Posted 11:56 AM by Gene

We don't want to make too much of this but we wonder: MR. STAR WARS just came out with a new animation, and it's dying at the B. O. We gather He is deeply unpopular, first, for being a control phreak and trying to strangle His fans, and second for wasting so much of the public's time and money with SPACE JUNK; His opus maximus is as much a period piece as disco. If this new masterpiece is dying because of its provenance this portends very serious trouble for the movee biz; the fans may now be armed for revenge, and they have many targets; and while MR. STAR WARS tops the list the TENTPOLES represent bull's eyes for an angry audience to aim its arrows at, especially as they represent a cumulative hundreds of recyclings. Most likely they'll do their land-office business but perhaps the public will finally realize it's being sold property around Love Canal.

Posted 7:52 PM by Gene

Walter Duranty flattered Stalin; Herbert Matthews flattered Castro. We're surprised when Pinch flatters His Omnipotence?

Posted 7:48 PM by Gene

There should be clear restraints on libelous speech on the Web; the problem is how to do the restraining when the Web is mostly libelous.

Posted 6:47 PM by Gene

Few things exasperate me more than hearing we're in a SUPERMEGAPLATINUM AGE OF TELEVISION!!!!!!!!! First, there's a difference between good programming and CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED. Supermegaplatinum TV is the latter, consumed by an obsessive core audience that we'd guess is overwhelmingly coastal and liberal, and that takes almost conformist cues from fellow hardcore TV fans. This makes their masterpieces niche programming, with no hope whatever of achieving the wide appeal art needs to survive. We'd guess much of the supermegaplatinum stuff shares traits that appeal to niche viewers: "edge", profanity, dark photography, sledgehammer irony, and references to other CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED programs. In short it's TV's version of a circular argument, one it can never lose, but one that those who'd do without programming made in a straitjacket can never win. And most people don't want to THINK when they watch television, and though the medium's too much a diet of sedatives few want the electronic equivalent of AMPHETAMINES, especially when they're sold as GOOD FOR YOU. Hence the "success" of reality programs, whose fans at least have the honesty to want to be stupid once in a while.

Posted 8:49 PM by Gene

We agree the Web can make one smarter, but the idea it dulls the creative mind is disproved by the downward slope of the last century's culture, which started long before the technogods, and by ARCHDaily and YouTube, brimming with "creativity".

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

We don't see why John Mackey should be mad at the scorners. His customers can AFFORD "Whole Paycheck"!

Oh John, and saying that buying at Whole Paycheck is less expensive because you eat better is like JACK VALENTI II saying movees are better because they cost more.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

We heard of this story from one of those Web sites that likes to be cute about such things while channeling Frank Rich on conservatives (DailyBeastVultureNewser, you know). This sort of transgressive malarkey goes hand in hand with living tattoo museums, just as PC does with huge business skools. Kolejes stand for little more than self-preservation, and they're part of the EDS 'n' MEDS disaster because when students (and especially their parents) have a reason not to attend -- and the Web and the news give them increasingly good ones -- there goes their boondoggling. Too many of society's institutions deserve a comeuppance, which is why the RICH-ONLY ECONOMIC BOOM exasperates us; it gives the most corrupt of them a second wind, more like a second hundredth; but they're still corrupt, and an energized public can still make them fall.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

A leading skinhead has been shot dead in Sacramento -- so why is only the Daily Mail reporting it?

Posted 3:50 PM by Gene

CLEVER: If LORD Springer buys EMI then Doug can claim he's run every label in the recorded...SOUND biz.

Maybe that's the trouble with it.

Posted 1:50 PM by Gene

Sadly, we can't rescind the First Amendment just because someone has hurt someone else's feelings. I tend not to take this odious group seriously because it, like a certain sitcom ac-TOR, has an obsessive need to get itself exposed, but that doesn't mean we should take the First Amendment less seriously.

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

The GOP needs someone with a high name ID to announce that he or she is running for president and then become the party’s de facto spokesperson.



Ta-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

Surprising: TV is now so much BETTER THAN EVER!!!!! the actors on one series can't identify their writers.

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

OH oh, what gives? Our next Republican president supports collective bargaining?!?!?!?!?

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

"The bountiful years, we want to emphasize, will never return," writes Buffett in his letter. "The huge sums of capital we currently manage eliminate any chance of exceptional performance."

TRANSLATION: St. Warrendom has become too big to fail!

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

How reassuring: unemployment will go down because the work force is growing old.

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

"The unions are the most powerful political group in the country today … Their power in politics is unprecedented. And without the unions, the Democrat Party fades away," DeMint said, licking his lips and rubbing his hands vigorously. [Last eight words added]

We know, Rushbo -- er, JIM, we KNOW, BOTH sides have people they'd LOVE to VAPORIZE.

And Rushbo -- er, JIM, why is the answer to the DEMOCRAT PARTY's form of authoritarian government YOURS?

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The company that makes 80 QUADRAHEXAGIGAZILLIONS selling $500 ghetto sneakers made by three-cent-an-hour help may be thinking self-defense because It stole Its Swoosh from NEWPORT CIGARETTES, NOT A WAFFLE IRON.

Posted 9:05 PM by Gene

Bloomberg LP? Honorary Mayor Mike? Ethics? Firewalls?

Make...me laugh!

Posted 6:42 PM by Gene

Early photos of Williams in costume and makeup are uncanny.

BRING BACK MR. MELLERDRAMMER!!!!!

And since young Kevin (who's just earned himself a NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD!) couldn't be bothered to get the link right, here it is -- and as we've thus far spotted only five stills associated with this masterwork, including one here, we'd guess even the producers don't believe it.

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

NOT ARCHDaily!



Looks like a elementary school in the 70's [Business Insider commenter SICs]

For $4 million, you too can live in a community recreation center.

Pee Wee's Playhouse is for sale???

Looks like more of a work of ass than than a work of art.

it'll sell for $250K in 43 months from now [More Business Insider commenter SICs]

It's in THE HAMPTONS and it's selling for $4 MILLION. Go for it!

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

So! NFL owners have lied about their economic impact to get their Taj Mahals built!

Lockout LONG and HARD, clods.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

Yesterday: BRKA up $3,750.00

Today: BRKA down $3,250.00

What Gods giveth the Masters of the Universe taketh away.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Bernie Madoff, seeking to atone for an unatonable life, tries redemption through news hacks, starting with mixed results. The opening grafs, however, give us pause, and far more than the story itself:

Bernard L. Madoff is in therapy. Each week, he waits for the signal that prisoners are allowed to leave their housing units, then he walks the five minutes from his “room,” as he calls it, to the psychiatric unit at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, where he can unburden himself. The sessions are often teary.

“How could I have done this?” he asks. “I was making a lot of money. I didn’t need the money. [Am I] a flawed character?”

In some ways, Madoff has not tried to evade blame. He has made a full confession, telling me again and again that nothing justifies what he did. And yet, for Madoff, that doesn’t settle the matter. He feels misunderstood. He can’t bear the thought that people think he’s evil. “I’m not the kind of person I’m being portrayed as,” he told me.

And so, sitting alone with his therapist, in the prison khakis he irons himself, he seeks reassurance. “Everybody on the outside kept claiming I was a sociopath,” Madoff told her one day. “I asked her, ‘Am I a sociopath?’” He waited expectantly, his eyelids squeezing open and shut, that famous tic. “She said, ‘You’re absolutely not a sociopath. You have morals. You have remorse.’” Madoff paused as he related this. His voice settled. He said to me, “I am a good person.”

This uncomfortably reminds us of Pat Robertson's idea of being born again, which did not preclude Hitler or Stalin from being "saved". If anyone can be saved there is no salvation. Psychotherapy is a secular religion, delivering faith through self-esteem. Woodster has been a believer for decades which did not stop him from being a total pervert. Bernie's following the same well-rutted (no pun intended) path. The only honest answer would be to admit that yes, Bernie, you are a sociopath -- and worse -- but that does not prevent you from seeking even the very limited redemption you deserve. That Bernie's session passes for psychotherapy shows the limits of false gods.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

No, not even the John Roberts-digited Nine Fingers would find a corporation a human being.

Posted 3:36 PM by Gene

Matthew Rutler was swarmed by more than 30 photographers and reporters when he exited the West Hollywood sheriff's station Tuesday morning.

And we know how many thousands of "reporters" covered the -- well, you know what arthouse awards; and don't forget The Gang of 27.

We confess we have a certain fascination for this..."singer"'s tribulations; it's always nice seeing superrich no-talents get into trouble. That said, somewhere, something is being underreported. News hacks will excuse themselves by saying, "Well we can't get in to Libya and besides, it's so dangerous!" You guys have stolen top-secret documents often enough, so you know danger. No, you don't want to be bothered, except for profits.

Posted 10:45 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Frank Rich needs more room to blow up his head and turn his face beet-red when he fumes over the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL of...gee, no one can take the place of Dubya. Can anyone?

(Via I Want Media)

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

TRAGEDY IN FILLUMDOM: We promise this is the LAST we say about the Os-CAR®S, but the direc-TOR of an epochal A-ca-de-my A-WARD®-ed documentary on our financial meltdown forgot to thank his sugar daddy -- Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of our IGGLES®, who no doubt knew a few people who brought on the meltdown. Indeed we say by being part of the NFL®'s cabal he helped bring on the meltdown. Oh well, turnabout's fair play, and you pays your money and he gets his...Os-CAR®.

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

Nuf said...alas.

Well, one more thing: last night one of SUPERNIKKI!!!!!'s commenters remarked that there's a difference between an actor and a star. What Seymour Harvey Whatshisname does is ac-TING. What Meryl Streep does is ac-TING. The American Arthouse Awards had plenty of ac-TORS. Ac-TORS help explain the recent B. O. BOOM. Ac-TORS also explain the SUPER BOWL® FOR WOMEN™'s skyrocketing ratings.

A great star doesn't have to ACT. Just by being the force of nature she was Jane Russell made more men frustratedly, deliriously, mindlessly happy in one picture than the whole cadre of today's female ac-TORS (mustn't call them actresses) will have done their entire careers. Yes, there is a difference.

(Originally posted 7:21 p. m.; moved to preserve pride of place)

Posted 7:54 PM by Gene

In Mr. Mellerdrammer's case, peripatetic definitely means flighty.

Posted 7:42 PM by Gene

Let's see if news hacks, the beneficiary of innumerable partisan leaks, turn this into another tiresome GATE.

We note in this vein today somebody in WOLFFDOM made a thing about how the hinterlands don't care for BIGMEDIA manias like TINA!!!!! Why should they? This is the good judgment of the people versus the top-one-thousandth-of-one-percent IQs of the hacks. The dilution of scandal has much to do with BIGMEDIA and its obsessions, so much so that even with the worst scandals we think the covert angle first and not the contents. Thirty-seven years of the appearance of CRUSADING JERNALISM have done this to our body politic.

(Second link via MediaBistro)

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

Meantime in other news of media morons our superiors trumpet that they can fix the V-Chip, meaning lots of C-SPAN seminars, lots of press releases, lots of bloviating, and maybe one parent in 10,000 still using it.

(Via I Want Media)

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

The inaptly named Dan Bigman may be right: The American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers would love to pay Charlie ANY amount if it would keep their ad fiefdoms happy and their spreadsheets in order, never mind if the clown out-Bozos Bozo. The demand's shrewd of Charlie, though not especially bright.

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

We've cringed repeatedly that RENDELLISM is all about creating burger-flipper jobs. Yesterday we cringed that RENDELLISM's reliance on EDS 'n' MEDS could be a "disaster". Well, BloomyBizWeek's chimed in, and....

While the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent in January, from a two-decade peak of 10.1 percent in October 2009, many of the jobs people are now taking don't match the pay, the hours, or the benefits of the 8.75 million positions that vanished in the recession, according to Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto....

While the number of openings for food preparation and serving workers will grow by 394,000 in the decade ending in 2018, the average wage is only $16,430 including tips, based on 2008 data. Meanwhile, the number of posts for financial examiners, who work at financial-services firms to ensure regulatory compliance, will expand by just 11,100. The average pay for examiners is $70,930.

Lowe's (LOW), the second-largest U.S. home improvement retailer, typifies the reshuffling of the U.S. workforce. The chain, based in Mooresville, N.C., said on Jan. 25 it is eliminating 1,700 managers responsible for store operations, sales, and administration as profit growth trails that of the larger Home Depot (HD) chain. Meanwhile, Lowe's said it will add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions and is creating a new assistant store manager position.

The trend is troubling for the country's long-term prospects, says Edmund Phelps, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2006 and directs the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University in New York. Businesses aren't innovating as much, so companies "just don't seem to require all those relatively high-paid workers they once did," he says.

The health-care industry is one example, the BLS said in a December report on the occupational outlook. As costs continue to rise, "tasks that were previously performed by doctors, nurses, dentists, or other health-care professionals increasingly are being performed by physician assistants, medical assistants, dental hygienists, and physical therapist aides."

GEE, THANKS, EDDIES!

Posted 10:37 PM by Gene

LINE OF THE NIGHT from SUPERNIKKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

"You know there's a problem when Bob Hope has the best lines," one top Hollywood PRman emails.

Posted 8:27 PM by Gene

RUN, SEXY, RUN!

Posted 6:40 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



A police station from chopsticks and toilet paper!



Now see, this central market in Spain isn't quite so bad; it improves on a late-19th-century building. But even it has a bit of that starchitectural mememe that can render good designs NSG. We reiterate though this one isn't bad at all.

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

I cringe at following the Os-CARS® tonight. It will not do to say they've outlived their usefulness as they're VERY useful for show-off CEOs and spendthrift ad fiefdoms. They're about movies most people haven't seen and "stars" most people wouldn't know (excepting a certain talent who SCREAMED her way to critical acclaim and then made DONKEY of herself at an awards show -- and who is famous for one other reason). Today's winners are tomorrow's has-beens. We can say that because for one thing computers are doing to ac-TORS what they could do to physicians; whole server farms could make and distribute movees. And would the lunkhead core audience know? We doubt it. Despite our confident talk before we think it unlikely the two-month B.O. BOOM stems from sudden dissatisfaction with a long superior product, but this biz deserves revolution as much as any Arab country, with the same aim -- to throw the governing bums OUT.

P. S. I deleted a needlessly insulting remark about the looks of one of the presenters. But I beg of this godforsaken business -- why can't we have



THIS again?

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

Speaking of meds, future EDDIES will come up with a good excuse for making the human race synthetic (i.e., half-man, half-machine): it will consume less.

Quite likely -- because it can then mostly consume SOYLENT GREEN.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

And near Jeff! part of the forlorn chunk of our former Gimbels store has been turned into a server farm. How did I know? Because some LUNKHEADED REALTORS plastered pictures of mostly empty floors with boxes in cages all over the windows on the Ninth Street side. Here's another secret of computing: An ultimate aim is set 'n' forget -- in short, VIRTUALLY NO HUMAN INTERVENTION. Let's get jobs out of SERVER FARMS, EDDIE!

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

Today curious at a construction crane not far from my Dark Shadows, only to see another Jefferson! building going up, I thought of another RENDELLISM: that if we create two million doctors we get permanent prosperity. With talk of computers replacing physicians in many capacities we can see more burger flippers only wearing white coats. EDS 'n' MEDS are a disaster zone because they rely on government money and higher health-care costs. Take out one or both props and you have unemployed. Our governing superiors just will NOT think of ways to encourage jobs for ORDINARY people, save stupid schemes like green power.

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

Our Convention Center's expansion is opening, and I'm depressed because we know the outcome: we get more third-rate "conventions" and America's Biggest Ghetto Mall will stay that way. EDDIES are convinced convention centers are panaceas when people can do the same things from their offices, and without enduring airport security and the joy of flying in aluminum bombs. I'm doubly depressed because the panaceas are supposed to replace real jobs when all they do is create glorified burger flippers and more debt. If the Republicans are serious in bringing down government costs they will put paid to the Taj Mahals -- and especially to those leeches who justify them with "studies".

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

We see The Last Airbender, which our parent of the Daily Nooz celebrated as a symbol of local industrial might (and wasted tax breaks), won the Golden Razzie for Worst Picture. That no one attends the Razzies (last year's charming exception excluded) says the biz takes them more seriously than the Os-CARS®. It should; the competition's much fiercer. Your typical cri-TIC will point to the thousands of out-STAND-ing movies he's seen in the last three months, with sales of $50,000; many Razzie nominees are box-office hits. We must note the Razzies would not have existed without ST. JACK OF VALENTI; they started and prospered during His reign and are now well enough publicized that they've come more than the Os-CARS® to represent fillum; we can't believe mere quality concerns aren't behind the current boom at the popcorn restaurants. Movees, McDonald's, the airlines and cable have proved it's possible to stiff your customers for a long time and not pay. Mickey D's came close to meltdown ignoring SOP (with luck it will someday happen again); airlines thankfully do go broke. The movee biz needs a meltdown -- as bad as The Last Airbender.

Filming starts this spring, with a sequel on the drawing board.

YES! GO FOR IT!