Posted 3:18 PM by Gene

The "government" says $25 billion.

Your guess or my guess is as good as the "government's" guess as to what it will cost to bail out zillionaires.

Posted 3:07 PM by Gene

We wonder why news hacks do so much of what they insist is reporting. For a advertorial like this all they have to do is rewrite an official press release -- and what can assure a reader that some typist hasn't done exactly that? Any business story with the words "declined to say" might as well be a press release.

Posted 3:01 PM by Gene

A group of highly partisan Democrats says the head of the GOP ticket will draw women to the Lord.

A group of highly partisan Republicans says The Lord Goddess Oprah is snubbing the head of the GOP ticket.

Yes, Brit. Poison.

Posted 1:43 PM by Gene

And now Pakistan has a caretaker president, until another strongman or worse comes along.

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

Having made an intentional accidental hit out of La Boheme Jr. twelve years ago, The Paper of Re-CORD's scribblers don't want to bury the corpse. Nearly every staffer at that pulp pile had something to do with it. They seem to take its closing personally. Even Anthony must admit the "phenomenon" must "start to fade", but with all the sympathy notes they've been writing for the soon-to-be deceased one is hard pressed not to believe they won't start huddling at the theater awaiting its resurrection. Which reminds us: they thought KERNGERSHWIN HAMMERSTEIN'S SMASH was forever too -- well, fifteen years, anyway.

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

James Fallows, in the kind of news-hack insight that typically doesn't emerge as such, says that in her oratory the top of the Republican ticket resembles PILLHEAD. That's no doubt why she got such a rise from the infomercial, and why NRO practically abandoned its scruples to adore her; but this strikes me as not good news, for it means yet another cheap, bloviating partisan, and perhaps the analogies to Dan QUAIL -- QUAAYL -- QUAYLE are not altogether unjustified.

Posted 6:32 PM by Gene

The PAUL DRECK of consultants whose name inspired a holiday has made up a number that fantasy football costs American business $9 billion a year in "productivity". It also made up these numbers: "[S]couring injury reports or making trades...occup[ies] workers for more than an hour a week!!!!! Fantasy football aficionados spend more than a half hour a day just thinking about their teams!!!!!" (Unproductive overemphasis added.) We will gladly say fantasy sports are D-U-M DUM but even the intrepid reporter who wrote this column admits the fans of fantasy football would be wasting their time elsewise, like maybe playing solitaire. We doubt fantasy leagues of any kind have interfered with "productivity" growth -- though they've certainly made an unnecessarily well-known consulting firm an unneeded boost of its own.

Posted 6:29 PM by Gene

The government's running out of money to repair roads -- but NOT running out of money to BAIL OUT ZILLIONAIRES.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

When a Brit Hume can refer to the product of infomercials as "partisan poison", he understates it.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Robert Giroux, a partner in a prestigious publishing house bearing his name, now just another imprint of a German firm that owns newspapers, has died. His CV includes Edmund Wilson, T. S. Eliot, the American edition of 1984, and an honorary mention for J. D. Salinger; no doubt today at Holtzzzzzzzbrrrrrinckk they'd call those demerits. How apt that Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote his obituary; for a long time he was one of the leading logrollers among the Paper of Re-CORD's book reviewers, and I guess logrolling is what in the publishing biz they once called "gentlemanly."

Posted 2:10 PM by Gene

Well, she was cute in those days -- wherever she went to college.

Somehow though I can't imagine John Adams in that get up -- or Abigail, even.

By the way, am I the only one to notice the T-shirt, bad punctuation and all?

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

Two zillionaires talkin'. That shore is a great way to sell XP ME, BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWLMER!

How many decades ago did these two zillionaires last grace a shoe store?

It's apparently just a "teaser ad," Brad Brooks, corporate VP-Windows consumer product marketing at Microsoft, said in a video interview on Microsoft's press site, about the first spot in a closely watched $300 million campaign. It is meant to "get the conversation going."

Just like the conversations you get going at SLASHDOT?

As for the ad, it's one of those cutesy-pie-weird types that's supposed to make us not notice it's two zillionaires talking.

Two-and-a-half stars and many admiring comments from the You Tube audience. Once again, they're smarter than their media betters.

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

We can imagine what would happen if we tried to find a Russian lady today, but that doesn't prevent us from posting this ad from FRONTPAGE!!!!!, even if the lady isn't Russian.

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

Doesn't business have too many friends in the business -- especially the media biz, which has too many friends as is?

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Altria Group goes from one kind of cancer to another!

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

Last night the hacks' favorite group of practical jokers heckled Boobs.

Do you suppose they had press passes?

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

REALLY, ASSPress, I think the last person who needs our sympathy is OJ.

Posted 8:13 AM by Gene

The rich, they are different from you and me. Especially when they're Congressmen.

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

You don't suppose with all those bonds our friends the Chinese couldn't throw us for a loop, could you?

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

Well, I guess he's all right but...I wish he were a Republican.

Posted 6:45 PM by Gene

The owners of the world's tallest building in the ugly-starchitecture capital Dubai instructed their mouthpieces of the world press to write another irritating ad saying it just got taller.

Who'll rent it?

It had been due for completion in the bustling city state at the end of 2008, but Emaar said in June that "finishing touches" had pushed back the date until September next year.

As in a few sucker financiers?

Remember the Ryugyong!

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

Another excuse from the mooVEE extruders and their press agents: too many moVEES. "600 pics a year -- no WAY can we handle that much product." Somehow the biz handled it in its golden age, a cutthroat-competitive age where numerous genres battled one another: westerns, war movies, women's pictures, comedies, costume epics, musicals, horror movies, crime dramas -- not to mention the attractions before the picture: two-reel comedies, shorts animated and unanimated, newsreels; and let us not forget the moVEE biz was stratified into A and B levels, which surely had their blood feuds. (That ended long ago; now we have B movies with A budgets.) But today there's television, right? I submit radio had at least as much original programming as television today -- more so as the boob screen's so abandoned itself to reality and sports. That doesn't explain where the audience went. And it won't come back when the moVEE biz has stratified again into tentpoles and other lures for stupid teenagers and easily led parents, and moVEES for cri-TICS. 400 moVEES for how many ad-blurbists? Just as the public knows the infomercials by heart, so it knows AHThouse pictures by heart: "hard-R" "adult" slogs with lots of sex 'n' violence 'n' pretentious brooding. And under the guidance of ad-blurbists the moVEE extruders are strait-jacketing the strait jacket. When PEOPLE WARNER shut down its two AHThouse units (which we submit have never been so called before by a news hack -- a rare brain spasm from Lauren, no doubt) it only affirmed the biz was making too many CRI-TIC-ALLY ACCLAIMED bowel movements for nobody. And these oafs can't blame marketing; somehow the 500 pictures a year in the golden age got seen without TV ads. Moreover that we're now stuck with tentpoles until hell freezes over is partly a consequence of the biz' pleasing so many cri-TICS: ten money-losing AHThouse pics lose as much money as one tentpole, so why make ten AHThouse pics? No, this biz increasingly can't excrete product to save its hide, as witness the five-percent attendance decline so far this year -- a decline that might have been much worse if KURT COBAIN hadn't died. The only saving grace for the FILLUM biz is that so long as lawyers would be moguls, and see immortality in burning money, we'll have moVEES -- even if they empty out the popcorn restaurants, as well they might.

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)

Posted 3:02 PM by Gene

The extreme disaster of this week's soap opera is that it has effectively caused news hacks to recuse themselves from reporting that GOP SLEAZE STILL RULES.

Posted 2:55 PM by Gene

Before the megapundits can get any more excited, here is a list of all the shows last week that ranked above Thursday's edition of the Democratic infomercial on network television:

1. Deal Or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 7.3/12; 2. America's Got Talent (Tuesday), NBC, 6.9/11; 3. America's Got Talent (Wednesday), NBC, 6.5/11; 4. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 5.8/9; 5. 60 Minutes, CBS, 5.4/12; 6. NCIS, CBS, 5.1/8; 7. America's Toughest Jobs, NBC, 4.6/7; 7. Criminal Minds, CBS, 4.6/7; 7. House, Fox, 4.6/7....

Meaning a lot of people were more content to watch fifth-rate pablum than to view the twentieth-rate pablum they already knew backwards and frontwards, whatever the speeches' BRILLIANCE.

And before the MS. TRAVERSES get excited, 305,000,000 - 37,200,000 = a lot of people who watched NEITHER INFOMERCIAL -- and who may STILL vote.

Posted 11:45 AM by Gene

On Wednesday afternoon, a few short hours before Sarah Palin was to take the stage for her big speech, Jeff Greenfield, the senior political correspondent for CBS News, sized up the Alaskan Governor.

His mind turned to cinema. "I'm trying to think of all the cultural examples about feisty women from nowhere who show up and beat the guys," said Mr. Greenfield. He did a mental IMDB. There was Judy Holliday in "The Solid Gold Cadillac." Sally Fields in "Norma Rae." Geena Davis in "Commander in Chief." Dolly Parton in "Nine to Five."

Can't some megapundits stop THINKING? Or haven't they ever STARTED?

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

Hmmm:

	Sarah Palin - Wednesday, September 03, 2008 @ 10:45:36 PM
	Doesn't have to do very much do get cheers from this crowd, but they are definitely on her side throughout her discussion of her family. Posted By: James Antle

	Palin's Speech - Wednesday, September 03, 2008 @ 11:19:02 PM
	The media spent five days lowering the bar. She cleared it easily. Posted By: John Tabin

Could it be I was right -- to an audience of three?

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

The other day we mentioned Michael Feinstein and his "research." Cavils aside (most not having to do with him), The Big V gave his act a pretty good write-up -- of which one sentence particularly boldfaced itself:

Band is topnotch, filled with some of New York's best players (many on leave from orchestra pits around town). Seventeen musicians is, as Feinstein points out, more than you'll hear at some Broadway hits (including "Jersey Boys," "In the Heights," "Chicago," "Mamma Mia" and "Hairspray").

We don't want to think back to when New York had far more musicians employed than now, and far more bands, and far more great music. In the late thirties Count Basie packed his band into the veritable equivalent of a broom closet in Midtown -- we can imagine how THAT sounded. Now it's minimalist theme parks, and AudioAnimatronics.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: We LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUVE CHEAP CHANNEL, and we have an excuse -- a very LENGTHY excuse.

This is why the press must expunge Noonanism from every last nook and cranny. What concerns this wonk and his intern is not the safety of Minot, North Dakota's citizens; it's the wealth of PILLHEAD and CHEAP CHANNEL's bondholders. I don't want the Fairness Doctrine back but dammit can't a little honesty help? A little DIShonesty mightily hurt BS.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

Okay, I guess it worked, but let us remember pundits don't (or shouldn't) win elections, the people will, and we've had nothing but "GREAT!" speeches for several weeks, and now we have one more "GREAT!" speech, and then the voters must trundle off to the polls, wondering why they always face these Hobson's choices.

One more thing: we're not voting for vice-president.

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Peggy "BS" Noonan wears two masks. Through the one mask she is the good, stalwart, lockstep Republican, propounding the cause through THICK candidates and thin. Through the other is a thoroughgoing insider cynic, despising the same people she touts in print, sticking the middle finger to her readers, boldly dishonest. The thing is if BS believed the election were "over" she'd have been better off confessing to it on the strength of her convictions, whatever those are; now she comes off as just another zillionaire Beltway two-timing sleazeball, who can't and shouldn't any longer be trusted. Frauds like BS make us wish the whole blasted press would go bankrupt, even as troubles like The New York Sun's demonstrate the mortal dangers of our wishes.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

We are sorry to learn The New York Sun is in danger of folding. We need more news outlets; but the Web explosion has in many ways shrunk our choices; all the little guys have given an increasingly bigger voice to the big guys (and especially the biggest of them all, the ASSPress); the few new outlets are not claiming their audiences. It was a fool's errand to run a new broadsheet in the world's most concentrated and stubborn media market; but the Sun's Web site has shown it can do a creditable job, and we hope at least that part of the outfit can survive, catering to a small but involved readership.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

Chrysler showing off plug-in hybrids to dealers

Does the THREE-HEADED DOG intend to make them -- or just market them?

Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

The Dems had a speaker named Barney Smith — he was one of the ordinary Joes, the sad sacks, lined up to speak at the convention. He said he wanted a president who would put “Barney Smith before Smith Barney.” A cute line. But what does that line tell us? For the thousandth time: Any individual or company having to do with money or finance has to be a hate object.

The con-SER-va-tive campaign to make zillionaires jes like us has suffered another setback.

God knows your red blooded news hack would like to make a thing about this story -- because EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL was a friend of CHENEY. It is not enough that this is a comprehensive sleazeball.

(Via USAOKAY.com!!!!!'s On Deadline)

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

On a day like this, Mike Kinsley's Stale.com's gotta be unreadable. Let's see how unreadable: Well, Jeff "MENSA" Greenfield leads off another session of his patented deep thinking like this:

Yes, it was exciting for us political types to play Al Roker and figure out the potential impact of Gustav on the campaign.

And he caps it off by waxing nostalgic over three BRILLIANT acceptance speeches, which again reminds us his blithering twaddle over the SLICKSTER in '88 helped elect HIM.

That's enough unreadable for me!

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Armey: 'Bubba vote' to hurt Obama

Hey Capo, all those votes on all those zillions in earmarks when you ran the show into the ground might hurt YOU.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Well, if it makes us feel any better, Henry Wallace's veepee running mate -- and his family -- sang after he accepted his nomination in 1948.

We somehow suppose Boobs would like Sarah to do something of the same thing, if different.

P. S. "When You Were Sweet Sixteen." SIC!!!!!

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

We see SL bombed last night, meaning he's spent too much time exchanging platitudes with Drunken Slob.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Commodities bubble burns big investment funds

Does that mean they're not speculators any more?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

We're NOT Gekko Kudlow, but can you say...scapegoats?

And what makes it worse is that they're probably guilty as charged.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

"I believe I'd fire any reporter who wasted a chance to question Gov. Sarah Palin by asking a single question about pregnancies, DUIs or thuggish boyfriends," writes McClatchy vice president/news Howard Weaver.

MNI went up sixteen cents today -- to $3.55!

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Meantime a scuffle broke out at NRO (and seems to have been tamped down) over the BF being at the infomercial. Here you think the age can't get any tackier, and it does.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

I'm TIRED of hearing this story, but here's betting Sarah drives her party NUTS!!!! and has a "Who am I?" moment at the same time. We can't imagine a woman politician making a "BIG SPEECH!!!!" without sounding shrill. This is true of SPEAKER BABS and HILLARY!!!!! and we wouldn't be surprised if it's true of Sarah.

We'd rather hear the boss bloviate.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

Michael Wolff, the greatest media-CEO hanger-on this side of Ken Felatta -- don't they hang on to the same boss? -- says SLIME!!!!!!!!! will buy The Paper of Record. With justice the markets will reward Him the way they've rewarded Him for buying Dow Jones.

At what point does a pile of assets become simply a pile?

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Our first thought about this story was, how much did Coke overpay? That was our second, third and fourth thoughts too.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

It must be nice to be politically correct and shaft your policyholders out of billions.

Once State Farm was a fine, humble company that sponsored Jack Benny. Now it's just another corporate cretin.

The LPGA's deputy commissioner is talking "dialogue", meaning this is finished. Do you suppose this was a way of drumming up dubious publicity for a dubious sports league?

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

When is a turncoat not a turncoat? When he's Lincoln "The Wimp" Chafee and you're a Democrat, or when he's Sen. Morals and you're a Republican. We've had enough of the former's whining and the latter's IMUSING to wish both these turncoats would TURN AWAY.

By the way, no SORE LOSERMAN tonight, huh FREE REPUBLIC?

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

In a story that's attracted tremendous and justifiable interest in England but of course not here, some possibly fraudulent millionaire killed his wife and daughter, burned down his house, then killed himself. We cannot try to find reason in insanity but at least the man had a devoted wife, a good daughter, and more money than most of us. In that he was blessed. That he may not have had scruples makes it another matter.

Posted 6:44 PM by Gene

Gonzales won't face charges for mishandling info

Shucks, I guess you can't jail a man for being a doofus.

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

Also in the precincts of literature, that Peter Drucker is making a comeback (so USAOKAY!!!!! sez) three years after his death says that junior executives still want to be like his disciple LEGENDARY WELCH, and think they can read their way to riches, when likely their eyeballs will drop out first.

Whatever happened to TOM PETERS?

Posted 6:27 PM by Gene

Elsewhere via AHTSJournal, The Paper of Re-CORD says censorship may have made Alexander Solzhenitsyn a stronger writer. We wonder whether they mean editing (for that's what it sounds like); and in any case you will not tame a force of nature whatever his MO.

We wish we had read, or rather had the inclination to read, Solzhenitsyn. We suppose not, now -- he has passed into the realm of history, and the classroom -- but we can still admire his courage, and his legacy.

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

Once again BIGPRESS beats its head against a wall over the decline in the cri-TIC-al community, and the eleventh head-banging graf is this:

But the future is still online, where a younger generation clusters around music blogs such as Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan and discovers artists such as Colbie Caillat, Ingrid Michaelson, and Sara Bareilles through MySpace rather than radio or reviews.

We have not heard of the sites and we definitely have not heard of these geniuses -- and we probably hardly ever will. We have heard of Pops, and Ol' Blue Eyes, and Elvis, and we say, we repeat it again and again, that the decline of the cri-TICS is only a symptom of a decline in the culture -- something, as with the decline of the outlets they type for, these withered snobs refuse to admit.

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

We wish we could say something of Jerry Reed, but on these matters we must plead our usual ignorance -- as with the VOICE OF FILLUM. The latter did post a nice self-effacing take of himself on YouTube, and we suspect he was a good guy, like many in his biz; although the fact remains he was THE VOICE OF FILLUM during what everyone except movie ad-blurbists and stupid teenagers must concede has been the worst epoch for cinema since Edison invented sprockets.

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

One should never trust con-SER-va-tive Web sites during a Republican convention (and the mirror opposite of course is true), but at least from their take BIGMEDIA's having a nervous breakdown. Gov. Palin as Caligula's horse is just one manifestation; race wars are another. We can't be sure why it should be so upset, exactly; it can still get out the vote with its adjectives. But (and we hate to repeat these numbers -- AGAIN) MNI at $3.39 and GCI at $17.38 would seem to show its power is somewhat abated.

What currently puzzles us about Boobs's pick is that she is occasioning the kind of happy hysteria in Republicans that she's occasioning in a different way with news hacks. This is a variation of that TNR typist saying TERRIFIC!!!!! to Four-Score. It's possible she will be a TERRIFIC!!!!! campaigner. We could have wished for a more inspirational pick; but a campaign starring such titans as Four-Score is hardly inspirational. Indeed we should ask whether nothing's at work here but plain old hermetically-sealed delusion.

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: G000,000,000,000,000GLE's getting into the Yahoo! business. That'll get it back to nosebleed territory?

We would say when it comes to browsers the Web may have largely made up its mind. Firefox got to twenty percent because people had it with Bugmeister's bugs -- and it's been a long haul to get to twenty percent -- and Firefox is now only incrementally better. It was also very much the underdog. Why people would want to go to a menace just as big as MSFT for a browser is beyond us. It would have to be very, very good -- and, face it, the Dalai Lamas of Mountain View just hit upon a very, very good idea a decade ago, and drove it to Mars, just as the Bugmeister drove His bad ideas to control of 27 universes. And we wonder if the Goog may be coasting.

P. S. We just thought up another reason this may not work.

Posted 11:20 AM by Gene

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia will respond calmly to an increase in NATO ships in the Black Sea in the aftermath of the short war with Georgia, but promised that "there will be an answer."

CALM?!? WHAT'S HIS IDEA OF CALM?!?!?!?!?

Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

Yes, I can believe Sleepy Gonzales was at least capable of fumbling through classified documents and then saying, "Where are they?"

The miracle is he didn't lose anything -- yet.

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

Yes, we know the story about You-Know-Who's upcoming grandchild, and if The Messiah's response means anything it's that many SUPERLIBERALS are far less tolerant than the born-agains they always love to lecture.

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

And speaking of Wasserman, who is unlamented for a reason, we have only paid attention to this continuing soap opera regarding yet another comic-book movie (siggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh) as background noise, but that Mr. Bew-KES and SLIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- and possibly SUMNER and Little Jeffy! -- intend to fire so many bullets at the opposition's lawyers shows an industry arsenaled with blanks. Really, how different is one comic-book movie from another? (They even get the same number of raves from the ad-blurbists.) Surely Mr. Bew-KES and SLIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! --- and SUMNER and Little Jeffy! -- stopped making movies for anyone with brain cells a long time ago. The ideal outcome is for all sides to so spoil the property it becomes unsellable. And fantasy is not an automatic home run. Does anyone here remember the brilliant adaptation of Mr. Hiaasen's precocious charge? No? And who will remember all these comic-book movies twenty years hence, except with a sneer?

P. S.



You want a supervillain? How about a movie about this Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient (from Slick, no doubt appreciative of all the campaign funds). Sadly, said honor did not prevent Him from dining alone at the end of His life, nor from people showing up at His funeral to see if He was dead.

Posted 4:44 PM by Gene

Which brings us to the question of what killed objectivity. We have an earnest lesson in Zeitgeist. The beloved ad copywriter Mr. Ansen has written a book blurb in which he evidences a seemingly depthless rage at Ronald Reagan but attempts to couch it in the obsolete tone of an objective non-partisan. To be sure, the former president was not the paragon of perfection con-SER-va-tives make him out to be; he was human (given "all the starlets he wined, dined and BEDDED between [his] marriages") (political-hypocrite overemphasis added), and he hooked up with scum (notably the late unlamented Lew Wasserman). These are valid points; but when the typist making them harbors a strong grudge, and expresses it in coy, euphemistic language, pretentiously concealing his ill-camouflaged disgust, it besmirches the truth. There is, needless to say, no besmirching a rag like Zeitgeist, which sees fit to print such malarkey with a compulsion.

Posted 4:38 PM by Gene

We see Ed Guthman, once big-time editor at the LALATimes and the StinkyInky, has died. He worked during the golden days, the former when we could stop a war and ditch a president, the latter a platinum era of 50,000-word snail darter stories. Oh, there was an age, when you as a newsman ruled the universe, when a computer was only a doohickey that printed labels on magazines. We're not sure we want to go back to the days when newsmen knew everything, and went on tangents proclaiming it, but we're not sure this new age is appreciably better.

Posted 12:46 PM by Gene

Analysis: McCain response poses risks, rewards

This risk-rewards business is the latest annoying cliché from news hacks; it allows them yet another platform for stupid and counterproductive speculation. Not even The Messiah knows how this election will play out. Can't we just leave history to its course?

Posted 12:17 PM by Gene

...archeology...recreate...archivist...museum...preserving....

We're not knocking Michael Feinstein but this article is very discouraging. It proves yet again that our commercial cultural past is not so much a living treasure as it is embalmed. Part of the problem, of course, is that there's hardly anyone around with the native talent to do it justice, to renew it without being showy about it; what very few who can are the not too distant cousins of theater queens, reverencing far more than renewing; and that many seem to be gay (like Mr. Feinstein; and we're not knocking that either) gives it a further musty aura, and the deadly and unmistakable notion that you can't be straight and enjoy it (like Ol' Blue, who we must confess was sometimes a bit too straight). Or to put it another way, the old popular culture is a carcass, surrounded by maggots with guitars, who won't feed on it.

Posted 12:15 PM by Gene

Luckily the latest storm proved smaller than expected, as we expected, and seems to have largely avoided Nawlans and the oil rigs. Maybe the Republicans shortening their convention did it. Pffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

Bush, Cheney to skip GOP convention

I was about to say, finally they have an excuse.

Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

As the movie biz enters into what we hope is another long and certainly well-deserved slump -- down about twenty percent for this Labor Day weekend, it would appear -- it is no accident to come across this story that strongly hints the fillum biz does a better job producing opening logos than the fillums proper. Fillums are already so weighted down with them as to make what follows almost irrelevant, but irrelevant was the theme from the moment the popcorn restaurants turned their establishments into dens to air TV commercials, a rather lengthy prelude in itself.

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

One reason the news biz can't decline fast enough for our taste is the favors it always does. This ASSPress ad has favors written all over it: to the Lord Goddess, to a corrupt mayor and his white-elephant dreams, to the PAHTNERS who will plaster their ads all over this immortality because Goddess's company called them first, to a hack who wants tickets himself. For every genuine act of public service the hacks do a hundred dubious good deeds -- for number one.

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO DANNY!