Rachel Parker

A little perspective, here.

Pranks are never more effective than when a prankster finds the precise border between reality and absurdity and just barely steps over it. This week's #CutForBieber trending topic--in which Justin Bieber fans were supposed to be cutting themselves in an attempt to force their ur-boyfriend off marijuana--was a perfectly executed example. Are there quite enough Beliebers interested in targeted self-harm to float a genuine reverse-protection-racket hashtag? Probably not. Are there a few? Suddenly plausible.
In that space: The prank. But the fascinating part about #CutForBieber isn't just the execution--it's how evanescent prank and prankster were. There's no Allen Funt here, and no footage of Justin Bieber bursting through a door and everybody sigh-laughing in relief.

There's just 4chan, and stories about a thing that was briefly happening and now isn't. #CutForBieber is an artifact of a system in which pranks and trending topics are functionally identical.

See also:
- Crotching Whiskey at the Justin Bieber Concert and Getting Thrown Out: A Review
- St. Louis Musicians' Monstrous Visages Loom Menacingly on City's Horizon
- Tony La Russa's Wife: Huge Metalhead?

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Don't Fear the Reaper? Not metal.

Lita Ford, Doro Pesch, Elaine LaRussa. Names that come to mind when thinking of the top heavy metal babes of all time? Not exactly, but it seems the wife of the man who led this city's baseball team to two World Series championships may prefer the mosh pit over the dugout herself.

See also:
- The 25 Creepiest Heavy Metal Album Covers
- Getting Bored and Angry at Lamb of God: Review and Photos
- The Six Best Non-Metal Songs About Heavy Metal

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It seemed like a good idea at the time. A couple months ago, close friends and former SLUH grads Tony Cerame and John Simon noticed that the gut-rocking, god-loving, glory-touring guys in Creed are coming to The Pageant this Saturday. At this point, they'd like to clarify one item: "We cannot, in any way be confused with Creed fans," insists Simon, though he admits he occasionally catches himself singing "Higher" in the shower. "Their songs are just so bombastic and Jesus-y that I can't help myself." Instead, the guys have become surprise (and sarcastic) philanthropists.

When Cerame's reaction to the tour announcement was, "You couldn't pay me enough to go to that," he second-guessed himself, brought in Simon and hatched a plan for charity. To raise money for the Gateway Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the two music fans will attend Creed in concert -- completely sober.

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Wikimedia Commons

Spin Magazine recently elaborated on Megadeth rocker Dave Mustaine's love for his mini-horse.

When metal demigod Dave Mustaine isn't raising eyebrows with his kind words about GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, he's usually melting faces as the frontman for Megadeth.

With so many years of rocking under his proverbial belt, Mustaine is entitled to some of the finer things in life. But according to Spin Magazine, one of Mustaine's most-prized possessions isn't a golden record or a platinum toothbrush. No, Mustaine is enamored with a miniature horse he found named Rocky:

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You think that's coffee in there? Why do you think he looks so smug?

Now that St. Patrick's Day has passed and we're still a couple of weeks away from the half-year binge known as baseball season, St. Louis' recreational drinkers are left looking for an excuse to put on our wobbly boots. Thank goodness, then, that our local NPR affiliate, 90.7 FM (KWMU), has its biannual pledge drive er, membership campaign under way. So crank your tuner to the left of the dial, pour your favorite elitist local microbrew into your I [heart] NPR mug (yours for a $5-per-month donation!) and actually enjoy listening to St. Louis Public Radio shake its can of change. The spring fundraising drive is on the air till Friday, March 23.

The goal: Get drunk enough to actually donate money to the station, while learning about, say, Congolese warlords or the dance of Malaysian honey bees. (We'll gladly fork over some cash just for the head rush that accompanies NPR's West Africa correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton saying Dakaaaar.)

Click through for the drinking game's rules...

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Jeff Moffett/Icon SMI AAH

Despite being the subject of an atrocious "anthem" song, Mizzou managed to snag the Big 12 tournament title.

Ah, March Madness. It's the period of time when gamblers around the world have hopes and dreams crushed by random, random schools.

Basketball sometimes gets lost in the pomp and circumstance of college sports. It's become increasingly commonplace, for instance, for fans of schools to go a little overboard in the enthusiasm department. For instance, Daily RFT scribe Paul Friswold detailed the absolutely atrocious musical depiction of Mizzou's basketball dominance.

But other schools seem to do a better job at composing "anthems" than our beloved Tigers. Here a few fan songs for teams competing in the tournament:

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Marky Ramone: punk, drummer, romance novelist.

Surely it could not have been easy being one of the lesser Ramones, but never let it be said that Marky Ramone, who assumed the drum kit after Tommy dropped out, was content to rest on the laurels of secondhand rock stardom. Even as the band stopped touring and its founding members slipped off this mortal coil, Marky was making plans for his second act, as he revealed to Tom Scharpling, host of The Best Show on WFMU radio out of Jersey City. (The radio station, by the way, that, via deejay Irwin Chusid, introduced the world to the unique musical stylings of the St. Louis-born chanteuse, Lucia Pamela.)

In this exclusive interview from 2006 (don't worry, the news* is not the least bit stale), recently rebroadcast, Marky reveals his secret passion...for romance novels! Lady Wainsworth's Desires, the first volume in Marky Ramone's Erotic Knights series was due out very shortly, and the drummer was eager to talk about it.

"It's not your mutha's romance novel," he says proudly. "There's nuthin' too dirty or too graphic, but it's kinda titillatin'."

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Mario did more than just stomp on turtles or race in go-karts. He also indirectly revolutionized video game composing.

Mario is a versatile video game character. In his long career in the digital world, Mario raced go-karts, fought adversaries in hand-to-hand combat and even got kidnapped to teach kids about geography.

Yet Nintendo's plumber extraordinaire may have inadvertently been a trailblazer in the realm of video game music-making.

When Nintendo released Mario Paint back in the early 1990s, it was effectively a way for kids to draw Nintendo characters. It was also a way for the company to disseminate a mouse created for the Super Nintendo system. Mario Paint also included what seemed to be a rudimentary composing mechanism, which swapped musical notes for images of Nintendo characters. At the time the game was released, the composer was aimed at providing a soundtrack to animated shorts.

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Go to hell, you old Bastard.

The sheer longevity of The Simpsons would be impressive if it wasn't so frightening. Consider: A person born on the day of the first non-Tracey Ullman Show episode is now 22 years old. And if characters from the show actually aged, Bart Simpson would be three years away from being able to assume the presidency.

Scary stuff. And individuals born in the 1980s may have felt a shiver of mortality Sunday when The Simpsons aired its 500th episode. With so many hours in the hopper, culling out particularly notable moments in its history without causing a flurry of angry debate is difficult.

Fear not: RFT Music waded through the murky yellow waters of the show's history in search of musicians and music that stand the test of time. Feel free to comment with other moments from Our Favorite Family that deserve recognition:

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Rick Steves.

St. Louis's most awesomely objectionable hip hop collective, King Kong Magnetics, dropped a serious mixtape earlier this week, entitled Bommarito Cash Orgy. They deal with current issues like foreclosure ("You broke ass, you white trash, good for nothing with your f***ing torn up shirt, your overall stinkin' shit,"), buying American, and even devoted a track to the late Osama bin Laden ("We killed that little bitch in his homo-ass cave"), and it's fourteen tracks of wildly offensive satire that will have you laughing hard enough to shoot soy milk from your nostrils. Assuming you're drinking soy milk, otherwise you need a doctor.

Jake Jones Rick Steves took some time out of his afternoon of eating black bean dip to talk about Danny Tanner's pussy, what he'd do with a large hadron collider, and the 10 other mixtapes they'll be dropping before the year is out.

So, Bommarito Cash Orgy mixtape. It's amazing.

That really ain't nothing, we got some more important ones coming out pretty soon.

What do you mean by more important?

Like a million times, it's just gonna be more important to the world. That's the beginning, that's just a scratch on the surface. We have ten more coming out this year. Literally ten more on the way before 2012.

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