Lifestyle of the Rich & Filthy [Vol.1]

Good evening. Thanks for stopping by the company picnic. I thought it would be a more relaxing venue for what I want to share with you.

We here at Goodtime Charlie Incorporated (a subsidiary of G.E. Goldman Viacom Blackwater & Hathaway LLC) thought it might be wise, what with the embarrassingly abundant resources at our fingertips, to find a way to use all that information in an informative and entertaining manner.

So we started a new feature we'd like to premiere for you right now--it's called Lifestyles of the Rich & Filthy. It is to appear on a frustratingly irregular basis and only on the most discerning sites on the web, to best limit exposure to those who don't deserve it.

With that in mind, I reckon we should get started with the profiles--and why not start at the top?


Goodtime Charlie was born in 1887, on a riverboat outside Detroit, to a disgraced single mother who died in childbirth. Left to his own devices at an astonishingly early age, Goodtime had no choice but to rely on his cunning to survive.



By age 8, he had a law degree from Oxford, spoke six languages, published his second acclaimed book of poetry, and was advising Ohio Governor William McKinley daily on how best to move from the state house to the White House.



Yes, let's just go right out and say it--prayers for young Goodtime's sexual maturity occupied most of the day for the average American woman from 1895 - 1901.


In 1901, Mr. Charlie--now a prominent industrialist, philanthropist, and sexually-active acrobat--arranged for the assassination of his old friend, President McKinley, after the President failed to turn up for a duel arranged to settle their battle for the heart of a promising young Vaudevillian minx.



At 21, Charlie, richer than Midas and a proud father of seven, got bored with life among men and abandoned his family to sail around the world forever on a yacht he carved himself out of a single tree.


Aside from his fantastic beard, renowned sexual prowess, nudism, and the fact that he never ages, little else is known about the man himself.


Well, that's a lie--here are seven more tantalizing facts we know about the reclusive national treasure:

1. He is 122 years old and lives in the middle of the ocean, in a house he built with his own hands out of salvaged materials.


2. He works tirelessly in a top-secret research facility/lounge carved into a mountain on an uncharted island and controls the native population as a benevolent dictator.


3. Every time he gets behind the wheel he sets a new land-speed record in his highly-modified 1939 Bugatti 57C.


4. He's had many, many women over the years, including Brigitte Bardot in her prime.


5. He's written every hit song since Joplin--under an ongoing series of pseudonyms--and possesses the velvety voice of an angel.



6. His diet consists of naught save whiskey, wine, spring water, hand-caught lobster, and exotic sandwiches.


7. Although you will most likely never see him, or even figure out what he looks like, rest assured he will maintain effortless control of your hearts and minds merely for his own amusement.



Well, that's all for today, people of the world. Please be sure to tune in for our next installment of Lifestyles of the Rich & Filthy or the next time you encounter me it might look more like this:


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Coolest Fireplace Ever?

Marilyn "Missy” Chandler, wife of L.A. Times publisher Otis Chandler,
in their California home. Photo by Fairchild Archives

Not for everybody, probably, since some people have no taste, but I doubt too many of us would complain about having it in our house since, if nothing else, it would imply that our house was big enough to hold a fireplace you could drive a car into.

[My only complaint is the dead animals scattered around it--I'd rather watch them on Planet Earth, thank you very much!]

If you are not a fan, maybe this Parisian Le Corbusier-style beauty is more your speed?

Jeanne Moreau's living room
Photo by Fairchild Archives

Oh, to be rich...

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Have They Already Cast "The Hobbit?"

Because I just found the perfect Bilbo Baggins--no make-up required!

Formerly hunky Mel Gibson, staring at a Jew across the room

BAM!

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Come on, Illinois...

Can you get your act together for one damn minute?

If it ain't the last TWO governors being indicted, it's Mayor Daley spending the city into near-bankruptcy in a failed bid for the Olympics nobody but his cronies wanted, or finding the body of the Chicago Board of Education floating in the river.

Can't Illinois political figures just lay low and do their dirty work on the sly, like everybody in government everywhere else in the country/world? Why do they seem to think they are impervious to punishment when lately everybody either gets busted by the only honest man in government, Patrick Fitzgerald, or winds up the victim of a "suicide?"


I have no doubt this guy was a corrupt asshole--he stood to make a lot of money from the Olympics on a property development deal, he was friends with Jesse Jackson for 30 years, and he was embroiled in some sort of scheme involving admission to the (very few) elite Chicago Public Schools--and I have no doubt he deserved what he got.

What did he get, you ask? The modern version of cement shoes. A couple thugs drove his car over to the river, put a bullet in his head, threw the gun in the river, and hopped into an idling car down the block--all as their boss watched through a telescope from the penthouse of Trump's new skyscraper. End of story.

If he was going to kill himself, do you really think that is how he would do it? Do you really think this is when he would choose to do it?

Basically, if you ever watched The Wire--and you should, if you haven't and you want to see exactly why and how we are in a never-ending political shit cycle-- this Michael Scott asshole is a bonafide Clay Davis sorta fella. And Clay Davis finally got his. Good job, Lester!

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No Wonder Babies Don't Want to Come Out!

Finger-lickin' good!

I have to tell you a little story. A story about the determination of the human spirit. And barbecue sauce.

It's a story that I swear is true, although I have been unable to unearth even a shred of internet evidence during a few thorough searches.

Here we go:

Years ago, when men were men, I read in a newspaper (remember those?) that shockwaves rippled through the New Orleans area when it turned out the winner of the annual BBQ sauce contest for the last 10-15 years was using amniotic fluid as his secret ingredient.



Say what?!

Yes. That was not a typo--I did not mean to say "pectin" and accidentally typed "amniotic fluid."

How was this discovered? Well, he was arrested--for the second time in a few years--at a local hospital, in disguise, trying to steal several large drums of amniotic fluid from wherever it is they keep those sorts of things in a hospital, as they await collection and disposal (into our rivers and streams) by one of our country's fine waste management companies.

When questioned by police, he owned up to the scheme and the policemen (probably) vomited all over him and threw away their stash of BBQ sauce in the office kitchen.

Just for a minute, imagine the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize that for the last fifteen years, you have been smothering every goddamn piece of meat you have put in your mouth in a veritable cocktail of the amniotic fluid collected from the uteri of dozens, if not hundreds, of pregnant women in your county.


Much like Ace Ventura post-Einhorn-realization, there is no way to scrub that filth off you--it is in your very living tissue at this point.

Now try to imagine how desperate you would have to be, in your quest to win your city's vaunted BBQ sauce contest with a magical secret ingredient, to wind up trying the ole 'amniotic fluid' angle. I'm sure he tried at least a few other flavors first, right? What were they? Shit, mucus, and menstrual blood?

And...then what? Where did he get his first taste of amniotic fluid, to see if it would work? It's not exactly easy to come by--did he force his wife to give birth in their kitchen so he could whip up a test batch?

I mean, even placentophagists (get ready to open a whole new world when you click on this link) don't consume the amniotic fluid when they eat their placenta, so it's not like it's a delicacy elsewhere and we're just being nancy boys about it over here.

Alright, alright--this is getting too gross; but you should check this link out for a laugh before you go. And for those of you BBQ sauce lovers out there, don't worry--I don't think it was Sweet Baby Ray's, although that would have been SO perfect.

"Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce--Now with 50% More Amniotic Fluid!"


...and THAT'S why you should always read the list of ingredients.


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Too Awesome Not to Share

An old friend of mine from college has the coolest girlfriend ever--she made this cake for him for his birthday!

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Just When You Thought You Were Tired of '2012' Ads...

2013?: Roland Emmerich, the director/producer behind next week’s apocalyptic 2012, is planning to extend his disaster franchise into television. Despite popular belief that there is no way to follow up on a White House-crushing tidal wave, Emmerich told Entertainment Weekly that there is still “plenty to do in a TV show.” Along with Mark Gordon of Grey’s Anatomy, Emmerich wants the show to focus on the resettling of earth, picking up with “a group of people who survived but not on the boats … maybe they were on a piece of land that was spared or one that became an island in the process of the crust moving.” Emmerich is reportedly in talks with ABC. [EW]



Oh. My. God, Becky...is Roland Emmerich remaking Lost before it's even finished? Brilliant! Almost as brilliant as Grey's Anatomy...OHHH!!!

[Sorry, Roland/Mark, but y'all got served. --Ed.]

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Maybe Michael Jackson DID Inspire the World...

...and we have him to blame for all our problems. Check these lyrics from Man In the Mirror (to be sung to the tune of Man in the Mirror, written and composed by Siedah Garrett, not MJ himself):

As I, Turn Up The Collar On My
Favorite Winter Coat
This Wind Is Blowin' My Mind
I See The Kids In The Street,
With Not Enough To Eat
Who Am I, To Be Blind?
Pretending Not To See
Their Needs
A Summer's Disregard,
A Broken Bottle Top
And A One Man's Soul
They Follow Each Other On
The Wind Ya' Know
'Cause They Got Nowhere
To Go
That's Why I Want You To
Know

I'm Starting With The Man In
The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change
His Ways
And No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
(If You Wanna Make The
World A Better Place)
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change
(Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change)
(Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Na Na,
Na Nah)

I've Been A Victim Of A Selfish
Kind Of Love
It's Time That I Realize
That There Are Some With No
Home, Not A Nickel To Loan
Could It Be Really Me,
Pretending That They're Not
Alone?

He saw the world for what it was--a bad place. He tried to change it, tried to inspire other people to change it ("We Are the World," for example), and...they listened to him. They believed in him. They followed him. The Kool-Aid was guzzled. It worked.

Well, congratulations to Michael then, for successfully leading us unto this shitty promised land racked by unemployment, bankruptcy, landfill mountains of bric-a-brac, and the Gosselins.

The case:


Defendant: Michael Jackson
- quick to blame somebody else for all his problems
- over-medicated on legal drugs pimped by the pharmaceutical industry
- had a penchant for justifying whatever he did, no matter how ill-advised
- sexually dysfunctional
- firmly religious, despite his thoughts and deeds
- spent more money than he made, mostly buying useless shit to decorate his house/body
- lost his house to a bank
- died in order to provide for his family



Plaintiff: The People of the World
- quick to blame somebody else for all their problems
- over-medicated on legal drugs pimped by the pharmaceutical industry
- have a penchant for justifying whatever they do, no matter how ill-advised
- sexually dysfunctional
- firmly religious, despite their thoughts and deeds
- spend more money than they make, mostly buying useless shit to decorate their houses/bodies
- lost their houses to several banks
- died in order to provide for their families, but forgot they had AIG insurance that was void upon death, as explicitly stated, in Aramaic, on the inside of an anonymous envelope they were sent once
- HUGE Michael Jackson fans

The Charge:
That Michael Jackson did, willfully and with malice of forethought, mislead The People of the World and plunge them into utter financial ruin and a life chock-full of sexual deviance and drug abuse.

The Verdict:
Well, I suppose that, considering it is possible Michael was instead a martyr who not only frittered away $500 million on total shit in order to have more in common with the average American but also became an overly-vain, sexually-perverse freakshow for the same reason, the least I can do is give his corpse the benefit of abstaining from this useless verdict. Case dismissed.

Uh-oh...wait a minute...I hope no crackpot religion starts out of that off-hand courtroom comment, like it did around 30 AD when my ancestor said that thing about that Jesus lad...or is it already too late?

My opinion, as strange as it seems, is that if it becomes clear that he did not abuse those children, he was very close to being a saint. And even if he was not, this is the first time in my life when I feel the presence of God's hand in what had happened. I am not religious person at all. But the whole story is so amazing, it contains some message, which I do not quite understand yet. I keep thinking about it since he's gone. It is also strange that the person like him could have such a big impact. You never know who will be chosen to convey some message from above. There are people who are not as rich as he was, not that confused, not keeping pornographic journals at home, doing much more for the humanity than he did. But he is the only one who looked like he had that divine spark. Isn't it strange?

(posted by Stranger on this fascinating blog entry. Seriously, just read through those comments at the end and a whole lot of questions about our why our world is in the shitter will slowly come into focus as you hear from some of its inhabitants...)

Shit. It's too late--the idiots have already had time to mull it over and make irrational decisions (also known as faith). I wonder if this new religion will be some sort of cocktail of Jackson's own diverse religious beliefs--maybe its cult members will have to wear a veil, knock on each other's doors to preach the word, and have weekly sleepovers with little boys. Or will they be more literal and pull their doctrine from his song lyrics...hmm...

Or perhaps this is all a bunch of lubbock and, like Mr. Hyde or The Emperor, Michael Jackson was simply an evil man who grew more physically detestable as his dastardly deeds grew more numerous and revolting, as he embraced the Dark Side, and neither he nor his adoring fans want to believe it.

Anything's possible I guess, I mean, we're in America, right? Go us!

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"Hello, Police?"

"Yes, it's an emergency. I was online tonight and somebody mentioned that Chad Michael Murray is a douche. I had no idea who he was, so I looked him up and this is what I found:"

[Reads this link in its entirety]

"Yeah, I know, this girl--nay, 25 year-old woman--has got a Chad Michael Murray fetish that I fear just won't quit until she literally owns his bloody, douchey heart and secrets it away in her hope chest. I think he's in grave danger."

[listens]

"Yeah, I'll hold."

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Christmas Present Ideas!

Christmas is right around the corner (only 49 days away!!!) and I'm sure some of you haven't completed your shopping yet--slackers!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!! ROTFL!!!!!!!! OMG...

I figured since I am the man everybody comes to for gift-giving tips, I would offer a couple suggestions for that precious little person in your life who thought they had everything:

You have to put your soap and scrub brush somewhere, right? Why not inside a gas mask protruding from your shower tiles? You'll be a big hit with guests--everybody loves getting scared to death with soap in their eyes!

Not your Daddy's knife block, that's for sure! So edgy!
[Hint: For an extra fee, you can make a mold of your own head! So hip!]

A T-shirt that will turn heads at the company picnic for sure--and may even get you a raise!

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Who Knew One Pistol Could Bring Our Mighty Army to Its Knees

Two old men had the following conversation in my head today and I felt like I should share:

"You've been in the bathroom awhile, man. Some shit went down."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. The other day a man walked into a crowded room with two handguns and opened fire. He somehow managed to kill 13 people and wound another 30 before being shot four times by a responding police officer who he also shot four times."

"Damn, what a gruesome story. Where did it happen? A school? A post office? The Republican National Headquarters?"

"Haha, yeah right--like anybody could get within 100 yards of that place with a gun... It happened at a military base in Texas crammed full of 50,000 soldiers, many of them trained for grueling warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Ni**a what?! That guy must have been some kinda bloodthirsty elite commando warrior gone rogue or something...wow...does Arnold have an alibi?"

"Whoa, whoa--settle down, it wasn't anything of the sort. The guy was a 39 year-old rotund military psychologist afraid of going to war."

"Shut the fuck up!"

"It's okay, baby--the police will be here any minute to save us."

Maybe one of the reasons we are having so much trouble in our endless war overseas is because a building full of trained soldiers can't disarm one man with a couple of pistols--they have to wait for a 5'4" female COP to drive over to the scene and throw herself in front of some bullets.

The soldiers even let this asshole RE-LOAD not once, not twice, but three times, for fuck sake, since he shot over 100 rounds of ammunition and the highest capacity clip for the FN 5.7 pistol he used (he never fired the .357 Magnum) is 30 rounds.

Note: There was an attempt in 2005 to make this pistol illegal, but it somehow failed...thanks, Bush.

Seriously, as tragic as it is that so many innocent people died, how the fuck is a lone psychiatrist able to get off that many rounds of ammunition in a room full of fucking battle-ready SOLDIERS?! Are they all named Buster Bluth or what?


I feel like if this happened in a high school locker room somewhere, some bone-headed-heart-of-gold football player would have clocked this guy and saved his classmates, even if he knew he might get shot to death in the process.

Not one soldier could fall on this grenade? Not one soldier had a gun to take him out? An entire platoon couldn't have bum-rushed him and taken him out with a few casualties?

How are all these 'soldiers' feeling now, knowing they are all going off to war surrounded by a bunch of selfish chickenshits? It must be rough knowing the guy next to you would rather duck behind a desk than attack a hostile enemy with his gun trained on his comrades.

Wait--are these soldiers even going to be allowed to go to war now? Or are they suffering from Pre-Traumatic-Stress Disorder and summarily relieved of active duty?

Doubtful--the army needs all the cannon fodder they can get these days, which is clearly the problem here...

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Priceless

Sifted from the Interweb, via Facebook:

Motivation: "You guys just found out your eHarmony dream-men
have been boning other people"

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The Cat from Hell

Hungover, tired as hell, damp from a shower, and dreading work, I opened the door to leave my apartment and heard a strange noise in the hallway.

"What is that strange noise?" I said to myself.

I perked my ears and listened closely, but didn't hear anything. I closed the door almost all the way, keeping my hand on the knob, and looked across the room at my sleepy-eyed girlfriend sitting up in bed, curious, confused.

"What's going on?"
"I heard a strange noise in the hallway. What do you think it is?"

I opened the door to get another listen and some sort of creature immediately shot through the crack like a bullet.

I jumped out of my shoes, onto the ceiling, and back into them. What was it? A diseased rat? Possum? Raccoon? Skunk? Feral dog?

As the faceless monster frantically darted around the apartment and my heartbeat worked its way back toward normal, I saw it was only a cat. I hate cats; they smell, I'm allergic, they're boring, arrogant, and rude. Would it bite me? Would it scratch me?


As I debated whether or not a squirrel or raccoon would have made a better foe, an unkempt middle-aged man stepped into the doorway and offered up some morning breath.

"I'm sorry. He's been a little crazy lately and he thinks he still lives here."

I recognized the man, Dennis, as the weird dude that lived in my apartment for years and years before moving into an identical apartment a mere two flights up. Even though we are probably more similar than I would like to admit--or maybe because of that fact--I was glad he decided not to cross the threshold and venture into my intimate space (it's an adorably/annoyingly small apartment).

When I toured my apartment...five years ago(?), trying to decided if the place was right for me, Dennis was in the throes of his big lazy move upstairs and pretty much all that remained were dozens upon dozens of milk crates stuffed with old records, stacked floor to ceiling along an entire wall. I'm a record collector myself, so you'd think I would think somebody who had tons of records would be cool, but these babies might as well have been yellowed newspapers--something about that gargantuan wall of musty records and its prominent location in the apartment screamed mentally-deranged loner pack-rat.


Based on that small bit of data, before I even met him, in my mind Dennis was a middle-aged hermitic freelance saxophone instructor or jazz music critic who decided years ago, maybe after his only girlfriend left him for their accountant, to hole up in an old brick building in Koreatown--probably since before the neighborhood was swallowed by the insatiable Korean monster and was still mostly Hispanic--smoking cigarettes with the shades drawn, never venturing outside save his midnight walks to the pleasantly uncrowded 24-hour grocery store and the ritualistic weekly moving of the ancient Volvo station wagon for street cleaning.

Not long after I moved into my apartment, I got a piece of Dennis' mail--which is the only reason I know his first name--and decided to give it to him by hand, since I knew where he lived and I was curious to see what he was like. Our neighborly interaction/intrusion of personal space lasted all of two seconds and did nothing but confirm my earlier impression about this guy's weirdness, reclusive nature, and potential for jazz saxophone instruction.

Dennis had long dirty-blond hair, wore tinted prescription glasses, didn't open the door more than 4 inches and never said a word when I politely handed him his mail and tried to make a bit of small talk (I hate small talk, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do).

To see this man standing inches from my face, at eight o'clock in the morning, years after our first/last meeting, seconds after being startled nearly to death by a crazed cat I never knew he had, and still stung by a hellacious hangover, was a bit much. I froze.

Luckily, my girlfriend leapt out of bed and corralled the cat before conversation between Dennis and I became necessary. Once the prickly pet was handed over and Dennis apologized for the intrusion, I nodded, closed the door, and took a breath.

"That cat scared the shit out of me!" I had to say out loud.

My girlfriend and I looked at each other as if we had both seen a ghost. Wishing to put the entire incident behind me, I opened the door for a third time, checked to make sure the coast was clear, and headed off to work, a bit closer to death than I was the last time I opened that portal to reality.

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It Worked!

In light of my dressing-down of anybody who might compare filmmaking chump Jared Hess to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fox Searchlight has decided to shelve Gentlemen Broncos.

Or maybe it was a result of the disappointing opening weekend in NY/LA (come on, Searchlight--know your audience and premiere it in the Utah/Idaho/Oklahoma/Duh-ha-ha markets if you want a true read on how it rates).

Or maybe it was the fact that the movie just plain sucks and they are quietly admitting they have no idea what they are doing. Let us not forget the same 'studio' recently released Whip It like a fart in the wind and still seem to think they should sit at my dinner table.

Thoughts?

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Recognize:

" { " is officially referred to as a "left curl brace," for those of y'all ignorant fools out there what didn't fuckin' already know that useful shit.

Now, try to work it into a conversation this week and see what happens. Get back to me.

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Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Gotta love Michelle Obama for her dedication to scaring children this Halloween. In other news, are those Klansmen in the background? Huh?

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You Wanna Know Why Network Television Sucks?

A lack of new blood on the creative end of things.

Case in point:

68 year-old James Burrows, who directed 75 episodes of Taxi (1978-82), also directed 238 episodes of Cheers, 32 episodes of Frasier, 20 episodes of Caroline in the City, 15 episodes of Friends, 187 episodes of Will & Grace, 17 episodes of Back to You, 26 episodes of Gary Unmarried, and an assortment of episodes of just about every TV show you have or have not heard of during the last 30 years.

Is there really such a dearth of talented directors out there that one man is allowed such a stranglehold on the boob tube for--literally--generations of viewers?

There isn't.

Is this purposefully-limited talent pool a big part of the reason why network TV shows are the most predictable, banal, stereotypical, humorless bullshit available to a consumer of media?

It is.

Mr. Burrows, a word of advice--do the world a favor and retire already. If you get bored and need something to do other than count your money, I think Wal-Mart is still on the lookout for greeters...

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Oh, no you didn't...

In his admonishing response to Manola Darghis' scathing review of the upcoming release Gentlemen Broncos, Richard Brody (of New Yorker magazine) went too far in his appraisal of director Jared Hess, no matter how good or bad that particular movie may be.

In light of the gratuitous bodily function jokes apparently present in Broncos, Brody claims the director that Jared Hess is most similar to--in all of film history--is none other than philosophical Italian provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Huh? Yeah. Peep this:

But then, she also thinks that Benjamin (Michael Angarano), the teen-ager at the film’s center—a science-fiction fantasist whose work is pilfered by a blocked, aging novelist and by a pair of local filmmakers—is a “rotten writer.” In fact, he’s the author of a new gospel, and Hess’s wondrously ingenuous filming of Benjamin’s visions are both as sublime and as crudely carnal as scripture itself. The grotesque bodily functions, human, animal, and alien, that the movie depicts unflinchingly—as well as the “unpleasant, unattractive characters” Dargis says the film is filled with—are the point. It’s easy to present the beautiful people and the scrubbed world as divine creations; Hess’s vision sacralizes what other filmmakers don’t. The director he’s closest to in this regard is Pier Paolo Pasolini (and Pasolini, too, had an extraordinary sense of the naïve, the repellent, and the ridiculous).

Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with Pasolini's work, but it is nothing like Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre, or Gentlemen Broncos. Nothing. Unless you find semi-amusing fart jokes and frightening, ritualistic depravity to prove a philosophical point one and the same.

Comparing Jared Hess to Pier Paolo Pasolini simply because they both made movies about outcasts living on the fringes of society is like comparing Scorsese to Taxi director James Burrows because they both made projects involving taxi drivers. There is nothing funny about Pasolini's depravity; there is nothing insightful about Hess' fart jokes.


Here is a quick recap of Jared Hess' life and works:

He is a 30 year-old heterosexual Mormon who studied film at Brigham Young University, is married to his college sweetheart, Jerusha Hess, has one child, lives in Salt Lake City, and has co-written and directed three feature-length oddball-comedies with his wife, one of which (Napolean Dynamite) became a cult hit.


Now, here is a quick recap of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life:

He studied literature and philosophy in college, was drafted into WWII, escaped from a Nazi prison to join his mother as a teacher of children in remote villages, was persecuted by the state due to his homosexuality and candor, became an accomplished poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, photographer, filmmaker, linguist, and political activist, troublesomely preached that a shift to communism was the only way to save Italy, had most of his films censored at one time or another due to their stark exploration of the depressing lives people led in the suburbs of Rome and their focus on sexual themes, and was brutally murdered by being repeatedly run over by his own car on a beach near Rome, not long before the premiere of what Time Out recently dubbed "The Most Controversial Film of All Time," Salo, his magnificent and horrifying adaptation of the the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, in which he calls out fascism for being not unlike sadomasochism.

Okay, so...a sheltered and ignorant Mormon (a Mormon, for Christ's sake!) out for cheap laughs by exploring the fictional lives of losers living on the fringes of society in Middle America is supposed to be comparable to a notoriously revolutionary, oft-censored, communist homosexual Italian poet/filmmaker who unflinchingly documented the darker side of humanity in his starkly realistic explorations of the depths of the mind and its potential for depravity? An artist whom intellectuals still revere 34 years after his death?

Ich don't think so, Richard Brody...

The confused Richard Brody

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Gotta Love the Governator?

As much as I wish Arnold Schwarzenegger was not our governor, I have to admire his (Chief of Staff's) balls in issuing the following veto message to the California Assembly today:


Check out the first letters of lines 3 through 7.

OH!

This hilarity notwithstanding, my problem with the Governator remains: I don't like his schtick, but, at the same time, I can't stop occasionally falling for his schtick, as I might an old flame--which doubly irritates me because it highlights an obvious weakness of mine.

But, I mean, come on--can you blame me? How can you not smile at this Duke of Dweebs?


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