THE CURIOUS ONLINE REALM OF POP CULTURE WRITER NATHAN RABIN.
Articles & features
Ruth Gordon swears, Clyde the Orangutan drinks beer and flips the bird and Clint Eastwood beats up fat old men, sometimes in motorcycle gang-sized groups, in an iconic blockbuster that, honestly, isn't that great.
In 1980, natural treasure Clint Eastwood made a second movie pairing him with an alcoholic, horny ape that was quite poor, if not quite as egregiously terrible as its predecessor.
Saturday Night Live taped a live special at Mardi Gras in 1977.
It did not go well.
The 2017 vanity project Michael Jackson’ s Halloween portrays the late pop icon as the essence of love and childhood innocence but is redeemed by a wall-to-wall soundtrack of Michael Jackson jams.
One of you kind patrons paid me to experience the surreal lunacy of Moonwalker, the trippy, weirdly revealing 1988 vanity project he made to promote Bad.
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I finally got around to watching Captain EO, a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between Disney, Michael Jackson, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola that’s a technological marvel and dramatically tedious in the same way the prequel trilogy would prove to be.
In a surprisingly positive, healthy development, I’m going to start charging for shipping at the store’s shop.
A whole lot of intense emotions come with late diagnosed ADHD/Autism, many of them complicated and painful.
Some scenes really stick with you, like the explosive opening set-piece of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving.
AI has many limitations, but they are most glaringly, horrifyingly apparent in its depiction of hands.
Can satire be effective if people don’t know it’s satire?
E.C. Comics generally trafficked in darkly comic nihilism but it opted for two-fisted idealism and blistering social commentary in Shock Suspenstories.
Kristi Noem was a rising star in the GOP until she did something only the true star of the party—Donald Trump—could get away with: murdering a puppy.
Hilarious Cyber-Satire That’s Easy to Misunderstand
A totally non-clickbait article on why everything you love and revere sucks shit.
We never should have even thought about writing this article.
Not all celebrities remain rich and famous forever. Here are five who went from wealth and fame to being homeless street trash.
We were going to share some neat trivia about actress Mena Suvari but since you don’t even know who she is we’re not even going to bother.
You’ve seen all the memes! Now see them all again, this time with punishingly literal commentary!
Whether you’re a small child or a punk hitting your bottom on heroin and cocaine in the late 1970s, Yo Gabba Gabba! is full of life lessons.
We know you remember and love all of these classic but we need clicks, baby! Sweet, sweet clicks!
FILM
The LEGENDARY column about failure at its most epic!
Saturday Night Live taped a live special at Mardi Gras in 1977.
It did not go well.
They made a sequel to The Mask without Jim Carrey. It did not go well.
They made a movie about the monster inside the moon who is causing the moon to fall to earth that is every bit as transcendent and wonderful as that sounds.
The surreal fall of GarfieldEats, the world’s only Garfield-themed eatery just keeps getting sadder and more surreal.
At the height of his fame, a creepily over-sexualized O.J. Simpson became the fourth black man to host Saturday Night Live in a surreal episode that, needless to say, has aged in a very strange, unfortunate way.
As a writer-director, Barry Levinson has made a lot of great movies. Unfortunately, he’s also made a lot of movies like the 1994 dud Jimmy Hollywood.
Clean cut fictional mouse Mickey Mouse released a Hip Hop album during the height of G-funk. It went so badly it somehow resulted in Tupac Shakur getting killed.
Saturday Night Live turned blue during a Dunn-less episode featuring the eternally controversial Andrew “Dice” Clay. It was UNBELIEVABLE! Oh!
John Travolta and Nicolas Cage Face/Off in The Ultimate Acting Battle!
John Travolta continues to scrape the bottom with the deathly dull 2019 racing Trading Paint.
With Shania Twain for some reason?
This Nicolas Cage vehicle is g-g-g-rounded until all of the g-g-g-ghosts!
Nicolas Cage has made a LOT of movies. Some of them are pretty crummy, like the overwrought 2019 Southern Gothic melodrama Grand Isle.
In a real change of pace, John Travolta, late in his career, that was not good.
Nicolas Cage. A jaguar and a killer on the loose. A boat. All the ingredients for a goofy good time.
Holy shit is the 2019 H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space a terrifying and terrific masterpiece of cosmic horror.
Where YOU pay ME to SEE movies!
One of you kind patrons paid me to experience the surreal lunacy of Moonwalker, the trippy, weirdly revealing 1988 vanity project he made to promote Bad.
One of you kind souls paid me to see 2011’s Megan is Missing, a movie that legitimately fucked me up.
They made a movie about the monster inside the moon who is causing the moon to fall to earth that is every bit as transcendent and wonderful as that sounds.
The Oscar-winning director of Gandhi joined forces with the Academy-Award-winning screenwriter of All The President’s Men and the Oscar-festooned star of Silence of the Lambs for an evil ventriloquist dummy movie that’s way better than it has any right to be.
My patron-funded journey through the British science-fiction television cult classic Red Dwarf continues.
Destroy All Neighbors is a demented dark horror comedy in the Evil Dead II vein.
The talking horse comedy Hot to Trot is like my ex-wife’s Meatloaf Surprise: not good!
My journey through the films of 1994 continues with a fond look at 1994’s Surviving the Game, a Most Dangerous Game adaptation starring Ice-T, Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham, Charles S. Dutton, Jeff Corey, and John C. McGinley. It’s quite the testosterone-fueled sausage fest!
Cinema at its shittiest!
For the purpose of a very strange cyber-safety initiative noted bully Garfield became an anti-bullying advocate and Nermal became a fat-shaming asshole as oblivious as he is creepy.
As part of my ongoing, obsessive coverage of Loqueesha filmmaker Jeremy Saville’s life and work, I unearth some of his early Youtube work, including such tellingly titled clips as “The Girlfriend Trainer” and “GayDate.” In a shocking, unexpected turn of events, they’re quite poor and also pretty offensive!
If you thought Vince Offer’s 2013 sketch comedy abomination inAPPropriate Comedy was an abomination, you’re right, but its Vince Offer-heavy prequel, 1999’s The Underground Comedy Movie, is somehow even worse! It’s an Offer you can, and most assuredly should, refuse.
It's a second rate The Godfather parody with Rodney as the Rodfather! Plus, it's a Kevin McDonald vehicle. What's not to love? (a lot, actually)
You know how everyone says Bright is total garbage? They're being overly generous.
John Candy Month kicks off with a fond look back at 1989’s Who’s Harry Crumb, a stupid movie for dumb babies.
It all comes down to this! Feld-Month covers Corey Feldman and his scantily clad all-female backing band Corey's Angels' shamelessly entertaining, as well as just plain shameless, Branson, variety-show-style two-hour-plus live extravaganza in Atlanta. It's uh, well, it's something. Just read!
Was making July Corey Feldman month a terrible mistake? Probably.
Music
Let’s Get Weird!
Al gets meta and deconstructionist on this epic, almost eleven minute long parody of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”
It took me a solid week of furious effort and three viewings of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but I have written what I think is the definitive 5000 word manifesto about the Citizen Kane of “Weird Al” Yankovic-themed parody biopics.
“Weird Al” Yankovic stars in another movie debuting on streaming this month and it is VERY weird but in a decidedly different way than Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
With Al’s second film as a screenwriter on the way I figured it was the ideal time to rerun my 5000 word appreciation of UHF.
The hardcover, full-color version of The Weird A-Coloring to Al is out and, at the risk of being immodest, is literally the greatest book ever written.
You don’t have to be the world’s most prolific author of books about “Weird Al” Yankovic to be excited about his forthcoming "Weird Al" brings The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour but it certainly doesn’t hurt!
There is a lost generation of kids without a new “Weird Al” Yankovic album to call their own. Are they beyond help?
Here’s a hint: it has NOTHING to do with not being good enough and everything to do with the Rock Hall taking itself way too seriously.
Literature
The Very Finest in Flaming Literary Garbage!
A laughless stroll through the first year and a half of Garfield (the disco era!) reveals that the insanely successful comic strip about the titular lasagna-loving, Monday-hating misanthrope has always been terrible.
Reality television villain turned Donald Trump advisor Omarosa is not here to make friends in her perversely unsatisfying “tell-all” Unhinged.
In this piece collected in The Joy of Trash, i eviscerate Doug Hutchinson’s appalling memoir, Flushing Hollywood.
The memoir of Rachel Dolezal is not convincing, at all. Batshit crazy, yes. Convincing? No.
Ruth Gordon swears, Clyde the Orangutan drinks beer and flips the bird and Clint Eastwood beats up fat old men, sometimes in motorcycle gang-sized groups, in an iconic blockbuster that, honestly, isn't that great.