the sobsister

2012-01-23T20:09:00.001-05:00

The Greeks Had a Word for It, Dept.

"CHORUS: So that one should wait to see the final day and should call none among mortals fortunate, till he has crossed the bourne of life without suffering grief."
Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus (Hugh Scott-Jones, trans., screenshot Loeb Classical Library edition) © 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

In reading about the death of Joe Paterno, I saw someone posted the short version of the preceding, "Count no man happy until he is dead," which is Herodotus, from his Histories (I.32) And very much so in Paterno's case. Never thought twice about him till the paedo story broke. Discussing this yesterday, I was hard-pressed to think of someone who went from the top of his or her profession to disgrace then death in such a short period of time. Not even Michael Jackson, who was, after all, acquitted, even though the stink of suspicion lingered in the nostrils of those who weren't his devout fans.

We take the ancient Greek word "hubris" to mean a downfall following arrogance, particularly by the powerful. The original, according to the hive mind at Wikipedia, referred to the gravest of crimes in Greek society and included "sexual crimes ranging from rape of women or children to consensual but improper activity, in particular anal sex with a free man or with an unconsenting and/or under-aged boy."

A bespoke term could not have been better crafted than "hubris" in its multiplicity of meanings to describe the rise and fall of Joe Paterno.

2012-01-20T22:39:00.001-05:00

The Fruit a Short Distance from the Tree, or I Pee, You Pee, We All Pee for IP, Dept.

Shuggie Otis, Freedom Flight

Johnny Otis, the Greek-American bandleader, singer, musician and silver-eared A&R man, the "godfather of R&B," who died two days before one of his greatest discoveries, Etta James, wrote "Willie and the Hand Jive," some good video of which is on YT here. He was also the father of Shuggie Otis. Who wrote, sang and played an orchestra of instruments on this his second album, best known for the later Brothers Johnson smash "Strawberry Letter 23." Which he recorded when he was 17. Justin Bieber would have to demonstrate an ability to understand human speech universally or outline a convincing unified field theory that succeeds where Einstein fell short, to even be allowed in the same room with him. Shuggie Otis isn't as well known as he should be. Nor, among most Americans, are his late father and the first-tier musicians his father promoted or employed and with whom Shuggie played hot blues guitar as an adolescent.

Go to MOG or Spotify or whichever service you frequent, and check out this album if you're unfamiliar with it. The Johnny Otis talent tree stretches through his progeny to the many stars he first boosted. Little Esther Phillips. Big Jay McNeely. The aforementioned Miss Etta James. Jackie Wilson. Hank Ballard. Little Willie John. And it's all out there.

Oh, and you'll pry my Internet out of my cold, dead hands. If SOPA and PIPA can even potentially threaten my ability to link to someone else's intellectual property in a way that honors and promotes the original work, then they and their lineal descendents in Congress must be attacked by wolverines with migraines. The people whose work I enjoy on Tumblr, for example, thrive on access to other people's intellectual property, as well as work in the public domain, to create recontextualized worlds. Worlds that use the words and works of other to express an individual sensibility, personal and private, serious or giddy. It would take a narrow view indeed to view the survival of an outmoded business model as more important than the public's ability to freely display consumable copies--that horrible word--of cultural artifacts. Not to profit from the act, but to share the work in a way that introduces others to one's passions and inspires them to learn more about a thinker or artist or relief worker or honest politician. I can't count the number of bands, films, strips, books, poets I've been introduced to in the course of years on the Internet. Many of whose work I've then obtained at my own expense.

How is this not considered valuable and real for an industry, compared to the imaginary billions claimed to be lost that never existed in the first place? If you tell someone, here's a dump of a new album by band X, free, and that person says, sure whatever and listens to it or not, it's not at all the same as that person counting as a lost sale. Were it not free, most people would not be filling their hard drives with five thousand songs they'll never hear. It's the opportunity, not the desire. Yes, some artists lose money because of their popularity. That's unavoidable. But the others cannot be counted as lost sales. To legislate on the basis of those imaginary economics is disingenuous beyond the horizon line.

So, yes. Fuck that noise. Keep the Internet free. Keep its users free to reshape the notion of "intellectual property" into as-yet-unknown formats that will honor creator and empower consumer at the same time.

2012-01-18T12:12:00.002-05:00

Baby First, THEN Bathwater, Dept.

SOPA/PIPA? Fuck that noise. I believe in intellectual property rights and would not want my shit being peddled for fi' dolla' by a Nigerian on Canal Street either. That said, the Congress is--mirabile dictu--entirely wrongheaded in its approach to piracy prevention. Break the Internet rather than have the entertainment industry adopt a 21st-century business model? Well, heck yeah! I mean, Sen. Patrick Leahy can't yawn without us seeing Hollywood's waggling fingers (three of his top five contributors? Time Warner, Walt Disney Co., Vivendi).

Call your senator or representative and tell them to pull their snouts out of the trough and do so some serious thinking about legislation that protects IP rights without shutting down the principal medium of dissemination for the same assholes who are serving them their slop.

Here are Google's talking points, and here's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's info on the 1/18 blackout and other topics.

2012-01-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

The Domino Theory, Dept.

And hot on the heels of my report of Melody Records' imminent closing, your sobsister learned this morning that the last decent Barnes and Noble in town closed over the weekend.

Me, I'm not generally a fan of B&N. The stores tend to stock the obvious and not very much of anything else. The difference between B&N and the late, lamented Borders always seemed to hinge on selection. Both had wi-fi and coffee bars and a high degree of tolerance for people with ample leisure time and little inclination to pay cash money for their reading material. But only Borders seemed to take time and care in its selection, going beyond the lazy man's "five Shakespeares and a Mamet and call it a theater section" to offer what FM radio calls "deep cuts." With the exception of the Georgetown B&N. Motivated perhaps by its proximity to the university and by its literate, affluent neighborhood clientele, the Georgetown store stocked its three floors thoughtfully, so that poetry and essays and theology and all the other categories that don't have a Stephen King or Nora Roberts to keep the pot boiling weren't shunted off to a corner with a few lonely specimens to represent them.

So, D.C. is now down to one-and-a-half B&Ns for its chain bookstores (and, no, I don't count "Books-A-Million"--which offers a selection that crosses the county line from "Pathetic" to "Insulting"--unless you're a real big fan of the "Left Behind" series, in which case you're shittin' in tall cotton, cousin!) and one decent indie bookstore, Politics and Prose. Oh, and good luck if you don't live in Northwest D.C., hon.

But the upside? We've got more cupcake and frozen yogurt outlets than the Duggars have neglected children! Sometimes you can even buy them both in the same store! Can you stuff froyo inside a cupcake? Dibs, I thought of it first! Excuse me, what's that now...? Books? Music? We're talking about never having to walk more than two blocks in any direction for froyo!! Honestly...

2012-01-02T21:18:00.011-05:00

The Day the Music Died, Dept.  

D.C. is diminished now, in a way that speaks to unwelcome but, perhaps, inevitable change. 

The last good record store in this minor-league town is closing. Melody Record Shop, just north of Dupont Circle, is shutting its doors after 34 years as a family-run business. And as they say on their Web site and on a sign at the store, which I passed today, "While we wish that we could continue indefinitely, technology, the internet and the economy has taken its toll, and we have concluded, unfortunately, that it is not possible to survive in this environment."

A few years back, I started shopping at Melody after a long hiatus shopping, first, at Tower Records, during its years here, then online and in second-hand stores and shows. I was working in the neighborhood and had a bit of extra change for an occasional CD buy. I was instantly reminded of the serendipity of the well-curated record store. How you might find this that you'd been looking for, but then see that that you'd read about in a music magazine or online, oh, and I didn't know this compilation existed...

It's just not the same online, and I don't know if some upcoming online retailer will be able to provide as satisfying an experience as a good record or book store visit. I can't imagine that, outside a holodeck, one ever could. Sure, you can have predictive algorithms that guess, based on your buying/viewing patterns and those of others with the same taste/income/location as you, similar but yet slightly different selections that you might find enjoyable and why don't you just click through and prove us right, okay? But it's not at all like walking into, say, a good book store and feeling the cool weight of all those fresh pages behind crisp covers in a slight mantling of seasonally appropriate indoor temperature and maybe some inobtrusive-but-really-cool music playing in the background. Scent of well-brewed coffee optional. The preceding hits the customer on so many different cognitive and sensory levels, that she or he wants to embrace the book store experience and is lubed to look for something to take home. Compared to the customer sitting on her living room couch staring at a screen, maybe the same screen she stared at for nine hours at work. Not even vaguely comparable, even if Jesus crafts your online customer environment.

But I can see why Melody Records will close, probably by the beginning of February. I use MOG and Spotify to listen to almost anything I want. I have to really need the physical package or its superior sound before I'll buy the CD. And I'm a minor collector, at least for certain artists and styles. So, there aren't that many classical music shoppers in D.C., I guess, or of show and film music or of international music, to name three of Melody's strengths, to support a store. And the store has always had good buyers. If I saw something in MOJO, there's a decent chance that Melody might've had it. Or, of course, they'd've ordered it.

I'm not one to say that it's the customers' "fault" that a store like Melody fails. Not enough people saw the benefit of what it offered, despite the store's efforts. It was hit hard after the world markets crisis, or so it seemed to me, as it appeared to resist carrying any kind of inventory despite its shelves looking a bit bare. But it built back up in the intervening three years, if inventory is any measure. It expanded its vinyl selection considerably, to where, any given week, they had a fine and sizeable selection of new and catalog discs. I guess there just isn't that much disposable income out there.

Or maybe its time has simply come and gone. Vinyl and box sets will be available in a smaller marketplace, direct order or boutique retail, but the broad-gauged music store may really be on the downward slope to extinction. To join "software stores" and "virtual reality arcades" as business environments of a bygone era. The publishing industry might've gone this way, except there was never a big enough market or an easy enough system of content extraction to have a Napster of novels, besides even short stories aren't singles.

In 1982, I saw my first CD, a Fleetwood Mac disc, in a longbox, on a small display with some other titles, visible as I walked into Melody, then half a block south. I'd heard, maybe read, about CDs, but this was the first time I'd seen one. I picked up the longbox, turned it around, saw its price (expensive) and put it back down. Interesting but by no means compelling enough as a concept to carry me to inquire regarding this new format and its players. But like most of the unfortunate crewmen aboard the Nostromo, Melody Records already carried within it the thing that would eventually destroy it.

And, so, adieu to this minor D.C. institution. I'll miss that blind date with serendipity that was every visit to the store. A Miles set I'd never heard about or that Nigerian compilation I saw advertised in The Wire or a Busby Berkeley DVD set. The tangible has its charm. To lose the tactile pleasure of possession is an unfortunate and incidental cost of our progress.

2012-01-01T20:18:00.000-05:00

PSA, Dept.

In writing a friend to offer her my New Year’s greetings, I used a phrase along the lines of wishing you a happy '12 that I slowly realized is perilously close to wishing you a happy 12”.

So, please, as you send out your New Year’s messages, particularly to older relatives, members of the clergy and prospective employers, double-check to ensure that you are not wishing any of them a happy/enjoyable/fruitful twelve inches. Unless that is, in fact, your intent.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

2012-01-01T15:35:00.001-05:00

Dragging Charlie over the Cold Cuts, Dept.

A new year, and the opportunity to walk down Memory Lane. Hey, who remembers Plato's Retreat? C'mon now...New York City's leading on-premises (hetero) sex club in the late '70s? No?

Well, as a wee child, I remember two things about Plato's Retreat, a place that vanished after the city closed down sex clubs post-AIDS: (i) their TV commercial (below), which I can only imagine aired late at night on one of the local channels in the middle of '30s musicals and Japanese monster movies (my staples) and (ii) the fact that they served a hot and cold buffet.

As you view the commercial, tell me you would even vaguely consider eating in a place like that. "Hey, cocktail franks! Whoops, sorry, buddy..." There is so much about that place that fascinated/repelled me then and now. Netflix carries a documentary titled American Swing that chronicles the rise and fall of Plato's. Should I watch it, I will report on my findings.

2011-12-16T05:04:00.001-05:00

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Dept.

Christopher Hitchens has died. Pneumonia resulting from the esophageal cancer he fought.

One quote, from his explanation for his strong and immediate defense of Salman Rushdie against the fatwa issued in 1989 by the Ayatollah Khomeini, speaks eloquently to his Weltanschauung and speaks very strongly to me in current-day America:

“It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.”

ave atque vale, Mr. Hitchens.

2011-12-04T18:07:00.007-05:00

Pillocks of the Community, Dept.

Hey, so, Herman "Where the white women at?!" Cain is out of the race because of "the continued distraction, the continued hurt to me and my family" related to his reported penchant for forcing women's heads down onto his groin. Separately, megachurch idiot-fleecer "Bishop" Eddie "You can't spell 'Eddie Long' without 'D.L.'" Long is taking time off to "focus on his family" after his wife filed for divorce, reportedly because he took advantage of his wealth and spiritual authority to lure four young men into sexual relationships. He settled the cases, as did Spermin' Herman, and neither man admitted wrongdoing, despite that head-scratching bit about giving accusers money when their accusations are a pack of lies.

Oh, America! Oh, religion! Oh, politics! Did you take the dictionary page containing "shame" and tear it out of your Funk & Wagnalls?

I mean--putting aside for the moment why, given his absolute zero experience in governance, anyone--ANYone--would think that this pizza-hustling pussy pirate could ever begin to approach the minimum requirements even to be mayor of a one-horse town somewhere in the trackless wastes of Flyoverstan, much less president of what is, for now, still the most powerful nation on Earth--on what planet is the farrago of bullshit, half-truths, non-truths, lies, spin and blather that this second coming of George Jefferson and his repellent mouthpiece spewed after allegations popped up like boners at a prom dance that he liked to dip his wick everywhere but in his long-suffering and almost entirely silent wife anything but risible?

But, no, actual sentient lifeforms with U.S. citizenships and driver's licenses that allow them to pilot two-ton vehicles at 65 miles per hour were lining up to support his pretend tax plan, to defend him against what were surely baseless charges by vindictive golddiggers, to pledge their sacred votes to see him elected to the highest office in this land. His now-defunct campaign even started a Web site "Women for Herman Cain" that, contrary to appearances, is not a sign-up sheet for women who want to be basted in his baby juice, but, instead, a place for representatives of the gentler sex from states whose shape and capitals we on the coasts are hard-put to remember to testify about their ardent luv for the pizza-makin', booty-shakin', liberties-with-the-truth takin' political n00b.

Take, for example, "Robin Haraway" of Millington, TN--apparently a real person--who writes, "Sir, I firmly believe that you were sent to our nation through Divine Providence and I believe that you are the man to preserve our Republic for our children."

Or "Debbie Stevens-Paulsen" of Tulsa, OK who writes, "I want you to know that I fully support you! I've sent $9.99 several times, and will continue to do so every chance I get. I wish I could do more! I'm "reassessing" my Christmas List... instead of buying misc $10 gifts for people I barely know anyway, I'm sending all that money to you. YOU are who this country needs. Please don't let the opposition win, they are vile liars and will face God for what they've done to you. "

Really?

Really really?

I mean, "Robin Haraway," though somewhat bereft of fashion sense, appears to be an Average American, one who does not live in a tree or communicate only in wolf language. How the flying fuck would this person--who, apparently, has held a job (as an elementary schoolteacher, dear God!) and perhaps even voted previously--ever think that the so-aptly named "Herm" was sent to our nation by anything other than a trickster deity with a grudge against American exceptionalism?

We're definitely at the horses-made-consuls-by-deranged-emperors stage of the ~~Roman~~ American Empire. Look for the barbarians at the gates in 3...2...

2011-11-07T22:16:00.002-05:00

Flame On! This Huge Fucking Spliff!, Dept.

A comic book hero "conceived by Ziggy Marley," the musician and bearer of irie genetic code.

Haven't seen any story from this yet. Can't imagine who his archenemy might be. Doctor Doesn't Corner the Bowl?

2011-11-06T17:15:00.000-05:00

The Proud, The Few, Dept.

Having ragged on the Apple Store and its substandard help, I have to take a moment here and give a shout-out to people who do it right.

I visited The Sound Garden in Bawlmurr today, as I generally do when in Charm City. (I should say, "Bawlmurr, hon" just to keep the branding consistent.) And those folks never fail to satisfy.

They always have the latest chart releases at great sale prices. Which would be more meaningful to your sobsister if most of the music on the charts didn't suck massive donkey cock, but, hey, chacun à son goût.
Other recent releases are priced near or better than Amazon's prices. Which is huge. What killed the big record stores/Borders/vaudeville is the fact that they were selling CDs at list price, even as Amazon was selling them for, on average, 20-30% less.
Their buyer(s) rock(s). I invariably find either things I've only seen in Brit music mags such as The Wire or MOJO--and not at no ripoff, margin-stretching markup--or stuff I didn't know existed that I suddenly realize I have to have.
They have tons of used CDs 4 cheep.

Now, when streaming music (i) fills out its catalogs (why no Joanna Newsom, MOG?) and (ii) gets with the CD-quality sound. then, really, the day of the great CD store will be over, save for those of us who need the accompanying 125-page hardbound book of liner notes replete with previously unpublished pix of the band. Which may be why the few that are still in business are stocking up vinyl like hoarders buying Wonder bread and milk before a snowstorm.

But, for now, shopping the great CD store is a lovely experience, thanks to convenience and, more importantly, serendipity. I went in looking for one CD and came out with three and could've come out with 10. That's not something I'll do online because of how the information is arranged. And, no, "if you like Amy Grant, you'll like Revolting Cocks" doesn't make me click through to your typical online vendor's suggestion.

So, enjoy your well-curated CD/LP stores while they last. Sound Garden is the best one between Philly and at least as far south as Richmond. It's even on Rolling Stone's list of the 30 best record stores in the contiguous 48, for those as still consider RS to be an arbiter of taste. I gave up when its coverage started being driven by what it thought its audience wanted to read rather than what it thought its audience should start hearing. Or maybe when it became People magazine with rolling paper ads in the back. But that's a story for another day.

So, The Sound Garden. Vote with your wallets, kids, early and often.

2011-11-05T10:15:00.000-04:00

An Educated Consumer Is Our Most Annoyed Customer, Dept.

Right, so I call the Apple Store today and ask which styluses/styli they carry for the iPad.

The salesperson on the other end says, "We have a couple of silver ones. Oh, you mean the brand name? I don't know that. I can find out, but it'll take a while."

And so, on this brilliant blue fall morning, I feel compelled to ask: are you fucking shitting me? "A couple of silver ones"?? If you worked in a wine store, would you answer, "We have some white ones and some red ones, and they're in glass bottles"?

Uncle Steve is looking down from Heaven and wishing he could assume corporeal form for only a few minutes just to rip this putz a new rectum.

2011-09-11T16:53:00.001-04:00

Slowly I Turned, Step by Step*, Dept.

The Times (New York's, of course; Washington's I wouldn't insult a puppy's ass with) had an interesting article this week concerning a condition whose existence was unknown to me: misophonia, which the paper describes as being sent "into an instantaneous, blood-boiling rage" by "[t]he sounds of other people eating—chewing, chomping, slurping, gurgling."

This.

I mention it both because it's interesting and because (here I stand up, introduce myself to the group and acknowledge) I cannot stand to watch or hear people eating. Now, it's not quite clobberin' time if I do happen to find myself in, say, a restaurant or even, God forbid, a food court. But there are times when I would gladly push a large-caliber bullet into a diner's forehead with my hand rather than have to watch him—and it's most often a "him"—chew his cud.

Case in point: I'm in a dumpling house yesterday, waiting to enjoy a plate of pan-fried dumplings. Because the kitchen forgot my order, I find myself without food for a long time in a smallish room that holds four other occupied tables. Two of them are occupied by Asian-Americans, whom, the law of averages holding, are likely Chinese-born. I lean on the law of averages in this case because their table manners were very reminiscent of those I saw exhibited by Chinese nationals during my time in the PRC, i.e., they manifested the relish with which they ate by (i) shoveling food into one's mouth as if trying to beat an off-stage timer and (ii) chewing in an open-mouthed style that produced a smacking sound like a wet towel hitting a bathroom wall.

Now, sensitive to multiculturalism as your sobsister is, I did not fling my unused chopsticks at either party (or, cooler, at both simultaneously) with sufficient force to pin his gobblin' hand to the nearest wall. But the thought crossed my mind. Along with that of a 16-ton Terry Gilliam-brand weight dropping on each of them. Call me bourgeois if you must, but there are a few things of which I should be unaware unless I'm rightnexttoyou. One is the smell of your perfume, another is the sound of your chewing. I would add to that list the sight/sound of people sucking the nonexistent contents of an empty cup through a straw and scraping the nonexistent contents of an empty yogurt container with a plastic spoon. Not unreasonable by any yardstick.

So, yes, misophonia. Stand up and proudly own your disorder. I have. And if you happen to be in an eating establishment, and an otherwise-mild-mannered person is lunging, Wolverine-style, at a patron who's rendering the 1812 Overture with only his spoon, his mouth and a bowl of soup, please come over and introduce yourself. I'll need someone to post my bail.

*If you've never had the pleasure of seeing the "Slowly I Turn" bit, feast your eyes on Lou Costello and Sid Fields or Lucille Ball or Moe, Curly and Larry working it.

2011-09-07T19:58:00.000-04:00

Irrefutable Assertions, Dept.

Right, so, today, as a result of the quite tarsome rain we've been enduring or perhaps of the strong winds accompanying same, a Very Large Crane (not the flying variety) crashed down at the National Cathedral. It had been transporting supplies to the top of the cathedral as part of the repair effort necessitated by the earthquake that shook Choc City a few weeks ago. In the WaPo's words, the "crane toppled...sending its operator to the hospital, damaging two out-buildings and crushing four vehicles that belonged to contractors."

Pretty brutal, right? The cathedral had sustained fairly serious structural and external damage as a result of the quake, to begin with, so this would seem the proverbial insult atop the the proverbial injury. But here's another take on it:

"The Rev. Simon Bautista, canon for Latino Ministries for the diocese...[s]uddenly] heard a sound that was like “thunder,” Bautista said. “My office started shaking.”
When he looked out and saw the yellow crane sprawled on the ground, he said his first thought was that people must be hurt. When he learned that no one had died or was seriously injured, Bautista called that miraculous.
'You can see that this was a divine hand that kept something else from happening,' Bautista said."

Well, one could see it from that angle. Or one might ask, "Gee, God, why are you toppling a crane that's helping to rebuild your house of worship?"

But kudos to the good padre. Talk about a spinmeister! When asked about the Black Plague that killed roughly half of everyone from Constantinople to Stockholm by the end of the 14th century, Bautista noted, "Truly a wonder! Clearly, it was the hand of God that prevented Europe from being entirely depopulated."

'Cause there's those as drink the Kool-Aid and those as pour it down your gullet.

2011-09-01T22:28:00.002-04:00

That sticky sauce of buttermilk and Clorox*, Dept.

"...as a result, the king said fellatio did not count as sex, and the youth of the realm set at it with a renewed vigor that even the Spanish ambassador found remarkable."

I swear, I did not know Foxe's Book of Martyrs was so entertaining. Because the title's a bit of a buzzkill, right?

I joke, of course—the preceding is not from Foxe's Martyrs, but from the somewhat-better-known Pilgrim's Progress by John "I gotcher Slough of Despond right'ere!" Bunyan.

But, taking just a moment to expound on fellatio (from the Latin fellare, "to do something that, really, is quite reasonable and shouldn't have to be requested, like Baked Alaska, accompanied by ample notification and much occasion"), why is one of the great divides in American society—a polity already riven by any number of polarizing dualities—spit versus swallow?

Your sobsister's experience working the business end of the membrum virile is limited. And by "limited," I mean "nonexistent." So, I cannot in all honesty judge—harshly, generously or at all—those who will not take the bitter draught in its full and fertile flow, though I have met women who would screw up their faces in a startling grimace at the prospect of gargling some groin grog.

That said, then, let's look at the numbers. The human male ejaculates, on average, 4 milliters of seminal fluid, with maximal levels of 10-11 ml recorded, according to the Internet, which has never, if rarely, let me down. By comparison, a teaspoon is equivalent to 5 ml. So, really, this entire debate, which has engulfed generations of Americans and generated more angry and tearful arguments than the question of Ann Coulter's birth gender, centers around individuals' unwillingness to down a teaspoon of viscous fluid when people drink entire cans of Coke Zero without batting an eye. I mean, really? Really really? You'll eat a Twinkie or a Hot Pocket or one of those horrible cheezy peanut butter cracker sandwiches they sell out of men's room vending machines, but you won't down a teaspoon of spooge? What are you, a fucking Communist?!

So, come on, America, he ejaculated, suck it up! A source of high-quality protein, low in fat and calories, rich in flavor.

Semen: It's Not Just for Prostitutes Any More™.

*A tip o' the topper to Philip Roth for that memorable description.

2011-08-14T19:51:00.002-04:00

Dulles As Dull Does, Dept.

Here's a Sobsister Tip®: If you're a germophobe, do not hang around the international arrivals area of a large airport for an hour and a half. Because that's like Mayo Makeup!: Best Bukkake #17 for germs of every description. As I could not slather myself in Purell like a Channel swimmer in grease, I held my breath for the better part of those 90 minutes and breathed through my skin as the dancing dots before my eyes bulged into topographical spheres.

I stood in said area and watched a number of planes' disease-vectoring human cargo stagger out to meet rushing hugging family; impassive Africans with little white signs bearing passenger names; or no one. A few observations--

Qatar Airways hostesses get to wear smart burgundy outfits topped with hats that look like gnocchi.
Some people vacation with more clothing than I have in my closet, chest of drawers and, possibly, attic.
French exchange studentesses are invariably cute. I'm extrapolating from the one I saw being met by her new host family, but I'm pretty confident about my calculations.
Many women arrive in the United States wearing Sharia-compliant clothing. Like the cute 20-something whose hijab was perfectly modest, thereby allowing the gaze to slip down to the v. large T-shirted rack popping out of her gown.
The difference in facial expression between arriving flight crews and tween travellers is like that between a cathouse madam and a honeymoon bride.
Grandmothers of all nations have the same cheek-pinch reflex, like a primordial muscle memory or a twitch of the collective unconscious.
If one young woman meets another who's arriving and says, "Oh my God, I totally want to murder you!," they're probably related.
Lufthansa crews look like Mad Men in the air. I expect the pilots still playfully swat the stewardess' asses and demand Johnny Walker, rocks, while puffing on Luckys.

So, yes, air travel. It brings us together: humanity and the microbes. Were there justice or even intelligent design, we would infect the little bastards with intestinal catarrh or the like. Instead, we rely on Panthanatos: ethyl alcohol in a 62% solution sweetened by aloe or Vitamin E. We are America battling imported insurgencies. From some of the same countries from which these tired and grateful visitors travelled or fled.

Circle of Life! *jazz hands*

2011-08-14T17:47:00.000-04:00

4:20 Mumbai Time, Dept.

Right, so your sobsister loves me some Kronos Quartet. Point the first. I'm also all about the Bollywood soundtracks. Point the second. So, some time ago, when I picked up legendary playback singer Asha Bhosle's collaboration with Kronos, You've Stolen My Heart - Songs from R. D. Burman's Bollywood, I was grabbed by the leadoff cut, "Dum Mara Dum," which is translated as "Take Another Toke."

The lyrics, according to the Mother Box, are:

Dum maro dum
Mit jaaye gham
Bolo subah shaam
Hare Krishna, hare Ram

[Take a toke
Let the pain be erased
Say all day and night
Hare Krishna, hare Ram]

Now, as you might've guessed, this piqued my interest. So, today, I thought to find the original, also sung by Ms. Bhosle, on YouTube and, sho' nuff, here it is. Very much of its time, i.e., fab.

From 1971's Hare Ram, Hare Krishna:

Man, those guys are working those chillums.

Then, I found a remade version that's very modern, i.e., BET moves and aerobicized abs on actress Deepika Padukone. Interesting, but very not Asha:

So, to make up for that tawdry display, I'll finish off this segment with the version that got this thing started. Asha Bhosle, about a quarter-century after the original, and the Kronos krewe:

And remember, kids: "ganja" is the Hindi word for "how late do they have that all-you-can-eat buffet at Udupi Palace?"

2011-07-04T08:57:00.000-04:00

Independence Day CCXXXV: Where's Your Precious Will Smith Now?, Dept.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Join me in celebrating that joyful day 235 years ago when Jesus first charged his power ring and created the blessed corporatocracy in which we now live. (Wait, did I spell that correctly...? c-o-p-r-o-c-r-a-c-y...)

If you can't join me, well, then, join Latino Superstar Jimmy "my name doesn't end in a vowel, cabrón" Smits for A Capitol Fourth. Smitty will introduce such renowned musical acts as that girl who won Idol a few years ago and Josh Groban, whom my mother used to like. Inspiring marches and such will be played to remind us of the American Empire's salad days. Hey, remember when we kicked Spain's ass?! Aww, yeah, that was wicked cool!

So, yes, America's birthday. Canada may have a better national anthem and health care system, but we made Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, so IN YOUR FACE, you poutine-eating, Triumph-listening posers!!

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A!

2011-06-30T20:08:00.000-04:00

Quoted for Truth, Dept.

From the landing page for the Welspun Group, an Indian steel and textiles manufacturer:

"With a participative approach towards social development, the company is guided by the three ‘E's - Education, Empowerment and Health."

Umm...is that the famous Hindi silent "h"?

2011-05-07T20:16:00.006-04:00

My Cousin Kenny, Dept.

This political season is so absurdly rich in sociopaths at whom we laugh, but who hold stature in the eyes of a non-trivial segment of the population, that satire becomes journalism with more Buffy references. Sure, some of them--Bachmann, Santorum, Palin--are so bizarre, repellent and unavoidable in their attempts at self-aggrandizement through manipulation of the basest instincts in what I hope is a largely ignorant, perhaps cave-dwelling, population that they invite, if not demand, comment in a way that, say, Steve Forbes never did and never will unless he releases photographs of himself coupling with a manatee cow.

Amongthem?notyet, but you have to credit his arriviste spunkiness is Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a feller who's making a name for himself by saying and doing shit that others might think openhandedly indulged a penchant for persecution of one's culture war enemies except for the fact that Cuccinelli's pronouncements are so inappropriate for someone representing all of the laws of the state--not just the ones that fuck up the Opposition--that they cease resembling rational speech and morph into the midway bark of a Tod Browning carnival. Challenging gay rights, challenging environmental legislation, challenging the constitutionality of the health care law, challenging academic freedom--he's one challenged guy. And on his short bus, he believes homosexuality is wrong, abstinence-only sex education is the way to go and the Second Amendment pretty much gives anyone the right to bear arms in as concealed a manner as that individual deems appropriate.

Now, by this point, you might think that "Cuccinelli" is Italian for "deranged right-wing twunt." And it might be; my Italian is rustier than Condoleezza Rice's sense of shame. But in the interests of bipartisanship and open dialogue, I've invited "Cooch," as I call him, to answer questions from readers, in a segment I call "Talk to the Cooch...'Cause the Face Don't Care!"

Our first question comes from Lerman Griswold of Nacogdoches, TX
Q: Hey, Cooch, It seems funny that Virginia still has anti-sodomy laws on the books, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v Texas. Could you clarify?
A: "I'm a little fucked up maybe, but I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?

Great, thanks, Cooch. Our next question is from Tamneesha Brown of Chicago, IL
Q: Dear Cooch, I understand that you gave your staff lapel pins that had a modified version of the current Virginia state seal. In your version, the Roman goddess' bare breast was covered, and the design came from a Confederate seal used during Civil War. So, are you a racist or scared of women's bodies or both?
A: "Give yourself a hand, right across your fucking mouth."

Interesting, interesting. Alright, we have time from one more question. This one's from Rogelio Ignacio Villacruz of Pomona, CA
Q: ¡Hola, Cooch! Me pareces ser un imbecil comemierda maricón infeliz, y yo y mi mara nos cagamos en la concha de la putamadre que te pario. ¿Que te parece eso?
A: "How do you cook your grits? Do you like them regular, creamy or al dente?"

Nicely put. With that, we bring this first edition of "Talk to the Cooch...'Cause the Face Don't Care!" to a close. Please send in your questions, and we'll try to get to as many as we can in future editions.

Until then...keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the...what? well, I don't care...is Casey Kasem my mother?...well, I don't have another sign-off, OK?...what?...that doesn't even make sense...I don't care if she's not using...what?...OK, fine...

Hm. Until then, everyone, wubba wubba wubba!

Gah.

2011-04-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

In the Valley of the Cretin, the Half-Wit is King, Dept.

As some of you might know, I have a hate/hate relationship with those Bunyanesque twins, Willful Ignorance and Self-Inflicted Stupidity. And, from daily exposure to their misshapen brood--in this episode, as you'll see, I encounter Cluelessness--I wear their stink like a '20s frat boy wore a beaver coat.

An example? Certainly. I arrive at a local medical facility for an appointment. At the elevator bank, I press the "up" button. Soon enough, the elevator arrives with a chiming tone and the illumination of a white and upwards-pointing arrow. The door slides open. Inside are two young women in their twenties. They stare at me, but make no motion to exit. I enter the elevator and press "4," the button for my floor, then share with them my view that this elevator is now going up. "Naw, it's goin' down," I'm told.

The elevator door closes, and, to my non-surprise, it heads up. The two women are confused. They were apparently heading for the garage. For which reason, I deduce from their few words to each other, they had pressed the starred "G" button, perhaps unaware of the convention whereby "G" stands for "Ground Floor," and of the one whereby a star beside the floor alphanumeric indicates that it is the principal exit floor.

The elevator, of its own volition, stops at 1. This floor is handsomely appointed, wood-grain trim above and below, tastefully matched to the paint, other nice touches. They overcome their apparent reluctance to leave the safe haven of the elevator, step out, look around and exclaim, "Where the hell we at?!" and "How we gettin' outta here?!" before the door slides back shut, sparing me the sight of their descent into madness.

So.
Q: If they thought--perhaps not unreasonably--that "G" stood for "Garage," then why didn't they get out of the elevator when it arrived at that floor, particularly as they hadn't pressed any other buttons?
A: Possibly because it didn't look like a garage floor might look.
Q: And the fancy-schmancy wood-paneled floor looked like the garage?
A: Yeah, I'd love to answer that, but I can't.

Q: At any rate, why insist, after I board the elevator, that it's going down, if they hadn't pushed any other buttons?
A: The topic of today's sermon: Cluelessness.

Another? My pleasure. Casa Sobsister has a shabby little black metal mailbox that may, at one point, have been attached to the house. It now leans against the house, its flappy door resting in the "closed" position. So, some time back, in anticipation of a Thanksgiving trip out of town, I submitted a request to the USPS to hold our mail until we returned. Off we go, back we come five days later. Well, not only had my "hold mail" request not been heeded, but the brain trust that comprises the mail carrier corps of my local post office had kept wedging the mail into the narrow little mailbox, despite the fact that, oddly enough, the residents were not retrieving their mail. As a consequence, then, of having a week's worth of mail (including magazines and a book) shoved into it, the mailbox stood with its flappy door forced open and skyward during a period when it rained quite heavily. Did any of the fucktards from my local post office regard the situation and think, "Hmm...this customer's mailbox is entirely full, possibly as a consequence of not retrieving the mail due to absence. Perhaps I should check to see if he has filed a 'hold mail' request."? Short answer: no. Somewhat-longer answer: no, because the radioactivity to which the postal drone in question exposes him- or herself while hanging onto a cell phone for the entirety of his or her shift renders him or her Clueless. And that is the kindest of the explanations I've been able to devise. Otherwise, why would I always get my next-door neighbors' mail? Why would I get the mail for the lady one block over who has the same house number? Why, despite the very large sign pasted to the shabby little mailbox that reads, "PLEASE KEEP CLOSED," do the mail carriers leave the flappy door w-i-d-e o-p-e-n? It's Cluelessness, plain and simple. Irremediable without a strong and conscious effort, which these shitwits are extremely unlikely to make as they slouch down the street, head and shoulder sandwiching a celly: "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know that's right. Mm-hmm."

So.
Q: What, are they retarded?
A: No, because the retarded make an effort. These minus-quam-sub-geniuses don't.

I occasionally despair for the species. And by "occasionally," I mean "every time I go outside." And by "every time I go outside," I mean "I have to go outside because I don't trust the USPS to deliver my magazines without jamming them into my mailbox in the rain and leaving the flappy door open."

2011-04-20T22:00:00.003-04:00

The 420 Steps, Dept.

So, last year on this date, I riffed on the cannabine associations of April 20. Sophomoric prattle, really; terms like "rolling a fatty" and "torching a tenement tiki" being bandied about like a teenager's first pair of breasts. And, certainly, there was a reference to a certain Austrian paperhanger's natal day. How could there not have been? But, the tone, I felt, was a low one.

So, instead, I thought today to honor the day with a bit of poetry. Not my own, mind you. That's so elevated in tone, it would bleach the tabs on either side of me in your browser. No, something a bit more traditional. Folk poetry, perhaps? There's something invariably noble and grounded about the people's creative product, isn't there? Well, let's see...what would be nice...? Oh! Yes. This'll do. This'll do nicely.

And so, without further ado, I offer for your delectation that family favorite, "The Ball of Inverness":

The Ball of Inverness

Four and twenty virgins,
Came down from Inverness,
And when the ball was over,
There were four and twenty less.

*Chorus*
Singing balls to your father,
Your arse against the wall,
If you've never been fucked on a Saturday night,
You'll never be fucked at all.

Four and twenty prostitutes,
Came up from Gloccamore,
And only one went home that night,
And she was double-bore.
(Chorus)

The village plumber he was there,
He felt an awful fool,
He'd come eleven leagues or more,
And forgot to bring his tool.
(Chorus)

Sandy McPherson he came along,
It was a bloody shame.
He fucked a lassie forty times,
And wouldna take her haim.
(Chorus)

Mrs. O'Malley she was there,
She had the crowd in fits,
A-jumping off the mantelpiece,
And landing on her tits.
(Chorus)

The minister's wife was at the ball,
A-sitting in the front,
A wreath of flowers 'round her ass,
A carrot up her cunt.
(Chorus)

Father Feeney he was there,
And in the corner he sat,
Amusing himself, abusing himself
And catching it in his hat.
(Chorus)

The Parson's daughter she was there,
The cunning little runt,
With poison ivy up her arse,
And thistle up her cunt.
(Chorus)

The Vicar's wife she drank beer,
Back up against the wall,
"Put your money on the table boys,
I'm fit to do ye all".
(Chorus)

The Vicar and his lovely wife,
Were having lots of fun,
The Parson had his finger,
Up another lady's bum.
(Chorus)

The vicar's daughter she was there,
Getting very merry,
Swinging from the chandelier
And peeing in the sherry
(Chorus)

The Queen was in the parlor,
Eating bread and honey,
The King was in the chambermaid,
And she was in the money.
(Chorus)

First lady forward,
Second lady back,
Third lady's finger,
Up the fourth lady's crack.
(Chorus)

The bride was in the kitchen,
Explaining to the groom.
The vagina, not the rectum,
Is the entrance to the womb.
(Chorus)

The groom was in the parlor,
Explaining to his bride.
The penis, not the scrotum,
Is the part that goes inside.
(Chorus)

The village magician he was there,
Doing his favorite trick,
Pulling his foreskin over his head,
And vanishing up his dick.
(Chorus)

The village cripple he was there,
He wasn't up too much,
He lined them up against the wall
And fucked them with his crutch.
(Chorus)

Now farmer Giles he was there,
His sickle in his hand,
And when he swung the blade around,
He circumcised the band.
(Chorus)

Giles he played a dirty trick,
We cannot let it pass,
He showed his lass his mighty prick,
Then shoved it up her ass.
(Chorus)

Farmer Brown he was there,
A' jumping on his hat,
For half an acre of his corn
Was fairly fucking flat.
(Chorus)

Officer O'Malley he was there,
The pride of all the force.
They found him in the stable,
Wanking off his horse.
(Chorus)

The chimney sweep he was there,
They had to throw him out,
For every time he farted,
The room was filled with soot,
(Chorus)

The village builder he was there,
He brought his bag of tricks,
He poured cement in all the holes,
And blunted all the pricks.
(Chorus)

Little Jimmy he was there,
The leader of the choir,
He hit the balls of all the boys,
To make their voices higher.
(Chorus)

Little Tommy he was there,
He was only eight,
He was too small for the women,
So he had to masturbate.
(Chorus)

The village doctor he was there,
He had his bag of tricks,
And in between the dances,
He was sterilizing pricks.
(Chorus)

The doctor's daughter she was there,
She went to gather sticks.
She couldna find a blade of grass,
For cunts and standing dicks.
(Chorus)

The village postman he was there,
The poor man had the pox,
He couldna fuck the lassies,
So he fucked the letter box.
(Chorus)

The village shepherd he was there,
And he began to weep,
All these willing women,
And not a single sheep.
(Chorus)

The local harlot she was there,
A lay'in on the floor,
And every time she spread her legs,
The vacuum shut the door.
(Chorus)

There was fucking in the haystacks,
Fucking in the ricks,
You couldna hear the music,
for the rustling of the pricks.
(Chorus)

And when the ball was over,
Everyone confessed,
They all enjoyed the dancing,
But the fucking was the best.

2011-04-18T22:56:00.007-04:00

American Hystery, Dept.

Your sobsister rides the subway to work. Here in Choc City, the subway is called a "Metro," the sound of which conjures up Parisian romance, even as the experience conjures up Dantean expiation of what must have been horrible, horrible sins on Earth. If Washington has been described as a city of southern efficiency and northern charm, the Metro is a transportation system of Nigerian efficiency and North Korean charm. While the frisson of sudden and unexpected death by incompetence does shake the previous night's sleep from passengers each morning, it is not, on the whole, a pleasant experience. And, by ironic understatement, I mean to say everyone associated with Metro--and here I'm looking at the person who let out the contract for installation and maintenance of the system's escalators--should be horsewhipped, if not daily, at least weekly. At least weekly. Maybe thrice a fortnight. Which is pronounced "Cholmondley."

Anyhoo. Every day, I wait for the Metro homebound, and I stare across at the facing platform, on which there is a backlit sign for a new show at Ford's Theatre. The venue will likely be familiar to you as the place where Abraham Lincoln took in most of Our American Cousin. And currently the theater is presenting a musical titled Liberty Smith.

Now, I don't claim to have psychic powers, you know, since the cease-and-desist, but, one look at that ad triggered what might be latent mutant tendencies. The poster transparency shows the title character, a fellow, affable in appearance, seated with a colonial American flag in his lap. I looked at the image, looked at the name of the production and intuited a show wherein the aformentioned Liberty Smith "happened" to have been comically present at key moments in revolutionary-era America. Maybe he told Betsy Ross that concentric circles wouldn't work as well as stars and stripes. Maybe he told Thomas Jefferson that once he went black, he would not, in fact, go back. Something along those lines, all whimsical and juvenile and easily digestible.

So, today, after a few weeks of staring at that ad while waiting for the train, I went to the Ford's Theatre Web site and read the synopsis of Liberty Smith. And it goes something like this:

Ford’s Theatre presents the world premiere of Liberty Smith, a madcap musical romp through Revolutionary America. A childhood friend of George Washington, apprentice to Benjamin Franklin and linked to Paul Revere’s remarkable ride, the elusive Liberty Smith weaves his way through familiar tales of a young nation.

As they say, nothing but net. Madcap net.

Now, you may ask, will I find love or who will win the Stanley Cup or when will a cure for cancer be found? My nascent powers, I believe, confer upon me a sacred trust to use them wisely, sparingly and well. Further, regarding the Stanley Cup, I think I'd rather inventory the earthworms in my back yard than devote a scintilla of thought to the most pointless of the generally pointless array of professional sports. But were you to ask: How is Liberty Smith? As two teams of wild horses would be woefully inadequate to drag me down to the theater, I'll supply a few choice quotes from the Washington Post's reviewer: "this energetic if flavor-deprived waltz through American revolutionary history...[is] a harmless riff on what spills out of every elementary school history text...The predicaments seem inspired by lame skits from long-ago TV variety shows." Funnily enough, none of this is quoted in the ad, which someone very carefully crafted from the handful of phrases in the review that didn't damn with faint meh.

So, yes, Liberty Smith. Exactly what out-of-towners expect of a Washington show and about what they deserve. I keep wanting to call it "Liberty Jones," except that would be the title for a Bing Crosby musical number of my imagining, circa 1940, featuring a goggle-eyed pickaninny shoeshine boy who dreams of being elected to a White House surrounded by cotton fields and watermelon patches, with a Secretary of Fried Chicken and a federal tap dancing holiday. "Liberty (Liberty!) His momma named him Liberty (Liberty!), 'Cause he'll set all the dark people free."

At any rate, pastiche pool's closed, kids. It's time to retire for the evening to face down another day tomorrow. And so, as another blogger once wrote, to bed.

2011-04-16T10:44:00.002-04:00

It's on Everyone's Lips, Dept.

You would think sodomy would be a divisive issue in today's America, but, surprisingly, it is not.

Democrats, for example, enjoy having their dicks sucked by zaftig interns with daddy issues, while Republicans like being reamed by hung rentboys. It's as natural as cherry blossoms in spring or fetal alcohol syndrome in reality show contestants.

Apropos of which, former Sen. Rick Santorum has taken the first baby steps towards the White House by announcing the fundraising committee that will sound the waters for financial support for his candidacy. For those who've not had the opportunity to google "Santorum," the Web site spreadingsantorum.com is the first hit for the former senator's surname, thanks to the SEO efforts of sex-advice columnist Dan Savage and his many followers. The site's purpose: to immortalize the redefinition of "santorum" (as devised by Savage's readers) as "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." Savage and his followers took the initiative in response to the former senator's many and unenlightened pronouncements on homosexuality. (The second Google hit is the Wikipedia page for "Santorum (sexual neologism)"--huh huh, he said "jism"--followed only then by Santorum's Wikipedia bio page.)

Now, Santorum, as a devout Catholic--if his seven children and virulently antigay pronouncements are any barometer--may be a stranger to back-door lovin', given that, by my best calculations, it doesn't seem to lead to babies very often (one notable exception: Glenn Beck). Or, as a devout Catholic who is virulently antigay, he may be well-acquainted with back-door lovin' (see rentboy above). It's all between him and his confessor. Who may be well-acquainted with back-door lovin' (see rentboy above).

But Santorum's reappearance on the national stage after having had his pee-pee spanked in the 2006 senatorial race by Democrat Bob Casey will allow national media to revisit this "colorful" senator's past statements and activities and report them to an audience a bit bigger than the tragically slackjawed Pennsylvania electorate that first elevated him to Capitol Hill.

Here's one of my favorite Santorum stories, a testament, really, to the type of president he might make were he to achieve this nation's highest elected office. So, as I noted, Santorum and his wife have seven children. Well, actually, they would have had eight, but the child fifth in line died a few hours after birth due to a severe genetic disorder. A tragedy by any reckoning, but Santorum decided to put his own special spin on the situation by bringing the deceased infant home, introducing it to his four children as "your brother Gabriel" and spending the night with it before returning it to the hospital the next day. Talk about kickin' it old-school. That's an attitude towards death with which most Americans would be familiar. In the 19th century. When post-mortem photography reached its zenith. It's certainly of a piece with his attendance of Latin Mass and his trogolodytic attitude towards human sexuality. Would your sobsister be surprised to find that Santorum cinches a metal cilice around his thigh just a bit tighter when he has an impure thought about Justin Bieber? Well, would your sobsister be surprised to find that Yosemite Sam recently pitched a minor hissy regarding a certain consarned long-eared galoot?

So, yes, Rick Santorum, welcome back to the national stage. In an electoral season where the ring is increasingly crowded by the tinfoil hats of the bizarre, disturbed and irrational politicians of the American Right, a man synonymous with shit-flecked spooge should feel right at home.

2011-04-13T19:56:00.001-04:00

The Definition of Solipsism, Dept.

I'm on Twitter. As some of you may recall, I'd ridiculed Twitter before I joined, its notion that anyone outside of your head cares in any meaningful way about your individual thoughts and actions unless they're your parents or your stalker. But I did join, first, by setting up my office's account and then, familiarized, by setting up my own.

I've used it more or less frequently since joining. It's fun to craft a punchy statement while working within the character constraints, and it's nice to "publish" a quick thought that isn't substantial enough for a blog post. From the user standpoint, it's great to find content from a variety of providers, from friends to corporations to commentators on it all.

But, here's the thing: I follow just over 60 accounts, and, even so, I rarely have the time to do more than cast a quick glance at these tweets when I do access Twitter to post, clicking infrequently through the attached links and never scrolling down more than a few screens. As a consequence, unless I make the effort to see what one Twitterer has had to say over X period of time, I miss much of what's been said while I've been offline.

By contrast, at work, I use HootSuite throughout the day to track my office's tweets, as well as subscription tweets, responses and retweets, in a four-column configuration. To the casual observer, it looks as if I'm monitoring battlefield reports at a C3 bunker, new tweets streaming on constantly, the software chiding me if I leave it unattended for over an hour.

I'm sorry, but either scenario is more than a bit unsatisfying. I mean, I want to be as informed as the next fellow of Christina Aguilera's thoughts on a real-time basis. And, doubtless, some of you are far more efficient than I and effortlessly multitask monitoring your overflowing Twitter stream, even as you earn Foursquare badges and update your Facebook status. But the democratization of online communication and the concomitant multiple-magnitude increase in online content have made it, to my mind, almost impossible to conduct a casual online life, one that does not require constant care, attention and commitment if one is actually to use the social media for which one has created accounts.

Granted, even among this democratized twittering class, some voices, by dint either of celebrity or of the actual value of their content, draw eyeballs. The aforementioned Aguilera has been on Twitter for just under a month and has over 220 thousand followers. Britney Spears has been on since October 2008, has 7.4 million followers and follows 417 thousand others. That said, while it's understandable that more people than inhabit Massachusetts would want to catch such gems as "@rihanna You're such a tease! I like it, like it.... -Britney" drop from BritBrit's virtual lips, is Britney assiduously reading the tweets from all four hundred thousand-plus of her followers? Such as LovelyHooker's intriguing tweet "@holymonsterslut You didn't actually :') Like whaaaat? A PINK DILDO? :B <3"

or any of the tweets from the 12-year-old "Verified Beliebers" who also follow her?

In truth, is anyone listening to anyone else? Because from my perspective, it's the virtual equivalent to a stadium concert where everyone is too busy texting, talking and tweeting to actually watch the act onstage. Except that the act onstage is everyone texting, talking and tweeting. And if that's the case, then what's Twitter but the ocean into which everyone throws a message in a bottle knowing? assuming? hoping? that someone will not only find it, but take 30 seconds to read it?

I referred earlier to the "democratization" of online communication, but Twitter represents not so much the democratization of electronic media as the reification of the ego. The expression of each individual, however benighted or brilliant, is given form and life in a way unimaginable a generation ago. As a consequence, people, their dreams kindled and expectations raised, want to be heard--even if they don't want to hear others--and want to have even a little assurance that they are being heard. "Follow-me-I'll-follow-you" logrolling only goes so far (the rolled log being the remains of the tree that fell in the forest to no audience), because you, Joe or Jane Blow, may have a thousand followers, but can you say with certainty that any 100 are actually reading your tweets regularly? If others do this math, then I can see a near future when Twitter sheds its "social media" skin to serve as a customer service channel for merchants such as airlines and big box retail or an expedited channel for news dissemination, be it from media, the government or grassroots reporters. But the notion that everyone or anyone cares about each and every hair, mood, location or LOLZOMG!! tweet you squirt is likely, I think, to be discarded sooner rather than later.

Because, ultimately, you're not that interesting, and neither am I. Keeping that knowledge to ourselves is as essential to the social compact as covering one's mouth during a sneeze and faking an orgasm with royalty. Any system that reminds us, tacitly or otherwise, of the world's indifference to the minutiae of our mental lives is not fated to enjoy a long life.

2011-04-04T23:24:00.001-04:00

The Conscience of the King, Dept.

So, I'd recorded the All Together Now: A Celebration of Service TV special that aired March 28 on NBC. A little bit of propaganda to goose the notions of service and volunteerism among the couchlocked viewing audience. All the living former presidents were in attendance, and, for some reason, Bush XLI was being particularly fêted. Or "fetid," I'm not sure which. So, Bill, Jimmy, Dubya and Poppy were all on display, along with the no-account Bushes, old Barbara and hot Barbara, etc.

From the attendees, you might imagine that the entertainment on offer would not be boundary-pushing. Whoever the fuck Miranda Cosgrove might be gave a little speech about service or something. Cee Lo Green came out to sing a verse of "Soul Man," then introduced his uncle, Sam Moore of Sam and Dave, who duetted with him. Brad Paisley, who we know is "country" 'cause he had the good taste to sport both an inappropriately large white cowboy hat and a silver-glitter-and-paisley Telecaster, sang "Try a Little Kindness." Lots of reaction shots of the prezzies. GHWB was looking very Monty-Burns-ish. Dubya unsurprisingly looked lost, as if Laura had snookered him into going out by telling him they were going to see The Wiggles. Bill, minus Hill who actually has paying work, was eyeing Miranda Cosgrove like a cartoon cannibal eyes Bugs Bunny. Jimmy and Rosalynn looked marooned on an island of fatuous.

Several speeches later, Carrie Underwood is introduced. I expect her to sing "Jesus Take the Wheel" or "Jesus Go Out for Burgers" or some other of her simultaneously pious and patriotic numbers. Out she struts in a snug'n'shiny black suit with three-quarter sleeves over a pirate shirt. Cut to the prezzies: old Barbara and Dubya and the rest are bobbing their heads to the intro music in expectation of some sweet Muskogee truisms about the flag and the Lord.

Instead, Carrie plants herself mid-stage and launches into
Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead.

If anyone with even slightly less Red State cred than Carrie U. had addressed these lines at the assembled, she would've been run out of town on a rail after a vigorous horsewhipping. Instead, Carrie stands there, unsmiling, staring up and out at the prezzies and sings
Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race.

Umm, wow. Okay. Maybe she? the producers? Satan? thought that the "Well we all shine on/Like the moon and the stars and the sun" bit made this song up-tempo and happy and appropriate for the occasion. Or maybe Carrie Underwood is the most subversive woman in America. But to tell this particular band of men, to tell the honoree and his skeeze-bag sons seated to his right and left, that karma is hovering over them like the Eumenides over Orestes? Oh snap, girl. That's better than Colbert reading Dubya at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

I don't own any of her albums. I didn't root for her the year she won Idol. I don't know the backstory to this performance. But for four minutes this week, I was a huge Carrie Underwood fan.

2011-04-03T13:49:00.000-04:00

The Coprokomodia, Dept.

So, this episode contains allusive content that may prove distressing to those with sensitive nerves or vivid imaginations. Let that serve as my only warning. Which reminds me, how's your mom, Ed?

I'm at work. I'm in the bathroom, I enter a stall. Someone is already in the far stall, the handicapable stall. As I ponder, let my thoughts meander, freely wander, the occupant of the far stall begins to make noises. The noises a very unfit man makes walking uphill in the summer. The hard breaths, the grunts. Should I intervene? Is the occupant in distress? Is the occupant about to gaochao? Is the four-alarm chili doing a Sherman through his Georgia?

The noise continues. It ends. The hoarse roar of his flush masks other ejaculations. I can see a sliver of the sinks through the crack between my stall door and the stall frame. The heavy breather--I recognize him, a morbidly obese dude in his early 30s I've seen on my floor--stops at a sink only long enough to trigger the motion-sensor water flow with a swipe of a hand, then walks to the paper dispenser to grab a length and out the door.

I can understand many trespasses and forgive some. Situation and circumstance can force men and women to do things that they might not have chosen to do, or they can offer men and women the opportunity to do things that they oughtn't. But the pro forma automatic sink swipe to convince whom? Me? Jesus? Ceiling cat? that you had washed your hands as thoroughly as anyone who's just finished a hot toilet grunt session might do, i.e., as thoroughly as if about to perform open thoracic surgery. That I shall not forgive or *gaak* forget.

You don't know me, and I don't know you. But, entre nous, in Tom Cruise's words from Magnolia, I'm quietly judging you. The judgment? You are one fa schifo motherfucker.

And I hope the maintenance guy scalds the bathroom door handles every night.

2011-04-02T19:56:00.001-04:00

Gen 6:4, Dept.

Listening to a stream of Miles Davis' sextet on April 12, 1970 at the Fillmore West. Jesus Mary and Joseph O'Leary, they started with an "It's About That Time" that must've flash-fried every hippie in that temple to Euterpe, then continued one minute voodoo funk the next free blowing for the entirety of the set, with occasional oases of quiet lyricism. If you've ever asked yourself as I am wont to do, "What's a good example of a band that listens to each other with elephant ears, then plays as tightly as, I don't know, some 12-armed deity of asskicking ecstacy music?," this will answer your question.

Then, the Grateful Dead walked on to headline, reportedly awed by Davis and his band. No offense to the Dead, and on their home court yet, but you can only follow an opener like that, to quote Lenny Bruce, with Art Baker whacking it in Bert Parks' face.

2011-03-29T20:08:00.000-04:00

Being a Short Discourse on the Latest Edition of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies, Dept.

Right, so I forgot that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (R&RHoF) Induction Ceremonies were last week, so I had to watch the two-hour reduction instead of the full live feed. On the one hand, I missed Jann Wenner's most-likely half-toasted introduction, some unedited acceptance speeches that remind us why a number of performers are not their own best editors, and the inevitable closing "jam." On the other hand, I missed Jann Wenner's most-likely half-toasted introduction...you get the bit, right? Onto the show, then, now in bulleted form!

Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack was inducted by John Legend, which must have been as disappointing for the good doctor as it was for the viewing audience. John Legend, what, now? Aside from having one of the ironic self-inflicted surnames of all time, I don't get him. He, like Fergie, like Pink, like so many others whose name more than music springs to mind, occupies this middle tier in the music business. Like he's the regional manager for product development. Not the CEO, not the mailcart guy, just...there. In the middle. Doing some job that I don't care about or even really understand. His induction speech was flaccid and Teleprompter-heavy, and then, inexplicably, he played a piano duet with Dr. John on "Such a Night." Was everyone and anyone else who could have said something meaningful about Mac Rebennack dead or out of town? I mean, Christ, Robbie Robertson was in the audience! Dr. John played "Such a Night" at The Last Waltz! There's relatedness, right there! Or Liv Tyler looking quite lovely. Or Catherine Zeta-Jones likewise. I'd preferred to have watched Liv Tyler and Catherine Zeta-Jones freestyle an induction rap for Dr. John over watching John Legend's grade-school pageant presentation. Ugh.
Bette Midler wearing an approximation of Bette Midler's face ca. the Divine Madness Tour inducted Darlene Love. *ha ha* I joke; she's had the good work done. And at least she read her speech with characteristic sass and oomph in contrast to the agent of entropy who preceded here. And Darlene Love spoke her acceptance sincerely, good lines well-delivered, from what the excerpts showed. The acceptance speeches were all intercut with the associated musical performances, so the absolute length of them is unknown to your reporter. She (and the others) may have spoken for an hour or two minutes. But she's got pipes, I tell you what. She ran through a few Spector classics with Paul Schaffer's Letterman ensemble, the usual house band for the event.
Rob Zombie, looking like he ate Choo-Choo Charlie then stole his hat, inducted Alice Cooper. A clever speech delivered in an offhand way. The band performed two numbers; the inevitable incongruousness of the 62-year-old Alice Cooper né Vincent Furnier singing "I'm Eighteen" and "School's Out" overshadowed by the fact that all but the guitarist are original members and looked to be having a tremendous time as they rocked out.
Neil Young now resembling a cantankerous Civil War veteran woken after a century's sleep offered offhand comments, essentially admitting he hadn't prepared remarks for the occasion, but, nevertheless, winged a funny, surreal performance piece in introduction of Tom Waits. I'd call this the marquee event. Tight-lipped and media-shy, Waits keeps a low profile, revealing print interviews of him as numerous as my hen's teeth. His acceptance speech is funny, likely rehearsed, but as engaging as you might imagine, punctuated by his eyes blinking as if forced into sunshine from the cool deep dark.
In the evening's most personal introduction, Sir Elton inducted his idol and current tour partner, Leon Russell. He spoke of his encounter with Russell's music as a young musician and of his awe and respect then and Russell's help and advice to him, followed by his reconnection with the man 30 years later when Russell's fortunes were much reduced. A riches-to-rags-to-riches story underlined by Russell's speech wherein he noted that Elton had found him in the "ditch by the side of the highway of life" and treated him like a king. Now and for some time in fragile health, he performed "Delta Lady" and, affectingly, "A Song for You" in a shadow of his voice, particularly poignant given the film clips of him hollering and tearing it up onstage as a younger man.
Paul Simon came out and kvetched humorously about it taking 20 years since Neil Diamond's first eligibility for him to be inducted. Paul looks like he hasn't had the good work, unfortunately. Maybe it's just crap makeup, but Paul Simon? Really? Whatever it is, he shouldn't look like Albin in La Cage at the Jewish Community Center of Flatbush. Neil Diamond offered a moving "I Am...I Said," with the weight of 45 years in the business behind it. Wistful, valedictory, a slow recognition of life's existential weight that ended in as many "no"s as Molly Bloom offered "yes"s. He then shifted gears suddenly--and somewhat unwillingly, if his expression was any barometer--to sing "Sweet Caroline." Pro that he is, however, by mid-song, he'd waded out into the audience to grab family members, shmooze other singers and, at one point, stand on a chair to lead the assembled in song. As I said, a pro.

So, okay, the average age of the inductees was 104. That's fine, but it led me to think and research. The list of good, even top-tier, bands that have yet to be inducted is long. Longlonglonglong loooonnng. And it raises a few questions that I'll characterize as "uncomfortable" and discuss in the next installment.

2011-03-19T17:49:00.001-04:00

New York State of Mind, Dept.

Recently back from der großer Apfel
--using the Teutonic version thereof in memory of the Yorkville neighborhood of NYC where I went to high school and where once there stood a series of great, traditional German businesses, large and small, including restaurants and Konditoreien and Biergärten and the like, but now is home to Big Box Stores because why have interesting, organically developed, locally owned businesses when you can have another Sephora and a Best Buy--

and, setting my bitterness aside for the moment, I thought to offer a few notes and observations from our latest visit.

If you are an attractive Asian-American female between the ages of 18 and 25 who is not appreciated in her precincts, by all means run-do-not-walk in your clackety heels to New York City. Apparently, the mayor passed an ordinance recently that requires casually dressed Caucasian men of the same age to be seen on the streets with an Asianesque hottie irrespective of their own Hot-or-Not rating. It follows on the heels of the controversial tattoo-sleeve/soul-patch/porkpie-hat requirement for Williamsburg.
If you read this before April 17, speed your way to the New York Theater Workshop in the East Village and glom a ticket or two for Peter and the Starcatcher, a prequel to J.M. Barrie's classic, Peter Pan, adapted from the novel of the same name. It's the closest to British panto I've seen on these shores. A smash-bash of high and low art that veers from fart gags to the line "It's as hard to find as the melody in a Philip Glass opera." Wildly inventive, it turns red headlights and two clotheslines into a crocodile, and ropes into everything from whipping waves to a narrow tunnel. Fantastic cast in a jewelbox setting. Do. Not. Miss. It.
Our hotel seemed to house two types of guest: us and ugly Euro-hookers. No, let me correct that: us, ugly Euro-hookers and Lolitas who ostentatiously occupied space in the lobby. One stood out: Ugg-ish boots, a v. short skirt over coltish legs, a headful of yellow curls, pouty mouth and a large sock monkey doll. What, the prop department couldn't find heart-shaped glasses and a lollipop? I'm sure these young ladies could earn their college and grad school tuitions in a single season working the lobby, assuming, of course, that by the time they're old enough to matriculate, they're not dead or chained to the throne of the Sultan of Brunei.
Mediocre seafood is not redeemed by a bouncy server who puts his thespic training on display as "Gregarious Waiter #2".
Times Square, thanks to the aforementioned Bloomberg, is now--thank you, Guinness--The Biggest Traffic Clusterfuck in Creation. I'm sorry, say again...? make Times Square a pedestrian mall? Certainly! I mean, who would ever use Broadway as a southbound artery? *ha ha* the very notion! Absurd! Perkins, throw another wog on the fire, I'm getting chilly!
I saw a number of institutions of secondary education named using the formula "The (illustrious obscurity's surname) School." They irritate me. That they are no more and no less than high schools that nevertheless charge, thanks to a consensual cachet, the equivalent of a small Andean country's GDP per annum to instill the values of a predatory plutocracy guised as beneficent meritocracy into the pretty heads of the loinfruit of the financial condottieri and their siblings in the Professions. That we as humble passersby should be awed by the stark simplicity of the institution's name, its opacity incised into the façade's granite. Not for them the transparency of "Wendell L. Willkie Middle School"or "Our Lady of the Illuminated Hardships High School for Girls," when, in fact, it should be: "The Murgatroyd School for the Coddled Children of the Monied Class, Who Within Our Walls Will Get an Earful of the Sort of Egalitarian Nonsense Only the Wealthy Can Afford to Believe, Then Stumble from Here to the Ivies, or, if They're Horrible Fuckups, the 'Little Ivies,' and, After Some Dalliance with Conformist Noncomformist Thinking, Will Eventually Get a Law Degree, Find a Suitable Spouse from the Same Class and Breed Their Successors at the Firm." At a minimum, it would provide ample work for automobile decal makers, and, really, isn't that all we can ask as a people?
There is more diversity in any three-block stretch of Queens Boulevard than there is in most of our landlocked states. Queens is where the immigrants live, cheek-by-jowl, bulgogi joint next to cumbia palace next to bagel shop. Queens is the last bit of Old New York, now that Progress, that tasteless bitch, has eaten up Manhattan and shitten out Singapore, then driven the dead out of Brooklyn. I can't speak for the Bronx or Staten Island because, frankly, who the fuck goes to the Bronx or Staten Island?
An apology to the people responsible for developing content for the little TVs in NYC cabs, but, really, I don't need to watch NBC-branded television if I'm in a taxi in Manhattan, right? If watching the architecture, storefronts and people of one of the most dynamic cities on the planet is too boring, I can always ask my driver how long it's been since he left Lahore.
Apropos of nothing, I judge people who have to have coffee before they can function or be even vaguely approachable at work. I mean, I'm extremely judgmental by nature and nurture, but, really, substitute "crystal meth" or "black tar heroin" or "a rock of cocaine" for "coffee" in that sentence, and you kinda get my drift. The fact that many enterprises--my own employers included--keep giant vats of this shit percolating all day for free consumption is ethically and operationally no different than their piling a five-ounce pyramid of blow on a conference room table at 9 a.m. So, yes, Mister Venti Non-Fat Four-Shot Extra-Hot Macchiato, you are the moral equivalent of a bust-out junkie, except you're nodding out before you score, and I pronounce anathema on you, sir, anathema!

At any rate, that's NYC for now. Coming back to Choc City after a weekend in Manhattan is like ambling back to Mayberry. Well, Mayberry with Black people. And without its courtly charm. But with horrible commuter traffic. Have I mentioned my proposal for a thousand-dollar-per-vehicle annual commuter tax on the Maryland and Virginia parasites who drive--and always, always badly--their cars into town and leave nothing of any value in return? Derail. At any rate, Choc City is apparently nothing like Mayberry, but is still a small Southern town. Those who wish to send me a file baked into a cake can write me for my mailing address.

2011-02-16T22:47:00.001-05:00

The Blue-Eyed Tiger, Dept.

Sobsister favorite Betty Garrett passed on to the Big Screening Room in the Sky on Feb. 12. She lights up the screen in On the Town despite sharing screens with Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller, Gene Kelly, Vera-Ellen and Jules Munshin, not a shrinking violet in the bunch. Her man-hungry lady cabdriver is the center of most of the best comic action in the film. Through most of the film, she eyes Sinatra the way a cartoon cannibal eyes a missionary on the hoof.

So, here's her big number from the aforementioned, "Come Up to My Place," a witty bit of classic Comden and Green. Sexy, sassy and smart. The kind of triple-threat movie star not much seen any more.

aav.

2011-02-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

Where Are They Then?, Dept.

Watching New Rose Hotel recently--an excellent William Gibson adaptation, btw, with standout turns by stars Christopher Walken and the stunning Asia Argento--I noticed, during the closing credit crawl, a semi-familiar name listed as providing craft services. Rachel Uchitel, now best known for being numbered among the four-score-and-seven women who boinked sex addict and sometime golfer Tiger "Itchypants" Woods, apparently fed the cast. It's the only time she's credited as such, according to IMDB, and her only foray onto the silver screen, big or little, excluding her appearances on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

9/11-semiwidow, VIP lounge wrangler, celebrity knobpolisher, reality TV exploitee. There's a resumé you don't see every day. Unless you live in Los Angeles, I suppose.

2011-01-23T16:00:00.001-05:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, Dept.

A mantra that your sobsister has heard at any number of jobs over the years is "Do more with less." Although its nuances shift according to the sector, decade and location, what it basically means is this: We don't have the resources to do what needs to be done in a way that doesn't strain you few poor bastards who are charged with the task's completion. That we do not could certainly be attributable to the fact that we didn't plan this all too well. Or to the fact that we don't care about your particular task, ostensibly necessary as it is, so we shifted resources to something entirely unrelated that will yield us more visible results that we can then trumpet to advertise our efficiency, efficacy and splendor. Or to the fact that we despise you, at least a little, as the incarnated reminder of responsibilities or functions that we do not care to be reminded we still possess like vestigial tails or vermiform appendices.

At any rate, it now appears that doing more with less is not restricted to the lower 48. And, no, I do not refer to the fact that Sarah Palin has done quite remarkably well for someone with a walnut-sized brain. *ha ha!* Gratuitous swipes are the best. And stolen kisses are the sweetest. Or so I am told. No, I refer to Il Vaticano, home of the 14-inch meat-lovers' wafer. For that august body has been having to do more with less for some long time now. (And, at least today, I am not making reference to their doing more boybuggery with less supervision. Although, in denying the reference, I make it. That's called "language.")

You see, back in 1983, Pope John Paul II abolished the office of the advocatus diaboli, better known to Keanu Reeves fans as "the devil's advocate." His reasons for doing so are unclear, to me at least. The devil's advocate--officially known as the promotor fidei, or "promoter of the faith"--serves, in the words of the old Catholic Encyclopedia, "to prepare in writing all possible arguments, even at times seemingly slight, against the raising of any one to the honours of the altar. The interest and honour of the Church are concerned in preventing any one from receiving those honours whose death is not juridically proved to have been "precious in the sight of God." JP II, very old-skool pontiff that he was, would seem an unlikely actor in the abolition of a 400-year-old office.

But, then, JP II also beatified 1,340 people and canonized 483 saints, "more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the last five centuries," according to Wikipedia. Around Choc City, we call that "removing a procedural bottleneck." And, as with any such initiative, given enough time, we see how it comes around to scratch the originator's back. (Along with those of 483 other people whose face and figure you won't be seeing on traveler's medals any time soon. Although the face of Opus Dei cult founder, Josemaría Escrivá, might be found burnt into the leather handles of the whips with which his ~~reactionary zombies~~ followers flagellate themselves.)

Because, earlier this month, news reports surfaced that JP II is himself due to be beatified on May 1. His successor approved as the qualifying miracle the spontaneous cure of a nun named Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, whose Parkinson's disease miraculously miracled itself out of existence after she prayed to JP II two months after his death. I'll let the BBC continue:

Church-appointed doctors agreed that there was no medical explanation for the curing of the nun, although last year there were some doubts about the validity of the miracle.

A Polish newspaper said that a doctor who scrutinised the nun's case had concluded that she might have been suffering not from Parkinson's, but from a nervous disorder from which temporary recovery is medically possible.

Let's see if I've got this straight: a Catholic nun--a reliably disinterested party if I've ever seen one--claims that her Parkinson's was cured by prayer to JP II. There were doubts about the validity of this "miracle," understandable given the fact that it sounds, in medical terms, entirely made up.

So, it seems that what this situation needed was another pair of eyes--someone to investigate the situation and report on the veracity of the cure with a particular eye to debunking any false claims that might somehow benefit the cause of the late pope's pending beatification, a sort of "advocate," if you will, against beatification. Yes. The man who benefited most from the abolition of the position of devil's advocate is the one who abolished the position of devil's advocate. Ironic, isn't it? Like ray-ee-ain on your wedding day.

And G*d only knows how many other people found themselves whoopsied into sainthood due to the absence of the devil's advocate. I can't imagine that the aforementioned Escrivá would have had such a lubed entrance into the fraternity of the elect if someone had been standing at the gate and examining his papers.

But, hey, it's all good. The RC church isn't about demonstrable facts. It's not even about internal consistency. Currently, it's about being a lawyered-up cross between the Mafia and Blackwater, with a little American Idol-style bottom-up mobocracy thrown in to keep the hoi polloi interested. So, yeah, clear some space on your dashboard for soon-to-be Saint John Paul II, patron saint of expeditious transactions, few or no questions asked.

2011-01-04T07:52:00.002-05:00

Less Taste, More Filling, Dept.

Having walked past the windows of the Forever 21 in downtown Choc City every day for some months now, I think I've hit upon their design secret for conveying the chain's unique fashion philosophy.

1) Eyes closed, reach into a large box and pick any five articles of clothing.
2) Dress mannequin with said articles.
3) Repeat until all the mannequins are dressed.
4) Done!

Yes, by just following these simple instructions, you too can dress a store window to feature a "look" situated somewhere between Mad Max and Barely Legal. And not in a good way.

So, hats off to Forever 21 for showing young men and women that they don't need "taste" or an "eye for style" to work in the fashion industry! Next up: Food Network's Sandra Lee demonstrates how lacking the will or skill to cook didn't prevent her from becoming a successful TV "chef"!

2011-01-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

Everything Old Is New Again, Dept.

Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
They rob, slaughter, plunder--and label it "empire." They make a wasteland and call it "peace."
-Tacitus, Agricola

So, how does 2011 look for the model Jeffersonian democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan?

2011-01-02T13:06:00.002-05:00

The Hot White North, Dept.

Well, Happy New Year to those of you employing the Gregorian calendar to mark the ineluctable passage of time and the slow march to the grave! Apropos of little on this gray Sunday, I'll offer you my nominees for the loveliest, most talented Canadian sisters of the 20th century, the O'Hara girls from Toronto:

Mary Margaret

and Catherine

Edging out Calgary's Tegan and Sara Quin and Montreal's Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Disqualified as half-sisters were Montreal's porn duo of Lanny Barbie (also known as Lannie Barbie, Lannie Barby and Lanny Barby and star of Analgeddon and the unnecessary Meet the Fuckers) and Kimberly Franklin, as well as Canmore, Alberta's Three Sisters mountain range for being a rock formation. Better luck next time, ladies!

2010-12-05T09:51:00.001-05:00

Cold Brittania, Dept.

So, your sobsister is back from a short week in London Town, which did not have me low or even have me down. And, as I've done in the past, I thought to share with you some observations, ruminations and gentle expectorations regarding our trip.

It was frickin' gelid in Londinium. While we were lucky not to get any of the November rain, pace Axl Rose, or even any of the November snow that subsequently pasted Blighty, we were happy for the heavy sweater/pashmina/coat/hat/gloves cocoon.
Related to this, with the same indomitable spirit that saw their great-grandmothers face down the Blitz, London girls were wearing miniskirts and sheer stockings in cold that would make Inuit quake and fold. Take that, Adolf!
The UK Passports line upon arrival looked like a Lahori production of The Usual Suspects. I could be wrong, but I sense a significant demographic shift.
Enjoyed some brilliant gastropub fare, very much in the new-cuisine-from-old-England vein. Snail and bacon pie. Roasted bone marrow and parsley salad. Whole partridge with wilted greens and chestnuts. Meat and two veg built the Empire. Take that, Adolf!
Gitmo nothing! Put a few wannabe terrorists in United's Economy class seats for an eight-hour flight, and they'll be selling out the cause faster'n you can say "72 virgins."
Hearing American tourists' voices while on holiday abroad is like thinking of your mother while having sex. Unless you enjoy thinking about your mother while having sex. In which case, despite my general espousal of moral relativism, I can do nothing but heap shame on you.
London Underground's trains are snug. Were the cars only a bit narrower, you could k-nock k-nees with the person sitting opposite. Were the ceilings only a bit lower, severe curvature of the spine would be endemic throughout the resident population. Yet, they are awfully charming, their miles of connecting stairs and tunnels obviating the need for expensive gym memberships. Which might explain why, in Central London at least, I didn't see any fat people who weren't middle-aged men tucking into stacked plates of steaming offal.
Emergency vehicles in London drive fast. And I mean Jerry Bruckheimer car chase-fast. Saw several take it on two wheels, oddly enough on the straightaways. By contrast, Choc City's emergency vehicles only drive that fast when the "Hot Doughnuts" sign is on at the Krispy Kreme.
Great cities have rivers that divide them, each part having its own character to the extent of its difference defining it in contrast to the other half. The Seine and the Rive Gauche. The Tiber and Trastevere. The Thames and South London. The East River and the Outer Boroughs. Washington, D.C., is notably absent from this discussion.
"Take a slash" has become my new favorite way to indicate to companions that I have to excuse myself to avail myself of the conveniences. Blended with rhyming slang, it makes for incomprehensible good fun! "Sorry, luv, I've got to get my plates up the apples to take a slash!" In the words of George Bernard Shaw, "We are two nations separated by a common language. Also, Audrey Hepburn had no fucking business playing Eliza Doolittle. Fact."

More later.
I'd say "more earlier," but I'm bound by linear time.

2010-12-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On, Dept.

For an inspiring tale of one academic's quest for knowledge, even at personal risk, please click here for the story of Dr. Giles Brindley, a man who has inched his way into scientific history and legend.

2010-11-21T14:35:00.002-05:00

You Can't Spell "Specious Reasoning" Without "V-A-T-I-C-A-N," Dept.

Right, so Pope B-b-b-benny is getting some column inches for saying that condoms maybe sorta kinda could be hemidemisemi-OK for male prostitutes who don't want to spread AIDS. Which normally would be an "are you shitting me?" qualification, but coming from Popesy might as well be an invitation to a chickenhawk film festival at St. Peter's...oh, wait, that's next Thursday.

Cooler mitres prevailed, however, as His Teutonic Nibs hastened to say, according to HuffPo, "...that it wasn't the way to deal with the evil of HIV, and elsewhere in the book reaffirmed church teaching on contraception and abortion, saying: 'How many children are killed who might one day have been geniuses, who could have given humanity something new, who could have given us a new Mozart or some new technical discovery?'"

I fucking love this line of reasoning. Because it hangs in the air, with kind of a pleading look, saying, "C'mon, slugger, hit me out into the far cheap seats..."

Yes, let us think of all the geniuses, the Mozarts, the Einsteins, who will only live their short spermy lives in the reservoir tip of a prophylactic contoured for her pleasure.

Then let us think of all the genocidal sociopaths, the serial killers, the televangelists and TeaDouchebaggers, the Hitlers, Pol Pots and Stalins, who are similarly fated to bump their little noggins against latex before shuffling off this mortal coil. Gee, them condoms don't look so bad now, do they, Benny?

And then let us think of the fact that, in an average load of spooge, one would count upwards of 200 million sperm, each capable of being the next Anita O'Day or, alternately, Katy Perry. Well, if the great and tragic sin is wasting these precious little fellers, why would our Intelligent Designer not have simply made conception a one sperm/one egg deal? Because, even with the best of intentions, the most Catholic of couplers is going to waste over 299 million potential Mozarts. How does that make sense, Benadryl?

Short answer: It don't. Longer answer: It really doesn't make any fucking sense at all.

So...I guess the fact that there's even the slightest bit of an exception shown by the paedo-pal's pontiff to the condom ban, particularly when it's related to HIV/AIDS prevention, a topic on which the Vatican has been just this side of an ostrich in terms of reasonable, non-faith-based prevention, is a good thing. But, really, Ben-Wa, even Life Sciences 101 makes a mockery of your point. So, why don't we agree that Not Every Sperm Is Sacred, to paraphrase those fellows, and jog reasonwards along the continuum, rather than ooga-boogawards?

Because, remember when you told me to tell you when you were being that guy? Well, you're being that guy. Like, a lot. So, chill. Put on that Colbie Caillat album you like. Maybe a little Pinot Grigio. And not so much talking, boo. You are not making things better.

2010-11-06T09:05:00.000-04:00

Ketchup Time, Dept.

Hey, mid-term elections! Krazy Teabaggers! Dirty tricks! The National Mall ass-deep in meta-signs and moderates! More Krazy Teabaggers! Loudmouthery in the ascendant! National Tragedy™ Sarah Palin inexplicably still not back to flipping burgers in a food trailer! Dick Tracy villain Mitch "Limpface" McConnell a-plottin'! Michele Bachmann eluding the men with the butterfly nets! The Three Weird Sisters--Angle, O'Donnell, Miller--unable to make their witchly cooking stick to America's ribs!

And the bottom line......we welcome our new Oompa-Loompa Speaker of the House, John "I'm a Massive" Boehner! The American people look forward to two years of gratuitous, partisan obstructionism on the part of our first Tangerine-American House leader. It's as if Ohio were somehow able to transplant a horrible, sebum-fat wen from its face to that of the nation. Thanks, Buckeyes!

So, c'mon, GOP! Live up to your role, nay, your divinely mandated mission, as the Cock-Blocking Party! At this critical time in our country's history, we need a Gal Who Can Say 'No'! Otherwise, the speed of constructive change and reasoned reform might give us the collective vapors!

2010-09-18T19:21:00.001-04:00

You Know You Want It, Dept.

The New York Jets' locker room miasma of sweat and testosterone boasts a collective intelligence, one that even gives voice to its thoughts, such as they are.
I'd guess they were thinking that female reporters flaunt an attitude somewhere between "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love"? and "Baby You Knock Me Out."
Because many of them are fans of the work of Stanley Donen and Anita Loos, or so I've been told.

2010-08-28T18:34:00.001-04:00

Letters, We Get Letters, Dept.

Dear Sobsister,

I've been reading stuff on the Internet, and it sounds like I have what they call "penis envy." I can't stop thinking about how great it would be if I had a penis. It would make my life heaven. I wake up each day and go to sleep each night wishing I had a penis, any size, wouldn't matter. What do you think I should do?

Inches Away in New Canaan

Dear Inches,

Medical science is making great strides, so your dreams may come true sooner than you think. And, by the way, good luck with that rally today, Mr. Beck.

2010-08-06T20:49:00.000-04:00

Letters, We Get Letters, Dept.

Dear Sobsister,

I'm a 43-year-old guy. I took some medicine, and my dick got really hard. The funny thing was, it was St. Joseph's Aspirin for Children. Is there something wrong with me?

Stiff in Ashtabula

Dear Stiff,

Not at all. And I'll see you at the Sunday bingo, Father.

2010-07-31T08:59:00.001-04:00

This Just In!, Dept.

Wait, Jennifer Lopez is going to replace Ellen DeGeneres on American Idol? Wow, the "singer/dancer/actor" who is best known for the size of her ass is going to judge musical ability. Isn't that like making Sarah Palin a Booker Prize judge?

*ha ha* All kidding aside, someone hit that fucking show on the head. The only reality television I've ever watched, and the reason I don't watch reality television.

Idol:talent::McDonald's:haute cuisine. Discuss while listening to Carrie Underwood warble, "Patsy Cline Would Kick My Ass (If She Were Still Alive)."

2010-07-25T15:34:00.001-04:00

Fourteen Lost Souls, Dept.

Right, so, Damn Yankees. Great, overlooked American musical film from the tail end of the Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals™. Rarely named among the genre's best despite powerhouse performances by Gwen Verdon as "Lola" and Ray Walston as "Applegate" (i.e., the Devil) and perennial showstoppers such as "Heart" and "Whatever Lola Wants."

At any rate, the last number in the film. "Two Lost Souls."

Exposition time: Joe Hardy, the middle-aged diehard Washington Senators fan who sold his soul to Applegate in exchange for a pennant for his hapless team and a lead role in the Senators' victory over the hated Yankees as a rejuvenated slugger, commiserates with Lola, who has fallen for the clean-cut Joe. Lola was once the "ugliest woman in Providence, Rhode Island," but was transformed into a bombshell (at the price of her soul) to help Applegate win men's souls. Joe is due to deliver his soul the next day, and the sympathetic Lola has done what she can to help him stay out of Applegate's clutches. They sit in the park, he despairs over his fate, they kiss, they adjourn to a bar for a tipsy dance number. End exposition.

"Two Lost Souls" has been done by a number of performers over the years, some not exactly representing the song's mixed tone of sadness, resignation and release.

So, that said, here's the original 1958 film version with Tab Hunter and Gwen Verdon.

Here are Jane Krakowski and Cheyenne Jackson in the 2008 Encores! series staging of Damn Yankees.

Here are Lee Remick and Jerry Lanning in a trippy, low-budget 1967 television staging.

Here are Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland doing the song in the tramp garb that the latter semi-regularly assumed in a 1963 television performance on The Judy Garland Show.

Here's a Muppet version, featuring Robin and Sweetums.

Here's a twofer: Jaye P. Morgan and Perry Como, the latter incapable of voicing despair in his buttery baritone, followed by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, who don't improve much on the tone, but do offer some nice harmony singing.

I'll spare you the many high school, college and community theater productions viewable on YT, but I will offer a special Sobsister Sunday Bonus: rehearsal footage, featuring Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera, from the original run of Chicago. Pure gold, I tells ya.

Anyway, more versions than you'd like, but fewer than you need. Or vice versa.

2010-07-04T22:30:00.000-04:00

Artificial Fires, Dept.

Watching
the National Mall and Hudson River
fireworks and
hearing
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" and "The Caissons Go Rolling Along,"
these songs that introduced
the American Century,
the disconnect between
those times and these,
that America and this.
Like replaying that recording
of your touchdown,
the one that led your high school to the final
at your retirement party.

2010-06-20T22:11:00.002-04:00

Another Op'nin', Another Show, Dept

Yeah, so your sobsister is looking at this Tumblr thing. To be precise: here. To be more precise: yo' momma.

2010-06-09T19:25:00.004-04:00

Inside a Bog It's Too Dark to Read, Dept.

Well, it's past Memorial Day, and your sobsister can take a three-month-long hiatus from chiding those who would insist on wearing white before the last Monday in May or after the first in September, and turn, instead, to one of my favorite year-round activities: pointing out Choc City's flaws.

Today's topic: Washington:bookstores::Tea Party:intellectualism. That is, something one discards, either through hostility or neglect.

Now, your sobsister, as you may recall, has lived here longer than anyone should be forced to do. As a consequence, I have Context for my critique. When I first came here, sure, there weren't "little plate" restaurants or wine bars or hookah lounges on every corner. What were here, however, were independent bookstores. On the way home today, I compiled a list, right off the top of my widdel head, of those fallen by the wayside. Here's 10 of them with their specialty in parens:

1. Lambda Rising (gay)
2. Lammas (feminism/lesbian)
3. Mystery Books (mystery)
4. Moonstone (sci-fi)
5. Travel Bookstore (travel)
6. Revolution Books (politics)
7. Common Concerns (politics)
8. Franz Bader (art)
9. Chapters (general)
10. Olsson's Books and Records (general).

Now, some of you might be saying, "Well, sobsister, businesses come and go every week, everywhere." And I would first look askance at you for your familiarity, then riposte with the fact that none of the above has been replaced. And, so, despite being ranked as the "second most literate city in the country" (behind the The Emerald City. You know, Seatown? A/k/a "Jet City"? C'mon, you're not even trying! Okay, here's a giveaway: "Gateway to Alaska"), Choc City has almost no independent bookstores. Fact. Even Politics and Prose, the highest-profile indy bookstore in the city, is being sold, according to today's news.

So, yeah. Either this amazingly literate audience is being fully served by Borders and B&N, which, if you've ever been to the Borders or B&N here, means that people are reading an awful lot of Vince Flynn, Chelsea Handler and whoever writes those wretched "street" novels with titles like Bitchez, Divaz and Afrikan Queenz and Oh No You DIN'T! that are marketed as "hip-hop lit" and eschew standard grammar and orthography as Mr. Charlie's Snares, or they're making Amazon richer than Croesus' ex-wife, who talked him out of the pre-nup.

I'm sure this all fits into some greater national trend regarding brick-and-mortar retail, its eclipse by online vendors, the decline of the paper book, blah blah. Bottom line: there's one bookstore your sobsister patronizes--a used book store, as it happens--partly because I love used book stores, but primarily and most annoyingly because it's my only real choice if I want to thumb through a book before buying it, if I want to be surprised by the serendipity that only winds along aisles and up shelves, if I want the pleasure of the impulsive purchase and the immediate gratification. My accompanying screed on the dearth of record stores in this town will have to wait for another day.

So, those of you out there who do enjoy an embarrassment of bookstores, I envy you. Few pleasures more satisfying than a cool, large series of rooms filled with well-chosen books. Even if I never read more than a pinch of them. That they exist is a great thing. And that they survive, three thousand years ago and today, in manuscript or on glossy paper. The physicality of bound paper, the fact that the tactile pleasure is physicalizing the emotional and intellectual excitement, curiosity, anticipation it will make me feel is pleasurable to me in a way that few other objects can match.

2010-05-05T19:59:00.003-04:00

I Hate It, But I Drink It Anyway, Dept.

You know, there are things that I love. Familiar things that do not lose their pleasure even through familiarity or frequent reencounter. Annie Hall, for example. Dusty in Memphis. And, of course, far-right-wing, Jesus-bothering homophobes getting caught fucking rentboys.

George Alan Rekers, sclerotic co-founder of the Gospel-gargling, bigotry broodmare Family Research Council, was discovered returning from a 10-day European vacation in the company of a comely companion of his own gender, said companion described in public writing as possessing a "smooth, sweet, tight ass" and "perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)" and being "sensual," "wild," and "up for anything." I'll let the Miami New Times tell the story:

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. "I had surgery," Rekers said, "and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him." (Medical problems didn't stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

Yet Rekers wouldn't deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com — which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks — and Lucien confirmed it.

Nom nom nom. It's Schadenfreude Wednesday, kids. The reveal is as good as you could want, short of, to paraphrase Lenny Bruce, Karl Rove whacking it in Ann Coulter's face. And as inevitable.

At this point in our history, the über-religious homophobe who indulges a taste for twink or trade is as familiar a figure as the Pilgrim forefather and the Confederate general. One thing, however, that never ceases to amaze, on a level of which Siegfried and Roy could only have dreamt, and amuse, like Ann Coulter whacking it in Karl Rove's face: how these self-loathing twunts think They'll Pull It Off FOREVER. But enough of them do that it holds out hope to these crippled souls.

And it's only Semi-Schadenfreude Wednesday, kids. Because, however much I deepdish despise those who stifle themselves and make others pay the cost in blood and tears, I have to feel some level of sympathy for a person so broken. Which is an unfamiliar feeling for me.

So, Happy Semi-Schadenfreude Wednesday. I still love hearing these stories every single time they surface. But, by posting's end, the white enamel of pleasure has an unignorable mar.

2010-05-01T22:54:00.007-04:00

Twin Sons Under a Sky of White, Dept.

Listening to Miles Davis' In Concert (Recorded Live at Philharmonic Hall, New York) reminds me of listening to Sly's There's a Riot Goin' On.

Which qualifies as more of a tweet than a blog posting, doesn't it?

Terseness and the lateness of the hour correlate highly.

2010-04-30T20:21:00.004-04:00

Non, je ne regrette rien, Dept.

The love affair is over. Not by choice. Not mine, anyway.

The object of my affection is leaving me.

Not for someone else, but, painfully, for no reason I can see.
Not yet, anyway.

I know that the next time we meet, things will definitely have changed. Perhaps for the better, but that's so hard to imagine.

We'll see.

2010-04-28T22:19:00.000-04:00

Listen to the Swallow, Dept.

As you may know, on rare occasion and for fact-finding purposes only, your sobsister visits Web sites that feature, gratuit, short erotic films, and by "short erotic films," I mean five-minute unSteadicam sextravaganzas with descriptive titles like "Russian facial slut" and "Little but a huge dick." Which, coincidentally, is also a new biography of Mickey Rooney.

Redtube, YouPorn, xhamster, PornHub, it's all one dizzying blur of ejaculate, silicone and salon tan. The pro material I won't touch. If I want to see grotesque tits, I'll watch a Teabagger debate. *ha ha* I don't joke. No, I cast a glance, instead, at those done by "amateurs." Some of whom are "amateur," while others are simply amateurs. I favor the latter, mainly for their "authenticity," a word that, once quote-bracketed, refutes itself. Like those downmarket burger joints that splash a quotey "Best Burger in Town" on their façade, wholly unattributed, so that one can only imagine the hipsterish quote-fingers and rolled eyes of it all. "Oh, yes, it's the 'Best Burger in Town.' Just like I have 'hope for the future.'"

I myself ask why any of the nice ladies in these films--all of whom get the big DeMille closeup as they work the boyfriend's/husband's/filmmaker's balls like Captain Queeg on the witness stand--would allow themselves to be filmed when, within minutes, their eye-bulging gag and eyeful of spunk will be fodder for every wanking cretin on the planet. Clearly, I do not share their view of the appropriate and desirable. But, for good or ill, it is they who drive the proceedings. The men are merely semi-erect offscreen voices, like Charlie talking to Sabrina, Kelly and Jill, except through a glory hole.

The semi-erectness, in fact, is notable, as a number of these auteurs can't quite manage a honest hard-on before the camera's unblinking eye, yet inexplicably want to make that fact known to all of us, even as they're being energetically serviced by reasonably attractive women who one would hope might've had something else to do that afternoon. Finish À la recherche du temps perdu or make a cup of chamomile tea or alphabetize their nail polish or, really, anything other than, as mentioned earlier, get an eyeful of semen.

Parenthetically, I can't imagine why everyone feels the need to have the television on in the visible background while they film themselves fucking. Is it a soundtrack thing? Like, were it silent, the blonde smoking her boyfriend's pole would be unspeakably loud? Or do they really, really not want to miss that Chris Rock concert film? For that matter, I also can't imagine the presence of mind that would allow one to operate a camera while being serviced. All of which explains why this site isn't called "The Sobsister's Porn-Cam Bloopers and Boners." And "Boners" would be in chubby fuchsia type.

At any rate, let me circle back to what might be the point of this lengthy meander: my inability to understand why someone would consent to have a sex tape made of herself for the benefit of an invisible but inescapable leering world.

I've tried and failed to find a passage I read sometime in the dim and distant past. I thought it was the porn actress Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse-Five who said it. Something to the effect of feeling sometimes like the attentions of all the unseen men who saw her in the dark were drowning her in semen. Maybe it wasn't Vonnegut at all, but it's still a useful image to capture the mood of displaying oneself for an anonymous, insatiably concupiscent audience. I don't doubt that, for some women, it is that display and desire that constitute the attraction, but, given the toxic levels of cretinism and creepiness in many corners of the Internet, it's not like George Clooney and Brad Pitt are leading a circle jerk in your honor on the other side of the screen. I suppose it's much to do with how one feels about drowning in semen of uncertain provenance. If you're thinking of having a bukkake bachelorette party, then five minutes of Internet time might not be such a big deal.

At any rate, the world of amateur short-form porn. Where on a clear day you can see Alcatraz. If you can't stand the meat, get out of the genre. And other pre-dinner aperçus.

2010-04-24T19:48:00.003-04:00

YouTube - Fiona Apple - Criminal

Bad bad girl, Dept.

This video, as I recall dimly, was criticized at the time for featuring the, politely put, lean and waifish Fiona Apple en déshabillé looking like a horny death camp survivor. Which, grouped "horny death" "camp survivor"--27 Across, eight letters--is "Liberace." Viewed at 14 years' remove, that aspect is ineluctable, but I can close my eyes and hear someone who sounds like the Black Crowes at their prime.

Further, the Mark Romanek-directed video is visionary for capturing the poses not only of the heroin chic of the '90s, but the paparazzo-upskirt of the '00s. Ms. Apple didn't flash pink, but the same manipulative vulnerability is at work, a LiLo construct avant la lettre.

2010-04-20T20:35:00.005-04:00

Vierhundertzwanzig, Dept.

So, d00ds, it's 4/20, that day on which we commemorate one very important thing: our Beloved Führer turns 121 today! Or at least his brain does, issuing orders to the Fifth or Sixth Reich--I forget which we're up to now--from a wired jar in Henry Kissinger's rec room.

*ha ha* I joke, of course. On this day, we remember the day the governor of Caracas declared independence from Spain. And smoked a lot of weed.

Excuse my levity, if not my brevity. What I'm trying to say is take the time today to roll a fatty. Just take his money and invest it in plastics.

And on the more-serious note I eventually had to reach, today, the DC Council approved a medical marijuana bill that will allow chronically ill patients to obtain marijuana from city-sanctioned distribution centers. And this is progress that I wouldn't have thought possible two years ago.

So, cheers, dears. Here's something to close out your evening.

2010-04-18T17:40:00.004-04:00

YouTube - Godspell - 04 - Joanne Jonas - Turn Back, O Man!

Jesus Is Just Alright, Dept.

At the same time that I have a nostalgic semidemiquasi-affection for parts of Godspell's score, I also understand why people hate hippies.

And I never understood Jesus as a clown. I mean, what the fuck was up with that? All those grammar school nuns who waxed wroth or wrothed wax at Jesus Christ Superstar had clearly spent their fury by the time this made it to the silver screen.

"Turn Back, O Man" is, at least on record, a cute number. The Mae West-ish asides mark it as a Nostalgia Era production, you know, from that period between the late '60s and mid '70s when the styles, music and films of the '30s and '40s informed a substantial segment of contemporary pop culture. The hippie Imogene Coca who performs it here is heavy on the whimsy, light on the sexy, in contrast to the vivacious but nameless teen from a nearby all-girls high school who pitched in on my all-boys high school's production. There was plenty of lap-sitting as she made her way up the center aisle during her performance of the number. It was like Joey Heatherton entertaining the troops in Viet Nam. Only an order of magnitude more fraught with forcibly suppressed sexual tension.

And if you call within the next 30 minutes, you can enjoy the following number, my other Godspell favorite and another Nostalgia Era throwback that reeks of Rudy Vallee crooning through a megaphone to ukulele accompaniment, "All for the Best.

The film adaptation of Godspell is, at best, weirdly entertaining; at worst, twee and misconceived. But it does offer top-notch footage of NYC's cityscape ca. 1972, particularly the latter number, wherein New York's streets and skyline are more the star than the film's protagonists.

2010-04-17T18:17:00.003-04:00

Driving Me Mad, Dept.

Do you know what scorches my permanent-press? Well, actually, if you've frequented this space for any length of time, you know the correct answer is "pretty much everything." But one thing that extra-specially ticks my box?

Say we're driving here in Choc City. And someone comes screaming the wrong way down a one-way street at 30 miles over the speed limit with the headlights off at night. We honk the motherfucking bitch because, you know, she's not observing either the letter or the spirit of the rules of the road. And the piece of shit honks back. As if we were engaged in a debate rather than my expressing disapproval with the car horn because, at that moment, I can't drop a 16-ton weight on her head.

I do not understand this. If you're driving so fucktardedly badly that I have to honk my horn at you, you should meekly accept your reprimand and resolve to improve your driving skills, not chestbump me and say, "Oh, yeah?"

Honestly.
I regularly wonder how it is, exactly, that we survive as a species.

Hulu - Glee: Vogue

2010-04-14T19:47:00.000-04:00

Hulu - Glee: Vogue

Game, Set, Madge, Dept.

Beauty's where you find it
Not just where you bump and grind it

Glee's Sue Sylvester--or is it Jane Lynch?--makes next week's Madonna-themed show a must-see. If it isn't already.

2010-04-11T22:22:00.001-04:00

It's Got a Groove, It's Got a Meaning, Dept.

Look at me, I'm Sandra B.,
martyrdom's celebrity.
Won the award, learned my husband
had whored.
I'm just poor Sandra B.

Oh, she truly is Sandy Dumbrowski! Her man tempted away by a tattooed Cha-Cha DiGregorio who offered him G*d only knows what forbidden pleasures and satisfactions!

Cute and smart and sweet and frank,
Yet my husband bangs a skank.
Take him to court, where I'll rip him a tort.
The mark of Sandra B.

No, but really. "Jesse James"? Professional ooh-bad-boy! on his third marriage, number two having been to a porn actress who was arrested after beating him; who made a homemade sex tape featuring herself, Crüe vocalist Vince Neil and a Penthouse Pet; and who did federal time for 300 large in tax evasion. Vewwy classy. Here's an example of her work. And here's a site dedicated to her time in the slammer. This is a lady who knows how to monetize her situation. As well as her willingness to pretend-fuck on camera.

So, given how well ol' Jess did with one tattooed trainwreck, he clearly decided to extend his streak, pro forma marital vows notwithstanding, with Michelle McGee. And, no, I won't stick "Bombshell" between her Christian and given names. Mainly because I don't quite see how this faux Goth who must've flunked the Suicide Girls entrance exam and whose FB page features a graphic with the legend "Fuck Me Love Me Leave Me Oh Well Fuck Off and Die"--oh, a writer and a role model--could ever be considered a "bombshell." A "bomb-cratered village on a fault line," maybe. You doubt me? How about a white-power photo shoot in Nazi regalia? It's as tacky and obvious as you would ever hope to malign her for being.

So, I leave you to ponder the attraction. Any of them, actually.

Never twice the river same!
Torn between a life and fame!
He's just a fool.
Every man his own tool.
Fangool, I'm Sandra B.!

The former Mrs. James shows how she gets and keeps a man.

2010-04-08T20:28:00.004-04:00

Pomes Penyeach, Dept.

As a younger sobsister, considerably younger, I heard two works of poetry that have remained with me to this day, some 400 years later. The first was titled "The Good Ship Venus." Anonymous in authorship. Its first quatrain unfolded as follows:

It was on the good ship Venus,
by Christ you should have seen us;
the figurehead was a whore in bed
sucking a big red penis.

The refrain consisted primarily of repetitions of the phrase "frigging in the rigging," presumably lustily declaimed in performance. So, yes, you understand.

The other, same provenance--an Albanian--was "The Ball of Inverness," which began,

Four-and-twenty virgins at the ball at Inverness.
When the ball was over,
There were four-and-twenty less.

I've always thought about that. "Four-and-twenty less." Wrong, really. And, so, today, I remedied that solecism:

Four-and-twenty virgins at the ball at Castle Dewar.
When the ball was over,
There were four-and-twenty fewer.

Actually, in most sources I've found the poem is titled "The Ball of Kirriemuir," although the tone is identical (and the rhyme would work for my purposes equally well). It begins:

O the ball, the ball, the ball, the ball, the ball
at Kirremuir,
there were four-and-twenty prostitutes a-lying
on the floor.

Here's an online version that features such lovely versifying as the following:

There was dancin' in the meadows,
There was dancin' in the ricks,
Ye could nae hear the bagpipes
For the swishin' o' the pricks.

As you might imagine, much better with a stage Scot accent. I don't do accents or dialect humor. In the best interest of all concerned, trust me.

It's a' the ladies back,
Wi' yer arses tae the wall;
Gin ye can't get fucked at Kirriemuir,
Ye'll ne'er get fucked at all!

So say we all!

2010-04-01T20:22:00.001-04:00

True to Form, Dept.

Every song, no matter good or crap, eventually comes true.

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart[1]

The dramaturges of the Absurd could not have crafted a better scenario than this. Allison Meyers, the twit-twat director of the Republican National Committee's "Young Eagles" program for post-pubescent, pre-sclerotic conservatives, was shitcanned for approving a two grand reimbursement for a donor event at a high-end bondage club in West Hollywood that features an Eyes Wide Shut vibe and faux-girl-on-girl action.

I mean, really, it's just too goddamn easy. Obvious, even. Were this a screenplay, it'd be bluepenciled to death. The far-right conservatives who, on the DL, indulge in decadent, kinky fun...CLICHÉ!! And, yet, it's twue, oh so vewwy twue.

Meyers has thrown herself in a hole and pulled it in after her, deleting her Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media profiles. No photos of her are known to exist. She hunts by night and sleeps by day. Mothers tie leeks around their children's necks to ward off her long and gory teeth. Her real name is known only to her Dark Master, the Lord of the Flies.

Naaah...I'm just foolin'...she's a subcompetent gladhander who attended Florida State and who maybe thought she'd figured out how to get ahead in the doubtless-womyn-friendly RNC. She's fucked for now, but maybe she'll "reinvent" herself and run for governor of Alaska.

Hey, it worked for the stupidest woman north of the 49th parallel.

Oh, and Michael Steele is so clowny, Ringling Brothers is considering suing him for IP theft.

1. Lou Reed, 1967.

2010-03-28T18:21:00.008-04:00

Not-Quite-Liveblogging the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Pt.I, Dept.

Another year, another set of arguments about what the "rock-and-roll" is and should it include anyone who doesn't rock out with his cock out. As your sobsister is watching the broadcast of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies on Fuse "aren't we as cool as MTV used to be? huh?" network a few weeks after the fact, I'll spare you the narrative and throw out some bullet points that you can use around the watercooler to impress your colleagues and further build the case for your prompt dismissal.

- The broadcast starts with the last bits of Jann Wenner's introductory speech. Something about renewing our faith, presumably in rock'n'roll. But what about Faithless and Faith No More? Isn't there room in the Big Wenner Tent for them?

- The lights dim, and we begin with a performance. It's all super-slow keyboard chords and dry ice a-plenty. Look, there's Bruce Springsteen! Look, there's Eddie Vedder! Look, there's Iggy Pop! Clearly, the director has no confidence in the s-l-o-w chords holding us. Look, there's Meryl Streep!

- Oh, the screen graphic says it's Phish performing "Watcher of the Skies" by Genesis. That must be why we're cutting back and forth between the stage and the members of Genesis. Boy, they look none too happy. Possibly because Phish's Trey Anastasio sings only as well as a dog does taxes. And they're opening the show with a Genesis cover? They must have tremendous faith in people's interest in the awards ceremony. Maybe that's what Jann was talking about: testing the audience's resolve with prog cover acts.

- Now, the little movie about Genesis. Short version: Phil Collins is super-defensive about the band under his tenure, and the band members hate that people will remember the commercial shit they did over the eight-minute tunes in 11/17 time. And, boy, it really still is Peter Gabriel v. everybody else.

- Trey Anastasio then gives his speech prefatory to induction of the band. It's very muso fanboy in the weeds and fairly solipsistic--I mean, crediting Genesis as a foundational influence in your musical formation is less impressive if your band sounds like shit--but informed, at least, and sincere. Phil Collins' daggers-out expression throughout says, "Get this blathering prat off the stage. Now."

- Five members of Genesis come up. Immediately, we're told that Peter Gabriel couldn't be there. He had a "very legitimate, genuine excuse" for not being there, apparently. Something about dust bunnies to sweep, hair to wash and condition and bloodboiling hatred for Phil Collins. *ha ha* I joke. It was awkward. Everything was awkward. You get the feeling that none of them is happy and, perhaps, has not been happy since Peter Gabriel wore that flower outfit. Phil Collins has gone from luvable '80s drum jamoke to the guy at the end of the counter, chain-smoking Luckys and dropping the butts in his cold coffee cup while he mutters about shit and the world and people and shitfuck goddammit.

- Phish then does another number. Not sure why Genesis itself isn't performing. Is Trey their Shabbes goy? "No Reply at All" is the song, and, wowee-wow-wow, Trey Anastasio's high school talent show vocals are doing nothing to enliven a cover so flaccid, it dangles. Ugh, if prog wasn't dead, this yanked the plug out of the wall. I guess Phish decided to go with mad otaku music trivia skillz over charisma and vocal ability for their frontman. It's like CPA Karaoke up there.

As a result, I'm not sure if the show opened with Genesis because they're a Big Name that would draw viewers into the broadcast or because the producers wanted to burn off two wretched covers of a band that couldn't be arsed to perform at its own induction. In either case, the very model of meh.

Next up: Iggy, Iggy, Iggy

2010-03-07T17:46:00.013-05:00

More like Blunderland Amirite?, Dept.

Yes, so your sobsister now dons the ceremonial caftan, curlytoed slippers and pointed headdress of the amateur film critic to describe my Saturday morning viewing experience of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3D.

Initially, I was tempted to divide the film into Things I Liked and Things I Didn't, with Helena Bonham-Carter in the former and everything else in the latter. But that's a bit too glib and facile. From the vaudeville act of the same name.

Instead, I give you, Constant Readers, the Big Picture and then fill in a detail here and there.

Basically and to its ruin, this film focuses on the visuals and ignores the fact that one's experience of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass Land is defined as much by Lewis Carroll's whirling, snapping, enchanting language, logic and humor as it is by the "wacky characters." It follows, then, the well-trodden path of most film and television adaptations to date in its fixation on the look of said characters--Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, Red Queen--without attempting to recreate or reimagine their voices as conceived in Carroll's wordplay.

As a result, this Alice is like a great spangled and beribboned package that one opens, only to find two-day-old bread and stale marshmallows. Burton told Entertainment Weekly, "I'd never really read the Lewis Carroll books. I knew Alice through music and other illustrators and things. The images were always strong, but the movie versions I'd seen, to me, were always just, like, a little brat wandering around a bunch of weirdos. [Laughs] It was fun to try to make the characters not just weird--I mean they are weird, but we wanted to get deeper into those characters."

This says it all, really. He's taken an illustrator's view of Alice and, in the process, eliminated not only Carroll's wordplay, but also the notion of narrational trajectory, Carroll's or those of any of his interpreters. And the notion that Burton wanted to get "deeper into those characters" in any traditional sense of that phrase is extremely difficult to reconcile with the finished product, given that they all--beginning and ending with another Johnny Depp portrayal, à la his Willy Wonka, of an impenetrable, inscrutable grotesque--are cartoonish in the extreme.

Deprived of linguistic and intellectual fireworks--and the dialogue is, politely put, "pedestrian"--the film is, at times, a plod. Burton's fusty black-lace-and-ash aesthetic has Alice looking and reading like something cobbled together by Goth film students who want to, like, subvert or whatever maaan, the Disney version.

Further, aside from that fact that the film's conceit--a 19-year-old Alice returns to a Wonderland that has been blighted by the Red Queen's rule to undertake a quest--is RPG-ish in a not-brilliant way, the story has been clumsily rewritten. Alice is no longer the fictional/real-life daughter of Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church, Oxford, but the fictional/fictional daughter of "Charles Kingsleigh," a merchant with interests in the Far East, and she is being nudged into an arranged marriage with a ginger dweeb Lord with bad digestion.

This would be an odd and unnecessary substitution, except that it affords Burton and screenwriter Linda "I'm eating out forever on The Lion King" Woolverton the opportunity to end the film by having a young woman in the what? 1870s? spout a 21st-century litany of womynly empowerment to an aristocratic crowd that, in the real world, would've had her walled into the attic. She then presumes to dictate to her late father's business partner (and father of the recently spurned swain) her seat-of-the-pantaloons thinking about expanding trade to China. He is, of course, delighted by her, what, fire? spunk? Or perhaps some combination of the two: I'm favoring "fink" over "spire." And makes her an apprentice on a merchant vessel--the "Wonder," but of course; I guess "The Mad Hatter, as Played by Johnny Depp" wouldn't've fit on a ship of the time--to China. It's like an American Girl® book by James Clavell.

Now, the East India Company, which enjoyed a series of monopolies over Asian trade, first opened a trading post in Canton, China, in 1711. So, this bit of visionary entrepreneurialism on the part of "Alice Kingsleigh" would appear to be just a tad out of date, even going back 50 years from the date of publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Why didn't they just have her call for manned space travel? That would've made it even more relevant and historically significant. And maybe for a reliable 3G network. Brought to you by Sprint.

The performances of this soporific screenplay were mostly fine. Helena Bonham-Carter makes the whole thing almost worth it. Her peevish and macrocephalic Red Queen is a great comic and dramatic turn. Crispin Glover, very Crispin Glover as the Knave. At one point, he gestures towards the camera, and I expect him to start fake-laughing before Biff pummels him. Excellent Alan Rickman voice for the Caterpillar. Anne Hathaway, pale as Vogue: Death Edition with smudges for eyes and brows, slowly swans about her sterile castle like a 1957 figure skater on Miltown, gin back. Unfortunately, the underwritten Alice falls to Mia Wasikowska, who evokes a less-interesting Gwyneth Paltrow. She's like Chris Martin playing Gwyneth Paltrow.

And the graphics were decent. 3D just 'cause. The film doesn't do much with the extra dimension except feature those always-amazin' shit-flying-at-the-audience moments that made 3D so commonplace for 15 minutes after House of Wax premiered in 1953.

It was just...boring. There were long stretches where the formulaic quest movie unspooled. She Gathers her Allies. She Finds One in an Unexpected Place. She Suffers a Reverse. She is Triumphant. Her winsome animal companions each had a simplistic back story. On top of which, these watch-glancing stretches were occasionally punctuated by moments that, beside the Goth gloom and the multiplex grasp of history, literature and culture, were unpleasant because of their explicit violence. "Hey, Alice in Wonderland! That's got bunnies in it, right? Little Alice Faye Marie will love it! She gets so scared by those other kids' movies!" And, yes, she will be charmed by the scene of miniature Alice jumping from head to severed head floating in the moat to get to the Red Queen's castle grounds. "Off with his head!" right? Except made unnecessarily obvious.

I don't know if the flaws in the movie come from Burton having to compromise his vision or from Burton not having to compromise his vision. But it is the dog's breakfast. Too violent for the children who would be an Alice adaptation's natural audience, too dumb for the adults who would come to the film expecting Carrollian mind games, too tame for the freaks who want this to be Švankmajer's Alice done 3D. I'm actually not sure of its natural audience, save Johnny Depp completists and Tim Burton fan-addicts.

So, yes. It was a disappointment. I'd gone into it with diminished expectations based on the reviews I'd read, but even those were inflated relative to the level of satisfaction I derived from this film. Wait for the DVD, then wait for a friend to rent it. It's not Švankmajer, it's not American McGee, it's not Lou Bunin or Jonathan Miller.

Here's particularly what it isn't: A few days before seeing the film, I found out that a television adaptation of Elizabeth Swados' Alice in Concert had been made in 1982, not long after its short run at the Public Theater in NYC. Meryl Streep, on a bare stage, in overalls and a turtleneck, plays Alice and is potently charming at such intimate range. And, though Swados' songs and story occasionally go off-piste, there is, at least, an attempt at Carrollian inventiveness and ingenuity, particularly when La Streep uses her body, training and talent to convey, with no green screen or CGI, growing bigger than a room will hold.

Burton's Alice, by contrast, is lazy. An offering to a broader audience than he's enjoyed that will likely not attract new adherents and probably disappoint those who've enjoyed his earlier work. How can Edward Scissorhands and this work be by the same filmmaker? Or Beetlejuice? Or Batman Returns? The invention and energy in those films curdles here into a nasty, calculated product, all sharp edges and surface gloss.

At the beginning of the first Alice book, she asks herself, "and what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" Viewers of Burton's Alice might reasonably ask themselves "and what is the use of a film without story or characters?"

2010-03-06T07:34:00.005-05:00

En Pleno Culo, Dept.

It's been a mixed week for gay lovin'.

Wednesday marked the dawn of legal same-sex marriage in Choc City.

Thursday, anti-gay, married, Republican California State Senator Roy Ashburn was arrested on a DUI after leaving a gay bar with some dude.

Friday, news broke of a Vatican chorister and the gay tricks he obtained for a married Vatican gentleman-in-waiting for €2,000 a pop.

That said, it was a great week to be someone possessed both of a pro-equality mindset and of a deep and abiding sense of Schadenfreude.

Let me break from this for a second to share with you my YouTube Comment of the Week. I'd googled the phrase I've used to title this posting out of curiosity to see where else besides my own mind it might have occurred. Under a four-second--yes, "four-second" thank you Marconi--clip of some brunette mannequin aspirant branded "Paula Davina," I found this comment, which contained the phrase in question:

Yo le meteria la lengua en pleno culo y le mamaria la chocha hasta que me diga "AY PAPI METEMELO YA QUE NO PUEDO MAS!!! AY, AY, AY, PAPI ME VENGOOOO QUE RICOOOOOO!!!! DAME LA LECHITA CALIENTE EN EL CULO PAPI ASIIIII!

I would translate, but it wouldn't represent the "fat guy who cracks up his friends" vibe of it. Suffice to say that there is no word of it that does not testify to his searing desire to fuck every square inch of this chick.

ANYhoo, what can I say about tragic situations wherein men who have profited in a variety of ways from their conformity to, or espousal of, viciously homophobic views then get fuckety-fuck-fucked for their blinding manlust in full view of Jesus Christ and everyone, thanks to the Interwubba-wubba-wubba, as Downtown Julie Brown might once have said. That I love them like a terrier loves equal and opposite tension on the other end of a chew toy? Like that fat motherfucker two grafs back feels about a woman he'll never, ever, ever, never meet? With the cumulative intensity of the sestrigintillion times this story appears or occurs or is quickly and violently hidden in America and Europe and everywhere that humanity is thwarted for the sake of Shit that People Made Up to Keep Others In Line.

The California shitbot--or his "reputational management team"--issued a statement that had a lot of "Ah-have-sinned-Lawd!" to it, the equivalent of him barechested begging strangers to piss on him in the back of some 1978 leather bar half a block from the West Side Highway.

The cassock queen spoke through his mouthpiece, Vinnie Boombats, and said something along the lines of "hurfle murfle privacy hurfle murfle allegations." Yet, according to a wiretap, this Stalwart Soldier of Christ had been ordering bespoke boys, including "'two black Cuban lads,' a former male model from Naples, and a rugby player from Rome," says the HuffPo. Oh, can you begrudge me my sloppy joy? Angelo Balducci, the oh-so-pious twunt in question--he was even a pallbearer for JPII!!--"[was] recorded describing precise physical details of the men he wanted." Let's guess the "precise physical details" he specified... I've got one! "MONSTER ROTO-ROOTER COCK" Yes.

Dear Jesus, it was a hectic week, but you made it so much better for me. My thanks to you and your excellent support staff.

2010-02-23T20:16:00.006-05:00

'Cause I'm a Creep, Dept.

As everyone knows, the '60s were a time of tremendous evil. Many irritating tropes of our times were conceived under casual sedation in over-aircon'd rooms while simulated stereo recordings droned in the background. Astonishingly malignant mindsets were more than tolerated; yes, they were even embraced. One such has been recently displayed on the stylish TV smash Mad Men as if it were a medieval gynaecological device: the sophisticated, pervasive misogyny of the time.

Difficult as it may be to believe in these enlightened times, when women can freely climax without fear of confinement in grimy mental institutions, at one point, in the confluence of Cold War paranoia, Eisenhower-era conformism, unregulated chemical derangement and the flop sweat stink of White Male Fear, misogyny of the most corrosive sort was celebrated in the popular culture, and didactic materials were devised and disseminated to instruct women, those fragile vessels, in how not to tipple-topple the status quo with untoward behavior or attitudes.

One prominent example comes to us from the pens of '60s pop music boffins Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who, in the song "Wives and Lovers," reveal an attitude toward women not unlike that which one might adopt in dealing with froward children at mealtime, as Hal David essentially tells young brides that, if they don't eat all their vegetables, the boogieman is going to jump out of the closet and bumboozle them.

"Wives and Lovers," in Jack Jones' Top 20 version, is a lightly swinging ditty perfect for scoring those martini-pitcher evenings. One can tune out the words and enjoy it as a classic pop confection. So, what makes this song a leading candidate for creepiest song of a decade filled with them (don't get me started on "Somethin' Stupid") is the rub between the song's light'n'easy arrangement and the chilling message of its words. Had the lyrics been set to a section of Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" or even the Sabs' "Iron Man," the fit would've been more congruent. Instead, you get a frothy "Bluesette"-sounding Marlo Thomas theme song with an undertone of rusty Gillette blades in the medicine cabinet ready for long cuts down-not-across in a warm Tuinal bath.

Basically, the message is: listen, sweetheart, your housewifely duties don't stop at rearing the 2.5, cleaning the house and fixing his grub--so, get yourself in pearls and heels as he gets off the 5:30 from Grand Central and pour him a drink while premoistening your business for his pleasure. Otherwise, he's going to plow his blonde, fit and ready secretary through a hotel headboard, and it'll be All Your Fault.

So, yes, Creepiest Song of the '60s. Thank you, Hal David, I can only imagine your home life at the time.

Wives and Lovers

(Burt Bacharach & Hal David)

Hey! Little Girl
Comb your hair, fix your makeup
Soon he will open the door
Don't think because there's a ring on your finger
You needn't try anymore

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I'm warning you...

Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don't send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He's almost here...

Hey! Little girl
Better wear something pretty
Something you'd wear to go to the city and
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love
Time to get ready
Time to get ready for love

2010-02-21T18:54:00.004-05:00

Tengo Todo Papi, Dept.

Someone referred to Dominicaneoyorquina Maluca as a "Dominican M.I.A." I'll go that one better and call her "M.I.A. meets Lily Allen for a double-caf mocha loca in the Heights." Not what you'd call a long discography, but "El Tigeraso" is a catchy numbah. Enjoy.

2010-02-15T17:10:00.001-05:00

Selling the Sizzle, Dept.

Great album, the two-disc UK pressing particularly. The U.S. single-disc version has the cover pic of *sigh* Patsy Kensit in a slit skirt on a scooter. A preternaturally cute woman at that point.

I digress.

Or do I? Because, on the topic of pulchritude marketed: American Apparel ads.

Just for background, AA is the largest clothes manufacturer in the United States, says the Wik. And their ad campaigns have been featured in prominent publications dedicated to the featuring of ad campaigns. Periodicals that could be called, say, Faboo Ads Quarterly or OMG, That Ad!!. If those don't exist, take them, a lagniappe for your custom. At any rate, their ads.

American Apparel, or "AA" for the remainder of this exercise, runs gynocentric ads whose design conceit, to drag in Sir Philip Sidney, seems to be "Girls AA President Dov Charney Would Like to Fuck." Which might account for the string of sexual harassment lawsuits filed against him. Basically, multiethnic size 2s in their early twenties arranged langourous and en déshabillé against a plain background. Attractive in a studied unstudied way. Like, "Yes, I'm that Latina-Asian girl with the smile you saw on the subway this morning. But in a lace body stocking." The ads position them as attractive, but not forbiddingly so. Eye-catching but not "cute." Regular girls who happen to be wearing a tank thong while arching their back on a bare mattress. The models like to arch their backs. And spread their legs. Occasionally at the same time. Here, in Choc City, AA likes to take the full back page of the local free weekly for its ads. As a result, one walks into work after lunch on Thursdays carrying a periodical that looks like Barely Legal Lingerie. Very impressive on that crowded elevator ride.

The ads sell women's clothing but appear to be aimed at men (for whom AA also makes clothing, but, for some reason, never features arching their back and spreading their legs). I don't know if the thinking at AA is that guys are going to be all, "Hey, baby, why don't you get this Double Diamond and Crescent Pattern Fishnet, because the model with the dancer's body who's wearing it in the ad I myself would like to bone till the cows come home?" How often that turns out well, your sobsister cannot say. Not very, I would think. Often, that is.

At any rate, American Apparel. You can't argue with success. Or, rather, you could, except that you're temporarily distracted by the Search for the Best Bottom in the World competition AA is currently running, and then you lose your train of thought.

2010-02-14T10:33:00.005-05:00

Toujours Gai, Dept.

Right, so I'm watching the first half-hour of the film Bobby Short at the Cafe Carlyle, the audience shots of which alone are worth the price of admission as an overview of a certain slice of NYC life in the Bad Old Good Old Days, i.e., 1979. And he's being Bobby Short, which, if you're Dianne Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters is intolerable, but, for the rest of us, is one paradigm of saloon singing, as he calls it. At any rate, the performance is interspersed with interview segments wherein he talks about his life and career. At one point, he talks about growing up listening to broadcasts from the Cotton Club in New York and learning the songs from each edition, that is, each year's revue, of the Cotton Club. He describes then going to New York in 1937 and meeting Duke Ellington, who was preparing the score for that year's Cotton Club show. Short describes the songs, particularly one number, "She's Tall, She's Tan, She's Terrific," as being "almost American folklore."

The scene returns to the Carlyle, where he launches into "She's Tall..." (which, in fact, was written by John Coots and Benny Davis and performed by Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra in '37 and available here) as part of a medley that continues with a short bit of "Posin'" by Chaplin and Kahn, then a laidback version of "Truckin'," a Koehler and Bloom ditty recorded by Fats Waller in 1935, followed by "Breakfast in Harlem," most often associated with the team of Buck and Bubbles, and a bit of 1933's "Old Man Harlem" by Rudy Vallee and Hoagy Carmichael and then back for the big finish with a reprise of "Truckin'." In short, a fabulous medley of songs associated with Harlem, the Cotton Club, '30s dance culture and his own first exposure to the city.

What prompted this entry are the lyrics to "Posin'," which, in Short's performance, on paper and in Jimmie Lunceford's recording, remind your sobsister of nothing so much as Madonna's "Vogue." Here are the lyrics to the first two verses and chorus, transcribed from the Lunceford recording:

Posin'!
Oh, posin'!

Dee-dee, fall-e-oh!
There's a dance you ought to do,
Let me introduce to you,
Posin'!
Everybody pose!

Get a partner, then begin,
Hold whatever pose you're in,
Posin'!
Everybody pose!

It's a dance that you can dance with your girl or wife;
Find a pose, then stop; position's everything in life!
You'll find there's no telling when
Dance will stop and start again,
Posin'!
Everybody pose!

Me, I'm drawing a bright line between this number, inspired by Harlem during its '30s renaissance (at which time underground drag balls gave birth to the dramatic dance style known as "presentation" or "performance") and that *dear god* 20-year-old song, voguing itself the lineal descendant of presentation developed at house balls featuring competition between the "children" of the great style houses of New York. The history of house balls and culture is too big a topic for a blog post (although here's an informative article on the topic), but I enjoy drawing these lines, and so I have done.

2010-02-13T21:19:00.006-05:00

Ruining his Pants Crease, Dept.

Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way" is a Great Rock Song. Perfect for any occasion. Driving down the highway. Singing along in a bar. Underscoring a lap dance. This last I can only speak of theoretically, as I've only seen them performed on television. Most recently at the National Prayer Breakfast, when Michele Bachmann thigh-fucked Satan to the tune of NIN's "Closer." It was a moving experience for all concerned. In my case, my breakfast relocated itself from my stomach to my lap.

So, yes, Joe Walsh, "Rocky Mountain Way." Listen to it here, then buy it at your favorite Geschlechtsverkehrbotschaft or neighborhood Fernsehgemeinschaft.

2010-02-09T18:26:00.004-05:00

Grandma's Hands, Dept.

Sarah's hands
Gave her hints on her positions
Sarah's hands
Took a hundred large away
Sarah's hands
Spell out words she should be saying,
She say, "Raisin' taxes ain't for me,
I'm all for Big Energy,
Who said free speech should be free?"
Sarah's hands

Sarah's hands
Used to field-dress baby's dinner
Sarah's hands
Now just play in the couture
Sarah's hands
Are more eloquent than she is, she says,
"Trippy, Grandma sympathize
Baby momma's got loose thighs,
Scream to God and clench her eyes"
Sarah's hands

Sarah's hands
Twitch and fret on FOX's cameras
Sarah's hands
Tell the nation she's no brain
Sarah's hands
Won't touch presidential Bible
She'll say, "Sure, I like to speak in tongues,
Whore for oil and carry guns,
Betcha Jesus loves my sons"
Lord, we hope she never, ever runs.

If God's in Heaven, we won't be in
Sarah's hands

With profound apologies to the great Bill Withers

2010-01-27T21:01:00.004-05:00

Bringing a Boiled Leek to a Gunfight, Dept.

Right, so... Scott Brown. Massachusetts. A week later, and my mind is still trying to wrap itself around how incredibly badly the Demoprats miscalculated that particular race, but I'm actually having better luck imagining a 6-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold.

Let's see...on the one hand, you've got this Man of the People who drives a beat-ass pickup truck, is a lieutenant colonel in the Mass. National Guard, is a champion triathlete, won Cosmo's "America's Sexiest Man" competition back in the day, has raised $5 million for an order of Cistercian nuns, is married to a TV newswoman and has one daughter who was a semifinalist on American Idol and another who's pre-med at Syracuse, the two of them attractive and apparently comfortable wearing very small swimwear.

On the other hand, you had someone who lost a double-digit lead in the polls by fucking up a joke about the Red Sox; defending the overreaction during the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign when LED signs were thought to be bombs; being on the side of the angels on key issues that are hugely liberal, i.e, divisive; and being a competent litigator at a time when lawyers and the educated are in particularly low esteem. I mean, the Democrats could've run Taylor Swift stapled to one of the Na'vi and still had an uphill slog. So, "aloof wonk" is just a few doors down from the Hopeless Hotel on the Rue de Despair.

I can't imagine the calculus that the Dems used to arrive at this juncture. Maybe it worked on paper. Maybe people in focus groups lied about favoring competence over charisma. Maybe the polling was conducted by the same outfit that touted Thomas E. Dewey, New Coke and Leno at 10. I myself don't know.

At any rate, Massachusetts, having sated its need to skullfuck the legacy of their late senior senator, now has its own Sarah Palin. Now, I wrote earlier about my demand that Dickflashin' Brown cover the Palinator, because, according to the ancient texts of my people, "OMGz!!! bby Bralin wld TOTLY rul!!!" In other words, or in words, their offspring would signal the End of Days and the Rapture of the Rapture-Ready, which I'm cool with because I'd enjoy getting a seat on the subway every morning and not seeing anyone reading The Washington Times as anything resembling journalism outside, say, Myanmar.

But, now I'm thinking something else, and this is what I'm thinking: have Scott Brown and Sarah Palin ever been photographed together? Because, I'm concerned, Gentle Readers. Concerned that the entities we know as The Most Annoying Woman in America™ and Starkers McBushpeek may actually be the two personae of a hermaphroditic whole, possibly from another planet, if not another dimension!

Keep watching the skies, friends. And keep watching Glee, because, sure, New Directions won Sectionals, but look at the competition... And, finally, keep watching your hands, because when you shake hands with the Bralin, there's a better-than-even chance you'll lose your rings and a digit or two in the exchange.

2010-01-26T08:21:00.001-05:00

"Eugenics" Spelled Backwards Is "Satan", Bitchez!!!111, Dept.

Well, it looks like it's time for an old-fashioned Sobsister Caption Contest! Because this cries out for something like public commentary. Beyond, "huh huh, I'd hit dat...twice." Which is the tenor of a certain segment of the online dialogue I've read. But then I really shouldn't follow Ellen DeGeneres' Twitter feed. *ha ha* No, really, she's obsessed.

At any rate, if these are the kids he could produce with the wife, I can only reiterate my request, no, demand that he and Sarahcuda unite to Make a Baby. Das Überbaby. Who will grow to rule us with a strong right hand of Pandering Charisma and a sharp left hand of Wrongheaded Statement.

2010-01-17T17:21:00.006-05:00

Double Meaning, Hidden Dragon, Dept

So, as Constant Readers may know, I'm a big fan of the risque R'n'B. Songs like "Big Ten-Inch Record" and "Let Me Bang Your Box" and "Big Long Slidin' Thing." And, of course, the great crossover double-entendre single, the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man." As a consequence of which, readers have asked me, sobsister, are you a sixty-minute man? To which I reply, Sure am...it takes at least that long for the Cialis to kick in. *ha ha* I kid regarding use of erection-enhancing medication. In fact, next week, we're going over to Madrid Airport to see the Spanish Fly. *ha ha* No, really, I've never taken any pills or powders to provoke tumescence, senescence or luminescence. Mainly out of fear of that Four-Hour Erection about which the ads all warn me. I mean, what do you do with it for the remaining three hours and 55 minutes? *ha ha* Oh, dick humor...

At any rate, "Sixty Minute Man." Here's my question. The singer, bass Bill Brown, talks about the 60 minutes comprising 15 minutes of kissin', 15 minutes of teasin', 15 minutes of squeezin' and 15 minutes of "blowin' my top." Now, I thought he was the top. So, I have to recalibrate my entire understanding of the sexual dynamics of that relationship. Is he declaring himself a bottom? Did they do such things in 1951? I thought people were too busy dropping dimes on comsymps before the HUAC to declare their sexual power preference, but I may be wrong.

Note to self: investigate correlation between impotence and chairmanship of congressional committees. Then cross-reference for Republican control of the House and Senate. Then take a nap. Then wake up, refreshed. Then maybe have a little snack, nothing too big, dinner's in a couple of hours.

2010-01-09T19:51:00.002-05:00

Bing-Bing-Bing! Ricochet Writeup!!, Dept.

I watch a fair amount of television apparently targeting the coveted decrepitude demo. The tell? Lotsa insurance ads sponsored by Cayman Islands shells comprising two guys and a tub of disposable cellies in a backroom holding company laundering Kazakh filth money. Baskets of commercials touting our time's equivalent of patent medicine. Sure, this'ere tonickal libation will cure the bladder swellings, feminine hysteria and anemia both, the croup, the Spanish croup and the German bleeding croup, all in no time at all! Some of ya will have curing fits. A few may have medicinal palpitations. That's yer business and the Lord's. ONE dollahdollahdollahdollah!!

And one thing I've learned from these ads--aside from the fact that, despite being quite ill with a variety of serious physical and mental disorders as well as with the foretold and ineluctable side-effects of their medication, people generally dress nicely, have loving friends and family and live in very pretty houses, often near beaches--is that prescription medicine has names that are poetic in their descriptions of their effect. And by "poetic," I mean, "annoying." So, I've decided that pharmaceutical companies have developed name generators that are fed Bush 43's speeches to form a linguistic matrix from which to generate brand names. You got the black dog onya? You gotta abilify yourself! Clear some brush. Heh-heh.

But that's not even the topic of this post, toasties. It's tangencies.

Here: your sobsister scores a small sack of one-buck vinyl, among which is an LP of instrumentals designed to accompany dancers warming up at home with the Luigi technique.
Now: your sobsister spent many an afternoon hour over three years taking jazz classes at Luigi's studio just south of Lincoln Center and up redolent stairs behind the Greek deli. I never got beyond the advanced beginner level, but it was as much physical fun as I've had doing most anything else ever. Nailing a combination after 45 minutes' hard trying was a heady feeling for somebody who, through high school and college, never pulled off either a Victor Sylvester or a Rudy Valentino.

Eugene Louis "Luigi" Facciuto himself is a whole post or two's worth of story. As Wikipedia notes, he was a dancer "who, after suffering a crippling automobile accident in the 1950s, created a new style of jazz dance based on the warm-up exercises he invented to circumvent his physical handicaps." After restoring himself, he danced in On the Town, An American in Paris, Annie Get Your Gun, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon and White Christmas, apprenticing himself to Robert Alton and Gene Kelly, the latter reportedly giving him his nickname.

Fabulous classes, the beginner classes he taught every day and the ones his teachers, including the wonderful Nicole, taught before or after in that room with smooth wood floors, floor-to-ceiling mirrors and huge windows onto Broadway. Each one beginning with the warmups and stretches that Luigi himself devised during his recovery, each time shepherded through the nuances by Luigi's instructive asides, some of them mantras he would repeat several time per class.

At any rate, the instrumentals on the LP. Recorded in 1962 and intended to accompany warmups away from the studio, the songs, all originals, flowed from the pen of 23-year-old composer George Fischoff, a piano graduate of Juilliard and student of Serkin and other notable teachers. They're background music, slow- to midtempo tunes that would've become ingrained in the student after hearing it every day while working through the warmup sequence developed by Luigi and described in the booklet one could optionally purchase for 10 bucks.

Nothing particularly memorable. Most likely his seconds. Not representative of the music that he, as a composer and classically trained pianist, would think destined for immortality. His back-cover bio talks about him writing the incidental music for a production of a Garcia Lorca play, and how an "eminent Broadway conductor" had heard this score and "immediately secured publishing rights" to it. The theme from this score was given a lyric and became Fischoff's "first published composition."

So what? You figure he shuffled off to obscurity, giving piano lessons on the Upper West Side through the '70s. But no. He didn't.

1967. "98.6" Keith's biggest hit. Yes, he went by "Keith." Up to #7 on the Billboard chart. Greatest body temperature song till Suzanne Vega's "99.9 F°" And then there's 1967. Spanky and Our Gang, "Lazy Day"? Lead-off cut on the debut album and all the way up to #14. Two classic slices of '60s sunshine pop, music by Mr. Bischoff. Then there's the 1970 B'way musical version of Georgy Girl, titled Georgy, music by Fischoff, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager. Somewhat less successful. Seven preview performances, four subsequently. Curtain down on that venture. Since then, George Fischoff has apparently continued composing for the theatre, including a number of Bible-themed shows that spring from his fervent Christian beliefs. But it's not all Reverend Lovejoy Revue: he most recently toured a show about the life of Gauguin, as well as previously writing the score for a musical based on James Michener's Sayonara.

So, tangencies. MGM musicals, jazz dance classes, a one-buck album and the musical career of George Fischoff. If I were channeling the late Paul Harvey, I could probably have ended this with the revelation that George Fischoff changed his name and gender and now performs as...Bette Midler.

I am not, however, to the understandable relief of his survivors and many fans.

2009-12-30T21:18:00.009-05:00

The 3Rs, Dept.

As a wee little sobsister, I watched an assload of television.

I may have mentioned that.

Whatever was on the local independent channels in NYC. WPIX. WNEW. WWOR. So, I was weaned on hours and hours of F Troop and McHale's Navy, My Favorite Martian and I Love Lucy, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. The foundation stones of modern television comedy, such as it is. And along with all this was an double-scoop helping of cartoons. Warner Bros. and Fleischer and Disney and Hanna-Barbera and Gumby, whose surrealism unnerved me in a way I enjoyed but couldn't identify (never a huge fan of MGM or Terrytoons or Lantz, never particularly liked Tom and Jerry or Heckle and Jeckle or Woody Woodpecker; I watched them, though, because, really, what else was I to do as a 7-year-old? Hail a cab down to the Stork Club?). And a whole bunch of what I now know as anime.

Not the eyeglazing slickness of now, but a simpler version, exported and reshaped for what was perceived as the American sensibility. 8th Man and Gigantor and Speed Racer and, rarely, Kimba the White Lion.

And there's all manner of fascinating minutiae associated with the preceding, from Isao Tomita composing the theme song to Kimba to Ralph Bakshi doing the opening to the U.S. version of 8th Man. Enough for a Web site of its own, I'm sure. At any rate, along with these was an animated film I only recently discovered was titled Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon.

I happened upon it by searching YouTube for the phrase "rise, robots, rise," which I remembered from an animated film I watched several times back then and nothing to do with the great and obscure early '90s band. Having watched the clip and having it not only stir long-dormant memories, but intrigue me on its own terms, I now feel compelled to find the film and watch it in its entirety.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying Rise Robots Rise's two videos on YT: "If I Only Knew" and "Talk Is Cheap". When first I heard this band back in that golden morning in America before Monica Lewinsky was baptized in presidential spooge (screen gets wavy; harp glissandi unspool), they'd been touted as "Steely Dan-like." I bought the CD and didn't hear the connection, so I set it aside. Returning to it now, I can see the slight resemblance, more attitudinal than musical, but also hear all the non-Steely Dan goodness in there, as well.

And if you order within the next thirty minutes, you will enjoy this collection of 1960s Marvel Superheroes TV cartoon theme songs. Your sobsister has hummed lyrically mangled versions of these since knee-high to a grasshopper.

No, don't thank me. It's my responsibility according to the wise and aged monk who gave me my powers

2009-12-17T19:35:00.009-05:00

It's Like Ray-ee-ain on Your Wedding Day, Dept.

Right, so Alanis Morissette is interviewed by Runner's World about her preparations to run her first marathon. Why Alanis Morissette? I don't know; maybe Edie Brickell was busy, maybe Suzanne Vega had a charley horse, maybe Lisa Loeb has ballooned to 20 stone.

At any rate, the most famous semi-Jewish Canadian female singer-songwriter ever is lobbed breathless, starstruck questions like, "Have you had any celebrity running partners?" and "You're a rock star. Shouldn't you be doing tons of drugs and staying up late and partying?" You know, the questions one normally asks a runner in a magazine devoted to running. And Alanis says things like, "I do have a philosophy that includes kind of keeping the balance...There is great care, but I still party and include a little debauchery and some indulgences because I have to." Pretty straightforward. A subtle allusion to her activities, and done.

But, no. That's not enough for Our Girl Reporter. Her follow-up: "What's your favorite way to indulge and party?" 'Cause, like, I like to party, too...? Like, I interviewed Chace, well, not interviewed-interviewed...? like, I talked to him, you know? at this, like, thing in Silverlake...? And I was, like, ohmyGhod, so messed up!!!111

At any rate, Alanis answers, "I occasionally indulge in red wine, and it's fun to have medical marijuana once in while."

Now...no. This is not a helpful thing to say from the standpoint of advocacy for medical marijuana. The point of medical marijuana is to relieve pain or combat the symptoms of a wasting disease or alleviate depression or whatever therapeutic use to which it's being put. But it shouldn't be "fun," any more than taking Paxil or Lipitor or Detrol is fun. No, the thing to say is, "It's fun to have marijuana once in a while." Full stop.

At any rate, the interview continues, it ends, it's published online.

Then come the comments.

And, through the magic of the Internuts, we get to hear from someone named RunToLive. Oh, such a jolly fellow is RunToLive! Here's his first comment on Alanis' interview:

I think it's just plain stupid, and sad actually, that she smokes marijuana just to keep her "rock star" image. I was kind of impressed until I got to the whole marijuana bit...

Not content to leave it at that, three minutes later he notes:

Oh and I *loved* the "The detox and veganism really allowed me to tune into the subtleties of how food affects my body." part *before* she adds "oh, yeah...and I smoke dope [paraphrased]." It just throws the "tune into the subtleties" and the veganism bit into the trashcan.

RunToLive lists his interests as, "Running, lifelong learning, and making the world a better place." Clearly, he accomplishes the latter goal by making other people wrong as often and as hard as he can. At any rate, a few more people comment, pro and con, then here comes RunToLive with his capper:

I just think it's stupid that she talks up the detoxifying effects of veganism, then goes on to mention that she pollutes her body with dope. Pollution is pollution when it comes to the ill effects it can have on a runner's physiology, whether it be from marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol.

Umm..."pollution is pollution"? By this point, I'm imagining this judgmental stugots is cowering behind a desk, lest his "essence" be stolen by women. Or taking another icy shower to keep the thoughts, the memories, from crowding into the front of his head. All those little gray men, huge expressionless eyes and lighttipp'd fingers, feeling him, probing him as they rise, together, in a beam of solid light to the waiting starship...

Anyhoo, it amused me and disgusted me, both. The notion that his opposition to a famous stranger's lifestyle would prompt him to write at length in order to discredit--and, by doing so, silence--that impossibly distant voice. Then, I realized, that's what I'm doing right here, except my target is an anonymous shmuck. So, maybe we aren't so different, he and I, you know, under the skin. Maybe, over a beer, we'd talk and joke and laugh and recount victories and bemoan defeats and see the humanity that joins us rather than the inhumanity that pushes us apart. Maybe.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Choc City has been turned into a great frozen blancmange by the **seventh worst snowstorm in the city's history**, according to DopplerWatchStormTrackerEyeWitnessNews, so your sobsister will be quite busy, mainly looking for neighborhood youth willing to clear our stairs, sidewalk and car.

2009-12-05T18:23:00.011-05:00

"Light up, baby, and get real high,
Here comes the man with the jive."

More Like "Second World Whore," Amirite?, Dept

As you know, I love the Internetjes like a terrier loves a biscuit. And one of the things I loves most, besides Porgy, is the role that the inspired amateur has played in its richness. A good example of that in a bit.

But, hey, y'know what? I feel that our Siamese wars in Iraqistan are missing a little sump'in sump'in. I mean, sure, we've got tragic civilian casualties and bloated Beltway bandits, fuck-you-Clausewitz thinking and profligate money-pissing. But, do we have a popular song celebrating GIs boning foreign damsels? I'm gonna say N-O!

This, more than anything else associated with these ventures--including the number, if not the size, of the parasites whose living comes from fucking the taxpayer over on any and everything associated with their anemiagenic diet of blood and silver--breaks with the proud, century-old tradition of American overseas dickwaggling. I mean, let's go back to the War to End All Notion of Civilized War; sure, we were late to the game and missed the opportunity to sacrifice the flower of a generation to some sort of incestuous squabble over the proper length of a leader's mustache, but we--the greater transatlantic "we"--had some great choonz, people.

"Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag," "It's A Long Way To Tipperary," "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty," "Oh! It's A Lovely War," "Over There," "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)" and so many other beloved standards. And if you order within the next 30 minutes... *ha ha* At any rate, they knew about memorializing, through the catchy ditty, the ritual and pointless sacrifice of their young men. We, as a nation, have forgotten this.

And returning to my earlier point, we have forgotten how to celebrate through song the thousand-mile-long furrows of fucking that our boys have thrown at overseas cooze. For example, "Mademoiselle from Armentières"; now, here's a classic that's equally adaptable to the barracks or the playground.

Children might sing:

"Madamoiselle from Armentiers
Parley-vous.
Madamoiselle from Armentiers
Parley-vous.
Madamoiselle from Armentiers
Hasn't been kissed in forty years
Hinkey-dinkey-parley-vous."

Their fathers and uncles, late come from killing the Hun, might sing:

"Up the stairs and into bed
Parley-vous
She swore I broke her maiden head
Parley-vous
Up the stairs and into bed
She swore I broke her maiden head
Hinkey-dinkey-parley-vous."

Finishing how ever many verses they remembered or invented that invoked a life so distant from their own postwar existence that it might as well have happened to John Barrymore or Ronald Colman except that their flesh's memory holds that life like coins in a purse, with the justifiably immortal couplet:

"The French, they are a funny race
They fight with their feet and fuck with their face."

Ha ha! That's the stuff, fellows!

Nothing enlivened that Bonus Army shantytown like a few verses of "Hinkey-dinkey," a swig of paralyzing petroleum distillate and a quarter-hour's tubercular coughing.

Moving forward to the Last War We Had Any Business Fighting, sure, our boys were diddlin' damsels across twenty time zones, but where was it best celebrated in song? Right here in our own backyard!

A photographer and self-proclaimed "Calypsophile," Kevin Burke has a Web site devoted to the song "Rum and Coca-Cola," the top single of 1945 and one of the most memorable songs of dubdub2@brownsugar.com. There's a fascinating backstory concerning the song and the intellectual property struggles behind its origin as a Trinidadian carnival song and its subsequent "coincidental" and contemporaneous composition--after a USO visit to Trinidad--by the grating Morey Amsterdam and other thieving White people. But our focus here is on its theme: local women prostituting themselves for G.I.s for the love of the almighty DOLL-AH!! The preceding delivered in an O'Jays chorus.

The original version, by Lord Invader and Lionel Belasco, is considerably grittier than the hit version by the Andrews Sisters, but even their whitebread rendition carries some pepper and pretty clearly makes its point:

"Out on Manzinella Beach
G.I. romance with native peach
All night long, make tropic love
Next day, sit in hot sun and cool off

Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koo-mah-nah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar."

The Trinidadian original makes the point ganz klar:

"Since the Yankees come to Trinidad
They have the young girls going mad
The young girls say they treat them nice
And they give them a better price.

A couple got married one afternoon
And was to go to Mayaro on a honeymoon
The very night the wife went with a Yankee lad
And the stupid husband went staring mad.

They drink rum and Coca-Cola, &c."

Can you imagine millions of virginal Mary Beths and Johnnies locking shy eyes over a malted milk, whatever the fuck that is, as the jukebox singers croon about native women balling soldiers for the few dollars that'll feed their families that week? Gosh, Freddie, I hope you get sent to Japan, you could bring me back some of those dreamy pearls...

But now? Bupkis. Or "BAPkis," if you're a Jada Pinkett Smith fan. For some reason. Maybe she gave you a lift once when your car was in the shop.

At any rate, we don't have a song called "Baby Got Burka" to warm our Home Front hearts while our boys do what boys do when they're separated from the girls who, through their ministrations, keep them from doing what boys would otherwise do among the general unsuspecting populace. And until we do, these won't be proper wars, I'm sorry to tell you. So, get out there, America, and petition Irving Berlin or George M. Cohan to come back from the grave and pen some rousing ditties that'll carry our boys from Baghdad to the Khyber Pass. Hey, the fucking Vietnam "conflict" didn't have a song, and how'd we do there? Point sobsister.

2009-11-28T10:15:00.002-05:00

Mais où sont les chattes d'antan?, Dept.

Marilyn Chambers. Seka. Linda Lovelace. Desireé Cousteau. Georgina Spelvin. Vanessa del Rio. Traci Lords. Juliet Anderson. Lisa Deleeuw. Annie Sprinkle. Annette Haven. Bambi Woods. Ginger Lynn. (And, thank yew, I hadn't forgotten, John Leslie. John Holmes. Ron Jeremy. Harry Reems. Johnnie Keyes. Jamie Gillis.)

What is the adult film industry equivalent of "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"?

And who among us does not have fond memories of pouring fondant to the celluloid escapades of these pornothespians? So many handymen called to service a lady's plumbing. So many girls in Camaros with fellatious notions of how to settle a speeding ticket. So much money shot. Disinfectant-scented darkroom glimpses into a parallel world of amazingly easy pleasure, only two bits a thrill.

(I once heard that the real difference between porn and non-porn is that the narrative of the former unspools in real time. So, you accompany the hung plumber driving crosstown to his new client's house. Take a right. Down the road a ways. Stop light. Round the circle. Straight past the laundromat and the liquor store. There's a spot in front of the house. Park. Take the keys out of the ignition. Walk to the front door. Ring the bell. Denying the existence of the jump cut certainly helped these porn Griffiths and Vertovs pad three or four suckyfucky scenes into feature-length films.)

Even now, as porn, like heartburn medication, is more commonly available than at any time in human history, it has, for your sobsister, lost its charm, its mystery, its creaky Americana. The stars of the '60s and '70s were human, individual and distinctive in a way that finds few equivalents in the modern day. Not to romanticize the job of grinding out dozens, hundreds of loops. Or forget the difficult lives some of these actors experienced before, during or after their film careers. But, there's something I love about the products that tumble forth at the creation of an art form. Like early sound musicals. Or 1939 comic books. In that formative period when any action repeated becomes a rule. Just as the unanticipated possibility of real profit presents itself to the moneymen. And those impromptu rules become conventions and then cliches.

So, just as Ruby Keeler's tap solo in 42nd Street looks like someone trying to shake shoeboxes off her feet, so, too, does the dialogue in these seminal (*ha ha*) adult films sound as if it were a Warsaw Pact translation of a Love, American Style episode being read by those people down the street who really need to buy shades for their bathroom. But the charm of both genres is undiminished--if anything, enhanced--by the wide-eyed novelty and earnest clumsiness. They are camp in the best way.

*******
¡¡¡CONSUMER BREAK!!!

What costs a dollar apiece?
Gershwin and Porter by Lee Wiley and a great early Steve Winwood retrospective and a Blue Note 1949-59 best-of and a rerelease of the first Crown Heights Affair album ("You Can't Bend My Super Rod": how had I never heard this song?) and Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret and Mandrill's Just Outside of Town, all and each on glorious, frangible vinyl

¡¡¡END BREAK!!!
*******

So, where was I...? Men's penises, or Men spenis es..., from Catullus 50. Yes, vintage pornography. Unlike our current enlightened times, wherein parents and pillars of the community can post daily MPEG updates to myhotslutwife.com without risking the stocks, flogging and transportation, in the Olden Days people actually felt shame at being associated with, not to mention participating in, public copulation before any audience, much less a national one. More informed commentators than I will have spilt useful ink on how the various '60s revolutions midwived the adult film industry. But it's still worth noting just how outré appearing in porn was at the time.

For perspective, this period fell in the vast gap between the 8mm domino-mask'd cavalier of greatgrandfather's smoker fame and the 21st-century 18-year-old, his Flip and oral "Brytny" in his Rover. At that time, to do this work as a profession, as the thing one did to live, was to be little better than a whore at a time when whores didn't enjoy book deals and talk show seats. Whereas Gypsy Rose Lee, by dint of her style, savvy and smarts, became acceptable in the way a reformed madam did, the women of porn offered no coyness or tease. They just fucked men and women and black men for money. On camera. For a living. Between stretches of plot and dialogue that were either crafted to ape Hollywood's infinitely more prestigious products or to avoid courtroom claims of gratuitous prurience. In contrast to our own enlightened present, when the "leaked" sex tape is a savvy career move, at that time, a sexually explicit film of a national figure, hot-eyed and moaning around the veined pipe she's sucking, would have been ruinous, suicidal, unimaginable. Imagine, for example, a Sophia Loren sex tape.

I'll be here when you're done.

All set? So, the fact that these people were alienated enough from society at large to say, "I'm going to let a bunch of guys fuck me onscreen, and, with any luck, millions will see me" was pretty radical as a departure from societal norms and expectations. The extent to which the actors were abused or abused themselves as a function of this work seems to have been widely divergent. (For example, were drugs used for pleasure, for escape or for coercion?) Yet, the films exude enough rough fun transcending the paucity of resources to engage the viewer as genre narrative in the midst of forming the conventions that would define the genre.

Pornography made the VCR and pornography drove the Internet, building on the work of these people. And I think that the fact that some freaks in San Francisco and Los Angeles contributed substantially to the popularization of two of the three transformative entertainment-driven technologies of the latter half of the 20th century (portable music from the Walkman on, being the third) is pretty fucking remarkable. And as unlikely as the outsider sons of immigrants pooling pushcart and pin money to build the dominant American contribution to world culture of the last 100 years.

So, yes, the Porn Pioneers. Doff your hat or boff your cat if you see one of these august personages in the street. Others metamorphosed their crayon-and-oaktag world into Bukkake Bitchez VIII: Ass Candy. Sic transit Gloria Leonard, and all that. But they had faces then, if occasionally streaked with the white tracers of luv. They are the Bessie Loves and Dick Powells of their form. And just because their form involved a few more threeways than most cultural innovations does not in any way diminish the significance of their contribution.

2009-11-21T20:32:00.004-05:00

Lee Wiley.

Lee Wiley.

Lee Wiley.

Rest of the World: You're Welcome!, Dept.

2009-11-12T19:36:00.009-05:00

"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.

2009-11-03T19:35:00.012-05:00

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?

2009-10-24T11:22:00.008-04:00

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.

2009-10-16T19:55:00.009-04:00

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.

2009-10-15T21:42:00.006-04:00

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.

2009-10-03T00:00:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-09-26T19:07:00.009-04:00

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.

2009-08-30T16:57:00.013-04:00

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.

2009-08-12T22:44:00.007-04:00

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.

2009-08-01T07:38:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-07-23T16:31:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-05-31T10:06:00.005-04:00

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 her ~~rape 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.

2009-05-30T18:55:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-05-15T10:21:00.002-04:00

Eight Million Stories on the Naked Titty, Dept.

When I first began this post, the story concerned a relatively unknown beauty pageant contestant from California who had (mis)spoken out about her opposition to gay marriage, an opposition rooted in her deeply held Christian beliefs. It then developed into a story about her surgically enhanced breasts, then about how the California pageant committee had paid for this enhancement. Expanding like the phallic bread dough in Lucy Ricardo's oven, it then concerned rumors of topless photos of the young woman, then her fervent denial and faith-based defense, then the online publication of one, then two, then more photos. Then revelations that the photos were recent, not years-old as had been claimed. And, throughout, there was the drumbeat of imminent dethronement and disgrace for having violated the cardinal rule of beauty pageantry: Don't show your nipples to the audience pipples. Or, don't flash your knockers at the alter kockers. Either way.

And in the eye of the swirl of speculation stood the man. Which man? The man with the most tragic hairpiece in creation. Ahhh. And the fate of this booby-baring bimba was in his hands. Would he conform to the rules and regulations of the pageant, which explicitly excluded prospective contestants who had had photographs taken of themselves nude or partially nude? Or would he do whatever made him the most money and guaranteed him the most column inches? Given that this wasn't just any lecherous, no-taste weasel of a real estate mogul but Miss USA pageant owner Donald Trump hisself, the mammary-sharing missy was allowed to keep her state title. Quoth the hairpiece, "We are in the 21st century. We have determined the pictures taken are fine...in some cases the pictures were lovely." (Can't you just picture him wiping the spittle from his lips as he recalls how the images of her supple mounds almost elicited an honest erection? Could the fallen beauty queen become Mrs. *ka-ching!* Trump v.4?) And this pronouncement itself prompted the executive director of the Miss California USA pageant--herself a former Miss USA--to resign.

Would that Wagner were still alive! Richard, not Honus. For, truly, this is an epic worthy of his overwrought Teutonic genius. Talk about a Gesamtkunstwerk! This story weaves together sex, greed, ambition, scandal, lies, bad hair, hypocrisy, titties and Jesus in a multimedia extravaganza of sight, sound and possibly scent!

Now, I'm a frugal sobsister, so I hate to waste perfectly good verbiage. So, following is the original work-in-progress post for your enjoyment. And, if not enjoyment, annoyance. Roll tape...

I'm not a religious person, as some of you may know. My formal observance is limited to taking, on occasion, the Rastafarian sacrament to the accompaniment of late-'50s stereo demonstration records (Wow, the bongo drums are on the right! Now, they're all the way on the left!). *ha ha* I kid. Boys and girls, lips that touch "maryjane" will only feel...very pain...ed. Whatever. At any rate, as a non-religious sobsister, I must take exception to beauty pageant contestant Miss California Carrie Prejean's well-publicized attempts to insert her interpretation of her Lord and Savior's policies vis-à-vis marriage into the secular province of beauty pageantry.

Why is Carrie Prejean (and, here, I must note my surprise at the somewhat pedestrian spelling of her given name; this young woman was clearly miscounselled in a number of ways, not least of which was the fact that, if she expects to excel in the bitch-mount-bitch world of pageantry, she needs to commit 110 percent to a first name such as "Carree" or "Karri" or, ideally, "Karree." Her current name just makes her look like she's not even trying, God love her.) speaking out against marriage for homosexuals? She talked, at the Miss USA pageant, of her support of "opposite marriage" (or "Bizarro marriage") over gay marriage. Which, you know, 1st Amendment and all, is fine. Yet, why is this young woman (and we're awaiting the test results that will confirm that) so adamant about some things that are contra naturam and not others?

I speak, of course, of the fake rack she had installed--at Miss California Pageant expense--scant weeks before the Miss USA contest. Now, as alluded to above, I am no theologian (although I did play William of Ockham in a grade-school pageant titled Razor? YOU Raise Her!), but it strikes me that having a pair of grapefruit halves stuck under your skin in defiance of the Divine Plan for your bosom allotment must surely make the Babby Jayzus cry. It's like Christmas morning, getting a reindeer sweater from Grammy and tossing it back in her face, saying, "Take that tired shit back to Penney's and get me some'a that GTA IV, itch-bay!"

Yet Miss Prejean (no apparent relation to Sister Helen Prejean, except insofar as one has seen a "Dead Man Walking," while the other is a witless twat) seems not at all discomfited by this apparent bit of hypocrisy. And, so, I must ask her, here in this most public of fora:

Carrie Prejean, if the Good Lord Above assigned you to the itty-bitty titty camp, why, then, were you trying to tunnel under to Stalag C-Cup? There is no squint-eyed Sergeant Schultz on duty here, only the unblinking glare of your omnivident god.

Further, Miss Prejean, segueing neatly into the whited sepulchre sitting in the living room of a glass house dept., can you tell me, then, exactly how flashing your own unenhanced raclette at a number of cameras jibes with the precepts of a religion whose more repugnant biases you are using to deny fellow Americans equal treatment under the law? I reiterate my admission that I'm no theologian; that said, I believe that baring one's boobies unto someone other than your husband in anticipation of imminent impregnation is considered a Sin by them as know from Xtian sin. Your "spokesman"--oh, pleez, may I apply for that job when the incumbent converts to full-time at Chuck E. Cheese?!?--tried to make the best of what must be an elephant turd in the punch bowl of your life. Some blather about you having been 17 and naive. You yourself took a slightly different tack with: ""I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos."

Yeah, sweetie. Models do pose for pictures. But Jesus-loving, God-fearing, Holy Spirit-conversing models don't do over-the-shoulder fuckmebigboy snaps that could incite a churchgoing fellow to play Onan in repertory. Nor do they lie about having taken said snaps in order to snake themselves around the pageant rules. Nor do they lie about the number of times they've had spicyspicycaliente pix taken of themselves. Or the age at which they had them taken. Et cetera, et cetera. You catch my drift, cupcake, right?

But, dang, there are just so many levels to this story--her father maybe was gay and that broke up her parents' marriage?!? Sweet Charles Foster Kane! stop the presses!!--that a measly post barely scratches the surface of analysis, exegesis and mockery for which this story begs like the beggingest beggar who ever begged. So, for now, Crimestoppers, today's takeaway special is this: Christian by convenience is like a hysterical pregnancy--sooner or later, people are going to figure out you're simply full of fetid gas. Mustard and duck sauce are in the bag, plus napkins. Enjoy.

2009-05-03T16:53:00.004-04:00

There Are Children in India Who'd Be Overjoyed with Your Year-old RAZR V3, Dept.

I was fondling my iPhone recently. A private moment. It was raining lightly outside. Because I'd asked that it stop raining, even lightly, inside.

As I traced its sleek lines with a finger, I thought about one thing. One thing only.

How is it that people have the stones to complain about the lack of features in iPhone apps that, on top of everything else and secondary to the point I'm about to make, are free or absurdly cheap?

Reading the reviews at the App Store is an eye-opening experience if you've ever harbored any illusions that people are easy to please. What, that 99-cent app doesn't alphabetize, cross-index or translate into Quechua and Amharic all the entries across your databases, while setting calendar alerts in Outlook?! By G*d, I rue the day they outlawed public horsewhipping!

I just want to call the people who post these, umm, somewhat demanding reviews and say, "Hello, do you mean to tell me that the fact that you can reorder your Netflix queue on your phone from a toilet stall in a bar doesn't drop you to your knees before the altar of Technology?! Did you want your winged horse in brown instead of white?! Does the pattern on your flying carpet clash with your shoes?!? You're just going to piss Technology off, and then she'll take all her shiny shit and split, and you'll be back to banging two rocks together for entertainment and saving acorns for counting beads. Ingrate."

Honestly. Monkeys is the kwaziest people.

2009-04-22T22:33:00.014-04:00

Peg o' My Heartburn, Dept.

Pundits Whitewash Torture

Peggy Noonan, Vestal Virgin at the shrine of Ronaldus Reaganorum, had some fascinatingly fascinating things to say last week about the release of Dubya-era memos detailing--and endorsing--waterboarding and other techniques used on swarthy men who face East to pray five times a day. Peg seems to think that there's just no point in revisiting those days and those issues and revealing some of the truths surrounding and underpinning them. She said, "Some things in life need to be mysterious. Sometimes you need to just keep walking."

I know that one doesn't want to know how sausage is made or, generally, witness much of what transpires in a commercial kitchen of meager means and undemanding clientele. But one would expect a political insider and author to exhibit a tad more interest in the secret workings of government. And, really, her current lack of curiosity regarding the whole Bushies-heart-torture issue is quite remarkable, given her own history.

For, if Sister Immaculata Primrose had manifested this discreet squeamishness concerning the darker corners of American politics during the Clinton administration, I would have said that she's simply a woman of circumspection, perhaps due to tender sensibilities and a mild constitution. But, no. She dug into the Lewinsky-Clinton scandale with the gusto of a competitive eater into blueberry pie no. 1. So, it appears that her...delicacy regarding matters of national import flares up only when confronting the bemerded peccadilloes of the conservative set.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, in her public appearances, Pegalong Casuistry combines the pantomime daintiness of a spinster who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful, with the sanctimonious condescension of a parochial school teacher towards the retards, Lord love them!, in her charge. Speaking of "civility" in our national discourse v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in what she must believe is a Gipperesque tone, Peg nonetheless regularly manages to dig the shiv between her target's ribs (hi, Hillary!) with the gusto of a nun with a new ruler and a classroom full of knuckles. This "do as I say, not as I do"-ism seems to be manifesting itself in the temperance of her previous zeal for full disclosure by an unquestioning respect for the inviolable nature of mysteries. Like the Assumption. Or how According to Jim has lasted eight seasons.

Oh, Peggy Noonan, Peggy Noonan! Pitiably blind to the red-headed hypocrisy born at the intersection of her current pleas for discretion and her previous cries for disclosure. The little girl in the plaid jumper who always reminded Sister that she'd forgotten to assign homework, now a wobbly pundit with a repellent public manner and a conveniently short memory. Lord love you, Peg! Ten Our Fathers and twenty-five thousand Hail Marys and your sins will be forgiven. Vade et amplius iam noli peccare.

Navel-grazing, Dept.

2009-04-19T08:53:00.000-04:00

Navel-Grazing, Dept.

There's something ineluctably sad about an ill-kept blog. It's not unlike chez sobsister, actually. Paint chipping on the façade, one brick loose from the front steps, mailbox could use replacing...

I haven't been posting here much. Lack of time + lack of inspiration = radio silence. The fact of the matter is--and, here, I'm taking a huge leap of faith that this sort of self-indulgent meta-post is even vaguely interesting to anyone outside my head--that after a point, LOLXtians and LOLNeocons isn't all that interesting to write. There are so many stories out there on which I could be ladling snark that simply recapitulate an unvarying theme.

Last month, for example, B-b-b-Benny and the Peds announced that condoms weren't really the answer in fighting AIDS in Africa. Sure, I could've called him a benighted dogmatist nancy-boy flouncing about in Mommy's caftan while condemning tens, no, hundreds of thousands to death, to unwanted pregnancy and an unbreakable cycle of poverty, simply to bolster his completely made-up belief that, somehow, taking responsibility for, and control of, one's reproductive process is a raspberry in the face of the Invisible Bearded Man in the Sky. But I didn't. I mean, I've come to realize with the passage of time that the Catholic Church regularly says astonishingly ill-advised things that fly like a piazza of spooked pigeons smack in the face of, oh, I don't know, common sense, science, logic. To point out the crass stupidity of the Vatican's pronouncement at each occasion would be like riffling through publicity shots of the Olsen twins and noting again and again and again that they sure could use a fucking sandwich.

Same with the conservatives and, to be precise, the right-wing media in this country. Late last month, twat con Laura Ingraham (isn't that always held on the first Sunday in July? Twat Con '09! with appearances by Monica Goodling, Michelle Malkin and Dana Perino! plus GOP cosplay!) dissed almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain (for criticizing Troll Quean Ann Coulter) by calling her fat. Sure, I could've noted that it's amazing that Laura Ingraham can host a radio show, given that she talks entirely through her ass, or that a neocon lawyer converting to Catholicism has just hit the bullshit rationalization trifecta. But I didn't. The fact of the matter is that the 24-hour news cycle, declining educational achievement and dwindling intellectual engagement nationwide, and booming fast food and pharmaceutical intake has created a roiling subclass of triple-chinned cretin zombies who pay to be told what to think by a gold-clad phalanx of screaming hucksters who grab the addled gomers by the nose to pour know-nothing elixir down their gullets. To point out the witless, intellectually dishonest copromathy that is this circus is like identifying sociopathic nuns in the parochial school system. After a while, your arm gets tired.

So, your sobsister continues to look for veins to mine. One possibility: people whose surnames sound like naughty body parts. Watch for it!

2009-03-18T23:14:00.004-04:00

Guilt by Association, Dept.

While I'm always grateful for the many and varied visitors who visit my humble, infrequently updated pages, I occasionally pause to wonder at my constituency, such as it is, based on the keywords they use to find my little sitting room in the blogosphere.

In the last week, folks have made their way here by searching for "offer him anal sex," "advantages of fellatio," *shudder* "ina garten uterus" *shudder*, "tween porn," "uncut monster cock whore" and, as always, "mica ertegun."

I'm...grateful for their custom, given that their paths to my pages have helped me to tease out the underlying, previously-obscured-to-me theme of my blog: underage sodomy, ideally with horse-hung Romanian interior designers.

Thank you, visitrons, one and all. I will now return to crafting my latest blog entry: I Was a Teenage Cum Junkie in Bucharest.

2009-03-12T10:43:00.001-04:00

Chapter VII, in which Levi Ducks a Bullet, Dept.

Alaska Gov. Palin's daughter, fiance break up

Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 2 1/2 months after the couple had a baby.

Oh noez!!! Alaska's number one fairytale out-of-wedlock teen failed abstinence romance is pulling an Exxon Valdez?!? The unseaworthy craft of their relationship broken on the reef of Teen Ennui, spilling millions of gallons of our Hopes for these krazy kids?! And our hopes were ever-so high for this shotgun engagement. I mean, how could a relationship born in thoughtless lust and maintained out of political expediency fail?!?

Well, I'm sure Sarahcuda is doing her dingdong-darndest to comfort her daughter with some folksy-yet-creepy platitudes involving Jesus, cows and free milk. Though maybe things ain't all frowns chez Palin, given that rumor has it, i.e., Levi's sister told the media, Li'l Bristol wasn't even lettin' her baby daddy anywhere near the fruit of his loins!

Oh, 4ever Love, you didn't even make it past this season's American Idol finale!

2009-02-28T19:05:00.005-05:00

Ich bin Musik, und Ich schreib' die Lieder, Dept.

When I was just a teenage sobsister in the hands of the wily Jesuits, I studied German for three years. Now, the third year was a wash because all we did was sit around, bullshit with our charming German-born teacher and play Skat, a popular German card game. The second year we spent learning endless vocabulary under the tutelage of another German-born teacher, considerably less charming and determined to convince us that we were the academic elite.
Very "Will to Power," very "Tomorrow Belongs to Me."

So, it was left to the first year to actually, you know, learn how to speak the frackin' language, which we sort of did at the hands of a patient Jesuit who stressed pronunciation above all else. He had a whole routine about the mouth being like a basketball court, and umlauted vowels were pronounced down by the basket and other vowels at the top of the key. Or something. It's enough that I remember enough of it to misremember.

Anyhoo, one of his paedagogical tools was German-language versions of popular songs. Well, popular in 1963, apparently, because all we listened to was "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" by The Beatles and "Die Antwort, mein Freund, ist ganz allein der Wind" by Bobby Dylan and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," which didn't even make sense in English. In that spirit, I offer you this corking version of "Downtown," likely sung by that pet of a girl, Petula Clark, who, if her Web site is any indication, has recorded in all the world languages, plus Quechua and Hmong.

Was the German market so strong in the late '50s and early '60s as to justify rerecording songs in that language? For that matter, was the Spanish-language film market so strong in the mid-'30s as to justify concurrently filming movies, as was done to, for example, Dracula, with Spanish-speaking actors? "Yes," to both, apparently. In the former case, my theory is that there were a lot of unemployed translators in Britain who'd been idle since the days of breaking Jerry's codes. Which should not be confused with "Jerry's Kids."

At any rate, follow the link to Pet Clark and a blast of 1964. I'll be putting on my white vinyl boots and joining you in a min.

From the excellent April Winchell Web site. Spend a week or two there.

2009-02-26T09:31:00.001-05:00

You Can't Spell "Sectarian Shooting Spree" without "Jesus," Dept.

Guns in church bill dies in Arkansas Senate panel - wtop.com:

From the page:
"Guns in church bill dies in Arkansas Senate panel
A state Senate panel has rejected a bill that would allow concealed handguns in Arkansas churches, a proposal that divided religious leaders.

The measure would have removed churches and other houses of worship from the list of places where concealed handguns are banned in Arkansas. Only churches and bars are on that list."

Gol-dang, lily-livered, Jesus-hatin', Huffington-lovin', pinko Adam'n'stEves!

How can a man show his face inside the Lord's House stripped of his shootin' irons?! That'd be like Samson shorn of the locks that gave him his muscles!

Now, imagine you're sittin' there in the pew, and the preacher-man's jawin' on about somethin' or another to do with Jesus, and it's kind of a hot day, heavy, y'know?, and *BANG!* in storms some Supralapsarian sumbitch or, even worse, a Mooslim! Now, if you ain't packin', son, you are lackin'! How're you gonna give that sumbitch a permanent part if your .357's locked up in some fool trunk or whatnot?! Scale a hymnal off 'is head, you won't even make 'im blink!

So, call your senator--'cause writin's for pointyheaded, latte-sippin', Hillary-huggin', Bolshevik sissy boys--and tear that sumbitch a new one.
Tell 'im you got a Biblical right to bear arms before the altar of the Lord! Tell 'im that!
Then tell 'im you know where his little blonde daughter goes to school and, my, ain't she a pretty, fragile li'l thing.
Do it.
Do it for Jesus, 'cause you know He'd do it for you.

2009-02-14T12:36:00.020-05:00

Get Your Kicks on Route 69, Dept.

Transcript February 14, 2009

MODERATOR: My first question to you, then, is: how does one get from Intercourse, PA to Climax, SK?

What's that? Yes, "sweaty thrusting" is one possibility. Anyone else?
That's right, "crazy-weasel pumping" is another one. What else? Yes, you in the back with the, with the hair?
Well, yes, I think we can count "ramming the 5:15 into the station repeatedly until the headboard splinters."

But it seems that all these answers, valid though they may be, rely solely on brute animal force. How about some approaches that won't bedew your body entire with beads and rivulets of salty glass? Anyone? No?

Then, let me introduce you to something called Xtreme Oral Pleasuring™, or XOP.

Gentlemen and those ladies who wish Lea DeLaria weren't quite so girly, this adorable little button deserves more attention than a Midwest queen at Bloomingdale's 59th Street. Ladies and those fellows who wish Liza Minnelli were harmony triplets, this handsome knob needs the kind of TLC a puppy gives its owner the morning after he's been brought home from the pound.

I can hear you say, "But, sobsister, who is ignorant of the pleasures that the oral pleasuring brings in the way of pleasurable pleasure?" And I say, "No one besides ancient Romans and Hottentots." But are you aware of the many and numerous advantages that Xtreme Oral Pleasuring™ can offer you?

Aside from the fact that you can wear your best suit or frock without fear of pitting it something awful, imagine a fellatio session that lasts 18 hours! The grindingly painful erection aside, XOP offers both participants amazing weight loss benefits--you're probably not stuffing yourself with greasy fast food while someone's making a 14-course Chinese banquet of your junk or while you're scarfing down a cup of DNA juice!

Or think about a cunnilingus encounter that takes a weekend to complete! Ladies, the discomfort occasioned by dehydration and foot cramps is more than offset by the financial advantages you gain! Did you know that if you orgasm continuously for longer than 24 hours you are eligible to claim per diem? And that beaver botherers are eligible for Workmen's Comp for any buccolingual damage incurred while on their employer's premises?!

Check my Web site, www.mouth-organ.edu, to get updates on the availability of my book, Jaws of Life: Mandibular Endurance and Xtreme Oral Pleasuring™. It gives you 101 numbered tips on how to maintain feeling in your jaw, tongue and lips even as you run a marathon of oral gratification! The first 100 orders will receive a complimentary copy of Earn the Burn!: The Role of Capsicum in Xtreme Oral Training™, an $89.95 value itself, free. And if you order within the next 30 minutes, you'll receive at no additional charge a DVD copy of ShamWow® Bloopers!: America's Kraziest Outtakes!

America, put your money where your mouth should be! Get into Xtreme Oral Pleasuring™ now! For, it is far, far better to give than to receive. Unless you're giving and receiving at the same time. In which case, you are golden, motherfucker.

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