Carrot and the Great Red Menace

Shit-eating grins all 'round.

Read on and find out why.

When I was ten years old, I went to war with a redhead. So did my brother. His name was Tony M. He lived two doors down from us. He was a friend. Once, the dog across the road (Nelson) tried to fuck him. He didn't manage to get very far, but afterward, Tony M. acted like the dog had achieved its goal. That's the kind of guy he was.

In the early 70's, we played a crude form of frisbee golf with Tony M. We'd tee off in front of the house and shoot for a distant target -- perhaps a "Stop" sign, or a neighbor's letterbox. We'd regroup at the target and tally our scores. Tony M. cheated half the time. I knew that because he cheated the first time we played. As a result, I was forced to keep a secret, mental record of his score as well as my own. That wasn't much fun.

One of the Silver Screen's most disturbing gingers.
Lock up your daughters, dogs, and guinea pigs.

Tony M., like many redheads, had a wicked temper. There was a kid named Steve at my school. He was a freckled redhead who'd blow his fuse if you looked at him. If you bumped him in the hallway, they'd be calling an ambulance for you. Every redhead I met as a kid was an angry fuck. Even the girls. A greasy fat lardbutt named Sally used to beat me with her leather schoolbag because she didn't like my plastic Dracula teeth. Well, I didn't like her Frankenstein face.

I don't know where the anger resided, but I sure knew where it went. At me. At the world.

The Butcher Boy's Francie : Pure evil on a rope swing.

When Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave us the "Gingerkids" episode of South Park, I laughed long and loud. Finally, someone had the balls to expose these melanin-deficient bastards.

A brilliant website, gingerkids.org, appeared on the net around the same time as the episode debuted. It had the ginger menace firmly in its crosshairs. Unfortunately, it no longer exists in the form it once did. I suspect foul play with a red stench.

Perhaps the gingerkids message was too potent for the world.

The South Park episode simply confirmed for us all that Gingerkids have no souls. I've always known that. So has my brother. We just couldn't articulate it as beautifully as Matt and Trey did.

The war with Tony M. ended the friendship. It was a plum war. After we stripped a local plum tree of its stone-like, tennis ball-sized fruits, we engaged the redheaded scourge in a violent trading of plums from behind two brick fences.

It was difficult to hit Tony M. with a force that would debilitate him because he remained like a girl behind the fence, head down. So did we. That is until it became evident that he was out of plums. Immediately, I jumped our fence, ran across the road, leapt up onto his fence, and found him cowering directly beneath me.

He was a pathetic figure of red-faced hate, his close-cropped hair giving his head the appearance of a giant carrot-colored tennis ball. Dispensing with threats such as "You're dead!" and "Say goodbye, cunt!", I clutched two hard plums in my hand, raised my arm, then let him have them like I'd never let anybody have a plum before (or since).

A pig mask can not hide a redhead's true intentions.
Besides, we've seen Motel Hell.

My brother, who witnessed the almighty branding of Tony M. from a distance, still recalls the two plums bouncing off his skull and flying forty feet into the air in opposite directions. M's cry of pain was banshee-like yet satisfying at the same time.

Falling back onto his own front lawn, he wriggled and shook like a man being scanned in a Cronenberg movie and clawed his carrot-colored skull.

A couple of months later, Tony M. moved away to Queensland with his mother and father. We never saw or heard from him again. The plums that bounced off his skull and were launched skyward eventually returned to terra firma. They sat rotting on the dried lawn of the M. residence, evidence of a battle fought and lost. I suspect Tony M. ate the rotten assassins of his demise. As I said, he was that kind of guy.

Eating shit and grinning at the same time. Only scat queens should
be able to do that.

Hollywood understands the threat Gingers pose. It doesn't deny that most of them pose a threat at least equal to terrorism.

Look at "Melvin The Mop Boy", for example, from Lloyd Kaufman's The Toxic Avenger. "He's always got that shit-eating grin on his face!" one character declares. And how right he was. They do have shit-eating grins. Somehow, they manage to eat shit and grin at the same time. Most of us can't do that. Not unless we work in the scat film indsutry. We'd just throw up.

Carrots don't. That scares the Holy Trinity out of me.

From "Francie" in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy to Las Vegas's favorite redheaded son, the disgraceful Carrot Top...

Irrefutable proof that there is no God.

...the Gingers represent a breed of human that has more in common with spiders than other humans. They repel us. They creep us out. They appall us with their strange, aggressive, alien presence. That's why a can of bug spray or a giant shoe is the only antidote to their gradual colonization of the planet.

If we don't stop Carrotkind now, we're in big, stinking trouble.

If you don't believe me, you need to see Tom Salisbury's Carrot (2009), a fifteen minute short film (or more accurately, a warning!) that is currently doing the festival rounds.

It is abundantly clear that Mr. Salisbury, an Australian director with a unique sensibility, has a spot of Nostradamus in him. Not only does he understand the carrot problem, he accurately predicts where it will go next.

Very nicely shot on a Red camera, Carrot depicts the last days of the titular redhead. Working in a confined office environment, he pines for a promotion. He is arrogant enough to consider himself (a carrot, mind you!!!) worthy of a raise in both status and pay. When he realizes that his carrotkind are unworthy of elevation beyond their station, he hits back in the only way a carrot knows. With shocking violence.

A Carrot on the edge in Tom Salisbury's cautionary tale.

The climactic mayhem has a Taxi Driver intensity. Short, disturbing bursts of brutality give rise to a cleansing for the carrot. For his co-workers, their prejudices against him are validated with death.

If scenes of ginger revenge are disturbing to you (or anybody under the age of seventy-five), approach this film with extreme caution.

If, on the other hand, you secretly yearn to see ginger revenge at its bloodiest, most violent, and most shocking, leave your soul at the door and do whatever you can to see Tom Salisbury's Carrot.

Extremely well acted, tightly cut, and smartly directed, it is an evolutionary step in accurate media presentation of the reddest Red Menace to threaten the world.

Spare us, Lord!