THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
AMERICA'S MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WEB SITE!
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Saturday, June 20, 2009
Analysis confirms Internet clampdown in Iran
You don't suppose our friends at companies like Cisco Systems are indirectly helping out, do you?
You don't suppose our friends at companies like Cisco Systems are indirectly helping out, do you?
We note in passing yesterday's news that the future Nine Finger has dropped her membership in that all-women's club, which is rather like some would-be president dropping out of Augusta National -- the symbol is impotent because the residue may remain.
The SUPERNIKKI!!!!!!!!!! brigade is making a great wingding over SUMNER firing two VIAC -- er, "Paramount" executives, which rather reminds us of Aldonza's line in Man of La Mancha: "One pair of arms is like another" -- thus with one pair of studio execs. We hate using Dilbert-like buzz words but for all the talk of Mr. Jesus Christ and MICKEYMOUSE NIXON and the late Mr. Warner Bros. and the loudmouth producer who wrote that memoir and other such flashes no one in moviedom has had -- vision since the furriers' sons, and they had the vision because they started Hollywood from scratch. The industry is now so old as to have passed into America's industrial nursing home, and all these screamers do is change the IVs on the patient to feed it zillions, and it still turns out the same zombies, and we're supposed to care? Hollywood alone is evidence we need a revolution more than Iran.
Another typical modern fistfight: The Former Jesus Christ of Show-Biz alleges that The Greatest Musician of All Time hoarded concert tickets. Whom does one root for? A man who's produced vast piles of junk "entertainments" or a man who got far because a couple of organization men put his mug on their newsrags at the same time? There's enough megalomania here to make us root against both.
Friday, June 19, 2009
In more news of sports scammers, DA POST!!!!! reports on some "golf-resort developer" who swindled hockey players out of zillions and spent it on parties with PR0N "stars" and Roger Steroid and Pete Rose (they go together) -- but the real news is
Only baseball greats got to attend -- the hockey players were not invited to the revelry, a source said.
Maybe the sport hasn't come back yet.
And in other norts spews the man who did so many obscene things to chewing tobacco at the plate is down to his last pouch. We knew a guy like Nails, only he wasn't "worth" zillions, and jail is too kind for such a bum.
Only baseball greats got to attend -- the hockey players were not invited to the revelry, a source said.
Maybe the sport hasn't come back yet.
And in other norts spews the man who did so many obscene things to chewing tobacco at the plate is down to his last pouch. We knew a guy like Nails, only he wasn't "worth" zillions, and jail is too kind for such a bum.
The "god"-appointed winner of Iran's elections likened his opponents to a losing football team, which in that part of the world we'd imagine would be an insult.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
"They're very angry, and they are worried. And they are wondering who's looking out for them," Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said of his constituents.
Not even FLY-KARATEING SUPERMAN?
Not even FLY-KARATEING SUPERMAN?
We must say it's easy to think of commercial pilots as being baby sitters for their jets, but at their finest they display a courage and a skill that few in any other fields can evidence. Such was the case today.
We can be sure most of those who sponsor Mr. Top-Ten List don't know, which is all right with people like Les and SUMNER; after all, a little fairy tells them to deposit their gold droppings on his head -- but then customer service hears a few complaints, and those CONSUMERIST obsessive-compulsives who write to the boss. Really, if Top-Ten hadn't made stupid joke tricks, and then apologized for them, would anyone really care about him?
And at some point that dimwit Howie Hairshirt will have to decide: The Daily Kaplan OR CABLE NUISANCE NETWORK.
We know he's decided -- for the BIG BUCKS. How long can KAPLAN, INC. go on paying this Caspar Milquetoasty apologist for his fellow moneymakers?
(Via the usual Romy)
We know he's decided -- for the BIG BUCKS. How long can KAPLAN, INC. go on paying this Caspar Milquetoasty apologist for his fellow moneymakers?
(Via the usual Romy)
The news hack IDIOTS have spent the better part of the last several days obsessing over His Omnipotence and THE FLY -- so it figures one of their number would run THIS press release:
PETA wishes Obama hadn't swatted that fly
In another time we would laugh this off. Instead we are very angry. The cable hacks' outrageous laziness in covering the Iran revolt, coupled with the total ideologically inspired non-coverage of The One, means the hacks have completely abandoned their responsibilities -- but not their pretensions. So long as they insist on reporting as little as they can we their turnips must continue to put as many hacks out of work as we can.
PETA wishes Obama hadn't swatted that fly
In another time we would laugh this off. Instead we are very angry. The cable hacks' outrageous laziness in covering the Iran revolt, coupled with the total ideologically inspired non-coverage of The One, means the hacks have completely abandoned their responsibilities -- but not their pretensions. So long as they insist on reporting as little as they can we their turnips must continue to put as many hacks out of work as we can.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Among the many important things Congress must pursue: whether the smiling dolt Sammy Sosa lied under oath.
Why didn't you Congressfools pursue it when you first knew it?
Why didn't you Congressfools pursue it when you first knew it?
ARCHDaily!
Rotterdam, we have a problem....
AND:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!! The wall's having a nervous breakdown!
(And this for the "Taiwan Center for Disease Control Complex". Better cure that WALL first.)
Rotterdam, we have a problem....
AND:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!! The wall's having a nervous breakdown!
(And this for the "Taiwan Center for Disease Control Complex". Better cure that WALL first.)
“But although academicians were the Americans most conversant with European affairs, few engaged in public anti-Nazi protest. As many working and lower-middle-class Americans marched in the streets and struggled to organize a nationwide boycott of German goods and services, American universities maintained amicable relations with the Third Reich, sending their students to study at Nazified universities while welcoming Nazi exchange students to their own campuses. American’s most distinguished university presidents willingly crossed the Atlantic in ships flying the swastika flag, openly defying the anti-Nazi boycott, to the benefit of the Third Reich’s economy. By warmly receiving Nazi diplomats and propagandists on campus, they helped Nazi Germany present itself to the American public as a civilized nation, unfairly maligned in the press.”
And now the descendants of said eggheads are celebrating Nazism again. How apt.
And now the descendants of said eggheads are celebrating Nazism again. How apt.
Hey GCI at $3.83! What's the diff between His Omnipotence's excessively measured words about Iran and the late unlamented Ambassador Kirkpatrick's belches of sile -- QUIET diplomacy?
S&P Cuts U.S. Banks, Citing Regulation, Volatility
Are these clowns still hiding something? Or is this in preparation of the much-vaunted commercial real-estate shoe waiting to drop?
Are these clowns still hiding something? Or is this in preparation of the much-vaunted commercial real-estate shoe waiting to drop?
Now, I SUPPOSE if you work for PEOPLE WARNER you could call these guys HOT!!!!!!!!! -- after all, you never know when they may work for you -- but then we think of someone like this...
... and we really do think the TWXSTERS should replace their contacts, or something.
And as we've said before, if the women have it bad -- think of the MEN.
And of course this sort of thing has not an iota to do with SUPERNIKKI!!!!!!!!!! breathlessly intoning about THE COMING BOX OFFICE DISASTER!!!!!!!!!! we mentioned over a week ago.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
ARCHDaily!
What is with STARCHITECTS that they must design "buildings" that look like badly-sorted decks of cards?
The $5 million hillbilly house!
No! NO! They're not really going to build THAT!!!!!
What is with STARCHITECTS that they must design "buildings" that look like badly-sorted decks of cards?
The $5 million hillbilly house!
No! NO! They're not really going to build THAT!!!!!
MySpace to cut 30 percent of work force
TRANSLATION: SLIME believed all those flacks who called him a visionary.
TRANSLATION: SLIME believed all those flacks who called him a visionary.
Because our guy does what the other guy did, and the other guy was a Republican, we can keep the lid on it, although one may ask how long this won't percolate when even THE MESS can demand to know who's visiting His Omnipotence.
And yesterday some doctors booed His Omnipotence -- well, for one line -- meaning omnipotence may not be what it used to be.
(Via -- alas -- Jenni-FER, who probably thinks they booed his whole speech)
(Via -- alas -- Jenni-FER, who probably thinks they booed his whole speech)
Monday, June 15, 2009
Long before rock mu-SIC cri-TICS, there was Professor John Alden Carpenter. And who was Prof. Carpenter? He was a highbrow American com-PO-ser whose WUHKS included "The Birthday of the Infanta, a ballet-pantomime produced...by the Chicago Opera Company", and other enduring excellences. Well, back in 1924 The Etude, a very popular, long defunct serious-music magazine, "assembled a 'Musical World Court' to determine who were the greatest composers and what their finest compositions". The results were surely predictable even for their day -- Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, Mozart (Die Meistersinger was rated the greatest by nine more of these eminences than Beethoven's Ninth, which came in fifth; Beethoven's Fifth came in third). But Prof. Carpenter must have been quite an iconoclast. Number three on his list was a masterwuhk called..."Everybody Step" -- a song by Irving Berlin! What inspires us is that this song came from Berlin's first Music Box Revue, a repository of more inane lyrics than any show before Stephen Schwartz. Leafing through Berlin's collected lyrics we find this poetry in the "Patter":
There's the instep and the doorstep,
There's the one-, two-, three- and the four-step,
My step and your step,
Steeping up the stepladder,
There's the left step and the right step,
There's the heavy step and the light step,
There's the fatal step and the stepbrother,
And the watch-your-step and the stepmother....
People make fun of The Chords and The Monotones (unjustly) but honest their work is divine art next to this (as with countless other earlier rock acts). But then this show begins with a stork descending onto the Music Box Theater's stage with a girl who turns out to be the Music Box -- the Revue, that is -- and she has in her hands "the plot", which she "deposits" into the music box (i.e., a music box in the Music Box), whereupon "nine BURGLARS" (sic) come in to snatch it and sell it to Ziegfeld, or possibly Charles Dillingham (both of whom died broke). After this the girl (who has been fortunately asleep through the BURGLARS) awakes and says it wasn't much of a plot, whereupon the Music Box Revue winds up the music box in the Music Box Revue in the Music Box and unleashes "Eight Little Notes":
Eight little notes are we,
Useful as we can be.
You know and we know
What do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do
Mean to a melody.
Eight little notes can't fail
When they are placed on sale....
as evidently they failed too seldom for Irving at this stage. But even he tops himself: he ascends to the great height of satire with his "Dining Out Scene", in which a young couple eat their dinner at a restaurant to the accompaniment of oversized oysters ("Someone awoke us and now we are cross --/Soon we'll be covered with red catsup sauce"), a chicken ("[I]n a minute I lost my head"), a mushroom and a cauliflower ("We were canned! We were canned!"), a French pastry, and a cheap cigar. Then comes -- the CHECK. And the TIPS.
Tip, tip, tip tip --
Don't forget the little
Tip, tip, tip, tip,
Never let the little
Tip
Slip
Out of your grip.
It's a total loss,
But you've got to come across
With the
Tip, tip, tip, tip.
To the bottom of your pocket
Take a dip;
Hear us holler, "Please change a dollar!"
And give us a little
Tip, tip, tip, tip.
It's enough to make one give up eating.
This is also the show that unleashed "Say It with Music" on the populace -- one of those treacly Berlin ballads so unaccountably popular the fans did not notice a last superb bit of lyric-writing:
...A melody mellow/Played on a cello....
It is impossible to behold that lyric without imagining a Jerry Colonna lookalike with a big prop moustache lugging a double-bass on stage and strumming aimlessly on it while lavishly embellishing the words at the top of his lungs again and again until he collapses in a heap of laughter. And unaccountably popular the whole first Music Box Revue shebang was; it ran 440 performances, a lifetime in the days before Branson East and Lord Lloud Wubbish.
We write this with deep regret. Berlin, needless to say, was one of the great songwriters; but he really didn't get started until about the time he met Fred and Ginger at RKO, and his true greatness didn't last all that long -- it ended with Easter Parade fifteen years later -- but it encompassed Annie Get Your Gun, a perfect score. Now to get back to Prof. Carpenter: He reveled in inanities long before the first rock cri-TIC. He demonstrated reverse snobbery before anyone invented the term. For that reason, and that reason alone, we must christen him the GODFATHER OF ROCK MU-SIC CRI-TICS, whose pioneering act eighty-five years ago says too well the decline of American culture was written in the stars, and it began long before the MLA and the deconstructionists.
There's the instep and the doorstep,
There's the one-, two-, three- and the four-step,
My step and your step,
Steeping up the stepladder,
There's the left step and the right step,
There's the heavy step and the light step,
There's the fatal step and the stepbrother,
And the watch-your-step and the stepmother....
People make fun of The Chords and The Monotones (unjustly) but honest their work is divine art next to this (as with countless other earlier rock acts). But then this show begins with a stork descending onto the Music Box Theater's stage with a girl who turns out to be the Music Box -- the Revue, that is -- and she has in her hands "the plot", which she "deposits" into the music box (i.e., a music box in the Music Box), whereupon "nine BURGLARS" (sic) come in to snatch it and sell it to Ziegfeld, or possibly Charles Dillingham (both of whom died broke). After this the girl (who has been fortunately asleep through the BURGLARS) awakes and says it wasn't much of a plot, whereupon the Music Box Revue winds up the music box in the Music Box Revue in the Music Box and unleashes "Eight Little Notes":
Eight little notes are we,
Useful as we can be.
You know and we know
What do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do
Mean to a melody.
Eight little notes can't fail
When they are placed on sale....
as evidently they failed too seldom for Irving at this stage. But even he tops himself: he ascends to the great height of satire with his "Dining Out Scene", in which a young couple eat their dinner at a restaurant to the accompaniment of oversized oysters ("Someone awoke us and now we are cross --/Soon we'll be covered with red catsup sauce"), a chicken ("[I]n a minute I lost my head"), a mushroom and a cauliflower ("We were canned! We were canned!"), a French pastry, and a cheap cigar. Then comes -- the CHECK. And the TIPS.
Tip, tip, tip tip --
Don't forget the little
Tip, tip, tip, tip,
Never let the little
Tip
Slip
Out of your grip.
It's a total loss,
But you've got to come across
With the
Tip, tip, tip, tip.
To the bottom of your pocket
Take a dip;
Hear us holler, "Please change a dollar!"
And give us a little
Tip, tip, tip, tip.
It's enough to make one give up eating.
This is also the show that unleashed "Say It with Music" on the populace -- one of those treacly Berlin ballads so unaccountably popular the fans did not notice a last superb bit of lyric-writing:
...A melody mellow/Played on a cello....
It is impossible to behold that lyric without imagining a Jerry Colonna lookalike with a big prop moustache lugging a double-bass on stage and strumming aimlessly on it while lavishly embellishing the words at the top of his lungs again and again until he collapses in a heap of laughter. And unaccountably popular the whole first Music Box Revue shebang was; it ran 440 performances, a lifetime in the days before Branson East and Lord Lloud Wubbish.
We write this with deep regret. Berlin, needless to say, was one of the great songwriters; but he really didn't get started until about the time he met Fred and Ginger at RKO, and his true greatness didn't last all that long -- it ended with Easter Parade fifteen years later -- but it encompassed Annie Get Your Gun, a perfect score. Now to get back to Prof. Carpenter: He reveled in inanities long before the first rock cri-TIC. He demonstrated reverse snobbery before anyone invented the term. For that reason, and that reason alone, we must christen him the GODFATHER OF ROCK MU-SIC CRI-TICS, whose pioneering act eighty-five years ago says too well the decline of American culture was written in the stars, and it began long before the MLA and the deconstructionists.
Global Web Means Your 'Fart Jokes' Can Be Heard Out of Context
Especially troublesome if you're in the AD BIZ, where those are the only jokes you know.
Especially troublesome if you're in the AD BIZ, where those are the only jokes you know.
I have not posted today because I simply had nothing to post on. I may post less in the coming weeks; yesterday I lopped nearly a thousand words off my never-to-be-published manuscript, meaning less than a thousand fewer words to be rejected. But still I march on, as I've marched for 25 years, hoping against hope to someday be published, knowing even if I am published I'll get a trifle for all the effort and grief.
I'll say this: blogging has helped me say things more pithily. This would seem preposterous given how many bloggers have won fame with giga-word posts. That I predicted THE 140-CHARACTER FAD's approach means zilch; brevity and jumble go well together. I think I can write, but I am getting tired of writing for no one, and for nothing. Now to see if I can make it pay.
I'll say this: blogging has helped me say things more pithily. This would seem preposterous given how many bloggers have won fame with giga-word posts. That I predicted THE 140-CHARACTER FAD's approach means zilch; brevity and jumble go well together. I think I can write, but I am getting tired of writing for no one, and for nothing. Now to see if I can make it pay.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Latest: You're Invited to Join Chris Ruddy, Larry Kudlow, Steve Forbes, Ron Paul, and Others at Freedom Fest
Is there any way of doing a return to sender?
Is there any way of doing a return to sender?
ANNOYING: Some wri-TER typed a re-vue of two bios of Gypsy Rose Lee. The first offense: Likening her to CherMadonnaBritney. The prime difference (other than that Gypsy Rose appears to have been a real woman, not merely technically female) is that, if this typist is true, she did it on her own, whereas that infernal triumvirate could not have done it without press agents, most of whom work out of newsrooms. The second offense (and not her fault): Most likely both books appeared because of -- let us clear the throat: BENJAMIN BRITTEN, W. H. AUDEN, PETER PEARS, ROLLLLLLLLL THE EYYYYYYYYYYYYES; when in fact the people lived at that famed Brooklyn boarding house not because of their damned SEXUALITY, but because it was a gathering ground for lively folk in the arts, and it insults the memory of Britten and others (especially he, a great composer) to reduce everything down to such microscopic trifles. We can be sure Gypsy and her cohorts would have had none of it.
One thing (as we'd expect) our au-THOR doesn't tell us: whether Gypsy wrote her own books. We know The G-String Murders was ghosted, and her epochal memoirs largely so. But we don't expect au-THORS to tell us such. Here is a demonstration why KAPLAN, INC. was thoroughly right in closing its Book Revue. (This typing appears under the "Book World" banner. Nuf said.)
And that we may not have the foggiest idea who Gypsy was (other than the title character of some MUSICAL) ties in all too well to the death of jazz. Once we had a grand urban culture. Gypsy was part of it. So was jazz. Now it's bus-'n'-truck companies and holes in the wall for budding MP3-inspired GENIUS.
P. S. Where is Jonathan Yardley?
P. P. S. at 7:20 p. m. A Google is hardly conclusive (and much of the evidence goes back to the hardly-definitive WIKIPEDIA), but Gypsy may not have ghosted her first novel after all; and evidently she wrote her memoirs on her own.
One thing (as we'd expect) our au-THOR doesn't tell us: whether Gypsy wrote her own books. We know The G-String Murders was ghosted, and her epochal memoirs largely so. But we don't expect au-THORS to tell us such. Here is a demonstration why KAPLAN, INC. was thoroughly right in closing its Book Revue. (This typing appears under the "Book World" banner. Nuf said.)
And that we may not have the foggiest idea who Gypsy was (other than the title character of some MUSICAL) ties in all too well to the death of jazz. Once we had a grand urban culture. Gypsy was part of it. So was jazz. Now it's bus-'n'-truck companies and holes in the wall for budding MP3-inspired GENIUS.
P. S. Where is Jonathan Yardley?
P. P. S. at 7:20 p. m. A Google is hardly conclusive (and much of the evidence goes back to the hardly-definitive WIKIPEDIA), but Gypsy may not have ghosted her first novel after all; and evidently she wrote her memoirs on her own.
And the CW numskulls at POLITICO still wear their black armbands for ST. TIMOTHY.
It's official: America's hobby is navel staring.
It's official: America's hobby is navel staring.
How many times must people remind us that jazz is dead without having the guts to say it?
(Via the usual prevaricating AHTSJournal)
(Via the usual prevaricating AHTSJournal)