Ready, Front

More Disbelief

2008-12-09T01:52:00.002-06:00

Sorry to make it look like every post is quasi-apocalyptic, but seriously, WHAT THE FUCK DOES RON SANTO HAVE TO DO TO GET VOTED INTO THE HALL OF FAME?

Would the Veteran's Committee like his arms, too? Or is it as simple as what I read on another blog today, that the VC don't want nobody else let in to their little club who isn't, you know, dead.

Well, fuck 'em. Merit and accomplishment?
Check.

Not being Joe Morgan after Joe Morgan stopped playing?
Double Check.

Hardships overcome?
Check and Mate.

Man oh Manischewitz. It's almost a parody of itself now. Even Susan Lucci won a Daytime Emmy, you know.

We Suck Journal

2008-12-05T11:18:00.002-06:00

What the fuck is wrong with the Wall Street Journal? Maybe it's not news, but today as I was doing something completely unrelated I happened on a post that really gobsmacked me. I'll get to that in a second, but also today is this stupid article which helps to explain why WSJ and one-trick ponies of its ilk shouldn't do stories that only tangentially deal with their field of expertise. (Which reminds me of a Heartwarming Family Anecdote. My brother, who is a gifted professor of economics in the macro-DC area, once argued with me several years ago that the Journal was the "perfect paper," since it was his opinion that they did the best financial reporting [I'll cop to that, esp since I know dickfist about finance] as well as reported on everything else on a par with everyone else. "It's the perfect paper," he said many years ago. "Really? Look at the fucking op-ed page sometime," I cheerfully respond in the present day. Ah, family.)

And now here's this stupid article, which I call a blinky, which is what happens when one-trick ponies like the Journal blink and look around outside their previously-mentioned fields of expertise and realize that OMG, stuff happens inthe world! College football is all-of-a-sudden popular and ascendant and dominant in the South! Ahem, fellas. College football has always been all of those things. It's no tnews that the state of Florida is where the speed is or tht they've been taking Northern kids out of the Ohio State/Michigan/Penn State/Big Ten pipeline. Sports Illustrated, a sports magazine that publishes articles written about sports, and only occasionally ties them in with stories about the money floating around in sports, did this story in their annual College Football Preview issue the year I got out of college. I remember that because I read it on my first day on the job at my first real-world job. OUT OF COLLEGE. In 1988. So, not news, Wall Street God-damned Journal. At all.

No, this article is clearly another tired-ass sop to red-state, deep-South, center-to-hard-right America and its presence as the only remaining fortress for old-school Republican and conservative values. Tying the traditions of SEC football and the Big Big Money to be gleaned from same is WSJ's way of saying the South will rise again, which, whatever. Like Army and Notre Dame have no tradition. (They don't have any talent now, either, but that's not what this article is trying to say.) And of course, as good as Florida, bama, LSU and Florida State have been in recent years, there also exists in the South an Ole Miss, a Mississippi State, a Baylor, and many other teams that do, in fact, suck. Like everywhere. So other than the fact that the SEC is pretty good, and the fact that the WSJ desperately needs the right wing to feel good about itself, this story shouldn't exist.

Ah, but that's just the icing. The cake (or perhaps I should say "shit-pie") is this steaming load from the always-load-bearing Peggy Noonan. God damn it. She so fucking sucks. It's her usual bullshit bit of moseying around rich white naeighborhoods doing rich white things with rich white people, which culminates in her "throwing down" to Barack Obama (Oh snap, Irish Lady!), challenging him to do better than Bush on Homelamd Security, because, after all, At Least Bush Kept Us Safe.

No. No he did not. You stupid idiot of stupidity. Shut up, sit down, shut up, and listen. Bush got us killed. Bush had the opportunity to keep us safe and ignored it, then lied us into a war that has beget another war based on that botched opportunity. Remember? Yellow gingham on the bed, yellowcake lies in the SOTU, remember, darling? We were safe for a good long while until Ol' Cowboy Chucklefuck got into office and made us all look like boorish assholes. Noonan seems to forget, or maybe it's because she really is stupid, that 9/11 happened on Preznit Fuckhead's watch. (Hers, too, so she hasn't kept us safe either.) And just offhand, to be a mean Republican cunt about things, her "observation" that dirty furriners the globe 'round are reacting less to Obama's victory and more to McCain's concession speech? Just another example that history is constantly being rewritten by the losers. The rich, white losers.

What I'm Thankful For Today

2008-11-27T17:57:00.001-06:00

BREAKING LATE ELECTION RESULTS

2008-11-05T00:40:00.002-06:00

With 97 % of precincts reporting from Petoskey, Michigan, Hooknose Longhorn and his brother, Dell, have retained the posts of Dogcatcher and Deputy Dogcatcher, posts which the former Tejas farmers have held since 1980. Jello Face Odion defeated Trident to win the post of Water Supervisor.

Trident's concession speech consisted of him mainly zooming around the podium as his supporters cheered, his three-pronged outlet of a tail flying behind him.

The race between Phoneface and Bellnose for Building Supervisor is still too close to call.

The Ionisation Blackout

2008-11-04T09:08:00.003-06:00

Well folk, today is Election Day.
You know what you have to do. Hopefully some of you have already done it.
Of course I 'd hope you would vote Democratic, but if you must vote Republican, at least vote. (Like that GOP vote will matter in Illinois.)

The thing I most want to happen tonight is to see Barack and Michelle Obama and Joe and Jill Biden shining all over Grant Park, before they throw the last shovelful of lime over the stinking, rotting, pustulent, bloated carcass of Karl Rove's career as any kind of political strategist. (They want to nail the lid on the coffin of this iteration of the GOP proper, they could do that too.)

So the board is in motion. I'm off to Loyola Park fieldhouse. Then we wait.

And then we dance.

This Just In

2008-10-26T20:56:00.002-05:00

David Frum is a cock.

Not only has he completely backed the wrong horse, he's being a total dick about it. That Post article "warns" of an impending Democratic hegemony that promises an orgy of unchecked spending and should Obama win and gain a filibuster-proof Senate.

Because unchecked power in Congress just might turn this country into a huge tub of suck, I guess.

I'd ask where the fuck Frum thinks he's been living the past eight goddamned years, but he probably gets paid by the word and "with my head up my ass" might not get him more than a triple sawbuck.

Clown.

Haul Away, Joe

2008-10-19T23:31:00.003-05:00

So I don't really care whether Joe the Plumber is a real plumber, or whether he didn't pay his taxes, or whether he owns a buisness or just rents it. (Like beer. You know.)

What I do give a fuck about is the fact that someone claims FOR HIM that his life has been turned upside down by Faggot Terrorist Barack Obama Hitler and his Homo Lovers of Liberalism, making him hide his face from the horde. Because he can't be bothered to tell us how bad his life is now. Because it's awful when the Mother Fucking Media show up on your lawn, making you come all out of the house and stand in front of cameras and talk to them and shit. Just awful.

But dude. What America-loving, higher-taxes-and-terrorist-faggots hating plumbung American complains about all that shit, then sits in the front row at Huckabee?

Asshole. Fake motherfucker. Famewhore.

Get off the fucking clock now, Joe. 14:59...and...

Here Come The--Oh, no, they're late.

2008-10-13T22:18:00.002-05:00

Wooo! Blackhawks! Yeah! Rocky and J-Mac did everything right in the offseason! Huge season-ticket base! Expectations!!! High!!! As expected!!!

THE MAGIC IS BACK, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!

Yeah. No.

Because, three games, six goals. No wins. No wins. I have no wins, too.

No fucking offense. Again. Angles were bad, passing sucked, guys looked tired. And so far each goalie has had one good period per start. (And Huet, use your FUCKING STICK TO BLOCK YOUR FIVE HOLE IN A SHOOTOUT.) I know it's early days, but boy does this shit look familiar. The crowd was rabid nd ready and then they were out of it fifteen minutes in.

Get your tickets now. Or don't.

Don't snivel, we just waxed the floors

2008-10-06T19:03:00.005-05:00

So at what level of bagginess is that douchebag, New York Times
"columnist" William Kristol?

Pretty baggy:

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue,
what about Reverend Wright?

Holy shit, is he kidding or stupid? Don't answer that, he's obviously stupid. (And sloppy, yes. And a hack. And a fraud. And the head of Alfredo Garcia. And a partridge. In a pear. Tree.)
He really wants to take Sarah Palin there? He really wants her to go where this asshole's grinning skull is waiting for her? Really? As if she doesn't look ass-backwards and bumblefuck enough, Bloody Billl wants to open up the Muthee floodgates by letting her try to hammer Obama on Wright? Cause your column has his name in it, you know? Well, bring that nonsense on, Bill. Plus, your column sucks. Every week. Like clockwork it sucks. Suckwork.
This is a great strategy for the McCain campaign. They obviously can't talk about the economy, even though that's ALL PEOPLE CARE ABOUT YOU STUPID BLINDERS-WEARING DUMB-ASS WARTHOGS OF REPUBLICAN STUPIDITY, because McCain fucked that up over the course of the last two weeks but good, and their idea of making it a Culture War died when people heard Goddess Of The Hunt Sarah Palin actually talk in real time, away from her baby-seal-fur-lined-leather-gloved handlers. So they try to pivot back to the tap-dance terrorist team of Wright and Ayers, an issue that was vetted and found wanting back when Hillary Clinton tried it. And we all know Hillary Clinton is twice the man Bill Kristol is, not to mention twice the writer. I sure hope this is their idea of an October Surprise. Because if it is, we can bury the political career of Karl Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, for good.
Good.
Plus, Bill Kristol sucks.

Drink your big Black Cow and get out of here

2008-10-02T21:11:00.004-05:00

Because it's over now, motherfuckers. Note the fucking time stamp, bitches.
Second inning, game 2, and it's over. I just watched the Lansing Fucking Lugnuts bat in the bottom of the first and the Cleveland Spiders in the fucking field in the top of the second.

Fucking over. Already. Jesus Fucking Fuck. Fuck you all. Spotlight too fucking bright? Get a pair of fucking sunglasses, assholes.

It's over.

Make me the biggest motherfucking liar in fucking history.

Ah, but that would require the ability to take a pitch and field a ground ball. I sure as hell can't do it. Neither can you JV motherfuckers, apparently.

So, no. Get a fucking book of Forever stamps and mail it in. From the fucking golf course, motherfuckers.

Fuck You All.

Done.

Post God-Damned Mortem, God Damn It

2008-10-02T10:42:00.003-05:00

So how bad was it?

Not bad, if "utter failure" is your bar. (Just so you know, I'm talking about this piece of crap and not this one. That's tonight.) Otherwise, bad. Like Cozy Cole BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD.

So how bad was it?

I heard that Ron Santo accidentally killed a guy when he took off one of his legs and threw it down toward the Cubs' dugout in frustration.

I heard that 14 different MLB-accredited documentary film crews packed up and went home, throwing their credits at the door of the Cubs' Media Relations department, weeping and saying through their tears, "What the fuck was that? You promised us MAGIC!!!"

I heard that even Chris Crocker won't defend the Cubs online today.

Hi-yooooooh.

Seriouslike, I know it's just one game, but it's a five-game series and not seven, and if this is the offense for the week, it's fucking over. Three out of five is no barometer for a team's rate of success over a 162-game season, but that's the way it is, and we saw this offense go into a week-long funk a couple of times this year, just like every team. But every team didn't make the playoffs and have the best offense in the national League, God damn it, and this one did, so they can't fucking bail this fucking WEEK.

Because now, as we know, the pitchers are scared. I'll get to Dumpster in a minute. (h/t to the rotting, stiinking, bloated carcass of Jay Mariotti's career) But after Dempster, Marshall came in and started nibbling at the corners, and walked guys and gave up home runs. Samardzija too. Blah blah blah. Pitching from some place of fear and despair and I don't know what instead of just being able to get that third out. I railed for years about the Cubs' problem being their inability to take a pitch on offense to draw a walk and thus put men on bast to score runs. This year that hasn't been a big problem, due in large measure to Fukudome's early-season left-handed plate patience, which rubbed off, which may be why Piniella's keeping him in. (Gaetti-Salazar-style loyalty is another Cubs'-brand trait that needs to be stopped soonest, but that's another post, I guess.)

This year it's been that third out. I don't know how many runs were scored off of Cubs pitchers with two outs, but I'd guess a whole lot more than should have been scored. Scientific, I know. But how many outs and how many strikes on Loney? You know, fuck. Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux gave up homers in Wrigley Field, everyone does, but they didn't walk guys in the playoffs like Dempster did to give up grand slams.

Oh. Wait.

And he pitched the 9th against the Cubs last night, right? And threw a perfect inning against the Cubs' offense? Fuck me.

So how bad was it?

Bullshit

2008-10-01T20:56:00.002-05:00

Fucking embarrassing.

That's it. Maybe tomorrow.

Fun With Real Comcast Headlines

2008-09-15T14:07:00.004-05:00

Palin spells out her role in McCain administration
GOLDEN, Col. - Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin was eager to spell out, for assembled reporters, her role in John McCain's administration .

"It's spelt H-E-R-O-I-N, and never, eeeever do it, 'kay keeids?" The junior governor of a state with less people than Nashville said.

When informed by a handler that she had been asked to figuratively spell out "her role," the MILFy pol beamed and said, "Mmmm. 'Kay then. Byeeeee!" And was whisked away to a waiting SUV.

No further questions were even contemplated by the press.

George Takei marries longtime partner Brad Altman

(via AP)LOS ANGELES — George Takei and his longtime partner, Brad Altman, have agreed to live long and prosper together.
Takei, 71, and Altman, 54, were married Sunday in a multicultural ceremony at the Japanese American National Museum that featured a Buddhist priest, Native American wedding bands, a Japanese Koto harp and a bagpipe procession.
The couple, both clad in white dinner jackets with black pants, made a grand entrance to the tune of "One Singular Sensation" from the Broadway musical "A Chorus Line." They stepped into a circle of yellow roses and lilies, where they shared a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and were wed by a Buddhist priest.
The priest then pronounced them "spouses for life." A bagpiper played as the newlyweds walked out, followed by friends, family and a few members of the press.
The "Star Trek" star and his manager plan to honeymoon in Argentina and Peru.
A spokesmen for the couple confirmed the ceremony was indeed "the gayest thing since Oscar Wilde fucked the cast of La Cage Aux Folles up the ass while wearing a Balenciaga spring frock."

Jestadt to Erstad

2008-09-14T21:47:00.003-05:00

Oh hells yeah.

Almost to the day since Milt Pappas lost a perfect game by that much, but still threw a no-hitter, getting Padre legend Jerry Jestadt to pop up after the walk that killed the perfecto, and almost to the day after Frank Castillo took a no-no two outs into the ninth at Wrigley field only to lose it to a triple by Bernard Gilkey, Carlos Zambrano put a stamp on the Cubs' season by striking out Darrin Erstad and throwing a no-hitter. Against the Astros. In Milwaukee.

The Cubs' lead in the division is 7.5 as of tonight, and I think it's safe to say it's over there. Because the Cubs played like ass the past two weeks, but the Brewers weren't much better, and made up no ground. And so they found themselves rooting for the Cubs to beat the Astros, who are creeping up on the Brewers in the Wild Card.

The game was in Milwaukee, because of complications with Hurricane Ike. It still must have sucked for Brewers fans to see their team lose in Philly and then have to watch Carlos do what he did tonight, in their house.

Hell yes, monkeyfingers. Game on...

Dear Fellow Democrats

2008-09-11T23:29:00.003-05:00

Three words:

Stop.
Breathe.
States.
Carry on.

(go Cubs)

boo-yah. who's your, um, daddy.

2008-09-07T12:02:00.002-05:00

Sorry to be all sportsy and all lately, but I notice the two NFL games I'm being "treated" to today have four teams with a combined win total of 16 from last year. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but is this a colluded atempt to get people to buy those digital "see it all" packages? Oh, Insufferable Jimmy Kimmel, how we hate thee.

I Got Your Open Letter Right Here

2008-09-06T20:16:00.002-05:00

Dear ESPN,

Your website sucks my ass.

Sincerely,
Someone who thinks your website sucks his ass

It's a Shame

2008-09-02T23:26:00.003-05:00

For it's root, root root for the home team,

If they don't win...

The best thing I can find to say about this clusterfuck of missed opportunities is they'd better be getting this shit out of their systems now, like the Sox did in a somewhat similar situation.

Because, otherwise, what the fuck? I hate to sound like Ron Albertson, but are the Cubs all of a sudden looking at their record and thinking September is Senior Skip Day? They can fucking play hooky and no one will notice because they're that far ahead?

Because they're not. They should be. But they're fucking not. Especially when they play like it's 2006 again, DERREK LEE, with the fucking 2-pitch at-bat after Brocail FUCKING WALKS THE BASES FULL. GOD DAMN IT.

No, no, fuck that "hottest team in the NL" Astros bullshit. The Cubs are supposed to be the best team in the National League and they lose four in a row at home? Kiss my fat ass.

And one more thing.

Fuck you, Bobby Howry.

Sit Down. No, SIT DOWN.

2008-08-24T22:20:00.003-05:00

Well, now I remember why I don't go to the theatre that much anymore.

Of course, thiose of you who know me realize that I my ownself am an actor and like to keep as busy as possible. Seriously. Fiorello! ended on July 20 and since then it's been the first time since last August that I've been without a show, and I really don't know what to do with myself sometimes.

So my good (and old, well not old, but I've known him for 20 years as of November) friend Mike is the Business Manager up at Light Opera Works in Evanston, where he and I met and worked lo those many years ago. We both started in the chorus and worked up to small speaking and compromario roles, then shared stage as comic featured players a couple of times. Anyway, he knows I know Gilbert and Sullivan and he asked me to do LOW's "balcony talk" lecture for the show they just closed, the G&S masterpiece Iolanthe. Long story shortish, I ripped it up in the balcony, and today he asked me to stay and see the show. (For free, y'all. Like I was a Caesar.) Any way.

I sit down, and get my USDA recommended daily reminder why I HATE going to the theatre. Two women, who had obviously bought their tickets (or someone had), and LOW tickets are not exactly cheap, off-Loop affairs, commenced to talking during the overture. After not really talking beforehand at all. I shushed them firmly and definitively, and it worked pretty much, until the second act when the M&Ms came out. Ten minutes before the end of the show. Seriously, you can't wait ten fucking minutes to eat your M&Ms? In the little bag? Seriously? And then, of course, because they suck, these two, they got up to leave before the curtain call even started. I was on the aisle and I wouldn't move for them. I refused to get up, and of course they bitched and moaned. I also got the feeling that if I hadn't got up to let them in at the start of Act II that they'd still be waiting for me to see them and get up.

Because people suck. It wasn't just these two, of course. It was everybody walking around and sitting and standing and moving around like they're at home, watching the fucking thing on TV. And these are not young people, these are not idiots or babes in the woods like the stupid 20-something co-workers of one of the guys in Fiorello! one evening. These are adults, who I assume have all ben to the theatre before. I understand that old is old (and a lot of the LOW audience is indeed, shall we say, advanced) and the bladder and the sphincter and the oxygen and the hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn, as Jerry Lewis would say, but God damn it. You paid for your ticket, but you didn't pay for my ticket. This time, neither did I, but they didn't fucking know that.

It's different at movies; not only is the live connection out of the equation but I usually see movies at 1 in the afternoon on a Monday, with maybe 6 other people, and it's easy to move around or shush people in that case. And if it's a big movie I want to see on a big weekend, like a Spider-Man or The Dark Knight, well, if it's a rollicking theatre full of crazies, that kind of movie is meant to be consumed at a high degree of volume anyway. ( I saw Spidey 2 the Monday night after it opened. With many folks. We had a great time. Dark Knight I saw the Monday afternoon after the meshugaas subsided. I think it was the first non-sellout, non-insane showing of it.) I think literally the only time I've ever had to move at a movie was at the first Harry Potter, when some asshole dad wouldn't shut the fuck up on his phone. There were only 5 or so of us in the theatre anyway. So moving, no problem. But a full house of paying customers at a live event? No soup for you, bitches. Grow up, get real, wake the fuck up.

That's why I don't go to the theatre so much anymore. Dammit.

Add 'em up, Bobby. Add 'em up.

2008-08-14T00:39:00.002-05:00

Damn! First Bernie Mac, then Isaac Hayes. And now, for another kick in the nuts, a guy I actually met died. And he, too, was a great American original.

George Furth passed away earl;ier this week. In addition to being a great character actor(maybe my brother Stu's favorite; check him out as Van Johnson in Blazing Saddles; he enters at 2:01. Here comes the funny.), he wrote the book to perhaps the most original musical ever written, as well as the book to one of the most sadly underachieving musicals ever written.

I met Furth when I did Company with Porchlight in 2003. He sat in the second row on opening night; it was impossible after a while not to notice him. Not because of anything he did to call attention to himself, he was just there. It was him. Next to having Sondheim in the house his ownself, having George Frigging Furth there was about as monolithic and absolute (which is how I often describe Company) as it gets. And he couldn't have been more complimentary afterwards.

It's a frigging shame. That's all.

Indy Mac, Freddie Mac, Bernie Mac

2008-08-10T02:28:00.001-05:00

Why is it that the only one of these three that's worth saving is the one we can't bring back?
Rest in peace, you summammabitch.

Turtle Heads

2008-08-05T15:21:00.003-05:00

Goddammit, they've been doing this way too fucking much lately. The Cubs offense scores a nice packet of runs in the first inning or three, then completely shuts down, then the pitchers get either lazy (Rich Harden) or stupid (Bobby Fucking Howry, again) or both, resulting in waaaay too many fucking blown leads lately. Call it turtling, or what you will. I call it "An annoying baseball trend."

Back in 1977, the Cubs "withered in the heat," so they said, playing all those day games, and ended up blowing a comfy lead they'd built up before the All-Star break. They don't have that excuse this time. (Nor, to be fair, is the division as good.) And yes, they're still the best team in the division by a long shot and especially at home, but when you start giving chippy bullshit away and not following through at home, I tend to get pissy about it, and memories of 20-40 1977 start popping into my head. I'm glad the offense is picking it up today, but this stuff catches up eventually. If they lose this one, bookmark it. Seriously.

Just musing, but...

2008-07-31T20:24:00.002-05:00

...does anyone else think that the Blackhawks haven't made a wrong move since Rocky Wirtz took over? It's amazing (and more than a little ghoulish to say, I'll admit) that it took the death of his father, who apparently had either no enthusiasm or no idea how to run this arm of his empire, to turn the tide. But the proof of the pudding would appear to be in the eating. Getting John McDonough from the Cubs, welcoming the greats of my childhood back (and they were gone why in the first place, Bill?) into the Hawks family, putting every motherfucking game on TV, splashing for real free agents, the Winter Classic at Wrigley, and now he hires FORMER RED WINGS COACH (and the winningest ever, by the way) Scotty Bowman to a senior ops position. Yeahhh. The McCain campaign might look into the Hawks' front office for an idea on how to do things. But, since it's the McCain campaign, they'd almost certainly manage to find documents and strategies from the Blackhawks, circa 2004. The Blackhawks of today certainly wouldn't vote for the Blackhawks of 2004.

...speaking of McCain, I have to agree with Wonkette from earlier this week: Wouldn't their campaign in general, and their media strategy in particular, have more credence if every fucking thing they did wasn't totally in response to something the Obama campaign did first and better?

...I think that I will never get an acting job again. Of course I'm over-dramatizing the situation, but this is the first time I've been without a show since last August. Marrone. I guess going from Mid-Life from Aug-Nov, to A City Lit Xmas, Nov-Dec, 1776 from Jan-Mar, the Mid-Life show again for three weeks in March, into Fiorello! from March to July 20 is pretty busy. Everyone seems to be saying 'Well, I bet you're enjoying some free time!' Truth is, I literally don't know what to do with myself most of the time. Which proves to me, if to nobody else, that this is all I want to do. That I'm a creature of theatre. Blah blah, but it's my blog blog. Seriously, though. If I don't get another gig soon, and by soon I mean in a short period of time, I may implode all over the cat. And nobody wants that. Least of all him.

...won't it be great on Broadway for the next ten years, when 24 of every 25 new musicals is an adaptation of a movie? And how creatively bankrupt and scared is the New York producing community (and their tour-booking national arms as well) that the majority of those movies have some name-brand recognition but in a sane economy wouldn't make good musicals to begin with?

One More Asshole in Heaven

2008-07-04T22:57:00.003-05:00

(with apologies to Tim Rice)

And no apologies, at all, to the memory of Jesse Helms, the now-thank-God-he's-DEAD former senator and all-time fuck-knuckle from North Carolina.

Yeah, it's one of those posts. I'll keep it short, because time sepnt writing about Jesse Helms (R-Acist) is time better spent masturbating or playing with my cat or telling you to go see Woody Guthrie's American Song at Victory Gardens Theatre Greenhouse. Go.

Helms was a conservative Republican in every sense of the word. Bully for him. I have no problem with conservatives or Republicans, because politics stops at the water's edge and our differences make us who and what we are and blah blah blah. Helms was that extra-special right-winger, the kind who hated blacks, and gays, and furriners, and was put by Newt Fucking Gingrich into a position where he caould do someething about all that shit, as Chair of the Senate Foreign relations Committee. As a committee Chair and a senior Senator he wielded a lot of foreign and domestic power so much got done or not done on his say-so. I'll leave it to better bloggers to give you a laundry list of his accomplishments (but my guess is his laundry list would normally read something like "Pick up sheets from dry cleaning. Wear to meeting tonight."). Suffice to say that President Fuckhead gave exactly the kind of condolence speech you'd think he would, with the kicker being that bullshit line about Helms running for election into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Aw helllls naw, motherfucker. See, Heaven is a place where I want my Dad to go. And his wife. And my Mom, if she's down. And the rest of my family. And all those I love for whom faith matters. Not for assholes like Helms.

Get that last part? Not for assholes like Jesse Helms. Not for the likes of the kind of dickhead who once cornered Carol Moseley Braun on an elevator and told Orrin Hatch he was going to make her cry by singing 'Dixie' to her. (To which she reportedly fired back, "You'd make me cry no matter what you sang, Senator." Hells yeah!) That whole thing about speaking ill of the dead, and respect and all that?

GWTW, my friends. Jesse Helms reaps what he sowed. Let the brickbats fly.

FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE

2008-06-30T02:15:00.007-05:00

Memo to the Chicago Tribune (please to click pic for the funny):

Let's see how soon we can move that top headline away from that game headline, hah? Because I'm sure I'd love to be related to one of those three poor souls who got *KAPOW!*'d last night. That would be an awesome thing to wake up to.

Bye Bye Beautiful Dynamite

2008-06-18T00:59:00.004-05:00

Tula Finklea passed away Tuesday and I am sad.
All right, none of you knew her by that name. But after dancing in school to build up her health, she eventually went to Hollywood and became this:

Yes. Cyd Charisse. Or, as Fred Astaire called her on more than one occasion, "Beautiful Dynamite." Or, as I called her all the time, "The Hottest Woman in the History of Recorded Time."

Look, I don't want to argue. Marilyn Monroe is the premier sex goddess of all time, and well-deserved, in my opinion. But that was media overdrive as much as anything. (And sure, at first, she ate it up.) Leslie Parrish, especially in her Daisy Mae Scragg-Jocie Jordan phase, is probably my favorite Hollywood blonde. And redheads, well, Ann-Margret, holy shit.

But all, and I mean ALL, must bow down to Cyd Charisse. Come on. It wasn't just the characters she played who could walk into a room and destroy every man in eyeshot.

You think that kind of thing happens by accident?
As a dancer, she was beyond the pale. A better dancer than Monroe was an actress, or Ann-Margret was a singer, too. But it's not a contest. And I mean that in both senses, too.

Rest in Peace, Tula.

Back from there

2008-06-15T19:25:00.002-05:00

It's Fathers' Day.
It's Open Sunday.
It's Celtics Day. Maybe.
It's Tony Night.

Which of these brought me back to this blog?

I don't know. None of them. All of them. (But probably none of them. But I love you Dad, go, Tigeroccolee, Celtics yay! I guess!, and so far [at 39 past the hour] the Tonys look wide open, on the musical side, at least. August: Osage County looks like it may roll like a Mack Truck.)

Since my last post down there, which was tongue-in-ass for Mitt Romney losing his birthright, a lot of life has gone by. First and foremost, this computer fucking hit a wall. So I got it fixed. Hi there.

Show, bitches! Fiorello! is back in the house. Very pleased, very proud, very tiring. That's the biz.

Barack Obama. I've said it all along, you read it here: Whichever Democrat won the primaries, he or she was going to mop the floor with John McCain. God bless Maverick Man. He was the pre-sump when my computer died, right? How the hell did that happen again? And every day, he makes right-wing radio/blogosphere's job that much harder by sucking more and more and more. Getcha popcorn. And get the hell out of Barack Obama's way.

Oh shit. Lin-Manuel Miranda is thanking everyone in rhyme. Man.

No, I don't want to liveblog the Tonys. It's just interesting that the League seems to want to pimp the musicals this year when it's clear that the plays (well, play, Mack Truck) are the focal point. The musicals are obviously more TV-friendly, and the League clearly wants to give the most Family-Fucking-Friendly product the best face time, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb in suggesting that August is clearly going to be the standard-bearer from this season long into the future.

And a good friend of mine died.

I don't think I can adequately explain on a stupid blog like this what it was really like to know, work with, and appreciate the friendship and the gifts of Page Hearn. The first time I met him was in late 1996. He was the Managing Director of City Lit Theatre, and was hard at work in their office. Trimming down a styrofoam softball bat to resemble a broadsword. The show ws The King, and it was a crashing bore, an unadaptable novel with which the great director Steve Scott could do little, despite a great non-Equity cast. (I was pretty damn good, thanks.) Page wasn't in it, though. He was at the Wellington, doing his role. Jeeves. The echt-valet (not a butler, god damn it. Jeeves was a valet. Period.) Partnered perfectly with the great Mark Richard as Bertie Wooster, the first one of the hilarious Wodehouse novels I saw him do was Thank You, Jeeves, which I was actually able to step into for one performance after The King was mercifully euthanized. And so began my professional relationship with City Lit and Page Hearn.

Page and I did five shows together, in various stages of professional relationship, at City Lit. In 2002, he brought me back in after the company had been basically resuscitated by him two years prior, by moving out of expensive Michigan Avenue offices up to Edgewater, and taking all office duties on his own shoulders. The show was She Stoops to Conquer, the greatest comedy ever written in the English language, and it's still the best non-Eq show I've ever done. (I love Fiorello! though, so come see it. Now.) There follwed another Wodehouse, a show called Cocktail Time, which gave me the best part I've ever done, a maybe-dotty-maybe-not 176-year-old publisher (not really, but still, ooooold) named Saxby. Page adapted that one, and was present throughout rehearsals, as director Kevin Theis brought all the funny out of a script that was funny as hell (and probably funnier than the book it's based on). That part got me two things I'll never forget: My first exit applause in a scene, and the greatest pull-quote ever, in which the Reader's Lawrence Bommer called me "Chicago's Nathan Lane". Schwing! He loved Broadway musicals almost as mush as I do, and when I'd fire off some obscure bullshit fact, he'd often look at me and say "Are you sure you're not gay?" Which leads me to my favorite Page story, and one that only I could ever claim to have seen. Downstairas at Jeeves in the Morning, in late 97 or early 98, Page was in his Jeeves livery, sitting on a sofa and doing some mild fix-work on a cape for Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream for Arts/Lanes, a short-Shakespeare company he also ran for a while. I was sitting there watching as Page, in Jeeves cutaway coat, had this cape spread out in front of him like a silvery-glittery skirt, when Marc Silvia, the director of another show in the Wellington complex at the same time, walked in, spied him, and after maybe a beat, squealed "Oh my god, you are such a queen!" Again, the written blog can't adequately relay Silvia's delivery of the line, which I'll never forget, but it almost makes me wish I'd seen that Oberon.

Still, Jeeves was the thing, and when his partner Steve got a job in NYC, Jeeves skipped town. I wasn;t happy about it, but he obviously was thrilled to be following the man he loved to the best place to be to do the thing he loved. Page was one of the very few theatre-pro friends I've had with whom I actually kept in touch after they fled for New York City. He was always inquisitive of the local scene, of the sales of my book, and seemed slightly frustrated at what he called the "closed club" of Broadway. Prior to the (motherfucking) heart attack that felled him, he had just completed a role on Law & Order:SVU, and he was giddy (as giddy as you can be in an email, anyway) about it. The L&O franchise is a brand which has a way of opening doors in New York. But that won't happen for Page. I miss him every day. And just as I wished he hadn't had to go to NYC, I wish there was some way I could bring him back from there.

Thuper Thursday!!!!

2008-02-08T01:20:00.000-06:00

And now, a poem:

Mitt
Bit
It.

Backstage at CPAC, Dennis Miller and Rush Limbaugh, their trousers already down at their ankles in anticipation of the mega-wankfest they would get from listening to Mitt Romney draw air, collapsed into hysterical sobbing fits as he suspended his Presidential campaign. Miller and Limbaugh fell into each others' arms seeking comfort, and ended up making sweet, sweet love.

A Malibu beachfront wedding is planned for early March.

No way. Go back to Massachusetts, you fags.

But Vote!!!

2008-02-05T18:49:00.000-06:00

Happy Super-hyple-foople-ized-and -Astro-glumpfinated Tuesday!!!

Isn't it great to partake in the Democratic process, especially when you live in a state where results are a foregone conclusion?

I do like seeing all the driver's-eye-level rally posters for all the candidates we never heard of, running for the offices we don't care about, clustered together as close to the polling place doors as is legally allowed, like they're huddling for warmth near a heat source. Someone should go out and pour soup on them.

And while we're on the subjeck of pollyticks, how hilarious would it be if Huckabee swept the south and fucked up McCain's coronation and Romney's pity party? On the other hand, seeing McCain get the nomination tonight would be fun because it would force Rush Limbaugh to shove something in his fucking mouth other than a steamer trunk full of OxyContin and Milk Duds. Fucking asshole.

I hope you voted, and if not, that's OK, because I live in Chicago and I voted twice.

2008-01-20T00:48:00.000-06:00

Okay. Can you all do me a favor? Two favors actually. The first: Go see Persepolis. Then read it. Or vice versa.

Two. Stop saying "British." Everyone knows you mean "English" anyway.

Because Britain is actually not a country or a nationality at all, it's an island. We all know which island it is, it's that big isosceles triangle between Iceland and France, upon which are situated the countries of England, Scotland, and Wales. Those three, plus Northern Ireland, Australia, Canada, blah blah, make up the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom. Of Great Britain. And Stuff.

But to say something is "British" doesn't really mean anything, not the way it gets thrown around these days, anyway. We don't mean "from the British Isles." "Oh yes, I love his British accent." "It's a British film." "Girls Gone Wild would be so much better if all the drunk girls were British." It's clear that 99.9 percent of the time what is meant is "English," but you know, Sean Connery is from Scotland and so is Ewan MacGregor, and Colin Farrel is from up there in Ireland, which isn't even a Commonwealth country (although Northern Ireland is, but I'll take that shit apart on St. Patrick's Day, maybe.) and, well, I don't know, so... So there goes the portmanteau sobriquet (French) "British" (English) so as to not offend anybody. Just say "English." God damn it. There's no such thing as a sexy Brit with a sexy British accent. He's Welsh. Or from Northern Ireland.

Thanks again. I love you. Now go see Persepolis.

If Your Name is Tom, And There's An "H" In Your First Name, Shut Up

2008-01-01T20:07:00.000-06:00

Well, that didn't take long.
With but 5:10 gone in the first quarter of the Sugar Bowl, FOX sportscaster Thom Brennaman called this guy Nomar Moreno.

Screwing up two sports at once, on three levels at once...that's FOX Sports for you.

Please bear in mind that that was the only thing involved with the beginning of the Sugar Bowl tht didn't take long. I kept surfing in to see if the fucking game had started, and there was Chris Goddamned Myers and Fran Tarkenton's Re-Animated Corpse telling us about how ZOMG, Hawai'i is like an island! But it's in 'Murrica! WTF!?!?!?? And the people who live there speak a funny nok nok language!

Please, FOX, just BCS Bash my fucking head in.

Rocky? Rocky!

2007-12-27T00:34:00.000-06:00

Watching the Chicago Blackhawks at home (and not being in the United Center, see what I did there? Cause the home games are ON THE FUCKING TV NOW, some at least) against Nadshville, I was briefly amused. Not because the Hawks won (bandwagon? Dunno), but because the Preds have Jason Arnott and Jordin Tootoo on the same line.

That sounds like a fun argument. "Arnott! Tootoo!"
"Arnott!!"
"Tootoo!"

Keith? Keith who?

2007-12-19T23:05:00.001-06:00

No big deal, I just wanted to pont out that Keith Olbermann's no. 1 pinch-hitter, Alison Stewart, is seriously hot.

No, this isn't a "Battle of the Newsbabes" or anything like that. However, if Alison, Liz Claman and Maria Bartiromo would care to battle each other for my pleasure, what am I going to do? Say no? that's not in keeping with the spirit of the season, is it?

So, ladies, battle away. Sigh. If you must. Preferably in wet nighties. Or wearing only trenchcoats.

Mitt Faced

2007-12-06T23:40:00.000-06:00

Hey, Mitt Romney! Over here, Daddy-O!

I see where you just went on TV after trying to pose like JFK, then said Americans need to be religious to, indeed, be Americans.

The way my agnostic-leaning-heavily-toward-atheist self sees this, I think I need you to do one of either two things for me, if you'd be so kind:

1)Recognize my formation of The Church of Mitt Sucks, and render me a tax-free organization.
2)Realize that, since I'm not a genuine American any more, you should pay my motherfucking taxes yourself, rich kid.

Gentles, Cover Your Eyes

2007-11-27T23:27:00.000-06:00

Because I'ma rip a new asshole out of Karl Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker.

After Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, resigned before his fucking ass was indicted so he'd have to spill his fucking guts about the only slightly-less-assholish Scooter Fucking Libby and their fucking bullshit about, you know, spitefully putting a human being's life in fucking danger, Turd Blossom is working like a fucking Klansman at a cross burning to hype a fucking book, a motherfucking book which will probably be so filled with lies, fucking lies, and utter fucking Rovian God-damned bullshit that there won't be any other reason not to include a chapter titled "Why I'm Not Really a Fucking Asshole."

Because Rove, that pasty-ass mothefucker, is lying like a fucking asshole again. AGAIN. For Christ's sake. Look at this fucking bullshit.

Are you fucking kidding me? Congress is to blame? You shithead, you fucking shithead, did you fucking fall off your George Bush hobby horse and land on your fucking watermelon-sized head? If you really think that those of us out here in Left Blogistan who HATE your FUCKING GUTS can't just find the fucking evidence to prove what you say is total horseshit, then you're an even more cynical asshole than even I would have thought. Naah, fuck that, I always knew it. Asshole.

And hey, Charlie Rose, what the fuck, man? Give that pasty-ass motherfucker a whole hour? What the fuck? Why couldn't you just tell him to go and do to himself what he's already done to the rest of the country? Bang! Boom! Am I right, people? Seriously, why give this fuckhead any kind of a platform to bullshit his way out (and by "bullshit his way out," I mean "fucking lie like a fucking liar's kung-fu master of lying") of the fucking hose job he performed on this country for seven fucking years? Not only is he a fucking crook, fucking liar, and a fucking asshole, he's also a fucking spin doctor who won't rest until every God-damned untruth he's shit out onto our rapidly-eroding soil has become Goebbeled into angry-white-guy, NASCAR-fucking-Dad "truth." Asshole.

I know he's got a wife and kids who probably aren't the fucking spawn of evil, but I'm afraid it's too late for them. (Although I would love to read a "Rove, wife to split" headline sometime soon. Perhaps she and I could date.) While Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, lives still, we as a race are doomed to be looked upon by the gods as nothing better than a petri dish full of gullible, stupid, asshole parameciuae. But soon, I hope, he'll die. And I will eat Jay's Cheezlets while dancing the fucking Lindy Hop on his maggot-ridden, lime-stenched grave. I hope his CV has been vetted enough to justify my hatred, but the Bush administration relly passed the fucking Rubicon with Scooter Libby and Plamegate, and Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, was all over that shit, getting his weekly rim job from Robert Novak and telling everyone else that there was fucking yellowcake all over the fucking Middle East ready to pop a yellowcake cap in our asses and camel-rape our children. Which of course, was bullshit. And he knew it. And he lied about it. Like everything else on his fucking resume, cause he's a fucking piece of shit.

Maybe all this cursing is blunting my message. You think? Oh well. I'll stop now. But a word to the wise, Charlie Rose, you and all the pundit-classholes who'll knock themselves out trying to fellate this guy when his book comes out, I'll quote Dave Moss (Ed Harris) in the film version of David Mamet's masterpiece, Glengarry Glen Ross:

"Anybody who talks to this asshole's a fuckin' asshole."

Well put. Fuck you, Turd Blossom.

Not From The New York Times-On This Date

2007-11-13T23:28:00.000-06:00

NOV. 13, New York--Today, freelance photographer Felix Unger ("Portraits a Specialty") was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife.

"And take this [expletive deleted] saucepan with you," she was alleged to have said. Unger, though distraught, appeared unruffled and was actually philosophical and upbeat about the situation.

"Deep down, I know she's right," he said, "but I also know that someday I'll return to her."

With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his friend, Oscar Madison. Madison, a sportswriter, was somewhat understanding of Unger's position. Several years earliuer, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return.

Grounds for expulsion were not known at press time, but sources close to both men believe their hygienic habits might lay at the heart of the matter.

"Felix is a neat freak, Oscar's a slob. [Unger's wife] Gloria and [Madison's wife] Blanche were going crazy," said New York policeman Murray Greshler, a longtime poker-playing friend of both men. Madison's downstairs neighbor, Cecily Pigeon, concurred. "Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? Coo, love, if they can it'll be a bloody miracle."

Drink, Upchuck, and Die

2007-11-06T23:04:00.000-06:00

Way to go, Chuck and Di.

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-Ickless) and Di Feinstein (D-CAve like a pussy) both decided to clear Michael Mukasey for confirmation to the position of Attorney General by the Senate. The vote went 11-9.

Way to go, dicks.

Boo. Goddammit.

2007-10-31T15:52:00.000-05:00

When I was a wee lad, Halloween was the shit. Free candy? Just for putting on a cool costume that I got to choose for myself? Hell yes, please. I remember one year I was an awesome pirate, a golfer once, I went as the unknown comic one year, an English admiral one year (Royal Nay VEE), and one year, which was either 77 or 78, we made the greatest Darth Vader ever, out of a kids' police helmet, some black felt, a catcher's chest protector and shin guards, black shoes, a hockey mask with some screen-door shingles and black tape for that mouth thing, and a dark Navy nurses' cape of my Mom's.

No pictures. Sorry 'bout that shit. It was awesome, though. I think that was the same year that my other brothers (one fat, one thi) went as Price and Pride from the old A&P commercials. A little conceptual genius, If You Ask Me.

And the candy was always pretty cool. We went about five blocks or so in every direction and then hauled our stuff back home and put it all in a huge mound, then did a dive. And we always threw out the Pixie Stix (DETERGENT) and the apples (RAZOR BLADES) and by November 2, all we had left were the hard candies and and Almond Joys. (Hate that coconut shit.)

Now? Not so much. That orange guy up top is my favorite Halloween image I've seen lately. Although if I ever get asked to a party, I've got a great idea for a costume-Hawaiian shirt, slacks, slick back my hair to accentuate my forehead, put on sunglasses, and have my 300-pound ass go as Lou Pearlman.

Tee Hee.

Omigod You Ugly Americans

2007-10-14T00:45:00.000-05:00

Sorry. But I saw two very different things this week and thought I would comment.

First, The Darjeeling Limited. Wes Anderson's latest, a story of a "spiritual journey" undertaken by three brothers (Jason Schwartzman as the Intellectual, Owen Wilson as the Businessman, Adrien Brody as the Craftsman) on a train to find their missionary mother (Anjelica Huston) in India. Anderson shot the film almost entirely in India, and his trademark neat-edged screen space and composition is still in effect, with an even better color palette (which reminded me of what I thought of Monsoon Wedding, that what this Indian film did with color alone made it better than most Hollywood films of that year. I don't think Darjeeling is quite that good, but it should satisfy the Andersons and -daughters out there, at least to a point.

Anderson's films often protag around a colorful outsider who feels he's stayed perhaps too long at the fair, like Steve Zissou or Royal Tenenbaum (or even Max Fischer, to a degree, since he obviously thinks he's wise beyond his years). The three leads in Darjeeling aren't that wearied yet, although all come with family baggage both literal and figurative, but the basic Anderson playbook is intact: need for familial connection, ritualistic introduction of your cast members (including a curtain call), short pans and long tracking shots, judicious use of slo-mo, a studiously chosen soundtrack (much of it music from Indian films, wow) and diorama-like production design. He gets away with the last one best in this film because most of it takes place on the train.

The three brothers act most of the time like Ugly Americans, disrupting much ritual and flouting many traditions along with acting out their expected family betrayals large and small that eventually surface (a running gag is one of the three telling another something about the third in confidence, which comes out about thirteen seconds later). Yet they are indulged for the most part by the "locals," who too often are depicted as noble color or background to the Ugly Americans. Which didn't seem like Anderson's point to me. (An exception is the train hostess, played by Amara Karan, who is the most stunning woman I've seen in a movie in quite a while. Holy moley.)

Not particulaly ugly was Legally Blonde. Which is ironic, since the taped performance was produced by and shown on that ugliest of consumer-pop cornholes, MTV. And I must say kudos to them for a surprisingly well-thought-out production of the show. The attractiveness of the show's demographic (soft-pedal-empowerment-minded tween girls and their moms)to MTV is obvious, but that still doesn't make it an obvious green-light decision to me. But green-light it MTV did, and I was astounded to see three entire musical numbers and their attendant dialogue go by before the first commercial break. Plus, very little of the choppy, ADD-happy editing that permeates just about everything "musical" these days (and which nearly ruined Chicago on film). On paper Legally Blonde isn't a great show; the score is indeed predictable generic pop with a couple of good lyrics thrown in, and the book, while it ties up a few loose ends from the movie and eliminates some characters and clutter, doesn't really improve on a screenplay that was fairly thin to begin with. (But judging from what I saw of Mary Fucking Poppins on the Tonys I would have given that last Best Musical slot to Blonde.) But that empowerment theme seems to resonate big time in the tween zeitgeist right now, cf. Wicked; as misinterpreted as it is on stage, I'd guess that Gregory Maguire is crying all the way to the bank, and the largely-teen-looking audience sure sounded like they were at High School Musical, even though Legally Blonde isn't quite a smash hit yet.

Legally Blonde benefits from very spirited direction by Jerry Mitchell (and, considering he started as a choreographer, not all that much dancing), and two knockout performances, from Orfeh as Paulette, the defeatist salon owner with a voice like a foghorn choir, and Laura Bell Bundy as our heroine, Elle Woods. She's onstage literally about 95% of the time, and she delivers the goods in fine style, winning the audience over as easily as did Reese Witherspoon in the film version. (And hey, why does Michael Rupert, as the oily lawyer Callahan, look so much like Jon Stewart on The Daily Show?) Bundy's got a funny-button nose, a round face and squinty eyes; she's cute but not gorgeous, which hopefully means Hollywood won't snatch her away and stick her on some production-limbo shelf somewhere. Which is maybe my wish for this whole happy occasion: Long may MTV wave this broadcast, and may Blonde's ticket sales go through the roof, spurring more networks to do what only Great Performances and the Broadway TV Network seemed willing to do in the past, namely, treat Broadway like anything BUT a Fabulous Invalid, and keep proving it a viable commodity. Good on MTV for presenting Legally Blonde with a miraculously low level of MTV-style pandering and bullshit.

Blue Falling, Red Sucking

2007-10-05T00:53:00.001-05:00

Hello, Cubs.
Well, that was a lot of fucking bullshit.
Anybody want to play baseball any more?
Listen, I have a jersey and a hat. If you find me a XXL pair of pants, may I start for you on Saturday? Christ knows I couldn't play any FUCKING WORSE than y'all did tonight and last night. Way to lay off the first pitch, and demonstrate your complete superiority of the strike zone by watching those pesky, completely unexpected third strikes just whizz by. What the fuck do umpires know?
I'd like to throw the pitchers a bone, but they'd just serve it up to Chris Young and then throw a fucking tantrum. (Note to Ted Lilly: Then don't throw it there in the first place.)

Sorry. Not this year. Maybe it's one to grow on. Diamondbacks in four.

Make me a motherfucking liar.

Speaking of motherfuck, the Blackhawks started their Fabulous Renaissance of Greatness by, um, giving up more goals than they scored. And by not scoring any goals at all. Wild 1, Hawks 0.
That's such a change from last year, when they couldn't prop up Khabibulin even when he played well. Jesus. They're ten years away from anything. And I've been saying that for at least five years. What a fun autumn this is going to be, sports fans!

Lay-Zee

2007-09-25T20:29:00.000-05:00

Oh great. Fucking Game 5 all over again.
You remember. Josh Beckett shut the Cubs completely down in Game 5 after the Cubs were all hard up for clinching. I felt, like a lot of fans probably did, that they might well have lost the series that left them That Close.

That's how I felt watching the game tonight. Swagger is great, but any team that drops it that badly against the Worst Team In The Blah Blah has a lousy sense of history. Not to mention a lack of talent. Sheesh.

Let's hope I'm being premature.

Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me

2007-09-22T13:33:00.000-05:00

Hey, Paul Bremer! What are you, stupid? You decided to give those Blackwater bastards free run of the place? Why? Because they're connected? Duh. Stupid question. (And don't we just love the fact that Ken Starr is their lawyer. That makes all the sense in the fucking world as far as President Fuckhead And His Criminals of Crime are concerned. God be damned.)

But, even though my guess is he wouldn't wipe his nose in it, The master, Stephen Sondheim, has got your number. As usual.

From Pacific Overtures:

Coming next, is extraterritoriality.
Noting text, say "extraterritoriality."
You perplexed by extraterritoriality?
Just noting clause (don't touch the coat)
Which say your laws
Do not apply (don't touch the coat)
When we drop by
Not getting shot
No matter what
A minor scrape
A major rape
And we escape (don't touch the cape)
That's what is extraterritoriality.

Throw out all the "don't touch the coat" stuff (It's supposed to be a Russian Admiral with a fancy coat) and that's pretty much it. Isn't it?

Stupid hack. Everyone go see No End In Sight and find out what a dick Paul Bremer really is.

When Artistic People Don't Get It. At All.

2007-09-20T23:32:00.000-05:00

And when I say "artistic," I mean the guy runs a theatre company. But it is, alas, a Christian troupe, and they've taken time and money from their mission to condemn a Hollywood celebrity. And when I say "a Hollywood celebrity," I mean a self-admitted D-Lister who's never met a subject she couldn't mock.

But never mind what she said. I'm more interested in what he said in response. It's a setup if ever one existed. Huffington Post.com has the story. It's Russ Hollington, GM of The Miracle Theatre, reacting to what Griffin said about Jesus, whom I bet could take a jab or two in His time:

"When word reached our cast that a Hollywood celebrity had stood before TV cameras and said such vulgar things about Christ, they were incensed," he said.

OH, REALLY? AND DID THE INCENSE SMELL GOOD?

People, sometimes you make this shit so eeeeeeeeeeasy.

Just Musing, But...

2007-09-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

...the fuck did Jason Varitek keep going out to tell Curt Schilling? And is it because Bush's numbers are so low that he obviously didn't listen?

...the fuck did FOX executives THINK Sally Field would do when they gave her an Emmy? Fuck you and your ten-second delay, motherfuckers. Can't stand a Hollywood liberal opining about a war? Go fuck yourselves with Schilling's bloody sock.

...or, perhaps, you could get this asshole to do some work for you. He looks like he could use a job, so perhaps you could "hire" him to do a hit piece on Sally Field. (Love how ABC spins this to try and save their candy asses, too.) Look, I get why Murdoch would use his London rags to spin for Cheney, but NBC (Timmy especially) is supposed to be Cheney's bitch, not ABC. Then again, what conservatives call the mainstream media has about as much Liberal bias as Rush Limbaugh does while fucking his Ann Coulter doll. And when I say "Ann Coulter doll," I mean, of course, a fucking cigar in a dress.

Guys

2007-09-11T12:01:00.000-05:00

Memo to MoviePlex:

Thanks for showing The Guys this morning. It's a good artistic examination of what happened on that fucking day.

But, guys? Next time, you may not want to tell us, as the credits are rolling for The Guys, that the movie showing tonight at 9 is Great Balls of Fire!

Just saying.

Hey Guys!!!

2007-08-29T13:04:00.000-05:00

You know what's really stupid?

Poeple who say "Oh my gosh" in any circumstance. "Gosh" is, of course, what people say when they can't say "God." And nobody says "Gosh" unless they're afraid people will give them PC shit for saying "God."

TV is where we find it the most, of course. Either the cretins who pimp themselves on reality TV and sports TV are being told by their betters not to say "God," or they don't want to risk it themselves, lest the fickle finger of fame pass them over for actually having the perverted, foulmouthed gall to say the word "God." (Blasphemy, blasphemy, no one gives a blast for me.) If it's the former, then TV producers are a bunch of craven, nail-biting, bottom-line-licking chickenshits. (I know, such a revelation, right?) But I don't think so. If you told someone not to say a word, any word, especially that word, eventually it would peep out anyway, because it's human nature, and it's a subconscious-type deal, as they say in Fargo. ("Chaska." "LeSuer.") People say "Omigod" all the fucking time, and the idea that if we hear it on TV that the great Christian Pearl-clutching TV-watching Red-State Swath or Islamists or atheists or Wiccans or the National Agnostic's Consortium are going to be offended is the stupidest kind of nervous groupthink I can think of.

"Oh my gosh." Stupidest thing going.

It Is To Laugh, It Is To Love

2007-08-24T22:08:00.000-05:00

We can glean nothing from people who get their news from FOX News except this: They truly enjoy being lied to. Which makes sense, I guess, because if the ostrich-headed onion brains who watch FOX News really knew what was going on out there they would never, ever, ever leave their homes.

And so I watched for about a minute and a half this evening, top of the hour, The O'Really Factor. No BillO, because a Labor Day vacation break is too tempting for a culture warrior, I guess (I'm looking at you too, KO. Come on.) Instead, non-white import-model-wannabe Michelle Malkin was on, trying very hard to convince us all that immigration reform is about crime and not about race. Which she tried to do, using small words (for her benefit or the audience's? You decide. She reports.), by replaying a BillO clip talking about two assholes who allegedly raped and killed a woman and her two daughters. I must have seen it way out of context (on FOX? I know! Insanity!) because the two men in the mug shot looked reasonably White and Christian, and not at all like greasy criminal taco-slinging non-White real peole. So, of course, Malkin brings it back to us and lays the blame at the feet of the New York Times for an op-ed that suggested that the immigration reform issue is maybe, I'm guessing, a, um, I don't know, racist smokescreen? I assume that the point is that these fuckers were white illegals, and not brown, so it's OBVIOUSLY not about race. There you go! Immigration problem solved! America is healed! And we know the racial rift is healed because Bill O'Reilly's cheerleader fantasy (via Wonkette) felt empowered enough by her love for all peoples to end her screed with one healing salve of a word:

"Comprende?"

Ahhhhhh. Love, people. Nothing but ostrich-head, motherfucking love.

The point of my only sort-of referenced entry about tonight's episode of Stupid and His Girlfriend is not that the immigration isue is so fake and smokescreeny and divisively distracting, and therefore exactly what you'd expect from Roger Ailes. No, I'm all about the punchline, my chickens. Because after Malkin's hi-larious comedy routine, she introduced, I'm assuming for fair and balanced analysis on the subject, this guy. That's right, him. Who is running for President. Which you may not have known. And his campaign manager? This guy's sister.

If I may, again, quote the Master, Stephen Sondheim?

So much happiness, so much love...

Why Karl Rove Can Suck My Fucking Dick

2007-08-20T23:06:00.000-05:00

Or, A Lesson To Democrats:

Karl Rove can suck my fucking dick because he's a fucking asshole.

Get it, Democrats?

If it's really obvious, just say it. Then back it up later. Throw some Mother. Fucking. Fire.

ps Of course he's still a pasty-ass motherfucker.

WikiBomb!

2007-08-15T15:10:00.000-05:00

DailyKos, those Nazi-terrorist faggots, had the story first, but I picked it up first on Crooks and Liars. It seems that someone with a web address traceable back to...wait for it...

FOX News !!!!!!!!!!

had been scrubbing and altering entries on polarizing political and commentary figures, like Shepard Smith and Keith Olbermann. DailyKos captured a bunch of them; they're subtle things mostly, like altering an entry about Olbermann's commentary on smoking-related cancers following the death of Peter Jennings to make it seem like he was being both self-serving and professionally reckless. Subtle, debate-shifting shit like that. You know, what FOX does oh, pretty much all the time.

So, thinking I'd see who else had been hit or scrubbed, I checked out the entry for a minor player in the FOX News firmament, Steve Doocy. Host of "FOX and Friends." Goofy-ass, failed talk-show host, "Letterman-Lite" as SPY magazine once called him.

God, I hope it's still there. Three fourths of the way down the page, after "Knights of Columbus of Bergen County, New Jersey."

Talk about subtle. And I'm still laughing. And when you think how much raw data there is on Wiki, and how easily manipulatable it is (Just ask Stephen Colbert or Hooters Icon Lynne Austin), one thinks that this could be the new Intrewebs sport of the millennium. God knows how many Wiki pages have been tagged like that.

Fun Ahoy!!!

ETA: FUCK it's gone. Scrubbed. The paragraph I refered to on Doocy ended with "...and is, perhaps, the dumbest human being living."

Jingle Them Crazy Bells

2007-08-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

Hooray! Ring the bells! Karl Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, has resigned his post as Josh Lyman to George W. Bartlet. Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, said he is resigning to spend more time with the seventeen-foot-tall stack of indictments that he looks at every morning rather than staring at his own pasty-ass visage in the mirror, where he might see his soul flying out the back of his fucking head, winging away to its dark master. "I'm at least thrice-damned to begin with," said the pasty-ass motherfucker, perhaps finally becoming aware of his no-doubt Faustian bargain, and perhaps referring to his vote-fraud-rigging, or perhaps the leaking of the name of a CIA agent who was covert at the time, and most certainly that fucking 'MC Rove' bullshit. "So if I can perhaps escape the fiery conflagration that I have almost single-handedly engineered myself, which will soon engulf this once-great nation in the fire of regret and confusion, the threat of Congressional indictment may at least serve as the steel-spiked, acid-salted poultice of the never-abating torture that awaits the endless cycle of my days. God be damned."

Nice speech, fuckhead. Now get the fuck out.

Have a Colortini? an Aqvavit? A Ballpark Beer?

2007-07-30T18:34:00.000-05:00

Or how about one of each?

The famous, they do die in threes, do they not?

Just Musing, But...

2007-07-28T14:18:00.000-05:00

Could the "producers" (or "writers") of this no-doubt-steaming pile of shit have conspired to perhaps name the movie something that, I don't know, doesn't rhyme with a gay slur? I'm actually surprised they didn't call it I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Shlomo. Or Chuck and Daggett. Chuck and Mutt-pirate? Or why not just go all the way and call it I Wanna Bury My Face In Jessica Biel's Ass?

Can we get a consensus on how to pronounce the new Chicago Fire striker's name? I heard "Kwaddemo," "Hwataymo," "Kwaddemock," and "Wattomo." (His name is Cuauhtemoc Blanco, and I for one just hope they say "Blanco.")

Nasty, Gnarly Endpieces

2007-07-20T18:26:00.000-05:00

Hey! Now it's literal!
Insert your own joke (So far up Bush's ass, Cheney kicking the Pars-dent's ass out of the Oval Office, putting the Dick in Bush's ass, Tony Snow has a Drinking Buddy, etc.), even a joke about inserting. If you like.

Have you seen anyone with an iPhone? iHaven't either. But tomorrow and for weeks to come, we'll see little kids, old adults, and everything in between carrying around a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, just as when the fourth, fifth, and sixth books hit. Just as we saw tons of young girls wearing Mia Hamm No. 9 USA jerseys after the women's World Cup back in 1999, and tons of little kids wearing Spider-Man Halloween costumes in the summer after the first movie came out in 2002. Why is that? Why haven't iPhones become ubiquitous? Oh, I know. They're really frigging expensive. And the battery doesn't come out on its own. And you have to send the whole iFucking thing back at once to get a new battery. And the system on which it runs is both Rinky and Dink. Suck it, at&t!

Looks like the Cubs are making me a liar. Is my ass red. For now. God, I hope it lasts. They're playing really well, and without Ryan Dempster, without Derrek Lee (for a while), and without any kind of consistent offensive presence at catcher. (I think it should be Koyie Hill. You?) I can't drive, so if there's a bandwagon, I'll be jumping on, not driving it. But later. We'll see.

One thing I won't see is the movie version of Underdog, and if you're my age, you may know why. ff the top of my head, I can think of one live-action film adaptation of a cartoon that worked, and that was Josie and the Pussycats, which NOBODY went to see. (And it was based on a comic book first. Those have done a little better, which seeMarvel.) Fat Albert? Sucked. The Fintstones? Sucked rocks. (OK, Jane Krakowski was scorching hot in Viva Rock Vegas, as she is in life. But, sucked.) Rocky and Bullwinkle? Holy shit, did that suck. You see my point, I bet. Live-action adaptations of cartoons suck balls. Big, sweaty ones, too. Literalness robs them of the fun. Using real dogs and CGI-ing the mouths is completely stupd, since real dogs have no emotions that would show up on screen for one stupid thing. And Underdog's characters weren't really even dogs to begin with-just people with people problems made into dogs so little shits like me would find it amusing. (You may surmise I have an unreasonable attachment to Underdog. Yes, my mother made me an Underdog costume when I was a kid because Jeffrey Seiver had a Superman costume and I didn't. What's your fucking point?) (Another thing. Sweet Polly Purebred? Murphy Brown. Totally. Glacially beautiful TV reporter, fond of big hair and jacket-and-skirt combos, with an Irish first name. I always wondered if Diane English was aware.) Peter Dinklage as Simon Bar Sinister is a not-bad choice, but still. Avoid. Wally Cox would never forgive you. And he'd send Brando to kick your ass. Or sit on you.

So Glad to See You Here; Carry On

2007-07-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Cubs, Jason Kendall. Glad you're glad to be with us.
This afternoon, will you please bring your game with you?

That is all.
Carry on.

Get Up With the Get Down

2007-07-16T12:39:00.000-05:00

Just adding my piddling two cents' worth of opinion to my comrades of Left Blogistan.

If the GOP minority wants to stall every piece of legislation the Democrats want to bring up this session, then let them get up, stand up, stand up for the Right and filibuster. No more cloture-vote bullshit. Make Trent Lott talk for seven hours about Oscar trivia. Force Mitch McConnell to break out the recipe books. Fuck 'em if they want to paint Democrats as a do-nothing majority. Let the peeples see how utterly unprincipled the GOP has become. Maybe when Pete Domenici has to talk for eight hours about baseball scores, the peeples will see what's going on and think "Oh. I get it. They're assholes." (Of course, FOX "News" will paint them as heroes, but we already know that FOX is a bunch of assholes.)

Harry Reid: Do your job. Make the Republicans get up with the get down.

Larry Bird Johnson Dead at 94

2007-07-12T12:55:00.000-05:00

Swear to Ford, every time I read her obituary headline that's what I see. No disrespect intended. She was a fantastic basketball talent.

Thank You, President Fuckhead

2007-07-02T22:05:00.000-05:00

As usual, Stephen Sondheim gets it better than anyone else could:

You forgot about the country
So it's now forgotten you.
--from Assassins

This motherfucker can't leave office soon enough. He has ceased to be my president.
I never thought I could possibly say that. The respect I have for the office has finally been subsumed by the profound disrespect I feel for the Empty Suit-in-Chief who occupies it anad weakens us by his very presence.

OVERSIGHT OR DEATH

2007-07-02T17:41:00.000-05:00

Oh, for Christ's sake.

I swear to fuck, if there isn't oversight on every single fucking angle of this, meaning depositions, hearings, threats, withholding of funds, in short, IF THE DEMOCRATS LET THESE FUCKERS LEAVE OFFICE WITHOUT THE TRUTH COMING OUT FOR ALL FUCKING TIME, THEN WE NEED TO BURN THE FUCKING CITY OF WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, THE FUCK DOWN.

Absolutely nobody won here. Except maybe Scooter Libby's family. And Karl Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker. And Cock Cheney. What the fuck is wrong with this man?

I can't stand this shit. LIBBY BROKE THE MOTHERFUCKING LAW. MORE THAN ONCE. GOD DAMN IT.

And any Democrat who thinks that waving his or her arms in the air and platitudinizing is going to get the job done needs to put their passport down and walk home, and apologize to their base and let the GODDAMNED DOGCATCHER fill out their fucking term in office.

Oversight. Or death. Tick-tock, motherfuckers.

Here I Go Again With the Bossiness

2007-06-28T09:24:00.000-05:00

They've done it again.

I'm reading the Tribune's Red Eye (shaddap, I was doing the puzz and finished early) and turned to Dustin J. Seibert's "Hump Day" column, which is all about dating or not dating women of faith. And lo and behold, right there in Black and White and Puerto Rican, he calls the divide between a woman's overriding faith and his mildly confrontational lack of same the "800-pound gorilla in the room."

NO. NO NO. NONONONONONONONONONONONO.

It's not. No 800-pound gorillas, goddamn it. Man, even Wikipedia's on my side with this one (and no, I didn't write the entry; I love the term "contamination from a separate idiom" but I would never have thought to call it that, even though that's exactly what it is). And I blame AXA Equitable for that goddamned series of ads perpetrating this crap on the lazy-ass, don't-know-better writers out there who hear something and assume it must be correct because they saw it in an ad or on TV. It's a lot like Seinfeld's "The Yada Yada," which made that phrase a popular shorthand for inane repetition, which is itself a shortening of Oscar Hammerstein's "Yatata, Yatata, Yatata" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Allegro. Now shit, I'm not suggesting NBC viewers need to know Allegro or anything, but the writers might have looked it up. Or watched M*A*S*H, which also used it correctly. (I'd bet Larry Gelbart wrote the episode in question, and I bet he looked it up.) I hate the laziness involved in shit like that. Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip (like Sorkin hasn't had enough problems with it) did the same thing on last week's episode. Sarah Paulson was doing her not-bad Holly Hunter impression and COMPLETELY MISQUOTED a great line from Broadcast News-"I have crossed some line, someplace. I'm beginning to repel people I'm trying to seduce." Paulson (well, her unbelievably annoying Christian character Harriet; let's get her together with Dustin!) said "I think I've turned a corner someplace..." Aaaaugh.

Sorkin should know better. He fucked up Gilbert and Sullivan too, so double aaaaugh. Maybe he just did what I did when I was writing my book and just assumed a lot of stuff off the top of his head that turned out to be wrong. But still, didn't anybody at NBC know Broadcast News or H.M.S. Pinafore better than I do?

But I digress. Once again, everyone: There is no "800-pound gorilla in the room." It doesn't make sense. The 800-pound gorilla is a metaphor for absolute power (Q: Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit [or sleep]? A: Wherever he wants.) The elephant in the room is a metaphor for deliberate avoidance of an uncomfortable truth (such as, say, ignoring your son's tattoos and body piercings at Thanksgiving, or refusing to discuss your niece's divorce and ugly custody fight). Nobody deliberately avoids the uncomfortable truth of absolute power. Thank you for your time. And please don't make me woodshed you again. I love you too much.

And I Laugh

2007-06-26T19:14:00.000-05:00

Seen and heard on La Salle Street, in front of the gorgeous old Rookery Building:

Man in his Jews For Jesus t-shirt, making with the handout literature. Middle-aged woman walking south, meets his eye and says "Hell no" without breaking stride.

Okay, maybe she said "Oh no" or "Ah, no," but it sounded like "Hell no" and I laughed in spite of myself. I realize that peoples' faith isn't really a laughing matter or a punchline, and the poor guy might have felt really bad, but still. I couldn't help myself.

Didn't you hear me the first time, Bobby?

2007-06-25T22:23:00.001-05:00

I said FUCK YOU!
No? Well, thanks for the opportunity, here it is again! FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!!!

No, no, shut the fuck up. You dont get a fucking pass just because the Cubs came back to win (gimme Koyie Hill, y'all) and some fence-jumping asshole was even stupider than you tonight. Fuck you, you first-ball-fastball-throwing idiot. I mean, shit. There's a novel approach:Let's let as many guys score as we can before getting anyone out. To make sure they score as many as they can to fucking WIN, I'll throw a fat-ass fastball over the fucking plate for a three-run home run. Nothing special. Because I'm as fucking inconsistent as I can fucking be.

I remember the White Sox against the Angels, in Anaheim, it was either 92 or 93, I think, and they were up by like two or three and their bullpen ended up giving up about eight runs. Just brutal, slap hits and an occasional bomb, over and over again, regular as sleep. And at the time I thought that was the worst bullpen performance I'd ever seen.

And then Scott Fucking Eyre shits on the mound and Bobby Howry wipes everyone's fucking face in it. Well, congratulations, King Shit. You're the new champ.

Tonys Overview

2007-06-11T09:11:00.000-05:00

Sunday night! Tony Awards, Tony Soprano, or Tony Parker? Get it? To look at all the bullshit about these three "entertainment options," you'd think we actually have a wide range of things to choose from on TV these days. We don't.

But anyway, my dad and his wife and I watched the Tony Awards. Not terrible, and still the best of the awards shows, because it's live theatre people in their element, doing it live. (Which always makes me wonder about the Emmys-it's a live TV show done by TV people, so why is it so bloated?) That's the best thing (usually) about the Tonys-it's the best-looking show on its feet and the most streamlined and least bloated by its own sense of importance. I mean, these awards shows are all big sloppy kisses from the industries to themselves, all orgies of self-congratulations. (I'm at the non-Equity Jeff Awards tonight, the same thing on a teensy-weensy scale.) But the telecast is what's at hand, and it really amounts to very little anymore than a long-form commercial for the nominated musicals. To wit:

How to Suck in Three Easy Steps
Mary Fucking Poppins, I'm looking at you. Easily the most recognizable of the four shows, a worldwide hit movie with built-in nam-brand blah blah blah, and what do they do? Show "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," which everybody in the world knows? Of course not. (To be fair, the pearly-style choreography I've seen for that number looks like the fucking Macarena, so maybe it was just as well. But.) Here's how they screwed it up:

Step One: "Chim-chi-mah-ny/Chim chim cher-ee?" What? Why with the over-diction? I know Dick Van Dyke had the worst Cockney accent in history in the movie version, but making that nonsense word rhyme with "Swanee" is just plain stupid. It's, um, ah, a play on the word "chimney." One of many examples of the Tony's Dilemma--making big stageworthy business look palatable and not overdone on the small screen. Double-compuneded because in addition to the aforementioned challenge, the performers are playing this night to Radio City Music Hall, the biggest room in the country. Still.

Step Two: "Step in Time." More like "Step in Half-Time." Not a tap number in the movie (sorry to keep comparing, but you know that's just what they want), but a busker two-step. So of course they turned it into a MUCH slower tap specialty for the stage show. Again, why? And even if you have to use the ladies of the ensemble to flesh out the dance corps, don't have them sing it in their own voices. I bet there weren't that many girl sweeps back then. Sounded stupid. Watching this part of the presentation is when I decided, out loud, "this show is crap." And then, to confirm my opinion:

Step Three:
"Anything Can Happen." One of the new songs shoehorned in, this one is at the end of the show, and it's a piece of shit. Seriously, "Anything can happen/If you let it"? What the fuck does that mean? That sounds like Bobby Knight's fun justification for rape from a few years back to me. Obviously, the producers of this family-dollar piece of claptrap wanted a feel-good anthem to wind up the evening, and I can understand that, but why do these things always have to be so fucking simpleminded? And the wide-eyed starry-landscape bullshit staging didn't help things, either. What the hell is wrong with "Let's Go Fly a Kite?" That's the message: Mr. Banks has found his sense of fun and spontanaeity again, thanks to Mary. Simple. He's flying a kite with his family, not changing the world through Hallmark cards. For fuck'sake. If I were a parent of young children, I'd take them to see whatever show was playing next door to Mary Poppins.

Spring Awakening was predictably middle-of-the-road, though I liked the energy and the "high-school-aged kids" bouncing around like pinballs at the end. But, again, overdone, carefully-calibrated "rock." Let's show everyone how hard we're working to look cool. Musicals can't, and never will, rock. Unless it's a concert. The enegies and disciplines are too dissimilar, all efforts to the contrary (Hair, Rent, The Who's Tommy) noted and logged. I guess the authors deserve credit for equating the youthful energies of the characters in the Wedekind play to the youthful energies of rock music, but the relative tameness of what I've heard of the score proves my point. As in Rent, the rock isn't rock enough to sustain a theatical, character-driven, narrative viewpoint. Rock music just isn't built to do that, and people who write good rock music don't know, or aren't interested in, doing it either. So, no earth-shaking revolution in the musical theatre, again, but it looks like it could be good anyway.

Not Just Yes

2007-06-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

...but Hell yes.

Now watch President Chimpo pardon the weasel bastard. And watch for Karl Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, to tell all and sundry why the U.S. is less safe than we were yesterday.

Night Into Morning

2007-05-31T10:21:00.000-05:00

Two completely unrelated things happened last night.

There was a blackout in my neighborhood. (Extreme North part of Rogers Park, right on the Lake.) About 11:35, just getting ready to hit the hay, as Olbermann wasn't on Wednesday, when everything went down. Bam. At first I thought "Great, a blown fuse at 11:30," and about two seconds later I noticed all was dark. Real dark. Like country dark. Because there was no light source coming into the apartment from anywhere. Mackie was probably a little freaked too, because there's always a courtyard lamp or the back porch or something. But no, no lights nowhere, nohow.

Then my courtyard half-sprang to life with people all doing the same thing I did: Fwipping up the shades and looking outside to see if it was that bad. I was the first one to actually stick my head out a window, and I could see some orange flickers in some windows, which were obviously candles being lit, and a couple of blue glows, which must have been the cell phone nation lighting up. Sirens started going off and I thought, well, good, someone's on it. One of the neighbors (I don't know who, because I could barely see, for reals) asked "Is it the whole block?" and I said back "I think so." Brilliant, yes? Anyway, I decided to go out and check. I put on shorts and a baseball jersey and flip-flopped out the back door with my own blue glow lighting the way. Flip-flop out onto the sidewalk, to the corner, with several other people all doing the same thing, milling around and looking down Sheridan road towards the nursing homes,which is where all the fire trucks were going. Good, I thought, my fucking fridge can wait a while; if the respirators are off that shit needs to be checked. The street lights were on on the east side of Sheridan, but only one work light or two was on in Loyola Park. A guy from the neighborhood got out of a taxi on Sheridan and looked a little freaked. I complimented him on his timing as he walked by.

I decided to walk down the block to see if the L platform lights were on (yes) and if traffic lights were on (Morse, three blocks south). The neighborhood west of the tracks was dark too, so I called my brother, who lives about 12 blocks south of me, to see if he was in the dark. Nope, just our tiny grid. I walked back to Sheridan Road, where every car was very gingerly pulling up to corners. Better than not, I guess. A few police cars prowled by, again, better than not, I guess. I thought of two more things: One, if this continues through the night, it could seriously be a sex offender's playground, what with a lot of clueless people groping around in pitch dark. And two, as I watched a 147 bus go by, at that moment I could have done anything. I had my wallet, keys, and a phone; I could have gotten on a bus and ridden all night if I had wanted to, just to get away from what was surely going to be an increasingly airless and hot apartment without the benefit of a fan. (Being a grownup is fun! And different!)

My brother and I debated whether it was a rolling blackout or a power surge or what; I concluded the area was too small for it to be a rolling blackout. After about fifteen minutes I hung up with him and set the alarm on my cell phone just in case. I was lying there in the dark, starting to sweat up, whistling for Mackie to come and keep me company, but he didn't seem to care at that moment, because he knew I wasn't going to feed him. Then I thought about unplugging all the electricals that were on when the lights went out, just to avoid the "Whaa?" that would happen at 2:30 when everything bonked back up. So I went to the wall and felt along for the first plug, and literally as I unplugged a lamp, the courtyard lamps came on. I was momentarily freaked, then I put two and two together. And my fan was the first thing I turned back on. At about 12:25. Not even an hour. What an adventure. Not.

Oh, the other thing?

The Cubs suck. Still early, yeah yeah, but seriously, I think we were sold a bill with this one. All those naysayers over the winter I think are right. Especially when MARK DE ROSA talks about all the "talent" oozing from every pore of the lineup. Sheesh. Obviously, they're in a bad place right now, and I don't think they'll end up as totallly suck as last year, and I overreact almost automatically when this happens, but man, they look like freeze-dried dick lately. The only thing that looks like anything right now is the starting rotation, which, I will say till my Irish-American ass is blue, is NOT of primary importance in Wrigley. I mean, it's nice to have, but even Fergie Jenkins gave up homers at home. (Greg Maddux, too.) He just never walked anybody.

And speaking of walks, what do you suppose Soriano is doing with his money? I hope he's planning on earning it sometime soon, and perhaps he could buy a spine to stick back there and say "You know, coach, as fast as I am, I can't steal first. Let me bat ANYWHERE but leadoff. Because I'm a free-swinging home run hitter who doesn't walk a lot." Rickey Henderson this guy is not. For one thing, Henderson knew the strike zone and made pitchers fear him because of it, which is why he often walked, and often homered from the one spot. Soriano? Lots of homers, not so many walkies. Sixty-seven is his all-time high, last year at Washington. That's a leadoff guy?

Perhaps the Powers that Be are unclear on the concept of what a leadoff hitter should be doing. But of course, nobody else on this team seems to know how to draw a walk either, so it's kind of a moot point, offensively. I quite honestly don't know what it is about Wrigley Field that turns the Cubs offense every year into a bunch of stammering, drooling, cross-eyed idiots, but there it is. Part of it is Hendry's fault for putting together a lineup that isn't built to win at Wrigley, i.e., take advantage of the power alleys and the deep outfield corners as well as the wind and the lack of foul territory and the seemingly short fences. No, somebody out there thought they should just build a team of bangers, cause, you know, Wrigley, homers, crowds, beer, blah de fucking blah. That shit. So everyone looks like Dave Kingman up there, and if you don't think so, watch Cliff Floyd's and Derrek Lee's at-bats in the ninth on Tuesday. Ridiculous. Said it before, blah blah, the Cubs have to lead the league in runs scored to win big, as they did in 84 and 89. both those years, the team ERA was literally middle-of-the-road. In 03, of course the offense wasn't so much, but the pitching was truly exceptional, and the division was bad. Anyone see that scenario unfolding this year? So far, yes, the pitching is good and the division is weak as hell. But I know that's not a recipe for winning in that ballpark. Which is why this team will lose.

Make me a liar, fellas.

Do You Remember?

2007-05-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

What I said a couple of weekends ago about Bobby Howry?

Well, play that shit again.With knobs on, as they say. And of course the Chicago media wouldn't ask the tough question, mainly "Why do these guys still have Major League jobs?" It's all "one-run losses" bullshit. And of course Piniella talks about how good he feels with the result. Shit, I can say "what are yu gonna do, motherfucker. Give me a job.

Here's what you do: Offload Howry, and cut off the fingers on Ohman's non-pitching hand. Then let him count his fucking money.

Simple.

On the Way Down

2007-05-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

It's games like tonight's that make me wonder how the Cubs EVER win a fucking game. No offense, untimely pitching. No pitching, unnecessary offense.

West Coast nightmare. Beginning of the end, O Best Beloved. Just like last year.

Somebody make me a liar.

'Irrelevant,' meet 'Asshole'

2007-05-21T10:39:00.000-05:00

Spokespersons for President George W. Bush responded to criticisms made over the weekend by former President Jimmy Carter, in which Nobel Prize-winner Carter attacked Bush and British Prime MinisterTony Blair for their failed policies via the war in Iraq.

Carter could not be reached for comment Monday, as he was probably in New Orleans, rebuilding houses that were destroyed two years ago by a hurricane that the Bush administration saw coming and in whose aftermath it did nothing to alleviate.

UPDATE: Apparently, Carter was available for comment. And kind of a pussy, too.

Go See 'Gidget'

2007-05-19T13:23:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't call this an unqualified rave, and of course I work at City Lit a lot, but I recommend their current production of Gidget absolutely. Mainly for one of the best performances I've seen this year.

It's based on the novel of the same name by Federick Kohner, about his daughter Kathy, the surf-obsessed girl who courted the surfer-boy gods down on the shore with food until they took her in as one of their own, christening her "Gidget," as in "girl midget." It's adapted by City Lit Artistic Director (and one of the most absolute men of the theatre I know) Terry McCabe and Marissa McKown and directed by McKown. Rather sluggishly, it turns out. There's not much going on physically, and of course the sensation of surfing is impossible to duplicate onstage(even with hydraulic surfboards, as in 2005's terminally stupid Broadway jukebox crapfest Good Vibrations.). But this is one of the better staging concepts in the show, actually. The actors in the ensemble (everyone but Gidget and the Great Kahoona doubles as a "kid" and as an "adult," more on that later), dressed neutrally, bear the surfers aloft in a nakedly theatrical but nonetheless effective image, equating the elation of surfing with the highs of flight.

The performances, unfortunately, are a bit of a mixed bag. Sabrina Kramnich is the class of the evening as Gidget. She narrates the story, and has roughly more of the evening than Hamlet, so the show is obviously going to rest on her five-foot tall frame, and she acquits herself extremely well, as both the gawky fan-girl at the beginning and the emergent young woman who is finally liberated by her endless summer. Eric Hoffmann looks like Adonis and has the easy-going swagger befitting the Great Kahoona, and also reveals some simple, effective vulnerability later. Most of the rest of the cast are just past college-aged, with the advantages (lively and convincing as the "teens") and disadvantages (less imposing as the older "authority" figures, particularly Dan Kennedy's not-potent-enough Dad) inherent. But see the show for Kramnich's performance; she doesn't ring a false note, and more people ought to see it.

Gidget, playing at City Lit Theatre, now thru 6/3. Fri-Sat at 8, Sun at 3. 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, Chicago. 773-293-3682.

Get 'Im, Boy!

2007-05-18T23:30:00.000-05:00

So, when this happened, did anybody think Ozzie was just lacing into Mike North for pretending to give a God damn about baseball?

The "Fuck You" Bandwagon is Growing!

2007-05-17T15:41:00.000-05:00

For fuck's sake. Get your seats now.

Fun Convergences of Art and Life

2007-05-15T15:46:00.000-05:00

The Tony nominations came out today, and when Jerry Falwell saw that Legally Blonde had been passed over for Mary Poppins in the Best Musical category, he dropped dead of a heart attack.

In other Tony-related news, America's Sweetheart Kristin Chenoweth was denied a Tony nomination for her no-doubt-well-sung and scrinchy-faced performance in The Apple Tree. Sources close to the pint-sized tornado quote her as saying "If I ever find Sorkin, he's a dead motherfucker."

Fuck You, Bobby Howry

2007-05-12T18:38:00.000-05:00

Did you forget how to record an out, asshole?
Or did you place a side bet during the rain delay? "How soon can I fuck up Will Ohman's day?"
Asshole.
I've seen worse pitching performnces. Maybe. But I don't think I've ever been so insulted watching someone in a Major League uniform pitch, and by "pitch" I mean "roll a fucking penny up to the wall." Because that's what your fucking pitches looked like.
Asshole. Way to pick up the offense.
And thanks for coming straight out of the motherfucking bullpen with four straight motherfucking balls for a motherfucking walk. If I were Lou Piniella I would have yanked you right there, then had you killed.
Asshole. Play baseball tomorow, why don't you.

Stay Thursday, My Friends.

2007-05-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

Can't help it. I enjoy that one. He's a cross between Hemingway and Castro. (via YouTube, of course.)

I also love the understatedness of the Comcast Spider-Man ad. It should be creepy but it's not. It makes me laugh every time I watch it. (ibid with the YouTube and all.)

Anyway, Thursday. Tonight. Bulls. Pistons. Game. Three. Zero hour approaches. How many times will we hear "must-win" tonight, even though it technically isn't, of course? There's a drinking game for you. I guess in basketball reality it pretty much is a must-win, especially if they get blown out like in the first two games. In that case, they can get a book of stamps, a padded Manila envelope, and just mail that shit in. But man, the Bulls sucked balls in those first two games, innit? Not to give them offense, but they couldn't give us offense, only a little defense, and it was all turnovers, all the time. (Nice if you work in a bakery, I guess. Not for sports, though.)

Enough. Flush the negative energy and just hold serve. Then, if that happens, Scott Skiles can figure out how they evened out and go from there.

Stay Thursday, my friends.

UPDATE: Aaaaah, fuck it.

We're Finally on our Own

2007-05-04T09:23:00.000-05:00

It happened 37 years ago today. National guradsmen opened fire on protesting students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio and by the time the smoke had cleared, four students were dead.

I would say something platitudinous about how that sort of thing won't happen again, but then again:

Virginia Tech + what happened in MacArthur Park this week x what happened elsewhere in LA yesterday, with Iraq as X xY= Sure, it could happen again.

But one thing probably won't happen again: we won't get a song like "Ohio."

In the aftermath, Neil Young and the other members of C,S,N&Y came out of the woods with song in hand, and what a song. In my mind, the angriest pop song ever recorded, and with pretty good reason: The Summer of Love haze had lifted from everyone's eyes by that time, the decade had turned, and there was the US, still locked into a stupid war a world away. And now the "Tin soldiers" are here, doing Nixon's bidding on campus, when "We're finally" supposed to be "on our own."

This litle nugget from YouTube does a pretty good job with the scattershot-chronology of the lyric to "Ohio," but it's the famous image the filmmaker weds to the line "What if you knew her and/Found her dead on the ground" that gets me. I bet you can't watch it and not get pissed off. At least a little.

Make Me a Liar

2007-04-10T15:57:00.000-05:00

Because it's only a week, blah blah blah, I know, jumping the gun, yes, yes, the Little Lebowskis and proud we are of all of them, but Goddamnit. God DAMN it. It's the same fucking team the Cubs put out there every year. This team plain doesn't score runs at home. And way to go, LOU, with the "Baseball isn't meant to be played in the cold" bullshit.

Man. Not like it will really make any difference, but I can't wait to see what this organization looks like in twenty years, when everyone involved in the current regime is dead.

Play B(PLEASE STAND BY)

2007-04-09T14:56:00.000-05:00

I did an extremely unscientific review of some of the more well-known live "Game Cast" sites for today's Cubs home opener, and I can state, without equivocation, that they all suck. In terms of providing "live" "play-by-play analysis" of "at-bats" and "pitches" "as they happen," that is. they all look good (except for CBS Sportsline.com, seriously, a softball player?), but so far it's Dance:three, Looks:Ten, if I may paraphrase.

You pick

2007-03-27T12:32:00.000-05:00

Let's play America's favorite new game show (timpani roll, chaser lights, models' arms UP!!)

Is Alberto Gonzalez (I'd type in "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales" but I'm pretty sure I'd have to change it by Easter) an Idiot, a Liar, or a Dickhead?

Was he really too stupid to know (or keep an eye on) what was going on within the purview of his office? If so, he's an Idiot.

Did he know, and is he not telling us the truth about knowing because it would jeopardize his non-political position? If you answered "yes," then he's quite obviously a Liar.

If he's dissembling to try and shield his boss and his boss's ass-wipe from harm, while giving short shrift to the careers of people who were literally just doing their jobs, then he's a big fat screaming Dickhead.

It's lunchtime, so I'll have the combo special: The Liar with the Dickhead on the side. Preferably tossed. In jail, you pasty-ass motherfucker. In any case, I have a teensy little do-nothing job for twelve dollars an hour and have huge piles of debt. Why should this bitch Gonzo have any job at all?

Speaking of pasty asses, The US, as a rule, doesn't negotiate with terrorists. And look how far that's gotten us. But fret not, because it looks like the world just might be getting a little better because the British decided to.

Fear and Loathing

2007-03-22T15:28:00.000-05:00

So. I have the greatest cat in the world. A mackerel tabby. Christened Margie, because he walked like Marge Gunderson in Fargo, and because he was tiny when I got him and I thought he was a girl; re-named Macheath, a/k/a Mack the Knife, from the Gay/Weill/Brecht Beggar's Opera/Threepenny Opera melange, because in his toddlerhood he discovered he had claws and was all about using them. He's almost ten years old, but to my (almost-) constant joy and delight, he often acts like he'a a spry lad of four, and sometimes, if a piece of paper or a shoelace gets in his eyeline, he acts like he's a kitten again.

But he's not. Last time he was weighed, a year or so ago, he was about 16 pounds. He's only slightly fat, especially considering he's almost ten, with a small fat pad, but he's long, and large, with enormous paws (so said the guy at the vet who was waiting with his kitten) and a big bull head (so say I, And I constantly remind him. "Look at your big head. Look at your big bull head."). My ex-next-door neighboor called him a "puma" once. (I guess she thought he was sleek.) He's just a big animal, as far as housecats go. A big tom. Like me.

I say this because he seems, in spite of being an in-cat who never goes outside except to walk on the window ledge, and a bit of a chicken, to be as strong and as durable as a frigging horse. Which is how I describe him to most people who inquire after him. "Oh he's awesome. He's a frigging horse." He's had pink eye, and a gland problem when he was very young, and your hairball fits and one cut footpad, but in the city, keeping cats inside definitely has its advantages. He's normally extremely healthy and fit. Seemingly indestructible.

So, guess who may have eaten tainted cat food over the past couple of weeks?

The numbers don't QUITE match up (here a date right, there a UPC number right, never both) but it's disconcerting as hell, and when I went to the Dominick's to get more and not-going-to-kill-the-best-part-of-my-everyday-existence cat food, the stuff I normally buy had been pulled.

Fuck.

And, it turns out, the makers of the stuff may have known all along there was a defect in the gluten.

So.

All I'm saying is, if Mackie dies because of this shit, don't be surprised if you read a headline from Canada like "Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid in Pet Food Factory, Slays 100." All I'm saying.

What a Night!!!

2007-02-26T14:20:00.000-06:00

Not.
Oscars over. Whatever. Good for Martin Scorsese, good for Alan Arkin, Jennifer Hudson's career is on 14:58...and begin. (Don't blame me, it's the curse.)

Look, I'm sure we can all agree that Pilobolus is an artistic amalgamation of the highest water, but seriously. What the hell? This is why the Oscars run long every year. The producers, or the Academy, or ABC, or all of these out-of-touch bastards, seem to think the watching public wants some sort of cheesy, and I mean cheesy, entertainmaent quotient to go with the bling and the gowns and he hot guys in their bedhead. But is there a codicil in the Oscar bylawas or something that states they have to employ a certain amount of dancers ro extras for this one night? Evry year they manage to totally fuck up the "live entertainment" portion of the program, because not only are all the best song nominees the type of David Foster-Diane Warren bullshit Celine Dion got famous singing, but the dancing is always attached to something unbelievably stupid, like the Rob Lowe/Snow White thing in 1989, or the Costume Design thing the next year (thanks, Debbie Allen!) or even managing to co-opt and render impotent a treasure like Savion Glover, or Pilobolus last night. Look! Pilobolus make shoe!

Cut the extraneous dance bullshit, the show would be 20 minutes shorter. Also, put ALL the nominees down on the main floor, and that would take five minutes off right there. The Pan's Labyrinth people were all up in the secon section of the main floor, and God knows they won a lot, so why can't they give the real honest-to-Christ nominees better seats? And in that case, shouldn't somebody's ego take a fucking hit for a night? Like some dickhead producer who didn't get any nominations? Or a publicist or agent whose clients are either non-nominees or Jessica Simpson? Let these fuckers and their egos sit in the back for a change.

I forgot. It's Hollywood.

I suppose ABC doesn't complain about the show runnng long, not with all the ad dollars they pull in, and they win the night every year anyway, I'd guess. Maybe it's just the print media, who are on deadline, and the great unwashed who complain.

And fianlly, I must strut. Nobody listened to me about Eddie Murphy. It's the Norbit Curse, sez I!

Crushes

2007-02-21T20:54:00.000-06:00

Yes, 40-year-old men still get them. Permit me to drool over two of them. Both over age, so hush, Goddammit.

CHRISTINE EBERSOLE

The Talent Crush. Ms. Ebersole, not only gorgeous (and it's her birthday today!) and a sexy, sexy middle-aged woman, is also the possessor of the finest voice in all the realm as of these days. (Barbara Cook, OK maybe. But still. Look at Christine. So hot!) And in a few months time, she's going to be back at them there Tonys, picking one up for her Promethean performance in Grey Gardens. Playing mama Beale in first act, daughter Beale in second, getting huge laughs dressed like God knows what, doing "The Revolutionary Costume for Today."

Then, she drops the hammer and blows the room away with "Another Winter in a Summer Town," based on the most moving moment in the documentary on which the show is based, when Little Edie is alone with the camera and says that if she doesn't get away from the Hamptons and her dilapidated mansion before winter sets on, she won't be able to take it anymore. Get thee to iTunes or whatever proprietary software thou posesseth and download it now. Then begin constructing your shrine to the de-lovely Christine Ebersole. Then, when you come back, I'll tell you about sweet Caroline.

CAROLINE DHAVERNAS

The Dreamy Crush. Ever since I saw her in a little nothing Canadian Showtime movie about swimmer Marilyn Bell, rocking a pixie cut and smiling like mmmmmmmmmmmooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn sorry. Ahem. That's Caroline Dhavernas. Not well known in the US (she's French Canadian, speaks both languages fluently ahh French mmmmmmmmmmmooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn)sorry. Anyway, best known for the underrated "Wonderfalls." Go rent it. Or buy it. Or see her and her pretty, pretty hair in Breach. She's like a more mature Katie Holmes with some life left in her eyes.

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

2007-02-13T11:37:00.000-06:00

Man, it's winter like a mofo in Chicago. It's not cute like 11 feet of snow in Oswego, NY-although I lived that nightmare twice as a kid and "cute" isn't the right word, though the dickheads in the national media would have you point and laugh like Oswego is in a shake-up snowglobe. Here it's just been alternately as cold as a snowman's dick, like it was last week, or miserably snowy and blizzardish, like today. I prefer the snow to the cold, because at least when it snows it's not as cold and you don't have to wear seven layers of clothes just to get to a Goddamned train.

Also, another reason I love my hometown:Chicago has the best snow removal in the world. By 8:00 this morning the Loop streets were clear and clean as a whistle. Amazing. The streets in Rogers Park were even pretty clear. (Snow removal issues changed the history of this city. Jane Byrne was elected mayor based mainly on the fact that during the blizzard of '78 the snow removal situation in Chicago was terrible. She ran against incumbent Michael Bilandic in the primary and said "Elect me and I'll fix it." They did, and she did.) It was easier to walk in the street than on the untouched sidewalks (thanks, douchebag neighbors!) so I trudged in the street instead. Wearing a layer extra and the winter boots in the driving snow makes a three-block walk seem like seven miles, yo. But it's a pretty good leg workout. I have to venture out again tonight to record Teapot Scandals for future consumption, in Andersonville. Not too far from home. Hopefully I'll be able to bus-and-train it instead of having to walk that figurative seven miles. I'd much rather sit at home and just wear the cat on my head. That way he's warm and I'm warm.

The Pride and Joy of Illinois

2007-01-21T17:19:00.000-06:00

Celebrate, Bears fans.

Rather amazing that Lovie Smith is the first black coach to try for a Super Bowl...
(UPDATE:Tony Dungy, y'all!!! Two black head coaches in the Super Bowl at once!!! Rush Limbaugh's dick falls off!!! Wheee!!! Our race problems are over!!! Ahem. Not. But still, I think it's still one out of five coaches in the NFL. That's not perfect, but it's better than the 50s and 60s, when George Halas ran every team and Vince Lombardi was the coach of every team.)

Fuck you, Joe Buck. If you can't hide your Dad's anti-Cubs bias when you cover the Bears, for Christ's sake, pack it the fuck in and get it the fuck off the national airwaves. Fuck Joe fucking Buckfuck fuck fuckfuck.

Will any of the national football media besides Tim Cowlishaw, Brian Baldinger, and Katherine Smith be able to stick a crowbar in their asses and finally, finally show the Bears some respect?

The trepidation the Bears fans felt for the last few weeks, after the Green Bay game and into the playoffs, is part and parcel with the Second-City inferiority complex that permeates the great City of Chicago, my home and the greatest city in the world. I fed into it every year (except 1996) the Bulls went to the NBA finals, but I finally refused to give in in 2005, when the White Sox went to the World Series. Anyone who asked whether we should consider the Astros as superior, I would say the same thing: No. Let someone be afraid of us. We led wire-to-wire, pitching, situational hitting, blah blah blah. I feel the same now. The Bears have done exactly what they needed to to get there. No more, and certainly no less. (Like, you know, turnovers. As in not a one, beeyotch.) Well, they poured it on at the end there, y'all, so that's More, I guess.

Celebrate. Good Times. Come on. Woo-hoo.

On the Sleeve of My Peasant Shirt

2007-01-16T18:04:00.000-06:00

So after I got off the "Express Train" and wandered into the "Super Market" for some cat litter and rolls, I had on my "Head Phones" that were connected to my "Compact Disk Player," featuring a "C.D." (short foe "Compact Disk") of my own making, one that I had "Burned" on my "Home Computer" using "Digital Sound Technology." And what was on this "C.D." as I walked in the store?

Why, Larry Groce's "Junk Food Junkie," of course. Nothing like walking around a store with that coming at you. Bravo for life's tiny ironies, if I might paraphrase Garry Trudeau.

It's Not That Hard

2007-01-08T11:36:00.000-06:00

Scorsese. Spelt thusly, once and for all:

S-C-O-R-S-E-S-E.

Can we please get it right, 'Net folk who don't always write about moobies? Because it's not like he just fell out of the sky and started making them yesterday.

Scorsese. Martin Scorsese. Who is not the possessor of an Academy Award, of which Kevin Costner deprived him. Think about that.

Ooh-Hoo-Hoooo, That's Good Timing!

2006-12-28T12:50:00.000-06:00

So Bob Herbert has a piece in the New York Times op-ed today (didn't read it because it's Times Select, and , uh-uh) and from the lede in the online edition, I assume it's about how James Brown and Gerald Ford held the answers to questions we need to ask today.

I'm again going to assume these questions are not, respectively, 1)"Who was the funkiest man in America?" and 2)"Who was the squarest man in America?" because, seriously, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

My objection isn't his piece itself, since I haven't read it, but rather the kind of shoehorning-by-happenstance article this appears to be, one that's all too common in media outlets these days. the fact that Brown and Ford did blah blah and represent a blah blah far too seldom seen in blah blah smacks entirely of pop-cult opportunism. Just because they died at the same time there's some nexus of connectivity to which they hold some key? Yeah. Again, without reading it, I can already tell what's up with that. If these two were the avatars of blah blah, and it's worth writing about their contributions to blah blah, then why didn't somebody do it before they happened to be famous people who died within a week of each other? Because under these circumstances, that gets the Wonky Eye Of Cynicism.

Roger Ebert writes an appreciation of his Two Favorite Movie Stars, Robert Mitchum and Jimmy Stewart, when they die within a week or so, fine, he's a great writer, and it's movie stuff. But if Brown and Ford truly were more than just a wacky cop movie, surely we should have heard about it before now, no? Because in the alternative it just looks like an excuse to sell papers, and a lazy, cheap, Entertainment-Weekly-inspired excuse at that.

Oooooooooooooooh, GOLLY

2006-11-18T14:58:00.000-06:00

So.
I didn't watch the pregame buildup, so I don't know if I nmissed it before, but it only took until Michigan scored their first TD before Brent Musburger told us that "Somewhere, Bo Schembechler is smiling."

Sigh.

I don't hate Musburger, but at least Keith Jckson would have made it sound like, you know,
Keith Jackson.

By the way, everyone's mourning the passing of Bo Schembechler, but I think we all know Michigan was always more of a running team.

Thank you. Dave safely.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat's More Like It

2006-11-08T17:50:00.000-06:00

Mandate, Monkeyfingers!

Say it loud!!!

Mandaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!!!!!

Rush Limbaugh's a fuckin' asshole!!!

Mandaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!!!!

Tonight's Car Fires Brought to You by Annheuser-Busch

2006-10-27T22:54:00.000-05:00

Aw, man, fuck the Cardinals. I was born in St. Louis, and just fuck the Cardinals. I was seriously looking forward to a World Series with two offenses and two defenses, but it looks like I got stuck with this twelve-errors-in-five-games monstrosity instead. When Kenny Rogers' left hand is the best thing about the week, it says something.

It's great that the Tigers have done their gear-stripping 180-degree turn in so short a time(Leyland is The Guy), and maybe they'll bring the team that did so well during the season with them next time.

Which begs the debate. (What?) One Wild card and one team that played about as well as the Cubs down the stretch. Just shows you how inexact a science three series of five, seven and seven are after 162 games determine a playoff schedule.

LET"S MAKE IT BEST THIRTEEN OF TWENTY-FIVE!!

See Below, You Humps

2006-10-02T20:25:00.000-05:00

Can everybody please shut the fuck up about how lame Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is? For Ford's sake, two episodes doth not a classic make, and, Emily's Reasons Why Not notwithstanding (say that shit ten times fast), it doesn't make for a huge pile of shit either. Yeah, so far it's not as good as the first two episodes of West Wing, ando God forbid I should piss on the carcass of the late, lamented, holy Goddamned Sports Night, but please. Come on. Watch those first episodes of WW and you'll see he's doing what he did then:Getting his Big Points in before he's taken off the air. Of course, WW wasn't yanked because it was so fucking good, but he didn't know how audiences would react. Sports Night flamed out fairly quickly, so Sorkin didn't exactly have the greatest track record in TV history when NBC picked up WW. So shut the hell up for now. Give it at least, oh, I don't know, another week or two before you scream and yell and tear your hair?

Way to go, ESPN. Looks like your mobile phone service is dead on a platter. Perhaps that's what you get for pimping the shit with an ad campaign featuring a fucking stalker. Great idea, that.

And by the way, what are the folks in the corner offices at AXA smoking? Way to mix your metaphors, bitches. For the un, AXA Equitable's new ad campaign is an entreaty for boomers to stop ignoring the "800-pound gorilla in the room" and make with the lifehealthhome. The ads feature an animatronic ape that was used in the movie Instinct. (great pedigree, that.)
So. Listen up, Merkley + Partners, because you either didn't listen to the post-grad English major copyboy or he was too scared to tell you, but you're mixing your metaphors. Duh. The 800-ppund gorilla sits wherever he wants. You ignore the fucking ELEPHANT in the room!!! Not the gorilla. Having to give Borscht Belt lessons to people with trillions of ad dollars to play with is not in my job description. Not for free, anyway.

Just Shut Up

2006-09-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

Shut Up, Kazakhstan. Sacha Baron Cohen has been doing Borat for years now. If it just now got to you that he's breaking your balls well then, maybe you are a bunch of backwards-ass slab heads.

Shut up, Kip Hawley. You're an idiot.

Shut up, Jesus Camp. Nothing new to see here.

Just Musing, But...

2006-09-22T20:17:00.000-05:00

...the White Sox were a good team at some point this year, right? I know the Cubs were good for like a week and a half, but the Sox, I think, looked like they could have been in it for a long time. Now it's obvious they're all watching the fucking Ryder Cup.

...ask yourself how it's possible to work 7 (seven) straight days and still be flat fucking broke. I've been asking myself for two days now.

...Is there anything cooler than a sleping cat? Seriously.

Thank You, Mister President

2006-09-11T23:36:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Mister President...

For making the United States of America more loathed overseas than ever before.

For failing to fulfill anything remotely like any promise you ever made regarding any war on terror.

For letting those who would advise you, most specifically Karl Rove, that pasty-ass motherfucker, obliterate everything that was empirically good about the Republican Party (fiscal responsibility, individual responsibility, the role of the national defense in government), and elevating the worst that your enemies might say about Republicans (values-related hypocrisy, fraud, corporate hegemony, intolerance, greed)to a fucking art form.

For making your father, whose presidency I loathed, look like a master statesman and brilliant leader by comparison. Though the Berlin Wall fell under his watch, his one significant piece of legislation was the Americans with Disabilities Act. You, on the ohter hand, gave us the No Child Left Behind Act, which sounds (and acts, to be honest) like something out of a Saturday Night Live sketch, and faith-based initiatives, which attempt to erode the Constitutional separation of church and blah blah fucking blah. Mister President, your dad woodshedded your ass, and he only had four years.

For contributing to the economy by spawning a cottage industry of screeching heads whose sole purpose is to obfuscate, outshout, distort, and inflame.

For using the Executive Branch of the federal government as a stick with which to beat your opponents, as a cloak under which to hide with presumed, unearned, and non-existent sovereignty, and and as a perch from which to look down on high, mouthing empty platitudes and reveling in your own inaction.

For forcing me to rationalize my profound disrespect for you and the profound respect I have for your office by feebly, honestly, and ultimately thinking "Well, at least he loves baseball," because, for serious, that's all we have to share with each other.

For bravely and proudly taking the lead in the political polarizing of the country, so much so that only the very stupidest among us, whose support you crave, could fail to see the blatant abuse at play in your administration.

For making us less safe than we were five years ago, and lying about it.

For paying "responsible" "journalists" to win the news cycle with Republican propaganda, and lying about it.

For attempting to erode my civil liberties, and lying about it.

For giving the people of this country several half-baked excuses for entering into war, and lying about them.

For urging the American people not to not put two and two together, but rather to put two and two together and come up with twenty-two.

For telling us why twenty-two is an evil number and must be erased for the sake of our children.

For failing to realize that I don't have any fucking children. Or that I already know what's best for my cat.

And most of all, sir, thank you for giving me and others like me a clear, concise, and altogether salient image of what has to change in the very near future, and for allowing all of us to realize that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it can't lame itself too soon.

Thank you, Mister President.

Are You Kidding?

2006-09-08T22:44:00.000-05:00

Four straight doubles? God damn it, kid. If you're not ready to fucking pitch, don't lie and say you are.

Jesus H. Christ.

Seriously, I'm glad they came back and won it, and I don't mean to kick the guy when he's down, and obviously Ozzie knows better than I do, but come on, man. That's fucking clown shoes.

As I Piss Away My Career

2006-09-01T00:48:00.000-05:00

Boy do I hate to do this. But this happened, so I feel compelled to talk about it.

Theatre Building Chicago is an organization here in town that produces new musicals. (For you score-keepers, they used to be called New Tuners Theatre.) Part of their season is a mini-festival of new works produced at the Theatre Building, a 3-house complex run by Theatre Building Chicago, or TBC for short. The festival is called, appropriately enough, Stages. ("Stages 2006" this year, because, yeah.) Shows are mounted in various forms, from sample versions of nascent work to fully-staged readings with script in hand to bare-bones performances. All of which, as Stages points out, are works in development. Not fully-designed, staged, music-directed, subscription evenings, but in this case, eight varying pieces of musical theatre, of various shapes and sizes, all in various stages (ha) of development. For which audiences paid to see and reporters were press-kitted.

Those last two things are the crux of my post tonight. Because, lo and behold, somebody apparently rent asunder a theatrical covenant, spilling blood, guts, and the shattered dreams of a generation of servants of Terpsichore, Phobos and Diemos. Except not.

Hedy Weiss, drama critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and a pretty good one, apparently was press-kitted and shown to her seat(s) for all eight shows at Stages, after which she proceeded to pretty much rip them all apart, in print. It gets better. Not only did she not like any show much, she also apparently left most, if not all, shows early, not bothering to stay for a single final curtain. (Which she admits to at the top of her review.)

Apparently this wasn't enough for the management of TBC, or the Dramatist's Guild, for that matter, both of which hit the ceiling in protest. And here's the tricky part. Seems to me that Weiss committed one offense-taking money to offer legitimate criticism on pieces of theater she didn't completely see to review-but the aggrivied parties seem to see the other end of the spectacle as the more egregious-reviewing, under any circumstances, "works in development." TBC honcho Joan Mazzonelli and Dramatists Guild head John Weidman fired off letters to the Sun-Times, condemning Weiss in the strongest language printable, for her "reckless" and "shocking" conduct.

While I don't appreciate Weiss's going out like a sucker, as Kevin Smith said of film critic Joel Siegel recently, after Siegel loudly flounced out of a screening of Smith's Clerks II forty-five minutes into the flick, I can't share the outrage that some of my brothers and sisters in the theatrical trenches are apparently feeling right now. Stages is a paying evet, tix at $15 a pop or a full pass for $85. Weiss was kitted, and, she says, not told "Thou shalt not review." So she did. TBC apparently thought Weiss knew their drill-specifically, that these pieces are workshops and are not to be touched (which, apparently, they haven't been before, not in the big papers, anyway). But if you're charging money to show them, doesn't that open it up? I mean, if they're not to be touched, don't let anyone touch them. No one. Don't invite the press and send them photos and CDs if they can't use them. Pre-show puffery is one thing, and a useful thing it is, too, but if you attempt to fill a space with customers, and pay your actors, which Stages did when I participated in a reading back in 2001, I can't see the great breach of theatrical etiquette here.

Weidman says that his indignance would be no smaller if she had loved all eight shows. That may very well be, and is not for me to question. But this is where producing organizations and writers get into trouble. They will take a critic's rave of their show and plaster its' pull quotes all over ads to get folks to come see the show, but then hit the roof and yell foul when something like this happens. That smacks of a professional double-standard. And I suppose I get where the Guild and TBC (and their very powerful, very famous allies) are coming from-the "chance to fail" barely exists for theatricians any more; a new playwright has little chance to strike out with one play and come back again with another, because theatre economics, union labor costs, media and real estate have changd so much in the past 50 years or so. This whole thing reminds me of the spring of 1990, when a piece was announced for production at a workshop called, effectively enough, New Musicals. The work-in-progress (first in a planned series, and, as it turned out, the last) was developed and performed (again for audiences) at SUNY-Purchase, a university campus up the Hudson river from Manhattan, obviously to keep it from the prying eyes of Frank Rich, the New York Times and all the New York tastemakers who would be ready to overhype it if they liked it, or shred it to pieces if they didn't. Fine and dandy. But what was the show? Kiss of the Spider Woman, by that up-and coming team of John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally. And directed by an unknown tyro by the name of Harold Prince.

Come on, now. (Full disclosure:NM's version of Spider Woman was thought to be to bloated and didn't go to Broadway until three years later, where it was hailed as one of the great salvage jobs ever done on a musical, won seven Tonys including Best Musical, and is on many short lists as "Best Musical of the 90s.")

Some would say it wouldn't matter if it had been Shakespeare and the Marx Brothers; a new work is a new work and shouldn't be reviewed under any circumstances, lest the nascent work fall prey to critical ridicule, thus jeopardizing its commercial chances. But if it's all about the business of show on one end, it should also be that way on the other end. Critics slam actors and writers all the time. Producers do the same to critics. How do you go on? Dorothy Fields knew how: Pick yourself up, Dust yourself off, Start all over again. I bet she got slammed by a few critics in her day.

I don't know if her work was in development, though.

Asshole!

2006-08-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

That's all. Partisan fuck. (via C&L.)

Ovah

2006-08-26T22:14:00.000-05:00

Yep. I think so. The Sox are toast.
Sorry if I sound like Jay Fucking Mariotti in knee-jerk mode, but I really think they can't win anything this way. pitching not good enough, hitting not good enough (although, seriously, Jermaine Dye? MVP.), defense not good enough.
Intangibles? Not even close. None, count 'em, none of the breaks that fell the Sox' way last season are falling this year. Paul Konerko swings at the first pitch he sees following Dye's great homer in the ninth? Please. Take that shit to Wrigley and sell it to Ronny Cedeno.

So, I think it's over. Hope to hell I'm wrong.

Just Musing, But...

2006-08-03T19:03:00.000-05:00

...as I type this, I'm sure Hannity, Klein, Malkin, et motherfucking al are hunkering down working out ways to discredit, trash, and just plain dyke up Hillary Clinton for having the gall to demand Donald Rumsfeld's presence before the august body of the United States Men's Senate. (And, by the way, looks like she woodshedded his ass.) I can't wait to hear what the Haters have in store for us. (Ann Coulter and her Penis are ahead of the pack, sugesting old Hitlery Clintoon is this close to coming out of the closet and getting busy with Anne Heche.)

...more than ever, but still not so much, I'm summer TV's bitch. (Take me, Project Runway. And I'm not even gay.) The networks dump all the Short-Attention-Span shows on us in the Short-Attention-Span time of year, with good reason, I suppose. But most of the stuff sucks. Heavily and loudly. The endless motherfucking variations on American Idol are the most egregious example, and they keep coming because of the Sundance Rule: every so often, one biggie comes out of the mix. Dancing With the Stars, The Full Monty, you know. Anyway, two of the suckiest are America's Got Talent (about which more later) and So You Think You Can Dance. I cannot tell a lie: I have found myself on occasion watching this bastard child of American Idol. Not because, like AI, it's good TV, heavens no. Two words justify my watching:Natalie Fotopoulous.

Sorry. She's just...yeah. (You'll have to take my word for it, though; Fox is of course controlling the images of the show.)Sorry, y'all. And in the next hour, she'll prolly be voted off the show and out of my life. The stick-like Heidi looks like the winner. And that's all I'll say about that. Anyway, summer TV is good for another reason. Since I was in Urinetown and Fiorello! for much of the winter and spring I missed much prime-time first run TV. And NBC is very kindly re-showing My Name Is Earl and The Office, both of which are better than they have a right to be. Earl is extremely well-contained, carrying the cheerful trailer-trash vibe as far as it can on a network sitcom and still managing to be laugh-out-loud funny, big ups to Ethan Suplee and the almost-miraculous Jamie Pressly, who takes a numbingly familiar sitcom trope, the harridan ex-wife, and still manages to knock every one-liner out of the park. And The Office is even better, a remake of a great BBC series that was a trope-buster of its own, a sitcom treatment of the Christopher Guest documentary-style stuff. The American version (which I wrote off before even seeing it , I'll admit) is the same stuff, but has the grasp of American-bidness ennui. There's more trope-shattering here, too, as all the office types are there, motormouth, Christian, wallflower, Proud Black Man, but thanks to the great cast, led by Steve Carell, they're all minted fresh and new. And The Office also has the best romance on TV, the woulda-shoulda of Jim and Pam, played beautifully by the immensely likable John Krasinski and the adorable Jenna Fischer.Seeing the first episodes this summer, the relationship-that-isn't there is absolutely marvelous to watch. Unfortunately, looks like it's over with the new season.

...Will Ferrell's new one has a typically Will-esque moment, in which Ricky Bobby runs around the track in his underwear and racing helmet, thinking he's on fire. You've seen the commercial. "Help me Jesus," he yells. Then, in the first set of commercials, he yells "Help me Tom Cruise! Use your magical powers" or something like that. A quick familiarity-based laugh. BUT, In the last week or so it's been changed to "Help me Jesus"/edit/"Help me Oprah Winnafree!" Which is still kind of funny, and isn't actually any less funny that "Tom Cruise," but why the change? Did Tom's preternaturally litigious people threaten some sort of action? Did they forget Tom was in a fucking stock-car movie once? Fuck you, Tom Cruise.

America's Got Talent is as lame as it sounds. It's a stupid talent show, with no rules except what the judges, and later on, America via votes, likes and doesn't. So why am I writing about it? Because a friend of mine did her thing on the show and I still can't understand how, or why.

I'll explain. The woman in question is Michelle L'Amour. She's a burlesque dancer. (I dunno what she'd call herself, but if you call her a stripper I'll kick your ass 'cause it ain't like that, Son.) She's an extremely good burlesque dancer, a title winner and really nice girl. She and I did the Fatty Arbuckle show together in the summer of 2004. She came in to the show's second run, and it took about five minutes before me, the writers, and some of the best physical performers in the city were standing, watching slack-jawed as Michelle did her stretching and warming up against a wall. She fit, as they say, right in. Plus she's really nice. (She came to see Urinetown and couldn't have been more complimentary.) Thing is, even though she's not a pole-dancy, let's-have-a-lap-party stripper, her act does involve artistic shedding of clothes to music, and it ain't for kids. I happened on her first performance on NBC about four weeks ago, completely by accident. I looked up and there she was, sitting next to Regis Philbin, poor girl. For her first time out she was doing a hot, naughty Snow White thing. The two male judges loved it, Brandy hated it. Too un-Christian, I guess. She got through to the next round.

Which was last night. She did a KITT-Knight Rider thing to butter up judge David Hasselhoff, but she didn't make it past the second round. What I don't get is why, despite her evident gifts, NBC ever put her on in the first place. Her act is sexy, and not family fare in any way, two things network television hasn't been in eons. So of course, her act is interspersed with shos of kids in the crowd hiding their eyes, and that bitch Brandy clucking her tongue. Shut up, Brandy. Plus, they made her cover her ass with a stupid blue towel or something. What's the point, guys? Cut the arm off a juggler and level the playing field. Make the Rappin' Granny (I told you the show sucks) do her thing with gum in her hair, I don't know. I know Michelle just wanted to get seen, and she did, but what the hell was NBC thinking? Like she was getting anywhere. Bastards. You give me back The Office with one hand, you take my friend's chances away with the other?

Dear White Sox Pitchers

2006-07-20T00:08:00.000-05:00

Please get your heads out of your asses and pitch to your previous level of aptitude.

Thank you,

Tom

Just Do It (or Say It)

2006-07-16T21:22:00.000-05:00

The two of you who read this blog (Hi, Stu! Hi, Dad!) may have realized I don't often do the whole "confessional" thing here very much, and by "very much" I mean "at all, ever." Most of what I noodle out here is political diarrhea or rants about how the Cubs suck today (which, wow. 2 grand slams in 1 inning. Another new way to suck.), or maybe a little shout to a friend or a project I'm working on. Very seldom is what I write here observational of human nature.

Which, for the two of you reading, may be a bit shocking, since I am at least a bit of a misanthrope. I guess that means I should leave the electriconic internets high-ways strewn with the smoking, charred rubble of my withering diatribes aimed at the follies, faults, and fucking stupidity of the race.

So, here goes.

My brother takes yoga and possesses a mantra, which I believe is a phrase one calls on to center oneself and allow one to meditate (or execute whatever one may be attempting to do) with the requisite serenity and calmness. Since I've always considered my energy too kinetic for yoga (not to mention my physical package almos impossible to calm down for long enough), I guess you might consider mine an anti-mantra. An odious yet absolutely necessary catch-all to apply to, well, just about everything that makes me so goddamned angry all the time. And it's this:

What the fuck is wrong with people?

To which you may add the corollary Your passive-aggressivity is evil. Be passive, be aggressive, but don't be passsive-aggressive. For fuck's sake.

But anyway, back to the societe cooperatif of my main anti-mantra. An example. Last Saturday I had an audition, to which I wore what would be described as office casual, since it was a relatively hot day and it wasn't a movement audition, so I didn't have to dress down in sweats or running shorts. I wore a pair of white Docker-type slacks and a clean blue polo. After the audition (didn't get, I don't think, thanks for asking), at which I saw a pair of seemingly contradictory signs on the wall, one of which said "It's not about YOU!!! Are you serving the playwright????" and the other of which said "Remember...nothing can keep you from being the best performer YOU can be!", I came homeward, and decided to stop at a Dominick's to pick up the two staples of the T. Shea household, soda and cat food. As I was standing in the produce section, looking at the Brach's Pick-and-Mix like the fat bastard I am, much like the fat bastard Dave Osborne in The Full Monty , I was assaulted on my left side by the cold, clammy reality of some sort of exotic salad falling off a cart, out of its tray, and on to me. Completely ruining the only clean polo I own, thereby reducing the already small amount the office- and audition-worthy garments your fat, broke motherfucker of a narrator already owns by one more.

Assessing the situation, I was pissed off about the ruination of my clothes, to be sure, but became even more pissed by the circumstances surrounding same. The produce section has those half-inch or so rubber mats on the floor near the walls, which I suppose are there to keep people from slipping when the misters go on. (Or to protect the store from a lawsuit caused by some stupid shit falling on the wet floor, saying "I didn't know it was wet.") The stupid shit operating the cart on wheels was all apologetic in that way where someone who does something stupid says they're sorry but only means it in the superficial way, since there's nothing she's going to fucking do for me apart from tell me how sorry she is, meaning "please don't yell at me in the middle of the store and get me fired." She gives me a roll of paper towels, which, whatever, you can't do anything with paper towels on a fucking armada of grease stains except keep the shit from running down your godamned arm, so I tear a few off and blot blot blot, then throw them back at her (the unused portion; I threw the used ones on the ground, but I should have thrown them on some tomatoes or Swiss chard), saying something vaguely about a bulldog not being fed, which went over her head since, yes, sadly, predictably, and absolutely xenophobically, english was not her first language.

The rubber mats, you're saying, what about those damned rubber mats? Tea, China, the price of same? Well, looking back at things, she clearly caused the shit to spill when she tried to navigate the rubber mats on the ground, thus tipping the stuff over when the terrain changed. I know if she'd had another foot of clearance or so, she could have navigted the floor without using the rubber mats. Clearance like where I was standing. So, if this woman had only bothered to say "Pardon me, sir, can you move to the side for a second? Otherwise I may, you know, spill this three bean salad with bowtie pasta on your polo so you can't wear it in decent company anymore," I would have been perfectly content to oblige her and move a foot and a half to the right. But apparently this woman felt it was easier to avoid talking to a human being she didn't know because of the possibility that I might threaten to take her head off, either literally or figuratively. She may deal with dangerous assholes every day, which, considering the fact that she works in a huge grocery store, is not completely beyond the scope of comprehension. But the fact that she chose to risk it, instead of actually attempting to communicate with me, and ended up fucking me over, fucking up the food she was handling, and earning herself a place in my Hall of FUCK!!! all at once, speaks volumes about the society of cringy, scared little sheep we've become.

In short, what the fuck is wrong with people?

It's been this way for a while. When I waited tables and seated people at a restaurant right out of college I used to marvel at how many people would wait until they saw someone ELSE get up with their dinner check, then follow THAT person to the cash register. I figured it was because the sheep-like follower was concerned that I (or whoever was sitting at the register) would reduce them to a smoking pile of lifeless ash and bone by saying "Oh, you know what, you can just pay your server." Which was silly, because there's a cash register at the door, and someone sitting there, waiting to use it. Back then, I thought, well, it's just not a society of leaders. And given the present state of the nation, who's in charge, and how marginalized our lives have become, I know it's true. Oftentimes on this blog, in the course of reviewing a bad movie or talking about how much the Cubs suck (Ron, I'm so sorry), I'll say something to the effect of "we all suck" or "God, we suck," since we the people (but not me, he said, misanthropically)put up with paying 10 dollars to go see a shitty Adam Sandler movie just because Courtney thinks he's cute or 900 dollars to go see a shitty ball club just because the ball park is so great and you can drink like a dickhead and not suffer any consequences. But this time, since it became personal, I mean it: We really, really suck. This fucking society needs to pull its head out of its reticent, please-don't-hurt-me-or-even-make-me-feel-bad-for-three-seconds ass and grow a pair of fucking testicles. If that sounds like a mixed metaphor, I don't give a fuck. Fuck you. See what that was? That was aggression. Good old aggression. And aggression is good, within boundaries, because it's honest. It lets people know where you stand or what you think, this side short of actually taking someone's head off. Then we have to involve the professionals, which sucks. Passivity is OK, too; some people aren't to the aggressive manner born, and that's fine as well, as long as it's honest. But what isn't honest and isn't OK is the meeting of the two, the passive-aggressive bullshit tendency that creeps into everything people do nowadays. Like, soccer mom, if you really think your kid is next for a boalloon at the circus, don't fucking singsong it as if what you're doing is cute, because we ALL KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, and it isn't the least bit fucking cute. It's aggressive, and venal, and your adding the passive voice to your aggression just makes you that much more loathsome. Same goes for you, middle-management prick, you, who have been kept waiting the princely sum of thirteen whole minutes to start the morning meeting because one of your employees was stuck in traffic. Just start the fucking meeting already, and let Late Boy deal with the consequences; like, he already knows he's late, and the last goddamn thing he wants is for your smirking but not-at-all-secretly pissed off ass to say "Forget where the office was today?" and fake-laugh through your teeth.*

Time for one more? OK, lady shopper, don't block the entire fucking aisle lengthwise with your cart looking for OJ or some shit, forcing some poor schmuck to sit there and count to 20 with his chin in his hand, hoping, just hoping he won't have to embarass you by pointing out how insensitive that shit is, then forcing him to slowly fling your cart around 90 degrees with your baby in it just so he can move in the supermarket.#

You may have a good mantra. I have the anti-mantra, and it neither centers me nor comforts me. But say it I must, because it's there and it needs to be said. What the fuck is wrong with people?

*Neither of these things has actually really happened to me, at least not in the way they're described above.
#Okay, yeah, that one did happen. What the fuck is wrong with people?

You Bastards!!!

2006-07-05T18:09:00.000-05:00

Dear Linda Lay:

Perhaps now you truly know what "gone" means.

But probably not.

Ken Lay, down 6 at day's end.