Ray, also known as Cash Flagg, Sven Golly and Cindy Lou Sutters, started his career as DP on Timothy Carey's "World's Greatest Sinner", and went on to give us such schlock classics as "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?", "The Horny Vampire", and my personal fave, "Rat Pfink A Boo Boo". Armed with a 16mm camera, a budget of hundreds and a dream, he took Hollywood by storm, albeit an embarrassingly small storm. His features made Ed Wood's movies look lavish and well written. Sure, he spent his later years churning out cheap porn from his Las Vegas hideaway, but that's not what he'll be remembered for.
Ray's wannabe filmmaker spirit lives today on this and a hundred other websites. There are millions of young Ray Dennis Stecklers out there, clutching DV cams in their sweaty fists and suffering fever dreams about ideas that they're convinced are worth a million bucks, unwittingly creating unintentionally hysterical crap that will entertain for generations to come. Few of them will ever realize their direct connection to Ray, but it's there.
For those of you out there who have yet to experience his work, please find it where you can and I'm willing to bet you'll agree with me...Ray Dennis Steckler made some of the best/worst films ever to slither through a projector.
And Ray, if there's a film maker's Heaven, I'm sure that the Good Lord has reserved a Double Wide for you somewhere on the periphery but inside the fence all the same. And when you see Ron Haydock (aka Vin Saxon, aka Lonnie Lord, aka Rat Pfink) and Titus Moede (aka Boo Boo), please give them a hug and tell them it was all worthwhile. I hope to see a sequel when I die and join you there.
I know nobody cares what the hell I think, and I know this is, like, a funny-ha-ha website, but if the message gets through to one person then it's worth the time to say it - TAKE FUCKING CARE OF YOURSELVES. I spent my whole life in robust health and abused the shit out of myself. I lived on coffee and pop tarts and craft services, and worked 10-14 hour days for 25 years. I gave the proverbial 110% regardless of whether or not anyone appreciated it because I love what I do. And in the end, it nearly killed me at the tender age of 46. It may still, although I'm not gonna go quietly. I have a long and ugly path to recovery ahead of me, and I put myself at this crossroads – nobody else is responsible. That's the worst part – the knowledge that I could've...and should've...prevented it.
DON'T NEGLECT YOUR HEALTH, FOLKS. IT CAN LEAVE YOU IN AN INSTANT. You don't always get a warning. And you don't have to be 80.
After watching scads of Laurel and Hardy shorts and Three Stooges two-reelers, I've started to wonder about how these men prepared their food on camera. Things like cracking eggs with a hammer and throwing shells and all into the pan, or making chicken soup by pouring boiling water through a bird carcass and into a bowl. Things like filling a birthday cake with natural gas, or feeding dog biscuits, alum, or salads filled with household objects to party guests.
Obviously, what's known today about the evils of cross-contamination, food allergies, bacterial infection and MSG was not a part of their culinary knowledge at the time, but that doesn't excuse overlooking common sense issues like not putting paint in an identical cup to the one holding coffee, and then placing said cup directly adjacent to the beverage itself. Or removing the lunchmeat from someone's sandwich and disguising the bread with, again, what surely must have been lead-based paint. Or stuffing entire unopened cans of vegetables into a turkey's cavities just before subjecting it to extreme heat.
And yet, these men all stayed alive for quite a while, which means they learned to consume and digest items that would sicken any of us living in the new millenium. The human digestive tract would have been much stronger then due to the harsh living conditions most immigrants suffered in both the old and new world. Strong enough to not only digest paint, nails, dirt and plaster, but to derive some sort of nutrient value from it as well.
The one puzzling factor in all of this is the ability of all of these men to obtain large amounts of elaborate pastries...Pies, cakes, cream puffs...No matter what sort of economic hardship these men suffered throughout the Great Depression, they were never far from large banquet tables or delivery trucks overflowing with baked goods. Unfortunately, these were usually used to assault dinner guests or passers-by as opposed to being eaten and enjoyed, which must have been a tremendous disappointment during those difficult economic times.
I was reminded of Santayana's "Condemned to repeat history " dictum, and I hope it is not true; I am not prepared to eat sawdust and ketchup sandwiches or have a live parrot climb into my thanksgiving turkey and run across the table. I will die first.
It's all well and good to credit Soviet Animation Collective #154 and the LearnFoTainment Channel for bringing you Svinja, but in reality there were no Soviet cartoon laborers involved. In actuality, Stalin didn't even have a pet pig, he was instead an avid collector of tropical fish, mostly neon and cardinal tetras, and felt that pigs were best served with pineapple rings and honey glaze. It was actually Field Marshal Georgi Zhukov who owned a pet pig, but this was not revealed to the public until his death in 1974.
Writing & Concept, Animation & Character Design: Clarington Shpoo
Backgrounds: Kevin Gallegly and Clarington Shpoo
Voices: Ken McIntyre as the Translator, Russian gibberish by Clarington
Please address all complaints to me; my friends had no idea what they were getting into.
...he told me what to say. My friend, the Witch Doctor, he told me what to do.
He said that you'd be mine, if I said this to you:
Oh, baby..
Ooh ee, ooh aah aah;
Ting, tang, walla walla bing bang –
Ooh ee, ooh aah ahh;
Ting tang, walla walla bing bang.
I can't believe how many times I've tried this, and it doesn't work worth a shit; in fact, I am much more likely to get smacked or arrested after shouting this in the average woman's face, especially since the Witch Doctor also instructed me to flail my arms wildly and bug my eyes as far as they'll go. If you see my friend the Witch Doctor, take it from one who knows, kick him in the nuts before he has a chance to give you any sage advice. If you must see a physician, choose a licensed, AMA approved health care provider.
The hairy, troll-like former TV hunchback wants to unionize internet content . This means that as far as he's concerned, all of you who like to star in and post your own films need to be shut out until you join his union, the Screen Actors Guild. He feels that non-union content on the internet is a threat to himself and his overpaid cronies, and that only certified, card-carrying members of SAG should be able to perform in front of a camera, regardless of where it's aimed. So you see, kids, it's not just about shutting you out of Club Hollywood, it's about shutting you out of everything ...Or making you pony up a couple of thousand a year to belong, like Scientology.
Furthermore, he feels that if you want to watch an old episode of Matlock or some such unmarketable crap that you downloaded off the web, that you need to pay for it, and Andy Griffith (or whoever, I don't mean to pick on Andy) needs to collect a royalty. From you.
You're a fascist, Asner, disguised as a leftist bleeder, just like Rob Reiner. It's all about controlling everyone else's lives instead of worrying about your own. You're worse than Bush, because at least he wears his colors for all to see. Up yours, hypocrite – I hope that the masses you're trying to betray rise up and drive you out of your gated community, security walled, million dollar fucking house.
