The Comb Over (Part 2)

Yes blessed friends I’m back.  And better than ever.  It is my sad duty to have to exercise my First Amendment Rights as an American in order to inform you that The Comb Over is Adolf Hitler with orange hair.  45th President of the United States.  If there ever was a sign of the decline of western civilization Donald Trump is it.  I told you the parallels were eerie: a leader treated by the political and media establishment as a buffoon, a dimwit outsider and an “it can’t happen here,” lazy intellectual attitude on the part of an ignorant electorate due to a shabby school system kidnapped by Tea Party Christian Right Wing White Republicans in favor of charter, voucher, home school, and just plain minimal investment in the education of our future (our children).  Then there is the Big Lie.  Then there is the manipulation of liberal democracy by Billionaires and the Soviet Union, er, I mean Russia.  I will prove to you in these bitter pages that to vote for a Republican now is to vote for the Nazi Party, Der Fuhrer.  Wait and see.  It will all become crystal clear.

Where to start?  Maybe at the end.  The separation and caging of refugee children was the last straw.  Where was the last place we saw families divided and sent off to “detention” camps when they came to a new country?  Do I have to spell it out for you?  You watch the History Channel, right?  My father fought to liberate people from concentration camps.  Almost died in The Battle of the Bulge.  Am I gonna sit here and watch the same thing happen to the Red, White, and Blue?  I’m disgusted, appalled.  Crying children.  My country?  Cages.  I’m ashamed to call myself American.

ICE.  Jack-booted storm troopers.  Sometimes you just walk away from your job because it is too repulsive, inhumane.  You say “I won’t be a part of this.”  Patriots just doing their jobs?  So were the SS men in Dachau.  Study the banality of evil.  They say they’ll use DNA to match the right children with their families.  What’s that about?  Like parents won’t recognize their own children?  Why do we need to match DNA?  If this doesn’t sound creepy to you, you aren’t paying attention.

How many times have you heard someone ask “if you were back in Nazi Germany would you have participated in the Holocaust?”  The answer is inevitably, “No I would have resisted.”  Liars, every one of you.

The time for conversation is over.  There is no such thing as “good people on both sides” when the Confederate flag is displayed.  How would you feel if they put up a statue honoring Erwin Rommel and you were Jewish?  Stone Mountain, Georgia.  How does an African American feel about that monument?

On today’s menu is Scott Pruitt Gauleiter of the Environmental Protection Agency.  He resigns after disemboweling 50 years of environmental protection for the planet.  Talk about putting the fox in the hen house.  A lifestyle considered lavish even by Imperial Roman standards on my/your dime while you scrabble to get health insurance, he resigns not in shame, but in having done a “good” job.  I’m sure there is a CEO/Lobbyist job he doesn’t need waiting for him in the Energy Sector somewhere.  Probably the Koch brothers.  Who knows.  Presidential Pardon.

Enough for today.  I’ll get back to you tomorrow.  I have so much more to say….

Foreign Invasion

Now I watch a lot of broadcast TV and you should too.  It’s the best way to gather information about the world other than the dark web but you aren’t ready for that. Patience.

When I’m not watching the #1 rated drama on US network television, NCIS, or one of its clones, on Sunday nights I sometimes creep over to the so-called “Public” television outlets on my high speed digital network.  Now today, in this 21st Century Comb-Over Era, perception and expectation are everything, and I expect to only hear British accents over on what we will now call for brevity’s sake, the PBS television network.

On a Sunday evening I expect to relax to some BBC 19th century parlor drama on my local public television station.  

Some programs on Public Television are actually from other UK production outlets like the commercial ITV.  This is fine by me as long as they get the accent right.  I’m as free market as the next yob when it comes to high brow television. But what’s got me really upset now is that they are starting to screen inferior accented series from Australia and New Zealand on public television.  As if we couldn’t tell the difference between a British accent and an Aussie accent.  Some people may be fooled, but not me. When I see my Pride and Prejudice I don’t want anybody popping off to Outback Steakhouse during the sponsor breaks at pledge time.

Unlike the US, Australia and New Zealand are just down in the mouth British colonies that couldn’t make it on their own.  Australia is just a shabby California. There’s nothing high brow or hoity-toity about these convict transportation camps that would interest the more advanced American viewers of TV like myself.  It’s shameful to screen ersatz Brideshead Revisiteds next to genuine smart English television content.  You can always tell when someone is trying to make it on the cheap. Substitute margarine for butter.  Made in Polynesia for made in the UK.  A downturn in pledge dollars doesn’t have to mean a sacrifice in quality.  How much could reruns of Good Neighbors or As Time Goes By cost?  As in all British TV, economical production values are overcome by high brow accents and big words where smaller words would normally suffice on large budget US TV programs like NCIS.  That’s what the literate public TV viewer expects.  Not G’day or throw another kangaroo on the barbie.  Public TV has lost its rudder.

Alistair Cooke – More American than Apple Pie

Now we accept Irish, Scots, and Welsh or even Indian accents in our public television content because these are necessary for verisimilitude especially when properly accented English people are really in charge.  This is only logical.  Every country has its aboriginal peoples.  Even America has Southern accents, but nobody is going to believe a documentary series about our founding fathers where people talk like they are from Atlanta or Sydney, people expect a British accent, and a low budget British production in some dreary castle would be even better.  After all who is better suited to present past glories than the British?  Nobody in America wants to see stories about small villages in the 1940s, or the 19th century in Australia or New Zealand and if public TV thinks they can foist this on American pledge givers as British programming just because cable network BBC America now gets the cream of British programming, along with the Star Trek franchise, well they need to wake up and smell the tea brewing.  Pasty complexions, bad teeth and posh accents are what we expect on Sunday night.

Now with Brexit on the horizon the fear is that even more Oceania programming will make it onto the lucrative US public TV market.  I say don’t stand for it.  God Save the Queen! Vote with your pledge dollars. Sure you can expect lower production values in British television as a result but these can always be overcome with longer words and posher accents.  More specials with dead 1950s and ’60s doo wop and pop groups are no substitute for high brow British mini series.

One yearns for the days when Alistair Cooke introduced Masterpiece with the proper Theater sup-pended to it.  Alan Cummings, although with a Scots accent, is almost more an American staple now than Cooke.  And now Emma Peel! Now if only the current content were as good.

I say put the Theater back in Masterpiece and take the Masterpiece out of Mystery.  Don’t stand for inferior colonial programming.  The next thing you know they’ll be putting programming from the ultimate failed colony, Canada, on public TV.  The most patriotic thing you can do today is write to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or your local PBS station to keep our American public television exclusively British. Hail Britannia!

 

 

 

Sigue Sigue Sputnik

21st Century Boy on TOTP 1986

Original post:
Gumbywan.booklikes.com/post/1195401/post

Marlboro Man

I just read that the Marlboro man died of a “smoking related disease.”  I guess sometimes there is justice in the universe.

Mommie Dearest: H.P. Lovecraft’s Descent into Maternal Madness By John A. DeLaughter

Mommie Dearest: H.P. Lovecraft’s Descent into Maternal Madness By John A. DeLaughter.

Dogs Playing Cards

Okay here’s a new one in the self-improvement vein.  Most of you have little interest in improving your intellect so just piss off now, you’re wasting your time and my breath here. This is of no import to your life so just move on. For those of you still here, today’s critical essay is about the visual arts.  It’s mainly about flat things you stick on the wall but we may touch on three dimensional objects known as sculptures too.  What I’m going to do is try to bring your knowledge of art up to at least a Kindergarten level.  It’s a tough pull but I’m game if you are..

Crap “Art”

Most colorful objects that you stick on the wall, so-called paintings, are crap.  Why?  Because they can’t move around and they are not about anything relevant.  Since the advent of film and television the static graphic objects:  paintings, prints, tapestries, sculpture, etc. are irrelevant and boring.  Technology has passed traditional art by.  It’s perpetually standing at the bus stop of history during a transit strike.  It’s Luddite thinking.

More Crap

However before TV and movies paintings and such were relevant forms of entertainment.  There was nothing to do except reading parlor novels and playing the piano, so if you weren’t musically gifted, as you surely aren’t, sitting around literally watching the paint dry was pretty exciting.  But of course the graphic arts went through its ups and downs too.  There was okay art like the Impressionists and bad art like Cubism and Jackson Pollock.

Dogs Playing Cards

Well the pinnacle of oil painting and most static art in general was Dogs Playing Cards.  Yep, you knew it deep down inside if you have ever seen this collection of 19 paintings by the unjustly overlooked C.M. Coolidge.  If you look at the Wikipedia entry for this there is a lot of misinformation probably added by some self styled artiste.  Don’t believe it.  I’m here to set the record straight.  Any simp can edit Wikipedia and there is a lot of nonsense in there like the earth is 4 billion year old and earthquakes are from the continents moving around (Did you ever see a continent move?).  As if.  Just because these were commissioned for cigar adverts doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be the best paintings that ever were.  It is well known that lesser achievements like the Moana Lisa were painted to sell olive oil and Andy Warhol was commissioned to sell canned soup.  So there!

Vintage Olive Oil Adverts

But C.M. was no sellout.  I know for a fact that he was really commissioned to paint people playing poker but true to his artistic ideals he refused to change his subject matter and you cannot say he wasn’t a true revolutionary, nobody painted dogs doing stuff other than walking around or chasing foxes before this.  He risked being ridiculed and never making a dime.  My personal favorite has always been Sitting Up With a Sick Friend but all of them are classic.  Coolidge even created the school of anthropomorphic art and this has continued until even today, but the zenith was still Dogs Playing Cards, a success never to be equaled.

Sitting Up With A Sick Friend

To digress for a moment, one thing that Dogs Playing Cards has also shown is that women don’t get true art.  Women just don’t dig Dogs Playing Cards, or the Three Stooges for that matter.  Dogs Playing Cards prints can mostly be found in places like a wood paneled finished basement where the pool table or second TV with the video games usually are; a man’s realm.  Or so called “Men’s Clubs” around the bar area.  Men appreciate good art and drunks can spend literally hours looking at the exquisite details in these paintings when they aren’t watching sports or action movies..

Well even Dogs Playing Cards is ignored these days, swamped by the technological artistic wonders of television, movies, and “short films” on the internet static art has been left behind.  Now the only reason to buy a a painting or print is to cover a hole or stain on the wall, or a safe.  You might as well put another TV up anywhere where there used to be a painting.

So go out right now and get some Dogs Playing Cards prints to cover up that place where you put your fist through the wall in a drunken rage.  Also avoid those self styled art museums like the plague unless you want to be frisked for a few bucks to look at your shoes for two hours.  Go to a movie instead.  Better yet find a rerun of NCIS on TV and If you got this far, don’t say I never did anything for you.

SARGASSO #1 NEARLY SOLD OUT!

SARGASSO #1 NEARLY SOLD OUT!.

Giant Monsters versus Giant Robots

Listen up all you cineastes.  I’m taking you to film school today and you know what that means, no talking in the class or the wooden yardstick comes out.

I went to see the film Pacific Rim the other day and I began thinking about how crappy most movies are.  Now you probably think I’m going to piss all over PR, but your camel has gone up the wrong dune effendi, I loved PR.  I think it is one of the best films made in the last 10 years.  Why?  Simple:  zero character development and minimal romance, giant 3D monsters, and giant 3D robots, a cinematic formula so simple and winning that you wonder why nobody thought of it a long time ago.

Oh but wait, somebody did think of it a long time ago:  the Japanese.  These clever Asians had pretty much a corner on this type of top notch entertainment for decades and for some reason nobody else caught on.  Even after the so-called live action giant monster fests went down the drain the tradition carried on via Japanese anime.

Meanwhile Hollywood, fat and jaded by chick flicks, Disney fare, musicals, and “important” art films passed on what could have saved a lot of California studios.  Hollywood had the technology to pull it off but left it to the Japanese with their inferior cinematic resources to carry on the tradition.  Ultimately the live action Japanese fare failed because of scant resources for better special effects.  The Japanese, largely devastated by nuclear attacks and real monster invasions, had to reallocate these vital cinematic resources just to survive.  Their ability to carry out believable special effects was severely compromised to the point where putting a lush in a rubber suit had to suffice for action.  Great Asian cinema would just have to wait.

Inferior Hollywood Fare

Hollywood could have saved the critical giant monster film industry starting in the late sixties but passed for the likes of The Great Gatsby, Chinatown, The Sting, China Syndrome, Ingmar Bergman and similar lo-tech dreck.  To say the Hollywood studios were too cheap to do it right is almost an understatement, and they paid dearly for it, many studios forced to ultimately close down, get gobbled up, or retreat to the porn industry.

Things remained pretty grim until the turn of the century.  After 2000 the movies started to get better, believable giant robots and monsters featured a lot more in films with the Transformers franchise and Cloverfield being critical turning points.  Giant monsters and giant robots were back on the menu!

SciFi’s Ice Spiders

Even television, especially cable, once they wised up and saw the potential, jumped on the bandwagon, with the SyFy (formerly SciFi) network being one of the pioneers with such tasty and high quality films as Ice Spiders and Mastodon.  I think the opening up of the mega channel cable industry actually had a lot to do with the resurgence of the genre with endless reruns of Andy Griffith and Gilligan’s Island driving people to demand smarter fare.

Finally, digital technology, IMAX and 3D made the giant monster and giant robot essential cinema viewing.  Now the only excuse you have for not being entertained and informed about the state of giant monsters and robots is being able to come up with the 15 bucks for a ticket (you can always sneak the concessions in in a picnic hamper).

Next time out I’m going to prove to you why, other than the TV program NCIS, monster and horror TV, and especially movies, are the most important and fulfilling entertainment you can watch.  I promise, and you already know you can depend on me.

Superior Entertainment

Pointless

Well here’s todays installment of me foaming at the mouth. As you can plainly see it’s called Pointless, and if you haven’t already figured out that it’s going to be a waste of your time then you’re on the wrong side of the mean.

Pointless

Anyway, here we go. Where to start? A bunch of years ago (you already know I’m not looking it up!) a scientist/anthropologist sort of Viking guy name Thor Heyerdahl built this raft using prehistoric methods and materials. He launched it into the Pacific Ocean. Eventually he landed using only primitive means and supplies on a Polynesian island. So, you’re gonna say this was pointless, oh no effendi, this had a very good reason. Let’s just make one thing clear, this scientist was the first person in the historic era to do anything like this and he wrote about it. This is very important so quit nodding off. Why? He was trying to see if prehistoric man could have populated all of Polynesia; if they had all the means and knowhow to achieve this. This was important because a lot of scientists were skeptical and there were conflicting theories about how Polynesia could have been populated. Heyerdahl proved that some guys in prehistoric times would have all they needed to push off from the continents to eventually find and populate all the islands. It didn’t prove that this is what happened but it proved all the guys wrong that said it couldn’t have happened this way. It also showed just how early or late Polynesia could have been settled. This is how science proceeds you waterheads.

Hero – Scientist

Now somewhere along the line another guy got the idea to do the same thing as Heyerdahl, exactly the same way. This is the most important thing I’m going to tell you so write it down, this guy’s escapade was pointless. Why? Heyerdahl had already done it. There was nothing further to be proved by a second trip. Even if this second guy died trying, it proved nothing since Heyerdahl had already proved it could be done. Nobody really cared that you could die doing it. Everyone already knew this. There were probably a lot of prehistoric guys who sailed off and died trying. So why did this second modern guy do this silly thing. Was he really stupid? Was he crazy? Probably not, after all even doing a lousy job would require a lot of planning and intelligence. Hmmmm. You wanna know why he did it? Because he’s an egotistical and selfish bastard, a piece of human scum, that’s why.

Hold on a minute you say, here’s a brave and intelligent fellow. He’s taking on this dangerous quest all alone with no modern contrivances. No he’s a selfish ego-driven idiot and a bane on humankind; someone never to be held up as a role model. I’m going to prove this to you so pay attention. Why? Because he does this out of his own selfish reasons, to prove some pointless fact about his courage and brilliance, plus he probably counts on us to risk our lives to bail him out if things go awry. He’s nothing but a spendthrift thrill seeker hoping you’ll be a big enough sucker to support him/her and say “well done” and have a parade when he/she maybe comes back. He’s a dumb ass swindler. A flim-flam man.

Heroes – Explorers

Here’s another thing I heard that’s a little different but equally pointless. In the early part of the 20th century a lot of folks were trying to be the first to the South Pole in Antarctica. This has at least some little merit from a scientific standpoint but it was basically another attempt to explore a place NOBODY had gone to before. There were two groups that went to the Pole, a British team and a Norwegian guy. Well the Norwegian guy got there first because he had a better plan and somewhat better luck. The British guys all died coming back, so the fact that they reached the Pole second almost doesn’t count because you’ve got to get back to tell about it to say it’s successful.

Dumb Ass

Now fast forward to modern times. People go to the South Pole all the time. People even live there in a sort of moon-base setup now. But here come some dumb-asses that want to go to the South Pole just like the British team did in 1911 (circa), man-hauling sledges, to “prove” that it could be done. What? First we already know it could be done. It was done by a Norwegian guy with a dogsled. It is also pretty certain that with a little better luck and maybe planning the British team would have gotten back as well. In addition, this is not like Heyerdahl’s experiment because we already know how people got to the South Pole, it’s no mystery. On top of this there are all sorts of less dangerous ways to get to the South Pole. You should use these before you resort to early 20th century technology and depend on us to save your ass in case of trouble. This newest expedition is pointless and a waste of time and money, no reason for accolades; an egotistical display of wasted time, money, and effort. An expensive and foolish hobby. And unnecessarily dangerous and risky.

Hero – Explorer

We see this all the time: somebody we know summits Mt. Everest, they’re somehow a better or deeper souled person than we are. No they’re as selfish as the guy down the street who spent $50,000 on a car. We already know somebody can get to the top of Mt. Everest, hundreds of people have done it. Planes fly higher. Real brave explorers have even walked on the moon, think about that. Now here is something to crow about: being launched in a tin can 250,000 airless miles with a pocket calculator for guidance and actually getting there and all the way back in one piece with rocks to prove you were there (uh, oh here come the loonies talking about the back-lot in New Mexico again). We actually learned a lot of stuff in the process unlike the guy who summits Everest without oxygen. Big deal!

More Dumb Asses

The last part is these fools put other people’s lives at risk with their egotistical and foolish behavior. How many times do we hear about the Coast Guard trying to pluck some retard out of a boat in a hurricane when they were trying to sail around the world alone? I say let the dumb asses drown. Why put a CG helicopter crew at risk for some dummy that doesn’t have the sense to crew his sailboat or come in out of the storm. This person put themselves intentionally in peril and we’re supposed to die to save them. I don’t think so! It’s like tying yourself to a potential suicide standing on a building ledge 30 stories up, a real bad idea. We’re supposed to come rescue these idiots when they express their ego-driven Darwinian behavior? It’s fake heroics. Heroics without purpose is just a waste of everything.

Another Dumb Ass

What I’m trying to say is all these stunters that are always trying to get support for their “expeditions” are nothing but leeches. Their time, money, and effort could be channeled into something useful. The problem is they get no accolades for their courage for building and staffing a soup kitchen. What kind of lousy accomplishment is that? There are all sorts of people everyday that are doing brave things with a point that don’t have this incredible ego thing going on and wasting our oxygen. Think about a fireman going into a burning building for a child, a regular cop who never knows if the next drunk isn’t going to go berserk at a traffic stop, an ambulance driver in Afghanistan, Mother Teresa helping infectious lepers. There are tons of deserving and heroic people making a difference in life, science, spirituality, etc. that really put it on the line and for a real reason, not pointlessness.

So be careful when you hold these “models” up your children or others. They aren’t role models. They are egotistical selfish people displaying dangerous behaviors. Is that who you want your kids to look up to and emulate?

A Real Hero

So I’m never going to jump out of an airplane and rely on a bed sheet to keep me from hitting the ground unless the plane is going to crash because then it’s the less risky, less foolish, less pointless option. And if I make it I don’t expect anybody to be patting me on the back for how brave I was in saving my own sorry ass.

Charity

One of my pet peeves is people who engage in their beloved hobby “for charity” and take credit for somehow being a better person than the rest of us. The worst offenders are runners, bicyclists, bowlers, motorcyclists, and especially golfers. They line up donations for how many miles they go or just finishing the event. Of course nobody ever checks to see that the person actually finished the race or didn’t pocket the donations. However I do believe most of these people are on the up and up so outright embezzlement of the funds or cheating is probably low.

Musicians “Giving Back”

I liken this somewhat to rock stars and their ilk who give concerts where the proceeds go to some supposedly worthy organization and get accolades for “giving back.” Most of these leeches and debaucher’s are multi-millionaires who if they really wanted to give back would carve a million or so of their filthy lucre off for the charity. The concept that playing a guitar for 90 minutes without getting paid is giving back somehow is ludicrous. Most of these guys and gals who couldn’t hold down a real job if their lives depended on it don’t deserve to be paid anyway.

Anyway back to the main subject. These so-called charity hobbyists have to presumably present some entrance fee. Corporations tend to jump on the bandwagon and sponsor these deals with everything from the charity itself to all the setup and production and things like bottled water, etc. Now when you get to the end of the line here just how much of all this money that is spent is actually getting to the charity? Wouldn’t it be better to have no event at all and have all the expense and corporate “support” dollars go directly to the charity and have the cyclists go off to the park to indulge in their hobby by themselves or with their buddies? Let’s face it these people are “giving” nothing. They are getting paid and donating the proceeds to their favorite charity for indulging in their fitness hobby, something they would have done anyway. If these folks were truly giving up their time they would be down at the soup kitchen slingin’ soup instead of wasting time riding around on their bikes or running in a 10K. In fact they might just work for a day at their job and donate that day’s pay to charity. Then they can just go jogging like usual or run in a regular marathon race.

Now why can’t I get the same deal, say for reading a certain number of books or winning a beer drinking contest?

Ping-Pong Charity Pool Party

So I don’t sponsor any of these yokels. I give plenty of dough out to charity but I’m not going to do it for you to go out and play ping-pong or poker so I sure won’t do it for anyone else’s hobby. Let’s just pony up for breast cancer or whatever and feel better about that and get on with our lives without pretending we’re giving any of our time to anyone in the process. Oh, and see if you can wheedle the same amount out of the corporate sponsors that they would have spent in event expenses. Bet you can’t because how are they going to get their logo on your t-shirt or some banners along the race course? They’re just buying advertising and not “giving” anything either.