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.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Someone else has noticed BID!

Posted 3:49 PM by Gene

The con men of advertising aren't immune from con men?!?

Posted 3:25 PM by Gene

SO: News hacks can't criticize those huge RENDELLIAN wastes of taxpayer money called convention centers because THEIR hands are in the cookie jar TOO.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO STINKYINKY MEDIA CO.!

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

WHEW! THE REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER "GOLD BUG" BECK QUITS!

And not a moment too soon.

Posted 12:07 PM by Gene

Chris Jones: I’m crushed my Ebert profile isn’t a National Magazine Award finalist [The usual Romy link]

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

MORE ON THE IRRELEVANCE OF BRANSON EAST: You don't suppose this new masterwork might be bombing because of the TITLE, do you?

Posted 9:34 PM by Gene

Face it, Atlantic City, you can blame all those new casinos elsewhere until the last geezer spends the last quarter on the last slot machine, but not too many people really want to gamble...



...in the gheeeeeeeeet-TOOOOOOOOOOOO....

Posted 8:03 PM by Gene

One of our true guilty pleasures is The Chicago Tribune's Web site's Mugs in the News. Yes, it is as advertised. The faces are fascinating. Most have guilty etched on their faces. Some look off to the side rather than straight at the camera; some rare ones smile (a la PILLHEAD), some pot growers look stoned. Remarkable is how more than a few of them bear the marks of crime like blotches of blood or scratch marks; no bruises, so the cops must be doing their jobs. A very very few of the whores look beddable, but most look like "You'd sleep with THAT?" And every mug has a story. This sorry tale says incontrovertibly that criminals is stupid:

David Sidener, in jail on murder charges, only wanted a little reciprocation from Cook County sheriff's investigators.

If they convinced prosecutors to drop his first-degree murder charge, he'd happily reveal the location of a makeshift gun, or "zip gun" stashed somewhere within jail walls.

But when the investigators rebuffed his proposition last month, the Evansville, Ind. man said something that stuck with them.

“This is not how I planned it would go,” Sidener told investigators as he was led back to his psychiatric ward jail cell, officials said in a news release. Sidener’s curious statement prompted an investigation that revealed that Sidener was behind a scheme that involved bullets and gunpowder being mailed to the jail's hospital, officials said.

Sidener was charged this week with two counts of possession of contraband in a penal institution, sheriff’s officials said. He was ordered held in lieu of $1 million bail Tuesday.

Yes, there are the unreadable tales -- scum who kill children -- but for the most part we guess patrons of Mugs in the News won't leave without a smile on their faces.

Posted 7:02 PM by Gene

And speaking of astonishing:

Britney Spears Songwriter Heather Bright: Pop Stars Get Co-writing Credits for Doing Nothing

On the other hand:

Of course, Bright's not in every studio session; she can't say for sure that Katy Perry didn't come up with "do you ever feel / like a plastic bag."

(Correct link here, to post here -- two too many.)

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

AHTSJournal thinks it has discerned a trend: that rock bands' names are getting "weirder". Hell they've been weird since long before THELONIOUS MONSTER. It's self-defeating at the least for the bunny-rabbit profusion of weird names says the music is all pretty much alike, and it stinks. Perhaps the acts should go back to normal-sounding names, like, well, Jan and Dean, but that would mean emphasizing the music when all you've got is the name.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Sequencing the human genome was more like getting an instruction manual for something important--in a dead language for which we have no Rosetta Stone.

But I didn't have that skepticism at the time, and neither did a lot of people in the biosciences. The human body keeps turning out to be way more complicated than we hope or expect.

Perhaps the Lord God has a plan to keep us from turning ourselves into Soylent Green-eating synthetic monsters.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

How surprising that The Man Who Would Kill Unions So Richie Riches Can Pay No Taxes has a friend of a friend in his government. Millionaires and bums and right-wing millionaire bums and left-wing millionaire bums and right-wing bums and left-wing bums....

(Via TINA!!!!!)

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

"Film production means jobs for Pennsylvanians, it's as simple as that!!" Office director Dawn Keezer said. "A single film can mean millions of dollars and many local jobs!!!! A franchise as prestigious as Batman opens our region up to an entirely new audience as filmmakers and studio executives experience southwestern Pennsylvania!!!!!" [Prestigious overemphasis added]

Let me guess: GUVMENT gave the store away.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

“I think Caterpillar is here to stay,” said Oberhelman, chairman and chief executive officer of the construction- and mining-equipment company. [Emphasis added]

TRANSLATION: CAT reserves the right to relocate corporate HQ to the Bahamas, or wherever.

Posted 10:54 AM by Gene

A GRIEVOUS LOSS FOR THE WORLD: That blithering pseudo-intellectual with the Dilbert voice, the HANS VON KALTENBORN of our day, Jeff "Super-High-IQ" Greenfield, has been...shown the door at SUMNERNET. But CABLE NUISANCE NETWORK needs talking gasbags to fill in its 50,000 hours of "news", so this is not the last we'll have to hear of him.

His "could-it-be-that-or-is-it-possible-that" routine from his days with LORD KOPPEL still rings in our ears.

Posted 11:43 PM by Gene

How apt: Trouble with the NCAA wins.

Posted 11:38 PM by Gene

How dispiriting to see, once again, the footage of theocratic rage in Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. The same old dreary formula: self-righteous frenzy married to a neurotic need to take offense; the easy resort to indiscriminate violence and cruelty; the promulgation of makeshift fatwas by mullahs on the make; those writhing mustaches framing crude slogans of piety and hatred, and yelling for death as if on first-name terms with the Almighty. The spilling of blood and the spoliation of property—all for nothing, and ostensibly "provoked" by the corny, brainless antics of a devout American nonentity, notice of whose mere existence is beneath the dignity of any thinking person.

It was dreadful today to see the word "dying" next to Christopher Hitchens's name. What shall we do without such writing?

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

It should not take telescopic eyes or x-ray vision to discern the problem with AH-pe-RA and thea-TAH and MOVEES is afflicting ballet. It doesn't matter who choreographs it; Tchaikovsky's not writing dance routines anymore. Thousands of cri-TICS ogling the latest tuneless AH-pe-RAs to within an inch of their lives have not brought that moribund form back to life, whatever that fan clique roughly analogous to SELIGISM's, who make it look far more prosperous than it is. And in the serious ahts we all know what new means. New means BAD. It's unfortunate but there's no getting around the high-cultural history of the last 75 years.

(Via the usual AHTSJournal, furrowing its brow in worry)

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

WOW!!!!!!!!!! MICKEY D's is going on a HIRING SPREE -- and each of its 14,000 domestic outlets will disburse an extra $101.37 in "wages and salaries" a day! WOW!!!!!!!!!! ([$518 million/14,000]/365)

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

And in other anti-climaxes...well, he could campaign as the award-winning president!

Obama himself does not speak in the 2:10 minute clip....

A first!

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

AP source: Couric leaving news anchor post

We thought she'd never leave.

This was a five-year anti-climax.

Posted 8:02 PM by Gene

Faulting Japan's outdated technology, Ahmadinejad asserted that a similarly massive earthquake wouldn't create "any serious problem" for Iran.

Indeed -- if an earthquake ever destroyed its nuclear technology NUKEMAN can always pray the winds carry some radiation toward you-know-who. Either way -- he wins!

Posted 7:02 PM by Gene

Under the circumstances we must view this as sheer employment-extending opportunism. Some of these people are surely sincere, but because it's Hollywood we must view everything as a cynical ploy. We puzzle as to why they'd take this route given the blacklist against conservatives. What's more they base their decision on a falsity: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!! The Jesus Slasher Movie was a fluke, and few "Christian" movies since have worked. At worst it will also mean a different kind of bad movee -- and we have ENOUGH of THOSE, whatever their lack of religion.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

"Naked history lessons" -- hey PEOPLE WARNER! You PRODUCE them. We're as tired of your constant mea culpas for synergistically lousy product as for YOUR product.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO HILLARY!

(Via TINA!!!!!, who no doubt could mea culpa her way into Mr. Bewkes's office royally)

Posted 6:49 PM by Gene

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

In addition to fewer show-biz advertorialists the news biz needs fewer ad-industry copywriters. They serve the same useless function as the honorary REALTORS® who typetypetype about TREMENDOUS BUYS, only to lead suckers into tremendous debt. All today's copywriters do is treat each new campaign like a cure for every known disease. They've helped give us vulgar ads and Super Bowl Ad Meters, and endless controversies over "ethics" and plagiarism that can drive a reader to six martinis. The fewer ad toadies the better.

Posted 6:45 PM by Gene

I do not feel the least sorry for EL POLLO LOCO, whose stepping down was grossly underreported by news hacks, as is usual for such important stories. And I don't feel sorry for the Spanish, either, who in a TERRORIST-INDUCED panic elected ZAP!!!!! and got themselves ZAPPED.

Posted 2:10 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Now this, we'll wager, isn't too bad. At least it's a way of bringing ornamentation to modern architecture, unlike MR. STARCHITECT, who thinks if he piles enough aluminum foil on a building it has class. The other side isn't too good looking, however.

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

If American firms sued their Chinese counterparts for patent infringement perhaps we'd get back a little of the competitive advantage they stole from us.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

"We would be surprised if there were not several negative pre-releases on margins and EPS in the first week of April," strategists at Morgan Stanley wrote in recent commentary.

We would be surprised if the S&P 500 didn't hit 2,000 in two weeks!