Posted 3:03 PM by Gene

Stars and Stripes's senior managing editor said yesterday what we said last Sunday, and nobody reads us.

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

BUSINESS BRILLIANCE: The wizards who just bought ESPNCORP's AHThouse division intend to make no more movies (hooRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!) but will instead buy bits and pieces of other libraries while the DVD market collapses. Brilliant business thinking!

Although given how ego and Hollywood collide one should never say never. The real fun will be in the added losses.

Posted 8:14 AM by Gene

We are surprised the hacks haven't pulled out their favorite weapon, THE R CARD. To which we answer: Who told Maxine and CHOLLY to use the government as a personal piggy bank?

Posted 7:10 PM by Gene

To all the NEWS HACKS who spend so many of their waking hours (and some of their sleeping) drooling over THIS CLOD, and her comrade clods: You think maybe if you stopped drooling over such clods -- better still, if you ignored them outright -- people might LIKE you more?

Posted 6:51 PM by Gene

WELL, poor Rocky, there's one solution to losing money on the Blackhawks: those all-day suckers called TAXPAYERS could build you a new arena!

CRYONIC MAYOR! GO FOR IT!

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

Bob Kerrey lost his chance to rule the world because HE SPILLED THE BEANS TO ROTGUT REEK!

Hold on! If ST. JACK OF VALENTI could palsy-walsy with OL' WHISKEY BREATH, why not BOB?

(Via TINA!!!!!)

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

AHTSJournal HAS to link to this leg-lifting about the WONDERFUL job the mentally-challenged have done for the movies, yet another reminder of how much better life would be without the Web.

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

A problem for Obama: He's the Velcro president [Home page link]

Wait! Wasn't he supposed to take credit for all the GOOD things that stuck to him?

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

Facebook Said to Put Off IPO Until 2012 to Buy Time for Growth

TRANSLATION: With luck this will be worth as much as MYSPACE is.

SharesPost values Facebook at $24.9 billion, more than double its value in March.

THIS from the Web site of the same rag that boasted THE DONALD was worth QUADRILLIONS. New owner, same rag.

Mommy, what is a SharesPost? Is that like a tooth fairy?

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

CBS Staffer Alleges Redstone Abuse

Why should anyone who treats His audiences so rotten be expected to treat His subordinates any better?

In short, don't we ALL suffer from Redstone abuse?

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

ESPNCORP's experiment with "adult" movies is officially over. Now it can make movies for kids, and adults who act like kids.

P. S.

Colony also controls Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.

NO COMMENT.

Posted 8:06 AM by Gene

But oui, I always intended to pay ze TAX on my boat! I have ze money for eet! You think I am a United Ztates zenator for nothzing?

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Only a STARCHITECT would assume a virtue in designing a building that looks ready to fall in on itself.



If we set up border checkpoints like this with Mexico NO ONE could get past them! No one would want to!



A $5 MILLION SERVICE STATION!

Is that a Denny's in back? And are the restrooms upstairs?



How many people can say they live beneath a superhighway on-ramp?



A yellow valentine!

Posted 3:27 PM by Gene

No! NO!! BOB KERREY'S TURNED DOWN THE CONSPIRACY JOB!!!!!

What will ANTI-PIRACY ZEALOTS do?

Thankfully THE CONSPIRACY can go on making JACK'S TOXIC ALPHABET SOUP.

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

CHOLLY! Please -- DON'T SETTLE! Stick up for your rights! Show 'em there's a place for raw corruption!

P. S. at 3:21 p. m.

The hearing's start was delayed an hour by votes on the House floor, during which Rangel huddled on the Democratic side with members of the New York delegation and a few other close supporters.

At one point, Rep Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), a junior lawmaker from Queens, gave the dean of his state's congressional delegation a big hug. Others patted him on the back.

We'll pat your back too, CHOLLY!

P. P. S. at 6:13 p. m.

However, as Thursday's public airing of the charges drew nearer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem resigned to the case proceeding. [Emphasis added]

He won't -- and I'm not!

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

This gesture should tell the people who want us outOUTOUT!!!!! of Afghanistan to shut up. I wouldn't have run it but I see the point.

Instead of wasting their zillions of vanity giving maybe BUGMEISTER and ST. WARREN could donate that horribly mutilated young woman some reconstructive surgery.

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

President Obama: I Wasn't Invited to Chelsea Clinton's Wedding

HINT HINT?

Posted 2:36 PM by Gene

After Breitbart and Shirley Sherrod, We Need a Slow-News Movement

For many years we had a slow-news movement, which sometimes slowed the news a la JOURNOLIST -- and THAT'S why we've got BREITBARTS!!!!!.

Posted 11:24 AM by Gene

Rod Blagojevich’s own lawyer said Tuesday that his client is “foolish” and not the “sharpest knife in the drawer,” but said that is no reason to convict the former Democratic governor of Illinois of corruption.

With friends like these....

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

2010 likely to bring more negative campaign ads than ever, analyst says



BROADCASTERS! Time to DANCE ON THE CEILING!

Posted 10:57 AM by Gene

Is social gaming becoming just another excuse for BIGMEDIA firms to waste money?

Posted 10:52 AM by Gene

CONSERVATIVES HATE ATTORNEY GENERAL EFFETE Q. SNOB BECAUSE HE'S BLACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Didn't TNR used to be better than this?

Posted 10:36 AM by Gene

HENRY HONEST!!!!! starts to boast like NICK DORKEN and the HUFF!!!!!

Peas in a pod -- and I don't care how BIG the peas are.

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

Why couldn't those two high-mucky-mucks have gone to a justice of the peace or a city clerk so we could avoid useless 1,946-WORD articles like this?

Posted 10:27 AM by Gene

A perfesser who served on SLICK's Council of Economic Advisors says the stimulus WORKED!!!!! A perfesser at the HOOVER INSTITUTION says it DIDN'T.

I HATE DUELING PARTISAN ECONOMISTS!

(Via the annoying TINA!!!!!)

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

We know weddings are a way of showing off but Mr. and Ms. Slickster may be going too far. Boomers flaunt their bad taste and we can see the zillion-dollar ceremony full of it -- the Beltway mafiosi flaunting their ugliest garb as though wearing leisure suits, the Slicksters FLYYYYYYYYYYING in Lord Elton to sing the musical equivalent of Sweet 'n Low, and FLYYYYYYYYYYING in Placido to sing "Perhaps Love" (how about with Lord Elton!); and we've no doubt the ceremony proper will be cloyingly PC to the NTH, with greeting-card poesy and all manner of skirting the fact that a man and a woman are marrying, and that there might be a God. As for the reception, it will be zillionaire slobs trying to act civilized. We could understand if the bride were a raging beauty (PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!) and the groom were handsome, or even powerful, but somehow we cannot skirt the fact that the betrothed are descended from an impeached president and a convicted felon, and that a big point of the exercise is to create a dynasty that may not take. Worse it's just another way for the RULING CLASS to mock the plebeians, and it doubly stings when so many are unemployed. Or as their distant relation Marie Antoinette could have said -- LET THEM EAT WEDDING CAKE!

(Via WOLFFMAN!!!!!)

Posted 2:36 PM by Gene

It is hard to shed tears of sympathy and write letters of condolence for the poor House Democrats who TRUSTED Speaker Babs.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The GUVMENT will PAY BP for its POLLUTION!

Posted 2:26 PM by Gene

Read...my...lips! No...more...BUSHES!

Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

Speaking of MediaBistro -- has anyone ever written a story about NICK DORKEN!!!!! that had any CONTENT?

Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

A note to THE NOTABLY ANGRY, SARCASTIC AMERICAN, the "SNARLYGASTER" who, in letters to this columnist or in postings on baltimoresun.com talk forums, expresses GLEE at the troubles of the U.S. newspaper industry and the hope that the nation's dailies disappear:

Be careful what you wish for. YOU MAY WIND UP WITH ANDREW BREITBART!!!!! [Angry overemphasis added]

Or you may wind up with JOURNOLIST.

I think we've crossed that Rubicon with BOTH feet, Dan.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:03 PM by Gene

I've often complained of my MOUNTAIN VIEW-originated lack of hits but surely a TV producer dying of cancer deserved far more than 50,000 visitors to her blog. Thankfully where she is now there are no traffic counts, only peace.

Posted 6:58 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



The most elaborate taxidermy project in history -- but what kind of lizard is THAT? And why the curved STILTS?

Or is that a weed-infested monorail about to take off?

Posted 6:50 PM by Gene

Please note: There's no nudity in the clips below but they are of an extremely racy nature -- so users with high blood pressure and heart problems should beware. (There is also graphic language.)

God knows what came over me but I clicked on Maxim's Web site, and however popular it may be it has the bloom of a dying web site. As I've said before perhaps the target audience has come to realize it's being talked down to, and resents it. What's more, Maxim's a tease. Caught between testosterone and the usual consumer-products sugar-daddy advertisers such a site can please no one. Witness the comments of this link to an old, stale AOL feature. (Who wrote that disclaimer? THE CONSPIRACY or THE ADVERTISERS? It has BELTWAY all over it. They WOULD think flesh worse than four-letter words.) Here is yet another argument that it's best to do something right or (preferably) not do it at all -- and as this amply demonstrates, some Web sites are best not doing anything.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

U.S. sales of new homes had a better-than-expected rebound in June after falling to record lows in May.

Sales rose 23.6% in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 330,000, the Commerce Department reported Monday....

Economists were expecting a slight bounce back to a 316,000 rate. This is still the second lowest sales rate on record.

DOW 15,000,000!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

The retail investor thinks the economy is heading down the drain!

Result: DOW 10,000,000!!!!!!!!!!

Is it possible a contrary indicator may not be so contrary once in a while?

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

Shucks, folks who work for a living won't strike Hollywood, meaning the flow of GENIUS remains unimpeded.

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Nobody but the effete media snobs and the slaves who think their every word truth watch THE SECOND GREATEST POP-CULTURE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY.

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

We'd very much like to see the MESS or Yahoo! acquire HuffPo. As the sad tales of MySpace and AOL's Weblogs show, once a HOT! Web site gets acquired it does a fine imitation of a collapsing house of cards.

She has lots of company: one block over from HuffPo’s SoHo headquarters are the offices of Mediaite, run by TV journalist Dan Abrams. A few blocks away is Gawker Media, led by Internet guru Nick Denton. Also in the neighborhood: Wolff’s Newser. Over on Fifth Avenue is Business Insider, started by ex–Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget. Not far away, in Chelsea, Tina Brown runs her news site, The Daily Beast. There’s also Politico, in Washington, D.C., and a slew of tech blogs out in Silicon Valley, including TechCrunch, GigaOm, AllThingsD—and on and on.

The collective gust of hot air is scalding.

Posted 10:43 PM by Gene

The Daily Kaplan's P-Ulitzer-winning investigation of our intelligence agencies came and went with little trace -- heck even the CW CJR mocked it -- and we doubt these voluminous leaks will last much longer. Even if we grant things are awful in Afghanistan, what's the alternative -- letting the stone-age Taliban rule? And do we need 90,000 alleged documents to tell us some Pakistanis are in cahoots with the rubble makers?

The only good to come out of this is it momentarily distracted the hacks from THEIR SERIAL AD CAMPAIGN.

Posted 7:54 PM by Gene

We hate to say this but do those two supreme megalomaniacs really help their daughter by making her wedding a butt of jokes?

(Also via WOLFFMAN!!!!!)

Posted 7:49 PM by Gene

50th-Anniversary Tour Will Be Rolling Stones' Last

AAAAAAAAAA-aaaa-MEN! (Clap! Clap!) AAAAAAAAAA-aaaa-MEN! (Clap! Clap!) AAAAAAAAAA-AAAA-MEN! AAAAAAAAAA-MEN! AAAAAAAAAA-MEN! EVERYBODY!

Have the Stones ever sung it?

eBay's stock UP TEN POINTS on Monday!

Posted 6:57 PM by Gene

I just came across a vile piece of PR -- pardon me -- doggie doo in USAOKAY!!!!! (I will not link to it as I posted the usual spit-in-a-fierce-wind comment) even as I was listening to a now-forgotten (unjustly forgotten) FDR campaign speech of '44 to the Teamsters -- the "Fala" speech. (Fala was FDR's dog, and a very good one.) In it, though likening the Republicans to our mortal enemies of the war (NO, GEORGE, you DIDN'T invent slander), he makes this otherwise searing observation:

The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler's book - and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again. [Emphasis added]

He famously went on to say how Fala became a victim of Republican falsehoods. Whether the story is true or not it was hugely entertaining, and any falsehood was good-humored and harmless, and it made Fala almost as immortal in the canine world as the dog not named Toto.

Since Fala news hacks have improved on Hitler's technique by cultivating so many small falsehoods for so many different kinds of untruth they become a very fantastically big one -- which they can repeat over and over and over again.

How did this get to be the MO of Al Neuharth? How did this get to be the MO of NEWS HACKS?

P. S. FDR's death broke Fala's heart. We would not be broken-hearted if most news hacks would parade single file off a cliff in the Grand Canyon.

Posted 3:16 PM by Gene

DISREGARD

Disregard Device Injuries-Kids. This story was not intended to move.

Okay ASSPress! We'll disregard.

Posted 3:15 PM by Gene

TONY gets his long awaited PROMOTION!

To the House of LORDS, no doubt.

Who's the next rapacious incompetent?

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

Is it not odd that while His Omnipotence leads us into what we are prohibited by law from calling SOCIALISM, the Brits are going the other way?

What do they know that His Omnipotence doesn't?

Posted 9:55 AM by Gene

SIX OF ONE: Democrats want to raise taxes.

HALF-A-DOZEN OF THE OTHER: Republicans want to increase the deficit.

A PLAGUE O' BOTH YOUR HOUSES IN BOTH YOUR HOUSES!

Posted 8:41 PM by Gene

Anyone here remember Interference, Inc.? The company that orchestrated the CARTOON NETWORK BOMB SCARE IN BOSTON? Well, it's still in business -- and here are its clients, past and present, meaning some CEOs apparently DO spend every day playing GOLF.

Posted 7:26 PM by Gene

What's happening to Atlantic City is proof not only that sometimes the house can't win, but the bigger the house the smaller the win.

Nor does it help when you put a grand foyer on an outhouse.

Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

Keeping in mind a LOT come from con-SER-va-tive Web sites: "JOURNOLIST groupthink" = 935,000 GOOGLE LINKS.

Posted 3:26 PM by Gene

We've seen worse, Yahoo! -- MUCH worse.

Posted 3:20 PM by Gene

Typing like this irks us because as Prof. Shafer says the biz has this penchant for creating bogus trends. Also John A. Challenger is the PAUL DRECK!!!!! of the personnel office. There's a more important reason -- as JOURNOLIST showed us the hacks en masse try to socialize us into dubious behaviors. Why does the world need more blue-blobbed skin?

Posted 3:03 PM by Gene

Then there's appeared this article suggesting classical music's sprouting a "new golden age". In a very narrow sense this may be true. More people must be earning their keep from the music; collectively the standard of performance has probably never been higher. (Some classic orchestras of the past sound distinctly flat with today's ears.) And it is probably true that before the phonograph most people gave little heed to music of any kind. But classical music is a niche item where it ought not to be; that for all the Web's wonders precious little of the music is broadcast; that the world is on the verge of having one classical-music recording company -- and most important, nobody's writing Beethoven's Fifth anymore. And just because a lot of third-rate scribblers are writing "operas" should NOT mean anything. I'll believe we're in a new golden age for classical music when I hear it -- and that means new works speaking to us as well as the old. I do not expect that to happen.

Posted 2:39 PM by Gene

We regretted to discover someone writing under that tiresome nom de plume Lexington inspired himself into a self-administered gas attack on the subject of America's "greatness". The most gaseous outburst was this:

America still towers over rivals in scientific virtuosity, military power, the vitality of democracy and much else.

Aside from our not taking too much comfort from a rag published in a dead empire and read by a lot of high mucky-mucks who'd call themselves "internationalists", this line irks us because the first two things are largely technocratic and the third probably has a lot to do with people like THE GOLD BUG who inhabit its grafs, and we'd hardly call dueling screaming cable heads combined with Congress's high popularity democratic. We'd like the hack hiding under the pseudonym to tell us that culturally or educationally we've never been better. Talk of America's financial inequality rivaling Zimbabwe's may not do much good for the soul either. Thankfully the hack gets this much right:

America is indeed a great and exceptional country. But it isn’t talking about it that makes it so.

And the less we talk about it, whether we be bloviating hacks or zillionaire table pounders, the better.

Posted 3:09 PM by Gene

GE BANCORP quarterly dividend in 2008: $0.31.

GE BANCORP quarterly dividend after the REVENGE OF THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: $0.10.

GE BANCORP quarterly dividend today: $0.12.

HISTORIC DOW 5,000,000!!!!!

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

Our favorite Branson East columnist Mike says THE GREATEST NETWORK OF ALL TIME is making a pilot for a series no one will see about a GENIUS COMPOSER no one outside Branson East pays attention to!

REVUERS!!!!! Get out your ADJECTIVES!

Posted 8:36 PM by Gene

When two acts as old as the hills join forces for a party devoted to celebrating great literature as old as the hills, and when NEWS HACKS try to sell it as the NEW! HIP! thing, there is a slight disconnect.

P. S. LALA must remind its turnips (with a plausibly deniable "Special" byline) that Matt Groening is a business bigger than DUNKIN DONUTS, only It used to be called ALTERNATIVE.

Posted 7:35 PM by Gene

Jeff Bezos's gift to man misses its targets.

THE LORD GOD STEVE IS NEXT!

“The companies that pulled back in the downturn are now accelerating their investments,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners LP. He has a sell rating on Amazon.com. “I don’t think Amazon is focused on any one quarter’s performance. They’re building for the future.”

With free books?

Posted 7:12 PM by Gene

[A] lot of the material on Journolist is actually pretty banal. In addition to being partisan hacks, a lot of these guys turn out to be pedestrian thinkers. Disappointing.

Count us not surprised there either.

Posted 7:02 PM by Gene

CHOLLY will leave office before he can be "tried"; nonetheless we are hardly surprised, and it couldn't have happen to a more -- giving person.

Only why did he take it from us?

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

I can think of one thing, TINA!!!!!, that's NOT.

Posted 9:37 AM by Gene

ON THE PROCEDURAL FRONT:

House GOP Leader John Boehner is pushing for reform this morning. In a new web video, he expresses his frustration with the Democrats’ bills and “the way they get passed.” Should Boehner win the Speaker’s gavel, he promises to prohibit the House from considering any bill that has not been publicly available for three days on the web: [Video excluded here.]

Cut the comedy, BANEHEAD: You'll do the same things the DEMS do -- THE SAME THINGS YOU GUYS DID BEFORE THEM -- THE SAME THINGS THEY DID BEFORE YOU.

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

Weekly Claims Turn Higher, Keeping Jobs Outlook Fragile

DOW 2,000,000!!!!!

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

North Korea sanctions: Are they meaningless?

This is TOO easy.

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

And we have not spoken of WALTER WINCHELL!!!!! JR.!!!!!'s latest stunt because it's another bandwidth-hogging irrelevance, but the history of the news biz teaches us partisans should never be trusted -- and the history of the news biz teaches us partisans can be RIGHT AND LEFT.

Hence MURROW and WINCHELL!!!!! are both ASSES. One thing they have in common: BIG SALARIES AND BIGGER EGOS, neither of which they deserve.

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

I go out of reach of internet-land for 48 hours, and the place blows up!

That's okay, MURROW -- you blow up today and we're all even!

An ASS should never try to confute another ASS.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

Though charging the same for a hybrid as a gas-powered car isn't quite on the level of the $5 day, it is proof outposts of American business may yet have the guts to do what should be done.

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

For what it's worth, WOLFFMAN:

Tattoo removal

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

We hope Ah-NULT appointed the lady because she's a good judge, but knowing Ah-NULT he did it for reasons he thinks will make him live forever.

When does this clod resume his fillum career?

Posted 2:54 PM by Gene

Ben TALKS -- the market WALKS!

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

We've heard the "THIS STRIKE WILL DESTROY THE BIZ!!!!!" talk before, but we do have delicious memories of the writers' "strike", and we can hope for another lengthy disruption of our Hollywood superiors' never ending plot to STUPIDIZE America, although we don't expect it.

Besides, it appears these people who may strike actually work for a living.

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

The superheroes of DC Comics Pictures are raising another COMIC-CON-approved tentpole. When do they finally learn the people who don't gather in San Diego in funny-looking costumes are tired of constant termite infestations?

"We're looking at DC as an untapped asset," he said, "since we need to find a way to fill some of the holes in our event movie schedule created by the end of Harry Potter."

And the end of JONAH HEX?

The biggest challenge for Nelson and Johns may be merging the cultures of the Warner lot in Burbank and the offices of DC, which are in Manhattan but may soon move to L.A.

TRANSLATION: 1. DC runs Burbank. 2. How can there be any culture clash with such self-lovers?

"It's no small challenge how few people have heard of these properties or understand their stories outside of fans of comic books," she said. "Sometimes the comic-book fans who love this stuff want us to get too precious about this stuff and if we do, we'll kill it off. We need to figure out how to evolve and grow it and bring it to more people."

You've already killed off the movie biz; why should catering to the mentally challenged comic-book nuts bother YOU?

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

It might help Tucker if we had transcripts of the moronic bleatings of the super-secret God-chosen cabal JOURNOLIST rather than engaging in the sort of tweakings the JOURNOLISTERS engage in. Nonetheless they do expose themselves as our superiors, and thus beneath our contempt.

Posted 7:32 PM by Gene

Today, thanks to something of a spinoff of that now-vanished soundtrack blog, I came across one of the most remarkable recordings I've ever heard: the great Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick singing demos of Tevye -- an early version of Fiddler on the Roof. To say Broadway songwriters are their own best interpreters is a commonplace but these two outdid themselves; this is the best rendition of the score there is, yes, better even than Zero, because the pair wear their emotions on their sleeves, and Fiddler is nothing if not emotional. One does not know where to start -- perhaps with the fact that eight of the fifteen songs were cut, and they were too rambling and ungainly to have worked on Broadway; Bock and Harnick were thinking things through in music. Although not all the music was cut: the opening, "We've Never Missed a Sabbath Yet", contains the germ of "Tradition", the Jerome Robbins masterpiece that made the show. Yet Tevye may have been a stronger, more nuanced work than the Hallmark card it became. Bock and Harnick tried to put a little too much Sholom Aleichem in, which might explain some of the ungainliness, but only in the songs that survived is there that lazy authorial contentment that ultimately does it in. Listening to "Far From the Home I Love" I regretted that a truly inspired songwriter did not create the achingly tragic number the lyrics deserved; the melody could have fit into one of their revues. (Their limitations helped end the partnership, which wrote only two more shows before splitting acrimoniously in 1970.) And the closing number "Get Thee Out" has a note of hopeful defiance and no tug at the tear ducts. Heroic Russian Jews wouldn't fit but the eventual ending is not merely "Tradition"'s antithesis but its negation. Fiddler on the Roof is fine Kosher comfort food; it could have been immortal. But then it might not have been immortal.

P. S. We discovered Sony tacked five of the team's demos onto the '67 London cast album (Goddard Lieberson wanted to record the Broadway show but Bill Paley thought it too much of a downer), but while they appear to be from the same tapes (and they both have rotten sound) they may not be from this source. Now that Sony owns the RCA catalog outright now's the time for the reissue Fiddler deserves -- including all these demo tracks.

Posted 7:26 PM by Gene

I wonder if, wherever he is, WFB isn't cursing himself for having unleashed Jo-NAH on his creation, for this is clearly his work, though it bears another's credit and none of his Frank Rich snark. I would let this pass without comment except the kind of high profile MENSA types who must obsess over this masterpiece are exactly the same types we dismissed after POLITICO ran that POLL. Even if FOUR MILLION AMERICANS watch this FOURTH COMING over 300 MILLION AMERICANS WON'T. The Greatest Pop-Culture-Achievement of the Last Quarter Century drew no more than TWELVE THIRTEEN MILLION. These obsessions speak to the disconnect of the ruling class as much as a love for His Omnipotence -- and they know no political bounds.

(Correction on 7/24/2010 at 7:00 p. m. It is hard to get precise numbers on Greatest but I gather the immortality seldom gathered more than ten million -- and we should not forget despite its immortality there's little evidence it helped THE GREATEST NETWORK OF ALL TIME gain subscribers, and if it did it was in the usual self-obsessed towns. Those who watched, watched, and most of America ignored.)

Posted 2:24 PM by Gene

Hiding behind green: The branding company Landor redesigned BP's logo in 2000, creating a green-and-yellow sunflower whose purpose, says Landor on its website, was to cast BP as "an environmental leader [with] a goal of moving beyond the petroleum sector." Oops. The fact that BP has for years presented itself as an environmentally friendly company "has made the oil spill even worse," says Kumar. "You talk green, green, green, but you are still a big oil company," he says. "It is almost as if they wished they were in a different business." The chasm between image and reality makes people question BP's sincerity, he adds. Strike three on commitment.

I REPEAT: GET RID OF THE FLOWER!!!!!

Posted 2:15 PM by Gene

I wonder: eighty-nine years from now will people be saying things like "this is one of the few cases in any Hollywood film where you literally watch a star being born on film" of...ADAM SANDLER?

This revival was in part a Kevin Brownlow production; he deserves great credit for restoring this. But why can't the biz MAKE them instead of RESTORING them?

Posted 12:52 PM by Gene

If SUMNER didn't have KEN FELATTA he'd be called SENILE -- or worse. Because he has KEN FELATTA he's called a GENIUS.

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

As WALTER WINCHELL!!!!! JR. threatened yesterday, we're starting to get dribs and drabs from the effete-snob state-secret e-mails of JOURNOLIST, and they aren't pretty. (TRANSLATION: We'll never hear of this outside CONSERVATIVE Web sites.)

Posted 9:11 AM by Gene

Back in the days when RENDELLISM encompassed an unquenchable belief that SUPERUPSCALE CONDOS would help create the jobs for waiters and janitors and bellhops and maids to fuel the 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMY, some developers started putting up this hoity-toity tower on SUPERDELUXE Rittenhouse Square for all the people commuting from Wall Street, not to mention some of the hundreds of thousands of city denizens with vast estates. Unfortunately, developers put up hundreds of thousands of other such towers, and putting up hundreds of thousands of such towers led to -- inconveniences, and now even our StinkyInky's resident real-estate Babbitt admits in typically sideways language that the hoity-toity building's essentially been foreclosed by a pension fund that's owed a LOT of hoity-toity money. Don't you just hate it when our saviors the megarich don't come through?

P. S. We might add that's not the only largely empty superduper condo on the Square; a rehab of a twenties highrise social club facing 18th Street has been occupied by spiders for two years. Maybe if we moved the Wall Street Casino to OUR stock exchange....

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

IPAD GAMES ARE GOING TO BE CRAZY AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! [Crazy awesome overemphasis added]

WHERE ARE ALL THE CRAZY AWESOME IPAD GAMES?????????? [Further crazy awesome overemphasis added]

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

Brauchli, who came to the paper in July 2008, just as it was in the midst of its third round of buyouts in five years, said the Post will continue to pursue such ambitious projects, regardless of the tough financial picture for newspapers.

“The Post remains firmly committed to accountability journalism,” he said. “We understand that in some cases it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of resources to do it well, but we will continue to do it.”



SURE!

Posted 10:04 PM by Gene

Lindsay Lohan Never Showed Up for the Interview, But Complex Put Her on the Cover Anyway



I smell a new editor!

Judging from the site, if YAHOO! doesn't own it, it will. That's CLOSE ENOUGH to GanNETt.

Posted 8:39 PM by Gene

The Companies Hiring The Most Right Now

Microsoft is the only large company on the list that isn't in the defense or health care industries. [Fifth and last graf]

DOW 500,000!!!!!

Posted 8:30 PM by Gene

Cameron Snubs Lockerbie Probe

The prime minister? The senators should have talked to Britain's real boss -- TONY!

Posted 8:25 PM by Gene

Stoopid magazines are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

But where does the SCHMOOZE factor come in, reverse Robin Hoods?

Posted 8:19 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Mom! That building winked at me!



A permanent Christo!

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

Our Eccentric Uncle Joe came out of the attic yesterday:

"We have two, three times as many highway projects going! We have significant investment in broadband for the first time now!!" [Significant overemphasis added]

And we can SEE IT!

"Broadband" = THE NEW RENDELLISM.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

The Daily Kaplan's P-ULITZER-WINNING EXAMINATION of intelligence is the sort of thing any well-read news consumer could have guessed at. Do we need a 100,000-word snail-darter expose to tell us our nation's private eyes basically don't know their fat fannies from a hole in the ground -- because so many fat fannies are working the hole?

Posted 8:21 AM by Gene

So our ruling class can't stand us. Who knew?

WE CAN'T STAND THEM.

Posted 9:04 PM by Gene

In the World of Blogging, from far better bloggers than I:

Potrzebie (yes, comic books) has posted the cover from this SUPERMEGARARE Superman from '78 that PEOPLE WARNER's reprinting -- in two editions! -- in which he fights against Muhammad Ali for what I'm sure was a very good PC cause. Here's the back cover. Can YOU spot the celebrities watching the greatest fight of all time-and-space?



I got three, without the code: President and Mrs. Ford -- and BILL GAINES. (Where's JIMMAH?!?!?) All those faces could have been drawn with a rubber stamp. I don't care WHAT people say about the GENIUS of comic books, this is GODAWFUL CARICATURE.



Elsewhere, Buster's very fine Big 10-Inch Record site posts an album by Xavier Cugat's once vocalist and wife Abbe Lane. As Curly would say, WOOWOOWOOWOO!!!!!!!!!!

And no, you're not supposed to notice the mole, but that's a pretty good spot for one, n'est-ce pas?

P. S. FOUR -- Alfred E. Neuman.

P. P. S. on 7/21 at 2:58 p. m. I spotted three others -- Tony Orlando and Donny and Marie Osmond. That's seven. But there are over a hundred faces here, and they all look like distant cousins of Clark Kent. Again, THIS IS GODAWFUL CARICATURE.

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

One book I have gotten around to reading in fits and starts from our apartment's "library" is a Truman Capote anthology featuring "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Capote won't last because he was an observer, a JERNALIST, and he hung around with too many society airheads before forcing the Paleys to evict him, but he did create one indelible character. Capote wanted MM for the film version. She was too brash for it. But Audrey wasn't quite right as she was too sophisticated. In my eyes Holly Golightly is a smart but very naive blue-eyed blonde of an exceptionally flirtatious mien and a lilting soprano, so no actress could ever be quite right, but I place her closer to Audrey's size than MM's, so maybe Blake Edwards didn't miscast her that much. To put it another way she is as very close to my idealized woman as mortals can come. The one disconcerting thing is that you can't escape the notion you aren't reading all of Truman's frizzy debutante friends talking, you're reading Truman, and really a man shouldn't talk that way. But talk that way he did, and he got away with it.

CORRECTION at 9:35 p. m. I meant shorter. Audrey was taller than MM. Who was looking? I was thinking the proverbial "five-foot-two, eyes of...hazel?" But no one could be hypercritical around Audrey or MM.

P. S. on 8/31/2010 at 7:52 p. m. Judging from this zinger (qv) I never started reading it. I'm not a fiction guy. I still stand by my notion that Truman grafted a lot of himself on the character. I've never seen the film, and am not interested.

Posted 4:41 PM by Gene

"A great American Novel." [SIC!]
--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Does anyone here remember several years ago -- when the nation's book revues were being DESTROYED!!!!!?

"...[A] powerful and brilliant book. By turns outrageously funny and deadly serious, it is always breathtakingly entertaining. It should be on everyone's shortlist."
--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Today in our apartment building's "library" I found a paperback edition of a supposed comic novel.

"Well-written and almost [SIC] always amusing, [the novel] is an entertaining book from a terrific writer."
--(Toronto) Globe and Mail

It contains four-and-a-half pages of blurbs.

"A riotous good time. [The author] tells one entertaining tale."
--People magazine

Four-and-a half pages of sound-alike blurbs may convey an unintended message, a message of defensiveness, a message of making something from the nothing there -- but those four-and-a half pages certainly are.

"[The novel] reads like Richard Ford meets Carl Hiassen."
--New York magazine

And they further highlight the dangers of obsessive blurbthinking and blurbmaking -- even a merely descriptive (and possibly dismissive) one can be thrown in and can sound like a rave.

"Bittersweet (with the emphasis on 'bitter') and hilarious."
--Harper's Bazaar

Four-and-a-half pages of blurbs translates into God knows how many thousands of words, thousands of unnecessary words, thousands of advertising words, words the public doesn't need and the author will squinch at for their sniveling flattery -- but several years back the DESTRUCTION of book revues was a MORTAL THREAT to the REPUBLIC, to be prevented at ALL COSTS!!!!! The republic survived, and so did the book biz, churning out more junk than ever. If this episode proves anything it is that NOT ONE BOOK REVUER IS WORTH READING. Only Jonathan Yardley was, and he appears to have effectively retired. What's left is advertising, and we have enough of it of all sorts from NEWS HACKS, and true literature will never benefit from it. Let the sleeping dog of book revuing lie -- in a different sense.

I have not read the book and probably never will. Thank you, book revuers, for your REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY.

P. S. 3.5 stars and #375,578 in Amazon.com.

Posted 2:26 PM by Gene

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.



GIMME FIVE!!!!!

Although to be BI-PARTISAN about it....

Posted 10:47 PM by Gene

Only THE WAX would call an excruciatingly heavily advertised movie a "SLEEPER!!!!!" hit.

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

Today on my South Street sojourn on a hot humid day, part of me missed the duck boats, and part of me didn't. I suspect EDDIE!!!! misses them -- our de facto mayor's probably been on the phone 500 times the last week imploring the owners and their "overseers" to get the dinghies back on the water. "WE NEED THE TOURISTS! TOURISTS ARE THE CITY'S LIFE BLOOD! TOURISTS PAY FOR ALL THE WAITERS AND JANITORS AND BELLHOPS WE NEED FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ECONOMY!!!!!" Any city whose sole revenue streams are tourism and LAW FIRMS doesn't deserve it.

AT CHEAP CHANNEL JR.'s auditorium I saw HEINEKEN® doling out "Respect." Volunteers or somebody were telling the big and mostly black crowd to file in one line for men and one for women. I didn't see the guys in the black suits with the black shirts and the black ties but it sure smelled of Him. Maybe it wasn't but I can see some MadAve type urging it, and telling the client to keep it coincidentally quiet -- and the client being coincidentally European would happily oblige. Also no mention on the marquee. (P. S. I see the company runs a former brewery in Amsterdam as a tourist trap. How apt -- how RENDELLIAN!)

At the Wawa and spying BARRON'S!!!!! I saw the Holy Sign of Mountain View -- which could mean only one thing:

GOOGLE COULD GO UP 10,000 PERCENT IN A YEAR!!!!!!!!!!

So I grabbed it and was disappointed it said:

GOOGLE COULD GO UP 35 PERCENT! [Or something. Yes, they did use an exclamation point!]

BP a SCREAMING BUY -- CHEAP CHANNEL JR. a SCREAMING BUY -- SLIME! Put Your WHOLE EMPIRE BEHIND A WALL!

But remember -- KAPLAN, INC.!

Posted 10:27 PM by Gene

In the old days Doris Day played Ruth Etting. These days our rank age's poor substitute gets to play a screaming drug-infested maniac.

Bring back the old days!

Posted 9:59 PM by Gene

A day in the life of The Windy City, AKA The Home of America's Permanent Mayor:

"Transformers 3," which began its three-day shoot around the Michigan Avenue Bridge on Friday morning, is leaving burned cars, chunks of dirt and movie stars all over Michigan and Pioneer Court. [Home-page squib]

TRANSLATION: 1. The locals at least clean up. 2. The locals will clean up on THEIR DIME.

Posted 9:57 PM by Gene

Some politicians, retired or not, should wear chastity belts.

Posted 9:30 PM by Gene

Don't these two look like a comedy team?

The should -- given all the laughs they've gotten on US.

(I was about to say the late Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, but that would besmirch them. Besides, these two comedians had friends in the BUSINESS.)

Posted 9:12 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



If Albert Speer were a STARCHITECT...



...he'd have known better than to have "designed" something like this.

Posted 8:56 PM by Gene

“The last thing Congress needs to do right now is start a new episode of ‘above the law.’”

What do you mean? That show's run a lot longer than Gunsmoke!

Posted 8:47 PM by Gene

Even PC can't save a bishop from incompetence over sexual abuse.

(Via TINA!!!!!)

Posted 8:37 PM by Gene

OoooooOOOOOoooooh, somebody's MAD!!!!!

We should rename our blog "Broken Record" -- would this have been such a CATASTROPHE if NEWS HACKS hadn't handed THE LORD GOD STEVE the world on a platter?

So we can no more believe the hacks now in their iconoclastic mode than the hacks before in their worshipful mode. Why should we believe them at ANY TIME?

Steve Jobs' Ayn Rand Moment

GOD IS CONSERVATIVE!!!!!!!!!!

BONO! LITTLE MALCOLM! The wall! THE WALL!!!!!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

LALA weighs in on the struggling arena..."MUSIC" biz:

"You go back 25 years, the big shows were on the weekends," Tollett said. "Now you could have three shows on a Monday that are good. That's hard for the consumer. There's just so much to choose from."

SO! The problem isn't the music STINKS, it's that it's so GOOD! There's SO MUCH GOOD MUSIC the folks can't make up their minds how many of a thousand ways to be gouged up to their increasingly deaf ears!

THIS IS A PLATINUM AGE OF MUSIC!!!!!

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

The program "was not intended as a bailout for Wall Street," said Warren, who also is a professor at Harvard Law School. "It was intended to support ... homeownership, retirement savings and banks across the country."

The best-laid plans of MICE....

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

Hewlett-Packard Partners With China's Communist Youth League

As we said....

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

So the rich have gotten richer destroying everyone else, and they celebrate with zillion-dollar bad-taste middle fingers in the Hamptons. So what?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Today GEKKO KUDLOW and his co-conspirators on the Big C must have been screaming, BP IS A GREAT COMPANY!!!!!

Well, perhaps it is. It can blow up a refinery, help pay to free a terrorist, blow up an oil rig and get away with it. That must be a kind of greatness. We will pay for BP's sins; its accountants must be working quadruple shifts. The stock will be back to where it was by the end of the year. GEKKO will be happy. The story will be over.

One thing, though: BP must GET RID OF THE FLOWER! Even now with the story over it's a visual insult, a four-letter word in green and yellow. Bring back the shield, or the torch you stole from Amoco. GET RID OF THAT @#$%&* FLOWER!!!!!

Posted 3:53 PM by Gene

WHOOPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BP'S TROUBLES ARE OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 8:16 AM by Gene

Reporter's lawsuit against Plain Dealer, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra [SIC!!!!!] goes to trial [ROMY LINK!]

Given our post the other day this confirms news hacks as PHILISTINES. And oddly enough Romy got the name RIGHT in the SQUIB.

Posted 8:08 AM by Gene

I was on vacation when the story broke that 11 Russians had been charged as sleeper agents planted in America by Moscow’s spy agency to gather intelligence on the United States and to recruit moles who could gain access to our top secrets. [FIRST SENTENCE]

My GOD Thomas, how did the business get along without you and your MILLIONS?

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

And speaking of what used to be called the THEATAH, MORE EXCITING -- NEWS:

New Musical Robin and the 7 Hoods Begins Old Globe Run July 14

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

This WILL be our last mention of Him but why are the hacks in such a sunken grief over THE BOSS? That He lived in THE CENTER OF ALL KNOWN UNIVERSES didn't hurt. Perhaps also because He was their ideal; beneath His bluster he was basically a snob, like they. Also He was a BIGMEDIA guy (and we're sure the grief-stricken have taken great pains not to tell the peons He produced for Branson East; aptly His last show was named for a hero -- Legs Diamond). And He, like THEY, always got His way. We suspect in His twilight years He asked why He couldn't take it with him, and ultimately He couldn't beat that rap. In short, He was the guy who could STICK IT IN OUR FACES. Unlike THE BOSS, however, hacks have learned -- well, several of them have -- that few of us can be Walter Mitty outside a daydream. And more than likely wherever He is He's learning that in the end only in FORBESLIST does it pay to be phantasmagorically greedy.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

It could take five to six years before the U.S. economy is fully healed from the Great Recession of 2008, officials at the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

More years of high unemployment. More years of skirting with deflation. More years of ultra-low interest rates, and more years of deleveraging.

More years of DOW 100,000!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

We don't know who William Underhill is but we do know if hacks did their job full-time (instead of moonlighting full-time for their CLIENTS) we wouldn't be talking about WONDERFUL REPS ABROAD and HORRIBLE REPS AT HOME -- and we didn't like Tony long before we first heard of William Underhill, which was TODAY.

Posted 2:09 PM by Gene

Look, I wanna make myself clear now that we know he's a crummy president: I DIDN'T HELP WRITE HIS SPEECH -- I merely CONTRIBUTED!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 1:56 PM by Gene

Lacey, we know you'd be EXTREMELY happy to help another would-be close show-biz friend, but does it occur to you people may be tiring of interview shows -- not just the dolt LARRY KING!!!!!?

Posted 8:52 AM by Gene

Columbia's Bollinger says journalism needs government's help [Usual Romy link]

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



If the Chinese wanted to build a tribute to the STONE AGE couldn't they have done it less expensively?

...the Ningbo Historic Museum designed by Wang Shu, Amateur Architecture Studio.

NUF SAID.



THE LORD GOD STEVE is building the world's first teleporter -- OR HIS VERSION OF LENIN'S TOMB!

And of COURSE in Shanghai -- perhaps as a further memorial tribute to the workers of FOXCONN.

Not that He'd care.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the budget year, showing the lasting impact of the recession on the government's finances.

Well that's one way of putting it, Marty.

Posted 4:15 PM by Gene

We learned today that ESPNCORP made an elaborate mea culpa over its newly closed World Cup division, saying that all the billions poured by DON THOMPSONS and other clods into South Africa won't help its poverty. We could have told the clods that ourselves, but we're not UB IGER, and we don't live in a LUXURY BOX.

Posted 2:25 PM by Gene

Created by Rob Broadhurst and Brent Black, recent products of New York University’s graduate musical theater writing program....

How did that sort of thing automatically equate to BAD?

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

"We have always felt that the government's position on fleeting expletives was unconstitutional," the network said. "While we will continue to strive to eliminate expletives from live broadcasts, the inherent challenges broadcasters face with live television, coupled with the human element required for monitoring, must allow for the unfortunate isolated instances where inappropriate language slips through."

TRANSLATION: One of these days -- and that day is coming soon -- our SUGAR DADDIES will see things our way, and we won't have to bleep ANYTHING!

Posted 2:04 PM by Gene

At least yesterday GanNETt had the guts to put A REAL AD on the front of USAOKAY!!!!!, instead of all manner of PRETEND ADS.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

The White House does not take this approach because it is in a position of strength.

You mean even KAPLAN, INC. believes His Omnipotence doesn't assume this ATTITUDE because He knows deep in His heart His party will WIN -- Kinsleyesque dissembling hed notwithstanding?

Posted 11:46 AM by Gene

George Steinbrenner, the Boss Tweed of baseball, who did more than his share to price the sport out of most fans' reach and shook down the taxpayers with the best of them, and thus made BOO!!!!! HISS!!!!! a part of their permanent lexicon, has died. Now he can meet up with Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, wherever they are -- and maybe even Boss Tweed himself.

P. S. at 2:19 p. m. Happily FORBESLIST looks on the bright side:

Steinbrenner Got A 33900% [SIC!] Cumulative Return On His Yankee Investment

Why couldn't IT fold?

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

Last night perusing this not-bad-at-all blog we happened on this curious photo:



We may ask: What did she not see in him? And what did he not see in her?

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Dull is the STARCHITECT's flip side of ugly. Look, if you're going to design a veterinary hospital for a zoo, can't you make it look like something cute, or animal, or something other than a wooden box where bad things can happen?

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Shucks, SCOTT!!!!! proves to be just another Demo...er....

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

What can Sarko blame it on? The CUP?

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

COMMENTARY: How Coverage of the BP Gulf Disaster Manages to be Too Soft -- and Sensationalized

Sounds about right to us.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

American footballers aren't the only ones prone to well-meaning platitudes.

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

The Beaver might seem like a strange choice for a production company focused on do-gooder films. The main character suffers from depression and mental illness.

But not strange for the FORMER SECOND COMING OF CHRIST, nuf said.

Posted 10:16 AM by Gene

Canada was supposedly a model for health care. Now it's supposedly a model for our economy?!?!?

Posted 10:14 AM by Gene

If KOLLEDGES had to go through the histories of all the people who gave their buildings names they'd never stop renaming.

Posted 9:52 AM by Gene

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The final STANK.

This kind of writing will happen when sports hacks become mo-VEE cri-TICS.

(Via TINA!!!!!)

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

In other news of blazing sexual pioneers Hollywood's (and HARVEY WHINER's) favorite molester Roman is "free" -- but not from the law.

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

The cretin HEF says He's taking His Empire private, which makes us wonder why He ever took It public.

Will He be able to boast up $200 million the way He boasts of His impact on HISTORY?

P. S. at 10:16 a. m. We stand corrected -- more like $122.5 million.

Posted 8:05 PM by Gene

Speaking of Chinese (although not speaking in it), Intel threw a big monkey wrench into my plans for a new computer; it's making changes in its line-up, and one of them is to cut the price of the i7-950 CPU almost in half -- but not until late August. This poses a problem: I have to get all my parts before July 30 when Bing Cashback expires -- and then I'll have to wait for the CPU. Better to do that I guess as I'll get a supposedly better processor cheaper.

Also I've been put off from buying any refurbished i7-950 machines through eBay or HP because they have a built-in CPU markup that's no longer justified. Decisions, decisions.

Posted 7:52 PM by Gene

When a well-known preacher (in this case Rev. Schuller) hands off control of his ministry, are there provisions in the will?

We are NOT kidding.

Posted 7:25 PM by Gene

One way we try to console ourselves when our morale frequently runs low is to turn to Quantcast and look up the demos of our favorite Web sites. Consider this one:



Obviously a fairly brainy bunch reads Jennifer. And affluent! (We are surprised that so many blacks seem to read it, so maybe some races and creeds aren't that monolithic.) A lot of the sites are like this. Of course there's no telling what the graduate courses are in, and judging from the last twenty years it's taken a lot of smarts to run our country into the ground, but we're proud.

On the other hand Grate.com exposed us (no link) to an extremely popular Web site that spreads social diseases (no link), and surprise! Two thirds of its surfers are men, they tend to be poorer, and more have no college than graduate schooling. So much for finding women through the Web.

Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

If it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time:

1. The Crainiacs are HUGGING themselves over the TREMENDOUS achievement of a KING. To His credit He did have the sponsorship proceeds donated to charity, it says here; but if I were the moron running, say, State Farm I wonder how many insurance policies my donation may have cost. But then we know the answer, if CEOs were ever honest enough to say it (CEOs? HONEST?): What we lose here we gain somewhere else. Translation: THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED.

2. EXCELLENT NEWS: The no-talents of the recorded...SOUND biz are having trouble getting their tone-deaf fans to pay $1,000 for a concert ticket. CHEAP CHANNEL JR.'s cohorts blame the de -- RECESSION. Of course it would NEVER occur to anyone that charity has its limits, and with the no-talents they may start fairly low.

And even BETTER news: the "concert" organizers are lopping some weight off the pound of flesh they charge for FEES -- however:

"We're training our audiences to wait for the sale that will come later," he said. "Nothing upsets consumers more than finding out they paid full price when someone else paid half of that -- especially if that person ended up with better seats."

Hmmm, maybe the answer is -- MORE FEES!

3. China's BFF Walmart can't make up Its mind how hoity-toity It wants to be. One day pallets in the aisle, the next day, Cartier. Will you Chinese bureaucrats make up your minds before the Party does?

P. S. on 7/12 at 8:30 a. m. The Crainiacs seem to have cribbed from the Wall Street Journals, who offer this note:

As aging musicians gradually exit the stage, few younger acts can consistently fill larger venues the way their predecessors could.It's [sic] not that young listeners aren't going to shows. About 8% of people aged 18 to 29 said they go to a concert once a month, more than any other age group, according to a Rasmussen survey from earlier this year. But considering how many young fans acquire and listen to music, the music seems to have less sticking power. For instance, 70% of the music obtained by 13-to-24-year-olds isn't paid for; instead, it's pulled from peer-to-peer networks, or ripped and copied from friends, according to the NPD Group. "They get so much free content, a lot of it they don't really value," says NPD entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick.

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!

(Link via the usual AHTSJournal)