Posted 4:56 PM by Gene

JonBoy interviews an expert on -- branding, branding as it pertains to -- foreign affairs, and gets some of the stinkiest prose to invade his territory since the Koran went in the toilet:

Israel talks of turning round its image. What can it hope to achieve?
Israel has the most catastrophically bad image. In fact, its figures [in the index] are some of the lowest I have ever recorded across the spectrum from culture to governance, from products and the land itself. In a case like that, I don’t think there is virtually anything you can do, and it may be counterproductive to try. One thing you can’t do with public opinion is to change the subject, and the thing with Israel, the subject is its various conflicts.

TRANSLATION: I don't know the damnedest thing about governments, but you called me in to offer PR advice relating to a movie, so this is the least I can do. It's not as if I'm the most ignorant on your premises, anyway; editors who can link world events to marketing buzzwords must be pretty ignorant in their own right. Besides, people like you pay me big bucks to dispense my ignorance. As your interview request proves, I'm in demand!

This is far worse than Black Friday stories -- because such blather happens 365 days a year.

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

Who'd have guessed? eBay sells indulgences!

Somewhere, Milton Friedman is laughing.

Posted 1:21 PM by Gene

In further random searching, we find this scribbler attempts to compare SLIME's stunt with His other comic masterwork because they both share a last name, only to prove once again that most hacks pride themselves in forced analogies, and newspapers are no longer worth buying.

Posted 12:58 PM by Gene

Which brings up another question: when do Christians (known in Hollywood as the Root of All Evil -- except when they spend) come to realize the movie hacks are patronizing them? When will they come to realize their pious holy offerings are a false front for junk? When do they refuse to play the game?

Posted 12:49 PM by Gene

What does it say when the TWXSTERS open two movies that together do a FIFTH the business of their CGI spectacular? What does it say when SLIME's new movie does less business than His GREATEST COMEDY EVER in its fourth weekend?

It says without parents or a raging publicist no one wants to see a movie.

P. S. Alas, it appears even the movie S&M buffs have told the Dixie Chicks to SHUT UP -- PERIOD.

Posted 12:43 PM by Gene

U.S. Involved in Iraq Longer Than WW II

Are CURLEY's (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES trying to MAKE a POINT? And if they are, why don't they just MAKE IT?

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

To further remove any doubt professional college football is not about education:

Coker, who said he had been offered at least two head-coaching jobs during his UM tenure but never pursued them because he was happy at Miami, will be paid a buyout approaching $3 million. He is expected to coach again.

Shalala also said she has directed Sergio M. Gonzalez, UM's vice president for advancement and communication, to begin a six-month fund-raising campaign "to secure commitments from our supporters/donors to finance competitive coaching contracts and build and renovate first-class facilities and programs for our first-class coaches and student athletes...."

TRANSLATION: They want an arms race, they'll GET an arms race!

Shalala concluded by writing, "Finally, I want to make it clear that no celebration is in order today...."

Tell that to your celebrating supporters/donors.

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

We accidentally came across this scribble from an ad-blurbist in ROMY's favorite alternarag who's been at it for decades, who came of age watching the BISKINDIAN GENIUS of the sixties, and who scribblescribblescribbles hoping for a return to those golden days of yesteryear, and who scribblescribblescribbles because he imagines what a grand wri-TER he is, and after reading this effusive garbage we accidentally came across a hed on the home page that further capsulizes such brilliant writers, and their eternal tilting at the same bean-counter and stupid-teen movie windmills:

Too dumb to quit

Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

Proof lovers of -- "music" may have too much time on their hands:

A woman is accused of using a computer at a national laboratory to hack into a cell phone company's Web site to get a number for Chester Bennington, lead singer of the Grammy-winning rock group Linkin Park....

Townsend's computer wasn't connected to classified data, Padilla said.

WELL! That's a relief.

Posted 10:38 AM by Gene

Cheney Visits Saudis Amid Iraq Upheaval

One word comes to mind here: blowback. Knowing Big Oil, who's auditioning for that superlobbyist job two years early, and the Saudis, we must wonder what these two titanic forces have in for us down the road. And they are sure to think up something. And they can always say it was an accident.

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

One of B. S. DEFENDER's enduring shticks is to complain about the idiot stories the hacks always do on Black Friday. Well bad news, B. S.: those stories now involve the Web.

Yes, I too am irritated by these write-by-numbers affairs, but when people are cued by an invisible hand to shop en masse the day after Thanksgiving you can't ignore it outright. There must be a better way of reporting it, and we can be sure the hacks will never find it.

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to DICK, who suggests why newspapers might not be filling in the blanks left by fired employees as they continue to insult their readers with such press releases.

Posted 2:02 PM by Gene

Why am I thinking, Chuck, that you got excited about THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER (and putting Tricky Dick in the same league as Harry Truman -- dashing!) only because David Brooks wrote about it, and that you would probably joined the embarrassing hordes of those kneeling-down-in...prayer news hacks who consented to "interviews" in character?

Maybe if we hacks hadn't called it THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER we wouldn't be doing our THINKER pose wondering if its star is a poseur.

I HATE NEWS-HACK WISDOM AFTER THE FACT!

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

Terry Teachout says this of a very famous playwright:

Tennessee Williams is widely thought to be a great playwright—but not by me. Yes, he wrote one indisputably great play, “The Glass Menagerie,” and I can also see why so many people like “A Streetcar Named Desire” so much more than I do. Most of the rest of his vast output, however, strikes me as overblown and underbelievable, with “Suddenly Last Summer” locking up the booby prize for sheer absurdity.

All well and good, and we suspect just; but is it not possible twenty or twenty-five years after his death someone will take the same attitude toward your beloved hero HERR DOKTOR SONDHEIM?

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

I just noticed this home-page blurb on the Houston Chronicle site:

Fran needs a win — Coach Dennis Franchione's approval rating is fading, but he'll get a boost if A&M beats UT.

While the accompanying story says nothing of polls, I take that seriously. I can see the multi-millionaire football-factory CEOs commissioning polls to see if they should keep a millionaire coach on the job. Half of these infernal college presidents' jobs must be to keep their profit centers on a short leash. No wonder their skools churn out so many ignoramuses, and America has lost her sense of humor.

Posted 10:10 AM by Gene

Another bit of very sad cultural news for the hacks to ignore: Betty Comden, who with the late Adolph Green wrote the books and lyrics to charming trifles like Bells are Ringing, and more memorably such screenplays as that masterpiece Singin' in the Rain among other hits, has died. Let us recall she was part of an act in the thirties call The Revuers that introduced Judy Tuvim (that is, Judy Holliday) to the world, much too briefly (not to forget Comden and Green were a pretty fair Broadway act themselves); and more importantly, they got their big break collaborating with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins on On the Town, which put them on the Main Stem map. (Bernstein's father called Green a "nut", recommendation enough to us.) Oh to have been a fly on the wall during their sessions! Such laughter! Such pizazz! Anyone who could write a song like "Moses" must be -- different. Those two gave incalculable merriment to the world. Now they and their whole jolly circle are gone, and we are left with Branson East, and jukebox revues, and Dreamgirls.

(Via ArtsJournal)

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: THE GREATEST DIRECTOR EVER (after the LEGENDARY Bob Altman, who just died) wastes millions creating a box-office bomb proving the Japanese were "jes like us" during the war, so he can win the Os-CAR®.

You mean our brave fighting men died to protect the freedoms of layabouts like YOU?

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

So attendance is down at our national parks. So what? I would think that would be good news -- good for the feds who don't have to shell out so much on maintenance and crowd control, good for people who don't want Times Square in the woodlands.

Posted 9:43 AM by Gene

Belly Kisser says, "T'ain't me! Chuckle chuckle."

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

Could it be the medical whizzes who prescribe combinations of psychiatric drugs to kids are trying to make them insane so they'll never get off them?

Posted 3:46 PM by Gene

Here now is the perfect excuse for the news hacks to know not what they're doing. When WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE DYLAN -- dies (assuming he dies; like SUMNER, he is well-nigh IMMORTAL) we will get a state-media funeral, with the pages outlined in black as The Paper of Re-CORD was for LINCOLN, and twenty-four-hour-long docuburps, and enough rotten-egg-smelling platitudes to make WOLF BLITZER and JEFF GREENFIELD sound intelligent -- but here is a woman who merely entertained, and assuming any of the hacks care they're busily scratching their heads and asking, who? We hate to make such a big thing of this, but we know what hacks think, and how hacks write, and what hacks listen to.

This gas expelled, we can say we are familiar with Lady O'Day. We cannot dissociate her with two other jazz giants -- the superdynamic Gene Krupa and Roy Eldridge -- because she arguably sang her best music with them. "Let Me Off Uptown" is too easy -- everyone who knows jazz knows the incendiary interplay between Miss O'Day and Eldridge. "Skylark" is too easy also -- that was the impossible of Anita improving a great tune. But everything she sang had that special zest -- and she was arguably not the best or most melodious of singers, but she had this way of insinuating herself into a tune that made her the best; she could make a song like "That's What You Think" sneak up on you. She had a sly, spry humor too: listen to a mere novelty tune like "Watch the Birdie" or "A Little Bit South of North Carolina", or Frank Loesser's "Murder! He Says". At their best the big-band chanteuses each had an identity, an identity that strengthened the identities of the big bands, and as good as Gene Krupa's was it wasn't half as good without Anita. It's a measure of how revered she was that after her dreadful nervous breakdown she came back with Krupa and her own vocal version of "Opus No. 1", arranged by Sy Oliver, and if it didn't have that nice warm suave velvety O'Day glow to it, and both versions (hers and TD's) were hits, proof of the riches of the big bands. Though we are less familiar with her solo albums we know she never lost that touch. And yes, if she wasn't the nicest of women, and she had many, many drug-induced bad days, she still made the nicest of music.

When jazz died we lost more than a musical form, which explains why we are in constant mourning over our culture, and why news hacks do not know up from down.

Another tribute to Lady O'Day: LEGENDARY DAVIS and the TONE-DEAFS at ROOTKIT MUSIC CO. discontinued both of her Columbia-OKeh anthologies. Well, at least we have them.

Posted 10:17 AM by Gene

Some Lebanese, it appears, know better than Condi, or the FIXER.

Posted 10:04 AM by Gene

A writer (and I wish I could identify him) has asked, in light of "Kramer"'s breast beating, whether there's a statute of limitations on apologies. Incidents like this quickly become excessively tiresome because some idiot scribblers perceive them as a way for America to do "penance." Honest, some rich comedian with no talent for stand-up got heckled, and blew a fuse, and said he's sorry. This isn't the bigot the Second Coming of Christ. Can't we leave it at that?

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

"We lost many friends in this election," said Steven C. Anderson, president of the Republican-leaning National Restaurant Association. "But that doesn't mean we can't make new friends, and that's what we'll do."

Just so long as you can make enemies of the PEOPLE.

Posted 9:58 PM by Gene

Before we get too mad at the bozos on eBay absconding with HARPERCOLLINS'S PROPERTY (Pffh-hh-hh!), we should remember THIS CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED BOOK went for $1,000 or something too.

Posted 9:55 PM by Gene

DOW 36,000 has devised an elaborate coffee-table decoration for rich people who can read.

Posted 9:53 PM by Gene

Dick Cheney to Meet With Saudi King Abdullah

Is our post-vice-presidential career on the agenda?

Posted 9:30 PM by Gene

STORY of the WEEK:

BOISE, Idaho - Two employees of the city's ice skating rink have been fired for making a midnight fast-food run in a pair of Zambonis. An anonymous tipster reported seeing the two big ice-resurfacing machines chug through a Burger King drive-through and return to the rink around 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 10. The squat, rubber-tired vehicles, which have a top speed of about 5 mph, drove 1 1/2 miles in all.

Thankfully no one and nothing was hurt, and the two clowns deserved to be fired; nonetheless we must say this is the most DROLL dispatch we've seen in a while.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Why do I think a generation from now when someone mentions Jerry Dreckheimer people will say, "Jerry who?"

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

What does it say for the League of Nations when Mia Farrow all but blasts it on Darfur -- and The Paper of Re-CORD admits its "Human Rights Commission" is a farce?

(Latter link via Marty)

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

At times like these, Jo-NAH, I'd rather read the stirring movie cri-TI-cism of the late Frank Rich.

Posted 3:12 PM by Gene

TNR notices the Congressional Black Caucus:

[O]ver the last few years, the CBC has seemed less concerned with pursuing the interests of black Americans than with protecting the interests of black congressmen. And, Mel Watt's excitement notwithstanding, that's not something to be happy about.

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

This little-heeded news from ROOTKIT MUSIC CO. points to a possible big future taxpayer shaft, to wit: ROOTKIT could decide to "donate" its classical-music library to the GOVERNMENT. Aside from the obvious rotten message it would send of the recorded-SOUND business getting out of anything decent (but then the recorded-SOUND business gave up on excellence a long time ago) it would be suitably and grossly expensive; ROOTKIT could take a HUGE tax writedown (and remember LORD SPRINGER, because this is "priceless" music let's jack up the price), and then, as a token gesture, give a seed-fund to permit the government to distribute (and maintain) the music, which means in time the TAXPAYERS would finance a classical record company at God knows what cost -- and we suspect ROOTKIT would be clever enough to keep such rights on the music that it would LOSE MONEY. What a perfect way of scamming the public for profit!

We note also another story says ROOTKIT fired a jazz-VP at the Legacy label, meaning presumably it could do the same thing to JAZZ -- which is, after all, AMERICA'S CLASSICAL MUSIC.

This has LEGENDARY DAVIS all over it.

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

Media need rules for dealing with sexual orientation issues

This is the proverbial nonsense on stilts. "Media" already have "rules" : to be PC ("the first gay blah-blah-blah") and shocked! SHOCKED! (L'Affaire Horny-Mark, pedophile priests), while luckily managing to avoid the catastrophe that is AIDS. The hacks are too far gone to be subject to rules of sense and logic on this or any matter, so we can expect more of the same, another reason the business is having an avalanche.

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

EXCELLENT:

The U.S. teen birthrate fell again in 2005 to a new historical low, however, almost all of these births were to unwed mothers, which helped push the percent of unwed births to a record high.

TRANSLATION: Ghetto kids will have kids.

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

Shucks, Pinch doesn't want to sell the Globe to LEGENDARY WELCH & CO.

But LEGENDARY won't give up. Think of all the people he could fire!

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

U.N.: Iraqi civilian deaths at new high

Don't tell me...let me guess...the League of Nations is hoping too!

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Four pages of blah from the great blah dispenser SI about how YouTube will CHANGE THE WORLD. HOLLYWOOD IS OVER!!!!!!!!!! Prediction: In 25 years the same tyrants who rule over our media now will rule over it then. Oh yes there may be one or two funny names, but the tyrannies haven't lasted this long without adapting. PEOPLE WARNER started as a newsrag and a movie studio. VIACON started as a movie studio and a second string radio network. ESPNCORP was created in part from a spinoff of NBC. They were powerful then, they'll be powerful in the future, and the AMAZING NEW POPULIST MEDIA will still be at the fringes because 500 million TV channels will have no audience -- something the bigmedia tyrannies won't have to worry about, especially as their sugar daddies on MADAVE will still be showering them with dough, albeit in a slightly different way.

(Via the usual blah dispenser ArtsJournal)

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

1. BABA WAWA might have interviewed you-know-who but ESPNCORP execs turned it down. 2. ROGER AILES knew (so much for NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN ZONE). 3. SLIME was "fully informed", meaning He probably stage-managed the whole thing.

We note this writer uses the word "sanctimony." And the media biz comes off almost as rotten as SLIME because their protestations were so false.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

Scarlett Johansson Wants George Bush to Teach Her More About Sex

NO COMMENT.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

SLIME pulls the media buyers' bacon out of that very hot fire.

They're lucky; we suspect most of them are not much better acquainted with the concept of right and wrong than SLIME.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

ANOTHER J'ACCUSE for SUPERHOOPER!

(Via -- alas -- AMSPEC)

Posted 2:19 PM by Gene

We smile:

200,000 CASINO ROYALE BOOTLEGS DOWNLOADED, SAYS REPORT

Mind you, we don't condone intellectual piracy -- but where's the harm when the product getting pirated is worthless? (And yes, we KNOW it was CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED, which indicates the fact even more so.)

Posted 2:15 PM by Gene

THE HEAVENS FALL: Two "top" WaPosties are leaving -- to start a WEB SITE!!!!!

Which raises the question -- if these top names can leave the WaPost, why shouldn't their readers?

(Via the inevitable Romy)

Posted 1:25 PM by Gene

We were just now moved to go to Roger Ebert's Web site. We know Mr. Ebert is gravely ill and he hasn't written for the public in months, but we wanted to see if possibly something from his mind had shown up. Instead we saw a piece of tripe from some typist named Emerson who was afraid to voice a judgment on THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER. Most likely Mr. Ebert would have written one of his patented ads, but at least it would have been interesting. This guy types in the increasingly namby-pamby style of the ad-blurbists. It is bad enough that the blurbists are the ne-plus-ultra of conformism and that they suffer from the most intense kind of cultural Stockholm Syndrome; but worse still, they can't write! One would moan over the loss except the LAST thing we need is more movie ad blurbs.

Posted 12:34 PM by Gene

When Jane Harman left Congress in 1998 to run for governor of California, her colleague Nancy Pelosi threw her a party — a chocolate-fudge sundae "social" in the House members' dining room.

How about throwing a FOOD FIGHT, Nancy?

Posted 12:28 PM by Gene

Robert Altman, who perfectly wended his way into the film cri-TICS' zeitgeist by making the movies they wanted to see, has died. RIP.

Posted 12:15 PM by Gene

SCARY:

Former Murdoch editors - including Harold Evans - have often suggested that the mogul's staff instinctively do what they think he will want, without necessarily being ordered. He needs to reflect hard on the fact that this piece of morbid sleaze was what they thought he wanted.

How many media empires run like this?

Posted 12:04 PM by Gene

LUKE SPIELBERG, the inventor of CASTOR OIL, calls for "RESPONSIBLE TELEVISION."

Two of Spielberg's movies, "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan," have generated controversy during their television airings with uncut language and graphic depictions. But Spielberg has also made a famous edit to the DVD release of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," where a government agent wielded a gun in the original film and then held a walkie-talkie in the DVD.

Yes, a billionaire may be a MORON, and a great ah-TEESTE a HYPOCRITE.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

Who wants to guess -- in the next couple of weeks, or days -- on EBAY....

400,000 COPIES! Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft!!!!!

Posted 11:21 AM by Gene

SUPERHOOPER gets on the horn and yells PERSECUTION!!!!!

I guess he's the new Je$$e for news hacks to swoon over. Doesn't that clown realize when he opens his big fat PR department he screams guilty?

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

A WaPostie is mad (in a gentle way) because the new Nightlight isn't anywhere near like the old.

Yes, we don't like celebrity fluff either; we suggest yet again that news hacks run such PR as advertorials (and in TV's case infomercials). That said, SLIME brings back the unpleasant memory of legions of NEWS HACKS fresh off their celebrations in South-Central happily trying to inspire riots by intimating whites thought O. J. guilty BECAUSE OF HIS (AND THE VICTIMS') RACE -- and LORD KOPPEL did a ten-month SPECIAL REPORT on race relations, which, translated, was a glorified justification for backing O. J. No, Paul, WE DO NOT MISS HIS LORDSHIP.

(Via the inevitable Romy)

Posted 10:56 AM by Gene

In other news of the evil-twin Lex Luthors:

Nephew sues Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone

Is it too much to hope someone sues SLIME too?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

The Browns now say SLIME offered them HUSH MONEY.

Is there ANY depth to which He wouldn't go?

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

Is this a new gag -- when people protest something like SLIME's stunt we HACKS call it CENSORSHIP?

And these are the same idiots who think up 50,000 ways of censoring their enemies -- only they call it OBJECTIVITY.

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

The Ophthalmologist has killed another enemy.

I think we can turn the other cheek, huh FIXER?

Posted 7:04 AM by Gene

SLIME had to pay the money anyway.

We'll be calling him SLIME for a little while longer.

Is it me or is the rest of the news biz downplaying this disaster? What's good for PEOPLE WARNER....

Posted 7:01 AM by Gene

Iran, Iraq and Syria are talking.

Are we out of it? Or are we merely saying we're out of it so FIXER can bulk up his power in the oil biz?

I'd bet the appeaser Condi has been so busy this past week her head's ready to fall off, which might shatter on the ground and reveal no brain.

Posted 5:04 PM by Gene

This should help the buyout talk:

Tribune Revenues Down 1.0% in October

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

Bill O'Reilly — who did talk about it, and took pains to denounce it — comes out a winner here. So do the rest of us, actually.

No you didn't. Con-SER-va-tives lost -- because so many of you long ago pledged total unthinking allegiance to SLIME and, like JPod, slavishly praised His every new assault on the public in the name of a dollar. So did the NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN ZONE when he all but denied his Boss was involved in it. So did anyone associated with SLIME's Empire, where the stain will not be that easily washed away.

P. S. Does His MADAM become the ritual sacrifice?

Posted 4:49 PM by Gene

We can think up another reason SLIME capitulated: He's in a continuing fight with the uber-SOB John "The Don" Malone over control of His empire. The Don may not be so amenable to a stock swap now; he could use this IDIOCY as an excuse to push SLIME out of His executive seat. Not that there'd be a difference; The Don would have done the same thing...a little more shrewdly.

One other thing: SLIME's stock was down every day since the announcement -- and it appears to have gone down a little more for His giving up.

Posted 3:51 PM by Gene

SLIME GIVES UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why did You do this in the first place, SLIME?

It finished at #53 on Amazon.com despite the publicity. THAT'S why He gave it up.

One last question -- will He and His MADAM endeavor to get Their money back? HMMM?

And how many copies in warehouses will He have to eat?

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

So much for Ralph Kramden's draft.

Posted 2:22 PM by Gene

Lou Dobbs: I'm Smarter Than Blitzer, Zahn!!!!!!!!!! [Overemphasis added]

Well, fatter anyway.

Posted 12:14 PM by Gene

Another triumph for Der Homeland:

A team of federal air marshals was prevented from protecting a recent flight from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport because a gate agent erroneously said they did not have the correct paperwork, say marshals familiar with the incident.

Posted 10:42 AM by Gene

What do college presidents and CEOs have in common?

One gue$$.

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

The bad news: Network TV viewership is up.

The good news: The Hollywood Stenographer likens the networks to The Sunshine Boys and The Golden Girls.

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

[W]hy risk angering fans who wanted the stadium named after Jackie Robinson and traditionalists who insist they'll keep calling it Shea Stadium, regardless of what corporation hangs its shingle above the entrances?

THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED!!!!! I'LL HAVE MY LUXURY BOX!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

Hoyer, [sic] claims no 'bad blood' with Pelosi

I see -- KNIVES.

Posted 6:56 AM by Gene

SLIME turns on THE GREATEST COMEDIAN EVER!

By the way, MORT ZUCK doesn't mention you-know-who, so I guess he's figured he can't get any more circ out of one-upmanship for now.

Posted 6:50 AM by Gene

Germany investigates 6 in alleged airplane plot

Let me guess -- Tibetan Buddhists!

Posted 7:34 PM by Gene

What is more embarrassing than an old newsweekly? I was doing my laundry when by unfortunate accident I came across a copy from precisely one year ago of PEOPLE NEWSRAG, which had the typical newsrag two-by-four-on-a-mule stories: one supposedly on ambition that gave our editors an excuse to drop very big and sexy names; a plug by DICK "GUNS CAUSED COLUMBINE!!!!!" CORLISS on some movie about geishas or something which he and his bosses were SURE WOULD WIN THE OSCAR®!!!!!, and a plug by ER for THE ERIC SEVAREID OF COMEDY, and I thought, these IDIOTS who prop their feet on their desks at big salaries to insult their readers thought folks would READ this? And they wonder why their bosses just scalped their CIRC? One thing's clear -- it wasn't THEIR fault.

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

GREAT: Slime's copying the EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY for His CORE.

Good night, and -- GOOD LUCK!

Posted 4:49 PM by Gene

Unless our IGGLES stage a streak to end all streaks I won't have to momentarily leave town on SUPER BORE SUNDAY. (Praaaaaaaaaaaaaaise de LOHD!) But skimming the scoreboard I'm amazed at all the teams straddling .500. The NFL calls this "parity." I call it boredom. How can people get excited at football played at such a low level?

Fortunately I stopped being excited about professional sports a long time ago.

P. S. at 6:20 P. M. I wrote this before I heard of the injury. I wouldn't have been so flippant otherwise. Here's one reason I've tuned them out; football especially is prone to these dreadful fluke mishaps. You needn't follow the game and one look and you know. The IGGLES fans are understandably funerary, but being funerary, and for nothing, is another reason I no longer closely follow sports.

Did I write "parody" in my original post? Yes I did. Not all that inapt, though.

Posted 3:06 PM by Gene

David "300" Bauder's plugging that Viacon boomer survey. But it doesn't have a happy ending as the inevitable result will be more niche programming. Whatever its flaws, and they were manifold and great, network TV in its prime at least broadcast for all. As it fragments and divides its audience into ever smaller groups TV eventually will end up programming for nobody -- although it's hard to see that isn't the case now.

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

Who knew Suzanne Somers wasn't a doctor?

Posted 12:47 PM by Gene

NOT BAD: Despite another round of 1939 and all those parents and movie S&M phreaks who believe what they read in the papers, B.O. for the top 12 looks to be down about $40 million from last year, a nice heartwarming close-to-25-percent drop. A few more weekends like this and the year won't be an unalloyed triumph after all.

Some more heartwarming factoids: THE GREATEST DIRECTOR's PC war movie has bombed, as has Phone Thrower's masterwork, as have the previously-mentioned DreamWorks writedown and two other newly opened expressions of genius. Not bad, not bad at all.

P. S. The Hollywood Stenographer calls the decline "staggering." Double not-bad.

Posted 12:06 PM by Gene

This is a most interesting photo. Useless News tells us it was taken on June 5, 1967. That's LBJ in the Oval Office poring over Teletype printouts while a custom-built TV set blares with the Big Three, all no doubt carrying the same pool feed from Turtle Bay. We may think our newsgathering has vastly improved from four decades ago, but consider: most Web news seems to be glorified rewrites of ASSociated Press stories, and the Big Three, for all the talk of the alleged death of network news, still command a vastly greater audience than all their cable rivals combined. Despite our vaunted technology we may not know much better than LBJ did. Plus ça change....

Posted 10:42 AM by Gene

Here's a laugh: greedy book publishers are strong-arming profs who put their stuff on the Web for free. Hey publishers, if you didn't charge $500 for a textbook...?

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

A veteran literary logroller for the StinkyInky supposes he is typing Swiftian satire:

Simple choice: You want goofy names, kooky groups, multi-claused, roller-coaster, Nabokovian sentences, pop-culture sarcasm, abstruse intellectual arabesques, 10-dollar words, inside jokes, fey attributions, self-parodying guides to interpretation - buy Against the Day.

You want order, coherence, clarity, terseness?

Buy a newspaper.

(Please.)

I don't know about the Nabokovian sentences, but it seems to me, Carlin, we get enough of that first list of yours from newspapers -- which is why people are no longer buying them.

No newspaper, magazine, TV station, gossip columnist or late-breaking blogger has been able to locate Pynchon in his 43-year publishing career.

Seeing as how all five on this second list have newspapers in common -- ANOTHER REASON.

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

Jonathan Yardley, who writes too seldom, delivers a stirring eulogy for the fillum trade:

"The best films," Phillips quotes Lean as writing in an essay published in 1947, "are generally those that have the stamp of one man's personality." Phillips takes this as proof that Lean "recognized the concept of the auteur long before it was officially promulgated" and that, by implication, he was himself an auteur. Perhaps so, but why on Earth should it matter? Lean loved making movies and was stubborn and strong-willed enough to make the movies he wanted to within a system that tends to crush individual taste and initiative. His extraordinary career tells us that the system can be tamed and put to good use by someone sufficiently passionate, determined and talented, and we don't need any fancy French words to figure that one out.

No, David "Stocks 'n' Porn" Denby, this does NOT mean MR. TAXI DRIVER.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Mr. My Business is My Business ALMOST says -- BLOOMY FOR PRESIDENT!

Wasn't Dubya "competent" too, once upon a time?

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

The Paper of Re-CORD seems astonished the Dems wouldn't go all the way on ethics legislation, but in many respects the world's most sophisticated reporters and editors were born yesterday.

Elsewhere said same rag plugs a [C]RAPPER-- the same [C]RAPPER Nekesi Moody Mumbi, Mumbi Nekesi, WHATEVER plugged yesterday! A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to KELEFA!

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

THE WORLD'S LEADING NEWS -- JonBoy is playing an elaborate trick this week! In the domestic edition -- AUTISM. (ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.) In the Europe and Latin America (?) editions only: an article on Muslim women and their veils. (I guess JonBoy didn't want to hear it from SUPERHOOPER.) In the Asian edition, an article on NGOs. (ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.) THE WORLD'S LEADING NEWS -- JonBoy is charging hard this week! Hey Jon? When do YOU cut YOUR rate base?

Elsewhere four writers come dangerously close to mocking those who are angry at SLIME's boy (although people like MORT ZUCK with their manufactured outrage brought part of it on themselves). We repeat, Jonny -- when do YOU cut YOUR rate base?

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

Our Asian "allies" shorten the wet noodle on North Korea!

It's official: no one is serious on this topic, and people are deluding themselves into thinking talks will cure this.