Understand, I’m implicitly assuming that you have absolutely nothing, I mean NOTHING better to do with your time than indulge this frivolity

 

 

Today’s Utterly Pointless Concept came to me, well, I’m not sure when.  It just manifested itself, like a weed through a crack in the patio concrete.  

 

The essential premise is:  Vocal duets that feature not only two singularly unlikely partners in song, but singing something thoroughly inappropriate for either of them individually, let alone together.  

Got it?  Swell!  Here are some ideas that occurred to me.  I’m sure you’ll be inspired to come up with just scads of your own!  So let’s go!!!!!

 

Fred Astaire and Willie Nelson; “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

 

Janis Joplin and Josh Groban; “Alley Oop”

 

Frank Zappa and Ethel Merman; “Born On The Bayou”

 

Mel Torme and Helen Traubel; “Blue Suede Shoes”

 

Gene Autry and Otis Redding; “Pinball Wizard”

 

Billie Holliday and Johnny Cash; “Yellow Submarine”

 

Tom Waits and Tiny Tim; “Good Vibrations”

 

…well, as you can see, I’m rapidly running out of gas on this premise.  Time for us to get on with our lives.  Unless you care to add to the list.  Please, be my guest.  Without actually coming to stay in my home, that is. 

IF YOU THOUGHT THE CUBS WERE A DISASTER…

 

I’m sure you saw or heard about this: When the news came down that Chicago had been eliminated from consideration for the 2016 Olympics, a great cheer broke out among the staffers at the righty-whitey National Review, and was caught on videocam or iPhone or some other of the several billion ways you can film shit these days, and a great chorus of harrumphing and tsk-tsking ensued, but the fact is, the NR crowd was absolutely right, albeit for the wrong reason.  The wrong reason being that in some insignificant way it might briefly diminish the stature of Barak Obama which, by their standards, would render it downright patriotic. 

 

Then again, by NR standards,  even if the entire US population west of Terre Haute, Indiana had to die writhing with plague, their loss would be worth it if it meant the return of the House to the GOP.  But the fact is that had Chicago been chosen to host the 2016 Games, we would have borne witness to a cavalcade of news items so horrendous as to make the rest of America deny any knowledge of the Land o’ Lincoln.  

 

For openers, consider the Walk of Penance that non-citizens must endure at airport customs stations just to get into the US.  This was certainly on the minds of the folks on the IOC board that questioned the various reps of the various cities.  In case you hadn’t noticed, the Land of the Free has become the biggest pain in the ass to get into this side of Heaven itself.  

 

The TSA would make entry such hell for half the world’s athletes and their families and supporters that al Qaeda would probably collapse just trying to handle the tide of applicants.  Indeed, on any given day, several thousand native born American citizens, some of them second or more generation, give serious thought to becoming terrorists as a result of their experience at the hands of Homeland Security.  America would have emerged from the ordeal with an international black eye the size of Saturn’s third ring.  

 

Face it, if Chicago had won, so would the terrorists.  

 

Moreover, can you even begin to imagine the citywide spree of graft and embezzlement and corruption that would bloom in the legendarily loose-moraled Windy City given the Great Huge Tide Of Money that would flow within the reach of all manner of weasel life?

And the whipsong frolic that rightwing radio would have with this epic malfeasance?  And how long it their ranting would go on, even well after we were sick to the point of retching from it?  

 

 Not to mention the internecine firefights that would erupt during the planning and development of the Entire Chicago Olympic Infrastructure between, just to name one cage match, the environmentalists and the unions.  And wouldn’t that be a tonic for Demo Party unity?  And of course, Chicago is Barak’s home town, meaning its ineptitudes and excesses and extralegal activities would be by GOP extension his.  

 

And finally — although this may get the TSA somewhat off the hook —  what with the whole world watching, and all, every Islamist (or other) zealot and sociopath and religious fanatic and jihad wannabe with a death wish and a grudge would be drawn to Chicagoland like flies to a divorce lawyer, to the point that some tragically lethal occurrence would become damn near inevitable.  

 

 All in all, Chi town, you bettah awf.  

AND PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T THROW ME IN THAT BRIAR PATCH!

The news was, quite frankly, gut-wrenching.  (Oddly, and purely by coincidence, Orchard Supply Hardware is having a sale on gut wrenches this week, the deluxe 16-piece set from Xi Xang Tools [Slogan: "Good enough for post-collectivist work."] going for just $139.95.  Get a discount coupon at www.bobwiederwouldshillforgraverobbersifthemoneywasright.com/coupons/goodluckgummo.

 

What left me dank with dread and concern were the news reports that on the computers of suspected (but let’s face it, almost certainly guilty as freaking sin) terrorist Najibullah Zazi and his merry band of civilization destroyers were the layouts of major sports complexes, stadiums, arenas, and other such.  Clearly, these bloodthirsty thugs have their sights set on America’s most precious cultural target: our sports heroes.  

 

And let’s face it, can  you imagine how DEVASTATING it would be to AMERICAN MORALE if what we all know as AMERICA’S TEAM, that of course being the DALLAS COWBOYS, were to somehow fall victim to some unconscionable SUICIDE BOMBING that would target and UTTERLY CRIPPLE THE DALLAS TEAM?  

 

 Well, of course you can.  

 

 As patriotic Americans, we can only hope the terrorists never discover how EMOTIONALLY DEVASTATING it would be for any harm whatsoever to befall OUR BELOVED COWBOYS.  If, for example, when they flew to San Francisco for their annual game with their arch rivals the 49ers, let’s say that terrorists were somehow to learn of the Cowboys’ unvarying devotion to an exact travel schedule that would have their charter flights ARRIVING AT GATE 145E AT PRECISELY 4:45 P.M. ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH.

 

 One can only imagine the HORRIFIC DESTRUCTION that would be wreaked on the COWBOYS if, say, a panel truck or large van or one of those Starving Students trucks filled with C-4 PLASTIC EXPLOSIVE were to pull alongside the COWBOYS BUS, as it reliably LEAVES SFO AT 5:30 on the dot, filled with AMERICA’S FAVORITE ATHLETES, whose death or injury would  CRIPPLE AMERICAN MORALE.  

 

 Failing such a roadside bombing, of course, there would be ample opportunity to ANNIHILATE AMERICA’S BELOVED TEAM when the team bus made its routine stop at ANIMAL PHARM, a secluded and marginally legitimate source of team medication on the outskirts of Colma.  

 

Were a used school bus packed with NITRATE FERTILIZER AND DETONATING JELLY to slide into the stall next to that of the COWBOYS IN THE PHARMACY PARKING LOT and be set off, the result would be a veritable DREAM COME TRUE FOR THE TERRORISTS, as Americans everywhere were reduced to WEEPING AND MOANING WITH GRIEF.  

 

 The horror.  The horror.

 

 One can only hope that those who wish our country ill will never discover how PAINFUL the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of the DALLAS COWBOYS would be to all Americans, or how SIMPLE it would be to WREAK HAVOC on the Texas team.  And how crucial it would be for the ‘BOYS ANNIHILATION to take place BEFORE they play the Niners. 

DEATH BE NOT PROUST

Kennedy. 

On the heels of Cronkite.  

And Michael Jackson.  And no, there’s no irony or sarcasm there.

 

In the space of…what, 60 days?…we’ve said goodbye to three historic personalities worthy of multi-network broadcast retrospectives and memorial and funeral services.  Because each of them had sunk a deep and abiding footprint into the mother culture.  Politics, media/journalism, music/performance art, whatever pond they frolicked in, it became different for their involvement in it.  

 

Proof of the pudding, I submit, is having one’s own epitaph established years before one actually expires and has need of it.  “The King of Pop.”  “The most trusted man in America.”  “The Lion of the Senate.”  

(It is all I can do to refrain from interjecting some tasteless reference to, say, Dick Cheney and the phrase “The Scum of the Earth.”  Well, you see there, it was too enticing after all.)  

 

 So I got to thinking that as we all know, these events — cover story deaths –  happen in threes, and we’ve seemingly bagged our limit for the moment, but still, the question just won’t be denied:  how many living individuals are there of the stature of these three who might similarly be expected to depart the coil in the foreseeable future?

 

Of course, Jacko, at age 51, certainly wasn’t considered a candidate for the dirtbed any time soon, so I may be phrasing the question too narrowly.  But whatever your age demographics, I can think of only a handful of living people who’ve made a mark comparable to the Late Three.

 

Billy Graham.  Goes without saying.  Listened to the intimate, soulful outpourings of every president since Truman.  Brought more people to God than Moses.  This is assuming, of course, that he’s still alive.  I could look it up, but I’m pretty sure he’s still awaiting the sound of his master’s voice, calling him home for dinner.  

 

Jack LaLanne.  I’m probably being too charitable as to his cultural impact.  How influential could he be, given a society two-thirds of whose inhabitants are actually unhealthily overweight and sedentary?  But you have to love him for good intentions and “so there” longevity.  

 

Hugh Hefner.  He brought the skeleton that reigns in midAmerica’s closets out into the klieg lights, is largely responsible for the degree to which we’ve come to accept our sexuality, and, as Lenny Bruce noted, “he made it so you couldn’t be a bigot and also drive a Porsche.”  Those were the days.  

 

Bob Dylan.  Towering talent.  Even if he actually stole everything he was ever accused of lifting, he was the one who made it iconographic, and he tinkered endlessly with his own standards just to freshen the air, and he wrote more cultural anthems than Souza.  

 

Muhammed Ali.  The first truly and literally world champion.  The first global athletic hero, and certainly the first to embrace Islam.  Abandoned greatness and vast fortune on principle and in opposition to war.  The entire planet’s first choice to light the flame at any Olympic Games, any time, anywhere.

 

Others?  Feel free to submit your nominees, but I think that beyond this short list, we’re lowering the bar well below the Immortal height.  Then again, maybe you could actually make a case for Andy Rooney.   

I’VE HAD MY FILL O’ DELPHIA

Here are a couple of particularly stupid bits of wordplay referencing the Michael Vick circumstance, one of which I think is original with me, the other I doubt, but who knows what is media osmosis and what is drug-induced invention?  Anyway…

Soon to be a commonplace bumper sticker in the more liberal Philadelphia suburbs:

Hide your beagles /  Vick’s on the Eagles

and…

In a potentially brilliant countermove, the Oakland Raiders today signed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromm to a long-term contract…”

THERE ARE SO MANY POSSIBLE WORD PLAYS THAT INVOLVE SUBSTITUTING THE WORD “HEALTH” FOR THE WORD “HELL” THAT IT’S BETTER TO NOT EVEN MESS WITH IT

It’s gotten to the point that upon hearing the words “health care” on either the tube or the radio I clutch for the remote or the dial and change stations with raw desperation.  I can’t take any more.  In a decent universe, where justice and fairness were the rule, you wouldn’t have to watch halfwits and lunatics shrieking about socialized medicine or death panels without also having the technological ability to shoot them.

One thing that gets my eyes rolling like dice is the part of the script where  ”government insurance will be able to provide cheaper coverage than private companies, and will put them out of business.”  Yeah, that’s a basic rule of commerce, cheaper beats pricy.  It explains, for example, why Hyundai forced Lexus and Porsche into bankruptcy, how Target has erased Nordstrom from the earth, and the crushing of the Four Seasons chain by Motel 6.  

Idiotic.  In point of fact, the high end of any marketing spectrum is always secure, thanks to the competativeness, vanity, exhibitionism, and insanely inequitable distribution of resources that are the pillars of our happy capitalist system.  Private insurers will simply resort to the Big Caressing Lie that has worked for so many overpriced products:  “Because you’re worth it.”  

Or maybe, “You can’t spend too much on health.”

The hell you can’t.

I also notice that a good proportion of the town hall ravers, even a clear majority, are more or less my age, which is that of retirement.  Which isn’t surprising, given that those who stolidly oppose any sane, honorable national health care program — i.e. the Republican Party and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries — are as usual working the Fear angle with an almost possessed intensity, and it is Seniors who are most vulnerable to Fear.  Being a Senior myself, I make apologies for them, because I know what Seniors are so fearful of:

Graduating.

The other side knows that, too, and plays it like a marimba.  The assholes.

TODAY’S LAME GAG LINE

Snide Disembodied Voice #1:  ”So Sarah Palin has actually quit as governor.  What could be going through her mind”?

SDV#2:  ”Whatever it is, it’s got plenty of room to maneuver.”

SOTOMAYOR MCCHEESE

Why?  Just tell me.  Why are the Dems letting the GOP shitslingers get away with this imbecilic notion that she is somehow unfit for the Courte Majeur because she was part of a decision involving firefighters that was reversed by the Supes, 5-4?  By that dazzlingly insipid logic, the four dissenting justices are unfit to be on the court.  But don’t kid yourself: If Jeff TheStromThermondofhistime Sessions could wave a wand, all four would all be safely removed from the Court to some some pleasant minimum security retirement facility.  

 

And the whole notion of her Latina…jeez, I don’t know, “upbringing” seems too stilted and incomplete, and “heritage” is just nonsense any more…but in any case the fact that she was raised Latina and would somehow view the world through a prism described by and modeled upon her life experiences is tossed into the air as evidence that she would be somehow prejudiced on that basis, a neat little take which implicitly assumes that the six white European-American upper-middle-class male justices aren’t just somehow free of similar prejudice, which would be laughable enough in itself, but which somehow presumes that the abovementioned white Euro-Amer upper-mid-class male is the standard and cultural norm.  It’s not just one particular view of the world, it’s The World.  Deviations therefrom will be evaluated for admission to the Power Circle based on individual circumstances and political realities.

My fantasy–and this is vicious and mean-spirited and in many ways unpardonable but it’s there, so–is that Clarence Thomas passes away (or, being a softhearted liberal, I’ll be glad to have retire suddenly, or have a debilitating stroke, or just wander off into a cornfield and never be heard of again), so that there is an open seat that is either (a) a conservative seat, or (b) an African American seat, depending on which demographic bloc you cast your lot with.  The GOP would, to placate its base, have to essentially take the position that the Court should be lily white.

 I just love what the right wing is doing to itself, which is described by a popular but anatomically impossible obscenity.  I’m just happy to be here to watch.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, #449

Don’t you hate it when you come up with some tasty little one-liner, some piece of quotable verbal confection or t-shirt-worthy bon mot or pithy epithet (which itself sounds almost contrivedly gay, but that’s neither here nor there) and then some element of the major media just yanks it out from under you?  Well, of course you do.

No wonder, then, that I am so disgruntled.  I was all primed to post this great headline — CNN: CELEBRITIES, NOT NEWS — followed by a rant about how CNN’s purportedly all-politics afternoon show “The Situation Room” was currently all Michael Jackson all the time.  Mind you, on this same news day, US troops were leaving Iraq cities, Minnesota was finally getting a second senator, and the world’s 7th largest economy, California, was heading into the commode.  And so help me God, not a word  was uttered on the Situation Room that was not about the life, death, burial, remembrance, flakiness, legacy, reputation, white cell count, favorite color, and impact of Jacko on the lives of approximately 250 people whose only significance is that you hope never to meet them.  And in this planned post I would go on and on along these tedious lines, but would pay off the piece with this killer closer.  

“Of course, one has to make an allowance for the tremendous grief that has engulfed those at CNN, the almost physically painful impact of a harsh, but unforgiving truth which naturally leaves them sobbing with woe:  There’s no way Michael Jackson can die more than once.

I admit it,I fairly wallowed in that line when it occurred to me.  And then, before I could render it mine by virtue of e-print, the vipers at The Daily Show used it virtually word for word (M.J. “can only die once,” I think).  

It’s a jungle in here.

Actia;;u

GRACELAND AND NEVERLAND: THE BOOGA BOOGA FACTOR. ALSO, THE 43RD TIME TODAY YOU WILL READ THE PHRASE “SANFORD AND SIN”

The woman is cursed!  No question about it.  That would be Lisa Marie Presley, of course.  Her dad, Elvis, The King, drops dead at the tender age of 42.  Her ex-husband, the King of Pop, does likewise at the even tenderer, as he played it, age of 50.  How much plainer could it be?  For the love of God, don’t let this woman anywhere near either Larry the talk-show relic or Stephen the storyteller.  Especially Larry.

 

Has this been an absolute blowjob of a week for Mitt Romney, or what?  Of the maybe, being generous, four GOP officeholders who could remotely be considered young phenoms with MVP potential, and hence serious competition for the Mittster in 2012, two, count ‘em two, have in less than ten days plunged like twin Acapulco cliff divers into the bottomless lagoon.  By the same token, probably no white man in America wept more sincerely at the death of the Gloved One than Mitt, knowing how it yanked the klieg lights away from that pathetic sap in the Columbia statehouse. 

 

And while we’re on that subject: Is nobody else going to come out and state the painfully obvious truth about Mark Sanford?  Which is that he is an almost classic illustration of the middle-aged male having what has traditionally been known as a “nervous breakdown.”  A normally rational, intelligent guy suddenly begins abandoning all common sense, behaving not just capriciously but self-destructively, often in pursuit of some impossible personal fantasy.  Or a dame.  Well, at that age, same thing.  I’m just surprised he didn’t buy a Porsche.

 

A relevant recollection:  At the very first ad agency to employ me, back in the Age of Nixon, this one account executive in his early 40s showed up one day with bleached blond hair, wraparound shades, and a, shall we say, frolicsome demeanor.  The agency’s response was to send him to Hawaii for rest and rehab and to soften the blow of his firing.  

All I could think of was: Why didn’t I think of that?