Forwarding address

Farewell, High Sheriffs of Google — you brainless rat bastards.

Coiled Pleasures is now at WordPress, with a bounty of bazongas, brownies and buttondowns.

http://coiledpleasures.com/

Attack of the High Sheriffs

Joe Bob Briggs used to refer to the forces of darkness at the Dallas Times-Herald as the High Sheriffs, and while that paper is long gone, the impulse to be a high sheriff is stronger than ever.

Witness this announcement I just received from Google:

In the coming weeks, we'll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video. We'll still allow nudity presented in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content.

The new policy will go into effect on the 23rd of March 2015. After this policy goes into effect, Google will restrict access to any blog identified as being in violation of our revised policy. No content will be deleted, but only blog authors and those with whom they have expressly shared the blog will be able to see the content we've made private.

Our records indicate that your account may be affected by this policy change. Please refrain from creating new content that would violate this policy. Also, we ask that you make any necessary changes to your existing blog to comply as soon as possible, so that you won't experience any interruptions in service.

Now, while it is true that I frequently post screen shots from films, and those screen shots often contain some degree of nekkidity, it is always presented in a highly artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific context — so much so I want to puke.

So some busybody years ago decided to flag "Coiled Pleasures," and now this. 

Well, fuck'em. See that, Google? Piss off, you brainless rodents. I'll take this show elsewhere.



This is okay:

This is not:

Hi, I'm Fat Slob. How Do You Do?

So it's been snowy and cold and generally miserable this winter. Plus I am about 20 pounds overweight, so three-quarters of my stuff doesn't fit.

This does: a two button Brooks sack jacket, Lands End cotton sweater vest, J. Press red uni stripe oxford and tie, LL Bean lined Chinos, Hanna cap and Allen Edmonds Eagle River boots with a Vibram lug sole. And a J. Press lambswool scarf (which they are giving away at the moment, by the way).

Okay, that's it. Off to the gym! And then to see "50 Shades of Grey"! Gee whiz!

Empty "Canyons"

Paul Schrader's "The Canyons" (written by Bret Easton Ellis) is a tedious piece of crap about bored decadent Hollywood people of marginal talent and interest.

Blah blah blah...

A self-portrait, in other words.

It has some nekkidity, but some of it involved Lindsay Lohan, who really needs to get her act together.

It also has a real life Porn Star, James Deen. He talks too much.

As does everybody in this clunker.

...blah blah blah blah...

You can't make an exploitation film, or even a daring, boundary-pushing flick, and bore the crap out of the audience.

A Fast-Forward Special -- to the dogpile scene, which is icky.

...blah blah blah blah oh let's get nekkid blah blah blah blah.

Zero coils. A complete waste of time.

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead — Now With Improved Glop-O-Rama

You won't believe how the Nazi zombies gassed up the tank.

Not content with the undoubted triumph of 2010's "Dead Snow," Tommy Wirkola has made a sequel. "Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead."

This title is a little misleading, because the "red" refers to some Red Army soldier-zombies who are just as dead as the Nazi zombies.

However, we are dealing with a generation that thinks the Berlin Wall was an album by some old guys called Pink Floyd. So we must make allowances.

If you recall, in the first flick Martin and his dopey friends went to cabin way the hell out in the woods in Norway and accidentally woke up Nazi commander Herzog and his zombie battalion.

In that one, everybody died, including Martin's girlfriend Sara, who is now called Hanna, but is still dead.

But what we didn't know is that Martin got away, but somehow wound up with Herzog's arm in his SUV.

So when the EMTs found him, they brought along the arm, and the kindly doctor reattached it — to Martin, who had cut his own arm off with a chain saw when he was bitten and infected.

Got that?

Well, this arm is capable of all sorts of stuff, including superhuman strength and resurrections.

Martin finds he can do all kinds of neat stuff with his Nazi zombie arm

Now, your Nazi zombies are complex creatures, and rarely do they have a simple agenda.

So Martin thinks they might be satisfied by getting their stupid treasure back, but he is sorely mistaken.

No, they have to finish their original mission, which was to destroy a little town called Tvnkj or something.

There is a whole lot of plot here, and to boil it down a bit, what we wind up with are four teams: the Nazi zombie team, led by Herzog; the Red Army team, led by some big tall zombie; Martin's team, which consists of Martin, the gay guy from the museum, and three nitwits from the US who call themselves The Zombie Squad; and the police, who are only there for comic relief.

Zombie Squad geek poses for photo with his first confirmed kill

The film is in English, which makes it slightly easier to be confused but lacks the Ingmar Bergman atmosphere that made the original so deep and profound.

However, it expands on the original's highly creative use of intestines. I have never seen an intestine used as a gasoline siphon before, and neither have you,  I'll bet.

Wirkola breaks the Glop-O-Meter on this one. Heads, feet, guts, arms all roll. Explosions. Nifty hatchet work. Intestine as garrote, siphon, electrical wire. Necrophilia (implied). Pet zombie. Bad running joke about the language of seagulls. Norwegian cops with Irish accents. No nekkidity (automatic one-coil deduction). Very confusing.

Three coils.

Review: Tacky Fly Box

I've seen these around and bought a couple. I am in the middle of Early January Fly-Fishing Angst Mode, when the only fishable water is about two miles of the West Branch of the Farmington, right where it comes out of the dam, and my idea of a good time is watching Davy Wotton videos while curled up in a blanket.

It's a slender thing, measuring 3/4 inch thick and 3 1/2 x 7 inches in area. It fits into a Fishpond chest pack. You could probably cram three or four in.

There are slots for 168 flies, but unless these flies are tiny and you want to use tweezers to get them in and out, I don't think you'll get every slot filled.

Hard to say how it works until I get out and try it, but I think it will allow me to consolidate all the nymphs in one (or two or three) boxes with a lot less bulk involved.

"Big Tit Zombie" Hits New Exciting Lows (with bonus French phrases)

Takao Nakano's 2010 "Big Tit Zombie" is an unusually stupid and tasteless film and as such zooms to the top of the CACA charts.

It stars Japanese porn queen Sora Aoi, aka Aoi Sora, aka Aoi Sola, and aka a few other names that are all remarkably similar.

She doesn't have especially big tits, either, but le tout ensemble is quite attractive. Especially when wielding a chain saw.

The plot, such as it is, has five strippers working in an unsuccessful club that just happens to be connected by underground passage to a dank dungeon with Cabbage Patch dolls and a well. Oh, and there is a Book of the Dead.

Naturally one of the strippers reads from the Book of the Dead. It is de rigueur in these situations. Otherwise the movie would just be called "Big Tit," or possibly "Big Tits," and where would you be?

Zombies emerge from the well, and hilarity ensues.

What sets this one apart from, say, "Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead" are the sushi scenes (once with sushi, once with entrails).

And where "Zombie Ass" had unusual things erupting from the butt-type area, "Big Tit Zombie" has a fiery...

Uhh.

I can't say it. The area from which the fire explodes is, uh...

Adjacent! That's it. The fire comes from a region of a lady actor's personal body that is adjacent to the butt-type area of the personal b.

The film is also very meta, which can mean anything. In this case it means that the subtitles rarely match the dubbed dialogue, which creates an ever-changing dialectic and existential tension that calls into question the very nature of cinema itself.

(Ha! Top that, dog-ass New York Times!)

It also means the director is shouting things at the actors, and you can see the wires on the tentacle things.

Four breasts (each set twice). Chain saw splitting of zombie, twice. Book of the Dead. Gibberish Latin that's not even Latin. (It's not even close.) Mt. Fuji as subject of subtextual jokes. Amusing zombies. And that fire thing.

Four coils, unreservedly, and a nomination for the next Iron Coil award.

"Siren" Blows

"Siren" aka "Erotic Siren" is a shot on video, released on video erotic horror film that is neither erotic nor particularly horrifying.

A gang of five guys, dressed unconvincingly as women, knocks off a bank and gets away with a big sack of cash. They drive up to an abandoned house to wait for a confederate to take them to a boat. Then they're going to sail somewhere.

But dang. There's a semi-fresh girl messing around by the side of the road, so for no apparent reason they stop, she sees the money and guns, and so now they have to bring her along.

Oh yeah, she came out of the ocean, nekkid, in the first scene of the flick.

Tedious "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" thieves falling out stuff ensues, except in this case they are all looking to cut themselves a slice of the siren girl.

Bottom line, she kills them all, but they die happy.

The same two breasts, repeatedly. Psycho gangster shit, in Japanese. Incredibly bad suits (looks like they knocked over a Men's Wearhouse, not a bank). Artsy sex shots, decidedly non-erotic.

Starring Japanese porno star Aoi Sola, if that does anything for you.

Phooey. One coil.

The Mojo Wire Is Not Your Friend

Part of the exciting life of a reporter is getting all kinds of material from kooks. And in these lax, post-modern times, kooks have a wide variety of methods to choose from to spread their kookery.

There is regular mail. Many kooks prefer this, as their remote dwellings are not wired for modern telecommunications.

There is telephone. Many kooks are unaware of caller ID, which takes the sting out of the anonymous "Deep Throat" sort of call.

Example:
Me: (guardedly) Hello?
Kook: I wanna give ya an anoner — an annonymuh — I wanna tell ya something without my name in it.
Me: Oh, hiya there, Al.
Kook: (spluttering) Click.

There is email. Anti-spam programs generally take care of this, but sometimes something slips through. Kooks like attachments; an email from a whacko will be festooned with them.

And there is the fax, a machine for which I prefer the Hunter S. Thompson name for the old Telex machine — the Mojo Wire.

Kooks like fax machines. I think it's because they know the product comes out on the receiver's end as a semi-legible, greasy affair, similar to the mimeographed copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (b/w "Party Down with Henry Ford") that started their kookery in the first place.

Now, by "kooks" I include the following: crackpots, cranks, conspiracy theorists; people who think I am a shill for the right; people who firmly believe I am part of the left-wing conspiracy.

Not to forget these chatty souls: New Age believers of every description; zealots (from Anglicans to Zoroastrians); Twelve Steppers, No-Steppers, and my personal favorite, Missed Steppers.

All of them are convinced my soul is in peril. (Last I checked, it was a little battered, but basically intact and functioning.)

This is but a sampling of the kook world.

And I admit it: I am a connoisseur of kooks. Many's the time I have wriggled out of an unpleasant political discussion by invoking the Reptilian Conspiracy.

So I can't complain when the fax machine starts making that peculiar humming sound that says "Incoming from Uncaged Looney!"

Here is a recent example. These are the first two pages, of seven, plus a closeup of some of the marginalia.

(If you would like a copy of the entire thing, send $3.50 and a SASE to "Save the Kooks," PO Box 1755, Lakeville, CT 06039.)

Working for a newspaper really is a splendid way to make a living.

Page one

Page two

Page two detail

Honk If You're...

Vehicle belonging to a progressive friend:

Vehicle belonging to libertarian (me):

And this:

Coiled Stew

Coiled Stew

Two pounds hot Italian sausage

One medium yellow onion

One red pepper

Garlic

One can kidney beans

One can diced tomatoes

Brown rice/quinoa blend

Optional: One bag spinach

In a big pot cook up some garlic in olive oil, add chopped onions and red pepper, stir around.

While this is happening cut up poopy-looking sausage coils into one-inch chunks.

Heave them into the pot and stir it all up, let it go for a while. Keep stirring so nothing burns. Add beans and tomatoes, with all liquids, lower the heat, stir some more, cover. 

After 30 minutes or so transfer the whole mess into a crock pot, which is where it's going to wind up anyway.

When you're ready to eat cook up some brown rice/qunioa blend, unless you want to spend $12 for a little box of pure keen-wah, which strikes me as a pretty major rip-off.

If you cant to add the spinach just rip the shit up or chop it or whatever and shove it in the crock pot before you cook the rice and keen-wah. By the time the rice is done the spinach will be done too.

Serve with grated cheese. You could also mix in some sour cream.

It looks pretty nasty but it tastes good, and it'c cheap and easy to make.

Stupid Winter — LL Bean PrimaLoft Packaway Jacket

As I grow older I realize how much I despise winter.

The short, grey days, when the sun comes up around 10 in the morning and disappears after lunch.

The spitting rain freezing on top of the dirty snow.

The plastic on the windows, for the ever-popular glaucoma effect.

I needed something to fill the void between lined trenchcoat and waxed cotton coat, and basic large hunting shirt, so I took a shot at one of these

It arrived the other day, and I deployed it this morning (24 degrees F and windy).

It is amazingly warm, especially for the weight. I initially thought it was a joke. My Drizzler windbreaker weighs more.

Trundling around the grocery store, which is not a warm place, I had to open it up to avoid overheating.

I bought an XL. I am 5'9" and about 180 at the moment. It fits fine. The sleeves are a little long, which for a winter jacket is no hardship.

The pockets are all on the outside.

The front is a zipper, no backup snaps or Velcro.

I am wearing it here with a thick Rugby shirt underneath, and a scarf.

I wouldn't try to fool with this and a suit or sport coat at the same time. Wrong type of garment.

Thumbs up. Four coils. Whatever.

[

The Genius of Thom Christopher; or How to Be Bald and Evil While Wearing a Ladies' Turban

I have now rewatched "Deathstalker," "Deathstalker II," and the imaginatively titled "Deathstalker III."

And while number one has a certain flair in the evil wizard with the face tats; and number two has the unforgettable Monique Gabrielle in two roles that both require extensive breastal exposure, plus John La Zar (as the sorcerer) using up all his little riffs that got cut from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"...

Number three is superior.

Why?

Because of Thom Christopher as the evil wizard Troxartes.

You probably know Thom from "Law and Order" reruns. He usually plays a New York jerk of some kind - boardroom jerk, attorney jerk, ordinary bald schmendrick-type jerk.

Thom's got damn good teeth, and they really get a workout in "Deathstalker III." Rarely has so much scenery been chewed by one actor.

He gives us demonic "I shall rule the world while clad in a fleece blanket from Target" laughter. He sashays through what the discerning critics of Mystery Science Theater rightly called the worst swordfight in cinema history. (The longest, too, according to Joe Bob Briggs' post-screening assessment for The Movie Channel.)

But most of all, Thom's Troxartes channels Gloria Swanson.




Now is that eerie or what?

The costume department was on the ball in this flick. The head henchman does his thing wearing a helmet clearly inspired by the cover of Cher's 1978 album "Take Me Home."




So while John Allen Nelson does not bring the same insouciant charm to the title role as D2's John Terlesky, and Carla Herd does not get nearly as nekkid as Monique, in Thom Christopher's Troxartes we have the stuff of greatness.

Three and a half coils, if I can find them.

Selfie-referential

"My Name is Bruce" is an extremely silly comedy horror flick from 2007 starring Bruce Campbell as himself. He is picked by a fan to help combat an Ancient Evil. Very mild hilarity ensues. No nekkidity. Self-referential, in the same sense that taking a picture of yourself making a stupid face and sending it to all your moron "friends" is self-referential.

It's a harmless and forgettable way to kill 86 minutes.

Mildly amusing, it gets two coils.

Ferlin Husky Sings!

The best way to describe Ferlin Husky singing the theme to "Swamp Girl" is to let you hear it for yourself.

Magnificent, isn't it?

And you get a whole movie too!

Nat, who is black, lives in the swamp with Janine, the Swamp Girl, who is young, blonde, pretty —and pretty nimble in a boat.

Swamp Girl thinks Nat is her Paw, until circumstances force him to tell her the truth, which is that he saved her from the drunken white-slaving abortionist Doc.

So now he's just Nat.

Meanwhile the local goobers are searching for the Swamp Girl, plus the sheriff, plus the Swamp Ranger, who is Ferlin Husky.

And a Bonnie and Clyde couple decide to cross the swamp on foot, which is not a good idea.

Alligator death. Snake death — twice. No, three times. (Snakes are cheaper than gators.) Air boat. Magic dress on Swamp Girl, that never gets wet or dirty. No nekkidity (automatic one-coil deduction). Brutal speech by mother of Convict Girl, to wrap up loose ends of plot. Convincing demonstration of why loafers are not the right footgear for swamps.

And, of course, the dulcet tones of Ferlin Husky singing the theme song and playing the guitar.

Two and a half coils.

Queen of Outer Space, Dahling

Zsa Zsa Gabor stars as Telleah, the good Venusian scientist, in Edward Bernds immortal Queen of Outer Space (1958).

Unhappily, Ms. Gabor's lines do not include the word "dahling."

Some astronauts go up in a space ship to visit the space station, which is pretty prescient for 1958.

But before they get there the station gets blasted by a death ray from Venus. The ship crashes in some excellent scenery on said planet, and the crew is taken prisoner by Venusian guards with really good legs.

Venus is run by the crazy Queen Yllana, who wears a sort of masked ball thing on account of the stupid men who caused her face to be disfigured. The stupid men are on a moon, which has been converted to a slave colony.

So there's a lot of blah blah blah and it turns out Zsa Zsa and like-minded girls (who have better legs) wish to overthrow the Queen and get some men back.

But Yllana is determined to zap the Earth.

Great-looking guards and gams. Flat-screen TVs. Radiation burns. Ornate masks. Cardboard sets. Heartfelt waving goodbye to spaceship by girl in unfortunate green dress. Story by Ben Hecht, of all people. Very silly, and a lot of fun.

Three coils.

Summer Blockbusters!

The Douglas Library (North Canaan, Conn.) comes through again, with an armload of DVDs with almost unlimited cheese-like potential.

We're talking The Giant Behemoth, Queen of Outer Space (starring Zsa Zsa Gabor), and Attack of the 50 ft Woman.

Speed Lovers, Thunder in Dixie, Swamp Girl, This Is Swamp Country, This Stuff'll Kill Ya!, The Year of the Yahoo and Two Thousand Maniacs (an acknowledged classic).

On the undead front, the "Zombie Madness" collection includes Melvin, Fast Zombies with Guns, Woods of Terror, The Defiled: We Are All Meat, and Zombie Lovers.

And Lon Chaney in the classic Universal version of The Wolf Man.

Chaney's also in the 1971 Dracula vs. Frankenstein, as Groton, a grunting insane henchman with a fondness for puppies. He also swings an efficient axe.

The immortal Zandor Vorkov stars as Dracula, if the Prince of Darkness were a roadie for Kiss.  All his lines have an echo chamber on them, for extra evil.

There are several plot lines. By what appears to be sheer coincidence they occasionally intersect.

One breast. Two beasts. Hippie dancing. Painful Las Vegas lounge act, featuring an incomprehensible song about luggage. Two decapitations. One quart blood. Hippie protest march. Fat bikers. Waiter in hippie cafe with large scar on forehead. Stoned Vegas showgirl hippie dancing. Groovy guy who solves everything while wearing turtlenecks. Dwarf carnival barker (falls on carelessly stored axe). Hippie boyfriend in striped pants who sees artistic potential in old tire (gets federal arts grant in sequel). Mad scientist in wheelchair. Frankenstein monster with face that looks like mashed potatoes, or Secretary of State John Kerry.  One psychedelic freakout song; one groovy ballad with oceans and seagulls, and above mentioned luggage number. Appalling. Three coils.

Lon Chaney as Groton. I would like to report on another character named Philips Exeter, but alas...

This is a song about luggage.

Zandor Vorkov is a glowering-type vampire.

Fishing report July 13

Streamside art, pt. 17. I don't wish to be disrespectful of our spinning and bait-casting brothers, but I can't help noticing that they tend to leave shit on the stream bank. Esopus, above Portal.

Crazy brookie, Woodland Valley. Chased a hopper, changed his mind, and just as impulsively decided to nail the tung head Prince I had on a dropper.

The Serpent... Another in my series of herpetological false alarms. Esopus Creek.

...and the Rainbow. This view tends to produce good photos. Woodland Valley.

Just when you thought you'd seen it all, the fishing selfie.

Streamside art, pt. 18. A radiator sits in silent rebuke. 

Lots of water in Woodland Valley for July.