Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Saturday, October 09, 2010


ARCHDaily!



Is it us or does this proposed U. S. Courthouse annex in Salt Lake City look like a -- prison?


Daimler May Make $16 Million From Auction of Koons Sculpture

We all know GEKKO KUDLOWS run the AHT world, so the only mystery is the MULTIPLIER. 5, 6, 7, 8 -- 20...GEKKO, you know anything about AHT? That's okay, you don't have to. The AHT world's denizens don't.


Let me guess: The Younuhversuhtee of Connecticut engaged in ritual self-flagellation to make itself look good so the NPCPCAA wouldn't overly punish its professional college hoops team, thus prolonging its immortality in DICKIE V's fantasy world. Let's hope it doesn't work.


Four years ago we ran multiple posts on all the wonderful ideas in development in MOVEES, based on HSX public offerings; about a tenth at best got made, and more than a few were undeserved hits (like the cri-TIC-al darling SuperBAD). Today we return to HSX to see what new genius the sons and daughters of ST. JACK OF VALENTI have planned, and from our first perusal they are not disappointing us. To wit:

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2
[?!?!?], A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, AIR GUITAR, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho ("The film takes a detailed look at the method behind the director�s [SIC!] most well-known film, as well as at his personal issues." He's not the only one.), ALIEN 5, a remake of All of Me [?], ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS 3D, American Jesus (you know what THAT means), AMERICAN PIE 4, ANCHORMAN 2, Another B.S. Night in Suck City (we really shouldn't do these industry satires), Arrested Development (ditto), AUSTIN POWERS 4, AVATAR 2....

Twenty-five more letters of the alphabet to go. And numbers, too!

Friday, October 08, 2010


The EFF points out that with Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Chinese censors have sprung into action trying to block all mentions of or research on either Liu Xiaobo or the Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently doing searches on either term gives you no results -- because I'm sure that's convincing. Separately, it's worth noting that Liu Xiaobo once declared "the internet is God's gift to China." And it's ability to censor the internet is...?

...the Devil's gift to China.


While baseball is still refusing to fully embrace video replay, another sport with balls and strikes is getting on board. The Professional Bowlers Association will begin using replay to resolve disputed calls.

Praaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaise GOD!


Talking Tech: How much would you pay to bring the Internet to TV?

What I'd pay to bring TV to the Internet -- zero.


I just heard a loud sonic boom outside our windows.



How much did THAT cost us taxpayers, EDDIE?


SUMNER wastes my time with a link to something published by NICK DORKEN and the linker conveniently fails to mention it. It seems apt that now the new Fitzgerald so unveiled has herself an agent; but then so did a few other of NICK'S discoveries who ended up in the remainder bins. Moreover (and I hate typing this way but the idiot inspires it) NICK has boasted of his -- SIZE for quite some time, but no one really knows because no one's ever seen him unzip his...ledgers.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO PENELOPE!


“I don't think most of the students on the campus notice us or pay all that much attention to Iraq the military. They’re generally assuming military service is for somebody else.”

Let's hear people say that when they need somebody else.

To their vast credit schools like Princeton and MIT have active ROTC programs, but that does not whiff away the stench from those that don't, for the usual ignominious reasons.


Philip Terzian's piece on ERIC SEVAREID'S AD has first and last grafs that perfectly bookend the near-obscenity of the commercial. Better for you to read it than for me to paraphrase it.


And continuing in their grand tradition of courage, the news noses at PEOPLE WARNER ask:

Jersey Shore Poll: What Was Snooki's Funniest Moment?

If enough media companies put their Web properties behind a WALL perhaps so many of us will give up on the Web that America can get back to normal again.


Shucks, the Dynamite Memorial people didn't award THE FLOTILLA, they awarded a Chinese dissident. Easy enough, I guess. Well, they'll be sneaking their ideology in under cover of darkness soon enough.

The announcement provoked a furious reaction from Chinese authorities, who warned that the decision would hurt relations with Norway.

Aw pipe down, Chinese. Just sell more goods from FOXCONN.

We did not realize the winner was an imprisoned Chinese dissident, so maybe it wasn't that easy. We can only hope it has the same effect as, say, awarding Andrei Sakharov. Just one problem: the Soviet Union didn't have Walmart as a BFF.

Thursday, October 07, 2010


This year's MICKEY D MONOPOLY® GAME RULES contain
16,311 WORDS
!!!!!!!!!!


THAT'S 2,973 WORDS MORE THAN LAST YEAR!

This game may not be OVERTLY fixed, but the presence of so many words suggests it may be COVERTLY fixed.

And the straws announcing the game are MADE IN CHINA.


In a world of moral equivalence, political correctness, and intentional obtuseness, Tony Blair stands apart. He has quickly become the most cogent and articulate defender of the West in the war against Islamic terror.

He has the money.


Somebody (though it be FORBESLISTBLOG) finally tries to get at the heart of HuffPo:

It's very tough to monetize communities that rely on traffic generated from search (one-third of HuffPo's total) and one-off referrals, such as those from Facebook. Advertisers care deeply about page views--the number of times a visitor views a complete page--and HuffPo's lately haven't kept pace with the doubling of comments on its site. Since May monthly page views have flatlined at roughly 450 million.

That trend discourages advertisers, and suggests problems with the types of visitors to the site and the caliber of its content, which isn't pulling people through an increasing number of pages. Its executives like to tout the site's "high-quality content"--which strains credibility given the preponderance of celebrity bloggers and Friends of Arianna. Perhaps in an effort to achieve premium status, HuffPo recently hired high-profile reporters from the
New York Times and Newsweek.

Lots of HuffPo's news pages come from and link to third-party stories from traditional outlets. Former
Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. slammed sites like HuffPo as "parasites living off journalism produced by others." He attributed HuffPo's success to its appeal to partisan political prejudices and headlines about "titillating gossip and sex." (One wag says it's more like a frat club than a debate club.) Downie may be right about gossip and sex. Recent headlines on HuffPo's entertainment page: "Watch Naked Heidi Klum in Seal's New Video" and "Bridget Moynahan Dating McG?"

OR:

Whatever the outcome, no one can quite envision a HuffPo without its founder.

TRANSLATION: The whole ball of wax melts when the Huff leaves.


Elsewhere in the great PEOPLE WARNER empire, a blazing statement of the un-obvious:

Oksana Grigorieva: Mel Gibson Needs Help


LOU DOBBS?!? A HYPOCRITE?!?!?!?!?

Who knew?


It figures, by the way, he owns a horse farm, no further comment.

(Via HENRY HONEST!)

Wednesday, October 06, 2010


After November, Obama can only hope that he can outsource the messy work of cuts and budget balancing to the congressional Republicans. Chances are he will demagogue them as heartless while taking credit for an economic rebound once investors, businesses, and corporations see an end to Obamism and its gratuitous slurs against the wealthy, and thus start using their stockpiled trillions to rehire and buy equipment in 2011. [Emphasis added]

Are you saying, Victor, that those two BFFs of con-SER-va-tives, big business and the hyperrich, are actively boycotting His Omnipotence -- and that the boycott will end when the Democratic majority ends?

We will not repeat THE MASTER's line about patriotism, but we must paraphrase ourselves and say any big business that boycotts the public gives itself carte blanche to commit treason.


Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, another MAMMA MIA! comes to film.

We would say Branson East is trying to export its Audio-Animatronics but the movee biz exported first.


After running basest junk these last few days, Atlantic.com gives us a respite -- in a testament to THE SUPERMANNING OF AMERICA and potato-chip bags:

[W]e've always had consumer culture and junk food R&D and sales. But somewhere along the line, it got huge. Innovation meant patenting variations on potato chips and their bags.

We stopped fixing bridges and dams and pipelines -- and started turning out ever more complex variations on things that we already have and that work just damn fine.

But perhaps realizing that we expend massive resources developing chip bags with just the
right sound is a good thing. The silliness of the enterprise is the sort of thing that could symbolize why we need to do something different. And then we can, as Silicon Valley luminary Tim O'Reilly likes to say, "work on stuff that matters."


If Atlantic.com keeps running such BS as this we may remove it from our bookmarks. OK Doug, you got one valuation right, maybe. But dammit, you're glorifying guessing, and that's all you're doing. Who's going to buy WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!'s site? This is just like the days when high-tech speculators could "value" their companies on tiny floats. Such listmaking is why FORBESLISTBLOG makes us cringe. But I guess we can't expect the site of Jim "MURROW" Fallow and Mr. Mellerdrammer to stop running BS.


Now that PINCH has refinanced His debt to CARLOS THE JACKASS, we can officially say: Pinch! The wall. THE WALL!!!!!

(Via MediaBistro)


The prospects in the global real estate sector are “dismal,” with a downturn that could last eight years, the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.

GEKKO! DOW 150 GIGAHEXAMEGAHYPERZILLION!!!!!!!!!!


WAS IT REALLY THE NEW GALLUP POLL THAT DROVE STOCKS UP ALMOST 200 POINTS ON TUESDAY?!?!? THAT BLOCKBUSTER SURVEY, REGARDED BY MANY AS THE BLUE-CHIP GOLD STANDARD FOR ELECTION FORECASTING, POINTED TO AN UNPRECEDENTED REPUBLICAN LANDSLIDE TSUNAMI IN THE GENERIC CONGRESSIONAL RACE!!!!! THAT BLOWOUT COULD INCLUDE A GOP HOUSE GAIN OF 65 TO 70 SEATS, AND A BARE-MAJORITY 10-SEAT PICKUP IN THE SENATE!!!!!!!!!! [Blowout overemphasis added]

Or maybe the Casino finally got the word that HONORARY MAYOR MIKE WILL BE THE NEXT TREASURY SECRETARY!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, October 05, 2010


ARCHDaily!



A bank? A school? a doctor's office?

A "drive-through restaurant"?




Aside from looking like the dream of a man who wants to keep all the sunlight out, this building is made of Cor-Ten steel. See that little out line of rust on the sidewalk? Imagine what this will look like in twenty years!


The dark side of RENDELLISM: EDDIE insisted if we put a theater in Center City playing original musicals for audiences of ten that would make thousands of jobs for all the waiters and janitors and maids who'd fuel the 21st-century economy. Well, the Prince Music Theater, which seemed dark even when it was open, is facing a sheriff's sale, and next on its stage is most likely a cheap store, or maybe a parking lot. How unpredictable!

P. S. On 10/30/2010 at 4:16 p. m. The day after this story the theater's owners filed for bankruptcy, meaning most likely the only music echoing in that hall for some time will be the footsteps of mice scampering.


The latest tweaking of RENDELLISM: burning tax money for rich high-tech firms!

This is why people are angry at our superiors, and why the only way to get back at them is to throw the bums out -- and somehow their tax-money-burning schemes still flourish.


Ben Brantley, today:

Though packed with shiny Shavian dialogue and robustly drawn social archetypes, [Mrs. Warren's Profession] can easily register as an animated debate between two sides, sparked by Vivie’s discovery of the source of her mother’s income.

Me, fourteen months ago, on Terry Teachout's AH-pe-RA:

As Vietnam and Wall Street demonstrate credentials will not inoculate people from their incompetence. But then critics may be beyond creative work because their knowledge of nuts and bolts robs them of inspiration. (We do not exclude Shaw, whose plays are often little more than glorified debates.)

Well, I'm not always wrong -- I hope.


In truth most of the high-mucky-mucks mentioned here are editors, and we expect editors to be overpaid. But that CHICKEN ZAKARIA would merit near-seven-digits says clowns like MR. BEW-KES or SLIME are as blind to their "talent" as a blind man without a seeing eye dog, and most blind people's intuitions are a lot better. Paying news hacks indiscriminately is the equivalent of advertisers buying time indiscriminately, and for no better reason than to facilitate schmoozing. That so much of the high-profile "talent" earns such frequent ridicule says enough.




Hey Phil! How 'bout this!



Or this!

Any other ideas?

(Via the usual Romy)


The Dynamite Memorial physics prize goes to a couple of scientists who helped perfect touch screens.

Who wins the Literature Prize? And who can top His Omnipotence? We still think they'll give the award to the FLOTILLA.

Monday, October 04, 2010


Advise and Consent: His Omnipotence's Stealth Justice may recuse herself from half the Nine Fingers' cases this term, which poses the question of the Senile Chamber: Why advise when all you have to do is consent?

And in further evidence the state press is doing its job:

NEW HIGH COURT ERA: KAGAN MAKES 3 WOMEN ON BENCH!!!!!!!!!! (New-era overemphasis added)

And she's recusing herself from half the cases (we must sheepishly admit in the second graf) -- but this is MORE important!

(Yes, I know, that story's a NewsMAX!!!!! but who else will run it?)


President Barack Obama on Monday said the United States was facing an "untenable fiscal situation" and would have to get serious about tackling its federal deficit.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!


I guess this means we can expect another round of banshee screaming from con-SER-va-tives saying GUVMENT DID IT. And these ARE sociologists. But the housing disaster would not have happened without the concerted efforts of FREE ENTERPRISE.


The one good of a mentally challenged global exobrain is that young people won't listen to as much CHEAP CHANNEL, which nonetheless won't stop the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers from continuing to subsidize it, wired or no.

P. S.


For the first time in at least five years, not a single new show has cracked the top 10 either among total viewers or the advertising-friendly demographic of adults aged 18 to 49, according to the Nielsen Co.

Ditto.

As is customary, poor marketing has been cited as a factor in the demise of some new shows....

But there may be a simpler explanation: The new shows just aren't that good.


TRANSLATION: Snipes and CRITICAL ACCLAIM have their limits.


The sycophantic populist zillionaire LOU DOBBS's former pretty face sez:

MIDTERM ELECTION ROUT COULD SEND MARTS SOARING!!!!!
[Soaring overemphasis added]

To which we say, either 1. At these prices the Wall Street Casino's factored that in or 2. That should end when BANEHEAD struggles.


SIDSWEEK, which in an earlier incarnation predicted that Second Life would take over the planet, is saying the same thing as Wax. Perhaps the electronic toys will create a global "exobrain" (it had to be Mr. Dilbert) but given celebrity twits and people texting non-stop about their bathroom habits we'd bet that brain proves mentally challenged.


Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) lost his driver’s license temporarily this summer because he bounced the check used to pay the renewal fee, according to an Associated Press report.

Let them eat bounced checks!

In addition to Conyers, 11 out of 30 candidates for Congress had marks on their driving record that included 19 speeding tickets, four citations and three suspensions.

No wonder they drive in limos!


ANOTHER brilliant observation:

True or not, where “The Social Network” misses the point is that it is ostensibly about the greatest communications revolution since moveable [SIC] type.

And yet viewers come away with no sense of how Facebook users actually do communicate. And so what was supposed to be a zeitgeist movie is, instead, a vehicle for elite Hollywood’s talents to blithely, if unwittingly, demonstrate how out-of-touch they are with what’s going on out there.


Out of touch, Wax? You SURE?

But we will say when a hack like the Wax refers to "the greatest communications revolution since moveable [SIC] type" we must keep our eyes peeled behind our backs.


The show-biz hacks have just invented another GENIUS!

Just because you commissioned a few "CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED" "HITS" watched by maybe two million does not add brain cells.


We are sorry to hear that Art Gilmore, the voice of Red Skelton (well, he was) and Highway Patrol and countless movie trailers, has died. We seldom think The Paper of Re-CORD insightful except in a bad sense but this time they've got it more or less right, despite those adjectives: "His voice — crisp and articulate, just a tad piercing, cagily pitched to the subject matter and inflected with a precisely calibrated measure of enthusiasm — was as recognizable as a theme song." Yes, they just don't make voices like that anymore.


The veritable inventor of in-vitro fertilization has won the first of the Dynamite Memorial Awards. As there will be much talk surrounding this award of "ethics" we can safely assume they've been swept into the dustbin of history, as any session of Congress will prove. Our only solace is that most of the names and accomplishments of the Dynamite Memorial science prizes are obscure even in their professions, and as last year's HEROISM proved we must take all the prizes as bromides.

Sunday, October 03, 2010


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



1. Stuck with its equity building name, PEOPLE WARNER CABLE is changing its logo, removing the last vestiges of a funeral director and SYNERGY. When Steve Ross (Steve Who?) devised this eye 'n' ear for his squooshed-together media monster PEOPLE WARNER back in 1990 the scribblers at TIME INC.!!!!!!!!!! fumed because they thought it was relegating them to the newly merged company's basement -- why, hadn't their patented sycophancy made the wedding possible? But he'd spent a small fortune on a prime-time ABC show touting the world-saving benefits of the merger, a precursor of the world saving of the late GERRY LEVIN, and he no doubt spent another small fortune on the logo, so it had to go someplace, and it eventually wound up with the cable unit. Now that the cable unit's split from PEOPLE WARNER there's no further need for Steve Who or his fictions.

2. And speaking of SYNERGY, there's no need for CABLE NUISANCE NETWORK to worry where its next meal will come from, so long as it can steal from the cupboards of its turnips, and further convince the generous sugar daddies there's a place for irrelevance in the news, and though all the cable news nuisances fight daily to be irrelevant for now it is no contest.


Speaking of OUTSOURCED, I finally got my brand spanking new homemade computer to work, but it wasn't without teething pains: it took me a week to learn that the HDMI-equipped GPU overrode the motherboard audio, and that the only solution was an HDMI cable to my monitor; and fiddling with the memory to procure its rated speed caused so many BSODs (the dreaded Event ID 41) I tried switching it around and got something worse, an F3 F6 boot loop; I feared I've have to RMA my motherboard and my Intel i7-950. Fortunately removing the CMOS battery for two nights solved that one. If I do try again I'm e-mailing Corsair.

I will say Windows 7 is a darned sight better than XP. I can't get used, however, to the permanent ClearType, much of which looks washed-out even on a monitor like an ASUS VH236H; and I'm annoyed I can't play my rigged Monopoly CD game because the BUGMEISTERS banished 16-bit from the premises (though the disc includes a 32-bit version); nor can I play Solitaire because they added so many play-slowing bells and whistles, and to use the old version you have to go into XP mode. Now to get a DSLR, and a new pair of computer speakers.

P. S. on 10/4/2010 at 8:32 a. m. Evidently enough people object to ClearType that it's possible to rid it, but if I know the BUGMEISTERS ridding it doesn't work quite properly.


I'm touched: Levi Strauss, a company that shipped more jobs overseas than most, is running an AD CAMPAIGN highlighting all the people out of work. Only a BELTWAY FRAUD or MADAVE could have come up with something as preposterous as this.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO "NPR STAFF"! (CLUNKclunk CLUNKclunk CLUNKclunk CLUNKclunk)

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