Posts Tagged CNN
Metalcore World Rocked By Stunning New Evidence of Hatebreed Singer’s Dark Mouseketeer Past
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on June 12, 2013
For years, Hatebreed singer Jamey Jasta was thought to be one of the baddest men on the planet. Jasta, a bandana wearing, tattoo-covered wildman, fronted one of the most rock’em-sock’em groups in the metalcore universe. Hatebreed was a name that inspired fear in the hearts of men, women and children alike. When Jasta howled the lyrics from songs like “Destroy Everything” and “In Ashes They Shall Reap” God-fearing, stability-loving citizens of this Great Republic cowered in terror. All those years, Jasta was carrying a secret that threatened to shake the very foundations of the metalcore world. Jamey was a former Mouseketeer.
Many of today’s top celebrities emerged from the 1990s version of The All-New Mickey Mouse Club. Keri Russell, Justin Timberlake, Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling were all part of the shows star-studded cast. There was also a quiet, well-mannered, golden-throated young man by the name of Casey Shanahan. He was only on the show for the 1990 season and is best remembered for a duet version the Ben E. King classic “Stand By Me” he performed with Spears. His contract was not renewed and “Casey” disappeared into obscurity. At least, that’s how the story goes.
Casey, who went by James when he wasn’t on the show, started a hardcore band with some of his friends back in New Haven, Connecticut that became one of the top selling metal acts of all time. He claimed that during the time he was supposedly on the show, he was a mild-mannered high school student who listened to a lot of Slayer and avoided pop music like the plague.
CNN’s Picture of “Casey” Jasta. He Is The Blonde Kid Standing Up In The Back With The Striped Shirt
Jasta has been hounded by rumors of his connection to the Mickey Mouse Club for years. In 2005, a fan at a concert in Dallas, Texas, was arrested for trying to sneak backstage at a Hatebreed concert to get his Mickey Mouse Club tee shirt signed. The fan, Dutch Engstrom, claimed in an interview with police that he had remembered “Casey” from the show and simply wanted to congratulate him on his success. Hours later, Dutch reportedly hung himself in his prison cell.
Pike Bishop, a reporter with the Washington Post, was ready to run a story on the Jasta-Mouseketeer Connection when he was told it would not be published by his editor. Days after the story was killed, Bishop died of a mysterious bacterial infection from consuming tainted shawarma at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Georgetown.
Deke Thornton, a stagehand on the 1990 Mickey Mouse Club show, contacted a publisher about potentially writing a tell-all novel about Jasta’s role on the show in 2009. Minutes after his phone conversation, his San Antonio home was destroyed by a stray missile accidentally launched during a US Army training exercise. He and his entire collection of 53 flat-tailed spider tortoises died instantly.
Finally, on Monday evening, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer ran a story showing clear, photographic evidence of Jasta’s time on the popular Disney channel show. After the broadcast, Blitzer and his golf caddy Freddie Sykes were mauled to death by zebras in the CNN parking lot. Police are calling the attack an accident.
Jasta himself has remained silent on the matter. He has yet to comment on the CNN story or any of the other reports of his involvement with the Mickey Mouse Club. However, his image as a warrior of true metalcore may never recover from the stories and pictures of his misspent youth.
Danzig Escapes From The Atlanta Zoo
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on April 19, 2013
This Never Gets Old
If you are anywhere near a television, a radio, the internet, your phone, your Blackberry, or a noisy colleague who spent most of the night in a cough medicine induced stupor watching news broadcasts on one of 68,032 news channels, you have probably heard about Danzig’s harrowing escape last night from the Atlanta Zoo. Here’s a quick timeline of how the events transpired…
5:10 PM-Radio station 640 WGST reported that Danzig gnawed through the bars of his cage and ran through a crowd of terrified onlookers on his way to the Dippin’ Dots stand. He knocked the stand over and began to howl in a bluesy voice about how ice cream used to mean something.
5:20 PM-CBS News reported Danzig was surrounded by police. Desperate and frightened, Danzig took a three-foot marmoset hostage at gunpoint.
5:47 PM-ABC News reported that Danzig threw the marmoset at police officers. The marmoset exploded into giant ball of light temporarily blinding the officers and allowing Danzig to escape the park.
6:08 PM-Several witnesses claimed Danzig ripped his shirt off and stole a broken down 1995 charcoal grey Ford Focus with a “Who Is John Galt?” sticker on the bumper.
6:09 PM-CNN reported that the Ford broke down and Danzig was left to escape on foot.
6:16 PM-Witnesses spotted Danzig in a BP station stealing boxes of beef jerky while bellowing the lyrics to “Sistinas”.
6:25 PM-Danzig stated unequivocally that there will be no Misfits reunion.
7:26 PM-Fox News reported that MARTA cameras identified a well-built, naked man fitting Danzig’s description running through the Vine City station. Fox anchor Brit Hume went on to conclude from the footage that it is clear that Danzig is a Muslim terrorist.
7:34 PM-Fox retracted the earlier MARTA story and confirmed that the naked man was former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue. However, they continued to claim Danzig is affiliated with Al Queda.
7:46 PM-CNN reported a SWAT team has surrounded a Waffle House in Downtown Decatur and that Danzig was eating a plate of hash browns and talking to the waiter about the occult roots of Nazism.
7:58 PM-A SWAT team stormed the Waffle House and arrested the suspect.
8:09 PM-CNN reported that the man in police custody is actually Arnold Horseschaker, a Danzig impersonator who had, hours earlier, played a 5-year-old’s birthday party in Alpharetta.
10:38 PM-AP reported that Danzig was spotted on a Vincent Blackshadow motorcycle riding up I-85 at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour, his hair gently cascading in the wind.
10:43 PM- According to AP, Danzig’s flaming motorcycle leapt over 25 police cars while flipping multiple times through the air. He escaped again, unharmed.
10:56 PM-AP changed its earlier story and claimed only that Danzig was photographed on a motorcycle in 1985.
11:07 PM-Danzig’s apartment on Stewart Avenue in Hapeville was raided. Several highlighted copies of Catcher in The Rye were found along with 45 fishnet shirts.
11:13 PM-According to Fox News, a man fitting Danzig’s description was arrested in Osaka, Japan. The man was carrying a copy of the Koran, 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives and Bill Ayers autobiography. Fox announced it is a “100 percent certainty” that the man arrested is Danzig.
11:17 PM-Fox News announced the capture of Danzig in a bar in Tupelo, Mississippi. He was carrying a small nuclear bomb in a suitcase, reading out loud from a copy of Das Kapital and wearing an Obama for President tee shirt.
11:19 PM-The Drudge Report announced that Danzig is actually a Kenyan national named Hussein Abdul-Jihad.
11:38 PM-Various media outlets reported that Danzig and an unnamed accomplice, Glenn Doe Number Two as he’s referred to, were seen breaking into an exotic pet store in Marietta in order to liberate all the pythons, ferrets and tropical fish. The two quickly left the store with several animals and were chased by police.
11:54 PM-WSB-TV in Atlanta reported that police have shot a suspect fitting Danzig’s description only feet away from the Chattahoochee River. The man, who authorities are referring to as “the guy who probably isn’t Danzig but looks slightly like him”, was attempting to throw a bag of tropical fish into the water.
12:01 AM-CNN reports the man shot by the Chattahoochee River was actually Ron Ziegler, former Press Secretary to President Richard Nixon.
12:05-4:30 AM-Most media outlets, realizing the audience was quickly losing focus, began to speculate on the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and the possibility of the Ebola virus being spread through Wendy’s hamburgers.
4:33AM-CNN reported Danzig was captured only feet away from his cage at the Atlanta Zoo. He had been hiding behind a tree.
The Man Who Would Be King Diamond
Posted by Keith Spillett in King Diamond For President in 2012 on August 23, 2011
(Here’s a great piece that was on CNN’s website last Friday)
(CNN)-After watching him burst from the obscure world of heavy metal music onto the national stage as a Republican candidate for the Presidency, most Americans are asking the same question, “Who is King Diamond?” As of 2010, most political commentators hadn’t even heard the album Fatal Portrait let alone considered him to be a possible challenger to Barack Obama’s Presidency. However, the past few months have seen a whirlwind of political action by The King, including solving the debt crisis, helping to overthrow Mubarak’s government in Egypt and giving a speech in front of 2 million screaming, poorly-dressed metalheads at this month’s Million Metalhead March.
Not only is The King gathering a flood of support from disaffected Republicans (as well as some Democrats), his shadowy political action committee, known as THEM, has raised over 13 million dollars in less than 2 weeks. In order to understand King Diamond’s appeal to voters, it is first important to learn about his fascinating background. In many ways, The King’s story is America’s story.
Kim Bendix Peterson was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1739. He was the son of Per Peterson, a blacksmith, and Abigail Peterson, a blood-drinking witch who was a direct descendant of the God Poseidon. He was an intelligent young man who was deeply interested in alchemy, local politics and dead animals. When he turned 16, he had his first meeting with the Dark Lord Satan, who was working as a science teacher at The King’s high school. Satan, who was impressed by young Kim’s quick wit and nimble mind, became something of a mentor to him. “I remember when I first met him,” said Satan in an exclusive interview with CNN last week, “you could just tell he was going to do great things.”
When Kim turned 21, he officially took on the name King Diamond during a ritual sacrifice of Copenhagen’s largest water buffalo. The King was immediately given the powers of invisibility, the ability to cast spells on those he felt were deserving of torment and the occasional ability to raise the dead. Satan worried that The King might be taking on too much at a young age, but Diamond was able to keep things in perspective, rising to the role of Dark Prince in a span of less than five years.
Things haven’t always been easy for The King. Diamond has had to overcome several major obstacles in his life including a yearlong bout with bubonic plague and his grandmother’s devastating battle with mental illness. However, nothing compares to the horrible four year stretch where he was dead back in the 1840s. After being burned at the stake by wild-eyed French farmers who believed he caused blight on their crops, he was trapped in a darkened purgatory for what seemed like eternity. Eventually Charon, the ferryman on the river Styx, found the King screaming falsetto Latin choruses at passing demons and led him out of the realm of eternal darkness. “I felt like The King still had so much evil to bring to the world,” said Charon in his biography “Rollin’ On The River of The Dead: A Memoir”, “so I took pity on his soul and returned him to the world of the living. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
After his return to earth, The King became involved in politics, eventually landing a high-ranking position as Ambassador to Russia under President Teddy Roosevelt. While in the Roosevelt administration, Diamond accidently helped to negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War. For his work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with the President, an Award that he tossed into a blazing fire moments after he received it. Things turned sour between him and Roosevelt soon after when the President refused to allow Satan to take control of Arizona, which he believed Satan rightfully won from the President in a game of poker. The King became disillusioned with politics and travelled to the Far East in order to learn meditation techniques from several enlightened masters.
The King returned to Europe in the 1970s and began his career as a musician, believing that music was the best way to spread his message of unbridled horror to the world. After stints in bands like Brainstorm and Black Rose, the King truly found his calling in the 1980s fronting metal legends Mercyful Fate. Along with the seven studio albums he recorded with Fate, he also put together twelve magnificent studio records as a solo artist. After seeing what he referred to as the “embarrassing state of American politics”, he decided it was time to return and save America from the “tyranny of the painfully stupid”. The King plans to bring a no-nonsense approach to governing that includes a more equitable tax code and the return of the guillotine. He has a bold, striking vision for America that many consider radical. However, in these troubled times, a radical message like his may be just what Americans are looking for.
The Most Amazing Thing That Has Ever Happened To Me….THANK YOU SARAH PALIN!!!!
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointless Music Reviews, The Sarah Palin Fiasco on January 12, 2011
A Real Iron Maiden!!!
Some of you may have heard the big news today, but if you haven’t, I will tell you that today is easily the biggest day in the history of The Tyranny of Tradition blog. I have spent most of the last 24 hours dealing with calls from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and even the 700 Club. In order to understand what is about to happen I need to give you some back-story. About 3 months ago, a good friend of mine told me that he remembered at an early Sarah Palin speech during the 2008 campaign she came out to speak to the opening riff from Godzilla by the Blue Oyster Cult. I assumed he was kidding, but he was pretty insistent about it so I decided to look it up. Sure enough, I found the footage along with an interview with her talking about music and she mentioned listening to the Blue Oyster Cult when she was in high school. Being a die-hard Blue Oyster Cult fan, this utterly blew my mind. I wanted to find out if she was still a fan so I emailed her people again and again but never got a response. I figured that she had just blown it off as a series of bizarre emails and forgot about the whole thing. Then, about a week ago…I got an email FROM HER. I was astonished. She wrote me this lengthy letter thanking me for writing to her telling me all about her love for the Blue Oyster Cult. This was too much for me. I nearly had a heart attack. I decided to push things a step further and sent her a request to write a short piece for my blog. I had been listening nonstop to a record by a band called Ghost. The album, “Opus Eponymous”, is absolutely fantastic. On a whim, I decided to ask her to listen to it and write a review. Again, I was certain that I would never in a million years get a reply, but as I opened my inbox this morning I found the following email…
Keith,
Thanks for offering me a chance to write a review for your blog. I have been quite busy recently but I took a few moments to put something together for you. Hope you like it.
Yours truly,
Sarah
A Review of Ghost “Opus Eponymous”
By Sarah Palin
Over the last few years, many of you have gotten to know me as Sarah the candidate, or Sarah the Governor, or Sarah the Mother, but I want to take this opportunity to show you another side of me. Today, I want to introduce you to Sarah the Metalhead. A lot of people think of me as some kind of stuffed shirt who doesn’t know how to rock out. Nothing could be further from the truth. Todd and I are both huge fans of heavy metal. On one of our first dates, Todd took me to the nicest restaurant in Wasilla, a wonderful little Mexican place called El Taco that is owned by our close family friend Jerry O’Malley. To impress me, he hired the mariachi band to play the Blue Oyster Cult song “Astronomy”. At that moment, I knew I was in love. Of all metal and hard rock bands, I have always had a special place in my heart for the Blue Oyster Cult. I love them so much that I even tried to get Bristol and Piper’s Jazzercise instructor to use “Burnin’ For You” as part of their warm-up activities. When we were working on Sarah Palin’s America for TLC, we tried to film a sequence where we shot a moose with a rocket launcher from a moving chopper. To get ready to use this fine piece of military machinery, I listened to the Blue Oyster Cult’s song “Vengeance: The Pact”. Unfortunately, I missed the moose and the segment had to be cut, but that song really got me ready to go.
I recently picked up a copy of a CD by a band named Ghost called “Opus Eponymous” that reminded me a lot of what’s great about the Blue Oyster Cult. The album is filled with great solos, sweeping choruses and driving riffs. When I first heard the song, “Ritual” I knew I was going to enjoy their sound. There are definitely other influences on this album as well. I noticed a lot of moments that reminded me of some of the work done by the great King Diamond on the early records by Mercyful Fate, particularly the song “Elizabeth”.
At first, I really loved the album but then I found out some things about Ghost that troubled me greatly. First of all, they make reference to Satan on several occasions on this album. There are also a lot of violent lyrics. As you know, I am strongly against young people listening to violent music. This is not the sort of thing that impressionable children should be listening to. The thing that disturbed even more was the fact that Ghost is Swedish. They seemed to speak English very well so I, of course, assumed that they were American. It makes you think that a Swede could pretend to be an American an easily get away with it. A slick talking Swedish terrorist could easily get past one of those TSA government workers and bring weapons of mass destruction into our country. I don’t want to paint all Swedes with the same brush. There are probably some good Swedes out there, but it is a fact that the government of Sweden is socialist. Ghost may not be a socialist band. They may have fled Sweden to escape their brutal and oppressive government, but they have grown up living the socialist life and these things can change a person. They probably would come here expecting some sort of government hand out if they didn’t sell enough records. We have to at least consider the possibility that their music is meant as a Trojan horse to lead our young people to violence, Satanism and the belief that the government is going to solve all of their problems.
I would advise you to not buy this album in spite of the excellent quality of the music. There are plenty of good old fashion, red-blooded American metal bands that are struggling to sell records. Why give good hard earned, American money to a group of people who are just going to give it away to people who don’t share our values?
Read Sarah Palin’s response to the “Oystergate” controversy caused by this article.
The Tyranny of Tradition 