Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Saturday, August 20, 2011


Few sites produce more show-biz GAS than SUPERADAM's; its favorite pastime is to restate the blazingly obvious when not being blazingly oblivious. Yesterday a female intern tiresomely bloviated over two remakes of eighties masterworks that without much need for crystal-balling proved box-office duds. Not wishing to extend the boredom we merely say for all the nostalgia over Ronnie eighties culture was a vast wasteland, which only got vaster in the decades ahead, which alone disproves the man did much other than bring down Communism.

Elsewhere said same intern with help has bloviated over the "market value" of certain female ac-TORS, and a commenter with even more time to burn assembled a list of A, B and C stars, and it does not speak kindly for the A's that they included a female version of Jerry Orbach, a woman with a highly masculine jaw, a supposed second coming of Audrey Hepburn who veers closer to Harry Langdon, and an MM impersonator. (Strangely enough Scarlett Who Can ACT was further down, and on several occasions her face has channeled Gene Rayburn's.) One commenter had to admit he hadn't heard of most of the names. This was perhaps because he hadn't heard of most of the faces. But an intern had to earn her experience, and like too many hacks engaged in a parlor game for one.


And sorry Jay, but though Howie and CHRIS!!!!!!!!!! be the worst kind of political hacks, in some ways Ike WAS a liberal Democrat.

Friday, August 19, 2011


The most remarkable thing about The Sleaze that Ate Miami is the sleazemaster Nevin himself; neither mentor nor mentees would have known trouble if he hadn't been such a groupie. What sane man would grope at thugs? We know, the meat slabs can have a cuddly side (although how cuddly slabs can be who live [C]RAP and worship unsportsmanlike penalties is beyond us), and possibly he thought he was doing them a favor (the favor of staining their reps), but if we could trade places -- not likely with his conviction -- we would want to know the best people in life. Criminals with shoulder pads are a dime-a-dozen. Nevin showed not merely a narrowness of mind with his athuhlete worship but a complete lack of it; and for that thus does he come across not as evil, but as something worse: a complete fool.


We too have our doubts about urban farming. "Sharecropping" hadn't come to mind before but given NoMoTown's population we can see it. What makes the topic so dispiriting is that it waves a big white flag for a big city. Best to think of it as an expedient until jobs and people can come along. Urban farming should never be a substitute for even the hope of industry.


“Giving up a third of your revenue, even if you end up being more profitable, it’s still a big chunk,” Cusumano said. “As the biggest PC manufacturer, they were in a lot of people’s homes as well as offices. They will lose that.”

TRANSLATION: Maybe getting out of A COMMODITY BUSINESS isn't THAT smart of an idea.


Fifty years ago Johnny Williams led Frankie Laine in an album of yeeeeeeeeeee-HAH!!!!! songs; five years later he conducted Valley of the Dolls; ten years after that he rewrote Korngold's theme for Kings Row; and today he's in the company of Copland, Bernstein and Koussevitzky at Tanglewood!

Only in America!


Just how much respect does His Incompetence earn in this new prosperous world?

Obama's Jobs Plan: Saving His Own


UNC opens his mouth again:

“If the NCAA kills the program, there will be a lot of people slitting their throats,” said rapper Luther Campbell, a huge Hurricanes fan, who was often seen on UM’s sideline during the 1980s and 1990s. “People would be on suicide watch, I can tell you that. That would very seriously hurt the city of Miami.”

Even though it's in Coral Gables?


The economy may be tanking but patriotic companies like MetLife still have the dough to burn on naming rights!

Now to spend the next twenty years with our feet on the railing, stogies in hand, employees to fire!

Thursday, August 18, 2011


Speaking of plagues, today Charmin -- pardon, METRO announced it's started a 9-11 site. This pretty well says the days leading to the anniversary will be all twaddle, with a kind of condescending fake patriotism at best, and worst, PARTISANS having another excuse for food fights, the right claiming the date as its exclusive holiday, the left less interested in remembering than in ISLAMOPHOBIA. And let us not forget the TASTEFUL efforts to monetize it! Even with Osama's long overdue demise there's little to say about 9-11 we haven't said already. A confident nation would march on to new adventures but ours is in a long-term swoon and can't say anything patriotic without being Lee Greenwood, or afraid. The way to remember the date is not through twaddle, but by being silent, and praying, and remembering, and always remembering we can never let our guard down. As for us, we'll mark the day with a simple photographic post, as that's all we need.


Today in NRO Peter Kirsanow grumbled, "How many windmills need to be built to equal the energy produced by 2 trillion barrels of oil?" And His Incompetence would build the windmills. The problem is con-SER-va-tives would drill without a counterbalance. Michelle's STUPID remark about the price of oil is proof enough. So was that cheap populist gag of repealing the incandescent-bulb ban. Look, I don't like Very Littler Jeffy either and I see why some hate CFLs. It's some conservation, however, or letting the Saudis blackmail us again and again. We need to drill. We also need to conserve. The problem is loony liberals won't drill and con-SER-va-tives won't conserve.

For the umpteen umpteenth time: A PLAGUE O' BOTH YOUR HOUSES!


HP will spin off its customer pleasin' low-margin PC business (probably to the Chinese) to concentrate on its ever-profitable printer-cartridge biz!

Good luck!


(Via CNN via FinViz. "Software and servers", it says here. Phooey! It can't be IBM because it makes its dough from printer cartridges!)


We have complained before that show-biz hacks know little of their industry's history, all the better to banter annoying hyperbole. No doubt this masterwork's producers had all their publicists lined up for "4D" and could bank on pliant hacks not knowing Mike Todd's son did the same thing fifty-one years ago and bombed with it. Smell-O-Vision won't work because it can't rid movee houses of the skunk smell coming from the screens.

P. S. Ramona and Lindsay were so busy selling the picture they neglected one thing: to describe how the gimmick works. "4D" uses scratch-and-sniff cards, not the fan-wafted perfumes of Smell-O-Vision. This PR doesn't even qualify for a Neuharthism of the Week Award.


OooooOOOOOoooooh, His Incompetence has just frozen Syria's assets!

I'm sure Bashar is VERY scared.


Speaking of the SAINT, anyone here remember when the hacks and the sales -- ANALYSTS were calling Eddie Lampert HIS SECOND COMING? How His company was sitting on $80 GIGABILLION QUINTILLION QUADRAZILLION in REAL ESTATE? Those inconveniences called customers could have looted the stores and shareholders would STILL make their megafortunes! WELL, that particular bubble popped, and ever since the company has had to concentrate on a very mundane thing: RETAILING; and judging from this NEW 52-WEEK LOW it has yet to master THAT.

Wanna lay odds for a future Chapter XI?


ANNOYING: CONrad the Prison Historian echoes the con-SER-va-tive buncombe that (to reduce it to its irreducible minimum) THE RICH SHOULD PAY NO TAXES. Look, we know ST. WARREN is at best a sanctimonious two-timer, and when He opens His obscenely wealthy mouth to say He should pay more taxes it is faintly self-serving, but how did the rich ever get to be sacrosanct with you tub thumpers? Please, con-SER-va-tives, if you want their money just ASK for it. Stop begging for it through toadying punditry.

And YOU especially CONnie should shut up because you're not exactly poor yourself.


AP sources: US call for Assad departure imminent

WOW!!!!! And it's only taken what, a few years?

Wednesday, August 17, 2011


During his decade-long run as a booster, Shapiro came to be known as "Little Luke," a derivative of "Uncle Luke," nickname of entertainer Luther Campbell, who notoriously took care of UM players in the 1980s and 90s. Campbell took exception Wednesday to Shapiro calling himself "Little Luke" in the Yahoo! report and wrote a blog ripping the booster for associating himself with Campbell.

I don't know, Unc, wasn't he merely following in the footsteps of a master?


First of all, I have never been a UM booster. I have never given a dime to the school. I have and always will support the players and the program out of civic pride, but I never violated any NCAA rules when I was the team's biggest fan in the '80s. And I definitely would not have ever paid for a stripper to abort a baby allegedly fathered by a UM football player, like Shapiro claims he did.

You can't be me just by reading a Dan Le Batard article in the
Miami Herald from 21 years ago alleging I paid players for hits on the field. The NCAA investigated those accusations and found no wrongdoing on my part. This notion that I was paying players is false. It never happened.

Aw, don't be so modest!

(Via CBS Sports)


Calamities like these rapes of Mennonite women in Bolivia will happen when whole parts of society decide they can secrete themselves away, however noble the secretion.


Bachmann: If elected, gas prices would fall to less than $2 per gallon

1. The SAUDIS will see about that! 2. The CHINESE will see about that! 3. BIG OIL will see about that! 4. President Bachmann's incompetence will see about that!

(Via NRO)


YOU COULD SAY THAT:

Cash payments, alcohol, strippers, hookers -- no wonder the Hurricanes haven't won much lately. They're exhausted.


From an interview with George Soros, somewhat removed from financing figurative bomb-throwers:

SPIEGEL: The United States is drowning in even more debt than Europeans. Its economic recovery has been painful. Are we going to see a double-dip recession in the US?

Soros: The indebtedness of the US is not all that high, but if a double-dip recession was in doubt a few weeks ago, it is less in doubt now, because financial markets have a very safe way of predicting the future. They cause it.


"A WIN-WIN SITUATION":

MTV is firing back at Abercrombie & Fitch after the youth-targeted clothing brand issued a statement saying it is willing to pay Jersey Shore star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino to refrain from wearing its merchandise. Sorrentino has frequently sported the brand on the MTV reality program.

"It’s a clever PR stunt, and we’d love to work with them on other ways they can leverage
Jersey Shore to reach the largest youth audience on television,” an MTV spokesperson said in a statement.

TRANSLATION: SUMNER wants their money!

However the mutual stunt thankfully turns into a LOSE-LOSE situation in the LAST GRAF:

In a recent study by social media agency Mr. Youth, it was discovered that both MTV and Abercrombie are struggling with reaching the youth audience. Teens reportedly watch MTV, but not with respect, believing that the network over-simplifies their generation. Abercrombie, on the other hand, doesn’t fit in with the generation’s value of diversity, self-expression and understated product branding. [Emphasis added]

The answer? Scream at them like RETARDS even more!


The Miami Morons weren't just paid for hits; they were paid for unsportsmanlike, personal-foul and celebration penalties, the mark of a team with absolutely no class.

Thankfully the better-than-ever NFL's been snared in this debacle, which alas probably won't hurt its popularity. It should.

The death penalty would be too kind for the Check Holders.

And speaking of Wild and Crazy Guys:

"Shapiro said he also paid cash to fix damage Winslow inflicted by crashing one of the booster's personal watercraft into another boat."

This is turning into the greatest stink in the history of all sport.


1:47 PM The third member (I, II) of the FOMC to dissent at last week's meeting has now weighed in publicly. Dallas Fed's Richard Fisher says the commitment to freeze rates removes the incentive for business to spend and hire, adding observers can now infer a "Bernanke put" - the notion the FOMC guides policy based on supporting the stock market.

Somebody got wise?

Tuesday, August 16, 2011


OR:

Having served in public life, I am well aware of the different voices and views on abortion. But health experts have long agreed that the politics of abortion must not obstruct women's access to essential primary and preventive health care, including family planning and birth control. That's a mainstream public health position and a commonsense prescription for the health of women and children.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abortion: In one instance, Shapiro described taking a player to the Pink Pony strip club and paying for a dancer to engage in sex with the athlete. In the ensuing weeks, Shapiro said the dancer called one of his security providers and informed him that the player had gotten her pregnant during the incident. Shapiro said he gave the dancer $500 to have an abortion performed, without notifying the player of the incident.

“I was doing him a favor,” the booster said. “That idiot might have wanted to keep [the baby].”

Due to the sensitivity of the allegation, Yahoo! Sports has chosen not to name the player allegedly involved.


I'm starting to think The Check Holder may be the scapegoat.

P. P. S. I've come up with a new fight song for U of M! First verse:

Seventy-two dumb jocks took the football field,
With a hundred and ten cheap whores right behind.
They were followed by rows and rows
Of the finest wheelbarrows
With cash from senior folks robbed blind!


(My deepest apologies to the late Meredith Willson)


Speaking of Miami and radioactive (well THAT was cheap), of COURSE we must be wary of nuclear power plants. We should be equally wary without them.

Incidentally, it says here that burg has only 32 months of condo inventory left! Half will turn into the apartments they should have been in the first place.


72 ATHUHLETES! YIKES!

But remember -- Miami will NOT get the death penalty because it's a NAME BRAND.

Yes, the guy's a con. Yes, this is PROFESSIONAL KOLEDGE FOOTBALL.



Gee! Making money is FUN!! Right, DONNA?

P. S. from a year ago in April:

The indictment puts South Florida even further in the Ponzi scheme spotlight in the wake of Scott Rothstein's $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, orchestrated out of his Fort Lauderdale law firm, and the $7 billion scheme allegedly orchestrated by R. Allen Stanford, who had a key office in Miami. (Rothstein has pleaded guilty, but Stanford is contesting the charges against him.)

Many of the victims in Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme also were South Floridians. Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term.


South Florida -- home of the PONZ! (Via MSNBC.com)


In the somber aftermath of a catastrophe, talk of inspections -- or the lack thereof.

Indiana native Paul Harding, a fellow at the American Institute of Architects and partner in a Chicago architectural firm, called the lack of a building permit and inspections "a very serious problem."

"If something is not permitted, the whole system is short-circuited," he said. "You don't have the checks and balances you would normally get with a project."

He said his first reaction when he saw the photos of the stage before it fell was that it looked "unbelievably flimsy."

"And after looking at the photographs of (structural pieces) after the collapse," he said, "they seemed thinner and more delicate than you would expect for a structure like that."


And no, the problem isn't climate change, it's suspending 25 TONS OF EQUIPMENT with Tinkertoys and baling wire.

Monday, August 15, 2011


We are very pleased to see though that ALLSTATE lost $2 billion on AAA-rated junk mortgage debt, far more than it will ever make selling insurance policies with vulgar ads on "pre-rolls".

(Via Seeking Alpha)


Elsewhere from AHTSJournal, it's plain the Web's obsessive nature is overtaking its usefulness. No one has calculated how much time it would take to listen to 15 million songs. As I know firsthand from obsessive downloading you don't have the time to hear what you've just downloaded. And we may wonder yet again if a surfeit of media equals a paucity of excellence.


After riots, Britain's Cameron vows to fight 'moral collapse'

Given that his second-to-last predecessor used his position to help his friends and was rewarded with big pounds on the lecture circuit, and given that his predecessor was a BP stooge who let a terrorist free, and given this guy will probably become obscenely rich himself after the skeletons come out of his closet, he should stop before he starts.


ALLSTATE's still running their crude, senseless ads today, leading me to believe it's intentional. If so, advertisers and their parasitic agencies are little better than the scum that tried burning London down. I've said this before: "Outrage gets talked about! So does a Ku Kluxer in his evening wear."


Cordis liberal nonhierarchical corporate culture didn’t blend well with Johnson and Johnson’s conservative hierarchical corporate culture. As a result, the acquisition didn’t fair well, and that was one of the reasons Johnston & Johnston failed to follow through with a new generation of surgical devices. [SIC!]

You know, Bono, we understand You want a return on Your investment, but shouldn't You hire maybe one editor for Your Web site?

Besides, isn't SPIDER-MAN: DON'T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS!!! making money?


How to Win When You’re Unpopular: What Obama Can Learn From Truman

Well, you could stop acting like a know-it-all college professor.

And you could stop campaigning all the time.

I can imagine the choice epithets Harry would aim at His Incompetence -- and at Norm Ornstein.


How do you know when it's AHTSJournal?

Producer: Pop Music Industry Needs To Seriously Reinvent

Warning: Publishing Must Change Or Else


Because it posts all these links to stories about industries that will NEVER CHANGE.

Not to mention...

Edinburgh Book Fair Provocation: Nothing Original About Books

Why Does Hollywood Keep Whitewashing History?

Nigel Kennedy: Musicians Are Wrecking Bach


...lots of tantrums going nowhere.

Sunday, August 14, 2011


One of the Web sites we use to steal -- pardon, DOWNLOAD music has brought us some badly recorded demos of a Honeymooners musical from 1983 (it says here). You may recall the songwriters: Menken and Ashman were MICKEYMOUSE NIXON's amanuenses, writing songs for His animated features the cri-TICS uniformly called genius; but from the minute or so we could stand to listen the songs sounded sappy, and were sung sappily -- we guess by one of the writers. There was nothing sappy about The Honeymooners; and though he didn't write music The Great One did a immensely better job creating his two famous themes than MICKEYMOUSE"s hacks could do writing a MILLION cartoon features.

P. S. at 7:09 p. m. It appears only Menken wrote the songs; they still smell.


ARCHDaily!



We haven't needed the ARCH to read of the Lord God Steve's SPACESHIP, and the same nooz industry that has scratched the Lord's back repeatedly has given Him some pretty nice oohs and aahs about it; but does anyone here remember -- the Skyscraper Index? And what is the Lord God's Spaceship but a huge circular skyscraper on its side? And what further is it but a ground-hogging CIRCULAR PENTAGON? We would do wise not to doubt Stevedom's permanent prosperity but does this building going up herald a final end to all the Wall Street Casino gas about a TRILLION-DOLLAR COMPANY?


Spain's 8,115 municipalities are being hit by a crushing revenue hangover from a nearly two-decade building boom that went bust in 2008. [Emphasis added]

Blame the miracle in Barcelona? No. But Spain, like the UK, was once a proud kingdom that straddled the globe, and it too had an economy with no tether, and leaders with no leadership.

(Via Seeking Alpha)


I wanted to leave this awful story alone, BUT:



FROM USAOKAY.COM!!!!!!!!!!


SLIME, in the voice of a fictional TV character, through "an e-mail sent to the press", through SUPERNIKKI!!!!!:

"For two years, we’ve been mercilessly bombarded with the pubescent nonsense of carnival sideshow freaks calling themselves 'The Glee Club'. And now, they’re trying to shove a 3D concert movie down our throats. It’s time to make a stand against these pimply-faced, hormone-ridden twits by joining the 'STOP BELIEVING' campaign. Say 'NO' to their insignificant cinematic experiment. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand looking at their little satanic faces in 2D, much less 3D."

Thankfully, the teens stopped believing.

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