VINCE VAUGHN'S CANNIBAL CONNECTION

I'm going to tell you a secret about me.

 I'm a bit off.

Crazy, nuts, cuckoo, and even disturbed. Forgive me if you think I'm lampooning mental illness. I have quirks, ticks, and jerks!
Sometimes I am compelled to count things. Sometimes I have to touch things for a set number of times. I've been told this is O.C.D., or I have O.C.D. tendencies.

I'm a daydreamer. There's some kind of movie constantly rolling in my skull, along with music and dialogue. That shit never stops. I should probably be locked in a padded room somewhere.

I do things that I don't remember doing, and I remember doing things that I did not actually do, Sometimes I wake from some horrifically frightening nightmare and I am paralyzed in my own bed with the feeling that there is something dark and ominous looming over me in my bed. I do not enjoy it when my dream self has to attempt to violently wake my sleeping self.

When that happens, I scream with all I've got inside my head, while my mouth barely opens, quivering to produce a most pathetic and microscopic cry for help. I'm not shitting you. This has been happening to me since I was a boy.

I have a need to be entertained every second that I am awake. A movie, music, a book.

I am not unique. I know many people out there go through the same things and much worse. So please know that I am not trying to elicit sympathy for poor little old me.

I am merely going to give you my opinion on a current topic in the entertainment world, and I want you to know that I have the credibility to do so. I was raised by entertainment. When I was a kid I was in front of the TV, the stereo, or a book. Always. Think Cable Guy.

Sometimes I use my powers of perception and taste to help someone out of a jam.

What the hell does any of this have to do with HBO's announcement that Vince Vaughn will be partnered with Colin Farrell in the next season of True Detective?

HBO struck gold with the first season cast. It's a no brainer that they would use the same formula for season 2 in picking the leads.

Woody Harrelson is an actor who has predominately starred in comedic roles with a serious role here and there. Matthew McConaughey is an actor who has predominately starred in serious roles with a comedic role here and there.

Vince Vaughn is an actor who has predominately starred in comedic roles with a serious role here and there. Colin Ferrell is an actor who has predominately starred in serious roles with a comedic role here and there.

See the formula? It's gotta work, right?

Nuh, uh. Not for me.

I know that I am stepping on some really thin ice here. I know that I'm tossing turd bombs at Vince before they have even shot one scene of the new series. I hope that I am wrong. Let me clear that off the plate right away. I hope that he brings his A game and does a decent job with the role he'll be given.

I liked the guy in Clay Pigeons. He was a great quirky serial killer. He can act when he wants to. The problem is that he mostly doesn't act. When Vince Vaughn is on the screen he is Vince Vaughn. That guy was hilarious in Dodge Ball. I spit my soda through my nose in Old School. What a riot in The Wedding Crashers. Then he did a few goofy holiday movies and then Couples Retreat and The Break-up and ....etc...

And then one day a movie came on called The Interns. Vince partnered up with his buddy, Owen Wilson again for an uproarious flick about two buddies who lose the jobs they were complacently doing and try to reinvent themselves trying to land jobs at Google.

Vince's character could be described as an over 40 schlub who never really matured past the 5th grade and now he has to man up to  make necessary life changes while still keeping that 5th grade playfulness that everybody really loves about him.

Was that the role he played in The Intern, you ask?

Yes. It is also the role he played in all of those other films I mentioned. Feel like you've seen the movie before? That's because he plays the same damned character in every film he's been in for the past fifteen years.

At this point, when I see that Vince Vaughn is going to be starring in a show that I wanted to see, I feel the same deflated feeling I get when the radio DJ announces that they are going to play Freebird after the break.

"Freebird? Jesus God no! Pull the plug out of the wall! Hurry up, I can't stand it!"

That fucking song is the most overplayed piece of shit in rock-n-roll history. It's been in a million movies and TV shows. Its been played six times a day on every classic rock radio station in the country for the past thirty years or more. I cringe at the start of that song, and it has had that effect on me for the past twenty years easily. Put your fucking lighter away already.

We've all heard Freebird over and over and over and over again. Does anyone besides a classic rock station DJ willingly select that song to listen to anymore?

Like I said at the beginning, I hope I'm wrong. I hope Vince Vaughn does a decent job with this dramatic role. I hope that when he steps up to bat he's wearing a real helmet and not one of those novelty drink holder helmets with the tubes that hang down for you to slurp Budweiser through.

He's going to have to make a big turn from everybody's favorite man-boy to win me, though. Because if I hear Freebird one more time, I just might throw up in my own mouth.

And with that I'll...

What? Oh, the cannibal thing? That's right, I did promise to tie all of the subjects of this blog to the topic of cannibalism to promote my forthcoming Kannibal Cookbook anthology, so here goes...

In 1998, director Gus Van Sant decided to remake Alfred Hitchcock's most famous film, Psycho. I know, WTF, right?

So he cast Vaughn in the role of Norman Bates, a sexually confused mama's boy who dressed in drag and butchered people at his family motel. Norman Bates was not a cannibal. The real life murderer that author Robert Bloch based his character on for his 1959 novel was a Wisconsin man named Ed Gein. In 1957, this real life psycho was arrested for the abduction and murder of a local woman. When police apprehended Gein at his farm, they discovered a horrific collection of knick knacks and furnishings made out of human body parts and skin from graves that he had been robbing in the night. Here is a list of items that were found in the Wisconsin farm house. I ripped it out of Wikipedia:

Whole human bones and fragments

wastebasket made of human skin

Human skin covering several chair seats

Skulls on his bedposts

Female skulls, some with the tops sawn off

Bowls made from human skulls

A corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist

Leggings made from human leg skin

Masks made from the skin from female heads

Mary Hogan's face mask in a paper bag

Mary Hogan's skull in a box

Bernice Worden's entire head in a burlap sack

Bernice Worden's heart in a saucepan on the stove

Nine vulvae in a shoe box

A young girl's dress and "the vulvas of two females judged to have been about fifteen years old"

A belt made from female human nipples

Four noses

A pair of lips on a window shade drawstring

A lampshade made from the skin of a human face

Fingernails from female fingers

Ed's dead mama had apparently taught the boy a lot of arts and crafts when she wasn't reading to him from the Bible and telling him what a shameful little masturbating bed wetter he was. He had one of those freaky Oedipal love/hate relationships with the old bag that went on in his head for years after she had died.

Ed was missing the old gal so much, that his biggest pet project was making a woman suit out of the skins he had collected from the boneyard and from a couple of women that he killed.

While Ed had a keen interest in native tribes that practiced cannibalism, there was no evidence that he had actually ingested any of the scraps he was playing with, despite the discovery of a human heart in a pan on the stove.

So Gein wasn't  a cannibal, you say? Ah, no he wasn't. There is yet another degree we must take to complete the cannibal link.

The 1991 film based on the book by Thomas Harris, featured a character named Buffalo Bill, who was also modeled after Ed Gein as he was stitching together his own woman suit made from the skins of his victims. Buffalo Bill was not portrayed as a cannibal either.

The notorious Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played so well by Anthony Hopkins, did enjoy the rare and exotic meat of his fellow man. Hannibal the Cannibal was a prominent character in the book and movie. He helped the young agent Starling in her investigation of Buffalo Bill's heinous crimes.

There you have it: Vince Vaughn to Norman Bates to Ed Gein to Silence of the Lambs. Hooked to cannibalism in just three degrees. Until next week....