Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

THE PAPER OF RE-CORD says His Omnipotence may be telling a tall tale to make himself look good?

Even with all that pain, can it yet be called the nation’s worst environmental disaster?

“My take,” said William W. Savage Jr., a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, “is that we’re not going to be able to tell until it’s over.”

BRILLIANT insight, Paper. CARLOS THE JACKASS! Put it behind the wall! NOW!

Posted 7:33 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



See, not all architecture HAS to be bad -- but why does so much of it say, "If you have to ask how much...."

Posted 7:24 PM by Gene

Little Jeremy proposes the CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED tentpole.

Skimming this makes us sad that Zeitgeist probably won't go out of biz after all, but we can still hope.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Today at my friendly neighborhood Mickey D's (how's your three month vacation in South Africa, DON? Noisy? Wait until July 12) the CRETINS OF FORT MILL (along with a Mickey staff that, in its argot, could care less) were playing what one might call The Will Friedwald Channel, "classic" vocal pop of the 50s and 60s with that aggressive sound people like Will Friedwald find jazzy, full of muted trumpets and doinks and boinks (AHoooooWEEawwwk!!!!!) and Billy May -- and lots of Stan Kenton just below the surface -- mostly from Capitol. That stuff killed two birds with one stone: the musical theater and decent pop tunes. Some hard-voiced singer with a persistent vibrato was emoting "All the Things You Are". Though Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw must accept the blame for trying to turn that one into a jazz tune they were only making a hit from a hit; the song's really meant for a moderate unsyncopated tempo and lush strings and a lyric soprano*, but the JAZZMEN must rend it for all sorts of rhythmic accents Jerome Kern may not have intended, and the females must sing it like a torch song.

Worse is Ol' Blue's "immortal" rendition of "Luck Be a Lady", which he recorded, aptly enough, for a miscast Guys and Dolls studio album. Anyone knowing the original cast album knows how eloquent its score can be, owing in a big way to George Bassman and Ted Royal, who gave it an occasional haunting melancholy to match its ripping bustle; instead Ol' Blue RIPS out its heart and supplants it with showy brassin' and pretentious swingin' -- all so he can shout, "Take THAT, Shmuel Gelbfisz!" In short, it was music as revenge, and his listeners were the target.

By singing and playing the songs the same way, as a doinking boinking vocal showoffing contest, the Friedwalders chased the young crowd away -- although I'm guessing they would have been proud to do so, as much of youth pop in those days was infested with "riffraff." (Friedwald tells us that when Blue recorded the piece of fake-R&B junk called "Five Hundred Guys" after the one take he unceremoniously dropped the music to the floor.) And because the singers relied so heavily on the theater for their books, in cutting off the youth audience they slowly starved it of inspiration. If good songs were being sung by such squares, in such a square manner, why bother hearing it? Or writing it? Yes for a few years the musical theater survived with new writers, but even Charles Strouse and Jerry Herman did not have the long-lived consistency of the masters; and for a few years the riffraff wrote some memorable tunes, for the old verities still permeated even their world; but then the floor fell out, and we've been largely tuneless ever since.

*Although it was introduced in Very Warm for May by a tenor.

Posted 12:14 PM by Gene

Speaking of BP -- and DIMWITS:

From Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
*** The week’s inflection point: Looking back at the past week, the White House might have been right: The week did serve as an inflection point in its handling of the BP spill. A two-day visit to the Gulf, a primetime Oval Office speech (though panned by pundits), the $20 billion BP escrow account, and GOP Rep. Joe Barton’s gift yesterday to Democrats all served to change the direction of the story about the spill -- at least temporarily. In Washington, the questions “Why isn’t the administration doing more?” or “Is Obama on top of this situation?” or “Will BP pay for the damages?” have died down.

11 workers died, this hole's leaking oil -- and all these two clods can think of is their godforsaken BELTWAY POLITICS.

Posted 11:56 AM by Gene

RON PAUL!!!!!!!!!! enthusiast and mathematics nut THE DUHB cites A SOURCE who says BP's blowout will leak ZILLIONS AND ZILLIONS OF GALLONS INTO THE GULF AND IT WILL NEVER EVER EVER EVER BE CAPPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe. But the fact that this site is now indelibly linked with a crank does not help its credibility. And under the circumstances the fact that contributors like "Gail the Actuary" and "Prof. Goose" hide behind their cute pseudonyms doesn't help either. Yes, we believe it COULD leak forever, and it sounds credible that it might, but we are guessing someone can come up with some sort of solution, at the very least one that could mitigate the leaking. We're not Pollyannas but with lip-smacking words like "[t]he infantile optimism of post-JFK America" The DUHB has furrowed our brow today.

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

In all, there were multiple injuries but no loss of life, officials said.

I'm sure we'll try to do BETTER next time.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Hey like that's a neat skateboard rink, man!



The world's largest outdoor IKEA knickknack collector!



Give me a backwards E! Give me an S! Give me a 2! Give me a -- another E! What's that spell? ES2E?!?!?

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

Press releases like this irritate us because news hacks can do for technocrappers what they did for LEGENDARY WELCHES and ST. WARRENS and THE LORD GOD STEVES. Just as they deify the latter for being emperors and tyrants they make the former inescapable pestilences through the device of appearing in with the in-crowd. And in both cases they all too amply celebrate LUCK. News hacks are partly to blame for the strong stench that emanates from our popular culture, and their answer is to throw more stink bombs our way.

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

Speaking of liberal practical jokes:

“Most of the increase in life expectancy in retirement has been among high income men,” explained Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank focusing on the concerns of low and middle income Americans.

Which occasioned this comment from "Mike M":

the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank

How hard did you giggle when you typed that?

She is a contributing editor to the The Nation.... [SIC!!!!!]

Very.

Posted 3:44 PM by Gene

Keith Olbermann is apparently done writing a diary for lefty site Daily Kos. In an angry post titled "Check, Please," Olbermann lashes back at one critic on the site in particular who accused him of criticizing President Obama's oil speech to boost ratings.

Now jeez -- why would he think of doing a thing like THAT?

Posted 3:40 PM by Gene

Speaking of con-SER-va-tives, we all heard what Joe Barton had to say. Here's the problem -- con-SER-va-tives have been sorta kinda defending The Pretty Green and Yellow Flower as a form of iconoclasm aimed at His Omnipotence, and also because they never met a huge corporation they didn't like. Before they get too carried away, however, they should remember Iran -- and Libya. Yes, it's a form of shakedown, but look at who's getting shaken down.

Posted 3:37 PM by Gene

Former Spanish Prime Minister: "If Israel Goes Down, We All Go Down"

Yes, but he was a CONSERVATIVE prime minister. The SUPERCHICKEN ZAP would probably say, "Eef Izrael gooooes dowwwn -- THEEE WORRRRLD GOOOES UP!!!!!"

We've come to a pretty pass when the only people willing to defend Israel are CONSERVATIVES.

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD: The Writers Guild West, which has probably launched enough self-serving FIRST AMENDMENT!!!!! campaigns to make people disrespect the Bill of Rights, now insists ac-TORS have a right -- nay, a moral OBLIGATION -- to remove their birth dates from IMDB.com, because the information fosters (timpani roll, please) AGEISM.

Hey WGAW, don't you have more important things to do -- like stinking up entertainment even more with your "scripts"?

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

CNN devises a fabulous excuse:

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said.

He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: "That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge -- a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy."

Just one problem: how would Honest Abe I's speeches go over? And no doubt HE wrote at a postgraduate level by today's standards -- and he had little formal education.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

Weird story of the day:

Heat wave breaks in Kuwait

AL INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

But for the photogenic nature of this ad it wouldn't be worth the time of day and waste of bandwidth, and this is precisely the sort of waste that overcrowds the Web and tires its denizens every single day.

Has anything happened at the World Cup lately, other than strikes and noisemakers and ads? Didn't think so.

Posted 8:10 PM by Gene

One of Gray-DOOHHNN's minions discovers the Web:

Obama Literally Cannot Stop Golfing for Long Enough to Just Fix the Gulf

Oh dear, oh dear, when DID they find WeeklyStandard.com?

Posted 7:54 PM by Gene

Lunch: Does Sopranos Creator David Chase Ever Smile?

Why should he? Did he not save the world with his genius?

Posted 7:49 PM by Gene

Happily Jack seems to believe His Omnipotence will redeem Himself by the money He spends.

Stop, Keith "BECK" Olbermann -- and smell the fake roses!

Posted 7:44 PM by Gene

Not a day goes by when our pointless pursuit of trivia in the name of hits doesn't sneak up and bite us on the behind. What do we gain from pursuing meaningles factoids? But such is the Web's power that we can't stop to smell the roses, being too busy to harvest pictures of roses, or exposés on roses, or rose jokes.

Posted 7:42 PM by Gene

As LALA prepares for rio -- CELEBRATIONS, its authorities take an act against AHT that would surely get CARLOS'S JACKASSES very, very mad.

Posted 7:32 PM by Gene

Congressional salaries are modest compared to what some politicians might make in the private sector.

Fortunately they can supplement their incomes with IMMORTALITY.

Posted 7:17 PM by Gene

For weeks, administration officials have been trumpeting Chu’s distinction at every opportunity. Earlier in the day, White House environmental guru Carol Browner cited the Nobel in a television interview. Presidential adviser David Axelrod talks about the Nobel all the time, as does Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. If there’s an official list of administration talking points about the response to the oil spill, “Chu’s Nobel” has to be at the top.

We can all applaud Chu’s accomplishment. But here’s the thing: Chu is a physicist, not an engineer or a biologist. His Nobel was awarded for the work he did in trapping individual atoms with lasers. He’s absurdly smart. But there’s nothing in his background to suggest he knows any more about capping an out-of-control deep-sea well, or containing a gargantuan oil spill, than, say, columnist Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel in economics. Or novelist Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel in literature.

OR...never mind.

(Via EM)

Posted 12:23 PM by Gene

Figures: The Big Green and Yellow Flower's friendly with Iran.

Posted 12:12 PM by Gene

Posted 8:50 PM by Gene

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has more than quadrupled the rent on her San Francisco district office, making the $18,736-a-month cost of her new South of Market space the highest in the House, according to a new report.

Who's paying the rent?

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

We wonder if the Bush mere et fille made their CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED remarks in part to get back at their NEANDERTHAL husband/father.

If Dubya were a different man we'd have the first post-presidential DIVORCE.

Posted 7:58 PM by Gene

Why must GanNETt always act as though it has a financial interest in the show-biz genius it unreports on?

As for the real subject of this ad -- I always confuse him with PARIS, for more than one reason.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

The good news:

Magazine Print Ad Revenue Will Ebb Until 2013, Outlook Says

The bad news:

But Magazines' Digital Ad Revenue Expected to Keep Growing

TRANSLATION: More stupid unnecessary rags from the usual gang of idiots.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



In guess which country, natch. Why couldn't they make it spiral fifty times?

Or LOOP-DE-LOOP?

Hope it doesn't FLOOD too often there!

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Hamas TV forced to halt broadcasts to Europe

TRANSLATION: The bad guys will merely take to the Web. Whatever THE PROFESSOR and B. S. DEFENDER gas, the Web has not helped the good guys -- witness the aborted Iranian uprising -- but it has tremendously helped the bad.

It has been a while since I visited those two clowns' sites, and I'd guess that while will be longer.

Posted 2:48 PM by Gene

The United Nations' arm for education, science and culture decided Tuesday to delay awarding a prize that had outraged critics because it was named for Equatorial Guinea's longtime dictator.

Why stop with awards? Why not the Fidel Castro Human Rights Council? Or the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad International Atomic Energy Agency? Heck let's rename the League of Nations for Stalin or Hitler or Mao! The possibilities are endless.

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

Whitman campaign spokeswoman Sarah Pompei issued a statement defending the Republican candidate as a "RESULTS-FOCUSED BOSS!!!!!" (Results-focused overemphasis added)

As anyone will know who's been SCAMMED by eBay.

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

Elssewhere from the ASSPress: in FUUUTBALLLLLL news: All three North Koreans with TVs will get to see the World Cup live! AND: The Cup's security workers are on strike! We're astonished that would happen in South Africa!

Posted 11:28 AM by Gene

Houston's building a 45-year-old Taj Mahal!

Posted 11:03 AM by Gene

Home builders' index dives after tax break expires

Best Buy shares drop on profit, sales shortfall

DOW 20,000!!!!!

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

If people are starting to question paying money for movees why should they pay for movee-based video games?

Posted 7:35 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



A $5 million hut!

Posted 7:23 PM by Gene

What Britney Spears Can Reveal About Alzheimer's

That anyone's at risk who works for PEOPLE WARNER.

Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

Callaway Golf Co. on Monday said it expects its second-quarter profit and revenue to be roughly flat with the year-ago quarter, but well below Wall Street forecasts.

Shares fell sharply in after-hours trading following the announcement.

Maybe all those CEOs won't return to their second offices THAT quickly.

Posted 6:54 PM by Gene

Speaking of advertising:

[T]he government’s story sounds like the sort of PR stunt put out by Pink Sheet scammers.

AND PARROTED CREDULOUSLY BY NEWS HACKS!

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 6:40 PM by Gene

When we consider the millions of bloggers and thousands of PEOPLE WARNER functionaries who'd get excited over this, and we consider an ac-TOR who is already considerably -- overexposed would deem fit to solicit more publicity, we must ask: don't some people have better things to do?

Of course not, or they wouldn't be ac-TORS -- or bloggers.

P. S. Or PEOPLE AT PEOPLE WARNER:





A SPECIAL NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO JULIE -- AND TO JEFF BEWKES, THE TONY HAYWARD OF MEDIA!

(Highlight added)

Posted 6:38 PM by Gene

[T]he State Department’s annual report on human trafficking nevertheless brands 13 countries as standouts for failure to address rampant cases of sex trading, indentured domestic work, forced field labor, and other varieties of slavery within their borders.

The global scofflaws range from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to North Korea and Cuba. The bright spots include Pakistan, Malaysia, Syria, Egypt, and Bosnia-Herzegovina – countries that don’t always shine in annual human-rights ratings but that the State Department found have acted to address human-trafficking issues over the past year.

What shall His Omnipotence do? These are our allies!

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

Will the REAL dithering incompetent please -- STAND UP?

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

Still, it may be tough to win back the favor of an audience that has been trained to expect more than Hollywood has delivered in the last few weeks. One danger is that potential filmgoers tend to overlook a next round of pictures when they did not like the last batch.

“It’s all about changing their mood,” Dennis Rice, a marketing consultant who previously ran Disney’s publicity operation, said of the entertainment business. [Emphasis added]

OH, so it's THEIR mood -- NOT YOURS.

Posted 11:30 AM by Gene

We are sorry to learn (although well after the fact) that LARRY KING!!!!!'s wife attempted suicide, reason enough we fear for CNN to renew His contract.

(Second link via IWantMedia)

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

Which reminds us -- if CARLOS'S JACKASSES didn't write their stories on HOT TRENDS would Jack Shafer have a column?

(Via THE BIG C -- which is preparing for ANOTHER INCREDIBLE RALLY!)

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

Fed's Bullard says strong global recovery under way



STRONG!!!!!

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

JUNIOR stared down THE MAN?

Then how did he lose all those zillions?

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

Surprise! This putative parent has a "reality"-TV deal.

Who needs parents when you can have MONEY?

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Stevedom doesn't need lobbyists -- but It could use an EMBASSY.

Doesn't the Vatican have one?

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

Nine years ago, Benny forcefully assured us, the musical FOUND ITS VOICE. That same year, in a show with an ick-provoking title, Chuck assured us the musical FOUND ITS VOICE. Three or four years ago Benny again assured us the musical FOUND ITS VOICE. Why it was just a few short months ago that someone recycled some rock album and Benny (or Chuck) assured us yet again that the musical FOUND ITS VOICE. Now Chuck panics that all of a sudden it has laryngitis. Where have his ears been these last few years? Regardless that most Paper of Re-CORD cri-TICS are senseless you'd think it would occur to SOMEBODY that MAYBE Dick and Larry aren't writing the songs anymore. Of course it wouldn't -- or we wouldn't have the voice-finding GENIUS of the last nine years.

CARLOS THE JACKASS! Put Your site behind a pay wall -- NOW!

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)

Posted 11:11 PM by Gene

We are sorry to hear that Jimmy Dean, who will be forever known for his breakfast sausage but should better be remembered as a pretty fair country troubadour, and who must also be remembered for the signal act of helping introduce the Muppets on his weekly variety show, has died. RIP.

(Via ASSPress; originally posted 10:49 p. m.)

Posted 11:08 PM by Gene

It's official: Scarlett can ACT.

And so can Mrs. Michael Douglas.

Will that REALLY help the ratings?

P. S. on 6/14 at 7:02 p. m. NO. (Caveat: It was up against THE ATTITUDE LEAGUE.)

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Here's the problem with starchitects: They give us ugly CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED buildings or they give us this. In the twenties, in a truly golden age of architecture, it would have been gorgeous; today it looks like Boston's City Hall, improved. That this went up in Prague means nothing; STARCHITECTURE and such uninspired blocks can rise anywhere.

And for JonBoy's site to proclaim an "age of excess" is receding says his hacks haven't surfed ARCHDaily!

P. S. An architecture school!

Posted 3:06 PM by Gene

I don't think of CEOs as superheroes; to me they're paper-pushing buffoons with luck. NEWS HACKS define CEOs, and in the absence of true national leaders they helped create LEGENDARY WELCHES and ST. WARRENS and the total Cult on Invincibility. They turned piles of flesh into crusading genius because they think in blurbs. Blame THEM.

Posted 12:12 PM by Gene

It says something of the Democrats that they have to campaign so hard using an ex-president, the current one being damaged goods. (Assuming, that is, this isn't a another news hack favor.)

Posted 12:07 PM by Gene

I submit this recession is hitting America harder because we lack an existential purpose. Past generations got through worse because they knew the country stood for something. I've said it before: What do we stand for? Venal featherbedding politicians? No-talents in our culture? God's Servants? Dilberts? Abortions? The Founding Fathers' glory grows ever more distant, and we face a world with NUKEMEN with nothing but a stomach growl, and a headache.

Posted 11:43 AM by Gene

The voices of Silent Spring are silent.

He may be an incompetent but he's OUR incompetent!