Posted 7:05 PM by Gene

"Who knows, maybe after it's all over George Bush and I will be able to sit down together at a Red Sox-Rangers game and shake hands as friends. That would be an election where all Americans would win in the end.''

I suspect, Dip, that would be an election YOU win. I don't see you being best buddy-buddies otherwise.

Posted 7:01 PM by Gene

NO hits today.

Anybody out there?!?!?

Posted 4:22 PM by Gene

Pavarotti to take final bow on Saturday at Met

Who wants to bet a) he avoids the high notes, b) he gets booed by the Met's notoriously picky fans, or c) both?

Posted 4:17 PM by Gene

Three Moroccans sighhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 1:03 PM by Gene

Raise gas prices! Buy an OSAMAMOBILE!

Posted 12:59 PM by Gene

And speaking of teens, they love splatter films.

It is sobering to think how much TEENS have destroyed our culture. We must remember it was hordes of snivelling, whimpering lamebrained teen girls who cried all the way through Titanic, making it the most popular bad movie of all time, and now the teens are getting their horror movie fix from a similar fluke in droves. The IDIOTS who call this a SPIRITUAL AWAKENING have a lot to answer for -- not the least their own depthless stupidity.

If I'm right about this, I take back my earlier comments about POPCORN.

Posted 12:47 PM by Gene

Ho-hum, another teenager learns how to shoot.

Posted 12:44 PM by Gene

Look out for your car -- it may be headed to CHINA.

Posted 12:43 PM by Gene

A Nation Is Scarred by 200 Years of Bad Government

US? (Just kidding, JUST KIDDING. I think.)

Posted 12:24 PM by Gene

Here is an updated version of THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY, which I hope will explain (though it may not excuse) some of the loopy nicknames I give people and organizations. I've updated it because several of the definitions were obsolete, or not sufficiently self-serving:

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.

THE ZON: Mel Karmazin, the broadcast tyrant and THE BROW's chief rival, 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.

STERNO (formerly 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 his former 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. His new nickname comes from turning his site lock-stock-and-barrel over to THE GREATEST ENTERTAINER OF ALL TIME.

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.) This also applies to any right-wing organization or NEWS HACK who exaggerates the news, like NewsMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, 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.

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.

WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Matt DRUDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, multi-millionaire populist liar, known for wearing a hat to cover the hole in his head.

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.

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.

MR. MARK: Mark Whitaker, BLUNDER's editor, who judging from his rag's contents seems like the classic advertising executive and buck passer.

Posted 12:10 PM by Gene

Three people dead in Dallas, ho-hum.

So long as it was some sort of crime it's okay.

Posted 12:03 PM by Gene

It is to our great loss that we lack real wounding blowhards like Alexander Woollcott, men of piercing wit and scalding tongues who could not step foot in modern society without slaying hundreds of deserving victims and taking thousands of prisoners. I think of Woollcott because it seems every time I walk into my local gyp-joint, er, grocery, LOWSY MAYS OF TEX-ASS (I presume; I'm guessing he has a synergistic stranglehold on foreground muzak, though it's hard to judge) inflicts me with this one-hit airhead singing in her airheady tones some stupid airheady song, and I'm thinking Woollcott would have grabbed this airhead by the scruff of her skinny neck and thrown her off the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Such is musical GENIUS in our artistically-full-to-bursting age.

Posted 11:45 AM by Gene

It is extremely irksome to have to judge the POLITICS of an article before judging its MERIT. When National Review gets itself hospitalized with nervous exhaustion over P. R. MEL it's obvious; the editors want to STICK IT IN THE LIBERALS' FACES, and besides, the magazine invented the odious concept of THE CONSERVATIVE MOVIE. And in its latest issue The New Yorker runs a scathing attack on shopping malls -- but before you can agree with the premise you must realize this IS The New Yorker (YES, The New Yorker), home of such sieg-heil leftist partisans as Sidney Blumenthal and Hendrik Hertzberg (as well as such less partisan but equally fatuous frauds as KEN FELATTA and David "Wall Street and Porn Made Me Do It" Denby). Too often reasonable articles are negated by their surrounding aura. Mike Kelly was on his way to making The Atlantic Monthly definitive and close to non-partisan in its judgments, but of course he had to die on us. Why must we be forced to judge every article by its POLITICS?

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Does corporate America realize the cost of being legally right may be far greater than the cost of doing right?

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

After cutting more than 30,000 jobs since 2001, DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group could add 200 positions at its Detroit Axle plant by this summer and is slowly adding workers at other factories as it prepares to build a host of new vehicles.

I'm IMPRESSED. Maybe if you'd built quality cars all along you wouldn't have had to fire 30,000.

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

Ho-hum, nine dead in a home, yawwwwwwwwwwwn....

This nation has decided a certain level of avoidable death is acceptable. Hence a million abortions every year; hence multiple murders once or twice or three times a week; hence hundreds of dead in our urban ghettoes, hence the mentality of death as glorified in slasher pictures (WITH or WITHOUT "JESUS"). We offer up enough supporting evidence every day to those preachers who proclaim our nation DAMNED and HEADED TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET. Who can argue with them?

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

If we, the people get mad enough to help wipe mass-murdering cockroaches (holy or otherwise) off the face of the earth, those 200 commuters will not have died in vain.

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

TEX-ASS COMMUTES A RE-TARD'S DEATH SENTENCE?

The mentally disabled should not receive death sentences, and Tex-ASS's willingness to officially kill anybody who steals a pack of gum has given vigor to the pro-crook elements who oppose death penalties.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Today's Doonesbury: Can't hear that.

Need a hearing -- ahem, NEED A HEARING AID, G. B.? Your humor does.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

She may have given up singing in public....

But after this film THE NOSE may want to consider giving up acting too.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

USA OKAY'S FULL-SCREEN POP UPS ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF BILL THE ENTOMOLOGIST'S BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

I thought condoms were PERFECT!

Condoms are the liberal's version of ABSTINENCE -- only abstinence, when used properly, is likely to work a lot better.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

And the INSULT TO JUSTICE, the PANDERING OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, the GREAT HEAVED GOB OF SPIT IN THE FACE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT, CONTINUES as the FCC fines CHEAP CHANNEL the equivalent of a few car dealer's ads for one of its BRIGHTEST LIGHTS DOING WHAT IS RIGHT, WHAT IS DECENT, WHAT IS HUMANE:

TELLING KA-KA, WEE-WEE AND BIG-BAZOOM JOKES.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

Translation: Greece is a nation with lots of islands surrounded by lots of people who like killing six-month old kids twenty or thirty at a time.

But LEGENDARY WELCH figured the Parthenon would pretty up all those sappy UP-CLOSE-AND-PERSONAL® features for the women.

Posted 12:16 PM by Gene

J'ACCUSE!!!!!!!!!! A dimbulb STATE WORKER is SUSPENDED for displaying the word "TRAITOR" on a STATE SNOWPLOW while helping with SECURITY for the PRESIDENT.

Let's see the NEWS HACKS do to this what HOWARD STERN is doing to KA-KA JOKES AND WEE-WEE JOKES.

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

Turns out HOWARD STERN did an ON-AIR FAVOR for Howie, which means an additional 1,872 WORDS on KA-KA JOKES AND WEE-WEE JOKES compared to 847 WORDS on the Madrid bombing. Plus he offers up the Street Drunk's Defense: "Boy that stuff tasted AWFUL the first time, but after awhile, you kind of get used to it, then you get that really good HIGH, and then you say, 'How could I have lived without STERNO?'" The man is getting to be a self-parody.

OR:

: PREVIOUS STERN POSTS: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 11:23 AM by Gene

WOW!! A $73.7 BILLION WRITEDOWN!!!!!

FREE ENTERPRISE at work!!!!!

Posted 11:21 AM by Gene

What is puzzling is not that some contemptible Reuters hack calls the brave bombers of Madrid "guerillas," in the tradition of Mao and Che; what is puzzling is that he calls those who died "victims." Wait, since this was purely a political attack, didn't those who died take a measure of responsibility for having been present at their death? In other words, didn't they CHOOSE to die for defending their PRIVILEGE of taking a train?

IDIOT.

Posted 7:37 PM by Gene

The LEAGUE OF NATIONS doesn't know a BLACK BOX from a BLACK HOLE, which is what the LEAGUE IS.

Another NOBEL for KOFI!

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

Tom Jones is finally giving up the tight leather trousers and shirts open to the waist.
His son and manager Mark has told him they look embarrassing on a 63-year-old.

Amen, brother. Now when does Lord Mick give up sex?

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

I understand why certain kinds of KNEE-JERK CONSERVATIVES favor unlimited corrupti -- campaign-ad spending. They argue in order to beat the Democrats' house organ (i.e., THE PRESS) Republicans must spend hundreds of millions on attack ads. When news hacks threaten to go out of the way to obscure that the newly arrested Iraqi spy was a D------T (and a NEWS HACK), suspicions only intensify. Still, both sides undermine democracy -- the HACKS by LYING, and the REPUBS by spending vast sums to counter the lies.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

lgf chooses an appropriate cutesy-pie slogan for today:

don't panic right away

Given that there doesn't seem a day when we're not angry, lgf, do you think we could get away from this whimsy?

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Remember that song from the sixties -- "Happiness Is"?

Posted 3:33 PM by Gene

There is MOURNING in Philadelphia (roll the eyes). Now we'll NEVER know if the much-vaunted HAWKS would be the first No. 1 to lose in the first round. There goes that UNDEFEATED season. "Sloppy Joe's" indeed!

Posted 3:30 PM by Gene

Looks like our favorite religious extremists were in on this one too, sighhhhhhhh.

Posted 12:11 PM by Gene

How many Americans acted as Iraqi SPIES?

None dare call it TREASON.

Posted 11:59 AM by Gene

But PROF FIGHTS BACK by causing an INSTASPIKE® for a blog that takes 3,337 WORDS to say -- IT'S ALL HOWARD'S FAULT.

And didn't PROF post something the other day intimating that maybe people don't have time for 3,337-WORD POSTS? Guess he's given up on that crusade.

And on this day when close to 200 die in a terrorist attack, two of AMERICA'S LEADING BLOGGERS GIVE US
5,356 WORDS ON KA-KA JOKES AND WEE-WEE JOKES.

WHAT AN OUTRAGE.

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

And speaking of TWXSTERS, it is clear HOWARD STERN is puffing himself up and using THIS DASTARDLY CAMPAIGN TO DENY AMERICA OF KA-KA JOKES AND WEE-WEE JOKES to OUT-PROF PROF. This bozo has his ear on HOWIE and his EYE on TECHNORATI. And who's to say it won't work? The INTERNET almost gave us a PSYCHO! as PRESIDENT. HOWARD, GET A LIFE!!!!!

2,019 WORDS TODAY.

Posted 11:43 AM by Gene

The TWXSTERS are already spinning that Spain's support for the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL war in Iraq was the reason. Can't we leave politics and underwater stock options out of this?

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

Haven't Wal-Mart and mail-order and the Web pretty much made department stores obsolete?

Posted 11:30 AM by Gene

I really don't understand why VIACON LITTLENET would be in such a fuss to edit this HOT HOT HOT! show. (Sixth item.) One reason we got the uproar over MS. BOOB was that ADVERTISERS HAVE BEEN AWOL, and even NOW they're still missing. Given they haven't said ONE WORD about the content mess you'd think that means they're essentialy satisified with what they get now. Where ARE you, oh keepers of America's corporate flame?

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

Happy BIRTHDAY, dear RUEEEEEEEWWWWWPERT!!!!!!!!!!

God knows how many doctors he has trying to prolong his life.

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

I hope Mr. O'Franken throws big fiery tantrums on the air, to prove his inner ninny -- and I hope NO-SPIN SPIN CORPORATION takes the bait. In this Battle of the Annoying Loudmouths Mr. O' has won one round already, and I wouldn't be surprised if he wins another.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

The Noos isn't mad at the POST!!!!!!!!!! for running an upsetting photo -- it's upset because the POST!!!!!!!!!! ran it.

Didn't you morons once run a picture of a woman getting zapped in an electric chair?

SHUT UP, MORTIMER!

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

Are the Basque in cahoots with the Osamas?

These terrorists shake one another's filthy hands too much.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

St. Warren of Buffett's favorite rag, BLUNDER, is launching a FRENCH edition. What could be more natural? It always knocks our Iraq efforts. It should be a HUGE HIT!

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

One difference between knee-jerk liberals and knee-jerk conservatives is that the former believe collective society should wear the moral strait-jacket while individuals may go to hell (smoking and overeating excepted), while conservatives believe individuals should wear the strait-jacket while the state and corporations may go to hell. My guess is this "study" (from the usual Ivy-League gang of idiots) is another liberal attempt to justify low personal standards for themselves. Nonetheless chastity pledges are surely worthless without a strong backbone of family and church and school; and for many teens these institutions are all but worthless.

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

Excellent news: the mentally-challenged Chicken-Little network execs are so worried about TiVo they're adding even more BUGS to their shows, which should help drive even more viewers away.

Just one thing, though: THEY WON'T DRIVE THE @#$%&* ADVERTISERS AWAY!!!!!

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

The gunsight gets death but the trigger man gets life? Forgive me while I fail to see the justice in this.

Posted 10:14 AM by Gene

LEAD GRAF OF THE WEEK:

The pope who has set more records than any other sets yet another Sunday as he becomes the second-longest-serving pontiff in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Among known world leaders today, only dictators Fidel Castro and Moammar Gadhafi were in office when John Paul II was elected 25 years and five months ago.

And USA Okay wasn't even a gleam in dictator SOB's eye.

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

At what point does skirting campaign finance "reform" become a noble cause?

Of course -- when YOUR candidate wears the skirts.

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

PRESIDENT DIPPITY-DO! wants to spread a little good-luck gel over Iraq!

How many foreign leaders will accompany him? And how many people will address him as Mr. President?

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

Another would be zoo-keeper makes a -- MONKEY of himself.

Why do so many people want to start private zoos? It's like the little old ladies and their 500 cats. WHAT GIVES?

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

HOWARD STERN is really getting on my nerves. At what point does a blog cease to be a person's own and become someone else's? And why this TWXSTER is making such a big stink about the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to TELL KA-KA JOKES AND WEE-WEE JOKES is beyond me. Doesn't the FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECT MORE IMPORTANT THINGS -- THINGS THE TWXSTER'S FORMER EMPLOYERS AND THEIR ILK OFTEN FAIL TO PROTECT?

1,239 WORDS on the pressing need for ka-ka jokes and wee-wee jokes.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

Exclusive: Rehnquist mulling retirement

Aren't we all?

Of course when most people retire they don't hear 50,000 people yelling behind their backs, "WE WANT KERRY!! WE WANT KERRY!!"

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

OJ -- TV PIRATE!

Can't you just sell memorabilia like other ex-jocks? OH. I guess not.

And the reporter's name is PAIN.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

Hijacker of Achille Lauro Dies in Iraq

Do they get 72 Helen Thomases if they die of natural causes?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

She should have known -- only members of the Walton family are allowed to use $1 million bills at Wal-Mart.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

I am somehow not surprised Dems went to the polls in, er, record numbers -- and that's how Dippity-DO! got nominated.

I wonder if his coronation is such a shoo-in after all.

Posted 3:23 PM by Gene

Paper: School Head Plagiarized Op - Ed Piece

Again, why the fuss? Times op-ed writers usually aren't.

P. S. LAUGH OF THE WEEK: The guy "was sentenced to 30 days' probation on felony charges of impersonating a police officer."

HARDY-HAR-HAR!

Posted 3:13 PM by Gene

Sources: Bin Laden may be eyeing move

And I know a GOOD location.

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

Bill: No plans for future office cuz private life's 'a hoot'

You always were good for a hoot, Legacy.

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

Oh, NO!!!!! THE ZONNNNNNNNNNN HAS A SON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JUNIOR, the throne is yours -- if Sumner ever relinquishes it.

Posted 1:20 PM by Gene

The judge ordered Mr. Muhammad executed on Oct. 14...

2038.

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

The difference between P. R. MEL and the infinitely squooshy Mitch Albom is PRECISELY the difference between hard-core Islam and Unitarianism: a "religion" that bludgeons its adherents and a "religion" that's a feather duster. This is no choice.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

One large corporation celebrated for its SPIN meets ANOTHER!

Sorry, I can't tell you which.

P. S. This "padded" anthology of "barroom anecdotes" is now 644 on Amazon.com. You can fool all the media types all of the time....

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

I AM NOT A CROOK!

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

Another internecine turf war that nobody's interested and only hurts one unimportant party: TV viewers.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

Iran CONSERVATIVES warn on nuclear cooperation

Those REAGANITES always DID want to blow us up!

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

Interesting: J&J may have illegally bought parts from UCLA's cadavers. That company is in the forefront of The American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers' attempt to spin sleaze on TV. Years ago old Hellfire Rev. Peters's rag The Washington Monthly accused its salespoops of distributing Tylenol with Codeine for "recreational" use. High ethical standards run in some companies.

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

$8,000 a year to have your kid taught by a kiddie-porn fan. How comforting.

He could have shown clips from P. R. MEL.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

Me voorst!

Non! You vurst!

Nein! Me voorst!

Nyet! We all go verst!

Okay --

VEE VANNT KERRRRRY!!!!!

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

The campaign has begun -- and already the NEWS HACKS are doing some VERY HEAVY CAMPAIGNING WITH THEIR POLLS.

WHAT NEWS HACKS DON'T SPIN THEY SELL, AND WHAT THEY DON'T SPIN OR SELL THEY DON'T REPORT -- LIKE IMMINENT TRANSIT STRIKES.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW AMERICA'S FIRST AMENDMENT DEFENDERS SERVE THE PUBLIC INTEREST: After having been inundated with stories about something called THE WING BOWL and suicide attempts in print after THE IGGLES lost and every @#$%&* murder to come down the pike, I learn only TODAY from our local KNIGHT RIDDER "news"paper monopoly that labor troubles at the transit authority that shleps me to and from work every day are bad enough that its workers have authorized a strike. (A Google News search proves the local "MEDIA" have all but ignored this sudden story.) To be sure it isn't pleasant contemplating the expense of a cab (my only alternative for now), but knowing a few weeks ahead of time might have prepared me a little better. Instead WE GET WING BOWLS, IGGLES, MURDERS, BOOBS AND BOOBS -- and SORRY, just because you PAY for the news DOESN'T mean you get what you pay for.

KNIGHT RIDDER=PREENING MORONS.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

I just signed up for DSL. Now I can get GOOGLEBLOGGER hiccups faster, annoying full-screen popups faster, buggy Windows Updates faster, one-minute porno teasers faster.

WHAT HATH MEL WROUGHT?

Posted 3:44 PM by Gene

El Stupido, Venezuela's "leader," threatens us with a 100-year war if we invade it.

First off, why would we want to invade Venezuela? Second, how about 100 days?

Posted 2:54 PM by Gene

A Forbes.com quote from Terry Teachout:

"A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves."

Orson Welles, This Is Orson Welles

Sage advice for those who too often mete out the blunt end of life's stick -- but does this apply to the SUMNERS whose eons are full of flattery from KEN FELATTAS, or the presidential candidate who has "foreign leaders" allegedly whispering sweet little nothings in the nothing's ear that he must win? No, the problem is that megalomaniacs receive TOO LITTLE DISCOURAGEMENT, and the further problem is MEGALOMANIACS RULE THE WORLD.

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

"I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that."

VEEE VONT JEANNNN!!!!! VEEE VONT JEANNNN!!!!!

Posted 12:15 PM by Gene

STOOOOPID idea: MIDDLEMEN for EBAY TRANSACTIONS.

Somebody's got it right, though: eBay is "the Soviet Union," AND MUG WHITMAN "head[s] the POLITBURO."

Posted 11:59 AM by Gene

COX, preparing for a future of newspapers with sentences full of SINGLE-SYLLABLE WORDS, justifies dumbing down Shakespeare.

One thing about news hacks: you never have to dumb THEM down.

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

The FRAUD KEN FELATTA bucks himself up by breaking one of the greatest expulsions of wind in human history. News hacks, says this master of gas, are "manufacturing...non-news into news." KENNY, you MANUFACTURED SUMNER into a HERO, you MANUFACTURED JESUS II into a HERO, you MANUFACTURED the WHOLE CAPCITIES GANG into HEROES, you manufactured EVERY @#$%&* MOGUL into a HERO. The next time you speak in public, please -- DOWN A BOTTLE OF DI-GEL FIRST.

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

The PLUMBERS (remember how they tried to un-elect Ah-NULT?) are at it AGAIN:

SCALIA ADDRESSED ADVOCACY GROUP BEFORE KEY DECISION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EXECUTE HIM!!!!!

P. S. Accompanied by this CLASSY ad:



You know what they say, PLUMBERS: people in glass houses....

Posted 11:28 AM by Gene

HOWARD STERN ONLINE SAYS HOWARD STERN IS GREAT. Ho-hum. Meantime he derisively links to an article from "TORSTAR" saying "most [blogs] are a self-indulgent waste of time."

Hint hint?

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

REALLY?

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

CON-SER-VATIVES take over in Greece! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Now they're responsible for the great international sports boondoggle owned by GE Bancorp.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Jean-Bertrand changed his mind.

What would YOU do about Haiti, DIP? Send in ALL OUR SOLDIERS?

Posted 11:10 AM by Gene

So much for not having democracy in Iraq.

Posted 11:05 AM by Gene

Another classic Forbes.com quote:

"To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking."
-William James

HEY! I'M A PHILOSOPHER!!

Posted 2:45 PM by Gene

Yesterday (on a lighter note, thankfully) I was lurking around a forum for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. As anyone who collects CDs knows, very little of its music is available; what there is is largely old Japanese pressings that command idiotic sums on the idiot's flea market eBay. I've a hunch Herb doesn't want it released because he's gotten ARTISTIC PRETENSIONS -- he's an ELDER STATESMAN OF JAZZ now -- and views his old hits as Muzak. (He ought to listen to his stuff as a solo act.) We can do worse than that ersatz-Mexican gang of studio pros with their happy melodies, their catchy beats, their all-around fun. The situation is complicated because Herb owns the master tapes but he sold his (and his business partner Jerry Moss's) record label A&M to the great ugly maw now called Vivendi Universal -- the label exists just as a name -- and they just settled a great ugly lawsuit against it, so there's probably no way of releasing the music without a ton of lawyers and ill will, even if he wanted to. Here's hoping Herb eventually comes to his senses and brings the Brass back, all of it, and returns FUN to pop music again.

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

I know one group of people who can't wait for the Holy Road Show to end -- THE THEATER OWNERS. What? They're changing money faster than Jesus would condemn it. True, but their money doesn't come from the picture -- most of that goes back to the distributor, at least for the first few weeks; it comes from CONCESSIONS, and I suspect all but the stoutest of stomachs and Dobsons are avoiding the popcorn.

ENOUGH on THE GREATEST PICTURE OF ALL TIME -- for now.

Posted 2:17 PM by Gene

P. R. MEL BRINGS PEOPLE BACK TO CHURCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So did 9/11. Many left after the fashion. (And also no doubt because so many churches offer bad music, bad preaching and bad politics. And further no doubt because they might not be the greatest place to meet a nice looking woman.) Billy Sunday (a "Dr." Dobson -- no, NOT a ninny -- a firebrand preacher with a sense of language and humor) brought a lot of people into church. (He used show-biz types also.) He also helped create Prohibition, which led to a vast increase in speakeasy attendance. Every time NEWS HACKS say we're closer to the Kingdom of God, we're backsliding somehow.

Here's Glenn Gould again: "I believe in God -- Bach's God."

NEWMARKET!! WHERE ARE YOUR "MIRACLES"?!?!?

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

One of "Dr." Dobson's regular features is MOVIE REVIEWS (ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!), and this week his resident ad-blurb copywriter takes up Starsky and Hutch. As this Most Worshipful within this House of God intones:

[Starsky's] favorite expression? "In Bay City, if you cross the line, your [anatomical slang] are mine."

Aw c'mon, "Doc"! Go all the way! P. R. MEL DID!

Posted 1:54 PM by Gene

For a number of reasons I won't get into here, I suspect "The Passion" may have an even lower decline number -- perhaps as low as 20 or 25 percent. This would put it on course to be one of the top two or three grossing movies of all time.

Guy, stick with what you don't know, like politics.

Posted 1:26 PM by Gene

I guess news hacks don't like writing obituaries because it reminds them of their own immortality. How else to explain I just learned of the death of Jerome Lawrence? A classic limousine liberal, he and the inaptly named Robert E. Lee (who died in 1994) wrote a lecture called Inherit the Wind (surely as profound in the fifties as P. R. MEL is today, though without the holy slashing) and a highly smug adaptation of Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame saved from current oblivion only by Roz Russell and the great Jerry Herman score ten years later. To my thinking their ne plus ultra was a regional flop called Jabberwock that turned the delightful James Thurber classic "My Life and Hard Times" into a preachment with cuss words. (Seems the two were from OHIO.) But then "[e]very good playwright has to be a truth-telling reporter of his own times and of his own mind, and of the people around him." And Lawrence and Lee told THE TRUTH. Well, a truth. RIP.

Posted 12:48 PM by Gene

Armed bands of tribals will help Pakistani authorities search for al Qaeda and Taliban militants in remote western regions of the country, tribal elders assured the government Sunday.

Sure. They'll help with the massacres.

Before enlisting tribes, best to read their smoke signals.

Posted 12:44 PM by Gene

Another NEWS HACK discovers PLAGIARISM.

I'll say it again: OVERT plagiarism -- cut-and-pasting from other papers -- doesn't bother me as much as COVERT plagiarism (sieg-heiling for Dippity-DO!, sieg-heiling for the latest HIT MOVIE, etc.). But only the FORMER gets punished.

Posted 12:37 PM by Gene

A FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News hack complains about cell-phone companies offering The National Enquirer and Weekly World News. "Can things get any worse? Can things get any tackier? Can the entire drift of Western society get any more vulgar and mundane and---?"

Sure. When FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News does it.

Posted 12:28 PM by Gene

A long time ago a writer named Farrell wrote some books about a character named Studs Lonigan -- soul-searing, truth-baring masterpieces. The Library of America has just reissued them, and if Jonathan Yardley is to be believed (as I think he is) they're as dead as the New Deal. "Opening the book with what can fairly be described as eagerness," he writes, "I quickly -- indeed almost immediately -- found myself fighting to stay attentive and awake. I also found myself wondering how many readers under the age of 30 would have any patience with Farrell's lumbering prose or would find anything within the trilogy with which to connect."

Think of it: what MASTERWORKS has our age produced? P. R. MEL's greatness, to be sure; The Sopranos -- genius for the ages; SLUTSVILLE likewise (but how quickly it's been forgotten); and the undying brilliance of Britney and rap. Which of these can survive two decades, let alone seven? And they aren't even in PRINT.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

These idiots want us to fail in Iraq. First they complained that we couldn't win the war. Then they complained that too many of our soldiers were dying. NOW they're complaining we can't start a democracy. They want us to FAIL in IRAQ so THEY can install Democratic presidents FOREVER. If the press awards orgy at the end of the Vietnam conflict taught us anything, it's that WE CAN'T ENTRUST OUR FOREIGN POLICY TO NEWS HACKS.

P. S. I don't care that it's John F. Burns. Lots of news hacks with less panache will state the same thing with more BRUTE FORCE.

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

If George and Ira could write "Nice Work If You Can Get It" today they might reserve a space for Mr. MARK -- and given Ira's occasional zingers I don't think it would be a flattering space.

P. S. Mr. MARK, she's BEAUTIFUL? I knew LOTS of good-looking girls in college (sighhhhhhhh). She looks like a younger, prettier version of Maxine Waters (yecch).

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

Headline on THE MESS:

Return of The Sopranos
®

Sorry, MESS, we do notice these things when you SELL to us. Now, uh, why will Dippity-Do be ONE OF OUR ALL-TIME GREAT PRESIDENTS?