To quote Lachlan Markay, "AYFKM with this?"

No. No, they are not. This is a thing.

They do, however, attempt to define that quality which differentiates a bad movie from being a good bad movie and just a plain ol' bad movie. This, they conclude, is the latter.

It feels like Zombeavers's writers saw Sharknado and its instant online popularity and thought it'd be easy to replicate something so bad that it's good. But there's a special magic to a movie like Sharknado, and that lies in its earnestness. For all its faults, Ian Ziering sells that he is afraid that sharks will fly out of a tornado and kill his family. It's insane. It's incredibly stupid. And you know what? It's wildly entertaining. Ultimately, Zombeavers is just two out three.

From a title like Zombeavers, you'd probably expect a creature feature studded with gore, goofiness, and perhaps some T&A, right? Well, if that's all you're hoping for from this horror-comedy, you'll be satisfied. Zombeavers delivers in being wacky and graphic. It's just a shame it doesn't aspire to be anything more, like spirited, smart or frightening.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:03 PM | Comments (264)
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Today's Aaron's 499 race kicks off at 1:00 pm EST at the 2.66 mile track at Talladega, AL.

Brian Scott and Paul Menard will be leading the pack with qualifying speeds of 198.290 mph and 197.888 mph respectively. The full lineup can be found HERE.

There are a few paint scheme switches this week. Of these, Michael Waltrip's looks pretty good.

Voting is open for 2015 Hall of Fame inductees. Cast your vote here.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:40 AM | Comments (171)
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Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's stately and prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread. All non-book discussion should go in Andy's open thread below. Thanks.

Pious Frauds

For my money, the second best conservative blog on teh internets is The Other McCain, where Robert Stacy McCain dishes up long, deep think pieces on an almost daily basis. Like in this one, where he notes the importance of "the authority of experience" in feminist writing, and how one particular writer uses some horrific circumstances of her earlier life to buttress the political point she's trying to make. McCain smelled a rat, so he searched for other articles by the same author, and in every one, she tells a different, yet painfully dramatic, personal story to argue her point. This happens so often that after awhile, you start to wonder how all the stories she's told about herself can possibly be true. McCain's chief complaint is the unverifiable nature of these anecdotes, particularly from a pseudonymous author. I suspect that if someone took all of these author's stories, tried to relate them to each other, establish timelines, etc., in order to set them on an objective foundation, they'd soon run into contradictions and impossibilities that couldn't be reconciled.

As I was reading McCain's piece, I was reminded of something similar that happened a number of years ago in the Christian circles I hang out in.

Back in the late 1980s, in the wake of some dubiously prosecuted child abuse cases, there was a big stink made over what was called "satanic ritual abuse". A sensational book by a Christian publisher was released, Satan's Underground by Lauren Stratford, who claimed to be an adult survivor of SRA, that detailed how her mother and succession of men kept her prisoner and made her perform all sorts of obscene and disgusting sex acts (that were filmed), and even making her get pregnant on multiple occasions so the baby could be used in sacrificial rituals. The stories told by Stratford were horrific and gruesome and so the book became a big seller.

Apparently, someone at the Christian magazine Cornerstone smelled a rat. So they investigated Stratford's claims, interviewed the people involved, tried to verify the details of her narrative, and discovered that the whole thing was pretty much a lie. Stratford was a deeply disturbed woman who lived at the intersection of evil and mental illness. She had been telling these sorts of lies about those around her for pretty much most of her life. Her 'sacrificial babies' never existed.

Funny thing is, you can still buy her completely fabricated sham of a book, though. The original publisher dropped it, but amazingly, another publisher picked it up.

After she was busted by Cornerstone, Stratford made herself scarce. But then she resurfaced several years later as "Lauren Grabowski", a child survivor of Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust. She got busted for that scam, too. She passed away in 2002.

And then there's that other Christian fraud, Michael Warnke. Wrote a best-selling book detailing his life as some big leader of a Satanist cult. And then he got pantsed by the guys at Cornerstone. His response was one of those weak-tea minimal apologies, and to play the victim card.

I don't think that very many of you morons are going to be surprised when I tell you that both Stratford and Warnke both have their defenders and followers even today, even after they've been exposed as frauds. Go read the 5-star Amazon reviews. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:50 AM | Comments (227)
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So, the Thought Police won again. Former Secretary of State Condeeleza Rice will NOT be speaking at Rutgers after all:

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out of giving Rutgers University's commencement speech today amid growing opposition among the school's students and faculty.

In a statement, Rice said she informed Rutgers President Robert Barchi that she has decided not to give the May 18 address.

“Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time," Rice said.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:07 AM | Comments (156)
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Yeah. I know. I'm overdue for posting a Home Improvement/DIY thread but have hit a run of good car bits that beg to be posted. I'm sure you won't mind.

New-car sales are doing well with Jeep, Nissan, and Subaru making big gains for April (YOY), up 52%, 18.3%, and 21.7% respectively. Jeep credits their gains to the new Cherokee and Patriot. As appalled as I was the first time I saw the Cherokee and the Grand Cherokee, I have to admit that the Grand Cherokee has since grown on me. The Cherokee? Well, I no longer curl up in a ball and weep like a baby when I see it, but it still has a ways to go before I can say that it isn't just plain ugly.

One thing about the sales stats that surprises me is Mitsubishi. Although sales are way up at +46.6%, they still sold only 6.5k units in April. This perplexes me. From my experience, the quality of Mitsubishi cars is on par with Toyota and Honda but they sell tens of thousands fewer cars every month. I purchased a 2003 Galant ES with 13k miles on it, a former rental, in 2005. I drove it until the end of 2008 and my daughter still drives it today. All this time there hasn't been a single problem with it (Knock on wood). If I were ever again in the market for a new car I'd give serious consideration to purchasing another.

Also revealed in that article, one-third of buyers are now financing their new car purchase for 72-mos or longer with that percentage dropping as the age of the buyer increases. That's an awful long time to pay for a car: It's well past the expiration of a standard warranty. It's waaaay past the honeymoon period.

There must be an awful lot of people out there who are buying cars they really cannot afford.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:58 PM | Comments (142)
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Good day, gardeners! This thread brought to you by creepy plants:

'Hope you are experiencing better weather at your neck of the woods this weekend. After a week of cold, damp weather, including a hard freeze that required me to cover my raised beds here at Casa Y-not, we are going to hit the 80s. Spring in Utah -- can't beat it.

Per reader requests, this week's topic is a bit off the straight and narrow path of "gardening" and will be about how to preserve the fruits (and veggies) of your labor.

Take it away, WeirdDave!

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:13 AM | Comments (108)
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Like to drink beer AND get naked? Well then you might should start thinking about getting to work on your beer gut NOW for this mandatory naked beer festival shindig. Don't forget your seat covers!!! One can only hope that the fare does not consist of hot dogs and tacos.... more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:10 PM | Comments (169)
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Here I am, 47 years old, and I find myself in my first serious-you-guys old man crisis. I can't stop yelling for these kids to get off my lawn country. This week we were treated to the spectacle of Tommy Vietor telling Bret Baier “Dude, that was like 2 years ago” in response to a question on Benghazi. First of all, dude looks like he's twelve years old. No fooling.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:31 AM | Comments (262)
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With the latest revelations from the Judicial Watch FOIA'd emails and ramped up dissembling from the lying liars in the White House bringing Benghazi back to the fore, the question of just what, exactly, in the f*ck the leader of the free world was doing when our diplomatic personnel were being murdered by Islamofascists remains unanswered.

Andy McCarthy wants to know ...

Outnumbered and fighting off wave after jihadist wave, Americans were left to die in Benghazi while administration officials huddled, not to devise a rescue strategy, but to spin the election-year politics. The most powerful and capable armed forces in the history of the world idled, looking not to their commander-in-chief but to a State Department that busied itself writing press releases about phantom Islamophobia. The president of the United States, the only constitutional official responsible for responding, was nowhere to be found.

... and Patterico thinks he might have the answer.

Here is an interesting tidbit from the White House Visitor Logs for 9/11/12: Obama met with three people, at an unknown time, for “debate prep.”

Be sure to read the whole thing. And we also talk a good bit about Benghazi on this week's podcast, so give that a listen as well.

The White House has moved on to the "it's old news" (dude ... DUDE!) phase of Democrat/MSM (BIRM) crisis management, but this is just getting started.

Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty deserve no less than for the American people to know the absolute, unvarnished truth of what happened that night and for someone actually responsible ... not scapegoat crappy YouTube guy ... to be held to account.

Posted by: andy at 08:17 AM | Comments (182)
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Be excellent to each other.

Posted by: andy at 03:29 AM | Comments (181)
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