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U.S. politics as professional wrestling

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One time many years ago I bought a T-shirt that depicted a donkey and an elephant doing battle inside a wrestling ring in typical pro wrestling style: extravagant, flamboyant, over the top. The caption read something like "US Government Wrestling Federation: It's All Fake."

Sagacious commentators like Gore Vidal and many others have been telling us for years that our political system is dominated by a duopoly which is really two wings of one Business Party, one of them slightly more moderate than the other, but both fundamentally subservient to the oligarchy. I think you would have to be either seriously deluded or disingenuous to disagree.

During the fake health care reform debate of 2009, Anthony Weiner remarked that Democrats show up at a knife fight carrying library books. And traditional, gullible liberals often lament that their leaders aren't mean and ruthless enough to go up against the evil Republican opposition. I think Anthony's remark is profoundly insightful, perhaps even more so than he intended. Assume it's true: Obama carries an armload of library books as he goes up against his vicious knife-wielding foes. Why? Why on earth would you do such a thing... unless... he doesn't really mean to win. Oh dear me, it's all fake!

I am reminded of the pro wrestling analogy as I watch the Obama administration pretend to care about the interests of ordinary people.

Here he comes, approaching the ring: Barack "Mister Main Street" Obama, wearing his coveralls and hardhat, carrying his lunch pail. He is lucky enough to be employed, it seems. Before entering the ring he punches his timecard on a clock installed outside his corner by the promoters, and the crowd goes wild -- their hero, a working man!

And now, here comes The Republican, in full evening wear. Cigar in hand, pocket watch on a gold chain, he steps into the ring, removes his top hat and hands it to his valet. Mostly jeers and boos come from the crowd but you can hear he has his supporters as well: those who like to imagine that their own interests coincide with those of The Republican. Now he pulls out a wad of cash and starts counting, driving his enemies in the crowd into a screaming rage. He jeers at the rabble, finally hands his cigar to his valet and gets ready to rumble.

The action begins, the Republican and Mister Main Street pound the shit out of each other for several minutes. Oh, the drama! Oh, the entertainment! How diverting! Finally the Republican beats Main Street senseless and wins the match once again. Tax cuts for the rich, billions for criminal wars of imperialist expansion, austerity for the rest of us.

Obama, arugula-eating elitist

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Now we're told that according to the latest desperate right-wing smear campaign, Obama is an arugula-eating elitist. A celebrity intellectual, not in touch with common folk.

Let's accept that for argument's sake. So much the better. I am a well-paid, educated super-liberal white male who reads books and speaks a second language: an America-hating elitist snob if ever there was one. Therefore, I like Obama better than McCain because I have more in common with Obama. What a happy irony! Who would have imagined forty years ago that a white guy like me would end up voting for the black guy because we were in the same social class.

By the way, my gratitude to The Daily Show for keeping me informed about politics.

A Tale of Two Serial Killers

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When you are a season behind in your Dexter viewing, because you discovered it belatedly; when you are netflixing Season One in order to catch up; when you have just finished watching episode 11; when you have just seen Rudy kidnap Dexter's sister: that's when you say, goddamn that fucking Ice Truck Killer, I fucking hate that prick!

It's a tale of two serial killers: one ever so nice, the other as mean as can be. I can't wait to see the nice one tape the mean one to a table and cut him up with power tools.

Colbert for President

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I am immensely grateful and relieved that Stephen Colbert is running for the highest office in the land. Now, at long last, I have a viable alternative to holding my nose, getting on my knees and acquiescing yet again to that most revolting of compromises, the Lesser Evil. I can go into the voting booth, have an enlightenment experience, jettison all that foolish left-wing progressive delusion, and suddenly become a conservative. Then I'll write in for Stephen Colbert.

Think I'm kidding? Yeah, I am kidding about the enlightenment part.

a weekend with the Dalai Lama

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This past weekend His Holiness was in great form (ouch! no double-entendre intended). A friend and I went to five two-hour lectures on abstruse Buddhist texts about Emptiness by Nagarjuna. I am more interested in Zen than I am in the Tibetan brand, but I invested the time and money in this event because I thought I could learn something from someone so highly accomplished. And I believe I did.

But this was not for wimps, no. This was a dense, cerebral exegesis of a difficult and arcane text. Much of it went over my head. It was hard to stay awake -- nay, impossible. I nodded off more than once, especially after lunch at one of those good restaurants on 46th Street between Fifth and Sixth. And magnificent though the interpreter was, I think occasionally the message suffered some in translation, and became less coherent. But in case you missed it: all phenomena are empty, that is, devoid of any independent, intrinsic objective reality. Any questions?

Still, I think all this teaching went somewhere other than /dev/null. Some things are difficult to grasp, and you begin to get it after several passes at it. Moreover, as my own teacher points out, Emptiness is a matter of insight. Therefore, back to the mat.

On Sunday afternoon H.H. gave a "public" talk -- geared for general audiences. He spoke the whole time in English, and was superb. The man has an uncommon gift for connecting with audiences. And he is obviously a highly evolved, wise, compassionate, all-around advanced human being. As are a lot of people. I see no reason to deify him.

SUV for Tom Glavine

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It's great that Tom Glavine has won 300 games and received lots of formal recognition for it. He's a remarkable athlete and has conducted himself admirably both on and off the field. But I hope I am not the only one who finds it disgusting and perverse to reward a millionaire with an environmentally hostile thing like an SUV. What on earth is the point?

In other news, however, the Mets did kick the Marlins' asses today, which is as it should be.

The Sopranos ending was fine

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I know it's old news now -- a week old. But here's my belated two cents.

The ending was fine! Fucks everyone whining about? I heard soundbytes on the radio from irate fans complaining about not getting "closure." Closure? Don't make me puke. You need to see Tony's brains splattered all over the onion rings in front of his family in order to achieve closure? That's pitiful.

What is wrong with a little ambiguity? Either he got shot, or he didn't. The end.

Good riddance, Imus

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I am happy to see you go, I-man. I have always found you annoying, stupid, spiteful, and not funny. Free speech is fine and well. Free speech makes it OK for me to say that in my opinion, you are an asshole. It's also true that money talks and shit walks. Hence your departure.

See, there's another mini-scandal here that few will probably remark on in the mainstream media. CBS only saw fit to fire you after it became apparent that it was detrimental to its business interests to do otherwise. First they were like, oh! That racist sexist talk is unconscionable! Two week suspension! They didn't show you the door until the advertisers started pulling their ads.

While I'm at it, I am tempted to blame you for Corzine's having gotten so banged up in that auto accident. If he hadn't been on his way to a meeting about this Imus affair, he would not have been at that location on the Garden State at that precise time and.... nah, that's bullshit. But it's tempting.

How to React to Three Celebrity Deaths in December

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(1) Augusto Pinochet. You are dancing in the street. It's a pity that he died too comfortably, and that we did not get "closure" through the criminal process, but my, it's great that he's dead. Let the champagne corks fly.

(2) James Brown. You feel rather sad and wistful, especially if you grew up with that DC Sound in your ears. He had soul, and he was super bad. He may have had a fucked up personal life, but the man was one hell of a performer and his contribution was major. Let us raise our glasses and drink to his bad self.

Here's a quick James Brown/LSD anecdote. Once upon a time a buddy and I were doing acid. As the drug's effects were coming on, we listened to the Greatist Hits CD on which the second track is Sex Machine (Get Up). It begins with James Brown proudly proclaiming how he intends to do his thing. Then the music kicks in, -- a-pampampampampampampam Get Up, Get On Up -- and suddenly you're in this exquisitely transparent and open texture, a perfect balance between the instrumental parts, with just enough space between the notes, and a bad-ass groove that defies description. Then come the self-referential lyrics about taking it to the bridge, threatening to take it to the bridge, building up an immense tension... it is music that celebrates itself, boasts and braggs about itself, revels in itself. I remember listening, incredulous, astonished at the genius of this achievement. I decided then and there that this was one of the greatest songs in the history of recorded music.

This is, by the way, an example of the Acidmaster's Paradox. It often happens that tripping on LSD takes you not farther from but closer to the true nature of reality. You may be fucked up beyond reason, yet you are seeing things revealed as they are. I knew Get Up was great, but I didn't fully appreciate its magnificence until I heard it while tripping.

But I digress.

(3) Gerald Ford. You don't really give a shit one way or the other. You dismiss the mainstream media bullshit about how heroically he healed the Watergate-traumatized nation by letting Trickie Dick slide. There was a deal, so he dealt. He played the game. Now we are hearing about how he told Bob Woodward -- gasp! -- that the Iraq invasion was a mistake! Oh, what genuis, what vision! By the way, it was no "mistake." It was a major crime against humanity for which its authors deserve to hang, not unlike the above-mentioned General, come to think of it.

If you went three for three above, high five.

August 2006

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This is the one blog that emphasizes quality over quantity -- usually. This entry is the exception to the rule, because I felt I had to blog something in the month of August lest an entire month go by with no blogging.

Blogging is for self-indulgent egomaniacs, and losers with nothing better to do than sit in front of their computer on a Saturday night at 11:08 pm drinking beer in solitude... no wait. Nevermind.

thinking about Bukowski

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Seeing Born Into This got me thinking about Bukowski and reminded me of an anecdote.

When I was a graduate student in a large university using its immense library for research, I used to enjoy getting distracted with things like Charles Bukowski. I checked out and read all the Bukowski they had. I remember one story -- or was it a novel? -- in which our first person narrator wakes up in the middle of the dark night after a fierce drinking binge, and discovers a warm body in bed with him. He marvels at the fearlessness and generosity of anyone who would bed down with a beast like him, and writes: what better way to reward her than by fucking her in the ass?

You know how students sometimes underline certain passages in books to draw attention to them. I came to regard this practice as a form of communication through which one reader of a copy of a library book would signal not just to himself, but also to future readers, that the underlined parts were particularly meaningful and important.

As a little gift/joke for the next reader, I took out my pencil and my ruler and meticulously underlined a passage which I felt exemplified the Bukowskian combination of irony and absolute non-ironic seriousness (and in so doing, imitated it): what better way to reward her than by fucking her in the ass?

It's remarkable how well known Bukowski is not. A lot of reasonably well-rounded, educated people have never heard of him. I imagine that's because Bukowski has to do with an altogether different kind of education from the traditional one you get in schools. Let's see whether this documentary helps bring Buk some of the recognition he deserves. If it doesn't, that's ok with me. I am happy to continue to share the secret with a couple hundred thousand of my closest fellow Bukowski fans.

Pull A String, A Puppet Moves each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand - and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know ... Charles Bukowski

The trouble with IPod

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Maybe it's generational and I'm too much of an old fart to understand why so many people, especially the young, are so enthralled with their IPod gizmos. Sure it's cute that you can carry around thousands of "songs" in your pocket. But when you are forever consuming music and rarely or never (re-)producing it yourself, you are missing out on an important aspect of the enjoyment and the brain-nourishing exercise that music provides: replaying it in your mind.

That's right folks. Listen to your music at home, or in whatever setting; then put down the ipod and get out on the street and start walking, and replay the music in your mind. Feel free to hum, whistle or sing softly along with the music. How does it sound? You may find yourself noticing some nuance of melody, or lyric, or structure, that you had not noticed before -- and might never have, were it not for this exercise.

gansta version of Christmas is coming

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I know I am a little ahead of the curve here. Hell, even Buy Nothing Day is still a couple weeks out. Nonetheless, the Muses dropped this little gem on me the other day and I feel duty-bound to share it:

Christmas is coming
Yo goose be gettin phat.
Won't you please put a pennny
In a nigga mothafuckin hat?
If y'all ain't got no penny
A haypenny will do.
Y'all ain't got no god damn haypenny
I'm a fuck yo ass up.

Six Feet Under, The Finale

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If you are planning to see it and haven't yet, DO NOT READ THIS.

Some of my friends say it was depressing, a tear-jerker. There were certainly moments that got me choked up, but I thought they gave just enough comic relief to keep it from being too heart-breaking. Consider the makeup in that final sequence. It seemed they were serious about aging David, but some of them literally looked like a joke. It's like they put a silly wig on Brenda and said fuck it, that'll do. And she expires as Billy is doing what? Running his mouth, as is his wont when he's in that mode. Even the way Keith gets wacked seemed more cartoonish than tragic, as if to say, hey, somebody has to die of unnatural causes.

One of the many things I loved about the show was the dialogues with the dead. Normally I hate anything remotely supernatural, but from the start I understood these conversations with ghosts as metaphors for interior dialogues, a means whereby the living character works out his problems. That's why Nate was far nastier as a dead guy than he ever was in life:  it wasn't him but Brenda's problems with him that were speaking. One of the things I learned years ago from my stepmother is that when a loved one dies, he's dead, but the relationship you had with the person continues, since it always was an abstract, intangible thing.

When it was all over I felt completely satisfied. It was a superb ending for one of the greatest shows in TV history. I think it was psychologically healthy for a lot of us viewers , and immensely entertaining.

That night I stepped into the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror looking older than I have ever looked before. Then it occurred to me:  I am, in fact, older than I have ever been before. Tick tock tick tock my friends, we're all gonna die. Is that so terrible? I think not.

Bravo Michael Jackson

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I'm glad he got acquitted. As I've repeatedly told everyone who would listen: you don't deserve to get convicted just because a fifteen-year-old liar says you gave him a handjob. And when you try a case, you don't put in fingerprint evidence about a porn magazine from which the prints weren't lifted until after the kid handled it during grand jury proceedings -- unless you are woefully incompetent.

Good bye String

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Stringer BellShit. I know I ain't the only middle class white mothafucka gonna miss that nigga. String was special, man, that mofucka had character, the nigga was original, he had like fuckin, integrity an shit, nome sayin?

I'm a miss you String. An I wish you all the best of luck on all your future projex B.

Pinkwater proves Terry Gross is an idiot

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The other day I heard Daniel Pinkwater, the writer of children's books and self-proclaimed fat guy, interviewed by Terry Gross on her show Fresh Air. There's always been something vaguely annoying about Terry but I've never been clever enough, or perhaps never tried hard enough, to identify and articulate exactly what.

Now Pinkwater comes along and without any apparent effort to humiliate or ridicule her, makes it plain that Terry is something of an idiot. When she asked him "were you close to your parents [when you were a child]?", he said something like "Close? They were my parents," i.e., how far away could they be, for fuck's sake? This was but one of numerous examples. It loses a lot in the retelling but take my word for it.

Farenheit 9/11:: Go See It. Now!

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Sure, parts of it are extremely painful and distressing. Sure, it's slanted, one-sided, and manipulative of the audience's emotions.

On the other hand, to my knowledge no one has disputed, much less refuted any of the facts asserted in the film. And words like "good," "powerful," "effective," etc., don't come close to doing it justice. Devastating is more like it. There were no basic facts revealed to me that I hadn't already gotten from my progressive alternative lefty media sources. But Michael Moore develops those facts and drives them home with.. well, devastating... impact.

If you're an advanced Bush hater you might think it impossible to walk out of the theatre despising George and his vicious, greedy warmongering cronies even more than when you walked in. But you will. And somehow George will seem more pathetic and ridiculous -- as well as dangerous -- than ever before. And that, in turn, combined with the tremendous success of this film, has the effect of instilling in me a measure of confidence than he is gonna be fired come November.

Will it change any minds or just preach to the converted? Apparently it can open and change some minds, from what I hear. If you get a Bushie into the theatre you've already accomplished something remarkable -- who would want to see that liberal faggot-ass America-bashing commie bullshit? And if the Bushie watches the film, the Bushie's wheels will simply have to start turning, if he has any.

It isn't enough just to beat this guy in November. We have to thrash him and kick his evil ass out into the street (and into prison would be nice, but first thing's first). Nothing less than a landslide will do. That's why I just heeded MoveOn.org's latest plea to give money to the wealthy, senatorial, phony Mr. Kerry, but by hitting a URL that signals his campaign that the money came from a progressive, not from a corporate fat cat. Yes I've come around:  I've shit on Kerry before, but now I'm pretty much with the program.

See you Friday at 5:00 pm at the Loews Village VII in downtown NY.

Nunberg: The Swearing on Deadwood is anachronistic

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According to Goeff Nunberg on Fresh Air yesterday, the swearing on Deadwood is anachronistic. Nobody said fucking and cocksucker all that much in the 1870s. These didn't get popular until the early 20th century. For serious shock value, they would have used true profanity as opposed to obscenity, that is, blasphemous expressions like god damn it and hell and jesus christ. You can see why the writers decided to crank it up for modern audiences, whether you agree with the approach or not.

And here I thought the show's every detail was historically impeccable. Oh the disappointment.

The Deadwood Award

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Deadwood fans, you know that our show is so goddamn good that they haven't even invented an award distinguished enough to do it justice. You might as well create The Deadwood Award.

Doc Cochran's little conversation with god -- we might call it the What Conceivable Godly Purpose? Speech -- was one of the most compelling performances you've ever seen on your television, bar none.

And how about the exquisite complexity of Al Swearengen's character? He has always striven to be as cold, calculating, brutal and self-interested as possible, because he had a horrible childhood, and his cruel ways have been rewarded with material prosperity. Now, in spite of himself, and although he's certainly still a violent hard-ass in his business affairs, he sees in himself disturbing tendencies in the direction of becoming a regular human being with normal feelings like love (e.g., for Trixie) and compassion (for the reverend). Despite his uncommonly dark, sardonic sense of humor, the man is incapable of smiling -- even at the sight of Jewel the Gimp waltzing with Doc Cochran. A psychotherapist could hang an entire career on Al's head.

E. B. Farnum for President!

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E. B. FarnumI have complete confidence that E. B. is a more worthy candidate for president of the United States than either Kerry or Bush, and his chances are at least equal to Nader's.

Think about it. The current Mayor of Deadwood has amply demonstrated integrity, honesty and leadership qualities that far surpass George W.'s, and cowardly though he may be, has he more balls than Kerry. Al Swearengen could be the power behind the throne as VP; A.W. Merrick, with his media savvy, would make a splendid press secretary; maybe a Farnum administration could recruit Eddie Sawyer from the Cy Tolliver organization and put him in charge of Treasury. I'm not sure whether Dan Dority would be more effective at the top slot in the Pentagon, or as Chief of Staff. But I know I'd rather have a principled, upstanding lad like Seth Bullock enforcing the law of the land than that fascist looney tune John Ashcroft. Mrs. Garret would surely make a fine replacement for Condi at National Security. And we all know Doc Cochran is a no-brainer for Surgeon General.

You pussies!

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Al SwearengenGoddamnit I'm sick and tired of you pathetic fucking cocksuckers who fancy yourselves literati constantly holding forth about pointless shit on my fucking blog. I like to swear. I disagree with the administration's policies. For the love of christ won't you please shut the fuck up? If you don't get your useless asses over to the Gem and start drinking, gambling and buying some cunt, I'm gonna have Dan slit every one of your fucking throats for you and feed you to Wu's pigs. How would you like that?

The Joy of Swearing

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There are those who say that the use of gratuitous profanity is symptomatic of weak powers of expression, laziness, poor self-discipline. Well you know what? I happen to enjoy swearing. Some argue that the promiscuous use of our friend the F-word, for example, diminishes its expressive power. Well guess what: that's one fucking trade-off I can live with.

speaking of the Sopranos....

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I predict that Johnny Sac will crush that malapropism-using, pretentious prick Little Carmine.

I predict something bad is gonna happen to our good friend, that homocidal genius, the erudite murderer, that clever assassin and would-be massage therapist known as Tony B. I think Johnny Sac might take his revenge on him for wacking Joey Peeps, and tell Tony S to just deal with it.

Oddities of Product Placement

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If you were Snapple, would you want to have an empty bottle from one of your products smashed into someone's face on the Sopranos? Seems to me that smashing people's faces with a bottle is kind of negative.

Then again, what do I know about marketing. Perhaps they're thrilled to get their brand in front of those eyeballs regardless of the context

Deadwood: A New Drinking Game

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Required equipment:   whiskey, a TV, and an episode of Deadwood.

Number of players:  a minimum of one.

Rules:   Play begins when the Deadwood episode starts. Every time a character on the program does a shot, players are required to do a shot. Last player standing is deemed the winner.

We'll miss ya, Bob Edwards

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I know I wasn't the only one who got a little teary when Bob said his goodbyes.

On literally thousands of mornings I've stood there trying to cut through the fog, pondering my coffee, my day, my life, and listening to Bob and to whomever he was interviewing. And I have almost invariably enjoyed listening. There's something about his voice, his style, his technique, and the workings of his intelligence that make you genuinely like the guy. Or at least, you're sure you would if you knew him personally. It seems inconceivable that the man is an asshole in real life.

I should note that I am not unconditionally in love with NPR. They often provoke my more-radical-than-thou leftist wrath with their pussy-liberal establishment optic and spin. But still I'm a habitual listener.

Let us digress. Because I live where I do, a real lefty radio alternative is available: WBAI. Problem is, their production quality and indeed their content is often just too shitty, and I lose patience. I recall one morning turning them on and hearing some guy chanting and playing bongoes. When he was done, the host of the show was like, thank you man that was really good. Guess what: no it wasn't. It sucked. Then came a woman reading dreadful poetry in a 1960s jive voice that was supposed to make us think she was cool. That's when I said fuck this I'm outa here, I'd rather listen to white males discuss the stock market.

Back to the matter at hand: you did a helluva job, Bob Edwards. We'll miss you buddy.

Sunday again, oh my....

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Wild BillSeth BullockCalamity JaneDocMister Al himself

Sunday and HBO: veg heaven

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I'm already euphoric just thinking about watching The Sopranos tonight.

Then there' s that new western, Deadwood. I was already favorably disposed to it from seeing the promos, but when the opening sequence started, and I heard that music and saw those images, I knew I was in love.

Perhaps it's a generational/sentimental thing. The western genre is practically dead; no one does it any more in this age of bullshit so-called reality shows. When I was a kid growing up in the sixties, there were plenty of westerns in film and on TV. I was fascinated by the macho atmosphere, the hokey-folky wisdom, the horses, guns, cards, whiskey, violence. The saloon doors, the player piano with that clinky sound...

Now comes this ultra high qualiity show where the creators went to the trouble of researching the shit out of the history of Deadwood, Montana, to bring you a beautifully produced work that de-romanticizes the old American west in the manner of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. (For the record: I won't be suprised if some critic has already compared Deadwood to Cormac McCarthy, but I haven't read or heard any such comparision, so maybe, just maybe: you heard it here first.) And so you have a character named Ellsworth who stands at the bar, having just traded his $170 gold piece for bar credit, and proclaims: I may have fucked my life up flatter than hammered shit, but I stand before you today beholden to no human cocksucker." How can you not love it?

Color and Boxing

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I first became aware of the beauty of boxing in the mid-fifties. The "Friday Night Fights" sponsored by Gillette "Blue-Blades". My father and great-uncle made it a ritual: Dad chain smoking Luckies and drinking bourbon (straight, if you nancy boys were wondering) and my uncle smoking his pipe (Granger Rough-Cut) and sipping blackberry brandy. I was supposed to be in bed but would sneak downstairs and watch/hide from the doorway. What an exotic scene: a room full of smoke and the two grown men in my life watching a snowy black and white TV screen and yelling as the two men on the TV tried to fucking beat the shit out of each other.

It was a religious moment.

Back in those days of black white and shades of gray, the fighters were in the "light" or "dark" trunks that usually had their names in bold letters on the waistbands. It was the south then, when it was "did you see that nigger hit that white boy? Man, them niggers can box" Ingmar Johannsen was the hero but Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston came along and the white boys had to admit that those coons could pack a punch. And then came a guy named Clay who beat Liston and I was amazed that these white trash - I - hate - niggers types were actually upset. Maybe that was the beginning of the realization that niggers weren't all that bad; well, some of them - "not the uppity ones". Ah, those were the halcyon days of my youth.

I was watching the HBO fights tonight and remembered the professors early bit about the "fighter in the blue trunks with the whitish golden tassles and the fighter in the blue trunks with..." (or something like that) and the advent of color hit me over the head. My! How things used to be easier before color. Maybe TV should go back to black and white. Blood is just a really a really dark color. "Raging Bull" is a great work of art - the slo-mo of liquid squirting out of pummeled noses is just like the Friday Night Fights of my childhood.

What to do now? The boxers are from everywhere and every "race" but we have to be PC and not notice that one is a square-headed-retarded looking former commie russkie and the other is a cauliflower-eared, puffy eyed, white double-wide trailer trash from northern Maine. Now did you notice that I didn't mention the gook in the red corner and the mick in the blue corner?

thank you, Sopranos

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Thanks to a recent Sopranos episode, I can't even take a dump now without thinking about Johnny Sac sitting on the pot, smoking a cigarrette and bitching to Tony about shit. Here I am with my pants down around my ankles -- where's my goddamn cigarette? And I don't even smoke.

How can a person in so undignified a posture be so self-righteous? The sheer chutzpah of Johnny Sac is stunning.

Sopranos redux

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Today is Monday. The Sopranos will be back on our vegboxes Sunday.

As Christopher Moltestanti might say:

thank fucking god!

It's the nipple, stupid.

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Janet Jackson's breast - which I am ashamed to say I missed. Yes, I did watch the super bowl but skipped the intermission because I am an intellectual snob. Watching a bunch of huge steroid enhanced men slam into each other over and over again does have a certain charm, though.

So the media and everyone, it seems, are all in a tizzy about seeing a nipple. Women have nipples? The local news just referred to it as an X-rated show. I have heard "pornographic" also. It isn't about her breast and I wish someone would point that out. You can see breasts exposed all the time on TV; sometimes completely, except for the nipple. TLC (my apologies to non-tv types - "The Learning Channel") has a wonderful show about emergency rooms and what goes on. It is very graphic and very interesting if you aren't bothered by lots of blood. Often the accident victim has his/her clothes cut off by the doctors and TLC fuzzes out 1. Nipples on women (the rest of the breast is exposed) and 2. Dicks, penises, schlongs, units, baby-makers, johnsons, peckers, etc. (Hey!! Lets see how many terms we can come up with). Interestingly though, men's nipples are OK to show. They tend to look like women's nipples, in case you haven't noticed. It's dangerous to show women's nipples. X-rated and pornographic.

How silly. Nobody has said anything about the streaker. What's with that? You know - if god had meant us to go around naked, we would have been born that way. Sometimes I think that it is all a joke or there is vast conspiracy and the entire US is pulling my leg. Bush. Bush. How many definitions can you come up with? See! you all have dirty filthy minds and he is our president.

I was in the National Gallery in London and a boy of about 6 or 7 was running from painting to painting and in a loud voice exclaiming "Ooh, mummy, look at the boobies on this one"! and the "mummy" said "Yes dear, they're very nice but lets speak quietly"

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