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Warthog

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Welcome to Honeywine.com!
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We wish you cheers and toast to the living history of a delicious fermented beverage
 

Warthog

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PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT REMINDING UPPITY IRAQASAURS TO LOSE THE INFERIOR ARABIAC PRIDE, SMILE PRETTY FOR THE CAMERAS, AND OPEN WIDE THE DOORS TO CHRISTIAN JDAMS OF FREEDOM
Radio Address by the President
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. My radio message today goes out to the great unwashed camel people of Iraqistan. I want to thank you all for tuning in to the station you could previously hear before we dropped an E-bomb on your version of Katie Couric. To be honest, I wouldn't mind dropping one on our own version too, but my advisors tell me we are still months away from being able to get away with that. Be advised that I will be speaking at you LOUDLY, thereby rendering my thick-tongued Texas twang instantly comprehensible to your sand-mite-filled foreigner ears.

As you may or may not have heard by now, I've got a wee bit of a bloodlust hard-on for that beret-wearing, Magnum PI cretin you losers call a leader, which is why I'm continuing to ignore the North Korean nuclear crisis by dispatching a patriotic quarter million of my nation's innocent teenage leathernecks to play death chicken with your nation's legions of walking godless impediments to my personal enrichment.

I know that many of you feel crushed between the rock and the hard place that is Saddam's iron grip and the promised joys of an American-styled totalitarian theocracy, which we call more simply "democracy." And I realize that in my Pappy's half-assed prequel to my War for Christ and Carbon-Based Fuels, he promised you suckers the moon if you if you would rise up against Saddam Insane. Then when you did just what he asked, the American military kicked back its heels and watched 30,000 to 60,000 of you get slaughtered for treason by Republican Guards.

Now with all that said, I can understand how some of you get all skittish and girly when I ask you to do the same. But today I want to promise you that there is only a 40 – 48 tops! – percent chance of us cracking open some brewskies and watching you get your easily-manipulated throats slit again. That's right - because this time we mean it: we are going to maybe somehow shove democracy down your hummus-slicked throats, prevent your fractious nation from disintegrating into ethnic civil war, open up a few hundred Burger Kings, steal your oil, and be out of your bushy flavor-saver mustaches in just fifteen to twenty years. Yes, we are going to teach you cultureless monkeys the wonders of American democracy by forcibly removing the leader you all seem to like and making you mindlessly kowtow to a puppet that moves his mouth when he is told to by powerful unseen forces. Hey, it's working just fine and dandy here in America, so you Oasis-sniffing trinket sellers better not turn your filthy noses up at the idea!

As a CEO-style President, I make it a point to absorb the insightful and always correct opinions of my expert panel of murderous and senile desk-humping daydreamers before I read their decisions aloud. So when it came time to cook up a reason to burn off some of our weapons stockpile so we can award a juicy batch of new defense contracts to red state corporations, I was assured that you feeble sub-humans would enjoy having your nation blanketed with bullets, bombs, body parts, and all manner of informatively entertaining leaflets.

That's why today I must tell you that I am both puzzled and foaming-at-the-mouth enraged by your failure to greet my invasion force with rose petal confetti and butt cheeks aflutter. Indeed, many of you are actually resisting my blood-drenched application of freedom to your worthless non-country. All of this, after I assured the American people that you wanted us to kill your children and level your homes. Now, I don't mind being a liar at all, but I do mind that you uncooperative sons of desert bitches have showed me to be that liar to the American television audience. Clearly, you people are in need of a little quiet time with the Holy Bible, which teaches us to avoid the sins of Arabiac pride, the false god of Allahammed, and non-white self-respect.

In short, cut the uppity shit and take your fucking raghead democracy medicine, you hear me? Because if need be, I'll exterminate every last one of you bastards if that's what it takes to reap vengeance upon old Osama bin Hussein. Of course, that would be one hell of a loss for both of us. For me, because it would force me to reveal my true motivations in launching an illegal attack against your sovereign nation, and for you, well mainly because then you'll miss out on all the cool new stuff that Dick Cheney and Halliburton are gonna build in your back yard for just 60% over cost.

In closing, just let me say that I understand that Iraq is not unlike a little girl who just had an all-day picnic with Uncle Bad Touch and his full cadre of pervert liberal Democrat friends. Iraq is damaged goods and y'all are the national equivalent of a porno actress – it's hard enough to look at you, but you'd have to be a goddamned nutjob to crawl in the sack with you. But has that stopped me from triple penetrating your nasty carcass? Hell, no. So please, just get with the program and welcome my marauding band of citizen soldiers with open arms, OK? After all, they just wanted the U.S. to pay for their college educations, but instead got a one-way ticket to Dubya's Bloody Ultra-Oblivion Adventure. You people cut them some slack, and we'll truly, truly love you. Doesn't that sound nice? It better.

Bush over and out.
 

Warthog

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April 17, 2003, 10:15 a.m.
Dirty Deeds Done Right
A good time with AC/DC.

By Kevin Cherry



he Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2003 is one of the more notable (no pun intended). From the blue-eyed soul and vocal croonings of the Righteous Brothers to the blue-eyed reggae and ego conflicts of the police, the artists inducted this year possess some of the most recognizable sounds in rock history. And yet, the most recognizable of them all may be the thunder from down under, Australia's AC/DC. When Angus Young's Gibson SG comes through your right speaker, joined by his brother Malcolm's Gretsch Firebird on the left, you know that they'll shake you all night long.














Indeed, AC/DC is the only band inducted this year still actively doing anything all night long. The Police broke up years ago, reportedly with Sting putting a knife to Stewart Copeland's throat; the Clash, too, fell apart due to internal power struggles, and Joe Strummer's death last year merely made a reunion logically impossible. Elvis Costello has spent more time with Burt Bacharach than Randy Bachman of late, and the Righteous Brothers are still living off the royalties from the use of "Unchained Melody" in Ghost.

AC/DC, however, is still going relatively strong. 2000's Stiff Upper Lip broke no new ground, but it showed that the band could still rock, more than twenty years after their first album. Indeed, in 1995, when Ballbreaker was released, the band was accused by critics of making the same album 12 times over. "That's a dirty lie!" lead guitarist Angus Young responded: "The truth is that we've made the same album over and over 14 times!"

And so they have. Despite having a few too many songs about STDs ("The Jack"), as well as sexual promiscuity ("Whole Lotta Rosie") and innuendo ("Hard as Rock," "Let Me Put My Love into You") AC/DC has kept the blues-based rock fires burning. They first toured America in 1977, but they didn't make much of a splash until the success of 1979's Highway to Hell and 1980's Back in Black.

What's interesting to note is that Highway to Hell — which has little to do with Satan and everything to do with the ups-and-downs of touring — was recorded with original lead singer Bon Scott, who drank himself to death shortly before beginning work on Back in Black. The band bounced back from the tragedy, picking up lead singer Brian Johnson, who has been as solid — if not as colorful — a frontman as Scott ever was. Few bands could bounce back so powerfully, let alone so quickly.

The secret to AC/DC's success is quite simple, really: good, tight rock-and-roll songs played with enthusiasm. AC/DC's albums are as electric as their live performances, perhaps because they are one of the few bands to still record live in the studio. "It's the only way to capture as much atmosphere as possible," Angus says. "It doesn't always make for the best friendships, but it sure as hell helps get a good vibe on a record." The guitar sound achieved by the brothers Young is nothing less than gargantuan, which is almost astonishing given that neither stands much more than five feet tall. Dressed in his trademark schoolboy uniform, Angus spends much of an AC/DC concert playing his guitar while riding on Johnson's shoulders.

Judging from their music, the band's politics are nonexistent. That said, they must be capitalists, and smart ones at that: They negotiated their contracts wisely enough that a label for which they have yet to record an album released newly remastered editions of their back catalog — just in time to capitalize on the publicity from their inauguration into the Hall of Fame.

The sound of the remasters is rather good. Some of the albums — like Back in Black — had received a similar upgrade during the mid-1990s, so the sound improvement there is less noticeable. However, the latest remasters improved on those by boosting the volume level, which is something you want when listening to AC/DC. In addition, they come with technology that lets you access, via the Internet, unreleased tracks, live versions, and videos. The Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap CD, for instance, lets you see a live performance of "Baby, Please Don't Go," one of their earliest songs. It's a nice touch, and something I wish other artists would do, but it would be better to put the extras on the discs themselves. The videos are at a relatively low resolution and take a long time to download, even on a T-1 connection. The songs are not downloadable.

Chances are you already own Back in Black. Forty million people do. If not, it's hard to recommend starting anywhere else. Highway to Hell is probably the best of the Bon Scott years, although Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap has some classic AC/DC moments — the title track, "Big Balls," and the actually poignant slow blues of "Ride On."

In addition to Back in Black, the Johnson years are best represented by 1990's The Razor's Edge. After Let There Be Rock, the follow-up to Back in Black, the band put together some astonishingly dull and uninspired albums. But after lightning struck a plane in which Angus was flying, he came up with the riff to "Thunderstruck," which put the band's career back on track.

In a way, the Live set that came out of that tour serves as a de facto greatest-hits album. Opening with "Thunderstruck," it moves through the classic tracks from the band until ending with "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)." There are single and double disc versions available. The single disc is adequate, covering all the ground; the double-disc set better represents a live concert and goes a bit deeper into the band's 20-year catalog.

What has made AC/DC last so long? "We like the feel-good factor in music," said Malcolm. Brother Angus added, "You don't join a rock-and-roll band to self-destruct; you join to have a good time!" And they do, and their listeners do. It's not Dylan, it's not Springsteen, it's only rock-and-roll, but I like it.

— Kevin Cherry is a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame in political science and a frequent contributor to NRO.
 

Warthog

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Claim: Van Halen's standard performance contract contained a provision calling for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, but with all the brown candies removed.
Status: True.

Example: [Harrington, 1981]


Van Halen tends to make the news portion of radio more often than it gets airplay. There was the M&M riot in New Mexico where the band did thousands of dollars of damage to a hall when they were served brown M&Ms -- their contract said the brown ones had to be removed.



Origins: Rock concerts have come a long ways since the days when the Beatles performed in boxing rings and hockey rinks, and made no greater demand of promoters than they be provided with clean towels and a few bottles of soft drinks. As the audiences grew larger, promoters stood to make more and more money from staging concerts, which meant that not only could rock stars command higher prices for their performances, but they were able to demand other perks as well, such as luxurious accommodations, lavish backstage buffets, and chauffeured transportation. It was inevitable that some high-demand acts, all their financial and pampering whims satisfied, would exercise their power and start making frivolous demands of promoters, simply because they could.

By far the most notorious of these whimsical requests is the legend that Van Halen's standard concert contract called for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with provision that all the brown candies must be removed. The presence of even a single brown M&M in that bowl, rumor had it, was sufficient legal cause for Van Halen to peremptorily cancel a scheduled appearance without advance notice (and usually an excuse for them to go on a destructive rampage as well).

The legendary "no brown M&Ms" contract clause was indeed real, but the purported motivation for it was not. The M&Ms provision was included in Van Halen's contracts not as an act of caprice, but because it served a practical purpose: to provide an easy way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read (and complied with). As Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography:


. . . Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors -- whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through.
The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . ." This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation."

So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.




Nonetheless, the media ran exaggerated and inaccurate accounts of Van Halen's using violations of the "no brown M&Ms" clause as justification for engaging in childish, destructive behavior (such as the newspaper article quoted at the top of this page). David Lee Roth's version of such events was decidedly different:


The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn't read the contract, and weren't sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.
I came backstage. I found some brown M&M's, I went into full Shakespearean "What is this before me?" . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars' worth of fun.

The staging sank through their floor. They didn't bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars' worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M's and did eighty-five thousand dollars' worth of damage to the backstage area.

Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?




Last updated: 19 January 2001
 

Warthog

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One more...

> > The Darwin's are awarded every year to the persons who
> > died (or almost died) in the stupidest way. Named
> > Darwin Awards because it is hoped that "Survival of
> > the Fittest" means something. Hopefully these idiots
> > haven't passed along their stupidity.
> >
> > This year's nominees are:
> >
> > Nominee No. 1:
> >
> > [San Jose Mercury News]: An unidentified man, using a
> > shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's
> > windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when
> > the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.
> >
> > Nominee No. 2:
> >
> > [Kalamazoo Gazette]: James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) of
> > Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he was trying to
> > repair what police describe as a "farm type truck."
> > Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway
> > while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain
> > the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes
> > caught on something, however, and the other man found
> > Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."
> >
> > Nominee No. 3:
> >
> > [Hickory Daily Record]: Ken Charles Barger, 47,
> > accidentally shot himself to death in December in
> > Newton, NC, awakening to the sound of a ringing
> > telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but
> > grabbed instead a Smith &Wesson 38 Special, which
> > discharged when he drew it to his ear.
> >
> > Nominee No. 4:
> >
> > [UPI, Toronto]: Police said a lawyer demonstrating the
> > safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper
> > crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged
> > 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry
> > Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto
> > Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was
> > explaining the strength of the building's windows to
> > visiting law students. Hoy previously has conducted
> > demonstrations of window strength according to police
> > reports. Peter Lawson, managing partner of the firm
> > Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that
> > Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the
> > 200-man association.
> >
> > Nominee No. 5:
> >
> > [Bloomberg News Service]: A terrible diet and room
> > with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of
> > a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no
> > mark on his body and an autopsy showed large amounts
> > of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted
> > primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other
> > things). It was just the right combination of foods.
> > It appears that the man died in his sleep from
> > breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over
> > his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been
> > opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was
> > shut up in his near airtight bedroom. According to the
> > article, "He was a big man with a huge capacity for
> > creating "this deadly gas." Three of the rescuers got
> > sick and one was hospitalized.
> >
> > Nominee No. 6:
> >
> > [The News of the Weird]: Michael Anderson Godwin made
> > News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several
> > years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a
> > murder conviction before having his sentence reduced
> > to life in prison. While sitting on a metal toilet in
> > his cell attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit
> > into a wire and was electrocuted.
> >
> > Nominee No. 7:
> >
> > [The Indianapolis Star]: A cigarette lighter may have
> > triggered a fatal explosion in Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay
> > County man using a cigarette lighter to check the
> > barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night when
> > the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's
> > investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in
> > his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 PM.
> > Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a 54-caliber
> > muzzle loader that had not been firing properly. He
> > was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the
> > gun powder ignited.
> >
> > Nominee No. 8:
> >
> > [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]: A man cleaning a bird
> > feeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in
> > this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his
> > death. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled
> > chair when the accident occurred, said Inspector
> > D'Arcy Honer of the Peel Regional Police. "It appears
> > the chair moved and he went over the balcony," Honer
> > said.
> >
> > Finally, Nominee No. 9, The Winner!!!:
> >
> > [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]: Two local men were
> > injured when their pickup truck left the road and
> > struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State Highway 38
> > early Monday. Woodruff County deputy Dovey Snyder
> > reported the accident shortly after midnight Monday.
> > Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc and Billy Ray Wallis,
> > 38, of Little Rock were returning to Des Arc after a
> > frog gigging trip. On an overcast Sunday night,
> > Poole's pickup truck headlights malfunctioned. The two
> > men concluded that the headlight fuse on the older
> > model truck had burned out. As a replacement fuse was
> > not available, Wallis noticed that the .22 caliber
> > bullet from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse box
> > next to the steering wheel column. Upon inserting the
> > bullet the headlights again began to operate properly
> > and the two men proceeded on eastbound toward the
> > White River Bridge. After traveling approximately
> > twenty miles and just before crossing the river, the
> > bullet apparently overheated, discharged and struck
> > Poole in the right testicle.
> >
> > The vehicle swerved sharply right, exiting the
> > pavement and striking a tree. Poole suffered only
> > minor cuts and abrasions from the accident, but will
> > require surgery to repair the testicle. Wallis
> > sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and
> > released. "Thank God we weren't on that bridge when
> > Thurston shot his balls off or we might both be dead"
> > stated Wallis. "I've been a trooper for ten years in
> > this part of the world, but this is a first for me. I
> > can't believe that those two would admit how this
> > accident happened," said Snyder. Upon being notified
> > of the wreck, Lavinia (Poole's wife) asked how many
> > frogs the boys had caught and did anyone get them from
> > the truck??
> >