You probably think I’m going to make fun of Marche Taylor for wearing a skimpy dress to her prom and getting escorted out in handcuffs, don’t you? Admit it: you think I’m going to go off on a rant about how the kids are out of control these days and the world is going to hell in a handbasket and nobody knows how to make a decent handbasket anymore. That would be a great rant for an older, more conservative blogger¹, but me? Come on. I can actually relate to Ms. Taylor’s plight, because I went through something very similar at my own prom.

The year was 1999. Limp Bizkit and Smashmouth were at the top of the charts, people were legitimately concerned that their computers might kill them on New Year’s Eve, and there I was, standing outside my senior prom in a leather harness and a pair of assless chaps.

Our principal, Dr. Louis Killjoy Sr., was standing in front of the doors with his arms folded across his chest. “You’re not coming in here dressed like that,” Dr. Killjoy said.

“I completely understand,” I replied. “This is a ridiculous outfit for me to be wearing to senior prom. What was I thinking?”

“Well, I’m glad we see eye to eye on this. Put ‘er there,” he said, holding out his hand. I tried to shake it, but my hand kept slipping out. “Are you slathered from head to toe in baby oil?” he asked.

“No,” I lied.

“Thank God,” he said. “If you were, it would be nearly impossible for us to catch you if you tried to run through this security gate into the prom.”

A few minutes of blank staring went by.

“I see,” I lied.

“You know - because you’re too slippery to grab.”

Another minute or two went by, and we both looked at our watches. Mine was too smudged from the baby oil to read, but I pretended I could read it anyway and looked around impatiently, as if to say, “Come on, people - let’s move it along.” A few dozen people stood behind me in line with the same expression on their faces.

“You’re an idiot, Wolinsky,” Dr. Killjoy said. “Go home.”

I took his advice, and the next day I went out for pie with my friends. They all told me the prom had been lovely.

A few weeks later we all went to college and never saw each other again.

Ba-dum ching!

¹ Like an 88-year-old, for example.

An interesting little sidebar to the success of the Ironman films, are the reports about how Robert Downey Jr. has had a hard time landing roles in Hollywood for insurance reasons. Even considering Downey’s decades of drug abuse and public nudity arrests, it turns out that when you establish a reputation as “the guy who was kicked off Ally McBeal” you become a serious financial liability for any production company. “How bad can this guy be?” I imagine insurance executives asking each other, as they pore over actuarial tables.

Regular readers of my “Risk Management Korner” column will be aware of my long-standing fascination with the insurance industry. Yet it had never occurred to me before that the possibility of your lead actor driving naked down Sunset Boulevard while throwing phantom rats out the window (this actually happened) was something that had to be accounted for and insured against. In some insurance company out there, there’s a spreadsheet calculating the possibility of “drug fueled, imaginary-rodent-ejecting car ride (nude)” It was someone’s job to make this spreadsheet. This tickles me to no end.

Of course, once you think about it, this kind of insurance makes perfect sense. A movie requires a huge amount of capital up front to be made, none of which can be recouped until the film is finished and released. If filming gets delayed or canceled because your lead actor got caught humping a bus shelter (I made that one up) the production company would be out of some serious money.

I’m guessing that the original intent of these insurance policies was to protect against delays caused by illness or injury, and not to protect against the possibility of the production being kicked out of a country because your lead tackled the monarch to during a publicity event “to protect him from bees” (I made that one up too.) These kind of insurance policies would make a Hollywood executive in the 1940’s sleep a little easier knowing about Humphrey Bogart’s fourteen pack a day smoking habit, but it amazes me to think they’ve now grown to encompass the possibility of your lead actor swinging across a hotel ballroom on a chandelier and then striking Jodie Foster in the face with his penis. (I’m kinda having fun with this.)

Most of Downey’s troubles with insurance bonds should be in the past now. He’s reportedly been clean for several years, and has even managed to make a couple films without hostage negotiators getting involved. So it was evidently fairly straightforward for Ironman’s producers to secure insurance for him for the movie. But there’s still a wrinkle: no-one was planning on making a single Ironman movie.

As I type this I’m wearing my usual writing get-up: a Spider Man 3 promotional T-shirt, an X-Men III promotional golf visor, and some original 1983 Batman Underoos. (I’m also sipping an alcohol-flavored beverage from a promotional Pirates of the Caribbean grog mug.) As you should be able to deduce from my entirely normal attire, there’s not a single summer movie being made these days that isn’t being deliberately designed to be the first of a seven movie franchise. And not withstanding the excellent work of Val Kilmer and George Clooney, it’s pretty hard to make a successful franchise when your lead role keeps changing hands. Sure, we can all be pretty confident that Tobey McGuire isn’t going to get in a fistfight with a transvestite over half a handle of Wild Turkey. But even considering his recent good behavior, it must take some large, steely, painfully heavy balls to take the same multi-million dollar leap of faith on Robert Downey Jr.

The Weather Channel. The phrase brings to mind thoughts of planning your weekend, flipping through en route to According to Jim, maybe even watching a hurricane tear your crappy state a new asshole. But there is a dark side to The Weather Channel. A world of sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and corporate cover-ups. Yes, the unthinkable has happened: The Weather Channel is interesting.

The man who made it so interesting? Bob Stokes, their “lead anchor” (sorry Bob, but you’re still just a weather man). After running his original co-anchor off with physical and verbal abuse, and not getting fired for it, he realized that he was so valuable to The Weather Channel that he could get away with basically anything. What made his bland, pan-asian face and generic way of speaking so damned valuable, we’ll never know.

But the fact is his new co-anchor, Hillary Andrews, was forced to put up with three years of sexual harassment and petty sabotage during which her superiors refused to act, and ultimately laid her off. Damn, but that Bob Stokes must be some draw. And all this in the midst of a 5 billion dollar bidding war for the sale of the channel. My God, The Weather Channel, when did you become a soap opera?

Probably about the time these pages from Andrew’s deposition hit the Internet. Prepare yourselves, readers; you are about to enter the seedy cloak-and-dagger world of national weather reportage.

Harrowing. We can only hope this monster’s abuses are finally brought to light, and The Weather Channel is replaced with something more wholesome and worthwhile, like foxy boxing.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael fulfills his title of world champion watcher of female mud wrestling as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

Ever since this whole War on Terror thing started, America has been slowly and steadily falling behind the rest of the world. Our money is worthless, our economy is in the shitter, and our standing as the leading global economic superpower is waning. Meanwhile Western Europe is sighing and shaking its collective head, China is too busy toiling around the clock like some crazy 1.3 billion-member ant colony to even notice, and the Dutch are sitting around laughing at pedophilia… and self-righteously defending their national identity on the internet.

Saving the world from evil-doers is all well and good, but it makes your country’s TV shows suck. Think about it: American Idol debuted in 2002, just nine months after 9/11. Coincidence? I think not. How did waging an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy turn a glorified karaoke competition into a #1 hit? I have no idea, but Ryan Seacrest doesn’t make me feel like everything is OK. If I had my choice, I’d much rather see some guy with an awesome Hitler moustache bouncing around inside a giant balloon when I turn on my TV during primetime.

Oddly enough, the Japanese haven’t even heard about the War on Terror. That might sound outlandish, but think about it: If you had shit like this on TV in your country, would you really be that concerned with global geopolitics? Nope - you’d just sit there on your couch, mouth agape, watching some guy with an awesome Hitler moustache bounce around inside a giant balloon. Then you’d get bored, change the channel, and watch something else equally awesome. Then you’d go to work for 18 hours and fall asleep on the train, but hey - at least you’d have some awesome shit to watch on TV when you got home.

Last week, something happened to me for the first time: I had an internet success. The premiere episode of Hate By Numbers lit up YouTube (by Gladstone standards) and brought me exposure like I’d never experienced before. True, one commenter called me a “gay … liberal,” while another found me to be more of a “Republican polesmoker,” but still the page views, comments, and ratings were all largely favorable. Besides, I felt good that I could unite our politically divided country with my alleged gayness. I also garnered some nice comments from Cracked readers —at least one of which— will likely bring Chris Hansen to my house with a film crew. (All I can say in my defense, Mr. Hansen, is that there was some question as to whether MLE05 were an underage girl or an adult male.)

But what to do now? Yes, it’s true that Michael Bay called my agent and offered money for the rights to turn Hate By Numbers into a summer blockbuster, starring Shia Labeouf as a dangerously unhinged mathematician, but that deal fell through. “Well, that’s it,” I thought. “My run at the big time is over.”

But just then the red phone in the Cracked House started ringing. DOB answered.

“‘This-shit-is-wack’ O’Brien is on the phone for you, Gladstone,” he said.

I took the phone. “Who’s your girlfriend having sex with now, Jack?” I asked.

“No, it’s not that,” he said. “I have a deal for you. What would you say, if I asked you to do your successful feature, Hate By Numbers, on a semi-regular basis, for no extra money?”

“How can I refuse?” I asked. “Anything else to sweeten the deal?”

“Yes. We also won’t be titling any of your posts Hate By Numbers because people seem to respond better to X Things That Pissed Me Off About Y.”

I winced, but as sure as I knew Chris Buckholz would leave me to die in a fire should Wolinsky burn the Cracked House down while freebasing, I knew Jack was right. So I called up my good friend and (former Cracked superstar) Ian Cooper and had him put together a kick ass logo for me. Then I went looking for something upsetting on FoxNews.

(more…)

Cracked.com’s Headitor, (that’s “Head Editor” shortened to just one word, Sports Fans, and you’re welcome), Jack O’Brien called all of the bloggers for a very important meeting. Even Cracked and Week In Douchebaggery Superstar Lex Friedman was in attendance. I hate being woken up in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, so I was already eager for the meeting to end.

“What’s this all about, Jim,” I asked.

“Please stop calling me ‘Jim,’” Jack responded. Lately I’d been trying to establish a Batman-Commissioner Gordon relationship between me and Jack. So far, he hasn’t been behind it. Incidentally, that’s also the reason why I keep breaking in through his window whenever I want to speak with him. Also, why I keep throwing smoke bombs at his family. Lex spoke up.

“Guys, thanks for coming out today, I really appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it, Lex & the City,” I answered.

“Don’t call him that,” Jack said.

“Anyway, the reason I called this meeting is because I want us to start shifting the focus of our articles and blog posts into a new direction,” Lex went on. The bloggers all got nervous. Me especially. Unless the new focus is “Things Found in Hannah Montana’s Trash,” I’m totally up shit’s creek.

“Why,” Swaim asked. Lex started passing around some documents to everyone.

“On these sheets, you’ll find a list of the top words and phrases people have typed into various search engines that lead them to this site. For example, about 150,000 people found us by typing the word ‘Cracked’ into Google, which makes sense.” I didn’t know why exactly that made sense, but I know better than to question Lex Friedman. “What I need you bloggers to do is to go through the other top words and phrases and start writing about that.”

“I’m not sure… You want us to pander” Gladstone said.

“I think what Lexas Chainsaw Massacre is trying to say,” I began, “is that we need more content that directly involves things found in Hannah Montana’s garbage.”

“That’s not even close to what I’m trying to say. Even a little bit. Okay, look: For example, according these records, 5,091 people found Cracked by typing ‘inspirational songs’ into a search engine. So, Bucholz, maybe you could do a post on-” Bucholz interrupted him as soon as his name was mentioned.

“I’m not doing shit. I’m gonna write about what I want, whenever I want to. Hope you fuckers like the Olympics.” He then got on his motorcycle and road off.
For a while, nothing happened.
Then, after nothing stopped happening, things started to happen. Specifically, Ross spoke.

“Is anyone else, like, totally terrified of Bucholz?” I seriously almost crapped all over the place, Bucholz is scary as hell.

(more…)

Ross Wolinsky is taking a personal day today. Filling in for him will be his grandfather, Pappy Wolinsky.

Hello, internet! How are you all doing? I’m doing fine, thanks!

You know, back in my day we didn’t have much scratch, but that was a different era - one where men wore hats, women wore dresses, and there was never any confusing the two!

We’d do all kinds of things for kicks back then - if we had the dough, we’d get dolled up in our best glad rags and head to town for some giggle water, but more times than not we were left flipping eggshells and spinning nuts - if you could get your hands on them! Hoo wee! We didn’t have the cable TV and Nintendro machines driving us all bugaboo back then! Heck no! All we needed was a bottle of hooch and a dame in the struggle buggy, and anything beyond that was just padding the butler’s ankles as far as we were concerned!

Things were a lot cheaper back then, boy I’ll tell you what! Back then you could get a gallon of milk for a penny, and a gallon went a lot further than it does today - we didn’t have those big fancy drinkin’ glasses you kids have today! I used to drink milk out of a rusty old tin can! There was only one tin can in the house that didn’t have any rust on it, and everyone knew that one belonged to Pa. It’d be coolies bending the trolley tracks if you drank out of Pa’s tin can - he’d box your ears but good!

Pa was a man who was hitting on all sixes for sure, and he could be tougher than a Chinaman’s mule on a hot Tuesday morning, but every once in a while he’d take us to town to see a talkie. Back then talkies only cost a nickel, and they were better than the garbage you get in the movie houses nowadays! That was when entertainment was on the level, boy! Now you’ve got your hotsy-totsy computer effects and your Iron Men and whatnot… horsefeathers! That ain’t entertainment! Nobody knows how to make a good movie anymore! Bah!

Back in my day, we didn’t need all these fancy effects and flashy cars and rap music to make a good talkie! All we needed was a good story - preferably one about a group of dogs having a party together, and if one of the dogs tried to rape one of the other dogs, all the better! If you could get a couple of dogs, some tiny evening wear, some string, and a jar of peanut butter together, why, you’d have a plum-ducky film on your hands!

And boy, those dogs were disciplined back then! We didn’t need some Spanish poolboy “whispering” at them to get them in line, no sir! But like I said, it was a different era back then: one where men wore hats, women wore dresses, and dogs knew their place. These films nowadays… applesauce, I say! Applesauce!

Yes, Florida is actually trying to split into two, with one half (presumably the one with Disney World) remaining a part of our glorious nation and the other (Universal Studios) sinking into the sea where it belongs.

And readers, I implore you: if you live in Florida, SUPPORT THIS MEASURE. Then move to a less shitty state. I hear Wyoming’s got room.

Let’s face facts. Florida is the wang of the United States for a reason: it’s a magnet for disease, usually smells bad, and at times (Spring Break, Mardis Gras, any other Girls Gone Wild-related calender event) it’s filled with wriggling white creatures who are just passing through.

Well, I say enough. Florida, don’t let Cuba hit you on the ass on your way out.

And believe me, I don’t take hate lightly; until now the only things I’ve hated are the chips and salsa at Mexican restaurants in Europe, dogs who act like they want it and then are all “yip yip yip” when it’s time to get down to business, and Judd Apatow (Grr! I hate him so much! Grr!). So when I say “I hate Florida,” I say it as someone who’s never gone near the hellhole and never will.

“But Michael,” you ask in your effeminate voices, “why so angry?”

“Shut up,” I answer, and then I ride away on my Harley.

But okay, just to humor you.

First off, if the liberal media I subscribe to is to be believed, you fuckers and your goddamned butterfly ballots stuck us with an idiot President and an expensive, highly fatal war in the Middle East, rather than just a boring, inoffensive President who invented the Internet. By my calculations, that means you owe us 500 billion dollars (and counting), the execution of Jeb Bush, and a public apology.

Secondly, they want to teach their ugly, incestuous kids Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is about as intelligent as the people in Florida, which is to say not very. Until religion can do any of the following things:

Then it has no right being taught as science or, for that matter, even being presented to our children. Yes, that’s right; I am firmly against children even being exposed to religion at school.

Middle School is a place to lose all faith in a higher loving power, and taking that experience away from our young people is just plain unfair. If I had to go through it, so should they.

Religion and school are like milk and gin; you can mix them if you want, but you’re just going to end up with a terrible taste in your mouth and a clogged kitchen sink. Alright, maybe that’s not exactly what it’s like, but I didn’t want to use a metaphor that would shoot over the heads of the mongoloid Floridian “readers.”

Bottom line: Get the hell out, God. And if you’ve got a problem with that little scenario, I’ll be waiting. You know where to find me (I presume).

Lastly, I was never that close to my Grandparents, and old people make me uneasy. What do they know that I don’t?

So do your duty, Americans (while you still are ones) and vote for Floridian secession.

It’s the right thing to do, and if you’re stupid enough to follow the advice of a Cracked blogger, you deserve no better.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes enemies states at a time as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

I love ice cream. It’s the only dessert that when I eat it, it somehow gets into my stomach and pushes all the other food out of the way to make room for more. I’m convinced that if I were ever in a sitcom-style situation in which I were trapped in an ice cream warehouse, the paramedics would find me dead in the morning, stomach ripped open like the fat guy in 7, face down in a puddle of pralines and cream.

Thus it is with great sadness that I report to you the death of one Irvine Robbins, without whom we’d have to choose from a measly 15.5 flavors at our local Baskin.

Oh well; making it to 90 is quite a feat for a guy who spent his life constantly surrounded by cookie dough.

And in the interest of honoring the man, I think it’d be a good time to point out how crucial his life really was. Without people like Irvine, there’d be no filter between the vast uncharted territory of ice cream flavors and those 31 gleaming tubs in the ice cream parlor. There would be no one to delineate what is delicious and what is sacrilege.

And lest you think such delineation is unnecessary, I’d like to direct your attention to:

10. Wasabi Ginger

First of all, it actually burns your sinuses, like eating wasabi. Whatever points that earns for accuracy, it immediately loses for unpleasantness, which is the same reason jelly belly samplers always have jalapenos left over. And surprisingly, this flavor is from Cold Stone, the kind of class act you wouldn’t expect to make such a rookie mistake. For shame. What am I supposed to mix in, chunks of fish?

9. Fish

What am I supposed to mix in, wasabi? I actually saw a guy on Iron Chef make this when the ingredient of the day was fish. When the judges asked him why the hell he would do that, he said he was “just curious.” You know, that’s the same rationale Mengele gave at the Nuremberg trials. In case you didn’t guess, he lost the title Iron Chef and was driven from Kitchen Stadium by an angry mob.

8. Black Licorice

Hey, I know! Let’s take a “candy” that everyone hates and use it to fuel an ice cream flavor equally disgusting and black as the night! Then lets all stab ourselves in the face with our letter openers!

7. Wheat

The retarded cousin of green tea ice cream, wheat manages to be even closer to tasting like dirty ice. The hint of grain suspended on a thin bed of shit will make you wish you weren’t the kind of ignorant tool who buys wheat ice cream.

6. Pit Viper

Yes, eating it makes you badass, but is it worth it? I haven’t been able to determine whether this ice cream is flavored like the venom of the snake (incredibly deadly) or from the actual meat (incredibly putrid), but either way I’d rather prove my manliness by forcing the angry viper into the ice cream maker than by actually eating some.

5. Raw Horseflesh

IT IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. MOVING ON.

4. Tomato

“Ketchup” would probably be a better descriptor, once you add in the liquid component. It makes me wonder if anyone’s ever made a whole ice cream burger by putting ketchup ice cream and mustard ice cream onto some beef ice cream between two layers of wheat ice cream. Then I wonder whether a situation could ever arise in which I am expected to eat something like that. Then I wonder if I have enough aspirin in the house to kill myself.

3. Charcoal

This one is a standout if only because it’s the only item on the list that you would never eat normally, and yet are expected to eat just because it’s ice cream. That’s like me dropping my car keys into some Rocky Road and expecting you to choke it down. And on top of everything, this stuff even coats your lungs with carcinogenic coal dust. Now you too can live the life of a miner!

2. Viagra

It’s ice cream that’ll make your dick hard. I’m not sure what the flavor is like, but at least it’s got that built-in endorsement going for it. On the other hand, it takes a pretty smooth operator to break off foreplay long enough eat an entire scoop of ice cream. That, and I’ll bet it makes free ice cream day at the little league game really awkward.

1. Salad

Look ice cream makers; this isn’t “cute” or “funny.” We eat ice cream because we’re not eating salad. The two are mutually exclusive, and tossing some cucumber into the vat doesn’t make it healthy. It just makes it the most retarded thing you could ever try and market to fatties. And by doing the exact opposite of what we want, you have officially made the worst ice cream flavor ever. Worse than charcoal and raw horse flesh. That, my friends, is something to be proud of.

So thank you, Irvine Robbins, for a life dedicated to shielding us from the horrors of the ice cream world. And for the record, eight out of ten of those flavors are from Japan, so if you want to solve this problem once and for all, you know who to bomb.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael waits for Cold Stone to restock Cake Batter as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

Dear People With Very Specific Skills Who Put Repetitive Videos Of Themselves Showing Off Those Skills YouTube,

First off, I’d just like to congratulate you all: You’ve created a new artform for the internet era, and for that you should be proud. I’m not going to deny that your videos are amazing, but I can’t help but wonder: What did you guys do before YouTube? Did you backflip into your pants whenever more than a handful of people were in the room? Was it hard to do it live because you didn’t have the luxury of editing out all the failed attempts? Did your friends & family get sick of you always trying to backflip into your pants at parties, or did they accept it as part of what made you a beautiful & unique snowflake?

Either way, you guys must be loving this whole YouTube thing, huh? You know - what with all the millions of people out there who haven’t seen you showing off your very specific skills. The view counts keep rising, the comments keep rolling in, and you’re left sitting there, watching it all happen and thinking to yourself, “Gosh! These people love me! They really love me!” I’ll be honest with you, people with very specific skills who put repetitive videos of themselves showing off those skills on YouTube: I’m not entirely sure why we, the YouTube viewing public, eat shit like this up with such a voracious appetite. Yes, your videos are impressive, and no, I don’t think I could backflip into a pair of jeans if I wanted to, but does that really explain why these videos end up being viewed by millions of people? Are we all just jealous of your unbelievably specific skills? I don’t think that completely explains it.

So why then? Why do the guys throwing bottles and sunglasses and jumping into pants get all the internet fame while more deserving characters (like the naked Japanese guy cooking mushrooms) fall by the wayside? I’m going to take a guess: It’s because people are more likely to forward a video of some guys throwing sunglasses onto each others’ faces than a video of a naked Japanese guy in a horse mask cooking mushrooms. People feel comfortable sending their parents and coworkers a video of some guys doing backflips into Levi’s, but a naked Japanese guy cooking mushrooms? Ehh… not so much.

So I have a challenge for you all today (and now I’m talking to all Cracked readers, not just the people with very specific skills who put repetitive videos of themselves showing off those skills on YouTube): I want you all to email the naked Japanese mushroom chef to a parent, relative, or coworker today with a message that says “Thought you would enjoy this LOL!” Let’s give the weirdos their due today.