Posted 10:52 PM by Gene

Donald Trump Shows Up at White House Correspondents Dinner, Is Booed on Arrival

TRANSLATION: Hypocrites again.

Posted 7:11 PM by Gene

Another RENDELLFEST, this time on Broad, tied in to a largely will-o'-the-wisp "international arts festival" supposedly tied to France though it was hard to tell the connection from the tray lousay jazz-rock bands, and definitely tied in to the Annenberg estate, which had nothing better to do with the money. An alleged 100,000 to 150,000 -- a reasonable guess -- crammed into eateries that on normal Saturdays would be all but out of business. People jostled into the Kimmel Mausoleum (for whose dubious benefit this was staged) to see an eighty-foot-high Erector set construction of the Eiffel Tower but they weren't cramming the gift shop as that was hidden by coming-attractions decals. Strangely -- or perhaps not so strangely given our perpetual distemper despite the Phightin' Phils -- the goody packs at the media tent went mostly unclaimed. I know EDDIES would be beside themselves but if this neighborhood were so crammed every blasted day it would be unlivable. The only thing for a single middle-aged white male to do was to scan the crowd for young attractive females, and God knows girl-watching among dirty old men is already a most melancholy hobby; I found one who uncomfortably reminded me of a woman I met eons ago on the Chestnut Hill local with whom I struck up a conversation but somehow never saw again. It is not pleasant thinking yourself the only man alive in a crowd of 100,000. Tonight (as last night, apparently in rehearsal) we got acrobats or dancers or something performing on a scaffold suspended by a hundred-fifty-foot crane, the whole contraption rigged with or accompanied by bells and making the appealing sound of ten thousand wind-chimes. One could imagine a spectacular if new-agey display of light and beauty but from my perspective it was a dark low-watt fizzle despite frequent stupid cheering. Thankfully the whole affair ushered in a white crowd, which is the whole point; Monday we go back to being an impoverished industry-free taxpayer-leeching plurality-black-and-poor city with a broke school system and little hope for the future save more RENDELLFESTS -- like this one in three weeks.

An odd sight: Outside the Academy tonight dozens of overmade-up strangely look-alike girls demonstrated an appalling lack of taste with short skirts (many fringed) and unappealing colors (lots of gray) and metallic high-heels this side of the disco age. One could call them tarts; I won't. At first I thought it was ballet but I remembered cultural events at our AHTS COMPLEX are off-limits to people under 65. No, these were students at a second-string university studying to be fashion designers and joining their no-doubt Walter Mittyish president in honoring Tommy Hilfiger. Last year at a similar event they honored an alumnus, his boss at Phillips-Van Heusen. Another honoree is the head of the Carl Icahn factotum Federal-Mogul (paaaaaaaaaaaarts for sale), which may not have much to do with Tommy Hilfiger. REALLY GUYS.... Anyway, the girls chatted and draped arms around one another and took pictures, and while many were no doubt airheads (certainly so designated by their dress) they had such an obvious bursting exquisitely feminine joie de vivre as to remind a sad middle-aged white male he was forlornly looking for a reason to live.

Posted 2:37 PM by Gene

Yahoo!!!!! runs a press release for another look-alike starlet -- with a difference:

Rosie said in an interview with Access Hollywood there was only one hitch to her sharing the screen with Shia LaBeouf: she's taller than him. She said, "I had to wear heels the whole way through filming, and when it came to our kissing scene I said, 'Michael, please let me take my shoes off!'" But the director wouldn't allow it: "He said, 'No, you're giving small men across America hope.'"

Well, so long as there's hope.

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

When one of the TV IS BETTER THAN EVER!!!!! crowd says the zillionaire dos' coverage of the wedding stunk, it STUNK.

Posted 10:36 AM by Gene

Three business press agents are dispensing a few of the believers' Q&A's at St. Warren's latest Holy Cult Conference, and since one of them is with THE BIG C we KNOW they'll be softballs.

Who says you can't take it with You, St.?

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

The World's Late-Night Casanova is in His TRUTH-TELLING MODE again.

He fits that sleazy loudmouth THE TRUMPSTER better than He thinks. If THE DONALD becomes president he should appoint CAS as His press secretary. Ol' Shag-Carpet Hair could say stupid things and CAS could say stupid things. It would be a non-stop...riot.

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

MOGUL'S FRIEND pulls another one -- not only does he launch into another of his specious, self-serving attacks on ST. JACK'S BOTULISM-LADEN ALPHABET SOUP, he does it on behalf of a non-starter at the box office!

FIRE MOGUL'S FRIEND!

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

God bless POLITICO:

SNL: Skewering pols for 35 years

So have the Capitol Steps, we think. Isn't it time to retire both of them?

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

THE DONALD DODGED THE DRAFT!

I'd rather talk about wedding gowns.

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

Donald Trump Drops F-Bombs Left And Right During Speech, And The Crowd Goes Crazy For It!!!!!!!!!!! [Weisenthal overemphasis added]

I was about to say there goes the social-conservative vote but THE DONALD isn't the only buffoon in or around the party.

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

George Soros on Koch brothers: ‘We used to be friends’

Geez, and you have so much in common -- wanting to rule the world, hating the people, trying to lock up your enemies in prisons -- why can't you three make up and be united about it?

"Wistful" P. S. at 6:35 p. m.

"The political controversy on the role of the state in the economy is raging in full force today," said Soros, "but the standards of political discourse have greatly deteriorated since then." The two opposing sides in politics "have each got hold of one half of the truth."

"Although I am often painted as the representative of the far left and I am certainly not free of political bias," said Soros, "I readily recognize that the other side is half right in claiming that the government is wasteful and inefficient and ought to function better. But I also continue to cling to the other half of the truth, namely that financial markets are inherently unstable and need to be regulated. Moreover, I am profoundly worried that those who proclaim half truths as the whole truth, whether they are from the left or the right, are endangering our open society."

Noble sentiments, George -- but they might have been nobler if you hadn't been at the center of the BUSHHITLER brigade, and if you had used your vast wealth to help build up our political smarts, instead of loudly and relentlessly dumbing us down.

And yes, that goes for your former friends too.

P. P. S.

Posted 10:13 AM by Gene

The Nobel-winning Professor Tantrum bellows:

I’d say that the Fed’s policy is to do nothing about unemployment because RON PAUL IS NOW THE CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON MONETARY POLICY!!!!!!!!!! [Do-nothing overemphasis added]

You mean HE runs the Fed?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 10:09 AM by Gene

One of His Incompetence's and BEN's most reliable cronies, the Very Very Littler Jeffy, has resigned from the board of the New York Fed (!!!!!), meaning he can devote more time to help outsourcing -- improving our economy!

The New York Fed in December revised rules for its board of directors to avert conflicts of interest.

As BEN and Very Very Littler Jeffy know, the best conflicts of interest are the ones you can't see!

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

One word on our part, despite the gassing of TWO BILLION!!!!!: the new Duchess has extraordinary taste in wedding gowns. We do hope the comparisons to Princess Grace aren't a curse, for her Rainier pretty well kept her locked up in his smirking principality, unable to move. If any of that radiant smile can translate into acts transcendently useful she could truly be something.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

Will Jimmy Carter's latest North Korea visit change anything?

Hasn't PEANUT long ago passed the point where he's too old to change anything?

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

It is sufficient to call THE DONALD "a clown and a buffoon", and leave it at that, but then TNR's "editors" had to psychologize, and say in so many words that this clown and buffoon appeals to lower-class retards because he preys on their inferiority complex. Isn't there enough to the man to ridicule without such histrionics? His bankruptcies alone would make an editorial. And this clown and buffoon may be on the mark when He says His Incompetence advanced in life thanks to affirmative action. Of course He did. Remember the news coverage of His coronation? THE DONALD's own pretzel-twisting words are damning enough.

Posted 8:06 AM by Gene

A comedian's work is never done:

NBC’S BRIAN WILLIAMS RETURNS TO U.S. FROM LONDON TO COVER AFTERMATH OF DEADLY SOUTHERN STORMS!!!!!!!!!! [Rush-rush overemphasis added]

Now after having spoken non-stop for three days will he be in voice?

Posted 10:36 PM by Gene

I wish I had a DSLR (I will soon, but later rather than sooner, alas); on my way to work the city (I presume) is demolishing an old crumbling factory near the Somerset El stop. Factories willed the El; many stops were located in industrial hubs. If I'm correct furniture was made there. It's five stories high and was built in at least two parts: the wood-and-brick original, which I date from the 1870s or 1880s, near a former Philadelphia and Reading right-of-way (now a one-track Norfolk Southern stub), and a more "modern" steel-framed extension, probably from around the Great War. Graffiti defaces it and God knows what crimes and drug abuse occur there; it's long deserved to be demolished. But the demolition is nonetheless dismaying for here is another part of working Philadelphia demolished, a city that ceased to exist when its governors turned it over to criminals, thus freeing factories to close or leave the city. Now (as I've said too often before) we're EDS 'n' MEDS and social services (and highly profitable non-profits like THE ORCHESTRA), a fact that pleases many here. It strongly displeases me that we have so robbed ourselves of the will and the means to live.

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

If the news hacks have turned the wedding into VAUDEVILLE so with their non-stop high-pitched whining self-consciousness they must now inflict upon us their nearly equal and opposite vaudeville of WHO CARES? The royal bride and groom have done nothing to offend us save through the endlessly refracting prism that is the news hacks' verbiage. Let them wed; we always have other targets worthy of saturation coverage and abuse.

Posted 3:21 PM by Gene

ExxonMobil understands: if you're going to be a political leper you may as well be the biggest leper you can.

Posted 1:55 PM by Gene

Speaking of business and bullhockey, here is the next con-SER-va-tive crusade: fighting limits to the marketing of "unhealthy" foods to kids. In an ideal world government wouldn't tell business how to conduct itself but one reason it does is that business has no moral bearings and as it grows ever more brazen it must increasingly must be slapped by GUVMENT's ever-heavier hand. (More on that second link later.)

Posted 1:50 PM by Gene

In how many B-schools is HAHVAHD Business Revue required reading? Judging from these two piles of bullhockey its subscribers would be better off getting a business education working the counter at Mickey D's.

Posted 1:15 PM by Gene

SURPRISE: The Golf Channel may have benefited from a Ponzi scheme of SUH ALLEN's.

FORE!

(Via FinViz)

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

U.S. economy weakens sharply in first quarter

It's official: BEN has it BOTH WAYS!

DOW 570 GIGAMEGAHYPERQUADRAZILLION!!!!!

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

IF FACEBOOK!!!!!!!!!! isn't worth $800 MEGAHYPERGIGAZILLIONS, what does that say for the rest of BEN'S DAYDREAM?

(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!, who knows something about daydreams)

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

More movee GENIUS, posted in full:

Sony has won a bidding war for Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber's royal-wedding-themed comedy, paying seven-figure sum for the pitch, TheWrap has learned.

The "500 Days of Summer" writers had received multiple offers.
Matt Tolmach is producing.

Andrea Giannetti and Doug Belgrad will oversee for the studio.

Who'll oversee the losses?

Posted 4:54 PM by Gene

It's official: Uncle Ben and His clients in the Wall Street Casino are trying to prompt another crash.

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

What took Him so long?

This will not stop people looking for conspiracies, but thankfully they will now more resolutely group themselves with the TRUTHERS.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

"Critics, you won."

No no no no no: the free market won -- by declaring AYNISM a non-starter at the popcorn restaurants.

Or is the free market unfree when it turns against Aynists?

Posted 8:21 AM by Gene

Hubert Schlafly, Jr., the godfather of His Incompetence and every soap opera actor as the inventor of the TelePrompTer, died last week. Amazing how simple innocent expedients can tie a people into knots, but then Vladimir Zworykin once thought TV would do good.

Posted 7:28 PM by Gene

Not content to torture themselves with BUGS, the videogame phreaks have laid themselves prostrate to the ultimate bug -- hackers stealing their electronic vitals.

Posted 7:25 PM by Gene

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says security is the only reason anyone should get a police escort.

That and "Can I have your autograph?"

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

Speaking of NEWSER!, this story should shame some of us into finishing our college educations, whatever their uselessness.

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

Amazon.com Falls RISES!!!!!!!!!! on Operating Profit Forecast Below Estimates

Well, it DID, for a little bit.

CLOUD Cuckooland Lives!

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

We would not say that "clueless horde" translates into RETARDS, but the way the Ivy League's run the country into the ground makes us yell THE PEOPLE, YES -- even if some supposedly have trouble thinking things through.

By the way, how many remember Walter Lippmann -- outside this lyric from Pal Joey: "Zip! Walter Lippmann wasn't brilliant today!"?

(Via NEWSER!, which agrees the voters are retards -- is WOLFFMAN!!!!! still there?)

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

We suspect in twenty years many people will remember MONEY HONEY®!!!!! and KATIE!!!!! equally well -- which will be about as many people as remember THIS GUY today.

What we intend to do shortly: post a list of media types who were famous twenty or thirty years ago who are question marks above the head now. Here's a starter: MAX ROBINSON?!?!?

And while we're at it, a suggestion to AOL: Buy HENRY HONEST!!!!!'s -- or better still, have him PAY YOU to MERGE!

P. S. If it helps anyone's memory, THIS GUY starred in the original production of HOW TO SUCCEED IN HOGWARTS!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

Thankfully when Corporate America extends Its hand in peace It stumbles over Its five left feet.

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

A Challenge: Stop Saying ‘Speculators’

A challenge to con-SER-va-tives: Stop calling them HEROES, or BLAMELESS, or with EUPHEMISMS.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Twenty-five years ago today the Soviet Union atom-bombed its own people. Oh yes, incompetents did it by pushing the wrong buttons, and of course they didn't mean to do it, but the effect was exactly the same. It unmasked Communism's cheap cruel attitude toward life for even the useful idiots. It, as even the supposed hero Gorbachev or Ronald Reagan could not do, brought an evil empire down. The cost was ghastly, and long after the Soviet Union ceases to be a bad blood-stained memory innocents will pay the price cleaning up for incompetents, and for the Devil's system that rewarded them.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

The singer Phoebe Snow, who cared for a profoundly disabled daughter for thirty-one years, has died, and we pray she, and her daughter, are together for all eternity enjoying the happiness this awful world denied them.

Posted 8:34 PM by Gene

ASTONISHING: We were looking for articles on the decline in the rock-noise biz and came across this one just posted three hours ago that alleges SELIGISM is awash in empty seats. We thought BUD took care of the problem after erasing THE GREATEST SEASON EVER! No sport save the ATTITUDE LEAGUE more epitomizes the contempt professional sports moguls have for the rank-and-file fan, yet some teams have cut prices -- and still the attendance falls! This might be part of a pattern, sorry to say: people might think anything BIGMEDIA vastly overpriced, employing ingrates who'd as soon spit at their fan base as shake their hands, and people may be tired of a product that practically doesn't change from year to year. We see that in the rock-noise biz. We still believe the current MOVEE B. O. BOOM isn't a glitch, though we won't be sure until the TENTPOLES go up. NASCAR still has its troubles. Perhaps people can will themselves into amnesia -- the NHL's recent "success" says that, though it's all but resigned itself to niche status -- but our BIGMEDIA superiors burned too many bridges with their customers, and thankfully some of their crowd are finally seeing the charred results.

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

Among the other HIP things ad agencies do is to overexpose bad songs. Not having heard any of the ditties in this puff piece we guess they're rambling and tuneless, or else aspirational and tuneless. One comes from an album that's sold an astonishing "230,000" copies in twenty-one months. At least the one band has seventy members and "spreads [the wealth] around." What makes us cringe when it should make us laugh is that all these bands have a noble obligation writ in blood not to "sell out". Irving Berlin was recently ubiquitous in Madison Avenue's spew because he was a street busker almost from his arrival from Tsarist Russia. No accident: the worse the songs get the more we hear that selling them is selling out, for without that self-righteousness, that noble aura that comes from reading hundreds of ROCK mu-SICK cri-TICKS, all that's left is a song, a song worth nothing if you can't whistle or hum it, a song you can't whistle or hum without considerable help, a song whose selling is made that much more impossible by its "creators" refusing to "sell out".

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

The advantage of Haley not running is now the Dems won't have someone who looks like a zillionaire lobbyist to campaign against.

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

A postcard (I think) affixed to the steps of a house on 10th Street:

Everything's going to be alright.

I hope so with that spelling.

P. S. My spell check caught everything's.

Posted 4:28 PM by Gene

A professor wants us to "rethink music", because:

Global sales of recorded music fell another nine percent last year, according to the IFPI (International Federation of the Recording Industry). Various estimates put the drop in annual sales over the last decade at somewhere between 60 and 70 percent, and IFPI estimates that 19 of every 20 tracks downloaded is pirated.

Fewer new artists are breaking through, too. Sales by debut artists in the global top 50 album chart in 2010 were just one quarter of the level they achieved in 2003. [PRAAAAAAAAAISE GOD!] Those that do succeed are frequently lamented for a perceived lack of talent.

Setting aside it may often be more than merely perceived, our professor shares with us this deadly factoid:

Copyrighted material is now the largest export of the United States.

While God's Servants would undoubtedly disagree, think of it -- aside from dubious financial instruments, our biggest export is now JUNK MOVIES, TV AND NOISE!

Posted 3:10 PM by Gene

John must be under orders from Philadelphia to make Brian Williams as revered a figure as ED MURROW. Okay, we concede: if we knew him we'd say Brian's a pretty good guy (despite four years ago), but consider: his news show barely draws nine million; the CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED 30 Rock draws maybe five million; the CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED SEE IT NOW draws about a million and a half. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, where's the rest of us, BRIAN?

Posted 12:18 PM by Gene

Since The Paper of Re-CORD runs all this fantastic reporting why should it worry about an impotent ombudsman?

Posted 12:08 PM by Gene

One of 16,327 reasons I don't trust the Web: Some typist at SLIME's Marketwatch ran a diatribe saying America is finished. WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! picked it up (NO DIRECT LINK), whereupon his opposite number HENRY HONEST!!!!! picked it up, both prompting hundreds to make inane remarks....Yes, when it comes to the Web it's best to close your ears before the bansheeing starts.

(Daily Mail and TWXSTER links via Jo-NAHdom)

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

Thankfully videogames have become as expensive to make as tentpoles, more so with their declining sales and increasing BUGS. This sounds like a totally fatuous project: a detective game set in the supposed Los Angeles of 1947, fatuous because it's set in what the movies would have certain geeks believe is the LA of 1947, a town all in black-and-white -- and heavily "researched" to boot. Without going into the great Oscar Hammerstein's comment about "research poison" we will say those remarkable color pictures of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake suggest there might not have been a time the world went film noir.

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

One of the MURROW BOYS whom we'll call Charlotte Collingwood hurled curses at people who wouldn't worship her!

Truly, it is an entitlement to work for ED MURROW.

The saucy "Daily Show" correspondent spent her Tuesday evening at Pure nightclub in Caesars Palace Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, enclosed in a VIP section with Ultimate Fighting Championship founder Dana White and supermodel Selita Ebanks. [Why all the links, MORT ZUCK?]

And to think ED the FIRST was friends with Bogie and Coop, not to mention Marlene and Mrs. Harriman! This, ED the SECOND, is no contest -- YOU WIN!

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

But Ben wasn't trying to help the economy -- he was trying to help the Wall Street Casino! See, by inflating the stock market that makes the rich richer, who then might spend a little of their newfound riches on -- oh, never mind.

(Via TINA!)

Posted 2:38 PM by Gene

"Information about our financial support for certain causes is proprietary!!!!!" said Adam Shores, a spokesman for insurance giant Allstate. [Informative overemphasis added]

TRANSLATION: THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED! WE'LL CORRUPT POLITICIANS ANY WAY WE CHOOSE!

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

“Likely the fighting is going to continue, the death rate will be high, the TV images are going to be awful, the drumbeat of criticism from the news corps, the punditocracy and the intervention caucus on Capitol Hill will get really loud,” Lindsay said. “Should we get to that point, Obama’s going to have a choice: Do more or find a way out.”

Say Your Incompetence! Nice Vietnam You landed us into -- and Yours doesn't even have COMMIES!

Posted 1:48 PM by Gene

[W]e are not sanguine about our media not being zapped despite the cloud's supposed near infinite capacity for backup.

Lots of others were!

(Via NEWSER!)

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Stephen Schwartz, the genius composer of PIPPIN and WICKED!!!!!, has written an AH-pe-RA for a dying company, with predictable results. Next time, Steve, leave it to professionals.

And what's wrong with sitting in the Riviera with your unjustly earned zillions?

Posted 9:15 PM by Gene

"This snub is par for the course for those of us lucky to do a job that's long been derided as extraneous AND self-indulgent!!!!!" [Deriding overemphasis added]

ANN, Ann, now that you've hyperventilated you've made it all but inevitable ROCK mu-SICK cri-TICS will get the beloved P-Ulitzers -- they'll probably be the only ones to get them -- but that doesn't make the truth you accidentally uttered any less true: such cri-TICS engage in extraneous, self-indulgent work, making immortals of temporal no-talents, using up more than the God-given supply of adjectives and syllables and pretensions; but PLEASE, Ann, cut the melodrama; in time their extraneous self-indulgence will be RICHLY awarded, as it has elsewhere in the NEWS BIZ.

Posted 8:20 PM by Gene

OH, so The GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHDIAN ran this AHTSJournal-linked pile of piffle also! Once one could distinguish literary fiction from hack work; but with the hack work rising to a level of unwarranted respectability -- and more to the point, with literary fiction falling to the level of its MFAs -- there was no longer a good reason to favor one over the other, especially when the reading public had an increasing resentment of being BORED.

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

MEL!!!!! had an EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!!!!! with the SUPERNIKKIS!!!!!!!!!!

TRANSLATION: He didn't say anything.

Posted 12:22 PM by Gene

Let's see -- where do we start with ASININE:

MORT ZUCK runs a story on a woman who's set an alleged record in plastic surgeries. The only comment thus far starts, "I dunno how this made 'news'." We dunno either.

DVFORBESLISTBLOG, not content to run a story on one of those all-time zillionaire villains who must own every sports team in sight and flatters the BONOVIANS by not talking to the press, runs this typing about bringing the Dodgers back to Brooklyn because Brooklyn's "HIP". I've got a better idea: Let's bring the Faberge eggs back to the Forbeses!

THE TWXSTERS say in so many words they'll let THE DONALD determine how much He's worth. You'd think news hacks would want to make a fuss over this, given how THEY appoint our president, but His publicity value TRUMPS making a fuss any day.

THE WAX tries to justify the wall-to-wall junk her CLIENTS intend to justify THE WEDDING with by running "GUESSTIMATES" of how many people watched certain big TV events, which reminds us of that old saw about lies, damned lies and TV EXECS.

THE GAHHHHHHHHHHDIAN runs another of those intolerable think pieces AHTSJournal MUST link to, saying how wonderful it is that our language is accreting with slang no one will remember in fifteen years. Hey Johnny, you think we'll still be using "sheening" then? Shakespeare's full of obsolete words. Some words sound good for a short time, but without an occasional cleaning and polishing they lose all meaning. And most people aren't Shakespeares. Writers can't avoid what the OED called "nonce" words -- we use too many ourselves -- but it's best to stick with the tried-and-true so that you won't require a slang dictionary in fifty years.

Posted 11:05 PM by Gene

THIS is a SCREAM!

JERRY BECK, TAKE A BOW!

(Even if the cartoon has a misspelling.)

Posted 2:50 PM by Gene

We are SOOOO sorry hope and change proved to be somewhat tougher to come by than expected.

Posted 2:30 PM by Gene

The best-laid plans of mice: Who knew "medical" marijuana was good for so many "aches and pains"?

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

Got a stock problem? KUDLOWIZE IT!

Yum Brands Inc. executives said Thursday that Taco Bell, their most profitable U.S. chain, hasn't recovered from the impact of a lawsuit, since dropped, over the beef content of its taco filling.

STOCK UP FIVE PERCENT!!!!!

Scores of websites and Internet services like Foursquare and Reddit are down or have limited availability because of problems at a data center run by Amazon.com.

NO PROBLEM -- THAT STOCK'S UP TOO!!!!!

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

The administration is not naive about Russia. It is well aware of the injustice, corruption and fragility of the country’s political system.

Since when has The Econowiz become a house organ for His Incompetence?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

Thanks for wasting our time, ZACK! Somewhere the Founder (you know, one of those guys before BONO!!!!! came along) is spinning in his grave.

Which reminds us -- hope You lose more money on TURN OUT THE LIGHTS!

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

Good! Frank's putting up a FIGHT! Although this merely means someone's right to earn obscene profits gets slightly delayed.

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

When a con-SER-va-tive Web site runs a story like this either 1. We can ignore it or 2. We can slander it thanks to its bias, but it sounds as though His Incompetence's gang has regally screwed up again.

Posted 8:52 AM by Gene

Some Web sites put the moral equivalent of "DO NOT ENTER" (or rather, don't have to enter) signs on their home pages. HENRY HONEST!!!! does it with JOE W.; Atlantic.com does it by becoming YOUR NUMBER-ONE SOURCE FOR ROCK MUSIC CRITICISM!!!!! The TWXSTERS have just done it too. But they're the experts at putting DO NOT ENTER signs on magazines, so it's second nature.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

GE BANCORP's raising its dividend -- by a penny -- and STEVEDOM'S BACK IN PERMANENT PROSPERITY MODE, so let me guess: DOW UP 10,000!!!!!

P. S. at 11:08 a. m.

Analysts noted GE's 6 percent rise in revenue -- which came across all divisions -- may have been inflated by a change in its fiscal calendar that added six days to the first quarter.

Sorry Very Littler Jeffy -- you're STILL not LEGENDARY WELCH.

P. P. S. at 11:11 a. m. LEGENDARY could buy SIX COMPANIES in ONE DAY!

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

All this means is someday soon the Dodgers will be obscenely profitable under new owners. The Bill Gates of Baseball protects His owners' profit margins first.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Here we get all this blah about a new golden age for Branson East and this theme park closes before they've had a chance to fully erect the rides. We only wish more of those who foist such parks on the Sardi's fanciers would have such rough times.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

This is a huge tax break and it's guvment playing favorites, which it shouldn't do; that said, better for Corporate America to be back in the cities it so blithely abandoned.

Posted 3:17 PM by Gene

A homeless man, who has been arrested at least 120 times since 1998, has been arrested after a woman accused him of assaulting her while she was passed out.

This is precisely the sort who's a hero to the sons of b -- DOUGLAS who think vagrancy is the expression of a noble spirit. If the Chief Social Engineer weren't preoccupied he'd take him up as pro-bono work.

When Bell was questioned by the police, he responded, "I probably did that," according to the report.

TRANSLATION: Try and convict me!

Posted 3:10 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The Web allows people to hibernate in such extraordinarily tiny hermetically-sealed self-referential in-joke cubbyholes their fellow humans have no reason to notice.

This DVFORBESLISTBLOG typist finds that wonderful. Don't we have enough cliques, even with memberships of one?

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

So! In addition to wasting money on junk television, Corporate America's wasting money on computers!

Just so long as It doesn't have to hire anybody.

Posted 8:03 PM by Gene

Chris was sure in a fun mood today, wasn't he! We confess we haven't even progressed to the boredom and ennui level with The Wedding of the Century. We were about to type that such weddings are an argument for abolishing the British crown but as Chris says the Queen does have a certain dignity, and besides what other high-ups can we laugh down
at?

Needless to say the MIRACLE OF MOUNTAIN VIEW is in on the act:

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

We fear this powerful essay will merely confirm the whole business as a partisan conservative cause, but conservatives and liberals alike should fight the open urban wound that is graffiti and redouble efforts to clean it up -- and especially to clean up its "artistes".

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

This surely qualifies for a Darwin Award, professional-sports division:

Reds pitcher Mike Leake was arrested on a shoplifting charge at a downtown department store Monday, accused of trying to steal six shirts with a total value of $59.88....

Police arrest reports said Leake removed the price tags from six American Rag T-shirts at a Macy's store and tried to leave without paying for them. Leake makes $425,000 in his second season in the majors.

Guy, if you're going to shoplift couldn't you trade up?

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

The widespread assumption that Trump’s flirtation with the presidency is a publicity stunt is no doubt at least partly true. But that’s merely the point of departure for a man whose almost every public move over the last 30 years has been a publicity stunt.

When our public life becomes something no one can take seriously, we get DONALDS.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Frank WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILDHORN, the age's answer to Henry Mancini, has concocted another theme park:

Wildhorn cooks up boy-band numbers for Jack and his fellow knights, who look like refugees from a Ralph Lauren Polo campaign. (These are among the few occasions choreographer Marguerite Derricks appears to be awake, aping moves more cleverly parodied in Altar Boyz.)

There’s generic Latino pop for El Gato, laid-back Prince-style funkadelics for the Caterpillar, a screechy anthem out of the Bonnie Tyler/Jim Steinman playbook for the Mad Hatter, and an old-school showstopper for the Queen, with nods to Gypsy, The Music Man and South Pacific. This show needs no help underlining its inferiority to classic musicals. In amongst all this is the occasional insipid ballad for Alice and Chloe.

Something for everyone -- a comedy tonight!

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

BULLETIN Treasury Dept.: S&P outlook underestimates U.S.'s debt-reduction capacity [Marketwatch.com blurb]

As well it might given His Incompetence is in office.

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

WHITE MALES ARE TOAST! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!

We wouldn't gloat so hard, TINA!!!!! -- not with SIX PAGES OF ADS and your SUGAR DADDY gone. Does America need more than one newsrag -- The Econowiz?

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

"More than two years after the beginning of the recent crisis, U.S. policymakers have still not agreed on how to reverse recent fiscal deterioration or address longer-term fiscal pressures," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Nikola G. Swann.

Our rejoinder: Stocks have doubled! What, we worry?

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

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

1. "A former network executive" burps:

The first decade of the 2000s has been dubbed "The Reality Era," but it was really an era of choice. If you want serious drama, there's "Mad Men," "Six Feet Under" or "The Wire"; if it's intelligent comedy try "The Daily Show"or "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; if it's tightly plotted thrillers, how about "True Blood" or "Damages?" If you prefer to not be sure what you're watching, try "Carnivale." [Only $110 for ALL THREE SETS!] And, of course, "reality" shows of every stripe filled the screen -- some being high-quality efforts such as "The Amazing Race" and "American Idol" and others that were just -- well -- odd. Whole networks are now devoted to the genre. If Newton Minow couldn't find something to like in this plethora of choice, tailored to so many tastes -- highbrow and low-brow -- perhaps he'd need to rethink his definition of a "wasteland." It's been a storm-tossed journey, but we've come a long way from "Gilligan's Island." [Links added]

Just one problem -- people now have to pay hundreds of dollars for what by rights the networks should have delivered for free. Their dropping the ball helped lead to "57 CHANNELS AND NOTHIN' ON", a number that threatens to approach 57,000. We might add "CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED" does NOT equal GOOD. We might further add if searching for quality television is now a full-time occupation in its own right what's the point?

And we would not have gone to the trouble of collecting links for these MASTERPIECES' ratings if people watched them. They are old but generally the numbers top out at 4 million -- 1.3 percent of the current U. S population. And they are frequently much lower. But then we do expect TV executives, present or former, to be IGNORAMUSES.

2. The CRAINIACS try to get their clients in gear by boasting that SOCIAL MEDIA LEAD TO APPOINTMENT VIEWING!!!!! Well when you see a buzzword you know it can't be long in the article before its authors contradict themselves:

[C]hatter doesn't always translate to ratings. Digital agency Wiredset recently launched social-media tracker Trendrr.TV to rank TV shows based on full-week volume of tweets, Facebook posts and check-ins for GetGlue and Miso, two mobile startups that aim to corral TV chatter. On that chart, for the same week, "Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" are top-three social-media shows; they also top Nielsen's list for most viewers. However, "Glee," while No. 2 on Trendrr.TV, was No. 77 on Nielsen's top-watched broadcast prime-time list for the same week.

TRANSLATION: Faddish social media won't help programs with "huge" audiences because they don't need it, and they won't help CULT PROGRAMS because their audiences are too small.

3. Brian -- who can always be counted on to assume the missionary position with potential advertisers -- says someday we'll get to see ANYTHING ON TV!!!!!!!!!! We would remind this DIMWIT that typical ratings for most TV shows are single-digit -- and sometimes not even that, which you'll get when your first order of business is to prod us to see ANYTHING ON TV!!!!!!!!!!

And judging from 16,800 Google links we'd say DOC-TOR PONDILLO is yearning to be the next PERFESSER THOMPSON -- that is to say, a complete ALWAYS-ON JERK.

P. S. Hmmm, six months ago the BLITHERING JACKASS BRIAN was saying, "[A]s TV becomes much more disparate and personal, thanks to new technology, family-friendly content may have more sway." I guess the pimps sang a different tune last week.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO BRIAN!

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

A pose of exceptional shrewdness. By putting her hand over her mouth Keira somewhat obscures her very masculine jaw. She actually looks...appealing. If Keira were as good looking below the upper lip...but we don't expect ANY female ac-TOR to be good looking these days.

Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

Another excruciatingly politicized topic. Why is only child PR0N bad? Given the inescapable "ADULT" kind why is that not a problem? And why do liberals take that smug attitude towards it -- an attitude that forcefully contrasts itself with their psychosis against SMOKING (which in turn is countered by the con-SER-va-tives' notion that smoking's basically good for you)?

A PLAGUE O'BOTH YOUR HOUSES!

Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

Report: Iranian intelligence minister resigns

TRANSLATION: NUKEMAN's stronger than ever.

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Can Condi do comedy? [Home-page link]

Yes! She has the résumé!

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

Okay, call us square, old fuddy-duddies, useless old fogies, but we wish we knew why the hacks see a new Athens of America in each of these wing-dings. We can guess what they're like even though we've never attended one. The more news hacks act as the total right-on-with-it-now philistines they are the more Orchestras will go bankrupt, and the consequences for our culture are already dire.

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

As I've said a zillion times before, good news for show-biz is bad news for the rest of us -- especially now that it's a glorified ward of the state. So okay, SUPERNIKKI!!!!!, you've got your GOOD NEWS!!!!!, but even you have to remind us the weekend was led off by a 3D babysitter, and there's still a vast indifference to most of the also-rans -- and even if your industry came out ahead $30 million a week for the next twenty weeks you'd still be behind for the year. Uncritical teens and parents will pull this undeserving industry from its rut, but we still would like to think this time will be different.

While we're at it, here's a dictionary definition of MORON:

Rio 3D posts the best G-rated family pic opening since Toy Story 3!!!!!!!!!! [Best overemphasis added]

We'd guess it's the first pic so rated SINCE!

The industry's SCARLET LETTER is STILL

P. S. at 6:38 P. M. We were pleased to see the Cult of AYNISM could not lure the hoards -- pardon, hordes into believing their GREENSPANIAN gospel of prosperity everlasting. Con-SER-va-tives will say, "It was a bad film." So was WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!!!!!!! The Jesus Slasher Movie!

Posted 10:39 AM by Gene

The Orchestra's bankruptcy is largely mismanagement, and moving into a needless new venue; but it is also about the classical music realm's near total bankruptcy of imagination, and it is about the permanent and total dearth of composing talent, something beyond the Orchestra's control, but the talent it impossibly needs to be able to avoid bankruptcy again.

Posted 10:45 PM by Gene

If any county deserves a bankrupt government it's Nassau, New York.

Posted 9:35 PM by Gene

Raul Castro proposes political term limits in Cuba

TRANSLATION: No one can serve in government for more than fifty-two years.

The proposal was made toward the end of a 2 1/2 hour speech....

Here's another idea, Raul: No speech can last longer than two-and-a-half hours -- or fifty-two years, whichever is longer.

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

Walter Mondale must remind us there are two ways to prosperity: the Democratic way of taxing everything until it screams and letting government run everything, and the Republican way of letting the hyperrich own everything while every man fends for himself. So long as we're stuck with these opposites we deserve to go broke.

(Via NEWSER!, which calls him WALTER MONDAY! [See the URL])

Posted 12:28 PM by Gene

Annoying to learn that Ward Kimball took the side of the ANGELS on Vietnam, but he loved model trains, and he loved Dixieland jazz, and he's still one of the greats.

Posted 10:10 AM by Gene

The new king of a local university wants to wipe out poverty from his neighborhood. The only way he can do that is by expanding his enrollment twenty-fold, and we suspect even Bill Cosby University is finding gentrification only goes so far; and by somehow persuading industry to relocate in those neighborhoods it's defenestrated, and the first calling of America's CEOs is to refuse to provide work for the locals. Inevitably he'll go the EDS-'n'-MEDS route and get GUVMENT and his pliant parent clients to build him some Taj Mahals. We've had enough needless spending on kolleje kampusses, and when a new king like this promises to act as a local savior we want to permanently stop our ears up.

Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

We presume JOURNOLIST still exists in some form, and helped enable this jackassery. This is a PILLHEADIAN practical joke from the left. Look, JOSH, our contempt for politicians and their helpers is total. Would you like it to be MORE THAN TOTAL?

(Via NEWSER!, which was no doubt full of giggles)

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

ANOTHER AHTSJournal imposition: Someone's written an AH-pe-RA about -- BRIAN MULRONEY, that Jay Leno lookalike to the north; and honest to God if someone didn't have to write THIS:

I felt a new emotion while watching this: sympathy for Brian Mulroney. I didn’t mind so much that Dan Redican’s script treats our former prime minister as an egotistical clown – editorial cartoonists did as much, or worse – but for Alexina Louie to give so colourful a man nothing memorable or interesting to sing seems too cruel.

Mulroney: The Opera is really a musical with operatic in-jokes....Most musicals live or die by good tunes, and there are a few in Mulroney. Unfortunately, they’ve all been repurposed from operas by the likes of Mozart, Bizet and Puccini.

When cultural anthropolgists five hundred years hence disinter the corpse of today's AH-pe-RA from its unmarked grave they'll marvel that so many people wrote in-jokes, and that so many raved about the in-jokes -- but mostly that "composers" had to steal profusely to pad their nonexistent scores, or worse, showed their lack of talent for all the world, like a minimally-endowed flasher.

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

Posner: What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About the Law

I think he's taught us enough.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

More genius from CABLE -- from its GLOBE THEATRE:

A couple of Sundays ago I had a gnarly mood swing in front of the telly. It happened while Kate Winslet was frowning and mumbling her way through the third episode of Mildred Pierce, the HBO miniseries directed by Todd Haynes. Though meticulously art-directed, this rendering of the James M. Cain pulp novel is the polar opposite of the archly fabulous 1945 movie that won Joan Crawford an Oscar. All the heavy maquillage, gut-busting histrionics and scenery-blocking shoulder pads of that classic film noir have been replaced by soft, Depression-era mossy tones and a relentlessly faithful-to-the-original-novel screenplay. In an effort to avoid cheesy pastiche, Haynes has stripped away the sizzle and the style and the Eve Ardens and the Butterfly McQueens, and replaced them with—quelle horreur!—authenticity.

Halfway through, I could stand it no more. I turned to my dog Liberace and I screeched, "You know what's wrong with this show don't you? It's not bloody camp enough!"

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

Perhaps justice will come to the Wall Street Casino after all.

And if there is any comfort, these guys will always have many, many more chances to get themselves incarcerated -- and BEN can't run the show FOREVER.

Posted 8:35 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: His Incompetence is shredding gears and leaking oil. Does this God care about anything but Himself and His ego?

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine....

[H]aving a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.

THE GREATEST SATIRIC NOVELIST'S words grow funnier and funnier every day -- perhaps the only funny words he ever wrote.

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

More genius from CABLE, the greatest repository of cultural superlatives since Elizabethan...England:

[I]n rushing William & Kate, the two-hour telepic airing Monday, into production, the makers of this incredibly awful movie seem to have skimped on everything—there’s a lackluster script, paint-by-numbers plotting, and hilariously inauthentic locations (UCLA’s Royce Hall repeatedly stands in for Scotland’s University of St Andrews, though the producers have attempted to recreate the “cursed” cobblestone initials of martyr Patrick Hamilton).

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

SHUCKS, God won't return to His kingdom after all to spread the holy word on RACIST HOMOPHOBIC NAZI CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES.

And below that in Romy, the University of Colorado is closing a "j-school", and we suggest if every last j-school closed newshackery might actually improve.

Alas, it appears the skool is creating something like a Department of Media, meaning the tax gouging and student bankrupting can happily continue.

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

"All My Children" won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1992, 1994, and 1998. It has received more than 30 Emmy Awards in all, as has taken on such social issues as AIDS, abortion, cochlear implants, teenage alcoholism, racial bias, acquaintance rape, spousal abuse, homosexuality, Reyes syndrome, Vietnam MIAs, and more. The show aired daytime's first same-sex kiss between two lesbian characters, as well as its first same-sex wedding between two women.

"One Life to Live" won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 2002. Its daytime firsts include stories of interracial romance, illiteracy, medical misdiagnosis, racial prejudice, gang violence and teen pregnancy.

Among its most celebrated storylines was one in 1992 about a gay teen (the then-unknown Ryan Phillippe) that culminated with the display of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation named it Outstanding Daytime Drama in 1993, 2005 and 2010.

Here in a nutshell is one reason ESPNCORP is canceling these soaps, and why the genre won't last much longer. These programs started as simple escapism and ultimately TACKLED ISSUES. This is the equivalent of news hacks TELLING THE TRUTH. We'd like to chart the ratings in general of the soaps in the last thirty years -- we suspect they share something with the NIGHTLY NEWS. Certainly they wouldn't have been taped in the back of a broom closet with one camera if they still resonated with viewers. And while we truly believe The American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers doesn't give a damn what it finances one can understand a very few of its members might find it easier to TACKLE ISSUES through "reality" shows than scripted dramas. We feel sorry for the fans who've invested their lives and their mental health in these soaps; as for the rest of us, we won't miss a thing.

“Because of all the amazing new series programming that is available to the viewer, it just can’t compete.”

Okay Talent Agent Jeff, if all this new series programming is so amazing why is drawing a 1.0 RATING an immortal achievement these days?

Posted 12:14 PM by Gene

Link of the Day:

EUROPEAN STOCKS TO WATCH
Chemical sector is ripe

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

We are sorry to see that Randy Wood, the founder of Dot Records, home at one time to Pat Boone and Lawrence Welk, has died. (He also founded Ranwood, which housed Welk almost exclusively.) Say what you will about those two, that there was once a place for them in music says there was also a place for other kinds of music that no longer have a place, thanks to the gold-chain brigade.

Our favorite Dot single is "Transfusion."

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

Typhoid Mary, yes -- but Typhoid Nancy?

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

That JonBoy can write for the former PEOPLE WARNER flagship merely proves the news biz is full of interchangeable parts that work so long as they think the same way.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 11:41 AM by Gene

Sleeping air traffic controllers claim their scapegoat.

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

Thursday, April 14, 11:12 AM Whoa! Zipcar (ZIP) opens at $30.50 (+70%) after pricing at $18.

Another future bankruptcy.

Posted 9:38 PM by Gene

Yes, the woman who yelled something close enough to "You like me! You REALLY LIKE ME!!!!!" is the perfect choice to play Mary Todd Lincoln in LUKE SPIELBERG's movie.

Posted 8:08 PM by Gene

RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE, MUTINY MUTINY MUTINY: It's official: con-SER-va-tives no longer like the budget deal.

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

We suspected The DONALD's campaign could be done in by financial disclosures, and here's the first. His purported grim miserliness might recommend Him to con-SER-va-tives but probably not to voters.

Of course He could have a reason: He's been saving up to run for president.

P. S.

The political press must make coverage decisions in a world with limited editorial resources. In doing so, no metric is perfect - some undeserving candidates will be elevated, while other deserving candidates won't get their due. But those should be the close cases. What we're seeing now is ludicrous. It's as if the financial ability to one day launch a quixotic, ultimately failed third-party bid for the White House itself compels the press to cover your campaign from day one.

Ludicrous is the news hack's middle name.

(First link via NEWSER!!!!!)

Posted 7:52 PM by Gene

A sales...ANALYST named White belches:

Observers have speculated for years that Apple will enter the $100 billion market for LCD television sets. To date, however, Apple has only flirted with the market with the $99 Apple TV, which Apple Chief Steve Jobs has described as a “hobby.”

That will change the moment Apple unveils a television set.”The [SIC] combination of Apple’s powerful ecosystem, industrial design savvy, powerful brand and ability to reinvent product categories could make Apple a powerful force in the TV world over the next few years!!!!!!!!!!” White wrote. [Powerful ovemphasis added]

I'd never bet against STEVEDOM, but it could also be Its Waterloo.

White has a buy-rating and a 12-month price target of $550 on Apple shares.

When do we get to really hate the Wall Street Casino again?

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

Given the ennui toward this story we're surprised Barry Bonds* was found guilty of anything. But if he wasn't guilty somebody was -- in THE GREATEST YEAR FOR BASEBALL EVER!

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

Sidney Harman has died, and now TINA!!!!! will have to try to get along without him.

But to avoid painting him in caricature, we must say hi-fi would not have been the same without him. The Lord God Steve owes HIS wealth to him -- and audiophiles their thrilling neurotic obsessions.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

Glenn Beck channels Orson Welles

What's this mean, Romy -- that He too can start a national panic?

And that business about War of the Worlds is apparently FALSE.

P. S. The Rev. Dr. BECK was born in 1964 -- and He "grew up" listening to radio shows first broadcast in the late 1930s? How often were they on?

P. P. S. Some have already noted the fact that Rev.'s linked Himself to a hoax -- but we might further remind our three surfers He's also linked himself to a COMMIE!

“Marc Blitzstein,” said Orson Welles in 1984, “was almost a saint. He was so totally and serenely convinced of the Eden which was waiting for us all [on] the other side of the Revolution that there was no way of talking politics to him. He didn't care who was in the Senate, or what Mr. Roosevelt said – [Roosevelt] was just the spokesman for the bourgeoisie! When he came into the room the lights got brighter. He was an engine, a rocket, directed in one direction which was his opera [The Cradle Will Rock] – which he almost believed had only to be performed to start the Revolution.”

Make a few substitutions and NUF SAID.

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

Six of one: Falwell University getting $445 million in Federal aid -- the most of any KOLEDGE in Virginia. It proceeded to censor the story from its Internet.

Half-a-dozen of the other: Romy yelling, "Salon.com linked to Barry's story and pointed out the CONSERVATIVE!!!!! college got more government cash than NPR last year! NYAAAAAAAAH NYAH NYAH NYAAAAAAAAAH NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"

SIX OF ONE....

Posted 8:13 PM by Gene

U.S. Admiral: China’s Carrier Poses Mostly Symbolic Threat

Walmarts and STEVEDOMS can make it real!

Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLEBLOGGER just had the equivalent of a total eclipse -- an argument for why it and STEVEDOM and ZUCKERDOM should engage in mortal battle -- and ALL LOSE.

Posted 6:34 PM by Gene

Speaking of PR0N, it is not enough that it is a visual practical joke -- one of its aficionados has learned how to use the homeless as a literal punchline.

Posted 6:24 PM by Gene

Today DailyMail.co.uk demonstrated why it is a perennial insult to its readers. I won't post the link that exasperated me except to say there are two reasons people take off their clothes in the movees -- to make money and to show off. In that it's little better than PR0N.

And speaking of dimwits, this self-imagined number two to SUPERNIKKI!!!!! demonstrates why he deserves a better job -- and certainly merits one away from Web sites:

Oblivion premise didn't fit the studio's family film mandate. Attempts to bring it in as a PG film was creatively strangling the project. It will be made as PG-13.

Say SUPERMIKE!!!!!, how did they manage such things before ST. JACK OF VALENTI? Maybe that's another reason for those RECORD GROSSES.



NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARDS TO DAILYMAIL.CO.UK AND SUPERMIKE!!!!!

Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

“Social media went wild and people were seeing too much negative rather than positive.”

TRANSLATION: Advertisers have an obligation to be devoid of common sense.

This ad was part of a campaign. Other executions included an attractive man (that ad ran on Saturday) and an attractive house. In each case, the idea was that things remain attractive even when “used” – so why not get a used car.

I repeat....

Posted 10:49 AM by Gene

A new IT challenge is emerging: building a vast infrastructure for electric vehicles, or EVs. Information technology is needed to give the electric car a much-needed push -- handling the vast data processing required to optimize power utilization from the generation plant all the way down to an individual owner's garage. These functions are needed to make the new cars successful, analysts say.

OR....

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

Bloggers to file class action suit against Huffington Post

Pffh-hh-hh hh hh hh ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

(The usual Romy link)

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

If Gwyneth were a ravishing beauty one could forgive her everything. It is far more difficult to forgive "AWARD-WINNING" typists for devoting 1,473 WORDS to such a tiresome topic.

BANKRUPTCY FOR TINA!!!!!

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

The budget shenanigans are starting to take on the smell of useless symbolism.

But some of the worst-sounding trims are not quite what they seem, and officials said they would not necessarily result in lost jobs or service cutbacks. In several cases, what look like large reductions are actually accounting gimmicks.

Double.

Posted 8:30 PM by Gene

This story (whose hed made us too somber to read it) grieves us as misplaced hope is only marginally less awful than the calamity. Nonetheless, we can hope.

But we did find this happy news in Politico.com:

Jonathan Alter out at Newsweek

That probably means the last of the scribblers who worshipped at the smelly feet of THE WONKY WHISKEY WHINER is gone. Good riddance!

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

The age reeks because it is a cartoon age. We have cartoon leaders engaged in cartoon violence over cartoon outrages, like dozens of Yosemite Sams without the humor. The GOP has a problem because cartoon characters are running for president -- that off-kilter Mormon, Dennis the Menace, Michelle, THE DONALD: they'd all fit perfectly in a comic strip, the best medium as it's been so long in decline.

Even the people who are supposed to distract us but lack the talent for it engage in their own cartooning. Why THE BOSS should counter Snooki at Rotgut -- Rutgers is beyond us -- pardon our Spanish but it's a pompous ass countering an ass with a well-developed ass. Bloviating on the "hypocrisy" of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE DYLAN is words wasted; given how news hacks love Him I'd say He's stood foursquare with THE MAN for some time. As for TGSM -- he isn't inferior enough to warrant comment, but SI pays too well, and you never know it might need another pontificator.

So this is a cartoon age. Unfortunately, most of the people who must live in it are all too real.

Posted 10:58 AM by Gene

Aren't these two truth tellers starting to look almost as old as the audience for denture-adhesive ads?

Posted 6:53 PM by Gene

Charl Schwartzel!

Hate to say it but it sounds like something from Mel Brooks.

Congratulations whatever the name -- at least it wasn't TGSM.

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

A photo like this reminds me of what could be in show-biz, and what today too often is, and is yet another in the endless hints that the continuing movee B. O. dropoff is more than a fluke of the schedule.

Or to put it another way, those who can "sing" can't act (we don't consider emitting technopop through your nose singing), those who can act can't sing, and those of either persuasion have no looks. We confess to daydreaming too much of a woman combining the innocent charm of the young Debbie Reynolds, the beauty and voice of the young Jeannette MacDonald, the seductiveness of MM or Liz and the flat-out sex appeal of BB or Sophia, plus being supersmart like Hedy Lamarr -- and we used to have each of those. Why not now?

While we think of it, anyone who can reel off the names of dozens and dozens of pop stars from the last thirty years almost certainly has no musical taste.

Posted 10:43 PM by Gene

SURPRISE! "Ordinary" German soldiers in the war were scum too.

Posted 7:45 PM by Gene

Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Charl Schwartzel, Angel Cabrera, K. J. Choi, Adam Scott, Luke Donald, Bo Van Pelt, Ross Fisher....

Any wonder the hacks are rooting for TGSM to win?

Posted 6:48 PM by Gene

We have to agree with this one:

Winner: The troops and military families. The possibility of soldiers fighting and dying while not being paid was one of the most significant factors that spurred the 11th-hour agreement Friday night. And by focusing at least for a few hours on them, Congress and the American people were reminded that we are at war, and that real Americans are fighting and dying.

Loser: Washington. Nowhere else could a process that ended more than half a year after it was supposed to, and resulted in minuscule cuts as compared to an anticipated $1.5 trillion deficit, end up with the participants congratulating themselves for beating an arbitrary deadline by 65 minutes after spending the day beating up on one another in public. This sausage-making was ugly, and it reminded Americans that their government is still badly divided, and often only able to work in crisis mode. And a fiscal crisis is coming, if not here already. The way this was handled does not inspire much confidence for looming donnybrooks over the 2012 budget and deficit ceiling.

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

So -- the Feds will now get to save the equivalent of lost pocket change. Let's see them try to sew up the pocket.

Posted 2:37 PM by Gene

CVS merged with Caremark so it could SPLIT UP.

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 2:30 PM by Gene

Vice President Joe Biden got visibly upset during late night White House talks on avoiding a government shutdown.

Calm down, Throttlebottom! We want you around for years and years as AMERICA'S GRANDPA!

Posted 2:02 PM by Gene

Hate to harp on this but getting rid of pit bosses in AC does not get rid of the gheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet-TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

Posted 1:51 PM by Gene

Speaking of rich, no one should complain about overpaid players. They allow the SELIGISTS to jack up prices; they allow the CABLE MONOPOLIES to gouge; they allow CEOs to burn impressive wads of sponsorship money for free tickets; and they give their SHYSTER AGENTS superb résumés. No one should complain about overpaid players -- except the fans who overpay. Who listens to them?

Posted 1:40 PM by Gene

I've come up with a good reason why the speculators' new dance over oil won't hurt the Wall Street Casino; this is a RICH-ONLY RALLY, and higher oil prices won't hurt the rich.

You're going to the MOON, Ben! BANG! ZOOM!

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

More genius from the House of St. Jack of Valenti:

The stars appear to be enjoying themselves, even when they're recycling groaners that Mel Brooks could barely get away with back in the '80s. (Fabious: "Come be gay with me and father!" Thadeous: "But I don't want to be gay!").

When Portman finally shows up as Isabel, a warrior on her own quest, she appears to be parodying her super-serious performance in the second "Star Wars" trilogy.

At the screening I attended, there was much speculation about whether she employed a body double for a heavily CGI'd rear shot wearing nothing but a thong. (My guess: without a doubt.)

But then Mr. THUMBS® comes along and spoils it all:

One strange thing about the movie is the relentless obscenity. I don't have the slightest difficulty with the f-word or most other words, as themselves. What I don't understand is why almost every single sentence has to be filled with them. Why is that funny? Was I supposed to be “shocked”? Was it intended as daring? It's puerile.

But isn't that why the late beloved fellow zillionaire GENE invented the A RATING?

And the sad thing is this was excreted by a former EISENSTEIN. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!

P. S. at 4:58 p. m. If a lazy typist like Dana can wax nostalgic about a largely forgotten, vaguely amusing "comedy" of 1981 -- and especially over The Singing Android -- how will movie ad-blurbists rhapsodize over today's movies thirty years hence? The mind reels.

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

We would hope the national rebellion against CEOs is starting to stick, but we should recall the idea of paying them stock options was their way of cleverly gaming the debate, and men who earn far more than the total help at some companies won't think up something. The one good thing: We don't lionize even LEGENDARY WELCHES anymore.

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

When is a "voting irregularity" not a voting irregularity?

When it's OUR voting irregularity!

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

And another astonishing insight -- from MENSA MAN CARTER and Romy:

CNN ratings fall as interest in breaking news fades

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

MOTION PICTURE ACADEMY SHOCKER! EXCLUSIVE BEHIND-THE-SCENE DETAILS: INDIE QUEEN DAWN HUDSON NAMED CEO!! INSIDER RIC ROBERTSON PASSED OVER!!! BOARD OF GOVERNORS WAS DEADLOCKED!!!!! [Shocking overemphasis added]

Who says SUPERNIKKI!!!!! knows what she's doing?

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

Sense actually hits MOGUL's FRIEND right between the eyes -- and the movee excretion biz right in the solar plexus:

I have one simple question: When would you ever pay $30 to see an Adam Sandler movie? Or, for that matter, a movie from the Farrelly Brothers, the Coen Brothers or even the Jonas Brothers? As it stands now, you can see a new film in a movie theater for roughly $10. Or you can wait 100 days or so and pay $15 for a DVD or rent the film for $3 or $4. Or wait a little longer, in some cases, to order it from Netflix. But $30? C'mon. I think I speak for many moviegoers when I say that even if you told me I could watch an Adam Sandler movie two months before it was released in theaters, I still wouldn't pay $30.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

This is an absolute technological must. For too many reasons to count PR0N is a sickness on society. Though rooting it out at the office with such a device smacks of Big Brother the consequences of PR0N unchecked are far worse.

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

USA Today Takes the Plunge: Paper to Pay Bonuses to Writers Based on Page Views

If this is true that means we can forget about McPaper as a serious news source, although God knows we already have, and it should do what we think it will: run wall to wall show-biz and sports advertorials -- as if it doesn't already.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

Can we now bury HONORARY MAYOR MIKE's rep for competence deep, deep in the ground?

(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!)

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The urban BOOM was a figment of news hacks' fervid imaginations.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

Our heart bleeds for MATT, who's discovered there's more to life than making umpteen gazillion a year, but our heart stops bleeding when we remember the morning blatherfests are solely about advertising, hairdos and goofy weathermen. If they all went out of biz tomorrow even their audiences wouldn't notice. What's the point of network television other than fiefdoms? Why couldn't these shows have left the air with Dave Garroway? (WHO?!?)

We are more sympathetic to Meredith, whose husband is reportedly ill, but our objections still stand.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

One reason I hate NEWS HACKS is that they can take a perfectly fine word and turn it into a foul euphemism (witness "tolerance", or "healing"). Recently we've had to see a revival of a word the cri-TIC-al brethren ruined: "SWEET." A few years back the cri-TICS justified grossout comedies by saying, for all their offensive non-humor, they were fundamentally SWEET. They raved several of these excretions because they were SWEET. In time the popcorn palaces were so overwhelmed with SWEETNESS the hypocritical typists screamed NO MAS!!!!!!!!!! Here is why when the subject is the news hacks' veracity Mary McCarthy's words when applied to them will ring forever.

But then such "thinking" would not exist without knee-jerk lockstep straitjacketed ideology. Which brings us to a related topic: jazz. Anyone who's had to endure an academic seminar on the topic will know the prevailing wisdom is that black jazz is better than white because -- the heavy-duty head scratchers will deny it, but it comes down to this racism: they got RHYTHM. We mention this having undergone a sudden infatuation with one of the great songs of all time, "I'm Beginning to See the Light." The Duke wrote that tune, and a grand tune it was; but one of the credited co-authors was Harry James. Both led superlative big bands and both recorded competing versions. Here's the Duke's, and here's Harry James's. I want all but the most hard-core over-Ph'D'd academics to tell me the Duke's version is better. If the identities could be reversed it would still be obvious. Of course James had a huge string section, often superfluous; but he also had "Pretty" Kitty Kallen (!!!!!), and an arranger (uncredited!) with the same penchant for high drama as Glenn Miller's -- James succeeded Miller on the Chesterfield show -- or certainly Les Brown's, whose band put some unmitigated sex behind Doris Day. The Duke's recording, with Joya Sherrill, has too many of his cute tricks, and the arrangement generally just sits there. It is also a bit flat, a common failing of the black jazz bands (bad technical training, no doubt) that didn't prevent them from dominating the music. The academics will unload an arsenal of adjectives on the James band like "commercial" and "schmaltzy" that does not prevent this from being one of the all-time ear-opening recordings. The public made the ultimate decision; while the Duke's disc charted at #6, the James version made #1. That James and Kitty Kallen followed it up with an even bigger hit, the epochal Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn collaboration "It's Been a Long, Long Time", renders this no contest. After the big bands went kerflooey the Duke "raided" the James band, rendering the whole subject moot.

But for the last word, we will defer as we should to the Duke. He once uttered this profound wisdom: "There are two kinds of music: good music, and the other kind." The Duke made great music. Harry James made great music. NUF SAID.

P. S. on 4/9/2011 at 6:58 p. m. We've just listened to the song as performed in the Branson East dead-man's revue Sophisticated Ladies, a mischievous download as it's $500 on Amazon.com. This is precisely why people who might come to love jazz turn away: It's Vegas prefab and showoffy swingin', sung by people who know or care nothing of the tune. In other words it's Sarah Vaughan after even the jazz buffs couldn't stand her. Jazz died a long time ago when it became just another form of cultural onanism. It could come back if someone knew how to do it right.