Lee Wiley.
Lee Wiley.
Lee Wiley.
Rest of the World: You're Welcome!, Dept.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
"Homosecular, amirite?!?", Dept.
People--and by "people," I mean "the nagging voices inside my head"--ask me, "'Ey, sobsister! What for you gotta be hatin' the Catholic Church with-a the white heat of a thousand-a suns?" And I respond, "Hey, Mr. Bacciagalupe! How's business?", then I grab a bright red apple from his stand, he pretend-spars with me and I go to work in my brand-new '52 Packard.
Well, here's one reason! The Good Ol' Catholic Church is opposing Choc City's measure to allow same-sex marriage. No surprise, right? Because the cassock set are down with the paedo playtime, but consenting adults in a relationship where the balance of power is negotiated? Fuck that shit five ways to Magdala! They've even got a note from Jesus saying--and I paraphrase liberally--"Fuck that shit five ways to Magdala!"
But, here's the kicker: not only is B-b-b-benny's Man-Boy Love Klatsch opposing this measure due to its longstanding policy of being to basic human decency what thalidomide was to eugenics, they're threatening to walk out on the social service programs they run for the city. Because of some higher religious principle, doubtless no doubt...? Oh, wait, here's what the WashPost says, it's because "...they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians."
So, the RC Church, purported beacon of righteousness since Western Civ was a pimply J.D., is willing to say, in front of God an' everybody, "By the blood of Our Savior whom, we fervently believe, died for the salvation of all men, we will fight for our right to be able to discriminate openly against a group that has does us no ill and to withhold our charity on a bitch's whim."
Thank you, Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, thank you. Mainly for reminding me precisely why I despise your establishment with what my friend Bacciagalupe calls, "the white heat of a thousand suns." The difference between, say, you and any hardballing Wall Street buyout shark is that you're just so much better at reducing your downside exposure, simply by speaking the mumbo and the jumbo and basking in the backlight of that big rose window called the autumn sky.
People--and by "people," I mean "the nagging voices inside my head"--ask me, "'Ey, sobsister! What for you gotta be hatin' the Catholic Church with-a the white heat of a thousand-a suns?" And I respond, "Hey, Mr. Bacciagalupe! How's business?", then I grab a bright red apple from his stand, he pretend-spars with me and I go to work in my brand-new '52 Packard.
Well, here's one reason! The Good Ol' Catholic Church is opposing Choc City's measure to allow same-sex marriage. No surprise, right? Because the cassock set are down with the paedo playtime, but consenting adults in a relationship where the balance of power is negotiated? Fuck that shit five ways to Magdala! They've even got a note from Jesus saying--and I paraphrase liberally--"Fuck that shit five ways to Magdala!"
But, here's the kicker: not only is B-b-b-benny's Man-Boy Love Klatsch opposing this measure due to its longstanding policy of being to basic human decency what thalidomide was to eugenics, they're threatening to walk out on the social service programs they run for the city. Because of some higher religious principle, doubtless no doubt...? Oh, wait, here's what the WashPost says, it's because "...they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians."
So, the RC Church, purported beacon of righteousness since Western Civ was a pimply J.D., is willing to say, in front of God an' everybody, "By the blood of Our Savior whom, we fervently believe, died for the salvation of all men, we will fight for our right to be able to discriminate openly against a group that has does us no ill and to withhold our charity on a bitch's whim."
Thank you, Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, thank you. Mainly for reminding me precisely why I despise your establishment with what my friend Bacciagalupe calls, "the white heat of a thousand suns." The difference between, say, you and any hardballing Wall Street buyout shark is that you're just so much better at reducing your downside exposure, simply by speaking the mumbo and the jumbo and basking in the backlight of that big rose window called the autumn sky.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Ontogeny Monetizes Philogeny, Dept.
Right, so we're parked in front of the Hypnogogue, preparing for an hour's avarice as Antiques Roadshow visits Louisville, KY Jelly, to gorge on the burgoo of bluegrass-state detritus. And this ad comes on.
Well, it's not an "ad"-ad because this is Public Television. Parked above the crass commercial concerns that drive the Big 4 networks to prostitute the core of integrity that would otherwise serve as their lodestar, Public Television won't suck Mammon's teat for the sake of a few greasy, cokey, crumpled Franklins. No, instead, Public Television features 60-second art films that depict a young woman's bittersweet coming of age thanks to the Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive of the Subaru Outback. Less of the coming of age part, actually.
In the background, we hear a young girl speaking to someone, as we're shown a black-and-white photograph of a woman holding a camera. In her slacks, bold belt, tucked-in sweater and playfully defiant expression, she evokes Carole Lombard on location in the Southwest. A thin, red line drops from the lower edge of her photo and veers sharp left to connect to a warmtoned color photo of the same camera being used by a woman in an Ali MacGraw Love Story hat. The clothes she wears, the background of the walls--the walls of a home, in the pictured prelapsarian era we'll call The Good '70s--her simple makeup, these all speak to a less-direct but no-less-consciously asserted female presence than that of the first photo. The thin red line--a vibrant line of descent, certainly-- then drops to a live-action, gauzy shot of a little girl, sprawled on a carpet, next to the camera we've already seen twice. She's the one whose voice we've been hearing. She's been speaking to her dolls, the ones she's arranging for the photo she's about take. "Say 'Cheese'..." she intones with all the calculated sweetness a professional actress of age six can be instructed to summon by "creatives" who may not be entirely sensitive to how like the uncanny shudder that a corpse evokes is this counterfeiting of child's imagination.
But somewhere between the first indistinct words we hear this child say and the last instruction we hear her offer, an adult woman's voice takes command of our earholes to thoughtfully inform us, "Some of the most important things passed down through generations have nothing to do with DNA. Liberty Mutual. Proud sponsor of Antiques Roadshow."
This is the point at which your sobsister's eyes widen to saucer size, mouth to gape like an off-season Tunnel of Love.
If you show me images of three generations of women--joined one to the other by what I can only construe as a stylized bloodline--each closely drawn to photography, then my first thought is actually not, "Oh, right, they're connected by their ownership of this object." No. It's more along the lines of "My GOD, is that a photography gene or a shiver of great white sharks?!?"
At least this non-commercial is being more honest than the show it "makes possible" as regards Antiques Roadshow society's valuation of the inherited, be it tangible or intangibly small. Every single bouffanted mercantilist who shleps a 300-lb *fingers crossed* authentic Colonial tallboy into the Father Coughlin Memorial Convention Center in downtown Saginaw and hears that she is potentially ten thousand bananas richer...and that's a conservative estimate...may say, "Oh, but we would never sell it!" but surely thinks, "Saint BART'S, baay-beee!!"
The disconnect between and the diametricity of the visual message and the verbal message. I imagine that those who conceptualized and executed this non-commercial were unaware that its talking point complements its visuals as well as four-alarm chili does a wedding dress. The equivalent of hearing the story of the Good Samaritan, and your take-away is that those who don't get involved are truly the Elect of the Lord.
Liberty Mutual, I know nothing about beyond the fact that it's an insurance company and, as such, makes its money by doing you out of as much recompense as its lawyers say it can do and still avoid being bumbusted in litigation. But absolutely nothing about its association with this exercise in cognitive dissonance gives me confidence that, as a corporate entity, it has the taste or sense that God gave a drunken sailor in a two-buck whorehouse. So, you may want to look elsewhere for that auto insurance.
I occasionally wonder about the people who work at ad agencies. Do they have magic wands they wave at their clients? Or do they possess m4d Jedi skillz? "This commercial is not asinine." "Your corporate messaging will be clearer thanks to this commercial." "You want to bring us a six-pack of hookers and a silver bucket of blow."
Here's the referenced non-commercial, along with its companion non-commercial involving a violin, three generations of Black people who all play the violin and the fact that they are joined solely by their ownership of the violin, not by any quote-unquote transmitted genetic predisposition.
Do you think when the ad people and the insurance company executives responsible for this paradigm of televisual non-commerce look in a mirror, they see themselves or only the room behind them?
Right, so we're parked in front of the Hypnogogue, preparing for an hour's avarice as Antiques Roadshow visits Louisville, KY Jelly, to gorge on the burgoo of bluegrass-state detritus. And this ad comes on.
Well, it's not an "ad"-ad because this is Public Television. Parked above the crass commercial concerns that drive the Big 4 networks to prostitute the core of integrity that would otherwise serve as their lodestar, Public Television won't suck Mammon's teat for the sake of a few greasy, cokey, crumpled Franklins. No, instead, Public Television features 60-second art films that depict a young woman's bittersweet coming of age thanks to the Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive of the Subaru Outback. Less of the coming of age part, actually.
In the background, we hear a young girl speaking to someone, as we're shown a black-and-white photograph of a woman holding a camera. In her slacks, bold belt, tucked-in sweater and playfully defiant expression, she evokes Carole Lombard on location in the Southwest. A thin, red line drops from the lower edge of her photo and veers sharp left to connect to a warmtoned color photo of the same camera being used by a woman in an Ali MacGraw Love Story hat. The clothes she wears, the background of the walls--the walls of a home, in the pictured prelapsarian era we'll call The Good '70s--her simple makeup, these all speak to a less-direct but no-less-consciously asserted female presence than that of the first photo. The thin red line--a vibrant line of descent, certainly-- then drops to a live-action, gauzy shot of a little girl, sprawled on a carpet, next to the camera we've already seen twice. She's the one whose voice we've been hearing. She's been speaking to her dolls, the ones she's arranging for the photo she's about take. "Say 'Cheese'..." she intones with all the calculated sweetness a professional actress of age six can be instructed to summon by "creatives" who may not be entirely sensitive to how like the uncanny shudder that a corpse evokes is this counterfeiting of child's imagination.
But somewhere between the first indistinct words we hear this child say and the last instruction we hear her offer, an adult woman's voice takes command of our earholes to thoughtfully inform us, "Some of the most important things passed down through generations have nothing to do with DNA. Liberty Mutual. Proud sponsor of Antiques Roadshow."
This is the point at which your sobsister's eyes widen to saucer size, mouth to gape like an off-season Tunnel of Love.
If you show me images of three generations of women--joined one to the other by what I can only construe as a stylized bloodline--each closely drawn to photography, then my first thought is actually not, "Oh, right, they're connected by their ownership of this object." No. It's more along the lines of "My GOD, is that a photography gene or a shiver of great white sharks?!?"
At least this non-commercial is being more honest than the show it "makes possible" as regards Antiques Roadshow society's valuation of the inherited, be it tangible or intangibly small. Every single bouffanted mercantilist who shleps a 300-lb *fingers crossed* authentic Colonial tallboy into the Father Coughlin Memorial Convention Center in downtown Saginaw and hears that she is potentially ten thousand bananas richer...and that's a conservative estimate...may say, "Oh, but we would never sell it!" but surely thinks, "Saint BART'S, baay-beee!!"
The disconnect between and the diametricity of the visual message and the verbal message. I imagine that those who conceptualized and executed this non-commercial were unaware that its talking point complements its visuals as well as four-alarm chili does a wedding dress. The equivalent of hearing the story of the Good Samaritan, and your take-away is that those who don't get involved are truly the Elect of the Lord.
Liberty Mutual, I know nothing about beyond the fact that it's an insurance company and, as such, makes its money by doing you out of as much recompense as its lawyers say it can do and still avoid being bumbusted in litigation. But absolutely nothing about its association with this exercise in cognitive dissonance gives me confidence that, as a corporate entity, it has the taste or sense that God gave a drunken sailor in a two-buck whorehouse. So, you may want to look elsewhere for that auto insurance.
I occasionally wonder about the people who work at ad agencies. Do they have magic wands they wave at their clients? Or do they possess m4d Jedi skillz? "This commercial is not asinine." "Your corporate messaging will be clearer thanks to this commercial." "You want to bring us a six-pack of hookers and a silver bucket of blow."
Here's the referenced non-commercial, along with its companion non-commercial involving a violin, three generations of Black people who all play the violin and the fact that they are joined solely by their ownership of the violin, not by any quote-unquote transmitted genetic predisposition.
Do you think when the ad people and the insurance company executives responsible for this paradigm of televisual non-commerce look in a mirror, they see themselves or only the room behind them?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Things Are Not As They Theme, Dept.
I recently tweeted the demise of composer Vic Mizzy. And that, in itself, is sad. The tweeting of it, I mean.
Previously: The bard Vic Mizzy has joined the Nine atop Mount Parnassus! Let us erect a monument in gleaming marble that will straddle the ages and offer up a hecatomb in his eternal honor!
Today: RT OMG Vic Mizzy hu? died u guyz!! #deadpool
Yes. We suck as a civilization.
Anyhoo, Vic Mizzy died. And in every American's DNA is encoded the fingersnaps of The Addams Family theme, which he wrote, and in every American's racial memory lurks the bantering theme for Green Acres, which he also wrote.
Now, sure, you have your "academy" poets with their MFAs and dog-eared Moleskines full of squinchy, purloined feet. But, as I've tried to show in the past, American popular lyric-writing kicks a lot of this Autumn Afternoons in Hartford shite in teh culo.
By way of demonstration, here are the lyrics for The Addams Family theme:
They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family.
Their house is a museum
Where people come to see 'em
They really are a screa-um,
The Addams Family.
Neat...
Sweet...
Petite.
So, get a witch's shawl on,
A broomstick you can crawl on,
We're gonna pay a call on
The Addams Family.
Okay? 'Nuff said.
Now, howzabout a little Green Acres?
He: Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
She: New York is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.
He:...The chores.
She:...The stores.
He:...Fresh air.
She:...Times Square
He: You are my wife.
She: Goodbye, city life.
Both: Green Acres, we are there!
I mean, can that be beat as an expository duet? One minute, six seconds; everything you need to know about the lead characters' relationship and about the premise of the show. Hell, you could do a three-act opera in 30 minutes with that kind of concision and economy! It's catchy, it's funny, you welcome it week after week.
Let me hitch my pants up to my tits, don my Henry-Fonda-in-On-Golden-Pond hat and affect my Andy Rooney croak...
What the H-E-double-swizzle-sticks happened to TV theme songs? Three shows I watch regularly--popular shows--have nothing that even vaguely resembles a theme. Lost? A hanging attackless chord. Heroes? Ten seconds of whirling flute and percussion. Stargate Universe? Talky expository bit a la Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica--Jesus, I watch a lot of sci-fi television--over rumbling symphonic bits, then done. Tell me that Lost wouldn't be improved with a Gilligan's Island-style theme. I think it might go something like this...
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
About a doughty set
That flew out from Australia's shores
Aboard a fragile jet.
The doc was a handsome, healing man,
Of stern and troubled mien.
A passenger, but not for long,
On flight eight-fifteen, on flight eight-fifteen.
&c., &c.
Granted, working one's way through all 14 billed main characters in the course of a theme might cut into each week's story a bit. But recapitulation is part of sonata form, so nyah.
At any rate, ave atque vale, Vic Mizzy. Know that countless generations will thrum the lyre and whack the tabor to your songs. Or not. But thanks, anyway.
I recently tweeted the demise of composer Vic Mizzy. And that, in itself, is sad. The tweeting of it, I mean.
Previously: The bard Vic Mizzy has joined the Nine atop Mount Parnassus! Let us erect a monument in gleaming marble that will straddle the ages and offer up a hecatomb in his eternal honor!
Today: RT OMG Vic Mizzy hu? died u guyz!! #deadpool
Yes. We suck as a civilization.
Anyhoo, Vic Mizzy died. And in every American's DNA is encoded the fingersnaps of The Addams Family theme, which he wrote, and in every American's racial memory lurks the bantering theme for Green Acres, which he also wrote.
Now, sure, you have your "academy" poets with their MFAs and dog-eared Moleskines full of squinchy, purloined feet. But, as I've tried to show in the past, American popular lyric-writing kicks a lot of this Autumn Afternoons in Hartford shite in teh culo.
By way of demonstration, here are the lyrics for The Addams Family theme:
They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family.
Their house is a museum
Where people come to see 'em
They really are a screa-um,
The Addams Family.
Neat...
Sweet...
Petite.
So, get a witch's shawl on,
A broomstick you can crawl on,
We're gonna pay a call on
The Addams Family.
Okay? 'Nuff said.
Now, howzabout a little Green Acres?
He: Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
She: New York is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.
He:...The chores.
She:...The stores.
He:...Fresh air.
She:...Times Square
He: You are my wife.
She: Goodbye, city life.
Both: Green Acres, we are there!
I mean, can that be beat as an expository duet? One minute, six seconds; everything you need to know about the lead characters' relationship and about the premise of the show. Hell, you could do a three-act opera in 30 minutes with that kind of concision and economy! It's catchy, it's funny, you welcome it week after week.
Let me hitch my pants up to my tits, don my Henry-Fonda-in-On-Golden-Pond hat and affect my Andy Rooney croak...
What the H-E-double-swizzle-sticks happened to TV theme songs? Three shows I watch regularly--popular shows--have nothing that even vaguely resembles a theme. Lost? A hanging attackless chord. Heroes? Ten seconds of whirling flute and percussion. Stargate Universe? Talky expository bit a la Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica--Jesus, I watch a lot of sci-fi television--over rumbling symphonic bits, then done. Tell me that Lost wouldn't be improved with a Gilligan's Island-style theme. I think it might go something like this...
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
About a doughty set
That flew out from Australia's shores
Aboard a fragile jet.
The doc was a handsome, healing man,
Of stern and troubled mien.
A passenger, but not for long,
On flight eight-fifteen, on flight eight-fifteen.
&c., &c.
Granted, working one's way through all 14 billed main characters in the course of a theme might cut into each week's story a bit. But recapitulation is part of sonata form, so nyah.
At any rate, ave atque vale, Vic Mizzy. Know that countless generations will thrum the lyre and whack the tabor to your songs. Or not. But thanks, anyway.
Friday, October 16, 2009
You Pray They Don't Reproduce, Dept.
I recently viewed some of Kim Kardashian, Superstar, the ¡whoopsie! sex tape of America's Most Famous Armenian™ (tough titty, Saroyan!) and her meat puppet, "hip hop star Ray J."
Yes, I, too, at first, thought that this was the legendary Ray J. Johnson, which would be even better as a nom de porn. You remember Ray J. Johnson: "My name is Raymond J. Johnson, Jr. Now you can call me Ray, or you can call me J, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me Junie, or you can call me Ray J, or you can call me RJ, or you can call me RJJ, or you can call me RJJ Jr. but you doesn't hasta call me Johnson!" No...? C'mon, that killed in 1978! BobfuckingDylan referenced it on "Gotta Serve Somebody"! That's like the Pope praising little Mary Shaughnessy's drawing of the BVM from his balcony at St. Peter's on Easter Sunday.
Anyway, it's not that guy. He's white. This is a 28-year-old black rapper. Best known for...well, for being Brandy's brother. You know: Brandy...? She was "Moesha" on TV...? She killed that woman on the 405...? Never got charged with vehicular manslaughter...? 'Cause she's MO-esha...? Right. So, her brother. If he killed somebody on a freeway, he would be charged, at a minimum, with vehicular manslaughter. Because he is considerably LESS-esha. *ha ha!* Opportunities to make Moesha jokes have been thin on the ground these last eight years. And in the Truth is Invariably More Sordid than Fiction File, we have Brandy and Ray J's mother suing the Kardashians for $1M on account of $120,000 in charges she claims they ran up on her credit cards. Oh, you wacky fuckups!
At any rate, the sex tape. Kim Kardashian, whom I only knew as a name for a very long time, apparently fucks this dude, and he taped them fucking, and she was shocked, shocked! to find that her most intimate moments were spread over the Internet, and she felt compelled to do her duty as an American and sued the company that released said tape.
time out: Is there anyone out there--and I'm willing to include recent immigrants, children and the smarter small mammals--who believes the wheeze that goes Oh-my-I-never-suspected-this-recording-would-leave-the-sanctity-of-our-bedroom! Because, no, really. I'm spry, but I wasn't born yesterday. The naïvete required to believe that a recording some fucking mook is making of you sucking his pipe is never going to appear online would, I think, forcibly qualify you to have a proxy named to transact even basic daily business. :tuo emit
Kim Kardashian is apparently famous to an extent inversely proportional to the extent of her talents, but highly correlative to the size of her ass. She is one of a number of siblings, many of whom are also famous entirely beyond their innate ability to command attention, respect or praise. Their names all begin with "K." No, I don't know why. In age order, there's Kunding, Kim, Korfu, Kleenex, Kourtney, Klench, Klinch, Khloé, Krispy, Kreme and Kinko's. I kid. Only three of those names are real.
So, the sex tape. Let's see...quality-wise, it makes 1 Night in Paris look like Titanic. It's makes "amateurish, careless slop" seem like praise. There are children out there--young children--who, given Mommy's camcorder, would construct a more compelling, less visually unpleasant work than did Ray J. Who clearly did not read the camcorder manual.
Prurience-wise? Aside from the fact that the editing on this thing seems designed to prevent anyone outside a correctional facility from getting wood, it's like watching a kid in front of a department store camera. Smiling and mugging and leering at the camera, Ray J doesn't break the fourth wall. Because, for Ray J, there is no fourth wall. I'll let you flash on that.
Right, so she gobbles his knob, he eats her pussy, he bones her doggie-style and missionary. She experiences what purports to be an orgasm. Then several more. The sounds of which don't really seem to sync with her facial expression or position. I mean, at all. I've seen Hong Kong chop socky flicks with better sync. But what do I know? I'm not Moesha's brother. And I'm not having sex with women who have to deny they've had plastic surgery. Questionable oral technique on the fellow, besides. You're not trying to shake a gnat off your head, brother, you're playing tag with a butterfly.
I quit about halfway in. And, really, if a celebrity sex tape can't hold me, it has to blow like an oboe convention. Even after reading the Wikipedia writeups on Kim Kardashian, I still don't know what her claim to fame is, besides her ass. But, then again, I think that the ducking-stool should be reintroduced for every single one of the women in those Real Housewives of... shows. So, I may not be the ideal audience for her wares.
See for yourself at the unsurprisingly named slutload.com. Particularly effective if you wish to deflate your opinion of humanity. Or if you need a bit of encouragement in hewing to a life of unrelieved sexual abstinence.
I recently viewed some of Kim Kardashian, Superstar, the ¡whoopsie! sex tape of America's Most Famous Armenian™ (tough titty, Saroyan!) and her meat puppet, "hip hop star Ray J."
Yes, I, too, at first, thought that this was the legendary Ray J. Johnson, which would be even better as a nom de porn. You remember Ray J. Johnson: "My name is Raymond J. Johnson, Jr. Now you can call me Ray, or you can call me J, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me Junie, or you can call me Ray J, or you can call me RJ, or you can call me RJJ, or you can call me RJJ Jr. but you doesn't hasta call me Johnson!" No...? C'mon, that killed in 1978! BobfuckingDylan referenced it on "Gotta Serve Somebody"! That's like the Pope praising little Mary Shaughnessy's drawing of the BVM from his balcony at St. Peter's on Easter Sunday.
Anyway, it's not that guy. He's white. This is a 28-year-old black rapper. Best known for...well, for being Brandy's brother. You know: Brandy...? She was "Moesha" on TV...? She killed that woman on the 405...? Never got charged with vehicular manslaughter...? 'Cause she's MO-esha...? Right. So, her brother. If he killed somebody on a freeway, he would be charged, at a minimum, with vehicular manslaughter. Because he is considerably LESS-esha. *ha ha!* Opportunities to make Moesha jokes have been thin on the ground these last eight years. And in the Truth is Invariably More Sordid than Fiction File, we have Brandy and Ray J's mother suing the Kardashians for $1M on account of $120,000 in charges she claims they ran up on her credit cards. Oh, you wacky fuckups!
At any rate, the sex tape. Kim Kardashian, whom I only knew as a name for a very long time, apparently fucks this dude, and he taped them fucking, and she was shocked, shocked! to find that her most intimate moments were spread over the Internet, and she felt compelled to do her duty as an American and sued the company that released said tape.
time out: Is there anyone out there--and I'm willing to include recent immigrants, children and the smarter small mammals--who believes the wheeze that goes Oh-my-I-never-suspected-this-recording-would-leave-the-sanctity-of-our-bedroom! Because, no, really. I'm spry, but I wasn't born yesterday. The naïvete required to believe that a recording some fucking mook is making of you sucking his pipe is never going to appear online would, I think, forcibly qualify you to have a proxy named to transact even basic daily business. :tuo emit
Kim Kardashian is apparently famous to an extent inversely proportional to the extent of her talents, but highly correlative to the size of her ass. She is one of a number of siblings, many of whom are also famous entirely beyond their innate ability to command attention, respect or praise. Their names all begin with "K." No, I don't know why. In age order, there's Kunding, Kim, Korfu, Kleenex, Kourtney, Klench, Klinch, Khloé, Krispy, Kreme and Kinko's. I kid. Only three of those names are real.
So, the sex tape. Let's see...quality-wise, it makes 1 Night in Paris look like Titanic. It's makes "amateurish, careless slop" seem like praise. There are children out there--young children--who, given Mommy's camcorder, would construct a more compelling, less visually unpleasant work than did Ray J. Who clearly did not read the camcorder manual.
Prurience-wise? Aside from the fact that the editing on this thing seems designed to prevent anyone outside a correctional facility from getting wood, it's like watching a kid in front of a department store camera. Smiling and mugging and leering at the camera, Ray J doesn't break the fourth wall. Because, for Ray J, there is no fourth wall. I'll let you flash on that.
Right, so she gobbles his knob, he eats her pussy, he bones her doggie-style and missionary. She experiences what purports to be an orgasm. Then several more. The sounds of which don't really seem to sync with her facial expression or position. I mean, at all. I've seen Hong Kong chop socky flicks with better sync. But what do I know? I'm not Moesha's brother. And I'm not having sex with women who have to deny they've had plastic surgery. Questionable oral technique on the fellow, besides. You're not trying to shake a gnat off your head, brother, you're playing tag with a butterfly.
I quit about halfway in. And, really, if a celebrity sex tape can't hold me, it has to blow like an oboe convention. Even after reading the Wikipedia writeups on Kim Kardashian, I still don't know what her claim to fame is, besides her ass. But, then again, I think that the ducking-stool should be reintroduced for every single one of the women in those Real Housewives of... shows. So, I may not be the ideal audience for her wares.
See for yourself at the unsurprisingly named slutload.com. Particularly effective if you wish to deflate your opinion of humanity. Or if you need a bit of encouragement in hewing to a life of unrelieved sexual abstinence.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
el pueblo unido jamas sera jodido, Dept.
Fiesta Latina: In Performance at the White House. Yes. Let me take a wild guess...Jimmy Smits and George Lopez as hosts? Yes! Gloria Estefan and either J.Lo or Marc Anthony? Yes and double yes! Los Lobos? Yes! Sheila E.? Yes! Well, that about taps it for Latin music/celebrities.
*ha ha!* I joke. No, I don't. That was about it, with the addition of Eva Longoria-whatever and Jose Feliciano. At one point, during the all-hands-on-deck finale, an al-Qaeda attack could have mooted the Latin Grammys for a generation.
High points: musical director Sheila E. and dad Pete Escovedo's dueting timbales on "Ran Kan Kan." Oddly watchable Marc Anthony's first, Spanish-language number. Jose Feliciano's Spanish-language version of the famous bit from the Concierto de Aranjuez. Homegirl Justice Sotomayor getting the big shout-out from BHO and a standing O from the audience. Sheila E. not having to do "The Glamorous Life." J.Lo not doing anything except introducing Marc Anthony.
Low points: personality-free kid with no real voice doing a reggaeton number. Skinny Mexican girl Thalia, not gifted with a strong set of pipes or much stage presence, doing some song and inviting Barry out for a dance--Michelle could've had her for lunch and been left hungry, but she graciously allowed the First Hubby to twirl a bit with the child. Gloria Estefan not doing "Conga."
No, but really: we're needing more Hispano-Latino celebs. 'Cause y'all are running poor Jimmy Smits ragged. He's barely had time to work in 20 years because he's too busy hosting the Latin Grammys or the Alma Awards or some shit.
Notable by their absence: my girl Jessica Alba, Cristina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Ruben Blades, Shakira, all the great Latino musicians (Willie Colon, Eddie Palmieri) who pioneered the New York sound. I'm not sure what the rationale behind the invites was, 'cause I don't think that everyone on stage was Murrican. Hell, bring on Los Aterciopelados, Cafe Tacuba and Soda Stereo, for that matter.
At any rate, my goodness, but there are some doughy white people in Choc City. All the Latino pols filling two tables, they had to pack the house with gringos. Woof. On the beat, people. And two. And four. And two. And four.
Sigh.
Richardson '12. You heard it here first.
Fiesta Latina: In Performance at the White House. Yes. Let me take a wild guess...Jimmy Smits and George Lopez as hosts? Yes! Gloria Estefan and either J.Lo or Marc Anthony? Yes and double yes! Los Lobos? Yes! Sheila E.? Yes! Well, that about taps it for Latin music/celebrities.
*ha ha!* I joke. No, I don't. That was about it, with the addition of Eva Longoria-whatever and Jose Feliciano. At one point, during the all-hands-on-deck finale, an al-Qaeda attack could have mooted the Latin Grammys for a generation.
High points: musical director Sheila E. and dad Pete Escovedo's dueting timbales on "Ran Kan Kan." Oddly watchable Marc Anthony's first, Spanish-language number. Jose Feliciano's Spanish-language version of the famous bit from the Concierto de Aranjuez. Homegirl Justice Sotomayor getting the big shout-out from BHO and a standing O from the audience. Sheila E. not having to do "The Glamorous Life." J.Lo not doing anything except introducing Marc Anthony.
Low points: personality-free kid with no real voice doing a reggaeton number. Skinny Mexican girl Thalia, not gifted with a strong set of pipes or much stage presence, doing some song and inviting Barry out for a dance--Michelle could've had her for lunch and been left hungry, but she graciously allowed the First Hubby to twirl a bit with the child. Gloria Estefan not doing "Conga."
No, but really: we're needing more Hispano-Latino celebs. 'Cause y'all are running poor Jimmy Smits ragged. He's barely had time to work in 20 years because he's too busy hosting the Latin Grammys or the Alma Awards or some shit.
Notable by their absence: my girl Jessica Alba, Cristina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Ruben Blades, Shakira, all the great Latino musicians (Willie Colon, Eddie Palmieri) who pioneered the New York sound. I'm not sure what the rationale behind the invites was, 'cause I don't think that everyone on stage was Murrican. Hell, bring on Los Aterciopelados, Cafe Tacuba and Soda Stereo, for that matter.
At any rate, my goodness, but there are some doughy white people in Choc City. All the Latino pols filling two tables, they had to pack the house with gringos. Woof. On the beat, people. And two. And four. And two. And four.
Sigh.
Richardson '12. You heard it here first.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Sarah Palin, Her Booke, Dept.
Oh, Baby Jesus, thank you for me being alive in these times! In an earlier age, women and politicians--much less the two together like some wonderful cup-shaped confection of some sort--could not have had their balls-out shamelessness amplified for a global audience without the omnivorous news cycle feeding its own unattainable satiety. In a later age, we will all be breeding stock for giant ant warrior-mages. But now--and only now--in the overripe sweet spot of Western Civilization, can there be a "Sarah Palin." A woman so bereft of wit, culture, breeding, prudence and shame as to constitute a hapax legomenon of European-American political culture. And I've heard Michele Bachmann speak.
Look at her. Utterly, wilfully deaf to the little voice that arrests most of us before we make reeking asses of ourselves, before we act in ways that would embarrass a gang of Somali pirates, before we say things that a child of three would dismiss as jejune, unconsidered and reductive. Admirable, really, if only for her ability to take such limited natural gifts and parlay them into global fame and disproportionate power simply by being able to sniff the Zeitgeist and jump ass-first through a closed window to grab it.
Her appearance is a factor, of course. Just attractive enough, certainly for American politics. The thwarted beauty queen who unites the cute girls and the wannabes. And her sculpted backstory. The frontier hubby. The kids with the SUV names. The where-have-you-gone-Margaret-Mead? religious practices. But it's the tenacity, the disregard for common sense and received wisdom that makes her the toddler with the fork in a roomful of sockets who is apparently immune to electrocution.
Her meh-moir is already #1 on Amazon's best-seller list, driven to that height, no doubt, by the conservative bulk book-buying machine. I mean, do you know anyone who'd shell out 15 hard-earned simoleons to read delusional, self-justifying rants uninformed by logic or any grounding in Western political philosophy, literature or history? Heck, you can read that for nothin' over at FreeRepublic.com! No, for the right wing in the good ol' U.S. of A., it's totally worth it to blow hundreds of thousands of someone else's dollars to be able to point to this book and say, "New York Times best-seller." (O, the lovely trees felled to support this vain deception. At least they will all soon return to the bosom of earth as landfill.) It's all part of the Plan. You know, The Plan?? The one where the Joker, having already crippled the United States by engineering the election (and re-election!) of George Wasteproduct Bush, schemes to deal the deathblow by elevating the Antichrist of Intellectualism to the highest office in the land? Boy, Batman really needs to pull his cowl out of his ass soon if we have any hope of surviving the Clown Prince of Crime's nefarious plot!
Can the nation be saved?!? Tune in again, kids! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-channel!
Oh, Baby Jesus, thank you for me being alive in these times! In an earlier age, women and politicians--much less the two together like some wonderful cup-shaped confection of some sort--could not have had their balls-out shamelessness amplified for a global audience without the omnivorous news cycle feeding its own unattainable satiety. In a later age, we will all be breeding stock for giant ant warrior-mages. But now--and only now--in the overripe sweet spot of Western Civilization, can there be a "Sarah Palin." A woman so bereft of wit, culture, breeding, prudence and shame as to constitute a hapax legomenon of European-American political culture. And I've heard Michele Bachmann speak.
Look at her. Utterly, wilfully deaf to the little voice that arrests most of us before we make reeking asses of ourselves, before we act in ways that would embarrass a gang of Somali pirates, before we say things that a child of three would dismiss as jejune, unconsidered and reductive. Admirable, really, if only for her ability to take such limited natural gifts and parlay them into global fame and disproportionate power simply by being able to sniff the Zeitgeist and jump ass-first through a closed window to grab it.
Her appearance is a factor, of course. Just attractive enough, certainly for American politics. The thwarted beauty queen who unites the cute girls and the wannabes. And her sculpted backstory. The frontier hubby. The kids with the SUV names. The where-have-you-gone-Margaret-Mead? religious practices. But it's the tenacity, the disregard for common sense and received wisdom that makes her the toddler with the fork in a roomful of sockets who is apparently immune to electrocution.
Her meh-moir is already #1 on Amazon's best-seller list, driven to that height, no doubt, by the conservative bulk book-buying machine. I mean, do you know anyone who'd shell out 15 hard-earned simoleons to read delusional, self-justifying rants uninformed by logic or any grounding in Western political philosophy, literature or history? Heck, you can read that for nothin' over at FreeRepublic.com! No, for the right wing in the good ol' U.S. of A., it's totally worth it to blow hundreds of thousands of someone else's dollars to be able to point to this book and say, "New York Times best-seller." (O, the lovely trees felled to support this vain deception. At least they will all soon return to the bosom of earth as landfill.) It's all part of the Plan. You know, The Plan?? The one where the Joker, having already crippled the United States by engineering the election (and re-election!) of George Wasteproduct Bush, schemes to deal the deathblow by elevating the Antichrist of Intellectualism to the highest office in the land? Boy, Batman really needs to pull his cowl out of his ass soon if we have any hope of surviving the Clown Prince of Crime's nefarious plot!
Can the nation be saved?!? Tune in again, kids! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-channel!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Putting the "I" in "lifestyle," Dept.
Longtime readers of this space will know that I hate The Washington Post. I'm sorry; I should be more precise: I hate the lifestyle sections of The Washington Post. To the extent that, for the longest time, we didn't take home delivery of the Post just to spare my blood pressure.
But it's back. And try as your sobsister might to avert my eyes, I did see the Sunday magazine this weekend. It looked...different. From the title on down. So, I turned to the first pages and found an "Editor's Note." One that, in so many ways, reaffirmed and validated my "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome." *ha ha* Did you see what I...? Oh. Okay.
At any rate, the "Editor's Note." Written by a "Debra Leithauser." It begins, "If you're anything like me..."
Regard this as the Fate Knocks on Beethoven's Door in Ms. Leithauser's Fifth Symphony. Dot-dot-dot-dash.
How is this phrase in any way motivic, you chirp sweetly? It is motivic not only because of its ubiquity (discussed below) in the article in question but, perhaps more importantly, because of the way it exemplifies much of what I despise in the Post's lifestyle Weltanschauung. For, the lifestyle editors of the Post learned, perhaps at an inappropriately early age, that what matters most in the reader's understanding of anything to do with the external world is how the reportorial "I" processes it in his or her fascinating life and mind. As a consequence, rare indeed is the article that doesn't place its writer and her reaction to the subject matter squarely in your line of sight, like a woman in an enormous bonnet blocking your view of the stage. If the writer were, say, Oriana Fallaci, there might be value added by the engagement. If the writer is Jane Shlobotnik, somewhat less so.
Thus, "If you're anything like me," it begins, "you're a fan of this magazine." Well, no, I'm not. And I'm also having a hard time with the way this relationship is being defined, frankly. Plus, I know there must be a famous Greek philosopher's name attached to the rhetorical device deployed in this opening sentence. Being "anything like me" is solely predicated on my approval of the magazine. So, if I am not a fan of the magazine, I am nothing like her. Quod erat menstruandum.
She continues, "The new WP Magazine adds to that experience. You'll continue to find deeply reported articles that illuminate and inspire..."
Yes. "WP Magazine." Its logo is a large "wp" in a gothic face, not unlike that found in the Post's masthead. Or The New York Times' masthead. Or on the logo of the Times' monthly glossy style supplement, "T." The Anglo-Irish philosomuso Declan MacManus put it best, perhaps, when he wrote, "All little sisters like to try on big sister's clothes."
Moving on, then, "deeply reported"? Ummm...does that mean something like "reported in depth"? If so, say so. Please. For the children's sake. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that very, very, very few indeed are the times that the Post's magazine writing has illuminated me or inspired me to do anything. Except, perhaps, write this piece.
Blah blah the crossword blah blah the dining column.
New graf. "Why the changes? Well, because if you're anything like me..."
Do you see what I mean? It flows through the editorial body like ichor. The conviction that their "take" on the situation is the prism through which you should view events. Like the one on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon. Only turning objective reality into a rainbow of middle-brow solipsism.
"...you also have a giggling, gurgling baby; a first-grader going on middle-schooler; and neighbors who wish they had more time for ... well, just about everything."
[ghuk ghukk ghaaaaaaak ghuk gh...ghaaaaakkkh ghu...ghu... I'm sorry. God. I'm sorry. Oh God, anchovies taste so much worse on the way up than on the way down...]
But, in less-visceral response, no, I don't. I have no fizzy baby, precocious six-year-old or frazzled-but-lovable neighbors. Then again, I'm not on an ABC sitcom,. And once again, Ms. Leithauser has chosen to define our relationship in an exclusionary way. Why, Ms. Leithauser, why? Is it that time you kept referring to Rashomon as "Rastaman" until I finally had to forehead-flick you? It is, isn't it?
She continues, "That's why we've reimagined the Magazine." People like to reimagine shit here in Choc City. People are reimagining things all the fucking time. Al Gore already Reinvented Government™, so that was taken. But "reimagined" is fine, and it is ever-so redolent of endless mid-afternoon meetings where people drink Coke Zero, check their Blackberrys obsessively and worry any halfway-decent idea to within an inch of its life.
"Reimagined," in this case, equates to Using Fewer Words. You're too busy, Busy Washingtonian. You are defined by the business of your busy-work. You define "multi-tasking." Usually incorrectly. But never no mind. Basically, she's telling us, this is written for the on-the-go-go-go Washingtonian. One who just doesn't have the time, sunshine. "TL;DR", amirite? Which translates to "your paper has a target audience with the attention span of a butterfly."
The Post has been suffering from a tragic bipolarity for some time, you see. It can't decide whether to continue serving its base of stolid, married, 2.5 kids-having, Golden Lab-owning White Professionals in northwest Choc City and northern Virginia who are too busy reimagining their own workplace to read the paper or to continue pandering to the fickle, semiliterate 20-somethings who represent the Last, Best Hope for a paper (and an industry) with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, who are too busy texting each other the most inane thoughts in the history of human consciousness to read the paper. The Post's Solomonic solution is to write anodyne articles in the voice of a not-very-well educated soccer mom who wants to convince her tattoo artist/bassist younger sister in Williamsburg that she's, y'know, "hep."
Blah blah clean look blah blah clear navigation.
Closing graf. "If you're anything like me..." I like to skin-pop skag? I think Dario Argento is God? I have a tattoo of Lux Interior on my stomach? What, Ms. Leithauser, what now?!?
"...you have an opinion about change." I do, actually, and it is this: I think articles about it really shouldn't mention their writers. At all. But I realize this is nigh-unto an impossibility at the Post, where lifestyle articles invariably ask the musical question, "But enough about the topic, what about me?"
To paraphrase the Post's most successful ad campaign, The Washington Post. If you don't get it, you're lucky.
Longtime readers of this space will know that I hate The Washington Post. I'm sorry; I should be more precise: I hate the lifestyle sections of The Washington Post. To the extent that, for the longest time, we didn't take home delivery of the Post just to spare my blood pressure.
But it's back. And try as your sobsister might to avert my eyes, I did see the Sunday magazine this weekend. It looked...different. From the title on down. So, I turned to the first pages and found an "Editor's Note." One that, in so many ways, reaffirmed and validated my "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome." *ha ha* Did you see what I...? Oh. Okay.
At any rate, the "Editor's Note." Written by a "Debra Leithauser." It begins, "If you're anything like me..."
Regard this as the Fate Knocks on Beethoven's Door in Ms. Leithauser's Fifth Symphony. Dot-dot-dot-dash.
How is this phrase in any way motivic, you chirp sweetly? It is motivic not only because of its ubiquity (discussed below) in the article in question but, perhaps more importantly, because of the way it exemplifies much of what I despise in the Post's lifestyle Weltanschauung. For, the lifestyle editors of the Post learned, perhaps at an inappropriately early age, that what matters most in the reader's understanding of anything to do with the external world is how the reportorial "I" processes it in his or her fascinating life and mind. As a consequence, rare indeed is the article that doesn't place its writer and her reaction to the subject matter squarely in your line of sight, like a woman in an enormous bonnet blocking your view of the stage. If the writer were, say, Oriana Fallaci, there might be value added by the engagement. If the writer is Jane Shlobotnik, somewhat less so.
Thus, "If you're anything like me," it begins, "you're a fan of this magazine." Well, no, I'm not. And I'm also having a hard time with the way this relationship is being defined, frankly. Plus, I know there must be a famous Greek philosopher's name attached to the rhetorical device deployed in this opening sentence. Being "anything like me" is solely predicated on my approval of the magazine. So, if I am not a fan of the magazine, I am nothing like her. Quod erat menstruandum.
She continues, "The new WP Magazine adds to that experience. You'll continue to find deeply reported articles that illuminate and inspire..."
Yes. "WP Magazine." Its logo is a large "wp" in a gothic face, not unlike that found in the Post's masthead. Or The New York Times' masthead. Or on the logo of the Times' monthly glossy style supplement, "T." The Anglo-Irish philosomuso Declan MacManus put it best, perhaps, when he wrote, "All little sisters like to try on big sister's clothes."
Moving on, then, "deeply reported"? Ummm...does that mean something like "reported in depth"? If so, say so. Please. For the children's sake. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that very, very, very few indeed are the times that the Post's magazine writing has illuminated me or inspired me to do anything. Except, perhaps, write this piece.
Blah blah the crossword blah blah the dining column.
New graf. "Why the changes? Well, because if you're anything like me..."
Do you see what I mean? It flows through the editorial body like ichor. The conviction that their "take" on the situation is the prism through which you should view events. Like the one on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon. Only turning objective reality into a rainbow of middle-brow solipsism.
"...you also have a giggling, gurgling baby; a first-grader going on middle-schooler; and neighbors who wish they had more time for ... well, just about everything."
[ghuk ghukk ghaaaaaaak ghuk gh...ghaaaaakkkh ghu...ghu... I'm sorry. God. I'm sorry. Oh God, anchovies taste so much worse on the way up than on the way down...]
But, in less-visceral response, no, I don't. I have no fizzy baby, precocious six-year-old or frazzled-but-lovable neighbors. Then again, I'm not on an ABC sitcom,. And once again, Ms. Leithauser has chosen to define our relationship in an exclusionary way. Why, Ms. Leithauser, why? Is it that time you kept referring to Rashomon as "Rastaman" until I finally had to forehead-flick you? It is, isn't it?
She continues, "That's why we've reimagined the Magazine." People like to reimagine shit here in Choc City. People are reimagining things all the fucking time. Al Gore already Reinvented Government™, so that was taken. But "reimagined" is fine, and it is ever-so redolent of endless mid-afternoon meetings where people drink Coke Zero, check their Blackberrys obsessively and worry any halfway-decent idea to within an inch of its life.
"Reimagined," in this case, equates to Using Fewer Words. You're too busy, Busy Washingtonian. You are defined by the business of your busy-work. You define "multi-tasking." Usually incorrectly. But never no mind. Basically, she's telling us, this is written for the on-the-go-go-go Washingtonian. One who just doesn't have the time, sunshine. "TL;DR", amirite? Which translates to "your paper has a target audience with the attention span of a butterfly."
The Post has been suffering from a tragic bipolarity for some time, you see. It can't decide whether to continue serving its base of stolid, married, 2.5 kids-having, Golden Lab-owning White Professionals in northwest Choc City and northern Virginia who are too busy reimagining their own workplace to read the paper or to continue pandering to the fickle, semiliterate 20-somethings who represent the Last, Best Hope for a paper (and an industry) with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, who are too busy texting each other the most inane thoughts in the history of human consciousness to read the paper. The Post's Solomonic solution is to write anodyne articles in the voice of a not-very-well educated soccer mom who wants to convince her tattoo artist/bassist younger sister in Williamsburg that she's, y'know, "hep."
Blah blah clean look blah blah clear navigation.
Closing graf. "If you're anything like me..." I like to skin-pop skag? I think Dario Argento is God? I have a tattoo of Lux Interior on my stomach? What, Ms. Leithauser, what now?!?
"...you have an opinion about change." I do, actually, and it is this: I think articles about it really shouldn't mention their writers. At all. But I realize this is nigh-unto an impossibility at the Post, where lifestyle articles invariably ask the musical question, "But enough about the topic, what about me?"
To paraphrase the Post's most successful ad campaign, The Washington Post. If you don't get it, you're lucky.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
We're off on the Road to Winooski, Dept.
Well, your sobsister's back from Points North. And, as always, I have thoughts that I will inflict upon you simply for having wandered onto this page. I know: it's unwarranted and spiteful. But such is my sobsisterly obligation. And I am but the Slave of Duty. ♫♫♪ Oh, is there not one maiden here whose homely face and bad complexion...♫♪♫
And so...
1) The main street of Woodstock, NY, is not a destination, if by "destination" you mean a place to which you would intentionally go. It's five blocks of fromagerrific "hippie" shops selling tie-dyed everything and posters of that long-ago weekend, sketchy food stores that seem confused as to the purpose of sell-by dates and tinkly-winkly craft stores. Interestingly, not a head shop to be seen. I figured, if nothing else, I'd photograph the World's Largest Bong. But no.
2) Dorset, VT, is a lovely town. Quaint, quiet, qwisp in the fall, no doubt. Here's an interesting fact about Dorset: there's no frackin' cell phone reception anywhere in or near it. I suspect it has something to do with the town's monthly ritual at which the lizard-skinned Undergrounders sacrifice unwary tourists in tribute to the Elder Gods.
3) Dorset also has the Softest Tap Water in the Eastern United States™. To the extent that water falling on, say, one's soapy hands bounces off like bullets off Superman's chest. Not sure WTF is up with that, except to conjecture that it somehow serves the Elder Gods to whom many Vermonters are in thrall.
4) Vermont, generally speaking, is composed almost entirely of White People. While in Burlington, for example, we saw only three Black People. However, two of these were riding in a gleaming Escalade EXT pumping enough bootybass to loosen the bowels of the most continent passersby. It was nice of these two fellows not to confirm any stereotypes residents may have held. Nice fellows!
5) Most of the people in Vermont are regular folks. There are a number, however, who look like they would lose a casting call for crazed Vietnam vets because they looked too, you know, crazed. Generally, these are men. And, generally, they are accompanied by women who either look like prostitutes, if prostitutes were intended to put men off sex, or large, doughy, mentally challenged children. Let me say at this juncture that the Elder Gods have an unfathomable sense of humor.
6) If you go to the Web site for The Avalon Inn and Spa, located in Island Pond, Vermont, and check the source HTML for the page, you'll find 25 hidden links to incesttubeporn.com. I had set out to make some joke about Vermont and incest, but, really, it'd just be gilding the lily at this point, wouldn't it?
7) Harold's New York Deli in Edison, NJ, is the sort of place you'd go, say, for a working lunch to discuss protesting the skimpy portions at Cheesecake Factory. The "X-Large" corned beef sandwich costs 32 dollars and feeds "3-4". But three to four people who really fucking love corned beef. Like a priest loves a gift subscription to Boys' Life. Your sobsister ordered a chocolate egg cream. The waitress, who seemed, shall we say, unamused by her situation in life, asked, "What size?" I asked what sizes they offered. "Small and large," she responded in a tone one might normally employ to address a bipedal figure composed of warm shit that had wandered into one's snowbank-white living room. "Large," I pluckily responded. She brought me a container just too small to bathe a newborn, filled with chocolate egg cream.
At the next table sat a guy who I assumed is known as "Joey Mooch." Wearing a charmingly loud shirt in face-sized red, white and black Japanese script blotches. There was a woman with him in some subordinate position. None of the creases on his face was caused by smiling. He orders a roast beef and pastrami two-meat sandwich and a plate of fries. The two of them go off to the pickle bar, whence patrons are seen returning bearing stacks of sours, half-sours and dills alongside shelves of pumpernickel and rye. No sooner do the two of them return, when the waitress arrives with Pickett's Charge recreated in deli meats, soon joined by a child's schoolroom volcano as imagined in fried potatoes and cheese product. Joey Mooch's shape did not suggest that he was cherry in any corner of Harold's ample menu. I assume he worked off the meal by dismantling the Woolworth Building.
8) Hot Grill, in Clifton, NJ, serves a loyal, local clientele. We sat down with our Texas Wieners--all the way, hold the onions--fries (gravy on the side) and "Sierra Mist," a beverage about whose existence I'd been unaware prior to this meal. The men behind the counter looked and sounded like they'd fought the Turks at İnönü. Everyone behind and before the counter seemed to know each other. The man next to whom we sat noted to me, in reference to my all-the-way wiener, "You gotta work that mess around," before going on to greet "Teddie Nig" and "Nigga Tom." I felt a bit like the second editor on Huck Finn. Oh, and Sierra Mist is like Jan Brady to Sprite's Marcia.
9) There are apparently points of light in the nighttime sky that only become visible when one is removed from the sizzling, spitting glow of the big cities. I'm waiting for confirmation of the name, but I believe they're known as "sturz."
That was some of my trip North, kids. It's almost the end of summer in Choc City, and you know what that means: I can stop dreading each waking moment outside air conditioning! Yowlee! Oh, and point (10) could be: the weather in VT was frackin' gorgeous. As was the scenery. One could almost work the calculus out to justify serving the Elder Gods in exchange for a mountainview cottage. Well, maybe more than a "cottage." Maybe a 10,000 sq.ft. spread with stainless steel appliances and hardwood floors.
Well, your sobsister's back from Points North. And, as always, I have thoughts that I will inflict upon you simply for having wandered onto this page. I know: it's unwarranted and spiteful. But such is my sobsisterly obligation. And I am but the Slave of Duty. ♫♫♪ Oh, is there not one maiden here whose homely face and bad complexion...♫♪♫
And so...
1) The main street of Woodstock, NY, is not a destination, if by "destination" you mean a place to which you would intentionally go. It's five blocks of fromagerrific "hippie" shops selling tie-dyed everything and posters of that long-ago weekend, sketchy food stores that seem confused as to the purpose of sell-by dates and tinkly-winkly craft stores. Interestingly, not a head shop to be seen. I figured, if nothing else, I'd photograph the World's Largest Bong. But no.
2) Dorset, VT, is a lovely town. Quaint, quiet, qwisp in the fall, no doubt. Here's an interesting fact about Dorset: there's no frackin' cell phone reception anywhere in or near it. I suspect it has something to do with the town's monthly ritual at which the lizard-skinned Undergrounders sacrifice unwary tourists in tribute to the Elder Gods.
3) Dorset also has the Softest Tap Water in the Eastern United States™. To the extent that water falling on, say, one's soapy hands bounces off like bullets off Superman's chest. Not sure WTF is up with that, except to conjecture that it somehow serves the Elder Gods to whom many Vermonters are in thrall.
4) Vermont, generally speaking, is composed almost entirely of White People. While in Burlington, for example, we saw only three Black People. However, two of these were riding in a gleaming Escalade EXT pumping enough bootybass to loosen the bowels of the most continent passersby. It was nice of these two fellows not to confirm any stereotypes residents may have held. Nice fellows!
5) Most of the people in Vermont are regular folks. There are a number, however, who look like they would lose a casting call for crazed Vietnam vets because they looked too, you know, crazed. Generally, these are men. And, generally, they are accompanied by women who either look like prostitutes, if prostitutes were intended to put men off sex, or large, doughy, mentally challenged children. Let me say at this juncture that the Elder Gods have an unfathomable sense of humor.
6) If you go to the Web site for The Avalon Inn and Spa, located in Island Pond, Vermont, and check the source HTML for the page, you'll find 25 hidden links to incesttubeporn.com. I had set out to make some joke about Vermont and incest, but, really, it'd just be gilding the lily at this point, wouldn't it?
7) Harold's New York Deli in Edison, NJ, is the sort of place you'd go, say, for a working lunch to discuss protesting the skimpy portions at Cheesecake Factory. The "X-Large" corned beef sandwich costs 32 dollars and feeds "3-4". But three to four people who really fucking love corned beef. Like a priest loves a gift subscription to Boys' Life. Your sobsister ordered a chocolate egg cream. The waitress, who seemed, shall we say, unamused by her situation in life, asked, "What size?" I asked what sizes they offered. "Small and large," she responded in a tone one might normally employ to address a bipedal figure composed of warm shit that had wandered into one's snowbank-white living room. "Large," I pluckily responded. She brought me a container just too small to bathe a newborn, filled with chocolate egg cream.
At the next table sat a guy who I assumed is known as "Joey Mooch." Wearing a charmingly loud shirt in face-sized red, white and black Japanese script blotches. There was a woman with him in some subordinate position. None of the creases on his face was caused by smiling. He orders a roast beef and pastrami two-meat sandwich and a plate of fries. The two of them go off to the pickle bar, whence patrons are seen returning bearing stacks of sours, half-sours and dills alongside shelves of pumpernickel and rye. No sooner do the two of them return, when the waitress arrives with Pickett's Charge recreated in deli meats, soon joined by a child's schoolroom volcano as imagined in fried potatoes and cheese product. Joey Mooch's shape did not suggest that he was cherry in any corner of Harold's ample menu. I assume he worked off the meal by dismantling the Woolworth Building.
8) Hot Grill, in Clifton, NJ, serves a loyal, local clientele. We sat down with our Texas Wieners--all the way, hold the onions--fries (gravy on the side) and "Sierra Mist," a beverage about whose existence I'd been unaware prior to this meal. The men behind the counter looked and sounded like they'd fought the Turks at İnönü. Everyone behind and before the counter seemed to know each other. The man next to whom we sat noted to me, in reference to my all-the-way wiener, "You gotta work that mess around," before going on to greet "Teddie Nig" and "Nigga Tom." I felt a bit like the second editor on Huck Finn. Oh, and Sierra Mist is like Jan Brady to Sprite's Marcia.
9) There are apparently points of light in the nighttime sky that only become visible when one is removed from the sizzling, spitting glow of the big cities. I'm waiting for confirmation of the name, but I believe they're known as "sturz."
That was some of my trip North, kids. It's almost the end of summer in Choc City, and you know what that means: I can stop dreading each waking moment outside air conditioning! Yowlee! Oh, and point (10) could be: the weather in VT was frackin' gorgeous. As was the scenery. One could almost work the calculus out to justify serving the Elder Gods in exchange for a mountainview cottage. Well, maybe more than a "cottage." Maybe a 10,000 sq.ft. spread with stainless steel appliances and hardwood floors.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
More Slap than Tickle, Dept.
I have vague recollections of my childhood before age, say, 8. The apartment in which we lived that I recall as always being dark, even at midday. The cat that belonged to the grocery store on Broadway, the first cat I'd ever approached, that scratched naive me as I went to pet it. Fucking cat. And I remember Popeye cartoons.
They were shown after school on local television, one of those shows hosted by an actor dressed as a cop or a cowboy. This one dressed like a ship's captain. I don't know if the nautical theme inspired the choice of cartoon or vice, you know, versa, but he aired Popeye cartoons every afternoon, just before or after the pretend cop who aired Three Stooges shorts, make of that pairing what you will.
Even as a kid, I preferred the Fleischer Popeyes to the a.a.p./United Artists versions. For one thing, I didn't like his nephews, introduced in the latter series. No Huey, Dewey and Louie, they. I mean, "Poopeye, Pipeye, Pupeye, Peepeye"? Ugh. "Poopeye" sounds like a scat-flick parody of Elzie Segar's sailorman, so...no. I also didn't like the all-white uniform Popeye wore in the later cartoons. And the fact that the newer versions didn't have the slamming shipboard door to transition between credits during the opening. As you might have guessed, I was a finicky child. But one with impeccable taste, apparently.
So, Popeye...he and Mr. Rough Trade, Bluto, vying for the favors of Olive Oyl. Who, in retrospect, sounds like Marge Simpson filtered through Edith Bunker. This one episode that I recall with absolutely no certainty of its existence in this time-space continuum involved Popeye and Bluto, as usual, beating the bejeezus out of each other but on the dancefloor. Or maybe Bluto and Olive Oyl first, then Bluto and Popeye.
At any rate, they went back and forth in a ritualized dance that may or may not have been familiar to me at the time from whatever other flotsam of films, cartoons and television I'd gathered in the hem of my Alice Blue Gown, but which I now recognize as having been an Apache Dance.
Pronounced "ah-PASH" rather than, you know, "uh-PAH-chee," the dance, in Wikipedia's words:
"...is taken from a Parisian street gang, which in turn was named for the American Indian tribe due to the perceived savagery of the hoodlums. The term came to be used more generally to refer to certain vicious elements of the Paris underworld at the beginning of the 20th century.
The dance is very brutal to the woman, and sometimes said to reenact a "discussion" between pimp and prostitute. It includes mock slaps and punches, the man picking up and throwing the woman to the ground, or lifting and carrying her while she struggles or feigns unconsciousness."
And, so, a dance from the 1900s is transmitted through a cartoon of the 1930s to a li'l sobsister decades later. And people think we've got durable memes now...
So, here for your dining and slapping pleasure, is a small selection of Apache Dance numbers courtesy of the Why Tee.
A straightforward one here.
A straightforward one bookended by zany bits from the Crazy Gang in 1937 here.
Cicely Courtneidge does one from 1933's Aunt Sally here.
While Gracie Fields watches then does one herself from 1934's Queen of Hearts here.
An Apache dancer comes to a pointy end in this excerpt from 1935's Charlie Chan in Paris here.
And, finally, a silent clip from 1902 accompanied by useful written commentary here.
Yes, more Danse Apache video clips than you'd ever have thought possible, thanks to the magic of the Intertubes. Enjoy, learn and, in the words of Wang Chung,
Take your baby by the hair
And pull her close and there there there
Take your baby by the ears
And play upon her darkest fears.
I have vague recollections of my childhood before age, say, 8. The apartment in which we lived that I recall as always being dark, even at midday. The cat that belonged to the grocery store on Broadway, the first cat I'd ever approached, that scratched naive me as I went to pet it. Fucking cat. And I remember Popeye cartoons.
They were shown after school on local television, one of those shows hosted by an actor dressed as a cop or a cowboy. This one dressed like a ship's captain. I don't know if the nautical theme inspired the choice of cartoon or vice, you know, versa, but he aired Popeye cartoons every afternoon, just before or after the pretend cop who aired Three Stooges shorts, make of that pairing what you will.
Even as a kid, I preferred the Fleischer Popeyes to the a.a.p./United Artists versions. For one thing, I didn't like his nephews, introduced in the latter series. No Huey, Dewey and Louie, they. I mean, "Poopeye, Pipeye, Pupeye, Peepeye"? Ugh. "Poopeye" sounds like a scat-flick parody of Elzie Segar's sailorman, so...no. I also didn't like the all-white uniform Popeye wore in the later cartoons. And the fact that the newer versions didn't have the slamming shipboard door to transition between credits during the opening. As you might have guessed, I was a finicky child. But one with impeccable taste, apparently.
So, Popeye...he and Mr. Rough Trade, Bluto, vying for the favors of Olive Oyl. Who, in retrospect, sounds like Marge Simpson filtered through Edith Bunker. This one episode that I recall with absolutely no certainty of its existence in this time-space continuum involved Popeye and Bluto, as usual, beating the bejeezus out of each other but on the dancefloor. Or maybe Bluto and Olive Oyl first, then Bluto and Popeye.
At any rate, they went back and forth in a ritualized dance that may or may not have been familiar to me at the time from whatever other flotsam of films, cartoons and television I'd gathered in the hem of my Alice Blue Gown, but which I now recognize as having been an Apache Dance.
Pronounced "ah-PASH" rather than, you know, "uh-PAH-chee," the dance, in Wikipedia's words:
"...is taken from a Parisian street gang, which in turn was named for the American Indian tribe due to the perceived savagery of the hoodlums. The term came to be used more generally to refer to certain vicious elements of the Paris underworld at the beginning of the 20th century.
The dance is very brutal to the woman, and sometimes said to reenact a "discussion" between pimp and prostitute. It includes mock slaps and punches, the man picking up and throwing the woman to the ground, or lifting and carrying her while she struggles or feigns unconsciousness."
And, so, a dance from the 1900s is transmitted through a cartoon of the 1930s to a li'l sobsister decades later. And people think we've got durable memes now...
So, here for your dining and slapping pleasure, is a small selection of Apache Dance numbers courtesy of the Why Tee.
A straightforward one here.
A straightforward one bookended by zany bits from the Crazy Gang in 1937 here.
Cicely Courtneidge does one from 1933's Aunt Sally here.
While Gracie Fields watches then does one herself from 1934's Queen of Hearts here.
An Apache dancer comes to a pointy end in this excerpt from 1935's Charlie Chan in Paris here.
And, finally, a silent clip from 1902 accompanied by useful written commentary here.
Yes, more Danse Apache video clips than you'd ever have thought possible, thanks to the magic of the Intertubes. Enjoy, learn and, in the words of Wang Chung,
Take your baby by the hair
And pull her close and there there there
Take your baby by the ears
And play upon her darkest fears.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
My words? They taste like wormwood and head cheese, Dept.
Oh, sure. I mocked the tweeting. I placed myself above the tweeting. But now, a casual glance at my right sidebar reveals...I'm a-tweeting.
Now, you may ask, "Sobsister, why Sobsister why?" And the answer comes in the form of a realization I experienced, an epiphany that was bestowed unto me, and that was this: I'm just that fascinating.
Yes. I am sufficiently fascinating that I believe that my most casual glimmer of a notion of a thought deserves immortality even as volumes and libraries of the work of the greatest minds of the classical world are being used as privy paper somewhere in Egypt.
Therefore, never send to know for whom the bird tweets; it tweets for thee.
Oh, sure. I mocked the tweeting. I placed myself above the tweeting. But now, a casual glance at my right sidebar reveals...I'm a-tweeting.
Now, you may ask, "Sobsister, why Sobsister why?" And the answer comes in the form of a realization I experienced, an epiphany that was bestowed unto me, and that was this: I'm just that fascinating.
Yes. I am sufficiently fascinating that I believe that my most casual glimmer of a notion of a thought deserves immortality even as volumes and libraries of the work of the greatest minds of the classical world are being used as privy paper somewhere in Egypt.
Therefore, never send to know for whom the bird tweets; it tweets for thee.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Boop-boop-a-don't care, Dept.
Hey, late July already? I guess I was in that parallel universe longer than I thought! Ha ha!
But seriously...a brief note that, if you've never watched Ugly Betty or if you have watched it but haven't felt compelled to spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing it, you will not in any way hurt my feelings if you ignore:
Does anyone else think that Ugly Betty has jumped not only the shark but a pod of whales and possibly some whelks, to boot?
Rule Number One of Television Comedy: the boy/girlfriend is hardly ever interesting when the romantic interest is a mid-run throwaway.
Sam and Diane? Interesting.
Maddie and David? Interesting.
Joel and Maggie? Interesting.
Jim and Pam? Interesting.
Why? Because the writers conceived of the relationship as a meaningful part of the characters' overall narrative trajectory.
By contrast:
Phoebe and whatever-Paul-Rudd's-character-was-called? Flat.
Ross and the black paleontologist? Flat.
Monica and Chandler? Ugh.
(And, yes, I watched Friends long after the shark was a tiny dot on the horizon.)
So, now, Betty's dating self-effacing, sensitive, dark-good-looks, wanting-to-be-loved-for-himself-not-his-money Richie Rich-guy. But she's not just dating him. Entire shows are dedicated to him, to them, to him again. And, frankly, I don't watch the show to see Betty find fulfillment. She's sexless and controlling and stunted, and, quite frankly, I was not looking forward to the long string of episodes wherein the Dorky Duckling would emerge as a Hot Latina Swan. (And, really, she's supposed to be so clever--why the frack has she dressed from Episode the First like a shitbomb in a Goodwill dumpster? Are we to understand that she's brilliant and insightful but hasn't figured out that she looks like she's trapped on the Fashion Short Bus?)
No, I watch UB for Amanda and Marc and Hilda and Justin (if they make that child any gayer, he will vanish in a swirl of glitter and Gautier) and Suzuki St. Pierre and all the other krazy kharacters. I don't care if Betty gets laid or finds happiness or becomes a writer. She's just not that interesting. She's the tofu burger we dress up with toppings, yes?
So, I've given up on her with the last three episodes of this season unwatched on the DVR. No, no...don't try to talk me out of it. I'm trying to wean chez sobsister off the glass teat (thank you, Mr. Ellison), and watching underperformers just encourages writers and show runners to get lazy.
Now, The Middleman: The Complete Series is just out on DVD. That, my friends, as you have read me say, is television. Not a shark for miles. Helped by the fact that it shut down for no apparent reason after two seasons. But neveryoumind. Rent it, buy it, download it (legally) and yell "YES!" to good television.
I thank you.
Hey, late July already? I guess I was in that parallel universe longer than I thought! Ha ha!
But seriously...a brief note that, if you've never watched Ugly Betty or if you have watched it but haven't felt compelled to spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing it, you will not in any way hurt my feelings if you ignore:
Does anyone else think that Ugly Betty has jumped not only the shark but a pod of whales and possibly some whelks, to boot?
Rule Number One of Television Comedy: the boy/girlfriend is hardly ever interesting when the romantic interest is a mid-run throwaway.
Sam and Diane? Interesting.
Maddie and David? Interesting.
Joel and Maggie? Interesting.
Jim and Pam? Interesting.
Why? Because the writers conceived of the relationship as a meaningful part of the characters' overall narrative trajectory.
By contrast:
Phoebe and whatever-Paul-Rudd's-character-was-called? Flat.
Ross and the black paleontologist? Flat.
Monica and Chandler? Ugh.
(And, yes, I watched Friends long after the shark was a tiny dot on the horizon.)
So, now, Betty's dating self-effacing, sensitive, dark-good-looks, wanting-to-be-loved-for-himself-not-his-money Richie Rich-guy. But she's not just dating him. Entire shows are dedicated to him, to them, to him again. And, frankly, I don't watch the show to see Betty find fulfillment. She's sexless and controlling and stunted, and, quite frankly, I was not looking forward to the long string of episodes wherein the Dorky Duckling would emerge as a Hot Latina Swan. (And, really, she's supposed to be so clever--why the frack has she dressed from Episode the First like a shitbomb in a Goodwill dumpster? Are we to understand that she's brilliant and insightful but hasn't figured out that she looks like she's trapped on the Fashion Short Bus?)
No, I watch UB for Amanda and Marc and Hilda and Justin (if they make that child any gayer, he will vanish in a swirl of glitter and Gautier) and Suzuki St. Pierre and all the other krazy kharacters. I don't care if Betty gets laid or finds happiness or becomes a writer. She's just not that interesting. She's the tofu burger we dress up with toppings, yes?
So, I've given up on her with the last three episodes of this season unwatched on the DVR. No, no...don't try to talk me out of it. I'm trying to wean chez sobsister off the glass teat (thank you, Mr. Ellison), and watching underperformers just encourages writers and show runners to get lazy.
Now, The Middleman: The Complete Series is just out on DVD. That, my friends, as you have read me say, is television. Not a shark for miles. Helped by the fact that it shut down for no apparent reason after two seasons. But neveryoumind. Rent it, buy it, download it (legally) and yell "YES!" to good television.
I thank you.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
NAWBLA Newsletter, Dept.
Well, as ol' Gomer Pyle used to say, Sha-zam! Who says there are no second acts in American lives? Mary Kay Letorneau, America's Most Beloved Pedophile™, is getting work. Some of you may recall that MK made headlines back in '97 when the then-34-year-old married mother of four and elementary school teacher was arrested for boning one of her 12-year-old students. She was preggers with her toy boy's first child when she was arrested. She pleaded guilty to child rape and was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, with all but six months suspended. Talk about recidivisim, within weeks of leaving pokey, she was caught playing hide the salam' with Skeezix in her car and ordered to serve the remainder of her sentence. She was, of course, preg again and gave birth to their second child while in lockup.
Parenthetically, just in case you might be wondering how far the fruit fell from the tree here, MK's daddy, John G. Schmitz, was apparently a politico and hyperconservative loon of the first water (sample 1981 press release: "Senator Schmitz and His Committee Survive Attack of the Bulldykes"; I mean, when the John Birch Society expels you for "extremism," you know you're on the bleeding edge of batshit.). Catholic Marine Corps lieutentant colonel who banged two babies out of some GOP volunteer who, of course, was not his wedded wife.
Anyhoo, it appears that MK's studminimuffin is now aspiring to become a DJ; thus, this awesomely tasteful event. Now, reader commentary at the preceding link identifies what I would think to be the salient problem with this situation, and I quote: Ever wonder what would have happened if the teacher was Gary K. Letourneau and the student was female? What a double standard! Precisely. Kall me krazy, but I don't think that "DJ Headline"'s gig hosted by Father Flotsky, his spiritual adviser and former ass-splitter, would be entirely free of howling, pitchfork-bearing mobs.
It's like my daddy used to say to me when I was knee-high in grasshoppers (I had sworn off Sazeracs): "Leetel sobseester, een America, you can be anytheeng you wanna be, especially eef you are a semi-hot woman eenvolved een a sex crime." I don't know why he would impersonate Peter Lorre whenever he spoke with me, but that was mah daddy.
Now, I do not believe the blonde bimba in the above pic is MK herself. Here, in fact, is a pic of MK and herrape victim loving hubby bookended by two Rhodes scholars:
Awww, ain't that puh-recious? I can just imagine, years from now, the scene at the Thanksgiving table:
-Gran'ma, how'd you an' Gran'pa meet?
-Well, little Tiffanee, back then I was married and had four little babies to take care of, just like you. But I was also criminally insane, so I fucked one of my boy students repeatedly until he put a baby of his own in my tummy. Now, who wants some more smashed potatoes?
It kinda gets ya...right here.
Well, as ol' Gomer Pyle used to say, Sha-zam! Who says there are no second acts in American lives? Mary Kay Letorneau, America's Most Beloved Pedophile™, is getting work. Some of you may recall that MK made headlines back in '97 when the then-34-year-old married mother of four and elementary school teacher was arrested for boning one of her 12-year-old students. She was preggers with her toy boy's first child when she was arrested. She pleaded guilty to child rape and was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, with all but six months suspended. Talk about recidivisim, within weeks of leaving pokey, she was caught playing hide the salam' with Skeezix in her car and ordered to serve the remainder of her sentence. She was, of course, preg again and gave birth to their second child while in lockup.
Parenthetically, just in case you might be wondering how far the fruit fell from the tree here, MK's daddy, John G. Schmitz, was apparently a politico and hyperconservative loon of the first water (sample 1981 press release: "Senator Schmitz and His Committee Survive Attack of the Bulldykes"; I mean, when the John Birch Society expels you for "extremism," you know you're on the bleeding edge of batshit.). Catholic Marine Corps lieutentant colonel who banged two babies out of some GOP volunteer who, of course, was not his wedded wife.
Anyhoo, it appears that MK's studminimuffin is now aspiring to become a DJ; thus, this awesomely tasteful event. Now, reader commentary at the preceding link identifies what I would think to be the salient problem with this situation, and I quote: Ever wonder what would have happened if the teacher was Gary K. Letourneau and the student was female? What a double standard! Precisely. Kall me krazy, but I don't think that "DJ Headline"'s gig hosted by Father Flotsky, his spiritual adviser and former ass-splitter, would be entirely free of howling, pitchfork-bearing mobs.
It's like my daddy used to say to me when I was knee-high in grasshoppers (I had sworn off Sazeracs): "Leetel sobseester, een America, you can be anytheeng you wanna be, especially eef you are a semi-hot woman eenvolved een a sex crime." I don't know why he would impersonate Peter Lorre whenever he spoke with me, but that was mah daddy.
Now, I do not believe the blonde bimba in the above pic is MK herself. Here, in fact, is a pic of MK and her
Awww, ain't that puh-recious? I can just imagine, years from now, the scene at the Thanksgiving table:
-Gran'ma, how'd you an' Gran'pa meet?
-Well, little Tiffanee, back then I was married and had four little babies to take care of, just like you. But I was also criminally insane, so I fucked one of my boy students repeatedly until he put a baby of his own in my tummy. Now, who wants some more smashed potatoes?
It kinda gets ya...right here.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Now on Your Newsstands, Dept.
When I was considerably younger, I used to read New York magazine. Actually, I used to read the hardbound collections--such as Thank You for the Giant Sea Tortoise--of Mary Ann Madden's New York magazine competitions. They were clever and brainy and smart (in both senses of the word) and very much of a piece with the way the city felt to me at that time.
Those books aside, I've never been what one might call a regular reader of the magazine. Mainly to do with the fact that I no longer live there and the fact that I don't care about the disproportionate impact of Lizzie Grubman, her predecessors and her successors on any aspect of life in the city.
That said, I've just finished two New York articles that I'd like to share with you (ah, there's the point of all this...y'all know enough to wait a paragraph or two). The first, "The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation," is on attention or, more accurately, our fractured, fragmented lack of it as a society and a wired culture.
The second--the most recent cover story--is "Twilight of the Tummlers," an interesting examination of how Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works starring Larry David, is a throwback to a style of Jewish comedy no longer being produced.
Now, I take exception to the title of the piece because neither Allen nor David is a tummler. A tummler is the guy at the Catskills resort who'll spray seltzer out his nose while imitating Mrs. Feinbaum doing the cha-cha. Jerry Lewis was the consummate tummler. Woody, not so much. But the article's a good read, and it introduced me to oldjewstellingjokes.com, which is like Beautiful Agony, only with shpritzing instead of spooging.
So, yay New York mag. I'm going to have to keep an eye out for their stories. I mean, it's not The New Yorker but, Christ, compared with Washingtonian magazine--which only seems to exist as a clearing house for plastic surgery ads and which is so unmoored from the day-to-day life of both the average subway rider and the world's most powerful city as to seem more like Palm Springs Life magazine--it's the London Review of Books.
Enjoy.
When I was considerably younger, I used to read New York magazine. Actually, I used to read the hardbound collections--such as Thank You for the Giant Sea Tortoise--of Mary Ann Madden's New York magazine competitions. They were clever and brainy and smart (in both senses of the word) and very much of a piece with the way the city felt to me at that time.
Those books aside, I've never been what one might call a regular reader of the magazine. Mainly to do with the fact that I no longer live there and the fact that I don't care about the disproportionate impact of Lizzie Grubman, her predecessors and her successors on any aspect of life in the city.
That said, I've just finished two New York articles that I'd like to share with you (ah, there's the point of all this...y'all know enough to wait a paragraph or two). The first, "The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation," is on attention or, more accurately, our fractured, fragmented lack of it as a society and a wired culture.
The second--the most recent cover story--is "Twilight of the Tummlers," an interesting examination of how Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works starring Larry David, is a throwback to a style of Jewish comedy no longer being produced.
Now, I take exception to the title of the piece because neither Allen nor David is a tummler. A tummler is the guy at the Catskills resort who'll spray seltzer out his nose while imitating Mrs. Feinbaum doing the cha-cha. Jerry Lewis was the consummate tummler. Woody, not so much. But the article's a good read, and it introduced me to oldjewstellingjokes.com, which is like Beautiful Agony, only with shpritzing instead of spooging.
So, yay New York mag. I'm going to have to keep an eye out for their stories. I mean, it's not The New Yorker but, Christ, compared with Washingtonian magazine--which only seems to exist as a clearing house for plastic surgery ads and which is so unmoored from the day-to-day life of both the average subway rider and the world's most powerful city as to seem more like Palm Springs Life magazine--it's the London Review of Books.
Enjoy.
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