Posted 5:04 PM by Gene

Cambodia too!

Duuuh duuuh duuuh duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh duh -- HEY!!!!!

"I hate the name Gary Glitter."

We're not too crazy for it either.

Count on some prospective mass-resume-mailing scribbler to call Mr. Humbert's fall "tragic." Actually, black comedy's more like it.

Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

We could have lived the rest of lives throughly contented without this piece of garbage but THE MESS had to link it today on its home page. I have said before that given its rah-rah for the porno biz it's a wonder the hacks don't review its masterworks, and we would not be surprised if the story behind the story's more entertaining -- that TOILETBOWL editors THOUGHT of giving this a serious write up but Mr. Mark said the advertisers still have to pay lip service to Red Country, though they basically agree with everything he and his partners in media crime do. By the way Danny, we never take TOILETBOWL's word for anything, except that it wants to earn a pile of dough sticking it to the readers.

Posted 4:05 PM by Gene

Further speaking of jokes I see some thugs from Florida are playing for a spot in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, which raises the question: now that the Humbert Humbert of Rock will get a nice unpaid vacation in Vietnam can we replace him with the 7th-Floor Crew?

Posted 4:01 PM by Gene

Speaking of jokes, LALA defends the ROOTKIT MOVIE CO.'s decision to disinter Rocky, which could be a dangerous thing: people might make jokes about JOE ROTH.

We're getting there.

Posted 3:44 PM by Gene

Lately LALATimes.com has been running an advertorial or house ad for some musical that supposedly sends up the No! No!! Nanettes!!! of the twenties (you know -- the show H. C. FRAZEE produced instead of re-upping the BABE), and it leads off with this strange music like a tuneless "Anything Goes" or warmed-over Leroy Shield, complete with period rumble-and-scratch effect, and hearing that music I think, why couldn't we live in a time that had the real thing?

Posted 2:18 PM by Gene

• Julie Andrews never tires of 'Sound of Music'

Hey if I got YOUR residuals thanks to all those GET-A-LIFE! types cross-dressing as nuns I wouldn't tire of it either.

Posted 2:13 PM by Gene

Here is one military mission NEWS HACKS can REALLY support:

U.S. GIs to Help Rescue Ethiopia Cheetahs

P. S. Mind you, this story of the mistreatment of these animals is hideous; but amazing how news hacks would step in for animals and discover all sorts of scruples to helping PEOPLE.

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

Another tale in the Triumph of Technology:

A 17-year-old likely will face misdemeanor charges after allegedly losing control of his car while text messaging and hitting a bicyclist.

The bicyclist, Jim R. Price of Highlands Ranch, died Friday, two days after the accident.

We suspect we will hear the day when someone causes an accident while using a LAPTOP, assuming that day hasn't arrived.

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

I have decided to follow the antics of America's SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS by putting them in a folder in my favorites list. I call it "CW Bloggers."

Posted 1:50 PM by Gene

Three Los Angeles hospitals regularly put discharged patients with nowhere to go into taxicabs bound for skid row, hospital officials acknowledged this week.

Who says hospitals aren't caring?

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

The galaxy-straddling blogger for the quark crowd thinks our news hacks don't talk up "Black Friday" enough!

You trying to draw ads too?

And still more fuming on the retail front:

Speaking of semantic insanity: the day they crucified Christ we call "Good Friday."

The day the retailers enrich themselves we call "Black Friday."

This looks like a job for -- DOW 36,000!!!!!

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

I wonder, do the hacks pull their annual holiday-sales-are-booming gag as a form of patriotism, or to show they can move the goods to advertisers who are unwilling or unavailable to sponsor them?

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

This kind of inevitable story that follows the inveitable press releases for lottery jackpots may prove that money isn't everything. Frequently it's nothing.

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

You've got to love a country that thinks its can sloganeer its way out of ennui -- especially when Hitler came up with the slogan.

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

Shoppers flooded area stores yesterday, contributing to what retailers hope was a blockbuster day for sales. Here's a look at how the day went for consumers and retailers.

6,200: Number of cannolis (left) [SIC] sold between 6 and 11:30 a.m. at Termini Bros. Bakery's Philadelphia and New Jersey shops.

1,728: Packs of holiday ornaments sold at Ikea's Philadelphia store from 9 a.m. to noon.

600,000: Number of lighted lawn deer (such as the one above) [SIC] sold this season by Philadelphia's Brite Star Manufacturing Co.

42: Number of children in line to see Santa at 10:45 a.m. at the King of Prussia mall.

200: Number of shoppers who saw the 10 a.m. light show at Lord & Taylor in Center City.

8,600: Number of shoppers at Willow Grove Park mall from 6 to 11 a.m. Among the busiest stores: Macy's, Sears, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters and Foot Locker.

5: Number of minutes it took to find a parking place at 9:12 a.m. at King of Prussia.

200: Number of steps from that parking space to the Lord & Taylor entrance.

2,700: Number of people in line at Best Buy's Mount Laurel store at 4 a.m., waiting for the 5 a.m. opening.

$21,000: Price of the most expensive item sold by 12:15 p.m at Tiffany & Co. on Walnut Street, a 1.75-carat diamond engagement ring for a 10-year wedding anniversary gift.

94: Number of people sipping tea at Center City's Four Seasons during Teatime in Wonderland, from 3 to 4:30 p.m.

$3,000: Amount Peggy Kelly of Cinnaminson plans to spend on Christmas gifts this year (up from $2,000 last year).

403: Number of hours Cherry Hill Mall will be open from Black Friday through Christmas Eve.

54: Number of extra people working at Boscov's at Plymouth Meeting Mall.

155,000: Number of items sold on QVC from 12:01 a.m. Thursday to noon Friday. Most popular item: plastic "puzzle boxes" that hold gift cards.

14: Number of river rocks painted with inspirational words such as love and peace that sold from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Ten Thousand Villages in Chestnut Hill.

22: Temperature at 3:25 a.m. yesterday as shoppers awaited the 5 a.m. opening of the Wal-Mart in Lumberton.

Why report the news when you can engage your readers in a game of Trivial Pursuit?

P. S. Judging from this story we can assume most downtowns were empty yesterday.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Well if we can believe this story (!) we think we know what Dubya'll do: hide under his desk.

Posted 11:05 AM by Gene

And speaking of presidents:

Iraqis of all sects want to live in a stable country. Iraq's neighbors don't want a civil war next door. The major powers don't want a terrorist haven in the heart of the Middle East. The American people want us to succeed.

Fine, Joe. What do you and your fellow candidates plan to do about it?

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

Another commission has approved another memorial in D. C. -- this one for Ike, and already we have the excuses:

"He kept the peace during the Cold War," said Dan Holt, director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene. "Most people don't understand how difficult that was in the 1950s."

The Republican remained popular throughout his presidency, but when he left office, historians dismissed him as timid and indecisive....

As witness Hungary, where his timid indecisiveness kept the peace.

"Ike had a management philosophy that if you take sides on major issues publicly, you polarize both those who support you and those who are against you, so he tried to stay in the middle," Holt said.

Hmmm, sounds like he'd endorse abortions. Way to go Ike!

The four-acre site stands in front of the Department of Education, which Eisenhower established as part of a Cabinet-level agency in 1953....

His memorial will be about four blocks from Grant's, and James A. Garfield's.

Posted 6:29 PM by Gene

Who is to say advertisers can't chase surfers from the Web just as they've chased viewers from TV? Their best creations are dumb, their worst make one wish for a PC version of TiVo. Case in point: those annoying ads on Yahoo! involving a hammer and a piggybank -- and though I've seen them hundreds of time I ask, what do they sell? Industrial-strength hammers or industrial-strength piggybanks?

Posted 2:14 PM by Gene

Oklahoma City's been RENDELLIFIED TOO!!!!!

Boy, and if the locals haven't taken HIS cues: the temporary relocation of New Orleans's attitude boys will yield "$50 million to $150 million"!!!!!

Yep, ten years after the bombing, it's safe to daydream in OKC again.

The city's downtown turnaround is considered a model among other cities experiencing similar rebirths, including Little Rock, Ark., Nashville, Tenn. and Memphis, Tenn., said Christopher B. Leinberger, a Brookings Institution fellow who has helped transform more than 20 downtowns. [That's a LOT of transforming! WOW!!!!!]

But Oklahoma City is only "halfway there," he said. The crux of downtown redevelopment is returning people there to live.

Who needs people when you have sports teams and a convention center!!!!!

Posted 1:57 PM by Gene

GE BANCORP NETWORK SIX-SIGMAED THE MACY'S PARADE WITH HAPPY TALK!

Of course we know what THE LORD GOD PINCH would have done: he'd have dwelt upon the accident to the exclusion of everything else.

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

Today passing the Academy of Music Garage while coming home from lunch (I took today off owing to the holiday) I saw some kids clambering out of a matinee of -- ANNIE, and I thought, this garage has reverted to its oldest days. Long before it became internationally known through Stokowski and Ormandy and Muti, the Academy no doubt played preposterous mellerdrammers and fifth-rate Sheridan knockoffs like Fashion and grand opry, the musicals of their day. One suspects back then they had the most oinkish ham acting; today they have zillion-dollar lighting boards. There is no essential difference; the Academy played bad then, and as a bus-and-truck-company garage it's playing bad now.

Posted 1:05 PM by Gene

We must confess we doubt we ever heard of George Best until this week. We will take Tony's word for it when he says he was the greatest soc -- football player ever, and George's word for it when he said Pele acclaimed him the best; that said we suspect the man lives on from his prime in but a few scratchy film clips, which the British telly have no doubt been running ad nauseum; certainly the name must cause people here to scratch their heads, the same sort of puzzlement American soc -- football provokes in England. (Our guess is they're going through a period of media-state mourning like what we'll have when William Shakespeare Dylan goes.) Everybody seems to be saying what a jolly good guy he was, and with that rakish look and those meaty thighs we have no doubt he was quite the comforter with the ladies, although we also get the impression he was not, er, reliable, and we have known people like that, and didn't consider them jolly good guys; moreover he seems to have spent his last thirty years on a bender, and worse (sorry for being JUDGMENTAL here), he kept on drinking even after he got a liver transplant, which may have found someone more innocent better use. Obits like this underline why this age is destined to oblivion; it lives on in highlight reels and you-had-to-be-there. (RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s obit unintentionally proves this by calling him a "GENIUS.") Oh well, let's raise a toast or three to George, who at least seems to have loved life, something most of us never manage.

Posted 10:33 AM by Gene

And pray tell how many times have the Marx Brothers been imitated on the stage since 1928?

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

Colin Powell: White House's Murtha Attack 'Disgraceful'

Does that mean we can expect more LEAKS?

"Jack Murtha is great friend of mine," Powell declared.

Who edits NewsMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

Posted 10:15 AM by Gene

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Friday expressed solidarity with the government and people of Pakistan in dealing with the aftermath of the 8 October quake which ripped through the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, killing at least 80,000 people and rendering over 3 million homeless.

"All our resources and capacities are at your disposal," said Antonio Guterres in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, addressing a press conference.

I am sure the Pakistanis are eternally grateful.

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

Toxic Slick Contaminates Water Supply Of Chinese City

Perhaps the nations that tell us to mind our own environmental business should tend to their own first.

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

The Dear Exalted Grand Mystic Poobah of North Korea has a museum housing His and His Father's many gifts from an admiring mankind buried in the mountains, which with any luck is where His and His Father's regime will be entombed someday.

"Stalin especially respected Kim Il Sung," our guide explains.

The feeling, I am sure, was mutual.

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

Here the National Goon League comes back from its year-long rest BETTER THAN EVER (that's what the hacks say), and some party pooper insists a third of its players use STEROIDS.

It is a little beyond belief, perhaps -- they need steroids to be GOONS?

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

Another eulogy for the movie biz:

There are two primary reasons why studios won't show critics a movie in advance: Either they know they have a flop on their hands, or the project has so many complicated and extraordinary special effects that it simply couldn't be readied in time to screen before opening day.

There are no special effects in "In the Mix."

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

Despite all its searching -- and yes, we can be sure it did a LOT of searching -- USAOKAY!!!!! can come up with no HOT TOY for this season.

Cheer up NEUHARTHS: the SUPER BOWL is only about two months away, and you'll be able to regale us then with all your HOT ADS.

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

Dave, we had your kind of wishy-washy let's-all-get-along president 25 years ago. He bequeathed us the Iran hostage crisis, which is a big reason why you blow your face up three times its normal size over the evil of Abu Ghraib and Republicans.

Again, a news hack reminds us of THE MASTER:

The subject having been introduced by Dr. Fordyce, Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, ‘Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.’

Posted 9:05 PM by Gene

Here's one for those who are always blogging their superiority to the MMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMMM: Which has more interns, a newspaper or a newspaper Web site?

I don't know the answer, but here's betting it's not flattering to SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

DEEtroiters evidently think they can rebuild their city with a HIP transplant, but the storied history of Philthydelphia proves that RENDELLISM happens only once in a lifetime.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

One of the TV ad-blurbists -- that guy named Potrzebie, or whatever -- admits he hadn't "watched a lot of Nightline...for years", and he further admits as much with his fellow ad-blurbists, leading us to believe more than ever much of what the blurbists spout above the titles is sheer logrolling invention.

Oddly enough he places the onus for much of the talk in ROMYLAND about how greed is killing the truth-telling biz on the ANCHORS, the former Big Four having earned by our guess a combined $30 MILLION PLUS, which would surely be more than enough to investigate the PERFIDY of REPUBLICANS many times over.

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

The truth is we have nothing to kick-start our space program. It was one thing when the Russians challenged us and tied the space race in with nuclear superiority; today we have no one to challenge but ourselves, and there is no overarching reason for us to peruse space, save the dim hopes of science, and the dimmer notion that the human race will have to procreate somewhere else in an inconceivable future.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

Don't sweat the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, guys -- HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES have a new shtick: counting EXECUTIONS!

We've said before we don't like states like Texas that will execute you for stealing a pack of gum. We've also said before people of the Charles Manson-John Wayne Gacy-Jeffrey Dahmer ilk deserve execution. What scrunges us up is, as always, the ideolgical pretzel of liberalism -- the idea that abortion and euthanasia are okay but killing even mass murderers isn't. News hacks may deny their deep thinking has anything to do with their sky-high reps, but it might.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

Osama's press ministry PROTESTS!

Free speech for insurgents! Er...

Let our agents go! Er...

Your terrorism is OUR FREEDOM FIGHTING! Er...

MOSSAD DID IT! ER....

Posted 11:37 AM by Gene

Mr. Craigslist is getting into the news biz.

Don't we have enough news already?

Posted 11:24 AM by Gene

The Humbert Humbert of pop has been invited to stay in Vietnam for as long as he was imprisoned for owning child porn.

Have a nice detention!

Interesting: the three ads from G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE next to this story were for porn filters. Can guys like Humbert Humbert be filtered?

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

Cheer up, Jake; though you're losing David "Logorrhea" Edelstein, you have another remarkable talent -- writing about "jazz":

The cross-pollination of jazz and hip-hop is often explicit, with hip-hop elements in plain view: turntables, samplers or laptops, and maybe even an MC on the mic. Some of the most forward-thinking instrumentalists, such as the trumpeters Wallace Roney, Dave Douglas, Russell Gunn, and Graham Haynes, or the pianists Andy Milne, Omar Sosa, Matthew Shipp, and Jason Lindner, have done substantial work along these lines.

Yes, very substantial. I'm sure we've all heard of Wallace Roney, Dave Douglas, Russell Gunn, Graham Haynes, Andy Milne (any relation to A. A.?), Omar Sosa, Matthew Shipp, and Jason Lindner. This is like those cast listings in Playbill.com's blurbs, the names interchangeable one for another. Yes, "jazz" is BURSTING with GENIUS! Jake, this guy MUST substitute for Logorrhea!

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

Google could be sitting on an ephemeral asset.

Ephemeral? What does that word mean?

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

Reminiscence is a dangerous thing, especially when someone like Jimson Dickey attempts it. In honoring Hugh Sidey he unfortunately reminds us of a piece in one of ST. WARREN's sister outlets in which Jack Shafer tells us that Hugh was close enough friends with "Henry" to call his judgment into doubt -- and when news hacks honor their fellow scribblers they honor themselves. We will leave Hugh and his friendships at peace, but Jimson has now made it quite difficult for us to forget them.

He makes the process well nigh impossible with sentences like these:

Ours is a new age, and a different one. We can hope that responsibility, decency and common sense eventually will win out, but it's hard to spot any positive trends.

Those EEEEEEEEEEEVIL Republicans are to blame. We know, we know. But when you kiss up to your sources isn't that another kind of bad?

Posted 9:54 AM by Gene

BUD BEANBALL SMILES: Costs on the Washington baseball pleasure palace are going up up UP, and guess who'll pay for them! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Posted 8:04 PM by Gene

The same kind of nose-in-the-air aesthetes who got their jollies inflicting that idiotic Jerry Springer "opera" on the masses, and couldn't stop hyenically laughing at the CHRISTIAN PRUDES, now censor the great Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe from the FETAL POSITION so they can avoid upsetting MUSLIMS.

FRAUDS.

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

And speaking of MMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMMM, here's what they pay our TWINS the NEWS HACKS the BIG BUCKS to do:

Owens' suspension will be reduced
Newsday, NY - 10 hours ago
BY BOB GLAUBER. An arbitrator is expected to rule later today that Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens' suspension will be reduced ...

So click on the link and what do you find?

The page you requested was not found.

ROG! PROFESSOR! SAM LITTLE! The LEAST we can do is top MMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMMM on THIS score too! Isn't that why the Lord God created you through a VIRGIN BIRTH?

Posted 7:26 PM by Gene

THIS is why THE LORD invented SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS:

Holy Harry!
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire grosses a record (for its franchise) 101.4 million dollars for its opening weekend. That's the fourth best three-day opening ever.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We couldn't have learned THAT without a SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGER! Such FACTUAL ANALYSIS! Such BRILLIANT WRITING! Such PROFITS from our IPO! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

Cruise Buys Sonogram Machine for Katie

WHY are we thinking he'll hook it up to an E-METER?

Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

We would not ordinarily accuse a writer for The Cute Little Pink Paper of thinking -- it is as unlikely as Candace "EW! YUCK! GROSS!" Bushnell shutting her trap -- but somebody there has linked the tuneless, dated PAPER OF RE-CORD-merchandised fad LaLa Boheem (now a tepidly-reviewed masterwork from THE ROOTKIT MOVIE CO.) with some period piece of the day from LE PAPIER by the mawkish, melodramatic Andy S. claiming AIDS IS OVER!, and we must confess we're bowled over by this brainstorm; what could inspire a smile more than an impassioned writer shoving two hand-holding meretricious trends down history's hell hole?

And FINALLY I figured out how to link to a Cute Little Pink Paper piece!

And to quote, and we could quote the whole thing:

We learned that the number of new cases being reported in gay and bisexual men is up 8 percent from 2003 to 2004.

We learned that in these 33 states, 68,434 gay and bisexual men tested positive between 2001 and 2004.

Each year of the last four years, on average, across those 33 states, 39,313 people have been informed that they are positive.

Yep, looks like we BOTH did a LOT of good!

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

P. S. Do you think ROOTKIT has applied DRM technology to this new classic to render it invisible to its audience?

P. P. S. DRUNKEN IMUS'S HERO DR. EVIL continues to protect America's children:

The word “f---,” as I recall, is spoken exactly once in the film. (Dashes mine, for which I do not apologize.)

Because two "f---s" are the EQUIVALENT OF 500 HEAD LOPPINGS!

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

I see the MEGAZILLIONAIRES of G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE intend to deprive me again of any hits.

Yes, I've noticed you seem to be running your blogging service better, but that doesn't make me any less annoyed at you.

It didn't help that my home computer briefly went on the fritz, so I couldn't post -- a stop-error problem, the result of my hard drive seizing up when I logged on, and solved because I had a Windows XP Home Edition upgrade disc, which I used to summon its Recovery Console, but not before calling IBM for a new hard drive (which I will return).

And I finally learned about CHKDSK! Maybe Bugmeister Bill isn't THAT bad.

Posted 6:13 PM by Gene

Yep, it's that time of year, when the hacks fill millions of column inches with meaningless stories numbingly quoting economists over how many angels can fit -- how much HOLIDAY SALES will go up -- and if we're lucky we can frame the story with a PR gimmick.

And eBay works EVERY TIME:

Despite shortages and strong demand from gamers willing to pay top dollar for the latest technology, however, some sellers were apparently asking too much. Many of the 31,000 eBay auctions listed were unsuccessful, possibly because of overpricing.

One Xbox 360 premium console was listed with a starting bid of $1,200 and a "Buy It Now" price of $2,500. That auction expired on Wednesday without attracting an offer.

Posted 6:08 PM by Gene

The influence of movies and the movie industry has destroyed the gaming field in recent years.

You mean the movie biz is making video games WORSE THAN MOVIES?

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

The forces of reaction triumph in Indiana as the state's supreme court forces women to wait for an abortion, meaning we can expect the hacks to get angrier as the Senate's DEADLINE approaches.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

The Sons of Bill Buckley have placed ads atop their blogs, like The Corner, I guess because so many people check to see how many spelling errors its contributors can make, or to check on which movie has now become PC con-SER-va-tive.

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

The height of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL:

Cheney to Headline DeLay Fundraiser

Posted 10:17 AM by Gene

So John Belushi's biographer is a fanny kisser. I am SO disheartened.

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

"A generation of viewers is not buying the dog food."

That's because your @#$%&* INDUSTRY still thinks WE'RE DOGS!

Posted 9:29 AM by Gene

David "Logorrhea" Edelstein will now type endlessly for New York, meaning 1. Adam had better devote half his space to his reviews, and 2. ADAGE will name it next year's RAG of the YEAR.

Just what we need, a fight between Logorrhea and A. O. to see who can be the worse writer. This will be a BATTLE TO THE DEATH!

"I am WILD about David's film criticism and couldn't he happier that he's agreed to join our magazine," said Moss. "And I'm equally excited about David's ability to put his talents to work on our website, nymag.com. As we re-launch and grow this important piece of the company, David will be a critical player in the expansion of our online cultural authority." [Overemphasis added.]

Which language is this? English or Bull?

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

Ted Koppel asked "Nightline" viewers to give his successors a fair break.

"If you don't," he said, "I promise you the network will just put another comedy show in this time slot. Then you'll be sorry."

He WILL never forget.

Suggestion to UB Iger: Put a comedy show in the slot and make Lord Koppel MAD!

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

An agonizing debate about euthanasia

TRANSLATION: The latest fight we NEWS HACKS win -- and WE have CLINT!

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

Recording artists as a group have been among the most vocal backers of so-called DRM schemes as a way to control online theft of music.

Be careful what you wish for....

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

We like this: One of the greatest AC-TORS of THIS or ANY GENERATION, having JUST WON THE OSCAR® for one of the GREAT SCREEN PERFORMANCES in this GOLDEN AGE of 1939, is thinking of QUITTING THE BUSINESS!

Now if only that bug could spread.

Posted 8:07 AM by Gene

The RESPECTED MURTHA index now stands at
1,620!

Posted 3:28 PM by Gene

It's official: When JUNIOR paid through the nose to get into recorded -- sound he paid through both nostrils.

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

Chris Hitchens calls RESPECTED MURTHA:

...honorable but simple-minded....

Now THAT'S an insult!

Posted 1:36 PM by Gene

LINE OF THE WEEK, from Jonathan Yardley:

It should scarcely come as a surprise, though, that the center of world politics is also the center of fake hair.

It precedes one just as good:

"A combover is particularly inadvisable for anyone involved in politics," Baldwin writes. "As well as looking ridiculous, the wearer can appear misguided and even dishonest. To quote Philip II of Macedon: 'I could not think that one who was faithless in his hair could be trustworthy in his deeds.'"

And that precedes another one even better:

However ridiculous fake hair may be, politicians and other bigfeet just can't resist it. As Baldwin notes in his "Hairless History of the World" chapter, in an entry for 1942, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur took command of Allied forces in the Pacific:

"Regrettably, MacArthur attempted to cover up with a combover, prompting Alice Roosevelt Longworth (daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt) to remark: 'Never trust a man who combs his hair straight from his left armpit.'..."

Thank you, Jonathan Yardley! Thank you, Mark Krikorian!

Posted 1:15 PM by Gene

Rosen: I don't think Woodward should be fired, but...

ROMY USES THE F-WORD! FIRE HIM, ST. WARREN! FIRE HIM!!

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

NewsMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bringing on one of broadcasting's great recovering alcoholics bringing on DR. EVIL is enough to start me thinking CONSPIRACY THEORIES.

Posted 11:22 AM by Gene

EXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY!!!!!!!!!!!

MADNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TRANSLATION: 1. Dubya has his "We nuke Russia" moment; 2. The Daily Mirror has its NEWSMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! moment.

Well, at least the Mirror admits the Osama Channel broadcasts "atrocities", something we might not expect in its hard-left moments.

Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle...

...a vocal backbench critic of the Government....

Sometimes I wonder if news stories are less about news than about grudges.

Posted 11:20 AM by Gene

"My hope and expectation is that we can make the show vibrant again."

They're PICKIN' on ya, LORD KOPPEL!

He also hinted that "Nightline" would experiment with "teases" about upcoming stories before heading into commercial breaks — a come-on familiar from newsmagazines but a tactic the program largely eschewed under Koppel.

Lord Koppel used tape, these folks will use teases. What's the diff?

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

The worsening problem of click fraud
One in five hits on search ads is likely bogus

OR:

Ninety-nine percent of Google revenue is from pay-per-click advertising, and as that has exploded so has click fraud.

TRANSLATION: $5,000 a share in three months.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

And here's something new: the CHENEY LASHES index -- which now stands at
925!

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

Arab shows decry Islamists

What? They're doing shows on something other than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

Jack Shafer attempts what he supposes to be satire, which means G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE will be going up for quite a while longer.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

Hugh Sidey has died. He was the Mr. CW of his day. We trust America's seven-digit pundits will honor his memory by being more CW than ever.

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

We should have seen this coming: CW news hacks called the NBA's dress code RACIST! Well guess what -- the NBA signing endorsement deals!

I guess that's RACIST with a capital $!

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

The RESPECTED MURTHA Index now stands at
1,590!

Posted 6:38 PM by Gene

Once upon the time, long before the magisterial 7th Floor Crew was even embryonic, pop music was BAD. Today on the way home from work a particularly loathsome piece of it wouldn't cease running through my head: "Something's Gotta Give", a song Fred Astaire introduced in Daddy Long Legs, but one implacably linked to Sammy Davis, who in turn soldered it onto the flip side of a 45 to an even WORSE tune, "Love Me or Leave Me," which Sammy and his honking crew turned into a piece that someone could have written for him that day in the studio instead of the late 20's. AWFUL! Well, "Something's Gotta Give" was written by one of the most ILLITERATE of lyricists, Johnny Mercer. Glenn Miller, an especially dreadful musician, performed at least sixteen of his songs, including something called "Peekaboo to You," in which he does something only rock artistes do: he makes you stop and wonder what the hell the lyric is about. It's a song about Red Riding Hood and Wolves, and and toward the end he stops the show with these lines:

Mom, hand me my fowling piece
[And] I'll police those charms....

The problem is you have to go to a dictionary to figure out what he meant: a "fouling piece" is "[a] light shotgun for shooting birds and small animals." For the first time you understand the lyric, something you've puzzled over for years; and it's GREA -- TERRIBLE!

Sorry for writing this way, but the same cretinous scribblers who call the Hawk Chicken "respected" call [C]RAP GENIUS, and there's no getting around the clumping lockstep of their thinking, or the sulfurous stench of their philistinism.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Unfortunately, it might take work even beyond our GOEBBELSES to change Sen. Kerry's name to RESPECTED.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Protestors halt nuclear convoy en route to German storage site

Do you have a better idea where to put it?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

OK, PR Rog, Rosie's Nephew's made another GREAT movie; but isn't that the problem with the biz -- it's making lots of GREAT MOVIES NOBODY WANTS TO WATCH?

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Today, much as we loooooooove G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE, we're instituting a daily RESPECTED MURTHA Index to follow the love and devotion this Giant of Legislators has engendered in the news hacks. We intend to keep it up until the Profile in Courage and his Cause fall off the radar screen, which may be when Boobs McKeating runs for president.

Current RESPECTED MURTHA Index:
1,450

Posted 3:14 PM by Gene

And maybe if you scribblers stopped doing dumb things like plugging "fantasy" books we wouldn't be hoping for more layoffs in your rank ranks.

Books by Jordan and Martin, says Joseph Beth's Delambre, "are kind of like what Unforgiven is for Westerns and Crouching Tiger (Hidden Dragon) is for kung fu flicks. They take all the things you learned from the old ones and turn it into something better and greater."

Well, this press agent's guaranteed a job.

Posted 2:35 PM by Gene

And as the news biz revels in its newfound love for RESPECTED MURTHA, the Strib's om-BUDS-woman worries over -- COMIC STRIP ADS!

Yep, you folks deserve all the layoffs you can get.

Posted 2:16 PM by Gene

John Murtha has a new first name: RESPECTED.

Thank you for pointing this out, "dead."

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

Vee arre bahck to norrrrMAL!!!!!

You've only gotten back to abnormal.

Zee woorrd rrriot ees a beet too strrraawng.

Okay, we'll call it angry cars incinerating themselves.

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

I've been down on the newer Simpsons for a while....

They're gonna kick you out of the CLUBHOUSE, Jonah!

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

I don't think I'd have linked to this, Romy. This typing displays the news hacks' true hero: Walter Mitty. This bozo all but admits he and his cohorts spend their daydreaming hours looking to bring Republicans to justice (like MARY MAPES, n'est-ce pas?), and to win awards to confirm their virtue for all time. And then John Belushi's biographer spoils it all by playing fast and loose with his ethics, such as they are after a career full of money. What are truth tellers to do? Well, for one thing, RETIRE -- EN MASSE.

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

First it was Magic Marker, now it's masking tape.

Won't Sony EVER learn?

Posted 10:04 AM by Gene

Speaking of HIP, now that Intel's also helping supply flash memory for our players that DEFINITELY doesn't make it evil anymore.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Bono Says His Music Will Last 100 Years

Cat years? Dog years? Fly years?

At least he didn't say whose.

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

The number of songs downloaded per iPod recently has declined to 15 a year, as of 2004's third quarter, vs. 25 in the year-ago period.

You mean even HIP people are getting tired of rotten "music"?

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

This should disqualify him:

Alito Often Ruled for Religious Expression

Posted 8:09 AM by Gene

$460 million

I really wish news hacks would link to sources when citing statistics. Any business that can take The Conspiracy's lying numbers lying down will take any numbers lying down when they concern show biz. Maybe $460 million is the truth, but we don't associate news hacks often with truth.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

Football at the stadium is an excuse for binge drinking and loutish behavior.

Who'da thought?

And of course the oafs who finance the National Foolishness League don't care; they're busy jabbering in their luxury boxes over new ways to shaft the public.

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

A eulogy for architecture, and perhaps for our culture too, from Jonathan Yardley:

"Sometimes it seems as if there are just thirty architects in the world, a flying circus of the perpetually jet-lagged that consists of the twenty who take one another seriously enough to acknowledge the presence of another member of the magic circle when they meet in the first-class lounge at Heathrow and another ten running on empty -- the others are on to them, but for the time being they can still pull in the clients on the strength of past glories. Taken together, they make up the group that provides the names that come up again and again when yet another sadly deluded city finds itself laboring under the mistaken impression that it is going to trump the Bilbao Guggenheim with an art gallery that looks like a flying saucer, or a hotel in the form of a twenty-story-high meteorite."

These are the architects "licensed to be weird," and they take full advantage of that license. Viz., Gehry. The result is a lot of showy, self-regarding architecture that will be worn out almost as soon as it's unveiled. In a culture of celebrity and glitz, it comes as no surprise that architecture has gone celebrity and glitz, nor is it any surprise that most of the buildings this produces are piles of junk.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

We're defeatist over taking it to corporate America on things like this because we've come to believe that rotting canard that the sole purpose of business is making money. True it is that Samuel Gompers said the worst crime against working people is a losing company, but that didn't mean business should be run with absolutely no higher purpose. Before it became a corporate villain Wal-Mart prided itself on being the good guy. Henry Ford did not pay his assembly line $5 a day out of the profit motive. W. K. Kellogg, whose company has such visceral hatred for its customers, was a health nut who wanted to cure TB. The formative years of our industry are filled with stories like Walter P. Chrysler's, who led a zealous crusade for better cars, or J. C. Penney's, apostle of hard work, thrift and the Golden Rule. No, the antisocial behavior of big business is a paraphrase of another old saw, from National Review: any business not expressly moral will turn immoral over time.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

I know we're supposed to smile at this press release, but here is the very definition of GET A LIFE! Someone is willing to deny himself a social life -- no, a NORMAL life -- so he can be the KING of the VIDEOGAMERS. And there are many someones willing to turn themselves into electronic zombies for no better reason than the alleged thrill of the chase. This is what we're coming to -- and I very much include bloggers in this: we spend so much damned time in front of our boxes we don't know the world outside, or any world other than the shrivelled-up fantasies in our brains. If I could somehow sell my writing I'd cease with this blog post haste; and even then I don't know that it would stop my Web obsession. I've quoted him before, I'll quote him again: Thoreau said man is becoming the tool of his tools, and while that wasn't true in the 1840s, when the most advanced technology was the steam locomotive and the telegraph, it's true now. With geniuses like this it will scarcely matter when we become half-man, half-machine; we'll have passed incontrovertibly beyond shame, or redemption.

Posted 4:39 PM by Gene

We're not surprised to learn The New MMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMMM is having -- trouble. Surely any outfit that counts SAM LITTLE as a partner will not be that competently run. We can't see any difference between this and your typical luxury news suite except most of these guys aren't (yet) being paid to brag. And doesn't the notion of a central marketplace for Web opinion go against the very concept of the Internet, which is every man for himself and free, free, FREE? This is just another excuse to monetize intellectual property rights, and while we will not be so foolish to say it's seventy times zero it is in that general vicinity.

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

The views that Samuel Alito expressed on reapportionment in a 20-year-old document could jeopardize his Supreme Court nomination and provoke a filibuster blahblahblah.

At what point do people say enough to partisan tantrums on both sides?

Posted 12:36 PM by Gene

Rumors are afoot that al-Zarqawi has blown himself up, but we should know better than to trust one of SAM LITTLE's favorite news outlets.

P. S. SAM's linked to it, so it's probably false.

P. P. S. It appears to be linked to this story from another of SAM's favorites:

EIGHT HIGH-RANKING AL QAEDA LEADERS BLEW THEMSELVES UP AFTER A LARGE AMERICAN FORCE SUNDAY NOON LAID SIEGE TO A BUILDING IN WHICH THEY WERE BARRICADED IN MOSUL, NORTHERN IRAQ!!!!!!!!!!

...which means it's probably DOUBLE-FALSE.

Posted 12:21 PM by Gene

All that patriotic plugging and the BEEEEEEEEEE-OOOOOOOOOOH will be up only about eighteen percent from last year -- and three films supposedly went down by nearly two-thirds, two of them having added to their theater counts. (We must say supposedly as PAUL DRECK always adds Sundays to his statistical buncombe even though nobody's attended a movie yet.) That an industry can program Pavlovian dogs into the theaters does not mean it's making anything worth seeing, cries of 1939 notwithstanding.

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Another reason to live:

Literary celebrations — like many other awards — have mushroomed, according to James English, whose new book is titled "The Economy of Prestige." Fifty years ago, there were only about 20 U.S. literary awards; now there are at least 1,000, he said. (As for feature films, he said, there are twice as many awards as films produced worldwide.)

And let us not forget JERNALISM awards, or TV awards, or recorded-SOUND awards. No one's better than the media biz in talking to itself, and not listening to anyone else.

Posted 11:24 AM by Gene

Things like this will happen when a few of your teammates are interested in "singing."

P. S. A blogger "reported" it, which suggests someday everybody will have his own scoop.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Zarqawi's family in Jordan disowns him

I'm sure he's very sad. Maybe he can blow them up someday.

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

Wanna bet? The first big terrorist attack on our soil after we withdraw ignominiously from Iraq and the zillionaires of the luxury news suites will demand the National Guard around them, to which (depending on who's in the White House) the government will respond slowly, or verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly.

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

Aguilera Reportedly Marries Music Exec

The last time a Janey-One-Note married a recorded-SOUND exec it was the Eight-Octave Screamer and Tommy "The Don" Mottola ("the record company mogul Michael Jackson called the devil and Mariah Carey called a husband" -- who knew SUMNER had that kind of wit in Him?), and we're not so sure it worked that well for either.

Posted 9:16 AM by Gene

And as we said yesterday, JOE GOEBBELS is ready:

Even 25 years later, the details of his death come rushing back, like a flock of dark birds.

Yeah, like THE BIRDS, or maybe a flock that will leave a mess of guano all over.

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

I see John Leo's column is coming to an end, no doubt involuntarily. That's okay: in a couple of years there'll be two domestic newsrags, and that's still two too many.

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

Well, we SHOULD have gone INSIDE MR. MARK's edifice to find CW alive, and well, and living in the pea-brained swelled head of Howard "CW" Fineman:

"The fact is, Bush's war policy has failed," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, a former Clinton spin doctor who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "It's failed! Who better to say so than Jack Murtha?"

GIVE ME FIVE! The boys were JUMPING when he said THAT. Shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake your BOOTY! Shake your BOOTY! C'mon!!

To his credit, Jonny's brain does seem to flicker briefly to activity, very briefly:

The stakes in Iraq are higher than in Southeast Asia 40 years ago. Failure would give Al Qaeda a huge base from which to kill us.

But why should we expect thinking between the lines, or any thinking at all, at a dishrag where the jobs are permanent and the self-congratulation is free?

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

Today for once we lead off with PEOPLE NEWSMAGAZINE as MR. MARK leads off with a tribute to Darwin whose covert purpose is no doubt to razz social conservatives, and we can smell such things a mile off -- though he can't:

New Orleans Today: It's Worse Than You Think

Couldn't we apply that line to anything? Possible it is that Nawlans wouldn't be 100 percent three months after one of our worst natural disasters, but you wonder how the news hacks' current self-flaggelations make their way into their stories. WOE ARE WE! shout the scribblers as they make bigger salaries than ever, as their employers make bigger profits than ever. It's worse than you think when you THINK about it.

Well, there is this morsel:

Louisiana's recent request for $250 billion, perilously short on details, got a contemptuous reception from Republicans ("Nonstarter," said a Senate aide), editorial writers (who dubbed it the "Louisiana looters' bill") and even a few Democrats....

Freudian slip?

P. S. The TWXSTERS have made this available. Have they stopped their stupid practice of walling off cover stories, or is this a glitch?