This little story originally reported on gawker has been making the rounds on the internetz this morning, and it’s just too good not to share.

According to a notice posted on the employee bulletin board at Seton Hall University’s heavy metal radio station WSOU, uttering any band names or playing any songs with the words “devil,” “Satan,” “God,” “Jesus,” or “any other Catholic references that are portrayed in a negative light” will result in suspension.

But to take any guesswork out of which band names aren’t appropriate for the airwaves at “Seton Hall’s Pirate Radio,” the management drafted a list of the 53 dirtiest band names that you can never say on the radio, a la George Carlin’s iconic monologue about TV.

The list includes such metal radio staples as Cradle of Filth, Cannibal Corpse, Anal Cunt, Morbid Angel, and Deicide, but also a bunch of just-fun-to-say-out-loud outfits such as Adolf Satan, Baby Jesus Hitler, Crucifucks, Jesus Chrysler, Smother Theresa, and, of course, Hell-O.

Completely understandable and appropriate. Seton Hall is, after all, a private Roman Catholic university (located in New Jersey), the Archbishop of Newark is the president of its Board of Trustees, and lord knows that the Catholic Church has never tolerated filth, depravity, or degradation . . . except among minor church functionaries known as “priests”, but that doesn’t count. Continue reading »

I fell off a wall last night. Intoxicants may have had something to do with it, though native idiocy could explain the whole thing, too.

My wife is out of town. I had been out carousing. Turns out I had locked myself out of my house, and had left the house key inside. I had also forgotten to turn on any lights, and where I live, it’s pretty close to pitch black when the lights are off. I also had no flashlight in my car (yeah, I’m that kind of dumbass). I was trying to find my way around to the back of the house to a place where a spare key is hidden. This involved walking along the edge of a low wall above a shallow ravine.

I thought I’d passed the end of the ravine and could safely turn left to walk down a small slope to where the key is hidden, but like I said, I couldn’t see shit. I took a step, unexpectedly went down about four feet, and landed awkwardly. Skinned up my left leg and twisted my ankle pretty good.

I lay there for a few minutes whimpering, with the sounds of the lorises’ mewling laughter ringing in my head. After I made it inside (which took a while), I probably should have tried to do something about the ankle, something like putting ice on it or wrapping it in an Ace bandage, or cutting off my foot right above the sprain. But I was kinda fucked up and I wanted to get off of it fast, so I pounded some Advil and went to bed. Continue reading »

It will come as no surprise to our readers that of all my many Facebook friends, most of whom undoubtedly have mistaken me for someone else, it was Phro and Phro alone who posted a link to the above video on his page. By being straight-forward and direct, it serves as a pointed reminder of how much bullshit we put up with in advertising. It made me think of how refreshing it would be if promotional campaigns for metal albums followed a similar formula.

Don’t get me wrong. I have cordial relations with many label representatives and PR folks, and I generally enjoy reading their album descriptions because they write better than I do and I admire good writing, except when I don’t enjoy their writing because they write better than I do. Also, I depend on them for advance access to music, which I appreciate because there’s not really a quid pro quo, given that even when I whip my lazy ass into writing a review it’s difficult for me to imagine anyone actually relying on my opinion in deciding what music to buy. This is why I always include music with the reviews. I may be stupid, but I’m not dumb.

Still, after seeing that video, I couldn’t help but fantasize about what the “Bag For Your Dick” approach to promotion would mean for metal PR:

“This album sounds like thousands of other deathcore albums with a few weedily riffs thrown in to make it sound “progressive”. It gave me diarrhea by the second track, but brainless teenagers will think it’s brutal. If any brainless teenagers read your blog, pimp the crap out of these hacks. Make sure you have the quart-sized Pepto Bismol on hand before you listen to this shit.”

“Here’s the long-awaited and highly anticipated new album by this band whose name I’d give my left nut to forget. And by ‘long-awaited and highly anticipated’ I mean these assholes have been auto-tuning and pro-tooling the living shit out of this pile of putrescence for the last year while getting high every night and bitching about their gf’s, who must be as retarded as the deluded dudes in this band. Whatever.” Continue reading »

I got cajoled into seeing a movie today that I didn’t really have any interest in seeing, and it turned out to be worthwhile. One line, often repeated, was: “Everything will be all right in the end, so if it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” There was also a speech near the end about success in life being measured by how you handle disappointment, and about the only failure being the failure to try. And then I got home and there, waiting in my e-mail in-box, was yet another chance for untold riches.

Despite all of my disappointments in sincerely answering similar e-mails, most of them from Africa, and my failure to obtain even one goddamn penny from any of these seemingly helpful correspondents, I had the movie’s lines ringing in my ears, and so I decided to try again. Full of renewed hope, and believing it must not be the end, I decided to really turn on the charm in answering the following e-mail from a helpful agent of the FBI:

From: “Ms. Tracy Sanson”
Date: June 30, 2012 9:47:29 AM PDT
Subject: THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER
Reply-To: mstracysanson2012@rediffmail.com

Hello,

I must let you in on the real facts about your delayed payment. As a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on local and foreign debt attached to the World Bank office in Washington, DC, USA, I am very much aware of the ordeal you are passing through in order to actualize your long delayed payment. Continue reading »