This article first appeared in The eXile on June 1, 2007

For months now, our overseas readers have been asking us, “What’s a gopnik?” They have a vague idea of what a gopnik looks like, thanks to our Face Control page: tough Russian dudes with bad skin and blank fuck-if-I-care expressions. They’re the guys who look more comfortable squatting than standing. But more than anything else, they’re the last males on planet earth who can get away with wearing those 20s-style leather gangster caps without looking like drama school fags rehearsing for a musical. (more…)

I know, I know, I’ve been AWOL a long time. Shoot me. No, seriously. I wouldn’t object. It’d be great to get shot, as long as it was quick and fatal, not somewhere like the shin, where you scream like a raccoon from the pain and don’t even die. Shot nice and quick by a firing squad, that’s the dream. When that redneck demanded capital punishment by firing squad in Utah, I was as jealous as I used to get reading about Hannibal and Forrest. Lucky bald-headed Aryan Brotherhood bastard: what a way to go! He suckered those Mormons all the way. Lethal injection, now that’s scary: die on a table with tubes going up your elbow? That’s too much like how I’m going to die for reals (and how you’ll die too, even if you don’t want to think about it). But getting shot in the heart—that’s making something of yourself. Be shot. (more…)

I found Predators to be amusing as hell, but then, I was in just the right mood for it. I’d had one of those brain-melting work weeks when you do nothing but talk to people, prepare to talk to people, and talk to people some more. At the end of it you either want to sit in a dark, silent room staring at the opposite wall, or you want to see a violent action film showing many people killed. People who talk, that is. First they talk, then they’re horribly, gruesomely slain.

And that’s Predators all over, my friend. The hero is the guy who talks the least. As it should be!
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Notice to readers: We are scrapping the Great Living Americans nominating process due to your miserable failure, and hereby revoke your suggestion privileges. The eXiled has also initiated a review of our policies regarding the solicitation of reader input to …

As an antidote to the current World Cup soccer idiocy, we suggest taking 1 full dose of The eXile’s classic soccer takedown, published during the 1998 World Cup.

I’ve hated Tom Cruise for twenty-five years now. It’s been one of my favorite traditions, hating Tom Cruise. It involved refusing to go to his biggest blockbusters like Top Gun, then occasionally, foolishly succumbing to the temptation to see just …

Seriously, it beats me how people managed to develop such an appetite for sloppy sentimentality. With each successive hit feature, Pixar tests the limit of that appetite, and finds that there is no limit. Audiences drink up vats of Pixar’s patented corn …

You might have heard that Mark Twain’s autobiography is going to be published this fall—the real one, not the abridged, expurgated, censored, compromised, cleaned-up, Sunday school superintendent version that’s circulated over the years. 5,000 pages of sheer bile, cussedness, and …

This article was first published in the New York Press.

Wall Street bankers and retired hedge fund billionaires have been talking about fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, preparing the masses for austerity measures and cuts in social services—which we are told …

It’s pretty simple, really. If you don’t like action films, don’t go see The A-Team. That is, if you complain when a film has explosions, and a lot of shooting and punching and special effects crashes and whatnot, and no …

This article was first published in Alternet.

Why are the hoppin’-mad Teabaggers so oddly quiet these days, ever since the BP oil disaster? That’s what Thomas Frank, author of What’s The Matter With Kansas? asked last week in his column, …

This afternoon the bullets were once again flying over my city, as Mexican Army soldiers captured the JEFE DE PLAZA of the Zetas in Monterrey Héctor Luna “El Tori” (short for Hector), along with other collaborators in an operation in …

We’re desperate for a laugh these days. Life was bad enough already without oil-covered seabirds. So naturally some gits arranged to provide us with oil-covered seabirds, really glopping the oil on them so they’re clearly immobile in the photos except …

For months people had been asking me if I’m still living in Victorville and if so, why I stopped writing about it. Some dumbshit even accused me of running back to live the big city life, as if I was …

This article first appeared in Viceland.com

Somehow I missed this review in the NY Times of The Fall’s new album. The article is titled “Mr. Smith Shows His Staying Power,” and it came out a couple of weeks ago. …