Up from the 36 Chambers....

This is possibly even better than the fake Foreigner drummer.
From Afrojacks.com, a typical day at the Wu Tang Office .





Nothing else to add, this is funny enough by itself.
Peace

News Wrap Up

So here's my favourite news story from this week.
Man steals car, claims to be Foreigner Drummer.

I don't think i've come across a funnier news story than this in quite some time.
A homeless dude convinced a woman and a valet that he was the ex-drummer for the band Foreigner, he then proceeded to "borrow" this womans car, and crashed it soon after, before being taken into custody.
Would you claim to be this man?

There's a few genius bits in this article. Firstly, if you were going to claim to be a celebrity, why choose the ex-drummer for Foreigner? It does have kitsch value, but most people would be unimpressed by this claim to fame, plus, foreigner has had a lot of drummers. I'm pretty sure everyone over the age of 40 has been the drummer for Foreigner at one point or another.
Secondly, and this is what really pumps this article to legendary status, is the fact that the guy said his name was Cory James.
Foreigner has never had a drummer named Cory James.
So it seems that this guy had the idea to fake out a woman and steal her car, but couldn't think of one name of an ex-Foreigner drummer, so he just made one up. And it worked! Imagine that conversation...
"Hi, i'm Cory James".
"Hi Cory, what is it you do?"
"I use to be the Drummer for Foreigner"
"Oh wow, a celebrity! Hey bartender, this guy's Cory James"
"Who's Cory James?"
"The drummer for Foreigner"
"Oh..... sweet."
"So, can I borrow your corvette?"
"Yeah sure, I trust the ex-drummer for Foreigner not to steal my car".

Genius.

Strictly for my 'Nilla's...

Here's the 90's Minimix from the last Eclectical Empire show.
BTW, if you're wondering what the hell the title of this post means, since i'm a white boy the word N***a is obviously out of bounds for me, so it's been replaced by the word 'Nilla (short for Vanilla).
I'm trying to bring this replacement word into the everyday lexicon, so use it, love it, and get everyone saying it.
Let's band together Nilla's, we've been stepped on for too long!
Peace

Grab your 90's goodness right HERE.

The hunt continues....

Hey kids,
the posts might be a little light on for the next little while, i'm mad busy looking for a new crib. I'll try to post at least once a week, but no promises.
But fret not y'all, The Trim shall continue to grow to internet domination status, I just need a little while to get shit together.
In the meantime, check Drab Art for some dope new work, and dig through the archives for stuff to keep you interested 'till i'm back on a regular posting schedule.
Peace,
Broke

I'm getting me a flying car!

'nuff said.

If I get locked up tonight.... (Updated)

Then it's been good to know y'all.
Leaked Australian government secret ACMA internet censorship blacklist.
I've made my feelings on this bullshit known. If you missed it, here it is

***Update***
OK, So it's now in question whether this is the actual ACMA blacklist (See HERE for the relevent article) however i'm more inclined to believe wikileaks than Comm's Minister Stephen Conroy (AKA the guy who's running this BS) as to the validity of this info. Even if it's not the actual blacklist itself, it definately came from a government source, and after a quick gander at the pages listed on it, it seems to be the type of gear that would get hit by this filter.
The interesting thing, as mentioned by a few news outlets today, is that there appears to be some sites that are totally undeserving of being listed. To wit, about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn at all, and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.

***Update part 2***
The links been re-upped, however if you're still iffy about peeping this gear,
here's a secondary link which is apparently safer.
Secure Wikileaks internet censorship article
Peace

Shark Watch! a.k.a Take a chunk out your body like a shark bit a 'nilla....

This is a new section on The Trim, possibly a one off, as I doubt this type of awesome action will be happening very often.
Sharkwatch involves rad moments with sharks, the most hard body fish in the ocean.
And this week....
MAN WRESTLES 12FT SHARK FOR 2 HOURS TO SAVE MATE.
No BS, this dude went toe to fin with a 12 foot tiger shark for 2 hours to save his buddy from an untimely death. You think you're hard? Craig Clasen is G'd up from the feet up.
I can't do much better than select a few choice quotes from the article.

"Down in my core I really felt the shark was there to feed. I didn't want it to come to that."
"Once I shot it in the gills I felt a moral obligation to finish the job."
"Tiger sharks have no problem eating whole sea turtles, 150lb tuna and even dolphins"
And my personal favourite....
"I shot it six times in the head with a spear and I wasn't having much luck"

Before the animal rights activists jump onto this, it was completely a defensive kill, and I would never support someone going in on a shark for no reason. Except if a shark showed up at the movies. Then i'm fuckin' that shark up.

Kaufman you are not, my friend.

So the Joaquin Phoenix debate took another turn today, with Mr. Phoenix nearly physically attacking a fan at his latest "rap" gig.
But let's take a second to step back from the whole thing and look logically at the situation.
For the uninitiated, about 6 months ago Joaquin announced he was quitting acting to become a rap star, and less-famous-than-his-brother Casey Affleck would be documenting the whole thing. He performed a series of disasterous gigs, repeatedly garbling his way through songs and occasionally falling off stage.

Now after about 3 weeks of this type of shit, people started questioning whether he was for real, or whether this whole thing was one big prank, in the style of Andy Kaufman, or more recently Sascha Baron Cohen.
Add to this a disasterous appearance on Letterman, and everyone was asking the same questions, to wit "Is he high, is he crazy or is he kidding?"

I was skeptical from the start, but this Letterman appearance confirmed it for me, for a few reasons.
Watch Joaquin carefully, many would assume by his attitude and demeanor that he was high, or losing his mind. Not true. Having spent an inexorable amount of time around people in various stages of drug dependance, I can tell you his behaviour is way too calculated for someone on drugs. He is purposefully trying to give off the air of someone nervous and ill-at-ease, but a few minor slips prove his mind is in place. Specifically, when Paul laughs at him, he jumps on the opportunity to push the focus off him onto Paul, and his line "are you serious, with the maniacal laugh?" sounds too controlled, like he's milking the audience for the laugh, not really the actions of an an insane or drug affected mind.
His constant looking down at his fingernails is obviously an affectation, you can see he forgets to do it on occasion, then remembers he's meant to be acting high and goes back to picking at his nails and avoiding eye contact.
Lastly, when Dave is introducing the clip, Joaquins whole act falls when he says "OK, you're doing fine..." This is too coherant a statement for someone who's losing their mind, or exceptionally high. Suddenly, all his behaviour makes no sense. He is flailing wildly between the actions of someone truly fucked up on PCP or crack (acting like he doesn't understand simple questions, ignoring Dave etc.) to someone totally sober (milking the audience for sympathy when Dave disses his music, cracking jokes etc.) It's all too strange for a truly collapsing mind.
Believe it or not, those of us who's minds are falling apart actually behave a lot more predictably than this. Either we're coherant, or we're not. We're either avoiding human contact, or we're doing everything possible to have all attention on us. Joaquin is swinging between these two extremes like a pendulum, showing that he is a lot more in control of his behavior than he would like us to believe.
His ridiculous act was pushed a little further today, with a near-physical altercation at his latest gig, of course caught on camera by Casey.
Joaquin Phoenix attacks crowd member at latest gig
Again, this doesn't seem to be the actions of someone who is out of control. It seems to be the actions of someone who wants to appear crazy, and it would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if security didn't step in. I wonder if things would really have escalated, or whether you would have backed out.

At the end of the day, none of this is really that important, and i'm kind of playing into Phoenix's web by even posting on it. If everyone ignored this behaviour, i'll guarantee the dude would get bored with this charade pretty quick and go back to making (mostly) decent movies.
But it frustrates me to have people saying he is pulling a Kaufman-esque prank. This self-indulgent BS is nowhere near the genius of Andy Kaufman. Joaquin could never come up with pure comedic gold like this.

Andy Kaufman performs Mighty Mouse - watch more funny videos

And Joaquin, here's how you truly fuck with an audience. I have a feeling that you planted the homie you attacked in your audience, just like Kaufman had Jerry Lawler in on the act here.

The main problem with Joaquins act is that he admits that he has someone filming it. Unlike Kaufman, who was a comedy star in his own right and used the air time he gained from that to fuck with people, you have someone apparently filming a documentary about your decline into psychosis. What kind of a friend would stand back and film a man losing his mind and destroying his career? Even Steve-O's mates got to a point where it wasn't funny any more, and they knew their buddy was in trouble, so they slammed him into rehab against his will.
I'm not saying Casey Affleck is the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if this isn't an act, he's a pretty callous dude to let you ruin your career, and possibly your mind, just for a documentary.
Peace out y'all.

Allow me to reintroduce myself... (Re-Upped)

My name is Broke.
This is why.


These are my films, documentaries and TV Shows.


These are my Music DVDs.


This is my music, and music making equipment (Some CD's belonging to the B-Double).



I've been collecting for nigh on 10 years now, and it's my second biggest addiction.
Like i've said before, I don't play.

The Face of Evil

OK, things have been kind of negative over the past few days here on the Trim, but this needs to be broken down for you simple motherfuckers.
The man pictured above is Bernie Madoff. Today Bernie admitted to perpetuating the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person, pleading guilty to charges that he had defrauded his investors of almost $65 billion.
$65 Billion. Once again, $65 Billion.
Here's how he did it.
Bernie ran a Wall Street firm called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, which at last check was worth well over $100 billion in liquid assets. This firm has an Assets Management division, responsible for taking peoples money and investing it, then paying dividends on those investments. Who's money was he taking? Try Stephen Spielberg, Elie Wiesal, possibly 50 Cent and definately Sterling Equities (the investment vehicle of the Wilpon family, which owns the New York Mets baseball team) among 4,800 others. That should tell you that the average investor can't just up and decide to give their cash to Madoff, you have to be in the know to get in on the deal. And rightly so, since Bernie's inverstors had been enjoying returns ranging from 15% to 22% for the past 30 years. Surely this is a safe bet, well known firm, big name investors, The Securities and Exchange Commission even gave Madoff's company a clean bill of health in early 2000, there could be no problem here. Right?
Wrong.

The problem was, there was no need for Madoff's company to show how and where these returns were coming from. The way they described their investments was to say "The "New York people" have a system whereby they place a series of instant trades — at once with futures, currencies and stocks — and out of this magic recipe fell a tiny 1% guaranteed, no-risk profit for the group. You do that 20 times a year, take away management fees and, voilà, a steady 15% return" (lifted from Time Magazine, minor changes). Madoff was supposed to have some "black box" model that signaled when to buy and when to sell, making Madoff's investments apparently a sure thing.
In other words, we take your money, buy stocks, wait until those stocks rise by 1% (which when you're buying stocks by the millions happens almost instantly), sell them again and there you have it, a 1% gain. Do this 15 or 20 times a year, and you're golden. No risk 15% returns for all.
Sounds too good to be true. And it was.
What was actually happening was the worlds simplest investment fraud, even more basic than your average Pyramid Selling scheme.
Maddoff was running a Ponzi, a massive, unbelievably stupid Ponzi scheme with no way out, except total and complete bankrupcy for all involved.
A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from any actual profit earned.
To break that down even simpler, lets say I give you $1000 to invest, and you say i'll get a 10% return on that. Then the homie BigDubbs from NOTR (shouts and respect) wants to get in on that good action, so he gives you a G-stack too, and you say the same thing to him.
Now instead of investing that scrilla, you hold the dough and when it comes time to pay our dividends, you use my cash to pay Dubbs his $100 dividend, and use his cash to pay mine.
As you can see, noones actually made any profit, and eventually this bad boy's gonna collapse in on itself. Which is exactly what happened to Madoff and his crew. They used new investors money to pay off massive dividends (we're taking in the millions) to older investors, and they just kept digging themselves deeper and deeper into a financial quagmire.
As it turns out, Madoffs investors hadn't even invested any cash for years. They were just paying people off with other peoples money, until one day about 3 months ago, Madoff just admitted it. He actually told his sons that the Assets Management arm of his company was "one big lie". Remarkably, or possibly in one of the most forsighted moves ever, his sons told the feds. The next day, Madoff went down. Hard.
And the stock market went to shit quick smart, as people realised that their money suddenly wasn't there any more. Their money which only existed in abstentia, now didn't even exist there. It was all gone. All of it.

The amazing thing is, well, actually there's a lot of amazing things about this. The first amazing thing is that this got to be this size without anyone questioning how a company can steadily pay up to 15% dividends, year after year. Hello, SEC...? Isn't it your job to make sure this type of shit doesn't happen?
Secondly, if it wasn't for a $7 billion dividend payment that they couldn't make, then this fraud would have continued until god knows when.
Thirdly, Officials at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority told The Post that after examining more than 40 years' worth of financial records from Madoff's now-defunct broker dealer, there are no signs that Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities ever traded shares on behalf of the investment-advisory business at the center of the scandal.
Once again, it's possible that THIS MULTI BILLION DOLLAR SHARE-TRADING COMPANY MAY HAVE NEVER EVER TRADED WITH ANYONE.

So there it is kids, hopefully you now understand a little more about how Bernie Madoff ripped off Charities, schools, banks, NFP organisations, not to mention the thousands of individual investors who have now lost everything.
I promise to make the posts a little lighter over the nesxt few weeks, noone likes to focus on the negatives of life, but I think it's important that people understand this junk, as it might one day make you think twice if someone offers you money for nothing.
Because believe me when I say, there is no money for nothing in this life.
Unless you grow weed.
Peace.

I Inhaled so much smoke........

So last nights post got most of the frustration out of my system, it feels good to go in hard on an easy target like Vanilla Ice. To lighten the mood a little, and in celebration of my week of sobriety, I thought i'd post a video or two of some inappropriately high people.
These come to us courtesy of my man B-Double (Pushing buttons like Shadow in the 90's).
First up, the stoned firefighter.


Following that, the stoned reporter (Soldiers as big as Wales.....)


Next up, the cop who stole weed, then called 911 when he chucked a Whitey with his wife.


And finally, the man responsible for transporting more weed than anyone else (When he was finally caught, it was for attempting to bring in 2 Tonnes of weed to Britain)
Howard Marks, A.K.A. Mr. Nice



I'm a little messed up on cold and flu medication at the moment, detoxing from weed and drink has played merry hell with my...... immune system was what I wanted to write here, took me 5 minutes to think of the word.

Yeah, I really can't think straight. I need to go to bed.

Peace out y'all.

You can Ice my nuts you corporate whore....

OK, let me say first off, if Vanilla Ice was legitimately apologising for destroying white people's credibility in Hip Hop (until Em came through and made everyone forget about all that shit), I would salute the guy. Really, I would. I would stand and salute the man if he was really admitting that his music is/was trash, and that he was just in it for a pay check, and that his ghost still haunts white boy rappers to this day, and also that he got hung over a balcony by Suge Knight over "contract issues" (If you haven't heard this story, peep hiphop.sh for the full breakdown. This is the only decent thing Suge has ever done, by the way).
If he was really copping to all that, and genuinely sorry for his corporate whore-dom over the past 20 years, and was trying to gain some credibility back for himself, then i'd finally have some respect for the dude. Some respect.
But if one heads to rightmusicwrongs.com, the first thing you're hit with is a Virgin Mobile advert. Continue a little further, and it takes only a few quick glances at the opening page to realise that THIS WHOLE THING IS JUST ANOTHER MONEY SPINNER.
The Ice Baby isn't sorry for a god-damn thing. In fact, i'll guarantee he's happy as a pig in shit that people still care enough about him to bother getting him to apologise for anything.
This whiny prick will literally do anything to grab the limelight for another few minutes. Literally anything.
Let's consider this for a minute. Vanilla Ice is willing to apologise for his whole career, to a public that doesn't really care any more, just to get a cheque. He literally admits that his whole career is shitful, just to score more money. If he really believed that the world would be better off if he wasn't making music and hogging the limelight, HE'D DO US ALL A FAVOUR AND HAVE A BUCKSHOT SANDWICH RIGHT THIS SECOND.
That's right, I said it. Eat a fucking shotgun you industry prick, i'm tired of these 80's has-beens making a "Comeback", playing on people's love of Kitsch-ness (That's the perfect phrase for this instance, since Kitsch has a dictionary definition of "art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art") and thinking that they are in any way still relevant or important.
That's enough for now, i've been detoxing for the past 5 days so i'm a little on edge, but you get my point. Fuck this punk and anyone who feels that his music was anything other than filler for the radio.
BTW, my favourite part of this whole thing is that he apologises for "the scandals and the gangs". Dude, get it through your head, noone thinks you're hard, you can tote a pump-action in front of a drop top caddy all you like, YOU'RE NOT A GANGSTER. Noone even classifies "Ice Ice Baby" as a rap song. It's pop, through and through.
Peace party people, sorry for the vitreole, but I needed to vent. Here's some real Hip Hop to get the bad taste out of your mouth.

I took a blues break.....

....and I Broke it.
Here's minimix 5, i've lost one of these somewhere along the way, and i'll try and re-up it if I can work out which one is missing.
Grab a handful of funk right HERE
Peace,
Broke A.K.A. Baroke Obama.
P.S. This is the 50th post here at the Trim. Happy half-century to all, and cheers to everyone who have stopped in to peep my random musings along the way. I mostly do this for me, as it keeps me busy and relatively sober, but to paraphrase Jigga...
"I do this for my culture,
to let 'em know what a white boy writes like
when the keyboard's out the holster".
Peace

5 Minutes to Midnight.....

Who watches the Watchmen?
I do, that's who.
Fuck the critics, they're always looking for reasons to hate a movie so they don't look like Stans, fuck the punks claiming that no film could do justice to the comic, Watchmen is the best comic book movie of the decade, possibly of all time.
Unlike The Dark Knight, which (let's face it kids) was essentially boosted to cult status by Heath Ledgers performance (BTW, if you haven't seen I'm Not There, the Bob Dylan bio-pic, get it out for 2 reasons. A: It's a killer film with great cinematography and an all round classic cast, but more importantly B: Heath Ledger uses almost the same accent he uses when he's playing The Joker, so if you close your eyes and listen you get a weird feeling that The Joker is a washed up musician arguing with his estranged wife. It's hella funny.)
Anyway, unlike TDK, Watchmen has phenomenal performances from pretty much every cast member, ass kicking action, epic scope with the story switching almost randomly through time periods and planets (Dr. Manhattan's glass palace on Mars is an amazing sequence) and the greatest anti-hero ever, Rorscharch.
It's worth the ticket price just to see Rorscharch tell a prison full of murderers and rapists "None of you seem to understand, I'm not locked in here with you... you're locked in here with me."
I know I sound like a nerdy Watchmen Stan, I don't really care. If you don't go see this film, it's your loss. And a big loss it will be.
Peace.

Hey Mr. Carter..

Tell me where have you been?
Even after all the bullshit, Wayne's still a charismatic motherfucker.



And who knew Weezy played Scrabble....

Witness the Slackness...

Man, my bad people. It's been a while since my last post, been trying to detox and sort out a bunch of shit in my life, so blogging has been a secondary concern for the last little while.
Anyways, here's the catch-up.

This week on The Empire we'll be rocking out with the worlds best lyricists. There's no way we can hit upon every great lyricist in the measy hour we have, but we'll try to cover most genres, and we'll at leat hit the main contenders for greatness.
Speaking of our sweet radio gig, here's part III of the minimix's. This bad boy's pretty rough, as I had major technical issues and had to re-record this about an hour before going to air, but it's still listenable.
Grab that mofo right HERE.

In case you're not as huge a fan of The Daily Show as I am, you probably missed Jon Stewart's epic rant against Rick Santelli and CNBC, so here it is. Gawker also posted this a few days ago, but it's well worth re-posting.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Thirdly, it seems the rest of the world is catching up with myself and BigDubbs (northoftheriver.wordpress.com) and proclaiming The Wire as the greatest thing on television since Wildboyz. OK, most wouldn't compare the two, but I will, 'cos that's how I roll. So if you're not up on it yet, crawl out from under your rock and get busy downloading or buying or whatever, just watch it. I'm sick of explaining the brilliance of this show to slack jawed idiots who can't understand how TV can be revolutionary.

Fourthly, my brother in arms PMM is a busy man, being that he actually studies and has a job and all that, so i'm pretty much holding the fort by myself (damn, two military analogies in one sentence, gotta expand my vocabulary). The point being, if anyone cares to join me here in cyberspace and feels that they could bring something to The Trim, then get at me and i'll add you to the Admin. No need to be exceptionally verbose, judging by the majority of my posts as long as you're semi-literate you'll fit right in.

Fifthly (OK, i'm gonna stop that now, they don't really work after thirdly) I love a good birdman rally. Nothing better than idiots hurling themselves off a pier with a pair of cardboard wings attached. And the shonkier the costume, the better. If it's too well constructed, then the fun is taken out of it. Noone watches a Daytona 500 to see cars driving really fast in a circle, they want to see massive stacks. And the same goes for a Birdman Rally, more failure, more enjoyment. Here's some highlights, courtesy of The Age website.
Birdman Rally Photo Gallery

And finally, I should weigh in on the Chris Brown/Rihanna debacle. I should, but I can't really do better than the homeboy here.

Well, i'll be back soonish, probably.
Peace.