Posted 8:32 PM by Gene

The celebrated blurbist A. O. with B. O., whom we'd have presumed read nothing but his own above-the-title squibs, has written an excruciatingly long think piece in which he opines (to the extent we can figure him out at all) that we should take the bloviating of our exceptionally-self-regarding li-te-rah-TEESTES seriously, and obliquely arguing that there has been no real decline in American fiction; indeed, the biz suffers from a especially hard case of -- I hate this word -- AGEISM.

Forgive our short memory, but it seems A. O. just reviewed A "MOVIE." It was based on A "BOOK." Isn't that "BOOK", and its epochal success, argument enough that li-te-rah-TEEYURE isn't what it used to be?

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Hmmm, you don't suppose the King of Beers bought out Rolling Rock so it would eventually have one less competitor, do you? NAAAAAAAAAAH.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

RAH! RAH! RAH! SIS! BOOM! BAH! DEMOCRATS! DEMOCRATS! RAH! RAH! RAH!

YaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY TEAM!!!!!!!!!!

I HATE cheerleading that passes for NEWS.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Lawyer: Kevorkian's Health Deteriorating

I have an idea -- why doesn't he assist his own suicide?

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

A eulogy for Branson East's bread and butter, from the unlikely Ben Brantley:

A LIVING ghost walks on Broadway. Colorless and thin to the point of transparency, it is far scarier than the make-believe ghouls — the vampires and phantoms in opera cloaks — who sometimes occupy the stages around Times Square. Though its guises are many, it always exudes the same damp aura of unconvincing jollity, like that of a superannuated party girl who lost her confidence with her youth and has taken to wearing her daughter's trendy clothes. Such is the face of the American musical in the year 2006.

But then I repeat what I said over a year ago: The musical is so dead the corpse has no smell.

Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

Perhaps one of radio's biggest problems is that it's built on personalities, and they all have a mighty fragrance. The dethroned Radio King with his pee-pee jokes, Rush with his table pounding, Paul Har-VEH with his Mall of the Air -- every one reeks of salesmanship and dishonesty. We're tired of being sold bills of goods, which is one reason we haven't listened to radio in eons. As for Mr. Har-VEH, he may be fit, but in many ways he's decrepit, no matter how many ad dollars he sucks in.

Posted 4:44 PM by Gene

BARRY* TIES* the BABE!

Now let's see him break* Hank's record.

Meantime, America yawns.

Posted 4:40 PM by Gene

Today's Wall Street Journals Arts and Leisure Edition has a "story" about how some entrepreneurs are trying to form a [C]RAP nostalgia circuit [!], and laments that very few [C]RAPPERS have had lasting success.

I haven't the foggiest idea why myself. Do you? The Journals should have done an investigative report.

Speaking thereof, here's betting come the week before the election, the PAPER OF RE-CORD, the WAPOST or the WALL STREET JOURNALS LIBERAL EDITION runs a P-ULITZER NOMINATION.

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

A popcorn-restaurant gigaplex showing DVC!!!!!!!!!! was closed after somebody stole twenty projector lenses.

It could have stayed open. The "moviegoers" wouldn't have known the difference.

(Via MyWay.com)

Posted 12:20 PM by Gene

In a weekend "60 Minutes" special, Mike Wallace acknowledges that he tried to commit suicide two decades ago.

With THAT ego?

Posted 12:01 PM by Gene

The WaPosties who declared fundamentalists poor, stupid and easily led have now found their own breed of credulous religious types!

How many of the reporters and editors having an orgasm over the newfound "strength" of the religious left have never gone to church?

The article quotes two pastors -- and four "experts." What do they know?

The Rev. Joseph W. Daniels Jr., senior pastor of Emory United Methodist Church in Northwest Washington, said a key question for him is whether the religious left will become "the polar opposite to . . . the religious right" or be "a voice in the middle."

"What this country needs is strong spiritual leadership that is willing to build bridges. We don't need leaders who are lightning bolts for division and dissension," he said.

But lightning bolts we may get, as malevolent forces are organizing for a second Civil War.

Posted 11:41 AM by Gene

Well, Paul Dreck's going NUUUUUUUUUUUTS! DVC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s aparently on track to earn its UMPTEEN MEGAZILLION, reviewers or no, but let's see what happens tomorrow -- and next week. (There's no direct url to the stats, and they're slightly garbled.)

What will really be irritating is all the press releases saying HOLLYWOOD IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But we've said that before.

P. S. It is doing less biz than Luke Spielberg's latest GET-A-LIFE epic on any of its first four days, so maybe it's not busting THAT many blocks.

A permanent link here.

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

It's official -- the former WIZARD OF OZ declares "the housing boom 'over.'"

Or is it? Does anyone pay attention to him anymore?

Posted 11:19 AM by Gene

At what point does NASCAR overmarket itself?

The boys in Daytona think there is no point. They may think wrong.

Posted 11:15 AM by Gene

The LALATimes cheers a movie!!!!!

Let's see if they're still cheering in December.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Liberals -- turn their backs on -- SEN. BOOBS McKEATING?!?!?

We figure 1. The people protesting him were McKeating plants, 2. Liberals are more intolerant than we thought, and 3. Boobs did this on purpose so as to bulk up his con-SER-va-tive bona-fides. We think it's 2 and 3.

Posted 9:46 PM by Gene

Here's one reason not to worry about the Feds spying on us by phone; the bad guys may know who all our air marshals are.

On the other hand....

Posted 6:36 PM by Gene

The business of hacks 'n' tracts had another BOFFO year, meaning our literature is DONE FOR.

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

MORE WILDEIAN WIT from THE CORNER:

THE GREAT RED, WHITE AND BLUE HOPE [Warren Bell]

When did things start to go wrong in this country? Derb might answer, "Day one." But for me, it was the dark moment a few years ago when we lost our dominance in hot dog eating.

I think the down trend accelerated when JO-nah (or whoever it was) organized THE CORNER.

Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

The housing -- well, it isn't quite a bust, but it isn't a boom any longer -- is one of those topics that gets the Gordon Gekko con-SER-va-tives fuming. ALL THAT NEGATIVE TALK BY THE PRESS STOPPED PEOPLE FROM BUYING! they scream. Rampant speculation had nothing to do with it; nor, we can be sure, did building twenty million condos.

As in MIAMI:

Empty condo towers are almost as common as palm trees. Speculators had assumed they could flip the properties before closing. They were wrong.

In downtown Miami a spanking-new 860-square-foot one-bedroom condo at 335 South Biscayne Boulevard has a skimpy cap rate of 3.5%. You can rent it from Realtor Jorge Rico for $1,700 a month or buy it for $385,000. Rental income is likely to head downward as still more condos are tossed into a renter's market. As speculative owners struggle to pay mortgages out of meager rental income, for-sale signs will go up. Single-family homes have also been overbuilt in Miami.

TRANSLATION: RENDELLISM HAS ITS LIMITS.

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

More news of the continuing irrelevance of the League of Nations:

U.N. Panel Backs Closing Guantánamo

Darfur Effort Said to Face Collapse

SIX OF ONE....

Better make that three; Kofi's boys may have absconded with something.

Posted 6:16 PM by Gene

Another zillion-dollar HI-MOM moment:

The debris that missed Discovery's wing came from a lengthy ramp of foam that served as a windshield for fuel pressurization lines and electrical cabling on the outside of the tank.

To prevent a recurrence, NASA removed the ramp from the tank that will fly with Discovery during a planned July 1 launch. Still to be completed, however, are engineering analyses to prove it will be safe to fly without the foam windshield. The concern is that aerodynamic pressure during the first few minutes of flight could rip the pressurization lines or cabling off the tank, triggering another catastrophe.

Senior managers will vet the analyses during a two-day meeting in mid-June.

At the meeting, senior managers, THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE!

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

Meantime in the never ending battle to talk down to us and make everything headache-inducing political, our superiors are turning something heretofore risible into another battle royale of pygmies. Mickey D's doesn't need our help being made fun of, but now it's in danger of becoming another tear-your-hair-out left-right affront, with the usual lefties on one side, and TCS's friends on the other. The idea of a second Civil War is not entirely fantasy.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

The one sad thing about DVC!!!!!!!!!! is if it had been good -- really good -- it could have helped bring back movies for adults. It wasn't going to happen of course, not with that MASTER OF PROSE HERR DOKTOR BROWN, and certainly not with OPIE; but you think, what would our culture be like with movies for sophisticated adults? THE ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEES are NOT for adults; they're for winning awards, and for adult children who write blurbs, and for pontificating, and for putting people to sleep without a prescription. Here's my idea of a movie for adults: an adaptation of Pal Joey. It could have been the first noir musical but the biz was skittish about shows with heels, and unhappy endings; later Blue turned it into another paycheck. Think of it -- think of a Maltese Falcon with music, with glorious music; think of a film that isn't afraid to be sophisticated. If I make it sound like an arthouse movie (and inevitably these days that's how it would play, I fear) just immerse yourself in Goddard Lieberson's glorious and atmospheric recording and you'll know what I'm thinking.

Of course, the X-Men open again next week, then comes another Pixar CGI doodle, then another theme-park recreation, and movies for adults recede further beyond the horizon.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

I suppose the Dickie Vs and other such Fred Flintstones will call Eddie Sutton a "class act," just as they called John Chaney (who?) a class act, largely because they have nothing better to do; but when you consider the drunk driving arrest, and then you look at that face, you think, how many corners did this guy cut to win?

His throne will be assumed by his son, who will continue the dynasty, at least till greedy alumni get him fired for not winning.

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

Speaking of TWXSTERS, MOUTH OF THE SOUTH is SILENTLY leaving their company, and now will devote himself to his buffalo-meat restaurants, along with a still generous occasional serving of BULL.

Posted 1:36 PM by Gene

Today is a DARK DAY in AMERICA: the SENATE has made a BIG STEP toward denying BROADCASTERS their RIGHT to --

use the airwaves as a toilet?

Poor B. S. DEFENDER. This is worse than what happened to his TWX OPTIONS. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

Posted 1:28 PM by Gene

The Pope, having stood up to the Chinese, appears ready to stand up to the sexual predators within his own church.

This breeze of courage is invigorating. Let's hope the air doesn't soon turn stale.

Posted 11:03 AM by Gene

Good news:

The numbers tell the tale. The shrinking of the broadcast network playing field from six to five, as WB Network and UPN morph into CW in the fall, inevitably has led to a reduction in the overall number of new and returning primetime series orders logged for the first time in years.

By the end of upfront week Thursday, the five largest suppliers of series programming had orders for 93 series, compared with 111 last year (those figures include some double-counted shows because of co-productions).

That SHOULD mean LESS junk television; HOWEVER these sewer outlets can always ramp up production when consumer-products CEOS get in a mood, and the REVERSE ROBIN HOODS of MADAVE are busy now looking for alternate junk to finance -- like cable, Web TV, Pod TV, etc., etc. -- so our dollars can go further in financing junk, and their advertising-department fiefdoms are safe.

Posted 6:46 AM by Gene

We can no longer trust anyone on Iraq. The smiley faces on the right are bad enough, but the left and its ventriloquist dummies the news hacks have wanted us to fail since day one, and now they're more determined than ever.

Total political exhaustion envelops the land, inspired by the dense inept Dubya and Democrats who stand for nothing but throwing tantrums. Who will lead us from this morass?

Posted 6:43 AM by Gene

'Not a Genuine Black Man,' a Play by Brian Copeland

When I saw this latest PAPER OF RE-CORD squib I thought, the 10,000th screed against Condi. It's just another review of another show in the vast onanistic sector of Manhattan that still does plays, and will soon be washed aside like all else of its genius.

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

While Dubya and the Seniles RUSHHHHHHH through legislation that the TWXSTERS' poll says (if their polls can be believed) is "low priority," they toss the con-SER-va-tives a bone inscribed in English.

Posted 6:38 AM by Gene

When news hacks start Goebbelizing nothing can sit them down and shut them up. Now they're about to inflict us with Year of the Woman II. Who'll be the Cynthia McKinney THIS time?

Posted 9:22 PM by Gene

Google News blurbs that caused us to STOP READING:

American Marines 'killed Iraqis in cold blood'
Independent 1 hour ago

By the way, whatever happened to that guy who got himself beaten up?

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

The true difference between the two ossified sides parading for the opinion magazines is the degree of their smugness. Saunter through The Corner and you often get a certain kind of blaseness, the notion that standing on principle may not be wise or even necessary. Hop down The Plank (round a bend and off a plank) and you can't escape the shadow of the ultimate table-pounding eager beaver Stephen Glass. The Ivy League's likewise inescapable: just as JO-nah can't shake his collegiate cockiness so you get the feeling TNR's guys can't douse the glow of their internships. This fight between these two breeds of supersnobs is the proverbial candle lit at both ends, and even before this mutual burning there's no candle.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

Somehow we always manage to rummage through classified documents to hurt our side, but when a leak might prevent a catastrophe, we fail to act.

Sorry, I think you're positing that the fact that you "knew" about 9/11 justifies rummaging through the top secrets. Some might not see it that way.

Posted 2:30 PM by Gene

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhoooooooooooooo, is ANYBODY OUT THERE?

Posted 2:07 PM by Gene

Bob Schieffer, facing retirement at the hands of the PERKIEST NEWSREADER in the UNIVERSE, searches out his inner TOM PAINE at Quinnipiac University, and BURRRRRRRRRRPS:

"With each of these investigations come insinuations that those who uncover government wrongdoing, mistakes, and questionable programs are somehow unpatriotic. ... Would we be better served if more attention was focused on what was leaked rather than on tracking who did the leaking? Why does the government need a list of my phone calls? AND WHAT BUSINESS DOES A DEMOCRACY HAVE RUNNING SECRET PRISONS ANYWAY? If the government hasn't told us they exist, how can we ever know who is being held there? Do you think anyone would have known about what was going on at Abu Ghraib if it had been left to the government to announce it? Some would argue those revelations hurt our cause. I would argue the opposite. Bringing mistakes to the fore is a strength, not a weakness. ... WHAT WEAKENS OUR CAUSE IS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT TRIES TO COVER UP MISTAKES, OR PLANT PHONY NEWS STORIES IN FOREIGN NEWSPAPERS OR BRIBE FRIENDLY COLUMNISTS TO TAKE THE COMPANY LINE!!!!!"

Alas, even as the patrons of St. Frederick of Friendly stood up and yelled BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, the school's baseball team was caught in an INITIATION. Thanks for the good news, Bob.

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

A NEW achievement for the zillionaire idiots of MOUNTAIN VIEW: they screwed up my LOTUS NOTES!

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

Somebody DON’T TELL THE PROFESSOR:

21-Year-Old BLOGGER Defeats 5-Term Incumbent in State Primary (Pittsburgh Channel) [overemphasis added]

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 1:32 PM by Gene

Hey, but there is GOOD news on the immigration front -- with the help of big biz, the Feds will build a HUGE DATABASE!

OR:

ID Database Faces Billions in Overruns, May Not Work

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

"I DON'T NEED TO BE LECTURED BY YOU!!!!! YOU ARE NO MORE A PROTECTOR OF THE CONSTITUTION THAN AM I!!!!!"

For once Sen. O'Specter tells the truth!

"IF YOU WANT TO LEAVE, GOOD RIDDANCE!!!!!"

And a plague o' BOTH your houses -- in BOTH your houses.

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday derided foes of Iran's nuclear work as mentally disturbed....

This is true. Their lack of courage is amply described in the psychiatric literature.

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

A kid or some other sicko gets his jollies with strategically-placed scratchiti, and it's a wonder the whole airport biz doesn't come to a complete halt.

And in Arabia....

Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

Another group of TRUTH TELLERS is in a FURY because producers would DARE insert PRODUCT PLACEMENTS into their PLOTS.

These scribblers should kiss the feet of every consumer-products CEO. It's their lush venality that makes their PLOTS possible in the first place.

Posted 1:01 PM by Gene

Fandango, a service that sells advance movie tickets, said that 77% of the tickets sold in the last week have been for "The Da Vinci Code."

I am not impressed. That means 23% of the tickets are being sold to something else. It always happens when there's an overpublicized bore on the market. This is not the sign of a healthy business.

A couple of hours later, after the film's red-carpet premiere, the cast was given a standing ovation by audience members who seemed to have enjoyed themselves.

And so did the millions who made what by all accounts is the worst-written smash book of all time a success.

Which reminds me -- it was the bofferroo book biz that made a super-duper hit out of James "I Lied -- A Little" Frey and The Serial Plagiarist. It's not in a position to be a cultural arbiter either.

Posted 6:53 AM by Gene

And speaking of AmSpec, it's plugging a "roundtable":

Join AFF at our next Roundtable Thursday, May 18, "What’s your Bottom Line: A Debate on Corporate Social Responsibility.” Is corporate social responsibility—or CSR for short—a new way of thinking about “doing well by doing good?” Or, is CSR simply privatizing socialism by demanding corporations do something more what [SIC] they should be doing: maximizing profits for investors?

I think we can safely guess which side AmSpec's on.

Posted 6:49 AM by Gene

Squib of the Day:

Tom Wolfe -- Aha!
The Current Crisis
In Washington the other night he spoke for over an hour without notes!
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., 5/18/2006 12:08:29 AM

This is an accomplishment?

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

We are sorry to hear Greg Norman's getting divorced, but not that sorry.

Posted 6:46 AM by Gene

We wonder how much time Noo Joisey's legisla-TORS wasted trying to get Hasbro to "keep" Atlantic City in Monopoly, given that the company has issued 20,000 line extensions, and any town of 1,000 or more has its own Monopoly board.

Posted 6:44 AM by Gene

A spasm of cheap politics has caused the House "Ethics" Committee to do things it should have done in the first place.

No, you may NOT take a bow.

Posted 10:47 PM by Gene

President Rove has a brain spasm:

Sensenbrenner did not attend a closed-door meeting between Bush political adviser Karl Rove and House Republicans, but said that some members complained to him that Rove didn't stay around for many questions or hear what lawmakers had to say.

"The overwhelming majority of those that I talked to who were at the conference believe that he dissed the House Republicans," Sensenbrenner said.

That should make it easier in the conference.

Sorry for TWO NewsMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!es in ONE day!

Posted 7:09 PM by Gene

T! H! U-M-B! YaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAY TOM!!!!!

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

Cy Feuer, who co-produced the original Guys and Dolls, and Joan Diener, who played Lalume in the original Kismet, have died, and we have TARZAN!!!!!!!!!!

P. S. for the Tonys:

And as of yesterday, there was still no host.

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

Paul McCartney says he's upset by suggestions Heather Mills McCartney married him for his fortune. [Photo caption]

Well she may not have married you for your LOOKS, Your Lordship.

Mills McCartney has also been accused of meddling in her husband's career -- such as the dismissal of his longtime publicist Geoff Baker -- and even of influencing him on issues as diverse as dying his hair and plastic surgery.

It must have been $ome lovene$t.

I love when the rich and the vapid have trouble, don't you?

Posted 4:56 PM by Gene

THE PAPER OF RE-CORD's great movie ad-blurbist passes JUDGMENT:

I certainly can't support any calls for boycotting or protesting this busy, trivial, inoffensive film. Which is not to say I'm recommending you go see it.

Unless, that is, you like your laughter UNINTENTIONAL.

...Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence....

Is there a review ANYWHERE which DEFENDS his prose style? And why should there be?

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

Says Congressman King of New York:

"It's not the kind of issue you can compromise on; either you're giving amnesty to people who are here illegally or you aren't."

Meantime Sen. Boobs McKeating calls amnesty "bananas" in a desperate effort to sell lemons. Better look for more grossout-flick cameos, Boobs.

And the Seniles throw the House a wall-shaped bone.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

I was at a sports restaurant for a retirement luncheon, and on one of the too many monitors ESPN used one of its many excuses to fill airtime during the day to plug MMMMMMMMMM-IIIIIIIIII-THREEEEEEEEEE, and even having not been to a theatrical movie since Star Wars and New York, New York (long story) I knew why this bombed. Look at the stunts and you've seen them a million times before, even if you haven't been to an action film. Cheerleaders like MARTY! (RAH! RAH!) who think THE CONSPIRACY will magically right itself are wrong. Oh sure, it'll do its grosses for a couple of weekends, but long-term the movies are in profound trouble, and there's no happy ending.

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

Jonny Hairshirt has six BRILLIANT ideas on how to improve PEOPLE NEWSRAG, among them:

2. Increase the entertainment coverage, including sports. And use a greater sense of imagination when you write about culture.

In other words, turn it into EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW! or People. Astounding suggestion, Jonny!

AND:

4. Encourage some writers to take a stronger point of view -- especially online.

Apparently having 500 columnists, DICK "GUNS CAUSED COLUMBINE" CORLISS and MR. MELODRAMA isn't enough.

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

S&P Cuts Nasdaq Debt to Junk

Somehow we cut Nasdaq to junk when QUALCOMM sold for $40,000 a share, or whatever it was.

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

PLEASE! LET IT BE TINA! We haven't had a good laugh from the rag biz in YEARS!

It'll probably be some stodgy instant organization man who'll prove just as adept at emitting tripe as his predecessors.

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

We are sorry to hear LORD BEATLE and his wife have separated. Carrying the awful weight of all that LEGENDARY GENIUS must be too much to bear.

We are sorry too to hear NICOLE's engaged -- but just wait four years.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

"'I have to get to a library fast.'"

Just what THE CONSPIRACY needs -- a movie to tell people to go to the library so they don't have to see more rotten movies.

That British hacks sort of liked it tells us nothing but that they're more easily bribed.

Posted 8:32 AM by Gene

How much of the billions Moody's is saving corporate America for borrowing will go back into the corporate coffers to finance more dubious acquisitions that won't pan out which will raise the cost of borrowing?

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

I guess HP's SEXY again, but it still makes its best dough from RAZOR BLADES.

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

Voters booted the top two Republicans in the state Senate from office yesterday in a startling display of anti-incumbent anger over the summer's legislative pay raise.

There does come a point where a legislator can shaft the public only so much.

Posted 6:34 PM by Gene

"The world is faced with the nightmarish prospect that nuclear weapons will become a standard part of national armament and wind up in terrorist hands," warns former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

THIS is the kind of BRILLIANT INSIGHT that comes with winning a NOBEL PRIZE, and being one of the world's leading -- CONSULTANTS.

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

Northwestern University has benched its women's soccer team, and given the compulsion of women soccer players to tear off their uniforms we wonder why something like this didn't happen sooner.

BadJocks.com sounds like a hoot -- except in places like Durham, North Carolina it isn't funny.

More surprises tomorrow.

Posted 6:26 PM by Gene

Branson East announces its nominees for Best Tourist Traps of the Year. The difference between this and artistic endeavor is fools and producers believe this is art.

They were announced in a place called the Bruno Walter Auditorium. Walter died in 1962, and these days it seems as though art died eons before that.

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

The Senate says pretty please.

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

We do not know why the 9-11 Pentagon video is news. It's been in the public domain for years. We don't know why the Feds held it back. We don't know what purpose it served for Judicial Watch to boast it got the Feds to release it. Perhaps also we're growing so distant from the atrocity that we're not sure what to think of it.

And as to those (largely Web-spread) conspiracy theories, we doubt American Airlines ever had scheduled missile service.

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

I am so tired of blogging without an audience. If only someone out there would pay attention to me, and if only what few hits I get weren't accidents. I don't know where to go to get attention, or if I could. I continue, but for much longer I don't know.

And then I turn to Wired's silly blog and I see all these trends of the microsecond, to be forgotten as soon as they were created, and I really despair of ever making an impact.

Posted 1:20 PM by Gene

The great advantage of blogging...

GREEDY KATIE CORRECTION [Tim Graham]

Oklahoma locals (who swear they don’t love Katie Couric) have pointed out that I need to correct and clarify my earlier post on Katie’s big-bucks commencement speech in Norman. The Norman Transcript reports that the Washington Post figure was too small: she made $115,000 for the speech. And she donated it to charity:

OU President David Boren announced that Couric donated her entire speaking fee, $115,000 from private funds, to cancer research at her alma mater, the University of Virginia. The donation was made in honor of Couric's sister, Emily, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2001 and was a former state senator.

Posted at 12:39 PM

...is that you don't have to correct yourself if nobody finds out.

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

The last word on Dubya:

Bush's immigration reform plan had something for everyone, which may mean it accomplishes nothing.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

Here's another thing THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTISERS can willfully ignore with pride -- but in their universe people over 50 don't exist, except for CEOs.

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Daley: Not worried about Olympics cost

Sure! There are boatloads of money where the FLYING SAUCER came from!

And the truckers.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

Aaron Brown, he of the Dilbert voice and undertaker mien, is becoming a PERFESSER, meaning he can bore more people silly.

(Via the usual ROMY)

Posted 8:10 AM by Gene

This is exasperating. Thousands of people have seen THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME -- surely a few of America's TRUTH TELLERS have seen it -- and they've all sworn a BLOOD OATH OF SECRECY, because WHAT'S GOOD FOR PEOPLE WARNER....Meantime God knows how many CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS the hacks have their grimy overpaid paws on, which they'll disclose blithely without any regard of the consequences. By such misdeeds news hacks have for all time defined themselves as shallow, greedy, misanthropic hypocrites.

Posted 8:19 PM by Gene

And so, having achieved the emasculation of the Conservatives, the BBC-Guardian axis has turned its sights on the last bastion of conservative thinking: the United States of America. That's why they are in America.

I don't think I'd worry -- too much.

Posted 7:39 PM by Gene

Meantime the hacks come up with another bold use of their public service, running millions in free advertising for a declining laddie magazine.

Posted 7:33 PM by Gene

U.S. Restores Diplomatic Ties to Libya

For once we'd be justified to say, yup, it was oil.

Posted 7:29 PM by Gene

The courageous, righteous, boldly truth-telling USAOKAY!!!!!, winner of the future P-Ulitzer Prize for Public Service, has today devoted (in cooperation with the equally noble truth tellers of the ASSociated Press) a portion of its Web site's noble bandwidth, and a link on its home page, to notify us that Huntington Beach, California, has been officially declared Surf City, USA.

@#$%&* NEWS HACKS!!!!!

Posted 7:15 PM by Gene

Dubya, faced with a revolt in the House and among con-SER-va-tives, raises a white flag.

Or is it just the sun shining off Dubya's face?

Posted 2:24 PM by Gene

The gossip rags are "swiping" staffers.

How can they tell?

Posted 1:17 PM by Gene

In an editorial Sunday, the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald apologized for the way a predecessor paper covered the horrific 1916 lynching of a mentally impaired black man.

What makes this different from your garden-variety Howie Hairshirt wailings? Perhaps the Tribune-Herald thought the PC angle would justify it. But this biz has constantly used its high-and-mighty status to make mistakes that matter. From Hearst's War to Cronkite's Peace and beyond it's made mistakes that matter. No amount of apologizing can cure this biz' undying superiority and its enmity to its readers, two things that allow it to make mistakes with impunity.

J.B. Smith, in an account published in the Tribune-Herald last year, said that the Waco Morning News went even further, "describing the mob in heroic terms."

Why not? The news biz has always LED it.

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

Joke of the Day: The EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-U is offering Iran "safe" nuclear technology in exchange for giving up on unsafe nuclear technology.

They seem to have forgotten the old saw, where there's a will there's a way. They seem to WANT to forget it.

Posted 12:58 PM by Gene

We are sorry to learn -- much after the fact -- that the former Congressman "Sonny" Montgomery has died. We remember watching too much of C-SPAN to know the man had dignity, grace and class, charcteristics altogether missing from politics nowadays, and that, sadly, no one seems to miss.

Posted 11:05 AM by Gene

Jim Geraghty has a WARNING: sit out the election, con-SER-va-tives, and you'll get a DEMOCRAT (con-SER-va-tive speak) Congress for as far as your blind eyes can't see!

Just one problem: "con-SER-va-tives" run the government.

Posted 11:02 AM by Gene

The market affords the best-run financial companies, like Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., multiples of about 13, and the best industrial companies trade at about 18 to 19 times earnings, said Matt Collins, an analyst with Edward Jones. That leaves top-rated GE, with half of the company's profits generated by financial services, right in the middle.

Translation: GE Bancorp and Realty STILL can't make up its mind what it wants to be when it grows up.

Posted 10:45 AM by Gene

The more we hear about ANGRY REPORTING the more that means we'll be subjected to stories like this.

The ANGRY REPORTING shtick is a mere excuse for the biz to indulge in its worst, and its worst consists largely of sales pitches and upsetting stories about private citizens. We firmly believe USAOKAY!!!!! ran its NSA story to help justify more show-biz toadying. Having just been hit on the head by YAHOO! (which runs at LEAST as many plugs as USAOKAY!!!!!) we're absolutely convinced of it.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

JUNIOR regales BizWeek readers with his -- humor:

If your turnaround efforts at Warner were a song, what would be the title?
Gosh, how about Hang On, Sloopy? [laughter]. Or We've Only Just Begun. That is probably better.

We don't know, Junior. Either way sounds bad.

Posted 9:25 AM by Gene

A couple of show-biz worshiping Congresspoops are launching a piece of -- LEGISLATION designed to rid iPod fans of more of their hard-earned bucks!

Congressfolk love to come up with clever acronyms and the Berman and Bono are no exceptions. PERFORM stands for Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music.

We could come up with clever acronyms too but we try not to use bad words on this blog.

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

If you can believe Bob Novak, one of America's GREATEST SENATORS (so the TWXSTERS tell us) is busy BUSTING THE BUDGET!

Way to go, Sen. GREATEST!

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

U.S. Population Weighs in as The World's Most Obese

You'd think this would count as an achievement, seeing that this is AdAge.com.

Posted 1:34 PM by Gene

When every weekend we obsess over the meaningless inflated movie box-office counts we forget the films at the low end. This weekend in addition to Poseidon (glub-glub) there opened six other pictures, and they give further credence to the notion that on most days you could shoot a cannon off in a popcorn restaurant and not hit anybody. Films with names like Just My Luck and Goal! The Dream Begins seem to have been intentionally made for nobody. But then we go further down the list: somebody at ESPNCorp tried hyping Keeping Up with the Steins as the Jewish My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Perhaps the Steins should have converted to Greek Orthodox. We cannot IMAGINE who turned out for Sketches of Frank Gehry -- possibly artistically inclined vagrants. And even the ad blurbists don't work, and many of the bombs reside in the arthouse division. Recently PEOPLE WARNER ARTHOUSE PICTURES II turned out two masterpieces that elicited considerable activity above the title; together they grossed $2.7 million in the U. S. If King Richard knew of these (we have no doubt He did not), He might have asked, "Who wants to see a Tristram Shandy movie? I hated it in college. Everyone I knew hated it. And don't these idiots realize sex is death in the houses? This isn't 1982 anymore." But no, He (and they) will keep on making such immortalities, to the indifference of movie execs and "audiences" alike.

P. S. After turning a column into THE PAUL DRECK SHOW, CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES have the gall to run this:

Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Vivendi Universal [Natch, CURLEY's (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGE gets this wrong -- it's VIVENDI]; DreamWorks is a unit of DreamWorks SKG Inc. [Ditto; it's a unit of VIACON. Where have these people been? Quoting PAUL DRECK?]; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount and Paramount Classics are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line and Warner Independent are units of Time Warner Inc.; Lions Gate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.

If all the stories that quoted from other news hacks had similar happy endings they'd get their readers so riled the hacks would look back to this as a golden age.

Posted 11:40 AM by Gene

China Jr. joins the WTO!

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

BOOM-BOOM outlets like TNR have DEMANDED we send our soldiers (whom we will presumably take out of Iraq) to STOP THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR.

What if it's not a genocide?

Well, it's something bad. We should step in. But at what point do we not send tens of thousands of soldiers into every humanitarian crisis?

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

Jeez -- I mean golly, I guess they're MY agents of intolerance now!

Posted 9:55 AM by Gene

Who comes first in wasting money -- Dubya or pro-sports franchises?

Though Dubya wastes vastly more money, we call it a draw.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

Forgive us for wondering again if bird flu is not the Medical Panic of the Year.

Meantime how many people have died worldwide from -- say, typhoid or malaria? There doesn't seem to be a panic over that.

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

Which is not to say the rags can't do good reporting, but they hide it. The TWXSTERS run a disturbing story about Nigeria, scene of extreme corruption and a huge pipeline disaster that went ignored -- but it appears in PEOPLE NEWSRAG EUROPE and is no doubt missing from the DOMESTIC edition, because it's FOREIGN NEWS. This from the same PEOPLE WARNER whose Mouth from the South banned the use of "foreign" in his cable news empire. When did King Richard last read His newsrags?

Posted 9:25 AM by Gene

We have not ignored Mr. Mark, by the way. He offers up CW about MMMMMMMMMM-IIIIIIIIII-THREEEEEEEEEE that any Web surfer could have gleaned a week ago Saturday. And once again he runs one of those spinny last grafs...

It is true, as the old World War II saying goes, that "loose lips sink ships." But by refusing to tolerate an open discussion of new rules post-9/11, the Bush team lost a chance to gain public support for the necessary trade-off between security and privacy. Figuring out how to track and find Internet-savvy terrorists is a daunting task. Government officials—even the superspooks of the NSA—need all the help they can get.

...that make us yearn for a day without newsrags.

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

Last week The Cute Little Pink Paper ran a feature in which its intern branded the newsrags as "musty and pointless." Too often hacks who write for rags that wear their irony on their sleeve will spout off for no reason, and TCLPP has done so almost as many times as the dollars it's lost, but hacks can hit on the truth even if for no better reason than to display their attitude. There is something profoundly wrong with the newsrags. We'll start with PEOPLE NEWSRAG today. Go into the table of contents and you have two stories anyone could write in his sleep: first that corporations are giving money in ways to help EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL Republicans, and second (and not for the initial time) that we should negotiate with Iran. (We suspect PRESIDENT HEIN-TZZZ is negotiating with select members of the PEOPLE NEWSRAG staff.) THE QUEEN OF BLOGGING tells us the newsrags "have enormous investigative resources that bloggers don’t have," and yet too often they seem compiled by an Onion staff with no sense of humor. (Assuming it has a sense of humor.) Fifteen grafs of CW doesn't seem worthy of the hundreds of "reporters" and "writers" and "editors" who serve up this weekly slop. Indeed the newsrags are proof if news orgs fired five-sixth of their staffs there'd be no difference. We crave information; the success of the Web in disseminating it shows that. But we don't crave any information; we crave complete information, information free from bias and spin and platitudes. That we don't get from the newsrags. Only America's coffee tables and reception rooms and greedy educrats keep them from joining the papers in deserved decline.

And as it happened the rags did do a BRUCE, but not the kind of Bruce we expected, and that's probably because they've already plugged THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME.