Sunday, July 31, 2016

Why I Feel Like A Trump Candidacy Is Gonna End Up On Law and Order: SVU

IMHO, there are a lot of Trump supporters who sound just like people who have been victims of domestic abuse: "He didn't mean it". "He was just joking". "Oh you don't know him like I do, because you never see that side of him". If you need to make excuses for a person, maybe they are not really the right person.
Admit it now, Trump supporters, so you don't end up on a slab with Olivia Benson swearing she will bring the candidate to justice.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Day of the Rope (A Dope)

Legal gadfly Larry Klayman is back, guys! As you may recall, Larry founded Judicial Watch in the 1990s to bring down the Clintons, but it didn't work out that well, and he wound up suing his own organization. He also sued his own mother and blamed the Clintons for telling people about it, then he ran for the United States Senate in Florida, but was either too crazy or not crazy enough to get past the primary. In Florida.

Later, he formed a successor group to Judicial Watch -- I can't remember the name; Watch on the Rhine, or something like that -- but gradually sank like Artax into the Swamp of Sadness that is World Net Daily.

But now that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee for President, he senses a chance to piggyback his way to renewed relevance, so he's begun folding her into the Obama-led race war Larry's been whipping up in his head.
Hillary and race baiters will be held to account
Hillary Rodham Clinton last week during the Republican National Convention equated her opponent and presidential GOP candidate Donald Trump with the Wizard of Oz, suggesting that he is not what he appears to be and hides behind a curtain of deception. 
For the "Bonnie of the Bonnie and Clyde" criminal duo, which includes her hubby, Bill, otherwise known as "Slick Willy," the analogy was ironic. Given her never-ending spate of scandals, and the fact that the private email caper is not over, it's clear that sooner or later Dorothy's house in Kansas is about to fall on the Wicked Witch of the Left.
Hm. Considering this year marks the 23rd anniversary of the "Arkansas Project", in which billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and serial-abuser-of-consecutive-consonants R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. promised to put a political end to the Clintons once and for all, I admire Larry's patience, because Dorothy's house has gotten some amazing hang-time. Way better than Damocles' sword. Maybe it got tangled up in the telephone lines like a pair of drug dealer's sneakers, or possibly it caught on some branches. I advise Larry to violently shake trees at random until something falls out. Start with coconut palms.
Despite my skepticism of the legal and judicial systems – 
Well I don't blame you you for your low opinion; it's pretty obvious they'll let just anybody be a lawyer these days.
-- given all I have experienced and fought for over the years in the trenches of Washington, D.C.
Ah, that's why, despite chasing the Clintons for twenty years with a Javert-like persistence, he's never caught them. It's not that Larry's lawsuits are written like Mad Libs and proceed from bullshit premises, it's that he's slowed down by trenchfoot.
and around the nation, which I chronicled in my autobiography, "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment,"
That's a snappy name for your memoirs, Larry. One suggestion, though: lose the subtitle. Just the one word seems to sum up your C.V.
and in my 300-plus columns over the years at WND
"...or that one column I wrote 300-plus times."
I continue to believe in justice and, more importantly, "divine justice."
Well, then I guess you can retire.

"Thanks, Larry! I'll take it from here..."
Plain and simple, the rank criminality and corruption of the Wicked Witch of the Left will catch up to her, and I am not just talking about the possibility that she may never be president of the United States.
Okay, I want to withdraw that comparison to Javert, because I don't believe he and Larry are actually in the same league, persecution-wise. Say what you like about Jean Valjean, he did steal that loaf of bread.
The stench surrounding her has reached historic proportions.
He who smelt it dealt it, Larry.
The history of her misdeeds, all of which have the establishments of both major political parties and compromised law enforcement authorities have attempted to cover up, is at the level of an unserviced and overflowing septic tank in your backyard.
Well, if Hillary can get Democrats, and Republicans, and the FBI and the courts to cover up her crimes, then she's clearly a uniter who can bring this fractured country together. However, if she wasn't trying so hard to outdo Taylor Swift with the size of her squad, maybe the septic tank wouldn't be overflowing.
The putrid order of the past of the Wicked Witch and her husband – a president who at a minimum engaged in oral sex with a young White House intern while it was the nation that was getting screwed with illegalities, ranging from Whitewater, to Chinagate, to Filegate, to Travelgate, to IRSatre, to name just a few of their more than 40 scandals – is now a documented pattern of corruption and criminality.
Uh-huh. Based on exhaustive, overlapping, interminable, and expensive investigations, none of the above were actual scandals, let alone illegal. Okay, I admit, "IRSatre" is new to me, but I assume that's a misspelling of "IRSartre", which refers to the scandalous prank in which loyal, taxpaying Americans would show up at the Internal Revenue Service for an audit and find themselves trapped by "No Exit" signs in the elevator lobby.

Anyway, Leisure Suit Lawsuit Larry goes on for another couple paragraphs. They're too long to excerpt in full, so I'll just give you the highlights: "henchmen", "squirrels", "not the Wizard of Oz but the Wicked Witch of the Left herself", "communists like Saul Alinsky", "leftist bastion of cancerous fools", "rabid feminist", and "'women's vote'", and finally, "an ardent supporter of Black Lives Matter and its co-conspirators who are successfully igniting a race war."

You remember the "race war" Larry mentioned last week, right? Me neither, but this column reminded me that I really oughta buckle down and decide what I'm going to plant in my Victory Garden. I've narrowed it down to white corn or black-eyed peas.
These black, racist supporters of the Wicked Witch, to put in mildly
I'd love to see what you consider fighting words.
include but are not limited to the racist-in-chief himself, Barack Hussein Obama, who regrettably is currently our president.
Not that Larry hasn't tried to change that. Unfortunately, he's not as good at his job as the Republicans employed to cover up Hillary's many murders and, apparently, poop in her septic tank.
 The others are the certified black Muslim Jew, Christian, white hater and leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, the degenerate "Rev." Al Sharpton, the race-baiting former Attorney General Eric Holder and the founders of Black Lives Matter. 
I wonder who certifies these people? I hope it's not the folks who "certify" pre-owned Toyotas, because they do an indifferent job at best. If we're lucky it's the same guy who ensures that Hebrew National Bun Length Beef Franks are made under strict rabbinical supervision, because that dude knows his stuff.
This week, all were served by same-day process servers with their pre-Christmas gift (of course, Farrakhan and Obama and many of their comrades celebrate Ramadan), a class-action complaint I filed as lead plaintiff in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where the Dallas police massacre recently was perpetrated.
Little trivia: Same-day process servers deliver complaints produced through One Hour Martinizing.
The class-action complaint, which alleges that these defendants incited, provoked and/or engaged in the violence that has resulted in many police and law enforcement killings, can be viewed at FreedomWatchUSA.org. 
You might as well go look at it. It's not like any of the intended recipients are ever going to see it.
It is at best amusing that Sharpton, the charlatan that he is, actually ran from the process server. 
Because charlatans have a well-known bias against cardio-vascular conditioning.
As I stated in this Daily Caller article, it is also ironic at best that big mouth and MSNBC commentator Sharpton, the Muslim King Obama's right-hand man when it comes to race-baiting and hating, someone who has a "seasons pass" to the White House, did not have the courage to willingly accept the complaint. 
Yeah! That's like when some bitch at a bar cold-shoulders your offer of free herpes.
Apparently, a court of law is not where the so-called Rev. Al feels at home. 
Well, I don't really blame him. The judge usually hogs the Tivo remote, and the bailiff drank all my Tahitian Treat.
Home for this sleaze ball is a good riot pitting blacks against whites and any others he can use as a foil to jingle the change for his racist organization and himself. He is a coward, plain and simple.
I don't know what Sharpton is so scared of. It's not like words such as "sleaze ball" or "riot" or "racist" or "coward" are in the complaint itself. Those words usually appear only in Larry's annual Christmas card.
But along with the Wicked Witch herself, which I continue to pursue in court concerning her private email server and related history of racketeering scandals, Obama, Sharpton, Farrakhan, Holder and Black Lives Matter will now be called before the bar of justice. 
Since there's zero chance any of these people, let alone the President, will ever be dragged into a court on Larry's say-so, I can only assume that Rocky Horror Picture Show star Victoria Justice has opened a saloon.
Let them appear in front of a federal judge in Dallas
Hell, let them appear in the TV show Dallas; that's actually more likely to happen. And why is Larry filing this lawsuit in Texas when he lives in Florida? That smacks of a shyster stacking the deck in defense of a feeble case, and it can't be that.

Anyway, let's fill a syringe with penicillin while the rest of Larry's periodic verbal discharge dribbles off his lips:
just as they appear in front of their racist supporters who are now in the process of irreparably dividing the races and wreaking death and destruction to not just law enforcement authorities, but others as well, including their own creed in the inner cities.
Just imagine listening to that closing statement from the jury box. It's like the rhetorical equivalent of what you'd get if George Wallace and William Jennings Bryan conceived a lovechild during a Perry Mason rerun.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Keith Presents: Putin On Airs


Vladimir Putin and Donald J. Trump experience a tiff over early tee-off times at The Donald's Aberdeenshire golf course.

"Mr. Trump, this confusion is obviously the fault of my advance people. Just so we're friends, would you please join me for dinner in London in a few days? I promise there will be no press or paparazzi."

Two days later The Donald arrives as scheduled and is met by President Putin.

The waiter arrives. "What will President Putin be having this evening?"

"I'll have the Cornish mackerel tartar, please."

"And sir, the vegetable?"

"He'll have the same."

Monday, July 25, 2016

Witless For The Prosecution

Or: Not Nobody, Not No-How: Johnny Nobody (1961)

By Hank Parmer


So did you hear the one about James Ronald Mulcahy, famous Irish-American author and outspoken atheist with a death wish, currently residing in the mother country? How one fine day, after receiving a telegram from his publisher informing him his latest book has been banned for indecency, he takes a stroll with the postman down to the picturesque village pub and picks a fight with the locals? (Over religion, naturally.)

Ejected from the pub, he challenges the outraged villagers to two falls out of three over the existence of God.

A riot is narrowly averted when the parish priest, Father Carey, arrives on the scene and persuades his flock to cool it.

His plan to get himself pummeled into a bloody rag having thus far failed, the author vows to insult the Deity on His own front step. He marches up to the church with a furious crowd trailing close behind.

Standing before the gate, he glares up at the heavens and defies the Big Guy upstairs to do something about it. Right on cue, a man guns him down.

When asked, the disoriented-appearing stranger claims he doesn't know who he is or how he got there with a pistol in his hand. A voice in his head told him to destroy this man, so he did. (I suppose if that voice in his head told him to jump off a cliff, he'd do that, too!)

So they call him -- "Johnny Nobody".

What then, you may ask, is the punchline? Actually, the joke's on the viewer, because there's still an hour-and-change left to go in this gobbler.

If you're incurably geeky about classic cinema, and especially film noir, you can understand why my interest was piqued when I came upon this reputed example of the genre, courtesy of our friends from across the Big Pond. Mostly because I'd never heard of it, but also because it starred William Bendix (as the author with the mercifully short part) and Aldo Ray as the title character, who as it turns out doesn't get all that many lines, either. Neither of these actors is a household name now, except to movie nerds, but their presence in some notable noir films and crime thrillers of the 1940s and '50s convinced me to give this one a look. Plus, as typically happens in these British B-movies, there were solid supporting actors in the cast like Cyril Cusack and Niall MacGinnis.

In fact, Johnny Nobody was released right after Ray starred in the nifty little British caper flick The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. So at first glance it didn't appear wholly implausible this one might at least be mildly entertaining. And it got a high rating on IMDB. (More on that, later.)

It was certainly informative. For one thing, it seems that in the Auld Sod, if you shoot an atheist while he's daring God to smite that chip off his shoulder, and then claim you don't know who you are, the police won't put much effort into checking your story. Oh, you'll still be charged with murder, however, on the bright side, your lawyer can utilize a little-known yet apparently highly effective surprise defense. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

Father Carey (played by Nigel Patrick, another well-known -- for his time, anyway -- British character actor and occasional lead, who also occupies the director's chair for this one) visits Johnny in jail. Johnny sticks to his story of amnesia and a disembodied voice. In an odd echo of a character Ray played in a far better film -- Jacques Tourneur's Nightfall -- he's been sketching to while away the time before his trial. Carey is intrigued by one quite professional drawing: a stylized depiction of St. George slaying the dragon. Johnny says he has no idea what it means, but he feels it's important.

Before he leaves, the father hands Johnny a bundle of fan mail, and lets him know that people all over the country are donating money to pay for his defense. It's the Christian thing to do.

Comes the day of the trial at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin. Father Carey is called to the witness stand. After the father identifies Johnny Nobody as the man who shot Mulcahy, Johnny's counsel (Niall MacGinnis -- who appears painfully aware of what a consummate load of codswallop the script's about to call on him to deliver) astounds the court when he bases his defense solely on Carey's opinion as a learned priest and therefore an expert on whether the murder Johnny indisputably committed was an actual act of God.

The impeccable legal logic he lays out here is worth noting: You see, since witnesses must swear on the Bible before testifying, that means everything in it must be the literal truth. Citing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the pillar-of-salt number the Lord did on Lot's wife as precedent, his counsel asserts Johnny is clearly innocent, because he was only the instrument of divine vengeance against a blasphemer.

And of course no one bothers to point out that neither of these examples of Jehovah's wrath was executed by a mortal, utilizing something as decidedly non-supernatural as a semi-automatic pistol. Or that giving people a free pass to plug someone because a voice from Above told them to might set a worrisome precedent.

The judge, although rightly skeptical, goes along with the gag and adjourns the court, giving himself and Father Carey a couple of days to ponder if the priest's truly qualified to settle the knotty question of whether God's now employing amnesiac torpedoes. Outside the courthouse, the mysterious brunette we met briefly during the trial scene (Yvonne Mitchell) introduces herself to Father Carey as a journalist and says she'd like to come down and give the parish a look. When called on it, she admits she's angling for an interview and apologizes, but surely the father can't blame her for wanting to scoop the competition.

They part ways, and Father Carey, deeply conflicted, returns to the seminary for some advice. He runs into his old friend, Brother Timothy (Noel Purcell, another instantly recognizable character actor from the British B's, though he's perhaps best known as the ship's carpenter from John Huston's film of Moby Dick) as the brother extricates himself from underneath a pile of sweaty young boys. Okay, he's refereeing a soccer game, but he seems like he's enjoying this a bit too much ....

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Happy Birthday, HeyDave! I Bring You the Gift of FIRE!

Today's the natal anniversary of longtime Crapper, rugged Plainsman, and rough-hewn son of the Chicago railroad yards, Heydave (insert Walt Whitmanesque yawp here). In remembrance of the moment he emerged, squalling and gooey from his mother's loins, or Zeus's forehead, or wherever -- I don't have every petty little detail of his birth at my fingertips, although I stand by the gooey part -- Southern California has turned into an unsafe and insane firework -- possibly a Glowworm, or perhaps a Smokey Joe. Anyway, we're aflame, and ashes are falling from the sky, so after you wish HD a very happy birthday, full of fun gifts, tasty cake, and perhaps an adult libation or two, you might want to run to your local church and repent. But hurry, because ours is already swathed in brimstone...

If I didn't know there was a fire burning, I'd think this was a bad optical effect from a mid-80s horror film.

The ash was thick in the air and we were advised to stay indoors, but I wanted to photograph this phenomenon for pretty much for the same reason people in small towns used to follow the fire brigade and watch their neighbor's house burn: because TV hadn't been invented yet, and even when it had, your wife was monopolizing it to watch Bones reruns on TNT.


So I wandered around with my phone, and not only got a few decent shots, I think I also gave myself Black Lung.

It occurred to me that these crispy, desiccated, century-old palm trees were just waiting for a spark to come along and turn them into blazing tiki torches, so I went to buy rum, just in case.

In Fig. 4 above, you can see exactly where blue skies met brown, in what would have surely proved to be a very confusing sight for Irving Berlin.

I bet people living in those upper apartments felt like they could almost reach out and touch the Apocalypse! Lucky ducks...

Eventually, Hollywood was entirely covered with a ceiling of smoke and ash, which was terrifying, but more scenic than that acoustical cottage cheese stuff we've got in the bedroom;
And sure, that was bad enough, but then there was the whole question of what do we do about...

Blood on the Sun! (As the ancient Native American fetus shamans tell us, a Blood Sun foretells famine, earthquake, or a new Adam Sandler movie on Netflix.)

[Note: I started this post yesterday, while the End of the World was still in progress, but apparently the wind shifted during the night, or Idris Elba succeeded in canceling the Apocalypse, because today it's nuthin' but blue skies.]

Anyway, here's hoping Heydave has a wonderful birthday, and that his local cornfields are not currently ablaze. I like to customize the Sexy Birthday Lizards, but there don't appear to be a whole lot of four-legged reptiles indigenous to Iowa. However, a Northern Prairie Skink has agreed to pose for Dave's party, so long as doing so does not require it to stop tasting the photographer:
And for the traditional glamour shot, here's vintage Hollywood doll Gloria Saunders doing a thing that it seems like you might do in Iowa if nobody was looking, although probably not in those shoes:

Happy birthday, Dave!

Friday, July 22, 2016

Happy Birthday, Preznit! I Got You New Fetus-In-A-Cyst!

Today is the natal anniversary of a man who goes by many names and at least one face on social media, but who is best known around these parts as Preznit, aka preznit giv me turkee. Wizened and wise, Preznit has been injecting high pressure wit into our comments since the early part of the century, so we wanted to get him something that was equally antique, and finally settled on a movie about a magical pimple on Lee Strasberg's daughter. Enjoy!


The Manitou (1978)
Director: William Girdler
Writers: Graham Masterton (novel), William Girdler and Jon Cedar & Thomas Pope (screenplay)

Two doctors contemplate X-rays of a fetus growing on the back of Susan Strasburg's neck. One of the physicians is played by Paul Mantee (Robinson Crusoe on Mars) which is neither here nor there, I just love that Mantee is in The Manitou, because it makes the whole thing sound less like body horror and more like a Dr. Seuss book). They make Susan partially strip in the waiting room so they can poke at her weird tumor in public, then sneak off to a private office where they conspire to give her neck an abortion.

Cut to San Francisco, where Tony Curtis and his psychic mustache are giving a Tarot card reading to a horny dowager. As soon as he hustles her out the door, he peels off his mustache, pours a can of Schlitz into a wine glass, and disco dances around his apartment to the theme from "S.W.A.T." I like this guy already.

Tony gets a call from ex-girlfriend Susan, who wants to talk about her pregnant neck. They stroll around a park, take a series of cable car rides, watch a man smash crab legs with a mallet, and ultimately find their love rekindled by Susan's abscess. Cut to Tony's apartment, where he and Susan are wearing bathrobes, which implies that they've just had sex, or a bath. They drink wine and Tony playfully reads the Tarot cards, but he's unsettled to discover that no matter how many times he reshuffles or deals them, they always predict the same thing: a bad movie.

The next day, the Doctor who's not Paul Mantee (played by co-writer Jon Cedar) tries to abort the neck baby, but Susan starts muttering some occult gibberish in her sleep, which makes Dr. Screenwriter try to amputate his own hand. (This movie was popular with the anti-abortion movement, although Operation Rescue activists were disappointed to discover that shouting Dungeons & Dragons spells at a Planned Parenthood clinic didn't actually make the staff self-mutilate.)

Another wealthy widow comes to Tony's for a reading, but before she even has time to get aroused by his mustache, the Manitou makes her shout the same incantation (which sounds like "Banana! Witchy! Coelacanth!"). The spirit possesses her body, making the elderly woman levitate and float  through Tony's Victorian apartment house, which is eerie and haunting until the Manitou slips and falls down the stairs.

Tony goes to the hospital to ask the sweaty, bed-ridden Susan who or what is sending these messages from the mystical realm, and could they stop tripping his clients? But she just grabs her neck and utters a piercing shriek, which is also what I tend to do when I first get out of bed in the morning.

In desperation, Tony goes to Stella Stevens, hoping she'll make for a less irritating love interest, but everyone gets distracted by her curly brunette wig and weird brownface make-up, wondering if it's supposed to be some kind of Gypsy drag, or if Stella pulled a Sean Young at the audition for The Lena Horne Story.

Stella suggests they abort the neck baby with a seance, so Gypsy it is, I guess. She and Tony gather around a table with Ann Sothern, who had a respectable career in Golden Age Hollywood that included many classic films, but who I choose to remember as the voice of Jerry Van Dykes' 1928 Porter in My Mother The Car because I can be a dick that way.

Stella cold calls the spirit world, and Ann starts muttering about Bananas and Coelacanths while an oil-soaked Indian head bubbles up out of the dinette set. The window shatters, Mom yells at them to stop playing with evil spirits in the house, so Tony and Stella drive out to Sausalito to visit Dr. Burgess Meredith, who is an anthropologist with a Ph.D in Exposition.

Dr. Meredith explains that Susan has a 400-year old Indian medicine man gestating on her neck, so they'll need another shaman to remove it. Not to mention a styptic pencil. Unfortunately, Tony's HMO considers aboriginal neck abortions to be cosmetic, and won't cover it without a referral.

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, Dr. Screenwriter tries to remove the Manitumor with an "optical laser", which I assumed was one of those LASIK devices, but no, it's apparently Blofeld's death ray from Diamonds Are Forever, because the the spirit uses it to demolish the operating room. Dr. Screenwriter surmises that because "we pumped enough X-rays into it to see through Fort Knox" that "we've created a monster." I don't imagine it did Susan a world of good either. So anyway, heed the Doc's safety tip: if you have a magical, reincarnated fetus growing on your back, don't bombard it with radiation until it mutates. And don't pick at it, you'll give yourself a scar.

Tony drives to South Dakota, which is apparently now located in the San Fernando Valley (maybe it had to move to a drier climate for its health), and asks John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara) for help. Singing Rock is a medicine man who knows about the Manitou and how to combat it; in fact, judging by the massive info-dump he takes on the film, he's basically the Neck Fetus Wiki.

Singing Rock and Tony visit Susan, who now has a hump the size and mobility of Marty Feldman's in Young Frankenstein. Michael's plan is to draw a circle around the bed, because evil spirits can master both mind and matter, but they never score well on the Geometry part of the SATs.

Bad news comes when the blemish introduces itself to Singing Rock; it seems Susan's tumor is the greatest medicine man of all time, an ancient shaman who could divert rivers and raise mountains, and he quickly proves his power by preventing Tony's Alka Seltzers from fizzing properly.

Perhaps realizing this wasn't the most chilling display of his mystical prowess, the shaman strips the skin off a male nurse like a peel 'n' eat shrimp. Tony and Singing Rock rush to Susan's room, where a dromedary hump is now poking through her hospital gown. It pops like a zit, and a gooey Native American dwarf wriggles out of her torso while Susan has what sounds like a prolonged and inappropriate orgasm.

If the reborn medicine man gets free of the circle, "absolute devastation" will ensure, so they decide to sit in the waiting room and drink coffee. But the Manitou finds this dull and decides to spice things up by reanimating the flayed orderly, and we get a brief, skinless puppet show. It doesn't really help, but it's less boring than that "Lonely Goat Herd" scene from The Sound of Music.

The Manitou flocks the hospital waiting room and freezes the head nurse in the act of hailing a taxi, or rendering the Nazi salute, or maybe hailing a nazi taxi (a naxi?), then starts a blizzard over by the vending machines. A sudden wind smashes the window and the glass shards decapitate the head nurse, which clearly means a demotion.

Tony fights back against this black magic with office supplies. It doesn't work very well, but I did learn something new: in the 70s, IBM Selectric typewriters contained napalm, judging by the way they'd explode into a massive fireball on contact. I can see why people were eager to make the switch to PCs.

The demon dwarf sends an earthquake, because it's San Francisco, and he believes in fresh, locally sourced, farm to table special effects. Singing Rock says they're beat, but Tony has seen Disney's Pocahontas, and realizes that every object has a spirit -- a manitou of its own -- and if they turn on all the computers at once, maybe they can give the evil spirit a fatal system error.

They go into Susan's room, which has turned into a star field. The dwarf is floating around in space, summoning the the Great Old One, which appears to be a Red Devil sparkler wrapped in decorative cellophane. Singing Rock can't harness the machine spirits because that's "White Man's Medicine," but Susan abruptly sits up in bed, topless, her hair poofy with static electricity, and shoots lasers out of her palms at the orbiting dwarf.

This touches off another explosion, then we see some effects footage leftover from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and then Susan says, "My contract calls for 30 seconds of nudity and that's IT!" So suddenly she's wearing a frumpy hospital gown again, and there's a smoldering pile of shaman on the linoleum.

Cut to the next day. Made for TV music plays as Tony walks Singing Rock to his cab, gives him one of those "Brother" handshakes he's seen in blaxploitation films, and pays him off in Prince Albert (the tobacco, not the penis piercing).

We pull out to a wide shot of the city, where a superimposed legend tells us, "FACT: Tokyo, Japan, 1969. A fifteen-year old boy developed what doctors thought was a tumor in his chest. The larger it grew, the more uncharacteristic it appeared. Eventually, it proved to be a human fetus."

The fetus was arraigned in Superior Court, in and for the County of Los Angeles. In a moment, the results of that trial...
**************************
So there you go. If you notice a large mole, wart, boil, or other growth on your neck, consult your dermatologist, obstetrician, or medicine man.

Now, in keeping with our birthday customs, he's a little sexy Ann Sothern from her studio salad days:

And, of course, no post-natal celebration would be complete without the traditional...
Sexy Birthday Lizard!

Please join me in wishing Preznit a very happy birthday.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Give Impeachment a Chance


Eternal optimist Larry Klayman is back in court, and this time he's suing President Obama for starting a race war without him. Now, filing a lawsuit demanding Obama's impeachment -- especially with a  mere six months remaining in the president's term -- may seem quixotic, but Klayman is determined to see justice done. He is the Javert to the president's Jean Valjean, the Lt. Gerard to his Dr. Richard Kimball, the Elmer Fudd to Obama's Bugs Bunny.
We can't wait 6 months to oust Obama from office 
The United States, Europe and the rest of the world is in violent upheaval. 
This sounds like either a panicky overreaction to current events, or the opening crawl to Red Dawn. Either way, I'm gonna heat up the Orville Redenbacher.
At home, fraudulently elected illegitimate President Barack Hussein Obama, along with his black-Muslim friends like so-called Rev. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, and Black Lives Matter allies, have finally succeeded in igniting a race war.
Is it the "Day of the Rope" already? Crap, I haven't even started my shopping -- I really need to get one of those advent calendars.

Weird, though, that I haven't really noticed a race war. Maybe it's just that I live in a liberal enclave, but whenever I walk outside I see people of all races, creeds, and colors squatting on Hollywood Boulevard to take a snapshot of Loretta Swit's star. Or maybe the constant succession of mass shootings has simply raised my threshold for mayhem, the way freshman year of college raises your tolerance for Pabst Blue Ribbon.
To add insult to very serious injury, President Obama refuses to use his powers as the commander in chief to destroy ISIS and other Muslim terrorists in a decisive way. The reason is obvious, and it's time for people to just start saying it: The "Muslim King" does not want to go hard against his Islamic brothers and frankly, in my view, sympathizes with their quest to have Allah reign supreme to further a worldwide caliphate. 
I'm no lawyer like Larry, but if I were King Salman of Saudi Arabia, I'd sue Obama for infringing on my "Muslim King" brand. Salman probably wouldn't even need to take him to court -- just look at Disney, or Viacom -- all he'd have to do is accuse him of a copyright violation and I bet YouTube would immediately take down all the President's videos.

Meanwhile, given how ISIS is losing territory, manpower, and market share, they can be excused for thinking "with friends like Obama, who needs enemies?" In fact, I sometimes wonder if Obama is actually less like a Muslim King and more like the Lindsay Lohan character in Mean Girls -- only pretending to further a worldwide caliphate, while secretly slipping it fattening snacks and gossiping to his gay friends about its Burn Book.
To add insult to injury, Obama has, through unconstitutional executive orders, opened the floodgates to millions of illegal immigrants who in many states like California can even obtain driver's licenses, allowing them to register to vote.
Yes, but if you look at the number of Americans who turn out to vote, especially in off-year elections, it's clear that ballot-casting is just one of those jobs that Americans don't want to do, so cheap foreign labor is the only solution. I'm not saying it's a perfect system -- there's certainly room for reform -- but if we want someone to vote for Comptroller, State Insurance Commissioner, and Highway Bond B, that means loading up your Ford Ranger with day laborers from the Home Depot parking lot and taking them out to the County Rec Center Multipurpose Room.
Thus, the Muslim King has subverted the electoral process in favor of his creed as the overwhelming majority of illegals will vote Democrat, that is, for the Wicked Witch of the Left, Hillary Clinton, in November's presidential election.
I'm pretty sure this sentence is what you'd get if L. Frank Baum got hit in the head by a flying spittoon during a tornado and woke up thinking he was Omar Khayyam. Which is fine with me; I wouldn't mind reading The Wonderful Vizier of Oz.
And, they will also vote for leftist Democrats and others for Congress. This will further the will of the Muslim King after his term ends – assuming he does not declare a state of emergency over the crises he has created and attempt to remain in power.
Sadly, this is how the two-party system works. No matter how superior your product is, there are always going to be people who vote for Brand X, even though yours has been conclusively proven to produce whiter whites.
The last seven and one half years have also seen a never-ending spate of scandals in and around the Obama administration, ranging from Fast and Furious-gate, to IRS-gate, to Benghazi-gate, and now the cover-up of the crimes committed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her private email server.
Wow. Seven years, one public crime spree after another, and you still can't catch her. I guess Hillary is to you as Osama bin Laden was to George W. Bush. Or maybe this is just the downside of pitching your wares at a largely geriatric audience; before you can explain to Grandma and Uncle Bob why Clinton's email server constitutes a crime, you first have to explain what email is. And by the time you're done with that, they're ready for a nap, or Jeopardy! is on.
 In this regard, it has been disclosed that Obama himself received highly classified emails from the Wicked Witch of the Left on her unprotected private email server, which was then easily hacked by the nation's enemies, Russia and China in particular. Obama is thus complicit in this breach of American national security
Wait, so just receiving an email now makes you responsible for its contents? Crap! I just looked at my spam folder, and I guess I owe you guys an apology for my promotional claims about penis enlargement pills -- turns out they don't turn a trouser snake into a pants python.
notwithstanding the other traitorous acts he has committed – including but not limited to the sham nuclear treaty with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which existentially endangers with another Holocaust not just Israel but the United States and the rest of the non-Muslim Western world.
Larry's rehearsing a lot of well-worn tropes here, but I did learn one new thing: Muslims are immune to radioactive fallout! Which is both interesting and helpful to know, since if Trump is elected, I now plan to convert.
Clearly, if there ever were a case for impeachment and conviction of a president, the Muslim King has exceeded "all expectations." 
Ah. Apparently we walked in on Larry giving Obama his quarterly employee review. Sounds like it's going pretty well, too.
By Obama's criminally minded standards, President Richard Nixon's Watergate caper was, in the commander in chief's own ironic words, simply a junior varsity effort at corruption.
These may in fact be Obama's most ironic words, since ironically he never said them.
The Hussein Obama is simply the most compromised, corrupt and evil president in American history. 
So give the guy a little credit! He's holding his own against some very impressive competition. Also, from now on I'd like to be known as The Hussein Clevenger.
The Founding Fathers and framers of our Constitution were inspired by God, but they were not God. 
Well, there goes my plan to gain immortality by sacrificing one of the cats to Button Gwinnett. Guess I'll go see what's on TV...
The likes of the Adams, Jefferson and Franklin were not infallible, however great they were. Unfortunately, they did not devise a viable constitutional method to remove from office a corrupt, criminal, traitorous and destructive president like the Muslim King.
I.e., they did not make it easy for litigious gadflies like Larry Klayman to sneak up on the government  whenever the whim struck and tip it over like a sleeping cow.
Indeed, the Muslim King, in my view, is far worse and more dangerous that another king, King George III, who provoked the Declaration of Independence and the first American Revolution in and around 1776.
In Obama's favor, he hasn't provoked a musical as bad as 1776. (Sorry, Broadway nerds. It's got a clever book by Peter Stone, but that Sherman Edwards score is a symphony for chalkboard and migraine.)
[With] the subversion of our ability to have fair presidential and congressional elections given that millions of illegal aliens are capable of fraudulently voting, what would our Founding Fathers do today differently than in 1776?
I'm guessing they'd actually do the same thing they did back then: limit the franchise to property-owning white men, write some grandiloquent paean to freedom and self-determination, then go have non-consensual sex with a slave.
So, I pose this question: 
"Why doesn't anybody love me? Is it that I look too much like Ed Begley, Jr. Is it that I don't look enough like Ed Begley, Jr.? Tell me, I can change! Well...no, actually I can't. I just realized I've been writing this same column since January 20, 2009."
How can the Muslim King be legally removed from office before he does even more irreparable damage in the next six months of his presidency?
Forceps? Stump-puller? I suppose we could ask Congress to intervene, like it suggests in the Constitution, but six months doesn't give them a lot of time to act, since they'll be on vacation for five of them.
I do not think that We the People can just sit back and hope for the best, particularly in light of the heinous terrorist attacks of the last weeks, the latest in Nice, France, and the race war Obama and his friends have caused to explode in Dallas and around the nation. Our lives and the lives of our loved ones are in mortal danger!
Or maybe we're not in mortal danger, you're just in a tizzy. But if you're right, Larry, and I'm reading your analysis correctly, then we're in the middle of a race war, white genocide is imminent, and the only way to save ourselves and our families is by filing a nuisance lawsuit. I'll be honest, The Turner Diaries was a lot zippier.

Anyway, good luck with that. I'd love to help, but my local Race War Draft Board has declared me 4-F, because as a child I was exposed to jazz (it was only smooth jazz, but according to CDC guidelines I'm still not allowed to donate blood).

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Love in the Time of Slime


The new Slumgullion has dropped (so watch where you step) and this week the Unknown Movie Challenge features a film currently in theaters, so we've assembled a whole panel of smart, funny people who run the gamut from young to old, dewy to dour, penile to vaginal.

First up is a chat about what's going on in the world of low-to-middlebrow entertainment -- what Jeff likes to call our "Pop Culture Pilates Class" -- then we read some listener mail (including a love letter from World O' Crap scribe Hank Parmer to movie heartthrob John Saxon), and finally, a spoiler-filled discussion of Ghostbusters, both old and new, which leads to a startling realization. So step right up and get your childhood ruined for free!


Click here to listen: The Slumgullion Episode 12 “We Liked it! Hey, Mikey!

You can also download our show from iTunes (it can be found under the name "Very Amateurish Productions", because boy are we ever.)

And if you haven't had a chance yet, please click here to check out our Adopt-A-Minx program.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Random Scenes of Hollywood

You know what? I'm gonna go ahead and just guess this place is a strip club.

THERAPIST: When did you first begin experiencing these feelings of inadequacy?

Bah, kids today! Too busy with their Internet porn and their Pokemon Go to risk death by illegally climbing their neighborhood air raid siren, with its conveniently placed, if rusty and dangerous, handholds. In my day, this thing would have been warning of us approaching Commies and reducing the surplus population at John Greenleaf Whittier Elementary!

Southern California is always beautiful, but never more so than when our inexcusably phallic vegetation is in full bloom.

All right, let's get away from all the penile imagery, and look at a window in a doorway, which is like two vaginal symbols for the price of one! A much better value than your national Georgia O'Keefe brand. "Tourists, determined to experience all that Hollywood has to offer -- primarily disappointment and heat stroke -- file inside to take a tour of the historic Chinese Theater."

This is an installation I call "Eagle and Penumbra: The Eclipse of the American Experiment" or "Sunset on Department of Water and Power Pumping Station No. 12."

Thursday, July 14, 2016

I Have Only One Thing to Say...

...about Trump's selection of Mike ("Choirboy") Pence as his running mate:
Doghouse Riley! Thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Adopt a Minx!

So there's this thing I've never heard of called "Stiff Man Syndrome". I don't know what it is, but like everything else in my life it immediately became a source of anxiety and made me wonder, if not actually worry, whether I'm Man enough or Stiff enough. And "Syndrome" reminds me of "Thunderdome", so now I'm thinking it's one of those things were Two Stiff Men Go In, One Stiff Man Comes Out, and I'll probably be the jerk left behind for the Zamboni driver to sweep up. Assuming Thunderdome death-matches are held on ice, which I assume they are, because the cold would explain the stiffness.

However, if you're not a man, but you're still stiff -- I mean chronically, catastrophically stiff, like, just had a staring contest with Medusa stiff -- then you may have the rare neurological disease that is now known as "Stiff Person's Syndrome", because Feminism, or maybe just because everyone expects doctors to be able to sex their patients at a glance, like that guy at the chicken hatchery who peeps at bird vents and separates the pullets from the cockerels. I dunno...Maybe I'm expecting a lot, but as I always say -- and you can check the record on this; Snopes will back me up that I always say this, often two or three times on a first date -- that if a guy with a G.E.D. and a history of alcohol abuse can suss out poultry sex organs with a 90% success rate, than I can expect no less from my neurologist.

So anyway, it's a neuter disease now, stiffening men and women with equal disdain for pronouns. And yet, I think everyone who has Stiff Person's Syndrome will agree -- it's a bitch. (Take that, SJWs!) On of those people is our own The Minx.

If you've been hanging around these parts for any length of time you probably know The Minx, who shares a birthday with our own Bill S., and is owned by distinguished cat about town, ZoeLuna:
Please leave me out of this.

Before we go any further, I'm must first take a step that is anathema to me, yet unavoidable: I'm about to doxx the crap out of The Minx. I'm sorry, but ethics in gaming journalism demand it. Her real name is Nadine! (Attention: Whoever had "Nadine" in the office pool, please see Jesse in Accounts Payable, she has your free box of Zone Bars.)

Nadine is a deeply fine person, kind to humans and animals, a reference librarian who was forced to retire because libraries are biased against Stiff People and prefer employees who can make a fist. And she's facing a round of expensive treatment and could really use some assistance and a bed that isn't acting as an Airbnb for her roommate's bedbugs. Mary and I gave what we could, but we're both unemployed right now, so it was a minuscule amount (on the bright side, our donation did conclusively prove that the ha'penny is still considered legal tender).

Here's a brief newspaper article about Nadine, SPS, Life, the Universe and Everything.


After you give that a peek, please visit her Go Fund Me -- One in a Million Nadine -- and help if you can.

Thanks!

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Post-Friday Beast Blogging: The Chuck Tingle Edition

SHADOW:  I've decided...Being near his butt is not enough. Snuggling it; using it as a pillow; tidying it up with my tongue...None of this truly captures the power and majesty of which his butt is endowed...

SHADOW: I am resolved to eat his butt, the way primitive warriors consumed the still-beating hearts of their fallen foes!
MOONDOGGIE: Don't eat my butt!

SHADOW: I must!
MOONDOGGIE: It's wasteful! You can't eat your butt and have it too. Isn't there some more sustainable way you can harvest butts? (PAUSE) Have you tried one of those vegan butts? I hear they're not bad...
SHADOW: The fur never tastes right.
MOONDOGGIE: I think they make it out of corn silk...

SCOTT: Shadow, do not eat his butt!
SHADOW: Hmmm...I can see I need to reduce the influence of negative people and naysayers in my life...Mute!
SCOTT: You can't just--
SHADOW: Unfriend!
SCOTT: That only works on social media--
SHADOW: Delete your account!

SCOTT: I said, do NOT eat his--
SHADOW: I'm not eating his butt! I'm eating toward his butt...

SHADOW: Fine. Fine! We'll just hold hands. Is that kumbaya enough for you Mr. Butt Justice Warrior? Hmph!


Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Movies So Bad Even Shatner Helps

The new Slumgullion is out, and we really screwed ourselves with this one. Oh did we screw ourselves. We screwed ourselves harder than the title character in Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Penis For a Corkscrew. We screwed ourselves more frenetically than two competitive depressives attempting to be the first person to commit suicide by Makita.

In other words, the whole thing goes horribly, horribly wrong, and it's all our fault.

Why? How? It all started innocently enough...Jeff and I had both seen cinematic acid reflux Independence Day: Resurgence and slow motion bikini wax The Neon Demon and decided to chat about them at the top of the show, because that's everyone's dream double feature. Right?
Right?

It goes about as well as you'd expect.

Actually...no. It goes worse than you'd expect. Much worse, because we manage to destroy the entire podcast timeline, and can only restore it with an elaborate flashback sequence that I hoped would feature a cameo appearance by The Flash but apparently he was booked. Still, there's a nice harp glissando.

Then it's time for the Unknown Movie Challenge, and this episode we decided to take on two moldy cheese wedges from the Eighties:
A John Sayles written, Roger Corman ghost-directed rip-off of the Seven Samurai rip-off Magnificent Seven -- that should be fun, right? But wait! What if we paired that with a beloved comic book from the 1970s, the creative vision of post-Star Wars but pre-Prequels George Lucas, and the first big screen appearance of a used duck condom?

Here's where our little rocket sled really goes off the rails, and if you have even an ounce of schadenfreude and sadism in your soul, you'll enjoy watching us spin like a Blooming Ground Flower across the Bonneville Salt Flats. So please give it a listen:

The Slumgullion Episode 11 “Da Sweet Blood of Shatner”

UPDATE: Speaking of audio entertainment...Our friend, film writer Jim Donahue guested on As If, which has one of the most -- shall we say "unique"? -- podcasting formats I've ever heard (let me just steal the description of it from his blog):
I'm appearing in five episodes of the As If podcast--a minute-by-minute look at Clueless, Amy Heckerling's 1995 updated, comedic take on Jane Austen's Emma. (In addition to that link, by the way, the show is also available via iTunes.) I'll be a guest for episodes devoted to minutes 53 through 57, and the first of our episodes went up today--the others go up Tuesday through Friday. If you're wondering if Clueless holds up: Yes, it does, and we had a lot of fun talking about it. Host for the episode is Dan Costa (who has his own podcast, Blockbuster Dropouts) and fellow guest is Wendy Mays (who hosts the Pet Cinematary podcast). (I take it that I'm now the only person on Earth without his own podcast.) So tune in for fun and prizes! (Note: The prize is free entertainment!)

Monday, July 4, 2016

Happy 4th of July!

Ava Gardner gives the British "Up Yours" sign to the Mother Country in honor of July 4th. (Usually this day is so filled with empty gestures that it's nice to see somebody offer a nice, practical, obscene one.)

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