Posted 3:47 PM by Gene

His Omnipotence wants us to seek cooperation in our military alliances. All well and good; so why is it from him it sounds as though we have to get permission first -- and especially the permission of those who wouldn't raise a finger in our defense -- and that we must get their permission regardless of how they've treated us?

Posted 3:43 PM by Gene

We are sorry to learn Rafat Aji is leaving his site paidContent.org. He has performed a signal public service. Every time SLIME or PINCH have had a stupid idea we've turned there first, and the stupid ideas of now are surely not far different from the stupid ideas of 2002. The site became needed enough that its founder sold it to the publishers of the U. K.'s Guardian. As long as there are media moguls, and as long as they think they can "MONETIZE" the Web off the backs of the turnips, there will be paidContent.org.

Posted 10:10 AM by Gene

And in other OUTSTANDING MOOVEE NOOZ, the Big Green Thing with the Satchmo Face and the Bugles Ears is PANCAKING, meaning even 3D has its limits.

And so do $20 TICKETS!!!!!

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

BOB KERREY IS THE NEXT JACK VALENTI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The ultimate schmoozer!

Just one problem: He'll be 67 in August, so obviously THE CONSPIRACY is choosing a Benedict.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Revenge of the White Piano Keys!



A big red starfish makes landfall in ABU DHABI!

Or is that some sort of superhero whose parachute failed?



A granddaddy of STARCHITECTURE! This hammering and sawing (which should be called Bearhug with the Letter N) dates from 1965. Visual practical jokes were predestined for AHCHITECTYUH. The STARCHITECT (whose name was Gwathemy) built it for his parents. I'd have been PLEASED. They probably were too.



Is the worst over?

If STARCHITECTS keep erecting MASTERPIECES like the last three WE HOPE NOT!

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

And this ad reminds us that but for its deep deep pockets Bloomy would not have bought Bizweek. We are supposed to ooh and aah HSN's "comeback" but we will always associate it with tacky, and when the Biz does the LEGENDARY WELCH routine you know it's hiding something.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

Here there's catastrophic flooding in Poland (and HENRY HONEST!!!!! tells us), and the former Mouth of the Mouth of the South, "International Edition", wastes a good chunk of its home page on an ad for His Highness Luke Spielberg -- and Poland doesn't even merit a squib on the HOME PAGE! -- proof reputations in the nooz biz are nothing more than the HOT AIR they're built on, and that no nooz organization can PAYWALL its way to excellence -- and the Mouth lives thanks to the CABLE PAYWALL.

Posted 12:58 PM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives are coming to realize some of their more voluble brethren have elected a crank as their Senate nominee in Kentucky. It is highly unlikely RON!!!!! PAUL!!!!! Jr.'s fruit fell too far from his father's thoroughly rotten tree. God knows how much of the cracked pottery he's cleaned and polished up in his own mind; that he seems to share his father's obsession with economics suggests a lot. It will not be fun to live in Kentucky this year as this footstomper faces a knee-jerk liberal, but that fine predicament is precisely what THE SONS OF SARAH!!!!! have gotten the Bluegrass State into.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

The West responds to Islam with a ineffectual stupid prank. It responds with a prank because it cannot respond by being itself. Being itself the West is decadent and ashamed. It has lost its moral and intellectual bearings. Whatever its bearings (and frequently its lack thereof) Islam is confident and tough. We can see who ultimately wins this battle.

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

Mort Zuck wants to own TWO annual listicles!

Or maybe one with a very awkward name.

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 10:20 PM by Gene

Okay Arlen, what party do you switch to now?

Posted 8:08 PM by Gene

LET'S GO FLYYYYYYYYYYYERS!!!!! THUMP! THUMP! THUMPTHUMPTHUMP!

Posted 8:00 PM by Gene

RON PAUL!!!!! Jr. WINS!!!!!

No one is safe!

Posted 7:53 PM by Gene

I think what forced Congresspoop Souder to resign was not his adultery, not even his hypocrisy, but the turnips the voters' universal disgust that Congresspoops can think they live above and beyond the rest of us, and that their lawmaking provides the ultimate shield to our contempt.

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

The Florida Marlins bought $70 million of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTITUDE.

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

One thing you could say for the GOP Class of '94 -- it was term-limited.

(Via NRO)

Posted 11:33 AM by Gene

Your book slobbering over Rupert Murdoch was soooo well-reported that it managed to lose your publisher a fortune on the advance.

[Y]ou've always wanted to be Teddy White, who himself outlived his form and sycophantic devotion to politicians.

Much as we hate to link to NICK DORKEN, we will say Jonny "The Thinking Knee-Jerk" Alter and WOLFFMAN!!!!! deserve each other.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: This time we don't throw WET noodles at Iran -- we throw UNCOOKED noodles!

OUCH!

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Shhh, don't say anything, but His Omnipotence has found a scapegoat for the oil spill. Promise you won't say anything? If news hacks won't you shouldn't.

(Via TINA!!!!!)

Posted 4:38 PM by Gene

What has triggered the suicide cluster at Foxconn?

How about assembly-line work for GOD?

Foxconn says it is at its wits’ end as to how to tackle the problem, and has even drafted in a Buddhist monk to try to purge its factories of evil spirits.

Buddhism can tackle STEVEISM?!?!?

(Via WOLFFMAN!!!!!)

Posted 4:30 PM by Gene

The NPCPCAA is pretty proficient in using the wet noodles too.

How did TRANSPARENCY become one of the most offensive words in English?

Posted 4:25 PM by Gene

For God's sake, Chris, blackmail is Iran's middle name.

When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded.

Buried under thousands of buckets of wet noodles.

Posted 4:01 PM by Gene

The modern-day RED SKELTON does it again:

"I can't wait to interview the cast of 'Jersey Shore' on the same lot where they filmed 'Casablanca,'" O'Brien said.



No, that was shot on thirteen other stages; but they did shoot House of Wax, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Stir Crazy, Blow Out, Body Double, The Lost Boys and Demolition Man there.

AND BLAZING SADDLES!!!!!

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

P. S. Look carefully; PEOPLE WARNER calls it "DEMOLITIONS [SIC!!!!!] MAN." DOUBLE PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

Well, I was wrong about Sullivan v. Florida, but it was close, and I figured there are times when common sense and the law have nothing to do with each other, especially when overseen by Nine Fingers.

Posted 6:41 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



A $5 million igloo!



What's it like in the dark?



Aren't these memorials to Communism going a bit too far?



So what do you do after entering that little-bitty "forest project" -- climb the wall to get out?



Whoever heard of putting a mausoleum in an office park?



Hmmm -- not too badly designed!

Posted 6:36 PM by Gene

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

1. Reviving long-gone TV shows may be a risky maneuver, but the technique is gaining more fans, said Mr. Weeks. After all, he said, "Zombies are huge right now."

And the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTSIERS is keeping them alive!

Oh and seeing how SUMNER's reviving Hawaii Five-0 and seeing how TV series aren't supposed to have theme songs anymore -- what's He do about the theme song?

2. After hugging themselves for letting amateurs devise their ads the ads they're devising are getting very rankly amateur. We don't see why this should bother ad people -- isn't this just being annoying in a different way?

3. Meantime the Crainiacs celebrate "on-the-fly" advertising, which means it can be even more rank, or amateur, or both.

Posted 4:19 PM by Gene

A student at RENDELL UNIVERSITY or somewhere left behind a whole bunch of paperback drama texts in our "reading room", which I promptly took, and one of them is a Penguin edition of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which contains an introduction suggesting George Frideric Handel invented MMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMMMM; at the very least he'd have forced Samuel Goldfish back to tanning gloves. It seems he brought Italian operas to London, and they were

remarkable for the sumptuousness of the costumes and the sophistication of the stage machinery. The libretto of Handel's very popular opera Rinaldo (1711), for example, requires the heroine to be carried through the air in Act I by a "Chariot drawn by two huge Dragons, out of whose Mouths issue Fire and Smoke", while Act II calls for waterfalls as well as "Thunder, Lightning and amazing Noises." With so much spectacle to engage its attention, the audience at an opera was unlikely to concern itself greatly with the details of the plot, which was in nearly every case if not manifestly absurd at least considerably remote from the concerns of the everyday.

TRANSLATION: TENTPOLES! (Although I doubt anyone will sing along with Iron Man 2 anytime soon -- even if it stars an AC-TOR.)

When they weren't obsessing over the scenery the audiences obsessed over the stars. British Italian opera needed real Italian singers, and for a time three dominated it: two prima-donnas and a castrato. We defer to the introduction again:

The three great Italian singers were first brought to together on the London stage in May 1726 for Handel's Allessandro, an opera carefully constructed so that neither Cuzzoni nor Faustina could claim to have the better role. The story concerns two women, Rossana (Faustino) and Lisana (Cuzzoni), both in love with Alexander the Great (Senesino); he wavers indecisively between them for virtually the whole length of the opera, only choosing Rossana at the last possible moment before the final curtain. [CHICKEN!] This even-handedness did not prevent the rivalry between Cuzzoni and Faustina form becoming notorious, however, and the London opera public divided into opposing claques so enthusiastically that by the spring of 1727 the young Lord Hervey complained that nobody talked about anything else. [!] Matters came to a violent if farcical head at a performance of Bononcini's Astyanax in June 1727 [the tentpoles had weird names then too] in which Cuzzoni and Faustina appeared. Showing scant respect for the Princess of Wales, who was present, the rival partisans in the audience became restive and then violent; as a contemporary newspaper reported, "the Contention at first was carried on by only Hissing on one Side, and Clapping on the other; but proceeded at length to Catcalls, and other great Indecencies." Spurred on no doubt by the excitement, Cuzzoni and Faustina so far forgot professional decorum as to come to blows on the stage, and the performance was abandoned in confusion.

TRANSLATION: Handel invented the Web long before Al Gore did.

The introduction also contains an account of London's unspeakable criminal aura of the day, vastly fueled by gin and stupid legislaTORS, which makes Noo Yawk in the seventies look like paradise.

P. S.

This furore seized the public imagination – the pamphleteer John Arbuthnot published "The DEVIL to pay at St. JAMES's: oR [Arbuthnot SIC or WIKI SIC?] A full and true ACCOUNT of a most horrid and bloody BATTLE between Madam FAUSTINA and Madam CUZZONI", in which he lambasted the two ladies: "TWO of a Trade seldom or ever agree … But who would have thought the Infection should reach the Hay-market and inspire Two Singing Ladies to pull each other's Coiffs, to the no small Disquiet of the Directors, who (God help them) have enough to do to keep Peace and Quietness between them. … I shall not determine who is the Aggressor, but take the surer Side, and wisely pronounce them both in Fault; for it is certainly an apparent Shame that two such well bred Ladies should call Bitch and Whore, should scold and fight like any Billingsgates." Recent research has shown, however, that there was a great deal of journalistic exaggeration in such accounts: it was the ladies' supporters who were behaving badly, not the singers themselves. Nonetheless, the entire opera season at that theatre was brought to a close by this scandal, though Handel kept both singers in his employ until the demise of his company in June 1728.

TRANSLATION: FREE REPUBLIC WAS THERE!!!!! And HUFF 'n' PUFF!!!!! And WOLFFMAN!!!!! AND HENRY HONEST!!!!! And SLIME!!!!! And SUMNER TOO!!!!!

Posted 2:48 PM by Gene

The nose-in-the-airs at Cannes are...astonished that Roman might have molested more than one young woman, which indicates their obtuseness is total.

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The craven French pay a ransom for a hostage while shredding what's left of His Omnipotence's wet-noodle Iran diplomacy. Smashing!