Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Saturday, April 30, 2011


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.


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.


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.

Friday, April 29, 2011


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!


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?


THE DONALD DODGED THE DRAFT!

I'd rather talk about wedding gowns.


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.


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.


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)


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!


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.


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?


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.


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?

Thursday, April 28, 2011


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.


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.


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.


U.S. economy weakens sharply in first quarter

It's official: BEN has it BOTH WAYS!

DOW 570 GIGAMEGAHYPERQUADRAZILLION!!!!!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011


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?


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.


"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?


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.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011


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

That and "Can I have your autograph?"


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


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?)




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!!!!!!!!!!


A Challenge: Stop Saying ‘Speculators’

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


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.


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.

Monday, April 25, 2011


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.


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".


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


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.


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!


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?


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)

Sunday, April 24, 2011


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.


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!


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!)

Home
Site Meter eXTReMe Tracker