Has "Parody" become the new "Irony"?

The porn industry certainly seems to think so. When one thinks of the word PARODY, a wealth of different images might come to mind. The works of Mel Brooks or the late Leslie Nielsen. The vocal stylings of Weird Al. The millions upon millions of terrible videos that have been added to YouTube since you started reading this. If you're the porn industry, however, your mind is most likely to be filled with dollar signs and the stuff nightmares are afraid of.

This is what lies where madness fears to tread.

In recent years, porn has taken the idea of the parody and turned it into something so far removed from its actual definition that you'd figure Alanis Morissette had written a song about it. A plethora of porn "parodies" have emerged over the past few years with some of the weakest titles and most random source material that you're likely to see. Gone are the days of such classics as "Edward Penishands", "Super Hornio Bros.", and "A Clockwork Orgy".

Maybe it's just me, but I consider a "That 70's Show" porn more random than this.

Now, the porn parody world is dominated with titles that would make Friedberg and Seltzer proud. Simply take the name of the TV show or movie you are using and place it into a generic porn title like "This Is Not [INSERT TITLE]: A XXX Parody". While these titles do give you all the information you need, "This Ain't The Partridge Family XXX" doesn't have nearly the same charm and marketing appeal as something like "The Da Vinci Load 2: Angels and Semen".

I had a pic for "The Da Vinci Load 2", but it didn't look nearly this ridiculous.

Perhaps the worst offender I've seen in this style is "This Isn't Twilight - The XXX Parody" put out by the folks over at Devil's Film. It's a parody in much the same way as you could say "Shindler's List" was a spoof of World War 2. As much as it pains me to say, I have to give at least some credit to Friedberg and Seltzer for knowing what a parody is, even if they do suck at making them. You have to change the situations or settings around a little, put in a funny twist that isn't expected. Hell, keep everything the same and just switch up the dialogue a little.

I know this is more or less what I was asking for, but yeah..... Fuck Friedberg and Seltzer.

"TIT-TXXXP" doesn't do any of these though. It uses sets that are as close to those in "Twilight" as they could find in the director's house/spacious back yard. The dialogue suffers on two fronts as it is A) Very poorly delivered even by porn standards and B) So close to the original material that they probably should have given Stephenie Meyer a writing credit. The actors could have changed things up a bit and pretended to have personalities. That would have been cool since we've yet to see any of that in an actual "Twilight" movie.

I seriously can't even tell these two apart any more. I think the one on the right is
the one the terrorists killed on 9-11.

As it is, this "spoof" is basically a carbon copy of a few disjointed scenes from a shitty movie, intercut with bouts of unappealing people getting their fuck on. I understand why people are watching these movies and it isn't for the hot girl-on-girl thespian action. But here's my thing, if they were going to more or less do away with the story altogether, why even bother putting one in? They could have excised the story completely and retitled this "White on Whites #24" and sold just as many units. For this movie to even have a story is superfluous and begs the question: "Who the hell was this movie even made for?!" Your average porn enthusiasts can get their wank on to any one of the BILLIONS of other videos out there. As for your average "Twilight" fan, they are either 10 year old girls obsessed with "Glee" and Willa Smith or 50 year old spinsters obsessed with their cats and tiny sweaters that can go on their cats. Neither of these seems particularly like the porn industry's target demographic. The only real option left is that this movie was made for people like me who would watch it and get so pissed off about it that they'd write something about it on the internet and inadvertently cause.. more... people....

Dear gods, what have I done?!

In case you were wondering just how bad the acting really is, I present to you now the ENTIRE MOVIE "This Isn't Twilight - The XXX Parody" (sans all the porny bits). Enjoy??!

Food: Double Down

KFC Double Down

Availability: All participating KFC restaurants.
Price: $5.65

The KFC Double Down. What the hell America? Is this really one of our contributions to the world, a chicken sandwich that avoids the one thing that truly makes a sandwich: bread. I can only assume that KFC is trying to keep people from thinking about how they treat their animals by simply giving them all congestive heart failure. Anyway, on with the review! The Double Down is one of those ideas so crazy it's just extra crazy. It's right up there with the Krispy Kreme Double Cheeseburger that came out a few years ago. It all starts with with a piece of chicken, your choice of fried or grilled. For this review I did try one of each. As stated before, there is no bread, just a chicken fillet. Next comes a helping of the "Colonel's Sauce". *For the record, I have no idea what the sauce is. I really couldn't taste it that much despite how much of it there was on the thing.* Next up we have 2 slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese, followed by 2 stripes of bacon. One last thing before the top piece of chicken, more fucking Colonel's Sauce. There you have it, a literal recipe for disaster. Let's take a look at the final product.


Yum. I decided to go with the grilled option on this one, while Sarah went with the fried variety. Right away, the first problem arose - How the hell do you eat this thing?! There was no easy way to pick the thing up. Combining the grease, melted cheese, and sauce, the thing was almost too slick to hold together. Not helping matters is that they wrap the whole thing in a 1-ply thick sleeve. Mine almost disintegrated, while Sarah's fried one was right out of the fryer and thus impossible to hold in one's bare hands. "Man if only there was some kind of baked shell I could hold this in..." she said. We eventually made due with a few napkins. Finally, we were ready for the first bite.


"Holy hell! That was a lot of fucking meat and cheese!" This was my first thought. Not that eloquent, but very true. Sarah agreed once she got the feeling back to her scorched mouth. The meat was almost too much. Each bite was like eating an entire Snacker. And the cheese, there was no end to the cheese. It was the strongest flavor in the whole thing. Honestly, if they hadn't told me that it came with bacon, I wouldn't have even known it. Also, it is very salty tasting. This is probably due to the fact that each sandwich has roughly ONE FULL DAYS WORTH OF SODIUM. The grilled comes in at 1,430 mg, while the fried settles at a respectable 1,380 mg. Calorie-wise the sandwich doesn't seem as bad, at least on paper. 460 for the grilled and 540 for the fried. I'm sure, though, that there are plenty of other numbers that go along with this things Nutritional Facts to make up for this surprisingly "low" number.


For those of you that may be worried about my health now, please don't fret. I found a way to counteract the harmful effects of the Double Down:



All in all: 5 out of 10
This thing is exactly what you think it is. It looks awful and you will feel awful after eating it. That being said, it doesn't really taste that bad, it just tastes...a lot...? Things like this exist and we wonder why other countries hate us.

Movie: Teeth

Teeth (2007)

Written and Directed by: Mitchell Lichtenstein

Starring: Jess Weixler and John Hensley

Teeth, as IMDB would lead me to believe, is the type of movie one would enjoy if their tastes lay somewhere between Tinto Brass's Caligula and Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct. I assume that IMDB's recommendation filter probably just picked up on "sex" and "violent" and decided to call it a day. Teeth, in addition to having nothing in common with these two movies, is an interesting take on the 'coming of age' theme as well as a slightly confusing horror-esque movie.

Our movie focuses on the exploits of Dawn O'Keefe (Jess Weixler), a high school student that promotes abstinence despite her overly on-the-nose name. She and her family live in an unnamed, vaguely Appalachian town built in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. The movie lets us know pretty early on that Dawn is different from most other people. She has a fairly irregular home life shared by her father, Bill; cancer suffering step-mother, Kim; and her death metal listening, drug using, layabout step-brother, Brad (John Hensley).

Dawn and her exceptionally small group of friends all belong to a sexual awareness group called 'The Promise'. They give speeches to younger kids on the importance of not having sex until you are married. Shortly after giving a speech on purity, our protagonist is introduced to Tobey, or as I called him throughout the movie "The Lost Jonas Brother". She makes it pretty obvious from that moment on that she would probably be willing to trade in the whole purity thing for a good roll in the hay.

Things move pretty quickly for the two and after a few days they decide to take things to the next level and go swimming, alone. Oh, the scandal. After seeing each other in next to nothing, things go downhill fast. Tobey reveals that he would like nothing better than to bed down Dawn. When she sticks to her guns and insists on leaving, Tobey decides to take what he wants. After forcing himself inside, we see his look go from rage to pleasure, then from confusion to horror. Once a few terror filled moments have passed we see Tobey pull back to reveal a bloody stump where his manhood once was. He flees in shame and fear into the lake to get away from Dawn.

The next day Dawn, determined to find answers as to what happened, starts researching a seemingly mythical condition named "vagina dentata". The myth tells that from time to time a woman is born with a tooth lined vagina requiring a "hero" to triumph over her vagina, knockout the teeth, and make her a woman. A few more incidents involving her vagina and blood loss confirms to Dawn that is has vagina dentata. More importantly, though, she learns that she has control over it.

Meanwhile, Dawn's mother suffers through an episode with her illness and is taken to the hospital, only to pass away a short while later. Tempers flare at the O'Keefe home as Bill lays the blame for her death on his step-son, Brad, who was home at the time having sex and generally ignoring the fact his mother was in trouble. Bill lashes out at Brad only to be assaulted by the unruly youth's dog, placing him in the ER.

Dawn, know realizing that her step-mother is dead and her father is injured due to Brad, decides to take matters into her own hands. She goes back to the family home and convinces her step-brother to sleep with her. I think you can probably figure out what happens from here. After the deed is done, Dawn packs up a few things and leaves town, presumably to use her vagina to get what she wants from now on.

All in all: 8 out of 10

This is a fun little movie if you are looking for something different out of a scary movie or if you feel it would be fun to give a younger sibling an irrational fear of women.

Comic: Y: The Last Man

Y: The Last Man(2002 - 2008)

Written By: Brian K. Vaughan

Penciled By: Pia Guerra

Released By: Vertigo, a DC Imprint

Y: The Last Man is everything one could want from a comic, barring some fanatical need to see muscled-out men running around in tights. It is a very thoughtful and purpose driven story that forces one to wonder, "How would I handle things if I were the last man on earth?"

*Note* Ahead there are some spoilers, but I will try to keep it to a minimum. This book is just too good for me to feel okay in ruining it for someone else.

The mystery starts right from the first page with a female NYC police officer stating to a distressed mother that "...all of the men are dead." We are then treated to a brief glimpse into our soon to be main characters' lives by way of what happened to them right as a world-wide phenomenon occurs. All the males around the world, regardless of race, nationality, creed, or species, spontaneously bleed out and die. Yorick Brown, an unemployed illusionist, and his Capuchin monkey Ampersand suddenly find themselves in a very unique situation: they are seemingly the only ones spared their gender's grisly fate.

Without giving much away, Yorick decides to track down his girlfriend, Beth, who is currently residing in Australia. This turns out to be much harder than he could have ever guessed. Joined by a small group of companions, Yorick ventures forth into a much different world than he is accustomed to. Along the way, the group will find itself constantly at odds with each other as they press forward towards the goal of finding out what happened and if it's too late to fix it.

Eisner Award winning author Brian K. Vaughan and illustrator Pia Guerra piece together a story full of twists and turns, laughs and tears, and most importantly courage and heart. There is seldom, if ever, a time in this story's 60-issue run that left this reader bored or unsure of where the story was going. A fantastic read from start to finish. I whole-heartily recommend that everyone should at least try reading this series. I doubt that you will be disappointed.

All in all: 10 out of 10

This is definitely the book to read if you're into comics and would like a break from the usual 'Cape-and-Cowl' books.

Movie: District B13

District B13/Banlieue 13 (2004)

Directed By: Pierre Morel

Written By: Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri

Starring: David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli

District B13 is one of the most fun viewing experiences I have ever had. This movie is a stuntman driven thrill ride. (Wow, you'd think I was getting paid to give lines like that.) The only real downside for this movie is the fact that it is a stuntman driven thrill ride. The dialogue is a little strange in spots (whether this is due to the writers or the French to English translation team is a point for someone else to analyse), the story is completely fucking ludicrous and our main actor, David Belle, is about as emotive as a wooden statue. This is definitely a guilty pleasure movie. However, if you go into it knowing this, you are guaranteed a good time.

The feature starts with a text scroll letting us know the basic info that sets up the movie: the year is 2010, we are in Paris, and the French government has discovered a new way to stop crime: giant walls topped with razor wire. I will be the first to tell you that I know almost nothing about France, but something tells me that when the movie was made in 2004, the country probably wasn't 6 years out from sectioning off it's most dangerous areas. I'm also not really sure how you build a wall like that and have everyone inside that district not go running off through an unfinished area. Oh well, this is an area we are supposed to be just accepting as fact so that we can get on with the action. At it's heart this is a tale of teamwork and overcoming social stereotypes, it just happens to be told through the ass-kicking team of Leito and Damien.

The first member of our duo is Leito(David Belle). He is the owner of a project in the annexed Paris area known as B13. He seems to be a fairly good guy, considering his surroundings, as we find him emptying out several large packets of heroin into his bath tub in an effort to dispose of them. Things go from tranquil to insane in a matter of minutes when the original owners of the drugs show up to reclaim them. The bad guys, enforcers for a local crime lord, make short work of Leito's gang. Leito then proceeds to lead the baddies on a whirlwind tour of his building, inside and out, through the stunning use of parkour.

As a side note here, David Belle basically invented parkour, an urban sport-like activity that involves getting from one point to another in the most efficient and fluid way possible. Parkour will seem familiar if you have seen any of the following movies: The Transporter series, Casino Royale, The Incredible Hulk, or the video games Mirror's Edge and Assassin's Creed.

Being unable to reclaim the dope or Leito, the bad guys head back to their boss, Taha (co-writer Bibi Naceri). Not pleased with this, Taha sends them out to kidnap Leito's sister, Lola, which he feels will illicit a reaction. Almost immediately, Leito arrives and breaks his sister out of there, while simultaneously capturing Taha and another stash of drugs. Leito then proceeds to the nearest Police outpost in B13 in order to turn Taha in for his crimes only to be told that the Police are moving out of B13 and that Taha is free to go. Fearing an all out gang war on their front steps, the Commanding Officer instead locks up Leito and allows Taha to kidnap Lola again. Leito, very pissed at this turn of events, kills the lead officer before the scene ends.

We pick up 6 months later with a scene involving a different gang that runs an underground gambling establishment. This scene is a little hard to follow at first due to the odd dialogue and the ridiculous looking boss this crime family has. We quickly establish that the family has been infiltrated by an undercover cop and that the building has been surrounded by a SWAT team. Enter Undercover Super Cop, Captain Damien Tomaso. Sent in to apprehend the crime boss Carlos Montoya, Damien, after revealing himself to be a cop, quickly busts a large number of heads in a short amount of time in a scene very reminiscent of one in Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior.

Immediately after completing this particular assignment, he is assigned a new mission that will be taking him into the heart of B13. It seems that an armored car, carrying a new "clean" bomb, just happened to be traveling past B13 and was hijacked and taken through the border crossing, finding itself in Taha's capitalistic hands. Unfortunately, the bomb has been activated and only 24 hours remain until the nuke goes off and wipes out B13. Damien has been chosen to go into B13 to retrieve the bomb and save the day, only this time he'll need a partner. His superiors decide to partner him up with convicted cop killer Leito, who will be acting as his guide. The only issue seems to be that they didn't really mention any of this to Leito, which leads to a lot of trust issues. Without ruining the rest of the story, a lot of asses are kicked and we are treated to a lot more insanely fun parkour action.

Bottom line is, Luc Besson has only further cemented himself as one of the best action movie makers of the last decade with this one. Now with several classics like La Femme Nikita and Leon(The Professional) and newer, higher budget extravaganzas like The Transporter movies and Jet Li's Kiss of the Dragon, I can only see things getting better from Besson.

All in all: 8.5 out of 10

Definitely worth watching if you like insane stunts and kick-ass action, or if you are looking for a flick that will allow you to retain your manhood while confidently stating "Why yes, I do watch foreign films."

Movie: Blue Sunshine

Blue Sunshine (1976)

Written and Directed by: Jeff Lieberman

Starring: Zalman King and Deborah Winters

Blue Sunshine is a fair step away from being a cinematic classic, but it is not entirely without it's demerits. The movie raises a few too many questions than it provides answers for and tends to think that it is a bit more important than it really is, but what it lacks in plot it makes up for with a fresh(for the time) concept and a reasonably paced story of a man on a mission.

The movie revolves around a wincing man-child named Jerry Zipkin(Zalman King). Zipkin, or as he is occasionally referred to "Zippo", is your typical "everyman" type character except for the fact he has no job, no means of supporting himself, and only seems to be friends with successful people. I suppose we can overlook this due to the fact that it allows him to spend the duration of the movie looking for clues related to the titular substance Blue Sunshine without us having to wonder why no one seems to realize that they haven't seen him in days and his friends have no problem breaking laws to help him despite having no damn reason to. Also, if the actor's name, Zalman King, strikes a bell for you, but your sure you've never seen him before, then I would be willing to bet that you had Showtime during the mid-90's. Zalman King would go on to do almost nothing for the next 15 years until a little show he wrote, directed, produced, and occasionally starred in called Red Shoe Diaries. That's right, our movie's hero is the guy that brought us one of televisions longest running softcore porn series. Huzzah!

In a way, it kind of surprises me that King never quite caught on as a leading man. Much like Bruce Campbell, he is a fair actor, delivering his lines with the right amount of intensity(usually) and only occasionally looking like he can't remember what his next line is. Plus, he is the spiting image of Michael Douglas. Seriously, put a beard on him and he looks like Douglas in The China Syndrome. Speaking of look-a-likes, our other main character is Alicia Sweeney, Zipline's girlfriend/wife/neighbour(it's never really explained that clearly), as portrayed by Deborah Winters. I spent a good portion of the movie sure that I'd seen her somewhere else. Then I placed it: Dee Wallace. These two could be sisters, which leads me to believe that our Director Jeff Lieberman really wanted Keller from Streets of San Francisco and Nettie from The Stepford Wives, but these two were all he could afford.

Anyway, on with the story. Blue Sunshine is a movie about drugs and their dangerous side-effects, which basically makes this a 90-minute PSA of the Reefer Madness variety. Zipper and his lady friend begin the movie attending a little house party. It seems pretty normal with the exception of some guy that thinks he is Rodan(of Godzilla fame) and everyone's best friend Frannie(a guy) preforming the laziest Frank Sinatra bit ever. During a particularly showy move, Frannie takes one of the audience into his arms and lays one on her. Not feeling that to be appropriate, the unnamed girl's unnamed man goes to pull Frannie off her by the hair, for some reason. To everyone's horror, Frannie's hair pulls right off like a really bad piece. Suddenly non-responsive and wild eyed, Frannie makes a line for the door and disappears into the night. Everyone decides to split up and look for him, with the exception of a few women who decide to stay at the house and wait for Frannie to show back up and murder them. Because that's what he does. Apparently losing your hair makes you kill people. The first one to find him is Zipwad. After a lackluster fight, they end up squaring off in the middle of the road. Zap ends the fight by throwing Frannie out in front of a passing semi. The drivers chase off our guy only leading the cops to believe that Zipling was the crazy S.O.B. that just killed 3 girls and someone that everyone already saw go crazy.

Events like this keep the movie going towards the end. Zip Pliskin shows up at a new leads house just in time for them to flip out or just too late and they are already dead. Through the course of everything though, we learn that all the victims have two things in common: they all went to the same college and they all had the same dealer. Turns out that Blue Sunshine was a specialized form of LSD that their dealer cooked up that has a time release side-effect of making you lose your hair and proceed to go bat-shit murder crazy after a 10 year grace period. The movie makes no attempt to explain how the BS(*snicker*) LSD was different, how or who made it, what happens to the dealer(who is now running for Congress by the way), or how to tell whose taken it, apart from assuming that anyone who was at Stanford in 1967 is about to go berserk. It does, however, mention that 255 tabs of the stuff are still unaccounted for. Why such a specific number? You mean to tell me no one bothered to keep track of who made it or who it was sold to, but they apparently kept records on how much of the stuff was left after the big summer selling push? Oh well, I guess this is what you have to deal with when you watch a movie made by the man who created the focus of one of my favorite MST3K episodes:Squirm!

All in all: 7 out of 10

Worth watching if you like your movies halfway between Scanners and The Fugitive.