into them for the rest of the night?”

 

PRE-CHORUS 1

“Hold my hand, touch my face

Please take me away from this dark place

Hold me tight, touch my hair

Please help me, I’m scared”

 

CHORUS 1

Who am I kidding? It’s a final fantasy

In the real world, magic women run away from me

It’s a place in my head, got no choice but to stay

Waste my time on limerence, throwing my life away

 

VERSE 2

Lonely bohemian says, “I stole things that aren’t mine

Everyone online made me pay for my crime”

Lonely bohemian says, “I don’t want to be alone

But I’m the only one who was asked to atone”

Lonely bohemian says, “Let me live another day

In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not okay”

Lonely bohemian says, “Can I stay with you tonight?

You’re the only one right now who’s keeping me alive”

 

PRE-CHORUS 2

“Kiss my lips, rub my back

Please protect me from all these attacks

Hold my hand, lay with me

Please don’t let me bleed”

 

CHORUS 2

Snap out of it, son, it’s a final fantasy

Brain ghosts shouldn’t even be asking me

To do emotional labor, save you from the haters

Of all the candies you chose, I’m not your first flavor

 

BRIDGE

I got so much to do, so much to live for

But magical thinking keeps me wanting more

It’s a cycle of addiction no different from crack

Lock myself in my room, don’t know when I’ll be back

 

VERSE 3

Magical woman meets lonely bohemian

Two twin flames, two lovely human beings

Do what you must in your hotel room

Get out of my head and do it fucking soon

Get married, have babies, buy a whole house

Watch a lot of Netflix on your leather couch

My work here is done, now I watch for number one

Ain’t no mystery in this land, it’s all in my hands

A Love Letter to Advil

As a loud and proud member of Generation Y

I’ve got pain in my back and tears in my eyes

There’s a war going on in the base of my spine

Flamethrower marines screaming, “Your ass is mine!”

Battle axe barbarians chopping down the tree

Razor claw demons going on a killing spree

Can’t wait for the bone-cracker to fix me up

I need instant healing before I fucking erupt

They call it Advil, I call it magic in tablets

For when I can’t move without yelling, “Damn it!”

A bottle of water cold enough to freeze hell

Swallow the pills and the pain takes the L

Why go cold turkey when it feels so good?

It’s not like I’m floating through the neighborhood

It’s not like I’m a space cadet calling Major Tom

Or drunkenly fucking on Porn Hub dot com

Doesn’t have the same energy as cooking crack

Booger sugar wouldn’t do shit for my back

Don’t have a meth lab on the bottom floor

Not making poison pills out of a nuclear core

The magic medicine works, I’m off to bed

Maybe one day it’ll unfuck my head

I wrote a love letter to Advil liquid gels

More like a commercial with intent to sell

A drug deal without the DEA

Just a fucking parade from the FDA

Two-Sentence Horror Story: Enjoy Coke

Morgan rolled up a hundred-dollar bill and snorted a line of cocaine up his nose. Only then did he regret keeping his stash next to the bottle of Comet.

Grocery Store of Broken Dreams

Roses and chocolates for the not-so-happy couple

When it comes to the law, they’re constantly in trouble

Black eyes, long cries, and cocaine covered nostrils

Only broken bones will be found in their fossils

A frozen pizza can feed a family of four

But not when the mother isn’t alive anymore

A single dad with gray hairs and noisy kids

He bottles his anger with the tightest lid

A bag of cheddar cheese sour cream potato chips

Is a fat man’s only friend when his self-esteem dips

He breathes like a windstorm, his T-shirt is damp

But life itself isn’t worth giving a single damn

A bottle of Advil in the hands of a grandma

Looks natural after the loss of the grandpa

A cell phone in her purse the size of a brick

But nobody calls, not even when she’s sick

A price gun in the hands of a check-out clerk

Will get a lot of mileage in this endless work

Take home a skinny paycheck, be a wreck

One dollar away from the homeless trek

Screenwriters, actors, and the bleeding hearts

Are part of this community that’s falling apart

It’s called the grocery store of broken dreams

It’s easier to fail and chow down on ice cream

How am I any different from my fellow shoppers?

I too have a cart full of frozen cheese poppers

I too was a dreamer once upon a long time

I too live in a town where stars never shine

I too have a stomach that stretches my shirt

I too have a mind full of trauma and hurt

I too have a heart that’ll never beat again

I too will never know if I’ll breathe again

Maximum 3

When I was a kid, long before I figured out what the fuck I wanted to do with my life, my first option was to just invent new things. New videogames, new movies, new TV shows, but in this instance alone, new medicines. And because my mind was thoroughly power-washed by TV advertisements back then, I was convinced that Advil was better than Tylenol and Bayer, Tylenol was better than Bayer, and Bayer was better than nothing. “It takes two Tylenols and three Bayers to match the strength of one Advil liquid gel”. If that wasn’t enough to get my creative wheels turning, there was yet another commercial on TV to wash my brain some more. It was for a medicine that combined Nyquil and Advil into one capsule. The message I received had nothing to do with falling asleep and resting easy. The message I got out of this was that more medicines equal faster healing. So…my genius idea for an all-purpose medicine…was a pill called Maximum 3. Why? Because it was maximum-strength and three medicines combined into one. The leading pills only had one medicine and were minimum strength. Three is obviously better because in America, more is always better. But as an adult with a better understanding of how pharmaceuticals work, I realize what would happen if a normal-sized adult took one swallow of Maximum 3: they would drop dead! There wouldn’t be enough Pulp Fiction needle juice in the world to wake up somebody from that kind of overkill. Come to think of it, there actually might be something similar to Maximum 3 out in the world. The Sackler family made a killing off of it in the blue-collar market. I might as well give my customers a bag of cocaine at this point.

Ted

MOVIE TITLE: Ted

DIRECTOR: Seth MacFarlane

YEAR: 2012

GENRE: Comedy

RATING: R for language, violence, and sexual content

GRADE: Pass

If you’ve watched any Seth MacFarlane cartoons over the years, you know exactly what you’re going to get from anything else he does: crude jokes, ridiculous fight scenes, pop culture references galore, and a belly full of laughs by the time you’re done watching. You’ll get everything you’ve come to know and love when you watch Ted, except this time without a TV-14 restriction holding Seth MacFarlane back. Oh sure, it starts out as an innocent friendship between a boy and his stuffed bear. But the bear has to eventually grow up too, which pretty much gives him a license to engage in whatever degenerate behavior he wants whether it’s snorting cocaine, beating people up, or having sex in the produce section of a grocery store. The whole movie is full of over-the-top moments made even funnier when they come from a Peter Griffin-sounding teddy bear. Growing up is overrated. Thunder buddies for life!

And because this is a Seth MacFarlane production, that means a lot of the jokes are going to be politically incorrect. And you know what? Even watching this in the present day, I don’t care! The more offensive, the better, I say. At least these disgusting jokes have substance to them. And hey, as long as it gets a laugh from the audience, all bets are off. Seth MacFarlane knows what he’s doing when it comes to comedy. None of the jokes come off as lazy or ham-fisted. It’s not like he scrolls through 4Chan every day just to dig up new material. He doesn’t need to do that. He’s got enough talent on his own whether he’s joking about taboo subjects or not. I won’t spoil any of the jokes here in this review, because I want you to watch the movie for yourself and enjoy the experience with a fresh and open mind. If you can watch Family Guy until the end of time, I think you can handle Ted just fine.

But do you know what’s even more unsettling than raunchy humor? Donny and his son Robert, two of Ted’s “biggest fans”. And by biggest fans, I mean obsessive serial killers and torturers who stalk Ted everywhere he goes. If you took Donny and Robert and put them in any other genre of movie, they could be convincing villains all the same. They’re deranged, abusive, creepy, controlling, manipulative, and pretty much any other adjective that will make you want to turn and run. Yes, Robert is a little on the chubby side and can’t run very fast, but trust me, you can’t get far enough away from that psychopath or his father. I jumped for joy when Mark Wahlberg’s character punched Robert in the face and knocked him out cold. But can he do the same to Donny? I’ll just leave that question hanging for as long as your anxiety will allow it.

Yes, this movie is a comedy that’s not meant to be taken seriously, but there is a good story in here about love and friendship. There are lessons to be learned underneath all of the belly laughs. Is it really necessary to “grow up”? Is one friend really more important than the other? Should friendship come easier for lonely kids? Not to sound too philosophical over a Seth MacFarlane movie, but getting hit in the feels is a common occurrence throughout the movie, especially near the end. Okay, maybe your feels won’t get hit nearly as hard as Mark Wahlberg and Ted hit each other in a cheap hotel room, but still, it’s something to consider when deciding on a final grade for this movie. In my case, I’ll give it four out of five stars. It’s not a perfect movie, because the laughs don’t come THAT frequently, but just frequently enough for some good old fashioned enjoyment.

Lionize

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to Lionize Entertainment’s fiftieth anniversary of the Lion Cup Tournament! My name is Andrea Lovell and I am the CEO of Lionize Entertainment! We’re going to have a fucking fun night of blood and death tonight!”

Hearing his boss echo those words throughout a coliseum full of roaring fans made Dargoth Destroyer sick to his stomach and set his aching brain on fire. The barbarian warrior firmly believed Andrea only had her job because she looked like a million bucks in a short skirt and high heels. She was easy to fantasize about, but hard to love.

Dargoth was too busy loving his own wife and kids back home. He loved them so much that he would rip the limbs off of any opponent who dared stand in the way of a paycheck and beat them to death like little bitches. With his wrecking ball muscles and volcanic temper, he could do just that to pretty much anybody.

Then again, so could Dargoth’s opponent for the evening, Zeal Cottonwood. The rotten-smelling, blue skinned zombie towered over the barbarian with a skyscraper height and muscles that might as well be registered as deadly weapons (even the small and insignificant ones). Zeal stared down into Dargoth’s eyes with neon-colored madness and smiled with rusty-nail teeth.

The barbarian, having already had visions of blood and brutality locked forever in his brain, refused to give even an inch of trembling to this undead beast with greasy long hair. The two opponents were so laser-focused into each other’s menacing eyeballs that they tuned out the crowd and Andrea Lovell’s nails-on-a-chalkboard voice completely.

It wasn’t until Miss Lovell, who sat at her golden throne in a skybox above the coliseum, snapped into the microphone, “HEY!” that the two combatants gave her their undying attention with wicked glares. “Are you two ready to put on a hell of a show for these rowdy animals?! Give ‘em hell!” Rowdy animals became the understatement of the year when the beer-drinking, T-shirt and jeans wearing crowd’s cheers bored into the combatants’ eardrums like a power drill. Even Zeal Cottonwood couldn’t help but grunt lightly at the sudden explosion of volume.

“Ready to get your ass whipped, little buddy?” growled Zeal in a monstrous tone. He leaned his sour milk-fragranced face in closer and whispered, “Between you and me, I wouldn’t worry too much about that wife of yours. I hear she’s banging the shit out of a hotter version of you. That lucrative contract of yours is going up her nose and in her G-spots!”

Zeal’s demonic cackle prompted the angrily trembling Dargoth to head butt his opponent in the nose. Both men clutched their noggins in pain and groaned minimally, but Dargoth was the only one between the two who staggered after such a brutal move. Zeal chuckled, “Is that all you got, little man? No wonder your wife’s sleeping around. That spaghetti dick of yours couldn’t satisfy a bitch like her anyways!”

Dargoth’s fiery adrenaline was smothered in kerosene, causing the hefty barbarian to spear tackle Zeal’s gut so hard that the seven-foot zombie flipped in the air like a pancake and flattened to the ground like one too. The barbarian’s muscles tightened as tough as steel with every brick-like punch he threw at the zombie’s already decrepit face. Teeth flew everywhere, pimples popped like grenades, blood splattered across the dirt floor, but through it all, Zeal never lost his smile and Dargoth’s hands reddened with electrified pain.

Zeal Cottonwood pushed Dargoth Destroyer in the air with his booted feet and nipped up in time to catch the smaller warrior in a military press. The audience “oooed” and “ahhed” like a herd of sheep while Zeal did strength training repetitions with Dargoth’s 300 lb. body. The barbarian tried to rake and punch at his opponent’s eyes, but the zombie wouldn’t relent. He tossed the smaller opponent across the dirt arena and caused him to bounce up and down along the way, forming bruises the size and disgustingness of rotten tomatoes.

Everything in Dargoth’s body felt as though he had been stepped on by Godzilla and rubbed across the asphalt. Yet the mental images of his beautiful wife and his two sweethearted daughters sent a rush of hot lava through his veins. This kind of money would keep them fed forever.

It would give the daughters an education they wouldn’t have dreamed of having in the ghetto neighborhood. It would give his wife a life of happiness and stability. If he didn’t get up and fight at this very moment, they would think of him as a failure and they’d most likely die from hunger in such a downtrodden economy. It was such a distasteful way to make money, but in Dargoth’s mind, there was no such thing as too much hard work.

By the time the barbarian heaved his clumsy ass off the ground, he peered up through bloodshot, dirt-covered eyes to find Zeal had a live chainsaw roaring to life in his hands. There were weapons scattered everywhere on the bloodstained ground from staves to swords to axes. Dargoth picked up an axe in his sore hands and then in a surprise move broke it over his knee to send a message: “Weapons are for pussies! If you want to fight like a pussy, I’ll treat you like one, Zeal! Come on, bitch!”

The gargantuan zombie rushed towards Dargoth swinging his power tool like a deranged samurai while Dargoth egged him on with a “come at me” hand gesture. The chainsaw blazed and buzzed all around the barbarian while the muscly warrior dodged and cartwheeled to safety despite losing a lock of his own sweaty hair.

Dargoth saw his opening when he ducked a decapitation attempt and went for a hard uppercut to the jaw. Zeal staggered backwards in dizziness and dropped his weapon. The barbarian continued to pummel his opponent with hard-hitting, rapid fire strikes that connected with thuds, cracks, and explosions. The primitive warrior tucked his head underneath Zeal’s crotch and hoisted the hefty warrior on his shoulders before slamming him down on his back with a shotgun blast thud. Even more cracks and bursts echoed throughout the arena as did the obnoxious cheers of both the audience and Andrea Lovell, who sat at her throne mockingly clapping for her independent contractor. “Finish him, Dargoth! Finish him now, you sick son of a bitch!”

The barbarian stared at the scantily clad, leggy CEO with cyanide in his eyes and iron in his gritted teeth. Winning the Lion Cup Tournament would guarantee him all the money he wanted for his family, but he would still be locked in a contract that put him in danger with every match. His body ached twenty-four-seven. He threw up his meals nightly. If he got the chance to go home at all, he would look like a monster to his family and scare them off. Maybe Zeal’s harsh rumors of infidelity would be completely justifiable at that point (if they were true). Surely, there had to be other ways of making lucrative money with his skills. Maybe there was…

Dargoth’s iron will wouldn’t be broken. One more death to go. Just one more. His target was in plain sight. The Lion Cup and everything that came with it would be his forever. He glanced at the live chainsaw and heaved the heavy machinery over his head with the intent to rip and shred. The audience roared and bellowed for Zeal’s bloody and disgusting death. He was just laying there ready to be dissected. Dargoth smiled a sadistic smile and approached Zeal with slow movements while the zombie rolled around and groaned in horrific pain. And then…the barbarian tossed the chainsaw like a boomerang.

But instead of grinding zombie meat, he chucked the whirring blade at Andrea Lovell so many feet in the air. The CEO gasped in horror before tucking and rolling out of the blade’s path. The audience gasped as well at the sight of the chainsaw embedded in the golden throne still buzzing.

After straightening her hair and fixing her skirt, Andrea stood back up with a queen’s posture and glared with hellish hatred at the menacing barbarian. She picked up the microphone and sneered, “So that’s how you plan on getting out of your contract, huh? By killing me?” Dargoth nodded and the audience booed him with plenty of bass in their voices.

The CEO scolded, “It’s a good thing your children are being well-educated with all of this money, because their daddy is the biggest dumb shit to step in my coliseum! Sure, you can kill me and rob me of the rest of your earnings, but you won’t be solving a damn thing, my friend. Ever heard the phrase power vacuum? Without me, all of your worst enemies will be gunning for my position. If you thought fighting to the death for my entertainment was bad, try fighting for the power I wield on a day-to-day basis. You already know what ISIS looks like. Try and picture the Lionize Entertainment version of ISIS! My corporation will last until the end of time, but your misery will be forever, just like your contract! You didn’t think this one through very well, did you?!”

Dargoth clenched his fists so tightly that his bloody fingernails dug into his palms and he didn’t give a shit about the pain. He didn’t want to admit it, but she was right: cutting off the head of the snake would create a hydra, not a corpse. A contractual slave like him couldn’t even dream of the power it took to run a whole corporation. What havoc had he brought upon himself? What danger did he put his beloved family in?

As he contemplated the consequences of his “easy way out”, Dargoth felt a tight presence squeeze around his torso until his body was pencil thin. His head turned purple, his veins grew to the size of tunnels, and his ribs were cracking like Rice Crispies. He peeked up and saw that Zeal Cottonwood was the one squeezing like a motherfucker, much to Andrea’s laughing delight. She even chimed in, “Squeeze harder! Pop him like a pimple! Make him suffer!”

Listening to that wasp-like voice sent Dargoth into rampage mode when he stomped on Zeal’s foot with the force of a jackhammer and head butted him in the jaw. The barbarian staggered around in dizziness and rasped for oxygen, but the zombie had released his grip and stumbled backwards himself.

As soon as Dargoth’s lungs no longer felt like he swallowed a battleaxe, Zeal went for an overhead strike. Dargoth ducked underneath and transitioned behind the zombie with an arm choke. The barbarian squeezed with enough force to pop more pimples and blood vessels on Zeal’s face. He even loosened a few rotten teeth. But the minute the zombie’s eyeballs popped out of his head, his brains leaked onto the floor and he was limp as Dargoth’s “spaghetti dick”.

As soon as Zeal plopped over dead, Dargoth Destroyer raised his fists to the sky to declare victory. The audience roared like jungle cats in approval and high fived each other while chanting Dargoth’s name. Even Andrea gave him a little golf clap while saying into the microphone, “I hope your wife is watching!”

Indeed she was watching. From the comfort of her soft, silky-sheeted bed, Mrs. Destroyer watched the violence with a satisfied, teary-eyed smile on her face. “Thank you so much, my dear! Thank you!” The other man who was grateful unwrapped the towel from his muscular waist and climbed into bed with her with a silver tray of cocaine in his hands. The wife smiled lovingly at her paramour before rolling up a dollar bill and snorting sweet candy right up her slender nose. The paramour snorted some too before the lovers got it on underneath the sheets.

Little did they know that from the crack of their bedroom door, two teary-eyed girls watched the whole thing. The daughters hugged each other tightly and smeared their salty eye fluids across their Winnie the Pooh pajama sleeves. “I miss daddy,” one of them whispered to the other while a night of hot cocaine-laced sex was unfolding before them.

California and Colorado

VERSE 1

You’ve got traces of blood in your alcohol stream

Your biggest heroin dose put you in a dark dream

All your trust fund money went up your nose

Sucking up the cocaine like a vacuum cleaner hose

Wake up the next morning not knowing where you are

Shake the cobwebs to find out you’re in a cop car

Solitary confinement or the general population

No chance of parole or a suspended probation

CHORUS

Going to California and Colorado?

Your pipe dreams are not what they seem

Flying to the moon and the red planet?

Controlled substances tell you what you believe

Going to Washington and Canada?

You tell the lies and trust those who deceive

How about Seaside and Long Beach?

Get your ass clean and get a permanent reprieve

VERSE 2

Whoever’s in your ear is the one you should fear

Whether it’s a cult master with no charismatic peers

A drunken fool who thinks his magic is cool

A babbling idiot with diseases on his tool

ABRIDGED CHORUS

Going to California and Colorado?

Your pipe dreams are not what they seem

Flying to the moon and the red planet?

Controlled substances tell you what you believe

BRIDGE

All your potential went up in a cloud of smoke

All your arguments come off as a big fucking joke

All your meaningless words come out as word salad

Your story’s ending was marked with a judge’s mallet

VERSE 3

Was it worth the thrills and the temporary chills?

Was it worth the stacks of debt collection bills?

Was it worth the pain you put your family through?

Don’t say for a minute that you never really knew!

CHORUS

Going to California and Colorado?

Your pipe dreams are not what they seem

Flying to the moon and the red planet?

Controlled substances tell you what you believe

Going to Washington and Canada?

You tell the lies and trust those who deceive

How about Seaside and Long Beach?

Get your ass clean and get a permanent reprieve

Alcohol of Fame

VERSE 1

How could you do this to yourself?

How could you endanger your health?

How could you put them through hell?

Is it too late to ask for fucking help?

CHORUS 1

Alcohol of fame

Your career’s going up in flames

Alcohol of fame

You’ve only got yourself to blame

VERSE 2

Snort a little cocaine, shoot some heroin

Chugging Oxycontin and good old Vicodin

Popping Viagra while committing mortal sins

The pressure brings you to your dirty shins

CHORUS 2

Alcohol of fame

Your excuses are so damn lame

Alcohol of fame

You make zombies look so tame

VERSE 3

Everything of yours is going down the tubes

You’re fucking yourself with bloody lube

You’re smashing up your own hotel room

Wake the fuck up or meet your own doom

CHORUS 3

Alcohol of fame

Your pathetic stories sound the same

Alcohol of fame

Watch it all go down the drain

Yeah!

Alcohol of fame

Psycho visions swirling in your brain

Alcohol of fame

Watch you dying in the coldest rain

FINAL VERSE

It’s never too late to turn back the clock

And drag your sorry ass back to the top

Admitting you’re wrong is the first step

Lying to yourself is the bridge to death

You can be clean and start over again

Or you can be the author of your life’s end

Make a decision, don’t think too hard

The road to recovery is no holds barred

Sloppy Joe

VERSE 1

You’re a beta male on beta blockers

A fitness freak with the biggest knockers

A Mary Jane mind that’s off your rocker

Childish joker who plays the role of mocker

You think you’ve got bigger balls than soccer

As you put your hot pants in a tiny locker

You’ve got some nerve being such a shit talker

Your rabid obsession makes you a kind of stalker

CHORUS 1

Sloppy Joe, what the fuck do you know?

Are you smoking the pot or sniffing the blow?

Sloppy Joe, you do this all for the dough

For the biggest check you’d backstab your bros

VERSE 2

You Gary-Stus have become old news

Older than the days of bebop and blues

Changing the channel is what we choose

No need to waste a perfectly good fuse

On someone who brings on a good snooze

Or someone too big for his baby shoes

Your macho persona is all but a ruse

When every argument is yours to lose

CHORUS 2

Sloppy Joe, where the fuck did you go?

Do you have enough butt-hurt steam to blow?

Sloppy Joe, get out of the front row

Not even close to being the star of the show

VERSE 3

Barbarian warriors are turning in their graves

Even they’re disgusted by how you behave

They’re the bottom of the barrel, that’s saying a lot

A tough guy and super athlete you are not

A one-sided battle you barely even fought

You didn’t give this a whole lot of thought

If you open your mouth, don’t ever get caught

With tears in your eyes and a nose full of snot

CHORUS 3

Sloppy Joe, you must be mentally slow

Too many rocks that you came to throw

Sloppy Joe, it’s time for you to blow

Get off the stage, get off the show

Sloppy Joe, now where will you go?

Nobody wants to listen to you crow

Sloppy Joe, time to mature and grow

Don’t pick a fight with a stronger foe

Wade Fish

NAME: Wade Fish
AGE: 31
OCCUPATION: Prisoner
CANON: Pretty Colors


When certain people grow up with a tough life in a crime-infested neighborhood, they look for positive ways to leave it all behind. Some people turn to music, some turn to sports, some even go so far as to join the military. And then you have those who are so consumed with their demons that their only escape comes from the worst kind of drugs available, either from the streets or at the local Walgreen’s. Guess which kind of escapist Wade Fish turned out to be. I’ll give you a clue: it involves hypodermic needles, a snorting straw, and pill bottles.

When most people look at Wade, they only see his dirty appearance. They don’t see the past he tried to leave behind. He was bullied in school by teachers and students alike. He was abused by his step-father. Crime was everywhere in his ghetto neighborhood. At the age of 31, he still lived with his abusive step-father and frightened mother. To summarize everything I’ve just said, Wade was not only dealt a crappy hand, but he willingly gave up his chips in exchange for a life in the gutter.

If there was a drug within Wade’s reach, he did it and became a zombie afterwards. He swallowed pills despite not knowing what they were. He snorted cocaine despite never knowing where it came from. He shot heroin into his veins and formed infections around both arms. And when the high took over, he was unstoppable. Wade would lash out at anybody who passed him. It didn’t matter if you were a gangster, a school student, or even a cop on foot: if Wade had a knife, you were fucking dead. Unfortunately for him, he found the one cop who was willing to shoot him in the leg in order to subdue him

Though in today’s warrior cop world, Wade would have been dead a long time ago. But since I need a story worth writing, his story won’t end at the hands of a brutal police officer. While in prison, Wade is offered a chance at freedom on the condition that he undergoes “behavioral modification”. If this sounds at all like a cheap knockoff of either A Clockwork Orange or the fourth story in Tales From the Hood, it’s because Pretty Colors was. And just like Crazy K from the latter of the two movies I’ve mentioned, Wade didn’t give a fuck about anybody’s feelings; he just wanted an easy way back on the streets.

The best way to relieve someone of traumatic stress is to take away their demons or at least neutralize them. In a part of prison called The Diamond Room (which is a colorful version of Crazy K’s sensory deprivation chamber), Wade Fish can do just that by confronting the people from his past who fucked him over. One by one, the “demons” come to life. First it’s his mother. Then it’s his teacher. Then its his stepfather. And now it’s a multi-headed hydra with all three of their heads, plus the heads of the warden and the scientist who created The Diamond Room in the first place. Wade goes into an “I don’t give a fuck!” rage at each of his demons and ends up dying in the colorful room due to a stroke brought on by a seizure.

After Wade dies, the REAL warden and scientist enter the room and say that The Diamond Room, “Just needs some fine tuning.” Really? That was the problem with this whole setup: it wasn’t tweaked enough? Never mind that a human being’s life was on the line. And by the way, just like with any prisoner, Wade’s legacy was buried deep within the beaurocracy of the prison and his body was thrown away like common garbage. Wisdom, justice, and love, my ass.

Even though Wade’s disturbing past is enough of a reason for him to gain sympathy, he will be cast as a villain for the next time I use him. He technically could be a “sympathetic villain”. Maybe he can be like the narrator in “A Million Little Pieces” and just be a lovable asshole. Either that or he can be a low level henchman who’s doing it all for the smack. So many doors can be opened for Wade Fish. All that’s left is for him to walk through one of those doors and become a literary icon. Or I could just bury him again, that always works out so well.

　

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“You get me slapped with a fine, you argue with the customers and I have to patch everything up, you get us thrown out of a funeral home for violating a corpse, and to top it all off, you ruin my relationship! I mean, what is your encore?! Do you anally rape my mother while pouring sugar in my gas tank?! You know what the real tragedy behind all of this is?! I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

-Dante Hicks from “Clerks”-

"A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey

If you were to take a good look at James Frey’s body, you’d assume that he exercises a lot. According to his loudest critics, the only exercises he does are stretching the truth and jumping to conclusions. Imagine that: a former drug addict exaggerates details of his memoir. Who would’ve thunk it? Truth is, I could care less if “A Million Little Pieces” is a true story or not, because it’s still a beautifully depressing book with a quick writing style.

If you really want to use the “fake” argument against me, then I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell people who say that professional wrestling is fake. I’m going to say, “Hey, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are fake and I don’t hear you bitching about them. I don’t hear you complaining about The Flintstones not being a documentary.”

Whether this particular book is fact or fiction is irrelevant, because if you enjoy reading heartbreaking memoirs that are also triumphant, you’ll love “A Million Little Pieces”. It doesn’t even read like a typical memoir with linear progression. It actually reads like a novel with a beginning, middle, and end. It also has likable and three-dimensional characters. The writing style is present tense and takes a lot of liberties with the exclusion of quotation marks and other forms of punctuation, but that’s what makes it an exciting read in the first place.

If I have to keep on driving home the point that this is a dark and depressing memoir, then consider this paragraph to be the final nail in that coffin. James Frey starts the story with him waking up on an airplane with a broken nose and missing teeth, both of which were aggravated from his lifelong addictions to alcohol and drugs. He’s being taken to a clinic in Minnesota to be treated for these addictions, because if he uses again, he will die, no ifs ands or buts.

Life in a drug rehab center isn’t a whole lot of fun in case you couldn’t tell. There are people in constant pain from detoxing, there are people vomiting, there are people acting hostile and crazy, none of these things unlike what James Frey used to be before the story’s end. How does one combat all of these things for six weeks and come out smelling like roses? Mr. Frey doesn’t want to do it through God or a higher power of any kind. If you want to see how he triumphs through all the darkness and depression, you’ll have to read this book.

If you’re still complaining about how James Frey is a “phony” and a “fraud”, then you just go ahead and do all the drugs you want until you become an addict. We’ll see if your story is any different from Mr. Frey’s.

　

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

DEEKS: Let’s go for a beer.

GRANGER: To drink or to post on Face Book?

-NCIS: Los Angeles-