7/08/2007 12:04:00 PM
On his HBO show, "Assume the Position," Robert Wuhl purports to present little-known tidbits of American history while separating myths and erroneous "common knowledge" from the ugly truths no one's bothered to tell us. It's a gimmicky comedy show, and if you've ever seen Wuhl perform, you'll understand why he needs more than just his sense of humor to get on HBO.
But it only works if Wuhl doesn't get sloppy on us.
In his latest installment, Wuhl claimed Hedy Lamarr's skinny dipping scene from 1933's Ecstasy was "the first nude scene in motion picture history," and that Barbara Bush is a "direct descendant" of Franklin Pierce.
I recognized both as falsehoods the moment I heard them.
Hocus-Pocus and Wuhl
Claiming Barbara Bush is a "direct descendant" of Franklin Pierce fit neatly into Wuhl's asinine routine, as did Lamarr appearing in the first nude scene in motion picture history. I guess it's just too hard for Wuhl et staff to make such comically symmetric "lesson plans" with just the facts.
A comedic history lesson whose punchline neatly returns to its premise is only worthy if it's factual.
For the record, Barbara Bush descended from a fourth cousin of Franklin Pierce's. And, though I don't know what motion picture featured the first nude scene, I do know (and own a copy) of a 1920 Lon Chaney movie one scene of which shows, quite prominently, a nude young woman modeling for a sculptress.
Scene from 1920's The PenaltyNow, if some average shmo like me, with no particular knack for movie and/or presidential trivia, can spot two mistakes in as many minutes, imagine how many lies Wuhl averages in a 30 minute show.
I'd been debating on canceling HBO - and I think this just sealed the deal.
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6/13/2007 10:26:00 AM
"Found On Road, Dead"
Anticipation...
For seven seasons Tony's been least happy whenever he's forced to deal with his lawyer, Mink.
This is because Tony only visits with his lawyer when he's up shit creek.
Yet for seven years Tony has managed to escape serious legal penalties. We, the fans, are intimately familiar with the sense of anticipation Tony must be experiencing every time he's with Mink.
So naturally we revisit the 1970s "Anticipation" ketchup commercial as Mink is torturing Tony with the anticipation of something that never seems to come - the RICO case.
While detailing for Tony the troubles that lie ahead, Mink literally hits the bottom of his nonresponsive ketchup bottle with each syllable. Finally, a frustrated Tony snatches the bottle from Mink, so that he can get the shit over with.
Now that's anticipation.
AJ - master of self-contradiction:
Insightfully quotes Yeats, yet naively mispronounces the author's name.
Environmentally conscious, yet drives a gas-hogging SUV.
Despises Bush, but wants to join the war in Afghanistan.
Appreciates nature, and the appropriateness of the message in a counterculture, 2-generations-old Dylan song, but not so much that he'll dare leave his parents' nest, or even step out of his warm car to get a closer look.
Ironically, the most anti-pollution device on the gas guzzling SUV ignites a pile of dead leaves.
AJ and his doll escape the ensuing fire as the SUV explodes.
And so does AJ's self-pity, philosophical disquiet, and moral waffling.
The fence has fallen, and AJ is forced to pick a side. Soon, we see him happily zipping around in a beamer.
---0---
Paulie, Christopher, and the cat -
The only Sopranos character more superstitious than Paulie Walnuts was Christopher Moltisanti.
So naturally, the street cat we meet in this episode interacts - almost exclusively - with Paulie and Chris.
Well, a photo of Chris.
The jacket Chris is wearing in this picture - especially the way it's unzipped between two slanted "eyes" - looks a bit like the face of a tabby cat.
Okay, maybe that's stretching it.
Maybe we're supposed to think the cat is Adriana reincarnated, but I see something else - at one point revived from having been clinically dead, Moltisanti ("many known") literally had more than one life. Like the proverbial cat*.
In "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti," would-be author Chris creates a story one plot twist of which involves a character walking on a Soft, Tar Roof, as opposed to Tennessee Williams, who wrote about a Hot, Tin Roof.
Upon which walked a cat.
Ha... I'm really stretching this shit, huh?
---0---
Choose your ending: The Final Scene
(1) The Sopranos live another day.
Fishy characters populate the diner Tony and family visit.
Some guy at the bar keeps looking back at Tony, but Tony doesn't seem to notice.
There's suspense all around. Everything seems to be building up to something...
But nothing happens.
And that's life for the Sopranos, isn't it? Isn't every stranger a bit suspicious to this family?
Don't stop believing. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
(2) Lights Out!
As he, himself, speculated in earlier episodes, "made" guys probably don't realize it when they get whacked.
At a random point during their appetizer, everything stops. No sound. No video. Not "fade to black" - just black.
Tony never saw it coming, though the audience might have.
Just moments before the lights go out, that suspicious guy at the bar gets up and heads into the bathroom. We never see him exit the bathroom, but from the camera angles Chase gives us we wouldn't have.
Mario Puzo would be pleased.
(3) Homicide Bomber
(The suspicious guy I've been talking about)
Does this guy seem Arabic to you?
Did his cheesy jacket seem a little too stuffed?
Meadow, whose symbolic readjustments are keeping her just beyond the nuclear family, enters the diner a little late, and so she misses it. What she witnesses may smother her idealism like AJ's exploding SUV extinguished his.
When this Members Only guy returns from the bathroom, he detonates a rack of TNT taped to his chest.
After all, the hatred that fuels suicide bombers was Made in America.
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* In Italy, cats are said to have seven lives, though most of us are used to hearing nine.
5/31/2007 08:57:00 AM
GOP candidate pool officially now the size of a small town.
Quick! What does Fred Dalton Thompson have in common with
Daniel James Barnett,
Dewey R. Broughman,
Samuel D. Brownback,
Edward A. Buck,
Anthony Lungo Carter,
Eamon Patrick Clune,
Hugh Cort,
John H. Cox,
Lowell Jackson Fellure,
Robert L. Forthan,
Anthony Keith Gallagher,
Daniel A. Gilbert,
James S. Gilmore,
Rudolph W. Giuliani,
Joe Honeychurch,
Mildred T. Howard,
Michael D. Huckabee,
Duncan L. Hunter,
Timothy Charles Kalemkarian,
Philip A. Kok,
Yaphet Kotto,
Alden Link,
Elvena E. Lloyd-Duffie,
Yehanna Joan Mary Malone,
John Sidney McCain,
James Creighton Mitchell,
Robert Edward Edward Moreau,
George E. Pataki,
Ron Paul,
William Nathaniel Raven,
Willard Mitt Romney,
Marshall Samuel Sanders,
Freddy Irwin Sitnick,
Michael Charles Smith,
Richard Michael Smith,
Johns Wallace Stevenson,
Tom Gerald Tancredo,
and
Tommy G. Thompson?
------------------------
Seriously, there are twice as many GOP candidates vying for 2008 as Democratic candidates.
Why is this? Either
- everyone and their grandmother is eager to continue the noble work of our current administration . . . or
- more republicans than ever before are alarmed at the way their party is destroying America, and feel they personally have to fix it.
Hmmm....
5/29/2007 09:31:00 AM
John at PLB is whining because Google didn't prepare a Google Doodle for Memorial Day.
Google is an international business, and has created doodles for Korean Liberation Day, the World Cup, Persian New Year, Chinese New Year, Bastille Day, Shichi-go-san (Japan), and the Summer games in Australia. But the majority of Google's doodles focus on American holidays. I don't believe they've missed a 4th of July yet.
If crying were chocolate and bourbon, PowerLine would be a 400 pound lush.
BTW, as an alternative to Google, the PLB braintrust point to DogPile. Dogpile, as most of you probably already know, filters its scans directly through Google. LOL!
"What 'clustering'? I barely
understand search engines..."
5/26/2007 08:26:00 AM
. .. .. .. .
If you're like me, your favorite moment from the second GOP debate was Ron Paul's analysis of worldwide anti-American sentiment, and its root causes. If you're like most republicans, your favorite moment came only moments afterwards, when Rudolph Giuliani interrupted the man to express his disgust with Paul's opinion.
To most of the right, Giuliani's response reflected their personal views on 9/11 and the War in Iraq. The remainder of the world recognized Giuliani doing Giuliani.
Check out the video for a good laugh.
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5/21/2007 05:47:00 AM
Is a gallon of gas worth 45 minutes of this?
Though they constantly say they loathe illegal immigration, the GOP has happily turned the other way while their corporate buddies exploit illegals for profit. But, with an election on the horizon the situation has snowballed into something ugly, and they're being forced to do something not-eactly-hawkish about it. Could the neocons have avoided this mess?
I think so. I think the GOP's habitual refusal to address the federally mandated minimum wage, along with the greed that drove their constituents to nurture illegal immigration, has brought the right wing to this.
In 1981 I got my first job. It was the summer between 10th and 11th grades, I'd just moved to a new town, and wanted to buy a car. And so, on most days of the week I slung hush puppies and North Atlantic Cod for the newly opened Captain D's on Atlantic Blvd in Jacksonville, FL. For 35 hours a week I earned $3.35 an hour - the federally mandated minimum wage of the time.
It wasn't a bad deal. At 16, I had a whopping 80-something bucks a week (post-taxes). I was a kid living at home; the money was all mine! Even with the ridiculous gas prices of the late 70s and early 80s, eighty bucks could keep a teenager pretty happy for a week.
Consider - in 1981, $3.35 bought:
- more than three gallons of gas ($1.10 average per gallon)
- twenty-two stamps (15 cents each)
- seven loaves of bread (45 cents avg)
- an hour and forty-five minutes at $3.35/hr could buy most record albums (at six dollars apiece)
- three hours of work could get you into any concert
- the average new car, at $7,600, cost (pre-tax) 2,267 hours, or 57 forty-hour weeks of minimum-wage work.
Now, as you all know, the federal minimum wage hasn't changed in ten years. Obviously, this means today's minimum wage-earner cannot buy nearly as much as I could in 1981.
For instance, in 2007 $5.15 buys:
- one and a half gallons of gas
- twelve stamps
- two loaves of bread
- 3.5 hours will buy most new albums (avg $18)
- five hours, at least, for a concert's nosebleed seats ($25 for the shitty seats)
- the average new car is $27,700 bucks; you're looking at 5,379 hours of pre-tax work, or about 135 forty-hour weeks of minimum-wage work.
So it's pretty fucking clear why many of today's teenagers aren't exactly beating down Captain D's doors (and the clueless wonder why today's youth isn't "motivated").
How does the federally-mandated minimum wage affect the current dilemma the GOP is facing on immigration reform?
Rapture-ublicans controlled Congress from 1995 until 2007, and for the past ten years remained stubbornly stagnant on the issue of increasing the minimum wage. Greed, you understand, is considered a virtue among these assholes.Nevertheless, as time passed inflation happened, and there came a time when $5.15 an hour was insufficient. At the same time, corporations needing unskilled, low-wage labor were losing employees.
The solution? Either (1) raise wages - thereby attracting more unskilled American teenagers/young adults, or (2) find another group of people willing to work for $5.15 an hour.
Most corporations happily chose curtain two. They figured out they could get immigrant workers to bust their humps for the federally-mandated minimum wage. Teenagers and pre-college/trade school adults were no longer needed as the foundation of America's unskilled work force. Better yet, once the fat cats figured out many of their newly found immigrant workers weren't in the USA legally, the corporate-immigrant understanding became "you work for less than $5.15 an hour/we won't turn you in."
So much for conservative values, eh?
Anyway, for over a decade no one said "boo" as Minute Maid, Del Monte, and Mott's boosted their profits on the backs of illegal immigrants willing to work for next to nothing. Immigrants flocked here, illegally. Corporations' profits skyrocketed. Congressional (R)s looked the other way.
And now we are where we are. The GOP's long-standing refusal to keep the minimum wage at a competitive level snowballed into a monster they cannot now escape. With a (D)-run congress in town, a general election on the horizon, and their own rabid-right-wing a.m. radio mouthpieces fueling their base's passion, the GOP is being forced to face a gigantic problem of their own making.
Suck it up, crybabies. You've got no one but yourselves to blame.
....
5/07/2007 01:33:00 AM
Though they are in the minority, right wing extremism has built for itself an ultra-concentrated media complex. One TV news organization. One radio band with one line up. One type of popular music. And so forth.This concentrated mediaplex is the reason they can honestly claim the most popular cable news network, the most popular radio personalities, etc. For instance, although total viewership of non-hyperconservative news channels outnumbers viewers of FOX News by a ratio of 3 to 1, the rabid right can technically claim they've got the most popular cable news channel in the country.
This tendency to clump around singularities is what defines hyperconservatism. It's a greedy mindset. Stay close to home. Stockpile your assets, and store them all in the same vault. When untouched by outside, regulating forces, it's the kind of thing whose growth is undone by its own overreaching. Without the liberal democratic base, it's dangerous (see: Hitler); in a liberal democracy it's the sort of thing that regularly self-destructs via political implosion. The Whigs, the American Civil War, isolationism, McCarthyism, Nixon.
So, ironically, when we "outsiders" successfully police (e.g., Imus) the singularity-focused type of hyperconservatism that we find alive and well today, this hyperconservatism actually strengthens. It draws its members closer together, confirming for them the world "really is out to get" them. It's as if a delusionally magnified sense of persecution oils the machine that drives these nuts towards their goals.
I think it's better if we ignore the nutcases, like those who run the Excessiveness In Buttboils network, who bait society with their "Barack the Magic Negro" type of nonsense. When they're left to their own devices, they overcram into their condensed locales, ultimately imploding. When outsiders come in and police their stupidity, they actually gain more momentum towards growth, not the overcrowding that regularly does them in.
So, the "Barack the Magic Negro" sort of stunt is more successful at propagating the right wing paranoia machine when it's shut down by mainstream society.
Why not leave them alone, leave them to their own demise?
....
4/23/2007 05:38:00 AM
What does history say?
YouTube version:
WMV version:
Enjoy...
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4/23/2007 01:18:00 AM
Are you surprised?
One reason Rove is such a staunch neocon is his homophobia, a condition that typically leads its hosts into the darkest realms of hardcore right wing mania.
Last night Sheryl Crow and Laurie David got a glimpse into the severity of Rove's neurosis. Read about it here.
Obviously, the self-loathing closet case didn't expect Sheryl Crow to touch him, and without a prepared reaction he acted naturally. He was grossed out.
HA!
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4/15/2007 04:25:00 AM
Either the "Free Market" always works itself out, or employers don't have the right to fire employees.
The right wing wants it both ways.
Good riddance, Mush Mouth
CBS and MSNBC dumped Don "Mush Mouth" Imus because neither network could survive airing his show without the ad revenue they'd lose if they did. It wasn't a decision based on morality, or social responsibility. It was based on economics. Simple as that.
Some think Imus has been deprived of his First Amendment rights, but he has not. Remember - civil liberties are freedoms you have that (supposedly) protect you from the government... Imus hasn't been charged with any crime. It's not the government punishing him. It's his employers. And, just as you can't expect the same privacy at your job you can expect in your home (again, supposedly), your freedom of speech at work is trumped by your employer's rights. An employer can levy her or his own rights against you, just as MSNBC and CBS did with MarbleMouth.
If your teenager works in McDonald's, and is fired for telling customers, "Burger King is a lot better than this crap," or, "hey, at least our french fry cooks aren't wetbacks," I doubt you'd get very far trying to recover damages from McDonald's for firing your kid.
This "I-Mess," as Olbermann calls it, serves as a fine example of capitalism at work; it should be embraced by the right wing as such. It was, after all, the market working itself out. Manufacturers and customers are only two components of a market; let us not forget about the employer-employee relationship -- just as much a part of any market as the manufacturer-client relationship.
But the choir of right-wing noise makers have conveniently changed their tune for the moment. Instead of shouting, "the market has again worked itself out," too many of them are singing "hypocrisy! The liberal media are having it both ways!" Imus, they remind us, was only repeating what hip-hop/rap stars say in their music. FOX News, talk radio, and the editorialists of various "news"papers have expressed this sentiment for nearly a week now.
They obviously think the majority of their audience is dumb.
Usually, the right wing wisdom machine (sic) reliably reminds us why a free market is such a grand thing: it's a self-regulating entity. No matter what bumps lie in the proverbial road, the truly free market always "works itself out." This obvious fact is a reliable fall-back for the right.
For instance, if Limbaugh was wrong for asking a black woman to take a bone out of her nose, or for suggesting a Latino runner won a marathon because an immigration official chased him the last ten miles, then, say the neoconanderthals, "the market would've taken care of itself." I.e., either he'd have been fired by an employer fully in its right to dump him, or he'd have eventually lost enough listeners to become nonviable economically. "The market didn't negatively react, his employer didn't fired him, and therefore it was OK." And, technically, they are correct.
Why? Because the free market does always work itself out. Oh, not in a way that preserves (or restores) what most would define as ethical behavior. But in a way that preserves itself.
Which is why an honest FOX News would use this episode to illustrate the virtues of the free market, and then move on.
Wait -- did I just say, "an honest FOX News"??? HA!! I need a minute...
..!..
4/08/2007 03:09:00 AM
MINE:
Obviously the YouTube conversion fucks it all up. How does one pre-empt this shit? How is it the video I created and then uploaded onto my own site sounds fine, but turns to shit when processed through the YouTube conversion? Anyone? Bueller?
..!..
4/06/2007 11:37:00 AM
Naturally, the second try didn't work either. Whatever is happening during the YouTube conversion, it totally fucks up the sound. Most places I've looked online address video quality issues and audio/video sync, but no sites discussing the major drop in audio quality i'm seeing (hearing) here.
Anyway, for my last attempt of the evening, I converted the applause into mono and removed the "ambience" sound effect. And, oh yes, Pinnacle Studio is fucking up. Again. The video disappears at 1:41 - only a black screen - and nothing I was doing seemed to fix it....
So I've had to build up the thing from scratch again.
Here goes nothing... the audio has been simplified, so it should work this time around. Unless that loss-of-sound from the YouTube conversion had nothing to do with the ditched "ambience."
Here it is - the "charm" attempt. Whatever that means.
If this doesn't work I'll have to readdress it tomorrow.
Peas out.
....
4/06/2007 10:14:00 AM
Rosie O'Donnell, you're embarrassing America's progressives
 |
| We don't need a liberal Ann Coulter to bring us down. |
And so it is with a strong sense of philosophical integrity that I can say Rosie O'Donnell is, and will continue to be, a HEEEUUUGE embarrassment for the left. Unless we can throw her overboard.
Even if you agree with everything else she says, she's openly declared her belief in the 9/11 conspiracy theories only the stupidest of conspiracy theorists believe. Sorry, Rosie, but you are officially a moron.
What separates us lefties from the majority of the right is how we deal with nuts like O'Donnell. The right loves Coulter; she raises money for their mainstream political activities, speaks at legitimate GOP functions, appears regularly on their "news" programs.
Here's where we need to pay attention: the right is trying desperately to tie Rosie to the left as a whole. We need to ignore this. No matter how much you might loathe the sight of Joe Scarborough or Billow Reilly, don't go for the bait when they slam Rosie. The more we defend O'Donnell, the more the right will be able to illustrate how stupid we are.
..!..
4/05/2007 10:44:00 AM
And if that doesn't work, you can download it here.
As for the real thing,
ROFLMAO!
My wife and I speak Spanish at home. It's her first language; I learned it in Panama. And we have this let's-poke-fun-at-a-certain-relative inside joke where I speak it, but with the worst possible accent ever. As "gringo" as I can sound. Yes, making fun of a family member. So what?
Anyway, you can imagine our delight when we saw this video of Newt reading Spanish from a teleprompter. Oh my fucking god, it's a classic. Barney the White House pooch speaks more Spanish than this testicularly-challenged/high-voiced neoconanderthal.
Bwah ha ha!
....
ADDENDUM:
What a disaster. Apparently the YouTube conversion drastically altered the clip's audio. On YouTube the thing is 90% sound effects, 10% Gingrich speech.
So far very few views, and one very low review (can you blame the guy?).
A quasi-educated guess? The "Gingrich" voice (mine) speech was in mono, but the sound effects (ambience and applause) were in stereo, and this mono/stereo mix doesn't convert too well into Flash (or whatever it is YouTube used).
Working on the YouTube video right now...
SECOND ADDENDUM:
Deleted original video from YouTube, resubmitted. Fingers crossed.
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4/04/2007 09:28:00 AM
Sorry, righties, but the numbers don't lie.
Next time you hear a neocon mouthpiece, or Der Chimpfokker himself, decry all the pork in the Democrats' military spending bill, check out the facts for yourself.
This is the first time pork in the Defense spending bill has come in under $11 billion since Fiscal year 2002.
It's all here.
It is a rare day when the top GOP talking points are factually accurate.
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