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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