Posted 4:12 PM by Gene

The evil twins of radio are about to send messages to your car stereo's display that could drive you to distraction.

Doesn't RDS mean "Radio Does Stink"?

Posted 4:08 PM by Gene

I was about to write a glib one-liner about this story but then reading of a victim of Cruetzfelt-Jacob disease put a halt to that. This disease has too much in common with Alzheimer's. One other thing: if this AP writer is to be believed, most "cases are either caused by inheriting a genetic mutation or acquired through medical procedures that used contaminated equipment or tissues" [emphasis added]. There are better reasons not to eat meat, I suspect.

Posted 4:01 PM by Gene

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!

Statement of Mark Geragos, Attorney for Michael Jackson

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a statement by Mark
Geragos, Attorney for Michael Jackson:

We not only welcome an investigation by the Attorney General of
California, but will ask that the entire case from its inception be
investigated by that office. The deliberate disregard of the findings of the
Los Angeles Department of Children & Family Services investigation -- and
closure of this case as totally unfounded by that agency -- seriously hurts
the credibility of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff.

I'm glad somebody said that.

P. S. This links on the front page of PRNewswire between "Independence Blue Cross and Holy Redeemer Health System Announce Agreement on New Contract" and "Modest Increase in Nation's Alienation Index, According to Harris Poll."

Sure they didn't mean "aliens"?

Posted 3:42 PM by Gene

AP: Neil Bush Makes 1 - Day Stock Windfall

Translation: we're gonna stick this story in your faces, and don't tell us about Hillary.

Posted 3:34 PM by Gene

LAUGH OF THE WEEK, from KEN FELATTA:

You are not writing for the people you profile but for your general readers.

Pffh-hh-hh-hh-ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!

I'd like to see YOU blog, Ken. "I'm having lunch at a table at the Four Seasons with Sum, Rupe and Barry...."

Posted 3:16 PM by Gene

ARAFAT SERAIT MORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALERT, or, Why Blogging May Not Cure Cancer: Last night the Freepers wasted mammoth bandwidth as NORAD safely escorted an Air France flight to LALA. Three hours after the laughs started littlegreenfundraiser called attention to it on his site and got almost 200 posts. I know we all have the occasional jitters over Gov's alert, and that's understandable, but again the Web demonstrates at its worst it's good at stoking panics, or (as one of the Freepers put it last night) leading the masses in a "wild goose chase." No GLENN, the Web isn't ready to eradicate diseases yet.

Posted 1:25 PM by Gene

The inanities of American culture, from the breathless coverage of the Trista and Ryan nuptials to the round-the-clock discussion of the Michael Jackson case, need to be satirically exposed more often, perhaps with the same kind of deadly aim that filmmaker Michael Moore takes on capitalism.

If you like suicide I say, RIGHT ON!

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

ANOTHER pearl of wisdom in a three-foot-diameter oyster shell:

So tasteful. So subdued. So . . . Cyndi Lauper at 50?

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

They document their own affliction: the need to write

So that explains blogging.

Posted 11:38 AM by Gene

We'll never hear the end of a story that has "baddog" in the URL.

Posted 11:33 AM by Gene

When Steve Spurrier began his association with the Washington Redskins, he said he would walk away after three seasons if his teams had not been successful.

I guess the plank gets much shorter when you're batting .375 in football.

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

Was it really the US that 'got him'?

Does it really matter unless we're looking for a new variety of QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

Circus clowns have predicted Dan Rather would get tossed since before he pulled that dead-air gag during the U. S. Open. Sorry, they'll have to drag him out of the Viacon Network Evening Newsroom FEET FIRST.

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

Whooooooooops! Looks as though SYNERGY has hit a SNAG.

Shucks. No Law and Order Channel. NO WOODY WOODPECKER CHANNEL. What shall we do?

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

Christopher Shays is verrrrrrrrry afraid of terrorists. But then Christopher Shays was verrrrrrrrry afraid of impeaching Bill Clinton. Christopher Shays is scaaaaaaaaaared.

OR:

Some Connecticut communities were hoping Shay's comments would be a boon to their own festivities.

Posted 6:46 AM by Gene

Here is why the Web is less a technological marvel than one unending ad hominem attack: somebody named Arthur Silber gets mad at Buzz T. Newhouse for supporting the war. To boost his case he snidely mentions that Buzz worked for "TV Guide, People and Entertainment Weekly." This gets Buzz mad ("incredibly long-winded, humorless, overblown blahblahblah," neglecting that Buzz' own posts need Weight Watchers). When bloggers fight each other with "HE TOOK MY BIKE! WAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!" we may as well send our computers to the landfill.

Posted 8:54 PM by Gene

Michael Jackson Is Said to Get $1 Million for CBS Interview

Ka-CHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHING
CHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHING
CHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHING
CHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHING
CHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHING!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

I have a nomination for Time Magazine's ''Person of the Year'' award. Surely, one of the most extraordinary success stories of the century, much less the year, is Oprah Winfrey.

Hey Je$$e, 1. you're a little late, and 2. the Queen of Mawkish Sleaze has her own rag -- and she's Person of the Year every month.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Jordanian schools will get new textbooks in the 2004-2005 school year that will differentiate between "terrorism and legitimate resistance."

I think we can guess the definition: terrorism is a Jew killing you. Legitimate resistance is you killing a Jew.

With UNESCO in on this we can be pretty sure that's what Jordanian schoolkids will learn.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

Great, just what we need, another mutual publicity stunt, this one involving "insults."

Girls, COMBINED the two of you aren't worth an insult.

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

More evidence Iraq is coming back: its boxers are training for the GE Bancorp -- er, OLYMPIC games (I can't keep away from them).

Posted 3:28 PM by Gene

What I said almost a month ago about the studio system, Sam Goldwyn Jr. says today. And if movies are BETTER THAN EVER, why is he complaining about the writing?

Posted 12:11 PM by Gene

Another example of a 6,000 word article encapsulating a fifty-word nugget of truth:

Still, not everyone is a convert to the idea of megachurches. While some admit they are a way to get people back into the pews, others believe they are diluting religious doctrine, offering more flash than substance.

Some even doubt they are meeting people's deepest spiritual needs. They see them as little more than a fad.

I suppose we should be happy that people can find God when and where they can, but given the great glories of religious culture, why do we have to take screaming and geetars lying down?

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

Wacko may see nothing wrong with sleeping with boys, but I guess his ex-spokesman does.

Posted 11:31 AM by Gene

ATTENTION! ATTENTION!! BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A WORLD ALMANAC!!!

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

"IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY THAT'S INTERESTING, you will eventually be heard." WRONG. If you write 100,000 words a day and have BIGMEDIA connections and blogroll and get 100 billion hits a day, you will be heard. Otherwise, forget it.

Maybe I would be better off if I sent e-mails to Michael Wolff and put up cute pictures of wolf pups and said I agreed with "Glenn."

P. S. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a form response.

Posted 10:42 AM by Gene

Looks like President DAMN! will land the "why-did-I-get-tattooed?" vote.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

Shake hands with Bashar Assad!

And wash them for a week.

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

Journalism has produced surprisingly few good memoirs....

Why surprisingly? All news hacks ever read is themselves.

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

I just found a little squib from BozellNews in FrontPage Magazine (a double caveat) that GE Bancorp stopped sponsoring Paul Harvey's show after SUPERHOOPER complained. With his arch, orotund manner and constant plugs Paul Harvey is an extreme irritant; that said, LITTLE JEFFREY's a WIMP, and he runs a PC company that sponsors everything -- except when the SUPERHOOPERS complain (and he runs a network that shows anything and everything too, and likewise.)

Posted 6:19 AM by Gene

A French newsman -- a FRENCH NEWSMAN -- complains: "Readers can't understand why the Americans won the war....The French press wasn't neutral....As soon as there were a couple of wounded, of dead, they were talking about Vietnam, Stalingrad.''

THAT'S an understatement, I'm sure.

He got fired, by the way -- something Ben Bradlee or Howie "Hair Shirt" Kurtz probably wouldn't complain about.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Now Buzz has added ANOTHER 1,568 WORDS ABOUT "CONVERSATIONS."

Today in nine posts (I usually do between fifteen and twenty on a good day) I've written 372 words. BUZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When will you Forbes 400 bloggers realize WE DON'T HAVE ALL DAY FOR YOU???????????????

Posted 3:30 PM by Gene

Well! Movie tickets now cost over $10 in New York. I suspect ticket prices can only go much higher as attendance nationwide has taken a sizable hit this year -- down over four percent. Of course, as JACK! or any movie-ad-blurb copywriter will tell you, IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH QUALITY. Already they're using the recorded-music conspiracy's excuse: PIRACY. In short, the blind ostriches are burying their heads in the sand again.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

Now PROF links to a co-production who spends 1,131 words telling us Maureen Dowd can't write.

PROF! WHEN DOES CHRISTMAS BREAK END? WE'RE GETTING YOUR CABIN FEVER!!

Posted 11:24 AM by Gene

Things will happen on Christmas break: now PROF spends 802 words on pots.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

How Wal-Mart would run a union. In a way Wal-Mart does run these unions.

Posted 11:12 AM by Gene

As I said yesterday, we don't need pop-culture departments when we have The New York Times, and here's another example. No one would care for these firefly no-talents like Vin "Sky Masterson" Diesel except the news hacks must always gotta get (or rather, sell) their latest gimmick, and that gimmick is meta- (or is that andro-) ethnicity. Honest, it's as if Howell still runs this rag. (I wouldn't have paid mind to it but there's a picture of one of these temporary stars, and she reminds me of an inamorata from college, only she had black hair.)

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

I hope I do not have to read ANOTHER word about Playboy for awhile, however well-intended.

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

Even before there was a Paul Krugman or a Larry Kudlow I think we learned not to trust economists.

Posted 6:56 AM by Gene

This is why I could tear my hair out at getting three hits a day: a PROF co-production spends several hundred words saying what I've said for months: businessmen can't take media, but they dish it out on the rest of us. And in the post before that he spends several hundred words on Gov. Pataki's Lenny Bruce pardon when I used six. And BUZZ devotes over a thousand words to news bias. PROFESSOR!!!!!!!!! BUZZ!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DO YOU THINK WE HAVE ALL DAY TO DO NOTHING BUT READ BLOGS?????????????

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

Vice-President Cheney -- er, President DAMN! had secret energy meetings too!

I wonder if this is part of a plot. News hacks hear rumblings that President DAMN! is unelectable, toss all sorts of mud in his face, so...NAH. They're too unbiased.

Posted 7:09 PM by Gene

FLASH!!!!!!!!! Comment on a Free Republic thread about THE WORLD'S GREATEST TV NEWS ORGANIZATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

I don't know about y'all, but I have had my fill of FOX News. Hourly, their on-air personalities try to out-do each other on the Jackson coverage. Then--the on-air personalities jump to the Mad Cow videos. FOX has really gone into a dung-heap. Who produces these shows? Barnum and Bailey?

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOUTH PARK CONSERVATIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Andy S.! You haven't mentioned them lately! Have they gone on vacation with you? Or can we expect some guest-star SOUTH PARK CONSERVATIVES?

Posted 4:39 PM by Gene

One problem I have with blogging corporations like the Professor is that they spend too much time running posts about the provenance of unfunny jokes.

Posted 4:30 PM by Gene

Three more things about Thompsonism:
1. I've a hunch a lot of the perfessers travel on studio- or network- or label-financed junkets, making them paid stooges for show-biz.
2. Perfessers are nothing if not ostentatiously political. These philistines no doubt are expanding their base by ingratiating themselves with j-schools to help them turn out ad-blurb copywriters; the day is slowly coming, I fear, when a pop-culture major may be as required to write ad blurbs as an Ivy League degree. The raves will go from annoying to intolerable.
3. The rich and unfunny irony is that these philistines work in an industry which always mocks Dubya as the height of STOOPID. Well, what could be more STOOPID than what these philistines engage in -- a circle jerk in words?

Posted 12:36 PM by Gene

We don't need pop-culture studies anyway. We have THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

FRENCH TIPPED OFF TERRORISTS!!!!!!!!!!

NEWSMAX shows yet again why a press dominated by hard-core knee-jerk conservative NEWS HACKS would be just as bad as a press dominated by hard-core knee-jerk liberal NEWS HACKS, if in a slightly different way. CLEARLY these idiots are saying that the French intentionally and malevolently let THE TERRORISTS know, almost personally, that they were targeted; and while I wouldn't put anything past the French, there's no evidence yet the premature news was the result of anything other than excessive zeal on someone's part. AND THERE'S NOTHING IN THE IDIOTS' OWN WASHINGTON TIMES-DERIVED STORY TO REFUTE THAT. This is the moral equivalent of WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! getting on the phone with an EisnerCorp guy -- a cheap way of pumping your constituents.

HEY WALTER!!!!! BUY NEWSMAX!!!!! It would be THE DEAL OF THE CENTURY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 10:31 AM by Gene

A puff piece for Thompsonism, the "study" of pop culture that's the latest form of intellectual masturbation sweeping academe, yet another way to stick it to the parents and the taxpayers, a means of making six digits writing six-syllable words praising junk, forming glorified fan clubs, and erasing the classics from the curriculum -- and in the end, wasting the student's time with gut courses and ensuring the poor sap (in several senses) has a tougher time finding A JOB. This isn't to say pop culture doesn't merit serious study; I've long dreamt of a show-business reference work like Encyclopedia Britannica, and while such a venture is a tacit admission that the glories of show-biz are largely in the past, we must understand where they came from, and use the knowledge to seek the future. But serious, tough study of show-biz is impossible when you're pulling a practical joke, and especially when you're competing with the corrupt lords of the professional college sports programs and the Charlie Keatings of the endowments and the mavens of political correctness to see who can commit the biggest affront to society.

P. S. Here is another reason why we don't need news hacks: a 1,332-word article containing this thirty-four-word nugget of wisdom, which on this subject is all we need to know:

"They're so concerned with the suggestion that to write about, say, The Simpsons means you're not really smart that it causes a lot of academics to overcompensate, unintentionally making parodies of their own work."

NUF SAID.

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

For 2004, Bush Has Strength in the White Male Numbers

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

1. Listings on eBay go way down around Christmas. 2. A Wall Street sales -- ANALYST says that if the total listings on eBay don't go way up soon he may have to do something DRASTIC -- like issue another buy recommendation. 3. Listings on eBay go way up.

Theh's somethin' SCWEWY goin' on awound heawh!

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

After reviewing movies for a while, you begin to think you're the Bill Murray character in "Groundhog Day." You wake up on the first of January and realize you're going to see the same movies you've been seeing every year.

Very true Jack, but that doesn't prevent you from believing that MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER -- or that we've just seen ONE OF THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS IN FILM HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!

And that's the problem with you and the other ad-blurb copywriters -- you've been reviewing movies for a while.

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Not to worry, says the New York Times Boston Edition: President DAMN!'s foreign policy will be "solidly from the center wing of the Democratic Party."

Looks like I have to revise the NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY again. Not to mention noting this turkey can't fly because it has so many wings.

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

Well -- I wouldn't go that far.

Posted 7:48 PM by Gene

Charming: the Wright Brothers of holy cockroachdom wanted to experiment on a runway in Riyadh. Fortunately the Saudis (!!!!!!!!!!!) stopped them. Does this mean 500 more preachments next Friday from the imams declaring death to infidels?

Posted 4:46 PM by Gene

I suppose we should be happy that Japan's primary export these days seems to be cartoons of people with adolescent faces, pale skin, big hair, microscopic pug noses, ittle bitty lips and beady eyes, but I fear they might do to our sanity what the nation's TVs and stereos did to our consumer-electronics industry.

The line that "cultural exports are now worth three and a half times the value of all the televisions this nation exported in 2002" is surely misleading as the Sonys and Matsushitas do a lot of their manufacturing overseas, as Japan long ago got too expensive; and besides, they sell a lot more than TVs.

Posted 4:40 PM by Gene

I've not posted on the dreadful earthquake in Iran because natural disasters do not lend themselves to more than platitudes or a kind of fake, transient sympathy. But I came across before-and-after pictures in one of the New York tabloids (this wasn't one of them) of that magnificent mud fortress from the 9th century, like a huge sand castle -- almost totally ruined. Those two pictures conveyed the loss in a way pictures of crying women can't.

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

Surprise, surprise. Congresspoops are exempt from their own anti-spam legislation.

(WHY MUST THAT REPORTER HAVE A MIDDLE INITIAL OF "8."?!?!?)

Posted 12:33 PM by Gene

Amazing: the Times concedes Honorary Mayor Mike's righteous smoking ban MAY be hurting sales at some businesses. Thinking like that not too long ago would have gotten you carted to Siberia.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Corporate America wastes tens of millions of dollars sponsoring professional college football bowl games. And how do I know it's money wasted? Here's the tragic tale of Osram, the German lighting manufacturer, which once sponsored a bowl game in San Anton':

[Osram] Sylvania [its US unit] couldn't get enough people, especially decision-making executives, to fly to San Antonio for the game and related events. "One of the problems was the date," Colotti said. "It was always between Christmas and New Year's. That presented a marketing challenge (to get commitments from the executives to fly to San Antonio). That's a family time."

Translation: this is a minor league bowl game, and there's no way we're spending a whole week to waste our time to schmooze with nothings in a no-account game. I mean, you can't go back to HQ and yell at the underlings, "I WAS AT THE OSRAM SYLVANIA BOWL AND YOU WEREN'T!!!!!"

Considering that many bowl games have already had two or three sponsors in their checkered histories -- remember the Hey, Culligan Bowl? The Carquest Bowl? The IBM OS/2 Bowl? The Poulin Weedeater Bowl? -- I'd say NO to any bowl sponsorship. But common sense has grown as extinct at most firms as American jobs.

Posted 8:56 PM by Gene

FLIP...
FLOP!!!!!

Posted 6:48 PM by Gene

Who gabbed?

Posted 6:25 PM by Gene

PRESIDENT DAMN! says Osama should not be PREJUDGED!

Pray for his innocence, PRESIDENT DAMN! -- especially when you hit the SOLID SOUTH!

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

ANDY S. has given his Von Hoffman Award to a fellow Newscorpion, which is problematical for two reasons: 1) Seeing how WRONG Simon Jenkins was, shouldn't RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fire him? Or does he get a pass because he's a fellow Newscorpion? and 2), Doesn't it behoove Andy S. to seek Mr. Jenkins's dismissal for his sheer incompetence?

I think we know the answers to those questions.

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Well, on this, the last BEEEEEEEEEEEEE-O weekend of 2003, I'M ABOUT TO PREDICT WHICH OVERBLOWN BORES WILL BE NOMINATED FOR -- THE BEST-PICTURE OSCAR®. The envelope, please:

1. C.G.I. Tolkien's imitation-Ring-Cycle adolescent fantasy;
2. RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s financially glubglubbing nautical adventure;
3. The better Gone with the Wind with sex, gore, no blacks, and rave reviews from idiots like David "I WAS A SLAVE TO PORN" Denby;
4. Clint's little artsy-craftsy; and
5. The horsey story without Liz and Mick.

I will announce THE WINNER OF THE COVETED ACADEMY AWARD® on the day of the NOMINATIONS. Good luck to bad films!

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! becomes SUICIDES, and thanks be that "[f]igures before 1990 were unavailable, military officials said," which means we can run this story in for a TOUCHDOWN!

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Corrections
Posted Friday, Dec. 26, 2003, at 9:29 AM PT

The Dec. 23 "Today's Papers," Eric Umansky called former Centcom commander Anthony Zinni by the wrong first name, George.

In the Dec. 23 edition of "Explainer," Eric Umansky wrongly stated that Jerry Rawlings' military title was first lieutenant. Rawlings was, rather, a flight lieutenant.

In the Dec. 22 "Art" article, Daniel Kunitz originally stated that James Whistler died on July 22, 1903. In fact, Whistler died on July 17; his funeral was held July 22. Kunitz also mistakenly said James Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 "always has hung" in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. In fact, the painting has always hung in Paris, although not always in the Musée D'Orsay.

Looks as if Kinsley.com has as many BUGS as any MS program! Good work, ENTOMOLOGISTS!

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Please read the following entry while listening to suitably pompous music, like an Elgar Pomp and Circumstance march: Viacon Network News got its Wacko scoop, and the industry is already eructing about ETHICS. Hey MORONS, if you knew what you were doing you wouldn't have to talk about ETHICS. But precisely because you DON'T know what you're doing, and make in the six and seven digits not knowing, will allow you to talk ETHICS until hell freezes over. Besides, BEING THE GOOD ORGANIZATION MEN YOU ARE, MOST OF YOU WOULD PROBABLY DO THE SAME SLEAZY THING.

Or as THE ZON might say, if he'd lived in the nineteenth century: "ETHICS BE DAMNED!!!!! I'm working for my shareholders!!!!!!!!!!!" You hypocrites would definitely appreicate that.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

Did he cry?

If so, did his mascara run?

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

He's always been quick with the one-liners, befitting a man whose showbiz pals included the late Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Milton Berle. "Humor has sustained me," Modell says.

Especially when the PUBLIC was the punchline. RIGHT, Art?

And a BAH HUMBUG to you.

Posted 10:16 AM by Gene

I am NOT a RePUBli...errrrrrrrrrUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

Good news, Prof! NFL players have GUNS!

THEY need them?

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Qaeda Vows 'Back-Breaking' Strike, Magazine Says

OOOOOH! We're SCARED!!!!!

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

STOP THE PRESSES! The Times' second-string theater ad-blurbist says the score of THE GREATEST SHOW OF ALL TIME "consists of serviceable novelty numbers written in generic style"! He even knocks the great FRINGE show he singlehandedly made a hit as imitation Kurt Weill!!!!! BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!!!!

AND: have YOU ever heard of -- "Michael John LaChiusa, Andrew Lippa, Ricky Ian Gordon, Robert Reale, Zena Goldrich, Adam Guettel, Jason Robert Brown, David Yazbek, Polly Pen, Robert Lindsay Nassif, Tim Acito and Laurence O'Keefe"? You should have -- THEY'VE ALL WRITTEN BRILLIANT MUSICALS!!!!!

No wonder we're stuck with Mamma Mia.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

A low-level minor-league bowl game "ENDED WITH A NASTY BRAWL!!!!!"

Who says it's not for the money?

Posted 1:12 PM by Gene

Why is it when a hard-core liberal like E.J. writes of God, I don't believe him?

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

And here's one from Lycos, complete with caption:



Sgt. Jaime Misplay of Golden Shores, Ariz., right, and Sgt. Paul R Messier of Swansea, Mass., right, decorate Christmas tree at the 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday Dec. 22, 2003. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Posted 8:21 AM by Gene

...and the tree at St. Peter's Square in the Vatican.



I'll find some more to amuse myself.

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

...and one Clark Granger walks among a bunch of baby Christmas trees at his Maine farm (he is said to be "raising genetically-improved trees that grow denser, faster, and require less pruning"):

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

...and Santa and Mrs. Claus in Kuala Lumpur:

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

Well, I did find a couple on Yahoo! News. Here's the National Christmas Tree outside the White House:

Posted 8:09 AM by Gene

Obviously the holy cockroaches are celebrating it too. Wanna bet this is an inside job?

Posted 8:08 AM by Gene

For all the Web's alleged riches I could not find a suitable photo to celebrate the day, so,

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

and I'll try to keep my posting light, to save wear and tear on my sanity.

(I DID IT!)

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Here's why I rail against the ad-blurb copywriters: David Sterritt, the seventy-something for the Homeopathic or Whatever Monitor, says "2003 was a good [year] overall," and to prove it he MUST cart out a top-10 list -- and nine of the ten are arthouse flicks, and not counting RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'S glub-glub period nautical adventure they've probably done no more business COMBINED than a bad CGI flick in its third week. As I said, the news hacks have helped wrap a straitjacket around the movies with their ossified thinking.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

The Sultan of SWAT "MIGHT ACCEPT NOMINATION AT YANKEE STADIUM!!!!!!!!!!" [Emphasis added.]

Better hope it doesn't rain.

Posted 4:46 PM by Gene

Four pages on this:

One theory that has been making the rounds for years now holds that shy people "are born with essentially more sensitive brains and nervous systems and they find normal social existence to be more stressful than they are comfortable with," says Cole. "They are just kind of high-strung."

I know. Puh-leeze.

Posted 4:42 PM by Gene

The League of Nations will spend over $3 billion dollars in the next two years tying its shoes.

Posted 4:35 PM by Gene

Two-month-old Palestinian Christian baby girl Maryam Qasis is propped up against an altar as her mother takes her photograph with the doll that represents the infant Jesus, in St. Catherine's Church in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The biblical town, where according to tradition Jesus was born, faces yet another gloomy Christmas in the face of more than three years of Palestinian-Israeli violent conflict.
(Getty Images)

(from Newsday.com)

Posted 2:40 PM by Gene

It's official: Gov. DUHHHHH'S TV show is history. Is THE MESS next?

Posted 2:23 PM by Gene

As yet another immortal masterpiece makes it way to screens everywhere and myriad perfessers waste time, tuition and taxes pondering why it was shot in Romania, I think of James Thurber and his flamboyant producer in "The Man who Hated Moonbaum":

"Not trying to do anything to me, he says!" screamed the little man. "Wasn't his fault! It's never anybody's fault! They give me ten thousand dollars' worth of Sam Browne belts for Scotch Highlanders and it's nobody's fault!"

Let us swallow hard: the several Oscar®-striving period pieces on the screen this season have fizzled at the BEEEEEEEEE-O. It was one thing to play these period pieces with Errol Flynns and Clark Gables, and they fit in a time that still believed in the old chivalries. Plus, and I hate to say it again, JACK and his penchant for Grand Guignol also ruin them. Hate to say this again, too: it isn't that people don't want adult pictures; it's that JACK's CONSPIRACY must make what it deems adult pictures ITS way, and largely to conform to the prejudices of the ad-blurb copywriters, which have now helped to strait-jacket the movies for two generations. And when these imbeciles are through the public can make out the Sam Browne belts. By January it'll be back to the dogs of winter, and the CGI machines for the stupid kids will soon follow, and whatever extremely marginal hope for better movies will disappear again.

Posted 10:56 AM by Gene

Those who ascribe to Dean a genuinely radical and even left-wing program are deluding themselves and others.

On the WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE?!?!?

Posted 10:45 AM by Gene

Thanks to ArtsJournal.com I encountered this sage advice for government funding of the arts from The New Criterion:

[P]ublic cultural support cannot be about the provision of entertainment, either upscale or for the masses; it cannot be about the accomplishment of immediate and partisan social and political goals; it cannot be about the stretching of the limits of permissible personal behavior; it cannot validate the so-called “cutting edge” of art or thought.
… [P]ublic support must concentrate on nothing less than the transmission of the civilization of the past, via the present, to the future. Public support thus must concern itself with civilizing works of art, literature, and thought, their preservation, study, communication, and regeneration. [Emphasis added.]

There you have it: no chcocolate-coated feminists, no bullwhips up behinds, no Christ figures in urine, no elephant dung, no video walls, no geetars, no lectures, no tantrums, just "the finest art." Is this too much to ask for?

Posted 9:12 AM by Gene

Merry Christmas, Charlie Company -- and be back soon.

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

Another one-hit wonder of literature. Recently FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News's flack Roger said he'd talked some time ago to a bigwig in the record biz who put his hand to his forehead (so I imagine), rolled his eyes heavenward (so I further imagine), and said with a barely-disguised tone of disgust, "One-hit wonders." So in publishing. And look what's happened to the record biz.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

Last night WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! screamed that our FEDS, in conjunction with the Russians, had found A BIG PILE OF URANIUM IN BULGARIA AND THE WASHINGTON POST WAS REPORTING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today it ran the story -- only it was on page A10, and that uranium was from an old nuclear reactor, and it's the third time we and the Russians have done it. I will not ask for WALTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to pull his hat over his head, but I should know better than to believe his exaggerations, including those of omission.

Posted 8:34 PM by Gene

Of course this story had to be hidden: Rep. Waxy Buildup TOOK HALLIBURTON MONEY!!!!!

Pffh-hh-hh!

Posted 7:44 PM by Gene

All this writer had to do to glean all these football cliches was to transcribe the Viacom Network's own NFL broadcasts.

Posted 7:36 PM by Gene

Corporate America is intent on proving that with outsourcing, the golden rule must always be, "I Rule, Therefore I'm Golden."

Here's an interesting paragraph:

The U.S. sales director for one of India's top computer services providers said his company has won business from customers such as Walt Disney Co., Time Warner Inc.'s CNN and the Fox division of News Corp. -- none of which want public disclosure.

Wonder why Viacom isn't in there.

I like the name of one of the companies that's helping to export the jobs to Inja: Tata Consultancy Services. As in kiss your employment goodbye. (I suspect some high-paid CONSULTANT will recommend a name change.)

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

More obtuseness from the Times: the procreating urge among teenagers seems to be calming down, and while only a fool would guess why (many fools in this piece), it's a CONSERVATIVE thing, and therefore we would never credit CONSERVATIVE forces like the abstinence movement because they're RED COUNTRY, from whence emanates EEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL. It's going to take more than gee-whiz aw-shucks I'm-just-an-ordinary-writer mea culpas from the "PUBLIC EDITOR" to disinfect the Times' longstenching moral reek.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

The fatuousness of ad-blurb copywriters knows no bounds:

This is a movie that sends you out shuddering, chuckling nervously, wanting to tell the people in line for the next show, "It's the feel-bad movie of the year!"

No, Bug, I don't want feel-bad movies, but what I do want -- movies that will entertain, movies that will make me think, movies that don't beat me over the head with Grand Guignol and all of JACK's other contemptible tricks -- you and your fellow blurbists DON'T WANT. You want good trash and good bad trash, because St. Pauline of Kael worshipped them. In short, you want TRASH.

Posted 3:20 PM by Gene

According to a study in the Arabic daily, Al-Watan, one in five children in Saudi Arabia is systematically abused.

So that's where they get that ol'-time religion.

Posted 2:50 PM by Gene

Oops! It's still illegal to toke in Canada, meaning it may not be the world's most advanced society.

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

Shucks, Richard ADVERTISEMENT Corliss, maybe your masterworks weren't so great; they got snubbed for the BEST CGI OSCAR®!

Now that's an insult.

Posted 1:30 PM by Gene

PILLHEAD SAYS IT'S A "DEMOCRAT VENDETTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

This is one thing I LOOOOOVE about political hacks: they'll invent 5000 new ways to mangle the language. With the HARD-CORE REPUBLICANS it's misusing "Democrat" as an adjective because they think it REEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY gets on people's nerves. They're right; it gets on my nerves.

Posted 1:17 PM by Gene

Pataki Pardons Lenny Bruce Posthumously

How fitting. One comedian pardons another.

Posted 12:10 PM by Gene

And speaking of NEWS HACKS and backscratching and THE FIFTH and extraordinary luck:

"MY BUSINESS IS MY BUSINESS. GOT IT?"

GOT IT, George "The Zillionaire Crybaby" Will.

P. S. WHAT ABOUT PAUL KRUGMAN AND ENRON?

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

More false statistics from the educrats, who alternate between naive hope and perfect denial, all the time never actually teaching.

Posted 11:47 AM by Gene

Sorry to repeat myself, but just as stories around Thanksgiving about retail sales going gangbusters can write themselves, so can stories about the inevitable disappointments. Can't we hold off on the sales pitches, and wait until January to spout the alleged numbers?

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

Here's a press release about a kid who wrote a fantasy book and got a lucky break when a VERY BIG NEWS HACK AND NOVELIST (he who helped Demi Moore develop bionic breasts) visited the neighborhood and his son said WOW THIS BOOK IS GREAT and now it's sold a zillion copies and first editions go for $10,000,000 on eBay. I guess I'm angry because I've not sold my book, and never will; I'm also angry because so much in the book biz depends on the lucky break, not on merit; and despite such wonders book sales are down for a reason, and they won't recover through hopeless gimmicks like more slut-lit or mommy-lit or Oprah-lit or navel-staring highbrow lit or $500 cookbook-lit or C.G.I. Tolkien Dungeons and Dragons fantasy-lit, and with every new such gimmick, the prospects for books of enduring excellence -- the Huck Finns and Great Gatsbys -- and for our culture not to die on remainder shelves and in flea markets, grow that much dimmer.

Posted 11:12 AM by Gene

Merry Christmas, Roy -- and don't listen to PETA.

Posted 11:10 AM by Gene

WILL PILLHEAD TAKE THIS TO THE NINE FINGERS?

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

There is no excusing our earlier toadying to Iraq, except in 1984 (at risk of using a pun) we were between Iraq and a hard place, Iran, which had just freed our diplomatic hostages three years earlier. To his great credit, Dubya has dumped this kind of international realism, but we shouldn't delude ourselves that we won't have to do it again, among other equally evil forces.

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

Holiday wishes test hopefuls' creativity

The politically correct A-HOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMA....

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

Dean left speechless on Libya arms move

A-HOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMAHOMMA....

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

The best laid plans of mice....

...[O]peratives of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, possibly trained and licensed to fly passenger jets, may now be pilots for some foreign airlines, ideally positioning them to carry out suicide attacks, U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday.

Reinforced cockpit doors intended to thwart hijackers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks would now protect any terrorist pilot at the controls, the officials said on condition of anonymity....

In a nice double qualifier, some "officials" "indicate" that the holy cockroaches "may"...you get the idea. We flail at orange through January.

Posted 7:18 PM by Gene

BLACKMAIL MADE HIM DO IT!

Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

THIS IS A TEST: Brazil's loony-leftist president Lulu -- Lula has signed a "sweeping" gun control bill. Let's see if this can bring down that nation's huge homicide rate.

Why am I doubtful? (And no, I don't like the NRA.)

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

Russia Offers to Forgive 65% of Iraq's Debt

And the dealmaking begins!

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

Shoes thrown at Egypt's minister in Jerusalem mosque

Is that another Palestinian tradition -- like candy?

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

In their latest cliche for the zeitgeist, news hacks now say video games are on "the verge" (and it's always the verge) of GREATNESS. First, regardless of what the hacks say, videogames will always be a calling for the young and nerdy, guaranteeing their arrested development. Second, the ART FORM can only express itself with shoot-em-ups and blow-'em-ups, hardly distinguishable from the movie MASTERPIECES of our time. Finally, because videogames are software, they are far more prone than other ART FORMS to disintegration and neglect. If this is our age's ticket to posterity I'd like to see some throwaway culture.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

PILLHEAD COPS A PLEA BARGAIN?!?!?

Yeah, to stick it to his ex-maid. What a delicious way on putting it over on the LOWER CLASSES.

Posted 3:49 PM by Gene

Why should the League of Nations be on the lookout for terrorists when they're among the terrorists' best friends?

Then again, look what happened to the Saudis.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

Frontier Repays Post - Sept. 11 Loan

You and who else?

When it's Congress, and it's business, and it's loans, it's grants.

Posted 1:02 PM by Gene

Ooooooooooh, the conservatives' favorite former publisher's taking THE FIFTH.

Him and Pillhead.

Posted 11:46 AM by Gene

Pirated 'Rings' easy to find online

HARDY-HAR-HAR!

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

There used to be a time when at least a few corporate executives didn't have the BOOOOO! HISSSSSS!! in them and wouldn't hog all the wealth to themselves. Judging from the miscreants who rule the business roost nowadays I'd say this will probably be the last such fine example.

Posted 11:21 AM by Gene

After adding a few conciliatory ice cubes toward the cold peace with Israel, Egypt's foreign minister gets assaulted by the Palis as a "collaborator," which I guess means anyone who wants peace.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

PROF pulls his knighthood routine on a blog. This is why I resent the domination of blogging by six people; it makes it more difficult for bloggers of any merit to break through; we all await the magic sword from Tennessee to tap us on the shoulder, on a whim, and grant us wisdom, and a spike in our Site Meter stats. Prof and Co. are on their way to being the BIGMEDIA of blogging -- and they, just like BIGMEDIA, are starting to sound alike.

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

It's official: China is about to constitutionally become a Communist-led free-market dictatorship. Break out the bubbly, Jim Glassman! Dick Armey! BUTTMEN! WAL-MART!!

Posted 8:19 PM by Gene

A columnist for TechCentralStation says Rudy will face Sen. Rodham in '06, which will be like a presidential race without the White House -- but with the hundreds of zillions financing hundreds of millions of negative ads. Wonderful.

Posted 3:56 PM by Gene

Here goes NewsMax again:

O'REILLY'S BOOK HITS #1 ON NY TIMES LIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what? Michael Moore's made #1 too. And as I've said before, the book biz isn't about quality, it's about marketing, which is why its sales have declined. Besides, most people don't want to read big fat mouths in print, the fringe hardcores excepted.

P. S. From now on NewsMax, would you mind putting your heds in ALL CAPS? It's your intention, and it would save me the trouble of having to ring up Word to change them.

Posted 3:40 PM by Gene

MORE EXTREMELY CLEVER NEWSHACKERY: "Some Israeli Reservists Refuse to Serve!!!!!!!!!", yells the headline. Now you'd think some means A LOT, but as Curley's (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) Stooge says, it's only thirteen, and as he further sheepishly admits (halfway down), "The 13 signatories represent a tiny fraction of the unit." Of ONE unit. Nonetheless, the good deed has been done, and there is PROFOUND DISSENSION in Israel's armed forces.

Somebody definitely had someone like Curley's (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) Stooges in mind when he said, "The enemy of our enemy is our friend." With friends like these who needs enemy's enemies?

Posted 2:16 PM by Gene

HEY! Thanks to Google, I JUST FOUND THE AIN'T IT COOL NEWS OF BAD MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

"Unfortunately for Sony, Michael's arrest came in the same week his new album was launched." [Editor's note: It's unfortunate because THIS ALBUM IS GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!] (Overemphasis mine.)

There aren't enough D-U-M-DUM sites for teens on the Web.

And of course it has 20 pop-up ads.

Posted 1:16 PM by Gene

The news hacks are already a-tingle and a-glow over the BEEEEEEEE-OH for C.G.I. Tolkien's heavily computerized faux-Ring-Cycle adolescent-male fantasy, but look at BoxOfficeMojo.com's numbers and you realize it did (or rather, it should do, these numbers being largely made up) as much business as everything else combined, which alone tells me movies are a joke.

Posted 12:47 PM by Gene

How far are we from the point people will pay no heed to terror alerts -- and that's when we get hit?

Honest Gov, your system is as useful as JACK's ALPHABET SOUP. There are only two ratings, and your red is like NC-17 (and only to be used after the fact). Isn't there a better way?

Coming on the same day as this story one may have reason to doubt you.

Posted 12:42 PM by Gene

You Can Stand on Principle and Still Stub a Toe

I've got a better hed, public editor: "You Can Stand on Principle Without a Foot to Stand On." Thus it is with news hacks, at especially the noble Times.

Posted 11:28 AM by Gene

Looks like Osama -- er, Pakistan lent some help to Iran's nuke program.

Answer us, Paks -- why do you want to nuke Israel?

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

I'm just as anti-war as he is -- BUT I WANT TO BE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF!!!!!

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

Last night, after Petrified Tree Jr. got busted for dope, the members of Free Republic confidently assumed there'd be a news embargo. Fortunately that's not entirely true, but on past behavior we do have reason to be suspicious.

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

Buzz! BUZZ! WAKE UP!! Time has chosen its PERSON OF THE YEAR -- the U.S. SOLDIER!!!!!

There. Now you can go back to sleep.

Posted 9:37 PM by Gene

Congressman V-Chip screams, WHY DIDN'T WE TAKE CARE OF LIBYA THE WAY WE TOOK CARE OF IRAQ?!?!? You forget, V-Chip, we did bomb them -- in 1986, an action popular with Europeans -- and Democrats. (Remember how our jets had to make a WIDE TURN to avoid France?) And conceding Moammar is a lizard and a nutcase, he did plead for mercy, unlike Saddam, who always gave the West the finger. Moreover, Iraq never agreed to unconditionally end its WMD programs the way Libya did. It was foolish for Tony Blair to call Moammar "courageous," but the noose has not exactly gone slack on him, especially after 9/11. I suspect the Loose Screw of Tripoli didn't want an angry American military bearing down on him again after our near total subjugation of Iraq's forces. And to the Pan Am 103 victims' families: I don't like Kissinger realism either, but at least now we can hope for a democratic, prosperous Libya, a hope that didn't exist before, a Libya that can apologize for its history.

Posted 7:27 PM by Gene

Double shucks, the forces of reaction have led most people to be opposed to gay marriage.

What do we do now?

Posted 7:24 PM by Gene

Shucks, the liberals' favorite Iraqi led the -- RESISTANCE. (Do I hear La Mayonnaise in the background?)

What do we do now?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Bob Novak insists Sen. Richard "Earnest" Lugar will probably replace GENERAL at Foggy Bottom, meaning more of the same old same old.

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

When two TV "news" outlets play the same tapes over and OVER and OVER, how can they tell?

Posted 3:01 PM by Gene

We know you're for limited government, Tony, but isn't this going a little too far?

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

In the event any of my four readers have trouble understanding me, I hereby introduce THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY, which I hope will explain (though it may not excuse) some of the loopy nicknames I give people and organizations:

MICKEYMOUSE NIXON: Michael Eisner. So called because in recent years he's frequently been likened to Nixon, given his penchant for micromanagement and credit-hogging.

BUTTMAN INSTITUTE: The Cato Institute, the home of glibertarianism. The producer of Buttman videos is a "major" benefactor.

THE BROW: Sumner Redstone, after the arch-nemesis of Dick Tracy, and also because he lost his in a hotel fire.

PRESIDENT DAMN!: Howard Dean, given his vituperous history and the fact that news hacks have annointed him our President-Elect.

PRESIDENT McCLELLAN: Wesley Clark, given his superficial resemblances to another Democratic general who ran for president, George McClellan. With PRESIDENT DAMN'S surge in the press's estimation I have demoted McClellan to general.

THE ZON: Mel Karmazin, the broadcast tyrant who makes a big thing about the correct pronunciation of his name: it's KarmaZON, NOT KarmaZIN.

THE GLIBERAL: Frank Rich. Self-explanatory, I hope.

ASWIA: The fictitious American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, which isn't so fictitious; it's called the Association of National Advertisers and it's made a big PR stink about its "support" for "family-friendly programming" even as it's grown ever more indiscriminate in its sponsorships.

THE CLUNKER BROTHERS: GM and Ford, and honorary member DaimlerCorp (i.e., DaimlerChrysler), again for obvious reasons; and while I know The Big Two have made considerable quality strides, they always manage to undercut them one way or another, mainly through their bad PR and excessive advertising.

BUZZ T. NEWHOUSE: Jeff Jarvis, former TV Guide "critic" and founder of the unreadable Time Warner rag Entertainment Weekly, and proprietor of BuzzMachine.com, who earned this name being a TWXster (qv), and also because he now works for Newhouse in "new media," and who has a decided aversion to knocking people in big media, unless they make idiotic statements about blogging.

RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Any property run by News Corporation automatically gets at least twenty exclamation points after (or within) the name given the founder's penchant for banging people on the head with them (hence FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News, THE NEW YORK POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, etc.)

TWXSTER: Anyone employed by Time Warner (TWX is its NYSE ticker symbol).

BILL THE ENTOMOLOGIST: The head wizard of Microsoft, after his company's penchant for creating some very ingenious software bugs.

PILLHEAD: Rush Limbaugh, after an unsolicited compliment on his radio show.

LOWSY MAYS: Lowry Mays, the swaggering founder and chairman of Clear Channel Communications (which I call CHEAP CHANNEL after the fashion).

SUPERHOOPER: Ibrahim Hooper, the tyrannical spokespoop for CAIR, who never met a Muslim he didn't like.

NEWS HACK: I know I have what amounts to an obsession in using this term, but as I explained in one of my earliest posts,

I'm not calling them "journalists." That's like calling a garbageman a sanitation engineer (God knows they're in the same business). Besides, am I going to endow an AP drone with the same term as Boswell, Dickens, Hemingway and Orwell? Not on your life! Well how about "reporter," then? Because not all news hacks report; some are incoherent columnists, some are movie-ad-blurb copywriters, some are senior-citizen groupies, some are millionaire toadies, and so forth. No, the dictionary defines "news" as "new information of any kind" (never mind that most "news" writing is old as the hilburns), and "hack" as "a writer hired to produce routine or commercial writing." Hackwork is worse on a deadline. Hence -- NEWS HACKS.

GE BANCORP: General Electric, because it seems increasingly to want to be a bank (and in similar financial scams like show-biz) and to uninvolve itself in grimy businesses like manufacturing.

ALTRIA MOTIVE: The former Philip Morris Companies, or as it must call itself now, Altria, the pronunciation of whose name suggests a double entendre -- and if the firm didn't provide it by sticking with its NYSE ticker symbol MO. (ALTRIA MOTIVE FOODS is Kraft Inc., 85-percent owned by ALTRIA MOTIVE.)

MOVIE-AD-BLURB COPYWRITERS: Again, I will not call them movie "critics" for the same reason I will not call NEWS HACKS "journalists." In a "notorious" column Variety's fawner-in-chief Peter Bart suggested calling them the same thing. All they write are ad blurbs for movies, seasoned with a big dollop of pretension.

DOW 36,000: Jim Glassman, the smug glibertarian columnist and head of Tech Central Station, who confidently predicted at the height of the stock-market bubble in 2000 -- in a BOOK -- that's where the Dow Jones Industrial Average would go.

SNIDELY WHIPLASH: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, for his comically villainous demeanor, and also because he'd look like Snidely if you gave him a handlebar moustache and stove-pipe hat.

CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES: AP hacks, affectionately named for their boss, Tom Curley, former editor of USA OKAY, who once insisted with a straight face most of the people who run the news biz are conservative. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: The United Nations, like its forerunner, a wimpish, appeasing irrelevance.

KINSLEY.COM: Slate.com, because it was founded and edited by Michael Kinsley, whose snide, smirky, smarmy presence radiates in every piece.

THE NINE FINGERS IN THE WIND: The Supreme Court of the United States, whose members frequently seem to rule that way.

GLIBERTARIANISM: Libertarianism. It combines (to quote from another post) "the worst of the knee-jerk liberal (laissez-faire morals) with the worst of the knee-jerk conservative (laissez-faire capitalism), mixed with a healthy dose of conceit."

JACK: Jack Valenti, former dishonest flack for LBJ, since 1966 head of THE CONSPIRACY: The Motion Picture Association of America. The man has done more to ruin movies than anyone else, far more than the most-often-named culprit, Lucas Spielberg.

JACK'S ALPHABET SOUP: "CARA," the MPAA's ratings system, an absolute disgrace, a big reason movie stink, and a problem no one seems of a mind to do anything about, for all the occasional REFORMING noises among news hacks. One suspects a reason the hacks are content just to make noises on the subject is that any positive change to mass media is a NEGATIVE CHANGE TO THEM. Hence the constant wave of denials of press bias, and the only recent grudging admission that something called the Web exists.

SLEAZEBALL GUMBO: Billy Tauzin, the corrupt Louisiana congressman and JACK's heir apparent.

THOMPSONISM: the womyn's studies and black studies movement of our time, "pop-culture studies," the incontinent praising of show-biz junk with multi-syllable words for the purpose of establishing tuition- and taxpayer-financed fiefdoms, named after "Prof." Robert Thompson of Syracuse, who's set Guinness Book records the last three years for getting his name in Nexus.

LITTLE JEFFREY: Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of GE BANCORP, whom I call such because he will forever work under the shadow of the LEGENDARY (see the NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY) JACK WELCH, the most overhyped and overrated CEO who ever lived.

BLUNDER RAG: Newsweek, so named after its hyperventilating Harvard graduate and superpatriotic columnist Jonathan Alter made fun of Vice-President Cheney for saying the Iraqis would cheer us. ("AN ARROGANT BLUNDER FOR THE AGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!") The magazine tries to make up for being second to its competition by outzeitgeisting the zeitgeist, often with nauseating (or unintentionally funny) results. BLUNDER was home of the Hitler Diaries, to this day one of its finest achievements.

Posted 2:02 PM by Gene

SHUT UP, Bill Buckley. I can recall when you boasted that you wrote for Playboy because it was RIGHT-ON, WITH-IT AND NOW, and a GREAT WAY TO REACH BUDDING YOUNG CONSERVATIVES. Sorry Bill, friend of Johann Sebastian Bach and his B-Minor Mass, I still rankle at how you changed formats on a New York classical radio station you owned -- and the first song you played was "Roll Over, Beethoven." SHUT UP, SENILE FICTIONIST WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

The left is mourning (and con-SER-vatives celebrating), but I have a hunch RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s overpaid, just as he did with TV Guide; for now he's in a battle with cable-system operators over who can pass the least programming costs onto the turnips, a battle both sides can only lose; and as more people hook on to digital cable and get phone and Internet service too the dishes lose some of their edge.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Saudi Arabia says most militants crushed

I'll believe it -- after a couple of years, and when we finally fire Whorvis Communications.

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

Book sales are down, in no small part because so many are marketing, so what do the publishing mavens do? More marketing!

If books were good the selling would tend to itself. That never occurs to the geniuses of pulpland.

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

Reuters gets excited because our soldiers mistook Iraqi police for "bandits."

Given their infiltration by the forces of right, how can we be sure they aren't bandits?

Posted 10:44 PM by Gene

IN THE PAST, I've compared the blogosphere to the network of European coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries....

I really wish the Fortune 500 blogger companies would stop writing this way. They're Starbucks; I'm a pouch of freeze-dried coffee.

I'm glad Buzz noticed that atrocious lead from the Reut; however I noticed it first. Alas, as my motto goes....

Posted 6:58 PM by Gene

I must confess priapic stories about good-looking airheads like these can give me a momentary thrill (and I wouldn't put it past these sluts to have staged their "fight" for the mutual publicity); but then I think of what the victims of the wacko snipers went through, or what our courageous soldiers in Iraq have gone through, and I think, we shouldn't give these a-double-scribbleholes the time of day. I could understand if they were Marlene on a USO tour, or Marilyn in Korea, but they aren't, and again, we shouldn't.

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

The hacks at Conrad's old haunt have a badly-written word or two, or ten thousand:

The owners of Harry Caray's Restaurant bought the baseball that was deflected by a fan during the Cubs' playoff loss to Florida-- a move they say will help bring closure to one of the most agonizing losses in the team's history.

That puts "closure" in the NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY. This word went from being what happens to a door to cheap pop psychology. Throw it away, please?

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Blair: Libya to give up WMD programs

Here's one tyrant who sees the proverbial writing on the wall. GETTING SADDAM WAS A VERY VERY BAD THING! RIGHT PRESIDENT DAMN!? RIGHT LIBERALS? RIGHT DEMOCRATS?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

WORLD COURT TO CHECK APARTHEID WALL LEGALITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe the World Court can bring down Israel too.

This Osama Channel Update brought to you by Buick® -- The Spirit of American Style™.

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

Reuters Line of the Week:

Michael Jackson is a lover, not a fighter....

That's almost as bad as calling a terrorist a freedom -- fighter.

Posted 1:31 PM by Gene

The Osama Channel introduces another new Top 40 Hit: "We're Chasing You"!

Maybe that explains why men in beards keep running after herds of goats.

Posted 12:19 PM by Gene

When will the organized campaign begin accusing us of a war crime for taking Sad Saddam's picture?

Posted 12:12 PM by Gene

Why am I not surprised to learn Osama's boys are drug pushers?

Posted 6:43 AM by Gene

Which awards ceremony does ArtsJournal.com call "bizarre and inexplicably important"? The Golden Globes® or the Oscars®?

Does it matter?

Posted 6:36 AM by Gene

Pundits say [Sen. Morals's] conservative positions will hamper his presidential aspirations.

Translation: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

DOO-DO-DOOT DOOO-DO-DO-DOOT! FLASH! PRESIDENT DAMN! CONCEDES SADDAM "BAD MAN"! DOO-DO-DOOT DOOO-DO-DO-DOOT!

Posted 7:12 PM by Gene

I have often made fun of the bloggers for going on and on and on and on and on for no reason, for writing just to show off their bona fides and warmed-over punditry. Well, here's a blogger who goes on and on and on and on and on, and whose nearly every word is worth reading: Terry "Unpronounceable" Teachout. I've criticized him before for his inconsistency: his Commentary rave of the IMMORTAL Stephen Sondheim, for instance; but on his blog he writes with passion and zeal and at best a truly unconventional wisdom. He finishes before his fellow bloggers have even started. If only there were more such the medium's future -- and its excellence -- would be unquestioned.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

If you think of Christmas as a form of redistribution of wealth it does lose some of its allure, doesn't it.

Which is what the holiday is for. That and the playing of crummy songs.

P. S. Synergy lives at EisnerCorp, in the hed.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Who wants to bet after the TWXsters buy a studio alleged to be MGM they stop making movies under the name? All it has is a film library and masterworks like Codebreaker, or whatever the name of that movie was. Alas, the bio of Cole Porter will probably go ahead, and the copywriters will call it genius.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

USA Okay's Question of the Day:

Is fruitcake a gift worth giving?

Posted 3:16 PM by Gene

Buzz (through a surrogate) has a BRILLIANT idea -- give awards to Weblogs! And we can guess who'll win the awards, CAN'T WE? You (after a mighty lobbying campaign by N------e), Prof, Andy S., little, Roger, Lileks, the guy who uses Stardates, etc. -- the usual blogrollers.

Go for it! And after you win, maybe you CAN apply for Michael Wolff's job!

Posted 3:10 PM by Gene

Good news for kids! Toy prices are going down, so the kids can nag their parents into buying more toys!

Posted 2:54 PM by Gene

A writer for the Wall Street Journals Liberal Edition...oh never mind.

I'd like to pull the hat over the Conservative Edition's head -- and seal the Liberal Edition's mouth with Super Glue.

I know, he's not, but he may as well be.

Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

Now that the ad-blurb copywriters are in earnest trying to dictate the Oscars®, why am I thinking most of the nominees will be from movies NOT RELEASED ON THOSE @#$%&* SCREENERS?

Posted 11:45 AM by Gene

"THERE IS NO OTHER CURE THAN TO KILL MATT DRUDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That won't be necessary. Just pull his hat down to his feet.

But first, let's seal Bill's MOUTH with Super Glue.

Posted 10:52 AM by Gene

Finally, in the Arab world, people speak up against the holy criminal class -- and an Arab expert likens Sad Saddam to Ceaucescu. Who knows? Maybe the right dominos are falling.

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

Well! Having already tried to sell penises, DaimlerCorp. decided it couldn't go too much further in offending reactionaries, even if they are a good chunk of our buyers; so there goes the Lingerie Bowl.

Shucks! The forces of Nazism march on!

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

Bad news, Whiney: Iraq's Governing Council wants the death penalty!

I say, let the Iraqis decide.

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

Little Whiney Richard wants Saddam to live, presumably as a reminder of the greatness that might have been.

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

Final Word: 'My Father's Name Was James Strom Thurmond'

Final word: Your father's name was M. U. D.

Posted 6:29 AM by Gene

A defiant, deranged Saddam Hussein is making outrageous statements to CIA interrogators, claiming his government never surrendered - and that he would win by a landslide in new Iraqi elections, The Post has learned....

Refusing to acknowledge the desperate circumstances in which he finds himself, the imprisoned, egomaniacal ex-tyrant is demanding to be treated with respect, the officials said.

Hey Sad, you're lucky we ARE treating you with respect.

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but Mayor Bloomberg's apparently is worth just 1 red cent.

A signed photo of Hizzoner was posted for sale last week on eBay. When the bidding closed last night just before 11, only one offer had been made - for a penny.

Maybe the seller should have described it as RARE.

Posted 6:23 AM by Gene

Paul "The Greediest SOB" Allen wants to build a space plane, which means he should soon be shaking down the government for many many billions to build it.

My suggestion, Greedy: call Ted Stevens. But be prepared to hand him half the project -- and to relocate to Nome.

Posted 6:20 AM by Gene

Palestinians expelled to Gaza share boredom, bitterness and cigarettes

Which I guess means we'll soon be accusing the Israelis of fomenting lung cancer.

Posted 12:21 AM by Gene

I can't sleep, so now's a good time to know the Profess -- BLUNDER has a "Web execlusive" saying that much-vaunted Iraqi memo is probably a fake. (I should have known something might be up when it was reported by someone named Con, no offense.) And now Buzz is all but admitting the equally vaunted campaign Weblogs (I've not seen them) are "one-way" devices. How surprising. In many ways Weblog communication is one-way, much of it is propaganda, and nearly all of it is done to amass hits. Surprise, surprise.

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

The LUMMOX former Sen. Bob "MENSA" Smith is going to seek Bob Graham's seat in Florida.

HARDY-HAR-HAR! Which party, Bob?

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

$1 million from EisnerCorp for an insider baseball account of a long-defunct magazine few outside BIGMEDIA read, written by two of the most self-absorbed egomaniacs in the business, makes sense too.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

It didn't take long for NewsMax, did it:

JUDGE WHO FREED HINCKLEY IS A CLINTONISTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The NEWSMAX/WINCHELL AXIS is no more interested in the truth than the idiots who are mourning our capture of Saddam.

OR:

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman set numerous conditions on the outings. Among other things, Hinckley is not permitted to leave his parents, John and Jo Ann, at any time while he is away from the hospital, and the first outings must be in the Washington area. Those visits could take place in two weeks unless prosecutors seek to delay them through an appeal....The judge is requiring advance notice of any outings, including a full itinerary. The Secret Service, which continues to monitor Hinckley, would be informed of any trips and would be free to keep track of him.

Facts can sometimes be an inconvenient thing.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

Buzz T. Newhouse unintentionally raises an unpleasant point, or rather a point unpleasantly: some of the people who run the big-name Weblogs could soon be worth (or will delude themselves into thinking they'll be worth) kazillions. By cultivating their own little provincial circle of backscratching the biggies may be working up in their own way to an IPO. Truth will suffer as inevitably as it suffers with NEWS HACKS. It does not help that Google (said to be worth at least $150 quadrazillions) owns Blogger. I'm sure Buzz has been thinking of cashing in on his musings (especially after what happened to his TWX stock and options, no doubt) ; The Professor is a lawyer, nuf said. And for little, there's always fundraising.

P. S. Judging from his newly purchased site I'd say the allegedly shrewd Bob Pittman is the latest jerk to throw money away on the Web -- but he had quite an education at TWX.

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

So -- these hospitals didn't tell anybody about this psycho nurse because they didn't want to get sued.

Makes sense to me -- now that they'll get sued.

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

Albright: Bin Laden Comments Were 'Tongue-in-Cheek'

VEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERY FUNNY, Cleaning Lady.

Posted 1:55 PM by Gene

Ted Stevens ranks at the top of the DAMNED IDIOTS LIST in Congress, comprised of people who stuff the government with pork and make it far more expensive to run. Well, why shouldn't we be surprised that the first question Ted asks when contemplating a piece of -- LEGISLATION is:

WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?

P. S. I found this article on Free Republic, and if the members aren't already doing the see-no-evil routine. Only a DEMOCRAT can be corrupt. Tell that to U. S. Grant, Warren Harding, RICHARD NIXON, etc. Oh, and it's the "L. A. Slimes." You clowns just don't agree with the politics. I HATE KNEE JERKS OF ANY STRIPE!

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

Just what we need: a third Osama Channel -- run by SAUDI ARABIA.

Posted 1:19 PM by Gene

Free PCs didn't work then, and they won't work now.

Posted 12:44 PM by Gene

I'm not sure what to think of the French's battle with the head scarves. It goes against my inner belief in freedom of conscience; yet we can be sure if some of those promoting the scarves had their way there'd be no freedom for anybody save the ruling imams and their court jesters the holy cockroaches.

Posted 12:25 PM by Gene

This is one of those "If-Gallup-had-polled-in-the-Civil-War-and-asked-if-slavery-is-okay and-most-people-said-slavery-was-okay-then-slavery-was-okay" stories (sorry, that's the only way to phrase it) whose sole purpose is to discourage and demoralize the reader, leaving THE NEWS HACKS AND THEIR SHOW-BIZ BRETHREN FIRMLY IN POWER.

I think this is why the media-political-academic industrial complex is so despondent that we caught Saddam: they're power phreaks, and because the people who captured Saddam are not in their little coterie they view this as a direct challenge to their power -- and I'm not the first to say this.

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

OOOOOOOOH, looks like one of the CONSERVATIVES' favorite former publishers faces the HOOSEGOW!

That should be a badge of honor with Larry "Greed" Kudlow.

Posted 11:42 AM by Gene

I repeat: Do most people want to watch a six-hour tantrum about AIDS?

Posted 8:45 AM by Gene

Utopia in Northwestern Pakistan.

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

Is that Pinch again?

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

SPINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN at the PRESIDENT DAMN! COMEDY FEST:

As all this hate was getting spewed out, Dean sat backstage listening. Aides say [emphasis added] he was fuming, so livid that he almost refused to come out to talk to the crowd. When he did, he began by saying some of the language was "wrong" and "I just don't have much tolerance for ethnic humor." But he didn't refer to all the X-rated anti-Bush and anti-Cheney attacks.

On second thought, though, he did find the jokes about Condoleezza Rice funny -- so long as they didn't contain the N-word.

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

When it comes to politics I'll bet J doesn't know her Lloyd's of London-insured behind from a hole in the ground, but I guess being associated with Sumner's "Hip" Youth Democrats for Whomever this means she hates Dubya too, which wouldn't distinguish her from lots of people who don't know their Lloyd's-of-London-uninsured behinds from a hole in the ground.

Posted 8:18 AM by Gene

The hacks at USA Okay really get excited when they can combine high-grade sociology with the high-pressure sell: in this case, for "professional-grade products," which USA Okay should know about, being a professional-grade pill.

Posted 6:36 AM by Gene

Horn to get $30,000 fine for cellphone call

He ought to change carriers.

Posted 6:21 AM by Gene

A new look at MSNBC.COM
A few features temporarily off due to high traffic

This part of the new look, Bugs?

Posted 6:18 AM by Gene

The MAN endorses Gen. McClellan, presumably because he'd pull our soldiers out of Iraq and put them all in Boobooland.

Doesn't some TWX moron realize the company's sold its records unit?

Posted 8:38 PM by Gene

Saddam was even more of a slob than I am!

Posted 8:30 PM by Gene

Okay, one: Sean Astin, and that's because he's the son of Patty Duke and Gomez. Whoopee.

Posted 8:21 PM by Gene

Here's the Dubya people were worried about before the election: squooshy on social issues in an off-the-cuff way so he could be immortalized in the New York Times. (Certain it is that he's no fiscal conservative.) The revolting thing about this story is that it will now be endlessly spun so that we won't know what he said.

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

Deer Runs Through D.C. Subway Station

Tally-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

Some experts argue [Osama's] jihad has worked – the world is now polarized.

Are these the same experts who've told us al Qaeda has 2,000, 5,000, 14,000, 30,000, 60,000, 500,000, 1 million and 2 million members? I think with the events of Sunday we can safely ignore them.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

More on President DAMN's foreign policy:

Dean Taps Clinton Aide Who Bungled Bin Laden Deal

BIG caveat: this IS NewsMax.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

A spate of violence Tuesday showed Saddam Hussein's capture offered no quick fix to Iraq's woes....

Oh goody! Bias? What bias?

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

I see the Glibertarians are hammering on the Vatican's tone-deaf approach re Saddam vis-a-vis gays. I agree; but the NAME-BRAND BLOGGERS have acquired the CRITICAL MASS needed to turn common sense into just another cliche. This will happen when five bloggers with 500 trillion hits say the same thing.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Has Sen. Morals found his in?

Or can President DAMN! find his out?

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

What's a Spider Hole?

That's where they put out Kinsley.com -- among the other BUGS.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

THE GREATEST FANTASY SINCE THE WIZARD OF OZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How many names can you associate with The Wizard of Oz? Let's see: Judy Garland (how could you not?), Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, Frank Morgan, the dog not named Toto, the Singer Midgets, Arthur Freed, Harold Arlen, E. Y. "Yip" Harburg, Victor Fleming, Mervyn LeRoy -- some may think King Vidor, others Buddy Ebsen, others Shirley Temple (who, after all, was offered the Dorothy part). A few diehards will recognize Herbert Stothart. Lots of names.

Quick! How many names can you associate with C.G.I. Tolkien's imitation-Wagner-Ring-Cycle adolescent fantasies? Bzzzzzzzzzt! TIME'S UP! DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....

Posted 3:29 PM by Gene

"[WE] LAUNCHED THE WAR IN THE WRONG WAY, AT THE WRONG TIME, WITH INADEQUATE PLANNING, INSUFFICIENT HELP AND AT AN EXTRAORDINARY COST SO FAR OF $166 BILLION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

By New Hampshire it'll be $500 billion. By the convention it'll be $2 trillion. By the time he loses it'll be $100 trillion. Don't ask if he becomes president.

Posted 12:21 PM by Gene

That week in early December was particularly painful. There was a seemingly endless stream of stories about men of color allegedly doing bad things: a Cincinnati black man caught on videotape as he fought police and later died at their hands; Michael Jackson's alleged sexual abuse of children; a Hispanic man arrested for allegedly abducting a white college student; Barry Bonds appearing before a grand jury investigating steroids. A media crime parade of men of color.

"Are there any positive stories on black men?" I screamed. I got my answer. The Grammys nominated 50 Cent for top rap artist of the year, a story that MSNBC.com put on its cover.

The MESS was only pulling the old Orwell gag: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. RAP IS GENIUS.

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

This is strange: Iraq's foreign minister blasts the League of Nations for doing nothing about Saddam -- and now he wants it to help?

Sweet water from a foul well, blood from rocks, you pick the cliche.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Did you see that stupid trick I just played on -- Commissioner?

Posted 11:10 AM by Gene

And somebody MUST tell James Bowman we're living in a golden age of entertainment too:

Every time I hear the term "sophisticated romantic comedy" used by a studio publicist to describe a movie these days my heart sinks a little. Oh dear. Someone’s going to speak a little French and someone’s going to be Hollywood’s idea of a writer or intellectual and everyone is going to wear fabulous clothes and be knowledgeable about food and wine. There may even be shots of the Eiffel Tower with snow falling. How I wish, usually, that there were less sophistication and more comedy. Nancy Meyers’s Something’s [Gotta] Give has all these problems and another, even more serious one all its own. It is — how to put this delicately? — that watching Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton together is like watching your parents making love.

Yecch!

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

Oh oh, Stephen! Turn in your union membership! You've just knocked one of the greatest achivements in film history! You'll never write in this country AGAIN!

I wonder which line will get the ad-blurb copywriters' dander up. Could it be:

What might be told in three hours is now told in four -- and then split in half, to stoke the filmmaker's ego and further fuel the merchandising.

OR:

How did Sam and Frodo get separated from Gandalf and Aragorn again? Where's Saruman? And why exactly is everyone fighting so hard to preserve a land of hereditary rulers and cranky old guys in dresses?

OR:

The director's monsters are impressive, the battle scenes thrilling, and only a nitpicker would ever stop to think he or she has just paid $10 to, essentially, watch one CGI giant fight two CGI elves.

Well Stephen, you're not supposed to NITPICK, you're supposed to RAVE RAVE RAVE ONE OF THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS IN FILM HISTORY. So much for doing 60-second blurbs on television.

Posted 10:27 AM by Gene

Morterman wants the trendily airheadily KEN FELATTINGLY fanny-kissing mistress of the zeitgeist TINA to edit his new rag New York, if he gets it. But the world's preeningest hack says NO; she's too busy adjusting her Pan-Cake for TV. This is nothing a little trendy moolah couldn't cure.

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

JESUS II blocks the Woodman's TruthNet!

Time to PRAY, Woodman! Better still do your weeping-willow routine.

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

PILLHEAD shuts his open book!

I can see it now: the world's loudest richest biggest MOUTH pleading the Fifth. What delicious irony!

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Lower Manhattan gets -- THE WORLD'S TALLEST WINDMILL!

Bring back the Tinkertoys!

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

It is clear leftists are upset that we got Saddam and have been willing to complain in every way possible. Now the bansheeing enters the mainstream as Little Whiney Richard pulls out another of his pleas for more Maypo. Here is a classic version of Lopezing, or pontificating on the world with your feet on the desk and your mind on your mutual funds. Mainstream, out of the loop, whatever, when these morons say "yes, but" they mean NO.

Posted 6:25 AM by Gene

AIDS After 'Angels': Not Gone, Not Forgotten

Translation: not even the greatest playwright in history, writing the greatest play in history, could wipe this scourge from the face of the earth.

I rather didn't think so.