Europe Reunion Tour

Recently, it was announced that 80s rock act Europe will be re-uniting to play several different music festivals this summer. Here's an exclusive first-look at their planned set list for the performances:

And for those of you who can't make the show:

Diary of Fools Nut-Punch of the Week, Sept 1-5, '08.

By Merton Sussex, Self-Appointed Demagogue.

Summer is drawing to a close, the days are growing shorter, and the kids are headed back to school. Football season is starting, the leaves will turn soon, and the nip will slowly creep back into the air. What does this have to do with anything? Fuck-all, really. But I've got a quota to fill. So, with that out of the way, it's time once again for that most groin-shockingly painful of Diary features:


Without further (or in fact ANY) adieu, here are this week's deserving contenders:



Kid Rock

Kid Rock (née Bob Ritchie) could have been featured here for any number of reasons. Among them: the posturing, the proclivity for getting into Waffle-House fights, the being greasier than the deck of the Exxon Valdez yet somehow still tapping Pamela Anderson...But like so many others, I waited until he really deserved it.

I'm just going to go ahead and assume you've heard his latest single. Reason I feel like I'm safe in that assumption is that it's harder to avoid than the clap at a nudist camp. Though, to be fair, it's quite a bit more unpleasant...So it's got that going for it.

"All Summer Long" isn't so much a "song" per se...it's really more of an audio abortion. For the uninitiated, first....Consider yourself lucky. Second, it would be generous to call it a mash-up. Ritchie took the hooks from both "Werewolves of London" and "Sweet Home Alabama," then nicked the title of a Beach Boys Song, and shoved them all in a blender and hit "liquefy." Hearing it is an experience akin to watching a wife-beater and mullet-sporting sanitation worker actively fuck the corpse of Warren Zevon in the dirtstar, then dismount, do a back-double twist/half-gainer, land cock-first and balls-deep directly the mud-eye of Ronnie Van Zandt's decaying body, start enthusiastically fucking THAT, and all without ever breaking a sweat, or his thrust pattern.

..."The Aristocrats!"

And the worst part? Well, being as he outright thieved the entire MUSICAL portion of this song, all he had to really come up with on his own was the LYRICS, right? Well, how are those? Let's take a peek:

Splashing through the sand bar
Talking by the campfire
It's the simple things in life, like when and where
We didn't have no internet
But man I never will forget
The way the moonlight shined upon her hair

To begin with, the mush-mouthed mangling of the language it takes to rhyme "sand bar" with "campfire" is one that currently has Robert Frost spinning in his casket so fast that the satin lining has caught fire. But then he wedges that disgustingly lazy "internet/forget" non-sequitur couplet in there apropos of exactly zero. What about "We didn't have no TiVo/but man, you know, by mind is slow"? Or, "There weren't no Blu-Ray DVD's/But I like my pizza with extra cheese"? Any coupling of 21st century technology with something that has nothing to do with it, or anything else in the song would suffice. Either of those would have worked as well, and made just as much sense. And that's just off of the top of my head, for chrissakes.

But the really egregiously inexcusable affront comes when the chorus comes slumping up and shits all over itself:

And we were trying different things
We were smoking funny things
Making love out by the lake to our favorite song
Sipping whiskey out the bottle, not thinking 'bout tomorrow
Singing Sweet home Alabama all summer long

Wrong, asshole...Wrong. Rhyming a word with ITSELF will get you booted out of any sixth-grade poetry class on the planet! You can't rhyme "things" with "THINGS"! Aaargh. FUCK! I can't believe he's getting PAID for this! And on top of THAT, he mentions "Sweet Home Alabama" just as the signature guitar lick from the same comes shitting all over the arrangement, as if he needs to grasp you tenderly by the hand, and point it out to you in case you missed it. Fuck you, Bob. Not all of us are as window-lickingly dumb as you.

Point is, this is stunningly stupid "music", MADE by someone stunningly stupid, and FOR people who are stunningly stupid. And yes, in case you LIKE this miserable excuse for radio filler, I'll simplify it further: THAT MEANS YOU ARE STUNNINGLY STUPID.

If I ever see Kid Rock, I might skip the nut-punch, and skip directly to kicking him in the fucking neck. He deserves no less for foisting this disgusting, bastardized puddle of audio diarrhea upon an unsuspecting public, all while standing on the shoulders of deceased giants who cannot defend themselves. He ought to be ashamed of himself. And he likely WOULD be, save for the fact that nothing I've ever seen indicates that he has the faintest drop of shame whatsoever.



Sean Combs

And yeah, I know. But I don't give a tin shit what cutesy little name he's calling himself this week. His momma calls him "Sean Combs", that's what's on his drivers' license, so that's who he is. And fuck you if you buy into his hype machine and refer to him as anything different. In fact, fuck you if you ever really refer to him at ALL. He has NEVER been worth your attention.

Sean Combs could have been here at any point, for most of the same reasons Bob Ritchie is. They both have the same amount of talent. They're both shitty rappers. They both rip off the work of others and pretend it's original. But Sean has really gone above and beyond this week, spewing his posturing, lack of social decorum, and notions of entitlement all over everything like rancid, morning-after chili vomit.

Combs recently posted a video on his website that's such a masterpiece of infuriating douchebaggery that I hardly know where to start. First, he yanks out his proverbial cock, and makes sure all and sundry know he has a private jet. Gag. Second, he talks about his "acting career," which should make any rational person want to start punching him, and not stop until he never gets up again. But then when he starts in about how much he's spending in a month on fuel to fly back and forth from New York to L.A. (around a half-million) it becomes apparent that he's going for some sort of asshole lifetime achievement award.

But what REALLY seals the deal on his jagoff japery is when he starts practically foaming at the mouth over the fact that he has to...*GASP!*...fly COMMERCIAL. Oh, the INDIGNITY! That a STAR of his magnitude should have to actually get on a plane with the unwashed MASSES, in order that he might have the wherewithal to someday subject the same people to his disgustingly inept ACTING?!? THERE TRULY IS NO GOD!

Then, just when you think he can't sink any lower, Diddly-Shit makes it a point to "give a shout-out to all my Saudi Arabia brothers and sisters and um...uh...Like...um...Other countries that have oil" in a not-even-slightly veiled bit of begging that they "send [him] some oil for [his] jet." Because if anyone deserves gas-price relief, it's not a single mom who can't afford to drive herself to work or her kids to school. It's not an over-the-road trucker who spends 14-16 hours on the road every day hauling food for working families. And it's certainly not a meals-on-wheels driver who volunteers her time, vehicle, and gas to make sure elderly shut-ins who are too ill to leave the house get enough to eat. No. It's some gaping, talent-free asshole who made every penny of his millions in the bank off of the backs of others, and then has the audacity to beg for special treatment in full view of all of the poor folks who bought his records.

"This is REALLY HAPPENING!" says Dudley Do-Wrong, filming himself in front of a boarding gate at an American Airlines airport terminal. No shit, you pompous, arrogant fuck-blister. Welcome to the real fucking world. If you had even the faintest fucking CLUE what reality was like for millions and millions of people out here right now, maybe you'd finally shut your big, idiotic, fly-catching mouth for once in your goddamned life, and perhaps show a little gratitude that you've managed to turn so little skill into so much revenue.

I literally cannot WAIT to see how INCENSED his useless ass gets when it's time for him to move to the not-so-ritzy community of Relative Obscurity. Once he's bunking with M.C. Hammer, he might start to get it. Though, to be honest...I'm not holding my breath.

If you dare, check out the video here:







Klee Irwin

Would you let THIS man inspect the inside of your asshole? Because he wants to. He REALLY, REALLY wants to.

If you have no idea who Klee Irwin is, it's because you're not an insomniac. And in that case, you should count yourself lucky TWICE.

Klee Irwin is an "author and researcher" who buys late-night infomercial ad space for the purpose of talking to you about your shit. And when I say "shit," I'm not talking about your household clutter, or some other euphemistic deal. I'm talking about your actual shit.

Apparently, this deeply creepy fuck wants you to believe he's seriously concerned about the quality of what comes out of your asshole. According to him, we're all walking around with several pounds of impacted shit, just hanging out and throwing a party in our lower intestines. And that's the reason for all of our ills! And, even though he's just an "author and researcher" (a dubious title technically applicable to anyone who's ever pulled an all-nighter writing a college paper) and not an actual DOCTOR, he wants you to believe that he and he alone can "cure" this condition. To that end, he peddles a super-expensive box of pills called "Dual Action Cleanse" that supposedly carpet-bomb your colon with a specially-formulated blend of botanicals, magically knocking loose all of your impacted crap, and in the process, improving your quality of life.

Okay, first, remember that he's not a doctor. He's a snake-oil salesman hucksteroo who'd have you believe that a fistful of prairie-pickin's are the answer to everything. And I don't care who you are...From chiropractors who think that they can fix everything from chronic hangnails to lung cancer by slapping around your vertebrae to nut-hatch Scientologists who say a few minutes on the e-meter getting "clear" of your body Thetans will fix everything....There's no single miracle treatment for every ailment under the sun. And if there were...I don't think it would be sold on an infomercial.

Second...If you Google this shit-on-the-brain, the whole first page (and most of the second) is people either A) making fun of him, or B) begging you not to buy his products because they're at best a scam, and at worst, downright dangerous.

Third: His obsession with shit is enough to make your skin crawl. He spends the majority of both of his infomercials talking about bowel movements, your colon, impacted fecal matter, and a thousand other topics, all having to do with shit. The worst 40 seconds EVER to air on television in any context ANYWHERE has to be the ones where he's talking about how fascinated he is with the turds of his toddler daughter. And no, I'm not kidding:



And fourth, HOW CAN HE NOT KNOW HE LOOKS THAT MUCH LIKE JOHN WATERS?!?



For chrissakes! If you resembled Mr. Waters THAT MUCH to begin with, why in the name of all that is good and holy would you slick your hair back and grow a pencil-thin moustache on top of it?!?

Don't get me wrong, I dig John Waters. I respect any auteur of avant-garde film. But you'd think if your whole business was built on getting shit out of people, you'd want to look a lot less like a guy world-famous for making a film featuring an obese drag queen eating dogshit fresh from the dog's ass. But maybe that's just me.

Still not convinced? Check THIS out:



Same shirt, same tie, same hair, same speech pattern, same ridiculous facial hair. Would you know that was a different dude if I hadn't told you?

So, if you SEE Klee Irwin, please run as far away as you can in the opposite direction. WhatEVER you do, do NOT engage him in conversation. I get the sense that any casual chat with this guy invariably turns to shit within five minutes.

And the winner is:



Kid Fucking Rock.

It's not just Ritchie himself, reprehensible though he may be. And it's not the song, abysmal though it is. It's what they represent together: The continual dumbing-down of America.

"Kid Rock" is the embodiment of a very detestable, yet growing trend. He represents that special brand of Bush-era dumb. The jubilant red-state celebration of the aggressively ignorant, trailer-dwelling, proudly and defiantly stereotypical collective anti-intellectual Jethro redneck fuck that's dragging this country into the sewer. There's no PRIDE inherent in being an uneducated, backwoods, moonshine-swilling waste of space. It's not "patriotic" or "American" to beat your wife, shoot stuff for the hell of it, and proudly wallow in your own idiocy. The American spirit has always said it's the most honorable path to strive for more, better, and greater heights of achievement. But thanks to Ritchie and others of his ilk, we have a whole subculture that reaches no higher than the bottom. That is perfectly happy to stand thigh-deep in racism, stupidity, and backward thinking. And for that, he deserves to have his scrotum worked like a heavy bag at a Bronx gym.

Go to hell, Bob. And take all of your Confederate-flag-wavin, hootin'-hollerin, greezed-pig-wrasslin, monster-truck-drivin', tarbacky-chawin', bible-thumpin', Jack-Daniels-chuggin', thinks-"Deliverance"-was-a-documentary loser crew with you. This country needs to outgrow you, and FAST.

You can leave Pam, though.

Oh, wait...She left you first.