THE STEADY LEAK RELOADED #4

Comment
on the MB Leak Thread
– Send a
Feedback Letter

The Set Up.

The last big Steady Leak hit the internet the week after Devin left CHUD, so it’s only fitting that the new one hits the week that his new site was revealed. Check out his writings over at http://www.badassdigest.com/ from hence forward. Now that his new gig has been announced you can get your fix of Devin and still enjoy this icky delightful place without any loss of life or limb. Good luck in your future Dev, it looks bright as hell.

But enough about other people’s sites…

We have a new site coming. In December a very pretty and very different from CHUD presence will hit the internet. What will it be covering? Just about everything that our culture allows, and it’ll be done in a way I think you’ll find delicious. I have a feeling it’ll be the big coming out party for Andrea Rothe, a writer you may know from her work here, as she’ll be the lead editor. It’ll definitely have the CHUD vibe in many ways but in others I think it’ll reach beyond. I can’t wait to share it with you.

What is this mysterious new site, you ask? Here’s a tease:

And:

I can’t wait until we launch that sucker sometime in the next two months. What I will say is that there’ll be some great chances for many of you folks to participate in really fun ways. It’s going to be something you wouldn’t expect from us, something a little more mainstream but a lot of fun. And if you have quirky knowledge it’ll be a place to share it. If you have a passion you’re an authority on but aren’t allowed to do in your day job, maybe we have a venue for you.

For example: If you spend your weekends building miniature replicas of Tiananmen Square out of corn… we probably have a place for you.

But enough about our other sites…

CHUD’s redesign is coming along famously [yes you should have it a year ago] and I’ll be accepting Beta Testers for it in the coming week or so, but I figured I’d start to unload it in little pieces.

Here’s the masthead for the new site:

Also, we are now at full steam at the office working on the new site and this delightful place you know so well. We are still flavoring it with spices and we need your help! You
are welcome to send us boxes of Red Vines, movie posters, gold bullion,
flowers, or a postcard from your town (I plan to build a showcase of
Chewer Postcards), or Clash of the Titans figures to our new home:

CHUD.com
c/o Nick Nunziata
12600 Deerfield Parkway
Suite 100
Alpharetta, GA 30004

Here’s the first three postcards up on the wall:

Oh, welcome to the new Steady Leak.

Prolific Stieg #1

Before he died, Stieg Larsson wrote dozens more books in his “Girl” series and hid them in a trunk in the sea, and I’ve got the inside track on them as it was my scuba diving ass that discovered them. Each Steady Leak I’ll unearth a few more for you, as it’s our exclusive:

The Internet: Giving a Voice to the Worst People!

I piss and moan every year it seems about how dumb, rude, boneheaded, disrespectful, and unappreciative message board and talkback people are. I truly expected that culture to evolve in the same manner many other aspects of the web have but they really haven’t. I don’t know the kind of mindset it requires to be a troll. I don’t understand it. We obviously have our share here but even the worst of them are mostly tolerable. They wear you down if you let them but ultimately all I see them doing is getting us to focus on them instead of our work, which is the worst. I think we’re lucky here at CHUD. We’ve fostered such a diverse and fun group of people who are very civil and there’s absolutely no one in our community who uses emoticons or abbreviations to communicate and there’s a precious few uses of stupid terms like Fail, LOL, Pwned, and whatever other terms I’m three years late in recognizing. Any time I need to be reminded how good we have it, I have IMDB’s message boards to bring me back to reality. From the Buried IMDB:

Saw it. BS Anti-war, Anti American, coward propaganda! He didn’t once try to break out of the coffin. How unrealistic is that? Instead, he sits on the phone for an hour an a half. Any real person would break outta the coffin and dig themselves outta the sand. Dumb ass! I woulda been all, I’m outta this *beep* *beep* bitch…and clawed my *beep* ass to the top. Then I woulda taken a gun and shot all the *beep* responsible for that *beep* That’s how the real movie shoulda ended…instead we get this pussy *beep* This is an American in a foreigners land. A real American woulda shown them bitches what’s up. This movie is for wimpy spineless lib pussy AmeriCANTS. Praise Jesus.

Here’s what’s scary: That’s probably not a joke account.

We have it good here. Real good.

The Hobbit. Yawn.

Why am I totally not into the Hobbit movies?

I was interested when Guillermo was doing them but even then felt it was a massive waste of resources. I wanted that dude doing what he’s doing now. I didn’t want Peter Jackson doing them, because he’s left his stamp already and I’m of the belief these films pale in comparison to the original trilogy in terms of depth and value. I was convinced he wouldn’t do them, but here he is.

The casting hasn’t interested me. The argument over locations hasn’t interested me, though a Hobbit film not shot in New Zealand is unfathomable. None of this shit has any bite to me, and I am a massive fan of the originals.

Was it the sheer overload of the original films? I mean, we really couldn’t breathe for like five years without some version of the films coming out, whether theatrically or DVD or extended edition or whatever the hell else. I’m still sort of reeling from it, though a recent revisit of the films a few months ago only affirmed my appreciation for them.

Personally I think it’s self defense. If I took all of this to heart as I did with the first I probably would have shot myself from all of this useless drama.

Give
me
a hand. What’s more depressing, seeing everyone you love eaten by
insects
or watching the nightly news? For me it depends on if the
insects
are arboreal. To save you the heartache, I browsed the US news
section
of CNN for material and all I got was this lousy column. To maintain the fun of this, I’ve used CNN’s headlines as representation. The ones on the actual sites aren’t nearly as funny. Here’s a quick
rundown…

1. The Headline: iPod probed in Amtrak fatality (link)

Nick’s
Take: Based on that headline I want to issue an APB on a tiny rectangle. Sadly, the story is about a gentleman who was smashed away by a train, possibly while listening to his iPod. While a tragedy to be sure, I think we have a built-in response that kicks in when we’re on or near train tracks. I think an alien on its first visit to Earth would know to look around when a set of parallel tracks appear before them. The idea of the story is that the very distracting music player was so connected to the dead sir’s mind that he was too distracted to not die. That said, it’s bad form to jump to conclusions and especially to focus on the blame aspect of it. The last thing we need is a parental group to have a law passed about headphones and trains. A person died and that’s a shame. But maybe it wasn’t because the new John Legend and Roots CD is so fucking bitchin’.

2. The Headline: Christians protest Satan event  (link)

Nick’s
Take: Wait, there was a Satanic Event and Christians protested it? That’s not news. Christians will protest nearly anything. What’s news is that there was a Satanic Event and people took it seriously. Also, how does one advertise such a gathering? Does Craiglist have a cute little Devilish Classifieds section for all your burning needs? I would be delighted to have those annoying ‘Words of Prayer’ radio spots swapped for a ‘Come to Lucifer’ speech.

“Hello, have you considered a future spinning in torment as fiery jerks stab the everlivin’ shit out of you in an inferno that takes your mind and turns it into your worst enemy? If so, than do we have the place for you! Come have a barbed penis sex its way into a new hole of our choice as your body becomes a chamber of delights for stinking red things. Just dial 1-888-SWEARING.”

3. The Headline: Girl steals chicken, skips class  (link)

Nick’s
Take: Which of those two is a crime? The horror of this story is not the vandalism or tardiness involved, nor is it that a girl became a local hero and that her new clucking pet has its own Facebook Page. Those are horrors, but the real horror is that a school has a class devoted to the raising and slaughtering of beasts. I don’t care if it’s Kansas and there’s not as many barista opportunities there. No one should befriend an animal and then kick its ass and make it into a crispy delight. They can learn about that in one of their vocational tract classes but to actually physically do it… that’s a gloryhole with no opening. One of the main thrusts of education ought to be how not to be cruel to animals, even if it’s a little too pussified in how it does so. Kansas fucked up.

4. The Headline: HS coach resigns after remarks (link)

Nick’s
Take: A coach spoke the truth about his less than brilliant football players and that many of them have no father figures. He cares about them but doesn’t mince words about the fact that they face a lot of challenges and that keeping them eligible due to grades is a tough task. He was forced to resign. The Morale of the Story: The truth will set you free.

5. The Headline: Adopted child stuck in Nepal (link)

Nick’s
Take: Based on the headline I had a flashy idea of what the fuck was going on. I envisioned a kid riding his/her bike past the agreed intersection they were allowed to go to without being punished and the worried parents going looking for them only to discover they’d accidentally wound up in Nepal. It happens! Kids don’t know the difference between going over Maple Street, to the sea, over the sea, through cities and towns, up mountains, past a Yak, and over a monastery and being home for supper after a zesty jaunt up the block. As it turns out, loopholes and legal issues prevented a kid who was being rented by an American family from coming to his new home (it’s like Netflix except with kids!). It’s a sad tale, but whatever. This just in: The kid was last seen making a snow angel next to the spot where Toht cooled his sizzlehand.

Who Dat? #1

Hint: He likes Noodles.
Last Installment Answer: Demian Slade!

Guess Right Here.

Jackass is not High Art

People have been overstating Jackass 3-D and its place in the pantheon of entertainment. At its core it is a group of friends making each other laugh, which obviously speaks to me (I mean, what else is our podcast?). It’s a core of folks who have found a way to elevate a very base and lowest common denominator idea to something pretty great. The way the shoot, edit, and conceive the stunts sometimes borders on brilliant but there’s not some deep significance to Jackass. It’s amazing that Johnny Knoxville has watched old cartoons, Buster Keaton movies, and other miscellany as he’s built their brand into something that is a license to print money but the value of the whole ordeal is its simplicity and lack of attempted depth. Don’t blow it out of proportion, critics.

Prolific Stieg #2

Before
he died, Stieg Larsson wrote dozens more books in his “Girl” series and
hid them in a trunk in the sea, and I’ve got the inside track on them as it
was my scuba diving ass that discovered them. Each Steady Leak I’ll
unearth a few more for you, as it’s our exclusive:

REVIEWING YOUR TWIT!

Here I’m going to give my two cents on a few Twitter feeds, some celebrity and some not:

http://twitter.com/#!/jackieearle: Jackie Earle Haley is a delight. His resurgence is an inspiration to us all. He’s on Twitter because he’s Jackie Goddamn Earle Goddamn Haley. Contrary to what you may expect, he’s a sweet gentleman and extremely positive and uplifting. Unfortunately, he’s stopped Tweeting of late. A few tweets:

It was a sweet Valentine’s day here in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics.

Somebody pinch me. These guys are awesome, and Marty rocked Shutter Island. I had a blast. 🙂

Ran into this poor, old, tired remnant of a tree in Stanley Park…

(out of a possible 4 Jims)

http://twitter.com/#!/actordougjones: One of the nicest dudes you will ever meet is NEWS FLASH… one of the nicest tweeters who’ll ever tweet.
A few tweets:

Fall colors, driving through Ohio, cheeseburger on my lap, Zekey cussing in the trunk. Life IS good.

May I please whore myself in these next 2 tweets? …..

While in Indianapolis, My brother Richie tells me Fred Flintstone & I are the same age. Both born in 1960! Yabba Dabba Dougie!!

Today’s
CHUD Fact

The 80’s missed a huge musical synergy opportunity with two huge acts touring together: The Prince and the Lauper.

If CHUD.com Ran the Movies