MACHO LUNCH.
Posted on February 5, 2015 5 Comments
Brute strength. Immense power. Blockbuster explosiveness. Hot lunch.
Just the other day this take-out pizza menu landed on my doorstep, featuring some of TNUC’s favorite action gurus sitting on top of an I-beam munching on burgers, fries, pizza and calzones. I could sit here with a straight face and attempt to tell you that it had arrived from some other dimension, a version of “heaven” if you will, one that’s home to action’s top macho men hanging out on construction sites eating junk food. Truth be told, the menu came to me from our friend at It Came From the VCR, who got it from someone in France.
Aside from Van Damme who looks really pissed off, everyone else is in good spirits, eating lunch and probably talking about working out, their favorite 80’s robots, who had the best montages and how many of them slept with Brigitte Nielsen. Schwarzenegger looks the most accurate, evoking the spirit of that big goofy foreign worker who shows up to the jobsite his 1st day wearing massive overalls and nothing underneath. He’s a little dumb but works hard and is happy to be there. Mel Gibson just looks high and Jack Nicholson is wasted beyond belief. Sly Stallone looks to be their fast-food-foreman, swinging around the iron like Tarzan with one hand on a suspension cable and the other on a pizza box.
The menu is in French so the only words I can make out are some of the combination plates, which include “La Chuck Norris” (tomate, fromage, boeuf hache, poulet, chorizo, olives, origan) and a pizza called “La Stalone” (Creme, lardons, oignons, fromage, olives, origan). The artwork is wacky but impressive. Whoever came up with this concept must have dreamed of it being presented beyond a 1″ x 6″ take-out menu. But then something came to mind…
It took me a few minutes before realizing this photo looked familiar. If you’ve ever visited a contractor’s office, you’ve probably seen this classic photo from 1932 which is called “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper”. The photo shows New York construction workers taking their lunch break up hundreds of feet in the air above the ground while building Rockefeller Center.
Doing a little research on the action hero version will guide you to a German artist by the name of Serdar Hizli, who was inspired by the original photo to paint his own version, (seen here in full), which sold over 3,000,000 copies worldwide in 1995. While the full version features 13 of the film industry’s biggest stars, it inspired Uncle T to come up with his own rendition. Here’s who would show up on the official TNUC poster…
From left to right: Patrick Swayze, Malibu (American Gladiators), Dolph Lundgren, The Barbarian Brothers, Santa Carla’s Vampires, Brian Bosworth (w/ pet Komodo dragon), Beer Wolf, Chainsaw & Dave (Summer School), Big Mike and The Manimal.
JANUARY’S LOST LEGEND OF THE MONTH: THE BROCKTON TRASH ICON.
Posted on January 29, 2015 8 Comments
Fresh off the heels of 2014’s Deadbeat-Of-The-Month, TNUC gallops into 2015 with a brand new monthly splurge: LOST LEGEND OF THE MONTH!
“Lost Legend”? Oh, like Kurt Cobain or something? NOPE.
Our Legends are forgotten men and women, as well as misplaced beasts that have been misunderstood and neglected throughout the course of history. People that given the chance and proper placement in life should have dominated everything in their path. But somehow that didn’t happen. For whatever reason they missed their window to rise to the top of that plateau with wind whipping through their hair and a sweaty clenched fist pointed to the high heavens, declaring their brute strength and sexual prowess on all of mankind.
The painful thing about seeing one of these supreme icons in action is that it might only last two seconds, whether that be in-person or on TV. However, that mere glimpse of getting a feel for their attitude, strut, and ruthlessness spoke numbers and left you in a daze of inspiration. You must get to know this mega-being, discover their daily activities, imitate their body language, see what’s on their bedroom walls and find out what action movie soundtrack they hold forever true.
On the flipside, these Legends aren’t restricted to being only the elusive kind. He, she or IT could be someone who was in the media spotlight for a period of time but dropped off the face of the planet to be never heard from again. Many of our LLOTM’s will be people you recognize and always wondered “WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN?”.
With that out of the way, we’re pleased to announce January’s Lost-Legend-Of-The-Month:
THE BROCKTON TRASH ICON.
Take a firm 25 minutes to absorb every bit of raw power that this photo contains. JUST LOOK AT THIS GUY. Yes, it’s a shirtless garbage man with a long hair, pink bandanas on each arm ala The Ultimate Warrior and most importantly, a bad attitude. This warrior of the wind was spotted just a few months ago in the somewhat-dumpy town of Brockton, Massachusetts hanging on the back of a garbage truck.
While brisk Northeast winds blow around that rat’s nest on top of his skull, our Legend prowls the city – tossing old food, dirty diapers, leaky packages and 220 lbs. bags of dog poo into his heavy duty killwagon. As you’ll see in the photos, he handles trash while wearing white, fingerless gloves which pair well with his I-could-give-a-fuck jeans. His skin is worse than an 80 year old Florida woman’s corpse, yet he’s immune to any forms of cancer. Locals call him Heavy-Metal-Melanoma. This guy is like if instead of starting a solo career, David Lee Roth was sent to a post-apocalyptic land of doom to share an apartment with The Toxic Avenger after he and Van Halen parted ways.
The photo came to me from a TNUC disciple named Shawn with a message that read “the most epic trash man”. Goddamn right he is. This is the baddest and nastiest garbage handler on the planet. It’s not that he doesn’t know what decade it is, he just couldn’t care less. Management are too afraid and intimidated to approach him regarding their “company dress code”, but they also can’t lay him off because he’s the best garbage man the city has seen this century. Little kids hold up handmade signs like they’re at a wrestling event when he pulls up to their houses. Every single mom in a 15 mi. radius starts out being afraid of him, threatening to call the cops purely based on his appearance, but weeks later are asking him to stop by on his “lunch break” with packs of Virginia Slims. Life for this Lost Legend really is all about greasin’ the do back and weasin’ on the buff-fest.
Shawn told me that he only caught the elusive trash warrior on the prowl one time, but word on the street is that now he’s wanted by the local sanitation department for riding through white-picket-fenced neighborhoods banging his head and blasting Testament. Again, this is not some old photo dug up from a 1987. It was taken just a few months ago. All of this is happening right now, maybe in YOUR neighborhood.
People, if you see this man, contact Uncle T IMMEDIATELY. If someone can convince him to use a computer for five minutes, have him read this post and let him know how much we respect everything that he represents.
In conclusion, Uncle T would just like to say that even though he for the most part despises movie remakes, can we get someone to remake 1990’s Men At Work? With leading roles by Keith David and our very 1st Lost Legend: The Brockton Trash Icon!
RIDE LIKE THE WIND MIX.
Posted on January 14, 2015 6 Comments
Finally, after a long hiatus, KURT SLOAN returns to the Land of TNUC today with his first mix (more like journey) since Deep Mountain Meditation. Kurt has faced some hard times since the last time we heard from him, which involved him losing some muscle tone and having to take up a custodial job at a local department store. Before you sink into this 40-minute sonic reawakening, we recommend that you read the full backstory:
“When Kurt Sloan awoke in a daze he had somewhat of a revelation. You see, the past few years hadn’t been kind to him but on this particular morning things looked promising. It all started when yet again he found himself lying spread eagle on a floor mattress with nothing but a deer hide blanket covering his loins. There was nothing really atypical about this current state, he had once again woken up naked in the backroom of the New Age Spiritual Shop in the mall.
His routine over the past few days went something like this: he would wrap up his late night janitorial shift at JC Penney by wringing out the dry mop, removing his name tag, splashing some water on his face and then finally heading down to the opposite end of the mall to bang the hippie college chick with the dreads who worked at the New Age Spiritual Shop.
So there he was, lying on his back and rubbing his eyes which were strained and watery, presumably from the air, which still lingered with smells from last night – some kind of cross between tiger balm, sage, and mineral oils. It seemed like all life had left the mall. “What time is it anyway?”, Kurt muttered to himself. He shook his head and tried to hear if anyone was in the front of the store, but the only sound he heard was the trickling of water running over stones from the Zen Garden display. He looked to his left at the familiar portrait of a radiant White Buffalo and the scattered stack of prints behind it depicting things such as canyons, temples and wolves. It was somewhere amidst the colorful array of horoscope calendars, astrology guides, mandalas, tarot cards and incense that Kurt Sloan began to find himself again…
He wriggled into his jeans and stood up with a renewed sense of purpose. He came face to face with a life-size painting of a Native American warrior who looked right into Kurt’s eyes with a piercing and stoic gaze. Wrinkles branched off from the warriors eyes like tributaries on a river, they suggested a great hardship, yet there he stood at the edge of a cliff looking over the plains with wind whipping through his hair. Kurt Sloan tightly clenched his fists, squeezing all his muscles together until he felt them burn with his inner fire.
He walked out of the mall and into the parking lot. He stepped onto his motorcycle, jarred the kickstand free, revved the throttle and rode off. As he drove past the highway sign that read 50 miles to Tucson, the sun was just starting to rise over the horizon. He took off towards the sunrise ready to RIDE LIKE THE WIND.”
*Uncle T cannot express his gratitude enough to Kurt Sloan for blessing our sacred land with this musical offering. When some time can be carved out we urge you to lock yourself in a dark room, strap on a pair of headphones and drift into this musical journey. If you’re sitting there scratching your head, wondering what the hell we’re talking about in this post, you need to visit Kurt’s 1st mix for TNUC from 2012.*
CARPENTER BRUT: EP III & INTERVIEW.
Posted on January 5, 2015 3 Comments
Three years ago I was captivated by an album cover that featured a snow covered building with an upside down crucifix hung on its side and the words ‘Carpenter Brut‘ plastered on the front. The music was synth-based and electronic but darker and more abrasive than anything else happening in the genre. Gone were the neon colors and sunny, palm tree imagery. These sounds were geared for 3:00 a.m. disco parties in the graveyard starring Trash from Return of the Living Dead and all your favorite leather-clad ghouls.
Then in 2013 came the release of EP II, an album that I consider a 100% Grade-A masterpiece. I hadn’t heard music (or any form of art) that blended three of my favorite things in the world together – old horror movies, 1980’s heavy metal, and oozing synthesizers. The behemoth-sized production on the album was noticeably different from his previous material. The synths alone would make Justice and Kavinsky drop to their knees and beg for mercy. There are moments on this album that sound like 1984 George Lynch is wailing away on his ESP guitar in the same room as Fabio Frizzi. Other moments that will have you seeing an oasis of Italian models in leotards sweating it up in a dimly-lit aerobic studio.
So naturally Uncle T was excited when he heard Carpenter Brut was releasing his third opus in January. Excited…but fearful. Was it possible to top what was accomplished on the previous album? And was this truly THE END of it all?
After getting a full preview of the new album, I’m here to report that the answer to the above question is YES – he’s done it again, folks. EP III pushes everything we love about his music to the limit and wraps the trilogy up with a post-apocalyptic, ultra-violent bomb blast to our senses. But these themes of obliteration also create a sense of paranoia for anyone fearing that “the end is nigh” for Carpenter Brut. You can all rest easy because he’s planning for world domination which happens to start right now in 2015. In this exclusive meeting of the minds, Uncle T sat down with Carpenter Brut to discuss his new EP, plans for performing/touring this year with a live band(!), releasing a full-length album and more!
UT: Congratulations on EP III. Was creating a trilogy intentional?
CB: Thanks! Yes it was intentional. I like movie trilogies, their length allows for the creation of interesting worlds. I have tried to apply that to my music. The last song of the latest EP is about invasion while the first song on the first EP is about escape. It comes full circle.
The addition of vocals to your music is an interesting approach. How did this come about and who’s singing?
I wrote ‘Anarchy Road’ having Depeche Mode in mind. I am a big fan of this band, even if I’m not so fond of their latest albums. Depeche Mode just sweats class, and their vocals contribute to it. We actually sent the track to their manager, just for the fun of it. No answers of course. I asked Jim from Tusk/Trumps to add vocals. He has a really cool voice that fits the song perfectly. I will try to add more vocals on the next album, even if it is harder to put in place than working by myself on my keyboards. Instrumental melody is fine for some time but I sometimes feel a bit trapped in order to move on. The addition of vocals can absolutely turn an average track into a bomb so why pass on them?
If you could choose any real or fictional setting for a first-time listener to listen to your music, where would that ideal place be? My choice would be a real-life Castle Grayskull, with barbarian-babes dancing along to your songs…
In the Overlook Hotel’s entrance hall, right by the elevators doors.
If you could re-score any horror, sci-fi or action flick of the past, what would it be?
Tough question. I have to say I have no clue. I think music is so linked to the images of a movie that it is hard to imagine it differently and with another vibe. I cannot imagine Star Wars composed by someone else than John Williams. Maybe I would go for “The Road”. This movie moved me so much that it would be quite a violent experience for me.
The ‘heavy metal’ vibe of your music really stands out. How does one evoke the spirit of heavy metal in electronic music form?
Maybe in the structure of the songs – that good old classic “verse/chorus” – or by including breaks that can be rock or metal oriented. I try, however, not to have a metal sound, even if I use keyboards with some thickness and distortion. I also want to sound heavy and powerful, and it might not be that common in traditional electro music. But I certainly don’t want to play metal music with keyboards.
You’re one of the only current electronic musicians that I could NEVER picture hunched over a lone laptop during a live show. Your music is just so huge and dynamic, so I was happy to see you transitioning to a band. Without revealing too much, what can hungry CB fans expect to see on this tour?
It will be our very first shows with this line-up so we will start by performing the songs the best we can. We have a lot of ideas that will develop in the long run but, because we lack time and means, our goal will simply be that people have a good time, with their heads exploding in a friendly and smooth environment. We will also have a knives stand.
I’m assuming you’ll have percussion on your first live tour. What else? Synthesizers and guitars? The last I heard Kane Roberts was out of work and looking for a guitar gig.
We’ll have drums, keyboards and guitar. It will allow us to bring some overall groove as well as some 80s guitar-hero pieces.
Are you a practicing satanist, and if so, Uncle T would love to wash down a couple quaaludes & some demon blood with you when you visit Los Angeles.
Haha. No I stopped when I was 12.
How important do you feel physical media is? For me, most of the time I like having something to hold and stare at when I’m listening to an album.
I am torn. On one hand I am a lazy dude and I listen to Spotify rather than digging in my records collection to find this or that album. I am even too lazy to sort them by alphabetical order. But on the other hand, if I really like an album, I buy the vinyl because the artist behind deserves to earn the maximum amount of money for the work and because the object is nicer than a CD. Chances are it will never end up on my turntable though. I don’t know how people still take time to listen to music given that now you can listen to music anywhere and all the time. I know some people still enjoy sitting on a couch to listen to a good vinyl. That’s why we release our albums on a physical support but in small amounts because it is always more expensive to make than putting them on iTunes.
Artwork for Carpenter Brut’s “Trilogy” 3xLP, coming this March.
If you could hire only one woman (living or dead) to star as a video vixen in one of your music videos, who would it be?
Monica Bellucci with a chainsaw in each hand.
Do you collect anything weird/interesting besides music? Are the walls of the Carpenter Brut lair adorned with anything strange?
Not really. Like everyone I have McFarlane movie figures. I waited for 25 years before owning He-Man’s Castle Grayskull. “Santa” didn’t seem to know what it was back in the days so I always ended up with cool stuff but never this damn castle. But my walls are more covered with acoustic panel. I had Ghostbusters Legos for Christmas though, I’m very proud of them.
Are you looking forward to seeing anything in particular while traveling to foreign lands on tour?
Not really. The simple idea of travelling thanks to my music is enough to make me happy. I always like to leave France anyway.
Any last words for the Land of TNUC and your fans?
“By the power of Grayskull…”
† † † † † † †
Carpenter Brut will release EP III on January 19th. Digital pre-orders are available now at this location. While we wait until March for the “Trilogy” 3xLP vinyl to arrive, digital pre-orders are available here. Keep an eye on his Facebook page for tour dates.
† † † † † † †
A TNUC CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.
Posted on December 24, 2014 2 Comments
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Let’s gaze inside the TNUC lair for a closer look at this year’s holiday banquet…
Yes, one of the Boglins demanded that Aunt Bethany’s cat food jello from Christmas Vacation be made on this joyous night.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from Uncle T, Harry, Cousin Itt, Drool (Boglin), Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Flurp (Boglin), Slimer, Rox (Street Shark), Gorzak and Cryptkeeper!
DECEMBER’S DEADBEAT OF THE MONTH: PAULIE.
Posted on December 22, 2014 1 Comment
It’s with great honor and privilege that we declare Paulie of the Rocky movies to be TNUC’s FINAL Deadbeat-of-the-Month.
Since we started this monthly journey into the deep abyss of depravity a year ago, Paulie was always on my mind. He’s the ideal candidate for Deadbeat-of-the-Month because he’s TNUC’s favorite type of deadbeat – guys that are basically good people deep down but the quest to locate that “good-ness” requires you to sift through a number of sleazy, insulting, drunken-slob qualities.
With that out of the way, we can now focus on the top (3) features that allow Paulie to be such a wonderful deadbeat.
#1 – THE BOOZING.
Paulie is a raging alcoholic which is blatantly displayed throughout the entire film franchise with countless scenes of him pounding cheap, bottom of the barrel beer and liquor. Consuming all this alcohol makes Paulie a bitter bastard, taking out his anger and frustration out on his sister Adrian and soon to be brother-in-law Rocky Balboa. In the photo above he’s drinking Schlitz, one of America’s oldest beers. It’s definitely cheap beer but still probably the classiest beverage we see Paulie drinking during all six movies. It’s all downhill from here..
If your definition of bad, cheap beer is Keystone Light you simply aren’t operating on Paulie’s level. His beer choices come from the family of “deadbeat beers” – stuff that tastes like it was brewed in a prison sweat-sock and is normally only sold in 30-packs (alcoholics/power-drinkers only). They don’t sell it in 6-packs because their customer demographic requires a lot more that six beers to get them into blackout, banshee, piss-your-pants glory.
In the above shot at Paulie’s birthday party in Rocky IV, next to his nephew we see a can of Stroh’s, notorious kingpin of the deadbeat beer universe. Before Stroh’s was bought out by Pabst Brewing Company in the early 2000’s, the Detroit-based company also produced Schaefer, Old Milwaukee, Lone Star and many other degenerate brews. If you haven’t seen your family in a while and for some reason plan on really freaking them out this holiday season, show up to their house with a case of Stroh’s and watch their faces drop. Or if you’re dead broke and worried about making rent this month, but know you won’t be able to shake that craving for 17 beers tonight, take Paulie’s advice and pick up the always-affordable Stroh’s.
Chugging beers everyday is one thing, hell, we fully support this sort of activity in the Land of TNUC. But drinking second rate, snake-piss whiskey all day/everyday is an act made only for guys like Paulie. In just about every scene in the original Rocky, he’s seen taking pulls of his bottle of Four Roses (see above). These days Four Roses is a fairly respected, “straight” bourbon…but there was a time when it was basically known as homeless booze. Before 2002 the brand name was used on a blended whiskey, so it was seen as sub-par to other bourbons. This of course happened to be during Paulie’s love affair with the drink as he’s seen taking swigs of his bottle at the meat-packing facility, on the street and just about anywhere he pleases.
One can sympathize with Paulie on the basis that the guy works in a freezer surrounded by raw cattle carcasses all day in dreary Philadelphia. If that alone isn’t a reason to drive him to drink, he also hates his job and wants to work for local mafioso Tony Gazzo. With every attempt Paulie tries to make with Rocky to put in a good word for him with Gazzo, he fails miserably and falls deeper into his bottle of bottom shelf whiskey.
#2 – THE ANGER.
Paulie is without a doubt an angry and negative bastard. His jealous rages toward Rocky and drunken outbursts on Adrian turn violent at times, resulting in him making an ass out of himself and even getting arrested as seen in Rocky III. See below for a refresher.
This is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series because it feels like for a second you’re watching a gritty, NYC grindhouse-horror flick…STARRING PAULIE. The mood and atmosphere as he stumbles through the arcade is downright chilling. If this taste of “Paulie-terror” is something that gets you excited, go watch 1982’s Amityville 2: The Possession starring Burt Young to help suppress your appetite.
This scene in the movie is the arch for our #1 deadbeat. In the first film he’s at an ultimate low – smashing shit with baseball bats, throwing turkey dinners into alleys and screaming at Adrian that she’s a loser. As Rocky gains momentum and starts making a name for himself, Paulie’s life gets better and we see him become relatively tame in the sequel, Rocky II. By the third film Rocky is making all kinds of money and Paulie reaches his breaking point with jealousy, as seen in the clip. This drunken explosion ends up getting him arrested, then Rocky bails him out of jail and they almost get into a fistfight in the parking lot. Rocky eventually sees what’s going on and gives him a job as ringside assistance.
#3 – THE ROBOT.
In Rocky IV, Paulie elevates his inner-deadbeat by turning a once-harmless robotic into an alleged electronic sex slave.
I bet Rocky and Adrian never dreamed when they surprised Paulie with a robot for his birthday that within a few days he’d have the talking machine saying things like “you’re the greatest” and “see ya, sport” in such a seductive voice. You can tell by the nervous look on Adrian’s face that she knows something else is up, but can’t bare to know the details. Watch the clip and wait for 1:19 to witness the robot’s transformation.
As the robot feeds him Stroh’s beer all day, he lounges around in his wifebeater and God-only-knows what down below (if anything). These scenes are meant to be lighthearted and comical, but i’m pretty sure there’s a lot more going on here. Just look at the expression on Apollo Creed’s face after the robot exits the room.
**FUN FACT** – What if I told you that our favorite robot of the 1980’s was actually designed to treat autism in children? It’s true. The “happy birthday Paulie” robot’s name was Sico and it was designed by a company called International Robotics in the mid-eighties to communicate with autistic kids. Back then autism was very under researched and Sylvester Stallone’s son Seargeoh was autistic, which is what eventually brought Sico to the set of Rocky IV. Stallone loved the robot so much that he wrote it some scenes for the movie. There is said to be a few hilarious scenes that were cut featuring Paulie and the robot in some sort of “Odd Couple” style relationship!
[I hope you disciples enjoyed TNUC’s DEADBEAT-OF-THE-MONTH retrospectives this year. We’re calling it quits after thirteen months of writing about these delinquents (December 2013 – December 2014) in hopes of starting a new monthly feature for 2015. Uncle T truly appreciates you sticking around to read or just quickly scan the posts each month! As always, you can revisit the saga of Deadbeats here.]
uncletnuc.com 
