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Trump vs. Mueller: The Interview
First of all, congratulations on reading. Itās a dying art, like soap making, or scrimshaw, or critical thinking. These are all dying arts. I knew a girl who made psychedelic T-shirts to sell at Phish shows, but that was more of a dye-ing art. Did I have to start this column with a pun? āOh yeah!ā And I say āOh Yeah!ā just like the Kool-aid man. You know the Kool-aid man, right? I like his style, smashing through the wall of your house and doing thousands of dollars in structural damage and creating an insurance nightmare that will drag on for months. Not sure how a somehow sentient being who is made of glass and liquid can smash through concrete, but thatās the way it is. Never underestimate the power of sugar, I guess. And what was the deal that his face was made only of condensation? That sounds like a hellish existence, Iād probably be insane enough to try to commit suicide by smashing my glass body into cinder blocks and cement too.
Second, thanks for reading my column, youāre clearly a person of virtue and accomplishment, destined for greatness and getting lots of hot sex along the way.
Letās get into it. One way or another, Trump is going to sit down with Robert Mueller. And we here at The Satire Day Evening Post, in cooperation with the RADIOLEARY Broadcasting Podcasting Association, have spent enormous amounts of federal grant money (that would have otherwise gone to the needy and blind) in order to research and predict the outcome of this interview. Using predictive algorithms and analytic software designed with reverse-engineered alien technology from flying saucer crash-site retrievals, along with a veritable army of prognosticators, dowsers, gypsy witches, remote viewers, seers, visionaries, mediums, extra-larges, sooth-sayers, shamans, telephone psychics, peyote salesmen, and fortune cookie authors, we have what we feel to be a complete and 100% accurate transcript of the Robert Mueller Donald Trump interview.
So look into the future with us, and someday soon weāll say, āHey, it wasnāt that far off.ā
MUELLER: Mr. President, I want to thank you for coming here today to answer some questions. You had stated publicly many times how you looked forward to speaking to me under oath, and here we are. And all it took was an invitation. Followed by a Grand Jury subpoena. Followed by 11 months of litigation, and a year of well-orchestrated media attacks on me personally, attacks on the integrity of the Russia investigation in general, and the entire FBI and Justice Department.
TRUMP: It was my pleasure.
MUELLER: Now, I know that your legal advisers were worried this interview would be some sort of a āperjury trapā, but I assure you we just have some straightforward, simple questions we hope you can answer for us. Weāre not looking to trick you or trap you in any way. Now, if you could just state your name for the record, please?
TRUMP: Yes, My name is Donald Trump and Iām guilty of treason.
MUELLER: Wait...What? May I remind you youāre under oath?
TRUMP: Oh right. My bad. Can I get a do-over on that one? Iām calling a mulligan.
MUELLER: Look, I.. okay, sure. Fine, whatever. Could you please state your name for the record?
TRUMP: My name is Donald J. Trump. And Iām guilty of treason. See, I almost forget the āJ.ā there for a minute. They told me you were tricky, but you canāt trip me up that easily, Iām a stable genius. You have to get up pretty early in the morning, if you want to see my insane Twitter rants. Okay, thatās take two, make sure you use take two, when is this episode going to air? I hope itās sweeps week.
MUELLER: Did.. did you just say youāre guilty of treason?
TRUMP: Yep. They told me this interview was a perjury trap, that youād try to get me to lie under oath, but Iām too smart for you. Iām like, an intelligent person. And Iām guilty of treason. Not lying. You can check. I am so completely guilty.
I committed treasonous acts against the United States and the people of the United States, I engaged in a criminal enterprise and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and Iāve served as a puppet dictator for a foreign power adversary. So by the U.S. military code of justice, Iām facing some very serious charges. Iām a baaad hombre. A tremendously bad hombre.
And I probably shouldnāt say this, butā¦ I know where the Lindbergh babyās buried. Hey, I didnāt kill it, I was just a boy at the time it happened. My dad killed it and I just held the ladder. It was a good thing I was there to hold the ladder or that baby might have fallen!
I probably shouldnāt have said that last part, but the lawyers said I couldnāt lie. Youāre not going to trip me up that easily, Fox Mulder.
MUELLER: Iām former FBI head Bob Mueller, Mr. President, not Fox Mulder from the X-files.
TRUMP: Oh thank God itās not Fox Mulder! That guy is really good with conspiracies! You mean Iāve been sweating it all this time for some guy named Bob Mueller? I donāt know who that is. Iāve never seen him on any shows, and I watch a lot of TV. I mean a truly amazing and tremendous amount of TV. Well, that explains why I havenāt seen Scully. Sheās smart and sexy, like my daughter. The hot one, I mean.
But Fox Mulder? You know, it seems tio me that if Mulder just got on the internet for a few minutes, he could look up the information for himself and see that flying saucers are real. Because thereās like, three thousand physical trace evidence cases of UFOs that have been investigated and documented. And tens of millions of first-hand eyewitness statements and testimony, photographs, film and video, radar recordings, and Pentagon releases of classified military incidents and encounters with UFOs.
And I guess somehow this Mulder guy, who is supposed to be the FBI agent in charge of all this UFO stuff, somehow missed that in 2002 The French government, one of our most trusted NATO allies, released a position paper from the Defense Ministry that concluded that UFOs are extremely advanced extraterrestrial technology that poses a serious threat to national and world security, a threat that can violate our airspace at will, and for which we have no defense. But Mulder? Heās got a poster on the wall in his office that says āI WANT TO BELIEVEā. Heās more incompetent and unqualified for the job than I am!
Anyway, Mueller is it? Nice to meet you, Mr. Mueller, Iām guilty of treason. Extremely, very guilty of treason. You know, Iāve still got the gun I killed JFK with. Me and Ted Cruzā dad.. Itās still got my fingerprints on it, too. But youāre never going to find it. Never in a million years will you ever find it. It is so well hidden, so fantastically hidden, that there is literally no possible way for you to ever find it. Itās buried four feet directly under the ninth hole on the Mar a Lago golf course. See? Not going to catch me lying.
Can I just say I am the Manchurian Candidate? Because youāre not going to trip me up! Iām a stable genius. You know, people say my mindā¦ Thatās what they say. They look at me and I hear them whisper āHis mind..ā and they just sort of trail off, and shake their heads in a shocked and horrified way. I think that means theyāre impressed.
Anyway, next question, Mr. Mulder. By the way, that was very brave of you and Scully to fight that swamp monster during the hurricane in that abandoned motel. Iād have run, that was very scary. Like, Scooby-Doo scary.
MUELLER: <sighs audibly, takes off glasses, closes his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose> Yes, We had quite a time with that swamp monster. And the one weāre after today.
TRUMP: I think you actually beat The Apprentice in the ratings with that swamp monster episode. But I canāt lie, we were losing to Urkel reruns on Nick at Nite. But Iām a TV star, a big stable genius TV star - won Presidency - first try!!! Except for the time I ran in 2000 for President as the Reform Party candidate and lost - which I do not remember! So technically, Iām not lying when I say I won on the first try. Next question, Scully.
MUELLER: Mr. Trump could you, in your own wordsā¦
TRUMP: Hold on - in my own words? Yes! I do that all the time, I use my own words that I made up myself, like ābiglyā and āyugeā. I have the best words. I own a dictionary, and I donāt know if you know about dictionaries, but they have many, many words, like probably most of the words there are, you can find in a dictionary. But theyāre very boring to read because they bunch they words together by whatever the first letter is, for some strange reason. Makes for a tough read, I quit by the time I hit āAardvarkā. Very strange book. Iāll go see the movie if they make one, itāll have everything in there! You know, a lot of my words arenāt even in the dictionary, thatās how good they are , they canāt keep up! I also own a thesaurus. I own the best thesaurus, the Thesaurus Rex. Thats the king of the Thesauruses. Iām lucky to have one, they went extinct a long long time ago. In a galaxy far far away. You know words are just made up of letters. You arrange them and they make words. Although sometimes they donāt make words, like that little guy Superman foung, that midget from another dimension, what was his name? Mr Mxyzptlk? Thatās not a word, it makes no sense, I tried to pronounce that one all through my 30ās. Ā So yes, I will tell you in my own words. That Iām guilty of treason.
MUELLER: Well, Iā¦
TRUMP: I should probably be court-martialed or something, or at the very least fired. Ooo! Can I fire myself? Iām very good at firing people, I used to do it for ratings. Well, I still do, kinda. I want to do it, Iāll look into a mirror and say āYouāre Fired!ā itāll be great. No, weāll do like a two camera shoot, where weāll film me once getting fired and then another shot where Iām firing me. Like in the Six-Million Dollar Man where he fought his exact replica? Or when Captain Kirk fought the imposter Captain Kirk? Or any one of those TV shows where the guy fights the exact replica of himself, but you only see the back of the one guyās head, because itās obviously a stuntman who only slightly resembles the guy? I think the guy Captain Kirk was fighting was Salvadoran, but what can you do, they had a limited budget.
Mr. Mulder, let me just say this: Iām going to build a wall. Between myself and the Justice Department. Itās going to be a big, beautiful wall, like, yuge, and youāre going to be on one side of it, and Iām going to be on the other side. Because Iām thinking about fleeing to Mexico. Lots of bad hombres there, theyāll never notice one more.
MUELLER: Now tell me about this secret meeting between the Russians and Donald Trump, Jr.
TRUMP: Donald Trump, Jr.? Never heard of him. Doesnāt sound familiar, sorry. Is that anything like Carls Jr.? Because I like to eat lunch there. Iām scared of being poisoned by some unknown poison, so I go there where I know the poisons Iām getting.
I never heard of this Donald Trump Jr. fellow in my life, believe me. Believe me. And you know who you should always believe? A guy whoās always begging for someone to believe him, because no one ever does. Nope, never heard of this Donald Trump Jr.. But if heās anything like me, heās guilty of treason. Not as guilty as me, though, Believe me.
Most treasonous President ever! You know, in his whole eight years in office, Obama never came close to being the least bit treasonous. I guess he was too busy out on the golf course, playing golf like, one-tenth as much as I do. And still I have time for the treason. I can play ten times the golf Obama did and commit ten times the treason, thatās how effective I am. You know Mar a Lago is a Spanish word, it means āLake of Treasonsā. It where we all hang out and commit treason. Itās on the menu at the restaurant. āHmm..Iāll start with the subterfuge.. A side of sedition.. And for the entree, Iām going to go with the treason.ā
MUELLER: Mr. Trump, there have been recent questions as to your mental state. On more than one occasion youāve referred to yourself publicly as a stable genius. Now, Iām not aware of a single instance where an actual genius ever once referred to themselves as a genius. Not in public, not in their memoirs, not in the heat of passion, never. It seems the one defining trait of an actual genius is never calling themselves a genius. In fact, only yourself and Wile E. Coyote have ever used the term āgeniusā self-referentially.
And Wile E. Coyote was not a genius, he couldnāt even eat a bird despite having a limitless budget and access to defense industry-grade weaponry. He had state of the art advanced technology weapons that would put Tesla to shame. You know, rail guns, particle beams, and still couldnāt eat that goddamn bird. For a fraction of what he spent on any of those super- electro magnets that could pull an ocean liner out of the Pacific Ocean a thousand miles inland to the Arizona desert, he could have eaten every damn bird he wanted. He could have had them delivered roasted. Every day. For just a fraction of what he spent on tech in any given episode. Where was his money coming from, by the way? Paul Manafort? Iām going to have to look into that.
TRUMP: I donāt know about any of that, all I know is Iām guilty of treason. You know Melania hates me, right? Even before she found out I was banging a porn star while she was having my kid, whatever his name is. Schuyler, maybe? Anyway. Iāve been finding shards of glass in my porridge. Melania swears itās a Hungarian recipe. Thatās why Iām always eating KFC, Iām not scared of being poisoned by spies, Iām scared of being poisoned by a trophy wife.
MUELLER: Well, I have just one last question, on a lighter note. In your experience which was harder to win; The Presidency of the United States, or Celebrity Apprentice?
TRUMP: Thatās an easy one - without a doubt - Celebrity Apprentice. You just look at the major talent and intellect that it took to win the Celebrity Apprentice: We had that Piers guy who got fired from CNN like ten minutes later. I think Lāil John made it to the finals. Look, it takes country and western singers and Joan Rivers to win Celebrity Apprentice, but an insane, incompetent asshole like me can be President. So what does that tell you?
You know, Lou Ferrigno almost won. And I almost made him Secretary of Defense. My plan was, we sneak him into North Korea, as part of the negotiations, then we get him mad! We just get him mad, he turns into the Hulk, big, bang, boom, he kills Lāil Kim. Kim jong Il? Kim Jong Dead. And look at it, the worse thing is he nukes us, but then we have an army of new Hulks from the radiation. Win/win, Scully.
MUELLER: Wow. Why donāt we break for lunch.
TRUMP: Sounds good. By the way, did I tell youā¦
MUELLER: I know, I know, youāre guilty of treason. But I knew that already.
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http://radioleary.libsyn.com/047-what-do-you-hear-mr-bond
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Where the Hell is James Bond?
Following the news these days is like watching a James Bond movie where James Bond just never shows up.
Every day itās another report about subterfuge and espionage, leaks and cover-ups, tapping and hacking, and at the highest levels of our government. As of today, a U.S. Army General, Michael Flynn, is seeking a plea deal for immunity to avoid prosecution for illegal meetings with Russian intelligence officials, and for failing to register as a foreign agent. A foreign agent? Our appointed National Security adviser? And the Presidentās lawyers knew this at the time? And President Trumpās former campaign leader Paul Manafort is being accused of laundering money for Russia? WTF? This raises a lot of red flags, and they all have the hammer and sickle on them! The Russians are back, and this time theyāre winning. They hacked Trumpās opponent to influence the election and subvert our democracy, just because they didnāt like Hillary Clinton. Oh, yeah? Hey Russia! Get in line! Nobody liked Hillary Clinton! Frankly, I doubt anybody would have voted for her if she wasnāt running against Donald Trump. But she was, and more Americans disliked her slightly less, so we wanted the extremely unpopular politician just a little bit more than the extremely unpopular celebrity firer.
You know, throughout the campaign Trump always bragged about being an outsider, but none of us thought he meant all the way from Moscow! Though now that we think about it, I guess we should have had a clue when he held a press conference on national TV back in July, and openly asked Russia to hack Hillaryās emails. Here is the exact quote: āI will tell you this, Russia, if youāre listening, I hope youāre able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.ā Turns out they were listening. I guess they were watching the evening news that night instead of āSiberiaās Got Talentā. We all saw him say it, but he was just too goddamn entertaining to get upset about it at the time. So I donāt think we can really bitch about it now that this tangerine huckster turns out to be less of a Republican candidate and more of a Manchurian candidate. Thatās like being upset when there are wine stains on your carpet after you ask Michael J. Fox to hold your drink.
So the whole thing is starting to look like the plot of a James Bond movie. Most James Bond movies start with a villain. Heās usually a rich, powerful man, often the leader of a sinister organization, he is routinely power-mad, greedy, and hell-bent on ruling the world. Only in the movies, James Bond stops them just before their evil plot succeeds. And he never lets them actually take over the world. But when I turn on the news these days, I see the villains, but thereās no sign of James Bond. Bond villains all have the same qualities, delusions of grandeur and a maniacal scheme. Their elaborate plans for wealth and domination are always needlessly complex, with scores of henchmen in uniforms and limitless amounts of money that youād need to pull it off. Unfortunately, all these volcano secret bases full of private armies, assassins and mercenaries somehow lack the particular set of skills needed to kill one polite British agent pussyhound. But hey, they try. And there are a lot of similarities between James Bond villains and Donald Trump:
Goldfinger: Now this guy is a fantastic villain. Auric Goldfinger plans "Operation Grand Slam", a plan even more heinous than the Dennyās food with the same name. Goldfinger is going to nuke Fort Knox, irradiating Americaās gold reserves and making his own supply of gold priceless. Pretty good plan, eh? I donāt see what could possibly go wrong with that. Seems a little labor intensive, maybe. Goldfinger couldāve probably made the same amount of money with credit-default swaps, predatory lending, and bundling subprime mortgages. It sure worked in 2008, when deregulation led to banks stealing about 40% of the wealth in America, and nobody ever went to jail for it. Nobody. And whatās on Trumpās agenda? Why, deregulation, of course. Now thatās a nefarious scheme! And no nuclear fallout. Hell, there wasnāt even a lot of political fallout.
And Goldfinger could have gotten away with it, too, if he just let that ālaser beamā circumcise 007 when he was strapped to a steel table. His girthy 007 was about to be cut down to about 3 1/2 inches. And in retrospect, it probably didnāt help that Goldfinger explained his entire plan to Bond, and even brought him along to the heist, to give him a sporting chance to thwart his plans. Like I said, what could possibly go wrong? And even worse, Goldfinger cheated at golf. That is just unacceptable. And Donald Trump has been in office only nine weeks, yet he has played golf thirteen times in those nine weeks, so thatās kind of cheating on the American people with golf. Also unacceptable. If Goldfinger had succeeded in his plans, it wouldnāt have mattered much anyway, Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971.
Scaramanga in "The Man with the Golden Gun": Played by Christopher Lee, who was best known playing both Count Dracula, and Count Dooku in the Star Wars movies. Too bad he died before they could make a big-budget film about Count Chocula or he could have had the trifecta. Lee played Count Dracula ten times, and Count Dooku twice. Wow! Thatās 12 Counts. Thatās almost too many Counts to count. But I counted them anyway. Know why? āBecause I love to count!! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!!ā Iām quoting Sesame Streetās Count Von Count, by the way. I looked it up, thatās his full name. Sadly I discovered that the puppeteer and voice of the Count, Jerry Nelson, passed away in 2012 after playing the Count for almost forty years. Thirty-nine or forty, but whoās counting. Nobody now, I guess. Now heās just a body count. But I digress.
So Francisco Scaramanga is a millionaire bad guy who has a gun made out of gold and his own private resort island, and it looks a lot like Mar-a-Lago. But whereas Scaramangaās assistant was the angry, high-strung midget from Fantasy Island, Trumpās assistant is the angry, high-strung midget Sean Spicer. You know, every time he has a press briefing I half expect him to start shouting āBoss! Boss! De plane! De plaaane!ā Scaramanga has a scheme to steal a solar energy producing device called the āSolex Agitatorā, and he will use it to power his giant ālaser beamā weapon and, of course, rule or destroy the world. Another great plan. But no similarity to Trump on that, Trump would never use a solar powered weapon, he would never encourage the use of solar power for anything. Now if it was a coal powered weapon, Trump would be all over it. Although, coal power itself is pretty much a weapon, destroying the environment and causing global warming. Not as quick as a solar laser beam, but a much more effective way to destroy the world in the long run. If Donald Trump was the villain in this movie, the title would have to be āThe Man With The Golden Showersā. And from what has been rumored, Putin just might have a copy of that film.
Blofeld: The leader of SPECTRE is Enst Stavro Blofeld, not to be confused with our President, an earnest blowhard. Blofeld showed up a lot, he is Bondās main nemesis. you know him as the basis for Dr. Evil, he has a facial scar, a monocle, and heās always stroking a cat. As opposed to our President who is always grabbing a pussy. Some really fine actors have played Blofeld over the years:
Charles Gray: He played Blofeld in āDiamonds Are Foreverā, if you canāt picture Charles Gray, you might know him better as āThe Criminologistā, the narrator in āThe Rocky Horror Picture Showā. You know; No Neck. Here we are forty years later, and āThe Rocky Horror Picture Showā remains the only movie where people throw a bunch of shit around the movie theater and donāt get arrested for it. The list of items you have to bring to this cult movie is redonkulous; rice, newspapers, water pistols, flashlights, rubber gloves, confetti, toilet paper, bells, cards, hot dogs, and toast. Jesus Christ, those arenāt items you need to go see a movie, those are the items you need to survive a zombie apocalypse! Throw in antibiotics and ammunition and youāve got Rick Grimesā Christmas wish list. Itās amazing that this cult-film tradition has survived for two generations now virtually unchanged. I say virtually, Iām sure with this generation of hipsters the rice is long-grain brown rice, the water pistols are Dasani, and the toast is gluten-free. But at least theyāre getting out of the house. We can all relax, and be glad that this throwing stuff around nonsense never caught on with any other movies, Iād hate to go see āLoganā and suddenly people start throwing a bunch of forks around. I have no mutant healing powers.
Max Von Sydow: Considered by many to be the greatest actor alive, Max Von Sydow played Blofeld in āNever Say Never Againā, which is also my slogan when it comes to meth. You might know Max Von Sydow from the role of Lor San Tekka in āStar Wars: The Force Awakensā. I guess since Carrie Fisher died, the next sequel will be titled āStar Wars: The Force goes to a Wakeā. He also played Death in āThe Seventh Sealā, Ā a movie that surprisingly had nothing to do with aquatic mammals. He played the old priest who had a heart attack in āThe Exorcistā, but you know him because he played Ming the Merciless in āFlash Gordonā, which straight-up sucked except for the title song by Queen. It really isnāt fair to compare Ming to Donald Trump, because everyone on the planet Mongo has guaranteed health care coverage. Heās merciless, but not like Republican merciless. Although Freddie Mercury still died of Aids. I guess Flash couldnāt save every one of us.
Telly Savalas: Yeah, thatās right, Kojak. He played Blofeld in āOn Her Majestyās Secret Serviceā, easily the worst James Bond movie ever. You may not have seen it because 007 was played by George Lazenby, whoever the hell that is. He was more like 000. Sean Connery was holding out for more money, and the studio execs gambled they could replace him with anybody and people would still go to a Bond movie.The studio lost that bet. I guess they never saw Bond play poker in āCasino Royaleā. I remember Kojak because when I was in college, weād sit around getting high and watching basic cable. Every time Kojak would say āYouāre a lyinā stinkinā murderer!ā weād take a bong hit. Which was about six times an episode. Thatās higher education for ya.
Christoph Waltz: Heās the most recent Blofeld, heās a great actor, but he does a terrible German accent, which is odd because heās actually German. He won an Oscar for playing a Nazi in āInglorious Basterdsā, which deeply upset Mel Gibson, who plays a Nazi in real life. Waltz actually won a second Oscar for āDjango Unchainedā, the movie that holds the world record for using the n-word. Which also deeply upset Mel Gibson, because he says it in real life.
But the greatest Blofeld was Donald Pleasence: He was in āYou Only Live Twiceā. What do you want to bet that if Millennials remake āYou Only Live Twiceā, theyāll call it āYOLOā. Donald Pleasence was in āEscape From New Yorkā and āTHX 1138ā, but we all love him as the creepy psychiatrist Dr. Loomis in āHalloweenā. Iām not one to judge, but seeing as his patient Michael Myers went on a five-movie killing streak, Iām not at all confident with his approach to the psychiatric profession. Personally, I wear the mantle of a strict Jungian approach, and Iāll never admit to wearing a Freudian slip. And itās not often you see a psychiatrist hunting his patient across the state in a station wagon with a .38 revolver in his trenchcoat pocket. At least not since Woody Allen talked in a therapy session about adopting again.
So I think itās not a stretch to count Donald Trump as a Bond bad guy, and after he quits being President this summer heās got a bright future ahead as the next Blofeld, or whoever. I can only imagine the titles of James Bond movies with Trump as the villain:
āLive and Let Die Without Obamacareā?
āCasino Royale-ly Bankruptā?
āA Quantrump of Solaceā?
āGrab āem by the Octopussyā?
āOn His Majesty Putinās Secret Serviceā?
āDr. No Means Noā?
āNever Tweet Never Againā?
So come on, James Bond. We need you, 007. Weāll even take George Lazenby.
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The Injustice League
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The Injustice League
If we had to elect a billionaire womanizer with anger issues, I wish we had elected Bruce Wayne instead. That I could get behind. Think about it, President Batman. How does that sound? Pretty damn awesome, thatās how that sounds! āPow!ā āBiff!ā āKa-Pow!ā Ā I love those comic book sound effects that accompany a solid kick to the face or a roundhouse punch on the old Adam West Batman show. I bet āKa-Pow!ā probably hurt a hell of a lot more than āBiff!ā or āPow!ā, right? There was definitely a wide range of fight sound effects, I actually did a little research to find some other real examples of superheroes hitting each other, and they werenāt all great:
āBam!ā Thatās not a punch, thatās the sound of that obnoxious midget Emeril Lagasse cooking food on TV.
āZonk!ā Sounds less like a mighty blow from Thorās hammer and more like the stoner from Doonesbury doing blow and getting hammered.
āBoom!ā āCrash!ā These two word show up a lot in comics, and what scares me is these are the same words they use on Wall Street every day to describe whatās happening to our retirement accounts. It doesnāt exactly fill me with confidence that fluctuations in the market are like Batmanās fist, and my 401K is the Jokerās face. Ā
āCrack!ā āZap!ā āCrash!ā That sounds like the drug you did, the police hitting you with a taser, and the sound you make as you hit the sidewalk. I would imagine the next sound effects would be āMake-Bail!ā āCourt-Appear!ā and āDo-Time!ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
āFap!ā āFwap!ā āSock!ā āBonk!ā āBamf!ā āWank!ā āSplooge!ā I kid you not, these were all really used in Marvel Comics from the 1980s. But it sounds more like the soundtrack of every teenage comic book nerd discovering masturbation. The next sound effect was most likely āMa! Donāt You Knock?!ā
But I digress. President-elect Batman. The Caped Crusader-in-Chief. The Dark Knight POTUS. Sure, itās crazy, but I think that actually sounds less insane than our reality here on Earth-Prime, with President-elect Donald J. Trump. What the hell happened? Is it just me, or does it feel a little like we somehow stepped into an alternate reality that really wasnāt supposed to happen. Like someone messed up the timestream, and we all have a residual memory of things having been better somehow in a significantly different world. We can feel it in our bones, that things were intended to go down another way. Itās kind of like The Man In the High Castle, Philip K. Dickās dystopian novel of an alternative reality where America lost World War II. It was a book I loved as a young man and read over and over, but now I know it as that show thatās supposed to be good that I canāt see because I donāt have Amazon. I preferred the book. There are certainly parallels, Trump actually lives in a high castle. But itās more like The Man In the Gaudy Ostentatious Gold-Plated Tower. And rather than leading an underground resistance against Nazi and Imperial Japanese rule, he just kind of causes traffic in midtown Manhattan to become a permanent unmoving cluster-fuck from MoMa to The Met.
Maybe Donald Trump is like Batman from an alternate reality where his parents donāt get killed in an alley during a robbery attempt. So rather than devote his life to seeking justice and protecting the city from evil, he instead goes on the Howard Stern show and talks to Baba Booey about third-world swimsuit models heās banged while he and one of his three wives were āon a breakā. You know, Bruce Wayne only pretended to be a shallow, rich, gropey asshole so people would never suspect he was secretly a hero. I donāt think our President is pretending, and I donāt suspect heās secretly a hero, either. I hope he is a hero, sure, but I still hope Andy Kaufman is just faking his own death, too.
Hey! Wait a minute! This explains why Trumpās eyes are so white while the rest of his face is burnt orange! He wears a mask! Holey Moley, Itās all starting to make sense! But whereas Batman fought the Penguin, The Riddler, and Poison Ivy, Trump mostly just fought Rosie OāDonnell. And a girl in a beauty pageant. And the cast of Hamilton. And I donāt think he actually won any of those fights, either. While Batman keeps the peace in Gotham City, one time on the Celebrity Apprentice Donald Trump kept Meatloaf and Gary Busey from fist-fighting over missing art supplies. Yeah, Batman seems like the better choice to me. Although I wonder what the sound effects would be for a Batman administration? āVeto!ā āPhoto-Op!ā āFund-Raise!ā
As Iāve been thinking about this, and taking this weak premise far too seriously, Iām beginning to realize I may have some real problems with a Batman presidency. Not so much with the hitting and the vigilante stuff. Not with the fact that heās a lunatic who deludedly thinks he rules a major metropolitan city, and if anyone else in a costume challenges him, he locks them away in Arkham mental asylum. No, my problem is the way he treats Alfred. Batman just may be a republican after all, because he treats Alfred the way the Walton family treat Wal-Mart employees.
How come every villain in Gotham City, from Clayface to Two-Face, they all have dozens and dozens of well-trained mercenary henchmen working for them, but Batman? Heās just has Alfred. He makes Alfred do absolutely everything. Bruce Wayne is like the richest man in Gotham City, but heās too cheap to hire any real workforce? No wonder Gotham City is constantly overrun by criminals - Baneās got an elite squad of para-military assassins knocking off the Gotham Bank, and Batmanās got an 85 year old British guy whoās gotta finish a load of laundry before he gasses up the Batmobile.
Alfred is like, āYeah, right away, āMaster Bruceā, mind if I put your damn socks away before I do the pre-flight check on the Bat-Copter? āCause if I donāt take them out of the dryer right now, everything is going to be wrinkled AF by the time you get back.ā
āYou do realize Iāve only been trained to kiss rich peopleās asses and serve soup, right? You want me to set the table and get the door? No problem. You want me to load Kryptonite missiles onto the Bat-Tank? Then you better download the manual, Caped Crusader, because they didnāt cover that shit in butler school. Itās bad enough youāve got me changing the oil in the Bat-Jet while Iām wearing a tuxedo, but then I gotta keep dinner warm all night while you brood over the city from the top of a watertower.ā
āYou know, you employ like 50,000 people worldwide with this Wayne Foundation and Wayne Industries, and routinely hire thousands more temporary workers and independent contractors. You know that, right? You are on the board of directors. Hereās a crazy idea, let me get back to polishing the silver and ironing your cape, and maybe you bring in some people who are actually qualified to run your advanced-weapons motor pool.ā
Is it my imagination or does it look like Alfred works seven days a week? Every crisis Iāve ever seen in Gotham, Alfred is always right there. Iāve never seen him take a day off. Youād think if something happened on a weekend, Bruce Wayne would have like a part-time guy there. āHey, Travis, is it? Can you hold off on doing those dishes and run down to the Bat-Cave and dig out my underwater Batsuit? Killer croc is starting some shit. No, I donāt know where it is exactly, Have you looked by the giant penny? Or the T-Rex? Alfred has his own system. You guys need to communicate on things like this.ā
You think Alfred ever hangs out with Jarvis, the Avengersā butler, and they just bitch about their jobs? āYou just have Batman, you have it easy, Thor leaves his hammer laying around and I canāt move it, I have to vacuum around it, and I always vacuum up Ant-Man. And they ought to call her the Scarlet Bitch, let me tell you.ā
But it just goes to show you how old these characters are that they have a butler. Who the hell has a butler these days? Mike Tyson had an entourage of like 50 people, but even he didnāt have a butler. A tiger-wrangler? Sure. A Maori Tattooist? Yes. No butler. Butlers are an anachronism from an antiquated class system. Batman still reflects the culture of the 1930s when he was created. Good thing Batman isnāt from like 70 years earlier than that, or it probably wouldnāt be a white guy working for him, and he probably wouldnāt have a choice. And when he said āMaster Bruceā, heād really mean it.
So let me see if I got the story straight here. Alfred raises Bruce from a kid after his parents were killed. And in gratitude, Bruce makes him work like thirty years past retirement age. No pension plan? So heās just gotta keep working until he drops dead? No 401K? Bruce Wayne is one cheap bastard. No. Heās a Cheap Bat-stard.
Batman is so cheap he wonāt even rent a nice place for his Batman stuff, he just lurks in an underground cave full of batshit and stagnant water. I donāt know which heās gonna catch first, the Riddler, or dysentery. Is he gonna collar a criminal, or just get cholera. A damp cave? Really? Itās a breeding ground for mosquitos. Heāll get the zika virus before he gets the Joker. Heās basically in a subterranean pit filled with bat guano, breathing that shit in, heāll get double-pneumonia before he gets two-face.
And they thought Howard Hughes was a crazy billionaire. At least Howard Hughes was smart enough to bang some movie stars. Batman? Whatās his thought process on a Friday night? āHmm, what to do tonight...I could date that supermodel whoās been sending me nude selfiesā¦.but on the other hand I could impale some junkie mugger with a couple of Batarangsā¦ I gotta go with Batarangs. Hey Alfred!ā
Make America and Gotham City great again.
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President Howard Beale?
On one of the cable channels today they were showing the classic movie āNetworkā, it was the scene where Howard Beale has a complete meltdown live on the evening news. Then I realized I had the TV on CNN, and it was President Trumpās press conference. Heās mad as hell, alright. And heās not gonna take it anymore, apparently. When I hear this guy get on a rant, I realize why he often tweets in all caps. Trump is āall capsā, personified. He should start every speech with āMy fellow Americans...CAPS LOCK!ā Then continue with his bad-policy bitch-fest. And this is the difference between Donald Trump and the real Presidents we used to have. They were case-sensitive. Trump just deported a mother of two American children, ripping a family apart. He has not been the least bit sensitive to her case. Donald Trump is not case-sensitive. Nope, heās āALL CAPS.ā You know, like Gary Busey's smile.
Typing in all caps reveals a guy who is mad about everything, all the time, and all problems large and small get treated with the same level of hysterical outrage. His tweets are like angry āMad Libsā, just insert any noun: ā____________ Ā IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE! TRULY STUPID! REALLY SAD!ā
It could be: āThe_Iran_nuclear_deal Ā IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE! TRULY STUPID! REALLY SAD!ā
But it could also be: āSaturday_Night_Live Ā IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE! TRULY STUPID! REALLY SAD!ā
Want to know which one it really was? You canāt tell, can you? Go ahead, take a guess, you have a 50/50 shot. Stick around, Iāll tell you at the end of this column.
This press conference was truly something else, we havenāt seen a meltdown of this magnitude since Chernobyl or Fukushima. I would imagine that podium now has a half-life of ten thousand years. It was like Avant-garde theatre, like watching a one-man play reenactment of ā12 Angry Men.ā It was more āin your faceā than 3-D porn. And a lot of whining, too. You know, heās only been in office a month and Iām already tired of his whining all the time. Maybe he just misspelled all those tweets where he promised weād be tired of his winning all the time?
Take a look at some of the crazy things the President said at his press conference and tell me itās not depressing. More like a depress conference. All these quotes are verbatim:
āTo be honest, I inherited a mess. A mess!ā
He inherited a mess? No, man, Obama inherited a mess. George Bush wrecked this country like it was Ferris Bueller's dadās Ferrari. The one he spent three years restoring. Overall, Ā President Obama did a pretty good job of cleaning up his mess. But isnāt that typical? Finally, a black President, and he has to clean up a mess left by a white guy. Trump inherited a mess? He must mean he inherited a mess of money and real estate, from his multi-millionaire dad. According to Marco Rubio during a debate, Trump inherited 100 million dollars from his fatherās company and estate, though more conservative estimates put the number closer to $40 million.
Now, that is a mess. A fine mess. To quote Oliver Hardy, āWell, this is another fine mess youāve gotten me into.ā Trump canāt be serious. I think he must be messing with us.
āDrugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars.ā
Donāt I know it! You donāt have to tell me that! These days I have to ride up in a bad neighborhood with a tightly folded twenty, and open the car window just enough to pass it through for a āfun-sizeā bag of Skittles. It costs less to āchase the dragonā than it costs to ātaste the rainbow.ā In all fairness, that really is a druggie-sounding slogan for a candy bar. And drugs come in āfun-sizeā bags too. So what the hell is our President talking about? Have the drug cartels and gangsta rappers taken over the candy industry? Candy wrappers, yes, but candy rappers? Will M&Ms change their name to Eminemās? Will Baby Ruth be Baby-Daddy Ruth? What other candy bars will be affected? Will Nestleās Crunch be called Nestleās Kush? Will Hersheyās Krackel just be Hersheyās Krack? Will Zagnut come wrapped in rolling papers and be called Zig-Zagnut? Will candy be so expensive you have to wait for payday to buy a Payday? When you buy drugs, itās a score, but when you buy candy, itās a Skor. Who knows what heās talking about, maybe Trump thought a 100 Grand bar was the actual cost. My only question is; can I now pay for drugs with those little sacks of chocolate gold coins?
āI guess it was the biggest electoral win since Reagan.ā
Guess again, Mr. President. I donāt know if thatās a guess or a lie or an alternative fact, but itās wrong. Itās as wrong as a turtle humping an army helmet. Donald Trump is crowing about his 306 electoral points? Letās see...Barack Obama had 356 in 2008, and 332 in 2012. And Bill Clinton had 370 in 1992 and 379 in 1996. When confronted by a reporter with these non-alternative facts, Trump stammered like an a guy with Tourettes on a pogo stick, saying āEr..ah..I meant Republicans.ā To which the reporter pointed out that George H.W. Bush had a whopping 426 Electoral votes. Trump replied, "I was given that information. Actually, I've seen that information around.ā Ā Actually, Mr. President, if it isnāt true, it isnāt information. Whether you saw it around or not. Where did you see it, exactly? Around where? Hanging around downtown in Bullshit City? Iām not sure where Donald Trump learned to count. Maybe from Betsy Devos.
āDoes anybody really think Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Russia than Donald Trump?ā
Yes. Everybody. Everybody in the world really thinks that. Iām sure that when Hillary Clinton pays Russian prostitutes to perform golden showers, she probably tips them a lot less. Whoās he kidding, heās tough on Russia? Sadly, it seems the only intelligence in the White House right now is Russian Intelligence. Come on, he just fired his national security adviser Michael Flynn for being cozy with the Russian government. Of course, he blamed the media for the scandal. āThe unfair attack on Michael Flynn was a Russia to judgement!ā Flynn made a huge mistake and he got caught, simple as that. Call him āError Flynn.ā But everyone knows Trump loves Putin and Russia. Donald Trump is so in love with Vladimir Putin, Melania is worried he may be bi-lateral curious.
āI am the least anti-Semitic person that youāve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person."
Wow, weāre pretty goddamn lucky! To have a president who is not only the least anti-semitic person weāve ever seen in our entire life, but also the least racist person, too? I guess we can forget about that poser Oskar Schindler and his stupid list! Oskar Swindler is more like it! He might as well have been a captain in the Gestapo compared to the legendary anti-anti-semite Donald Trump! Trump should also add that he is the least egotistical. āIām the most-anti-egotistical person that youāve ever seen in your entire life. In fact Iām the least egotistical person that ever lived. Ever. That includes all of time and space; not just past, but the future as well. And all planets in every galaxy both known and unknown. And if superstring theory and quantum physics pan out, youāll find out Iām the most anti-egotistical being in an infinite number of quantum universes. All of āem. Iām number one at not having an ego, in all of creation, and even beyond that to other various planes of existence and reality; supernatural realms, alternate realities, temporal paradoxes, mythological constructs, the afterlife, and the before-life too. So suck on that! And I say that humbly, believe me.ā
Then it got weird. āYou know what uranium is, right? Itās this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things.ā
Whoa, slow down with the scientific talk, President Heisenberg. I didnāt attend Trump University.
āThe news is fake because so much of the news is fake.ā
Itās hard to argue with logic like that. He must be part Vulcan. I know heās really good at the Vulcan nerve-grope. But Trump only says āLive long and prosperā when heās looking in the mirror.
And just in case you were getting drastically concerned about having a president that is ranting and raving after just four weeks in office, donāt worry. Trump allayed all our fears, telling us that he was not āranting and raving,ā but the lying media would say he was. āTomorrow, they will say, "Donald Trump rants and raves at the press." I'm not ranting and raving. I'm just telling you. You know, you're dishonest people. But -- but I'm not ranting and raving. I love this. I'm having a good time doing it. But tomorrow, the headlines are going to be, "Donald Trump rants and raves." I'm not ranting and raving.
Whew, thank goodness for that, because it sounded a lot like ranting and raving to me, but what do I know. Folks, itās like this; if somebody tells you five times they arenāt ranting and raving - they are ranting and raving. I think that is the clinical definition.
āThis administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.ā
It sure is. After all, a guillotine is a fine-tuned machine. So is a chainsaw. And with Flynn getting the axe, Pudzer out as Labor secretary, and Kellyanne Conway on her way out, I think itās fair to say the Trump administration is running like the Texas Fine-Tuned Machine Massacre.
Now hereās the answer I promised you earlier:
āThe_Iran_nuclear_deal Ā IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE! TRULY STUPID! REALLY SAD!ā
You lucked out this time, Saturday Night Live.
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Nixonās Apprentice
For news junkies like me, this past week was the best week of news in a long, long time. Ever since Bernie Sanders ālostā the Democratic primary race to Hillary Clinton, the Queen of the Illuminati. or is it Hilluminati? Since then, the news has all been pretty bad. Ā I donāt need to recite a litany of all the affronts to sanity and society to which we have all borne witness these past hundred-odd days, and itās been a hundred very odd days indeed. Things have gone rapidly downhill since the election, down a slope as steep as a double-black diamond ski trail. Down a mountain where Trump is the tree, and the whole country is Sonny Bono.
If you are too young to know who Sonny Bono is, he wasnāt related to U2ās Bono, you could tell because Sonny Bono found what he was looking for. He was a hippie-ish singer and musician who racked up a string of hits with his wife Cher in the 1960ās, then in the 1970ās they had a long-running TV variety show (with David Letterman as a writer), then he served three terms in Congress in the 1990ās representing California, until he was killed in a tragic skiing accident when he hit a tree. They say the bark is worse than the bite, and to Sonny Bono, the bark was definitely worse. Some people say Sonny probably should have spent more time in Congress and less time at a ski resort, but who knows, maybe he had a time-Cher. Sonny Bono was another TV celebrity turned incompetent Republican elected to high office, so he wasnāt all that different than Donald Trump. Except The Sonny and Cher Show on CBS was the highest rated television show in America, and The Apprentice didnāt even crack the top 50 in its last four seasons. People viewed Sonny Bono as a bit of a joke and a lightweight, but compared to our current President he looked like Teddy Roosevelt, if Teddy could carry a tune instead of a big stick. He even had the moustache.
The big difference between Trump and Sonny Bono is that Sonny had a wonderfully self-deprecating sense of humor, he was charming and humble, and he was honest about how unqualified he was for high office. āThe last thing in the world I thought I would be is a U.S. Congressman, given all the bobcat vests and Eskimo boots I used to wear.ā Sonny said. āWhat is qualified? What have I been qualified for in my life? I haven't been qualified to be a mayor. I'm not qualified to be a songwriter. I'm not qualified to be a TV producer. I'm not qualified to be a successful businessman. And so, I don't know what qualified means.ā Wow, thatās a refreshing change from the self-proclaimed super-genius President we have now. The one who was surprised that being President was harder than having a reality game show. That genius. You know, Wile E. Coyote thought he was a Super-Genius too, but in the span of five-minutes he gets crushed by a giant boulder, takes an anvil to the head, and is turned into an accordion after falling from a fatal height.
But I digress.
So the news has been bad and getting worse, until right now. Itās been exhausting. Used to be, before we entered what I affectionately call the āend of daysā, a President would get embroiled in a scandal, it would unfold slowly over months or years, and it would either bring him down or it wouldnāt. But this time around the scandals have moved faster than Anthony Weinerās texting hand. Or maybe his other hand, if you know what I mean. Even hardcore political junkies like myself are starting to O.D. like a frontman in a grunge band.
With the firing of FBI director Comey to stop an investigation against him, and subsequent veiled threats about secret ātapesā, Donald Trump has raised the specter of Richard Nixon. By the way, somebody should tell Trump that when you put quotation marks around a word like that, itās usually meant to indicate sarcasm. Itās called āIrony punctuationā. In the 1580ās, a printer in England introduced the percontation point, and French poet Alcanter de Brahm called it the irony mark. Both are the form of a question mark reversed, like this, "āø®". Irony punctuation is used to convey that a sentence should be understood at a second, deeper level.
Initially the reverse question mark was used at the end of a rhetorical question, like āWhy is it your feet smell and your nose runs "āø®" or āHow can you ever get off the airplane if itās a non-stop flight "āø®" (that one actually has an answer, you fly United and they drag you out before take-off). Eventually, the reverse question mark disappeared, but the quotation marks around it are now put around the word or phrase you mean sarcastically or ironically. Like, if you see a sign in a restaurant window that says: OUR BURGERS ARE 100% āBEEFā, youād better make sure those are grill marks on the burger and not whip marks from when it lost the Kentucky Derby. So listen up, Donald Trump, stop putting quotation marks around words that are not intended sarcastically! Okay, Mr. āPresidentā?
But I do digress.
I remember Nixon. Man-o-man, do I remember Nixon. My dad was a lifelong Democrat, and he was draft age as the Vietnam war raged across the evening news, so Nixonās name came up a lot. Not really in a positive way. I grew up thinking Richard Nixonās middle name was F***ing. Thatās the way it sounded in my house, anyway. My dad would be watching Cronkite, and since like most Americans we were a one-TV household, that meant I was watching Cronkite too. It was either that or actually do my homework, so hello, Walter. Ā And olā Tricky Dick was always up to something. My dad would seethe at every new scandal, from āHeās sabotaged Johnsonās peace talks! That Richard F***ing Nixon!ā to āHe attacked Cambodia? On Christmas? That Richard F***ing Nixon!ā to āCan you believe he fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox? That Richard F***ing Nixon!ā
That was all well and good, until one day in school my teacher asked us what President Nixonās full name was. My hand shot up, with about the same positive result as when Janis Joplin shot up. āI know! I know! Itās Richard F***ing Nixon!ā I got the feeling I may have been incorrect when twenty-five third-graders gasped in unison, sucking all the air out of the room like the Allied air raids over Dresden. After Mrs. Whatever-her-name-was regained consciousness, her teacher training took over as she tried to regain control of the classroom with all the nervous calm of a woman about to lose tenure. āNo, Chris, President Nixonās middle initial is āMā.ā I raised my hand again. āI got it now, is it Richard Motherf***ing Nixon? Because Iāve heard that one a lot too.ā And thatās right about the moment my name started going on lists. I was sent home with a note for my mother. I read it, but I had to ask mom what āpolitical dissident commie pinkoā meant. Mom said it meant I was smarter than my teacher.
Did you know that Richard Nixon happened to be in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the very day President Kennedy was killed there? Itās true. After Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960, Nixon went to work as a lawyer for Pepsi, and he gave a speech that day before a group of Dallas businessmen. But for some reason, Nixon later told three separate lies saying he left Dallas before the trouble started. Nobody thought he had anything to do with the shooting, itās not a conspiracy, just a weird coincidence, but Nixon lied about it anyway. It was completely unnecessary too, because thanks to Trump, we now know that JFK was actually killed by Ted Cruzās dad. And probably Hillary. And maybe Pocahontas.
And did you know that besides the astronauts, the only other name on the Moon is Richard Nixon? Well, thatās true, too. There are plaques left behind by the Apollo astronauts, with their signatures and Nixonās signature, because he was President for all the Moon landings, so heās the guy that signed the checks. I think they left the plaque right beside that cool flag they planted for MTV. It reads, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." Wow. Thatās pretty noble. I guess they decided not to add the part that says āBut mainly, we did it to show up the Russians.ā
And Iām sure that plaque is still there, untouched, on that secret Nevada movie set where they really filmed the Moon landing. I think history will eventually give the directorās credit for the Moon landing to Stanley Kubrick He probably filmed it between 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, we could ask Kubrick, but he died mysteriously less than one week after finishing Eyes Wide Shut. Some say he was killed for revealing a long-hidden truth in that film. Not the hidden truth that the world is run by a secret society of elites that control the levers of power, commit murder with impunity, and engage in ancient satyric orgiastic rituals. But rather he revealed the long-hidden truth that there was absolutely no sexual chemistry at all between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Faked the Moon landing? I think Tom Cruise faked the Poon landing! I understand that before filming started, Tom Cruise asked Kubrick if he could keep his beard in the movie. Kubrick said yes, so Tom Cruise brought Nicole. Get it? She was a beard? No? Ah, forget it. I should have closed with Poon landing.
Now I, for one, truly appreciate the irony of Nixonās name reaching the lofty height of being on a heavenly body, because he was infamous primarily for his gutter politics. Dick Nixon was a dick alright, right from the beginning. He worked with āTailgunner Joeā McCarthy and the HUAC, the House Unamerican Activities Committee. They basically just went around ruining the careers of anyone who opposed them, usually by accusing them of being secret Communist agents. Most of āem were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but the committee black-balled them out of their professions if they were any more liberal than Rorschach from The Watchmen. āHurm.ā The HUAC black-balled thousands and thousands of decent, patriotic Americans with all the credibility of the Salem Witch trials. The HUAC were responsible for more black-balling than the Kardashian family. Ā
Too bad the HUAC isnāt around today, they wouldnāt have to look any further than a few blocks down the street to the White House to find a whole mess of Communist agents and Moscow Moles, and this time they wouldnāt have to make it up. Hell, between Trump puppet Devin Nunes and the newly-elected Montana body-slam man, theyād have plenty of careers that need ruining right there in the House itself without bothering the rest of us. Itās mind-boggling to me that the Republican party was once so obsessed with preventing Russian agents from infiltrating the government, and today they are the Russian agents infiltrating government. And the ones that arenāt actually Russian influenced are spending all their energies and political capital defending and making excuses for the ones that are. Iāve said it before, we are living in a land without irony.
Nixon was a low-down red-baiter from his very first campaign in 1946, when he was recruited into politics by Republicans in California's 12th district to oust incumbent Democrat Jerry Voorhis, who supported the New Deal and had a liberal voting record. Nixon came out bullshit blazing, saying that because Voorhis was endorsed by a group linked to communists, it must mean that heās a left-wing radical commie himself. In reality, Voorhis was staunchly anti-communist, and he was voted by the press corps to be the "most honest congressman.ā But Nixon was able to paint him red all over, even though Voorhis refused to accept any endorsement that didnāt renounce communism. Nixon won by over 15,000 votes, and the rest is history, and itās even written on the Moon. Itās too bad Jerry Voorhis wasnāt Jason Vorhees, now thereās a dude that would know how to effectively respond to a hatchet-job. Probably with a machete.
Nixon was a creep, and itās no coincidence that the group behind the break-in at the Watergate hotel was called the Committee to RE-Elect the President, or CREEP. You canāt make that shit up. Next thing you know, Nixon fires the special prosecutor who is investigating him, Archibald Cox. Heh heh...Dick fired Cox...heh heh. Just like Trump fired Comey. And then Trump hints that there are secret tapes. Or ātapesā, if you donāt get sarcasm. Just like the tapes that Nixon was forced to turn over in which he implicates himself in a million-dollar payoff of hush-money to cover up the break-in. Nixon was the master of recording, Trump is like a Nixon cover band.
Donald Trump knows nothing of history, or heād know that it wasnāt the initial act that drove Nixon from office, it was the endless cover-up that did him in. And there were no ātapesā of Nixon getting golden showers. But in the end, I believe all these comparisons between Richard Nixon and Donald Trump are a little unfair.
After all, Nixon never went to prison.
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When Chuck Norris Got Bullied, He Called Evel Knievel
I simply canāt keep up with all the crazy things the Trump administration has been up to this past week. Heās only been President for two weeks and he has caused more protests than we have seen in this country since the ending of the last episode of āThe Sopranos.ā Seriously, after eight seasons, how dare they just cut to black as the Sopranos are sitting there in a pizza joint? If I wanted to decide for myself what happens to Tony and Carmella, I wouldnāt have paid for eight years of HBO. Iām certainly not paying for HBO because of the incredible selection of the same dozen movies they run over and over again until you know every line of dialogue between John McClane and Hans Gruber. You know what? Rather than invent examples, Iāll just grab the remote and check whatās on HBO right now. I have the whole package (if you know what I mean), so Iām sure there are some real cinematic masterpieces. Letās see...okay, here we go. āThe Princess Diariesā, from 2001. āThe Bonfire of the Vanities,ā1990, followed by āProblem Child 2ā, 1991. Then āKing Ralph,ā āSixteen Candles,ā āWall Street,ā āBlues Brothers 2000,ā āDemolition Man,ā āPoint Break,ā and āPanic Room.ā Wow, cancel all my appointments! I know what Iām doing for the next 18 hours! Screw the Superbowl, Iāll be watching Charlie Sheen before Aids, Wesley Snipes before prison, and Jodie Foster before she came out of the panic room closet. And luckily, I have HBO West, so I get to watch them all over again three hours later in case I missed something the first ten times. Are you kidding me? These are all movies I would gladly pay fifty bucks a month to avoid.
This week Trump pulled more crazy stunts than anyone since Evel Knievel built a rocketship to jump over the Snake River Canyon. And we all know how great that turned out. There are parallels between Evel Knievel and Donald Trump, I guess. Trump wants to build an enormous wall in the desert, Evel Knievel built an enormous ramp in the desert. Of course, the ramp was built to get you across a river, and the wall will be built to stop you from getting across a river, but, whatever. When Evel Knievel appeared somewhere, the crowds would all shout āEvel!ā, and whenever Trump appears somewhere, the crowds all shout āEvil!ā Kind of similar, but again, whatever. People watched in horror as Evel Knievelās motorcycle crashed during a jump, on a bus, and people listened in horror as Trump was recorded talking about grabbing pussy, on a bus. Both were consummate showmen, both were thin-skinned, angry, and hated critics. Both were constantly feuding with the media even as they fed off it. But Trumpās approval rating is falling faster than Evelās rocket-motorcycle fell into that canyon. And thatās as close as Evel Knievel ever came to jumping a shark, yet Donald Trump may have already jumped the shark. Evel Knievel survived that crash on September 8, 1974, simply because he was as badass as they get. It takes a lot more than jumping a mile-wide chasm in a homemade steam-powered rocket-motorcycle and plummeting a thousand feet into a river canyon to kill Evel Knievel. He was old school tough. I watched this guy crash, hitting his landing ramp too fast after jumping 13 double-decker busses in Wembley Stadium, Ā and he hit the ground at 70mph, so hard it would make crash-test dummies weep, tumbling on the tarmac like a sweater in the dryer. He broke his pelvis, collarbone, some ribs and vertebrae. And you know what he did? No, of course you donāt, youāre less than a hundred years old. Well, Iāll tell ya what he did. He got up. He got to his feet, broken pelvis and all, and walked over to the microphone and told the crowd he was retiring. He was in shock, and ABC broadcaster Frank Gifford was begging him on-air to let the paramedics put him on a stretcher and in an ambulance, but Evel Knievel just turned and walked off the Wembley field, saying, āI came in walking, I went out walking!ā It does not get more badass than that. Evel Knievel makes Clint Eastwood look like Jay Baruchel. He makes Vin Diesel look like Shia LaBeouf. Over his entire career, he spent more than 3 years in a hospital due to traumatic injuries from his jumps! And although Evel Knievel didnāt actually break "every bone in his body," as legend had it, the truth is he suffered 433 broken bones during his career. He is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of the most bones broken in a lifetime.
He was so tough, when Chuck Norris got bullied, he called Evel Knievel.
But as I say, Iām having trouble just keeping up with all the blunders of the Trump administration this past week, far more than any other President screwed up in their entire first term. I think in the four years Jimmy Carter was President, the worst thing he ever did was one time he went fishing, and he whacked a rabbit that was trying to climb into his canoe. With a paddle, I mean, he didnāt have it whacked like a mob hit. Ah, simpler times, when presidential scandals were as wholesome as fishinā and whackinā rabbits with a paddle. Now itās all about pussy grabbinā, golden showers, and whackinā something else entirely.
I just canāt write fast enough to keep up. To write down all of Trumpās bullshit this week, I would have to type faster than a court stenographer taking down the testimony of Busta Rhymes being sued by an auctioneer. (For you old people: Busta Rhymes talks really fast. For you young people: auctioneers talk really fast.) I would Ā have to type faster than Stephen King cranking out schlocky horror novels, although I think Trump is a hell of a lot scarier. Like a Stephen King novel, Trump was elected by states populated by the āChildren of the Corn,ā and now weāre all in āMisery.ā In Ronald Reagan's farewell address from the Oval Office, he called America āthe shining city on hillā, but after only two weeks of Trump, itās starting to look more like just āThe Shining.ā And President Obamaās term in office is over, so just like in āThe Shining,ā things get really crazy after the black guy retires.
Speaking of horror movies brought to life, his cabinet picks are all being confirmed, and it looks less like the cabinet of a President, and more like āThe Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.ā Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon/Mobil is now the Secretary of State. The State Department is busy preparing for his arrival by making sure all the bathrooms are just as disgustingly filthy as the bathrooms at every Exxon/Mobil gas station. Diplomats received an inter-office memo instructing them not to flush until further notice, and to no longer worry about their aim. To add authenticity, all of the bathrooms will also be kept locked with only one key for the entire building, and the key will be attached to a hubcap from a late-model Buick LeSabre to make sure no one walks off with it.
So what did Trump do this week? Well, at a Black History Month prayer breakfast, Trump seemed to think the famous orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was alive and well. Which may come as a shock to his family, seeing as he died in 1895. Well, not his family, so much, but his descendants might be pretty freaked out to know he walks among the living. Frederick Douglass would probably be a very eloquent zombie. He could probably convince you to agree to let him eat your brains as reparations for slavery. I remember his famous quote, āThose who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, so howās about you let me eat your brains?ā Or this insightful quote they taught us in school, āNo man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. Now let me eat your brains, seriously.ā
When asked about Douglass, Trump said, āFrederick Douglass is an example of somebody whoās done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.ā Yeah, heās getting recognized more and more, Mr. President, and you noticed. Nothing gets by you, does it? I think he might just win this season of Celebrity Apprentice, if that scheming Harriet Tubman doesnāt call him out in the boardroom for being a lousy project manager. Harriet Tubman was like the Omarosa of the underground railroad, and putting her face on the twenty-dollar bill will only feed her ego and make her even more insufferable to be around. āLet me get the tip, but all I have are twenties...Anybody got change for a āmeā?ā I wondered how any U.S. President could be quite this stupid, then I realized he must have learned everything he knows about black history from his Education Secretary pick, Betsy DeVos. Now, Iām not saying Betsy DeVos is an idiot and far too unqualified to run our nationās public schools. Iām not saying it, Iām typing it. She knows nothing about our education system.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks a āscholarshipā is a boat full of smart people.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks ātrigonometryā is the study of firing guns.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks that ātuitionā is when a woman gets a hunch about something.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks āTufts Universityā is where you learn to cut hair.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks āTulane Universityā is on a highway.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks āLoyolaā is where they make all those crayons.
Betsy DeVos is so stupid, she thinks a āBachelor of Artsā is a gay male dancer.
Apart from Trump providing a perfect example of why we actually need Black History Month, he upped the crazy ante at this prayer breakfast when he started ranting about the ratings on his old TV show, from which he was fired for being a racist. "They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place...The ratings went down the tubes. It's been a total disaster...And I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings." WTF? Somebody tell this guy heās supposed to be worrying about the really big things now, like war, and comets, and aliens, and climate change, and everything else that can possibly go wrong. But instead he is worrying about his old TV show? Snap out of it, man, youāre on a new reality show now, itās called āCelebrity President.ā And this first season sucks. And your ratings are awful. How the hell did we end up with a President who is in bed with Russia but at war with NBC? Franklin Roosevelt will always be remembered for winning the war against the Nazis and the Japanese, and Donald Trump will always be remembered for losing the war against Saturday Night Live. I think it was a racist thing to do, actually, to pray for Arnold Schwarzeneggerās ratings at a Black History prayer breakfast instead of any number of African-Americans who lost their lives in the past year. Frankly, I think he brought up Schwarzenegger because he knew the only way he could use the n-word was by putting āSchwarzenā in front of it.
And another scary development, two weeks into Trump's presidency and Republicans have given the mentally ill easier access to guns, as they voted to overturn an Obama administration law that blocked people with mental disorders from buying guns. Wow. Talk about playing to your base.
What else. Oh yeah, he threatened to invade Mexico, probably worth mentioning that. Nothing like a military invasion to teach people to respect borders. I guess his next move will be to annex the Sudetenland.
Strangest of all, Trump somehow managed to get into a fight with one of our staunchest allies, Australia. Australia! How do you manage to piss off Australia? For Godās sake, their national motto is āNo Worries.ā Trump was upset that President Obama had agreed to take 1,200 refugees that Australia had been detaining. Trump called it the āworst deal ever!ā The worst deal ever? I donāt think it really approaches the level of worst deal ever, not even on a personal level. I once paid 60 bucks for an eighth of mediocre weed, and that was in the 1990s! I couldnāt even enjoy it because I paid so much. And because it was shitty weed. The Brown Frown.
Worst deal ever? How about when we bought Manhattan from the Indians for 24 bucks? Thatās a pretty bad deal. Is it still okay to say Indians? Probably not, unless youāre talking about motorcycles or Clevelandās baseball team, so, Native Americans it is. Although, for my own education I looked into this, and some people prefer to be called American Indian over Native American. One Lakota man from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation said recently, "If some Indians want to be called Native Americans or Natives, let them be called that, but I was born an Indian and I shall die an Indian.ā That sounds so cool the way he says it. I bet it sounds less impressive when you describe comics that way. āIf some Comics want to be called Stand-up Comics or Comedians, let them be called that, but I was born a Hack, and I shall die a Hack.ā No, I was wrong, it still sounds pretty cool.
Trump should consider himself very lucky that bad deal went down. Just imagine, if they hadnāt made that bad deal, the Native Americans would have been the real estate developers in Manhattan instead of Donald Trumpās dad. And he never would have gotten rich, and never would have become President. Whoa. Itās a revenge curse! President Trump is our payback for ripping off those Indians! I havenāt seen a revenge curse this bad since Craig T. Nelson built his house on a sacred burial ground in āPoltergeistā! Of course, the real difference between Native American real estate developers and Donald Trump is that the Native American casinos donāt go bankrupt.
Hey, hereās a really bad deal, how about all the people who paid to enroll in Trump University? Now that might be the āworst deal ever.ā So bad that Trump agreed to pay a 25 million dollar settlement to avoid a trial and charges of fraud. Although, in all fairness to Trump, by paying out that 25 million, he actually did make those students wealthy like he promised, all it took was a class action lawsuit against him. Clever move, Mr. Trump. Bravo.
And that is the week that was.
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Donald Trump vs. Herbert Hoover vs. Back to The Future Part III
Okay, heās the worst ever. President Trump is the worst President weāve ever had, in my lifetime at least. To find a President that could even compete with Trump for the title of worst President ever, youād have to get in a time-traveling Delorean and go back about a century. But I wouldnāt recommend you do that, some say that time-traveling in a car powered by a flux capacitor can possibly lead to Parkinsonās disease, especially if you do it for three movies. But the evidence for that is...shaky. Hey, why did those āBack To The Futureā films successively get so much worse? Couldnāt producer Robert Zemeckis just get in the Delorean and go forward in time to read the godawful reviews? If only Biff Tannen had stolen a movie guide instead of a sports almanac, he could have saved Universal Studios the 40 million dollars it spent making āBack To The Future Part IIIā. Wow, what a disaster! You know, I recently saw an ad for some network TV show where a team of intrepid multi-culti adventurers go back in time to save the Hindenburg from exploding, but I think āBack To The Future IIIā may have been the bigger disaster. Yes, the Hindenburg was terrible, sure, but it all happened pretty quick. Whereas āBack To The Future IIIā has a running time of two hours! Two hours of watching Teen Wolf and the stoner from Taxi yuk it up in the old West. āOh, the inanity!ā
You probably donāt even remember the movie. That's understandable, itās a normal human response to block out cinematic traumas like that. To access those repressed bad-movie memories youād need years of psychotherapy and hypnotic regression. Or basic cable. First of all, who would take a time machine and go back to the Old West? Nobody in their right mind, thatās who. Not even Dr. Who. It was about as bad a place and time as there was. All you could get in the Old West was syphilis or a gunshot wound. The Old West was even worse than Kanye West, heād probably only give you one of those things.
If you could time travel to the far off future, why would you go back and watch a prospector fall down an abandoned mineshaft? You can watch Leonardo da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa, or you could go watch two drunk cowboys shoot each other for cheating at cards. Actually, that still happens quite often. No time travel necessary, just a bus ticket to Reno.
Thatās why I donāt get this Westworld. Thatās the place you want to re-create and populate with robots? I could think of dozens of better robot theme parks. Hereās one, how about Hugh Hefnerās Playboy Mansion circa 1974? Hanging out with James Caan, a metric ton of cocaine, and every aspiring centerfold on the west coast sounds like a lot more fun than sitting in the middle of a train robbery shoot-out. Where am I, Chicago? But thatās just me, I guess. Ā Want another great robot idea? How about a robot theme park of the cast of Seinfeld. That would be awesome! I would so go, weād all go! And theyād all be there, not just Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine, but everybody. Mr. Pitt. Tim Watley. Jackie Chiles, Lloyd Braun, Kenny Bania, and of course, Uncle Leo. The bubble boy and Izzy Mandelbaum. āMandelbaum! Mandelbaum!ā Let me know when they build it and I will date the robot Sue Ellen Mischke, the bra-less woman who caused a car accident. She may not be real, but theyāre spectacular! Serenity now!
But I digress.
As I was saying, no one would time travel to the Old West.
If somebody actually had a time machine, the conversation would go something like this: āHey, I have this time machine, and itās all gassed up with bananas peels and deadly radiation or whatever the hell it runs on, where do you think we should go?ā
āWe can go anywhere in time? How about we check out a Jimi Hendrix concert! Letās go see Jimiās legendary set at Woodstock! Or the Fillmore East, 1970, thatās maybe his best concert ever! Cāmon! Hendrix!! Either that or maybe we go back in time and check out Jesus! Iād be cool with that, too, either Jesus or Jimi Hendrix! Which one do you want to go see?ā
āWell, I donāt know about you, but I donāt think Iām worthy to be in the presence of God. So letās go see Jesus.ā
The amazing things you could see with a time machine would blow your mind. You could go see the Great Pyramids of Giza when they were brand new, and still under warrantee. Back when they still had that new Pyramid smell. The Pyramids donāt smell so good today, now the place really Sphynx. That joke never gets old, right? Donāt Tut-Tut me. Itās like they say, moā mummy moā problems.
You could go back and see who built Stonehenge...the Druids? The Picts? Or was Stonehenge a natural formation, like the face on Mars, and Mount Rushmore.
You could go back in time to see the dinosaurs just before the comet hit, and watch them climb into their dinosaur space-ships and fly off to populate other worlds. The dinosaurs that stayed behind were either wiped out or forced to live underground, until they were discovered by Marshall, Will, and Holly on Saturday mornings in the Land of The Lost.
The spacefaring dinosaurs, over millions of years, eventually became the Gorn, a very tough race of outer-space reptilians. But they got their lizard asses kicked in about 40 minutes by Captain James Tiberius Kirk, and single-handedly. You can say what you want about William Shatner being a complete diva and an asshole to work with, but the man kicked ass and saved the galaxy about a hundred times, and he did it all without a raccoon. As far as Iām concerned, Captain Kirk earned the right to cut scenes from the other cast members just to pad his own lines. Live long and fuck āem.
But I digress. I really, really digressed.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, this damn Back to The Future III, itās kind of haunting me, how bad this movie is. Itās a shame the time-travelers from that TV show couldnāt go back in time and save the time-travelerās movie franchise. And what is it with time-travel being so popular on television all of a sudden? When did that happen? On TV right now, there is the time-travel show I was talking about, NBCās Travelers. Also, Fox has Making History, Hulu has 11.22.63, The CW has Legends of Tomorrow, Syfy has 12 Monkeys, and Comedy Central has Time Traveling Bong. And I already mentioned BBCās Dr. Who. Thatās a whole lot of time travel goinā on! Thereās no way thereās enough time in the day for a person to watch all these time-travel shows, youād actually need to use a time machine to see them all. Or a DVR, I guess.
But I digress. Stop me before I digress again. I think this blog is about politics.
Oh yeah, Donald Trump is the worst President ever.
To find another President as bad as Trump, youād have to go back at least as far Hoover. Herbert Hoover, that is, not J. Edgar Hoover. Itās easy to confuse the two of them, the Hoovers. But where Herbert Hoover liked to address the public, J. Edgar liked to wear a dress in public. And where Herbert Hooverās dam looked good, J. Edgar looked damn good. But much like the Hoover vacuum cleaner of that era, both of these guys completely sucked.
Was Herbert Hoover worse than Trump? Letās compare the two men:
Herbert Hoover was orphaned at an early age. He worked hard to found his own business and became a multi-millionaire. Donald Trump? He was born with a silver spoon up his ass and inherited his multi-millionaire dadās real estate business. He then went on to bankrupt casinos, screw over independent contractors, and force people to humiliate themselves for jobs on national TV. Oh, and heās good at firing beauty pageant winners if they gain a few pounds, then ridiculing them in the press. Hmm. itās close, but I think I gotta give round 1 to Hoover.
Herbert Hoover was Stanford-educated, he was an engineer. But Trump must be smarter, after all, he had his own Trump University! And if it was a phony university like the fake news says, tell me how come all those students went on to earn millions of dollars? Oh, thatās right, it was a 25 million dollar class-action lawsuit settlement he paid out to avoid having his orange ass dragged into court. Round 2, Hoover.
Herbert Hoover built Hoover Dam, one of the greatest structural engineering feats in human history. But then again, Donald Trump built a huge pyramid scheme. So, Iād call this round a draw.
Before Herbert Hoover was President, Ā he was in charge of enormous, complex relief operations in Europe during and after World War I. He served two Presidents as Secretary of Commerce, under both Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Before Donald Trump was President? He was in charge of enormous, complex challenges like making Lou Ferrigno and LaToya Jackson make bagels and peddle them on the streets of Manhattan. Trumpās biggest executive decisions were made sitting in a boardroom with Dee Snider, Meatloaf, Joan Rivers, Sinbad, and Dennis Rodman. Who, sadly enough, would make far better cabinet secretaries than the ones he actually chose. Seriously, who do you think has more experience dealing with North Korean āweebles-wobble-but-they-donāt-fall-downā dictator Kim Jong Un: Rex Tillerson or Dennis Rodman? Think about that one. Hereās a hint: itās the guy with 11,954 rebounds. Dennis Rodman is the only person Trump knows who has actually sat down with āLil Kimā Jong Un, and he fired him. Now I donāt think I would trust the Worm to handle the North Korea situation by himself, but if he had Jordan, Pippen, and the rest of the 1995 Chicago Bulls with him, weād have an NBA franchise in Pyongyang by now. And war would have to wait at least through the playoffs. Round 4, Herbert Hoover.
I think we can stop right there. Itās a K.O. at the O.K. corral. Move over, Herbert Hoover, thereās a new worst President in town.
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The Password is Fidelio
Fidel Castro was found dead. Looks like our 1961 CIA secret plot to kill him was more effective than we thought! I guess they chose a more long-range method of execution, probably for plausible deniability. That way, the blame and blowback couldnāt come back to haunt the President. Of course, that was President Kennedy, so heās the one doing the haunting now. And there was blowback for Kennedy, but it came from the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza. Back, and to the left.
How arbitrary and unfair is the world when we lose a great man like JFK way back in 1963, but an asshole dictator like Fidel Castro got to live until right now? It might even be worse than when Chris Farley died, and yet we still have David Spade. Although, āJoe Dirt 2ā was such a disaster that in the credits, it lists the director as āZapruderā.
We lost Kennedy so long ago, it was before the Beatles came to America to appear live on the Ed Sullivan Show and take America by storm. Think about that, folks. That means that if Kennedy had lived, he could have protected the U.S. from the British Invasion..! But while LBJ was exponentially deepening our military involvement in Viet Nam, we lacked the military might at home to protect the borders from an invading army of Skiffle bands and adorable, jangly guitar acts. There was no stopping them. And they werenāt always sending their best, folks. While our soldiers were fighting Ho Chi Minh, there was no one to stop Hermanās Hermits. We fought at Da Nang, we should have fought Donovan. Tet offensive? Not as offensive as the Troggs. And it was literally an invasion by The Zombies. Iām not sure what happened to them, I think after they recorded āTime of The Season,ā Rick Grimes killed them with a machete.
But I digress.
Fidel Castro. If youāre young and donāt know much about this short, disheveled, rumpled, cigar-smoking old man, well, he was kind of like Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo. Except instead of going around solving murders, he went around ordering them.
But if youāre young, you donāt know who the hell Columbo is either. Columbo? Hermanās Hermits? Jesus Christ, I gotta start using references from this century. If I only knew what article of speech Wiz Khalifa was, Iād use it in a sentence.
We donāt know much about Castroās death at this point, only that was very despondent over the break-up of a long-term relationship. Apparently his BFF Vladimir Putin dumped him recently for Donald Trump.
I hear that Castro might have survived, but the ambulance they sent for him was a 1958 Ford Edsel, held together only by bread-ties and a sense of communist solidarity. It might be a workerās paradise, but not if you want to work in a car dealership. Thanks to our embargo, the last time there was a new car in Cuba, Fredo Corleone was driving around in it with Johnny Ola. I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!
I seriously think the best thing that came out of Cuba in the last 50 years was Godfather II. Sorry, cigars, close, but no cigar. Godfather II takes the cake, and the cake is shaped like Cuba.
And Iād have to say the second-best thing to come out of Cuba was Al Pacino again as Tony Montana in Scarface. I just wish there was more cocaine in the movie. There was more white powder in Scarface than when Jack Nicholson chased Danny through the hedge maze in a snowstorm in The Shining.
And the third-best was Al Pacino again in Carlitoās Way. Yeah, I know he was Puerto Rican in that, but so what, Pacino is cool.
Fidel Castro was the worldās most powerful Socialist. Except for one Senator from Vermont.
Now with Castroās death, the worst island Dictator in the world is now unquestionably Jeff Probst. If Castro tortured his political prisoners as badly as any Survivor reward challenge, Amnesty International would have a stroke. And Jeff Probst has kicked more people off the island than the Mariel boatlift. āIām sorry Elian, bring me your torch, the tribe has spoken. Youāll have to leave the island immediately. Unless you have a diplomatic immunity idol.ā
Itās sad that Fidel died before realizing his biggest dream, taking over as the new host of NBCās Celebrity Apprentice. Now who will lecture Boy George, Vince Neil and āSnookiā on workers controlling the means of production? Come on, host Arnold Schwarzenegger canāt even pronounce Marxism. āMox-zhissom!ā Nope. Castro would have been perfect, he was really good at firing people. Well, firing at people. In fact he had a whole squad of people just to do the firing. I forget what they were called. Squad of firers? No, thatās not it. Anyway, he...Firing squad! Thatās it! In fact, I think the first celebrity he āfiredā was Ernesto āCheā Guevara. I was hoping it would be Omarosa.
Castro left his brother Raoul to rule Cuba, and left his beard to every hipster in Brooklyn.
So long Fidel, I donāt know where youāre going, but I know it rhymes with āFidelā.
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Trump Goes From Fox News to TNT!
Donald Trump owes a lot of his fame to NBC for The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice. And Donald Trump owes his Election in a large part to FOX NEWS. Trump has always known when to use a network to his advantage. Now 100 days into his term, with his approval ratings falling faster than a dog on roller skates, Trump has gone from FOX NEWS to TNT. Not the TV network, though, the explosive.
Trump has started dropping bombs on people, a time-honored tradition with leaders who really arenāt all that good at leading. War is what happens when people are bad at politics. When I first heard that Trump dropped a 13 million dollar bomb on Afghanistan, I just assumed they were talking about the female āGhostbustersā reboot. Wow, what a disaster! It was unwatchable. Not a laugh in that script. Who ya gonna call? āGhost writers!ā Too bad they couldnāt keep the ghost of Harold Ramis in one of those containment units, but he always was a Class 5 Entity. He probably haunted this production just on principle. When I saw the movie, I thought I was in a surround-sound theater, but it turned out it wasnāt the ghosts on the screen, it was the audience yelling āBoo! Boo!ā
But I digress.
Trump bombed an ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan with the Mother Of All Bombs, the MOAB. Itās one of those Millennial acronyms, like YOLO, except it means the exact opposite of that. It means You Only Lived, Once. And if you happen to be a Millennial, let me put it in terms you can understand: The Generals told Trump āHey, weāre hundo-p this bomb is on Fleek.ā Trump said āPerf! Iām thirsty, and theyāre throwing shade. Bye Felicia!ā Sorry not sorry. And then we dropped the MOAB on ISIS. I guess ISIS is another Millennial acronym, and judging from all their recent losses on the battlefield, ISIS probably stands for āI Surrender! I Surrender!ā Boom.
This bomb was big, let me tell you. āHow big was it,ā you ask, Ed McMahon-style? It was so big, it was almost as big as the bomb they dropped this week on Survivor! āHIYO!ā Did you see the Survivor controversy? At tribal council, one low-life contestant outed another contestant as transexual, live on national TV, if you overlook the fact that it was filmed four months earlier. People all across America were shocked. Well, mostly they were shocked that Survivor was still on the air. There were howls of well-deserved outrage for this truly reprehensible contestant, I know they donāt let you bring a compass to the desert island, but I didnāt know you couldnāt bring a moral compass! But most of the outrage was for CBS, who had months to edit this revelation out but chose not to. Why? Well, because emotional trauma equals ratings equals advertising revenue. And I know they could have easily cut the scene, because they do let you bring a machete. What kind of advertisers does CBS hopes to gain by publicly outing a contestant? What corporate sponsors are cool with that? Maybe In-N-Out Burger? Outback Steakhouse? California Closets? The logo of Survivor should be changed to āOutwit, Outlast, Outplay, Out somebody.ā
But again, Ā I digress.
So there were a bunch of ISIS fighters hiding in an underground cave complex along the Afghanistan border. And say what you want about Afghans, theyāre a tight-knit community. Get it? An Afghan is tight-knit, like the blanket? Hey, man, it wasnāt that bad. So, the President had only two options, drop the Mother Of All Bombs on them, or send in United Airlines security guards to drag them out. But they felt the United Airlines jackbooted goons might be a tad too violent. If only the 9/11 hijackers had flown United Airlines, weād have saved a couple of trillion dollars on a couple of endless wars. Yeah, I know, I know, that one was that bad.. Unless you happened to have been frozen in carbonite this past week, you know that United Airlines security thugs dragged an Asian doctor out of his seat because they overbooked the flight, and he did not go willingly. Iām not sure what the doctorās name was, but from what he was screaming as the security guards slammed him in the face, his name may have been Doctor āNo!ā Anyway, right now United is trying to repair the damage from this weekās unfortunate Asian-toss with new incentives, they just introduced a āFrequent Dragger Milesā program. From now on customer service comes first at United, theyāre going to roll out the red carpet before they drag you out on it.
And Syria. The Thursday before last, Trump ordered a launch on Syria. And that same day, I ordered a lunch on Siri. Weird, right? Quite the coincidence. Personally, Iām not so big on getting involved in Syriaās civil war. Hereās the way I look at it, we had a Civil War once, and they didnāt help at all. So donāt ask us, Damascus! Man, that would make a great T-shirt for a pro-isolationist PAC that can appreciate clever word-play, but those two qualities are mutually exclusive.
Donald Trump recounted the events of the night of the launch in an interview, but it sounded less like a moment in military history and more like a late-night cable infomercial for cake. Apparently, just as we were giving Assad his just desserts, Trump was just having dessert. He was eating chocolate cake as he launched missiles at Syria. Wow, talk about death by chocolate! Trump said, "Weāre now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that youāve ever seen." Trump went on to mention the cake four times in a two-minute interview. Now I seriously doubt that this guy knows any more about cake than he knows about being President, he thought that would be a piece of cake, too. And how the hell does he know what kind of beautiful cakes this interviewer has seen in her lifetime? Sheās in TV, she may have worked on any number of cake-related reality TV shows; Cake Wars, or Cake Boss, or Cake Czar, or Cake Fuhrer, or Cake Blitzkreig, or Cake Tet Offensive. And all of those cakes result in losing the Battle of the Bulge, amirite? Amirite? You know I am! Now I donāt mind if Trump wants to say itās the best piece of cake heās ever seen in his life, fine. We know heād be lying, simply because thatās what he does, but, fine. Whatever. But donāt go saying that your cake is better than any cake somebody else has ever seen in their life. Thatās this guyās problem, always telling other people he know better. He tried that sales-pitch with his monstrous health care bill, and people werenāt buying it then, and theyāre not buying your ultimate-cake bullshit now. Iād like to point out this is clearly a Marie Antoinette moment for Trump, but alas, we have been living in a land without irony for some time now.
And seeing as Mar-a Lago was just hit with serious health code violations for improper food handling, Iāll skip the dessert and just take the check, thanks. Health inspectors found āpotentially hazardousā āhigh priorityā violations at Trumpās āsouthern White Houseā, with meats stored at temperatures much higher the mandatory 41 degrees. The duck and beef were measured at 50 degrees, so when you see that beef coming, you better duck! And the ham was stored at 57 degrees! Even I start to turn bad at 57 degrees. Another violation was the smoked salmon, which was being served without āproper parasite destruction.ā Sounds yummy, they must have caught the fish in that swamp they drained. Funny he doesnāt talk about this to the reporter, "Weāre now having dessert. And we had the most unsanitary, unsafe for human consumption piece of badly-stored, room-temperature, parasite-infested swamp-cake that youāve ever seen." So Eff this Mar-a Lago, political prisoners got better food at the Gulag Archipelago! Oh, just look it up, thatās damn funny. Fun fact: Mar-a Lago is Spanish for āLake surrounded by Morons.ā I did not know that. Ed, did you know that? āYes!ā HIYO!
Trump launched 60 missiles at the Syrian air base, one missile missed, 59 missiles hit. Hey, why do they call it a āmissileā when it hits itās target? They should call the ones that miss missiles, and call the ones that hit āhittilesā. Although, thinking about it, āhittilesā sounds like a Nazi candy. Forget that. All I know is the air strike played really well for Donald Trump, his ratings went up a couple of points, and he showed the world that the kid with small hands can play cowboy.
As Donald Trump put it, after he finished his cake, āNow people will take me Syriasly.ā
And now, weāre on to North Korea. You know, I never really minded that Trump was vulgar and offensive, that was as close as he gets to charm. But I donāt like the way things are going. Things are going south, fast. I get the feeling the next thing that will be going south on the Korean peninsula is the North Korean army. Oh well, at least weāll get a M*A*S*H reboot out of it. I like Alan Alda, and now he can tell us this war is stupid, too, in between ripping-off Groucho Marx lines. But I wish Trump would go back to swearing and talking about pussy. I donāt mind him dropping F-bombs, I just donāt want him dropping any A-bombs.
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1984, Marked Down From $25.99! (AndĀ the Ray Bradbury Story)
After the Trump administration introduced the all-too Orwellian concept of āalternative factsā, it has caused panicked buying of the novel ā1984ā all across the country. It was reported that in the week since Kelleyanne Conman...I mean Kellyanne Conway...made that statement Sunday on āMeet The Pressā, sales of the George Orwell cautionary classic have gone up over ten thousand percent! Ā Ten thousand percent, thatās exactly how much our gym coach always asked us to give out there. Heād always say āYa gotta give it yer all! Ya gotta give ten thousand percent out there!! Ya think we werenāt givinā it our all at Inchon? The Korean border sure wasnāt gonna stay exactly the same as it was before the war by itself!ā That was Coach Fazullo, he was old school tough, picture a cross between Burgess Meredith and the Thing, but more gruff. I think he probably meant āYa gotta give a hundred and ten percent out there!!ā, a phrase commonly used by coaches to demonstrate exactly why they arenāt teaching math, but coach mustāve moved the decimal point or forgot to carry the one or something. Maybe he thought if we somehow did manage to give ten thousand percent, we could beat any other team who is only giving 110 percent? Frankly, I had my doubts that Coach knew any numbers higher than the ones marked on the football field, or maybe the 53rd parallel of the Korean peninsula. In fact, he never had us count off any higher than four. I explained to Coach that it would take 100 of us, each giving 100%, to give 10,000% āout thereā. Or it would take 91 of us if we each gave 110%. I was rewarded for my precise calculations with a leather medicine ball to the solar plexus, thrown with the force of an asteroid impact on ancient Mesoamerica. When I regained the ability to breathe, some twenty minutes later, Coach told me, āGet offa the floor before I put ya in an iron lung!ā So now my sternum aches whenever itās going to rain, or whenever I hear the number āten thousand percent.ā
You know, I got curious while writing this, and I looked into the origin of the phrase ā110 percentā. The first ever use was in 1916, in the sport of competitive rowing. The next usage had an element of humor to it, and it ended up being used from 1919 to 1925 in a vaudeville show as a joke. Iām not sure at what point sports teams started taking it seriously, maybe because theyāre all on steroids and performance-enhancing drugs 110% is not out of the question.
But I digress.
So now ā1984ā is the number one selling book on Amazon, or it was until they completely ran out of copies. They are hurriedly rushing the book back into print to meet the demand! That is doubleplusgood for us, but doubleplusungood for a presidency that rejects facts. And journalism is up against the wall already. You know, itās pretty sad when Newsweek goes out of business, but Newspeak is alive and well. Maybe these are the jobs he was going to bring back, dystopian authors who warned us about people like him. Who knows? Maybe heāll start burning books, and the sales of āFahrenheit 451ā will go through the roof, too.
Yeah, thatās a pretty cool book, Fahrenheit 451. I mean, thatās what I hear. I never read it, and donāt know much about it, other than it was written by Ray Bradbury. I always meant to read it, but how would I ever figure out whatās going on? I havenāt read any of the 450 Fahrenheit books that came before it! I canāt just pick up and read the 451st book in a series! And I sure as hell canāt go back and start reading from Fahrenheit 1, whoās got that kind of time? Lifers at Guantanamo? Iām not getting any younger, here. Iām lucky I got through all three of the Hunger Games books. I donāt even want to read the Divergent trilogy. Thatās why I never read Slaughterhouse 5, because I never read the first 4 Slaughterhouse books! Too many sequels, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.! But what can you expect from a man named Kurt Vonnegut Jr., he is a sequel himself! And this is the same reason I never read Catch 22. Waay too many books! I just canāt devote that kind of time to any book series, I mean, cāmon! Although I must admit I am curious as to what the main guy caught 22 of. Did he catch 22 fish? Did he catch 22 head colds? I guess Iāll never know. But Iām okay with that. I hear they made it into a movie, so maybe theyāll play it on cable TV someday and Iāll get to see it. Itād be wild if they played it on channel 22, right? But channel 22 is QVC, so the most I could probably hope for is that they sell DVDs of it.
But Fahrenheit 451? WTF? Wow, Ray Bradbury, mad respect, son! Thatās crazy determined. Image you write 450 books before you get one thatās a hit? If I wrote just one book and it didnāt sell Iād probably give up, but not this Ray Bradbury. No way. He just kept on typing away like a mad mojo mofo. And we know none of the earlier books were a hit, right? I mean, go into Barnes and Noble and ask them for a copy of Fahrenheit 1 and theyāll look at you like youāre insane, so it must be a really bad book. By the time I asked them for a copy of Fahrenheit 7, they told me to leave the store, so I guess they only carry the one famous book, Fahrenheit 451. And for all we know, he wrote a hundred Fahrenheit books after that one, too, but none of them were any good either. We simply have no way of knowing, not if you get tossed out of bookstores every time you ask a question!
But he stuck with it. Youād think a normal human would really take serious stock of himself after writing 450 books that were flops, but he didnāt quit. Iād be like, āAlright, I gave it a good shot, canāt say I didnāt try this writing thing, but hell, 450 books. Sounds like a good number to throw my typewriter off a bridge and go to trade school to become a spot-welder. Is 46 too old to take the Postal exam? I need a pension. I should have listened to my mother and been a mailman, they have great benefits.ā But not Ray, he knew that one more book would be the one that made him famous.
I wonder if all his science fiction author friends gave him a bunch of shit about his years of struggle when they came over. Like when Isaac Asimov comes over to burn one and hang out. āWhat up, Ray, how you livinā? You still working on those Fahrenheit books? Yeah? Man, Ray...uh, I donāt mean Man Ray, the American Surrealist painter and photographer who was also a significant contributor to the Dada movement, I mean, you, Ray Bradbury! What number book you up to now, Ray?ā
āWell, Isaac, if you really want to know, right now Iām writing Fahrenheit 337.ā
āAndā¦ā Asimov paused to take a big hit off the joint, then exhale a curling plume of Tahoe OG Kush, ā...howās that one going, Ray?ā
āHowās it going? Howās it going? Itās piece of shit is how itās going! But itās a process, Isaac, itās a process! And one day...one day, Asimov, itās gonna pay off, big time! Donāt give me crap about writing 337 Fahrenheit books, George Orwell wrote 1984, thatās like, 1647 more books than me, and it was a big, big hit! And even in the future, itāll be huge! And Arthur C. Clarke just wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, thatās even more than 1984, and theyāre making that one into a movie, for Chrissake!ā
My question is, how long did the wife put up with this literary losing streak? Not all that long, I bet. āRay. I...Iām leaving you, Ray. Iām through. I just canāt take any more, not one more book! I believed in you, Ray, you and your stupid...temperature books! Who in their right mind writes books about the temperature? And I read them all, Ray, from Fahrenheit Zero all the way up! I read Fahrenheit 10. It left me, cold, Ray, Fahrenheit 10 is very cold. Now Fahrenheit 77, that was beautiful, thatās a good book for a picnic, Fahrenheit 77 is just about perfect.
But whereās it going to stop, Ray? I thought youād quit when you hit the boiling point, Fahrenheit 212, but you just kept going! Well Iāve reached my boiling point, Ray, and Iām leaving! But before I do, Iām going to take all of these stupid books and Iām gonna put āem in a pile, Ray, and Iām gonna set fire to them! Iām gonna burn āem all, Ray! I donāt know what temperature books burn at, but you might want to look that one up, Ray! You might want to look it up!
We need money, Ray, weāre broke. Why donāt you just go back to writing for the newspaper? Iām sure theyād give you your old job back, Iām sure theyād take you back at the Chronicle.ā
And Ray Bradbury heatedly replied, āForget it, Delores, or whatever Ray Bradburyās wifeās name is, Iām not going back to the newspaper! I write books! Books, maybe Delores, books about different temperatures! From very, very cold to very, very hot! And all the different temperature degrees in between very, very cold and very, very hot! Iām never going back to the newspaper! Why, I wouldnāt write for the Chronicle again if they were the last newspaper on Earth! I wouldnāt write for the Chronicle if they were the only newspaper from here to Mars! I wouldnāt write for them if they were The Martian Chronicle! Iā¦.wait a minute. I like the way that sounds...The Martian Chronicles! Thatās it! Get me a new typewriter ribbon, Delores, or whatever my wifeās name is!ā
Iām pretty sure thatās how it happened.
Wait, what the hell was I talking about? Oh right, Trump. Yeah, he sucks.
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John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin: To Infirmity and Beyond
I remember when the term āSpace-Ageā meant the future, now it means the past.
With the death of John Glenn and the recent hospitalization of Buzz Aldrin, itās starting to look like the greatest days of pioneering and exploration are behind us. Letās face it, we peaked as a civilization about half a century ago, and now weāre sliding back down on the great decline. Like the parabolic arc of a rocketship, we reached our zenith when we reached the Moon, and now weāre plummeting back to Earth to burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere. Not from velocity, just from our own global warming. Going to the Moon was the greatest achievement of humankind, and by a wide margin, 238,900 miles to be precise. Letās put that distance in perspective: If you were to take everybody in line in front of you at your local Starbucks on a Monday morning, they would only reach halfway to the Moon. Wow, right?
The Moon is so far away that astronauts Tom Hanks and Lt. Dan couldnāt even get there in Apollo 13. I think it was because the other astronaut was Kevin Bacon, and his very presence caused all their calculations to be off by six degrees. Man, I hope somebody got that. Iām pretty sure Ed Harris was in that movie too, before he started killing robots and spilling paint on the floor. If it sounds like I never even saw Apollo 13, youāre right. I just know that from the title it sounds like another one of those high-number sequels, like X-Men 9, Ā or Star Wars 7, or Oceans 11, and I think I would have to watch the other 12 Apollo movies first to know what was going on. I mean, I saw the first Apollo movie, where he fights Rocky, right? That was a good one. I know they fight again in the sequel, but after that Rocky goes on to fight Mr. T, and Dolph Lundgren, and Viet Nam a few times. I didnāt know there were a dozen more Apollo Creed movies, and in this one heās in space? Now I have to see it! I learn so much from documentaries. I guess if a cartoon rock band of strippers like Josie and the Pussycats can make it into Outer Space, anybody can.
Going to the moon was manās highest ambition from the moment the very first cavemen looked up and touched that monolith. Next thing you know, they were throwing bones in the air to the Blue Danube Waltz, and somehow that started the space program. And our Apollo mission was the big, climactic finish of manās deep-seated longing for the Moon. It wasnāt just the Moonshot, it was the Money shot. And like any good porn actors, our astronauts hit it two more times before they quit it.
And we havenāt been back since. Which is pathetic. And donāt give me any of the usual millennialist Weltschmerz about how thereās no reason to go back, and it costs a lot, and itās just a bunch of rocks. If you want to put it that way, then Mount Rushmore is just a bunch of rocks, and the Pyramids are just a bunch of rocks, and the Grand Canyon is just a hole where a bunch of rocks used to be. But theyāre all sure as hell worth the gas to get there. And youāre not thinking very hard if you canāt come up with a hundred ways the Moon could be used for fun and profit. How a theme park, Disneymoon. And they wouldnāt even have to build Space Mountain, theyād just have to point in any direction and go, āThere! Thereās a space mountain! And there! Thereās another space mountain!āā Then they could point point back to the Earth in the distance and say, āSee? Itās a small world after all.ā It would certainly be a honeymoon destination. Or would that be a honeyearth destination, itās kinda messed up. Plus billionaires could hide their money on the Moon to avoid paying taxes, no taxes on the Moon. Today they have to stash their money in off-shore accounts, you know how much theyād love to stash their money in off-world accounts? Good plan, unless the Ferengi find out about it. And the Moon looks like the best place to be to score some alien drugs. No drug laws on the Moon, either. Forget Maui, imagine Lunar Kush from the Sea of Tranquility. In space, no one can hear you cough.
But weāre not going back to the Moon, not anytime soon anyway, not Americans. Not men, not women, and probably not your kids or grandkids. Weāve lost it. The will as a people, the cohesiveness, the cooperation and the belief in a better future that would be needed for such an undertaking. They canāt even fix the roads. Hell, we donāt even have any spaceships anymore. The Shuttles were scuttled and shuttered and scattered and shuffled off to museums and Iām eating skittles. Try saying that, I dare you.
And we donāt have many astronauts left either. And the ones we do have left are getting very, very old. Personally, Iād like to see them go back into space. Ā And luckily, Cape Canaveral is already in Florida. The mission would be called AARP-OLLO 13. They would stop at the International Space Station, but just to ask directions. And then theyād forget where they parked. There is a danger they might freeze to death, simply because theyāre all old men, and they would all keep turning down the thermostat. āIām not paying to heat the whole outdoors, let alone the endless reaches of space!ā Theyād be the first astronauts to orbit the Earth at no more than 40 miles an hour. Theyād be going so slow theyād probably be passed by a Galaxy. A 1967 Ford Galaxy. Upon re-entry, theyād orbit the Earth six extra times looking for a closer parking space. And theyād land in the wrong time zone just so they can still catch the early-bird special.
John Glenn died on December 8th at age 95, and he was an amazing man. He was a fighter pilot in both WWII and Korea, he flew 149 combat missions, his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on twelve separate occasions and he survived. Then he went into the space program and became the first American to orbit the Earth. Then he served 20 years in the U.S. Senate. Then at age 77, he returned to space. Has anyone in the world ever achieved more? I seriously doubt it. And yet if you ask people today who the most interesting man in the world is, theyāll say itās the liver-damaged Latin lothario Don Juan-wannabe in the Dos Equis beer commercials. Well if heās so goddamn interesting, how come heās always in some dive bar at closing time, telling his stories to a couple of bored hookers one-third his age, instead of being at home with a family that loves him? How badly did he screw up his life with alcohol and the constant need to be the life of the party? Hell, thatās basically me without the accent, and Iām not the least bit interesting. I wish the voice-over in those Dos Equis commercials that tell us how interesting he is were more honest about his actual exploits:
āHe drank so much crappy Mexican beer that even his new liver needs a new liver.ā
āOnce in a drunken rampage he punched Mother Teresa in the tit because he thought she was a velociraptor.ā
āHe sold his soul to the Devil for free beer for life, but now the Devil realizes he made a bad deal and wants out of the contract.ā
And then thereās his tagline. āI donāt always drink beer, but when I donāt, I still drink beer. So I guess I do always drink beer. Buy me a beer?ā And, āStay thirsty, my friends.ā Stay thirsty? That sounds like one of the warning signs of diabetes to me. Put down the beer and get yourself to an endocrinologist. āI donāt always inject insulin, but when I do, I always drink beer. Stay medicated, my friends.ā Mega-Dose Equis.
And have you noticed they recently replaced the old āmost interesting man in the worldā for a new, much less-interesting man in the world? What happened to the old guy, did Trump already deport him? Now that would be interesting. What actually happened is, Dos Equis wanted to change their image to appeal to the growing hispanic population, so they dropped Jonathan Goldsmith, who is actually Jewish, and replaced him with Augustin Legrande, who is actually French. That makes sense. Nothing more popular in Latino culture than Post-Impressionism and delicate Croquembouche puff pastries.
Days before John Glenn died, Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, was evacuated from the South Pole because he was showing signs of altitude sickness. Thatās how every news media began their report. Every one of them. Buzz Aldrin, āthe second person to walk on the moonā.
Actually, what theyāve called him all these years was āthe second MAN to walk on the moonā, which is substantially more accurate, and shorter to say. Iām not sure when they stopped using the word āmanā to describe him, but it happened when I wasnāt looking. Which basically just means it didnāt happen on Pornhub. So now the Moon landings are gender-neutral now, and Iām cool with whatever, but I think that tinkering with the descriptive language of historical events is kind of ā1984ā. Itās doubleplusungood. Iād say it was āBig Brotherā, but today it would have to be āBig Siblingā. Which is fine, I guess. Orwell that ends well, I always say. I just donāt see the point in being purposefully vague about the gender of the people who walked on the Moon, there were only twelve of them, and all of them were men. I think people are okay with that fact, and Iām pretty sure that if we had continued to refer to them as men it would not have led to widespread protests at Cape Canaveral. I doubt thereād be hordes of angry progressives marching on the launchpad holding up signs that read āNASA: Not Another Sexist Agency!ā and āRockets=Flying Erections!ā
I know there are just as many women as men who want to go to the Moon and are qualified to do so. Although with the women Iāve known, their favorite rocket? It fit in their pocket. And none of the women I know would want to go to Moon, for the same reason they hated every restaurant Iāve ever taken them to: the food sucks and thereās no atmosphere. <moonshot rimshot>
But hey, things change fast; language, everything, whether you notice it or not. Thatās how the world changes; not before your eyes, but behind your back. Never while youāre looking. One day, you just turn around and there are no more pay phones. āWhere did they go? They were right here like five minutes ago! Thousands of them!ā There were rows and rows of pay phones, on every corner of every street in every city in America. And then, there werenāt. Just like that. And Iāll tell you what, I never saw any pay phones get hauled up out of the ground by the roots and loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck. Not once. They were just gone, man. Not even a hole in the sidewalk where they were, just smooth cement. Were workmen ordered to remove them only in the middle of the night, so as not to frighten people with the pace of societal change? Nobody ever sees change coming, you just eventually notice that it happened. They always tell you to āface the futureā, but to do that, you better keep looking over your shoulder.
I actually feel sorry for anyone who never knew the cheap thrill of walking by a pay phone and sticking your fingers into the coin return slot, on the very small chance that somebody walked away and left money in there. It didnāt ever actually happen, to my knowledge, but people always stopped to check anyway. Today, these are the same people who buy scratch-off lottery tickets and think theyāll win, and when they donāt win, they buy more scratch-off lottery tickets and think theyāll win. I found a dime in the coin return slot once. Not the coin, but a bag of weed some guy stuffed in there when he was making a call and a cop car parked next to him. Apparently it was the kind of weed that makes you paranoid, because when I smoked it up, I had a weird feeling the pay phone was going to ring and it would be the guy asking for his weed back. Anyway. The coin return slot on pay phones curved upward, so you had to crook and curve your finger as you inserted it, wiggling your fingers looking for coins. Incidentally, this hand motion, repeated over time, eventually led to the discovery of the G-spot. Combine that motion with the motion of dialing an old telephone by inserting your index finger into a hole and making lazy circles, and you werenāt sure if you were giving someone a call or giving them an orgasm.
When I was a kid we had a rotary phone, or as it was called back then, a phone. And they were a pain in the ass to dial. It was relatively easy to dial the lower numbers, they were the closest to whatever the hell you called that curved metal hook that stopped your finger like a miniature Soviet-era sickle, but you had to go almost all the way around the circle for the 8, 9, and 0. And then you had to wait for the wheel to roll all the way back before you could dial the next number. I swear to god, we dropped friends and cut ties with family because their phone numbers had a lot of high numbers that were too much work to dial. āIām sorry, Grandma, but your number is 797-8990, we love you, but weāve met another old lady whose number is 232-1311. Sheās not you, but sheās a lot easier to talk to. Nothing personal, nanna, we just dialed the low numbers until somebody answered.ā And to call somebody in another area code, ten-digits with high numbers? Youād be better off writing them a letter and dropping it in a mailbox. Wait a minute - where the hell did all the mailboxes go? They were right here like five minutes ago! Thousands of them! Right next to the pay phones!
Yeah, Iām old, so what. So I was born before smart phones with unlimited data. So how come It was the generation with the smart phones and the unlimited data that were too stupid to vote? If their phones get any smarter, weāll be living in a feudal kingdom.
But I am old. Iām so old, until recently, I thought āGalaxy 7 with Unlimited Dataā was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In all fairness, he was an Android. And the Enterpriseās mission was to seek out new Verizons. Whoa! Wait a minute! I just remembered something! In the original (best) Star Trek, Kirkās narration was ā...to boldly go where no man has gone beforeā. But in The Next Generation (not the best), Picardās monologue was ā...to boldly go where no one has gone before.ā Holy shit, this gender-neutral-in-space thing goes back further than I thought! I didnāt notice it when it happened, and it was even before Pornhub.
But I digress. Buzz Aldrin, āThe second man/person to walk on the Moon.ā How tired he must be of hearing that word for the last fifty years. Second. Theyāve been calling him that since 1969. Second. Hell, John Glenn just circled the globe three times and he still gets to be called First, Buzz went all the way to the Moon and he gets called Second. Forever to be known throughout all of human history as the guy who had to settle for the Silver Medal in the only race that ever really counted. Poor guy, people think. He was this close to being the famous hero in all the books. Because on July 20, 1969, he stepped on the moon about 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong took the historic first step.
But itās not what this man deserves to be called. Second place? Bullshit. Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the Moon. Why the hell havenāt they given him his due credit for the last fifty years? Sure, he had Neil Armstrong sitting right next to him, but they touched down on the Moon at the exact same second. They were both the first men on the Moon! You want to know who the real big loser in this adventure is, itās Michael Collins. That poor son of a bitch went all the way to the Moon with Buzz and Neil, but he had to stay in orbit so they could link up to get back home. If you donāt recognise his name, thatās a testament to how badly he got screwed by history. And no, Liam Neeson did not make a movie about him. Michael Collins is alive and well at age 86, and living in Rome. Hey, hereās a crazy thought, maybe we should start appreciating him a little bit while we still have him, and pay him the kind of attention and importance we normally reserve only for Kardashians.
How insane, that the press, popular culture, and now history books have labeled Buzz Aldrin as anything less than First, and forgotten Collins altogether. When two drivers win a cross-country road race, they crossed the finish line together and they are both first place! Do they say the winner is the one who gets out of the car first? Hell no! When a rowing team wins the gold at the Olympics, do they only give the medal to the guy at the front of the boat? Youāre damn right they donāt. Why is Buzz Aldrin a hero? Because heās managed to accept this injustice with class and dignity, and smile and wave as if it isnāt killing him on the inside. But thatās probably why heās still chasing adventure by going to the South Pole at age 86. I bet when they got to South Pole, Buzz said to the people with him, ā We made it! Hey, anybody see Neil Armstrong here? No? Nobody sees him? He didnāt get here twenty minutes before us? Oh, right, he died in 2012! Didnāt get here first, did ya, Neil!ā Until someone says, āMr. Aldrin? Wouldnāt that mean that Neil Armstrong got to heaven first?ā Then Buzz collapsed and was airlifted to a hospital in New Zealand. If I was Buzz Aldrin, I think I would have killed the first guy to call me Second. Then at least I would be the First astronaut to be charged with First degree murder. Total Buzzkill. Pun intended.
Iām afraid that soon enough, after everybody who went to the Moon has died, and then after everybody who witnessed the Moon landing live on TV has died, that people will come to think that it never really happened. Itāll only take another generation or two of societal lassitude and torpidity until the Moon landing will be listed on IMDB as a Stanley Kubrick film. Which, it just may well be, of course, but thatās a discussion for another day. Someday, the Moonwalk will only be remembered as a 20th Century pedophileās dance move. And someday the astronauts will only be known for the tired old cliche: āHow come they can put a man on the moon, but they canātā¦ā Fill in the annoyance of your choice. No matter how trivial or insignificant, your personal pet peeve deserves to be compared to the decades of monumental effort, investment, innovation, and sacrifice it took to get us to the Moon. Hereās a few examples:
āHow come they can put a man on the moon, but they canātā¦make a cell phone battery that lasts more than eight hours?ā
Hmm, maybe because Jules Verne, the Wright brothers, and Werner Von Braun didnāt give a shit whether or not you could spend your entire work shift playing with your face on the snapchat filter?
āHow come they can put a man on the moon, but they canāt...build a robot that looks just like me that I can send to work to earn a paycheck so I can stay home and chill all day?ā
They did. It quit your job on the first day, moved to Los Angeles, became an independent film producer, and heās engaged to the actress you had a crush on in high school. And he said to tell you she is amazing in bed. Heās living the life you could have, but unlike you, the robot has a drive.
āHow come they can put a man on the moon, but they canāt...put a man on the sun?ā
A fair question. This should be easy enough. The Sun is a much bigger target, so it should be hard to miss, and itās very well-lit. And itās solar powered.
āHow come they can put a man on the moon, but they canātā¦make a toilet that doesn't amplify my farts 500%?ā
Now this one I agree with. Everybody tries to be quiet in the bathroom. So why are toilets shaped exactly like a satellite dish designed to pick up the faintest sounds and signals from space? You're trying to crap as quietly as possible into something shaped to acoustically focus sound and amplify it like a SETI signal receiver. Iām in the bathroom, and people in the living room are like, "Either Aracebo has made contact with Alpha Centauri, or he ate Indian food again." Ā Sure, your ass is pressed to the seat, trying to form a sound-proof seal, but that just changes the pitch. Like when Louis Armstrong used to mute his trumpet with a plunger. He probably thought of doing that while on the toilet, why else would he use a plunger?
Mine might be: āHow come they can put a man on the moon, but...we still call the sky the limit?"
But if I could only pick one, I think it would have to be: āIf they can put a man on the moon...why canāt that man be Donald Trump?ā
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New Yearās Eve
It is New Yearās Eve this week. The word āEveā is just a fancy, Shakespearean way of saying āthe day before,ā and for some reason we only use it two days a year; Christmas Eve and New Yearās Eve. Thereās no Easter Eve, or Arbor Eve, or Groundhog Eve, unless Bill Murray wants to start making prequels. Which would be awesome, but, unlikely. And we certainly canāt refer the day before the first day of Summer as Summerās Eve, and Iād make the obvious jokes about that, but I respect your intelligence too much. And an old joke like that has, well, a not-so-fresh feeling. So I think this year we should all start using āEveā more. Try this. When your wife tells you to put out the recyclables and the garbage because tomorrow is garbage day, say to her, āIs it Garbage Eve already? It comes around so fast these days. Boy, it just isnāt as magical now that the kids are off to college.ā Sure, in that moment she will look at you and wonder why she married you, but thatās okay, the unexamined life is not worth living. And she may just stop asking you to do things, which frankly, would be great. But again, unlikely.
I see ABC is still calling their New Yearās show Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. That is one hell of a contract they have that guy under. Dick Clark died in 2012, but I guess he is contractually obligated through 2137. What ABC attorney wrote that contract, Lou Siffer? B.L. Zeebub? Iām not sure what method they plan to use to bring him back and keep hosting, I think this season they reveal heās been a Westworld robot all along. But heās starting to remember. āNo, Buddy Holly! Chubby Checker! Take the train!ā Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve started in 1972, and it may never end. After hosting for 32 years, Dick Clark had a serious stroke in 2004, and ABC had him back on the air by 2005, but he was never really the same. He sat there rocking back and forth, mostly. They could have called it Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Back and Forth Eve. They could have also called it Dick Clark's New Year's Droolin' Eve, and Dick Clark's New Yearās Slurred Speech and Facial Droopin' Eve. But he died in 2012, surrounded by family and friends who loved him. I wonder if they counted down, āTen...nine...eightā¦sevenā¦ā But Iām a very sick man.
This year it is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, and the entertainers will be Mariah Carey and Lionel Ritchie, with Jenny McCarthy and Fergie. Wow, what hot performers! Apparently the new year we are ringing in is 1998. Maybe 2003, tops. What happened, were Ace of Base and Color Me Badd unavailable?
We are saying goodbye to 2016, and not a minute too soon. Thatās why we celebrate New Yearās Eve, not out of excitement for the new year, but because we are thrilled AF to have somehow survived another brutal 12-month asskicking. And 2016 was like stepping into the Octagon and fighting Kimbo Slice. Except even Kimbo Slice didnāt stand a chance against 2016, he tapped out in June. Thatās how tough 2016 was. It was the year of Iām with Her and Feel the Bern, of fracking and hacking, of shootinā and Putin. Of Zika and Scalia. Of bathroom stalls and building walls. If 2008 was the year of HOPE, then 2016 was the year of GROPE. A year of pipelines and Brexits, of deplorables and superdelegates, and that election. Oh man, that election. So many people wish they could just wake up and it didnāt happen, or at least forget that it happened. Like that guy in Momento. Or Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates, where she wakes up every day with short term memory loss, blissfully unaware that sheās been dating Adam Sandler. If only we could wake up every day unaware that Trump won the Electoral College. We could call it 50 First States. But on December 31, they drop the ball in New York City, and then on January 20, they drop the ball in Washington, D.C.
Iām not so convinced we are actually heading into a new year at all. With the incoming administration, it looks more like weāre heading into 1957.
In 1957, Republicans controlled the White House, The House, and the Senate. Under Emperor Palpatine, if I remember correctly. It was a long, long time ago.
In 1957, there was no EPA, and after Trump puts avowed climate denier Scott Pruitt in charge, there probably wonāt be an EPA next year either.
In 1957, there was no Department of Energy. We can only hope that Texas idiot Rick Perry is as incompetent at eliminating the department as he was at remembering it. Rick Perry gained stature with Republicans when he started wearing a pair of glasses he found on a city bus to look smarter, but his one memorable moment is him not remembering. Maybe weāll get lucky and heāll forget he even works at the EPA. Maybe heāll decide to follow his dream and finally try out for Dancing With the Stars, oh wait, he did. Oops. Rick Perry actually is the one with the memory loss from Momento and 50 First Dates.
Finally, In 1957, the U.S. and Russia were locked in a nuclear arms race, escalating their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Thankfully, nothing like that will happen when Trump...What? He already did? Are you Sure? WTF! But heās not even President yet! He better be careful, if he pisses off the Russians, they wonāt re-elect him.
But whatever happens, weāll get through it. And then next December 31 weāll celebrate surviving that one too. Or weāll be meeting Kimbo Slice. Now we look forward, and write our New Yearās resolutions. I looked up the word āresolutionā, itās Old French for āaw, who am I kidding.ā I have written my resolutions for the new year, Iām sure theyāre no different than everybody elseās. But if you see one you like, you can take it, too. These are my resolutions for 2017
1. Stop making excuses for my heroin use by calling it ājazz lessons.ā
2. Stop writing angry letters to the manufacturers of āCracker Jackā for having the most racist named snack ever.
3. Stop throwing people under the bus every time something goes wrong in my life. In fact, I should stay away from bus stations altogether, they probably have my face on file.
4. Stop confusing Aleppo with the other Marx brothers; Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo. And stop confusing Syria with that talking phone.
5. Stop running up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Although itās not my fault if whoever lost the card hasnāt called their bank and cancelled it yet.
6. Stop throwing my vote away by voting for write-in candidates. Especially when I write-in āBatman.ā But dude, heād be great.
7. This is the year I finally get fit. For a straight-jacket.
8. Stop making excuses for my weight by calling myself āToo big to fail.ā
9. When Iām in church and the priest starts talking about Jesus dying on the cross, I have to stop yelling āSpoiler alert!ā
10. This is the year I travel to new places. Mainly to countries that have no extradition treaty with the U.S. for throwing people under a bus.
Happy New Year! I am one with the force, the force is with me!
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They Blinded Me Without Science
It was another crazy week in what feels like the fifth year of the Trump administration, and Iām just trying to keep up with the insanity. You know, people told me after the election, āLook at the bright side, with Trump in the White House, the comedy will just write itself!ā I wish that were the case. Iām finding out that the comedy does not just write itself. That would be really cool if it did, I could just get on stage and read from the newspaper and look like a latter day, fatter-day Mort Sahl, or I could just cut and paste from the Washington Post and send my column in, then get back to arguing with my cat. But no, I actually have to write the comedy myself.
President Donnie Darko turned the crazy up to eleven this week. This weekās politics was crazier than a shoeshine in a shitstorm. This week was crazier than a Klansman at a White Sale. This week was crazier than a Nickelback fan club.
Trump declared war on Nordstrom for dropping his daughter Ivankaās clothing line, which caused their company stock price to rise overnight. See, people? Heās making the economy better already! Maybe if he attacks a few more American businesses, he might just make this place great again after all. And isnāt he the guy who said he was going to bring businesses back to America? So why attack companies that didnāt leave the country? Maybe he wants to chase them out first, so he can then bring them back. I have no idea. And such a shame for Ivanka, her fall āBack to Parochial Schoolā collection reflects the sense of Oscar De la Renta, and the non-sense of Betsy DeVos. And her summer swimwear āBeach Clothes for the Beach Closed!ā collection is made of coal and oil stain-resistant fabrics, since now the coal companies can legally pollute the rivers again and the Dakota Access Pipeline is being built. No matter what sludge you swim in, youāll get out looking dapper. And DAPL.
Trump tweeted on Wednesday: āMy daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!ā Trump was so upset, he was barely able to get back to work and deport the mother of two American children that same day. Yep, Mr. President, it sure is unfair and terrible when a family member gets kicked out of someplace. Alas, Iām afraid we are living in a land without irony.
What else. Oh yes, Trump referred to a federal judge as a āso-called judge.ā Always a good move. I know a guy who called a judge a āso-called judgeā once, and Iāll see him again in 3-5 years. And that was just in traffic court. Trump was angry that the judge ruled against him over his travel ban, and his executive order will not be followed. Man, this world has changed. When I was young, the only travel ban we followed was the Grateful Dead. Preferably in a 1983 VW bus covered with bumper stickers of dancing bears and lightning-bolt skulls. Ah, youth!
So Trump appealed the ruling, and now a three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled unanimously against him as well. Trump accepted the ruling with all the quiet dignity of Charles Manson being denied parole. Trump tweeted: āSEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!ā First of all, anyone who tweets in all caps is clinically insane. We all know that. That right there should be an impeachable offence, way higher on the list than an adulterous intern blowjob. But to tell a judge āSEE YOU IN COURTā? Is that supposed to sound intimidating? That line only works on all the small-business independent contractors that he has refused to pay for their services. That doesnāt work on judges, theyāre already in court. Thatās their home, court, and they rule in court. Literally. Thatās like trying to intimidate LeBron James by saying āSEE YOU ON THE BASKETBALL COURT!ā Thatās like telling a Great White Shark āSEE YOU IN THE OCEAN!ā They arenāt scared, and youāre gonna need a bigger boat. His reaction reminds me of the Carl Sandburg quote, āIf the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.ā And tweet it, in all caps.
But hereās what I really want to talk about, people are beginning to push back against the Trump agenda. Maybe the Borg and the Daleks were wrong when they said āResistance is futile!ā In cities all across the country, protesters are showing up at town hall meetings, private homes of Senators, and they even blocked Betsy DeVos from entering a public school. She thought she could count on public support, but it turns out she just plain canāt count. The best argument for funding our public schools is the fact that Betsy DeVos is the result of attending private schools. Republicans were on the run, scurrying away from scheduled media events and public appearances as they found crowds of ornery woke people waiting for them. As for me, Iām trying to be woke, but I keep hitting the snooze button. Iām sure Iāll do better when we return to daylight savings time.
At a town hall meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, that hotbed of liberal activism, GOP Congressman Jason Chaffetz was booed and shouted at continuously by an audience chanting āDo you job!ā, demanding he investigate national security adviser Michael Flynn or step aside. Flynn may have violated the Logan Act in his repeated contact with the Russian government. I, for one, was surprised to learn that the Logan act actually has nothing to do with adamantium claws. Hmph. Live and learn. Chaffetz may not believe in global warming, but he was feeling the heat, bigly. Chaffetz was sweating like a Nixon debating in a steamroom. Chaffetz was sweating like a German trying to tell a joke. Chaffetz was sweating like your balls in Bahrain. Chaffetz was sweating like the guy in the red shirt on the original Star Trek. He knows the minute they beam down heāll be killed by a Horta or the Gorn. Thatās why heās there, because somebody has to die to advance the plot, and it sure as hell canāt be Shatner and Nimoy! But that doesnāt make dying on an alien planet any easier.
Things got really bad for Chaffetz when he faced tough questions from a member of the audience with superior intelligence, a 9 year old girl. She stood up and asked Chaffetz what he would do when it comes to protecting the environment. When he started stammering a non-answer, the girl hit him with a follow up question that left Chaffetz looking for a fire alarm to pull. āDo you believe in science?ā she asked. āBecause I do!ā Boom. Crowd roars. Mic drop. One and done, son. It must be embarrassing to be schooled by someone actually in grade-school.
He couldnāt give a straight answer. All she asked him was if he believed in science. Yet a Congressman in the 21st Century couldnāt answer āYes.ā WTF? I havenāt seen anything this pathetic since a drunk David Hasselhoff ate a cheeseburger off a bathroom floor. Who the hell wonāt say they believe in science? The Mujahideen? Snake-Handling Pentecostal Pastors who speak in tongues? The Pope who locked up Galileo? I grew up in an era when people knew knowledge is power, and every single member of Congress would have answered yes to that question in a heartbeat. You would have to go all the way back to 1925 to the Scopes Monkey Trial to find a public official actively and openly dodging science. Sadly, people are so uninformed today they think the Scopes Monkey Trial involved Dr. Zaius and Harambe. Hey, you know what the difference is between Dr. Zaius and Donald Trump? One is a hateful, orange, science-denying orangutan, and the other one has a medical degree.
Every Congressman since before my grandfather was born has believed in science. Especially since science gave us the atom bombs we dropped on Imperial Japan and won the damn war in three days. Ask the Japanese if they believe in science. They know that our atomic detonations awakened Godzilla from his frozen slumber, and Tokyo paid the price for a dozen movies or more. Ā āHistory shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men. Go go Godzilla.ā Then Godzilla went back to sleep for a couple of decades when he stopped selling tickets. Hmm, I wonder if it was radiation from the Fukushima reactor core meltdown that brought Godzilla back to life for the 2015 reboot? Although the movie may have been a bigger disaster than Fukushima. I mean, they had a red-hot Brian Cranston in his first movie since winning three best actor Emmys for the greatest television show ever, āBreaking Badā, and what do they do? They kill him in the first ten minutes of the movie. He went from āBreaking Badā on television to āMaking Badā movies.
Anyway, after entering the Atomic Age, all our politicians believed in science, because it put us at the top of the food chain. We were running this world for decades after the war, and we blinded them with science. And because our politicians believed in science, they put a lot of funding into science, investing in the space program, bringing in the Space Age, and putting America on the Moon. The only men ever on the Moon. Just us, and science. But now the Republican right has decided to reject facts, and reject science.
You know who does believe in science? Iran. They launched a missile test just two weeks ago, which US officials sharply condemned as "provocative" and "irresponsible." Call it what it is, man, āscience.ā Not believing in science doesnāt mean it doesnāt exist, it wonāt go away if you ignore it. Unlike your ex. You can say you donāt believe in trains, but I wouldnāt recommend laying on railroad tracks to test your theory. You know who else believes in science? North Korea. They just fired a ballistic missile over 300 miles into the sea of Japan, while in this country Donald Trump just goes ballistic on Twitter. Do we really live in a world where Kim Jong-un, a wobbling weebil of a dictator with a haircut that looks like a matadorās hat, Ā is more scientific than U.S. Congressmen? Whereās Seth Rogen and James Franco when you need them.
But we know why Jason Chaffetz is running away from science. Because his corporate owners are Climate Change deniers, so he is too, if he wants to get re-elected. In fact, in answer to the girlās question, he started talking about burning more coal. Clean coal. Clean coal? Thatās like saying Clean Aids. Thatās like saying Clean Shit. āNah, I didnāt need to wash my hands, it was Clean Shit. Now let me get start making your dinner.ā Then youāll have Clean Dysentery.
I have the TV on as I write this column, I left it on TMC, half-watching a Fellini movie I didnāt understand a word of, but I like listening to people speak Italian. It makes me feel cultured for some reason. But as I mentioned climate change, I looked up and noticed that the movie had ended and a new movie started. Ice Station Zebra is on right now, where Rock āI swear Iām straightā Hudson races the Russians to a north pole weather station to recover a Soviet spy satellite, with the help of affable idiot Ernest Borgnine, and running back Jim Brown. This was 1968, and theyāre walking on foot to the North Pole base, with gunfights, fistfights, and a whole lot of solid ice. That was 1968. Today, theyād be swimming to the North Pole. The only standing theyād be doing at the North Pole now would be on the floating bodies of drowned polar bears. Thatās how real climate change is, and the science behind it. But not to Jason Chaffetz. Half his base are greedy corporate bastards who donāt want to stop polluting and risk cutting into their obscene profits, and the other half his base want the world to end so Jesus can come take them all to heaven. Not a lot of incentive for him to embrace reality.
When the crowd chanted at Chaffetz, āDo your job!ā, what they donāt realize is he is doing his job, for his real bosses, not for us. He is removing protections for the environment, for workers, for labor unions, basically dismantling society until Americans live a type of unhealthy, impoverished, uninsured existence we havenāt seen since Bob Cratchitās evil boss had a Christmas nightmare. And you know the ending to a Christmas Carol is bullshit, right? You know that new-found benevolence Scrooge acquired from his visions or visitations or whatever they were wore off pretty quickly in the cold light of day. I bet a week after Christmas, Scrooge was back to his old greedy self, and sent the Cratchits a bill for the turkey he brought them. And he probably sold Tiny Tim to a coal mine, heās small, and in those tunnels his bad leg doesnāt matter, thereās no room for him to stand up anyway. He probably eliminated Cratchit's job altogether, through downsizing or outsourcing, leaving them destitute. Mrs. Cratchit was probably left with no choice but to walk the cobblestone streets of London as a Victorian prostitute, until she is killed by Jack the Ripper in a gaslit alley.
Hey, speaking of gaslight, anybody remember Gaslight Village? It was a theme park in Lake George village, owned by the same guy who created Frontier Town and Storytown, which is now the Great Escape. Gaslight Village was by far the lamest of the three amusement parks. It was mainly aimed at older adults, who only went because they sold beer and liquor all over the park, so they could put their obnoxious kids on a slow-moving merry go round and toss back a row of boiler makers and maybe this goddamn vacation wonāt be a complete waste of time after all. I basically just remember the ads for Gaslight Village, and that barbershop quartet-style jingle. āGaslight Village, yesterdayās fun today, bo de-oh doe, bo de-oh doe doe doe.ā
I went there as a very young kid, it was a 1920ās themed park, so I canāt imagine what āyesterdayās funā would have been. Not catching tuberculosis? Living through trench warfare on the western front in World War I? That is, if you call surviving trench foot, shell-shock, and mustard gas attacks āliving.ā You know, I always thought mustard gas sounded delicious. In retrospect, itās probably a bad idea to name horrible, fatal, chemical nerve-agents after tasty condiments. Thankfully it stopped right there with mustard gas, to my knowledge. I donāt think they ever developed a ketchup virus, or an ebola mayonnaise, or any other killer condiment. Although more than a few people who had the salsa at Chipotle might disagree with me, if they still could. Mustard gas was used on millions of men throughout Germany and France. I wonder, when they fought at Dijon, do you think the mustard gas they used was of a higher quality? Or was it just more expensive? I picture two tanks stopped alongside each other, a man inside one tank asks the other tank, āPardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon mustard gas?ā But the other tank was German, so they shot him in the face with a Howitzer. Or in Germany, at the battle of Frankfurt, mustard gas sounds like it would be an excellent choice, after all, who doesn't like a frankfurter with mustard? In fact, Italy wanted to get in on the war just so they could get some mustard on Bologna, but the fighting was too far away, so they just went to the store instead.
āIt's poetry in motion
And when she turned her eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mm, but she blinded me with science
And failed me in geometry
When she's dancing next to me
"Blinding me with science, science!"
"Science!"
I can hear machinery.ā
-Thomas Dolby
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