Posted 9:41 PM by Gene

Today I saw the Mummers, viewing it by walking twenty-four blocks down Broad and twenty-four up, and on the way back up I saw the same string bands I'd seen on the way down. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the most ineptly organized parade in all the world. But I must note -- and this thing rarely gets noted in the public prints -- that the fans were extraordinarily well-behaved, as they have been every time, a little tipsy perhaps, and giddy with Silly String, but why not? Before next New Year's I intend to get a DSLR and if I've not been frazzled typing this blog I intend to post my own pictures, knowing half a million have posted their own already.

Posted 9:10 PM by Gene

Tonight I listened to an old (1988) "Melodiya" CD (via a defunct British label) of a 1951 adaptation by a composer named Avtomyan of Shostakovich's post-war score for a film called The Young Guard. The title summons those notorious farm-tractor musicals; then again the name Shostakovich summons a man whose face suggested a few too many sojourns under a desk, who wrote reams of "musical dissidence" -- meaning works with names like Leningrad and October and lots of gloomy and doomy chords with a heavily ironic fortissiissimo major chord at the end (with a flatted fifth snuck in like Miles Davis), works that yelled to the West, "See? I'm not in the Gulag yet!" -- even as he was winning Orders of Lenin and Stalin State Prizes or whatever they were called. But Shosty must have realized it would be hard to work that shtick in writing a film called The Young Guard. Here's IMDB.com's brief description:

The film is set in the city of Krasnodon in 1942 during the Nazi occupation of Russia. Local teenagers are organizing the underground resistance. The teens manage to outsmart the Nazis in their fight. They blow up the Nazi recruitment offices. Their activity lifts the spirits of the surviving citizens. They organize other school-friends in the groups of five to help the citizens in their struggle for survival. Their courage helps many others to survive.

Whatever side the Soviets took in history they (ultimately) took the right side against Hitler, and it would be hard to be false writing such hack work in a week, as Shosty probably did -- and except for a few bathetic chords that seem to say, "Am I really writing this dreck?", it is touching and stirring music, because here was recent history, and possibly because it has the guts to be sincere. Shosty has not entered the historic ash heap for the same reasons some people must find HERR DOKTOR SONDHEIM a genius, although the former is far worthier of avoiding it, but the received opinion on things can be the wrong one, and we're too overwhelmed by it to dissent.

P. S. We must presume the Soviets didn't make up the tale of the young guards like their other tall tales -- but how would it benefit them after their own untold millions of war dead?

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

And speaking of daydreaming, Rich daydreams about how we can bring America back. Let's see: Ban public unions, "let smart and motivated people teach school", "dump Sarbanes-Oxley", "privatize Social Security" -- it would be more honest to resurrect Jay Gould and Jim Fisk. We will need radical thinking to bring us back but this kind of radical thinking is old, and it reeks.

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

We wish we knew something about infrastructure but nonetheless this piece seems simple-minded. Yes it would be nice if we could build all these golly-gee-whiz-bang projects like the Chinese. All right -- let's trade our government in for China's. Plus these projects seem aimed not at ordinary people but at the rich and tourists. Let's build an infrastructure for the rich and tourists. What about the Bird's Nest? Oh, it's a beautiful work of infrastructure, isn't it? (I don't think so.) Of course we can do better but feeling sorry for ourselves in the reflection of an authoritarian state's ambitions isn't the way to do it.

The dire state of state finances is a result of decades of financing social security and public works expenditures with debt in the form of government bonds. The government finances are on the brink of collapse.

Which country would that be?

Posted 12:00 AM by Gene

May as well repeat this one from last year, with edits:

I do not like discussing personal matters but with the New Year I must. New Year's resolutions are not just made to be broken; they must preexist somewhere as lies. I have two for 2011, the same as from 2010: 1. Get published professionally and 2. Acquire a woman. Both are impossible. My masterpiece of a novel requires untold revisions -- rather demolition and reconstruction -- and I have neither the talent nor the patience to start. Well why not write a new novel? Because that would require inspiration, or experience. Our culture stinks because we don't have the panoramic life experience. Think of Dickens in his youth. Life is far easier now and we pay for it through the culture. The only places with something like the mad scramble of life are Africa and South Asia, and they don't have the masterworks because they never had Western culture. Sorry, Bollywood doesn't count.

As for the second the challenge is insuperable. Middle-age love is self-parody. Think Slick and his amours; think our thankfully outgoing guvnor EDDIE being a ladies' man. (In a way TGSM's train wreck was middle-aged because it's what a CEO might do if he had a body.) I don't have the advantage of a famous name or a famous inheritance. I fear online dating is a slog. There is no one at work. Being alone for so long I'm not sure I'd tolerate another person. The reduction of tragedy in life has made it somehow harder to mate; Matchmakers and arranged marriages existed because a spinster's fate was worse than virginity. How many more people lead unhappy love lives now that's its square to be romantically continent? The only conceivable way I'd gather a woman is through success in writing, and even if I found it I fear so many in the business would be so incompatible (i. e., knee-jerk liberals with huge egos and no irony, or overpublicized airheads) that I'd be just as bad as before, only with a little more money. So I make my resolutions knowing a higher force has already pulverized them for me.

Today the Mummers carry on with their increasingly shriveling excuse for a parade, and I'm always reluctant to head out as there are long, long gaps in the proceedings, with no one parading but policemen and souvenir hawkers, and nobody cares outside the city, but there are mobs to mingle with, and it's that or staying in my hovel all day.

Posted 11:56 AM by Gene

It's been a while, but we haven't forgotten...ARCHDaily!



The giant in "Jack and the Beanstalk" needs his exercise!

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

"This is nothing to be proud of," Medvedev told the businessmen, according to Dow Jones. "Part of the problem is, of course, [our] investment climate, which is bad. Very bad."

We have not commented on that sentencing in Russia because it seems like little more than a battle between two Mafia bosses, hence neutering somewhat all that "democracy" talk, and only people who've stuck their heads up their wazoos could be astonished that PUPPET MASTER may not be committed to whatever He calls "the rule of law", but His puppet makes it official: he is VLAD's version of a customer-service rep -- or HOWIE HAIRSHIRT.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

How astonishing to learn that TROOPER SUPERNIKKI!!!!! "ZEIGFIELD" FINKE has a friend in PAUL DRECK. She'll need his boisterous company if movee attendance is as bad as she says. Hollywood's had stinko years before and then a whole new wave of brilliance and TENTPOLES saved it, but the people have been quietly avoiding the octogigaplexes for ages, and all that "SUB-PAR content" may finally be wafting up the noses of even the movee S&M phreaks, and combined with 3D surcharges they may not, for the first time in recorded history, be a happy lot. Well what makes the cinematic diehards unhappy makes us very happy. More of the same in 2011!

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

One of the few ways the incoming Republican House will do a public service is by noting that His Incompetence has little interest in intelligence, nor in the means to effectively procure it.

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

When first we heard of the patriotic actions of NOO YAWK's sanitation workers -- in DA POST!!!!! -- our first thought was, another con-SER-va-tive gripe. As the evidence mounts up as did the snow it says that at their worst unions can paralyze cities, and because there's no way to punish the miscreants -- remember the rubber rooms? -- they can do it with impunity. Here's betting no one gets so much as lectured for this disgrace.

The one good thing about this is that HONORARY MAYOR MIKE can no longer run for president with impunity.

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

BUY NOW, PAY LATER: His Incompetence never thought of what might happen after the nation ran out of His holy-water stimulus. Why should He have? Didn't He stimulate the economy? Shouldn't His vassals be eternally grateful?

Posted 8:35 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: HE IS ED MURROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We wonder what the late lamented Mike Kelly would think of the Web site he left behind, and of the drivel that spouts from it. (The only consistently sensible writer there is Megan McArdle.)

I believe history will judge Stewart similarly, in this instance and hopefully again in the future.

We know one thing: any "writer" who uses the "floating hopefully" probably can't think.

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

These people are bitter because they didn't invest in the markets in March, 2009 -- they could nonupled their money!!!!!

As GEKKO KUDLOW teaches us just because stocks may be down over an arbitrary time frame doesn't mean they won't go upupupupUP!!!!!

Posted 7:14 PM by Gene

Money is not a motivator or factor as to why one school would get a particular decision versus another. Any insinuation that revenue from bowl games in particular would influence NCAA decisions is absurd, because schools and conferences receive that revenue, not the NCAA.

TRANSLATION: Our sugar daddies don't have to tell us what to do.

(Via ASSPress)

Posted 3:06 PM by Gene

The Wikileaks revolution isn’t only about airing secrets and transacting information. It’s about dismantling large organizations—from corporations to government bureaucracies. It may well lead to their extinction.

TRANSLATION: The paperless office, again.

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

Gawker Media was targeted because Denton and the staff decided earlier this year to annoy denizens of 4Chan, the anarchic web forum.

Nick Dorken learns, thankfully too late, there are some people you don't want to annoy.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

The Pentagon Papers revelations dealt with a discrete topic, the ever-increasing level of duplicity of our leaders over a score of years in increasing the nation's involvement in Vietnam while denying it. It revealed official wrongdoing or, at the least, a pervasive lack of candor by the government to its people.

WikiLeaks is different. It revels in the revelation of "secrets" simply because they are secret.

Mr. Abrams, a senior partner in the firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case.

I guess It hasn't hired us yet.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:18 AM by Gene

Don't look now but the fast-food-in-ghetto-America debate is coming back. Liberals believe such stores should be shut down en masse. What would take their place -- junk food from convenience stores? Conservatives believe there aren't enough of them. Why must the poor be fated to eat nothing but fast food?

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

“Some of the best minds in the country are spent all day, every day, wheedling nickels and dimes out of the tax system.”

One reason Corporate America has leaked TRILLIONS in REPUTATION.

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

CONCAST overpaying for THE GAMES would have two advantages: It would be a neat excuse to raise rates on the turnips AND allow BRIAN ROBBER and select co-conspira -- execs to laze in luxury boxes for months. GO FOR IT!!!!!

By the way, should news hacks like Dick really be lobbying people to do the things they want them to? Sure -- when they work for The Paper of Re-CORD!

PINCH! The wall. THE WALL!!!!!!!!!!

(Via several sites)

Posted 8:52 AM by Gene

Every day, at HENRY HONEST'S:

Glenview’s Larry Robbins Sets The World's Most Bullish Target: DOW 20,000!!!!!!!!!!

Roubini: The Housing Double Dip Is Now ACCELERATING!!!!!!!!!! [Bullish or accelerating overemphasis added]

Reading such jackasses is like reading a knee-jerk conservative and a knee-jerk liberal debating. Bulls and bears are the financial equivalent of partisans, and everything out of their yaps is the same as a partisan bleat; you can no more trust hard-core bulls and bears than hard-core Republicans or Democrats.

Posted 11:44 PM by Gene

The God Who Would Be President can't clear Noo Yawk's snow, which makes Him even more qualified.

Posted 10:46 AM by Gene

"CBS neither knew of nor approved the broadcast involving the material at issue. Consequently, the Court should vacate the forfeiture," CBS said in its filing last week.

This is extremely clever wording by a lawyer. SUMNER BROADCASTING CO. may not have known but we submit SUMNER did -- actually, we think he instigated it -- and because SUMNER did but SBC didn't means plausible deniability.

The one good thing is SUMNERDOM has spent millions in legal fees so it wouldn't have to pay a pittance to the Feds. If I owned shares in SBC I'd complain at the shareholders meeting. Thankfully SUMNER virtually owns the company. Please, please Your Highness SUMNER, make this story go away!

Posted 10:39 AM by Gene

It's hard to guess which could be louder: the chortling in the luxury news suites over the use of a word for this story or the chortling over the story outside.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

Corporate America continues its boycott of the people with cash hoarding, money it eventually decides to spend to make new billionaires on Wall Street and to provide employment for Chinese and Indians.

Does this not sound like something LEGENDARY WELCH concocts every night in his dreams?

P. S. Yes, yes, we know, the growth's overseas, but what's to prevent these INTERNATIONAL firms from taking their corporate HQ where the jobs are -- at the usual big cost to the taxpayer? Mark my words: that's next.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives would call those who default on loans for for-profit "college" courses dummies and financially incontinent. We say they were honest people looking for a step up the ladder, and found it hollowed out by for-profit termites like KAPLAN, INC.

One of the Republicans' first priorities when they assume full control of Congress must be to make it impossible for such people to ever reclaim their lives while making the for-profits impervious to all legal action.

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

The Library of Congress has just announced the latest Gene Siskel Memorial Thumbs-Up. What happens when we get to film number 1000? Oh, but surely there are that many films worthy of the Siskelian designation of GENIUS. Did not his sidekick and rival in toadying one-upmanship ROGER proclaim the industry to which he's sworn his fealty in blood can produce nothing but GENIUS? Let's increase the number of annual "honorees" to a hundred!

Here's a demonstration on why cutting Federal spending is well-nigh impossible: You'd have to cut thousands of Gene Siskel Memorial Thumbs-Up projects, and they're in every district, and every Congresspoop's pocket.

Posted 2:35 PM by Gene

There have been other instances when an advocate on a television show turned around public policy almost immediately by concerted focus on an issue — but not recently, and in much different circumstances.

“The two that come instantly to mind are MURROW and CRONKITE!!!!!” said

ROBERT J. THOMPSON,

a professor of television at Syracuse University!!!!! (Murrovian and Cronkitian overemphasis added)

PINCH! THE WALL!!!!! THE WALL!!!!!!!!!!



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO MENSA MAN AND THE ORIGINAL TV NEWSER!!!!!

(With an HONORARY MENTION to THE USUAL ROMY)

Posted 12:39 PM by Gene

Of course the Civil War was about slavery; Abe Lincoln said so. But when an ultra-partisan hack like E. J. gets his hands on such a topic you know it's for a cause, almost always an ulterior one, and it's a cause full of mischief and malice. So let's see: why would an ultra-partisan hack like E. J. say the Civil War was about slavery? I know! Because all these NAZIS like RAND PAUL want to BRING IT BACK!

(Via Newser!)

Posted 11:42 AM by Gene

Yep, you can tell a politician by his -- jet.

Critics say the flights suggest that Barbour has continued to live the lifestyle of a highflying lobbyist as he's slashed his state's budget for government services across the board since taking office in 2004.

Hey I got an idea, con-SER-va-tives: let's pay Republican politicians CEO wages for cutting spending -- just like CEOs!

Posted 6:43 AM by Gene

Another "count-us-not-surprised":

A few good songs would help, in which department the show is sorely lacking. Like most rock stars, Bono and The Edge haven’t a clue about writing for the theater. Many of the numbers are fragments and none offers much psychological insight into character. Tellingly, the ones that work best -- “Rise Above” and “Deeply Furious” -- belong to Arachne, who also gets the title song, a lame item indeed.

There’s not much humor in “Spider-Man,” and most of it is visual.

Even after Mike Riedel's through? (Although we've noticed him MIA of late. SLIME easily bought? Oh, no. He doesn't have to be.)

P. S. Steve (or rather, Pond) seems genuinely mystified that 2010 was "a bad year for film songs" [!!!!!], this in an age of such genius as "Springsteen's 'Streets of Philadelphia' and Dylan's 'Things Have Changed' and Eminem's 'Lose Yourself'", and even thinking through how bad it was despite all the compliments on FIVE PAGES didn't help.

By the way, who were those no-talents who wrote that forgotten Best Song of 1936? Give me Springsteen and Dylan and Eminem any day! Right, Pond?

Posted 6:10 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Between Tony and Sonny the Nine Fingers have their version of "whatever turns you on." With Tony it's law enforcement; with Sonny it's "criminal defendants." When they get turned on they tend to turn the people off.

And with the Fingers we view the hacks covering it as part of their digits, and we're never sure when they can be fully trusted.

Posted 9:50 PM by Gene

Bill Clinton to campaign for Emanuel in Chicago

Since the boss won't do it....

Posted 5:04 PM by Gene

Cut the comedy, It; It'll regret it all the way to the bank.

We do have a swell title, though, if Kuh-NUFF wants to earn the money back: The Sex Life of Julian Assange.

Who'll read it for anything else?

Incidentally, given Its manner of speaking in electronic pamphlets -- why do I smell dozens of ghosts?

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

Before the twerp Dick Ebersol, before even Roone Arledge, there was Bud Greenspan. (Of course before Greenspan there was Leni Riefenstahl, but that's another story.) On the one hand by all accounts he was a brilliant documentarian; on the other he must be blamed in part for the up-close-and-personal garbage that has overwhelmed THE GAMES. On the third hand people could believe in it because there was no reason not to, as THE GAMES could still put on the pretense of being virginal.

Posted 4:39 PM by Gene

We believe it, Senator -- our country will face "apocalyptic pain" -- so will your party hand out big doses of pain reliever like the last time?

Posted 4:36 PM by Gene

Hefner, known around the world by his nickname, Hef, has championed sexual freedom and civil rights, published stories challenging McCarthyism and the Vietnam War, and backed gay causes and the legalisation of marijuana.

Yep, these blithering hacks have already written the second-coming-of-Jesus obituaries.

P. S. at 10:47 p. m. The comments are almost as "gross" as the purported nuptials.

Posted 4:34 PM by Gene

Perhaps the auto biz wouldn't be in this mess of having to placate His Omnipotence except that for years all they knew how to sell was SUVs and minivans, and our good "friends" the Saudis would always be there to provide us with economical power.

Posted 4:23 PM by Gene

Gibbs: Indefinite detention of terrorists regrettable

TRANSLATION: Golly gee, we'd like to let 'em out -- Constitutional rights and all that; but these NAZ -- Republicans say these guys'll throw all sorts of tantrums if we do, and while I'm not an ISLAMOPHOBE like Republicans there comes a time when...

DAMMIT why did my boss have to make that blasted PROMISE?

Posted 4:20 PM by Gene

Can someone please tell us how much filler is in all those box sets the rock mu-SICK-cri-TICKS get to take home for free?

Posted 4:05 PM by Gene

Well, we got our kind of Xmas gift -- BO down 45 PERCENT from last year, but a lot of that's due to KING JIM, although some of it might owe to cynics who think they can do the filmic equivalent of a bowel movement and people will want to see it. Plus SLIME thought people would want to see Jack Black in a "family" movee when people may not want to see him in anything. We do want to see the Os-CAR® people give the a-WARD to that arty remake of something that starred JOHN WAYNE just because it was "successful".

"The industry is going to be running agains [SIC!] all those weeks of 'Avatar,' and it's going to be hard to compete," said one studio executive.

May you have lots more uncompetitive weekends!

P. S.

Jack Black was a trooper [SIC!!!!!] and went everywhere to promote.

"Zeigfield", "trooper" -- who cares as long as we're the most powerful woman in Hollywood!

And -- promote what?