Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Hey GoogleBlogger! When can I go back to the acoustical era?

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

U.S. Cool To New U.N.Vote
Unfettered Role In Iraq Preferred

That's the word -- unfettered. Let the League of Nations loose and they'll model us in a reinforced-concrete strait-jacket.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Another source of gazillions for America's fee collectors (i.e., banks) is ATMs. So what have the collectors done to double your pleasure? They've made the ATM system vulnerable to crooks! Way to go, Armeyites!

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

What prompted the Times' morons to put this story on the front page? It's perfect for the dog days -- something overblown, something overhyped, something overpolitical. Whether Mel Gibson's masterpiece is any good is no longer a question, as knee jerks right and left have taken battle positions. Before it's over this cause celebre promises to be every bit as irritating as QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!! or Kobe.

Posted 2:17 PM by Gene

Hey Dickie V! It might not be glory but they were sure feeling GLORIous!

Posted 1:16 PM by Gene

Lucky Lindy always did love the Germans.

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

The American branch of the British Vicarage and Tea Time Club chooses a PC socials director, prompting the leaders to say don't cheer and the Asians and Africans to wonder whether they got into the wrong club.

They're also rewriting the club rulebook so all the members may have a smashingly good time.

Posted 7:49 AM by Gene

Thanks to Andy S. I found Christopher Hitchens's evisceration of Bob Hope. Let me repeat: as a corporate comedian, he was unfunny -- again I point to Andrew Ferguson's Weekly Standard piece, which sadly is not on the Web -- but that was in the last forty years of his career, and especially after his stints in Vietnam. In the radio years and the Road pictures he was funny, when his act was still reasonably fresh. Mark Steyn has said pretty much the same thing. Mr. Hitchens is on far stronger ground attacking idiot news hacks who write condescending encomiums out of thin air just to appease a public they despise.

Posted 7:28 AM by Gene

More good corporate citizenship from Concast!

Posted 7:23 AM by Gene

Here come the leaks!

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Another sign GoogleBlogger is working right: I'm getting GoogleBlogger for Dummies -- referred to in the URL as "lofi." (I thought that was the regular version!)

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

Father and Brother Are Forced by Villagers to Execute Suspected U.S. Informant

And -- let me guess -- all over the Arab world, the villagers are heroes.

Just like the 9/11 guys.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

There is a bold and entirely plausible theory that may account for the mystery over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam Hussein, the theory holds, ordered the destruction of his weapon stocks well before the war to deprive the United States of a rationale to attack his regime and to hasten the eventual lifting of the United Nations sanctions. But the Iraqi dictator retained the scientists and technical capacity to resume the production of chemical and biological weapons and eventually develop nuclear arms.

Mr. Hussein's calculation was that he could restart his weapons programs once the international community lost interest in Iraq and became absorbed with other crises. That would enable him to pursue his dream of making Iraq the dominant power in the Persian Gulf region and make it easier for him to deter enemies at home and abroad.

Oh that's really high-IQ thinking.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

GoogleBlogger was working fine for a week, so some Bill-like entomologist yelled, "BLOGGER'S WORKING GREAT! WE GOTTA FIX IT!!!!!"

And sure enough, it has the hiccups again, and you can't post without "HTTP Status 500" again. (Is HTTP Bill's version of CCCP?)

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

They're so politically correct anyway, why shouldn't America's CEOs endorse socialism?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Daughter: Saddam 'had a big heart'

For which hundreds of thousands bled.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Another unsportsmanlike conduct!

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

The Clunker Brothers build more great cars!

(I guess it's optimism that GM's sales "fell less than expected.")

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

America ignores copyrights on the Net

Another sign that with the media, you get what you pay for.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

The Professor uses the words "window dressing" -- two days after I do.

Only I don't get 500 million hits an hour (sighhhhhhhhhhhhh).

Posted 1:56 PM by Gene

I didn't pay much attention to that psychological study equating Reagan with Hitler. Boys will be boys, I thought. Now it emerges (from conservative and Republican sources, alas) that its authors got over $1.2 million in federal greasing. This turns a joke into an outrage.

Posted 12:14 PM by Gene

Looks like the professional college football season's going to start with an unsportsmanlike penalty!

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

Not just Giggly disproves that any publicity is good publicity.

Posted 11:14 AM by Gene

When Jeb criticizes Dubya, you know he's done somethin' stupid.

Posted 10:47 AM by Gene

The sensitive soul might connect the wheeling-dealing for VUE (to use a Ken Auletta insiderism) to its superb moviemaking, and get mad. The craven news hack, of course, only wants to score points, and get a better job, and gives not a whit for your feelings.

Posted 6:50 AM by Gene

I guess Ah-NULT is going to run, given he's making the announcement on Leno. That will be a happy day for the knee-jerk Republicans. The hacks should ask him tough questions, but they won't because he's in SHOW-BIZ, and SHOW-BIZ is PERFECT -- unless, of course, they remember (as they will) that he's an EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL REPUBLICAN -- but even then they won't as SHOW-BIZ trumps evil.

Two predictions: Ah-NULT will be in over his musclebound head (Ronald Reagan at least ran a union for years and was politically active, so there's no comparison); and his wife becomes the de facto governor.

Posted 6:44 AM by Gene

After a week of relative calm, and no hiccups, a new feature on GoogleBlogger -- "HTTP Status 500!"

Posted 6:43 AM by Gene

Orgasmically raving movie ad-blurb copywriters helped make the gross-out comedy indestructible, and now in typical news hack fashion the blurbists are deploring the fact even while denying they had anything to do with it. With their philistinism, trend chasing and reverse snobbery news hacks have done more than any party save JACK to ruin our culture, but of course will NEVER take responsibility, except in the fake symbolic PR manner of closing the barn door after the horse manure has bolted out.

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

I have avoided gay marriage as it is a sticky, nettlesome kettle of worms, but the news hacks didn't help the cause with their hallelujahs after the Nine Fingers in the Wind did their thing, and their high-intensity cheerleading is no doubt what's reflected in public-opinion polls. A little less politicking and maybe people could have approached it a little more dispassionately, but then, news hacks wouldn't be news hacks without their power grabbing.

Posted 8:19 PM by Gene

Is it me or are more "responsible" people leading a life that's a cross between Peyton Place and Spoon River Anthology?

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

THE FIXER wants to protect THIS?

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Well, that's a relief! No Saturday vacations for the Postal Service.

Now they can just deliver the mail at 8 p.m. The following day.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Concast is firing 7,000 rather than 5,000 thanks to buying from AT&T, so let me guess -- IT'LL RAISE RATES EVEN MORE!

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Unfortunately, Nixon won't have to resign -- yet.

Posted 2:01 PM by Gene

An onanist reports THE BROW wants to take over AOL.

Didn't he learn GENERAL JR.'s lesson?

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

May Department Stores is shuttering 32 Lord & Taylor stores (presumably all in malls) while spiffying up the "flagships" in Manhattan and Philadelphia. Interesting note: "[T]he stores that are closing made up 38 percent of the chain's locations, they only brought in 19 percent of the revenue [emphasis added]."

The big retail chains, anxious to escape the wrong races, ran bansheeing out of the cities, building millions more stores in Mallopia than anyone needed. Now the retailers are paying the price. But for prejudice shoppers could have been better served -- in suburbs and in cities.

Posted 6:45 AM by Gene

Do you suppose this hoaxer would have gotten any mileage if she hadn't thought the NEWS HACKS would take her lies hook, line and sinker?

Sorry, you bozos need more than ombudsmen.

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

First comes Giggly, then come strippers! They couldn't have happened to a nicer butt -- and butthead. HARDY HAR HAR!!

Posted 6:35 AM by Gene

Sam Phillips personified the saying, "Pioneering don't pay." He discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins, and what did he get? A paragraph in pop-culture history books, a dubious memorial. Oh well, better to have discovered them, Sam, than to let them languish as carhops. RIP.

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

I'd have thought suggesting traffic jams are a good thing would have come from the Buttman -- er, Cato Institute, or from Jim "Dow 36,000" Glassman's playbook. Alas, the idea seems to have started unassisted in academe, hatchery of so many scrambled eggheads.

Posted 6:49 PM by Gene

Why didn't Hormel sue when the word first cropped up?

Although some might argue Hormel should have sued itself for inventing Spam®.

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

Si habla BUGS?

(And yes, I tried inserting an upside-down question mark in front like you're supposed to, AND BILL WOULDN'T LET ME.)

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

Every so often you read a story about how a psychiatrist makes a fortune selling psychoactive drugs to addicts. It seems to go with their territory.

It also confirms that some shrinks are nuts.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

It figures a former AOL Time Warner Magazines apparatchik would think up something like THIS.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Oooooh! Jayson's race up the ladder "has all the earmarks of a social promotion."

Just like in bad inner-city schools. RIGHT, HOWELL?

Hope the new ombuds -- public editor is more than what they mostly are -- window dressing.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Historian Says Stalin Tried to Kill John Wayne

This should make the BS meter go off the scale; it was reported by FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News and spread by NewsMax.

Still I can see why it might be true.

Posted 3:24 PM by Gene

House Speaker Hastert to Publish Memoirszzzzzzzzzzzz....

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

REMEMBER WHEN WALTER WINCHELL PLUGGED DISNEY'S NEW ANTI-WAR MOVIE?!?!?

The elephant begat a mouse.

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

Another one of those Forbes.com pop-ups:

"Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism."

--Richard Kluger

Every time a newspaper runs another story about QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!, or another private tragedy, or another verbal form of social engineering, or another paean to the genius of show-business, the country moves a little closer to irreversible stupidity.

Posted 1:37 PM by Gene

Hey Dickie V, ya think Trial City's gonna compete against your basket-BALL?

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

Line of the Week:

Sharon Osborne, mother of three -- not counting infantile husband Ozzy....

Posted 1:17 PM by Gene

Buying blind for the next season is madness

John, you miss the point! THE PURPOSE OF TV ADVERTISING IS TO FLUSH TENS OF BILLIONS OF OUR PURCHASING DOLLARS DOWN THE TOILET!

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

I thought Bob Hope would be buried at -- Forest Lawn. He wasn't.

I guess the guy had good taste.

(I just remembered -- he lived in a spaceship in Palm Springs. Oh well, in the end, he had good taste.)

Posted 12:30 PM by Gene

''I didn't expect Thomas Jefferson to emerge in Iraq in a 90-day period.''

NEWS HACKS DID.

Posted 12:09 PM by Gene

McDonald's distributes McRags!

Mickey D's and AOL are made for each other.

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

I'm sorry too that there may be no place for Merle Haggard's song on the radio, but why am I thinking, Trib LALALand Edition, if it were something you violently disagreed with we wouldn't hear from you?

That's the news -- hacks.

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

SHUCKS. No riots.

Posted 6:59 AM by Gene

We've found our man! He "defies labels left and right," which means he's our kind of ultra-liberal.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

I was about to post, Anna always has a career in movies, but with more Gigglys coming down the pike I'm not sure that's an option.

Posted 6:31 AM by Gene

The PR fiasco that is Giggly -- er, Geally? -- is the fiasco of film in the age of JACK, of an industry making movies every bit as bad as it can, concentrating solely on marketing and its core audience of shareholders, movie ad-blurb copywriters, and dumb blind teens. But the ruse isn't working as well as it did -- as I've said before, the more movies excel in explosions, the less bang the audience gets -- and we see mounting signs of anger and impatience at the product; the rebellion against GENERAL JR. owes in no small way to biz' continued excellence. In time perhaps the people will do to Hollywood what the Indians have done to Bollywood. Movies are long overdue for serious retrenchment.

P. S. Yesterday I posted on the East Coast fee collector with the funny name. Why would somebody give a movie a title that looks like "Giggly" -- especially given the cloying tabloid romance of its lovey-dovey stars?

P.P.S. If it helps, JACK, take the L from the title and you have Gigi, the best-picture Oscar® winner of '58. Bring back Lerner and Loewe!

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

Shuttered Bug: Mexico rolls out its last classic Beetle

If it's any consolation, Beetle fans, Bill the Entomologist will be rolling out bugs for a long, long time.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

I wonder if Tiger Woods® is quite what he used to be.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Ziff Davis Media's Annual Survey of Videogame Trends Finds That Almost Two-Thirds of U.S. Households Plays Digital Games

Does that include Pac-Man?

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

The Times commits a posthumous boo-boo.

And the worst thing is, Vincent Canby was an el-stinko writer.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

"In my 12 years as a business journalist, I've been on many a call during which some suck-up journalist will congratulate a company for, as they love to say, improving shareholder value. Now, unless I'm a stockholder -- which I can't be if I'm covering a company for a newspaper -- why would I feel compelled to congratulate a CEO?"

ASK JOHN A. BYRNE.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

We share your outrage, Herr Holy Poobah Grand Exalted Excellency Mr. Foreign Minister. If only you'd been outraged say, five years ago.

Who wants to bet THE FIXER's in on this?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

The owner of the politically-incorrect Detroit Lions has blasted the NFL for implementing a "diversity" policy the league owners never approved.

That's how it always works in the PC Kingdom. Ask the league's sponsors.

OOPS! I'm sorry. I meant PC Persondom. (Mustn't be RACISTSEXISTHOMOPHOBIC.)

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

We needed the Brothers' demise to justify the war?

Posted 6:45 AM by Gene

As it is making clear in zillions of dollars in ads, a big SuperArmey Fee Collector (i.e., a bank) has changed its name to Wachovia. It's pronounced Wah-CHO-vee-uh, but it looks like Walk-ova-ya or a Balkan banana republic, and pronounced properly it has vaguely Orwellian overtones, and I predict in time either the SuperArmey Fee Collector changes its name or merges with the other such fee collectors to form another hard-core free-enterprise CONSERVATIVE's dream -- A NATIONAL FEE COLLECTOR.

By the way, how many millions in fees did it take to devise that "what-is-it?" logo?

Posted 6:34 AM by Gene

I wonder if Tiger Woods® is quite what he used to be.

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

I wanted to say this yesterday, but held off thinking it would be in bad taste: can you imagine the nervous breakdown news hacks will have when the greatest poet of all time, Robert Zimmerman, bites the dust? The boomers, knowing their time will come, will quote ever perfessorial charlatan who's ever earned the right not to be fired spouting multisyllables on his profundities, and every page will be filled with quotes just like yearbooks, and by God if it won't mark a new low in pretension and raging lunacy. I do not look forward to that day -- or the day His Royal Highness King Jagger goes, for that matter. Maybe they'll live to be 200 -- or better still, forever.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

Okay, one last word about Bob Hope -- a story from John Steinbeck (as recounted in LALA's not-bad-at-all obit), well-known but worth repeating:

"Probably the most difficult, the most tearing thing of all is to be funny in a hospital.... In the long aisles of pain the men lie, with their eyes turned inward on themselves....

"Bob Hope and his company come into this quiet, inward, lonesome place, gently pull the minds outward and catch the interest, and finally bring laughter up out of the black water."

Steinbeck wrote about the efforts of Frances Langford to sing in one hospital and how, when one of the wounded soldiers began to cry, she broke down and couldn't go on.

"Then Hope walked into the aisle between the beds, and he said seriously: 'Fellows, the folks at home are having a terrible time about eggs. They can't get any powdered eggs at all. They've got to use the old-fashioned kind you break open.'

"There's a man for you," Steinbeck concluded. "There is really a man."

There was really a man. God bless you, Bob.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

"Fine-tune [y]our BS meters"? They broke a long time ago.

Posted 2:35 PM by Gene

And speaking of serving your country, see the lady at the top? (I'd have like to used just her picture but I can't edit these @#$%&* things.) She joined the military. (Not to slight the others; they joined also. Good going.)

Miss, if I could be in your unit can I join too? HowOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Is your middle name Ava?

Posted 2:30 PM by Gene

And speaking of overrated TV personalities (and speaking of GE Bancorp), Howie "Hair Shirt" Kurtz tells us HHHWalter Crrrronkite Jr. (whom I call that because he once did an GE Bancorp Network Nightly News every bit as dour and pompous as the master) is THE WILD AND CRRRRAAAAZY GUY of the MESS. This, the guy who said Al and John should resign over the Disney Network hiring an ex-cheerleader for MNF? Annoying, YES. (And one indication of what a phony he is: he decided to get back into news after 9/11 because it was "the closest thing I'll ever do to serving my country." SHUT UP, UNCLE HHHWALTER JR.)

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

Money Honey makes an admi$$ion before interviewing Citigroup's Sun King and magically gets her entire network's staff to shut up.

Two things: Honey's probably one of the most overrated TV personalities there is, and you can have conflicts of interest without stock ownership, as too many news hacks are willing to prove.

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

Tomb Raider & Jeep Cross-Promote Onscreen and Beyond

Hmmm. And the story goes on:

In case you’ve steered clear of movie theaters this summer, or have succeeded only in “Finding Nemo,” here’s a rundown of the season’s cars on film:

--Cadillacs and other General Motors vehicles storm through “The Matrix Reloaded.”

--All variety of imports, modified virtually beyond recognition, set a very bad example in “2Fast 2Furious.”

--Modern Mini Coopers reprise their role as getaway cars in the remake of 1969’s “The Italian Job.”

--A carload of mutants go on the lam in a Mazda RX-8 in “X2: X-Men United.”

--A Toyota Tundra holds its own against a fleet of emergency vehicles and a crane under the murderous command of a terminatrix (who — when not traveling through time — occasionally slums it in a Lexus SC 430) in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.”

And what do nearly all these movies have in common? Either they've bombed or done disappointingly at the box office.

Think there's a connection,

JACK?

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

Oooh! "Bush spends like Carter and panders like Clinton." Wow!

This is a ready-made campaign issue. But so long as the Demos are the party of the Hussein brothers and gay marriage they don't stand a chance.

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

WE WANT TAXES! WE WANT TAXES!

No no, Dubya, we were saying, we want TEXAS! Your home state? It would help us win back the White House.

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

When Forbes says a college education may not necessarily be worth it, I respectfully agree.

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

GENERAL JR.'s aides must have spent a long, hard weekend ghosting these excuses. First off, GENERAL JR., when five companies command eighty percent of the TV audience, why is this not monopoly? As to HBO, its "quality" is as much a function of snooty urban elitists getting their jollies as anything else. And face it, GENERAL JR., you've said you want dreck because THE MARKETPLACE DEMANDS IT, so aren't you trying as much to dictate what airs as anyone else? You lost, GENERAL JR. Now seek your comfort making zillions as a lobbyist.

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

Having already written a eulogy for Bob Hope I see no need to write another now that he has died. My words still stand. RIP.

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

When the six-digit show-biz blurbists and salesmeisters at LALA discuss something like this, they laugh.

Posted 7:05 AM by Gene

We may not have the money to keep the lights on on the bridges, but we do have the money to segregate gays (in a PC way) in high school.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

The sadly forgotten retailing giant John Wanamaker (whose name was a victim of idiot Armeyism of the eighties) said that he wasted half his money on advertising, only he didn't know which half. With their lamebrained use of pop tunes, ad types are now wasting closer to 80 percent.

Posted 7:29 PM by Gene

Here's fun news for the markets tomorrow: the Europeans are ditching their holdings in our mortgage-banking-credit-quasi-agency whatisits because of their award-winning accounting.

Posted 7:23 PM by Gene

Garry Carter and Eddie -- uh, Gary Carter's a nice guy, but do he and Eddie belong in THE HALL?

I'd wager Lance Armstrong's done a lot more for cycling.

Posted 4:08 PM by Gene

It's maddening: one of my quotes pops up in a blog index -- and so does a misspelling!

Well, at least computers are scanning me.

P. S. I corrected the misspelling.

Posted 3:32 PM by Gene

Now the ossified publishing biz has come up with yet another excuse for prevarication: it's selective memory.

If we're going to publish novels let's stop calling them "memoirs."

Posted 3:28 PM by Gene

Several weeks ago the LALA Times ran a story about all the people complaining about all the movie shoots in their backyards. So somebody at LALA came up with a brilliant idea -- send them all to Philadelphia!

PLEASE! No more frozen zones, no more sidewalks blocked by trailers, no more glaring lights -- PLEASE!

Posted 3:23 PM by Gene

We arrest two spies -- er, REPORTERS for the Osama Intelli, er, CHANNEL.

While they're at it, maybe they can pass on some information to Saddam.

Posted 3:10 PM by Gene

It takes a couple of oh-so-inside Times reporters three Web pages to say what I said several weeks ago in one sentence: Vivendi may be stuck in show-biz.

Posted 1:31 PM by Gene

The old fad of chick-lit is followed on its high heels by the new fad of mommy-lit.

Whatever, it's always one fad after another, which may account for the current "grim sales season." The book biz is in the same long-term creative drought and psychosis over marketing as the JACK biz, and Fitz and Papa couldn't lift it out of them (as if most people in the biz would know Fitz and Papa).

Posted 8:53 AM by Gene

I'm beginning to wonder: are Democrats campaigning against Republicans, or against Republican voters?

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

If Democrats hope to beat President Bush next year, they have to do everything they can to sweet-talk single gals into the voting booth.

Call it the crucial "Sex and the City" demographic.

I think Dubya's better off in Red Country.

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

Don't you love pop-up ads you can't shut up?

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

ANOTHER scintillating ATWOLA cover story!

Oh well, anything's better than ADVERTISEMENT -- and SYNERGY.

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

You know you're in a BILL controlled Web site when:

A page comes in two parts and the second part takes forever to download (The Mess, USA Okay); or

When you try scrolling on a page before it's downloaded, you get a bar-code visual effect (the LALA Times).

Better living through entomology™!

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

Corporate Reform is a Work in Progress [front-page head]

So long as The Wall Street Journals remain the police blotter of big business, it will always be a work in progress.

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

Nike (like all good members of ASWIA) has only itself to blame for getting into the Kobe mess. These idiots should realize when they pay for the gazillion-dollar endorsements the chances are excellent they'll be getting "damaged goods" before any damage can show up. Even if the guy's found innocent his reputation's taken a licking. People don't believe endorsements anyway. Why bother? Because of CHEVY CHASE SYNDROME ("I GOT KOBE BRYANT TO SIGN A BASKETBALL AND YOU DIDN'T!!!!!").

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

The SATs have been so screwed-up and dumbed-down (just like colleges, needless to say) why not just ditch them outright and think of something else?