Christ, what an asshole.
Yeah, there’s something smarmy about the New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest; something vapid, vacuous—hermetic.
Luckily, Modern Arthur has the answer.
Also, the anti-caption contest. The caption-the-ones-they-didn’t-have-us-caption contest. And, yes, McSweeney’s.
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I really ought to stop poking the whole James Frey mess, but it appears he’s dating Mary Rosh.
One of us; one of us.
I pretty much already knew Stephen Colbert was a geek; there was that bit when Viggo Mortensen hit the Daily Show and Jon Stewart played this recording of Colbert drily lecturing on Aragorn’s various names that was hilarious mostly because you could tell it was true. —But between the D&D and the improv theatre, it sounds like the Colbert Report’s an oddball campaign of Prime Time Adventures that somehow got itself ready for prime time.
Project much?
My mama done tol’ me
When I was in knee-pants,
My mama done tol’ me
“Son, a woman’ll sweet-talk,
And give you the big eye,
but when the sweet talkin’s done?
A woman’s a two-face,
A worrisome thing
Who’ll leave you to sing
The blues in the night…”
—Louis Armstrong
My mama done tol’ me
When I was in pigtails,
My mama done tol’ me
“Hon, a man is a two-face,
He’ll give you the big eye,
but when the sweet talkin’s done?
A man is a two-face,
A worrisome thing
Who’ll leave you to sing
The blues in the night…”
—Ella Fitzgerald
As a 48-year-old never married single man still in decent shape, successful and now retired, and having weathered the “feminist” cultural storm still raging since my teens, I can tell you that even your having read Norah Vincent’s book, you STILL have no idea of the anger, the hatred, the vengeance and the pain so many otherwise attractive and available women are afflicted with. It is an epidemic of conflict and self-distortion that begins and ends with an impenetrable sense of entitlement, based on a false sense of victimhood, and for which not just any man but every man must pay forever for the restoration that’s never good enough.
Oh, you can hum a few bars and fake the rest, I’m sure. —The above gacked from Roy Edroso, who’s been quote-mining again, and dug up some doozies…
Point, meet counterpoint.
Why, yes. This site’s been up and down rather more frequently than something that competes professionally on the going-up-and-down-frequently circuit. The fine folks at Dreamhost insist they won’t rest until the mystery is solved. Presuming you can read this, I thought I’d alert you to Tim, who, in comments, is disputing certain allegations of the “wear your own body armor and we’ll cut your death benefits” story; also, I thought I’d point you to this essay by Emma Bull, whose opinion on the new Battlestar is, shall we say, against the grain.
An article of pinnacle stupidity.
I mean, I knew their sense of self was weak; when your character is based so strongly on hate the Other, you’ve got nothing to fall back on for yourself. When that Other is inextricably defined by sexuality and desire, those deep, anarchic, inarticulable forces we must control to control ourselves, then a religion of peace and love and forgiveness can be turned on its head, reduced to nothing more than hate the gay. —It helps to explain why their encomiums to Dear Leader are so comically fellatial, yes, but careful; it also explains why we find it so funny to refer to them as “Assmissile.” There’s two edges on that blade.
So I knew, yes, but dear Lord in heaven and all His little fishes below, I swear I had no idea what a deep and gnawing, rotten and terrifying, Echthroi-howling hole it was inside them, until now—
It is cognitively and nationally dissonant to propose on one hand the advancement of the homosexualization of your most identified national folk icon and simultaneously bluster with the impending force of a war to defend that same civilization. The homosexualization of your most revered masculinity is the cheapest and stupidest shot you can take at the survival of your own culture and it is really inappropriately timed when you are facing, from threats abroad, the most substantial existential peril the nation has ever known. You can’t fight Islamism with gay cowboys.
Oh God, if You are up there, please. Hurry down the Rapture. We’ll get so much more done with them all out of the way. —Via the Poor Man.
A public service announcement.
Thanks to Ampersand, I now know the Mo Movie Measure isn’t really the Mo Movie Measure. If anything, it’s the Liz Wallace Movie Measure.
The measure? Works like this: think of a movie that meets the following criteria—
- It has to have at least two women in it.
- Who talk to each other during the course of the movie.
- About something besides a man.
I’ll let you cogitate for a bit. —Comes from a Dykes to Watch Out For strip that’s so old skool Mo wasn’t even in the cast yet, which is why it isn’t the Mo Movie Measure. When Bechdel did the strip back in 1985, the last movie she could think of that passed was Alien.
(Only I don’t remember calling it the Mo Movie Measure myself. I always remember it being referred to as Bechdel’s Rule, or the Dykes to Watch Out For Rule, which is more correct, though it doesn’t address Liz Wallace’s displacement. But what can I say? Alliteration is against her. The Mo Movie Measure is just so darned catchy!)
This woman’s word.
Go on. Guess.
Now that I’m up with 2.12—
—or 2.2.2, or whatever the cool kids are calling it, anyway, from the talented mind at 
stutefish: your moment of Battlestar Zen—
Pieces of what, exactly?
I didn’t notice when James Frey’s Million Little Pieces hit the Oprah jackpot, but I wasn’t paying that much attention to the Oprah jackpot. But now that the Smoking Gun has gone and gotten itself on the front page of USA Today for calling him on his shit, well, I guess I am paying attention to USA Today. Or at least saw it out of the corner of my eye on my way to pick up a slice of pizza.
Anyway, I just wanted to remind all and sundry of this delightfully caustic review from a couple years back.
Malleability.
So almost three years after I heard of it, I finally have a copy of The Office (for which many thanks). And it is, indeed, exquisitely excruciating to watch (the moreso if you’re howsomever precariously perched in middle management yourself). But this isn’t about The Office. See, now that I’ve seen the character of David Brent in action, I now have a much more full appreciation of the Ricky Gervais Reveal.
The Ricky Gervais Reveal?
Well. The gentleman below, one Ricky Gervais, famous of course for the singular comic creation that is the character of David Brent,
was once the somewhat taller half of really-big-in-Japan-(and-the-Philippines) pop sensation Seona Dancing.
(Luckily, I’d already seen Momus’ post on the subject, or else John’s might have curdled my brain somewhat more than it did. Speaking of malleability.)
But this isn’t about the Ricky Gervais Reveal, either. It’s about another reveal, which will probably impress three people out there, and I’ve already told one of them in person, and another probably already knows. But who cares. —See, in the course of one thing and another (now that the zombies are put to bed) I was listening to the soundtrack of The Secret Garden, which has its moments, bombastic though they might be, and when “Winter’s on the Wing” came on, I happened to look over at the iTunes window, where the Artist field was highlighted, and did a doubletake. See, Martha’s brother Dickon, conjurin’ with that stick of his?
Well, there in the Original Cast, he was played by John Cameron Mitchell, who would some few years later rather famously pull a wig down from the shelf.
Rather a long way to go for thin bit of gruel, I’m afraid. —I did discover that Ricky Gervais is writing for the Simpsons,
and also what John Cameron Mitchell’s up to these days.
Does that help?
The third, of course, will be a direct-to-iPod release in early 2009.
“[Peristere] added that the movie’s sales on DVD, which came out on Dec. 20, are running neck-and-neck with the hit comedy Wedding Crashers, which bodes well for a possible Serenity sequel.”
And I did not speak up, because I was not Tina Fey.
Sat next to Ann Coulter and Catherine Crier (they were dining with unidentified gentleman) during brunch at La Goulue on Sunday, March 20th. Catherine Crier’s face looked like a burn victim! She was pulled tight and had obviously had LOTS of work done. But, I can only comment on Ann’s “blonde” locks as she sat with her back towards me. While eavesdropping on Ann and Catherine’s conversation, heard a little snippet about their dislike of Tina Fey and “Saturday Night Live.” They believe that Tina is “un-American” and she shouldn’t be on television…which my friend and I found VERY ironic!
Witnessed an axis of evil power lunch on palm Sunday at la goulue – anne coulter and catherine crier ripping tina fey APART at the next table for the previous nights snl weekend update—crier actually pounding the table and saying shes vile and evil and cant stand her. Crier looks a lot like joan rivers surgically. fey and pohler rule.
—“Gawker Stalker,” 22 March 2005
o.H.M.y.
Y’all remember Tatu? Taty? t.A.T.y?
(Take your time. I’ll wait.)
Okay. I haven’t been following the news all that much, because, y’know, you load one fauxsapphic lolitapop eurochirp album onto your iPod, how many more do you need, and anyway, the pop-culture buzz only lasts so long. —Somewhere in intervening time, it seems, Yulia and Lena wised up to the exploitative nature of their predicament and cut out one of the middlemen by dropping their Svengali, Ivan Shapovalov. And promptly fell off the cult stud radar. There was apparently a reality show, framed around the recording of their new album? Which was supposed to drop on 14 March? Anybody?
Ah, but what about said ex-Svengali?
“I don’t care if she is Russian or not,” says Shapovalov. “This is a girl from the Internet. I can’t even determine the exact style of her music. She sings in Tadjik, Georgian and Pharsi languages. Her songs are about love, about life.”
Ladies and gentlemen: n.A.T.o.
“It’s my first concert, and anything can happen. But everything is going to be fine!” The CNN commentary fades slowly into a steady techno beat, soon joined by live drums and a heavy guitar riff opens up. As Nato lifts the microphone to her lips and starts to sing, the audience strains to hear her voice over the noise. But no matter how they crane their necks, they can see nothing of her face, hidden behind a black veil that shows only her eyes. The lyrics, too, are a bit of a mystery, as Nato doesn’t sing in Russian, but in Chechen and Georgian. One thing is clear: Nato’s outfitted to look like one of the infamous “Black Widows,” the female Chechen suicide bombers.
Confidential to Kriston Capps, to whom many thanks: Russian culture qua culture tends neither to be deaf nor immune; rather, it takes inordinate pride in the world’s deadest pan:
As a finale, Nato performs “Chor Javon,” a catchy song with clear hit potential that’s going to be released as her first single. As soon as she puts down the microphone, the guards jump on stage and fire paintballs into the crowd with their fake Kalashnikovs. Alexy, a 24 year-old concert-goer, gives the whole thing a tired smile. “I’d imagined this would be way more radical,” he says. “Machine guns, the whole silent guard routine—you’re really not going to shock anyone with that kind of thing these days.”
Alas!
Alas, a blog is back from database hell.
