"We've got two dizzy bitches in the ring now!"

A kind tipster emailed me this 1980s-era AWWF lady-wrestling vid last night, presumably because one of the participants was a "thunder thighed" young lady dressed like an extra from Flashdance named the "Cajun Queen." But what took me aback was the hilarious over-the-top style of the guy announcing the match. It seems as though he's trying like hell to sex the thing up and add an element of eroticism to it. He failed. But his attempts are funny as all hell.

To give you some background, the Cajun Queen and her opponent, the "Littlest Angel," were fighting for the affections of some dude named Johnny. Lucky bastard...

An open letter to David Letterman

Dear Dave,

In a couple of hours, you'll be interviewing Bill O'Reilly for tonight's show. Can you do us all one gigantic favor? Can take the insufferable prick to the woodshed over the tabloid-style, ambush "journalism" he loves to use on his show with that little twat Jesse Watters? You know, the kind where he doesn't attempt to request an interview but has his people follow his marks around while they're on vacation and leap out at them with microphones and cameras when they least expect it for merely having the audacity to call O'Reilly out on his bullshit. I only ask this of you because you're probably one of the few people with a platform who actually has the onions to call him out on this. You and probably Jon Stewart, the two great American stars shining light on the most prolific purveyors of great American bullshit.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Apples and bananas,
Cajun Boy

Meet the Steve Doocy of New Zealand

I guess there's some comfort that can be taken in the knowledge that morning show hosts on the other side of the world are just as dipshity as American ones, but a Greenpeace spokeswoman with a mustache, or "lady-mo," is kinda funny, so I can't judge him too harshly I suppose. However, this has apparently ruffled some feathers in the land of the kiwi...


(via Videogum)

Quote of the day II

The only other important thing to be said about Fear & Loathing at this time is that it was fun to write, and that’s rare — for me, at least, because I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling. Nothing is fun when you have to do it — over and over, again and again — or else you’ll be evicted, and that gets old. So it’s a rare goddamn trip for a locked-in, rent-paying writer to get into a gig that, even in retrospect, was a kinghell, highlife fucking from start to finish… and then to actually get paid for writing this kind of manic gibberish seems genuinely weird; like getting paid for kicking Agnew in the balls. So maybe there’s hope. Or maybe I’m going mad… In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile — and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely… The Swine are gearing down for a serious workout this time around… So much, then, for The Road — and for the last possibilities of running amok in Las Vegas… Well, at least, I’ll know I was there, neck deep in the madness, before the deal went down, and I got so high and wild that I felt like a two-ton Manta ray jumping all the way across the Bay of Bengal.

-Hunter S. Thompson

(via)

A lovely little ad for a sex shop

I don't think I've ever seen an ad that communicated an "it's okay to play with yourself" message any better...


(via Copyranter)

Here's Coco de mer's website if you're feeling liberated all of a sudden.

Quote of the day

For me the quinessential New Orleans moment came during Mardi Gras 2006. I was with my boyfriend, a tightly-wound, vegetarian, health-nut insurance adjustor from the suburbs of D.C. We were on the neutral ground at St. Charles and Felicity, waiting for some night parade or other--Muses or Hermes or Endymion--to roll by. We’d been there since five that afternoon, staking out our spots amid the beer bottles and broken beads and Popeye’s and McHardy’s chicken boxes left over from the previous night’s parades. The boyfriend was growing antsy. “It’s 7:00.” “It’s 7:30.” “It’s 7:45.” “It’s 7:57. What time is this thing supposed to start?”

“Well, honey,” I answered. “The paper said it would roll at seven. That means it will start at 8:15, and that’s up on Napoleon, so it will probably get here at close to ten.”

“TEN! I’m not waiting around till ten o’fucking clock! Why can’t this goddamn city get its shit together? Fucking lazy assholes.” And so on and so on.

And that’s when our parade-going neighbor intervened. I had never met her before and have never seen her since. She had the most terrifically sprayed and teased bangs I have ever seen. She had a tattoo of the Grateful Dead dancing bear on her ankle. She chain-smoked Virginia Slims. She wore a sweatshirt proclaiming she was a Proud Chalmette Football Mom. She had a family-sized box of Popeye’s spicy fried chicken on her lap. She probably weighed close to three hundred pounds and was wedged into an LSU lawn chair, which was rapidly sinking into the mud. And in an accent straight outta St. Bernard Parish, she said to the boyfriend,

“Baby, you gotta settle your ass down. It’ll get here when it gets here. Have some chicken.”

-Leeandra Nolting in her hilarious and touching essay, "Why I Live in New Orleans."

Morning links 3/31/09

-Researchers have developed a pill that they claim reduces the risk of heart disease by 50%. (Yahoo)

-I'm still waiting on an explanation of what the fuck it was that was seen exploding in the sky all up and down the East Coast the other night. (WBAL)

-Fivethirtyeight.com statistics whiz Nate Silver is moving to my neighborhood! Can any one geographic area sustain two such massive intellects at the same time? (Fivethirtyeight.com)

-A woman used Google satellite images to catch her husband cheating on her. (The Sun)

-You heard about the Sham-Wow guy beating up a hooker in Miami, right? Even worse...he's a Scientologist or something! (Gawker)

-Actor Wendell Pierce, best known as "Bunk" on The Wire, is doing more than his part to help rebuild his hometown of New Orleans. (New York Times)

-I have always found the look of emasculation written all over a big dog's face when it's shitting to be very funny. (Dog's Pooping)

-Fox News has launched its own Huffington Post-type site. (The Fox Nation)

-I could play the "Guess Her Muff" game all day long. (Guess Her Muff)

-I'm not sure if this is more tragic or said, but it sure is a hell of a lot of both. (WTFDYHAK)

"Life is Beautiful" by Vega4

One of my favorite songs ever. Too bad the British band that created it broke up last year. It's absolutely perfect...



Stand where you are.
We let all these moments pass us by.

It's amazing where I'm standing,
There's alot that we can give.
This is ours just for the moment,
There's alot that we can give.

Attend classes at Yale via YouTube

A few weeks ago it came to my attention that some colleges and universities were uploading entire course lectures onto YouTube, an act that struck me as one of the more phenomenal developments of the internet age. To think that now some poor kid living in a slum a world away, or a poor kid growing up on the bayou for that matter, or just anyone interesting in increasing the scope of their knowledge, now has access to a world class education via an internet connection is truly remarkable. YouTube has organized a collection of college lectures here at YouTube.edu.

Personally I've listened to a few of the lectures offered by Yale University, specifically those from Professor Amy Hungerford's class examining the American novel in the 20th century after 1945, and found them to be enjoyable. Here's the introductory class in that particular series...



My only wish is that they examined A Confederacy Of Dunces in the class.

Looking back to see who said what during the debate to repeal the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933 is wildly illuminating

When analyzing the recent collapse of the American economy, one of the main things that people point to when asking "how the hell did this happen?" is the Phil Gramm-led movement to repeal the Glass-Steagal act of 1933 in 1999. Glass-Steagal was a regulatory act passed during the Great Depression in an attempt to prevent the very events that led to Depression from happening again in the future. Sifting through a New York Times article that ran in the paper on the day after the Congress voted to repeal Glass-Steagal in 1999, it's illuminating to see who said what about what back then, to see what predictions were horribly wrong, and which ones were spot-on accurate.

Here are some of the excerpts I found most interesting...

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.

The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

Yes, this is the same Lawrence Summers who is now one of Obama's main advisers on matters of finance.

''The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

Oh yeah, freedom. I wonder what future generations will think when they look back in time at all of the disastrous decisions that were made by American politicians under the guise of protecting "freedom?"

However, there were a few wise men who accurately saw what the future held...

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

And finally, the foolish words of former Senator and current embattled head of the New School Bob Kerrey seem to speak collectively for the supporters of the Glass-Steagal repeal...

Supporters of the legislation rejected those arguments. They responded that historians and economists have concluded that the Glass-Steagall Act was not the correct response to the banking crisis because it was the failure of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy, not speculation in the stock market, that caused the collapse of 11,000 banks. If anything, the supporters said, the new law will give financial companies the ability to diversify and therefore reduce their risks. The new law, they said, will also give regulators new tools to supervise shaky institutions.

''The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,'' said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska.

What is it that they say about failing to learn the lessons of the past?

Who couldn't use a lion hug today?

I predict that this is going to end tragically...


(vian Andrew Sullivan)

Quote of the day II

People who are good at making arguments overrate the value of arguments. The verbally adroit among us often demand that disputes of many sorts should be decided on the basis of debate. This demand is particularly acute for public policy disputes. The idea is that policy choices should be subject to rigorous public scrutiny and that this should result in the the adoption of the policy for which the best arguments can be marshaled.

This is an odd claim. No society has ever really attempted to govern itself in this way, although a few have at time imagined that they were governed according to this system. In reality, governments of all sorts are controlled by interests and prejudices not arguments. Intellectuals react to this in horror but it is far from the calamity they imagine. Indeed, much of the horror over the non-deliberative nature of politics and society is attributable to their over-estimation of the value of arguments. And some of it is simply self-serving—they favor a kind of government that would empower them.

-John Carney, a man who believes that arguments are overrated.

They take their basketball seriously in Kentucky

University of Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillespie was fired on Friday after two seasons at the helm. Watch the disrespectful lengths that some members of the local media in Lexington will go to get a quote from him after he was fired...

Picture of the day

Fargo, North Dakota over the weekend...



A pretty amazing slideshow from the flooding of the area can be viewed here.

Quote of the day

For 20 years, we've had Homer Simpson's spot-on caricature of the quintessential American: childish, irresponsible, willfully oblivious, fat and happy. And more recently we winced at the ultra-Homerized former earthlings of WALL•E.

We knew, in our heart of hearts, that something had to give. Remember when each decade, not long after it finished, assumed a distinct character? We all knew and know what "the '50s" mean, and they definitively ended with the Pill, J.F.K.'s assassination and the Beatles — just as "the '60s" ended when Americans got tired of being alarmed and hectored, and "the '70s" ended when stimulants became more popular than depressants and AIDS appeared. But in all salient respects, "the '80s" — Reaganism's reshaping of the political economy, the thrall of the PC, the vertiginous rise in the stock market — did not end.

The '80s spirit endured through the '90s and the 2000s, all the way until the fall of 2008, like an awesome winning streak in Vegas that went on and on and on. American-style capitalism triumphed, and thanks to FedEx and the Web, delayed gratification itself came to seem quaint and unnecessary. So what if every year since the turn of the century the U.S. economy grew more slowly than the global economy? Stuff at Wal-Mart and Costco and money itself stayed supercheap! Even 9/11, which supposedly "changed everything," and the resulting Iraqi debacle came to seem like mere bumps in the road. Even if deep down everyone knew that the spiral of overleveraging and overspending and the prices of stocks and houses were unsustainable, no one wanted to be a buzz kill.

But now everything really has changed. More than a year into the Great Recession, we still aren't sure if there's a bottom in sight, and six months after the financial system began imploding, it's still iffy. The party is finally, definitely over. And the present decade, which we've never even agreed what to call — the 2000s? the aughts? — has acquired its permanent character as a historical pivot defined by the nightmares of 9/11 and the Panic of 2008-09. Those of us old enough to remember life before the 26-year-long spree began will probably spend the rest of our lives dealing with its consequences — in economics, foreign policy, culture, politics, the warp and woof of our daily lives. During the '80s and '90s, we were Wile E. Coyote racing heedlessly across the endless American landscape at maximum speed and then spent the beginning of the 21st century suspended in midair just past the end of the cliff; gravity reasserted itself, and we plummeted.

In the Road Runner cartoons, after each fall, the coyote is broken and battered but never dies. America isn't going to expire either. But unlike him, we will be chastened and begin behaving more wisely. For years, enthusiasts for unfettered capitalism have insisted that the withering away of enterprises and entire industries is a healthy and necessary part of a vibrant, self-correcting economic system; now, more than at any time since Joseph Schumpeter popularized the idea of creative destruction in 1942, we must endure the shocking and awesome pain of that metamorphosis. After decades of talking the talk, now we're all obliged to walk the walk.

-Excerpted from Kurt Anderson's new piece in Time Magazine on whether or not the recession will actually be good for the country by changing some old bad habits.

Morning links 3/30/09

-New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin may lose his house in Dallas after neglecting to pay homeowner's fees. (Nola.com)

-A gunman in North Carolina went on a shooting rampage in a nursing home. (WRAL)

-Neil LaBute is a complicated man. (New York Times Magazine)

-Glenn Beck fancies himself as the new Howard Beale. (New York Times)

-Some laid off Wall Street ladies have turned to stripping to pay their bills. (New York Post)

-Barack Obama essentially fired the CEO of General Motors. (Politico)

-The NBA fined Mark Cuban for a comment he made about the league on Twitter. (Valleywag)

-There might be a video of Joe Biden's daughter doing blow floating around out there. (Times Online)

-New Orleans looks to re-establish itself as the brewery hub of the South. (New York Times)

-Bill O'Reilly lost UPS as an advertiser after his latest stalking incident, and Ford may be next. (Gawker)

-The Final Four is all set! (USA Today)

Have a great weekend!

I couldn't call it a day without sharing a link to my favorite new website, redneckandsingle.com. It's like match.com and jdate, only for rednecks! Wouldn't want any of you to be lonely this weekend. After all, NASCAR season is just getting started! YEEEEHAAAAW!



(via Caroline McCarthy)

Yale's "All the Single Asians" is so wrong but oh so right

Judging by the five emails I've received in the last two hours containing links to this video, I presume that this mofo is burning up the internet today. And with good reason...

I just can't stop myself from mocking these idiots

Before I launch into this let me just say that I've grappled with it all day...I told myself last night that I'd done enough bashing of the modern Republican party for the week, but this is just too much for me to hold back on.

So yesterday I came back home after a meeting, it was late afternoon, 5-ish if I remember correctly, and I turned on the TV and opened up my laptop. Flipping channels a bit trying to decide what news program to watch, I came across C-SPAN and noticed that some sort of press conference was taking place with the Republican "leadership" in the House of Representatives. I recognized John Boehner and Eric Kantor immediately, I can't recall who the others were, but what was taking place was the unveiling of Republican alternative to the Obama budget that was released a few weeks ago.

"Well it's about fucking time," I thought to myself.

For weeks these guys have been running around playing Chicken Little about how all the spending in the Obama budget was going to turn us into the Soviet Union without having offered any alternative ideas themselves, and for a brief moment I thought, "whew...now finally both parties can sit down and negotiate and come to some sort of middle ground." And that's what I thought would happen all along. I've long believed that the Obama budget was a sort of moon and the stars wishlist that they knew would hald to be pared down a bit. I thought that the strategy that the White House was employing was no different from that of a person buying a house or a car. You go in with an initial offer that you know that you'll probably not get, but it's the starting point from which you negotiate.

So there I was passively watching this press conference and I have to tell you that I was beginning to feel hopeful, hopeful that all of the ridiculous posturing and game-playing by the Republican leadership had ended, that they've spent all these weeks crafting an alternative to be taken seriously, and that the nation's best interests would finally be served by having two opposing parties hammer out a budget that most reasonable people could live with.

But then as the hours passed it began trickling out into the media from people whose opinions I respect that had actually seen this new Republican budget, something called "The Republican Road to Recovery," that the plan was a horrendous piece of shit, a complete farce really.

Like, IT HAS NO NUMBERS IN IT!

Apparently what it is is a series of charts and graphs and pictures of bubbles and windmills (WTF?!) and such filled with all the usual Republican buzzwords and catch-phrases about tax cuts and spending cuts and such, but it contains no real numbers or any sort of deficit projections. It can't even be turned into the non-partisan congressional budget office for their analysis because, well, THEY CAN'T ANALYZE A BUDGET THAT DOESN'T HAVE NUMBERS IN IT!

Read more on this here, here, here and here.

I have to admit...I'm beyond beside myself here. I keep wondering who these people are and where did they come from? These asshats certainly aren't the people I aligned myself with when I registered as a Republican when I first registered to vote, that's for sure. This is just shameful. They're just playing games. They're not even trying. They essentially just threw together a pile of dogshit just so they can go before the cameras and have a big "the president is not living up to his promise to reach across the aisle" dog and pony show after Obama tells them to go fuck themselves for having the gall to waste his time with such cheese. It's all just a "well we offered a plan but he ignored us" political stunt. It's also tragic because the party in power needs a strong opposition to keep it in check. Especially in times like these. These are the people who so often claim to be the Patriots who love America more than their opposition does?!?!?!

Even further, witness Republican Party chairman Michael Steele in a recent CNN interview explaining how he's just playing everybody with all of the dumb things that come out of his mouth. It's all part of his master plan you see...



These people are just fucking clowns.

Quote of the day II

It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.

-The always quotable Shaquille O'Neal in a New York Times article about how some celebrities are hiring ghostwriters to post things to their Twitter accounts.

South Park explains how the US economy works

This week's South Park was another gem. Here's how the treasury doles out bailout money, in case you were wondering...



You can watch the full episode here.

Quote of the day

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.

it could mean freezing on a park bench.

it could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation.

isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.

and you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that.

you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way all the way.

you will ride life straight to perfect laughter, its the only good fight there is.

-Charles Bukowski

Lebron James' ridiculous shot on 60 Minutes

Once upon a time I used to be able to shovel three-quarter court shots straight through the hoop while talking to a reporter. Well, not really...



The entire interview airs on 60 Minutes this Sunday night.

Morning links 3/27/09

-Fargo, North Dakota is probably one of the worst places to live right about now. (Yahoo)

-New York's ridiculous Rockefeller drug laws are about to come to an end. (New York Magazine)

-More taking advantage of stupid Christians; some company launched a website where you can have a computer pray for you for a $5 per month fee. (Livescience)

-The music magazine Blender is going out of business. (Gawker)

-Cloris Leachman and Gene Hackman used to secretly bone back in the 70s. (New York Post)

-A minor league baseball team is handing out fart shields to its fans. (Deadspin)

-Friday Night Lights has been picked up for two more seasons. (TV Squad)

-A rather spirited defense of uber-douche Fred Durst. (Videogum)

-Shake Shack, maker of the best burger in the history of burgers, will have an outpost in the Mets' new stadium. (MLB.com)

-Mark Ecko looks like he'll go down as the MC Hammer of the fashion industry. (Gawker)

-A porno version of the Cosby Show is on the way. (Videogum)

-The New York Times is cutting employee salaries 5%. (Silicon Valley Insider)

-Another Kentucky basketball coach is about to bite the dust. (News Enterprise)

-Here's the trailer for the new Where the Wild Things Are movie. (Cinematical)

-The US Senate is investigating how to best determine a college football national champion. (AP)

-The Blackberry App store is set to open online next week. (Gizmodo)

-Speaking of MC Hammer, surely everyone knows that he has a Twitter page, right? (MC Hammer's Twitter)

"Sickos" by the Harlem Shakes

My friend Kendrick plays keyboards and sings backup vocals in an "up and coming" band you may have heard of called the Harlem Shakes. They've been traveling quite a bit of late, most recently opening up for Tokyo Police Club on a nationwide tour, and are a ridiculously talented group of guys who put on an great live show. Their new album, "Technicolor Health," went on sale this week and they're playing tonight in New York at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. Here's a live performance of "Sickos," one of my favorite songs from their last album, that they performed for a local radio station...



You can preview the songs on the new album and purchase it by clicking on the Amazon ad below...

Why is a Jesus-loving "real American" like Sarah Palin palling around with Scientologists?

Ok, here's what we know...Sarah Palin is an ignoramus of Titanic proportions who desperately wants to president so that she can burn all the Harry Potter books and force unmarried women to have their pussies sewn shut because pussies are the root of all evil and should only be fondled within the confines of a matrimonial bond. We also know that Sarah Palin often appears on Greta Van Susteren's horrible Fox News show to bray barely incoherent lies that go completely unchallenged by Greta's hard-hitting journalistic style. Now, we recently discovered that Greta's husband, John Coale, was the person running Sarah Palin's fundraising committee for her 2012 race for the presidency as well as "guiding (her) image in Washington." We also learned that Greta's husband was some sort of leader within the cultish Scientology movement.

Now today Gawker's John Cook has somehow managed to get his hands on an internal Scientology document written by Greta's husband outlining how the cult can gain power and influence in Washington...it's a manifesto of sorts on how to gain influence with powerful political figures in the hopes of having friends in high places to help fight off future attacks against their wacky religion. I suggest you go read it.

And to just refresh your memory, Scientologists at their core believe that all earthlings came from a far-away galaxy millions of years ago when an evil ruler named Xenu exiled trillions of people to earth to solve his own planet's overpopulation problem. Among other things.

Yeah.

Now, on the face of it, the pairing of Sarah Palin and the Church of Scientology seems to be an unlikely one, but then when you sit back and just let it really sink in, it all seems perfectly logical. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Who else but Sarah Palin would be so power-hungry AND brainwashable enough to fall into bed with these freaks. You follow? Besides, Tom Cruise is a Scientologist and Sarah fancies herself as a "maverick," so logically this would the next step in her progression to that end...

Quote of the day

The marketplace of ideas for now doesn’t clear out bad pundits and bad ideas partly because there’s no accountability. We trumpet our successes and ignore failures — or else attempt to explain that the failure doesn’t count because the situation changed or that we were basically right but the timing was off.

For example, I boast about having warned in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq would be a violent mess after we invaded. But I tend to make excuses for my own incorrect forecast in early 2007 that the troop “surge” would fail.

So what about a system to evaluate us prognosticators? Professor Tetlock suggests that various foundations might try to create a “trans-ideological Consumer Reports for punditry,” monitoring and evaluating the records of various experts and pundits as a public service. I agree: Hold us accountable!

-Nicholas Kristof proposes that there should be a rating system for the punditry, the so-called "experts." I think this is a great idea.

Some dude named Sam Hart sings "The Kitty Song" while his girlfriend stacks things on top of his sleeping cat

This absolutely made my day...


(via VAMH)

Thanks for sending this by Priscilla!

On the ridiculous levels of stupidity inherent in the right wing's "President Teleprompter" attacks on Obama

One of the things that I've noticed over the past few weeks is the concerted effort by the mouthpieces for the right wing to carve a "narrative" or a "meme" out of Obama's use of a teleprompter. If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin or if you read Drudge, you've undoubtably noticed this. I'm beginning to think that they all convene regularly in Dick Cheney's basement to hatch dumbass plans to fool voters into thinking that their party in its present form is actually a viable option for American leadership, something that any human being with the capacity for abstract thought knows is patently false. Drudge was at it again Tuesday night when he posted a photo of a television in the back of the press room that Obama used to read his opening statement before his press conference the other night...



Now, first of all, I find all of this laughably amusing. I mean, is this really the best that they've got? Who came up with this complete abortion of an attack plan? Is there something in "The Art of War" that advocates attacking your opponent's strength or something? Is that what they're trying to do here? Because I have thought about this a lot and I can't seem to make sense of it. At all.

Do these morons really think that by beating the "he's reading the words that other people are telling him to say" drum over and over and over again that this will actually stick with the American public? What kind of fools do they take us for? Do they really think that because he reads his prepared speeches off of a teleprompter, just as every other leading American political figure of this generation has done, that they're going to trick the public into thinking that Obama is some sort of robot, some sort of empty suit who can't think for himself when left to his own devices and is programmed daily by Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Osama Bin Laden and Satan himself? I heard Limbaugh the other day spouting off saying that the reason Obama had his special Olympics gaffe with Leno was because he didn't have a teleprompter to read off of. And he was serious! Really? Give me a fucking break!

HAVE THESE IDIOTS COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN WHO THE PRESIDENT WAS FOR THE LAST EIGHT YEARS? DO THEY NOT REMEMBER THE BARELY LITERATE FUCKING RETARD THEY WANTED TO BE VICE-PRESIDENT IN THE LAST ELECTION?

Republicans inferring that Obama is a robot who relies a teleprompter to speak to the nation in complete sentences is kind of like a kid riddled with horrendous acne who calls out the kid in his class with the clearest skin for having a pizza face. It just doesn't make any fucking sense at all. You're going to attempt to mock and ridicule the most eloquent world leader of this generation for his alleged inability to communicate without a teleprompter when the last leader of the party could barely speak in complete sentences EVEN WHEN HE USED ONE?!?!

What a bunch of dipshits. They're truly more fucked than I ever though they were if this is the best that they can do. They're completely devoid of original ideas and offer nothing to the American public except silly schemes designed to hamper the opposition party's approval ratings, and they're EMBARRASSINGLY TERRIBLE at even that.

In case anyone needs reminding of the previous president's communication skills, here's David Letterman's "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" greatest hits...



The modern Republican party continues to prove itself a fucking joke, and an awfully lame one at that.

Morning links 3/26/09

-Jim Carrey, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro are set to star as Moe, Larry and Curly in a new Three Stooges movie. (Variety)

-Singer Elvis Crespo was arrested for masturbating on a plane. (New York Times)

-House Republican Whip Eric Kantor attended a Britney Spears concert during Obama's press conference the other night. (Wonkette)

-Two of the biggest talent agenices in Hollywood, William Morris and Endeavor, may or may not merge on today. (Deadline Hollywood)

-A Brooklyn man was killed by the guy he met for sex on Craigslist Casual Encounters last weekend. (New York Daily News)

-Bobby Jindal says that the GOP should stand up to Obama, whatever that means. (Newsweek)

-CNN's Ed Henry attempts to explain his dumbass self. (CNN)

-People have threatened the children of AIG employees. (NBC Connecticut)

-Parks and Recreation, NBC's spinoff of The Office, was received horribly by consumer focus groups. (Deadline Hollywood)

-David Lynch has a Twitter. (David Lynch's Twitter)

Fox News wingnut Glenn Beck handles dead fish like the effete liberal pansy-asses he and his "real American" followers profess to loathe

Tonight's Glenn Beck Show on Fox News proved once again that yes, he is indeed almost completely devoid of sanity, and also that he's a closeted flaming homosexual. I have seen gay male friends of mine handle fish in the kitchen, and never have I ever seen any of them place latex gloves on their hands to protect themselves from the "ew gross" factor of it all. So this should settle any and all doubt as to whether or not Beck is a closeted gay man who enjoys elitist gay sex. In fact, he's probably having his puckered asshole pummeled by Larry Craig right this very second while Bill O'Reilly strokes his cock in the corner awaiting his turn to nail Beck's gaping pooper. Witness...


(via Gawker)

"Nikki has fainted!"

Luckily Nikki turned out all right, no thanks to the buttplug who just stood there with his hands in his pockets during this live remote from the beach in Panama City, Florida...


(via Deadspin)

Quote of the day II

Army specialist Terry Holdbrooks had been a guard at Guantánamo for about six months the night he had his life-altering conversation with detainee 590, a Moroccan also known as "the General." This was early 2004, about halfway through Holdbrooks's stint at Guantánamo with the 463rd Military Police Company. Until then, he'd spent most of his day shifts just doing his duty. He'd escort prisoners to interrogations or walk up and down the cellblock making sure they weren't passing notes. But the midnight shifts were slow. "The only thing you really had to do was mop the center floor," he says. So Holdbrooks began spending part of the night sitting cross-legged on the ground, talking to detainees through the metal mesh of their cell doors.

He developed a strong relationship with the General, whose real name is Ahmed Errachidi. Their late-night conversations led Holdbrooks to be more skeptical about the prison, he says, and made him think harder about his own life. Soon, Holdbrooks was ordering books on Arabic and Islam. During an evening talk with Errachidi in early 2004, the conversation turned to the shahada, the one-line statement of faith that marks the single requirement for converting to Islam ("There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet"). Holdbrooks pushed a pen and an index card through the mesh, and asked Errachidi to write out the shahada in English and transliterated Arabic. He then uttered the words aloud and, there on the floor of Guantánamo's Camp Delta, became a Muslim.

-Excerpted from a rather fascinating Newsweek article about Terry Holdbrooks, a US Army serviceman stationed at Gitmo as a guard who converted to the Muslim faith.

The brilliance of South Park's Jonas Brothers skewering illuminated fully

A couple of weeks ago the Jonas Brothers got the South Park treatment, and boy was it ever an evisceration. In a post I wrote on it at the time I called it one of the best episodes the show has ever done, and today I feel even stronger about that after learning that a part of the episode I thought was complete made-up buffoonery used to illuminate a larger point, the thinly veiled sexual metaphor of the Jonas Brothers spraying their crowds of horny teenage girls with a jizz-like white foam through a hose, is an actual part of the Jonas Brothers act during their concert performances! Here's a clip from the episode where the white foam thing comes up...



And here's a clip that someone emailed me from an actual Jonas Brothers show...these little twats actually do spray the crowd with a white foam substance!



I don't really have any other point to make here, other than to express my shock that they actually do this shit! Here I was thinking all along that it was just a clever little joke inserted into the episode by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Fucking Disney!

Quote of the day

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

-Excerpted from a resignation letter submitted by AIG Financial Products division employee Jake DeSantis.

A giant orange crab explains Facebook to Patrick Duffy

Bobby Ewing doesn't get the internet...

Whore-mongering diaper-fetishist Louisiana Senator David Vitter evades justice yet again

I gotta tell you, it sure helps to be a US Senator from the great state of Louisiana, because if you or I tried to barge our way onto a commercial airliner after the security door had been closed by airline employees, our asses would probably be sharing a bunk with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the next few months. But instead, Vitter gets off free with only a tersely-worded two-sentence statement from the TSA...

TSA worked with local partners to review the incident and determined the actions of the individual did not pose a security threat. The individual caused a door to alarm but did not proceed into a restricted area.

To think that this asshole had the audacity to drop the "don't you know who I am" card and then bully his way to the door, force it open, thereby setting off the alarm, should be enough to get him fined at the very least, regardless if he tried to proceed forward through the door or not. And what sort of self-important prick even does such a thing in the first place? The junior senator from Louisiana, that's who! What a fucking joke.

Photo via Wonkette.

Barack Obama smacks down CNN's Ed Henry

This was unquestionably my favorite moment from last night's press conference...



I kinda like it when Obama gets angry.

Morning links 3/25/09

-Sasha Baron Cohen used 31 different front companies to pull off Bruno. (Smoking Gun)

-Inspired by Google earth, an 18 year old in England painted a 60 foot long penis on the roof of his parent's home. (BBC)

-Here's a great look inside on one of NYC's underground poker rings. (Salon)

-New Orleans rapper C-Murder may be released from prison soon! (Nola.com)

-65 things to love about this year's NCAA tournament. (Yahoo)

-A woman in France with a fetish for inanimate objects has married the Eiffel Tower. (New York Daily News)

-This is why Michael Arrington is a fucking idiot. (Techcrunch)

-ARod bangs the same hookers as Eliot Spitzer. (Deadspin)

-Congress is considering a bailout of the newspaper industry. (Reuters)

-Drew Barrymore has a Twitter. (Drew Barrymore's Twitter)

Funny how things work out occasionally, isn't it?

I suppose that I, being the one person who knows ME better than anyone else, could argue that one of my main faults over the last couple of years has been spending too much time on self-reflection. I mean, I guess it isn't all that bad, right? After all, what is it that they say...an unexamined life is a life not lived or something like that? But sometimes my penchant for prolonged self-examination gets to be a little too much, to the point of me driving myself a little crazy over what ifs, roads taken or not taken, decisions made and not made, etc.

As is often the case with anything involving human life, so much of what becomes our fate is determined by things way beyond our control, and it's so very easy to forget that. I know I do. But every now and then life comes along and throws us a little reminder of just how powerless we are over it all. It's as if someone came knocking at our door and handed over a pamphlet that read simply, "Hey asshole...knock it off with all the hand-wringing and just get on with your fucking life." Something like that happened with me recently. Allow me to indulge you.

You see, a few years ago I made a choice to leave behind a "safe" career, one where I wore a suit to work each day and was compensated with an above-average salary, had employee-sponsored health insurance, a 401k, blah blah blah, all the usual bullshit that comes along with a career in corporate America, in order to move to New York and pursue the life and the career I would often find myself daydreaming about in the course of carrying out the duties that my "safe" career required of me. Many of the people close to me questioned my sanity upon hearing what I planned to do, while many of them encouraged and applauded me for having what they perceived as courage to try to blaze a new trail and to re-invent who and what I was. Whatever, it really didn't matter what anyone said about me or to me at the time, as I'd made up my mind and was resolute and I was doing what I was going to do regardless of what anyone else said. I simply had to do it.

Now, between the point where I left the "safe" career with the above-average salary, the health insurance, and the 401k, and now, there have been many doubts about my life choices that have infiltrated and infected my mind. I'd be lying if I tried to tell you otherwise. There have been many times where I've stopped to ask myself, "what the fuck are you doing...why did you let yourself go down this road?" The struggle, for lack of a better term, of trying to carve out a life in the arts is as exhilarating and stimulating as it is exhausting and frustrating, and I often feel as though there's a boxing match going on inside of my brain between the two sides. For every sharp jab that the exhilarating and stimulating part of "the struggle" lands, the exhausting and frustrating side will counter with a combination that'll put me on the ropes. This back and forth jostling has been perpetual and relentless over the last few years.

The whole "making it" process involves so much horseshit, so many kicks to the teeth, shady fucks, profound disappointments, the seemingly perpetual state of uncertainty, and out and out rejection, that it's, well, it's fucking hard man. And when you couple that with living in one of the more prosperous cities in the world and you have highly paid friends working in more "traditional" fields who are living it up in all sorts of crazy ways and blowing through more money in a night out than you spend on rent in a month, not to mention the fact that you're actually renting when you live in a country that has indoctrinated you into believing that you're worthless unless you own your home, well it just fucking fucks with you hard and in a bad way. At least it does me anyway. I can't tell you how many times I've stopped to take a look around and seriously second-guessed myself.

"I'm smarter than these dipshits...why isn't it me who's flying first class to Amsterdam to spend the weekend with a girl named Petra?"

Yeah, I know it's probably stupid and petty and a million other non-flattering things to think that way, but it's hard not to be overcome with doubts about whether or not the decisions you've made in certain aspects of your life have been the right ones sometimes, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Which gets me to this...

Over the last year or so we've seen a cataclysmic change take place in this country. We've seen thousands upon thousands of people lose their jobs, their homes, the savings that they've spent their lives accumulating, etc., and many of which did so at the hands of forces well beyond their control. It just happened. They thought that they had financial security, but they got fucked. Royally fucked. And there was little or nothing that they could do to save themselves from the fucking they were destined to receive. Many of these royally fucked people were employed in jobs and careers that the collective conventional wisdom deemed to be "safe." Do you follow what I'm getting at here?

To put it bluntly, watching all of things transpire that have transpired over the last couple of years has helped to eviscerate the doubts that'd occasionally lingered in my mind. Not to sound gleeful about the misfortunes of others, because that's the last thing I want to do and I empathize greatly with those who have lost a lot in all of this, but the plight of the "safe" American has sent a shock to my system, it's shaken me to the very core, and I'm overcome with the realization that in this life there is no real "safe" road to take. There are no certainties. There are no absolutes. There are no guarantees. Despite how empowered we may feel over the course of our own destiny, there is so much that we can never even hope to control. Who's to say that if I stayed trudging down my old career path I'd be any better or worse than I am now for having forgone that road? I might have lost all of the money I would have socked away in that 401k. I might have lost my job and my home. And I can't help but wonder how many people who took the "safe" road now find their lives in ruin and are filled with regrets over not having pursued careers in the things that they were most passionate about so long ago?

Absolutely nothing is "safe."

That's not to say that I didn't already know most of these things, because I did, but it often helps to have the things you believe affirmed by something tangible. The doubts that had been lingering periodically inside my mind have been replaced with an almost unequivocal belief that the choices I made were the right ones.

In other words, the exhilarating and stimulating side of that boxing match inside my brain recently landed what looks to be a knock-out punch. The exhausting and frustrating side is on the canvas and the referee is delivering the count, and I don't think it'll be able to get back up again.

Quote of the day II

Hey all you elite cocktail-sipping Georgetown dandies gumming your cucumber sandwiches at tea time: Barack Obama is NOT overexposing himself with the daily live-teevee appearances and “town halls” and Jay Leno guest spots. In fact, this is how you make Americans love you, in this country. You just show up on every teevee show, laughing weirdly, dancing, saying vaguely untrue things, smiling, etc., and then your approval ratings just go up, up, up.

This is America. These people need a Simple Narrative. The most beloved show on television for the past decade has been a fucking low-rent Gong Show, with people singing karaoke. You want to explain leverage and derivatives and equity ratios and Glass-Steagall and whatever to this crowd? Good luck.

This is why Obama’s approval rating has gone up several points, to 64%, while he was simultaneously feigning outrage about the AIG bonuses his Treasury Secretary approved, and making fun of Sarah Palin’s retarded bowling team.

-Ken Layne

The Redneck Camping Guide

This is a bit of an over the top spoof of camping and redneck culture, but it's still pretty funny nonetheless...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo gets AIG dudes to give their stupid bonuses back

Wow. Why hasn't more been made of this? From the New York Times...

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced late Monday afternoon that 9 of the top 10 bonus recipients at the American International Group were giving back their bonuses.

He also said 15 of the largest 20 bonus recipients in A.I.G.’s financial products division had agreed to give back the money, for a total that he estimated at about $30 million. “Those bonuses will be returned in full,” Mr. Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters.

The attorney general noted that about 47 percent of $165 million in retention bonuses was awarded to Americans, accounting for nearly $80 million. All told, Mr. Cuomo said, A.I.G. employees have agreed to return about $50 million in bonuses.

How many horses had to die for Cuomo to pull this off by placing severed heads in the beds of sleeping AIG executives? Or maybe the whole 90% tax on the bonuses proposed by Congress made it a no-brainer to just return the money?

Twitter put into its proper perspective

Nailed it!

Picture of the day

"Swampland Jewels" goes down as the best album cover of all-time in my book. I mean, come on...a girl in a bikini straddling a crawfish...does it get any better?

(click to enlarge)


And you can purchase the album on Amazon for the recession-friendly price of $146.69! Click the ad below to go to the page and sample the music...



Thanks for sending this over Julia!

Quote of the day

I mean come on, this guy hasn’t even been in office two months. The mess that the Bush administration left the Obama administration. I’m a Republican, we rang up more than a third of the nation's national debt under a Republican congress and Republican president 6 out of the last 8 years, we got America into two wars, we’ve done great damage to our economy, to our force structure, to our standing in the world. For a Vice President who participated in that, who led in that, to come on and say that this new administration has really put America in danger is just folly.

That’s ridiculous! It has no merit on fact or by any measurement.

-Senator Chuck Hagel, perhaps the most ballsy and intellectually honest Republican elected official out there today.

Morning links 3/24/09

-Jennifer Anniston dumped John Mayer because of his Twitter obsession. (UK Telegraph)

-Here's how to get any parking spot you want at anytime. (Jalopnik)

-The MTA is set to raise New York City subway and bus fares 23%...23 fucking percent! (Cityroom)

-Meet the sixth grader some are saying will be one of the top five point guards in the history of basketball. (New York Times Magazine)

-David Letterman got married over the weekend. (US Weekly)

-Here's how to become a successful band in the internet era. (Hipster Runoff)

-The "tea bag" movement stirred up by wingnut conservatives comes to a hilarious and inevitable crossroad. (Crooks and Liars)

-A New Orleans man shot another New Orleans man for boning his girl AND giving her an STD, which she then gave to him. (Nola.com)

-Meet the Tato Nano, the world's only car that sells for under $2000 brand new. (Gizmodo)

-Sign of the times...we're even getting our condoms from China, forcing layoffs in Alabama. (McClatchy)

-Did your city make the Forbes list of ten "most miserable" cities in America? (Forbes)

-Washing your hair with shampoo each day is actually bad for your hair. (Lifehacker)

-Christopher Walken is on Twitter. (Christopher Walken's Twitter)

This is why white guys shouldn't even attempt to dunk a basketball

I don't know how a week has passed without me seeing the best and worst dunk of all-time by Adam Waddell of Wyoming, but this is truly one for the ages, despite the fact that he couldn't stick the landing at the end...

Quote of the day II

It is a given in American life that goals are inseparable from accomplishment. President Kennedy's 1961 promise to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade is held up as an example of a world-changing goal, the kind of inspirational beacon needed to surmount immense societal challenges. Among psychologists, the link between setting goals and achievement is one of the clearest there is, with studies on everyone from woodworkers to CEOs showing that we concentrate better, work longer, and do more if we set specific, measurable goals for ourselves. Goal-setting is one of the seven habits of highly effective people, says self-help guru Stephen Covey, and even Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher of dropping out, celebrates the work of goal setting. "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them," he writes in Walden.

But a few management scholars are now looking deeper into the effects of goals, and finding that goals have a dangerous side. Individuals, governments, and companies like GM show ample ability to hurt themselves by setting and blindly following goals, even those that seem to make sense at the time. These skeptics draw on a broad array of large-scale failures - the design of the Ford Pinto, the Enron collapse, the rash lending practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - as evidence of the pernicious effects of goals. Outside the workplace, these thinkers point to the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing in grade schools, and psychological literature showing that goals and other incentives can constrict our thinking. Even the scarcity of cabs on rainy days, some argue, illustrates the ways that goals can blind people to their own best interests.

-Drake Bennett in an interesting column on Boston.com about goal-setting.

(via Fimoculous)

Meet bag-head cat

There's a joke I could make here about girls from eastern Tennessee, but that just wouldn't be nice...



(via Buzzfeed)

Let the merciless mocking of Bobby Jindal commence!

Hey remember a few weeks ago when Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal trotted awkwardly out onto the national stage and humiliated himself by giving the Republican response to Obama's non-State of the Union speech? Remember how during his speech Jindal, a man who governs a state that's been ass-raped by natural disasters and the federal government's profane lack of preparation in handling them, mocked the stupidity of allocating a few milllion bucks in the Obama budget for volcano research in Alaska? "Wasteful spending" I think is what he called it. And now today, ironically poetic, a volcano has erupted in Alaska...

Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted with four large explosions last night that shot a huge plume of gas and smoke 15 kilometres into the air and sent ash drifting toward the state's largest city Anchorage.

"It is in full eruption," said Matthew Haney, a research geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Mount Redoubt, which is some 170 kilometres from Anchorage, rises 3,108 metres above the Kenai Peninsula. About 50,000 people live on the peninsula within 80 kilometres of the mountain and it is one of the most densely populated areas of the state.

Sarah Palin is so gonna rip Jindal a new asshole in the 2012 Republican debates!

Quote of the day

We are the Jetsons. Map navigation systems in cars and telephones the size of baseball cards that play movies and cars that tell you when someone is calling and allow you to talk to them as if they’re sitting in the back seat. It isn’t just that none of these things existed a few years ago. None of them even seemed remotely possible. None of them even seemed like an invention you could dream about. I know I’ve written here before, but when I was 12 years old, I was utterly convinced that everything that could be invented had been invented. I guess everyone is like that, but the logic was so clear to me. Someone invented a box that sound came out of — that was radio. Someone then invented a box that had sound and pictures, and that was television. Someone made the pictures on the box colorful, that was color TV. Thus ended the great era of invention. There were no worlds left ti conquer. It had all been done except, maybe, a flying car.

Now, these things — the Internet, bluetooth, handheld devices, the Amazon Kindle*, 24-hour banking, high def television, Tivo, the Slap Chop, iTunes, DVDs, the WII — these are all part of our daily lives. They are so intertwined in our daily lives that in many ways they lose their wonder, and it becomes hard to remember how we lived without them. At one point, my oldest daughter Elizabeth asked what age I got a cell phone. I told her that we did not have cell phones when I was a boy. And then I tried to explain rotary phones to her, but it was like my father trying to explain the milk man concept to me. So I became a Dad and just told her that she was too young for a cell phone. Why? Because I said so. And I meant it.

-Joe Posnanski

Barack Obama on 60 Minutes

In case you missed it last night, here's the majority of Obama's interview with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes last night...


Watch CBS Videos Online

Morning links 3/23/09

-Famed New Orleans restaurant Commander's Palace may be taking over the Tavern on the Green space in Central Park. (Nola.com)

-Charlie Rose was almost mistakenly "whacked" by those bumbling "mob cops." (New York Post)

-Take a peek inside the minds of Obama's financial braintrust. (New York Magazine)

-Meet Diablo Cody's pussy posse. (New York Times)

-Bruce Willis got married over the weekend. (CNN)

-Sylvia Plath's son has...wait for it...committed suicide. (UK Times Online)

-Does Steve Kroft think that Obama is delusional or insane? (Politico)

-The hilarious Charlie Murphy grants a Q & A to New York Magazine. (New York Magazine)

-Harry Reid wants economic stimulus dollars for casinos in Nevada. (KRNV)

-Comedian Rob Corddry is probably the funniest celebrity on Twitter. (Rob Corddry's Twitter)

"Notte Sento"

For your viewing pleasure, here's a great little short film. Watching this reminded me that I needed to move to Rome, buy a Vespa and cruise the streets late at night for beautiful deaf girls who've missed their trains to Milan...


Notte Sento (English subtitles) from napdan on Vimeo.

If there is a God, LSU will end the collegiate career of UNC's Tyler Hansbrough, the Tim Tebow of college basketball, later today

I've gotten a few emails in the past couple of weeks from people wanting to know why I hate Tyler Hansbrough so much. I can't really explain it other than to say that I hate him for the same reasons I hate Tim Tebow. In fact, now that I think about it, Tyler Hansbrough is truly the Tim Tebow of college basketball, minus the Jesus Freakery with the circumcisions and all. They're both ridiculously overhyped college athletes who will do absolutely nothing when they go pro, and there's just something completely loathesome about that. I can't really explain it any better than that.

But at least with Tebow I think he can be legitimately labeled as one of the better college football players of all-time, whereas to label Hansbrough as the same in his sport is a complete fucking joke. He's a 6'10'' brute who has made a career out of tipping in missed shots over smaller players while being rhetorically fellated by every "expert" in ESPN's roster of college basketball "experts," and I can't wait to watch his ass get destroyed regularly when he gets to the NBA. On the rare occasions he'll get minutes that is.

Further, I don't think I can put it much better than my buddy Eamonn did in his recent anti-Hansbrough polemic on Yahoo...

Watching Hansbrough is not fun or entertaining or aesthetically enjoyable. It's just ugly. Hansbrough's game is predicated on physical play, on out-muscling the competition, getting under the hoop and making baskets. When you watch, say, Blake Griffin, you likely often find yourself saying "ooh, nice" or "wow" or "oh my God look out below." When was the last time you said those things about Hansbrough? One of the key components of basketball respect -- seeing a player's skills on display -- are completely out of Hansbrough's equation. He is to hoops what robots are to manufacturing: efficient, ruthlessly effective and utterly depressing to watch.

But that really doesn't get to the heart of the matter. The real reason why people loathe Tyler Hansbrough is much simpler, much less psychological. People dislike Tyler Hansbrough because the media loves him.

If you watch ESPN or even CBS, you know it's true. Dick Vitale loves him. Digger Phelps loves him. Everyone loves him. It has been dogmatically accepted for about three years that Hansbrough is the best big man in the college game, that he's one of the best college players of all-time, that he has no flaws in his game and so on. This hyperbole knows no bounds. And of course Vitale is the worst offender; even as his supporters admit that Hansbrough's game likely isn't suited for the NBA, Vitale uses broadcast time to dare NBA teams to pass on the player. It's insane.

In the hyperbole, Hansbrough's accomplishments get obscured. Yes, he is a good player, and yes, he deserves national and conference accolades. He isn't one of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game. He is, yes, a great player, but when you consistently overshoot that mark and head into undeserved territory -- when you start saying things that don't line up, visually, with what your viewers are seeing unfold in front of them -- you undermine the whole enterprise. Fans, whether rationally or not, turn that disconnect into disgust.

Yes. Yes. YES!

And now today Hansbrough and his North Carolina teammates are taking on LSU in the second round of the NCAA tournament. There are few things that could give me more pleasure than seeing my team send Hanbrough packing for good.

Oddly, the outcome of today's game may depend less on what Hansbrough does or doesn't do than it does on what his teammate Ty Lawson does. More specifically, how effective will Lawson be playing with an injured toe, a question which led someone at Tigerdroppings.com to create this new logo for the Carolina basketball team...



Come to think of it, the whole drama surrounding Ty Lawson's toe speaks volumes about Tyler Hansbrough's worth as a basketball player, don't you think.

Regardless, fuck Tyler Hansbrough. And GEAUX TIGERS!

UPDATE: Well we had a nice little run, but the better team won unfortunately.

"I Got Whiskey" by Rich Mann

So I've been on a bit of a country music kick lately, and this artist, a guy from Baton Rouge who goes by the name of Rich Mann, speaks to me with this song...



Thanks to Nick for sending a link to Rich's YouTube page along.

Sarah Palin unleashes shockingly predictable attack on Obama for his "Special Olympics" gaffe

Well that didn't take long. Sarah Palin, predictably, has something to say about Barack Obama's gaffe on Leno last night. From The Daily Beast...

"I was shocked to learn of the comment made by President Obama about Special Olympics,” Palin said in a statement. “This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world. These athletes overcome more challenges, discrimination and adversity than most of us ever will. By the way, these athletes can outperform many of us and we should be proud of them. I hope President Obama’s comments do not reflect how he truly feels about the special needs community."

Interestingly, she who has appointed herself as the defacto spokesperson for people with "special needs" recently turned down millions of stimulus plan dollars that would have aided special education programs in her state. Once again, Palin's actions speak much louder than her painfully hollow words.

Wacky conservatives groups still inviting Joe the Plumber to give us his dipshity opinion on things. Also, he's horny.

Confession: The first time I watched this I lost my shit about two seconds into it, just as that cheesy-ass "Proud to be an American" song by Lee Greenwood started playing as JTP took the stage. And then I lost my shit again when Joe proclaimed, "I'm horny" in his first sentence at the microphone, except this time my laughter was coupled by the feeling that my genitals were recoiling back inside of my body.

This is from an event throw by the "Media Research Center," some sort of conservative watchdog group whose main focus is to keep tabs on those commie fucks in the "liberal media." No word on if they give a fuck that a host on Fox News is rallying militant wingnuts to overthrow the government...


(via Wonkette)

Obama's "Special Olympics" comment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

For the first time in about 6 months, I actually went to bed before midnight last night. Just feel asleep watching basketball on television I did. Blame all the beer I consumed over the course of the day. Anyway, I missed Obama's appearance on Jay Leno last night but read some of the headlines made by him comparing his bowling skills to the Special Olympics when I got up to go to the bathroom at 4am, but hadn't bothered to seek out a clip of it. Anyway, I just did, and all I have to say to all of the people crying about this today is this...OH COME ON!



I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Sarah Palin jumps into the fray on this.