Posted 9:19 PM by Gene

If the news hacks know what they're doing (highly unlikely) they will not use to tomorrow to remind us lots of THEM got DEFERMENTS during you-know-what war we heroically ended -- and of THE MASTER's definition of PATRIOTISM.

We can look at it this way: this will affect the margins if anything; and besides while His Incompetence got CIVIL RIGHTS the GOP got TAX BREAKS FOR ZILLIONAIRES.

Posted 9:13 PM by Gene

Come on Barron'S, you can do better than that -- twenty percent! Fifty percent! A THOUSAND PERCENT UP FOR THE MARKETS!!!!!

"None of the longer-term issues have been resolved: The developed world still has too much debt, wage growth is subpar, and central banks are running out of bullets to use during the next downturn," says Henry McVey, Morgan Stanley Investment Management's head of global macro and asset allocation. "BUT we're getting a cyclical reprieve, engineered by the central banks!!" [Cyclical overemphasis added]

E'REWAY INHAY EETHAY ONEYMAY!

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

Another expensive CEO golden parachute in professional college football. Just pay the players and be done with your fig-leaf fictions.

(Via TheDailyKaplan.com)

Posted 2:09 PM by Gene

Speaking of Jeff, we wish some of His Web sites would go the same place as these sixteen phrases His interns find so annoying. (Via NEWSER!)

Posted 1:43 PM by Gene

Despite the relative success of that ESPNCORP retread at the top of the ticket this must count as an especially gratifying weekend for those of us who wish the movee biz would catapult off the nearest cliff. Consider the following:

Yogi. This was total stupidity from the beginning. The animation buffs didn't like it, and many of them don't like the original. Who was going to watch this? Jeff Bew-KES's family? Really Jeff, deep-six Your ideas for other glorified TV characters like Pepe Le Pew and Speedy Gonzales -- the speedier the better. We'd also like to think 3D will permanently head the same direction as this smash.

ANOTHER "romcom". This particularly tickles us because it involved alleged A-list talent and a huge budget. Mogulmaniacs, when will you see the audience for your tired, stale Hepburn-Tracy remakes died with the last Doris Day-Rock Hudson film? -- and they weren't that good either. With luck A-list is a new improved version of CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED -- the NEW DEATH at the boxoffice.

AHTHOUSE. Last year every cri-TIC RAVED over Precious. Where did its BO go? The same place as these two cri-TIC-ally-acclaimed masterworks'. People just don't want to see AHTHOUSE PICTURES. That psychosexual mellerdrammer (the words these cri-TICS love!) will have gone from $80,000 per screen to maybe $9,000 in three weekends. No picture can maintain perfect money-making momentum but any good movies would not endure such a fearsome dropoff -- and AHTHOUSE pictures may not be good except for their PRESS.

P. S. SUPERNIKKI!!!!! sez at that romcom's current BO plod Sony will have a $50 million "writeoff". Ah but you must spend money to spend money.

Posted 3:06 PM by Gene

Delany said the conference chose the divisions based on parity, rather than geography, which made naming them East-West or North-South impractical. The Big Ten also considered using names of historic players or coaches, but Delany said that would have been “too limiting.”

The commissioner also said there was little consideration given to changing the conference name from the Big Ten, unlike in 1990, when Penn State became the 11th member.

Once again, football becomes rocket science.

Posted 1:48 PM by Gene

If I were a true-blue Republican I'd be so happy today: the radio business is having M&A fever again!

How much is left to merge?

Posted 11:15 AM by Gene

Now that the victims of the scum Madoff are on the verge of getting a considerable amount of their principal back, the question is -- where do they invest the money?

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

May we stop assuming Notre Dame is something better than a football factory?

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

Could it be all the people who couldn't stand LARRY KING!!!!! vastly outnumbered his audience?

We repeat, in unison with SUPERNIKKI!!!!!: GOODBYE, LARRY -- AND GET LOST!!!!!

P. S. We now see why our local StinkyInky demoted Gail Shister.

P. P. S. at 10:53 a. m.

King's longtime producer to join Davis-Block PR firm

How apt. (Romy link)

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

Congress Sends $801 Billion Tax Cut Bill to Obama

Moody’s Slashes Ireland’s Rating

Nah, no connection.

Posted 9:11 PM by Gene

Cities like Vineland, New Jersey cannot hope to compete commercially as historic curiosities, and their downtowns will still get slaughtered by malls and big boxes. And where's the local industry? I wish I could be as sanguine about its future as SIDSWEEK.

Posted 3:46 PM by Gene

A eulogy for an Os-CAR® winner:

"Hurt Locker" was awesome. It deserved all the press and accolades it received, including toppling the "Avatar" leviathan. It was by all accounts the ultimate underdog success story … except financially. While that may not be apparent to the public at large, their principal financier Grosvenor Park is still not fully recouped. Grosvenor has gone the way of so many other gap funds that cropped up in the late 2000′s but subsequently withered away in the great financial famine of 2008.

Posted 1:26 PM by Gene

Blake Edwards, producer of comedies that were probably predictable even in their day but somehow made a ton of money, who also somehow convinced the multitudes that Audrey Hepburn was Holly Golightly, that Henry Mancini was a great composer and that Bo Derek was a raging beauty, and who further convinced his wife Julie Andrews to go topless in a movie because it made scourging fun of Hollywood, has died. RIP.

Posted 10:15 AM by Gene

I sweat so badly today I'm afraid to get undressed.

The latest hot TWEET from the latest hot blogging sensation of the CENTURY!!!!!

Why in God's name do I bother typing?

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

A fitting tribute to THE GREATEST INTERVIEWER IN HISTORY:

CNN To Post Lowest Rated Year In 2010

P. S. BEN FRANKENSTEIN gives him a great big bear hug; unfortunately most of the commenters want to give Ben a great big bear hug around his neck.

P. P. S. Yet another memorial tribute to the Question Man.

"'Larry King' gaffes" = 1,940,000 GOOGLE HITS -- and most of them aren't even his. You brought out the best in people, Lar.

Posted 2:37 PM by Gene

2:36 PM Anthony Ward, nicknamed Choc-finger, unloads his fund's $1B of cocoa stocks. Fears Ward was trying to corner the market were raised this summer as prices rose to a record, but markets seek out and punish such hubris. Cocoa has fallen 30% since July and is the worst agricultural performer this year.

Those who live by the cocoa bean....

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

BRING BACK JENNIFER!

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

You better be sitting down before reading what this sell-to-buy ratio was this past week: 7.07-to-1. In other words, corporate insiders on balance are selling more than seven shares for every one that they are buying.

The last time this ratio was this high was the week ending Feb. 14, 2007, almost four years ago.

DOW 250 HEXAMEGA...oh, never mind.

We would note they've been selling all along. Who's been buying?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

US will lose AAA credit rating, says M&G's Jim Leaviss

When that happens we'll see DOW SEVENTY HEXAGIGHAMEGAHYPERBAZILLION so it won't matter.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

ASININE: Doesn't the Air Force have better things to do than to lock the barn door after the "secrets" have escaped?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

You've been warned:

CNN announced on Tuesday that it will produce New Hampshire’s first debate next June.

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

Moody’s warns of another Spain downgrade

We warn of stocks going up another hundred thousand percent!

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

Pierre Laval...er, Mohammad Mossadegh...er, King Faisal...er, MARK!!!!! has been named PEOPLE WARNER NEWSRAG'S POOP OF THE YEAR!!!!!!!!!!

Hey JEFFREY! Time to merge with MARK!!!!! Pfffffffffffffffffffffffft!!!!!

Or, "WE DIDN'T KNOW WE OWNED PART OF TURNER BROADCASTING!!!!!"

P. S.
During the second half of 2009 the magazine saw a 34.9% decline in news stand [sic] sales.^[8] During the first half of 2010 there was another decline of at least one third in Time magazine sales.

KEEP GOING!

P. P. S.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 26, is youngest honoree in magazine's history. [Home-page squib]



DOUBLE PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Orange juice futures tumbled 4.1% today on signs that citrus groves in Florida probably avoided damage from cold weather last night. Overnight was “not nearly as cold as the weather service was calling for,” a senior AccuWeather meteorologist says. “If there was any effect on the citrus crop, it was very small.”

Drat! This is almost as bad for speculators as the price of oil going down.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

WOW!!!!! Oregon's put the ugly of its basketball court onto its football players!

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

Gee whiz aw shucks goshdarnit, Apple's a superduperterrific stock but it's just gotten slightly ahead of itself, but you know our secret code -- give us six months and we'll have a $10,000 price target.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Not necessarily to speak of this split but the problem with show-biz marriages is that narcissism is best suited for one.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

AP Staffers Hold ‘Byline Boycott’

Given some of their output they should make it permanent.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

Washington Suburbs Are Richest, Most Educated in U.S.

...which leads one to think Commodore Vanderbilt didn't coin the phrase "The public be damned!"

“People with college degrees have the highest incomes because they have the highest-paid jobs, and the Washington area tends to have highly educated and highly paid people because of the federal government,” Cohn said. “The presence of government tends to insulate the Washington area from the impacts of the economic downturns.”

And Beltway types are well-insulated from that damned public, so they're doubly on another planet.

Let's take away all those tax dollars and see how hoity-toity they are then.

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

We wish we knew what to say about Richard Holbrooke. History is full of brilliant diplomats who brought temporary peace, and history is full of temporary peace; thus we will forever need diplomats and have temporary peace. From all accounts Holbrooke was superhumanly diligent, and alas that may have killed him. He brought peace to Bosnia but it also took an unspeakable war too, and we cannot be sure it is settled. As for his last words, we wonder at whom that "you" was aimed. Supposedly he said it to his doctor but we wonder if it couldn't have been intended for God, who might be the only party ever to bring peace to Afghanistan -- an understandable sentiment from a diplomat. We'll say this: though he lost his last "negotiation" at least he tried willing himself from death, like a man.

P. S. at 5:03 p. m. Of COURSE the news hacks had to get his words wrong. (Via Spectator.org)

Posted 2:59 PM by Gene

Don't expect Piers Morgan to interview Madonna when his CNN show premieres in January.

"She is too vegan for TV," Morgan was quoted saying by the U.K. media. "We have Lady Gaga now so Madonna is banned from my show."

Hey Larry! LARRY! I think he learned something from you!

Posted 2:33 PM by Gene

One of the most overrated of koleegeyate majors is business. What can you learn of business in kolledge you can't learn in the real world? Maybe the irrelevance of kolledge has sunk in in a few quarters.

According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, it is not business, but the sciences -- a broad category encompassing behavioral, health, life, medical, and physical sciences -- that now command the greatest share of bachelor's degrees.

This is a good thing so long as it doesn't merely reflect our superiors' browbeating over EDS 'N' MEDS, and the new grads don't merely head to glorified government jobs.

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

It is...ironic that the same con-SER-va-tives who loathe "judicial activism" are cheering for Obamacare's dismantlement in the courts. They seem to have forgotten about the NRA and "court packing." Nonetheless we should not forget what BABS and WHINY REID did was Democratic in the proper-noun sense only.

At any rate you have your courts and they have theirs.

Posted 11:44 AM by Gene

It IS possible for a commenter on HENRY HONEST's sites NOT to be a total idiot:

It's amazing to me how few people grasp the cynical genius of Rupert Murdoch. He is essentially able to make money from both sides of the so-called culture war. The demo that watches Fox News gets phony, contrived moral outrage while the demo that watches Family Guy and the Simpsons and Glee gets equally phony and contrived cultural subversiveness. In the end, of course, Murdoch laughs all the way to the bank.

Remember, FOX (sic) is the company that is responsible for both Glenn Beck and Avatar.

(Peculiar spacing corrected)

Posted 11:22 AM by Gene

Our favorite mismanaged supermarket chain has declared bankruptcy, and we're surprised con-SER-va-tives haven't honed on to this fact with laser-guided precision:

A&P also has one of the most heavily unionized work forces in the business, with 95 percent of its workers covered under collective bargaining agreements. It said in its filing it would seek to work with the unions to lower those costs.

As we said before, if PILLHEAD ran America unions and organizing would be illegal. If Madame Soon-to-Be-EX-Speaker ran America she'd make union membership and dues mandatory. This is her world.

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

After a long dry spell -- ARCHDaily!



An igloo in China?!?

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

CONCAST is readying to sell its AHTHOUSE film unit (don't say AHTHOUSE, say "specialty features"), which reminds us of what we said the other day: moveemakers would rather tell THE TRUTH than appeal to a wide audience. There will always be those strange films that need handholding but possibly if the biz still had the knack to make excellent movies with wide appeal it wouldn't have to rely on navel starings with audiences of ten and DVD sales of six.

(Via Vulture)

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

A brilliant novelist or memoirist or whatever confesses to a no-doubt widely imitated secret obsession of news hacks:

I just re-watched "All the President's Men," which I do every year or so, and, every time, I marvel at how interesting Woodward and Bernstein's lives were at The Post, and how well the film explains the reporting process, its doggedness and randomness, and how great an excuse it is to get out in the world and ask every seemingly obvious question you can think of (What books did the man check out?), because you never know, you might bring down a government that has it coming.

Only we suspect most do it every week, just to see that they are heroes after all.

No comments after a whole weekend, which says the reps of brilliant novelists are largely in the bequeathers' heads.

P. S. at 7:20 p. m. I realize now in light of this story I was way too hard on the guy. Nonetheless some people get published because they're brand names, never mind -- as in this case -- if they have little to say. Zero comments could just mean bad placement too; but it could also mean not interested.

(First link via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

Having made his "living" slinging mud and boasts of fantastic profits it is just that NICK DORKEN's fallen victim to hackers. What NICK can do anonymously to others others have now done anonymously to NICK. Yes, quite just.

P. S. at 11:52 a. m. An exceptionally detailed account of what justly happened here. To quote:

Making unnecessary statements of bravado, statements potentially divorced from reality, changes the equation for an attacker, it (sic) suddenly makes compromising your environment worth more of his or her time.

No further comment.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

This is another of TINA!!!!!'s gimmicky listicles (and hard to follow to boot) but what with their tax-money vacuuming and their overcharging and their PC and their professional sports factories I'm ready to throw America's KOLLEDGES off the proverbial cliff.

Posted 11:15 PM by Gene

The live sound...er, concert business had a disastrous 2010, and the promoters in this post-mortem talk like the agency execs in one of those AdAge think pieces after they've been caught in their clients' cookie jars. We would not bet against a lack of taste and common sense returning to the fore, and to the bank accounts; nonetheless it must be dawning even on the most obsessive of live sound...er, concert fans that they may have only so much money to burn -- and more to the point, they're not burning it on the second coming of the Beatles.

Posted 3:12 PM by Gene

You Can't Spell TIME Without 'I' and 'Me'!

Has Henry Luce returned from the dead?

Or is Mr. BEW-KES daydreaming as usual?

Posted 3:00 PM by Gene

It is unlikely they fully realised that their behaviour would be equated even more prominently with that of Nazi Germany.

Hey! Who's complaining? It had a booming economy too!

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

Indeed harping on one topic is the mark of a deranged man, but since people must preen about JACK'S BOTULISM-INFESTED ALPHABET SOUP I will suggest this, in girding my loins for reading Thumb's GAR-BAGE:

First, before it does anything, the industry must confront whether JACK'S BOTULISM-LADEN SOUP has made movies worse. This means gassy C-SPAN seminars, empty mea culpas, fake hand-wringing pledges of reform. Facing a broken system we have no choice but to endure such verbiage. It must address the insidious elitism at the system's heart, the notion that it is better for filmmakers to tell "the truth" than appeal to a wide audience. It must also ask itself whether age segregation is the best means of confronting content problems, and whether it might be possible to make truly adult movies suitable for the whole without dumbing them down. IT USED TO BE.

The best cure for the industry's woes would be voluntary censorship, a solid assurance to parents that it acknowledges its worries. It worked before. The problem is the industry had the talent and the confidence to overcome its flaws. It doesn't now. Moreover JACK and LOUIS NIZER opened a Pandora's box when they maliciously invented their ALPHABET SOUP. With the profound shortsightedness typical of a man who thought the VCR wouldn't last they never imagined their movies would be beyond the purview of ticket-takers and ushers; thus they defacto flooded other media with so much gunk it's impossible to escape it even if one tried. So that's out.

The next would be to replace the system with nothing. That would have the virtue of a kind of honesty, and would differ little from the current regime. A nation that tolerates a million abortions a year and ghetto target practice can find it within its withered heart to let children watch anything. Unfortunately the preeners of WASHINGTON would burp about PARENTS, never mind most seem to be indifferent to JACK's SOUP (or that Beltway-contrived smirk the V-CHIP), so forget that.

That leaves fixing an unfixable system. If we must continue this charade of thinking we can protect children from unsuitable media content in this Internet age by assigning movies arbitrary codes -- and a hundred years' experience with Will Hays and JACK teaches us they WILL be arbitrary -- the preeners must do the following:

1. Demand the rating system be physically separated from the MPAA, and financed by foundation or other independent grants. That is the only way of assuring it will not be a total industry stooge. That can leave the MPAA to play J. Edgar Hoover against pirates to its heart's delight.

2. Have all content rated by a board of MDs, psychiatrists, social workers and other such professionals, with help from ordinary citizens appointed to the board. Doctors and social scientists have their own crotchets, but it's that or easily swayed rank amateurs. New board members may be nominated by the public. All entertainment and mass-media industry employees would be prohibited from membership. NO BOARD MEMBER WOULD SERVE MORE THAN TWO YEARS.

3. ALL BOARD MEETINGS, ALL RATINGS DECISIONS, AND ALL APPEALS, MUST BE FULLY CONDUCTED IN PUBLIC, WITH COMPLETE INTERNET ACCESS.

4. Eliminate the current ALPHABET SOUP with a numerical system like England's, with number ratings denoting minimum age of admission. The maximum age would be 18. G would be replaced by "ALL", to try to eliminate the scourge of the SCARLET LETTER that's affixed itself to that rating. The Columbine boxes would stay, and with greater detail.

5. The system would continue to review all TV and print advertising, as before.

6. Given their ease of dissemination the equivalents of RED-BAND TRAILERS would be PROHIBITED.

I'm sure such "reforms" will not prevent LUKE SPIELBERGS from gaming the system, nor the dread ratings creep. I have no doubt the malice of the present system will merely take another form. But we've lived with this disaster for 42 years. When do we finally say ENOUGH?

Posted 10:58 AM by Gene

We should not harp on this extremely exasperating topic but just reading the AHTSJournal squib we know what Mr. Thumbs® Up! would do: make the BOTULISM providers' standards "more consistent." We'd bet those two words appear in this eruction. Sorry Thumbs®, the system was BORN BROKEN. We recall with considerable disgust how in 1990 your friend and partner in highly profitable raves GENE put his arm around JACK and declared they'd fixed the system by inventing a euphemism for pornography. Before we can even think of "fixing" this disaster we must discuss its relationship with the quality of the industry's extrusions, something you very profitable writers will NOT do, because the first thing out of your word processors will be ad hominem attacks on those who'd do the suggesting.

We will, with great reluctance, read this later, and see just how close we were.

P. S. at 2:18 p. m. We read it. It's a total cop-out. He doesn't say "more consistent" but he may as well have. He again proposes an A, which (aside from being perfectly dense) is exactly what led to Gene's flash of brilliance. TIME TO RETIRE, THUMBS®.