Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

We get mail

One of the nice things about doing a project like Monkey Spit is the chance to mock random strangers. So let's get to it...

A while back, we put up one of our notorious fake websites, this one dedicated to "The World's Greatest Partridge Family Tribute Band." The site was actually intended as a poke at Howard's Tribute Band Heaven, one of the more unintentionally hilarious pages I've visited (be sure to read his "Theories"). For our page, we created a fictional band-leader, one Gordie Ferguson, who is so far gone he believes himself to be guided by the "spirit of Danny Partridge;" Ol' Gordie's actually got himself a mid-'80s Toyota minivan and painted it to resemble the Partridge Family bus. It was all just goofy fun for us, and there it sits in our fake sites collection. Apparently it still fools a few people.

So a couple of days ago, I get an e-mail from somebody at VH1. Seems they have a new program in the works. Here's the text:

Hey Gordie,

VH1 Casting Producer

Now, I could have played this for laughs and yanked her chain for a while, but she isn't a Nigerian scammer, and it just wasn't warranted. So I told her the truth, namely that Gordie doesn't exist, that the minivan doesn't exist, and that all the photos of the band-members on our page are actually pictures of the real Partridge Family cast that I tortured and distorted with a fun little program called Kai's Power Goo, now part of Corel's KPT Collection. (The reason computers were invented was so that Kai's Power Goo could exist; it's the most fun you can have without explosives. But I digress.) I even pointed out that there is a disclaimer on the page explaining that the band is fake. I was feeling magnanimous.

She took it well, and after exchanging a couple of e-mails, I referred her to my pal Scott Shaw! and his amazing and exhaustive collection of Flintstones memorabilia. Maybe they'll feature him on the show, and free publicity is always good, right?

Meanwhile, I recently got another e-mail relating to another one of our goofy sites. This one was the Felix Silla Fan Page, which we created as a parody of some of the "fan pages" you see on the web, where the fan can't help but drag his/her own life into the page that's supposed to be about the celebrity to whom it's devoted. We also thought it was bizarre that people go to the trouble to put up online shrines to incredibly obscure performers. You can find a page devoted to just about everybody who ever appeared on television. Every blonde bimbo who ever graced the tube has a fan page, and so does every bit actor who ever had crap glued to his face for an episode of Star Trek. We decided to build our weird celebrity fan page around my favorite Little Person, Felix Silla, best known for his performances as Cousin Itt and Twiki the Robot in the Addams Family and Buck Rogers TV shows. The page we made (I say "we" but Craig actually did all the work on that one; my only contribution was to suggest using Mr. Silla) was actually a lot more about the oddball site author than about Mr. Silla, though you can glean a lot of interesting biographical info from the page.

Anyway, last week I got an e-mail:

Subject: ur site.....

Thats funny u liek my uncle felix and u made a site bout him lol.....just writting to ya cuz i think its cool nice job....

Why am I left feeling that they didn't get the joke?

Crass Commercialism time: Now that the holiday season is upon us, allow me to turn into a total shill and remind you that the Monkey Spit Emporium has a bunch of unique gift ideas.

Or give the gift that keeps on giving, a Monkey Spit t-shirt!

Finally, for the person who already has everything, how about a nice godhood? Be a God allows you to declare anybody a god or goddess for only $9.99, including a handsome Certificate of Deity suitable for framing! Why name a star after somebody when you can make them a god? For that matter, why bother with a $29.95 ordination to the ministry when you can take the top slot for less than half that? Certainly apotheosis (look it up, it's good for you) for under ten bucks is a better bargain than one of those diplomas from "prestigious non-accredited universities" that they keep sending me e-mail for, isn't it?

Do your shopping and throw us a bone at the same time!

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