Wolf Gnards

Where have all the mullets gone? In the 80’s, mullets made us happy when we were sad, they cherished us when we were alone, they made us laugh, they made us cry. When there was only one set of foot prints in the sand… why that’s when the mullets were carrying us, of course. But where are the mullets now and where did the mullets even come from?

Mullets have largely become a tragic punchline. We devote websites to mullet jokes and we laugh at stray mullets on the street. This is a haircut relegated to hockey moms, Canadians, and hipsters (who only mullet ironically), so where has the history gone? Where is the majesty of the mullet? Let’s look back to when men were men and men wore mullets.

Fashion Mullet

The term mullet can be traced back to the early 90’s made popular by the Beastie Boys song “Mullet Head.” However, the mullet is far older, for the first mullet we need to go back to a time when a mullet was risky and dangerous – the 70’s. This fashion friendly proto-mullet can be attributed to none other than David Bowie. Redneck’s do not spend nearly enough time worshiping at the feet of David Bowie. He wanted to look like a fashionable gay alien from the future and no haircut conveyed this message quite like the mullet. The mullet let him embrace his feminine side without being all the way gay, and isn’t that what fashion is all about? So, to all you mullet heads out there, the reason you look so douchey is because David Bowie and glam rockers wanted to look more like girls… it’s a fact, deal with it. Other mullet trailblazers include Paul McCartney and Florence Henderson.

Action Mullet

As the mullet grew less and less fashionable, it went to where all good haircuts go to die: Australia. The hairstyle was picked up by most Australian Rules football players and found new life with their #1 son, Mel Gibson. Gibson then brought this hairstyle back with him to the Lethal Weapon film series and the Action Mullet was born. As a rule action hero could kill as many people as he wanted as long as A) they were all bad and B) they did it with a mullet. Most action stars of the 80’s and 90’s, at least, flirted with the mullet (if not outright married it): Kurt Russell, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Costner, and Patrick Swayze all sported mullets. Most action mullets were shaved or slicked on the side with a nice bushel of hair in the back, this is partying in the back with extreme prejudice. But the person who best represents the action mullet is Richard Dean Anderson and MacGyver. MacGyver was the “thinking man’s hero,” so it’s counterintuitive to lump him with the machine gun wielding He-men (He-Man… another mullet), but that’s exactly why. MacGyver was a sensitive hero with a sensitive haircut, so why show Van Damme’s character crying or Stallone rescuing a kitten, when it’s so much easier to give him a sensitive haircut? Why waste exposition when hair can do all the work for you? The action mullet essentially softens the macho man’s personality with a haircut. Killer in the front, guy with deep feelings in the back.

Lush Mullet

The lush mullet is everything we think of in a classic mullet. Lush mullets are hair cuts that don’t actually get cut. If you put off enough haircuts eventually you’re going to end up with a mullet. This is the hairstyle that simultaneously says you don’t care and you care a whole lot, because it takes heavy styling to be that casual. This is the hair in the 90’s for anyone desperate to look cool, and who probably went to their barber and said, “I want to look… what do the kids say? Cool?” Popular with pop stars: George Michael and Richard Marx. Funny men: Bill Murray and Jerry Seinfeld (a mini-mullet). And even today’s older movie stars: Tom Hanks and Nic Cage, anyone? An overgrown mullet being the perfect haircut to cover any plastic surgery scars (wink, wink). A young George Clooney fits in here, but the most famous lush mullet being Full House’s Uncle Jesse… a man desperate to look cool to his preteen nieces. Uncle Jesse worked the mullet until a very special episode marked the end of a generation.

Read more »

What the Government Doesn’t Want you to Know

There is a conspiracy of fat men on television. Why did Kevin James, Jim Belushi, and Mark Addy have TV shows? Talent? Hardly. Most would attribute the phenomenon by the simple equation fat equals funny and, of course, the fatter the funnier, but this does not work in pairs. The classic fat duos are traditionally the fat and the fat inverse ie someone skinny, creating fat & skinny comedy teams like Laurel & Hardy, Farley & Spade, Jay & Silent Bob. You can’t have two fats because instead of wacky hijinks they would just eat a series of progressively larger sandwiches throughout the movie. On a marriage related sitcom the fat man stands in the for the husband and a hot chick stands in for the skinny sidekick. One would think it’s just the regular comedic fat formula, but one would be wrong. The fat guy/hot wife scenario was created for one purpose: the subjugation of woman.

There’s nothing funny about the abuse of women through some of the world’s fattest men. Great examples of fattitude include: Just the 10 of Us, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, According to Jim, King of Queens, Grounded for Life, Still Standing, and even animated shows like Simpsons and Family Guy are designed to keep women down through male obesity. These television shows all have fat men, all with women who would never date fat men let alone commit their lives to vacuuming under their stomachs. Coach from Just the 10 of Us needed an entire hot family to support is fat ass. Is this just male fantasy run amuck, or is there something deeper? Here’s how the media fat cats are manipulating women: A single woman watches one of these shows and thinks, “Hmmm, if Stacey Carosi could only get Kevin James, and surely I’m not as good looking as Stacey Carosi, could I possibly do better than Kevin James?” Of course not, better settle for that mutant over there. Likewise if Courtney Thorne-Smith could only pull down John Belushi’s less talented brother, could you ever hope to be with a more talent brother? Not at all, fat dude sitcoms tell us better to be with a loser than no one at all.

The consolation prize for that slob on the couch is, at least, he’s funny. As if that’s something women want. Women then don’t actually like funny men, but are conditioned to settle for personality by the media. Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has the added bonus of also being wealthy. Sufficient money and humor will get you a Leah Remini or a Jami Gertz, or whatever B List actress you want. And who’s to benefit? Fat comedians, fat politicians, and your fat boyfriend, of course. Our entire entertainment industry is based on the concept of helping less attractive men get laid. That’s why underdog’s always get the girl in the end, to increase the potential of this actually happening in real life.

The conspiracy goes back to the early 1950’s in a possible underground meeting between Colonel Sanders, Winston Churchill, Fats Domino, the ghost of Fatty Arbuckle, and a 3-year-old Jerry Mathers (as the Beaver). Remember women’s suffrage was still fresh on the minds and the Women’s revolution was well on the horizon, the government had no choice but to come up with a plan. The question was put forth: How can we both stunt women empowerment and get hot women to date us? The answer was The Honeymooners. Jackie Gleason is the alpha fat man to Audrey Meadows’s omega hot chick. The Honeymooners was devised to keep women at bay through fear and intimidation, but in the funniest ways possible. Gleason was essentially asked to promote domestic abuse, but in a hee-hee sort of way. The lesson of every episode of the the Honeymooners: no matter how fat, dumb, and belligerent your man is, you better stick with him because there’s absolutely no alternative.

And if she doesn’t like your beer gut then it’s bang, zoom, to the moon.

Fame is not measured in accolades or success. In money or movie premieres. Fame is determined by one thing and one thing only, proximity to Matt Lauer. If excrement is measured in Courics then fame is measured in Lauers. The closer you are to Matt Lauer, the more famous you become. If you’re in the same building you’re a kind of happening person, if you’re in the same room then you’re probably sort of somebody (you can order someone to get you a latte at the very least), and if you’re sitting in Lauer’s tender embrace then you just might be a celebrity. As my mom has always said, “If Woof Gnats is so famous, how come you ain’t on the Matt Lauer?” Touche, Mother, touche. Matt Lauer distributes everyone’s allotted 15 minutes of fame, a fame fairy if you will.

So, if you’ve been interviewed by Matt Lauer you are definitely more famous than the vast majority of us. But how do you separate the people who have been interviewed? Quantity of interviews for starters. So, the more you’ve been interviewed by Matt Lauer the more famous you are. However, not only is there the Lauer interview to fame ratio, but there’s different degrees of Matt Lauer. The lowest level of fame is a Matt Lauer thought, you’ve crossed his mind but not his lips. The second level is Matt Lauer has spoken your name, even a passing reference counts. The third and fourth levels are the interview, which is split between the via satellite interview and the live interview. The live Matt Lauer interview is the holy grail of fame. Each level of Lauer is then weighted differently with a live interview being roughly equal to 8 Matt Lauer thoughts, 4 Lauer mentions, or 2 via satellite interviews.

Fames Creamy Liquid Core

Read more »

Probably one of the top 10 Saved by the Bell charts in existence right there behind the Rod Belding to stewardess to whitewater rafting pie chart (A Building with two Beldings one of whom is Balding). Two things missing from the Jessie Spano Caffeine Chart… a more complete depiction of Hot Sundae and Jessie passing out a la Alex P. Keaton but Alex P. Keaton was on amphetamines and she had three cups of coffee. via Flavorwire and Nathaniel James, thanks for the heads up Lee.

Other oddities…

How Does Bulbasaur Work? A better question might be where does all the water come from in SSquirtle? Is it vomit? Spit? Or a combination of the the two?

Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard embroidered for Granny nerds everywhere.

James Lipton apparently wrote the Thunder Cats theme song. That’s weirder than Alan Thicke, not any of the theme songs he wrote, just him period. via Nerd Bastards

Star Wars Burlesque! Things are getting hot on Hoth.

Or the Tale of Amber Lamps

Who is Amber Lamps? Amber Lamps is the vaguely cute, pseudo hipster girl in the background of the Epic Beard Man video. Or more precisely, Amber Lamps is the girl my co-worker is crazy about. Every day he comes in more wound up than the day before. “I have to find her,” he says. “I have to have her. She’s… my density (Density has popped me to you).” If you don’t know, Amber sits on a bus and watches the action unfold without a care in the world or seemly any interest at all. And for that she drives us crazy… there’s tribute songs and everything. But why? For her? Amber Lamps is a case of bus hot, bus hot in a spectacular way even, but bus hot all the same. Much like Einstein and physics hotness is only relative.

Physical attractiveness is based on comparison, this is exactly why cute girls have ugly friends. And in the vast spectrum of hotness, there’s bus hot, work hot, school hot, almost any kind of hot. In many circles, I’m considered sewer hot, as in surround me by various sewer dwellers (i.e. rats, alligators, Norton, ninja turtles, mole men) and suddenly I become very hot. And this scaling hotness is why fashion magazines have the inevitable ability to make women feel bad about themselves because suddenly they’ve dropped (through no fault of their own) one rung less hot. If magazines and media open up the channels of hot then conversely isolation decreases the channels of hot.

The bus is like a desert island, and once those doors close we are cut off from the rest of civilization. Take the movie Cast Away for example, isolation from humanity made a volleyball a wonderful companion. Now Tom Hanks never wanted to make sweet love to Wilson (at least, not in anything they showed on film) but they did become the best of bosom buddies. With no one to talk to an inanimate object becomes the best available companion. A hierarchy would go beautiful person > average person > ugly person > beautiful animal > ugly animal > beautiful object > ugly object. So, he’d rather talk to a dolphin than a cow, or the Mona Lisa than a volleyball, but given all that was available, the volleyball become the best available companion for Tom Hanks.

The bus works the same way. It offers similar possibles because Jessica Alba does not exist on the bus, therefor since Jessica Alba does not exist in the eyes of the bus, the next girl in line becomes the Jessica Alba and so on and so forth. Simply put, the average become cute, the cute become beautiful, and the beautiful become something other worldly, something that only internet meme’s can describe. Fig. A. 1 demonstrates the bus before the doors have closed with open access to the world. We can see everything for who they are. Fig. A. 2 demonstrates the closed bus system, notice the striking increase in beauty. However, the figures are not to scale, it should be noted that the ugly also become uglier. The bus is such a strange and wonderful world because of the already heavy concentrations of ugly, making those rare beauties so much more beautiful.

Read more »

With an all new Spider-man movie on the horizon, we get to go back to the age old debate of mechanical web-shooters vs organic web-shooters. With a second chance, do film makers go with the new or return to the old? Ten years ago the idea of anything but Spidey’s mechanical web-shooters was blasphemy—something of venomous debate, at the least—but three Spider-Man films later (two of them good), and it really turned into something of a non-issue. The casual moviegoer just cares that Spider-man is web slinging and swinging around town, and not so much how he’s slinging.

Oh, just thinking of it makes me want to strap on my web-shooters and swing like I’ve never swung before, swing, swing, SWING, feel the wind through my hair… No, no, back to web-shooters.

Mechanical Web-Shooters

Mechanical web-shooters are the standard for all web-shooters. As a kid, I must admit that I didn’t understand if Peter Parker had spider powers why did he need a device to shoot webs. The reason it’s a mechanical device is because spider’s in nature do not shoot webs, they spin webs much the same way your grandmother knits a horrible Christmas Sweater. The original idea Marvel was to shoot webs at bad guys, and in the first design by Jack Kirby, Spider-man had a web gun (he also had a web shield and was a little more than a Captain AmeriSpider). Steve Ditko changed the design to the wrist mounted web shooters we all know and love, why? Because it’s cool, that’s why. And also because if a Batman has cool gadgets, surely a Spider-man would have gadgets just as cool.

How do they work? Spider-Man’s web-shooters are steel bracelets with a trigger on the palm that releases a pressurized stream of web fluid. Typically held in tiny web cartridges, all of which conveniently fit under his form fitting Spider-Man costume. The trigger is pressure gauged for his two fingers and that’s why he does his little devil horns. This is so Spidey can make a fist and open doors and go to the bathroom without getting webs everywhere. Although a pressure spring shouldn’t really be able to tell the difference between 65 pounds of pressure from two fingers or four fingers or leaning against a wall. The trigger causes web fluid to spray, becoming a hardened sticky string with exposure to air. Web fluid being a synthetic polymer adhesive not entirely unlike nylon, and its this web fluid that will eventually lead to creation of organic web shooters.

Organic Web-Shooters

Back in days of yore, around 1991, James Cameron and Co. came up with the legendary “scriptment” that contained the now infamous “organic web-shooters.” Cameron might not have come up with the idea, but it was his will and fame that kept it in script after script until Sam Raimi arrived on the scene. The idea was that it’s simply unbelievable for a high school student (as nerdy and science clubby as Peter Parker may be) to invent anything even remotely resembling the web fluid. It was Raimi’s belief that if an actual scientist can’t make web fluid then Parker would have no chance. So, instead of inventing a device, Peter mutated spinnerets in his forearms.

This is just another classic example of screenwriters thinking they’re better than comic book writers. The real reason producers couldn’t let go of the organic shooters was because it came down from upon the mountain… from James Cameron himself (Cameron’s initials are J.C., Jesus’s initials were J.C…. coincidence?). Film makers prodded Marvel so much about these organic web-shooters being better, that comic writers were actually forced to incorporate them into the comics! Yes, Peter Parker grew wrist spinnerets, and they worked exactly the same as the as original web-shooters, he even had to still use his devil horn trigger finger.

My problem with the organic web-shooters is the explanation. Raimi said they did this for believability, but if the audience was willing to suspend disbelief enough that a radioactive spider give a teenager super spider power, I don’t think you’ll lose them with mechanical web-shooters. In fact, wrist mounted web slingers are actually the most believable element of the whole Spider-man mythos. Other things that don’t exist in real life: the Batmobile, adamantium, invisible jets, and jets boots, hand repulsers, unibeams, and just about every bit of Iron Man technology.

The organic web-shooters are actually far less believable because spiders do not produce webs through any of their eight legs. The spinnerets are located at the rear of the spider’s abdomen, or, in the case with human/spider hybrid, on Peter Parker’s ass. Yes, Spider-man would have to swing from his butt and fart at the Green Goblin. A biologist on the this History Channel’s Spider-Man Tech, I think trying to be a little more discrete, suggested that our salivary glands could conceivably mutant to produce webbing, but definitely not his wrists. Additionally, the artificial webbing was designed to dissolve after an hour (great for cleaning up after spider parties), if Peter Parker produced his own webbing, there’s no telling how long it would last. Spider-man would most likely poop out enough webbing to encase New York City several times over.