Tuesday, December 20, 2011

North Korea is so lonely...

Añadir imagenIt’s beyond the describable for western (even eastern) ears what is going on in North Korea. The most perfect police state is every George Orwell’s nightmare come true. Maybe you should try Cracked.com or what the late (and much mourned) Christopher Hitchens wrote.

Now that the dear leader Kim Jong Il dies, in true pharaoh fashion, his grieving army launches a missile to scare South Korea even more.

Now the last perfect Stalinist state keeps on living its pharaonical fantasy: Kim’s son, Kim Jong Un, is appointed supreme leader and nobody knows what is going to happen next. Why? Because we knew a thing or two about the ridiculously megalomaniac Il, but we don’t know jack about Un. Even knowing Il was a madman was an advantage.

I’m leaving you now with a not-so-inaccurate portrait of the deceased (and much mourned) leader, performing in “Team America: World Police” the un-pc and tender ballad “I’m so Ronery.”




Ever wonder what a socialistic, all-poweful state can achieve? Visit North Korea

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Friday, December 16, 2011

You will never work again in this town: a celebrities' all-out slugfest


Wordpress messed with my access to Opinion Renegada, so I asked April Camus and Dr. sipmac to post this here in the meanwhile. Enjoy:

Glamour aside, working in Hollywood is like being stuck in the most uncomfortable cubicle of the meanest soul-sucking corporation. So much for leaving it all to follow your celluloid dreams… today I found this article, and I wanted to share what the fray had to add.

Let the festivities begin!

  • “Like sleeping in bed with a girl” – Ava Gardner on ex hubby Frank Sinatra
  • “Go shave off your goddamn mustache you c**t” – Judy Garland to Ginger Rogers, inscribed on a stein beer mug
  • “She knew how to sleep with the right people” – Liza Minnelli on Grace Kelly’s Oscar win
  • “Her singing voice can peel paint off walls” – Judy Garland on Kathryn Grayson
  • “She had so much ice water in her veins that she was pissing it” – Ramon Novarro on co-star Jeanette MacDonald
  • “I am aware of how Miss Davis felt about my makeup in Baby Jane, but my reasons for appearing somewhat glamorous were just as valid as hers, with all those layers of rice powder she wore and that ghastly lipstick. But Miss Davis was always partial to covering up her face in motion pictures. She called it ‘Art.’ Others might call it camouflage- a cover-up for the
  • absence of any real beauty. ” – Joan on Bette in ‘Baby Jane’
  • “I’d wring her neck if I can find it” – Noel Coward on Claudette Colbert
  • “It should have been called ‘All About Me’, dahling!’ – Tallulah Bankhead on Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve’
  • “When she married him [Vincente Minnelli], I told Judy Garland directly to her face that I’d never shed another tear for her.” – Butterfly McQueen
  • “It was the most shocking display of bad taste I have ever seen. Look, there’s nothing wrong with my tits, but I don’t go around throwing them in people’s faces.” – Joan Crawford on Marilyn Monroe
  • “That little Barbra Streisand turned out to be a big ol’ shit” – Vivian Vance
  • “I could smell his dentures when we were doing a kissing scene, which reeked of cigar smoke.” – Vivien Leigh on Clark Gable
  • “My mother told me to only speak good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Thank God!” – Bette Davis
  • “”He played my father in my first picture [A Bill of Divorcement]. His attentions were very unfatherly. When we finished shooting I went up to him and said ‘Thank God I don’t have to act with YOU anymore!’ and he simply said ‘I didn’t know you ever HAD, darling!’” – Kate Hepburn on John Barrymore
  • “Who does she think she isn’t?” – Yves Montand on Shirley MacLaine
  • “Elvis not only dyed his blonde hair black, which he thought was more butch, but in some of his movies he wore more eyeliner than his leading ladies” – former co-star Alejandro Rey
  • “I did a movie with Duke Wayne and was shocked to learn he had small feet and wore lifts and a corset. Hollywood is seldom what it seems” – Rock Hudson
  • “Brando used to be a huge star, now he’s just huge” – former co-star Brian Keith
  • “Bob Hope would attend the opening of a supermarket” – Marlon Brando
  • “I saw this empty taxcab pull up and out hopped Sam Goldwyn” – Bob Hope
  • “Marilyn was smart for only 10 minutes in her life, and that was the time it took to sign with Darryl Zanuck” – Anne Baxter
  • “That broad’s got a great future behind her” – Betty Grable on Marilyn Monroe
  • “THAT DYKE!” – Liz Taylor on Marilyn Monroe, in Marilyn’s prescence
  • “She is a spoiled, indulgent girl, a blemish on public decency” – Joan Crawford on Liz Taylor
  • “God it was awful. He can sing but he can’t do much else” – Natalie Wood on her brief fling with Elvis
  • “Duke Wayne had 4 inch lifts in his shoes.. he was probably buried in those goddamn lifts” – Robert Mitchum
  • Tony Curtis about kissing Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Take it away, Tony! “It was like kissing Hitler”.
  • The costume designer, when he was making adjustments to Curtis’ female outfit, told MM that Curtis had a better ass than she did. She opened her blouse and shouted “Yeah, but he doesn’t have t**s like these!”
  • “I found out that Carole Lombard wasn’t a natural blonde. We’re in her dressing room talking while shooting Bolero and she starts taking her clothes off. I didn’t know what to do!… then she starts mixing peroxide in a bowl and with a piece cotton began to apply the liquid to dye the hair around her honey pot. She glanced up at me and said ‘Relax Georgie, I’m just making my collars and my cuffs match’” – George Raft
  • “Orson Welles always carries a little suitcase around with him because he’s ashamed of his small nose. He always puts a little putty or something on it.” – Jeanne Moreau
  • “Think what my brother would’ve acheived if he had been celibate” – Shirley MacLaine
  • “Woody Allen… is an evil man.” – Maureen O’Sullivan
  • “I worked with Gig Young once in a film. You don’t get to know a man and you never know what he’s going to do. He had a bland personality, good looks, somewhat sad smile, and years later after he remarries for the second or third time he kills his wife! And I always thought the best of people!” – Joan Blondell
  • “George C. Scott. Great actor. Big drinker. Wife beater. What else do you want to know?” – ex-wife Colleen Dewhurst
  • “The least couth actress I’ve ever worked with? Bette Davis” – Helen Hayes
  • “I’m Number 10 at the box office right behind HER! [Barbra Streisand]. Get me a bag I think I’m going to vomit” – Walter Matthau
  • “C.B. DeMille invited me to a private screening of ‘Samson and Delilah’ Afterward he asked me how I liked it. I replied: ‘I never like a movie where Vic Mature’s tits are bigger than Hedy Lamarr’s'” – Groucho Marx
  • “I always thought that Jane Fonda had a stunning figure. Did you see ‘Barbarella’? Why did she need do get a boob job? Just because her husband had an affair with a younger woman? What kind of role model solves her problems by making her bust bigger?” – Sandy Dennis
  • “Chuck Heston has made acting in period pictures an art. A minor art.” – Ava Gardner
  • “I said to Marilyn on the set of ‘Prince and the Showgirl’, ‘Why can’t you get here on time for f**k’s sake?’ And she replied ‘Oh, you have that word in England too?’” – Laurence Olivier
  • “Goddamit, when is she going to be here, she’s going to give me a heart attack.” – Clark Gable about Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits.
  • “She was frightened, insecure. During our scenes in ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’, she’d look at my forehead instead of my eyes. A scene took probably 15 or more takes. I couldn’t dislike Marilyn, she had no meanness in her” – Lauren Bacall
  • “She was the biggest bitch in show business, thank God I’ll never have to work with her again!” – Tom Bosley on Lucille Ball
  • “Bruce Lee was an egomaniac. He thought it terrible that he had to be just a movie star when he really wanted to be a dictator. I’m not kidding!” – Lee Marvin
  • “I wouldn’t say she’s dumb, but one time she squealed out loud on set that she had a terrific idea. The director stared at her and said ‘Treat it gently dear, it’s in a strange place.’” – Tony Randall on Jayne Mansfield, who had an above average IQ.
  • “Yes I have acted with Clint Eastwood. Or rather I have acted opposite Clint Eastwood” – Geraldine Page
  • “Gerry Page is a superb Method actress. I once asked her what her secret is and she replied ‘Talent’” – Helen Hayes
  • “I didn’t know what to make of Patty Duke’s erratic behavior. I thought she was a Method actress but then I was informed she was manic depressive” – Elsa Lanchester
  • “I loved Bill Holden, but I couldn’t have knowingly married an alcoholic” – Audrey Hepburn
  • “Joan Crawford was on the set, knitting. Lana Turner rushed over to her and yelled ‘The Japanese have destroyed Pearl Harbor!’ Joan looked up at her and said ‘Oh… my dear, who was she?’” – Mary Astor
  • “I’ve never been a fan of Woody Allen. Many people say he’s the funniest in the world. I find him neurotic” – George C. Scott.
  • “Abbott and Costello were famous for stealing furniture from their sets without the directors calling them out on it. But one did and Lou went home one day and saw that his grand piano was missing. The director made them return EVERYTHING they stole from the set.” – Joe Besser
  • “I was in one of Woody Allen’s movies [Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask]. When I met him, I wondered how he was qualified to direct this movie”. – John Carradine.
  • “On the set with Chuck Heston, we’d be sitting side by side for 20 minutes and finally I’d turn to him and say ‘You know you can’t sit next to somebody for half an hour and not even say hello. He boomed ‘WELL I CAN!’” – Edward G. Robinson.
  • “Never mind Arthur, Pomona isn’t Lucille’s town.” – Judy Garland to Arthur Freed after a disasterous preview of Yolanda and the Thief, starring Freed’s mistress Lucille Bremer
  • “Barbara Parkins… was so rude and petty all of the time. I just found her behavior to be so silly.”–Lana Wood, her co-star on Peyton Place.
  • “John Wayne was the meanest, nastiest man with the worst attitude that I ever worked with.”–Jill Haworth, his co-star in In Harm’s Way.
  • “Stella Stevens was a pain in the ass. They [the crew] called her Madame Stella–she thought she was some great stellar star. And she wasn’t really much of anything at the time [1962].”–Laurel Goodwin, her co-star in Girls! Girls! Girls!
  • “Raquel Welch was a probelm on this movie and she was a major, major bitch.”–Lori Williams, her co-star in A Swingin’ Summer.
  • “Jill St. John is an unbelievably cruel person who I am not fond of in the least!”–Quinn O’Hara, her co-star in Who’s Minding the Store?
  • “Joey Bishop knew my husband at the time and he still came on to me. I was so angry at that asshole. I just felt that he was an absolute creep.”–Sharyn Hillyer, his co-star in A Guide for the Married Man.
  • Jerry Lewis on Groucho Marx: “He took everything he heard at a cocktail party and turned it into material.”
  • Red Skelton at disliked studio head Harry Cohn’s crowded funeral: “Give the people what they want and you’ll always sell out.”
  • James Cagney on Horst Bucholz: “I’d like to knock him ass-over-tea kettle”
  • After completing A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn told John Barrymore, “I will never act with you again,” whereupon Barrymore replied, “you never have.”
  • When director Sam Wood said to Groucho Marx, “you can’t make an actor out of clay,” Groucho retorted, “nor a director out of Wood.”
  • “Mary Ann Mobley was a phony. She was saccharine, sweet and phony!”–Chris Noel, her co-star in Girl Happy.


Cut!
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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Time Magazine snubbed Copper Pooper as Person of the Year!




















It’s so easy to romanticize mobs that yell for freedom, not knowing to whom they are really working for. Witness TIME Magazine, which selected as Person of the Year… THE PROTESTER. The protester does not have a name but in the mandatory vein of the political correctness movement, looks like a Muslim woman.

In a way, it is absolutely correct this magazine cover. According to recent elections, the Muslim Brotherhood is on the verge of funding new sharia — based theocratic societies in the Middle East. As I said, they do not know to whom they are really working for, nor Time nor THE PROTESTER.

The real gender of THE PROTESTER should be male, and is known by now as Copper Pooper, who occupied Wall Street, and wanted to show how to achieve a better world, by literally dumping on a police patrol, while the whole world was watching.


He must have a Ché Guevara T-shirt and he knows not why…
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Monday, December 5, 2011

A-Holes of 2011 - Second Semester Edition!

Our traditional countdown of yearly a-holes makes its second semester appearance! This time, a fair and balanced cast between newcomers and serial offenders stole the spotlight that Anthony Weiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other politicos eagerly craved. For instance, this semester’s list features:

1. Levi Johnston: a lightweight by definition, this former, estranged fiancé of Bristol Palin and father of Trigg, their sole child. Now and in the same venue as Ronald Reagan Jr., Johnston has made a living by trashing her former in-laws and the mother of her child (Somehow unexpectedly, his plan of a modeling/acting career in Hollywood never took off). The Palins, always the classier ones, have remained silent about Johnston’s attempts to milk them as a cash cow, even when he published this year his memoir “Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs.” Jimmy Carter had to endure his brother Billy Beer, Bill Clinton had to deal with his embarrassing brothers and sisters, so it’s perfectly natural for the Palins the need to deal with a family a-hole.

2. Jimmy Fallon / Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson: speaking of a total lack of class, the less-than-cavalierly attitude regarding GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann is outright cowardly and miserably despicable. Cheap shots and entrapments are expected for republicans in liberal controlled media (witness Newsweek’s cover photo of the same Michelle), but that didn’t stop Thompson from going really low: he and the house band played “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” when Congresswoman Bachmann entered the show. Besides, he bragged in twitter what he was up to prior to the appearance. Jimmy Fallon reaction? “@Questlove is grounded.” NBC reaction? None.

3. Copper Pooper: ever wondered what would be the face of #OccupyWallStreet in the history books? Don’t look any more for peppered protestors; Copper Pooper is here to stay! Lacking even more class than Johnston, Fallon and Questlove combined, Copper Pooper thinks that the right way to show the piggies how he thinks about them is taking a dump in a police car. Pooper: the whole world watched you, a-hole!

4. Miley Cirus: conventional wisdom says that a clean, wholesome image is an asset when you’re a teenage star, but a huge liability when you want to reach adulthood with the same star status. So, you start appearing nude in magazines, smoking pot (to shiver your “innocence” away) and becoming “transcendent” by supporting trendy causes. Miley decided to dedicate a year-old song to the #OWS Movement. Her support fell flat with the protesters, and her PR stunt failed miserably. Being the visible head of a billion-dollars franchise, anointed by none other than the Mouse himself, as having an estimated personal fortune in the ranks of $ 120 million, nobody was there to buy her sincerity and support to the cause. Jay-Z couldn’t, either. The only one that gets away by combining huge wealth, socialist activism and hypocrisy is Michael Moore.

5. Timochenko: Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, a.k.a. Timoleón Jiménez, a.k.a. Timochenko, is the new head honcho of the farc, the oldest guerrilla army in the western hemisphere. The Colombian army recently attempted to rescue long time kidnapped soldiers and policemen, and the operative ended in tragedy. The sole survivor of the kidnapped succeeded in surviving by running to the opposite direction the guerilleros told him: far away from them. The rest of his companions stayed with their captors, only to get summarily executed. A few days later, the tyrant wannabe dares to express his condolences to the victims’ families, miserably and cynically attempting to whitewash any responsibility, dumping it on the Colombian army and the president. Absolutely nobody bought it. BTW, Juan Manuel Santos seemed to interpret the sentiments of his compatriots when he answered: Don’t take us for assholes!

6. Piedad Córdoba: I wasn’t accurate when I said nobody bought Timochenko’s story. Not only the former Senator did believe it, but dared to put the blame entirely on the president, alleging that the release of the war prisoners… er, kidnapped was already on the way when the liberation operative took place. Matter-of-factly, Córdoba casted her doubts on the nature of the deaths, implying they could have being because of the crossfire and not of executions, irresponsibly contradicting both the forensic reports and the account of the sole survivor of the gruesome ordeal.









7. Michael Mann/Phil Jones: two words: Climategate 2.0. The main stars of this entanglement of lies, doctored climate reports and mafia-style repression of dissent, remain defiant and unrepentant, despite the amount of evidence in the form of leaked e-mails.


See ya next semester!
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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Joe the Puppeteer and Wall Street got bailed out by Joe the Plumber?

Joe Therrien, a New York City public – school drama teacher, wasn’t satisfied with neither the educational system nor his life, so he decided to pursue his lifelong dream: he went to the University of Connecticut to earn a MFA… in puppetry.

Apart from metaphors and Metallica seminal albums, I didn’t realize there were actual degrees mastering the intricate discipline of puppetry. It has to be one, at least. Otherwise, how could you create such gems as Thunderbirds, Team America and yes, Sesame Street and the Muppets?

So, Mr. Therrien discovered after dropping everything to pursue his dreams, that the job market wasn’t so hot for his new, highly specialized skills, and feeling painted into a corner, he did what was expected for a person in those circumstances: he took to the streets and joined the #ocuppywallstreet movement. Not surprisingly at all, Therrien’s puppeteering expertise has found a proper outlet to thrive.

Therrien personal demands go as this: he wants the US Government to forgive his student loans and land him a more steadier job than he currently has (Apparently, NYC cannot hire him with the same conditions as before). And why not? If the Obama administration bailed out Wall Street from its repeated fiascoes, why not trying to bail out its individual citizens? Are they less deserving of a bailout?

That’s the downside of current system: as the great Frédéric Bastiat once pointed, “the State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else”. The whole banking and stock system can mess day in and day out its shenanigans, knowing that they are “too big to fail” and someone else (i.e., the taxpayer) will pick the tab. Fairly logically, people like Mr. Therrien, that make bad choices with their careers can expect and demand the caring touch of the government and keep on living at the expense of the taxpayers.

If we want to get out of the deep hole we dug us into, the fancy notion that CEOs must get paid by the company’s stock performance, instead of its growth, must disappear for good. That model is completely unsustainable. Payment of high bonuses, even when companies fail, only because there is some bailout money handed by the government, is downright roguish. That said, it would become clearer to see that New York City’s taxpayers owe Mr. Therrien absolutely nothing, and he’s still stuck with $ 36.000 that anyhow is going to remind him that his plan to get paid an additional yearly $ 10.000 in the city’s school system, is still backfiring the big time.

What’s baffling me is the uncanny ability of the big education racket to pass completely unnoticed in its pretentions to provide “knowledge” that translate into big, shiny, beautiful diplomas but not a serious chance to land their owners a job (unless the government makes an opening). A Master of Fine Arts in Puppetry? How? The big education racket answers these questions if you cross its palm with US$ 36.000, what costs about 90 to 130 puppet camps entry fees.

Almost four years ago, Joe Wurzelbacher, an unemployed plumber who dream big, confronted the presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who patronized him by telling that it was necessary to “spread the wealth”, specially if he decided to make it big pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams and earn more than $ 250 K a year. Now we know why: to pay both the Wall Street fat cat banker’s bonuses and (hopefully for him), Joe the Puppeteer.
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Friday, October 28, 2011

Demotivational Posters for Late-October

Hoping that Bloodthirsty Liberal and Brutally Honest nailed the real thing. Otherwise, they've still nailed it!. - Dr. sipmac.



Thanks to all those #OccupyWallStreet protestors that made our work at sipmacrants! a lot easier.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Mob lynching Herman Cain: because he doesn’t conform to the stereotype


By Marc Ipsula

Is Herman Cain Black?

Well, according to Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte, Jesse Jackson and Kevin Blackistone among others, he’s not.

To Harry Belafonte, an avowed communist by the way, this is just mere routine: every black GOPer is by definition a “House Negro”, a strong derogatory term (early applied to those trusted slaves that could serve inside the slavemaster’s house instead of the plantation), akin to “Uncle Tom”, witnesses Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.

The righteous prejudice-and-discrimination fighters ironically seem to embrace a very particular stereotype of the American black:

- An American black is a victim, will always be a victim. No matter what happens or does, the American black must always act like a victim.
- An American black must be angry and resentful all the time.
- An American black must expect everything spoon-fed by the government.
- Most important, an American black must embrace liberalism as the correct ideology and always vote Democrat.

As you may suspect, presidential hopeful Herman Cain is none of this. His attitude is one of amiable straightforwardness and perennial optimism. He grew up in the Deep South during the segregation era but he overcame this to become a mathematician and later a Master’s degree in computer science. The CEO stunt at Godfather’s Pizza was only one episode of a fruitful career in the private sector. Maybe Sharpton, Belafonte et al. could oversee all this if Herman Cain weren’t a Republican. And a conservative.

As I said, this is anathema to liberals in general. A black cannot be a conservative and a Republican. This contradicts the political narrative that keeps blacks voting Democrat as a bloc, election after election, as Lyndon B. Johnson boasted once (the n---s would vote Democrat for 200 years).

Civil Rights laws have always been seen as a Democrat achievement, and Republicans always failed to claim their due credit. As they fail to pinpoint the fact that the most reactionary, vocal (and material) supporters of segregation in the civil rights advent era, i.e., the likes of Bull Connor and George Wallace, were Democrats. As Al Gore always manages to duck the fact that his father was as unreconstructed as J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton’s political mentor) or Jimmy Carter could be. Do you doubt me? After Barack Obama’s election, Teddy Kennedy leaked the fact that when Clinton was looking for the dying senator’s endorsement to Hillary’s campaign in 2008, he tried to convince Kennedy by affirming that Barack Obama should be serving them coffee.

These are the people that, with no little help from Sharpton, Jackson, Belafonte et al., will attempt to lynch Herman Cain before he has a chance to spread his message, the very opposite of those spoiled kids occupying Wall Street. The character assassination just began, by declaring him “not black”.

FULL DISCLOSURE 1: @sipmacrants decided to follow @THEHermanCain WAY before it was trendy enough. I should credit Dr. sipmac with this witty decision.

FULL DISCLOSURE 2: Marc Ispula’s ancestry is as diverse as Barack Obama’s or even Tiger Wood’s. Yep, arawak, black, Spaniard and Italian ancestors are in the mix.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011

Note to farc: RELEASE THE GIRL. WITHOUT CONDITIONS. RIGHT NOW!

Nhora Valentina Muñoz is a 10-year old girl, yet she might be (outrageously) considered a “political hostage” and the payment of a ransom is even (unreasonably) expected. Why? It is not because she’s the daughter of the mayor of a small town in the northeastern part of Colombia. It is because the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, a.k.a. farc frigging said so.

The almost 60-year old guerrilla does what it wants and there is not accountability to its horrendous crimes. It looks that when the guerilla is nearing to a negotiation of a peace treaty (as they are surreptitiously doing it now), it has to find a way to shock the public opinion and turn it against it. And boy they always find a (gory, revolting) way.

Horrendous crimes like the killing of a very old and beloved priest, the denial of the release of a kidnapped officer whose child was dying of cancer, and other alike criminal gestures preceded the abrupt ending of peace talks. If the guerilla honchos think that shows their strength at the negotiating table, they should have learned by now those actions only show their brutality, their inhumanity and their unwillingness to negotiate but to gain time, influence and terrain to control while sitting at the table.

Juan Manuel Santos, the current Colombian president, knows that the Colombians are not in the mood for a peace talk after the utter failure of the last effort the Pastrana administration made to reach the cherished goal. Colombians elected Alvaro Uribe Vélez to treat the guerilla with an iron fist and after he left office, they still want a defeated guerilla, not a negotiating one. Yet Santos tries to find a way to initiate peace talks with the highest secrecy. And the kidnapping of 10-year old girl shows pretty clearly which are the intentions of the guerilla, and most jaw dropping, they haven’t changed a bit in almost 60 years.


RELEASE THE GIRL. WITHOUT CONDITIONS. RIGHT NOW!
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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

iRREPLACEABLE - Steve Jobs has passed away

Apple was always the Media Darling. IBM and Microsoft have to keep toiling and earning gazillions, only to be seen as philistines. Apple was always the golden standard. Steve Jobs kept fighting and innovating (always innovating!) until Apple became the number one in everybody’s minds. At 56 years, he could claim a huge victory.

As I said, I’m no computer geek, but I have to praise the style and the grace of Apple products. And Pixar movies, especially The Incredibles.


Farewell, Steve.
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Sipmsons: Th-th-th-that’s all folks?

It’s like this: the main cast cashes 8 million per season each, then they get a paltry union mandated residual for reruns and syndication, but nothing else. The novelty and the freshness wore off a long time ago; hence the ratings are not what they used to be (a paltry third of its prime). The main cast boss is even more reviled than Charles Montgomery Burns and a standoff was unavoidable.

Dan Castellaneta (Homer, Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, and others), Julie Kavner (Marge and others), Nancy Cartwright (Bart and others), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum and Apu Nahasapeemapetilon), and Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, and others) each earn about $8 million annually for about 22 weeks’ work. Fox offered a 45% pay cut with absolutely no sweeteners. The counteroffer took the form of a 30% cut with a tiny fraction of all the huge back-end profits the network receives from syndication and franchising. Fox said no way.

In the end, after 500 episodes and absolutely no fear of diluting a winning franchise, Fox says it’s not afraid of axing the longest running series in American TV history, either.

I say it’s about time.

The Simpsons and I parted ways the season when Homer and Marge ate uranium and Bart ate tomacco. I found the movie okay and that was pretty much it. It’s sad the animated sitcom didn’t find its Great Gazoo that would mercifully kill it, so that the memories of seven or eight good seasons could be preserved. But no, we have to endure craptacular irritating annoyance season after season in order to appreciate only two good quality episodes.

I cannot understand why people are raving mad about the series cancellation; even now we’re not sure if this is not a gimmick to embig a little bit the ratings. I cannot understand the twitter threads. I cannot understand the facebook frenzy. 500 episodes is not enough?

Another fact is that The Simpsons were so groundbreaking that they had to take the same path of Citizen Kane and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They became revered artifacts but are not paid attention anymore. Don’t you think so? South Park is experiencing some of the same problems now; hey, even Family Guy is more interesting and funnier now (it will take the same path eventually).

The Simpsons started with the truly remarkable ambition of being more realistic than any flesh-and-blood sitcom of its time (Family Ties and The Cosby Show were on the crosshairs). It succeeded. Then it departed from its initial goal having already changed pop culture forever; while the new flesh-and-blood sitcoms tried to capture its irreverence and joie de vivre, The Simpsons began its slow demise into irrelevance. By having a huge and loyal following, nobody noticed this.

It should have ended with a bang. Instead, the acrimony of a nasty divorce takes the spotlight instead of the series.


And no catchphrase will lighten me up now. Meh, indeed.
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Hank Williams Jr.: You're no Dixie Chick, just shut up and sing!

In 2003, one of the Dixie Chicks regretted publicly and outside the U.S. that her president George W. Bush the 43rd came from the same state as they did. Turmoil followed, because it was a “treacherous” thing to do. Right wing commentators attacked the country music artists because the USA was in a war against terror and they were aiding and abetting terrorists with their very words. Treacherous or not, in simpler but more elegant times, artists didn’t engage in polemic statements outside their homelands.

Granted this, the Chicks were exercising her free speech after all. Eventually, and allegedly after Laura Bush let her husband proceed, the president himself told the people to refrain from abusing the girls. A documentary about the bravery of the Dixie Chicks was filmed afterwards, as a testament to the first ammendment martyrs.

It has to be a really great feat to be a son of a country music legend and make a name for you anyway. Hank Williams Jr. did it anyway. Yesterday he compared president Obama to Hitler in “Fox and Friends”, just because Hank supports Israel and doesn’t find the president’s behavior very supportive at all.

Turmoil followed, because it was a “racist” thing to do, and his appearances were pulled out from “Monday Night Football” on ESPN with a public statement of the network. Although Williams Jr. is said to be supporting Herman Cain in the Republican primaries, he caved in and backtracked his prior statement, obviously feeling the heat.

Apparently nobody has realized the parallel between the Chicks and Williams Jr. Nobody came to support his free speech exercise and absolutely nobody is talking about a clearing documentary of his heroic feat.


The word is not “racism” but “hypocrisy.” The double standard never felt so disgusting.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Walden Schmidt will be the new half man in Two and a Half Men: #Winning!

Charles Francis Harper was a genius. But by courtesy of Charlie Sheen, the carefree happy-go-lucky bachelor met an untimely, grim death and a ghastly, unpleasant, rather disturbing funeral. The hapless Alan was unable to conduct a dignified ceremony. Her mother, pitching in that very moment the sale of Charlie’s iconic Malibu house, wasn’t very helpful, either.

The beloved nutty pharmacist appeared to collect his $ 38.000 (apparently, that’s what Charlie owed in smack), and most former girlfriends of the Womanizer of the Aughts decided to confirm by themselves if the good news were true. Not a nice word for Charlie by them but by the black widow, Rose. She left implied that Charlie cheated on her and that’s why an unfortunate accident kept the coffin closed at the funeral.
Cut to the Malibu Pad. Bertha, reliable as ever, offers the only thing resembling a eulogy in the whole episode. Evelyn explains that Charlie’s finances are such a mess that only by selling the house the estate may break even (the 6% commission is part of the deal, of course). So, Alan begins to face the very possibility of homelessness. Chuck Lorre’s revenge on Charlie Sheen is now complete.

Well, I might add that I was forecasting months ago that the ratings of the first episode of the ninth season were meant to be huge, even greater than any episode featuring Charlie Sheen. I wasn’t disappointed: 28 million viewers watched how Walden Schmidt/Ashton Kutcher entered Alan’s life practically the same way Charlie Harper tried to end his life when Chelsea dumped him. He was trying to drown himself, but the water was too cold. By the way, Charlie’s ashes were spilled all over the living room.

Chuck Lorre must have really enjoyed himself writing this tour-de-force: notable cameos by John Stamos, Joel Murray delivers the remains of Charlie Harper and Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson give us a hint that Dharma and Greg’s marriage might have soured quite a bit after all. But Kutcher’s sales pitch is the real blast here: even richer, handsomer, carefree and immature than his predecessor, and eager to take over Charlie Harper’s realm.

We still have to find out how the dynamics between Walden and the rest of the cast will be set. It might be creepy, but I think I’ll be missing Rose. Hopefully she makes another comeback, but since she was so devoted of Charlie…


This season looks promising enough.

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