Eugene David ...The One-Minute Pundit |
|
Saturday, September 13, 2008
This makes us smile: In so many words the NYSE has threatened Citadel, the company that gave a new home to Drunken Slob, with delisting. Radio has so pummeled its listeners with bad "music" and loud ads the broadcasters deserve every last ounce of grief; the only disappointment is this isn't CHEAP CHANNEL.
Last night YouTube had me in a full nelson. The Web will occasionally remind you of its omnipresence and your infinitesimalism. There are vast piles of junk to machete through but then there are the little gems, the detritus of culture, that have you begging for more whatever their shortcomings, or YouTube's. Thus I witnessed Marilyn Miller in a largely two-strip-Technicolor excerpt from Warner's Sally, and another two-strip Technicolor excerpt (minus the soundtrack) from Paramount's Glorifying the American Girl, both projects involving the great Ziegfeld (or as NIKKI!!!!! would call him, "Zeigfield"). Watching these and other snippets from that era (including the remarkable "Lock Step" number from the aborted MGM extravaganza The March of Time, which some poster stole from the TWXSTERS) it is clear why the "all-singing-all-dancing" musical was doomed to failure, nearly dragging the Depression-era movie business down into the heap with it: everything is so incorrigibly stagebound (quite literally -- nearly every number has a proscenium arch), and devoid of any traits that would mark it as film; and the astonishing feats of terpsichore just blend one into another into a foggy roar; the rather dullish image and sound exacerbated by the Dalai Lamas of Mountain View don't help. Though I know I'd bore myself watching these films whole they exert a fascination in bits and pieces, and though these people may not always have had faces they had the talent; if only it weren't ahead of the technology -- the exact opposite of our time.
The scuzz that most likely killed a few people with anthrax left money in his will to Planned Parenthood to needle his family.
You're a liberal. Does that make him a hero in spite of it all?
How bad are things in Branson East? The creator of a long-running satirical revue is closing it for good -- because:
“When Broadway becomes too theme-park-like, it makes it difficult, and it just looks like it’s becoming overly commercial the next couple of years.” And how do you make fun of THEME PARKS?
SARAH!!!!! seems to have cast a SPELL on The Lord -- He can't do ANYTHING right!
Well, wait until the heavily scripted "debates", when His colleagues will attempt to prove He can't do anything wrong, though the patina of omnipotence has definitely worn off.
There are, however, preventable disasters. Why today would freight and passenger trains share a single track? That kind of cheeseparing practice dates to the earliest days of railroading. Build two tracks, period.
From early indications this hurricane, though bad, may not be the CATASTROPHE!!!!! the emergency-management incompetents and their partners in falling skies the news hacks predicted. These events irritate us in part because the hacks tend to act as if we can prevent hurricanes (an annoyance compounded by the invariable accompanying surfeit of PC global warming stories), although people might not want to live where they're something of an occupational hazard. As for those riding out the storm, perhaps it's just stubbornness, but could all the Chicken Little surrounding hurricanes have the opposite effect on them? Then again, maybe some folks are just plain stupid.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Speaking of SLIME!!!!!, BizWeek scratches and scratches its head over His new music site -- and count on some rank amateur to get it right:
The problem for record companies is not technology, it is bad music.
And how many of SLIME's assets are missing from Flashing Esquire's "quote-icle"?
When Charlie asked uncomfortable questions of The Lord, con-SER-va-tives found it refreshing! When Charlie asks uncomfortable questions of SARAH!!!!!, con-SER-va-tives find him "amazingly condescending, prosecutorial, and -- SNIPPY!" (Snippy overemphasis added)
We won't use that "he-must-be-doing-something-right" gag as network news rarely does, so let's just say when somebody asks uncomfortable questions of partisans it's a Rorschach test -- that both sides fail.
B. S. DEFENDER FINDS ANOTHER CLIENT! And boy is it some client -- it's TINA!!!!! But gathering clients for your Web 2.0 firm and blog isn't what it used to be: the bigshots B. S. and Tina love to cultivate won't cooperate! "It's so -- eighties."
Well, you know -- back to the future! (First link via the usual Romy; second link via LALATimes.com)
A physicist has done the math, and says Usain Bolt could have run the 100-meter Olympic final in 9.55 seconds if he had not slowed down to showboat.
"We estimate that he could have finished the race in a time between 9.55 and 9.61," Norwegian physicist Hans Eriksen said Friday in a telephone interview.... Eriksen, a physicist at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo.... TOOT! TOOT! HERE COMES THE SHOWBOAT! PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!
NBC: We've sold most of Super Bowl
Big ad bucks for postseason baseball Face it, even in a recession, schmoozing and showing off never go out of style.
Meantime SARAH!!!!! hits a "speed bump" -- with Charles Gibson and JPOD:
[H]er discomfiture suggested this was perhaps the first moment in her public life that she has ever had to speak extemporaneously on what might be called the intellectual foundations of foreig [SIC] policy. That is bound to be upsetting to people, like many readers of this blog and the entire readership of Commentary magazine, for whom the intellectual foundations of foreign policy are profoundly important, even of overriding importance. What must they think at NRO, whose FOUNDER thought so much the rest of his staff didn't have to?
Now NRO's calling Number Two "The Old White-Haired Dude." Fellows, haven't we done enough for Sarah?
SARAH'S SON GOES TO WAR -- AND SO DOES SARAH!!!!!
Have we been talking too much about her lately? Oh, but she is running for president.
Palin on the Bush Doctrine
Palin on ANWR PALIN WINS!!!!! [Winning overemphasis added] PALIN FOR PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!! Thursday, September 11, 2008
"Junk."
There will always be hard-core knee-jerk leftists who will always believe Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were innocent. That ruse gets harder and harder to defend all the time.
Keith Olbermann Says Everything Barack Obama Wants To, But Can't
This on a liberal -- and gay -- Web site?!? Oh, he calls the NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN ZONE's bloviating "ventriloquism" too. It would be more apt, however, to call them both DUMMIES.
Palin: I'm ready to step in as president
Well, that's why people will vote for you: to step into the White House come inauguration day... but what about that fellow who's your v-p pick? (I think that's him on the right. I have no idea who the guy on the left is -- must be Sarah's husband.)
Geez, I think NRO's trying to set an internal Guinness Book record by going one whole week without mentioning -- er, you know.
On the whole, Comedy Central has been reduced to a wasteland of laughter, a black hole of funny, an ocean of failed humor.
Reduced?!? Given its sordid birth I'd say increased. (Via tvtattle.com, whatever that is)
SaaaaaAAAAAaaaaay, if this speculation proves correct, next year's Os-CARs® could be even more ratings-challenged than this year's!
Way to go, ACADEMY®! And while you're at it, BRING BACK THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY!
A conscience of the age is arrested for...breaking a photographer's camera!
That's okay; it'll just make him more HIP. And at an airport, too -- he certainly chose the right day for that!
Hey Dmitry, our market's tanking. Tell investors we'd love to have their money. S'allright?
S'ALLRIGHT! P. S. at 1:02 p. m. S'ALLWRONG!
A BRILLIANT QUOTE OF THE DAY from FORBESLIST:
Between two evils I like to pick the one I never tried before. --Mae West How would she pick between Sarah and The Lord?
It's Almost Like I Said The Same Thing [Jonah Goldberg]
But you do, Jo-NAH -- you say the same thing over and over again. Or we could put something like this on the site. It's better than nothing, people will say. But it's still dangerously close.
Seven years and it's still a hole in the ground. Of course it speaks to our national psyche, but it's more than that; we hesitate to put something there in no small part because it might uglify the hole - and because we justly think ourselves incapable of anything else. We could put something like
this on the site. The Paper of Re-CORD would call it GENIUS. Whether the people might is another matter. Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Count on WFMU to come through: today is the RAYMOND SCOTT CENTENNIAL! Let us celebrate THE MAN WHO MADE CARL STALLING GREAT!
Another reason America MUST have television:
So Far, Fall Shows Have Stinky Ratings And that includes THE CABLE CHANNEL OF THE CENTURY, which now seems to specialize in CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED stinky -- and it may not be so CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED anymore.
Spaking of NRO, some twerp is steamed because a DEMOCRAT Party whatisit says "that Sarah Palin's 'primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion.'" Such sleaze, alas, has the tincture of truth -- especially given that John...er, McClune's? primary qualification was stepping aside for Sarah.
These cretins make the Messiah's cult look irreverent.
Of the ten teasers in NRO's Election 2008, five refer to President-Elect Palin. NONE refer to...uh, JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
Hmmm, I don't think SLIME'S NEOCON'S "BLOG"'s mentioning whathisname either! And that other NEOCON's SON isn't paying him much mind either! By the way, nifty trick, JPOD -- you're back with those annoying subscription appeals, meaning you can't access your "blog" from the home page, meaning you have to go into your history to get it! You ever thought of working for the Bugmeisters?
Also via IWantMedia, the Understatement of the Century:
Asked whether the sharp drop in CBS stock would lead him to consider taking the company private, Moonves replied that such a decision was out of his hands. "Not my call," he said. Mooner would obviously be better than the comedians SUMNER employs -- including ED AND ERIC.
We wonder if big guvment and big business (in this case, big oil) can ever not be in cahoots.
And on a day when the press is testing or nation's sanity with lipsticked pigs, neither of Denver's two newspapers seem to be paying this story much mind, reporting on an awful vehicular homicide instead. (Although that story raises another question: how many ILLEGALS cause driving accidents?)
And of course six- and seven-digit media types prove again they're running the game by obsessing over another trivial and alleged faux pas, meaning this will be forgotten a week from now -- and twenty years hence historians will wonder why we didn't commit mass suicide.
Is it me or are con-SER-va-tives becoming as smug about President-Elect Sarah as liberals were over The Lord?
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
We have only one explanation why Jennifer Aniston's face is so famous: she looks like your sister. Or my sister (if I had one), or anybody's sister. Also she's cute for a soon-to-be forty-year-old. But I well remember the authors of an eloquent and unjustly neglected picture-book called The Movies taking Alistair Cooke to task for stating that Mary Pickford was the woman every man wanted for his sister. To which the authors Messrs. Griffith and Mayer responded, she was not: she was the woman every man wanted for himself. Leaving aside Mary Pickford we have come altogether too far when arguably the most visible actress of her generation has gotten that way for qualities other than being desirable.
P. S. I see I said over two years ago she looks like a Valley Girl, which I suppose is still true enough, but I suggest what I just said is now truer.
Why Bush Scaled Back the Drawdown
By removing just 8,000 troops from Iraq, the President is acknowledging that the fight there isn't yet won [Home page hed and tease] You hacks trying to be hopeful again?
Someone, please slap some sense into Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
With the Zune, Microsoft continues to try to build a better music player. Apple, meanwhile, has built a digital media monopoly. Yes, Mr. Ballmer, you should be familiar with this concept. What's the difference between the one religious cult and the other, except the one has sex appeal?
The owner and managers of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant were charged Tuesday with more than 9,000 misdemeanors alleging that they hired minors and in some cases had children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment such as circular saws, meat grinders and power shears.
Say this in your best Jackie Mason voice: "Hey! That's kosher"?
Speaking further of AHTSJournal links, we haven't a clue who Justin Davidson is, but some mystical force has imbued him with the ability to see two look-alike buildings and call them different. It wouldn't be so bad except that more than one of these immortalities usurped thoroughly decent buildings. We hardly know the difference between "Greenberg Farrow’s impressively awful tower" and those superb "new 42nd Street studios" except the one looks like a descendant of a Morse Electrophonic disco stereo, and the other seems to have been designed using business cards. But Justin -- sees things differently. "Most architecture in any age is crap, and today’s crap isn’t as bad as yesterday’s." In other words, crap is better than ever. It's this sort of typing -- we won't guess how many nights this clown stayed awake, unless he has a preternatural ability to type -- that gets bloggers to think, "Gee! I can do it better than this guy!" Unfortunately, most don't work for magazines.
Speaking of links in AHTSJournal, it has come up with two articles that make us hope for a depression. We can't tell the difference between Damien Coons and Jeff Hirst (are those their names?); they're both practical jokers, experts of kitsch, rampant no-talents, and zillionaires. We don't expect the Enronners and Lehman Brothers-style rocket scientists to know the difference between art and and a hole in the ground -- there frequently isn't -- but they've so invested their fortunes into these hacks that the time is long overdue for a comeuppance; but because the comeuppance will most likely involve those they've regally shafted, meaning us, it may hurt us more than Damien and Jeff.
Several months ago we predicted a new ge-NIUS o-pe-RA would "stink." Alas, there is no joy in our vindication. Why? Even the pans were apologetic. B-b-b-but...the film was BRILLIANT! S-s-s-so was the c-c-c-composer! We never expect anything of contemporary o-pe-RA because it exists largely as an excuse to waste foundation money, and as an exercise in PC. More to the point, how can o-pe-RA mu-SIC be good in this age? But the apologies leave us to believe the next time a masterwork isn't flat-out-unendurably BAD as this one surely is it will get raves. All is has to do is come up to the level of, say, A Streetcar Named Desire and it will have scaled Everest; climbing to the level of Nixon in China and it will reach the moon. That is why we expect nothing from o-pe-RA -- nothing but future RAVES.
THE MESS! says:
BREAKING NEWS: U.S. official tells AP that North Korea's Kim Jong Il may have suffered stroke This wouldn't be related to Elvis's kidneys, would it? Monday, September 08, 2008
Oh dear, oh dear: Professional football's minor league is manning its teams with dummies -- er, "special admits."
Isn't there a better way of winning than picking kids off the street and dumping them back on? (Via Chronicle.com)
The hacks can't seem to agree as to whether what occured in a London courtroom was a conviction of terrorists or an acquittal. If the former it would certainly seem proof enough the holy cockroaches continue up to no good; if the latter it seems some tweaking of the system may be built into the cockroaches' MO, and that British terrorism fighting and jurisprudence may be almost as inept as the Spanish.
We feel awfully sorry for you that Mr. Patriots is out for the year, but did you HAVE to put the news in a black-colored box?
And in another kind of dense, here's how PEOPLE WARNER MAGAZINES' FLAGSHIP'S WEB SITE hedded it: Tom Brady Ends His Football Season
This latest indictment involving the RED-STATE SCORPION reminds us why Republicans are not to be trusted. Now's the time for WHINY REID, BABS and THE LORD to banshee and remind us why DEMOCRATS are not to be trusted.
(Via USAOKAY!!!!!.com's On Deadline)
Both the Chicago Tribune and the Florida Sun-Sentinel are owned by the Tribune Co. [LAST GRAF]
In reporting the six-year-old "news" that United Airlines had gone bankrupt was COL. committing a Freudian slip? But how to explain -- Bloomberg?!?
Ooooooh, the ORIGINAL TVNEWSER has a scoop: The Mess is playing musical chairs!
I don't see what difference this makes. The loudmouths will still be there; they'll just be called "analysts", and they'll get just as much in-your-face time. So what? P. S. at 5:20 p. m. I realize what I wrote doesn't reflect exactly what happened but the fact is this merely means the BLOviators will be out maybe four hours' exposure the rest of the year, while the NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN ZONE OF THE LEFT continues his empire building. Sunday, September 07, 2008
Speaking of Mr. Zukor, we wonder if his sainted predecessors helped finance this one.
We should not be surprised.
If it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time:
1. Few industries are more knee-jerk lockstep hard-core think-alike liberal than the ad biz, so we can see why Rance would want to appeal to his readership by saying Army recruiting's gotta be a bad thing because it's luring -- kids, and he uses violence as an excuse. (Heck he's aghast that its promotional videogame is rated T, possibly the first time anyone's taken the botulism-laden alphabet soup of the ESRB seriously.) Okay Rance, the next time we're in a shooting war, God forbid, I'd like to see a sergeant put some ammo in your hands. Maybe our enemies would die laughing at the sight of it. Meanwhile St. Warren Jr. makes some Army-licensed clothing overseas, which sounds about par for His sand-trap-laden course. 2. First the first time (or maybe not), ADAGE is running fiction -- or at least satire: a story about six marketing experts in a contest to see who can emit the most buzzwords about the GOP's presidential candidate Gov. Palin. It's not especially funny satire, but of that we understand as Rance is in the trade-news biz, not the fiction biz; nonetheless it does show promise. Maybe next time, Rance, you should run a story about six TV executives. Then again, they tend to be funnier in real life. 3. Mark Baynes is the Adolph Zukor of Battle Creek, producing between 300 to 400 commercials a year so he can let the peons know who runs their pocketbooks. Well, Mark seems to have done something -- unintentional: he spent money on the Web for Special K, and it worked well enough that he's cutting back on the thirty-second entertainments. This is most unpatriotic, Mark: Think where Bill and Joe would have been without the Big K! Think where sugared cereals would have been! Or childhood obesity! Alas, we can imagine.
A VERY good reason for newspapers to ditch their mu-SIC cri-TICS: Woodster the Perv has directed an o-pe-RA.
We wouldn't pay him or this story any mind except that 98 percent of his claque will vote for THE MESSIAH, and half of them are professors, media types and other nose-in-the-airs, and their idea of independent thinking tends to resemble SS on the march.
Speaking of the 32-Headed Mint, we question, what with SPONSORS and SEAT LICENSES and TAXPAYERS, whether it NEEDS fans. After all, if one person gives up his season ticket there's five hundred in line -- for now. Besides, ZELIG SELIG has proved His league doesn't need fans who make less than half-a-million a year. Besides, who's our BIGGEST sponsor? For now.
Speaking of money, today is an AWFUL day for PAUL DRECK. I would bet adjusted for inflation the movie excretion biz just saw its worst weekend in at least a decade, and possibly longer. How long can THE CONSPIRACY continue to use popcorn restaurants as an outhouse?
(Link via HSX.COM!!!!!!!!!!) P. S. The last weekend the biz went below $50 million was in 2001 -- and that was nearly two weekends after 9/11. The lowest weekend before now, adjusted for inflation, appears to have been in 1996, when (it says here) tickets cost $4.42, compared to $7.08 today. It is altogether possible this is the worst weekend since 1991 -- and it would still be worse because our population's increased by twenty percent. Sorry to make a big thing of these dubious stats, but to rewrite what we always say, what's BAD for PEOPLE WARNER is GOOD for America!
I just heard a LOUD sonic boom where I live. I know what it is. If we multiply that by 32 how much do those sonic booms cost? Well, that's all right; we have money to burn on ZILLIONAIRES.
Now that Treasury is officially bailing out zillionaires, the Paper of Re-CORD reports (in the last graf):
In a possibly unprecedented move into ther [SIC] private markets, the Treasury Department will also buy up billions of dollars in Fannie and Freddie mortgage securities on the open market. This move is likely to make it much easier for the companies to finance somewhat riskier loans. TRANSLATION: Any time a speculative zillionaire fails, it's UNCLE SUCKER TO THE RESCUE. And it's POLICY. Both Paulson and Lockhart were careful not to blame Daniel Mudd, the CEO of Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron for the companies' current problems. While both men are being removed as the top executives, they have been asked to remain for an unspecified period to help with the transition. TRANSLATION: They get to continue the mess they made!
|