Documentality: Bang My Box The Robyn Byrd Story

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Bang My Box The Robyn Byrd Story 9/10

This was a damn good documentary L suggested. This is about Robin Byrd. She hosted a public access series called The Robin Byrd Show in Manhattan where she spoke about sex, love, life, championed causes for the LGBTQ community, and safe sex. And this is something she kinda fell into. A show she had showed up on was being canceled (Hot Legs) and they just sorta threw her on and the show blew up. This show aired from 1977 to 1998. She went against the government during the shitty Ronald Reagan era (I shit you not when I was about 5 or 6 years old I wrote an article for the school paper about him titled “Bad Actor Makes Worse President”) and she won. Robin had been in adult films and would have adults performers on the show to just hang out, talk, dance, and speak with callers live on air. This could not exist now. People suck.

Documentality: The University of Cosmic Intelligence

The University of Cosmic Intelligence 2/10

Not too much to say about this as it was advertised as a documentary when it was more of a I guess “be on the look out for these missing people” type of thing. This dude Rashad Jamal from Chicago beats and strangles his woman. Years later he is Atlanta trying to rap. Meets this lady who has kids who wants to be a singer. They get together and have a kid. He starts making up all these conspiracy videos that get traction online talking about Black people being gods and Atlantis being where Atlanta now sits and all kinda weird shit. Its Pandemic time so everyone is going crazy and a bunch of crunchy Black folk start following him. He gets too nutty and molests his lady's daughter and eventually he is arrested for 18 years.

Documentality: Three Docs In One!

Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult 6/10

Over the last few weeks (pre Rhode Island vacation) L and I watched a few documentaries. This was the first. This former male model named Hoyt Richards ends up joining a spiritual cult. At one point he was the most famous male model in the world (I realized that other than Fabio who appears in this I barely know male models but knew most women). He left his home after being approached by the guy named Frederick von Mierers. This guy rounded up attractive people and had them help sell crystals and cassette tapes. Frederick is a weird dude and gathers everyone as they party and try to explain their beliefs to everyone. Its all nuts and I won't bother describing cause it sounds like every other weird cult. Past lives. Egypt. The usual. It wasn't like he had all his money stolen or was told what to do with his life really. This “cult” didn't seem all that bad honestly. Watched on HBO.

Documentality: We Are Jeni

We Are Jeni 6/10

This not gonna be long. L and I watched this two part series about this lady named Jeni who was super tortured by her father for years and again later as an adult (when she invited him back into her life after he only got 9 years in prison for assaulting someone else in England but I am not gonna get into that). What was remarkable about this case was that Jeni has DID ( Dissociative Identity Disorder) and was allowed to have her different alts speak at her trial. Her father was sentenced to decades which means his raggedy ass gonna die behind bars. DID is something I saw in movies, TV shows, and read in comics (Crazy Jane in Doom Patrol of the dude in Split. Some people say they have it but a true version of it is interesting to see. I am glad she got justice after so many years of not being believed or protected but I had more questions than answers after watching this and felt a type of way after watching. There is no meaty backstory on what her mother was doing while over a decade of abuse happened to Jeni. There was physical damage done and no one helped. No mention of her brother and sister and if they had the same thing or something similar happening to them. I wasn't asking for some triumphant happy ending, but when this was done I felt like this lady was born to be the victim of a monster. No reasons or anything given as to why no one believed her or even how her father grew up to be such a shitty human. It was just like “This is what happened. This is how it ended. Bye.”

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Documentality: Cult Of Natureboy

Cult Of Natureboy WTF/10

This is gonna be full of all the what people these days call “victim blaming” so if that bugs you please just go read something else. When I start any documentary about cults I ask myself two questions: Are there any Black people there and why are they? I know that folks can join a cult cause they are lonely and whatnot. Hey. I have been alone but wouldn't consider myself as ever being truly lonely. I think even in my most sad state I would never follow this guy. This dude is a true piece of shit and if you have ever known a loudmouth Black dude you would hear him and immediately go “Oh, this dude is fucknuts. I'm crossing the street.” Like, a couple months ago on the bus this dude was wilding out. He said his name so I looked him up and I'll be damned if there wasn't a video of him screaming the same shit to a camera crew.

Documentality: The Alabama Solution

Alabama Solution 9/10

This was a rough watch. The makers of this Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman went to this prison called Easterling in Alabama back in 2019 and there was a festival and everything seemed all nice and cool. There is church shit, barbecue, and love music. Then this one prisoner points out that its all bullshit. Turns out he was incredibly right. Filmed over years prisoners use their cell phones to record and document everything that is going on. I am not gonna pretend to be shocked that they have access to cell phones because my lady has shown me full on Tik Tok videos from inmates.

Documentality: Hey Beautiful

Hey Beautiful 7/10

This week L and I watched this series on Hulu. Its in three parts and a pretty easy watch being less than an hour each. This follows three women in particular at the start that all fall for the same guy using different names. There is Annette (the thirsty one). Roxy (the old, married one). And Gaby (the German who don't learn lessons). They are totally being scammed and giving this guy between one thousand bucks to over a million. No, they have never met him. When we watch scam things online me and my lady always wonder where these people get all this money to throw away from. Like Annette who is a waitress gives like 40,000 dollars to this guy. Roxy sneaks and has this fake fling with the guy while being married for over 50 years and is bored with her husband. And Gaby who we still aren't sure if she is still married goes as far as selling her childhood home to give money to this dude.

Documentality: Luther Vandross Never Too Much

Luther Vandross Never Too Much 10/10

This was amazing. I have been a fan of Luther since I was a little kid. Me and my lady ended up watching this and I found out so much new information about him such as the fact that he got started with performing so young and wrote songs for a lot of big people. I knew about him singing background with David Bowie but thought it was in just one song. I was super wrong. This is told through interviews with people that worked with him from the start of his career and uses a good balance of that along with interviews with him. I realized I had never actually watched an interview with him and he seemed like such a cool ass dude. And he could just sing! What I mean by that is he didn't warm up, do coke, or giggle and play it off. He could just sing at the drop of a hat with or without music.

Documentality: Yacht Rock A Dockumentary

Yacht Rock A Dockumentary 10/10

Last weekend L and I decided to check out this documentary on Max. We were like “Let's just check it out” and ended up sitting through the whole thing without pausing. This is unheard of. This had some really great music and I learned so much. I really didn't know that the term yacht rock didn't exist until a sketch group made a series online and used that name. I didn't know certain artists and bands were so blended together. I learned what counted as yacht rock and what didn't. I learned one dude from Steely Dan would likely stab you if you used that term in front of him. I found out that even Toto doesn't know what the fuck that song Africa is about. I also found out just when the genre started dying off. I swear, MTV was a curse disguised as a blessing. This is one of those things you could watch a few times and still enjoy it. I added a whole playlist to my Spotify Just a really feel good ass thing to watch.

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Documentality: Chimp Crazy

Chimp Crazy 4/10

We watched this crazy ass documentary a few weeks back and while it had the potential to be interesting they stretched out what could have easily been an hour and a half series into four hour long episodes where you get to watch this nutty ass woman Tonia Haddix lie through her teeth constantly. If they had focused on more people this could have been interesting but since they would show a tiny bit about others and then go back to this woman I lost interest. I can't just sit and watch someone lie that much and stay entertained especially when I know they not in prison for animal abuse. Tonia is a former nurse and has a husband and kids but they don't mean shit compared to her love for her chimp, Tonka. She collects primates and is in a lawsuit because of how she keeps her animals. I don't know about you but I doubt that McDonald's and Gatorade are okay for animals to be chomping down on daily.

Documentality: The Black Widower

The Black Widower 3/10

This could have been a one hour episode of a larger crime show. Not to make too light of the fact that this dude named Thomas Randolph allegedly killed four of his six previous wives. I didn't get how this man pulled one wife let alone six of them. From listening to people that knew him it sounds like he was only good to you if you had something he needed. This guy would put out life insurances on women and they would die. He killed the hitman after the hitman killed one wife. He allegedly killed one after her surgery. The others I forget because this series dragged out so much that L. fell asleep during the second episode and I updated her on what happened in the final. I know I said one hour but with commercials this could have been told in 42 minutes. This was on Max.

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Documentality: The Man With 1000 Kids

The Man With 1000 Kids Ew/10

Jonathan Jacob Meijer is gross. The end.

This won't be too long. This is about this Jonathon dude that donates sperm to companies and women wanting to start a family and having trouble for whatever reason. You go online, look for a donor that fits what you looking for in a future child (hobbies and looks seem to be the most important), and get that sweet man gravy. He used a company where they had a certain amount you could donate on top of people using his services privately and doing it all over the world. In one part of the world he did it to the point where people knew one another that now had kids that were siblings. Though the number as far as they know around the world is 600 I assume that is bullshit and there are far more. They interview various people explaining the process of using this guy (and it turns out possibly one more because they were mixing their juices together for funsies).

Documentality: They Called Him Mostly Harmless

They Called Him Mostly Harmless 8/10

Spoilers!!! This was insane! L. mentioned hearing about this on a podcast and we checked it out. This hiker known to other hikers as Mostly Harmless was found dead in his tent in 2018. He had money and food but weighed about 83 pounds. He had no identification on him and even when he was fingerprinted nothing came up. They speak to other hikers who met him and took pictures with him but no one knows his real name. They had experts and others talk about how hard it is to actually be as unknown as this guy was. I just wanted to know if they eventually found out who he was. L. assured me that we would know his name by the time this ended. His body was discovered by some other hikers after smelling some dead human funk and alerted authorities. They tried their best to make an image of what he may have looked like alive from his body. It looked horrifying.

Documentality: Lover Stalker Killer

Lover Stalker Killer 6/10

L. and I watched this crazy ass documentary on Netflix a few weeks ago. Once it started she already knew the story and we fast forward through a giant chunk because Netflix was like “We have a lot of text effects and we gonna use all of 'em!” It gets old. So this dude Dave is newly split with the mother of his children and decides to start using dating apps. This is back in 2012 when dating apps were like the wild west. So he meets up with this lady named Liz. He tells her he doesn't wanna be tied down and she seems cool with it. He later meets another woman which sets off a bizarre series of events such as Liz coming down with the worst luck ever. House burned down. Car keyed. The other woman comes up missing. Liz says she is being stalked. Turns out that Liz is doing all this to herself and stalking the fuck out of Dave. Oh, and she murdered the other woman. I told my lady “Ain't no dick in the world that good!” She agreed. This was fine but felt longer than it was even with fast forwarding. They could have had two different stories in this.

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Documentality: Chowchilla

Chowchilla 7/10

So L. and I watch this documentary on HBO that was originally done on CNN called Chowchilla. This was insane. I had never heard about this case before where a bus full of 26 students and the bus driver were kidnapped. So these kids riding the bus just living their best weird ass Central California life when these guys wearing stockings over their face and holding guns stop the bus. Now the bus driver let them on and all I could think about was that if this ever happened on the public transit that I ride. The bus driver would immediately let anybody on seeing as how they let on screaming, yelling homeless people daily. So these kids get taken for a ride and then they're moved into this underground bunker type thing and next thing you know they hear dirt being shoveled on top of them. These kids started having hallucinations and pretty much losing their minds as you would expect. The bus driver tries to rescue them by lifting this lid and he can't do it but one of the boys is able to. This boy is a true hero this story but what sucks is that the bus driver got all of the credit. Even on this bus driver's Tombstone when he died years later they put that he was a hero.

Documentality: Curry and Cyanide

Curry And Cyanide 8/10

Another documentary we watched was called Curry and Cyanide. It's the tale of this lady named Jolly Joseph who and India killed six people. You can guess how she did it. Her first victim was her mother-in-law who she gave a glass of water too with some cyanide in it. Next was her father-in-law followed shortly by her own husband. By the time she was done she had killed one more person, a child, and the mother of that child so she could be with the husband. This was insane to hear about but the crazy thing is when I watch some of these documentaries and I look at the years that this stuff was occurring it's just like “oh yeah life was real strange around that time.” Like, if anything insane happened between 2019 and 2021 chances are I missed out on it. The thing about this lady that bugs me so much other than the fact that she was a murderer was that she would straight up be at these people's funerals standing over their caskets knowing good and damn well that she hadn't murdered them. She would have gotten caught sooner if they had done autopsies on some of these bodies and understood the fact that women could kill. I also like that they had real people involved in this case interviewed. There weren't strange reenactments really of things happening and they spoke to people involved in having her caught including her sister-in-law and one of her two children. This is on Netflix and is a really quick watch.

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Documentality: Stolen Youth Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence

Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence 8/10

A lot of times when I watch documentaries about mind control or cult or anything like that I think to myself “that could never be me.” A lot of times it's because everybody looks filthy and I like taking showers or they have to get weird haircuts and outfits and things like that. In this documentary Stolen Youth this could not have been me because even though I have not gone to college I could not imagine me and seven other roommates suddenly having a new roommate in the form of somebody's ex-con daddy. This is about this group of students at Sarah Lawrence College and one of the girls is like “Hey, my dad's getting out of prison you mind if he chills on the couch here?” And they all agreed that its cool! Thankfully, like with every documentary about a cult or anything like this I always look for Black people and there are none in this one.

Documentality: Hell Camp

Hell Camp 7/10

A few weeks ago L. and I watched this documentary called Hell Camp on Netflix. This was nuts. Its about a “camp” where your parents pay a lot of money for you to be kidnapped from your home, taking to Utah, and forced to hike hundreds of miles in the desert. Okay, but really it's for out of control teens and this program set up by this guy named Steve is supposed to whip you into shape. It did eventually get shut down and by shut down I mean moved to a new location until a 16 year old girl actually died. So what happens is you are a teen in the 80s or 90s and smoking weed and drinking and just being a general nuisance. Your parents are sitting at home watching Donahue and they see this guy Steve show up and talks about how you should be dealing with your out of control teenagers. Mind you we later find out that his son is also out of control and ends up at one of these places along with his another child of Steve's who ends up with drug issues as well. So they take you out of your house, throw you on the plane, drop you off in this desert, and the next thing you know Macho Man Randy Savage is screaming in your face.

Documentality: Natalia Speaks

Natalia Speaks 4/10

I have to stay for the record that L. and I did watch the first Natalia Grace (which I would have given a 9/10 just for pure nonsense factor) documentary. For some reason I did not write about it and assumed that I had. The basic premise is that this couple name the Barnett's adopted this little girl named Natalia who was from a Ukrainian orphanage. Over time they started saying that she had mental problems and that she was violent and would do things like stand at the edge of their bed holding a knife and attacking other children. Next thing you know they got this girl in a mental hospital and then moved her own her own to this two-story house and then they also moved her to this place that looks like the type of area you would go to do drugs and die. So the entire time the family is saying this is an adult woman pretending to be a little girl because they said she got her period and had pubic hair and the way she talked seemed to adult for a child. That's the basic story going into this chaos.

Documentality: Love Has Won The Cult Of Mother God

Love Has Won 8/10

Last week L. and I watched this crazy ass documentary called Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. This is about this lady named Amy Carlson who started a cult called Love Has Won. What is the point of this cult? What was their main goal? What is their mission statement? I have no idea. I have looked online I have watched other videos about this group of people and I have absolutely no idea what the point of it was. From these three episodes it seems like she had a pretty normal life. She also has an abusive husband and different relationships and then one day she quit her job at McDonald's and left her kids behind. Next thing you know she's with this old man and they're doing a bunch of seemingly hippie stuff together. She ends up leaving him and some other men that she ends up calling Father God until she settles on this one guy who is so crazy seeming it is scary.