10. In protest of CBS, stopped trying to be funny in 1997, no one noticed.

9. After quintuple bypass surgery, discovered that he had no heart!

8. Misplaced humor bit “Big Ass Ham” found in his pants!

7. Still has violent stomach reaction to Doritos.

6. Used to play to college students, now prefers to play WITH them.

5. Got big laughs dropping watermelons from towers, now tries dropping bombs in his monologue.

4. Obama, Uma. Uma Obama! Ha ha ha ha, yeagh.

3. Primetime? Forget it CSI Topeka is on.

2. Lowest rated CBS show? Two words, Katie Couric!

1. Used to mentor Conan O’Brian, now gets schooled by him.

Letterman could not have expected the firestorm that he ignited by taking on the Palins on the occasion of their trip to New York.

In case you haven’t seen this yet. Here he is doing his usual schtick which became unfunny sometime after I graduated college. Whether the loss of amusement was due to him losing his edge or me no longer smoking pot, we may never know.

Well, the pitbull removed her lipstick and took a bite out of Letterman. It culminated this morning with Palin’s appearance on the Today show.

In my opinion, if he wasn’t so self-admittedly in the bag for Obama, this joke probably wouldn’t have sparked the outrage it did. It is the comedian’s role to make fun of public figures, but since he took Obama off the table, the attack on the Palins seem more partisan and gratuitous.

The attributed source of the outrage was the Alex Rodriguez/Willow Palin joke which was certainly in bad taste and did cross the line. But I’m not sure that the joke alone would have led to the same level of outrage.

By taking sides, Letterman appears to delve into mean spirited partisan politics.

That’s my opinion. Yours?

Come, my turtle dove.   Let us jet off to New Yawk, so that we may dance lightly in our carbon footprint and hate on whitey:

President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama landed in New York Saturday afternoon, and after taking a helicopter from JFK into Manhattan, drove up the West Side Highway, where the northbound lanes were shut down by police for their visit, past Ground Zero, into the Village for dinner at the Village’s Blue Hill restaurant. From there, they went north to Times Square, where they went to to see a production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Belasco Theater on West 44 Street.

“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is your typical black person’s romantic drama.  Set against the backdrop of emancipated slaves fleeing the racist South (as if there’s some other “South”), nothing’s mo’ entertaining than an evening of ebonified steppin’ and fetchit dialogue.  A lead character who’s been sexually emasculated by The Man ™ and railroaded by his justice system, whose wife (cast to the winds of diaspora) decided to move on with her life cause she got tired of waiting on him to get out of jail, the only white character is a Jewish former slave trader who sows mistrust between black folk and everything works out thanks to one character who never forgot his black magic witchcraft roots:

Scene Five- In the final scene Loomis and Zonia leave the boardinghouse as it is Saturday. Bertha tells Mattie that all she needs in life is love and laughing- which they all start to do. Then Martha Pentecost [Loomis] enters with Selig looking for Loomis and Zonia. Loomis reenters with Zonia and he recounts the last decade of his life; his search for her and the heartache it has caused him. Martha tells him that she has moved on with her life because she couldn’t wait for him any longer. Martha also reveals that she had Bynum put a binding spell on her and Zonia and that is why they have come to find each other. Loomis goes into a rage and pulls out a knife. He denounces his Christian background and slashes his chest. The stage directions read “Having found his song, the song of self-sufficiency, fully resurrected, cleansed and given breath, free from any encumbrance other than the workings of his own heart and the bonds of the flesh, having accepted the responsibility for his own presence in the world, he is free to soar above the environs that weighed and pushed his spirit into terrifying contractions.” He leaves and the play ends with Bynum yelling “Herald Loomis, you shining! You shining like new money!”

How do you top that?  Protagonist finds spiritual redemption by cutting his chest with a knife (in some iterations he then smears his blood all over his face), renounces his Christian faith and abandons his former wife and daughter to the delusion of Whitey’s God.  What an odd entertainment choice for this President.

Lawdy!  I don’t think Jeremiah Wright could have said it any better.  Now put your shiny, new money in the offering plate and pass it down for the greater good.

RELATED: For criticizing this expensive, one-off trip, noted Huffin’ Glue Poster and Lightworker aficionado Mark Morford sez Rush Limbaugh has depraved gay sexual fantasies about children.  Always a classy outlet that Huffin’ Glue Post is.

To recap, saying Sotomayor’s membership in “La Raza” and comments about being able to make better decsions because of her race = You’re the racist.   Criticizing a gratuitous, climate-harming jaunt to watch a racist play means you’re a child-hungry pedophile = good clean fun!

Check out this summer replacement series coming to ABC this May.

Debbie Schussel says:

Full disclosure – I thought Beavis and Butthead was completely lame, so I didn’t care much for Judge. Office Space began to change my perception and after watching Idiocracy (at Brian’s recommendation), I’ve gained all kinds of respect for Mike Judge.

Bonus! A drinking game for Swamp Rabbit and other interested participants. Every time you find a hostile review blasting this show for it’s stereotyping and cliches, take a drink. If you find that the same reviewer really liked a show or movie that played on redneck, Christian or any other conservative stereotypes, drink the whole dang bottle, I’ll buy you a new one.

In honor of the new Star Trek movie opening tommorow, there is a great discussion of the worst and best Trek films over at Big Hollywood.

Head over to the comments and leave your two cents. Or, be a grown up and just skip it. That lawn won’t mow itself.

He really should have thought twice before reminding us that he existed by vomiting forth more idiocy in Vanity Fair.

Thank goodness bankrupting the country doesn’t qualify as a “disaster”. Luckily, the job market is always flush with openings for bad adolescent poets. Give me Keith Morris any day.

Actually, there are a lot of people in America pissed off about the current economic crisis, you just don’t like our views (limited government, self-determination, support of the U.S. Constitution, strong national defense, the list goes on). And the way you respond to the average Americans who are involved in this grass-roots movement demonstrates that you’re the same bitter, ignorant, little pimple-faced twat who eventually had to bulk up into a steroid rage to prove your manhood.

I guess times are tough over at Vanity Fair if this is the best they can do. Hopefully it’s an unpaid internship for old H.R.

h/t Rob

Let me preface this by saying that I rely on the work done by the good people at Newsbusters and the Media Research Center. Having said that, Brent Bozell’s latest screed against South Park underscores the increasingly hardline school of old conservatives against the new regime that enjoys griping about them darned younguns’ who don’t appreciate the rich, moral fiber of Wilford Brimley. Though Bozell’s jihad against Parker and Stone’s ribald satire is nothing new, his latest jeremiad in defense of the axis of the Chicom enabling Disney Corp. and the bland Jonas Brothers  (of all people and all corporations) warrants an apology or at least a STFU:

But for Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the perennial ninth graders behind “South Park,” everything is a sick joke, especially abstinence until marriage. To them, no one could seriously advocate that position and live by it. In their typical crayon-scribble plot, the Jonas Brothers wore purity rings only as a corporate scam run by Disney, so they could “sell sex” to pre-pubescent grade-school girls. The dictatorial CEO of Disney was of course, Mickey Mouse, who screamed profanities and beat up one of the Jonas boys until his nose bled for threatening not to make the purity-ring pitch.

Our “heroes” from South Park eventually exposed Mickey Mouse and his plot, turning up the microphone at the concert hall as Mickey sneered backstage that he makes money when little girls are sexually aroused, and “little girls are f—ing stupid. The purity rings make it OK for me to do whatever I want! Even the Christians are too f—ing stupid to figure out I’m selling sex to their daughters. I’ve made billions off Christian ignorance for decades now. And do you know why? Because Christians are retarded. They believe in a talking dead guy.”

What part of that isn’t true?  (more…)

Andrew Breitbart goes into the bowels of hell (legendary short man Bill Maher’s presence) and learns first hand how leftists frame arguments in such a fashion to shut down debate by shouting “racism!”

Additional clips here.

Dicentra over at the PW Pub actually lays out some transcripts from the video.

This is a great lesson in how liberal filibustering and Breitbart is spot on with this comment:

They pull out the “have you stopped beating your wife?” argument from the very beginning in hopes of stopping the debate immediately. When that fails, they just run their stupid mouths to ensure that an opposing viewpoint is not allowed airtime. Why do you think they want the new-and-improved fairness doctrine so badly?

I have to give Breitbart credit for taking them on, but after so much of the same thing time-after-time, isn’t it a waste of time and energy?

via Jeff G

UPDATE: Andrew explains. Thanks to Gabriel for the link.

Well, this was an embarassing watch. Bulldog Jim Cramer tucks tail and lets Jon Stewart lecture him on CNBC’s complicity in the finanicial meltdown. The video is at the link.

I would have expected a bit more of a fight and for Cramer to be a little less contrite. As it was, every time Cramer knuckled under, it opened Stewart up to issue an awkward admonition.

Honestly, I haven’t been following the Cramer/Stewart feud and am not even sure whether The Daily Show has a good point. But Stewart playing the “fake news” show complete with the pathetic fan applause lines simultaneously with media watchdog just doesn’t work.

UPDATE:

There has been some great discussion about Jon Stewart in the comments. Let me add my additional two cents worth.

I saw Stewart Live a couple of years ago and he is a very funny comedian. Others have noted that as a political commentator, he is like Maher, sacrificing funny for a cheap shot that gets his moronic audience into a frenzy.

Here is one reason his show is painfully unfunny – this snarky chucklehead.

Bylined in the free subway rag* with Elliott Kalan is a writer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” This clown is so irrelevant, he is still digging for material from the previous administration.

How he got a job writing for television instead of posting at Daily Kos is beyond me.

* In fairness, they do have a great Sudoku puzzle.

Who knew?

For seven years, MOVIEGUIDE® has been looking at the political content of the Top 250 English-language movies that open nationally each year in the United States. An examination of the domestic box office averages for movies promoting an unabashedly socialist or Communist viewpoint shows that such movies averaged only about $15.5 million and $7 million per movie from 2002 through 2008.

2008 boxoffice receipts prove this point.

… movies released in 2008 coming from a more liberal or leftist sensibility (including Steven Soderbergh’s movie honoring Che Guevara, “Mamma Mia!” and Bill Maher’s “Religulous”) averaged only $11.4 million at the box office, but that movies with more conservative content, including the new Indiana Jones movie where the villain is a spy from the Soviet Union, “Prince Caspian” and the Christian movie “Fireproof,” which attacked the porn industry, averaged $81.2 million.

The question remains, why can’t conservatives create an alternative to Hollywood?

Sure The Omega Code was a turd, but you can’t hold that against us forever.

Maybe it’s these times, I dunno.  But I could really go for some Cox & Forkum right now.  Michael Ramirez, Eric Allie and even Zack Rawsthorne are great in their absence but with all the craziness going on right now I just know C&F could be bumping some knock out material.

Oh My Gawd!!

Tony is a double-top-secret agent!!

And Chloe is back!

Woo hoo!

Jack has gone rogue!!!!!!!

Like the lemming that I am, I admit to contributing an extra $20 to the pot that has already earned close to $100 million dollars in the 9 days since ‘Marley & Me’ was released.   At the screening I saw at Green Hills last night, the theater was so packed that the ushers were re-seating people to make room for everyone looking for a spot.

Sorry if we’re not licking the ‘Milk’ out of your saucer, Hollywood.

It is a testament to the nature of the American people that they would freely give up a hundred large for a mawkish send-up cynically and laboriously designed to pluck at your heart strings.

This is what makes our culture different from the Islamic ones.  We care more about our dogs than they care about their children.

I’m not going to go into any spoilers here like I usually would.  (more…)

This one comes from The Boston Herald.  *Groan*

And by *groan* I mean in a stomach turning way, not *groan* in a fit of toe-curling, homosexual ecstasy kind of way.  I guess it could be both.

“Sean Penn Cream Of Crop As ‘Milk’”

Geez guys,  please tell me you didn’t see that one coming.

RELATED:  Chinese detain tainted milk activist.

I’ve been completely happy with my Zune until about 2 am this morning. That was roughly around the time that every first generation 30GB Zune in the world froze up with no foreseeable fix in sight outside of a hard reset.   Z2K9 – here we come!

An unidentified software bug has affected 30GB first generation versions of the Microsoft Zune digital media player.

The company appears baffled by the cause but on its website said it is aware of the problem and is working to correct it.

The problem is apparently a worldwide one with customers reporting their devices freeze when booted.

Let’s not confuse “appears baffled” with “pantshittingly retarded”.

Quote one expert:

“I’ve never heard of a consumer electronic device fail en masse like this,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a Seattle-based research firm that focuses on the software giant.

Rosoff estimated that as many as one million people may have been affected by the glitch, which disabled the original 30 gigabyte Zune players.

Never again, MicroStank.  This the Corvair of the Digital Age and unsafe at any speed.

Due to your complete inability to produce a media player untainted by the foul stench of your software failures, I will never buy one of these again and will likely choose a Mac or a Linux OS in the future for all future desktops or laptops.

Congratulations on another successful PR campaign, doucherags.  Z2K9, indeed.

Not one just to bitch and moan, I’m all about solutions:

A)  You can bite the bullet and trade these out for new models of the same size.

B)  Sub out the repair to local outlets like Best Buy.

C) Overnight the tiny screwdriver kit to remove the case to everyone responding on your website with directions for the hard reset.  Not even my eyeglass screwdriver is small enough to fit these screws.

D)  Eat the peanuts out of my crap.

The choice is yours.

Cranky gloats in the comments.  What can I say?  We didn’t listen!

Blank Zune templates after the jump.  Just do a “Save As” and  Photoshop your own idea of what a real frozen Zune screen should look like and I’ll post them (send to -b-dot-mcmurphy-at-yah00000!-dot-com).

Micro Soft On Quality Update: Allegedly this time freeing feature of the Zune will work itself out at the stroke of midnight.  In other words, “don’t just do something – sit there!”*

Yay.  Just in time for everybody to go home.

Another wonderful bit of tech advice from the people who never met a problem that powering down your system and restarting couldn’t fix.

(more…)

Will suffers, so do you.

One second you’re entertaining an audience of thousands, the next you’re becoming a sliced cucumber courtesy of a human Salad Shooter.

This is why you go to Cirque du Soleil:

ILLUSIONIST David Copperfield’s assistant has been accidentally sucked into the vortex of an oversized fan before a horrified audience.

A technician named Brandon was accidentally pulled into the vortex of the fan on stage of Copperfield’s An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

Now that’s what I call “intimate”.

IMPORTANT UPDATE!! Who knew that there was a Cranky Movie reviewer out there? Certainly not me. But his kind team of lawyers informed me*. So from this point on, movie reviews will either be known as “The Cranky Neocon movie review” or “Buffet Bitz” or some other insipid thingee.

* Not true. But I was contacted in a non-threatening fashion.

Original post begins below

Before I get into it, know that I suck as a movie critic. Most of my reactions are either “Awesome, you gotta see it!” or “pass me another mini-bottle of Smirnoff, Sweetie”.

However, I just got done seeing Changeling and just have to brain dump. The film is Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial project and he just seems to be improving with age. The story itself is an adaptation of the real-life case which took place in 1920′s Los Angeles. Angelina Jolie’s character, Christine Collins returns from work to find her son abducted. The Los Angeles police find a boy who claims to be her missing son, Walter. Problem is, he isn’t and the police want the case closed lest it create an embarrassment. Her protestations land her in an insane asylum.

So far, you have seen all this in the previews, but if I go any further, we’re venturing into spoiler territory.

Since this a caustic conservative site, let’s get into the political and social aspects.

The Los Angeles police department was especially corrupt during this period (and again at times I’m sure). I re-discovered my appreciation for a free press that can and does blow the whistle on gross corruption. Where they are now is a mystery unless you’re Joe the Plumber. But to imagine yourself at the mercy of a government which is out to silence you. That creepy thought is enough to bring the suppressed liberal out of you. The good kind of liberal, I need to stress. Streisand, Obama and Schumer can still kiss my tushie.

Lest you think me getting soft, however, the movie also reaffirms, clearly, the necessity of the death penalty. In what must be an anachronism, a villain is sentenced to death and it is carried out within a couple of years. Did I mention the movie is set in California? The bad guy doesn’t even get to write a book or recite resistance poetry!

This movie won’t leave you feeling all perky, but it won’t depress the hell out of you either. If you’re inlined to however, you and your friends might go to the Denny’s and discuss it until 1:30 am. It’s that kind of film.

My $10 movie budget usually goes to movies where stuff gets magnificently blown up and bad guys die – in space preferably. But I’m going to really recommend this film. I think it might be Oscar worthy, but I did see a trailer about the murdered homosexual politician, Harvey Milk. It stars Sean Penn so I think this year’s Oscar is already spoken for.

As a geek goodie, the story is written by J. Michael Straczynski who wrote the most excellent Babylon 5 series. Straczynski, has moved onto greater things and it shows.

I know the election season has us all wound up tighter than a patronage job in the Chicago Machine. So it’s time to loosen up and forget about politics for a while.

Perhaps to forget the vitriol, you should consider taking your little progeny for some entertainment and unrealistic idealization of four years of their life which will never live up to glorified imagery presented by the Disney Corporation.

That’s right, take them to see High School Musical 3 this weekend!

Included for your convenience is a handy guide to maximize your fun! CrankyKid and I have prepared this for you!
(more…)

Sure.  She’s going to kick Sarah Palin’s ass.  Pick on somebody your own age, Granny:

Madonna is building an extraordinary divorce case against Guy Ritchie, claiming he was a cruel and verbally-abusive husband who would belittle and ridicule her in front of others.

Riiiight.  This is coming from someone who made a career of prancing around on stage in bondage and sado-masochistic outfits for over a quarter of a century.

Lawyers for the singer, who was widely believed to be the dominant partner in the marriage, are putting together a dossier of incidents.

They include allegations that he told her she ‘looked like a granny’ on stage compared with her younger backing dancers. He is also alleged to have declared that she could not act, and was ‘past it’ after she turned 50.

Naaaw, honey.  When your worldwide tour is being sponsored by Metamucil and Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice you are still hotter than those flashes you got when you went through menopause in the early 90s.  The proof is in the tapioca pudding.

I’m not saying Madonna looks old.  It’s just the ADA accessible ramp to her sex swing that makes her look old belies her mature sensuality.

But he “alleged to have declared that she could not act”.  He did?  I think she’s confusing him with Robert Ebert who said of “Body of Evidence”:

The movie stars Madonna, who after “Bloodhounds of Broadway,” “Shanghai Surprise” and “Who’s That Girl?” now nails down her title as the queen of movies that were bad ideas right from the beginning. She plays a kinky dominatrix involved in ingenious and hazardous sex with an aging millionaire who has a bad heart.

Life imitating art I say.   Or maybe it was when the New York Times reviewed Shanghai Surprise:

THE nicest thing about ”Shanghai Surprise,” the widely publicized washout starring Madonna and Sean Penn, is that you can watch it in near-total privacy.

Ahh..Mrs. Madonna Ciccone-Spicoli-Ritchie, we wish we hardly knew ye – if I may speak in Olde English through a megaphone so that you could hear me.

Good luck with the divorce, Guy.  Go ahead and buy a metal detector so you can dig up the millions she buried underneath the house in mason jars like she did after the Great Depression.

I’m not sure if it is because I went in to the movie with lowered expectations or raised blood alcohol* or none of the above, but I throughly enjoyed An American Carol.

Apparently, Carol had a much more limited release than other movies this weekend. I don’t know why this was surprising to me. But since the three neighborhood theaters didn’t screen it, we took a modest 17 mile trek.

The other surprise was the demographic that came out to see it. Except for one family with kids, which skewed the average age downward, the typical attendee was going into menopause around the time Lloyd Bridges picked the wrong week to stop huffing glue. Perhaps it was because of the way the movie was promoted on conservative radio. Sean Hannity did do some live-spot commercials for it.

The movie itself was effective because it cleverly used the Christmas Carol story line to get its point across. By design, the Carol storyline is “preachy”. But because the movie spoke to my political and social sensibilities I didn’t find it particularly heavy-handed or jingoistic. A sincere liberal, on the other hand, might have heard nothing but fingernails on the chalkboard for 90 minutes.

The laugh out loud highlights were the visit to a student protest at Columbia University that included a musical number performed by tenured professors pining for 1968 and the Moovealong.org film awards ceremony.

Bill O’Reilly’s cameos were clever, but were very unconvincing. He didn’t shout down Rosie O’Connell during the movie’s “Factor” scene. That was complete bull.

After the film, it dawned on me that this probably was David Zucker’s first attempt to write a film where the storyline was more than just a vehicle for hanging sight gags. There was some really good dialogue in this film, especially as Patton tried to educate Michael Malone. It was co-written with Myrna Solokoff, so perhaps the depth came from her hand.

You really should see this movie for yourself. Five Meats out of Six.

*One Martini. Drink in moderation, kids. And if you have too much, use a designated driver.

I’m sure glad that evil Rethuglicans are the only ones who ramp up their voter base using fear. Isn’t that we’re always told?

I got the following press release at one of my other e-mail addresses from the braintrust of P-Diddy, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige and Kevin Liles. If you add the collective I.Q.s of these four fine “artists” you might break 100. But I doubt it.

E-mail re-printed unedited for your enjoyment after the jump.

(more…)

Imagine – An awkward Father’s Day card.

Quite possibly like Jersey Girl or The Legend of Bagger Vance.*

Scary stuff.

OUT OF FRAME: in real-life Damon’s strings are pulled by Howard Zinn.

People like me. Well, er.  Hm. Eh.

You and me and Teddy makes three.

Quote Of The Day:

“Paul (Wellstone) was always someone concerned about vets, especially homeless vets — the men and women who fell through the cracks,” he said. “I want to continue that.”