Tag Archives: America

Tomcat Films Makes The Best (Worst) Movies in America

Posted on February 1, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Shit, superman is taken? How about ‘Hero Dude’?  No?  Well let’s do some re-shoots and get this bitch distributed!”

~Ted Chalmers

 panda-saurus

Making it big in the American film industry requires talent, perseverance, knowing the right people, and a whole lot of luck.  Unfortunately, not every American who wants to go into show business was born with Brad Pitt’s face or Willem Dafoe’s prodigious genitalia, and most dreams in Tinseltown end where they begin- holding back tears as you scrub semen stains off a producer’s couch.

But there’s a strange and frankly wonderful niche among all the critically acclaimed Indie darlings and massive blockbuster hits that is lucrative enough to account for 90% of the DVDs your grandma buys for you at Walmart.  That niche, of course, is the Mockbuster- super cheap, poorly CGI’d films that riff on popular blockbusters with names juuuust close enough to trick people into thinking “Wow, The Dark Knight’s on DVD for only $2.99!  Weird that they didn’t spell it with the K, but whatever.”

One of these Mockbuster purveyors is Tomcat Films, now under the umbrella of Summer Hill Films.  So we took one look at their offerings to the public and said to ourselves, hell yeah, let’s talk about the hilariously bad movies these guys have produced.  And holy hell, did they not disappoint.  So grab your off-brand popcorn and get ready for a master class in so-bad-they’re-good-and-then-bad-again movie making

Tomcat Films Makes The Best (Worst) Movies in America

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Great Moments in Spam Responses: International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology

Posted on January 25, 2017 | 1 comment

“Get me off your fucking mailing list.”

~David Mazières and Eddie Kohler

get-me-off-your-list

If you put a gun to our head and told us to tell you one thing that’s wrong with America, we’d press our forehead into the barrel and say, “That pussies like you don’t have the stones to pull the trigger.” But if you asked nicely, and weren’t a dick about it, we’d say, “probably the existence of companies and publications employing predatory tactics to gain profit.”

And while businesses that gain all their profits through legal-but-shady means are a global phenomenon, America does unfortunately have its fair share of assholes who trick the gullible, frightened, and elderly into giving them money.

One surprising and somewhat unsettling form this has taken involves, of all things, science. Specifically, “academic journals” that solely exist to mill out publications for graduate students and members of STEM academia. These publications spam academics and will post just about anything so long as they get their publication fee.

One of those publications is the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology which is the equivalent of us calling our website the International Publication of Extraordinary Patriotic Informative Studies, which is to say it’s a bullshit name for a bullshit publication (yes we are including ourselves in the “bullshit” category).

And that’s why it was so wonderful when, in 2014, Peter Vamplew, Associate Professor at Federation University Australia, decided to fuck with this publication, to amazing effect.  This is his story.

Great Moments in Spam Responses:  International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology

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The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Mordvinia

Posted on January 18, 2017 | 4 comments

“Wait, so this is depressing even for RUSSIA?  Jesus.”

~AFFotD’s Food Critic

 mordvinia

We very clearly love food here, but we also love calling out other countries for how bad their food is. Granted, it’s not particularly noteworthy to have bad food (cough, sup England) or weird food (how you living, Japan). But we prefer to focus on depressing food cultures. Like, yes, Iceland eats rotted fermented shark, and that’s gross, but the fact that they ferment everything because they can’t afford to import salt, or that the shark has to be fermented so that it stops being poisonous is legitimately depressing.

So we are here to keep our proud tradition of looking at rich, steeped culinary histories and going, “Oh God, that’s so sad.” Now let’s hop on a plane to the federal subject of Russia, Mordvinia, where things get depressing, even for Russia.

The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Mordvinia

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, Insulting Foreigners, The Rest of Them, The World’s Saddest Cuisines

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Jackie Coogan: Uncle Fester Was Kind of a Badass

Posted on November 30, 2016 | 4 comments

“Holy shit, I can’t believe I got killed by Uncle Fester.”

~An Actual Murderer

coogan

“Actors aren’t as tough as they used to be” sounds like a sentence you’d hear an angry old man shouting from his porch, possibly to children gliding down the sidewalk on Heelys. But there is some truth to it.

Sure, a lot might have to do with the times we live in, but it’s easy to forget that Hollywood wasn’t always full of glamour and George Clooneys. The Golden Age of Hollywood was pretty much fueled by animal deaths on set and carefully regimented drug cocktails forced upon strung out teenage actresses off it, and if you managed to pull through that minefield relatively successful and sane, then you had to be made of some pretty solid stuff.

We mention that because while we (correctly) look back at groundbreaking actors such as Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, and Humphrey Bogart as visionaries and badasses, there’s one actor who probably was the toughest son of a bitch to step in front of a camera (yes, we know that list includes Danny Trejo) if for no other reason than the fact that his childhood, we’re pretty sure, was haunted. Which probably helped him prepare for the role of Uncle Fester.

Yes, we’re going to talk about Jackie Coogan, who could totally beat you up.

Jackie Coogan:  Uncle Fester Was Kind of a Badass

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, American Heroes, The Best of the Rest

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Ray Caldwell: The Alcoholic Lightning Rod of Major League Baseball

Posted on November 16, 2016 | 1 comment

“*gets hit by lightning*  *chugs a beer*  Don’t worry guys, I’m good.”

~Ray Caldwell

ray-caldwell

Most history curriculums are pretty bad at telling us about the crazy things that have actually happened in the world, if you think about it.  Sure, McCarthyism during the Cold War is “something we should know” but how come no one talks about the time we tried to build a military base on the moon in 1959? Hell, even when history tries to get edgy (like, for instance, the existence of Teddy Roosevelt) it somehow manages to leave out some of the best parts (like how his daughter was a pet-snake keeping badass).

This goes double for the history of baseball. We know about Babe Ruth and his philandering, boozy ways, but we don’t know about the pure insanity that was Charlie Sweeney. Likewise, everyone and their mother knows at least the name “Cy Young” when it comes to pitchers, but was Cy Young an alcoholic who once was struck by lightning during a game that he stayed in and finished?  We didn’t think so.

So we here at America Fun Fact of the Day have decided to do history a favor and help them spice things up a bit by telling you a little bit about Ray Caldwell, one of the most badass pitchers to ever play professional baseball, and one of the few people who can give Charlie Sweeney a run for his money.

Ray Caldwell: The Alcoholic Lightning Rod of Major League Baseball

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Posted in 20th Century Insanity, All things baseball, America Fun Fact of the Day, Drinkers

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The National Anthems Of The World Series: Part 4- National Anthems With The Lowest Self Esteem

Posted on October 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

“This is our national anthem, nobody likes me L”

~Huh, How Do You Get an Emoji in a National Anthem?

national-anthem

We’ve spent the last few weeks telling you about countries that aren’t America, which we know is very jarring for many of you. But in our attempts to be cultured (read as: making fun of other nations) we’ve found a broad spectrum of National Anthems that range from “Okay that’s pretty badass” to “please stop crying, please stop crying, it’s making us very uncomfortable.”

Make no mistake, a National Anthem is supposed to be your country at its most very badass. But that’s not always the case. So we’re going to close out our series with a handful of nations that, just, really need to boost that self-esteem.  Come on guys, chins up!

The National Anthems Of The World Series:  Part 4- National Anthems With The Lowest Self Esteem

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The National Anthems Of The World Series: Part 3- The Most Depressing National Anthem Lyrics

Posted on October 5, 2016 | 3 comments

“I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo.”

~Bangladesh’s National Anthem, Basically

national-anthem

For the past few weeks we’ve been looking at various National Anthems, and judging their lyrics in our own judgey way. We started off with those anthems that we deemed to be particularly “metal” because that’s by far the most fun thing to read, but there are all sorts of National Anthems out there. Some are origin stories. Some are proud. Some are, meh, boring (sup Canada).

But, notably, a lot are surprisingly depressing. Let’s all get sad together, shall we?

The National Anthems Of The World Series: Part 3- The Most Depressing National Anthem Lyrics

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The National Anthems Of The World Series: Part 2- More Metal National Anthem Lyrics

Posted on September 28, 2016 | 3 comments

“Come at us, France.”

~Algeria’s National Anthem

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Last week, we quoted a bunch of National Anthems that are not as good as the Star-Spangled Banner, despite being metal as fuck. (It’s nothing personal, the Star-Spangled Banner could just be the lyrics to the Oscar Meyer wiener song and it’d still be better than all National Anthems just simply by being America’s National Anthem)

But it is true. Some countries decide to make their anthems metal as hell. Like, did you know that Bhutan’s national anthem is literally called the Thunder Dragon Kingdom? Like, holy shit right? So we were able to find even more anthems filled with blood and veiled threats. After this, we’re going to take things down a notch with depressing National Anthems, so enjoy this while you can.

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The National Anthems Of The World Series: Part 1- The Most Metal National Anthem Lyrics

Posted on September 21, 2016 | 4 comments

“Oh say can you see…by the dawn’s…*30% of the crowd starts to mumble the rest of the lyrics that they only know three-quarters of*”

~The National Anthem of the United States

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The Star-Spangled Banner is, as the kids say, a jam. Our national anthem since 1931, it’s pretty much the one song that you can get punched in the face for disparaging other than Drunk in Love in this country.

But if you really take a step back and look at it objectively, for a song that we hold such deep reverence for, it’s pretty surprising that it’s even a song we know in the first place. We literally took a popular British drinking song that we’d been changing the lyrics to, parody style, for years (basically an Olde-Timey version of “Call You Maybe”) and stuck in a poem about a time a bunch of British people attacked a fort during the War of 1812, and were like, yeah this seems patriotic, let’s turn it into our National Anthem in like, 120 years.

But it works! And that’s the thing with National Anthems, so long as they swell and you can get a good low angle shot of an Olympic Athlete’s eyes getting a bit misty hearing it, no one really reads that much into what they say.

Who among you actually knows what a rampart is? Like, who can describe a rampart without having to use Wikipedia, right now? Okay, sure, you just got it, but not all of us aced our SAT Verbal Exams, asshole.

Anyway, this all made us think about National Anthems. Because just about every country has them, and not every country has ever had cause to write a poem about fighting the British in a battle. Most countries, sure. But not all. And so we dug through English translations of every single National Anthem out there, and, well, there’s so much we want to share.

So welcome to our National Anthem series. We’ll spend the next few weeks going through the most depressing National Anthems, as well as the National Anthems that convey the lowest self-esteem. But first, we want to get the fun ones out of the way.  Because guess what? A lot of National Anthems are metal as fuck. So let’s start there.

The National Anthems Of The World Series:  Part 1- The Most Metal National Anthem Lyrics

rampart

We’re still only like 40% sure what a rampart is, though.

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Cap’N Crunch’s Grossest Flavors of All Time

Posted on September 14, 2016 | 5 comments

“Give me a break!”

~Um, That’s Not The Theme Song To Captain Crunch…

oh-captain-my-captain

When Captain Cap’n Crunch first hit the shelves in 1963, we didn’t worry ourselves with the fact that he’s not an actual Captain, and instead went wild over the corn-based cereal that was the first to be coated in a thin layer of oil to give it an additional boost of flavor.

The cereal itself was developed by Pamela Low, a flavorist (shut up, it’s a thing) (no it actually is) at Arthur D. Little who tried to make a cereal that tasted like her grandmother’s recipe of brown sugar and butter melted over rice.

Now, as far as “tasting like sugar butter over rice” goes, Captain Cap’n Crunch was an abject failure.  But if we look at the product through a “holy shit, this is really good, let’s put some crunch berries in it” lens, it was a roaring success.

Now, Cap’n Crunch is everywhere, and you’ll hear no one complain about that fact because Cap’n Crunch is goddamn magical.  That is, when they’re not trying to showboat.

Yes, much like Marshmallow Peeps, Oreos, or, God help us, M&Ms, Cap’n Crunch has tried many times to fly to the sun, only to see their waxen wings melt away. That was a very elegant metaphor about how you shouldn’t sell Cap’n Crunch that comes with fucking pop rocks in it.

Cap’N Crunch’s Grossest Flavors of All Time

more-like-totally-smashed-berries-amiright

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, America's Culinary Treats, Strange Foods

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