Fuck You, Mr. Mort

Peter Bergman 1939-2012

WaPo, You Slut!

Aphorisms Suck! Part 16

T.S. Eliot never had to rake leaves.

-Jimbo Riley

Requiescant in Pace

FRED Shuttlesworth was The Man. The Man of Men. Fred Shuttlesworth stood up when there wasn't even the marginal protection of not-exactly-sympathetic media around to give violent racists pause before acting, or to help identify them after the fact so all-white juries could yuck it up over the charges.

He stood up, because standing up was right.

Mr. Obama, a Medal of Freedom is in order. Like Martin, like Thurgood Marshall, posthumously, not alive and kicking like Tony Blair. Or Tenet and Bremer. Ask for theirs back, while you're at it, and rescind them with a signing statement or something if they refuse. You know, use that Alternate Presidential Reality Bush was so fucking fond of.

It's deserved.

And Jobs. Not the Medal, I mean. Look, I'm a Woz man, myself, We've had a Mac on the desk here since 1988, and there's a small, unplanned museum in the basement. I wasn't a fanboy, or no more than could be excused by my justifiable hatred of DOS in those days, but I admired the fact that Apple tried to be smart. Even, grudgingly, when System X, sorry, OS TEN, belatedly consummated our long relationship without bothering with the lube.

And of course the iPodiPhone Apple that everyone is celebrating through Steven Jobs this morning is another matter ("take iTunes. Please."), a carnival that's come to town, set up a tent next door, and gives every indication of playing that fucking calliope every night until Doomsday. I'm not a religious man, so I can only hope that that'll be the end of it, that my eternity in Gehenna Fire will not involve an endless steam of people's cat pictures shoved at me on screens the size of plover's eggs. With date stamps.

I like technology, it's just not what I want in my pocket. Apple (and Jobs) are right, and I'm wrong, in the same way that the bloated raccoon on the side of the road, with all four legs pointing to the daytime sky he never cared for, was wrong, and the speeding car was right. Even if it carried White Slavers fleeing the wrath of Greg Zoeller.

But I can't look at those Press obsequies this morning without remembering just whose side those people were on in the 90s, when Apple was the patchouli-redolent hippie in the corporate elevator, and the great Tech Wizard Forward-Looking Genius Hero was Bill Gates, the Sam Walton of software.

True, Being A Wiseass Doesn't Pay In Money, Vol. XLVII

SPEEDING geriatric bicyclist Riley while racing past two teams of Seventh Day Adventist doorknockers on his block this AM:

"You guys still here?"

Maybe Just A Breadstick, Senator?

I ♥ The Internets

You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here

IN honor of the frenzied, desperate, and doomed attempts to cap that thing in the Gulf (oh, we don't mean the massive oil spill; we mean the massive libertarian PR spew and containment operation, which led celebrity polititainment figure Sarah Palin to twit that Drill, Baby, Drill! was the one environmentally sound approach; Rush Limbaugh to suggest that Liberals should love the spill since they believe it'll cause marine life to evolve; and David Brooks' argument that since The Free Market couldn't prevent the wholly natural, and sociologically-explained, tendency of people charged with maintaining the safety of cosmically risky profit-driven ventures to begin slacking off after 48 hours without a catastrophe there's no reason the Government should try) I bravely descended my basement stairs yesterday to initiate search efforts for the Esquire Dubious Achievement Awards issue with the Great Mir Cascade. And I succeeded where all those BP engineers and flacksters failed.

For entertainment purposes only! Don't go getting any notions that we should distrust Technology Herself, nor, especially, Her dedicated mouthpieces. © 1997. used without permission:

OF COURSE, AS SPACE STATIONS GO, THAT'S A LONG TIME WITHOUT A FIRE
In February, after eleven years and sixty thousand orbits around the earth, a fire broke out aboard Russia's Mir space station, filling the main cabin with smoke and forcing the crew members to wear gas masks.

A LITTLE FIRE? NO PROBLEM, WE'LL BE FINE AS LONG AS THE GENERATORS DON'T FAIL, LEAVING US WITH ONLY A TWO-MONTH SUPPLY OF OXYGEN
In March, the generators failed aboard the Mir space station, leaving the crew with a two-month supply of oxygen.

OXYGEN GLITCH, SURE. BUT WE'LL BE FINE AS LONG AS OUR COOLING SYSTEM DOESN'T START LEAKING DANGEROUS ETHYLENE-GLYCOL
In April, Mir's cooling system started leaking dangerous ethylene-glycol.

YES, THE FUMES ARE A PROBLEM, BUT WE'LL BE FINE AS LONG AS WE DON'T COLLIDE WITH A SEVEN-TON CARGO SHIP, PUNCTURING THE HULL OF THE SPEKTR MODULE AND KNOCKING OUT MOST OR ALL OF THE SOLAR PANELS
In June, Mir collided with a seven-ton cargo ship, puncturing the hull of the Spektr module and knocking out all the solar panels.

IN A PINCH, WE CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON LAZUTKIN
In July, during an onboard repair, Mir cosmonaut Alexander Lazutkin accidentally pulled the wrong plug, shutting off all power and sending the space station into a spin.

THERE'S ALWAYS THE MAIN COMPUTER
In August, the main computer failed.

WE WILL PERSEVERE. JUST GIVE US A FEW MORE WEEKS--
In August, the crew members were replaced and sent home.

AT LEAST WE'LL GET A HERO'S WELCOME AND OUR BONUS
The Mir cosmonauts did not get a hero's welcome. They did not get their bonuses.

Your Friday Moment of Doug*

Or, the reply I shoulda made to this and didn't:

"Gee, I've wanted to do this ever since I first heard Negro music!"

___________

*Kenney, RIP, you whippersnappers. At least have the decency to read the credits the next fifteen times you watch Caddyshack.

Things I Don't Understand, Pt. Seven Billion

Erik Nelson, "The Perfect Double Bill: Zombieland and Road to Utopia". February 2

I THINK I've lived a little too long/ On the outskirts of town…. There are few moments as personally satisfying as this, which, of course, I find more than a little disturbing, in that it means a lifetime's worth of helping the Universe in its ongoing efforts to beat every last jot of irrational hope (if that's not oxymoronic) out of me has failed, or missed a spot; it really must be harder than it looks to be a Buddhist. Anyway, Nelson not only praises Bing & Bob here, but later throws Artie Shaw into the bargain.

[The Road pictures] were defining moments of the 1940s, an era that seems impossibly remote today. The Greatest Generation is remembered for storming Omaha Beach, not laughing at jesters of the republic like Abbott and Costello or Fred Allen. It seems Preston Sturges is the only comedic film artist of that era who has made the jump to those fly-in-amber Criterion box sets.

It's not exactly Nick Drake returning from the grave to chart, after I'd spent twenty years pressing his stuff into the hands of intelligent listeners who'd been too young to join the throngs which ignored him when he was alive, but for some reason it perks me up, despite the fact that the world never learned anything from that Volkswagen commercial.

So here's what I don't get:

If it's a culture crime that a decade of comedy has simply vanished from memory, a simultaneous witness for both the defense and the prosecution is Bob Hope. Here's an American comedic legend who quite simply was not funny -- at least publicly -- for 50 long years, a creative desert entered the day that principal photography was completed on Frank Tashlin's "Son of Paleface" in 1952, and left by Hope's death in 2003. This very public lack of discernible humor not only doomed Hope to critical oblivion, but may have impacted the reputations of many of his contemporaries as well.

But still.

Because, as someone who thinks 92.6% of the films which can truly be called Great are in black-and-white, I'd like to know who's watching any of 'em. Who's talking about The Thin Man? His Girl Friday? Ball of Fire? The Devil and Miss Jones? Okay, Ivan (who ain't trading no samizdat, Mr. Nelson, and in fact may be the only honest man on the internets).

I grew up with the worst of Hope--not just those phone-it-in-from-waaay-long distance teevee specials, but his vocal support of a jungle war that kept his name in Variety for something other than Call Me Bwana. But I knew at the same time that Hope had an unmatched sense of timing, at least in talkies, at least until he grew fat and comfortable and chummy with Presidents. Yeah, he coasted for thirty years or so; you get that option when the audience allows, which doesn't mean you have to take it. I just find it a little difficult to accept that today's audiences are still turned off by his middle-to-old-age reputation, which resides in that same musty corner as everything else that occurred before the vast majority of them was born. I can't think of anyone under 30 in my extended family, or my neighborhood, who could be made to sit still for a Road picture, or a screwball comedy, or an episode of The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show, for that matter. Although if someone turned them into cartoons…

And I don't know why this is, exactly. Not lack of wit, or intellect; more like a proprietary sense about CGI, and a consumerist streak that borders on Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, time marches on. Yeah, yeah, Ted Turner cornered the market. That doesn't explain why every other channel shows an endless Roadhouse loop. Y'know, the Silents don't speak to me much, either, but I made the effort to see The Passion of Joan of Arc, Metropolis, Greed, and Napoleon, and I'd count it as a personal failure, not excuse it as a cultural artifact, if I were anything less than a huge fan of Buster and Charlie. This is the cultural equivalent of the old Red Barn question: farmers say they paint barns red because that was the color the Merchantile stocked; the retailer said he stocked it because that was the color farmers asked for. You're excused if you don't really like this stuff. You're not excused for thinking Judd Apatow is the greatest comic genius ever if you didn't look first. Or thereafter, but that's another story.

Obligatory clumsy segue to Indiana politics: So "Dan Coats to challenge Evan Bayh" becomes the latest headline-borne example of how careless political writers are with minor details (Coats has essentially said he wouldn't resist having his name placed in nomination, which may be as good as a wink to a blind camel, but it's not the fucking same, is it?). So in the space of a couple weeks we've gone from the Massachusetts election, to the Indiana Republican party deciding that made Fidel Bayh vulnerable, to them "proving" it with a Mike Pence poll, to every legitimate Indiana Republican contender immediately declining to run or talking his wife into getting temporary cancer--unless you count John "Concealed Weapon" Hostettler as legitimate--to the party somehow dredging up the only Indiana Senator since sleeve garters with an emptier legislative resume than Bayh himself. Sometimes you can get the vague impression that none of these people really means what he says. And despite the potential contest of Chamber of Commerce Hairdo vs. Mr. Beige-on-Beige Interior, it's actually started off pretty well, from an entertainment point of view, with state Democrats officially welcoming Coats back to Indiana (he's been living in Virginia), and the GOP making noises about running against "Mr. and Mrs. Bayh," which I hope they will, as it'll be a little hard for ol' Ev to blame that one on Leftists.

Friday Olio: Not Funny

• Kee-rist, why do I know there is something out there called (something like) The Co-Co Army, and how is it anyone could possibly care what Conan O'Brien does? He got shafted by NBC and Leno. And as a result he walks off with a king's ransom. Find someone with real problems to care about.

It might be different if he was funny, but as far as I can tell, some suit told him in 1993 that they saw him as an edgier Steve Allen, and it stuck. I've never seen the man when anything he did didn't come with calculation marks all over it. It's like watching SNL, circa 1976, and learning that Belushi has demanded they do nothing but Bee skits.

• I happened upon Letterman last night while I was trying to find something to accompany bicycling. He was busy slagging Carson Daly and Jay Leno. Not funny slagging, either; just meanness. Which I'm all for, except what possible reason would anyone have to be rude about Carson Fucking Daly? It's like starting a feud with the woman at the grocery store who refills the lotto ticket dispenser.

Look, David, we'll always have Clover Power, and it's not like I've been part of your audience the last fifteen years or so, but th' fuck? If you're not even going to try to be funny at least let the audience smoke dope openly so we'll know why they're howling at this shit.

• This reminded me that last weekend my neighbor forced us to take home his copy of The Hangover, the comedy sensation of the summer, and, being not merely a vocational salesman but a congenitally avocational one, prefaced the handoff with "Do you guys wanna go home and laugh your asses off?" I was tempted to respond, "Hey, I've got The Comedians of Comedy on disc. Want me to bring that over so you can stare uncomfortably at Zach Galifianakis' stand-up for two hours?"

I didn't, and it would have been unfair--he's not unintelligent, for a Republican, and a very funny guy--he might even know Galifianakis' stand-up, and it's possible I will laugh my ass off at The Hangover, although it's also possible I will finish reading the Great Works of Western Civ first, since I have only about 5000 to go.

I said this before, but you go through their rather extensive DVD collection and there's every piece of wildly popular trash of the last twenty years. I'm long past trying to understand this, but it does have the saving grace that, as middle-class Middle American Republicans they're supposed to hate Hollywood with a passion, and they're the ones keeping it afloat. (And, again, while the aesthetic portion of my attitude dates to being a high-school know-it-all, my one practical lesson, which scarred me for life, is the fault of George Lucas, the general population of Indianapolis, and my dick, not necessarily in that order. I squired a remarkably Amazonian Bible College freshman to a first-run showing of Star Wars, at her request, and the hooting, clapping, hissing, booing, and foot-stomping of the crowd, which suggested it had more in common with the slack-jawed audience of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, or possibly the hayseeds of the 20s who thought William S. Hart and Tom Mix were actually killing actual Injuns, or that players who walked off-screen could be located in the appropriate wing, than it did a crowd of people which had recently lived through a rash of political assassinations, the forcible and violent defense of Jim Crow, and the public disgracing of a petty thug and felon who was simultaneously their President, left me speechless. I'd'a walked out within ten minutes, but my dick decided to stay. The number of times I have ventured into a public theatre since then without first confirming that the flick in question was subtitled you can count on any other appendage.)

• Not only that, but for some reason, probably my Poor Wife's remote habits, I not only know that Tiger Woods is in rehab--and if you can rehab "being a wealthy, attractive celebrity who likes to fuck" then I guess the nation's Strategic Celebrity Rehab Capacity is a tad excessive--but that he's been allowed to bring in help to clean his toilet, something lesser celebrity poon-hounds apparently are forced to do for themselves. How fucking hard is it to clean a toilet? How fucking far gone do you have to be that you simply must have someone else do it? Isn't that goddam pendulum supposed to swing back at some point, and some generation of American citizens, force-fed this crap from infancy, to take umbrage?

• And local news last night, of the Channel 8 variety, took forty minutes to get to anything that might possibly have resembled news, because they were busy doing live remotes from a Colts Pep Rally. I believe those of us who didn't care to attend were allowed to take an extra period of study hall in the cafeteria. At any rate, the one bit of "news" they did cram into the first half-hour was the exciting word--it excited them no end, at any rate--that ion-battery producer EnerDel is set to open a new plant in Hancock county, creating 500 new jobs, and all thanks to Mitch Daniels and Indiana's business-friendly environment, according to the EnerDel mouthpiece 8 quoted.

Well, they seem to've left out a couple of small details. Like the fact that zoning hasn't been approved, not that the rights of local governments would stop the Bantam Menace from fluffing the story at a presser. Jes' to help move the process along, y'know. Or that EnerDel at this point seems to be largely floating on a sea of Federal loans and grants. Or that the last deal resulted in fewer jobs than promised. Or that there's apparently no financing secured for the new one. Or, y'know, that Indiana's business-friendly environment has had it hemorrhaging jobs the past two years at a higher-than-national average. Success! Jobs! More corporate political contributions so we might be running campaign ads from this April to November, 2012!

There's not even any sense that they should try to hide this stuff anymore, which leads me to believe Depressing The Fuck Out Of Anyone With Reading Comprehension has always been Job 1.

Fun With Matrimony, Television, and Heroin, Vol. VIII

SO the Poor Wife and I were watching the idiot box, and one of those Deeply Caring Pharmaceutical Giant commercials comes on, this one for Alzheimer's, which is, in a way, the Cigarette of illness plugging, since they've got to get to you while you're still young, though of course the scale has slid. And so the suitably grey-haired but not superannuated woman is missing her keys, and just can't remember where she might have put them. The matter obviously troubles her deeply. Husband is informed. Husband opens the refrigerator. Keys are inside. Knowing look at helpmeet, still addled. Cue piano.

DR: So that's where I left 'em!

PW: Well, at least there'll be a light on when you go looking for them.

(And look: I rarely lose my keys, anymore, because for the first twenty years of my driving career they could be anywhere. My glasses are a little different story (though still much better than my youth) since I occasionally take 'em off outside for close-up work--I'll never get the hang of bifocals--or put 'em on the wrong shelf when I take a shower, and they'll stay lost until I retrace my steps. If only I would lose things in the fridge! At least you're guaranteed to look in there six or seven times before bed.)

Local news returns, with a story warning parents that their children could be on the smack! It's illustrated with a still of a twisted-off corner of a baggie, filled with white powder, beside a shiny Roosevelt dime.

PW: What's that dime doing there?

DR: It's for scale.

PW: What scale? You mean if you found an ounce and a half of white powder in your kid's pocket you'd decide it was nothing, because the bag was too big?

DR: Okay. Then it's metaphoric. It was a dime bag.

PW: So, what? they couldn't work a horse into the picture too?

(Which reminds me: the news hairdos also notified us this week that Bayer, once a proud member of the fine IG Farben family, was sending samples of its new powdered headache reliever through the mails, so listeners were instructed to relax their steady Homeland vigilance for the nonce, as it is trumped by the Profit Motive. Besides, being so tense all the time can lead to headaches and muscle tension, and where would you turn? These are the same people who went full metal apeshit over shampoo bombs a couple years back.)

They Think The Blurting May Be A Mild Form Of Tourette's

"Dunno, but last I checked, no one's announced that the White House is booked and won't be ready for occupancy on Monday."

--James "Jimbo" Riley, responding to his wife's question about what was in the news today, then hoping he wasn't giving anybody ideas.

The Blackwater T-Shirt Is A Nice Touch, Though

Feds Raid Culver City Medical Marihuana Dispensary

Like I always say, never sell to a man with a soul patch and an Uzi belted to his leg.  Unless you're selling Rush tickets.

UPDATE: 

rageahol said...
thats not an uzi, thats a plain ol standard issue glock, old guy.

Riley replies:

1) I actually considered putting a disclaimer up there to begin with, but I decided to let it go. 2) Generally speaking, "Uzi" is funny; "Glock" is not. 3) Riley has little if any use for gun culture, but knows enough about weapons not to have blown his fucking hand off. 4) Correctly identifying the weapon in question would have made him sound at least minimally knowledgeable, a condition to be avoided on several counts.  5) His eyesight has always been bad, but it's not that bad, yet. 6) The joke, such as it is, rests (or wobbles) on the three points of what a carnival pitchman might call his tripes:  a) that it is something I always say, making "Uzi" the appropriate period reference, and "Glock" an anachronism; b) that that great honking velcro holster contraption makes the man look like he strapped on a fucking howitzer in order to do battle with some aging hippies.  With glaucoma, no less; and c) the always risible dichotomy between the hipster accoutrements of the undercover cop and the ultimate display of the true cop mentality, wherein the frisson of the suggestion that one would attempt to make a "Buy", as they say on the street, of a little harmless weed while displaying a shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon on one's hip plays against the real-life frisson that, at least in retrospect, the soul patch is no less of a giveaway.  7) Similarly, I might have ignored the weapon altogether and said something like, "It proves the old adage, 'Never sell weed to that guy from Extreme who fronted Van Halen for six weeks", but, really, it's probably wisest at my age that I avoid cultural references altogether.  Rush was a leap.

SECOND THOUGHT:  If anyone wants to put up the money, I'll bet "DEA Evidence" boxes would be a big Xmas item in certain markets.

Commercial Break

Fun With Monogamy, Vol. MCCXLV

WE are, you may know already, regular viewers of Jeopardy! chez Riley, which out of convenience has evolved frequently to include the end of Wheel of Fortune, in which the Winner of that day's competition gets to solve one more puzzle for a fabulous prize, determined by yet another wheel spin. And this week there's some sort of tag-team competition going on, with two contestants in the place of one, and the two gentlemen solved the Prize Puzzle, and the envelope was opened to reveal they'd won a pair of Buick Enclaves!, which Buick describes as a "luxury crossover vehicle", and which I described, from the accompanying promotional video, as probably among the Top 15% of ugly vehicles on American roadways, no small achievement.

ME: A pair of Enclaves! There oughta be a collective noun for that.

PW: How about "Effrontery"?

Mild Suburban Amusements, Vol. XVI

THIS morning just after seven there's a pounding on the back door which can mean only one thing:  I've forgotten to latch the gate again, and Parker, the praeternaturally garrulous five-year-old from next door has gotten into the yard like a gulp of magpies.  

PG5:  Keats (the neighbor's cat) is under your car and she (he, actually) won't come out!

DR: Parker, would you poke a hibernating bear with a stick? *

PG5: No.

DR:  Well, you are.

______________

* Exchange shortened for comic effect; it's necessary to repeat any question put to him six times at increasing volume levels just to get him to stop talking long enough to hear you.

Fun With Monogamy, Vol. LXXI

NBC News teaser: "Plus, John McCain makes an unscheduled visit to Baghdad..."

Me: Unscheduled? Th' fuck? Just last year he walked through that market practically unaccompanied, and now he has to go in unannounced?

PW: He probably thought they'd raise prices if they knew he was coming.

The Guy Is Almost As Funny As Rod Dreher