thehardtimes

Hard Digest October 8: Early Access Bret Michaels, David Bowie, Anti-Homeless Designs, and More

Added 2024-10-09 00:00:05 +0000 UTC

Bret Michaels’ Bandana and Cowboy Hat Launch Custody Battle Over His Head

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Bret Michael’s longtime bandana and cowboy hat launched a heated custody battle of his head this week, according to sources flipping through legal briefs searching for any type of precedent.

“We’ve been sharing space on Bret’s scalp for decades, but it’s time for him to finally nut up and pick one of us,” stated his red paisley bandana. “It used to be just the two of us rocking out with our cocks out, but since that hat showed up, fans barely notice me. I’m being suffocated, both figuratively and literally, by that stupid cowboy gimmick. Fun fact: Bret’s never even rode a horse before. Last time he came within five feet of one he pissed his pants in fear. I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’m just tired of being strung along like this. I think it’s high time he makes an honest hair accessory out of me.”

The aging rocker’s cowboy hat couldn’t disagree more.

“The only reason he still keeps him around is because it’s technically impossible to remove him from being fused to Bret’s skull,” said the wide-brimmed headwear. “We seek an injunction for the bandana to immediately be surgically removed, in order for me to be the sole entity of the top of his dome and any surrounding areas like his forehead. Everyone knows I make Bret, Bret. I not only make him look cool as shit but I also shield his beautiful eyes from the sun and from all the adoring fans who swarm him at all those county fairs and casinos we now play at.”

Industry expert Kris Da Capo explained that objects fighting for space in a musician’s life isn’t a new phenomenon.

“Happens all the time,” said Da Capo. “Steven Tyler was dragged through the courts for years after dozens of his scarves sued for the right to exclusivity on his microphone stand. And one of the reasons Oasis initially broke up was because their various drugs of choice didn’t want to share the limelight. The only exception to the rule is Bono, whose sunglasses and leather jacket have been trying for years to emancipate themselves entirely from his act out of embarrassment.”

At press time, Michaels’ facial hair also dipped its toes into the legal waters after his mustache sent an urgent cease and desist order to his soul patch.

6 Lost David Bowie Concept Albums He Abandoned After Realizing They Were Just Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

By Nathan Kamal

David Bowie was a true chameleon of rock music. Over the decades, he was able to seamlessly blend wildly different genres and images into a brilliant multimedia career, and he was also prone to basking in the sun on a hot rock.

But even geniuses sometimes get hung up on an idea too, and for whatever reason, Bowie just couldn’t stop coming up with ideas for new concept albums that he later realized were just the plot of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ He repeatedly claimed in interviews that he had never read Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book or seen any of the film adaptations, but who’s to say? These abandoned albums seem awfully familiar…

‘The Blonde Child Who Owned a Factory’
In 1970, Bowie was coming to the close of his “unsuccessful hippie” phase and moving on to “leveraging wearing a dress for popularity.” Little remains of his planned album, ‘The Blonde Child Who Owned a Factory’ and early demos (which reportedly included songs titled “All the Slugworths Sing” and “Grandpa, Where Has Your Dance Gone”) were destroyed once the enraged singer read the back of a copy of the novel dropped by Tony Visconti in a haze of studio brandy. Engineer Gerald Chevin would later describe the sessions as “pretty obviously just the book.”

‘Charlie Galaxy and the Neverending Hard Candy’
Bowie hit a cultural nerve in 1972 with ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ and was reportedly under extreme pressure from RCA to create a sequel to the concept album. ‘Charlie Galaxy’ (as the album is known to fans) apparently followed the adventures of a boy whose quest to find a quasi-mystical jawbreaker led him to heroin abuse and a lot of makeup and is universally agreed to be “bad.’ As a kind of apology, RCA President Anthony L. Conrad gave Gene Wilder the master tapes to the near-complete album, but the ‘Willy Wonka’ actor said he didn’t want them.

‘Diamond Loompas’
‘Diamond Loompas’ was scrapped, Bowie would later tell ‘Blender’ in a 1999 interview, because his worsening drug habits made it impossible for him to articulate his post-apocalyptic visions of a group of gross children being slowly murdered by midgets and also, Road Dahl’s attorneys had gotten wise to him. He also revealed that his proposed cover art would have depicted him as half-man, half-Oompa Loompa, but with a fully exposed dog penis.

‘Wonkatacularia’
To his dying day, Bowie claimed that the title of ‘Wonkatacularia’ was coincidental. Yeah, fucking right, David.

‘Chocolate River, Dead Kid’
By the 1990s, Bowie’s critical rep had hit the skids and, after several failed attempts to record candy-themed follow-ups to the blockbuster ‘Let’s Dance,’ he finally emerged with a somber, jazz- and electronica-influenced album titled “Chocolate River, Dead Kid.” The plot of the album has been called “oblique at best” and “stupid,” but appears to focus on the dying thoughts of a German pre-teen musing on greed, post-Nazi politics, and why there would be a river made of chocolate in a factory. The album was never released for unknown reasons, but probably because it sucked.

‘Tim Burton, Make A Worse Version’
Discovered in the late singer’s archives in 2018, ‘Tim Burton, Make a Worse Version’ confounds many Bowie scholars. The spoken-word album is said to consist of the singer sleepwalking and reading from a copy of ‘Charlie,’ while occasionally wondering if filmmaker Tim Burton will ever make an unnecessarily morbid version of the story starring Johnny Depp and chanting in a “hellish tongue not of this Earth.” The album was recorded in 1977 and is currently in possession of the Vatican.

Anti-Homeless Bench Catapults Sitter Into the Sky If They Make Less Than 50k a Year

By Charles Bill

HARRISONBURG, Va. — City officials installed an anti-homeless bench this week that will catapult the sitter into the sky if they so much as dare to make less than $50,000 a year, confirmed sources who had to check their pay stubs.

“One second I was looking for somewhere to sleep, next thing I know I’m 30 feet in the air looking for a tree to land on,” explained unhoused individual Bradley Gray. “I hit some really tough times in life recently. Lost my job, ended up on the street. Most of the benches around here have little points on them, or inconvenient armrests that make it impossible to lie on, but this bench looked comfy as hell. I lay on it around midnight, and then I noticed it seemed to be getting closer to the ground, like it was getting ready to spring. Then a small speaker said ‘get a job, bum’ before I got trebucheted towards the courthouse. Thankfully I landed on a pile of people the bench had already launched and those bodies broke my fall.”

Although the new bench has received criticism by homeless advocate groups, it is also being hailed as an engineering marvel.

“It cost us 40-million dollars to build it, but it was all worth it,” said lead bench designer Dr. Alex Moore. “The easy part was getting a seat to hurl people through the air. That was done day one. The bench is on a very powerful spring that will then trip a switch and launch your poor ass to the heavens. Tough part was identifying the poor people. Had to put in facial recognition technology which then runs you through our national database to the IRS, which then reports back your income and yeets you appropriately, or not. If anyone has a beard the bench instantly sends them though, because no way a bearded person isn’t poor.”

The bench has received praise from city leaders.

“The goal of our city, and every other one in America, is to make life impossible for homeless people,” explained city councilman Greg Jacobsen. “If I had my way, everything the city did would be anti-homeless. Anti-homeless benches, parks, buses, police of course. I want an anti-homeless force whose only job is to find someone sleeping outside and shake them awake and spit on them. If we start treating these creatures like human beings, then they’ll believe it. You should see the splats from this new bench though, shit is Looney Tunes.”

At press time, city officials were working on a new bench design that would torture sitters Jigsaw-style if they worked three jobs and still couldn’t afford rent.

Here’s the Most Popular Halloween Costume the Year You Were Born and a Graphic Description of How Your Parents Smashed While Wearing It

Every Carcass Album Ranked Worst to Best

“Dune: Prophecy” Series Dares to Ask “What if You Understood Even Less of This?”

BY Peter Ferrarese

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The philosophical question at the center of the upcoming prequel series to the critically-acclaimed “Dune” films will reportedly be “What if general audiences understood even less about this franchise?” according to sources familiar with the matter.

“I’ve always loved Dune, and I’m a big believer in the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle when it comes to storytelling,” showrunner Alison Schapker said in a statement. “To that end, we endeavored to really confuse audiences as much as possible with this one by showing a ton of bizarre stuff and telling them absolutely nothing. Just have the Bene Gesserit cryptically scheme and use the Voice and do a bunch of witchy shit, to the point where the audience is like, ‘I’m not even sure what’s happening here,’ y’know?”

The director of “Dune” and “Dune: Part 2”, Denis Villeneuve, expressed his enthusiasm for the project.

“It is so rewarding for me to see people reacting positively to this world we’ve created,” said Villeneuve. “And as a director, I am confident that the cast and crew of this has gotten to the essence of what I am trying to do with my films: have people all over the world saying ‘wait, what?’ After two entries in the main ‘Dune’ film series, it’s important to create as many spinoffs in as many different in-universe time periods as possible, just to make sure audiences are kept on their toes and have to keep pausing to ask their family members, ‘What the fuck was that all about?’”

Brian Herbert, son of Dune author Frank Herbert, executive producer on the series and noted hack, is also excited for the series’ premiere.

“Am I worried people won’t understand it? Shit, I don’t care. I’m gonna make hand over fist on this. Way more than I ever did for those books, anyway,” said Herbert. “As long as they don’t answer any of the burning questions from the movies, like ‘How could they possibly influence generations of reproduction between the powerful Houses of the universe?’ and raise even more questions, like, ‘What the hell is Mark Strong doing here?’ then I think fans of my work will get exactly what they’re looking for.”

At press time, the writers’ room was observed hurriedly adding ten more references to the gom jabbar, the Golden Path, and the Kwisatz Haderach per episode.

New Grounded Take on Batman to Feature Billionaire Bruce Wayne Not Helping Anyone

BY Sean Fallon

LOS ANGELES — The next film in the Batman franchise will be a grounded take that features Bruce Wayne deciding to not use his billions to help anyone, sources confirm.

“We looked at the world and thought, a billionaire thinking of others? No one is gonna buy that,” said Matt Reeves, writer/director of 2022’s The Batman and its upcoming sequel. “I realized early on that a crocodile man or a guy with a freeze ray are things that an audience can suspend their belief about. Bruce Wayne not spending his time hoarding wealth at the expense of the most vulnerable Gotham citizens however was never going to fly.”

The movie’s new direction, while realistic, has alienated some fans.

“It’s not really a Batman movie if he’s not Batman,” said Bob Shepard, who much preferred when Batman’s wealth was a fun element rather than a grim reminder of the iron grip of capitalism upon our throats. “I get it, it’s weird to see a billionaire thinking of others, but that’s the escapism of cinema. For two hours we can pretend that the world wouldn’t be a better place if we lined all the billionaires up and shot them, and instead make believe that they could be capable of altruism or even empathy.”

Warner Bros. Pictures, the studio behind the new movie, issued a statement through their Twitter account.

“Warner Bros. can sympathize with audiences,” read the statement. “As a studio run by an unscrupulous aspiring billionaire who seems more likely to delete a movie at the behest of the shareholders than release anything, we can see why audiences would rather help others than, say, buy a social media site, fill it with Nazis, then tweet cringe 60 times a day.”

As a counterpoint to the more grounded Batman, Warner Bros. are also looking to make a Lex Luthor movie spotlighting the importance of rich people in society and their fight against illegal aliens.