Editorials
Green Day’s Billie Joe Has A Temper Tantrum: Screams, “I’m Not F*cking Justin Bieber, You Motherf*ckers!”
Update: According to the AP, singer Billie Joe Armstrong is headed to rehab for substance abuse. The band also told AP that their set was not cut short.
On Friday night, at the IHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, NV (which was also being broadcast live via Yahoo), Green Day frontman Billie Joe lost it when he saw that his band only had one more minute left to perform. And by “lost it”, I mean that he basically had a childish temper tantrum where he swore up a storm (he used the word ‘f*ck’, or a derivation of it, 21 times), smashed his guitar and then threw his microphone across the stage.
The trigger for this was the fact that all bands/performers at the festival had a 25-30 set time allotted. This included No Doubt, Usher, and Bon Jovi, as well as many others. And yet, for some reason, Billie Joe felt that his band deserved a longer set list, claiming that they’ve been around, “…since f*cking nineteen eighty f*cking eight“. Hmmm, Bon Jovi’s first release was 1984, but you don’t hear him whining, do you Billie?
Apparently, Billie Joe wasn’t calm or rational during the show either. Yahoo states that he berated the few people who decided to sit down during their performance (I’d be sitting too), the band premiered a new song entitled “It’s F*ck Time”, and Billie Joe pulled down his pants, revealing his, “…personal grooming habits.”
Read on for my thoughts as well as a video of Billie Joe reverting to a snubbed 4-year old.
I’m sorry, but what the hell?! The band knew about the time slot arrangement WELL before taking the stage. These festivals are planned down to the second and any band that signs on knows exactly what is going on. Even if Green Day’s management signed them on without the band knowing the details, they would be brought up-to-date beforehand. Why? Simple: the band would have to design a setlist to fit within the time constraints.
So why does Billie Joe think Green Day deserves better than any other artist that is on the bill? Why should a pop-punk band get preferential treatment? Because they’re about to be immortalized as pigs in an Angry Birds game? Because they have a musical for American Idiot? Sorry, none of this is impressing me. I stopped playing Angry Birds a while ago and I don’t care about your sh*tty musical.
Some people are wondering if this is a publicity stunt to promote the release of ¡Uno!, which comes out on Tuesday. I’m going to speculate that this isn’t the case. I’ve seen a ton of publicity for that album everywhere. Also, the band is big enough that simply releasing a new album will drive sales. They don’t need negative publicity.
No, this is plain and simple a case of someone’s head getting swollen up and their ego getting bigger than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. If Billie Joe thinks that he’s impressed or shocked anyone, he can think again. The only thing he’s done is prove that he’s a liability and that music festivals should think twice before signing them to the show.
Also, his overuse of the various forms of “f*ck” totally reminded me of South Park’s “It Hits The Fan”. Check out below to see what I’m talking about.
Got any thoughts/questions/concerns for Jonathan Barkan? Shoot him a message on Twitter or on Bloody-Disgusting!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
You must be logged in to post a comment.