Posted 7:35 PM by Gene

Two days ago we posited that somebody was about to be fired.

Well, two days later, somebody still hasn't been fired, but six coaches have been fired elsewhere, leading us to believe it's the air inside Jerry Jones's head.

Posted 7:27 PM by Gene

We don't want to be too hard on our mayor -- he seems like a reasonably capable guy, and furthermore he is our boss -- but shutting down libraries may have cost more than he could have saved.

Posted 7:19 PM by Gene

But see? HP is an international company.

(Via Slashdot -- and given this just appeared a few hours ago we might say, with Slashdot, you're often the last to know)

Posted 7:11 PM by Gene

A con-SER-va-tive daydreams as con-SER-va-tives will of Pat Toomey ousting Sen. O'Specter, forgetting her hero may be as captive to dogma of the undying wisdom of the FREE MARKET as O'Specter is captive to the need to make news hacks his slaves.

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

Ooooooops! Being omnipotently correct like The Paper of Re-CORD may have its...costs.

Posted 7:00 PM by Gene

Why couldn't Trent "The Born Lobbyist" Lott have defended POPEYE?

(Via the usual ArtsJournal)

Posted 6:58 PM by Gene

Awwwwww, poor One's "disappointed."

His muse Mr. Lincoln seems to have failed him -- and not, we suspect, for the first time.

Posted 6:54 PM by Gene

JOE STALIN JR. and that piece of multicolored felt in his hand have come up with the perfect excuse to be gleeful at the price of oil.

Posted 6:45 PM by Gene

And in other news of overpaid, overexposed typists whom PVT. ZELL should have laid off, we realize it is a waste of bandwidth to dwell on Mogul's Friend's successive outbursts, but the man will just not stop making an ass of himself. His current solution for the Os-CAR®S is twofold: 1. To get the A-CA-DE-MY® to honor as many of the hundreds of GREAT FILMS that it can, and 2. For the IN-DUS-TRY to give big wide platforms for terrific films with zero crowd-pleasing appeal. So irrelevant has this buffoon become that nearly thirty hours after his post it's gathered no comments. For once the sadomasochists who call themselves movee buffs have shown good judgment. With any luck PVT. will find a financial excuse for this bozo to daydream somewhere else -- say, at Northwestern University, where he can be a PERFESSER OF OS-CAR®, or at ROLLING STONE, where he can form a tag team of toadying with PETER TRAVERS.

Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

No, the Lord Goddess Oprah won't get hurt, but the time may come when people can finally stop saying that.

Posted 6:38 PM by Gene

It was painful to hear yet again of the Columbia catastrophe, but you can't have space exploration without heroes -- nor space accidents without bureaucracies.

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

Here when you think Blago has defined the term schmuck, he redefines it.

And his choice sounds like the definitive hack.

Would the Dems get so exercised if this choice mattered?

Posted 7:22 PM by Gene

The new Billy Graham has his Brezhnev. Somehow I am not surprised.

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

"Senator McConnell — Idiot of the Highest Order" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Yes, he must be doing something good.

12/29 05:38 PM

Or maybe he's doing the same thing as DEMOCRATS in a different key.

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

Whoever Stole the Huge Statue Out of Bernie Madoff’s Backyard Is Awesome

Or maybe not; it's that much fractionally less money due the creditors.

Posted 11:12 AM by Gene

If "50,000 stores could close without any effect on consumer choice", and "200,000 stores may close in 2009, compared with a record 160,000 in 2008", what does that say for retailing's future?

Maybe if it hadn't opened so many unneeded stores in the first place while neglecting underserved customers thanks to long held prejudices it would have a better future.

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

Hollywood's happy, even without a record year

Hollywood's happy? DAVID "NON" GERMAIN's happy. He's happy because the people who feed him the useless self-serving quotes are happy, and by God if they're happy he's happy. Should even an ASSPress reporter be happy?

Wait until next year when you have another chance to use the word "RECORD" indiscriminately. Until then, another NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD to NON!

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

My clients plied me with so much money I went INSANE!

Sure, Bernie, sure.

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

NewsMAX!!!!! can agree -- capitalism is BROKEN?!?

SEND THE MARINES!!!!!

Posted 10:30 PM by Gene

Fifty years after Fidel Castro led a band of rebels to victory over a U.S.-backed dictator, his revolution goes on, Cuba firmly in its grip, in what some view as a triumph and others a tragedy. [Home page squib]

Well JEEZ, al Reut, if we can't make up our minds why bother reporting at all? Not that you're always such eunuchs -- I mean, you decided long ago that "militants" aren't such bad guys even if they kill thousands. What's the matter with you? The operation still hurt?

Posted 7:25 PM by Gene

WFMU.org's blog has introduced us to a very interesting site that specializes in downloads of schlock videos its proprietor summarily assumes are PD -- mostly seventies programmers (and mostly R-RATED -- and no age check!) and a few made-for-TV movies, all out of circulation for some time, and with luck never to be circulated again. We'd make nothing of it but for two points: 1. SAMMY GLICK...MAN has lost the piracy war, and this stands is its most prominent tombstone this side of BitTorrent; and 2. The next time SAMMY GLICK...MAN boasts about JACK'S SECRET-RECIPE ALPHABET SOUP someone should ask him who lobbied for LEHMAN BROTHERS.

P. S. We've a hunch three of Alexa.com's Top 50 are frequented rather heavily by under-17s. The only good thing is that biz has run even more afoul of piracy.

P. P. S. And speaking of Cowboys, here's another biz that isn't wholly undeserving of it.

Posted 7:13 PM by Gene

Quinn: Blago will be out by Abe's 200th

I'm thinking it's more likely he'll be out by Blago's 200th.

Posted 7:02 PM by Gene

Five fatal stabbings every week despite Labour’s knife-crime ‘crackdown’

There's an easy answer to this, of course -- ban knives!

We shouldn't be flippant at this but a certain kind of LIBERAL believes he can solve social problems by going after the symptoms of the underlying illness, while the con-SER-va-tive believes he can solve social problems by having people make more money.

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

PREDICTION: Somebody's going to be FIIIIIIIIIIIIII-red tomorrow!

This could be a funnier story than PlaxPlex! Question: Which does more self-inflicted damage: PlaxPlex' guns or Jerry Jones's MOUTH?

Posted 2:02 PM by Gene

SHUCKS, MICKEYMOUSE NIXON is ending his interview show Conversations with Myself, blaming the low ratings on not wanting to do the show more than once a month.

With MICKEYMOUSE NIXONS it NEVER has anything to do with YOU.

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

I did not post yesterday in no small part thanks to IT&T, which slowed my connection enough I couldn't download anything. I've given up on the Indians and will switch tomorrow to Verizon, as if that will do any good.

Posted 1:05 PM by Gene

A publisher finally canceled what proved to be a Holocaust "memoir". Even if the book biz could learn from its mistakes it never would, being one of those industries that never makes them.

Posted 12:59 PM by Gene

And here's a candidate for returning some of OUR money, and the mortgage holders': WAMU'S AD AGENCY. (Linked in story below)

Posted 12:56 PM by Gene

Meet John D. Parsons -- WaMu's Employee of the Decade!

He's the one on the left. No, he might be the one on the right.

Posted 12:52 PM by Gene

That the Israelis finally managed a self-defense against Hamas does not negate how the world and Arabs will feel about them: "a superpower with feet of clay, technologically powerful but spiritually weak and quickly cowed by international condemnation." Ultimately self-defense must trump feelings. And if the Israelis killed somewhat more than we might have liked let us remember Hamas would kill 10,000 times as many Israelis as the Israelis killed Arabs, and be done with it.

Posted 9:48 PM by Gene

Another of the earth-shattering dispatches for which THE UNIVERSE'S LEADING NEWS ORGANIZATION was founded 142 years ago:

Obamas visit aquatic park, eat shave ice on outing

Posted 6:42 PM by Gene

Could it be people have tired of shopping for shopping's sake?

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

Lately The Hollywood Reporter ran an interesting roundtable with prominent film composers. Musicians rank with stuntmen as among the few Hollywoodians really serious about their craft; they're also among the fewer with any sense of the biz' history. Reading this one gets two impressions -- that, however good they try to be (we have no way of knowing, believing MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER!!!!!), film scoring has taken a nosedive since the golden age (that we can believe); and the bean-counting hacks have largely supplanted music with SFX, and the SFX are getting louder, and all you have at your command is a pencil, which you must "keep moving" (to quote Howard Shore), if only to fill in the lulls between explosions.

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

I'm sure we all feel very bad about this one:

Signs of the New Economy: 'The Private Jet Market Stinks'

Posted 1:40 PM by Gene

Speaking of GCI at $7.49, here is one of those inimitable USAOKAY!!!!! automatic typings whose sole purpose it to make the print front page look busy. It is an answer to a question no one but a USAOKAY!!!!! editor would ask, and only under the hot breath of a would be Neuharth: Was 2008 an HISTORIC year? Any hack with tired poor red blood coursing through his veins would say yes as any year's historic with HIM reporting it. That such stories are by definition asinine, that they are the ne plus ultra of asinine, would not occur to the hack trying to justify his job as the industry falls out from under him. So he writes useless stories that shovel ever more spadefuls of dirt from beneath his feet -- and help the former accent on NET!!!!! sell for $7.49.

Posted 12:03 PM by Gene

Reviving theaters is a central tenet of the RENDELLIST notion that the AHTS can restore a city economy, when it has proved all too obvious that no zillions in convention center/stadium/arts center building can help; and old theaters were located in downtowns because downtowns were once vital, and because entertainment was vital too -- and neither theaters nor entertainment are vital anymore, whatever table pounders like SUPERNIKKI!!!!! belch. That said, it is heartening that an urban palace like the Oakland Fox has survived long enough to be fully renovated, and even if it spends much of its time emceeing dust particles, at least it's there.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

Throwing your TV set away is environmentally BAD. Sending it to a recycling center where it gets carted overseas to pollute the local environment is BAD.

Maybe AL should reinvent the Internet.

Posted 11:45 AM by Gene

Another pressing question from America's First Amendment defenders:

Obama: Full-on geek or just 'nerd-adjacent?'

NYT at $5.75, GCI at $7.54, MNI at $0.65....

Posted 9:52 PM by Gene

Charming statistic from a supporter of The One's "infrastructure" dreams:

(Studies estimate that somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the total time spent on the average American construction site is wasted.)

Really, just giving the money away to each of us would be more useful.

Posted 9:10 PM by Gene

The Three-Headed DOG thanked Uncle Sucker for his "investment" in a full-color ad. Any number of obscene gestures would have done just as nicely, and they wouldn't have cost so much.

Posted 6:32 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Chances are better that we'll get "a bureaucratic nightmare like the Homeland Security Department" for investments than that you'd lose money with BERNIE.

And we can call it the Homeland Securities Department.

Posted 6:27 PM by Gene

Claudia, whose last name we make fun of because she is one of USAOKAY!!!!!'s top flacks, has a home-page recommendation:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is worth seeing just for the superb makeup.

Which would probably make that the first such in movee history, but then ad-blurbists never praise movees for good reasons.

Needless to say we didn't follow the link.

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

We must confess Eartha Kitt never appealed to us -- she uncomfortably straddled the border with camp -- but we more than understand why she appealed to others, and we definitely understand why there are no Eartha Kitts anymore, BRITNEYS notwithstanding.

Curious footnote: She co-starred with the unlikely Eddie Bracken in a flop musical adaptation of the great Don Marquis's* "archy" verse called Shinbone Alley, written by Mel Brooks before he became a GENIUS. (Some Llord Lloud Wubbish fan must have typed this.)

*Pronounced mar-KWIS. Lloud Wubbish fans can pronounce it mar-KEE.

Posted 12:29 PM by Gene

All I can say is AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Posted 12:13 PM by Gene

An AmSpec contributor comes up with the perfect line about what passes for political debate these days:

...a bad caricature of Fox News versus a bad caricature of NPR's "All Things Considered."

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

The CEO of the British Vicarage and Tea-Time Club wants to take care of the economy, but despite his ambitions the politicians really have turned the practice of screwing it up into a fine art.

Posted 11:31 AM by Gene

Harold Pinter, the British Norm Mailer of playdom, better known to the public for his tantrums on America's EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL than anything else, has died. RIP.

His Paper of Re-CORD obit was co-authored by a man who died three years ago, and it says little of America's EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL.

Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

And now for our annual Yahoo! news-photo links that will be disappear in thirty days without a trace:



A Christmas tree near the Bird's Nest in Beijing (Bird's Nest? What was that?);



The U. S. Capitol Christmas Tree;



The Christmas tree at Notre Dame Cathedral;



A Christmas tree in Lisbon;



A Christmas tree on "the hangar deck of the USS Iwo Jima, docked in Manama, Bahrain";



A Christmas tree in an Istanbul shopping mall;



A Christmas tree and a Santa at the entrance to Jerusalem's Old City;



"A statue of St. George decorated like a Christmas tree in downtown Tbilisi, Georgia";



A Christmas tree at Sydney's Taronga Zoo;



A Christmas tree in Hamburg;



A Christmas tree in Taipei;



A Christmas tree in Vienna (it's there someplace);



A Christmas tree in Monterrey;



A Christmas tree in Milan;



A Christmas tree in Lima;



A Christmas tree in Managua;



A Christmas tree at the Swiss federal palace in Bern;



A Christmas tree in Bethlehem;



A Christmas -- well, it's a "giant Christmas pudding", concocted by Roger and Valerie Holley at their home in Yeovil, England;



A Christmas tree in Honolulu;



A Christmas tree in Havana (!);



A Christmas tree in Dili, East Timor;



A Christmas tree in Sao Paulo;



A whole bunch of Christmas trees in Puchheim, Germany;



A Christmas "tree" of sugar candy sticks in a Bangkok hotel;



And finally, a Christmas tree in a Christian school in Baghdad.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Posted 8:19 PM by Gene

No one has to tell me $MA$ stinks, but it stinks precisely because it's $MA$, and has no relation to its putative reason -- something too many churches have raised a white flag over.

And it's not just liberal magazines and their Web sites.

Posted 8:09 PM by Gene

Celebrity press first with Obama photos

Perhaps if the hacks can think of The One as a Celebrity President...and maybe People and Us should have seats in the White House press corps.

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

How apt that Frank DiGiacomo's story on the "LEGENDARY" Star Wars Holiday Special and Christopher Caldwell's history of the weak revolt against Brutalism appeared practically at the same time. Here are pernicious artifacts of the seventies in all their vain ignominy -- the "windowless façades, [the] human-repelling scale, [the] masses of dirty concrete and their self-conscious wish to shock", a cheesy glitzy variety show prompted by the "unfathomable" success of a "gee-whiz" space epic, the Brutalists and Luke Spielberg defining the age in tinsel and dreck, both embarrassments in innumerable ways, the former ripped by Tom Wolfe, the latter hidden away by its license-holding CONTROL PHREAK. And each has its eulogy -- first from Caldwell:

Modernist architecture does not give us new ways of seeing. It is an impoverishment, in fact. It ignores a varied cultural vocabulary accumulated over the centuries, because that vocabulary might endanger Modernism's political purpose. As a project, it resembles Kemal Atatürk's purging of the Turkish language to eliminate words with Persian, Arabic, or European roots.

And this one from DiGiacomo, from, a writer who worked on the Luke Spielberg bomb:

“I think in a bigger sense, it’s nice to know that Star Wars does have feet of clay,” he says. “Ultimately, when all is said and done, it’s an outer-space movie. It’s not sacred. And what has amused me the most is that somehow people think the special discredits the image of this sacred text.”

In short, architecture and movees have their deadly-obsessive adherents, with feet of clay and brains the match, who inflict visual pollution of all kinds, and whose cultural despotism the Republic can never rid, except perhaps through the passage of time, which can't come soon enough.

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

But there is this bit of good news:

Crisis widens appeal of Islamic finance

Posted 11:23 AM by Gene

New York University....

Bernie knew institutions too.

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

FedEx not advertising in the Super Bore, FedEx Bowl tickets going for "less than $10" -- are CEOs taking themselves too seriously?

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

PlaxPlex had enough guns to shoot himself in three or four legs.

Ooooooooooooooooooh! Thahyt smaaaaaaaaaaarts!

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

Shucks, the Screen Actors Guild may not shoot itself in the foot after all.

It's already used all its ammo on the audience.

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

SEC Chair Defends His Restraint

Yeah but Chris, did you have to straitjacket yourself into your chair?

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

A L'Oreal heiress....

Bernie knew a lot of people, didn't he.

Posted 8:56 PM by Gene

This would seem counterintuitive: BMW's raising prices (slightly) because its sales have tanked.

Oh well, its customers can afford it.

We think.

Posted 8:25 PM by Gene

A neat juxtaposition on Politico.com:

Paparazzo snaps shirtless Obama

...which is right above:

The top ten media blunders of 2008

Add number eleven: Spending more time on the Shirtless Hulk than on his governing philosophy -- which is also less time than we spent on his prospective DOG.

Posted 8:22 PM by Gene

Somewhere, somewhere in The One's new government, there will be a malevolent idealist who believes cities have no right to force vagrants from sleeping on the street. And someday, someday, said idealist will get The One in trouble -- although the way most news hacks report they are honorarily sleeping on the street too.

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

Talk about Hahvahd Mutual Fund -- how many KOLLEDGES does the depr -- DEEP RECESSION put out of business?

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

Whenever we'd see Elaine Garzarelli on TV we'd think, this lady looks and sounds like a stand-up comic.

Which just goes to show most stock "analysts" earn their real money from moonlighting.

“Garzarelli is advising investors to buy some of the most beaten-down stocks, including those of giant financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch. What would cause her to turn bearish? Not much. ‘Our indicators are extremely bullish.’”

In the words of Fred and Ira, madame, who's got the last laugh now?

Pffffffffffffffffffffffft!

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 8:05 PM by Gene

And in another...Understatement of the Day:

After 50 years, Cuba's economy still isn't self-sufficient

Posted 8:00 PM by Gene

OH oh, yesterday NewsMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! praised The Daily Kaplan for its fairness -- and today ROMY finds out, which means half the SEVENTY-FIVE-CENTS-A-SHARE news biz is fuming, and he's thinking, why couldn't Ben Bradlee clone himself?

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

We're not sure what quite to think of The Lord Goddess's OPRAH's latest problem in self-improvement. It doesn't sound like James Frey making things up for literary history, and "living" in a concentration camp can warp a man's memory as well as his mind. But the one thing to know about the Lord Goddess, the one thing that gives the claims of falsehood credibility: She spells everything with an $.

Posted 7:47 PM by Gene

JOSSIP has said about the three race-baiting stooges what most news hacks have not said in their whole careers -- which has nothing to do with, say, MNI at SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS.

Posted 7:44 PM by Gene

Meanwhile, con-SER-va-tives are surely annoyed because Walmart has to PAY UP because it cheated its help.

How did they expect to grow the economy?

Posted 7:41 PM by Gene

BANEhead Boehner gets some economists together...BUT:

...critics say eight years of the Bush administration’s economic policies have damaged the Republican Party’s credibility to contest the claims of big government.

That's putting it -- MILDLY.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

Our favorite PR guy Rog seems to be the only show-biz writer who believes there are far more bad movees than good. We wonder that he hasn't censored himself given his BOSS.

Posted 1:44 PM by Gene

GASP! The One is asking all those Pentagon warmongers to stay!

MoveOn.org MUST stage a protest rally!

Posted 1:40 PM by Gene

The scum Madoff has now claimed a suicide atop the mere financial victims, not to mention all the people who should wear a dunce cap for the rest of their lives.

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

Blogging and YouTube are proof enough the long-tail theory is BUNK.

Mr Anderson named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people....

NUF SAID.

Posted 9:07 PM by Gene

Microsoft again extends Windows XP drop-dead date

At this rate XP may have eternal life.

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

The ideological pretzel of Hollywood: Show-biz is disgorging more dreck than ever, but at least it's environmentally-friendly dreck.

Posted 11:19 AM by Gene

Who wants to bet all this blather about FIFTY MILLION attending The One's accession will do a GAMES-style number on the Beltway -- and turn lots of hotels into ghost towns?

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

ROLL THE EYES: USAOKAY!!!!! has just played another trick on its readers. More churches now use more drums than ever! And worship is more informal and enthusiastic! But go down to the TWELFTH GRAF of a fourteen-graf story and you find both priests and congregants are older than they were a decade ago, meaning either 1. the young have learned to live without church or 2. maybe all that hand-clapping and shouting and drum-beating isn't drawing customers. (No mention of total church attendance, by the way.) This is precisely the kind of story (like OKAY!!!!!'s endless show-biz-RECORD fables) that graphs would tell better -- and more honestly.

When USAOKAY!!!!! makes a trend, do a full-nelson on your wallet.

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

Elsewhere CuteLittlePinkPaper.com boasts of Hillary's former communications director's (and current cable bobblehead's) "tastes" in music, which makes us a little relieved she didn't win.

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

Hmm, maybe Jay Carney will be headed to the think tank sooner than he -- thought.

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

And now the Babbitts are asking for money.

Did Hank conjure this up on purpose?

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

It wasn't long ago when people got in a tizz because Toyota was about to beat our seniormost Clunker Brother as the world's biggest automaker. You have to wonder if all those excess SUVs helped bring the whole market down. Call this The Revenge of GM.

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

China Cuts Key Rates for Fifth Time in Three Months

Gadzooks! Even the World's Economic Engine isn't immune.

And here some people thought the Chinese charity buying our debt would save us.

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Kendra Turns Conservative Since Engagement

Jo-NAH! Time for one of your pop-cult extrusions!

And "she doesn't flash anymore." Presumably she got rid of the bulb on her nose. (Sorry.)

And all we know of her is she's another Barbie Doll of the Moment. (Judging from the photo I'm afraid I mean that a bit literally.) Oh well, PEOPLE WARNER does have a way with "news".

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

"Gross negligence" at The Paper of Re-CORD, gross incompetence at the White House.

Six of one....

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

Only in the movies, they say. Too bad. We could all use a little fantasy right about now.

Who says? Fantasy lives in USAOKAY!!!!! and the heart of its NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD WINNER CRAIG!

GCI AT $7.71 -- NEARLY $83 OFF ITS HIGH.

Posted 7:20 PM by Gene

We're not con-SER-va-tives when it comes to mass transit, but this story shows what could happen to some of The One's stimulus money: it could go into salaries.

Posted 6:39 PM by Gene

An idealist channels Ike:

MJ: It's fascinating that Eisenhower was a critic of the military system. He's seen as such a Republican "man's man," for lack of a better phrase.

EJ: It's no wonder members of the Eisenhower family, namely John Eisenhower, his son, and Susan Eisenhower, his granddaughter, have felt compelled to leave the Republican Party in recent years. That's not so much a statement on the GOP as it is on the American political system per se. Eisenhower would be significantly to the left of today's Democrats.

Does that mean he's still one of our greatest presidents? Or does that depend on which party you're in?

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Ireland's nationalizing a bank because its chairman had a bit of the MADOFF in him.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

GORDON BROWN IS HITLER!!!!!

So the head of the British Vicarage and Tea-Time Club says.

I wonder -- who would Hitler be like?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Well, The Paper of Re-CORD does have much happier tidings to report: Seymour Philip Whatshisname has become THE GREATEST CHARACTER ACTOR OF ALL -- OUR TIME!!!!!

Please Pinchians, stick to bias.

P. S. It's worse: The Pinchians copied their CW from THE WEEKLY STANDARD!

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The outgoing "administration" having proved it can waste money on bankers, the incoming administration intends to waste at least as much money on spending projects for the sake of spending, regardless of what Larry Summers says.

[The "stimulus" package] would most likely grow as it made its way through Congress, although Mr. Obama has secured Democratic leaders’ agreement to ban spending on pork-barrel projects.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 1:30 PM by Gene

Somebody at ASSPress must be in a bad mood because he didn't quote Paul Dreck today.

It should give the movie excreters pause when the biz' two alleged biggest names can't come up with enough for one. Dreck would say, "Well it's timing and snowstorms and no big tentpole this year and people are still going to the movies and...." I'd like to think even the hard core is starting to get some sense into its heads that movies won't get better, and believing ad-blurbists won't make them so.

P. S. at 3:25 p. m. Oops! David "NON" Germain had a change of heart; neither rain nor heat nor slush nor SNOWSTORMS will keep movies from being BETTER THAN EVER! A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO NON!

Posted 10:35 AM by Gene

Speaking of air fresheners, good news for the Internet's inventor: The global depr -- DEEP RECESSION has shut down a stinky Russian paper mill, "a feat that ecologists, trying to preserve Lake Baikal from pollution, had been unable to accomplish."

Breathe deep, Al! The air will smell pretty clean for a while!

Posted 10:31 AM by Gene

Forgive us but the scum Bernie seems to have inflicted far more damage on the reps of the people who "invested" with him than on Bernie -- although with him there was nothing to damage.

Posted 10:22 AM by Gene

Sometimes it's hard to believe the people who write the editorials for The Daily Kaplan share the same newspaper with everyone else. Of course Slick's multinational bank account smells. But pardon us for thinking whenever there's a Democratic money smell there's always an accompanying pungent masking odor of the news hacks' GLADE.

Posted 9:12 PM by Gene

And we would tell these toadies at Kaplan Interactive that, as we've said before, the Wall Street Casino has virtually priced its parent's media division at ZERO -- and that INCLUDES its non-educational Web sites -- and just because something appears on the Web doesn't make it any good...although with some sites it goes without saying.

It further goes without saying any Web site Jonny Hairshirt praises is by definition no good.

Posted 9:05 PM by Gene

Oh hell, if we can post that gaseous preener JonBoy we can post that photo. We've seen much worse elsewhere.

Posted 8:58 PM by Gene

JonBoy thinks he can avoid a huge circulation decline by aping that other rag's gimmicks like its Most Influential 100 (or whatever they call it). Unfortunately that other rag already put a campaign poster on its cover, but we can never remind ourselves too many times The One IS a great president.

Oh, he hasn't taken the oath of office yet? ZEIT! Down to a million-six you go!

It is a fact, too, that one day Obama's power will fade, as will that wielded by the others on our list.

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle! But Zeitgeist's (and that other rag's) ability to toady to the flavor of the month will never fade -- which is why it, and its partners in crime, cannot go out of business fast enough.

Posted 8:42 PM by Gene

One of the great guilty pleasures of DailyMail.co.uk is to look at all these would-be female stars we've never heard of before (and never will again) being caught in uncomfortable -- positions. While part of us would like to post the picture of this immortal entertainer part of us also doesn't want to be affixed to the more notorious avenues, so we'll skip it. That said, we suspect her behind is cuter than her act.

Posted 6:21 PM by Gene

And speaking of Masters of the Universe, did anyone notice when Bernie came out of hiding the other day his faint Mona Lisa smile?

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

Over at City Journal some Walt has a seizure over the Republic Windows action, largely because the union behind it is LEFTIST.

Unfortunately con-SER-va-tives seem to believe that our slow-moving ecomomic debacle came from the stars. Or to put it another way, the Lehmans and Madoffs have done THEIR job.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

The ASSPress gives out a nice little $mas gift to Vivendi and Electronic Arts -- who rather need it. (Of course we don't need it, but we is never the point with news.) These guitar games are little more than a variation on the old player piano, which had to be fed rolls; instead of gathering themselves around the machine for a sing along the would-be geniuses prod their instruments before a monitor, and feed the games progressively expensive downloads. Yes the games are a lot sexier than a player piano but it's the same old platform. And its half-uncle karaoke has never lost its rep as a kind of bar joke, an electronic voice box for people who can't sing. The games have too much money behind them to be fads but we wonder whether people will still sing along in five years. That the ASSPressian must breathlessly intone that one of the games goes for a thousand above list through Amazon.com answers the question.

So would the share prices of ATVI, ERTS -- and VIAB.

Posted 2:07 PM by Gene

On its second day of mourning for a GREAT AMERICAN, a question: Why doesn't Kaplan, Inc. link to its media properties on its HOME PAGE?

P. S.



Can Kaplan, Inc.'s media division make the same claim?

I wonder too if St. Warren could fill us in on how much of that is GOVERNMENT?

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

The Picower Foundation, whose founder once invested with Ivan Boesky....

Some people will never learn.

Posted 1:48 PM by Gene

Just When Democrats Have Shed Their Elitist Stigma, Along Comes Caroline Kennedy

When?

Posted 1:29 PM by Gene

THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE!

Posted 11:47 AM by Gene

Everybody says what a great guy Clint is -- the greatest director of all time, and the greatest actor too; who'd have known the star of those hammer-on-anvil detective films would be such a progressive? But only among the news hacks can earning $13,000 a screen at six popcorn ahthouses for the first weekend on your latest smash be considered good news. Clearly ordinary people don't think Clint a greater talent than, say, Michelangelo; but among the people who make and admire terrific films with zero crowd-pleasing appeal he is -- GOD.

But then BERNIE was GOD too -- and look where that got him AND his church.

P. S. on 12/21 at 5:45 p. m. Scratched out because BoxOffice.com's listings for "limited releases" are confusing -- and wrong. Better to attend a seance with PAUL DRECK.

Posted 6:21 PM by Gene

Ford Will Need Help, Too

NOW you're telling us.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

Tufts University....

And if the SEC isn't out nabbing the bad guys maybe that's because its employees are preoccupied with other things.

Posted 2:27 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: When Republicans engage in institutional corruption, it isn't institutional.

PETE, we'll have to come up with a nickname for YOU TOO.

Posted 2:26 PM by Gene

And another Hollywood excretion does what it's supposed to:

The familiar Carrey routine may have suited a young man, but he's 46 now, and standing next to the 28-year-old Deschanel, he looks every minute of it. Moreover, the movie places his character, Carl, within a group of friends in which everyone is no more than 35, implying that Carl is supposed to be in his early 30s. A 46-year-old man doesn't normally register as Methuselah, but present him as though he were 32 and give him a 28-year-old girlfriend (who looks 23), and things get awkward.

On top of that, have him act in a way that, in real life, would probably scare women, not seduce them, and a funny (as in strange) thing starts to happen in the audience: Arm hair stands up. Skin tingles and crawls. People sink into their seats. They feel their facial muscles tightening. They are wincing. Wincing and cringing.

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

ZEITGEIST is worried: the recession threatens compulsive shoppers.

Hey JonBoy! Maybe you could get a few of those pirates like the one in YOUR EXCLUSIVE to point some guns their way!

Posted 1:36 PM by Gene

Dave Obey says we're about to fall into "a massive, massive hole" -- and what better way to stave off that threat than to fill the hole with MONEY!

Posted 1:25 PM by Gene

Burglars hit Paris Hilton's home, take $2 million in jewelry

ROGER AILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 1:21 PM by Gene

MOGUL'S FRIEND DOES IT AGAIN:

...a terrific film with zero crowd-pleasing appeal....

Hey MOG! Have your friends at VIACON put THAT one on the ads.

This utter IDIOT does not realize that the movie-excretion biz makes movies for people like the AD-BLURBISTS and him -- and that's one reason the industry's dying despite its bloom of health.

Posted 1:10 PM by Gene

Thank you, Mr. President

When can we taxpayers join in?

Posted 1:06 PM by Gene

Well, maybe the Three-Headed Dog is serious about Chrysler; it's handed over a stake to labor and creditors, plus it's eliminated its marketing fiefdom. But we must yet see if imminent death has concentrated the automakers' minds enough.

Posted 12:59 PM by Gene

Bernie's scam went back to the disco years, and with 4,000 alleged clients and Fed patsies he sure would have had the wherewithal to boogie.

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

And in a stirring review from the other bible of entertainment, we learn that here in our home town of Philthydelphia someone has concocted an OUTSTANDING musical about the Cherry Sisters, which would seem like an oxymoron but always remember there are lots of oxymorons in show-biz -- and it has this Bartlett's-immortal line: "I'm a Cherry with a cherry/I will be no man's wife", which makes us think somewhere W. C. Fields is regretting his line.

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

A Senate seat is a f*@king valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing. [HOME PAGE ONLY]

Leon, you make us pine for the day when intellectuals used big words.

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

In more inspiring news of the sweeping originality of show-biz, some hacks are making a BUCK ROGERS TENTPOLE (and being "a darker take" should definitely excuse it), and GSN has ordered up 40 SONY-produced episodes of THE NEWLYWED GAME, which makes us extremely eager to note that a media-industry maven is predicting A THREE-YEAR ADVERTISING DEPRESSION -- and while we would say the longer the better except these folks can take it out on us, we will not entirely abstain from the notion.

(Third link via IWantMedia)

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

ELIOT "BORN-AGAIN" SPITZER! PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!

(Via The Daily Beast)

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

1. The automakers can do as they please; 2. If they can't repay the loans -- NO PROBLEM! WE WILL!

Posted 8:35 AM by Gene

And as the entire Kaplan empire mourns, rare wisdom from Ben Brantley, surveying the wreckage of a dud of a revival of Pal Joey:

Frankness dates fast.

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

The Daily Kaplan loses its most famous source, and it expects us to mourn.

There is no honor among reporters.

P. S. The glory days ended with JANET COOKE.

Kaplan Inc. down over 13 yesterday.

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

Not likely, but still anyone want to wager in this newly prosperous age trading stamps make a comeback?

Posted 7:42 PM by Gene

Somebody tell Seeking Alpha that maybe Smashing Pumpkins is quitting albums because albums stink, and albums stink because music stinks, and music stinks because MOST OF THE ACTS STINK.

Somebody also tell Seeking Alpha (and the off-limits Pali Research, whoever that is) that because digital singles sales are up 25 percent and album sales up down 22 percent does not mean music sales are up three percent -- the very clever implication here.

Amazing too that it's taken fifty years for music "lovers" to realize most pop-album tracks are filler.

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

Does Being Jewish Make You a Flight Risk?

Whew! For a second I thought we were speaking of you-know-who.

Posted 6:54 PM by Gene

These lists of Bernie's victims are starting to resemble the lists of passengers aboard the Titanic.

THE IRS! (Well, sort of.)

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

There were benefits to missing the sparsely viewed Second Coming of Seligism in October -- like missing an F-bomb.

Daddy, what's a Phillie?

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

Oh, The One was also speaking of the markets!



This looks like a job for SUPERGEKKO!!!!!

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

When does one of the Big Boys get implicated with Bernie?

And don't forget, this is insider trading, the sort of thing Bernie supposedly did so well while forming his Ponzi scheme.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Daddy, what's a "jazz critic"?

I see Daddy answering with, "You don't want to know, son."

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

We wandered into B. S. DEFENDER by unfortunate accident, and we see he's perfected the art of consulting by saying nothing.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

We have resisted talking of Caroline because nothing we could say wouldn't be tiresome or beyond the point, but we see she lunched with REV. AL!!!!!, meaning Camelot may have quotas.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

It is one thing to ask for "adult supervision" of our politics, but if the last several decades are proof the nurseries have been in charge. Let us hope this changes, but we less-than-eagerly await the first Democratic colic.

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

Maybe OPEC should keep announcing production cuts!

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Playing Bridge
With the next White House and Congress poised to push through an ambitious infrastructure-spending plan, what should conservatives be ready to do?

Complain to no effect, as usual.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Banks will dig the ground out from under these needed changes in credit card regulation by prompting the sort of "unintended consequences" which they gloat at preparing to implement, like higher fees and lower credit limits.

Unfortunately, a Republican may not run things for a while.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Nestlé's Purina unit is financing a SLIME FILM, so we can say His outfit went to the DOGS to make a DOG.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

AP NEWSALERT!!!!!

CHICAGO (AP) -- Obama says "there needs to be a shift in ethics on Wall Street."

And most likely his worshipers in the press didn't even ask about THAT.

Posted 11:10 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: With any luck Russia goes broke, which means Vlad will have to play with his puppet all by himself.

Posted 11:06 AM by Gene

The Saudis gave to the Slickster. Who knew?

The only practical effect of this disclosure is that when Slick ever meets THE FIXER he can say he has more money.

Posted 9:29 AM by Gene

This is the fad of the future for Wall Street: reverse stock splits. We get reverse stock splits with badly managed or obsolete companies. There seem to be more of those. Sirius, Unisys and Rite Aid are pretty poor stuff, and one must wonder if reverse splits will help them. Figuratively they're on the pink sheets whatever their price.

Posted 3:00 PM by Gene

ROLEX!

Posted 2:49 PM by Gene

You know, we might not have had this "credit vertigo" if the Wall Street Casino had kept its feet on the ground.

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

The One's forces have announced the program for his accession: Aretha Franklin will sing, and John Williams will premiere some stentorian piece of musical buncombe, and Rick Warren will premiere his act as the new Billy Graham. Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma will be there, and so will a poet. Well, it could have been worse.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Iraqi Shoe-Tosser a Hero to Some of His Journo Colleagues

Yes, we imagine he would be, GREG.

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

Why should GOODTHINGS ENTERTAINMENT's The Morning Plug boast of its EXCLUSIVE AD for a dying newsrag's cover publicity stunt when ROG announced it eight days ago?

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

Long distillers -- and MICKEY D!

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

And if this isn't a little scary:

"There will be a lot more Madoffs discovered," says Edward Seidle, founder of Benchmark Financial Services, which specializes in investigations of pension fraud and money management abuses. "It will no longer be impolite to ask for the documents, sit down, and figure out whether the manager is for real."

(Via Bloomy)

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

And in more celebrity con-man news:

Madoff Enjoyed $50 Pedicures, 9.8 Handicap, Boat Called ‘Bull’

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Eric Roth, author of the movie masterwork Forrest Gump!

These Hollywood bozos always like to think they're better than their RETARDED clients who'll swallow their anything whole -- but how many times have they been well-publicized victims of financial scams?

Sorry Eric -- STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

At General Electric’s annual investor outlook meeting, held in the same studio where GE unit NBC [sic] films [sic] the show Saturday Night Live....

NO COMMENT.

Posted 8:52 PM by Gene

Whassa matta, Bernie? Broke?

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

How about a bailout of the ART MARKET?

And here's an apt eulogy:

One of the emotions that has driven its boom is the narcissistic belief of the rich in the greatness of the age in which they are living. They thought they were buying masterpieces. But like the Dutch merchants and their tulips, the obsession of the new rich with contemporary art is likely to be remembered as the epitome of the vanity and folly of the age. The bulbs are still in the ground but the spades are poised.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily)

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

Soembody alert Ms. "He's-Not-Scum-He's-A-Republican" -- MORE good news!

Breaking: Major sustainable-food foundation collapses
The Fair Food Foundation crumbles under weight of the Madoff Ponzi scheme [Emphasis added]

This is what happens to -- DEMOCRATS!!!!!

Mark my words -- within a week one of the con-SER-va-tive sites will run a totally fatuous essay explaining why this scum's financial collapse was a VICTORY.

Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

Well, there's one booming business in Palm Beach: pawn shops.

T'ain't funny, McGee.

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

Picture of the Day, from WFMU.org's Beware of the Blog. Indeed!

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

Coming just behind OJ's long-overdue imprisonment, these two stories prove that the murderer may run, but it is ever more difficult for him to hide.

And count on the ASSPress to provide a deep head-scratching of its own:

What [John Walsh's crusade] also did, said Mount Holyoke College sociologist and criminologist Richard Moran, is make children and adults alike exponentially more afraid.

"He ended up really producing a generation of cautious and afraid kids who view all adults and strangers as a threat to them and it made parents extremely paranoid about the safety of their children," Moran said.

Assuming you're right, PERFESSER (and we decreasingly assume that in a man with a degree behind his name -- like the people who invented CDOs and SIVs and who declared BERNIE safe), what would YOU do in THIS day and age?

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

New York subways risky for drunks

A new study shows that nearly half of those who died accidentally in subways tested positive for alcohol consumption.

And our own internal survey suggests maybe ninety percent of those lived there.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

"Our job is to hold him to account," Whitaker said, adding that he thinks "we're going to have to get tougher."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter followed up: "We need the Sam Donaldsons of the world."

Which showy breast beating surely does not involve the story below it on Politico's home page:

ASNE proposes name change; remove 'newspapers'

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Johnson Controls Inc., one of the auto industry's biggest parts makers, handed in its 2009 outlook Tuesday. It was not pretty.

The company predicted only 9.3 million cars and light trucks will be sold in the United States next year. That's down from 16 million in 2007 and about half of the nearly 18 million cars sold in the go-go year 1999....

How bad will it get? If U.S. car sales drop to 9 million vehicles next year, it will be the first time -- with the exception of the World War II years -- the number of cars sent to the scrap yard will top the number of new cars sold.

Economists call it auto deflation.

I call it a depr -- DEEP RECESSION.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

HARDY HAR HAR:

The arrest of New York money manager Bernard Madoff claims one of the most active supporters of criminal justice reform in the U.S.

The Manhattan-based JEHT Foundation (pronounced ‘Jet’) said yesterday that it stopped making grants and will close in January. In 2006 alone, it gave away $26.4 million, according to its most recent publicly available tax return.

“They are one of the best progressive foundations around,” said New York lawyer William Zabel, a partner with Schulte Roth & Zabel and a director of the foundation. “There are so many sad stories out there, but this is one of the worst.”

TRANSLATION: A victory for con-SER-va-tives, despite the defeat for con-SER-va-tism.

Posted 2:36 PM by Gene

I'm a knee-jerk conservative, E. J., and I know what to do!

And I'm a knee-jerk liberal, Ramesh, and I know what to do!

But are you sure this constant pointless head-butting without a helmet is really a meeting of the minds?

Just so long as the readers feel our pain.

Posted 2:33 PM by Gene

Okay, Fed -- now what?

Posted 12:34 PM by Gene

Repeat after me: Bernie was vermin...and a
DEMOCRAT!!!!!

One more like this and we'll have to find you a nickname.

Posted 12:30 PM by Gene

Why is it when news hacks do think pieces on bad behavior they often sound like excuses?

Hope YOU didn't know anybody who invested in BERNIE, Andy.

Posted 12:21 PM by Gene

Well here's some good news for us spoilsports:

"Mamma Mia!" Becomes Highest-Grossing Film Ever Released in the U.K.

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

As was widely trumpeted, Detroit's newspapers are scaling back drastically. The good news is they're innovating. (Pfffffffffffffft!) The newspaper biz is in dire shape and will likely get worse, and that is no good for even the most press-contemptuous of us (although in Detroit it's magnified by the genius of our auto makers). But it can't get better being just a Web service, nor by disseminating more of the drivel it dispenses now.

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

Madoff boasted to regulators about profits

From whom? For what?

Accused money manager also advised government on scam artists

He was the expert.

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

No keyboards in the future?
A survey predicts that by 2012 keyboards will become "quaint relics."

Just like paper!

Posted 9:03 PM by Gene

Another unbiased, non-partisan news hack discloses his party affiliation.

I give Jay two years before boredom sets in, then it's on to a high profile job at a think tank. It's surely not back to a newsrag -- if such a creature still exists.

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

In the three months since Lehman people have second guessed the thing until they've keeled over from exhaustion, but is it possible this depr -- DEEP RECESSION was going to happen anyway, and that Lehman is only an excuse for the Wall Street Casino's fatal flaws?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

Hasbro Films has dropped its suit against the makers of Scrabulous and can now control the universe with its upcoming rendition of MONOPOLY.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Which is funnier?

"National Lampoon" Inc. engaging in stock manipulation? or

The Golfing Machine perfunctorily apologizing to Wrong-Way for his caddy?

There's surely humor in both jokes. "National Lampoon" must be the eighth or ninth version of the one-hit wonder that has lasted this long only because someone thinks the declining proceeds of Animal House must be worth something, anything; its successive owners invented the term "penny stock" before anyone knew what it was. It's in the same league as porno stocks only the sex is simulated. As for TGM and Wrong-Way, it is quite obvious they despise each other, especially after that amusing tale at the U. S. Open; but then they have plenty to be despicable about, TGM being an efficient, soulless, RICH piece of automation (at least before it broke down); Wrong-Way for being an absolute ninny with no discernible sense of humor. Really those two guys deserve each other -- and golf deserves them...and golf deserves fewer sponsors for being the Madoff's favorite.

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

And now, as last posted two years ago, another of my chestnuts roasting on an open fire too long:

WHY ARE POP CHRISTMAS SONGS INTOLERABLE?

The standard explanations won't do -- that the Christmas season's one long shopping spree, and the platitudes of the songs are the platitudes of corrupt businessmen; that they're overexposed and inescapable, especially now with FOREGROUND MUZAK. Certainly the notion of America enveloped in DOOM and GLOOM and ENNUI won't do; Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg wrote their very sour takes on Christmas in the late fifties, before our favorite assassination. No, the best explanation is that the songs are FLAT-OUT BAD. Christ was born to provide fodder for Lawrence Welk. Consider that none of the truly top Broadway songwriters ever wrote a hit Christmas tune -- save Irving Berlin; the holiday perfectly fit a lyrical style that at its worst echoes a rhyming dictionary ("Where the treetops glisten,/And children listen,/Stand beside her,/And guide her," etc., etc., etc.). The songs also brought out the most crass in the record industry as it entered its fat years in the fifties, a time when Mitch Miller thought it cute to have Ol' Blue sing a duet with a dog. You can't think of Meredith Willson's utterly corny "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" without the cute pizzicato strings and the cute flutes and the cute xylophone and Johnny Mathis with a two-second reverb and a clothespin on his larynx. (When Willson wrote his Christmas musical Here's Love twelve years later his depleted inspiration made him re-use it, proof that the holiday does not bring out the best in musicians.) Even the very few good Christmas tunes suffer from guilt by association. Arthur Fiedler turned Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" into an exciting, bracing mini-tone poem, but everywhere else Mitchell Parish's lyrics kick in, with their fakery of farmers and pumpkin pie and Currier and Ives, and it's back to the land of hack arrangements by Ralph Carmichael and the ooohing and aaahing of the angelic chorus. "The Christmas Song" (not great, but pretty good) marks the beginning of Nat "King" Cole's transformation from a jazzman of the first rank to an automatic molasses dispenser. Elvis, who frequently performed bad songs at half-mast, was the perfect pop Christmas singer, oozing the drivel out like a particularly unctuous undertaker soothing a dead body's relative, or a relative's dead body. And let us not forget the KIDDIE TUNES written for television though it didn't yet exist, sound-alike songs like "Frosty the Snowman" (you can hear the songwriters cutting a deal on the tune) and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," whose title character originated at a now-defunct department-store chain (Montgomery Ward). One of the great mysteries of popular music is how Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots survived a piece of junk like "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" to write the immortal "You Go To My Head"; by rights their next tune should have been written by Bob Merrill. (Look up the tune in ASCAP's ACE directory and you find a veritable army of the tiresome acts that buried it: the Ames Brothers, Brenda Lee, Ray Conniff, Liberace, Guy Lombardo, the Mills Brothers -- and yes, I include Bruce.) While it is true that familiarity breeds contempt, the contempt starts early when those familiar notes in your brain are so contemptible.

P. S. There are exceptions: something like "The Chipmunks' Christmas Song" is cheesy, but nostalgic fun. And I have a weakness for Sing Along's seminal renditions (can I type for Stale.com or what?) as The Gang knew perfectly just how corny it was, and didn't try to escape it. But when ACTS must add MELISMAS to the "traditional" songs they ensure they're unlistenable too.

P. P. S. at 1:38 today: I wasn't quite right about "the top Broadway songwriters"; I should have mentioned the superb Jule Styne, who alas with the equally superb Sammy Cahn wrote two top $MA$ nuisances, but the first came before Styne went to Broadway, and the second went to Ol' Blue, with no thought of it being a nuisance.

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

If I get $100 million in compensation, the thinking goes, it is because 'I deserve it.' There is no discussion of the role of circumstance, luck or market failure. It is the type of thinking that has resulted in literally hundreds of billions of dollars being transferred away from organizational resources and into the personal bank accounts of CEOs, and is now bringing capitalism to its knees....

[T]o effect a real change in the outlook of America's execs, we'll need to instill in the next generation of business leaders a sense of social purpose and broader understanding of their role as custodians of society's economic resources, rather than the very limited Friedmanist view that the selfish pursuit of maximizing profits leads to the best of all possible worlds.

FORBESLIST.COM?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

Though he takes the usual time to remind the rabble that I, Christopher Hitchens, wear my atheism on my sleeve, and thus refer to Christ as the Dear Leader, it would be far more apt to give the distinction to Santa Claus, with the elves, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer serving as his Politburo.

Posted 12:13 PM by Gene

Christie's is having a SALE!

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 12:10 PM by Gene

And this from the British Socialist Worker Online:

Bernard Madoff: a Wall Street crook

But aren't they all?

Posted 12:06 PM by Gene

It figures:

Madoff touted 'advanced technology' to his clients/victims

Posted 12:00 PM by Gene

And we should resist the temptation to laugh (I haven't) when we realize the slime Madoff left human wreckage behind, something we haven't heard too much off midst all the sexy names.

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

Walter Noel’s Fairfield Greenwich Group would have collected about $135 million in fees this year for peddling Bernard Madoff’s investing acumen to clients from South America, the Middle East and Asia.

TRANSLATON: The sucke...investors should get something back, however minuscule -- if the lawyers' fees don't get there first.

Posted 11:49 AM by Gene

Is California too unwieldy to govern?

Is AMERICA too unwieldy to govern?

Posted 11:42 AM by Gene

More good news: We're holding our noses at Wall Street, and now finally we sense the reek from the gambl -- GAMING biz. If the depr -- deep recession does us any good it will be to shrink the industry and loosen its tentacles from our pockets.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

Which is less green: Shrek or the box office after Ben's review?

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

GOODTHINGS ENTERTAINMENT's affiliates sound not too thrilled at being stuck with Jut-Jaw in prime time for three to five years. They have to deal with his jokes.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

Elie Wiesel's foundation, a charity started by LUKE SPIELBERG...

How does anyone trust anyone after this?

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

The bad news: More people listen to radio than suspected.

The GOOD news: More people listen to less radio than suspected.

(Via ArtsJournal)

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

MORT ZUCK!

Posted 10:35 PM by Gene

Reading this latest boneheaded LALA commentary on how to "fix" the Os-CAR®s (and we thought being boneheaded on the boneheaded Os-CAR®s was Mogul's Friend's property! Wrong as usual), we ask, Pvt. Zell, why didn't you declare CHAPTER 7?

Posted 6:51 PM by Gene

We have NOT forgotten Sen. Laut. Indeed the sad thing about this story is that most of the victims were Jewish -- or perhaps we should say "Jewish", as so many Jews are religious in name only (I'm half-Jewish myself) -- and if they were not observant (I'd guess many of them leaned for) they still have enough of the old ethnic identification to stick with a fellow Jew. This disaster has done far more damage than a covey of perfessers screaming for disinvestment.

Posted 6:41 PM by Gene

A former record producer shows off his advanced degrees by saying holiday music stinks in as many words as possible, and as vaguely as possible, meaning SLIME'S NEW! IMPROVED!! JOURNALS!!! may not be as good as the Romys say.

(Via ArtsJournal, which MUST link to these things)

Posted 3:56 PM by Gene

These last several days I've been overcome by another of those songs that will not leave my head. This one is called "My Heart Goes Crazy", and it has a strange CV: the GREAT Burke and Van Heusen wrote it for a 1946 Rank Organisation extravaganza called London Town; despite featuring the 13-year-old Petula Clark it bombed at the box office (nor did it do better stateside seven years later under that song's title); somebody sang it VERY flat. About two months after its release The Modernaires recorded it, with a surprisingly powerful orchestra led by Mitchell Ayres, who accompanied too much glop for Perry Como. Hardly anyone remembers The Modernaires now -- that was Glenn Miller's vocal group. After his death it might have had more success had Columbia's A&R folk hadn't stuck it with some...rank novelty tunes. We can be stupid and say these folks channeled the future Blue Eyes but he is there; then again Alec Wilder wrote that every one of Van Heusen's songs has the unmistakable sound of a pretty good jazz rhythm section. In short, it is a superb track, but because it's from 62 years ago no one would know. Compare it to that whatisit singing on the soundtrack album and you easily behold how a hit song can become tomorrow's archives. I can't stop thinking of it as the title tune to some sort of retro Jayne Mansfield - Frank Tashlin dumb-blonde farce that would have the moviegoers floating out on air, just my latest hopeless daydream.

Posted 3:05 PM by Gene

We will assume Dubya's bodyguards knew what was in those shoes.

Posted 2:59 PM by Gene

Irwin Kellner -- chief economist of Cheapie Marketwatch!

Now that is embarrassing.

Posted 10:13 AM by Gene

Jenny is auditioning for MS. TRAVERS's place in the Web. She's even MORE excited today because the SCUM MADOFF donated to DEMOCRATS. That he was SCUM does NOT seem to enter into her equation. Red-Light Schumer's far, FAR worse. Why? Because he overlooked the SCUM for MONEY. Wait a second. Scum's only a criminal because he donated to DEMOCRATS. If he'd donated to that buffoon Mitch we'd stay smugly silent. Why should we get all hot-and-bothered over campaign donations?

Jenny, when was your last vacation?

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

Shucks, here's very bad news: Prince "$10 Million" Alwaleed has lost $4 billion. Geez, Princie, all you have to do is shut off your spigot and you get it back!

Or do you?

Who told you to invest in Citigroup, even with our largesse?

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

Oops! I think JonBoy's courage has evaporated! Maybe he got second thoughts on having launched that nuclear option. He's about to call this whistle blower who gave The Paper of Re-CORD a story a hero but then says, in the LAST SENTENCE:

Sometimes the thinnest of lines separates the criminal from the hero.

And sometimes the thinnest of lines separates fact from fiction -- as we know too well from Hitler's diaries, toilet-bound Korans and ZEITGEIST.

Hey Jonny! Work hard enough and you may not HAVE to cut the rate base!

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

OH -- it seems we may hear a little about the scum Madoff from con-SER-va-tives: he gave to DEMOCRATS.

Unlike Republican donors who usually get headlines something like “GOP Donor Snared In Criminality,” Madoff, as Democratic donor, barely earned a media mention.

And we're sure if he gave to REPUBLICANS you'd sweep that eccentric uncle under the rug TOO.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

How to $ELL mutual funds:

Bold: The mutual fund industry is one of the most inefficient I have ever seen. Putnam Fund for Growth & Income, a large value fund, has been in the bottom 5% of all funds in its category for the past decade, yet still has almost $6 billion invested in it. If it were a horse, it would already be glue.

Glue? That horse is Secretariat!

Wiener: Can you spell L-O-A-D? As in a 5.75% front-end and a 25 bp 12b-1. Putnam funds are not bought--they are sold.

They take it in the front end and pull the investors out through the rear. Apt terminology.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

And we can expect both kinds of useless partisanship to condone their favorite crimes. The liberal condones criminal acts in the name of a righteous cause; the conservative condones criminal acts in the name of profit. We heard little from liberals about the near-terrorist acts against Prop 8's supporters; conservatives have been conspicuously mute about Madoff. Both sides have their useful criminal idiots.

Posted 4:47 PM by Gene

We laugh at all the musclebound know-it-all Richie Riches who "invested" zillions with the vermin Madoff, but the amusement should cease when we realize financial crimes are growing bigger and more brazen. What is to prevent some genius with a computer from swiping the net worth of America? Yes it took the scum Madoff years to insinuate himself into the wallets of the rich, and vacuum out their contents; but we may no longer have the luxury of the big-time scamsters being outwardly civil.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

Investors in CHICKENLAND: $4 BILLION!

And our favorite PR guy Rog comes through again:

Madoff (which is pronounced "made-off," as in, made off with all our money)....

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

The numbers on those two political Os-CAR® nominees say once these things open wider, the audience will disappear. The modern political movie is but another form of media onanism -- and who really wants to see movie studios engage in self-abuse, especially when they get their jollies abusing us?

Posted 1:04 PM by Gene

The world may not have Mike Royko anymore (for which it is infinitely poorer), but it does have Jonny "Scalp-Scratchin'" Alter. Bleeeeeah!

Posted 12:59 PM by Gene

Norm Braman, a Florida car dealer and once-owner of the Philadelphia Eagles....

And a good chunk of Palm Beach, Florida (probably not including PILLHEAD, alas).

Plus the scum Madoff was a pioneer in social networking!

Two of his investors said that among his clients, Mr. Madoff was considered a money-management legend; they would joke that if Mr. Madoff was a fraud, he'd take down half the world with him.

He may yet.

P. S. The REFORMED Henry Blodget says lots of his sucke -- INVESTORS poured in the money because they thought he specialized in INSIDER TRADING, which would definitely make him a Republican hero.

OR:

For years and years I've heard people say that [Bernie's] investment performance was too good to be true. The returns were too steady -- like GE earnings under Welch -- and too high given the supposed strategy. (Emphasis added)

And LEGENDARY was LEGENDARY too!

(Links via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 8:20 PM by Gene

O. J. may not have had the money to pay off the Goldmans, but he had enough money to pay a witness at his burglary trial.

Still think he's innocent of the murder -- HACKS?

Posted 3:10 PM by Gene

The New York Mets' owners invested with the scum MADOFF! HA! HA! HA!

Aren't you glad you have friends at CITIGROUP!

Posted 12:26 PM by Gene

No "HIP" comedian emceeing the Os-CAR®S this year? Now the A-CA-DE-MY® is begging its viewers to STAY AWAY!

Or maybe they'll have him tell jokes just in case.

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

ANGER at NRO, and not from cat dander:

BUSH IS CAVING!! UNBELIEVABLE!!!!! (Unbelievable overemphasis added)

What's a press secretary supposed to say? "White House to Detroit -- Drop Dead?" I don't want a bailout but I don't want our domestic auto business to implode -- although with Dubya you know he's capable of the craven, expedient thing.

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

Here's good news: Video-game sales went up!

Video games and MICKEY D's will save America!

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 10:27 AM by Gene

OOOOH, Eddie said some not-nice words about The One's handling of Mr. Naughty Word!

You know what presidents-elect do to senior Delaware senators, don't you?

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

BULLETIN FROM CHEAPIE MARKETWATCH!

UAW CALLS ON FED, TREASURY TO SAVE AUTO INDUSTRY

TRANSLATION: SAVE OUR JOBS BANK!

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

Jo-NAH's getting a CAT! Pffffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

[T]he first step toward resolving the war in Afghanistan is to lay down the law in both Islamabad and Kabul. The message should be the same in both cases: The unsupervised splurge of American aid is over. The Pakistanis will have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade. There are plenty of other reforms necessary — the international humanitarian effort is a shabby, self-righteous mess; some of our NATO allies aren't carrying their share of the military burden — but the war will remain a bloody stalemate at best as long as jihadis come across the border from Pakistan and the drug trade flourishes....

Before he sends another U.S. soldier off to die or be maimed in Afghanistan, President-elect Obama needs to deliver the blunt message to the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan that we will no longer tolerate their complicity in the deaths of Americans and our allies, a slaughter that began on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and continues to this day.

You know ANONYMOUS, if you weren't the bomb-throwing tantrum-spewing mud-flinging type, we'd almost believe your on-site reporting.