Peeps: Seventh Sign of the Apocalypse

I love Easter for a lot one reason: candy. Specifically, Cadbury creme eggs. There's a lot of religious stuff that goes on around this time (and remember that Easter predates the life of Jesus by many hundreds of years) that mostly involves reborn Jewish guys and some unholy breeding program between chickens and bunnies.

For me, the chocolaty shell and smooth fondant center of the creme egg is the only religion I need. But others have a more sinister form of candy worship. I'm talking, of course, about the most vile, unnatural, and evil harbinger that marks the coming of Spring.

These guys. 

My wife is a fan of Peeps, which might surprise you given how much I hate them. I'm not saying it would have been a deal breaker had I known before we'd gotten serious...but I sometimes wonder if her love for Peeps isn't the root cause of every argument we've ever had. I mean, I know she loves them. It's always there in the back of my mind.

How can I hate these adorable blobs of marshmallow, with their bright colors and sparkly sugar coating? How can I detest a treat that brings a smile to millions of children every year?

Just look at them. Look at their cold, dead eyes. There's a reason Peeps never go bad (the pack of them in my pantry has been there since we moved in. As in, it was already here. Yes. The peeps are waiting, biding their time...) when you leave them to their own nefarious devices. They are multiplying, plotting. Just imagine an egg trying to do that. Impossible.

But Peeps have eyes. They have little chubby bird bodies. They hate. Ask any person who has ever eaten one to describe the experience to you, and I bet they'll explain that it's a bit like chewing squishy sandpaper. Yet every year, more and more people buy package after package, only to throw the extras onto the back of a shelf when their bland graininess is rediscovered.

Much like Cthulhu--

Great Old One, Destroyer of Minds

--Peeps do not sleep. They wait.


I don't know what sort of arcane power these adorable, sugary little bastards have that parents keep buying them despite the fact that ninety percent never get eaten. I only know that I haven't fallen for whatever ruse they've got going. I see the signs, and there still may be time too--

Oh, Dear God

Well, we're fucked.

Bad Porn That Isn't Hilariously So (A Rant)

Okay, look. I'm not asking for much here. What with the age of the internet, the physical purchase of porn has become something like buying vinyl records. You might do it, but you feel guilty and maybe a little dirty, and if you do buy it, you try to make it worth the money.

Because, let's face it, there are hundreds of free porn sites out there right now that can fit any of your dirty little desires. Admit it, your tastes would make Rick Santorum vomit up his entire gastrointestinal tract.

So when you buy porn, it has to be something special, right? I know it does for me.

My wife and I very rarely hit adult bookstores (and I don't know why they're still called that. We've never bought a book there at one), but when we do it's usually with the intent to buy something awesome. You read that part up there about physical porn having to be special, right? I hope so, because otherwise that means you skipped it and that's just lazy. Stop being lazy.

The era of internet porn means that your standard productions of physical products have to really jump out at you. For some people, that means the hugely popular meme of parody porn. There's one about The Flintstones, The Justice League of America, even The Brady Bunch. That's the tip of the iceberg, really. There are hundreds out there.

For my wife and I, it means finding the funniest possible title and hoping for the best. This is a habit of mine that dates back more than a decade.

See, when I was nineteen, I didn't really care for porn. Not only was I living at home and terribly afraid of my mom, who hates pornography of all kinds (and she punches REALLY. HARD.) but I was, as most young men who lean heterosexual are, more interested in actual women than videotapes or DVDs. Also like most young men, I struck out fairly often.

So when I went to visit friends out of state, we'd sojourn to the local smut house and spend too much money on the funniest porn we could find. The crowning jewel of those days was Night of The Living Bed, which isn't about sentient mattresses at all. It's very, very badly done zombie porn. The actors are attractive, the sex scenes not too over-the-top, and it has Ron Jeremy in it. He doesn't even have sex, he just plays some dude, which says something about his age and his power in the industry.

But what makes NOTLB so great? It's god-awful. The acting is so bad it borders on stereotype. The zombie makeup was apparently on a strict budget (or tasted bad) because it went on the head and hands of the actors, and that was it. Just white chalky stuff at that, like someone clapped the shit out of a couple erasers and called it a day. If you fast forward through all the sex scenes in that movie, you get about thirty minutes of horrible acting and shitty dialog that somehow still manages to make your sides hurt with laughter.

Basically, the Jersey Shore of its time.

But then you get movies like International Lesbian Affair 2. I bought this thing thinking that with a title like that, it had to be hilariously bad. As my bestie for life Courtney asked, "What plot elements from the first International Lesbian Affair were left unfinished, that they demanded a sequel?"

You know what we saw when we popped the tape in? Two German women, likely with kids in college, who had no compunctions about not shaving. On a tarp.

That was it. Middle-aged, hairy German moms on a tarp. And about ten minutes in, some random guy in the background walks over and undoes his snazzy stonewashed jeans. I thought, hey, at least something different is about to happen, but the dude just starts masturbating while *very* loudly muttering "Oh, Ja. Ja. Oh, Ja."

The moral of the story is this: Porn companies need to make the call now. Either go all digital, or at least have the decency to create deliberately terrible and funny movies for those of us who enjoy laughing at them. I want crappy production values and bargain-basement acting. Not tarp-on-a-floor cheap, because that's just lazy. And laziness isn't funny. I want the sets to look like a really enthusiastic fifth-grade class tried to make them. I want the actors to put forth a real effort to act, and to fail so utterly that it makes my brain hurt. Hell, throw in a dancing hillbilly for no goddamn reason at all. Be random, be chaotic. Just be funny.

Or do a Jetsons parody, I guess. Your call.