Monday, May 31, 2021
Memorial Day, II
Memorial Day
Today we remember that 12 years ago on this date Xmastime got dumped by his girlfriend. Sigh.
Papa Was A Rolling Stone, and Maybe Stupid?
Rolling Stone put out its list of the Top 100 Motown songs a coupla months ago and I've been wrestling with it; finally, instead of screaming at my screen like a lunatic I've decided to simply list what MY Top 10 is (at this moment). YOU'RE WELCOME, EARTH!
ROLLING STONE'S' TOP 10
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "The Tears of a Clown"
Martha and the Vandellas, "Dancing in the Street"
The Jackson 5, "I Want You Back"
The Supremes, "You Keep Me Hangin' On"
The Temptations, "My Girl"
Stevie Wonder, "Superstition"
Martha and the Vandellas, "Heat Wave"
Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On"
The Temptations, "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone"
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"
MY TOP 10 - first those included in the Rolling Stone list, plus four more:
The Four Tops, "It's the Same Old Song" RS ranking: #88
Diana Ross and the Supremes, "Someday We'll Be Together" #82
Brenda Holloway, "Every Little Bit Hurts" #77
The Temptations, "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)" #55
Jimmy Ruffin, "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" #34
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears" #1
Edwin Starr, "Twenty-Five Miles"
Four Tops, "Ask the Lonely”
The Temptations, “I Wish it Would Rain”
Kim Weston, "Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)"
Uber-special: Nathan Jones
Big Smack to My Forehead
I love a Big Mac like the next guy, even though I've bitched on these pages many times before about:
- It’s remarkable to me that after 50 years McDonalds Big Mac is still so popular considering its total absence of structural integrity. Has anyone ever finished one before it started completely falling apart? 😡
- How is this sandwich so popular when its so big but only has one slice of cheese?
- The box it comes in is exactly as wide as the sandwich itself it, meaning to pick it up you've gotta scrape the buns and start tearing/unsettling the shit before you've even started.
Meanwhile Matt Yglesias points out an article dissing the Big Mac in favor of some upscale NYC version of it, the Big Schmacc at Smashed:
A big part of what makes the Big Mac appealing in pictures,” a burger aficionado I know mused the other day, “is that the patties extend past the perimeter of the bun. But then you actually get one, and most of the time you can barely even see the patties.” We were sitting outside Smashed NYC, a new burger shop on the Lower East Side. He peeled back the black-and-white checkered wax paper folded around the Big Schmacc, a highlight of the menu. Two thin jagged-edged disks of deeply browned ground beef hung floppily over the limits of three halves of Martin’s “Big Marty’s” sesame roll; there was clear visual evidence, too, of sharp-cornered, barely melted slices of American cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, crinkle-cut pickle coins, and Creamsicle-colored Smash Sauce. “This is what it’s supposed to look like,” he explained, with the authority of a biologist.
Okay fine, nobody's ever gonna be bragging about how a Big Mac looks. But then Yglesias points out this line from the author:
I confess that I’ve never tried a Big Mac—because I’ve seen what it looks like in real life.
OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE ALREADY - if you're going to write an entire article trashing something at least fucking try it first! Nobody would care if you said you know what, I've had a Big Mac and it sucks, but this kind of bullshit negates everything this idiot has to say about the (probably amazing) Big Schmacc. As Yglesias fumes:
The problem is that this is a professional work of journalism whose subject is a restaurant doing a riff on a Big Mac. Experience eating Big Macs is so directly relevant to executing the story, that the author had to go out of her way to mention that she’s never had a Big Mac. But so do the reporting! Buy yourself a Big Mac and explain the difference between the two. It’s not like this is some kind of impossible assignment — where will I find a Big Mac? How will I get the expense approved?
I've just about had it with these fucking people. I mean life is already hard enough, for fuck's sake.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT, Redux
I don’t know what they did but Little Debbie Nutty Buddy Bars are somehow way better than when I was a kid.
- END STATEMENT -
Barack O'Brien
Nobody likes to admit out loud "part of my success is due to economic
and social conditions cemented long before I was even born"; we must be
made to believe that Successful Person X was left to die in a
dumpster, then pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and became a
real rags to riches story. - XMASTIME 2011
Great episode of Conan O'Brien's podcast this morning with Barack "BARRY!" Obama, there to talk about his book:
1) He's funny af
2) Conan seems mesmerized by how good of a writer Obama is throughout the book
3) Obama points out that no matter how smart or hard-working each of them are, both of them got to where they did as much due to luck - a series of breaks along the way that led them to their destiny - as anything else: Xmastime - VINDICATED ONCE AGAIN!!!
Enjoy, people:
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Not-So-Hot Dog
It's not an exaggeration so say that nothing says New York City like a dirty water street hot dog, and here's a few stories of vendors who have tried to hang in there through COVID:
I wish it gets better this summer. I wish. But I don’t think so. If New York opens, the tourists are going to come. But New York is still closed. They open and close. I wish, I wish, because if this year is like last year I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. It was too much — the rent, the kids.
I’ve been working five days a week. Between 10 and 12 hours a day. It’s the same as before the pandemic. But business? It’s not the same. I pray the summer will be better. I don’t want free money from the government. I want to work to get money.
This is bad, that’s about it. There are no tourists around here. Only locals. Of course, most of the customers are usually tourists. But they’re all locals now. I don’t know how much I’m selling. I never counted hot dogs before or after.
There’s no money out here. No money out there, my friend. Not enough money to even pay my rent or pay anybody. We decided we gotta stay alive and stay busy. We’re not sitting at home.
No, ain’t nobody did business last summer. Everything was closed, from March all the way to the end of the year. Am I hopeful about this summer? Everyone has faith and hope in believing that it’s going to get better. That’s all we can do. You’ve just got to wait and see what happens. There have been no good days as of yet. Hopefully someday.
TBH I'm amazed that ANY of them have survived at all after this past year, and I'm rotting like hell for all of them to come roaring back soon.
Hey, lets turn these frown upside down with an Xmastime classic!
There is nothing about this strip that makes any fucking sense.
1) Why is the plate upside down?
2) Jon Arbuckle lives in the Midwest, and yet he hasn't dumped a bunch of fucking ketchup on his hot dog?
3) Who the fuck bites into the middle of a hot dog like that? Is this because he apparently closes his eyes when he's about to bite into food? How many times does this dumb motherfucker accidentally bite his own hand?
4) Did Jim Davis chuckle like a 12 year-old when he got away with "who greased my wiener"?
5) Why would a cat who is used to eating lasagna and is repulsed at the thought of eating a mouse be so excited to eat a hot dog that's been "greased"? Wtf?
6) If Garfield had access to the hot dog to cover it in grease, why didn't he just eat the fucking thing then?
Xmastime TV Review: Hacks
I'm six episodes into the 10 episode run, so I have a few thoughts:
1) I like it more now than in the first few episodes, during which I had a nagging suspicion it was trying to be one of these modern shows that call themselves "comedies" yet twist their hamstrings trying to go out of their way to go long stretches without being funny, a la Louie or Baskets (maybe this is a Louis CK thing?) This sub-genre is annoying to me - if you're a "comedy" then you are obligated to at least try to be funny every once in a while! Back in the day I liked Christopher Guest movies like anybody else, until I read somewhere that during interviews or panel talks he *refuses* to be funny, claiming he withholds it for when he's being paid. To which I'm like fuck you man, being funny is a gift, making people laugh is a noble thing and if you're too good for it then you can go fuck yourself. And so I refuse to watch any of his shit again. Thankfully, Hacks has relaxed from taking itself so seriously and clocks in with some pretty good comedy throughout now, thank freaking god.
2) The cast is really great. Jean Smart of course is fantastic, the mopey second lead (Lorraine Neuman's daughter!) is spot-on and who doesn't love it whenever Christopher McDonald (from Dutch, motherscratchers!) shows up onscreen? And the Asian blackjack dealer is really funny whenever she pops up.
3) For being a 20-something comedy writer in LA, the younger lead is curiously out of the loop when it comes to pop culture. Is this a thing? Why?
4) Unfortunately this is one of those shows where the character with the new job would've gotten fired about 50 times in real life yet never does on the show, but what the hell it's just a tv show so just suspend a little belief here.
5) Why is the front desk guy giving her a hard time about fixing the tv? Would any real hotel in Las Vegas really not simply jump to fix the damn thing? And what does he care, just make the phone call man. And is he the only person who works the desk 24/7? If this continues to be a thing Imma be annoyed. YOU ARE WARNED, FRONT DESK GUY!
Overall I recommend you watch. It's obviously going to end up having some mega-touching "you taught me no YOU taught me and now we respect each other forever! etc etc" by-the-numbers climax, but it's very well-done/well-cast and has gotten better over the weeks, so I'm really looking forward to the remaining four episodes.
OH WAIT one more thing:
6) Like everybody I'm sure, I really like Jean Smart's assistant, Marcus, but right now he's infuriating in that he's playing the classic Hollywood stereotype of the "gay friend who magically knows everything and everyone and has the greatest taste in the world" etc.
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't Patton Oswalt have a classic bit about this very thing?"
Why YES, faithful readers, yes he did - enjoy!
Something I Learned Today
Apparently I never would have met The Ramones if that shit 90's band Live hadn't deigned themselves to be too good to play my pretend college back in 1995.
Fuck you, Live! And thank you, Live!
The story as told by the legendary jennie fennel:
2 Large for MLB
About a year ago I stumbled into some article on Bob Watson scoring Major League Baseball's 1,000,000th run back in 1975. It didn't occur to me at the time to wonder if we were anywhere close to the 2,000,000th run, but now I see that the historic run will be scored TODAY:
From the reign of Queen Victoria to the era of launch angles, a parade of ballplayers has crossed home plate. It has happened 1,999,987 times through Friday’s games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, the official statisticians for Major League Baseball.
That means that on Saturday some lucky player will set spike to rubber and score what will officially be the two millionth run in M.L.B. history.
In baseball’s official accounting, the first run scored in the lineage of today’s Major League Baseball came on April 22, 1876. According to new research this month conducted by Thorn, the run was plated by Tim McGinley, a catcher for the Boston Red Stockings, the forebears of today’s Atlanta Braves. Historians are not certain whether he batted right- or left-handed, but we know he scored in the top of the second inning at Philadelphia.
I was gonna make a "as long as The Orioles pitching stays as it is then MLB may reach 3,000,000 by September" joke but decided to take the high road instead. You're welcome, O's fans!
But seriously, you can see what I'm talking about:
Country Boys: Ray Riddle
Since it came out back in 2006 I've rarely been able to go much longer than about two years without re-watching the Country Boys series on PBS' Frontline, and this week was no exception. But his time I noticed something for this first time - I'd always assumed the song woven throughout the intros and outros of the three episodes, some song about being a country boy, was by Merle Haggard. Only because it sounded like...well, Merle Haggard. It was only this watch around that I realized it was actually written and performed by the dad of one of the boy's girlfriends, Ray Riddle (real name!) who is in fact portrayed as a wanna-be country singer/songwriter. The song isn't remarkable, it's fairly paint-by-numbers country song, but it's easy to like and he has a great voice - obviously, if someone can think it's Merle fucking Haggard!
Check it out and then get thee now to PBS to watch the entire series!!
Ray vs. Revolver
BUT APPARENTLY HE DID go out of his way to semi-trash The Beatles' classic Revolver, taking it track-by-track for a Disco and Music Echo article when the album came out. Davies is pretty famous for being incapable of telling anything other than the 100% truth, and he doesn't hold back. This one is my favorite:
‘Tomorrow Never Knows‘ – “Listen to all those crazy sounds! It’ll be popular in discotheques. I can imagine they had George Martin tied to a totem pole when they did this.”
His comments aren't actually that bad, a few tracks he simply compliments, but still...publicly dissing Revolver in any slight way? Ballsy, Ray Ray!!!!
"Look, Paul, I - he said what? Ray said that? No, he's....out right now, but really, I - what? No no no, Paul, baby, sweetheart, Ray would never - hello? Hello? Paul?...Sir Paul? Dammit Ray!"
Friday, May 28, 2021
Oh Death
I don’t know if it’s weird or not but whenever I see that someone famous has died only to find out they actually died years ago I’m somehow relieved; their being “used to be being dead for awhile now” is assuring to me, as opposed to them being newly dead.
Me. I’m really happening, aren’t I?
Let it Be
The Beatles are so ingrained to our lives, including mine, that it's hard to remember that initial feeling when you're first gut/heart/head-punched by their amazing work, particularly when you're an old dried-out husk without feelings like myself WHOMP-WHOMP!
So it's damn refreshing to see such discovery through someone else's eyes. There's apparently a subgenre of YouTube featuring young black kids hearing to The Beatles for the very first time and reacting in real time and this is my favorite, this guy listening to Let it Be. He's so hit by a part of it that he has to leave the room more than once to collect himself; then we get to hear that it's so impactful to him because it reminds him of his grandmother who he obviously loved very much and was a major - if not THE major - influence on his life. Really, really great insight to the connection between the song and his grandmother into what it all means to him.
It should be a great reminder for all of us to try to find moments like this ourselves, to not believe for a second that being hit with something as emotionally meaningful and fulfilling as this is out of our reach. Vivá le life, people!
Thanks for this, Rome Life.
May 28, 1981
The residency was only supposed to 8 shows but 3,500 tickets for each show for the 1,750-seat venue were sold, leading the NYC Fire Marshall to step in and threaten to cancel the shows. Times
Square area came to a standstill and the event made national news
thanks to protestors, rioters and police being called out to keep the
scene under control, after which The Clash volunteered to accommodate all fans with tickets by playing 17 shows instead of the original 8: "the band condemned the brazen greed of the promoters while demonstrating
unprecedented integrity to each and every ticketholder by doubling the
original booking with a total of 17 dates extending through June".
Longtime Xmastime buddy Mike Lisk was at one of the shows; he's seen a million rocks shows over the decades and I remember him telling me once that to this day he'd never seen an audience in such anticipation for a band; it sounds like they were waiting impatiently on the edges of their seats as if on a live wire dancing above water.
Perfectly Shitty
Imagine that: bearing the name of the one, miniscule, mysteriously hidden part of the female anatomy that apparently unlocks all kinds of orgasmic pleasure, driving a woman crazy to YOUR your touch. Not too shabby. Would not be the worst pick-up line at your local tavern. - XMASTIME
Now here's a guy with some regrets:
At 71, Herbie Allen got one of the most unusual compliments of his life when a health care worker told him he has “perfect poop.”
Besides being “perfect,” Allen’s poop also could be lucrative. “I found out I could make $13,000 to $15,000 a year for my poop,” Allen said. “About $40 a day.”
Why couldn't he have discovered this unique talent as a young man? He could be living large on mounds of ca$h from his doo-doo while using it to pick up women at the bar.
Sigh. A wasted life, indeed.
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
9 Years Ago Today
Annual goodbye 100 Metro post. Not my manliest wave ever. But probably not my least manliest either. #2012 #williamsburg #brooklyn 
Monday, May 24, 2021
Irish du Jour
Reminds me of Big Bear! :)
(walking with Big Bear to pick Cherry Bomb up from school and trying to gauge if we could make it home before it started raining, or if I needed to call for a car service)
Xmastime: how long does it take to get from Cherry Bomb's school to home?
Big Bear: same as it does from home to her school.
State du Moi
Was given the opportunity to eat fried chicken in bed earlier but decided I’d better not, so...some real growth there, I think.
HAPPY BIRFDAY!
To loooongtime Xmastime buddy Dave, who spent many years alongside me on the font lines of shiTty Brooklyn taps and styrofoam cups. We had some great nights rocking and some great days riffing, and I can't believe it's been over 12 years since we lived in the same hood. I miss you, buddy. Have a great one today.
NOTE: I was gonna link to this classic post and joke about us kissing but thought I'd move on this year YOU'RE WELCOME!
Here he is instead back in 2009 talking about his (as yet unsuccessful) search for a Smithfield ham.
The Powerful, the Comedians, the Social Media Oh MY!
There's a lot in this article about "one of the great tricks of the powerful is to hold all the power while also playing the part of the oppressed", and then more about the eye-rolling nonsense that is comedians bitching and moaning about being "canceled" ("To claim you are being silenced when you are still in full voice seems to be a dangerous game to play.") It's a helluva packed article but, if nothing else, it also has this incredibly succinct line about social media and why we react so harshly to it in real-time:
One of the problems is that social media is a very hasty place, we type as if talking but we are read as if published.
Something to think about, people. You're welcome!
It's Much Too Late For Goodbyes
I always felt sorry for Julian Lennon. After being ignored by his dad during The Beatles Years he had to watch his father fly off to America to not only have another kid, but then decide to dedicate his life so much to his newest son he gave up making music for five years! Meanwhile the only Beatles song written about him was by Paul McCartney, Hey Jude. Julian Lennon would go on to say that during those time he definitely felt that Uncle Paul spent more time with him than Father John.
Then for some reason when Julian launched his own career - just a few years after his father’s assassination - all the critics shit all over him, immediately discrediting him for reasons unclear to me. “He’s trying to sound like his father!” “He’s okay but he’s not his father!” “How dare he so soon after his father’s death!” and in and on and on. I remember liking his big radio hits just fine. Were they up to his father’s standards? Well no, but who the fuck else's were?!!
Jump 15 years ahead to 1998 and my first weeks in Brooklyn. Julian’s young half-brother Sean was about to release his very first record. He’d never released music before or played a show, but every music critic in the city for some reason decided that everything this kid was gonna drop was absolute genius; the one-upsmanship between them re: ball-slurping the music the kid was deigning to gift us all was palpable.
Of course the album sucked, it was more his mother Yoko than his father John, with weird noises etc replacing actual words and music. The critics quickly disappeared and agreed the album had never happened.
The only reason I thought of any of this was the other night I was re-watching the classic Chuck Berry doc Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll!, and Berry brings a 23 year-old Julian Lennon to sing Johnny B. Goode with him. The verses are unremarkable but when the kid starts singing the chorus it’s UNDENIABLE who his father was, and it makes you wish those fucking critics in the beginning had given him a real chance. Ah well.
Was George Harrison from the Future?
A decade ago, I pointed out that George Harrison was The Tea Party Beatle.
Then a few years later, I wrote that his funding Monty Python's Life of Brian made him the original Kickstarter.
And now it occurs to me that his song I Me Mine from The Beatles' Let it Be may have been the kickoff point for today's fluidity of personal pronouns, during which anybody can choose whether they are he/she/him/her/horse/whatever.
What the fuck planet was this guy on - how many more things are going to occur in history for us to look back and realize The Dark Horse got there decades earlier?!?!??
HEY HO LET'S GO to....Kingston?
The internet never ceases to amaze and now it delivers this mashup, done by someone with much more free time than me which makes no mathematical sense, of The Ramones and reggae. At the same time kinda funny and yet poignant as hell, here's the track list:
0:00 01 - Durango 65 1:19 02 - I Don't Wanna Stand Up 4:04 03 - Stirring In My Room 7:01 04 - Today One Love, Tomorrow The World 08:58 05 - Jamming Affairs 11:05 06 - Three Little Surfin' Birds 13:17 07 - Kaya Bop 15:39 08 - Glad To See You Cry 18:32 09 - Is This Love Kills 21:19 10 - Bye Bye Redemption
CC Cighting!
New York Yankees world champion CC Sabathia is lighting it up in a Central League softball league:
Before the season, Sabathia sprung for a new bat, batting gloves, and a Ken Griffey Jr. model glove — Sabathia’s first time buying gear since he was a kid — and the former Cy Young winner was slotted in the clean-up spot and given the start at first base. (He expressed zero desire to throw any more innings as a pitcher.) Sabathia has played in two of the Warriors’ four games so far (all wins), and he got off to a slow start in his first few innings, dropping a throw to first and weakly putting the ball in play in his first two at-bats. But since then, he’s found his groove, and he’s been dazzling his teammates with his displays of power.
Any Yankees fan who watched CC for a decade is not surprised about this at all. Fun!
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you ask for this 12 years ago?"
Sigh. Yes, faithful readers. Yes, I DID:
AMAZING XMASTIME IDEA: How awesome would it be to have a reality show about a major league ballplayer, a year after retiring, joining some random, kinda crappy, co-ed Sunday beer league? I mean, there's some dudes in the league I'm in that scare the hell outta me; can you imagine standing there and A-Rod walks up to the plate?
I see a few ways that it could go that would pull you in like a mofo:
a) guy inexplicably struggles, can't seem to get a hit and fucks up in the field. The drama of having a major league player fucking up would be amazing. Pressure builds every week as he's embarrassed and pressing.
b) somehow throughout the season the athletic, rich, famous ballplayer forms a friendship with the last guy on the bench, some nerdy loser who isn't really well-known throughout the league and isn't a good player at all, and has zero confidence in himself. In a word: touching!
c) the guy's competitive instincts kick in and as the games go by he completely unravels at everybody else's lack of talent compared to his own; by midseason he's screaming at a girl for dropping a ball, and everybody hates his guts.
Only rule: he can't pay for everybody's beers after the game.
I'd watch!!!!
 |
| "Watty? Who's that? Great first baseman? Yeah well that was in the old day, Boomers - CC's here now!" |
Nice Moments, Ruined by Xmastime
This would normally be a "DAMMIT PEOPLE I AM NOT MADE OF STONE!" moment, but now I can't stop laughing re: what if we could translate what the donkey is really saying, and instead of some heartwarming welcome of love it's actually braying, "you BITCH, you ruined my life!! Where's the $347 you owe me you midget fucking skank?!?!?!!?!!" 🤣
This donkey is reunited with the girl who raised it.. pic.twitter.com/SAWNOhqESr
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden_) May 23, 2021
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
RIP Charles Grodin
Charles Grodin died today. Everyone has stories of how their favorite movies had an impact on him and I'm no different:
I remember once in 6th grade we were supposed to write a 3-page play. I lifted line after line from The Star Spangled Girl and Seems Like Old Times, and got so many laughs the class asked me to read it again the next day. Prolly my greatest achievement, after inventing the armpit fart.
And of course, Clifford!
Can somebody please explain to me why there hasn't been a sequel made of this classic? I mean, Charles Grodin is 76 now - doesn't the "Clifford becomes Uncle Martin's caretaker and terrorizes him" script write itself? Camon, America. Wake up!
Monday, May 17, 2021
"Bad Girls" by Donna Summer...
...just in time for this alleged Summer of Debauchery to descend up on us....🍻🕺💃 👪
More Funny History!
As you incredibly loyal fans know too well, it's long been my dream to turn James Swanson's brilliant Manhunt into a comedic screenplay. And now I may wanna follow that with a sequel about the shooting of Franz Ferdinand during a motor procession through the streets of Sarajevo:
1) Wanna-be killer - one out of a group of three - throws a grenade at Ferdinand's moving car
2) Didn't realize there's a 1-secnd delay with the grande, so the grenade blows up under the fourth car in the procession instead of Ferdinand's, hurting some folks but killing nobody (in particular, not killing Ferdinand)
3) Wanna-be killer pops a capsule of cyanide, throws himself into the river to ensure he dies
4) Whoops! Cyanide pill had expired!
5) aaaaaaaaaand the river was only 4 inches deep, so the police immediately dragged his dumb ass out, fully alive
6) Ferdinand decides to go visit the victims at the hospital, but there's a mix-up about the directions and the car makes a few wrong turns
7) Upon realizing this the driver stops and tries to do a u-turn in the middle of the street, but the car stalls out and the wheels lock up
8) Another of the three wanna-be killers happens to be standing right there. BLAMMO!
I got all this from a small Wikipedia page, I'm sure with some digging we can really bring home some comedy!
 |
| "If the guy from Parks and Rec can play me then yes, yes, YES!" |
Dreams. I Have Them.
To one day give such zero fucks that I can run a book store like Bernard Black from Graham Linehan's classic sitcom Black Books. :)
Saturday, May 15, 2021
Superslice of Superslices
Not only is this one of The Ramones' most underrated songs, it's tough to be more Joey Ramone than this one.
Friday, May 14, 2021
Xmastime on Film
This article, The Best Films in History: Did Your Favorite Make the List? popped up, and I will now choose the ones from the list I've seen like YOU'RE WELCOME, EARTH!!!!
Airplane!
Almost Famous
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Blazing Saddles
Amadeus
The Apartment
Cool Hand Luke
Reservoir Dogs
Okay I stopped, this list seems to never fucking end and I'm tired of clicking "NEXT PAGE".
Famous!
I recommended this book a few weeks ago and now I see the author put my ad on Facebook. Now, does this make me better than you? OF COURSE THIS MAKES ME BETTER THAN YOU!!!
TFW...
...your beloved Popeyes is in the hands of an UberEats virgin...😬5:06pm update: kid nailed it
More Friday the 14th!
Have fun with a podcast I did on the episode back in 2018. You're welcome, Earth!
Ugh.
The MTG vs. AOC "thing" has a long history.
I’d give anything to have it in me to be a Republican congressman. Just need to be an assclown without a brain in your head, without even pretending to do any actual work for the idiots who voted you in. All performance for cameras and then laughing to the bank the rest of your life. Must be nice!
Baseball!
These grown men trying mightily to place a baseball into such cramped
pockets of hittable-ness is a thing to behold. They pitch to their own
kids, their own teams, so they most certainly want the kids to
swing and make contact. And many do, over and over again. Charlie was
hitting really well, honestly, until the last few games. Then something
slid away from him and a slump got born. No one knows why these things
occur, especially when the batter is 7 and slightly distracted by the
slightest shadow of a bird. Ladies and Gents, please meet the
daydreaming slugger with pancake syrup from breakfast still painted in
the corners of his mouth.
Happy Friday the 14th!
Celebrate with me by watching one of my favorite Only Fools and Horses episodes.
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Electric
I've always said that if I could have been a part of any tv show, it would've been The Carol Burnett Show, and this is why. Incredible.
The Greatest Sketch of All Time?
1) It goes on for 9 minutes yet leaves you wanting more
2) Whoever came up with the killing the fly bit deserves a goddam medal
Bragging Time
One thing you guys should know about me is one time I was standing outside work on 5th Avenue and Carrot Top walked by and I said “hi” and he said “hi” right back, so.
MORE MAD DOG
Only Doggie could tell a story about almost boiling his kid alive and come out of it even more likable than ever. 🤣
Just have to say with all sincerity that it has truly brought me joy that so many people enjoyed this clip. Nobody tells a story like Chris Russo. https://t.co/f4XVO9EwjF
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) May 13, 2021
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Yes!
After disappearing for over a year the retro Mike and the Mad Dog podcast is back up! Here they are in 1996 talking to Johnny Vander Meer and I am a pig in doo-doo! 😜
Baseball Sucks
We know we're stuck in a homer/strikeout/walk world and I don't wanna be the "Get Off My Lawn!" guy, but here's a factoid I just learned: from 1900-1963 a COMBINED 94 players struck out 100 times in a season. Now, we're averaging more thna160 every season. Ugh.
The only time I wanna see a strikeout is if Enrico Palazzo is behind the plate.
FFS du Jour
He seems like a genuinely nice guy but it’s hard to listen to Jakob Dylan kvetch about how hard it is for a young band to get the attention of record labels without the eyeballs rolling out of the head. 
Joba & the Midges
Not sure why they didn't wait for some sort of anniversary date for it, but The Ringer has an article about the infamous Joba Chamberlain midges game:
For everyone involved, the “Bug Game” remains one of the strangest experiences of their sporting lives—an unthinkable ecological conflation of events interfering with a rookie phenom right before the greatest closer in MLB history could take the mound. The ramifications and second guesses from that night have since become part of baseball folklore, bolstered by the indelible, insectified imagery and subsequent fall matchups between the two organizations. Almost 14 years later, those in attendance still talk about the moment less like a playoff classic than an act of god.
Amid this unexpected frenzy, Chamberlain became rattled and lost his command; one walk and two wild pitches later, the rookie had allowed the Indians to tie the game at one. “It was just impossible to focus on throwing strikes,” says Roger Clemens, who had a front-row seat from the visiting dugout. “It should have been treated as a rain delay.”
I remember that game like it was yesterday; today I look back like man, back in 2007 we Yankees fans still assumed we'd at least make it to the World Series every year. Different, headier times indeed.
BONUS: enjoy this 2008 Joba Chamberlain Xmastime classic. You're welcome, people!
Oh, Barry!
A lot of kvetching has been made over the years re: Barry Sanders retiring early, but it’s until right now that I realize he left the game with 99 rushing touchdowns. How the fuck can you ignore the itch to get to 100 when you literally couldn’t be closer????!!
Monday, May 10, 2021
Xmastime Declareth
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the first 3 episodes of season 2 of The IT Crowd is an incredibly tough 3-episode stretch to beat.
Down with Love
The other day someone referred to me as a bachelor. I was flattered -
when I hear "bachelor" I think of playboy man-about-town sprinting from
one meaningless date to another and hanging out in my split-level
shag-rugged apartment in Manhattan listening to "The Manny Moods of
Murray Wilson" while sipping martinis. With, apparently, Niles Crane. In
other words, I aspire to be a bachelor. - XMASTIME after yet another viewing of Down With Love
I haven't seen it in years but back in the day I really loved Down with Love; it was breezily disposable while a precursor look to Mad Men. So I look forward to any random shout-out for it, such as its 18th-year anniversary:
One of the big funny scenes you have in the movie is with David, in Ewan’s character’s bachelor pad, where he keeps setting off different contraptions and you get caught in the middle of them.Find this movie and watch it, people!
David Hyde Pierce is just, when it comes to comedy and physical comedy, a master at it. It was just about listening and responding, which is what I think all good acting aspires to be. I actually get under the couch at that one point and the cigarette smoke was coming out from under it. I remember having a mild panic attack under there, like, “How well made is this prop couch?” It’s funny how much this movie I really remember probably because the whole thing is sort of in Technicolor in my mind. I mean, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning.
Let's Not Forget Reagan and Bush Were the Worst
A few weeks ago I tried to remind you people that as a President Ronald Reagan was an absolute monster, and the very reason we got to Trump eventually.
We were already blinded by his natural charisma + another age when it comes to media to see this at the time; Reagan was charming so we were fine with things he kicked off that are still destroying the country today, with no sign of slowing down no matter how destructive they continually prove to be: trickle down economics, welfare shredding, union busting destroying the middle class, the lost war on drugs and the very idea that supporting the government is “un-American”.
And now with Trump being such a grotesque figure we're just grateful to be done with, public opinion - especially among amnesiac Democrats - is now comprised of hazily thinking of George W. Bush - a decent person who should never have been president but then became one of the worst of all time and a war criminal - as a cozy grandpa painting cozy pictures. Incredibly, Trump both as a person and "leader" was SO repugnant that already we're in a trap of comparing Reagan/Bush/Cheney to him, which of course automatically makes them so much better in comparison:
Having a few slightly human exchanges with Michelle Obama, of course, worked wonders for George W. Bush. Over the past five years, the grotesquery of Bush's presidency has undergone such a thorough rehabilitation that, according to many polls, even a majority of Democrats have a favorable view of the retired war criminal.
Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, coined one of his boss's most famous phrases in an address against affirmative action: "the soft bigotry of low expectations." It is a rich irony that Bush now benefits from that exact form of "soft bigotry" as he is lavished with praise for not being a fascist or a nativist.
There's a real danger in accepting that because Trump was so awful then we must paint Bush et al as the opposite. It's okay to accept the fact that they were all terrible for the country, and anybody like these people should be avoided in the future when it comes to electing president (side note: the odds of this happening are 0%).
Goot EVAH-ning!
Dracula's old castle now available for vaccinations!
Visitors to Dracula's castle are being jabbed with needles rather than fangs after a Covid-19 vaccine centre has been set up at the Transylvanian site.
Medics with fang stickers on their scrubs are offering Pfizer shots to everyone who visits the 14th-century Bran Castle in central Romania.
It is part of a government drive to encourage more Romanians to get jabbed.
PLEASE tell me the thing is that you sleep there and at some point while you're sleeping they come and give two shots next to each other on your neck?!?!?!!?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)