The Best of Frasier Crane

As I've mentioned several times throughout this blog, my Dad was a no-nonsense kinda guy. He never pretended his role was to be my "buddy" or "pal;" his job was to put bread on the table and scare the hell out of us. Although he very rarely administered the beatings himself, I'm fairly certain that the reason I wasn't a huge troublemaker as a kid was the prospect of going home to him and having him literally kill me and bury me piece by piece under the shed out back. Handel's "Messiah" quietly playing while he shaves the skin off my bones in his easy chair as my mother serves him a bowl of butter pecan ice cream. Like the Fonz he never lost his temper or hit anyone, but he had that old-school air of well, maybe that could all change at any moment. And these were the "old days", ie if another adult plowed over me with a car my dad would yell at me for getting in the way of the car while refusing to bring me to the hospital.

So it always cracks me up on sitcoms when the father is a funny, goofy gentle sort, always kidding around with the kids and being silly, and one of the kids does something to get himself in trouble and we gotta go through the motions of "Dad's gonna kill me!!!!!" Siblings laughing, "wait til Dad get's home, you're DEAD!!" Really? I haven't seen this dad be mean once in all the seasons, he's usually always trying to be funny. You're really scared of this person? And then when you see the father find out, and the kid is cringing, awaiting the father to kill him...and the father starts cracking jokes et al. Now me, even to this day, if I fuck up and the person who should be pissed starts laughing instead of yelling, I enjoy this much better and indeed try to add as many laughs as possible. But on these sitcoms, the kids are required to act chagrined they're getting laughed at, acting pissed/embarrassed. Instead of "thank god, I'm gonna live!!" they almost challenge the father to punish them. Whack.

One of the worst offenders of this is my show of shows, "The Cosby Show." How many times did we hear "ooooooh, dad's gonna KILL you when he finds out!!!!" only to have Cliff stroll in, look serious, and then riff for 5 minutes at the kid's expense? Not once did my father do that; before being punished I was never treated to a few minutes of him warming up for his Catskills Tour. "...a D in geography, son? can you not locate your brain on a map?" (cue laugh track, bowl of butter pecan appears.)

Thoughts, Barely, by Xmastime

I just watched a KFC commercial wherein they turn their noses up at other fast food places' chicken nugget by snidely asking "just what part of the chicken is the nugget?"

Fair enough, I thought.  I mean, it IS true.

And then they're slapping themselves high fives by following with "we don't make chicken nuggets, we make POPCORN chicken!!", and yet at no point do they explain just what part of the chicken is the popcorn.

Hmm.

This Guy Gets It

You people know how I feel about Whitney Cummings, and this guy here agrees with me:

I for one think that maybe, just maaaybe, if Whitney fails, it won't be because "audiences aren’t ready for a rom-com sitcom centered around a good-looking female standup." It will be because Whitney isn't funny.

Jesus Warns Herman Cain He Just Fucked Up; "Lemme At Him!!!" His Lovable, Scrappy Sidekick Baby Jesus Screams While Being Restrained.

Gitmo

The other night HERE I mentioned the wisdom of RFK's use of the Golden Rule as being practical, not just some kumbaya/rainbows & puppies doctrine.  So of course now we see Dick Cheney not only is for the US using torture, but proud of his role in it.  Presumably, of course, because we have the moral high ground and Jesus and his loveable, scrappy sidekick Baby Jesus on our side, and so nobody else would EVER torture a US soldier.  Brilliant. - XMASTIME

In a surprise to exactly nobody who can breath out of their nose, it looks like our acting like assholes at Gitmo all these years is coming back to bite us in the ass.  If I wanted to I could roll me eyes and say well, I told you so, but in the coupla months since I wrote the above it's come to my attention that Jesus and his scrappy, lovable sidekick Baby Jesus actually DO root for America, so I'm curious to see what the two of them do to the Iranian guards who fucked with Americans.  Leprosy? Locusts?  Both, along with being forced to do Proud to Be an American karaoke ad infinitum?  Oh btw, that means "while waving your hands in the air like you just don't care" - it's called Latin, you fucking sand n----rs.  Heard of it?

On a side note, I am still curious about the music situation there now.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

If Bands...

...are gonna start poking around to see if their music was used for torture at Gitmo, can they start doing something about their music being used to assault people at bars who just wanna have a quiet drink? Please?

Time to Be a Patriot

If bands like Rage Against the Machine and Pearl Jam et al are upset about their music being used at Gitmo, I would like to graciously offer up the greatest band in the world, Hayday - for FREE!!

Use 'em to dance, torture, waterboard, whatevs!!! We just wanna help America!

THIS IS HAYDAY...REPORTING FOR DUTY!!!!!

Whitney Award du Hour; ie Show That's Just as Awful As I Thought It'd Be

Happy Birfday...PADDY MAC!!!!!!!

The kid turns the big 0-6 today.  Yes, those are liver spots on your legs.  Here he is making fun of his aunt  :)

HOLY SHIT!

Chuck Knoblach is following me on Twitter!!!  Presumably because of THIS.

Or, because the word is out that I'm amazing.  Either way, I finally have an "in" to get my baseball resume a look in the major leagues.  Hell, my first summer league game alone shoulda gotten me a tryout!

Porn, Pace, Some Guy Named Ted

3) While we’re on the subject of porn, I’d like to send a note out to all you “directors” out there: knock it off with these prolonged shots of dudes faces! What the fuck?!?!? I’m cruising along, watching a girl getting rammed from behind, enjoying myself, when BAM!! the camera cuts to a close-up of the guy’s face. Who is this for? And then they LEAVE IT THERE for like 20 seconds!!!!!!!!! Baffling. Do these people even understand the reason guys watch these flicks in the first place? It’s bad enough I’ve got my dick in my hand while another guy is even on the screen naked, but these facial close-ups? “OOOoh, look – Ted is enjoying himself! Great!” And there’s nothing worse than investing all that time and energy into it, and you’re about ready for the big payoff and then right as you have liftoff….close up to the guys face. Great. And yes, in case you’re wondering, that does in fact make you gay. - XMASTIME

The Daily What has some help re: "maintaining pace." Ha!

GOP Determined Ignorance

Santorum's answer tonite re: "Obama is King George III" should've fallen flat with such a Founding Fathers Constitution-loving Tea Party audience who claim to be such lovers of history, but of course they went wild with applause since they're stupid, completely ignorant that the mass of Americans in 1776 were perfectly fine with George III save a handful of hyper-educated, Enlightenment-loving, God-doubting pretend farmers who believed in taxation, but not taxation without representation, ie. fascist-loving Obama.  In other words, gay French Euro-fags.  THAT's who you owe America to, not some bootstraps-wearing over-represented (really? Montana has the same voice as New York? REALLY?) farmers that can't fucking read, but Jesus loves.  Ignorance does not travel well.

My favorite Founding Father is Thomas Jefferson. Does ANYBODY think TJ would not be horrified by the current GOP's willful stupidity?

GOP Debate

Something I thought to note tonight is that the median age of the GOP candidates should they take office would be 62 (before you say it, the number should we remove Ron Paul is still 61.)

The president who reigned over the most peace and prosperity of the last century took office as a 46 year-old; meanwhile, any GOP nominee will be coming in 2nd place to Reagan in the "oldest fucker to take office" sweepstakes.

Meanwhile, Obama was born in 1961.  I think I'll take my chances with someone not baffled by tee-vee ("How can he be in that box talking, and yet be beside me??!?!?")

 

GOP Debatezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

How inane have these GOP "presidential debates" become when I can't even bother to watch them?  I mean, really, at first the unintentional comedy was great; now, it's just like the last 8 seasons of M*A*S*H: not funny, and seemingly longer than the Korean War itself.  It's just watching a handful of stupid people preach to a roomful of stupid people.  Even I, the great Xmastime, can't keep it interesting for two hours.  Wake me up when Romney's declared the nominee; until then, fucking christ.  Even I'M shocked at the stupidity and dullness, and that's saying something.

And why can't Gingrich do the right thing and show up rightfully smeared in chocolate?

Statement

I would never admit it because of my loyalty to Joe Strummer, and I've always claimed it was more of  a collection of pre-released singles than an "album", but Never Mind the Bullocks tops any Clash album.

I'd also never admit that one time I ran over a dog and didn't even stop.

Okay, I've admitted that repeatedly on Xmastime (and have been repaid QUITE handsomely lady-wise, heh heh heh) 

Loyalty. It's Important.

To everyone losing their shit over Facebook's big changes, I'd point out that Friendster hasn't changed in about 7 or 8 years, so.  That's what you get for jumping ship, assholes!

(btw, anyone got their newest AOL cd lying around I can install? $19.95/mo. and only only costing long-distance after 9pm? HELL-o?!???!!!))

Recent Xmastime Classixxx

It's already June and we haven't seen the release of this year's version of "white teacher comes to black school, is met with indifference and anger, refuses to give up on 'my kids, dammit!' and ends up inspiring them to heights they didn't know existed," which means maybe there's room in the market for my own spin on the genre.

We Like, We Like, We Like Ugly Women

A while back I wrote HERE about women having something called body dysmorphic disorder, AND NOW IT TURNS OUT THAT MRS. XMASTIME SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR FUCKING HAS IT:

"I totally have body dysmorphic disorder," she said. "I think most women do.

What? Where the fuck are these women?  Every woman I meet seems to have a VERY high image of herself?  Or is that she thinks she's hideous, but not hideous enough for me? Wtf?  Should I start dating animals?  As I said before, should I hire myself out to make these women feel better about themselves?  Ka-ching!

Chuck Knoblauch

I sympathized with Chuck Knoblauch when he was going through his throwing woes, as I had the yips myself for a time - when I was a catcher, my pretending to have something important to say to the pitcher so I could casually walk out to the mound between every pitch and hand him the ball instead of throwing the ball into center field was Oscar-worthy.  He was the leadoff hitter on my first Yankees team, 1998; every fucking game he would've scored, putting the Yankees up 1-0 before you could even settle into your chair to start watching.  Also, he's responsible for the greatest back-page headline of all time.


Interesting article here on him here.  I don't know what's more shocking: how removed from baseball he is, how much he's hated in Minnesota, that he retired 9 years ago, or that he's got a brother that's 6'5".

Knoblauch's now remembered mostly for his throwing yips, but he also had one of the smartest plays in the history of the World Series.

Lily Collins

Last December I noted that Phil Collin's daughter had turned out to be a pretty sweet piece HERE without being crass with some sort of "I Can Feel Me Cumming in Her Hair Tonight" crack (curtsy), and now she's heading a list of hit rock star daughters.

Quite a year for this young lady.

Freedom-Loving Christian Americans Distracted by Fall Lineup Premiering on NBC, Forget to Totally Lose Their Shit Over Opening of Park 51

R.E.M.

Small collection of musicians re: R.E.M.'s effect on them.  The thing that jumps out to me is Bob Mould:

I spent many late nights hanging out with Peter Buck, witnessing his unbridled excitement as he played records I'd never heard.

I've read a million articles on R.E.M. and even a bunch of books about them, and every single person who has ever hung out with Pete Buck tells the exact same story of being treated to all-nighters of him excitedly playing 45 after 45 for them.

Also what I think is true HERE re why they mattered so much:

R.E.M. were more than just a band; they represented an aesthetic preference. In contrast to U2, the kings of secular sincerity, R.E.M. made themselves vulnerable in a very human way. They were a smart band who stood for substantial things and weren’t afraid to be totally, delightfully weird. The group’s stubborn unorthodoxy resonated with the  kids who didn’t fit in -- the ones who were too smart, too unconventional, too geeky, too philosophical, too artsy. Hardcore fans naturally gravitated toward one another: If you saw someone wearing an R.E.M. shirt, you just knew on a subconscious level you’d probably be friends.