Posted 6:40 PM by Gene

On the day Howell gulps, news hacks give us another reason not to trust them: a MESS.com story about the sniper attack at Cleveland State rehashes a CURLEY (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) account that devotes half its space to the architect Frank Gehry and his building -- and NOT ONE WORD to the sniper's identity. Why? Because he was an anti-war nut.

I HATE NEWS HACKS!!!!!

(Original link via lgf.)

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

I got a solution for your headache, Howell -- CALL JE$$E! He's got a message for you.

Posted 6:08 PM by Gene

Now that I think of it, except for the plagiarism, I don't detect a whole lot of difference between Jayson Blair and Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss. Both men have put one over on the public, except that Corliss did his work "legally." I give the benefit of the doubt to Blair: he was acting merely on his own. The pitchman was lying for AOL.

Whether they're selling a fib or a product, America's news hacks must now be held on a leash so short we can lift them in the air to give them an idea what hanging is like.

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

Howell goes GULP.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Oh, oh! Funny Cide's win smells -- funny.

Just what the Sport of Court Jesters needs -- another scandal, after the Autotote business. But a sport that specializes in anorexia and drunks deserves it.

UPDATE: On second thought: A closer look at those photos shows no wrong. The first photo reveals nothing untoward, and in the second photo you can barely see the blue of the jockey between his fingers, or (I presume) some part of his racing gear. I think we have an optical illusion here. We bloggers should always take care not to pull a Jayson.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Speaking of BAD, and Walnut Street, another one of Ed Rendell's attempted innovations was to turn our Center City into a permanent street festival. He couldn't do it, but today we had our annual one along the allegedly tonier part of Walnut near "The Square," with the usual outdoor food tents (I bought some not-bad Chinese food and have felt groggy ever since) and five bands per block from the Great White circuit (or as they call it now, The Big ONE-OH-OH) competing in wrong notes and pierced eardrums; they made the old coot (literally and figuratively) who spreads disease germs through his cornet in front of a store nearly every day sound good. One might seek solace in girlwatching when the weather's warm and humid, but alas, it was sixtyish and merely damp, and all the girls wore dirty-looking jeans (why can't women dress up again?), and I got tired of of the need to hold my ears (not because the music was loud, necessarily), and I went home.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

I know the feeling: We had an HMV on Walnut Street, a handsome modern building but ill-kept inside, with a flickering video wall, and the usual attitude-rich brats for clerks. It closed several years ago for a SuperGAP. EMI, HMV's parent, is in worse shape than ever -- a blessing as it's one of the BIG FIVE of BAD. Who needs thousands of stores to sell BAD when it's all over the Web?

Posted 2:27 PM by Gene

Yemen, of all countries, shows a little GUTS in handing down a death sentence to a holy cockroach. But in the Arab world, there's always a but, and one wonders whether the cockroach has a "Get Out of Jail Free" card in his pocket.

Posted 2:08 PM by Gene

If we told you everything they'd have to kill us

I just stumbled across AOL Time Warner rag's outrageous cover advertorial-synergasm, and without question this is the dumbest line ever to appear in a newsrag, dumber even than the ARROGANT BLUNDER, and that's a contest. Since many professors are wasting their students' tuition rhapsodizing over the gold-plated cinematic pile of dog leavings herein advertised, I'll follow in their learned entrails and submit this idiot line can be interpreted several ways:

1. Since AOL Time Warner rag can't tell us everything, it's under no obligation to tell the truth, since telling the truth would mean telling us everything. Therefore AOL Time Warner rag may spin and sell until the Messiah comes (which arguably He did when Barry Diller was born, although King Richard might hold a theological conference about who is more omnipotent). OR

2. Who is -- "they"? Is "they" King Richard? If so, this must be a REPUBLICAN plot, for Business Week has "exclusively" disclosed, in an exquisitely-timed cover sales pitch from the same week (and with considerable self-back patting and signing of contracts for future memoir ghostwriting), that His Royal Highness of Cable Gouging and Internet Service Interruptions was an aide to Nelson Rockefeller, whose greatest achievements in life were to raise his middle finger and die of adultery; and He has turned down offers to serve in a Republican adminstration, presumably because He knows who's more powerful. OR

3. No, NO! I can't go that far. If I did, well...you understand. Let's just say that if a space station from a media-hating planet, equipped with a powerful teleporting ray gun, came down and zapped King Richard, His magazines, His cable networks, His cable systems, His movie studios, His TV studios, His record company, His Internet scam, His law-defying accountants and all His employees who spend ALL their careers lying to the public for big bucks, and sent them ALL out to another universe, Americans would cheer from one coast to the other.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Dissidents in Vietnam? I thought Wal-Mart took care of them!

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Meantime an Iraqi ya ya has other ideas.

Didn't the Ayatollah Koo-koomeini return home too?

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

The grandest holiest royal poohbah of CATARRH says democracy in Iraq could spread through the Arab world.

Heaven forbid!

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

This story should remind us that the first time an entertainment company with the Warner name in it was involved in high-tech, it lost half its market value in one day.

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

Let's see, Gerald "He Golfed While America Burned" Ford had his WIN buttons. I got an idea, Honorary Mayor Mike: how about smiley buttons -- with your face on them?

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

The Howells will be screaming about their @#$%&* MUSEUM for decades, but this kind of looting was far more serious. I really think SuperRummy at times lets his ego get the best of him. Hope not too many people will glow in the dark.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

When you're standing there hunched arthritically over a slot machine or a roulette wheel, who has time for art?

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

Looks like one of the holy cockroaches got his jollies again.

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

Peace, in Experiment Form, Survives the Shuttle Disaster

It's a Howell, but yes, also a poignant reminder of Columbia.

Posted 6:29 PM by Gene

When FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s Arthouse Pictures unit sponsors an archive of stories about one of its movies, does that mean it's paying the writers ex post facto?

Posted 6:24 PM by Gene

HA HA HA! Howell said his ex-plagiarist was a shining example of affirmative action's glories! HA HA HA!

I think he just set race relations back a decade. (But then at Augusta he set them back three centuries.)

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

The airlines are cutting back on new inflight movies, and then something like this comes out. Why does Hollywood bother?

Posted 6:12 PM by Gene

Steven Spielberg GETS BACK TO NEWSMAX!

WOW!!!!!!!! We're IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!

(Er, his people.)

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

Even as Warren Buffett's factotums announce, no he's not buying Dow, Jones, The Wall Street Journals unveil a gimmick worthy of their partner AOL.

They just don't want people to share their news!

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Take one part Soviet aviation excellence and one part permanent corruption that turned Congo's highways into a giant pothole, and you have an unimaginable disaster.

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

AOL Time Warner Faces Revolt From Two Big Holders

It figures. They're revolting.

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

I know most governor's jobs are largely ceremonial, but why did North Carolina's moron consent to drive a race car? And why did his staff permit him to?

And everyone's hardy-har-har about it, which shows how little we think of our public officials -- even those who should know better.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

And in other cultural news, some idiots are staging an operatic adaptation of a novel called The Handmaid's Tale, which, some hack assures us, has "illicit sex, perversion, betrayal, hope and love and such heartbreaking loss" -- everything, no doubt, but music.

Does anyone remember the MASTERPIECES NIXON IN CHINA and WILLIE STARK?

I guess you can tell I've been at ArtsJournal.com again, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

And the flip side of Howellism is Sondheimism, the relentless hero worship of the most unmusical composer ever to be called a genius. "BETTER THAN PORGY AND BESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Let's see, better than "Summertime," "I Got Plenty o' Nothin'," "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now"....Hum me ONE song from a Sondheim MASTERPIECE other than that self-pitying dirge "Send in the Clowns," which is just "I Remember It Well" after a visit to a shrink. I'll say this: if Puccini or Bizet had written one opera as tuneless as any of our modern hero's MASTERPIECES, he'd have killed himself for his lack of inspiration. (I'm disappointed that Terry "Unpronounceable" Teachout wrote this piece of garbage. I thought he had more sense than that. I guess not.)

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Another manifestation of Howellism (besides QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, plagiarism and an obsession over hoity-toity country clubs) is its high-end philistinism. You see it in the endless eggheadish quotes about Nietzsche applied to the Columbine movies. So yes, news hacks bear responsibility for the dumbing-down of our culture. (Alas, the author undercuts his argument by blaming everybody [and therefore nobody] and by bringing up that @#$%&* Iraqi MUSEUM again.)

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

SPRINGTIME FOR ANSEN AND HOLLYWOOD: Blunder magazine runs the 476,000th installment of "Movies were Better than Ever in the 70s." Really David, if we're going to have this cultural sieg heil all the time, I'd rather not be able to read.

Posted 7:14 AM by Gene

Let 'em eat baseballs!

Posted 7:11 AM by Gene

My black's blacker than your black!

Posted 6:57 AM by Gene

Let 'em eat wedding cake!

Posted 6:52 AM by Gene

More proof the news hacks aren't serious: LALA accompanies a predictable screed about Mr. Morals with a stupid Macromedia graphic. We want information, not gimmicks!

Posted 6:49 AM by Gene

The school with the massacre inspired by THE NEWS HACKS' FAVORITE MOVIE is under lockdown, in preparation for the sequel's opening.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

I LOVE PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

What the press calls news: Today's Trib runs a story that its sister, the LALA Times, ran five days ago: an irritating tribute to R movies! When we want news, we don't want warmed over bunkum. Keep giving it to us and you'll really see your circ go down the drain. Wanna try it, Trib Company? We know your love of show-biz.

Posted 6:28 PM by Gene

Looks like a valuable source of eBay merchandise has dried up.

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

A just reward for our true friends.

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

Can't these @#$%&* eggheads get a job?

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

Back when LEGENDARY Welch introduced The MESS he promised something like "complete VCR functionality." Now Concast has bought it hook, line and stinker.

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

First the powers that be wanted bland office buildings, then the people rose and said no bland office buildings, then the powers that be approved The Shards with the world's tallest tower, now the people don't want the world's tallest tower.

Will you make up your minds?

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

Has Honorary Mayor Mike thought about returning that key to the city?

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Bill the Entomologist complements the convenience of acquiring mountains of spam via Hotmail by adding a security loophole to Passport!

Did Thomas Edison work this way?

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

Dan-O had one of his least-watched weeks ever.

Take courage, Dan. Maybe your viewers don't know the frequency.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

RUPERT MURDOCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! rejected criticism from Democratic lawmakers of his bid to buy DIRECTV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- and basked in praise from Republicans enamored with his conservative FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News. [As described by I Want Media, emphasis added.]

OYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

"The dead are rising up in Iraq."

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Things happen when you run a country in secret.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

Sega called off its merger with Sammy.

Frank and Dino available?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Great news for the Arab world: al-Qaeda has "reorganized." Bad news for the Arab world: it believed the Iraqi information minister.

Posted 8:01 PM by Gene

The best-laid plans of mice and press agents....

Posted 7:58 PM by Gene

Weenies like the head of the British Vicarage and Tea Time Club spend their lives debating how may ang -- atoms can fit on the head of a pin. Hence many find their ultimate joy in buggering boys.

Posted 6:36 PM by Gene

The Professor discovers the Iraq museum press outrage -- nearly two days after I found it!

Fortunately I don't have three million hits a day.

Posted 6:33 PM by Gene

We're getting closer....

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

I repeat: THE TIMES WILL NEVER FORSWEAR WALTER DURANTY'S PULITZER. And it has Columbia U. to cover for it.

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

But we're the ones who did it! Who did it! Who did it!
We said that we would do it and indeed we did!

Right, Cols. Pickering.

Posted 6:19 PM by Gene

The Professional Sports Boondoggle Show moves to Salem, Oregon!

Guess who pays for the overruns. It won't be "players and team officials."

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

Stephen "Funhouse" Glass, the notorious New Republic hoaxer, has written a non-fiction novel, and rather than be cutely ironic (a la TNR's former boss Michael Kinsley), Leon Weiseltier will have none of it. He calls the guy "a creep."

I like people who speak plainly, unlike Stephen Glass.

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

So to show its spite (especially after that uplifting episode of looting), will the League tell the General to take a hike?

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Hey! They can always fling it back with a fan.

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

Not only is Barney the Pink Spendosaur still mad that we won the war, he thinks "The Conscience" is "too conservative for Democrats"!

Keep talkin', Barn. We love you, you love...never mind.

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

An Ad Age editor says the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers should be COMMITTED!!!!!

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

Like a virus, QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is mutating into all sorts of new and predictable strains. The latest, prompted by Dubya's tacky aircraft-carrier speech, I shall call Waxmanitis, or maybe, Kleaglitis.

Posted 6:29 AM by Gene

Is It News or an Advertisement?

With a great many stories I've known the answer for years.

The real question is, everyone mentioned here is a zillionaire -- Morley "Key to the" Safer's toughest choice every day is deciding which of his twenty-two Rollses to be chauffered in -- so why do they need the money? Because they're news hacks, and being a news hack means you must embarrass yourself.

Posted 6:21 AM by Gene

The Blade? More like a dulled knife.

Posted 6:17 AM by Gene

Have gazillionaires given more thought to putting their money to projects like demolishing abandoned houses in our cities?

Posted 6:14 AM by Gene

It's official: Dubya and Inside in '04.

Posted 6:10 AM by Gene

Buy North Korean bonds and you get no interest, but you will get a hug from the North Koreans.

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

Newsflash to Owners: Hummer Guzzles Gas

Newsflash to Reuters: WE KNOW.

Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

I don't like just blindly posting on the advice of other weblogs because I don't want to be anyone's thought slave (although yes, I do find I Want Media and ArtsJournal.com very useful), but after finding the link on littlegreenfootballs.com I had to post this 60 Minutes story of an ineffably brave Iraqi Jew hunting down terrorists. To get an idea of how scintillating it is, here's the money quote:

When they want to raise money from Americans they show you the orphans. When they want to raise money from the Arabs they show you Mujahadeen.

No further comment necessary.

Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

If there's one thing that makes as much sense as the Berlin Wall, and deserves to be torn down forthwith, it's the "Berlin Wall" of Cyprus.

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

Why can't our blind filmgoers revolt against Hollywood the way Indians are revolting at Bollywood?

"Bad movies," says the Beeb, "are being churned out with amazing regularity." What's the diff?

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

The moronic battle of New York's Masters of the Universe highlights a problem for cable TV. At some point the greedmeisters must confront a fact: given the choice, most subscribers don't want 500 channels, just a few favorites. But the a la carte option won't happen. Why? it would put many cable channels out of business, which given their ownership by cable-system operators would be a big dent indeed. Also, it might make cable cheaper, and we don't want that, not with our cash flow.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

That sooooooooooo many conservatives are calling the Mr. Morals fiasco a "gotcha" is a sure sign that, just like liberals, they don't want to confront their heroes' foibles.

And sorry, Jonah, you're no Mike Kelly. You're just a Frank "Gliberal" Rich of the right. (God, I miss Mike Kelly almost as much as Mike Royko.)

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

Don't dismiss Bob Graham as dull, Dubya. After all, your critics called you stupid.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Let's hope the new Kissinger realist-clone consultant doesn't screw up the works. If anyone can install a Koo-koomeini in Iraq, it's a Kissinger realist-clone.

Of course, what's good for Henry is good for Vice-President Inside.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

While the value of a thirty-second spot goes down, the price of a thirty-second spot goes up, siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

A MESSAGE FROM THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTISERS.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Whatever you say, Little Jeffrey, I, your loyal publicist Stephen, will parrot it.

Jeffrey want a hit show? GRAWWWWWWWWWWK!

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

The MESS hedges its bet on Jesse Ventura.

What's the matter guys? It's only the "franchise."

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

O, the aaagony! The AAAAAAAAAAAAGONYYYYY!!!

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

You can bet RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! won't testify under oath about DIRECTV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, either because if he did he couldn't open his mouth, OR he'd say, "WHOT aoath? OY mike the ruuuules!"

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

I don't like the loony leftists of show-biz either, but this goes too far.

It would have been nice, CURLEY (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!), given that you always identify the heavies -- er, conservatives in your stories, to know who owns the station. (A little Googling reveals it's an independent. That won't last long.)

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

Here's another hard-core-conservative "right": insurance-industry redlining.

Posted 6:46 AM by Gene

Andy S., he who railed for days against Sen. Dennis Day but decided Mr. Morals's agony was a "private matter," has turned slightly bearish on Iraq. Mr. S., is, of course, a news hack, is thus not entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and earlier on, he was slightly unsure we'd win the war. To the extent his worry is justified, we're passing into a phase where the Iraqis determine their fate, and a little finger-crossing is justified. But I wouldn't rely on any news hack to help me cross my fingers.

Posted 6:37 AM by Gene

I guess the news hacks will be on Wal-Mart's back for days now that it's banned "three racy men's magazines."

Our First Amendment defenders have done it before: they harped on how Wal-Mart was CENSORING records but failed to note all the nice juicy pro-competitive pro-employee things it did. Can't see the forest for the trees? They can't even make out the leaves.

Posted 6:34 AM by Gene

It's about time we had peace talks over that @#$%^& pile of rocks.

Posted 6:21 AM by Gene

Saddam's son Qusay took off with nearly $1 billion in three big rigs before the war began.

The song "Convoy" comes to mind, but it's too early in the morning to remember the lyrics.

Posted 6:16 AM by Gene

The Mouth of the South gives up on AOL.

Why didn't you sell when it was $90, Ted?

Posted 6:39 PM by Gene

From the ultra-cute Slate style of writing to the fact that the author has worked for such exemplars of rigorous nonpartisanship as the Rev. Charles Peters and ARROGANT BLUNDER -- and both Rev. Peters's rag and the BLUNDER had the evidence -- I say TIM broke the story on how Mr. Morals tried to break the bank, or at least worked as a go-between.

Tim! "Game" for a lie-detector test? Didn't think so.

P. S. Given that Washington Post ARROGANT BLUNDER Magazine is, shall we say, ungainly, and because there's a Blender Magazine, from now on, we will call Warren Buffett's favorite newsweekly just plain BLUNDER.

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

Like Slickster, like library: "We need the money."

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

The best-laid plans of mice and conservation groups....

Posted 6:08 PM by Gene

What I LOVE about pop-ups: while they download, you try to get the balky screen to scroll, and it won't scroll, but as soon as the pop-up appears the screen won't stop scrolling!

Am I cranky today or what?

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Another Republican comes to the rescue: Honorary Mayor Mike wanted a bigger city-sales-tax increase than the State's solons.

Let 'em eat cake! If they can afford it.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

Mr. Morals finally comes to his senses. Why did take an army of politically-motivated news hacks to make him do it?

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

I'm now getting junk instant messaging come-ons from porno spammers via Bill.

Is there any way to stop these cretins?

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Palestinians Promise to Subdue Militants

In English?

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

Now the news hacks are chanting Disney-Vivendi.

Any way you slice it, it's still yeeeeeeech!

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

I think if the late, great Jim Croce were alive, he'd have rewritten his song, "You don't mess around with Kate."

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

A producer blames media consolidation on the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL Newt.

Why didn't President Hollywood stop him?

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Good news for hard-core conservatives: John Stossel, the liberal news hack of the right, may emcee 20/20 with Baba Wawa.

Alas, hard-core, they still employ -- PEEtah.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Probably idiot tax breaks were involved here too, but just maybe a trend's forming: First Compuware relocates to downtown Detroit, and now Pfizer says it will add a thousand workers to its midtown-Manhattan world headquarters. Here's some good corporate citizenship for once after decades of bad.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

Sen. Joseph McCarthy could have been a hero. Instead, he was a jerk, a bully and a drunk who set back the cause of anti-Communism for decades, and whose ghost can still be summoned to intimidate conservatives.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

CNN buries the museum story, too, but we do get a press release about Sumner's new sequel to Grease, a piece of fifth-rate real estate the Reuters Publicity Service calls a "franchise."

I HATE NEWS HACKS!

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

We get Mrs. Anthrax!

If 100 museums had been looted, it would have been worth it to get one Mrs. Anthrax (except of course, to Howell, etc. etc. etc.).

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

JESUS II enters the mortgage brokering business.

I've always thought loan sharking would be a natural for him (or is that Him?), and now maybe he can do it.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

Yes, HOWELL, this is the MILITARY, Howell, we KNOW, Washington Post ARROGANT BLUNDER magazine, BUT:

THE VAST MAJORITY OF ANTIQUITIES FEARED STOLEN OR BROKEN HAVE BEEN FOUND INSIDE THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN BAGHDAD, ACCORDING TO AMERICAN INVESTIGATORS WHO COMPILED AN INVENTORY OVER THE WEEKEND OF THE RANSACKED GALLERIES. A TOTAL OF 38 PIECES, NOT TENS OF THOUSANDS, ARE NOW BELIEVED TO BE MISSING.

IMBECILES.

P. S. I see on the Trib Web site the story is nearly invisible -- compared to the high visibility for yet another egregious story about a private tragedy of the sort news hacks LOVE.

Posted 6:52 AM by Gene

The Washington Times, that bastion of conservatism, is calling the settlement against the stockbrokers and their superdupersalesmen "MODEST"? Wow.

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

Speaking of quacks, in the latest episode of self-administered homeopathy at AOL, the company has decided to be like HBO.

Yeah, overcharge and gross out the audience. That's an excellent role model.

Posted 6:41 AM by Gene

Here's another version of -- quicksand: thanks to our successful war, al Qaeda "may be" "rebuilding."

You quacks also told us Corrie was a hero. We know how distraught you are. STOP GRIEVING IN PRINT.

Posted 6:31 AM by Gene

What little I've heard about Gen. Garner -- and the news hacks don't want to tell us a thing about him, because we're stuck in -- quicksand -- has been very heartening. Now he says he'll have an interim government up by mid-May. Great news, if he can do it.

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

"X-CELLENT"?

X-asperating. The same people who give us quicksand, who read nothing but their own PR, who listen to the junkiest radio stations at work, who wring their hands over that @#$%^& MUSEUM even though they haven't been in one in years, who write fulsome tributes to Gershwin and Satchmo and the Duke even though they've never heard a note of their music, sell a movie based on a comic book. How about a movie based on a comic book about life at newspapers -- and I don't mean Superman? I mean real life.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

Why should we care about Iraqi art? Because for weeks, for months, we kept saying we'd get drubbed in this war, that we'd be fighting house-to-house street battles, that we'd take thousands of casualties, that we'd soon be caught in a -- quicksand, that anyone who said the Iraqis would cheer us was an ARROGANT BLUNDERer, but because the war ended weeks ago, and there's no end to nursing our psyches, we have to latch on some good news, any good news, that can prove it was unjustified, and so we've latched onto that @#$%^& MUSEUM -- with a VENGEANCE.

I fear I'll have to make this point until we all fall off a cliff, but the news hacks will make their point long after Iraq has recovered from the war.

Posted 6:19 AM by Gene

The LALA Times has a new version of QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's called "Quicksand."

Posted 8:01 PM by Gene

Hmmm, maybe Syria does want to be KA-BOOMED!

Posted 3:05 PM by Gene

Another reason to cheer that our culture, popular and classical, is BETTER THAN EVER (this from an article about tired symphonic pops concerts in Milwaukee):

Pops grew up when crossover stars of recording, Broadway and Hollywood worked in musical idioms not that distant from Western classical tradition. That was a long time ago; several generations of folk and rock and now a generation of rap stand between 2003 and the good old days. Ethel Merman could sing in front of an orchestra without looking preposterous. Rod ("Do You Think I'm 60") Stewart could not. Art Garfunkel, a Pops guest last season, could not. The venue will be even less promising for washed-up rap stars 25 years from now.

That leaves orchestras forever rehashing under-rehearsed Lerner and Loewe tributes and Gershwin medleys. Or, worse, playing whole-note chords behind, say, Toni Tennille's rhythm section. Audiences yawn and don't come back, and the orchestra's musicians would escape if they could.

You're wrong! As Ty "I'm Not a Beanie Baby" Burr would certainly say, we'll be quoting rap geniuses in 25 years just as we quote Lincoln! Or as one of their number, um, I can't recall his name, said in one of his raps, um, uh, errrrr....

Posted 12:46 PM by Gene

Well, at least the Internet bubble's bursting did have a good side -- lots of "little guys" and nonprofits get lots of overpriced offices and furniture for very little.

Anyone want a used Sub-Zero refrigerator for nothing?

Posted 12:42 PM by Gene

The prosecution of Alleged Hijacker Number Twenty is not going that well. The man may be a fool, and he may be evil, but he's also a holy cockroach, and holy cockroaches are cunning.

There is, of course, the outside chance that he's innocent, but innocence and holy cockroaches don't seem to go together.

Posted 12:28 PM by Gene

It's getting to the point there are so few creative figures of note -- yes, we hear you, blurb copywriters, this is a platinum age -- that when a hack named Wyle who wrote the Gilligan's Island theme dies, it makes news.

Is the great songwriter Ben Weisman still alive?

P. S. I didn't read the story -- his real name was Bernard Weissman! Does this kind of talent run in families?

Posted 12:19 PM by Gene

A "freedom-fighting" Taliban uses his personal Reuters press minister to declare jihad on guess who.

Doesn't it get tiresome living in a cave? I guess not. They lived in caves when they were in power.

And in this case, we'll call him a freedom fighter too. He's fighting freedom.

Posted 12:11 PM by Gene

Here's something that should send shivers up your spine: a combined Viacon-Vivendi.

Forgetting for the moment whether Sumner AND Zon AND Jesus II would get along, precisely this sort of public-squooshing deal is why there are anti-trust laws, and this is also why Republicans and hard-core conservatives will never enforce them -- because big business is always right -- and as the late, er, Dick Armey would say in that deep Texas Mafia voice, "The bigger the business, the better."

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

That off-target landing of the three space-station astronauts should tell us the shuttle isn't the only jalopy in orbit.

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

Sorry "critics," being in business means never having to say you're sorry -- except at the point of a lawsuit, or to Je$$e.

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

And another pat on the back for GoogleBlogger -- this time for a three-hour service interruption!

Posted 11:49 AM by Gene

If I had a celebrity mom...

I'd probably be dead because she'd be on drugs or I'd be on drugs.

Posted 8:16 AM by Gene

Funny Cide, a 'Yeah, Right' Gelding, Beats Royalty

Can you see Adolph Ochs running a head like that? Poor guy must have rolled over in his grave. But with the new, improved Times he may have some experience at it.

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

Washington Post ARROGANT BLUNDER magazine celebrates househusbands. After the blunder and THE BLAME GAME BEGINS you "know" instinctively a piece like this is essentially proselytizing and gloating, and even if it isn't reverse psychology has become so necessary in consuming the news lacks' logorrhea that when an article speaks the truth you can't believe it.

Posted 7:59 AM by Gene

Oh to be a high-paid cipher spending all the livelong day doing nothing but snoozing, or eating, or passing wind, or chewing the fat, every hour the money coming in, and nothing to ever stop it. News hacks lead such lives -- as do academics.

Posted 7:54 AM by Gene

Saddam ran the world's biggest laundromat -- and the League of Nations provided the quarters.

Posted 7:52 AM by Gene

WE DON'T WANT NO "KA-BOOM!"

Posted 7:50 AM by Gene

You news hacks can use words like "edgy" to justify R movies until the sun burns to a cinder, but somebody must tell you overpaid clowns, there's a large fragment of America that DOES NOT LIKE HOLLYWOOD, and the more you toady, the more it gets MAD. And besides, as the buffoon R. W. Apple Jr. once said, the public sees no difference between The New York Times and Disney.