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Whither Parmistan? RJ Ritchie Selecting a URL for our site was a pain in the arse. First, our site is dedicated to the glut of masscult kitsch, pop effluvia and general cultural rot out there, and we wanted a punchy little name that did a good job of embodying it all1. At first glance, pop culture seems to offer a treasure trove of potential names, but it's actually more of a black hole. It’s just really hard to pick a name that sufficiently represents the sea of total crap that's out there. Secondly, the Internet is big and chockablock with websites, many of which boast URLs that we were contemplating2. Initally, this led to lighthearted bemusement, and then later to purple fury. Here's an excerpt from our selection process: "Oh, let's see if Craptastic.com is taken." "Ok, yeah." (entering Craptastic.com into search engine) "Taken." "OK, now that's ridiculous. Redonkulous even. Hey - Redonkulous!" "Taken.". . . (An hour and a couple of beers a piece later.) "How about PainDontHurt.com?3" "um. . nope. No, it's taken alright." And then it hit us—Parmistan.com. Yes, why not name the site after the fictive Central Asian backwater that was the backdrop for the campy, Cold War actioneer, Gymkata, staring gold medal gymnast qua golden boy Kurt Thomas. In the film, Thomas is John Cabot, a star gymnast conscripted into helping the U.S. infiltrate this barbaric hell-hole to obtain permission for a “Star Wars” warning location. To do so, Cabot, like all foreigners, must first survive Parmistan’s brutal initiation ritual—the Game, a death race/obstacle course that forces participants to climb ropes, elude scimitar-wielding ninjas on horseback and navigate “the Village of the Crazies,” a lepers colony for the criminally insane that has a pommel horse in the village square. Using a balletic fighting style that fuses gymnastics with karate, the mulleted Cabot becomes the first male gymnast to ever survive the Game, at which point the film abruptly ends, telling us of the geopolitical consequences of his victory in a succinct epilogue. Some movies are just bad, others are so bad that they’re good, others are just plain insane. Born out of the frothy optimism of 1984’s Olympic fever, Gymkata is an action flick staring a male gymnast who kicks ass using moves from his floor exercise routine—Gymkata is insane. I guess that is partly why we settled on Parmistan.com, that and the fact that Gymkata.com was already taken, of course. Well, that’s it. We hope you like the site, or just hate it a little bit less than the women in our lives do. Enjoy, and as they say in Parmistan, “Yakmalla!”

¹Day by day, the site moves further away from its original focus on popular culture. We are aware of this. Our hope is that what we have lost in a defined mission has been made up for in material that amuses what few readers we have, regardless of what it’s about.

²Many of the taken URL's aren't being used either. They're just registered. Some are probably owned by individuals with the best of intentions of using them, although they never will. Others, I'm very sure, are owned by complete jerks that have gobbled them up with the hope of getting paid to hand them over.

³Other URL's we remember trying: fugly.com, pugfugly.com, ohwell.com, Dalton.com, Roadhouse.com, DoubleDeuce.com, Manos.com, Torgo.com, whoretoculture.com. . .)