Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

The bad news: Whole Foods's profit fell.

The good news: more effete snobs are ready to pay more for overpriced groceries than ever.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

MS. TRAVERS says LARRY!!!!! asked "silly questions" of VEEP BIGOIL.

That LARRY!!!!! asks silly questions we need not comment on. But perhaps one question wasn't that silly: "Wouldn't you like to be liked?" To us that's a pungent question, even if LARRY!!!!! asked it. The problem is too many politicians want desperately to be liked, and turn even more into creatures they aren't. Tricky Dick wanted desperately to be liked. Slick wanted to be liked. On the other extreme is VEEP BIGOIL, who doesn't seem to give a damn whether people like him or not, just so long as he can be MR. FIXER and do his favors for his friends. We are not well served by either sort of politico.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Video reopens debate over Beslan attack

Which Belly Kisser and his thugs will close.

It is highly likely a government (in a previous edition) that could make an exploding nuke reactor can make an exploding hostage crisis. No one ever said the Russians do things -- lightly.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

The Orbiting Jalopy has a leak.

For God's sake what is the point of these hi-mom expeditions?

Posted 2:48 PM by Gene

Here we were going along gangbusters, GM up, SLIME getting His way, all things right with the world -- and then some SUBPRIME company no one ever heard of got shellacked because it couldn't meet its MARGIN CALLS (shades of '29?), and we're back where we were last week.

Why was the Dow at 14,000?

And we see AAPL's getting a thoroughly deserved comeuppance because it may not be making as many iPhones (or is that iPods?) as The Lord God Steve talked the sales -- ANALYSTS and news hacks into believing. Things will happen when you trust in fairy tales.

Posted 12:25 PM by Gene

GEKKO KUDLOW all but concedes The Great Alaskan Boar is corrupt, but why are so many con-SER-va-tives willing to clothespin their noses for a majority's sake?

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

British teevee is acquiring a rep for truth comparable to Jayson Blair's or Stephen Glass's. Once this rot works into media it doesn't work out, so that the only solution is total avoidance, which isn't possible or desirable. But British teevee sure does deserve it.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Get reaaady! Geeeeet REEEEEADYYYYY!!!!! THE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD IS COMING TO AN ENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND!!!!!!!!!!!

And if David Faber says it's so, it's so. Right?

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Lots of ugly speculative oil-fueled building in Moscow too!

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

Non-profits sure can pay some more!

And this guy's even better because he's made budget cuts -- except to his own salary, of course.

Posted 8:14 AM by Gene

We'd hoped to drop the subject for all time yesterday as it seems like piling on otherwise, but you can tell the news hack's self-regard by the gusto he writes obits on his colleagues. Not only did these men cure cancer, they saved the universe. Thus David Halberstam acquired posthumous superhuman powers, and now Tom Snyder (whom we in our family always referred to as Tom Snide) has become the greatest interviewer ever. That these pieces are the funerary version of fanny-kissing is evident in that Snyder seems to have emerged full bore at NBC without his tryout in Philadelphia, which city does not seem to have been mentioned anywhere yesterday once. If the hacks won't tell the whole truth about themselves in their obits they can hardly be expected to tell the whole truth about anything.

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

Another "classic", Michelangelo Antonioni, the director of L'Avventura, has died. Could it be these "classics" and the ad-blurbists' worship of them played a part in our current megaplatinum movie age?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

BATTLE OF THE MASHED-POTATO WADS: Somebody named N'Gai Croal breaks a 3,913-WORD wind against Mr. Thumbs-Up for despising videogames -- and then remembers who the EDITOR-IN-CHIEF is:

[I]t's the right of someone with the maturity of an honest and articulate four-year-old [Come on, N'Gai guy -- you meant Rog -- why didn't you have the guts to say it?] to forget the history of his own favored art form and close his mind to the potential of another. In the meantime, those of us who care about the possibilities inherent in this medium will have to rely upon ourselves and one another to keep doing the heavy lifting necessary to suss out where the art of videogames lies; to determine how the craft can enhance that art; and to continue the fight to push this young medium from squalling infancy into graceful adulthood. Let's get cracking.

These last words are worthy of the kind of folderol and fiddlededee JonBoy ends the masterworks in his rag with. Indeed he does such geniuses as the rag's PR vice-prez DEVIN one better by writing "suss out" -- boy if that isn't the MARK OF HIP! (Sort of like the Mark of Zorro on an unprotected stomach.) If we're not careful this N'Gai will be going places. Now if only we could suggest where.

(Via the usual brain-addling SLASHDOT, where the thousands of Darth Vader costume-wearers have placed this anenst TOM PAINE -- whoever he was. Maybe the inspiration to PHILIP K. DICK?)

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

"If Walsh was a general," said ESPN analyst Beano Cook, "he would be able to overrun Europe with the army from Sweden."

Yes, Bill Walsh must have been something. Indeed it is a tragedy that true leadership seems limited to the gridiron. We could use a champion in the White House, for sure.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

We hope the Chief Justice is well; we also hope the Nine Fingers don't pull the secrecy gag they did during the long dying of Chief Rehnquist.

Posted 2:08 PM by Gene

The bad thing isn't that Al Gore's son pleaded guilty to drug posession. The bad thing was that he did 100 in a hybrid.

Pfffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 2:04 PM by Gene

The definition of a frivolous lawsuit.

Posted 12:29 PM by Gene

BULLETIN DOW JONES SHARES FALL SHARPLY AS NEWS CORP. WARNS IT MAY ABANDON BID

Is the Messiah about to come?

Posted 12:09 PM by Gene

Yes, just what we need -- presidential candidates telling jokes...and not just the EDDIE of the WEST.

Isn't running for office comedy enough?

Posted 12:04 PM by Gene

AP NEWS ALERT!!!!!

CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown tells President Bush he shares the U.S. view that there are "duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in Iraq.

Shucks, maybe the Brits aren't ready yet to blow a gasket.

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

Admissions are currently running 1% ahead of last year's total.

Thanks again, Stenographer, for getting the last word in the LAST GRAF.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Gordon Brown defines Iraq as 'battle of ideas'

We know: hiding under a desk or cutting and running.

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Nan is mad she was suckered by a fraudulent writer -- and MUST blame it on Oprah.

Oprah deserves it.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

Tom Snyder has died. We remember him as the archetypal brash local newsman who graduated to NBC to stick his finger in the eyes of millions. Indeed he seemed to spend his whole career boasting; yet as Disco Tom he told people his hyperkinetic personal life was none of their business, a reasonable thing to say but perhaps not so reasonable when it came to Disco Tom. He spent years insisting he should have done the Nightly News. His brashness proved his undoing, and in recent years he suffered from leukemia. He was hot once, as today's sensations are hot, and he and they will be remembered, if at all, for a pose and an attitude.

Which is why Romy called him "LEGENDARY."

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

Alan Jay Lerner was notorious for biting his fingernails -- indeed he bit them so much he left a trail of bloodstained white cotton gloves he wore to hide all the biting.

Romy and all the other ninnies of the "news" biz are on their fifth pair now.

Posted 8:05 AM by Gene

Ingmar Bergman defines "classic" -- everyone knows he was a classic, and everyone knows he made classics, but alas we suspect hardly anyone has ever seen them (we haven't). Woodster the Perv saw them. Whether that is a recommendation or an insult we don't know. (We incline toward the latter.) The ad-blurbists may miss him while for the people who made that damned promotion this weekend into a "hit" he will not exist. (Indeed they may mistake him for Ingrid -- if they know who she was.) Such is the disconnect between art and commerce in entertainment, and such is the state of our fillum biz.

Posted 3:56 PM by Gene

Non-profits sure can pay!

Something useful from the Daily Babbitt, for once.

Posted 1:55 PM by Gene

A sudden RUSH of news from the ASSPress: 1. Somebody finally won the Tour de Dope, and we hope this time it's for real. 2. NEWT! predicts a Hill-JFK ticket, all that much better to run against. [!] 3. Ike Turner won't get his day (in St. Louis), although he seems magnanimous about the fact his wonderful rep as a lady's man may have had something to do with it.

And finally, the kind of breathless question only David "300" Bauder could ask:

Is Drew Carey Next Regis Philbin?

Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

One reason for Nukeman:

In Iran the government chooses the candidates, but the people are free to vote.

Posted 1:10 PM by Gene

The parent hospital of the country club known as the Betty Ford Center has dispensed drugs with some zeal, and we can't say we're surprised; nobody tells the members of a country club how to act.

And the hospital's named for Ike, and we detect a certain symbolism there too.

Posted 12:58 PM by Gene

Taliban: Hostages will die Monday

TRANSLATION: South Korea will pay up Monday.

Posted 12:38 PM by Gene

Little did we realize what a feast Ms. Rodham's jejune ponderings might prove to, say, stand-up comedians:

“Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?” Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter. “How about a compassionate misanthrope?”

I guess we'll find out starting January 20, 2009, won't we, Hill.

“If people react to you in the role of answer bestower then quite possibly you are.”

And you ARE the answer bestower!

“God, I feel so divorced from Park Ridge, parents, home, the entire unreality of middle class America.”

I don't think we've had to worry about being middle-class for some time.

“Of course, I’m normal, if that is a permissible adjective for a Wellesley girl.”

But not for our next president, that's for sure.

“Random thinking usually becomes a process of self-analysis with my ego coming out on the short end.”

WHAT?

“You’ll probably think I’m retreating from the world back to the sunlight in an attempt to dream my child’s movie.”

So that's where she got that idea we're all a nation of children, or whatever that thought was. She was Oprah before Oprah!

The letters contain no possibly damaging revelations of the proverbial “youthful indiscretions,” and mention nothing glaringly outlandish or irresponsible.

Au contraire; they are a powerful argument for burning letters.

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

ANOTHER B. O. TRIUMPH: THE GREATEST ANIMATED COMEDY OF ALL TIME did NEARLY $6 MILLION LESS on Saturday. I don't care what that idiot PAUL DRECK and his puppet "NON" GERMAIN say, this is people screaming from the popcorn restaurants, and it's nothing else.

YESYESYESYESYES, B. O. is UPUPUPUPUP, but the fact remains for all this financial weightlifting supplemented with a huge dose of marketing steroids THE CONSPIRACY still is maybe one or two percent higher than last year in attendance at best, meaning it's still making crap for a minority taste.

And now comes the tidal wave of imbecilic heds like "Mmmm! GROSSES!" and "D'oooooooooooough!", which is the moral equivalent of the rationale behind HELICOPTER REPORTING.

P. S. at 3:20 p.m. Now somebody named GENTILE is PAUL DRECK's stooge! He must be cultivating the WHOLE ASSPRESS! And a NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD for leading off with "Woo Hoo!", the kind of moronic enthusiasm that would get him FIRED if he reported on SOMETHING ELSE.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Can't Little Malcolm cease his obsession with saving His empire with lists?

Posted 9:54 AM by Gene

Elsewhere in celebrity matrimonial news Steve Martin has wed a former New Yorker staffer, which means he finally made it.

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

Some guests speculated Usher was furious after discovering his intended had concealed details of her past. Late last week, the National Enquirer reported that Foster was an ex-con whose drug-dealing ex-lover had been gunned down.

Others suggested the bride, who has three children from a pervious [SIC!] marriage, may have balked at signing a prenup.

Yes, this has the makings of a perfectly good career move.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

“Since Xmas vacation, I’ve gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me,” Ms. Rodham wrote to Mr. Peavoy in April 1967. “So far, I’ve used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity.”

We do wish you'd decided though before running for president.

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

I now know what the Coppock Curve is. I wish I didn't have to.

Posted 9:37 AM by Gene

Do You-Know-Who's rap sheet and her B.O. have a connection?

We would like to think so.

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

Now chess may have a cheating problem.

Is anyone in public life honest?

Posted 9:42 PM by Gene

WaPost throws a tantrum (using a poll) that THE COURT'S TOO CONSERVATIVE!!!!!!!!!!

There's a simple answer, Lenny -- rig an election. You guys always manage.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

We never know what JonBoy is up to with his covers. This week here it's "Slaughter in the Jungle", which is asking a lot after the coffee tables were slaughtered by I---M. Elsewhere they're recovering from SECOND LIFE with a story on all those ugly buildings going up in Abu Dhabi and Dubai -- financed by our oil guzzling ("unprecedented boom" = rampant self-defeating speculation), which I suppose is better than running another movie plug. Why not, JonBoy?

Posted 2:09 PM by Gene

Detroit held on too long to Tiger Stadium out of misplaced nostalgia and its own justified feelings of inadequacy. It should have been demolished years ago, whatever the value of its existence to eBay scammeisters.

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

Precisely how much the "record" means:

Bonds just 1 HR away from Aron [Home-page SIC]

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

Now it's official: BIZWEEK, which gave us the multi-zillionaire the DONALD and the LEGENDARY GENIUS of NEUTRON JACK, confirms SUMNER WILL LIVE FOREVER!!!!!

Who did this interview -- John "Suck-Up" Byrne?

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

Phoenix' police chief is making noises of "holding" that truck thief "responsible" for the helicopter collision, which removes the onus from where it belongs -- on the TV stations and their "news" organizations for pursuing a non-story for no good reason.

Posted 9:17 PM by Gene

What's the difference between municipal tap water and bottled water except for the huge hoard of plastic waste?

Posted 7:23 PM by Gene

``They're doing a lot of licensing agreements,'' said Brad Adgate, research director at Horizon Media Inc., an advertising and marketing company in New York.

How apt for a spinoff of a show that grew "LEGENDARY" tweaking the establishment (ever so slightly to be sure, given who runs this particular establishment).



By the way, has someone been partaking a bit too freely of those Kwik-E-Mart doughnuts?

And speaking of lardbucket:

But in the end, it's really just an old-fashioned family show.

"We're talking about a family who love each other but drive each other crazy … and what I always like to think is that here it is you look at this family on TV, the Simpsons, and you go 'no matter how bad my life is, I'm better off than they are.'"

I'd say this zillionaire has mastered the fine art of bullhockey almost as much as R----T.

Posted 6:37 PM by Gene

Which reminds us: Who needs TMZ.com when we have The PAPER OF RE-CORD?

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

We hope America's luxury news suites feel MIGHTY good if the BANCROFTS do their noble deed, for it's going to be a very EXPENSIVE morale boost.

(Via the usual Romy, who's very busy this afternoon with media greatness)

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

A BOO-BOO STRIKES ONE OF AMERICA'S LEADING NEWSMEN:

Stephen Colbert Breaks Wrist on Set

Now when do the onanists of punditry and blogging start beating the living daylights out of THIS?

P. S. Thankfully it wasn't His nose, or else we'd have an excuse for all those anchorpoop FACELIFTS -- all the better to serenade HELICOPTER REPORTING by.

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

Nike, Reebok suspend sales of NFL star Vick products

The marketplace beat them to it.

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

"This is one of those cases where fear is worse than reality."

But just as the WALL STREET CASINO can make everyone a millionaire by avoiding reality, so it can create a depression likewise.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

We should count ourselves lucky that the battle of local broadcast one-upmanship in the air hasn't claimed more lives. It's a wonder (just to cite two examples) there weren't midair collisions during the reportorial wet dreams of South Central and O. J. And this sort of thing won't stop, because mindlessly pursuing stories from the air is a time filler and a profit center.

That we're likely to get sick jokes out of this -- well at least they got some TERRIFIC FOOTAGE! -- and climaxing in the terrific footage itself, can only add to our disgust.

(Via the usual Romy)

P. S.

The helicopters collided while covering a police pursuit of a man in a construction truck.

That must have been REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS to sacrifice FOUR LIVES.

P. P. S.

The suspect in that chase is currently barricaded inside a West Valley home near 83rd Avenue and Thomas Road.

And not just deaths -- do you think we can add hindering police work to our résumé?

P. P. P. S. At least it happened on a Friday afternoon, before the Howie Hairshirts and Jonny Hairshirts could start caterwauling of ETHICS.

P. P. P. P. S.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the FAA is reviewing air traffic control tapes to see if pilots were talking to controllers at that time.

"Typically air traffic controllers clear helicopters into an area where they can cover a chase like this," Gregor said. "Once they are in the area, the pilots themselves are responsible for keeping themselves separated from other aircraft."

TRANSLATION: Only the pilots' skills stand between them and catastrophe.

Also, there was thankfully no video of the collision itself, so at least we'll be spared sick jokes.

I'm making a lot of this story because it's so typical of media's excesses and faults -- and no matter how excessive and faulty the goons who run our media can never admit to their culpability.

For the record, we removed a reference to the accident that killed Sen. Heinz because it did not involve helicopter traffic reporting, as we said in our original posting.

Posted 2:32 PM by Gene

Philly Mayor Criticized for Low Profile

Sorry, a fellow hot for an iPhone does not exactly cut a low profile.

Posted 2:19 PM by Gene

This nascent debate over whether Republicans should show for HistoricYouTube Debate II begs the point. The presidential campaign has become the electoral equivalent of Bataan, requiring candidates to face unending humiliations they wouldn't and shouldn't have before; but because the whole "process" hinges on participating for participation's sake, and because hacks are obsessed with the candidates having a "sense of humor" even though they haven't an atom of one themselves, and being people of the pee-PUL despite their own naked living fear of human contact, slog the candidates must to each new depredation.

Posted 2:17 PM by Gene

I suppose it isn't long before the Comic-Con organizers start organizing an intense tug of war among cities to get them to pony up hundreds of millions to emcee the event, proof in itself America has gone off its collective rocker.

And you can bet the hacks won't report on the story as they'll be in on the action.

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the United States, and President Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire.

1. Belly Kisser. 2. And how many years have you been out of office, world-saver?

The typists will eagerly bestow him all the hosannas they had to issue to Reagan against their will.

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

Another miracle from Second Life:

In Second Life, it's relatively easy to build chairs, buildings and other objects for avatars to sit on or walk through. Tools like wrenches or manual controls are also easy to build and, with a little tweaking, users can control them with a Wiimote.

"This may be one of the most significant things about Second Life," says Stone. "It is a world of abundance. People share. What would the real world be like if your house and car and all your furniture, et cetera, was available for free or for pennies?"

1. No more yard sales; and 2. Couches might look like the ones in chain bookstores. [Link via ArtsJournal]

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Religious revival at Comic-Con:

Nimoy to Reprise Spock Role in Trek Film

Not only has THE CONSPIRACY run out of ideas, it's run out of actors.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

Great: TWO Money Honey®s.

Who says the news biz is about news?

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

AN OPEN LETTER TO TWO DIMWITS:



Ron Varrial
Editor
Eric Mayberry
Publisher
Metro Philadelphia
30 S. 15th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Dear Messrs. Varrial and Mayberry:

It is bad enough having you news hacks tell me how to think. Worse is when you tell me what to buy. It is not enough that this blazing insult to my intelligence carries a hed bigger than anything you've run in the last few years, nor that it takes up more space than many newsworthy stories. No, this is worse: an ad masquerading as a story. Such fraudulence is why you hacks are held in lower regard than used-car salesmen. You may think being distributed gratis clears you from having to act responsibly, but it doesn't. Nor can you excuse the buffoonery by the fact you run wire copy and three interns. And when the damned fools at the Tower of Babble on North Broad run their sectional-front ads they have the alibi of being paid. Advertising as "news" reeks like a free whorehouse.

And those of us who step on your rag going to work don't even have the luxury of boycotting you. You've become like city hall, something we can't fight. At the very least realize many of those who read your used Bounty read nothing else, and they deserve better -- even if you don't.

Yours,
[Eugene David]

(Our hero appears in a small corner of Metro New York, which is unobjectionable -- but then a big stock market drop may have concentrated its "editors'" minds wonderfully.)

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

"As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5-6 1/2 and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally."

HA!* HA!* HA!* HA!*

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

We have not commented on the "Scott Thomas" brouhaha because it had the marks of another manufactured controversy, but we'll say this: both sides heard what they wanted to hear -- liberals who wanted to hear our soldiers were apes, conservatives who wanted to hear only a fake would say a few of our soldiers might be apes. A PLAGUE O' BOTH YOUR HOUSES as usual.

And why does Jo-NAH explode every time someone calls him a chickenhawk? Sorry, we can see that guy using his vast connections to avoid the draft too. (In fairness, however, we can see the TNR gang pulling a few strings also. A PLAGUE O'...never mind.)

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

If there's a "train wreck" in the national conversion to digital TV it's because the Congress has been at the throttle for a few years.

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

IT'S THE WIZARD OF OZ' FAULT!

Posted 1:55 PM by Gene

See?

Posted 1:20 PM by Gene

Edwards Proposes Raising Top Capital Gains Rate to 28 Percent

Sen. Busy Comb is a ninny, and it's in his interest to play to the rabble, and it's exquisitely well-timed, too; nonetheless, only con-SER-va-tives and GEKKO KUDLOWS believe things like paying CEOs 10,000 times their average charge's salary aren't a problem.

SIX OF ONE....

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

ST. WARREN opines on the future of ONLINE JERNALISM:

"The ideal combination would be if The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Post had a joint Web site, and you couldn't get any one individually. That, you could sell for a fair amount of money, and it would have one hell of a readership."

Hell St., You already own 18 percent of WaPost; it wouldn't take that much to buy the rest, and PAPEROFRECORDCO, and You were always rumored to buy Dow Jones. So just buy all three of them and start a combined Web site! You'd make millions of readers happy.

How wise would ST. be if He hadn't invested in 1965?

(Via the inevitable Romy)

Posted 1:01 PM by Gene

Raul Castro: Fidel's Illness a Blow

We don't know to whom or to what; even from a sickbed He's running the country into the ground as usual.

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

As Ron Dellums is now discovering, dreaming of worldwide socialism is just not the same as governing.

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

This sort of thing must happen every month in every city: Some councilman or whatever makes a racially charged imitation of a colicky baby, of scarce interest even within said city, which nonetheless gets him booted from the chamber to the sound of rapturous applause from the usual types. If our city council dimwits spent as much time governing as making verbal firebombs our cities be the best governed places in the world.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

Here's another hero for the Comic-Con cretins: Wilhelm.

Movies have been bad since 1951?

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Assuming this isn't just another cheap political tactic, this is welcome news, as now even Democrats seem to realize there are too many abortions, and it's not just about a piece of newly-formed flesh.

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

The best-laid plans of mice: Those long security lines at airports are terror targets, meaning neither Der Homeland and its ilk nor the airlines will do a thing about them.

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

Where is Tom Wolfe when you need him? Why can't he do to Comic-Con what he did to Lenny?

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

Those separated-at-birth twins Slashdot and Ain't It Cool News will go nuts:

'Blade Runner' gets final cut
DVD set will include five versions of Scott pic

So why revisit the movie after all this time? Maligned and misunderstood in its day, "Blade Runner" actually established much of the aesthetic that defines cinematic sci-fi, from the movie's wet-streets, neon-and-steam look to the grim, pessimistic tone gleaned from Philip K. Dick's dystopian novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

TRANSLATION: This is the wellspring of all in movies today that's BAD.

Posted 8:18 AM by Gene

To those who believe big business is better than big government because it makes money:

ExxonMobil Sends Man 2,000 Credit Cards

P. S. at 6:30 p.m. A fitting story on the day XOM helped give the WALL STREET FAIRYLAND a shellacking.

Posted 8:59 PM by Gene

Roger Kimball's slashing attack on the "art" world is so rich and savory it will not to quote a crumb of a sentence or two, but he has come up with two perfect mottos for our age:

As W. S. Gilbert knew, when everybody’s somebody, nobody’s anybody.

TRANSLATION: YouTube and blogging.

Sooner or later, even the Leon Botsteins and Marieluise Hessels of the world will realize that the character in Bruce Nauman’s “Good Boy, Bad Boy” was right: “this is boring.”

TRANSLATION: YouTube, blogging, e-mail, instant messaging, social networking, virtual worlds, videogames, obsessive downloading and file sharing, and everything else high-tech.

That these mottoes apply brilliantly to art it goes without saying, but somehow the tech angle is unavoidable.

Posted 8:22 PM by Gene

LORD STEVE IS GOD AGAIN!!!!!

I wish I knew why this sort of thing isn't a repeat of the dotcom idiocy. How do stocks become the financial fountain of youth? What is behind these sensations but hyperbole -- and I don't care how profitable LORD STEVE'S HEAVEN is, it wouldn't be profitable except that no company has ever done a better job pasting America with PR, and having a pliant press act as an advertising agency.

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

To quote from a former pre-Steve Ross People Inc.-er (Steve who?) named Agee, PEOPLEWARNERGOSSIP.com deserves "to walk alone, tinkle a little bell and cry 'Unclean, unclean.'"

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

When JonBoy piled on with that load of BS about Second Life you came to realize why you hate news hacks -- and of course it wasn't the whole story:

Second Life partisans claim meteoric growth, with the number of "residents," or avatars created, surpassing 7 million in June. There's no question that more and more people are trying Second Life, but that figure turns out to be wildly misleading. For starters, many people make more than one avatar. According to Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the number of avatars created by distinct individuals was closer to 4 million. Of those, only about 1 million had logged on in the previous 30 days (the standard measure of Internet traffic), and barely a third of that total had bothered to drop by in the previous week. Most of those who did were from Europe or Asia, leaving a little more than 100,000 Americans per week to be targeted by US marketers. [Emphasis added]

Moreover being "successful" in Second Life has its occupational hazards:

Last winter, CNET's in-world correspondent was conducting a live interview with Anshe Chung, an avatar said to have earned more than $1 million on virtual real estate deals, when Chung was assaulted by flying penises in a griefer attack.

Years from now virtual worlds may be important -- we fear so -- but we'd guess it will take that long to perfect the technology, and by then people may feel a certain irony in spending so much time avoiding real people to congregate with fake ones. As for JonBoy, we wish we could think up our own griefer attack, but that would be useless as he's already instigated one on the public with his FLYING BS.

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

I hate myself: Today at 15th and Sansom a middle-aged woman grabbed firm hold of my wrist and asked me to help her across the street. She said she'd sprained her ankle. As she forced me to follow her to the curb cut she mentioned a brain tumor. At that point I imagined the dread words about change, and I angrily broke away and she gave me a less than affectionate tap on my behind.

Maybe she just needed someone to help her cross the street. But that same intersection is a favorite for people who sit on milk cartons and sleep on grates (at least someone slept on a grate there until a manhole cover replaced it). It's a block beyond one of the city's favorite meeting places for vagrants. I don't like being cold and hard. But I don't like people begging me for money, or even behaving in a manner that threatens it. And having someone grab your wrist, even in a busy disorienting intersection, may not engender merciful feelings. What was I to do?

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

The feds are looking through the blueprints of the Bridge to Nowhere's architect.

Now if only he and The Great Alaskan Boar could go to prison together.

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

England! Housing bust! You're next!

Posted 12:17 PM by Gene

HENRY BLODGET!!!!!!!!!! says MySpace is doing $1 BILLION IN BUSINESS A YEAR!!!!!!!!!! Somebody named Douglas McIntyre seconds that -- and goes so far as to praise Henry in a comment!

If you-scratch-my-back's a reason the DOW's in the stratosphere this balloon's heading to earth.

Posted 12:10 PM by Gene

A SLIME typist has doubts about -- THE MOVIE?????

SLIME's SYNERGY does make us momentarily sympathetic to the JOURNALSISTS' cause. Yes, His papers may be "livelier", but at a cost -- the cost of being tacky promotional vehicles, the cost of table-pounding falsehoods, the cost of insulting His readers. That the JOURNALSISTS are right on this score, however, does not make them any less unappetizingly sanctimonious.

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

One way of putting it:

Messrs Murdoch and Redstone are living treasures of capitalism, infinitely more interesting characters involved in far more fascinating plots than any that appear on the TV networks they own. Enjoy them while they last.

That doesn't say much for Their Empires, does it.

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 10:22 AM by Gene

Boomer Esiason (!) may replace the Drunken Slob, who evidently isn't coming back to SUMNERDOM.

The "nappy-headed hos" have seen their day -- unless Drunken's coterie can renew their lease.

Posted 9:37 AM by Gene

Oop! Another stock that can do no wrong!

ALL HAIL THE LORD GOD JEFF!

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

430 NKoreans Die of Hunger in Past Month

So please, send us food -- which we can give to the army and to keep our nuc -- to keep our nation strong!

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

Shucks, Ward Churchill's fired, despite his penchant for telling "the truth."

One down and -- how many thousands to go?

See you in court!

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

And to the idiots at "Dow Jones, Inc." who still imagine a white knight galloping to their rescue in spite of all:

Tribune profit dives 58% on charges, print softness

Posted 6:56 AM by Gene

Maybe Goldstein's the wrong name, though; it does appear somebody in SLIME's Royal Family doesn't like JEWS -- but then again SLIME loved O. J. and PARIS, and there's definitely no accounting for His tastes.

Posted 6:49 AM by Gene

And in the capitol of news truth and justice, more love for -- GOLDSTEIN:

At around noon on Tuesday, Geoffrey V. Raymond, a New York based portrait artist, showed up at One World Financial Center, the offices of Dow Jones, Inc. [SIC], with a four-foot-tall painting of Rupert Murdoch's face.

Security officers clapped on their headsets, unsure of the building's regulations for unexpected art exhibitions. After some deliberation they sent him curbside, where he remained for the rest of the afternoon.

"I have carved a niche out of painting controversial Wall Street figures," Mr. Raymond said, standing proudly next to his latest, “The Annotated Murdoch.” With the face centered on the canvas, passersby stopped to write their thoughts around the border with magic markers that Mr. Raymond provided. A red marker was reserved for Dow Jones employees.

A self-described cross between Jackson Pollack and Chuck Close, Mr. Raymond has created images of former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso and Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein. He said he is currently working on a portrait of CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo (nickname, “Money Honey”) as the Virgin Mary. He said he chose to paint Mr. Murdoch because of his internal anxiety about the potential Dow Jones take over.

"The acquisition of The Wall Street Journal by somebody like Rupert Murdoch is certainly cause for concern,” he said. “I find it ratifying that people want to write on my painting.”

By mid-afternoon around 30 commenters ratified Mr. Raymond’s reconstitution of Mr. Murdoch.

“I don't care,” scrawled one strangely apathetic passerby. “Keep the WSJ out of this scumbag's hands” wrote a more opinionated signatory.

“We want truth liberty and the American way," one Dow Jones employee wrote, while another complained, "Fox News is no news."

On the center of the canvas in red ink were written the words, "news is sacred."

Joshua Prager, a senior special writer at The Wall Street Journal, approached the canvas to write the legend: “Unfair and Imbalanced, stay away.”

“I think people have a lot to say and a lot of thoughts to express,” Mr. Prager said. “This is just another outlet for them to do so.”

Mr. Raymond said that lots of Dow Jones employees had looked at the painting, but only five had actually written on it by mid-afternoon.

He said one employee had begun writing but stopped when he saw his editor walking by.

"I think there's a degree of corporate paranoia," Mr. Raymond said.

Mr. Raymond plans to stand outside of Dow Jones everyday this week, weather permitting, and will measure his success in graffiti.

And then he’ll put the painting up for sale on Ebay, starting the bidding at $3,500.

"It only takes two rich guys to make the action a success," Mr. Raymond said with a smile.

LONG LIVE TRUTH AND JUSTICE IN REPORTING!!!!! LONG LIVE THE WALL STREET JOURNALS!!!!!

These clowns might merit a graf in the DSM.

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

The housing bust has hit -- Manhattan?

Say it isn't so!

Posted 7:42 PM by Gene

And of course we answer all those COMMIES who want to socialize the drug biz with this foot stomper for its right to charge whatever it damn well -- for those who want FREE EN-TER-PRISE unchecked.

Is any topic immune from mutually oblivious lobbying?

Posted 6:45 PM by Gene

Sen. Law-and-Order hasn't announced yet and already he's "shaking up" his campaign staff?

Hoo-boy, this is going to be some election.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

And it is harder to expect a sincere apology from pols when SUMNER and MOONER offer one up in 108 pages of .pdf.

(Via B&C)

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Most pols can't offer a good apology because they don't know how to write, and they don't know how to write because they don't know how to think, and they don't know how to think because they've led lives free from the need for apology.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Hillary's a "talking dog"? What of the other mutts?

You're not so pretty yourself, Dick.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

I like this, Rich: We answer the hacks' obsession with this EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL veep with a hagiography -- written by a Weekly Standard man -- and published by his boss the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL Dow Jones-sacking SLIME. Excellent, guy.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

Really:

The Atlanta Falcons on Tuesday said they did not anticipate star quarterback Michael Vick's indictment on charges related to dogfighting.

What did you expect? That he'd get a community-service award? How long has this been out there?

Meantime the NBA's commish does the only thing he can (or should): hang his head.

Posted 2:03 PM by Gene

Shares of Apple Inc. fell sharply Tuesday after AT&T Inc. issued initial subscriber numbers for customers of Apple’s iPhone that were below analyst estimates.

NO!!!!!!!!!! The Lord $teve Job$ ISN'T GOD!

In addition, a telecommunications analyst issued a report before the opening bell that said demand for the device at retail outlets has seen a "significant decline" in recent days.

The former god's going to HAVE to brush up on his heaven-and-earth creating!

Posted 1:57 PM by Gene

NOW on the PEOPLE WARNER FLAGSHIP home page:

Lawyer: Lindsay 'Relapsed,' Is Getting 'Medical Care'

Lindsay Lohan Arrested for DUI – Again

Lindsay's Tonight Show Appearance Canceled

Is PEOPLE WARNER preparing for the next -- you-know-who?

Posted 1:40 PM by Gene

Alter: How superficial has our country become?

Enough to make Jonny the Head Scratcher look like a deep thinker?

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

Cuba: a Year Without Fidel

...is like a day without sunshine.

Pfffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

Oooh...Forbeslist suggests taking mass transit to avoid those stressful commutes -- and complaining about the black clouds belched by trucks?

THIS IS COMMUNISTIC!

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

The Big Bug prepares for His next generation of software in 2015.

Oh, I'm sorry -- it says "2010"! Fooled me.

Posted 12:00 PM by Gene

We don't know why LALA is in such a big huff about "comedians" stealing each others' jokes -- especially when (as we said before in a related story) the robbery is funnier than the jokes.

And how big is the market for stand-up comedy outside the boxing trade?

Posted 11:57 AM by Gene

That CHEAP CHANNEL wouldn't be into payola is almost as likely as CHEAP CHANNEL not being into three-song playlists.

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

When that flutey-voiced snowman asked our presidential candidates a question, I made up my mind that this YouTube debate has been tremendous. Some of the questions -- I'm thinking of Pastor Reggie -- have been tough, but it also served the purpose of accomplishing what Mike Gravel has been crabbily begging for all night: More air time for lunatics.

I guess that's what "excellent" means.

By the way, I've a hunch the numbers who watched it were dwarfed by the numbers who commented on it.

P. S. at 6:42 p.m. 2.6 million, so it appears we were right.

Posted 8:16 PM by Gene

At least somebody gets it:

Even in Hollywood, where blame gets passed around like a viral video, there's little disagreement about the generally punchless condition of most prime-time sitcoms over the last decade. "Most of them haven't been funny," said Grammer, who plays an egocentric news anchor on his way down the ladder of success. "It's just that simple."

Posted 6:51 PM by Gene

It's...



BILL...



CULLEN!

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

I don't know which is more irritating -- reading PR about ROWLINGCORP or reading PR about how YouTube will change elections.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Gonzales vows to stay to fix Justice Department

Isn't that sort of like "you broke it, you pay for it"?

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Gov. Reform -- would use his State Police for -- "political purposes"?

Heaven forfend!

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

When we think of it -- and we try not to -- JFK's assassination gives us pause because so much bad came after it, and it will not ameliorate the discomfort to call it the "demise of liberalism", for a selfish bastard dwarf offspring has run it ever since -- but before we blame the assassin we should remember who ran our country into the ground thereafter. Lincoln's death was followed by ciphers while the country was blithely ruled by despots of the dollar, and America was still on the upswing. Hence Henry Adams could talk of our national amnesia of it and the two assassinations that followed. We weren't as lucky in the sixties; leadership would have deprived our national crisis of its oxygen, but instead of leadership we got two textbook examples of craven borderline-psychotic paranoia. We should not think the disaster that followed 11/22/1963 was unique; the Brits found a way to run the Subcontinent into the ground in a stroke that made those twin blowhard failures microscopic in their incompetence by comparison. But then the whole 20th century was a disaster, starting with that damfool murder of some archduke and for all practical purposes ending with 9/11, an obscenity that visits the failures of the last on ours.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

Did the New Yorker's Jeffrey Frank examine the Romenesko Memos page before writing his editor's memo?

Maybe -- and that should make you wince too, Romy.

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

Our age doesn't seem to have a very good idea of where honesty ends and running off at the mouth begins -- and neither does Whiny Reid.

Posted 12:18 PM by Gene

Perhaps the more important lesson is that today's most cutting-edge, young female audience (aka the audience Jane was created for), doesn't want to be dictated by anyone.

It started with my generation: I wanted to be Jane Pratt. I didn't care what sweater she wanted me to buy. I wanted to live out loud. And today's young women are living louder than ever before. So loud, in fact, that many of them don't want to listen to anyone ... except themselves.

Do we have a new Candace "EW! YUCK!! GROSS!!!" Bushnell in the making?

Posted 12:16 PM by Gene

Clinton did not demand an end to federal raids on undocumented immigrants. Obama would not guarantee a visit to the immigrant-heavy agricultural area of California's Central Valley in between his fundraising trips to Los Angeles.

This, we're sure, is what the hacks would call courage.

Posted 9:52 AM by Gene

The World's Oldest Adolescent's successor says sanctions against Iran are working -- indeed they're working so well he might call for more sanctions!

Prepare to fire wet noodles!

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

When ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!'s substitute philosopher-brain KURT!!!!!!!!!! starts an article like this:

Life is unfair. And we Americans prefer it that way.

...we know to stop reading. Why? Perhaps because KURT!!!!!!!!!! is such an expert at saying something when he has nothing to say. Perhaps because KURT!!!!!!!!!! tries to make such a big show of being engaged when he's so disengaged. Perhaps because KURT!!!!!!!!!!'s coasted along on his rep for decades and has never had it challenged. Perhaps because we just don't want to read KURT!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Another achievement for NASA and the Space Station: spending millions adding to the stock of space junk!

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Figures: He may not have the holier-than-thou utterly sacrosanct poets of the newsroom, but SLIME sure does have the salesmen!

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

This must be the ASSPress's day to do favors: here it runs a press release for some ticky-tacky developer in the ugly-building capitol of Dubai claiming his tower's taller than that waste-basket pile in Taipei.

Yeah, and let's see how many people really want an "executive office suite" on the 125th floor.

Posted 7:24 PM by Gene

Here's one comparison to Harry Truman the Dubya fans can clutch to their bosoms: he's about as likely to be impeached, the screaming Web notwithstanding.

Posted 7:00 PM by Gene

Here is Exhibit A in the case for putting the news business out of business. We doubt that most of the "facts" here can be independently verified, which didn't stop some cretinous ASSPress publicist from selling them: 8.3 million in 24 hours, "300,000 copies in sales per hour -- more than 50,000 a minute" -- the dimwitted ASSPressian was so hot to merchandise this he/she/it got his/her/its math wrong (and thankfully spread the error all over the Web). Surely there are stories somewhere the ASSPress could pay more attention to, stories of necessity, stories that don't insult our intelligence -- heck this same ASSPress came out with a report on eating disorders among older women, and if it's another tiresome service doohickey at least it might help somebody. This helps nobody but the ROWLING-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD to the ASSPRESS and its ANONYMOUS MORON!

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

Th' one thayng ya gotta know abayout thees beezness, Cheeyip, eiys to look sayerious and saholemn on th' outsahd whahle yur laughin' heistayrically aiyt th' PEE-pul ohn th' insahd.

Posted 1:16 PM by Gene

Why must the cost of drugs depend so heavily on when patents expire?

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Two of the top three in the B.O. went down Friday-to-Saturday, another instance of THE CONSPIRACY giving 'em what they want!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Here's a combo that doesn't inspire confidence: our Daily Babbitt is gushing at all the high-tech hospitals are buying -- tablet computers! implantable RFID chips! [!!!!!] -- and here the AMA is having a blood-pressure-raising tantrum blasting pharmacy clinics. While we might doubt CVS can do a better job than a local hospital the one thing that has brought medicine in disrepute is its temple-on-the-mount approach, and we suspect all those gadgets will do less good than simple things to let people have more control over their health -- and if it means taking doctors out of the process in a few places, so be it.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

Is G.E. Too Big for Its Own Good?

Smart question -- and Nelson engages in a schmoozefest with Little Jeffy and LEGENDARY WELCH that natch doesn't answer it. Of course that pile of assets is too big, it's only in business to be a pile of assets, and it has to remain a pile of assets because otherwise the shareholders might be disappointed. The result is a company that has spun its logos going nowhere.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

Tammy Faye Bakker was the Charo of religion; but where Charo had her hips and her accent Tammy had her make-up and her blubber. She mightily assisted her husband Jim in his fraud but managed to escape censure thanks to being a living cartoon character. She suffered enormously in recent years, and we hope she has found the peace that eluded her in the days she was a mascara-and-tear-stained whirlwind.

Posted 9:42 PM by Gene

Well! Florida's had a condo binge -- and now comes the purge!

The oversupply will force prices down as much as 30 percent, the worst decline since the 1970s, and help push Florida's economy into recession as early as October, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Moody's Economy.com, who owns a home in Vero Beach, Florida.

Stop us before we build again!

In the 1970s, when condos were a new product, Florida developers built 500,000 units and prices fell 50 percent, said Brad Hunter of MetroStudy, a research firm in West Palm Beach.

``The difference is, back then they were two-story condo buildings that had $50,000 units,'' Hunter said. ``Nowadays they are $700,000 units in 20-story buildings. Instead of building too much stuff that people could afford like we did then, this time we built too much stuff that people can't afford.''

And they can't be converted into apartments because they cost too much to build -- this looks like a recipe for profits!

The skyline of Miami is visible from Key Biscayne, the barrier island where John Rosser lives. Some nights the real estate broker scans the new buildings and sees more dark windows than lighted.

``This is dumbfounding to me,'' Rosser said. ``It's a building boom in the middle of a housing bust.''

Look at it this way: there's plenty of living room for ghosts. Maybe they can light up all those units with their ectoplasm.

Posted 7:48 PM by Gene

OHoh, JonBoy dares his rapidly growing subscriber base to run screaming from their coffee tables -- with A "SPECIAL REPORT" on..."I---M IN AMERICA!"

Was ever any newsrag story more guessable without being read?

Elsewhere he runs a cover plug for Second Life, which makes us wonder why he didn't run it domestically, the principal purpose of a newsrag being to flatten its readers' heads.

IT MAY BE THE INTERNET'S NEXT BIG THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Overemphasis added]

TRANSLATION: 1. When's the IPO? 2. St. WARRRRRRRRRRRREN! Here's a chance to overcome your Webophobia! 3. What makes these zillionaire newsrag editors think they can always sell their BS?

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to JESSICA and MALCOLM!

Oops:

If Gartner is to be believed (and it is one of the most RESPECTED research firms in the field) this means 1.6 billion—out of a total 2 billion Internet users—will have found new lives online. [Overemphasis added]

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD to JESSICA and MALCOLM!

P. S. All right JonBoy, we surrender -- we read the centerpiece, and it wasn't half-bad. So we shouldn't jump to conclusions; but dammit JonBoy, your rag still runs plugs, and it still stinks.

Posted 4:39 PM by Gene

Then again maybe we should liken the high arts to the NFL. The NBA's unfolding PR catastrophe reminds us that sports, too, are now largely a plaything of the rich. Take away the zillions from the Chevy Chase CEOs who browbeat their help with their luxury suites, take away the zillionaires who sit in total bordeom in the front row merely to be seen in hip snoozing, and what do you have? Certainly not fans. They gave up on some sports long ago, like $ELIGI$M, which wouldn't exist without its many superrich enclaves. The NHL is what the NBA could and should be -- a virtual league. The rich pour zillions into their athletic fetishism for no good reason. Despite their obvious joy in burning money they may not be able to do so forever. The NFL aside pro sports are on the descendant, and if this loutish ref helps accelerate the decline he will have served a useful function.

Posted 4:17 PM by Gene

DOW 36,000 takes a numerical approach to opera: "Roughly as many Americans attend live opera performances as attend NFL football games!!!!!" Opera productions are "up by one-third in just four years!!!!!" The bad news is, "Mounting a production is expensive, and, even with triple-digit ticket prices, all operas lose money", but the good news is, "'Aggregated, all government subsidies only come to 5 or 6 percent of the U.S. companies’ funding!!!!!'" FREE EN-TER-PRISE AT WORK!

This is the simplemindedness of a man who knows nothing of culture but everything about getting his name in op-ed pages. We take a more sober view. The other day Mr. Teachout commented on the ghastly suicide of the tenor Jerry Hadley, and he quoted from his own review of some now-forgotten free-enterprise-financed adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which we requote in full:

The score is strictly mainline modernist yard goods, while the libretto is a filet of Fitzgerald containing all of the action, most of the famous lines ("Her voice is full of money") and none of the elegiac, bittersweet tone that is the novel's essence. Gatsby is given a pair of clumsily confessional arias, a fatal mistake; the great mystery man of American fiction would never have revealed himself in that way, not even to himself. It doesn't help that Jerry Hadley's voice is frayed and throaty, or that he is stocky and unglamorous--hardly the gorgeous, gold-hatted charmer of Fitzgerald's imagination....Harbison has turned Fitzgerald's quicksilver masterpiece into a slow-moving opera that is stolidly competent and totally superfluous.

And in another entry on the sizzling new leader of the New York Philharmonic (tellingly titled, "Er, who's Alan Gilbert?") he wrote as an aside, "I've also seen a lot of walkers at Paper Mill Playhouse's weekend matinees, which presumably is a big part of the reason why they got themselves into such dire financial straits this past season." These two observations, I fear, are clearer to the reality of high art in America, and they have nothing to do with the NFL.

Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

Yesterday ArtsJournal ran this link of another experiment to try to get a classic manuscript past the slush machine. While we must expect such an outcome (and a few of the drones in the slush pile did recognize Jane Austen -- just a few), this latest such try merely further discredits publishing's judgment and that of the hordes of scribblers who've acclaimed ROWLINGCORP's "valedictory" a masterpiece, but wouldn't know Huck Finn if it hit them on the head with a truckload of review copies.

Posted 12:49 PM by Gene

Mr. Moderate, Mr. Compromise, Mr. Wimp, Mr. Weenie, Mr. Mush, the media's all-time-favorite Demo...REPUBLICAN, CHRIS SHAYS, had a RUN-IN with -- the CAPITOL POLICE?

1. Didn't know you had that in ya! Then again, obviously he did. 2. He must have been mad Dubya would resume power.

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

The hacks prepare to laugh again at the Pentagon -- this time for relying on "marketing" to win wars, oblivious as to how their own sales forces have now put marketing as their first priority, and truth the last; and especially oblivious as to how their unique selling propositions lend holy cockroaches the upper hand.

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

The Lord God Pinch may end TimesReject!

Hey SLIME! Do You suppose Your hacks might be sending You a message?

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

Guess* who* may* be* indicted* in* the* fall*!

That may redefine the meaning of "fall classic."



Meantime FRISCO's set to be the first city with an asterisk in its name too.

By the way --

AT LEAST 1,857 LINKS.

Posted 9:12 AM by Gene

As we will ultimately find out, the difference between Web news sites and newsrags is that the passage of time more easily hides the Web's embarrassments. Nonetheless the unending electronic triviamania (especially as exemplified in this exasperating week) will someday be every bit as cringe provoking as, say, going back in ZEITGEIST's archives and finding the threat of global cooling, or Hitler's diaries, or the Koran down the toilet, or going back in PEOPLE NEWSRAG's vault and finding all the hundreds of PEOPLE NEWSRAG 100 lists, or the return of God in His son Jimmah, or how they liked Ike, or how backward ran sentences until reeled the mind. And the day will come sooner, as the Web indulges in so much more of it.

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

Meantime the Taliban have given the West another reason to negotiate with them.

Our only surprise is this was the top story on both CNN.com sites. Where's our parent company ROWLINGCORP?

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

It is gratifying some Muslims are sending a message against their violence; but for this to stick they have to speak more loudly to call off the soldiers, and that they have yet to do, because what the soldiers do is ultimately in their interest.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

We should have known it wouldn't be long before Mr. Dog Executioner became a PC cause.



Fuut-ball? I've nevah seen a fuut-ball game. I'm not into -- violent spohts.

P. S.

Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who has addressed lawmakers often about his love for animals, shook with emotion [?] during a forceful condemnation of dogfighting.

"Hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of dollars are often at stake in the breeding, the training and the selling of fighting dogs. How INHUMAN, how DASTARDLY!" shouted the senator. "The training of these poor creatures to turn themselves into FIGHTING MACHINES is SIMPLY BARBARIC!!!!!" [Emphasis and overemphasis added]

Yes, now we're going from genuine outrage to the manufactured kind. These guys can make the vilest fraud look good.

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

The word liberal carries a lot of baggage, so I'm discovering.

Unfortunately fewer and fewer of your turnips seem to be willing porters anymore.

Mr. Thumbs-Up is delighted, though. Is your baggage any heavier there, Cheryl? By the way, was the URL intentional?

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

In the heat of a partisan spat, Democrats forced a vote on a nonbinding measure to instruct President Bush not to pardon former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But there's no record of the 47-49 vote in the daily record of congressional proceedings - or anywhere else.

That's because senators agreed less than an hour later to undo their vote and pretend it had never happened.

Now why couldn't the Senate just erase its entire record then we'd never have to bother with it again?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

I DON'T CARE WHAT MY...DAUGHTER SAYS -- I AM GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!!!!!

Bob. (Boy if that doesn't give a future spokesman the goosebumps.)

By the way, SUM, I wouldn't yell too loud; it might prompt Your daughter to bring a few...MDs into the courtroom.

Posted 1:56 PM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives may be ready to force Sen. Vitter to walk the plank over his "sin", because his sin was a crime, which may never have entered the Senator's mind, assuming anything ever enters Senators' minds.

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

ROMENESKO-IZING WITHOUT ROMY: The newly acquired Mediabistro has created a fuss over a certain cable zillionaire loudmouth making fun of Sen. Vitter's wife, which inevitably gets me thinking, how much time do media, big and bigger, old and new, spend propagating trivia?

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

Elsewhere in SUMNERLAND, He and The Saint of Tentpoles have a falling out, and for once God may not win.

Posted 11:21 AM by Gene

Good dog!

Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

The poor little boo-boo corporation that created all those fantasies for kids says she was lonely making them.

You put me in a room with billions and I'd find a way not to be so lonely.

P. S. at 2:00 p.m. A perfesser at Georgetown is evidently lobbying to start a Department of Harry Potter Studies. Go for it!

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

Cash for honours: Insufficient evidence

Aw SHUCKS, looks like The World's Oldest Adolescent will stay a free man after all.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

And speaking of SLIME (how can you not these days?), online movie ad-blurbists have declared WAR on Him!

He knows what the ad-blurbists refuse to admit: His films stink, and He's taking the only defensive posture He can -- short of withholding them from the ad-blurbists altogether, which mightn't be a bad idea, as it wouldn't hurt sales with the movie-going retards, and it would prevent the stench of too many adjectives.

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

Sorry to cite SLIME's flagship so often (at least it's His flagship until He rapes and plunders the JOURNALS), but the only surprise about learning some NBA ref may have fixed games is that it didn't happen earlier -- way earlier.

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

Dolly Parton's opening a new Dollywood branch in Branson East!

Now all Branson East's main drag needs is a long line of gas stations and fast-food joints.

Posted 8:45 AM by Gene

AWWWWWW, I can't think of a party more deserving of a lawsuit from his own daughter than The Lord God SUMNER, can you?

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

"Can't we please stop the war??????????" [Overemphasis added]

No one ever said taking the side of right was easy. (Pffffffffffffffffft!)

Posted 7:37 PM by Gene

Remember THE GREATEST SEASON IN TELEVISION HISTORY?

Burned, along with their readers, last fall when brilliant pilots faded into disappointing, and mostly canceled, series, the nation's TV critics are withholding their enthusiasm for a new fall season of shows.

This ad-blurbist does.

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) -- Everyone's a winner after a direct-mail marketing company hired by a local car dealership mistakenly sent out 50,000 scratch-off tickets to residents - all of them declaring the ticket-holder the $1,000 grand prize winner. Just one of the tickets was supposed to be the grand prize winner.

I think some weird fellow from a UFO did it. (Boooooooooooooooooooooo!)

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

D--n, profanity fines are back on track.

Time for B. S. DEFENDER to blow another fuse. Or has he stopped listening to Herbert -- Stone (sp) anymore?

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

Nike suspends release of Vick line, with a smirk [Last three words added]

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

Why do I think the Dow's new record and Bobby Bonds*'s two* home runs* are two statistics that deserve each other?

By the way, anyone remember Blackstone? Blackstone who?

And you don't suppose the tragedy in MOUNTAIN VIEW today indicates this market's lots of smoke and mirrors, do you? NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Thank the Lord God Steve for APPLE, which made Its fortune selling smoke and mirrors.

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

Say, here's another neat way AMAIRIKUH'S KOLLEDGES can plead poverty: by running expensive CEO -- er, presidential searches!

Posted 1:12 PM by Gene

No, let's not call this treason; let's call it -- a security lapse.

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

It appears when it comes to dogfighting a lot of other people should be indicted.

Posted 10:13 AM by Gene

SUMNER DOES plan to live forever!

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

A testament to The Lord God's Steve's might: one iPhone can bring down Duke University!

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

Doping Problems Threaten to Sink Tour De France Yet Again

Why call it the Tour de France? Better call it the Tour de Dope.

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

ASSPress becomes a MUSIC PUBLISHER:

"And that's why I wrote this song-a. We like you here, you can belong-a. But you just can't buy us, and simply own-a. Somebody should have told you, it's very wrong-a. To take our name and try to become chef Katonah."

Yes, this will be up there in the annals along with "Blowin' in the Wind", or something.

Posted 9:43 AM by Gene

Surprise! Knuckleheads built golf courses faster than business could create new CEOs to laze their days on them. No wonder we have a subprime problem.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

AP NEWS ALERT!!!!!

BEIJING (AP) -- U.S. nuclear envoy says North Korea arms talks to end without setting deadline for next steps on disarmament.

Sure all that shutting down wasn't for show, Foggy Bottom?

Posted 9:11 AM by Gene

The other day The New York Philharmonic named a new music director, and looking at the guy's picture we thought, this will revive classical music? One of The Paper of Re-CORD's scribblers further arouses our suspicions:

[M]any of the players have said that what they prize in a music director is a towering musician who can teach them something. Mr. Gilbert presents himself simply as a solid, utterly professional conductor who will try to instill a collegial atmosphere within the ranks of the players rather than be their teacher.

Some of the Philharmonic’s more traditional concertgoers may also have to adjust. Those who expect the music director of the Philharmonic to perform a cycle of Beethoven symphonies that will enter the annals of music history may be disappointed. But if Mr. Gilbert can liberate himself from such lofty expectations, he should be able to attract new audiences and inspire the players to take some chances, have some fun, think outside the box.

TRANSLATION: The guy's a musical drone. We certainly hope not; but how can this biz get back on its feet when it does everything to obscure itself to the public, from geriatric concerts to awful "operas"?

(Links via ArtsJournal)

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Did you know ESPNCorp is still pursuing MICKEYMOUSE NIXON's dream of being a PLAYER in the RECORD BIZ? Well, it is:

Disney’s Hollywood Records label unveiled what it is calling CDVU+, pronounced CD view plus, at the Samsung Experience store at New York’s Time Warner Center, which just so happens to be where Time Warner’s (TWX) CNNMoney.com offices are located. [Ta-DAAAAA!!!!! I guess they know all about records.] Disney said that its pop-punk trio, the Jonas Brothers, will be the first act to release an album in this format. The self-titled CD will be released on August 7.

So what makes the CDVU+ special? The CD will launch a digital magazine that features loads of exclusive content. Disney worked with Zinio, a company that helps magazine and book publishers deliver content online, to launch this service. The CDVU+ will also allow Jonas Brothers fans to check out videos and photos, get song lyrics and create posters.

WOW!!!!! This will revive the CD for SURE!!!!!!!!!!

(Via the New, Improved MediaBistro)

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

SLIME backs out of the Great Onanists' and Geeks' Fantasy Convention because its -- properties aren't ready?

Would the geeks have noticed?

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

Vodafone Says 1Q Revenue Rose 7.5 Pct.

Sure you don't want to buy Verizon?

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

A number of scribblers with an advanced notion of justice believe our friend the dogfighting impresario should be allowed to play. Fine. Let him play -- to the sight of thousands of opposing fans in dog masks, and the sound of barking and howling and "Hound Dog" and "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?", and the posters: "Lock Vick Up in the Pound", "Throw Him to the Dogs", "Vick! Play Dead", "Humane League Poster Boy", "ConVICKt", and so forth. It would be an amusing spectacle. And so yes, he should play -- unless, of course, he comes to whatever little he has of his senses and takes a leave of absence...before the con-vick-tion.

P. S. at 9:58 a.m. Another reason he'll play:

The Falcons face an estimated salary cap hit of about $6 million this year and $15 million in 2008 if they release Vick — devastating hits to any team’s budget.

Posted 7:47 PM by Gene

Perhaps no city lives more on its underground than New York. Does anyone really know what goes on down there?

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

However true the notion that a great flood separated England and France, the very thought is beyond awe, aside from being its own best proof that geography is destiny.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Damned if you do: If RUDY pledges a litmus test, the hacks call him a Nazi; if he doesn't, the a social conservatives scratch their heads about his sincerity.

I love this Republican line-up, don't you?

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

It's official: people are bored with eBay.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Even with the slight increase, the number of Missourians receiving abortions last year still was at its second-lowest mark since 1975, according to health department records.

Perhaps the notion of abortion as a sexual convenience is finally loosening its grip on us -- perhaps.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

Speaking of cri-TICS, would the world be sad if someday Mis-tuh Ker-RY Den-BEH hung up his keyboard -- or half the STAHF of THUH NE-EW YAWH-KUH, for that matter?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

The male Ms. Travers of TNRO has something to say about a TV cri-TIC named TOM:

Since "Seinfeld" was cancelled in 1998, Shales has cited it in a remarkable 79 articles. (Compare that to a mere 18 mentions of "The Simpsons," which has actually been running, albeit at quarter-steam, all those years.) Shales has described "Seinfeld" as "the most successful and acclaimed sitcom ever"; "one of the most popular and highly praised sitcoms ever "; "It may have constituted a 'great era' all by itself"; "the last great sitcom of the age of the sitcom"; and "the last really funny TV show"--a tidal wave of praise that would be less overwhelming if not for the fact that all these quotes appeared in the last 14 months, many years after the show went defunct.

And while he avows the great comic masterpiece was "very funny", he further avows, "I find its relentlessly shticky humor holds up rather disappointingly in reruns" -- meaning, as with so many cultural sensations, you had to be there.

Posted 2:18 PM by Gene

DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!

Scholastic: Some customers received Harry Potter book early

Now may we please put an end to this money-making stunt once and for all?

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

“We made a mistake in calculating the amount that leaked into the ocean. We apologize and make correction.”

Oooooooooooooooooooooookay!

Posted 11:17 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: If the Bannies turn down SLIME they'll lose a LOT of money -- but they'll look like GODS.

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

Why is North Korea in such a sudden rush to disarm?

Theh's somethin' SCWEWY goin' on awound heawh!

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

Dueling versions of Potter book surface on Net

You don't suppose ROWLINGCORP and its subsids Bloomsbury and Scholastic Inc. and PEOPLE WARNER would do this on purpose would you? NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

I suppose this means another diatribe about how con-SER-va-tive Politico.com is, but....

Left could push pro-Israel voters to GOP

We doubt it -- because Jews are the most masochistic voters of all, and they love the pain.

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

The creator of MediaBistro has sold her site for $23 million -- with a little help from a few unknowns, like Alan Meckler, and Russell Baker, and Marty Peretz, and her hubby at BizWeek, and several others, and while it always annoys us that a pile of typing can go for megazillions, the Web moves so fast that today's typing piles will be supplanted by others. Just to move in that biz is to stand still, and I'm glad I'm not in it, except for the riches.

Correction on 10/3 at 9:05 a. m. Apparently the Russell Baker who helped with MediaBistro's launch doesn't have a sense of humor.

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

Michael Vick's been indicted in that dog-fighting scheme, another richly deserved self-administered NFL black eye.

On Vick's Web site, he lists his birthplace as Newport News, "a.k.a. BadNews."

NO COMMENT.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

Our favorite PR guy Rog affirms the quickly developing CW that EDNA's film is a "sleeper" -- principally because "it’s the antidote to all the sequels we’ve had so far this summer, and all the dreary action films." But because the surrounding films are so franchise-hamburger (or is that TENTPOLE?) bad that makes this one a masterwork? Haven't we had enough of hearing how wonderful something is because the junk makes it look good by comparison? Plus Rog says "[t]he marketing people worry that men won’t go." [TRANSLATION: Musicals are for GAYS.] Probably it'll be that sleeper, but just as probably it could go kerflooey because everyone except the ad-blurbists realizes we don't make good movies anymore -- and least of all musicals.

Rog also tells us Ms. Clarkson's latest album has pancaked. Why do we hope such people bomb? Is it because they're hyped to death in the first place? Or is it because they're alumni of SLIME's talent factory?

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

Hmmm: Does this mean there's a remote chance the Three-Headed Dog's deal for Chrysler won't go through because -- we had a party in subprimes?

Posted 2:26 PM by Gene

Another "poverty tour" in Eastern Kentucky leaves the natives less than impressed:

Still, Edwards has lost some of his credibility in this predominantly Democratic region. They don't forget $400 haircuts around here.

"A haircut's a haircut. You can get the same one for $10," said James Rudd, a 28-year-old Whitesburg resident who's spent the past 10 years mining coal. "If he's so big on poverty, then why don't he give the other $390 to some homeless person?"

Because a fella needs the other $390 to run for president.