Just saw that Kelsey Grammer is going to be the face of RightNetwork, a cable channel catering exclusively to conservatives because apparently Fox News doesn't exist or something. Here's Kelsey now, disparaging "partisan politics," among other things, while openly shilling for right wing TV.
I guess the idea behind RightNetwork is to provide non-news/political pundit content for the conservative audience, and one of their pilots is Right2Laugh, a showcase of right-wing comedians. Here's the teaser for it. Uh, yeah.
Let me say, for the record, that I am open to the idea of conservative comedians. Nick DiPaolo was really funny before he went completely off the deep end, and Jeff Foxworthy manages to be funny, be a Republican, and work clean, which requires almost occult levels of wit and timing. Denis Leary has conservative tendencies, as relevant as political alignment is to that Boston Irish mindset of being insanely angry all the time.
However, the problem with a lot of conservative comics is that their routines are too much about proving their own conservatism and less about telling jokes or being funny or exploring the absurd, or really connecting with the audience in any meaningful way. In the teaser I linked, there's maybe one or two jokes that might work beyond an echo chamber in lockstep agreement with the comedian (and only one joke, the one about the Obama coin, that got more than a tepid response from the crowd). Otherwise, the content and delivery don't cover any ground beyond the sort of "X walks like this, but Y walks like this" bullshit pandering that is a staple of ineffective comedy.
I'd try explaining my lengthy absence from this blog, but I doubt anyone reading it remembers that I'm a contributor. Even I forgot until recently. Still, I suppose I owe you people something. This video is a good approximation of what my life has been like since the last time I posted here.
Anyway, as some of you may know, I am an ad critic. Which means, among other things, that I am no stranger to hate mail. This was a particularly fun item:
With regard to your comment... "How they thought this would reflect well on the brand is anyone's guess. Maybe they downsized the people in charge of thinking this stuff through."
That, or maybe they just went for it. And didn't over think it. That or, they didn't make a decision based on fear. Whatever the case, they tried.
Of course, you wouldn't know anything about that. Instead, you -like all the other Ellsworth Tooheys of the world- do your best to justify your existence by doing nothing more commenting on other's efforts. Attempting to gain some modicum of self worth with your smug and glib little quips. Sad.
I'll be expecting the requisite glib/smug/ironic comment back from you. So, take your time. And make it a good one.
Ellsworth Toohey, by the way, was an art critic in The Fountainhead whose secret plan was to destroy excellence by enshrining mediocrity. That this dude finished The Fountainhead is no small feat; rather, it proves that he likes the smell of Ayn Rand's farts as much as she did. He's a stronger man than me in that respect, because I didn't get very far into that book before Rand's utter dogshit writing got the best of me.
But if he's serious about tearing down mediocrity, he should be fighting back-to-back with me against a marketing culture where "growing the brand" has become a justification for poorly conceived or pointlessly random ideas that do nothing for the product they're selling. The whole POINT of advertising is to sell things, after all, and merely raising awareness of a product is fruitless if said awareness is negative, or even opaque. The ad he's defending leaves me, the viewer, connecting the Walmart brand to a clown screaming at a room full of terrified kids. Not an inaccurate image, God knows, but not one that reflects well on Walmart. And brands do this ALL THE TIME. It is a function of creative and artistic laziness that protects bad ideas at the expense of good ones (this Kodak spot is an example of what I think is a good one). If Captain Objectivism wasn't so busy getting his precious feelings hurt by strangers on the Internet, he would see that.
Also, I write for Adfreak to justify my existence at the expense of others? No, I work for money - Verizon doesn't accept justifications of my existence in lieu of payment, thanks. But I'd rather be Ellsworth Toohey, for all his faults, than yet another blowhard asshole who thinks he's John Galt.
Pro wrestling and football are two of the most hypocritical spectacles of the modern age. They appeal to a largely male audience in a traditionally male way, through encouragement of physical superiority and violence and so on. In short, what they're going for is an image of dominant, unquestionable masculinity, and they consistently fail. Because what they both are, when all's said and done, is gay. Very, very gay. Now, we're going to need an operational definition of the word “gay.” For the purposes of this essay, gay has less to do with hot man-on-man action than it does with heavy handed irony.
Consider two muscular men in bicycle shorts dancing together in the NYC Pride Parade. Now consider that they're standing on the bow of a giant pink float called the Mississippi Queen while the DJ—wearing angel wings and a diaper—plays a medley of remixed Cher hits. Are these two men gay?
No, they are not. Not even if they sing along with the disco whistle. Those two men are openly embracing not just each other, but their homosexuality. They might be doing so in a crude and obvious way, but there is no subtext to it. But when football and wrestling try so hard to avoid and denigrate homosexual imagery that they come full circle and mimic it, that's gay. And what we're proving today is that football is unquestionably gayer than wrestling in this regard. We'll start with the obvious.
The tight end: In an all-male sport, calling anything a tight end is pretty much an invitation for sodomy. Wrestling does not have a tight end. It has wrestlers, it has managers, it has valets, it has bodyguards, and it's even had a genie who impregnated a woman by spitting green mist into her crotch. But it has never had anyone whose position, whether behind or in front of the curtain, was referred to as the tight end. Even the old-school practice of insiders referring to pretty boy tag teams as “blowjobs” implied that they'd be receiving them from the women in attendance. Compare this to what tight ends receive.
The center: At first glance, the center isn't really all that gay. He's the guy in the “center” of the offensive line who snaps the ball to the quarterback. Nothing fishy about that at all, right? ...well, except for the fact that he has to bend over directly in front of the quarterback. That's his job. Wearing tight pants and bending over in front of another man. That's his day. Wrestling doesn't have this. True, it isn't really a team sport, but even tag team wrestling doesn't have a guy who just bends over while his partner does all the work. Yes, that wording was intentional.
Subtlety: This category reaches back around to our operational definition. What's gayer; a guy who says something like “hi, I'm Julian and I love feeling penises in my butt,” or the married high school shop teacher getting dragged out of Club Manhole by the police? The answer involves Julian walking off stage with the silver medal. Wrestling is kind of like Julian. There's just no escaping the fact that WWE owner Vince McMahon has forced grown men to kiss his bare ass on national television. You can't ungay that. You can't even unsee it.
Football, by contrast, tries much harder to hide from the truth. They've managed to obscure their gayness behind mountains of cheerleaders and halftime shows and commercials and cutbacks to the broadcast table every ten fucking seconds. You would think that there was some monetary benefit to all this, measured by ratings and ad revenue. And you'd be wrong – the idea is to never show, under any circumstances, footage of the game itself. All those tight uniforms and bulges and motivational butt pats make for bad television. Or more accurately, like Mr. Shop Teacher and his gym bag full of assless leather pants, football hates itself for things utterly beyond its control.
John Madden: Now that he's retired, it's easy to pick on him, but Madden left behind a legacy of broadcasting that called almost entirely upon upon homosexual imagery. “He hits the hole right after Jesse opens it up” is one of many examples. And when you describe anything in football as “the last shot out of the Roman Candle,” you mean ejaculation. Same for any situation that prompts a comment like “he's going to fire into this guy right here.” Don't argue. You will lose.
Wrestling has had some pretty bad play-by-play men and color commentators over the years, especially the 80s, but nothing can match Madden's consistency. Not even Lord Alfred Hayes' fretting about manager Jimmy Hart “always on his back” and constantly “inventing new things to do to [him],” or Mean Gene Okerlund's questionable on-screen relationship with Hulk Hogan, can compare. They weren't regular announcers anyway – Jesse Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon were the commentators of the Reagan years, and unlike Madden, they could think faster than they spoke. Even Dusty Rhodes was quicker on the draw, and he used words like “clubberin'” on a regular basis. And as dumb and inarticulate as that is, it isn't gay. But the Roman Candle thing? Gay.
So there you have it. Ironclad, irrefutable proof that what happens on the gridiron is roughly ten or eleven times gayer than what happens in the squared circle. Actually, “squared circle” could be a euphemism for the anus...nope, football's still gayer. Tight end. Jesus.
For the love of God and sunny Jesus, WHAT? Out with it. You're interrupting pornography.
Individuals and institutions, alike,
Too many commas; "alike" is not a separate clause, bubba.
faced extraordinary challenges over the last year, and Gettysburg College is hardly immune from the realities of today’s economy.
Why is it that every time I get a letter from the college, I hear change rattling in a tin cup?
Now, more than ever, the College relies on your support to ensure our students receive the same outstanding Gettysburg experience you enjoyed.
You mean the one no one ever mentions aloud because they're too busy reminiscing about "waffle ball" or building unnecessary exercise facilities?Come on now. If you're going to jerk me off, at least spit on your hand first.
With less than a week until the close of this Gettysburg College fund year on May 31, we ask you to consider your circumstances. If you can help the College, won’t you please make a gift to the Gettysburg Fund? I'm as broke as I was the last time you asked me for money - you know, A MONTH AGO - so no.
If you choose to make a gift, please go online to our secure online giving website or mail your gift (to count in the 2009 fund year, it needs to be postmarked on or before May 31) to the address below.
If you have already mailed your gift, let me be the first to say “Thank you” for all you do for our College.
Not for nothing, but if I ever do give you people any money, I only accept gratitude in the form of memorial plaques.Wood frame too, nothing tacky. Precocious brilliance like mine requires old world craftsmanship, you goddamned artless Philistines.
I hope that as advocates for Gettysburg, we can help the College meet current challenges and move on to the future with great momentum.
Sincerely,
Oh, that's another thing. I also demand that any and all correspondence from the college concerning alumni donationsincludes the phrase, "more blood for the blood god."
As a very important, monocle-and-top-hat-wearing college graduate, my alma mater keeps in frequent, mostly-unwanted contact with me about very important matters. And by "matters," I of course mean "donations to the college." Here is one such email, with my responses in italics:
Dear Dave,
Yes?
With a few days of spring-like temperatures here and there, we are itching for the warmer weather to stay. Personally, I am sick of the New England snow and wind!
Um...I'm sorry? I hope you don't live in Maine, because you'll be begging for a mid-June blizzard when all those black flies show up.
This time of year also reminds us of two things at Gettysburg.
No, it doesn't.
First, our memories of playing waffle ball
Our what now?
and passing the Frisbee around on Stine Lake, doing homework outside on the steps of the library, walking to classes and watching the lacrosse games among other activities. Dude, the only things I did in college were masturbate and host a radio show, often simultaneously. You did intend this for Dave *Kiefaber*, right?
Predictably, that’s what the current students are doing on their warm days at Gettysburg.
You forgot sunbathing. See above note concerning masturbation. Now get to the point already.
Second, it reminds me, as your Class Agent and alum of Gettysburg, that the College’s fund year is almost over.
I KNEW IT.
The Gettysburg Fund is vital to providing the continued opportunities we all experienced while on campus. Please consider a gift of $25 towards the Gettysburg Fund to help current students and our class make an impact. Click Here to make your gift online. Your participation is important to me and the College. Important to you how, exactly? Will you get a cookie if your half-hearted attempt at familiarity works and I donate to the college? Seriously, you could have tried a little harder to win my confidence. That we both know where Stine Lake is and hate the way Servo overcooks their pasta doesn't make us friends, so maybe go beyond generic bullshit the next time you try to extract more blood for the blood god.
Please let me know if you have any questions or if you have any updates you’d like to share.
Yesterday, it rained very hard for a very long time. And as Lauren put it, I was one of the .01 percent of New Yorkers without an umbrella. As I was sprinting home with a jacket over my head (hard to do), I wondered, "How, in this day and age when we have things that can tell what song is playing on the radio, are we still using upside down baskets to protect us from the rain?"
I really think we could come up with something better.
In the midst of all of the tea-bagging, tea parties, and "Obama Bin-Lyin" bashing as of late, I think America has really lost sight of what is important about Tax Day: kids in ironic and borderline racist costumes. Thank goodness some parents have the sense not only to dress their kid up as a good ol' fashioned injin chief, but also to allow their children to make an informed decision about taxes.
Point being, the VH1 franchise "Best Week Ever" compiled a list of The 14 Catchiest Tax Day Protest Signs, just in case you couldn't make all the tea parties in your area. My personal favorites? #13. Stimulate Not Business Government and #6. Don't Tread on Me (is this even relevant?).
Things to take away from Tax Day 2009: stay out of this lil' injin's piggy bank. Seriously.
You know how you really like to sing in your car? Maybe the music is on full volume, maybe you are fist pumping, or head thrashing at stop lights, and dancing really unsexily. Maybe the cd is Mariah Carey! And you think to yourself, "Man, this is so fun, I love singing in my car."
Remember when that was the end of the story? You just danced your way into your driveway and called it a day. But now you might either Facebook Interest, Facebook Status Update, or Twitter, "singing in the car/singing in the car with the windows down." (You or someone you know has definitely done this exact thing.)
It totally depresses me that we don't get gratification from the activity anymore, but instead from it's publicity. Now here is this funny video from Slate that mocks Twitter with "Flutter" -- a nanoblog.
The other day I was telling my co-workers why I'm not a huge fan of Lent, and that the whole concept was pretty much ruined for me when my friend told me she heard a sorority girl say, "I have to give up peanut butter for Lent, because it is making me gain weight." That really made me want to run away from the whole idea of Lent. My co-worker Jess said, "sorority girls ruined Green Day for me," (this makes sense because I think she graduated when Green Day was self-destructing and being ruined by the radio and the masses, etc.) and I thought... there is a whole bunch of stuff -- potentially good things -- that I pretty much hate now because I identify them with lots of unpleasant Greek brother and sisters that I went to school with. And here they are. Add your own. (And like, don't get offended if you enjoy Tiffany jewelry or the continent of Australia. I'm admitting that these things are potentially awesome, but have been unjustly ruined for me. My loss.)
The pink/green combo
J Crew (entirely)
Nautical themes (particularly: anchors, whales)
The Greek Alphabet (oh, I don't know, say: Delta, Gamma, TKE whatever that stands for, etc.)
Hair ribbons
Being an asshole to cafeteria workers and maintenance people (oh wait, that was never awesome)
Giving blow jobs in bathrooms
Particular branches of rap music (the kind that only fosters an environment of people humping eachother)
Giving up stuff for Lent
Collared shirts
Large pearl earrings
Tiffany jewelry
Lily Pulitzer
The continent of Australia (the place where students who only want a partially exotic study abroad experience go to come back with their lame stories of being drunk on the beach and seeing lots of boobs)
Psychology. I have no respect for this field anymore, unless it is studied at a more prestigious level than liberal arts major.
Nelly's "It's Getting Hot in Herrrre" or "Bring Sexy Back"
Disclaimer: The following list does not necessarily reflect the point of view of Eric, with the exception of Number Nineteen. Everyone in the universe agrees With Number Nineteen.
1) That poor Trix Rabbit gets fucked over again, when all he wants is, innocently enough, is to enjoy the breakfast goods that exploit his image in advertising.
2) Yogurt: are you a liquid or a solid? Please make up your mind and then get back to me.
5)I don't take orders from Jaime Lee Curtis. Also the Activia song makes me want to die.
6) Did someone actually get paid for coming up with Yoplait's slogan "It's just so good"? How did that slip through the cracks? (After hearing it, my immediate response is just a flat, "no it's not," and then I move on, my anti-yogurt stance unwavering.)
7) Inauthentic Girliness. Yoplait is trying to connect with me and my feminine needs (Yoplait is "not waiting in line for the restroom good"? OH MAN! WHERE DO THEY GET THIS STUFF!?!?) but it only makes me want to disown my uterus. Who serves yogurt at a wedding, anyway?
8) It's too sweet. I cringe.
9) Shitty flavors. It's always the same old artificial blueberry, strawberry, etc. that never taste like blueberry, strawberry, etc. Why don't they make some that taste like lasagna or a Dirty Martini?
10) Eating yogurt is just depressing, unless you don't have teeth. So, like, babies can eat it, fine. And old people. But if you are hip at all, grab life by the balls and put down the yogurt.
11) It's too complicated and instills fear in me. Those Activia commercials have me scared out of my mind, with all those flying arrows and exploding stomachs.
12) It's definitely labeled a "woman's food", which makes me want to hate it more.
13) The publishers I work for claim in a highly sensitive and top secret document that "kids have aversions to yogurt because they suspect it might be healthy." I disagree with this statement. You can get kids to eat anything and they almost never have a problem with yogurt. They're not like, "WAIT A SECOND, MOM. I CAN SMELL THE PROBIOTICS." Kids don't care. But reading it made me think about how much I hate yogurt in the first place.
14) Yogurt does not taste good on pizza or in alcohol. So really, what's the point?
15) If left unrefrigerated, yogurt sucks even more.
16) Your mom may or may not have packed it in your lunch box every goddam day for 8 years throughout grade school and now you're sick of it.
17) Your host family when you studied abroad in Florence (who didn't understand the eating habits of Americans) may or may not have found out that your roommate liked yogurt and may or may not have bought entire crates of it, forcing it on you as meal replacements for actual cooked meals. Also, Italian yogurt may or may not suck even worse than unrefrigerated American yogurt (this has something to do with the fact that Italians actually know what good food tastes like, so they don't EAT yogurt) and I question the amount of viable probiotics in European yogurt, anyway.
18) Yogurt requires no effort on the behalf of the consumer. You might as well just blast it down your throat in tubes, or inject it the next time you're shooing up heroin. A good food requires some chewing, it requires you to work for it's love.
19) GO-GURT is Ridiculous. As Ellen Deneneres so aptly put,
"GO-GURT is for people on the go. Let me ask you, was there a big mobility problem with yogurt before? How time-consuming was it, really? [pretending to be on the phone:] "Hello?...Oh, hi, Tom...oh, I've been dying to see that movie...Umm, no...I just opened up some yogurt...Yeah, I'm in for the night...No, not even later-it's the kind with fruit on the bottom. Well, have fun. Thanks anyway."
When I heard that McKay Hatch started a National No Cussing Club, I thought 2 things: 1. This boy is confusing, he has two last names and 2. What kind of dweeb starts a No Cussing Club?
Now I was a huge dork when I was Mr. Hatch's age. Or Mr. McKay's age. Or whatever. But not in this lame-ass way. I wore kangol hats and suspenders to school every day. I watched Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when I was entirely too old to be doing so. I tripped over things a lot. I definitely thought swearing was cool -- it was the language of my grandparents, my parents, and me. One of the first times I stringed together a sentence, I was sitting in my high-chair while my mother was throwing a dinner party and I said, "What the hell is this, chicken?" I believe swearing is a beautiful use of the English language. How good does it feel to say MOTHER FUCKER!!!? Everyone has their profanity of choice. (My mom's is "ass-wipe.) And now we know that swearing at work is GOOD FOR EVERYONE.
But come on. What kind of nerd admits "A lot of kids at my school, and some of my friends, would cuss and use dirty language all the time. They did it so much, they didn't even realize they were doing it. It bothered me so much that one day I challenged them to stop!" This kid needs a good old fashioned Swirlie. Or Awful Waffle. And what kind of nerd does makes a no cussing rap video?
But then I started thinking this McKay kid might have a point. When little kids swear, it definitely sounds lame-ass. You have to fight for your right to swear. It's like a right you earn for putting up with a bunch of bullshit that you wanted to swear about your whole life but couldn't cause you were only a kid (like indoor recess and yogurt in your lunch box). The kid was talking on the news, and I was thinking, he sounds so mature, so adult. I felt like he probably had a lot to say about the Palestine/Israeli conflict or something. Very articulate kid.
So a message to Hatch: I'm sorry I poo-pooed you, you goddam son of a bitch. Easy on the swears for now, it will get you far. But once you get to be older, it doesn't really matter. (You might also get looser on other such items such as drinking, drugs, and sex, and life will be more fun.)
Off the top of my head, I can remember hearing reports that R gave CB "brown herpes," was flirting with Jay-Z (who wouldn't flirt with Jay-Z?) and then there was this reporter from the Daily News who reported that Rihanna grabbed the keys out of Chris' Lamborghini and threw them down the street, knowing "it would really infuriate Chris, and it worked." The same article says an insider reported that, "Rihanna is tempermental, too. They're both too hot-headed for their own good."
So I'm getting used to hearing this shit and being like "Mother of God!" But this morning, CNN interviewed Jeff Gardere, a Clinical Psychologist and I think it just made me realize that I've had enough. Up to here. Etcetera. The first thing he said that made me go "huh" was "They really are in love," which confuses me and I think is up for debate. But this part shouldn't be up for debate:
Rihanna, as we know, through her attorney, asked a judge not to prohibit Brown from contacting her. And we hear they are back together. Yikes. Gardere says,
"Rihanna herself has a responsibility not just to herself and her relationship and Chris Brown, but to her public, whether she wants to be a role model or not, she actually is, so she's giving a very wrong message by saying, "I'm going back, but I'm going back with no preconditions." There have to be preconditions. And I, as Rihanna, I should perhaps get some therapy and find out why it is that I want to stay in this kind of relationship."
Yes. The cycle of violence, we all know. But I would think a Clinical Psychologist would know how hard it is to break the cycle of violence. How hard it is to just walk away. Every day, women all over the world claim they love their husbands who have tried to kill them. We can never judge a woman who can't just get up one morning and do it, even if she is a public figure. It's going to be very difficult for Rihanna to break out of the cycle.
To celebrate their 70th anniversary, Glamour recently did a piece honoring American women (and one Belgian). The connection there is tenuous, but nevertheless they chose to honor the women by having young celebutantes pose in their images: Alexis Bleidel as Rosie the Riveter, Camilla Belle as Mary Tyler Moore and yes, Emma stone as Carrie Bradshaw.
The effect is kind of creepy -- the actresses and models, mostly much younger than the women they're representing, have a plastic sheen and beatific smile. Like Barbie, the ever-present archetype. It's an insult to women like Amelia Earhart and Brandi Chastain and a corruption of what they stand for. Hayden Panatteire and Elisha Cuthbert seem like nice girls but what have they ever done for the world or for women?
Would anyone care about the story of Dolores Huerta if there wasn't a pretty starlet posing as her? Fighting for migrant workers rights isn't pretty or stylized. Why not show pictures of the actual women? Once again the media is telling women that, "Sure! Do whatever you want as long as you're pretty doing it. Also, if you were just pretty (like a model!) you could just pretend to do something great."
When women are told "You can do anything," as the subtitle to this slideshow does, should we be thinking of Carrie Bradshaw? Aside from the fact that she's a fictional character whose made up life could only exist in fantasy, she represents values -- materialism, vanity and a singular focus on romance -- that only hurt us.
Glamour's "American Icons" only serves to muddle the meaning of what it means to be a great woman.
I'm doing research for work that requires me to spend some time on websites for tween girls. Peering into the interior of the tween mind has been a combination of terrifying, mortifying (I was once one myself) and professionally speaking, informative. And it isn't professional of me to read the "Secrets" page of one such site, meant to be an anonymous forum for openness and compassion, and laugh and then share this with you in hopes you will laugh too. But I'm going to:
"I have an ingrown toenail on my big toe and i ahd it for over 2 years and idk how to tell my parents... ive had before and had surgery on it but im afraid. and it can kill you... i dont want to die" -- one desolate tween
