Speak Softly but Carry a Potato Rake

Sumter, SC – Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the U.S., and the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Rumor has it the ‘teddy bear’ was named after him, and he had a guinea pig named Father O’Grady and a snake named Emily Spinach. Really. Where the fuck was I going with this? Oh, yeah. Teddy once said: “Walk softly, but carry a big stick.” Perhaps 31 year old Carlos Lincoln was thinking about that sage advice when, during an argument on September 5th, he picked up a piece of wood to beat the shit out of 21 year old Reginald Gass. Perhaps that is when Gass recalled his favorite Teddy Roosevelt quote, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”, when he plunged a potato rake into Carlos’ chest. Ouch. Did anyone else accidentally read “potato cake” at first and giggle? Read more

Cracky-Jackie’s Recipe For Murder

Las Vegas, NV - Crack cocaine brings people together. Unfortunately, those people are crack heads, and not always the best company. However, if you’re already together with a heap of crack heads, there’s a good chance that you’re also a crack head. As dangerous as they are entertaining, there really is no safe place from which to watch a crack head’s strange antics. I’ve seen them scale walls, chew their way through Plexiglas and break down doors with bad prosthetic limbs. They’re kind of like zombies, if zombies asked you for change and then smeared you with their feces before you could take your hands out of your pockets. Jackie Wilridge is one of these crack heads, but instead of the standard shit-smearing and trying to sell invisible food items, Jackie attacked and robbed a fellow crack head in a Las Vegas apartment, before boiling a pot of water and scalding her to death. Read more

WY so Evil?

Cheyenne, WY – Southeast Wyoming is hell. It’s a gray, desolate, nightmarish wasteland full of howling wind and the ugliest, most desperate shrubbery in the world. When the wind isn’t sucking all rational thought from your skull like a passenger jet with the windows blown out, I’m almost certain that it actually rains road kill. It’s the least populous state in the nation, which means most people have chosen slightly lesser hells like Bakersfield, CA, or even Delaware. Stop and ask a local why the fuck you just saw a sign with a picture of a rabbit with antlers growing out of it’s head. They jokingly call this taxidermy-for-tourism‘s-sake a “jackalope”, but I call it mutilating at least two corpses. It is a place that warps the mind, sickens the soul and ruthlessly chaps the lips of any who dare enter it. That’s why whenever some horrible, bloody tale makes it’s way from those barren hills and into the news, I can’t say I’m all that surprised. Even when Joy Hofer shot her husband, strangled their son and killed herself. Did I mention all the road kill? Read more

Hillbilly Rampage Or A Feud Is A Feud

Marion, Alabama - As this is AmericaAmerica reviews and not some horrible, soulless place without Andy Griffith like Soviet Russia or EuroDisney, I assume most of us have seen some episode of The Andy Griffith Show at some point in our lives. If you haven’t, well then I pity you. Or envy you – I’m conflicted. Does anyone remember an episode entitled A Feud is a Feud? In this one, a young couple show up at Andy’s late one night wanting to be married. The two are members, respectively, of long feuding mountain families in the area. Long story short, Andy nearly gets his banjo-stroking ass capped performing the ceremony. The episode was obviously meant to parody the famous Hatfield/McCoy feud that claimed the lives of a dozen members of both families between 1800 and 1891. I wish I could say the assholes in this story were just poking fun at that old feud when they clashed violently in front of the Marion City Hall in Marion, Alabama – but I think they were fairly serious. Read more

George Vera Was Carrying a Congealed Weapon

Houston, TX -Let me start this one by declaring that I have nothing against morbidly obese people (except usually, both of my elbows in a movie theater). I can handle the crumbs, excessive sweat and even the ‘almost-brought-the-plane-down’ antics. They really mean no harm – we’re all just trying to survive, right? We do the best we can with what we’ve got. However, when what you’ve got is 500lbs and a handgun – well then you’re just a criminal. And a fat one, too. Things are bigger in Texas, and George Vera is no exception. The 25 year old was arrested in Houston for suspicion of selling bootleg CDs (bootlegging is so 1996 – and who buys CDs anymore?). Read more

The Darkest Chocolate

Camden, NJ – In 1997 Vincent Smith II was probably told by doctors that he was in the ultimate good news/bad news situation. Maybe. Even if they had, chances are that Vincent didn’t hear a word – the poor guy was in a coma at the time. Vincent was in a car crash in Pennsylvania which ejected him out of the vehicle and sent him hurtling headlong into said coma. However, Vincent Smith II soon beat the odds when he awoke from the coma, virtually returning from the dead like religious icons Jesus of Nazareth, Lazarus and Tupac. The grim reaper himself had snatched Vincent up by the collar, muscled him over the threshold of life and death and then had apparently fallen asleep on the couch while Vincent crept back to consciousness on hands and knees. But he was back. A miracle-man. He was now a walking example of a human being who had triumphantly returned from the abyss. Then last month he drowned in boiling chocolate in Camden, NJ. Read more

Where Have All The Satanists Gone?

Ponchatoula, Louisiana – I miss the 80s. I miss Max Headroom. I miss that Sheena Easton video with all the Universal Monsters in it. I miss toys with kung-fu grips and cock-punching action when you squeeze their legs together. I also miss all the full blown Satanists. Don’t you? Remember the enchanting days when Geraldo Rivera attempted to warn us about the black-hearted fiends running about in cloaks, abducting our juvenile news carriers, encoding vile messages into our music and poisoning our HalloweenHalloween reviews candy? The Satanic Panic. Ah, nostalgia. Read more