So Benchilada posted a bunch of anti-meth ads that have been up in his area (like, the area where he lives) and it’s sparked a lot of discussion.

They look like this:

 

I decided to make up a few anti-drug ads myself. You know, for kids.

They look like this:

 

Click for bigness.

-edit-

another one.

Ya know, there was a time when you just assumed that most rock stars were on drugs. It was a given. You knew that Kurt Cobain and Perry Ferrell and Layne Stanley were junkies. You knew that Eddie Vedder was a drunk and that Liam Gallagher was a coke head.

But these days… who do the kids have to look up to as druggie music heroes? Sure, they’ve got their Lindsey Lohans and Paris Hiltons, but they don’t count because, well… they aren’t really musicians. They’re famous people who have bought their way into the music industry to put out phoney albums that no one buys. They’ve got Britney, but she’s not really a musician either. Not anymore. She’s just a professional train wreck. If her album does well, it will have more to do with morbid fascination than anyone’s interest in music.

Well, now they’ve got Amy Winehouse.

It’s weird because it’s almost shocking. It wouldn’t have been fifteen years ago, when I was looking up to tortured and inebriated artists, but now… it’s just weird to see someone spiraling so quickly. I mean, how does it work that within six months of even learning her name, it’s already not going to be a surprised when she’s found dead and rotting in her flat? How does someone fall to such a pathetic bottom so soon after getting famous? It can’t be chocked up to the pressures of fame, like it was with Cobain and Vedder.

Anyway, my point is that I watched the MTV Europe awards last night. Well, I watched about three minutes of it. It was on and I did other things. I watched enough to see that only half of the acts I even recognized. They had to mix actual famous music acts with weak ass British acts that I’ve never heard of. It went like “Performing tonight! Snoop Dog! Billy Bonsworth! The Foo Fighters! Blandisher! My Chemical Romance! Eddy Warbucks and the Floozies!”

So Amy Winehouse won an award for like, best skank, and she just walked up to the podium, took the award and said “thanks” and stumbled off the stage.

Then she performed… sort of. She did her song Back to Black… except she didn’t really. I’d say she slurred or mumbled it, but that wouldn’t be right either, because at least when you slur or mumble, you’re still saying words. She didn’t even say words. She just made noises to the tune of the song and then picked out a couple of words during the chorus. It was really sad to watch.

So this has been one of my favorite songs for a long time. I saw this performance from the Johnny Cash Show on PBS a little while ago and thought I’d share.

And, for contrast sake, here’s an 8 year old little girl singing it.

and last but not to be the least, here’s some band called Seether doing it. Weirdly enough, these guys sound a lot like Nirvana (and that NEVER happens!) especially the Unplugged album. If you listen without the picture, you (or, at least I) can almost picture Kurt singing it. It’s like the cover that never happened, but should have. Especially since Kurt quoted Neil Young in his suicide note (better to burn out than to fade away)

Ben interviewed by some chick in Toronto. He’s highly entertaining and highly intoxicated. I don’t know if he’s drunk or on X or what, but man, this dude is LIT.

So, a few things have happened in the last few days…

first of all, Scott and Bear came over for a visit to watch movies and bullshit… and they brought an ominous Tupperware container full of brownies… so I ask them “so, when did you two start watching Martha Stewart” and their response was something along the lines of “fuck Martha Stewart… Martha couldn’t touch THESE brownies” and I’m like “what’s so special about THESE brownies?” and they’re like “THESE brownies have a special ingredient in them” and I’m like “What? Love?” and they’re like “no… even better…WEED!”

so, after not so much convincing, I sampled the special brownies.

I’d never had special brownies before. All of my pot experiences have been through smoking (except one, which I’ll get to later)… so, we watched a couple videos worth of old homemade short films Bear and Scott and a bunch of their friends had made… they were pretty funny at time, pretty silly other times… and sometime I think you had to of been there.

It took me a lot longer than them to eat my brownie… for starters, they didn’t really cook these brownies the recommended way for cooking pot brownies… as I understand it, there’s a process where you like, boil the weed in butter and there’s some kind separation of oils or something like that… I don’t know, I’ve never done it… either way, I’m pretty sure that you usually don’t just dump your stash into the brownie mix…

when you’re eating these BIG brownies, you’re also having to pick buds out of your teeth… and I had a hard time eating the brownies under these circumstances… I mean, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but pot is not the most delicious of drugs…

The other reason I had trouble eating the brownies was because a few years back a friend and I had acquired a large sum of pot and were smoking it in this friends house… but this friend also happened to live on the airforce base, so he was paranoid the whole time (IE, if the SPs brought dogs even remotely near the house, they’d smell the pot, and my friend would be arrested and thrown out of the military)

when we’d smoked more than we could possibly handle, thinking that we’d be able to smoke the entire stash over the course of the evening, we still had a TON of weed left… in fact, we had a LOT more than we’d planned for… I guess an eighth goes a lot farther between two guys than you’d expect…

anyway, so, we had to get rid of the pot, but we didn’t want to just flush it down the toilet… i mean, what a waste, right? So my friend says “hey, let’s TEA it”… so, in our completely high frame of mind, we made makeshift weed/tea bags and poured boiling water over them in our coffee mugs…

but, of course, my makeshift weed/tea bag fell apart the moment the water touched it and the weed just mixed with the water and then floated up to the top…

needless to say, the tea was not tasty… so I drowned it in sugar and milk and started drinking… but I kept getting big hunks of weed in my mouth… and it tasted terrible… it felt like i was drinking shitty water and the weed was chunks…

and, when you’re in that sort of mind set, it gets REALLY easy to visualize these sorts of things to the point where you actually BELIEVE that’s what’s going into your mouth…

I promptly hurled.

and I’ve had a really hard time with having weed in my mouth since then…

back to the brownies… so, that’s why it took me a long time to eat my brownie… if I had this big soft brown lump that tastes a little like a brownie and a lot like weed… well, that’s a hard thing for me to take in…

after all the videos and whatnot, I’d finished my brownie, and we put on my X-Men DVD and started watching that… this was probably a half hour after I’d finished my brownie, and an hour after I’d started it…

at the beginning of X-Men there’s this scene where we see Magneto as a young kid in the Holocaust, being pulled away from his family… and he goes nuts and ends up ripping up this big gate with his mind…

well… let me tell you, that shit was INTENSE… i found myself extremely involved with this movie and the colors and whatnot…

by the time that Wolverine shows up and whips his claws out in that Canadian bar… oh jeezus… I found myself outside looking in… i was fucking HIGH… and I don’t mean like “oh boy was I was high”… i was FUCKING HIGH.

We watched the whole movie and I was just friggin mesmerized… I wish that I had Heavy Metal on DVD…

anyhoo… Scott and Bear left… I felt bad, because if they were anywhere near as high as I was, then they certainly didn’t need to be driving… but they weren’t going far, and driving while stoned isn’t like driving drunk… when you’re drunk you’re slowed down and just stupid… but when you’re high, you’re so paranoid that you can’t NOT drive well… I mean, when you’re high, you pay MORE attention to details and whatnot… so I mean, I wasn’t too worried… my only fear was that they’d get pulled over or something and then I’d be liable if they got in a wreck or something. But, if they got in a wreck, I’m sure they wouldn’t say “i was coming from Joe Humphrey’s house, on 5555 Five Street, Victoria BC”

they didn’t get in a wreck regardless, and I went to sleep…

five hours later Sandra’s alarm goes off and she hits the snooze and informs me that I’m going to be driving her to work cause she didn’t sleep well… and that was fine with me… I’ve driven her to work every day for the past two weeks… whatever works.

So, a half hour later or so, she gets up and I get up and oh my god… i was STILL just as high as I was when I went to sleep.

Sandra asked how my night was, and I told her it was pleasant… she asked if I’d gotten anything off the brownies… and I told her that “yeah, I think I got a little buzz” and we left it at that… so she drove to work (that’s what we always do… she drives to work and I ride and drive the car home) and I had my head discretely out the window, getting air…

By the time we got downtown, I actually felt pretty calm, cool and collected. I didn’t feel impaired in anyway… I just felt kind of hung over… so I dropped her off and headed back home… I put on some music and found myself feeling very high again… i found myself getting very involved with the music…

did you ever notice that the Cheap Trick song I Want You To Want Me has got some pretty fucked up lyrics? I had a CD of cover tunes that I’d made for my brother and I was listening to Letters for Cleo doing that song… it’s pretty demented… another one that’s really a lot nastier than I thought it was is My Sharona (done by Veruca Salt on this CD) …
So, I’m listening to this band Train (who did that song Meet Virginia… you know, that song that starts off “she never wore a dress… her hair is always a mess…”) doing the song Ramble On by Zeppelin… and jesus… that song became my whole world… I couldn’t believe how intense it was… this guy sounded JUST LIKE Robert Plant! It was crazy…

so, I’m paranoid about getting pulled over in my frame of mind so I’m like, riding 80 klicks perfectly for the entire drive home…

then I had to go over to Sandra’s parents house and let her dad look at the battery in her truck… which was weird cause I was still pretty high… that went without a hitch… we got a new battery and a hundred dollars later I was back at home in my war comfortable bed… it was just before 10 am…

I took care of some important under the covers business and then passed out… and I slept ALL DAY… and woke up at quarter to 3pm and then did a quick clean on the house… and frantically searched for my birth certificate and passport (i had to get my BC drivers license) and couldn’t find them… I gave up and was out the door by five after three, ready to put off the Drivers License until a day when I knew where my Birth Certificate and Passport were…

then, once I was on the road, I got a hunch and checked the glovebox and there they were… I’d stuffed them there when I’d gotten my fingerprints done for the FBI clearances…

so I went and got my drivers license, which was surprisingly (thankfully) incredibly painless and easy… they just took my old license, my 17 dollars and gave me an eye exam…

the eye exam machine is this big view master with little letters and road signs in it… and jesus christ did it give me a head ache… I’ve got perfect vision, but by brain does NOT like it when my eyes can’t figure out what they’re supposed to be focusing on… which is how it is in that view master thing…

anyway, so i got a temp license and headed out to pick up Sandra… we ate at Montana’s cookhouse and I had a less that quality steak… but the company was very nice and it was over all a nice little date…

so then we went from Montanas to Sandra’s parents house so she could get her resume off of her parents computer and apply for a sweet job with the government… she just got a promotion in her current job, but this new job is making a bunch more dollars more a year, so that’s kind of impossible to pass up…

while Sandra was dealing with her resume, I tried to fix her aunt’s printer… she’d called me a couple days ago, but I hadn’t been over to the farm since… actually, i checked that morning when i was there to have Sandra’s dad look at the battery, but Sandra’s aunt hadn’t been home…

anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to fix the printer… and Sandra shows up and she fixes it within a minute… she’s pretty smart. So then it’s getting after six, so I call up Bear and tell him that I’ll be over within a half hour to pick him up for the movie (remember? The Gift!) and we take off…

Sandra and I pop into our apartment for a minute so that I could grab the tickets and the directions to Scott and Bear’s new apartment (that I hadn’t seen yet) and I grab the rest of the brownies that they’d left over… i take off and pick up Bear… the apartment complex is a royal pain in the ass… i knew where it was (on the corner of Quadra and McKenzie… next to the London Drugs and Dairy Queen and White Spot) but I didn’t know where in the complex it was… so I drove around for a while trying to find a place to park…

after a while of trying to figure out the door and whatnot, Bear and I left for the movie… we discussed how incredibly high we were still the next morning… he had my story about dropping Sandra off at work beaten… his parents called at 9 in the morning and said they were picking him up for lunch… so he had to eat lunch with his parents while stoned off his ass… that’s a funny image…

so, we get to the movie… it’s at this tiny theater in this joke of a mall… the theater pretends to be an art theater, even though they play MI2 and Miss Congeniality… oh well, whatever… I much prefer the far more expensive Silver City… simply because they’ve got stadium seating, GIANT screens and decent sound systems… but I digress…

I got popcorn and a drink with my bank card (7 bucks for a large popcorn and large drink and a chocolate bar… SWEET deal… 7 bucks canadian is like, 4.50 US) and we find seats…

The movie was…

well…

it was neat… there was a LOT of neat stuff in it..Giovanni Ribisi was pretty cool in it… there’s this scene where Keanu Reeves (more on him later) is telling Cait Blanchett’s kid that she’s a witch and that she going to burn in hell… and so the Giovanni Ribisi pulls up behind Keanu’s truck and asks the kid “is everything all right?” and the kid says “this guy says my mommy’s a witch and is gonna burn in hell!” and so Giovanni Ribisi gets out of his truck and Keanu says something like “you just mind your own business” and then Giovanni Ribisi says “okay” and grabs a crowbar out of his truck and then proceeds to BEAT THE SHIT out of Keanu reeves truck, bashing in the windows and putting holes in the door and everything… then Keanu Reeves whips out a pistol and Giovanni Ribisi pushes his forehead against the nose of the gun and starts screaming “SHOOT ME MOTHERFUCKER!” over and over… Keanu reeves freaks out and the truck speeds off…

that was a BAD ASS scene… Giovanni Ribisi is like the new Christopher Walken… he’s just so… INTENSE… he’s like… weird…

but, in this movie, he’s playing a borderline retarded dude… what’s the deal with that? Can’t he play characters who aren’t retarded? I think that I’ve probably seen him in five roles, and he’s been borderline retarded in all but one… in fact… off the top of my head… I’ll figure out all movie’s and things I’ve seen him in…
The Gift (borderline retarded)
Friends (borderline retarded)
Suburbia (not retarded, but such a slacker that he may as well have been)
The Other Sister (Okay, so I didn’t see it, but he DOES play a retarded guy in it)
The X-Files (he plays a borderline retarded redneck kid that can control lightning… great episode… he reminded me of Less Claypool in the My Name is Mud video)
Saving Private Ryan (I honestly don’t really remember much about this movie… I just remember that he was in it… so i can’t vouch for the intelligence of this particular character)

anyway… enough about Giovanni Ribisi…

you know… I’ve given Keanu Reeves lots of chances… I’m very open when it comes to artists… actors and film makers especially… I’ve always tried to maintain the idea that Keanu Reeves just needs the right forum for his skills…

but this was just offensive… he’s TERRIBLE in this movie! His southern accent is even more of a joke than his English accent in Dracula… why do people keep giving him work?!

Keanu Reeve’s job is to stand around looking puzzled and saying “whoa” a lot… that should be it… he was GREAT in the two Bill and Ted movies, where his job was to look puzzled and say “whoa”… he was great in Parenthood where again, he stood around and said “whoa”… he was great in The Matrix, where he looked puzzled and said “whoa”…

but Dracula? Speed? The Devil’s Advocate? And now The Gift? I don’t think so… leave the real acting to the people who know what they’re doing…

the good news is that Keanu has expressed an avid interest in reprising his role as Ted Theodore Logan in another installment in the Bill and Ted series… needless to say, I am in full support of this project.

Okay, so there’s this big controversy (well, a little one at least) over Joey Potter from Dawson’s Creek whipping her titties out for this movie…

Honestly, from the get go, I’ve never liked this chick… Katie Holmes… to me, she’s always seemed like a low-grade Drew Berrymore knock off… which ain’t a good thing… Drew Berrymore just BARELY scraps along… anything lower that Drew in the Hollywood starlet department is bottom of the barrel…

anyway, enough about Drew Berrymore…

So, Katie Holmes is playing Greg Kinear’s super sexy slutty fiance that’s sleeping with half the town… and by the constant GRIN on Katie Holmes face, you can tell that she’s loving every minute of it… she’s finally able to say things like “you better fuck me fast” and “I’m with him cause he’s the only man in this town who can fuck me how I like it!” and so she’s soaking this up like it’s that sunny day in that fucking ray bradburry story about the girl who lives on venus and it rains all the time or something like that…

so, you see her boobs… but they’re boobs on a nasty rotting carcass… so they don’t count… I was all pissed off, cause she gets killed and there’s no boobs… and then you see her nasty white dead boobs… I mean, was that what people were all excited about?

Well, no… there’s flashbacks later, and THAT’S when you see her boobs…

okay, so here’s where I get a little more preachier than I usually am…

I am certainly a guy’s guy… I love nakedness… I love violence and sex in movies… I was a big fan of the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks when they were going strong… I was a big fan of the 80s trashy naked movies (Porkies, Revenge of the Nerds, so on and so forth) and I love a good action movie as much as the next guy… there’s two ways that I can enjoy these things… I can enjoy nudity and violence for the sake of nudity and violence (IE, stupid slasher movies and stupid naked movies) or I can enjoy them as a part of a story line (IE, nudity in Boogie Nights and violence in Taxi Driver)… but there has to be that distinction…

Sam Raimi is famous for his Evil Dead movies… this is a perfect example of violence for the sake of violence… Evil Dead II is one of the most violent, stupidest, mindless fun movies of all time… it’s a classic and one of my favorites… but anyone watching it and enjoying it understands exactly what they’re getting into…

but lately Sam Raimi has been doing “serious” movies… he did A Simple Plan, which was all right… he did some baseball movie with Kevin Costner that I didn’t see… and now he’s done The Gift… a more serious horror flick… this one’s not particularly violent or gory… but it is scary.. fairly well crafted considering the not so great quality of script….I had no problem with the direction in this movie…

but at the end of the movie, during a flashback when we’re about to find out who the REAL killer is (don’t worry, I won’t tell you… even though you’ll have figured it out half way into the movie) Katie Holmes takes off her shirt for seemingly NO REASON whatsoever… just kind of all of a sudden “Hi! I’m Joey Potter from TVs Dawson’s Creek, and these are my breasts! Get your modems ready boys!” and she’s shaking her tits around and being all silly, and then she gets killed….

so like…

I’m sitting in the theater thinking “Was that really necessary? That had absolutely NOTHING to do with anything!” it was just like they felt that they REALLY needed to show her boobs

I dunno… maybe she really wanted to show us her boobs… maybe it was about that time in her career… maybe she wanted to break away from Dawson’s creek… I mean, why not? The ever sexy Michelle Williams got naked in that HBO lesbian movie (though that was at least pertaining to the story… or lack there of) so why not Joey Potter?

Either way, that was the definition of pointless nudity… it was just stupid. I felt like a prude, but I was almost offended by it… not that I found seeing Katie Holme’s breasts offensive… I felt like someone was saying “here you go boys, this is what you came to see!” I felt condescended too… I felt like she was showing her boobs as a marketing tool…

Either way, it pretty much ruined what would otherwise be an interesting experience (seeing Katie Holme’s boobs under any other circumstances)…

oh well…

so, by the end of the movie, I felt that I was most certainly entertained… there’s no doubt in my mind that Sam Raimi is an honest to god good film maker… he just needs a good script. This was one of Billy Bob Thornton’s first scripts (written well before Slingblade) so I don’t fault it too much… i mean, if Sam Raimi filmed one of my first scripts, I’d be embarrassed to even come near that movie…

There were some really great visuals… the dream sequences were intense… the scene where she talks to her dead grandmother and the scene where she sees that dude playing fiddle by the river was pretty intense…

oh…

by the way…

Hillary Swank is now on my list of people I don’t enjoy looking at or hearing or having anything to do with… she bugged the shit out of me in this movie… She played Keanu Reeves’ punching bag wife…
I was going to give her a few chances… you know, being the Karate Kid 4 and all… but man, she is just ANNOYING as hell. I wanted to smack her around too.

So, in the end, I’d recommend this movie on a cheap night… if you’re a sam raimi fan.

I won’t go see it again any time soon, but it was certainly good for a freebie….

okay, well, I’m done writing for now…