What Are We Laughing At?

I Can See Russia From My House!

I saw Tina Fey do her impression of Sarah Palin on SNL the other night. (I actually caught it on YouTube. It's a cliche nowadays to say, "I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in years," so I won't say it.) The impression has become as popular as the candidate, with some wandering if Fey can come back and be Palin on SNL while continuing to write and star in her own TV show, “30 Rock”.

I have to say that Tina Fey is really funny, and the sketch is great. It’s probably the best thing anybody on SNL has done in quite a while, probably since Will Ferrill’s Bush impression.

My problem is that the best impressions are the ones who generally win elections. Think about it. Dana Carvey’s George Bush probably helped the real Bush win his term in the Oval Office. You might be able to say the same thing for Phil Hartmann as Bubba Clinton. Then there is Ferrill as Dubya, and now we have Fey as Palin.

I won’t say that the best impressions help the candidates. Dan Ackroyd did an awesome job as Bob Dole in the fake Republican debate back in ’88 which is the last decent thing he has done. Ackroyd is so good, he makes Carvey’s Bush look like a wimp (much as Dole made Bush look like a wimp in real life), but Dole couldn’t get the nomination that year, and he lost to Bill Clinton four years later. Ackroyd never repeated his impression on SNL again, and the role fell to Norm MacDonald, who pretty much imitated Ackroyd imitating Dole. MacDonald’s impression was nowhere near as good as Phil Hartmann as Bubba. Hartmann was so sleazy, so repellant, it was awesome. The one I remember most clearly was Clinton at Mickey D’s stealing food off people’s plates.

Then there is Ferrill as Dubya. I forget who took over when Ferrill left the show, but he is nowhere near as good. Ferrill specializes in stupid people, so he and Dubya are a perfect match. But did you ever stop to think that maybe Ferrill’s Dubya made the real Dubya possible?

It’s like all of those Ronald Reagan impressions people did in the eighties. It kind of made the guy more charming than he already was. The impressions give a gloss of humor to these people that their actions alone would not merit. We don’t take them seriously, so it’s easy to discount the actual effect of their decisions on our lives.

People have been writing Bush off as a joke for eight years, and look where not taking him seriously has gotten us. Bush may be a smirking buffoon, but he has won every fight in his term of office. The Constitution has been gutted, the Economy has been looted, the infrastructure has been wrecked, and he’s to blame for all of it. But we still laugh. If an idiot has you arrested while stealing your wallet and having you evicted from your home, you can’t really compliment yourself on how much smarter you are. Dubya might not score much higher on an IQ test than Forrest Gump, but he is a member of one of the most powerful families in the U.S. While we have been busy laughing at Ferrill as Dubya (even the nickname makes him more approachable, more friendly seeming) George Bush has been destroying this country.

So now I worry that because SNL has us laughing at Sarah Palin, that might make it less scary to actually vote for her. Laughing at things has a way of shrinking them down to size. It’s part of how we deal with our problems, but is there really anything about George W. Bush and Sarah Palin that we should be laughing about?

How is it funny that we are almost twenty trillion dollars in debt? Is it funny that our economy is collapsing like a cheap tent? Is it funny that three thousand people in Louisiana drowned? Isn't it hilarious that we're paying four dollars a gallon for gas? You could die laughing when you think that more American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan than died in nine years at Viet Nam (I'm quoting from an article in Atlantic Monthly here). It's a real rib tickler when our bridges collapse and our road ways just fall apart from under us. While we have been laughing, this country has regressed to where it's almost a fuedal state.

Maybe the real question we should be wondering about is not whether Tina Fey can find the time in her busy schedule to impersonate Sarah Palin again. Maybe the real question we need to ask is how long can we afford to be laughing this hard?

FUNNY BOOK PHYSICS

FUNNY BOOK PHYSICS

In the real world, exposure to massive doses of radiation or consumption of experimental chemical compounds can be a painful, if not a fatal experience. In comic book land, it can be an empowering moment in one’s life. However even in the wild and woolly and not altogether coherent world of funny book physics there are still hard and fast rules which guide all comic book transformations. So let’s put on our unstable molecules and take a look with our Phantom Zone viewer.

1. If you are the star of a book, no matter how much radiation you absorb, how many experimental solutions you drink, or how many times you get zapped by wizards at the Rock of Eternity, you will always revert to the image that is used on the cover to sell the comic.
2. Conversely, if you are the star of a title, and your transformed image is used to sell the book, you will never permanently revert to normal.
3. If you have either been bitten by, had a blood transfusion from, or been raised from infancy by an animal or extraterrestrial being, you will gain that creature’s special abilities. It doesn’t need to be radioactive, either.
4. If you have been disfigured by a criminal, have cosmetic surgery to restore your original appearance, and then have any kind of accident, your features will revert to exactly how they were after the first incident.
5. If you are on fire, find the nearest swamp and jump in the water. You will then become an unstoppable bog monster. A bio-restorative formula is not necessary.
6. If you are killed by a criminal and are either very popular or speak to God nicely, you will return to earth with awesome cool superpowers.
7. If you are an arrogant scientist boldly seeking the answers to questions which man was not meant to know, you will be turned into a monster. Unless you are killed by the monster you have accidentally created, at which point you will turn into a monster.
8. Transformed women are usually hotter than they were before their transformation.
9. If women are hot and evil, when they are transformed, they will be revealed as old and ugly.
10. When beloved sidekicks die, they always come back as villains.
11. No one ever builds indestructible killing machines with off switches.
12. Men who gain powers can always control them, women who gain powers can’t.
13. Gorillas never shrink. They always become giants.
14. Any woman who gains powers always loses her clothes in the process.
15. Massive power over the entire space time continuum is always best controlled by ordinary guys.
16. Every non-powered character in a comic book will get super powers at least once.
17. If your superhero wife starts dressing slutty, not only is she having an affair, but her lover is plotting to take over the world.
18. Anyone who becomes smarter will always turn evil.
19. Anyone who becomes stronger but either retains their normal intelligence or drops a few points on their intelligence quotient will always be good.
20. If you are transformed but do not receive superpowers or become a villain, you will die.

Alternate Reality Dukes of Hazzard

The formula: Three cousins raised by their cantankerous uncle fight for
justice against the corrupt local crime lord and his policemen minions. Add
two unknown leading men, one sexy girl in a skimpy outfit, veteran character
actors in all the other roles, and a slumming star from another medium as
the Narrator.

The Dukes of Hoboken
Bobo and Luka Dukowski are cousins from the docks on parole for loan
sharking, a proud family tradition that's just a little bit more than the
law will allow. Cousin Daisy works as a topless waitress in a dive owned by
local crime boss, Boss Hoggawicz (George Dzunda), their mortal nemesis. The
father figure in their life is Uncle Jessie (George Carlin) and they are
always under the watchful eye of police Sgt. Roscoe P. Coltrowski (Wayne
Knight). With the help of their loyal ally handyman/snitch Virgil "Vag"
Vagnitz (Elias Koteas), they're fighting the system like two modern day
Robin Hoods.
Their car: Metallic blue 1969 Dodge Charger, with a Jersey Devil logo
painted on roof. Horn plays: "Born to Run".
Daisy's outfit: Hot pants, boots and fur jacket.
Narrator: Bruce Springsteen
"...someday the turnpike might get them, but the law never will..."

The Dukes of Harlem
Bubba and LL LaDuke are cousins from the projects on parole for pimping, a
proud family tradition that's just a little bit more than the law will
allow. Cousin Daisy is a waitress in the soul food restaurant owned by local
crime boss Boss Hogge (Roscoe Lee Browne), their mortal nemesis. Their
mother figure is retired madam Jessie (Della Reese) and they are always
under the watchful eye of Det. Sgt. R.P. Coltrane (John Witherspoon). With
the help of their loyal ally, retired pimp turned building super O.P.P.
(Flava Flav), they're fighting the system like two modern day Robin Hoods.
Car: 1969 Dodge Charger, jet black, with the Pan African Flag painted on the
roof. It also has low profiles and gold rims.
Sound system announces them with "F### the Police."
Daisy's outfit: Daisy Dukes and a gold lame bikini top with 6 inch clogs.
Narrator: Snoop Dogg, of course.
"...someday the ghetto might get them, but the law never will..."


The Dukes of Hell's Kitchen
Bobby and Luke O'Duke are cousins from the mean streets on
parole for taking protection money, a proud family tradition that's just a
little bit more than the law will allow. Their cousin Daisy is a bartender
in the pub owned by local crime boss Boss Hogg (Ed Asner), their mortal
nemesis. Their father figure is Uncle Jess (John Mahoney who is actually
not Irish but Welsh) and they are always under the watchful eye of Det. Sgt.
Roscoe P. Coltrane (Donal Logue). Along with their loyal ally, loud
mouthed, drunken former stand up comic Boyo (Colin Quinn); they're fighting
the system like two modern day Robin Hoods.
Car: 1969 Dodge Charger, green, with the Notre Dame Fightin' Irishman on
the roof. Touchdown Jesus on the dashboard. Unlike the original Gen. Lee, this car has been heavily damaged.
Horn plays: Notre Dame fight song.
Daisy's outfit: Catholic school girl outfit with the shirt tied up to
reveal the belly, pony tails.
Narrator: Eveready.
"...someday the Dagos might get them, but the law never will..."


The Dukes of O'Hare
Bobo and Luka Ducci are cousins from the mean streets of Chicago on parole
for hijacking, a proud family tradition that's just a little bit more than
the law will allow. To put herself through nursing school, cousin Daisy
works as a nude dancer in the bar owned by local crime boss Boss Hoggia
(Danny Devito), their mortal nemesis. Their father figure is Uncle Jessie
(Robert Loggia) and they are always under the watchful eye of Det. Sgt.
Rocco P. Coltrini (Dennis Farina). With the help of loyal ally and pizza
parlor owner "Cooz" (Joe Pesci),they're fighting the system like two modern
day Robin Hoods.
Car: 1969 Dodge Charger, blue, with green fender, and the Italian Tricolor
on the roof.
Horn plays: the theme from the "Godfather".
Daisy's outfit: Glitter, 12 inch heels, clever camera angles.
Narrator: Tony Bennett.
"...someday the Irish might get them but the law never will..."

The Dukes of Hollywood
Bryan and Layne Duke (real nameTerence and Allen Lipschitz) are cousins from
Tinsel Town on parole for trading sex for acting roles, a proud family
tradition that's just a little bit more than the law will allow. Troubled
cousin Daisy (real name Agatha) is a porn star who works for porn overlord Boss Hogg
(Saul Rubinek), their mortal nemesis, who keeps her supplied with drugs.
Their mother figure is "Aunt makes me sound old" Jessie (Joan Rivers), and
they are always under the watchful eye of studio chief of security Rob
Coltrane (Corbin Bernson). Along with their loyal ally, scuzzy unlicensed
plastic surgeon "Puter" (Pauly Shore), they're fighting the system like two
modern day Robin Hoods.
Car: 1969 Dodge Charger, metallic gold flake, with a silver star of David
on the roof. This car is always seen on the ass end of a tow truck, either
broken down or in the process of being repossessed.
Horn plays: "Hava Nagila".
Daisy's outfit: Roller skates, sunglasses, pool water.
Narrator: Liza Minnelli.
"...some day directors won't want them, but the law always will..."

The Dukes of Hyde Park
Beauregard "Bo" and Wynthrop "Lucky" Featheringay are the penniless heirs to
the Dukedom of Hazzard. The dissolute, degenerate cousins from London are on
parole for running an homosexual clique in their public school for profit, a proud
family tradition that's just a little bit more than the law will allow.
Cousin Daisy, named after the doomed heroine in a James Miller novel, is a
page three girl for press magnate Boss Rudolph Klein-Hogge (Robbie
Coltraine), their mortal nemesis, and a foreigner to boot, dash it all.
Their father figure is faithful family retainer Jesper (John Cleese), who
has not been paid in decades, and they are always under the watchful eye of
Chief Inspector R. P. Coltraine (Rowan Atkinson), who envies them their
titles and status. With the assistance of loyal lackey "Winky" (Rik
Mayall),a public school whipping boy turned Internet billionaire, they're
fighting the system like two modern day Robin Hoods.
Car: Royal blue 1969 Aston Martin with a Union Jack on the roof, which they
inherited and have painted as an ironic comment.
Horn plays: "Rule, Britannia."
Daisy's outfit: Daisy Dukes with a Union Jack bikini top, 12 inch heels,
and knee high socks.
Narrator: Keith Richards (with subtitles).
"...they're much too clever for the law to apprehend..."

The Dukes of the Heartland
Coy and Vance Duke are cousins from the mean streets of Speedway, Indiana on
parole for manufacturing meth, a proud family tradition that's just a little
bit more than the law will allow. Cousin Daisy does Internet porn for local
crime boss, Boss Hogg (George Wendt), their mortal nemesis and owner of the
trailer park where they live. The father figure in their life is Uncle
Jesse (Brian Dennehy) and they are always under the watchful eye of police
Sgt. Roscoe P. Coltrane (Jim Nabors). With the aid of their loyal ally,
paint huffing laid off auto worker "Taint" (David Letterman), they're
fighting the system like two modern day Robin Hoods.
Their car: Orange 1969 Dodge Charger, with Dixie on the roof even though
their ancestors fought on the Union side of the Civil War.
Horn plays: "Jack and Diane"
Daisy's outfit: Daisy Dukes, Colts shirt stretched over her huge fake
breasts.
Narrator: John Mellencamp.
"...someday the meth might get them but the law never will..."

That's all I've got. How many Duke Variations can you come up
with?

Bikini Movies, NOT Beach Movies

Bikini Movies, NOT Beach Movies

Let's take a lingering look at two of my favorite of the AIP bikini movies. Why bikini movies rather than beach movies? Well, no one went to see the beach. I'll start with one of most successful, HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI. (The answer? Start with a tame one first. Ha. Ha.)

Some enthusiasts also call them Frankie and Dee Dee movies, because the stars were always known by these names on screen. So why was Frankie Avalon always referred to by his first name, but Annette Funicello was always called Dee Dee? Hmmm, I can think of two good reasons. (Dee Dee = DD or Double D for the people in the back row.)

These movies were ostensibly comedies, with the majority of the laughs coming from one ERIC VON ZIPPER. He was leader of the world's unlikeliest looking biker gang, known alternately as the Malibu Rat Pack and the Rats & Mice club. Von Zipper and the rest of his middle-aged stooges were the bad guys in all of these movies, but were usually more of a nuisance than a real menace.

One of the jokes behind the scenes was that Harvey Lembeck, who played Von Zipper, was around forty five years old and deathly afraid of motorcycles, so the only time he was ever seen sitting on one was for publicity pictures like below. When his character had to ride, it was either rear projection on a stationary bike, done by an obvious stuntman (usually about forty pounds lighter and twenty years younger), or the “Zipper” rode in a sidecar. Can you imagine Sonny Barger of the Hell’s Angels doing that? Man, only a bitch rides in a sidecar.

I remember watching these movies with my brother (who was a biker) and while I would be lost in a haze of prepubescent horniness over the bikini girls, my brother would be bitterly criticizing Lembeck's obvious lack of riding ability.

Harvey Lembeck was really funny, especially because he was so horrendously miscast, (sometimes casting is all about finding the wrong guy for the role). He also had good people in his gang to work with, but that was hardly the point. No matter how good an actor is, he is always going to lose to the girl in the bikini, and whenever we were with the actors, versus the bikini girls, people would start checking their watches.

In many ways, Von Zipper was the precursor of Fonzie from Happy Days. You've got an actor pretending to be a hood, a guy who really doesn't ride that well pretending to be a biker, and he is surrounded by, but not really part of a group of wholesome clean cut kids. Still, the Fonz was a hell of a lot cooler than Von Zipper could ever hope to be. (The Fonz = the VonZ?)

The “Zipper” was in just about every one of these movies, even more than Avalon and Funicello, so you might say, he deserves to be called the star more than they did. But who are we kidding, the two real stars of the bikini movies were Annette Funicello.

Funicello was still under contract with Disney when the first bikini movies were made. At Disney the joke had been that old Uncle Walt had taken her career well in hand. Thanks to Disney's lawyers she didn't wear a bikini for the first two movies, and her character generally spent most of her screen time trying to get everybody else to cover up and behave themselves. But it's like one of my rules of strip clubs, while the naked dancers are on stage, all the guys will be hitting on the fully clothed waitress.

In many ways, Funicello blazed the trail followed by the likes of the Olsen twins, Britney Spears, and Alyssa Milano. She started out as a child star, and when she started developing, she became the focus of an intense erotic fascination. A lot of teenagers, and a lot of dirty old men too, who had noticed how cute she was on the Mickey Mouse Club, wanted to know in the worst possible way what she looked like without the mouse ears and the sweatshirt.

Annette’s bikini scene became a big event. She wore more clothes than most of the women and a lot of the men in the cast. The producers were coy, keeping Annette's assets under wraps, building the audience's anticipation for the big reveal. This was the real climax of the series, and once all of her was out, her career lost steam. There was nowhere else to go. She could have gotten naked, but Funicello, a very devout person, would have refused, and besides, that would have been a stag film. They tried to build a plot line about Dee Dee and Frankie getting married and having kids, but nobody wants to see that in a bikini movie. The answer to the problem was to make the movies about the guys, and Funicello gradually became nothing more than window dressing like the rest of the girls. Although she is the star of Wild Bikini, when Dobie Gillis shows up she is on her way out. By the time of Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine she was gone. Ironically, once she put on that bikini, she was done in bikini movies.

While Annette may have been demure and modest, the rest of the girls were letting it all hang out. Before these movies, the American public had probably never seen so much female flesh at one time on a movie screen. Oh sure, you'd see a lot of leg in a musical number, but this was generally considered extra gravy. The audience was supposed to look beyond the thrill of the exposed limbs to the true beauty of the movements they made (nudge, nudge --- wink, wink).

However, the main point of the frequent production numbers in the bikini movies was never how well the girls danced or how great the choreography was. Nobody was expecting Busby Berkely in Beach Blanket Bingo. Another one of my observations about strip clubs that seems appropriate here is that nobody ever complains that the stripper can't keep a beat.

The movies were stuffed like, well, a bikini, with young starlets in swimsuits from beginning to end. There wasn't any nudity, of course. Generally there wasn't even the suggestion of sex or drugs (you had to go see French movies for that kind of stuff). You could show them at church today. Any children in the audience will just be bored (I know I was, until I hit puberty.) But they are the ancestors to the eighties teen comedies, like Hardbodies and One Crazy Summer where there was plenty of sex, drugs and nudity which helped the audience to get over the lame comedy and awful acting. The genre was ultimately killed by the remote control, which made the comedy scenes superfluous, and only survives now as ironic Yuppie nostalgia like Wet Hot American Summer with Janeane Garofalo. (The sex comedy still survives.)

Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine featured Vincent Price. I remember this fondly. Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman (the star of Dobie Gillis) were paired up to be the Hope and Crosby of the Sixties, I guess. Neither one of them has a chance against Price, and not even Vincent Price can command the screen when there are bikini girls running around. A true classic of American cinematic cheese, there was also a sequel, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. These aren't considered beach movies, because they don't feature Funicello and they don't have beach in the title, but they are very definitely bikini movies. Vincent Price and bikini girls? Now that's entertainment.

A constant in all bikini movies was the presence of a respected actor. Generally someone whose career was maybe fading a bit, someone who had a mortgage payment to make, someone who didn't mind coming to the AIP back lot to ogle some bikini girls from behind their huge Sixties style sunglasses. They usually played a second villain of some sort. Mickey Rooney, Brian Donleavy, and Buster Keaton are all in Wild Bikini. On one hand, you were grateful for these guys for appearing and trying to liven things up, because most of the cast were not chosen for their acting ability. On the other hand, the acting was getting in the way of the girls in the bikinis.

Almost all of these guys seemed like creeps when I was younger. They're still creeps now, but I'm more understanding today. When I go to the beach and find myself surrounded by jiggling female flesh packed into a few slight strips of rayon polyester blend, but these girls are young enough to be my daughters . . . Well, now that I'm older, I can understand better at how the mind of a middle-aged man kind of strips its gears. But there is no getting away from the fact that the guys who made these movies were creeps.

Obviously made by middle-aged men, the point of view they espouse is middle-aged and dirty minded. Only middle aged men and bikini girls populate bikini movies. (Avalon was only twenty six, but the blow dried hair made him seem older). There is no suggestion of a Sexual Revolution going on. All Dee Dee wanted was a cozy little home with Frankie while he ran around and flirted with the other bikini girls. However, if she so much as said 'Hi' to another man, he would go crazy. No one on screen seemed to be enjoying the sexual liberation of the Swingin' Sixties.

Of course bikini movies weren't hip even when they were new. There are no hippies, no authentic bikers or surfers anywhere to be seen. Frankie Avalon even wears a Navy uniform in Wild Bikini. The only people who seemed to be counter culture in any way were Von Zipper and the Rats and Mice Club, and they were the bad guys.

The bikini movies are awful, especially if you are not viewing them through the haze of nostalgia. With the amount of skin available on Internet and cable, there is no reason for the average pervert to watch them. However they are an ingrained memory of mine thanks to growing up in the seventies, when there were three channels and only rich people had remote controls. None of them are over ninety minutes long, so you generally sat there and watched. And, there were girls in bikinis in it.

Today they're probably of more interest to rock and pop fans. Stevie Wonder, Dick Dale and the DelTones, Nancy Sinatra, the Kingsmen, they all appeared in bikini movies, although the rest of the music is mostly prefab dreck.

The real point of these movies were to advertise the music, making them also the ancestors of MTV. Frankie Avalon was one of the Teen Idols of the era, a packaged commodity manufactured by producers in Philadelphia and New York City. He would sing one or two of his new CRAP singles in every movie, which stopped the film dead like those Harpo Marx harp recitals would kill Marx Brothers movies. The only way most men could stay interested is that there were girls in bikinis dancing. They also went out of their way to make fun of British rock bands (Avalon caricatures John Lennon under the name of Potato Bug). Avalon's resentment of the Beatles and the British Invasion makes more sense when you realize that they were driving him and the rest of his prefab brotherhood off the record charts at that time.

Even though they were set and made in California, they were really East Coast kind of movies. I think the chance of seeing the likes of Frankie and Dee Dee and Eric Von Zipper at the beach was much more likely on Long Island than Los Angeles. Even the way they behaved was more East Coast conventional than West Coast hip. Dee Dee sexually blackmailed Frankie into settling down and marrying her, with the implicit understanding that he was going to be fooling around on the side.

Still, I found these movies charming when I was a kid. Nowadays, I don't think I'd like the people in it that much. I don't know if I'm more discerning or just more irritable. The idea of people hanging out at the beach, but never getting their hair wet and never mussing up their makeup kind of creeps me out. But I am obviously thinking too much. Another production number with some dancing bikini girls will help me clear my mind.

What Are You Voting For?

• What Are You Voting For?
  
  It’s a little less than two months until the election. I suspect most of us have already made up our minds who they are voting for. I finally decided last week, and I did it by considering the following things. Even if you have made your choice, it doesn’t hurt to think about these factors before casting your vote.
  
  John McCain is too old. He should have been elected president eight years ago. It was his moment. Today, he is seventy four years old, and he is running for the toughest job on earth. The Oval Office has ruined the health of men almost half his age. No matter how good a shape he is in, he is too old for the job. We wouldn’t let him drive a bus, we wouldn’t let him practice medicine, we wouldn’t let him teach college. But it’s fine to make him president. I honestly don’t think he’ll last two years, and then who do we get? Sarah Palin.
• 
  Voting for John McCain is voting for Sarah Palin. Former chairwoman of a PAC that is currently under federal indictment, a woman who hired a high powered lobbyist and got more government funds for a town of 11,000 than the entire state of Idaho, a politician who got elected on her promise to build the Bridge to Nowhere, then when it was politically expedient, cancelled the project (but never gave back the money). This woman is now running as a political outsider. Don’t worry about her almost complete lack of credentials and any kind of experience. Hey, Alaska’s pretty close to Russia. That makes her an expert on foreign affairs! Where have we heard all of this before?
• 
  Sarah Palin is George W. Bush. George Bush was just as unprepared for the demands of the Oval Office eight years ago as Palin is today. What did we get? Dick Cheney running the country, while Bush stood on an oil drum shouting “Mission Accomplished!” Looking back, it’s clear that the one government official who truly answered the challenge of 9/11 was Rudy Guiliani, while Cheney and Bush cowered in their hidden bunkers. When Katrina came, and we looked to him for leadership, Bush trimmed the brush at his ranch while thousands of Americans drowned in their own sewage. Sarah Palin is George Bush with big hair. She uses the same speechwriters and talks in the same clichés. She’s probably smarter than Bush, but she still answers to the same people Bush does. It’s the people who give Bush his instructions who we really should be worried about.
• 
  George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are slaves. I would have used the word whore, but that’s an insult to hard-working prostitutes, who can at least choose not to do things that are harmful to them. Bush and Palin have no choice but to obey their masters. They are slaves to the oil companies. They are slaves to defense contractors. They are slaves to the banks and mortgage industry. Why didn’t Bush do anything about Katrina? Because it suited the real estate developers. Why are Bush and Palin pushing for drilling on federally protected land when the oil companies already own millions of acres of land with oil in it and don’t drill? Because it gives the oil companies options on incredibly valuable real estate. The interests of these companies come before any other consideration. Do we really need another Bush to be our president in the tough times ahead? Because if you thought the last eight years were awful, wait until you see what happens after the election.
• 
  Tough times are ahead regardless of who is president. The only thing keeping the economy from collapsing are billions of our tax dollars in corporate welfare the Federal Reserve are throwing into the stock and mortgage markets. The stereotypical welfare mothers who have children and don’t work, that’s small change. We’re also giving welfare to the bankers who sell houses to these welfare mothers without asking if they have any income. The resulting defaults are costing us billions upon billions of dollars. And that’s just the beginning. Drive around any community in America and see all of the strip malls that don’t have any renters, all of the empty stores being built while older ones stay vacant. The commercial mortgage market is the next to go. The commercial mortgage market in the US is currently valued at something like twenty times the Gross Domestic Product of the entire earth. It’s being propped up until after the election. It’s a leaking balloon that’s being kept inflated by Ben Bernanke desperately blowing in it while no one is looking.
• 
  John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t care. John McCain supposedly doesn’t know how many houses he owns, is kind of vague about how much money he makes. He’s old, so maybe he’s forgetful, but I think he doesn’t want to answer the question. Sarah Palin is a corporate welfare mother. If we can learn anything about her career so far it’s that she knows how to find money. Regardless of what happens to the rest of us, they’re covered. What do they care if the price of gas goes above four dollars a gallon? They’re not going to be unemployed when the banks start to shut down faster than the FDIC can cover, when companies unable to borrow any more operating capital start putting workers on the street. When given the choice of doing something to save one of their fat cat masters or doing something to help you, what choice do you thing they are going to make?
• 
  Who’s looking out for you? It’s not Bill O’Reilly. It’s not Rush Limbaugh. It’s not Karl “Turdblossom” Rove. In the end it may not be Barack Obama or Joe Biden. But we already gave the others a chance, and this is where they have got us. If the surge has worked so well and we have won in Iraq, why can’t we bring any soldiers home? Why doesn’t anyone mention Afghanistan? All we hear is that everything is working, but just a glance at the headlines will show us that it’s not. We have bridges falling into the Mississippi River, railroad overpasses collapsing on I95 in Philadelphia, every time it rains in New Orleans the remaining locals pray for the levees. This is what has come out of running the government like a business. Considering how poorly most American business is doing today, maybe we need to find another model.
  Voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin is voting for more of the same. They answer to the same corporations and special interests as Bush, they are committed to the same policies as Bush, they don’t represent any kind of break from Bush and Cheney. Voting for them is like re-electing Bush for a third term. Ronald Reagan asked if you were better off after four years of Jimmy Carter. Are you better off after eight years of Bush? Unless you’re a member of the board of directors for Exxon or own stock in Halliburton, you know the answer to that question. We need to start making better choices, because at the rate we’re going, it may be the last choice we get.

And however you vote, make you sure you get to the polls.

Top Ten Laziest People In The World

Top Ten Laziest People In The World

1. The French These infamous cheese eating surrender monkeys invented laziness. The reason the One Hundred Years War went on so long is because they went on vacation before taking care of the paper work. How lazy are French people really? They’re still reserving judgment on this whole Revolution thing. The French have manipulated world history in order to ensure their laziness. Faced with a stagnant economy, a runaway bureaucracy, and massive minority unrest, the intrepid Frenchman takes a month long vacation. The French rule at laziness because they seriously could not give a fuck. Laziness: 10. How they accomplish their laziness: They did it old school. They staged a blood thirsty revolution 200 years ago that almost went completely out of control. When their union boss walks into the plant manager’s office, the boss man is all ears. That revolution was the last time any Frenchman ever gave a shit about anything. Hot Women: 7.
2. The Russians Those old Soviet-era propaganda films that showed healthy young men and women tossing boulders out of their wheat fields? That was the only legitimate effort anyone has gotten out of the Russian people since Ivan the Terrible. Even facing machine guns and imprisonment at one of Papa Joe’s gulags, these hard-bitten slackers fucked up every Five Year Plan Stalin ever had. These people are the master half-assers of all time. Oh they’re a bundle of happy comrades, singing state authored work songs and tossing bales of hay the size of state parks around as long as the guards are watching, but as soon as the eyes of the KGB and GRU are gone, they’re doing some serious dicking around. They’re still going to do something about that Chernobyl thing one day now. Laziness: 8. How they achieved their laziness: By fulfilling every rule and regulation concerning their job without actually doing anything. Hot Women: 8.
3. The English “If you can’t blind them with your brilliance, bury them with your bullshit.” William Shakespeare said that 900 years ago and it’s just as true today. This nation of Poindexters has figured out how to seem brilliant while not knowing a goddamn thing about what they’re talking about. No Englishman has ever read a book all the way through. This is a race of scanners and hi-liters of the most noble of stature. With their affected accents and their smug superiority, they are easy to hate, but a whole lot harder to fire evidently. They have this special relationship with the boss and getting rid of them is impossible. A bright scepter’d isle of barnacles is what they are.
4. The Greeks Still getting ready for the 2004 Olympics.
5. The Italians The Coliseum ought to be finished any day now.
6. The Egyptians We didn’t lose the Seven Day War, we just forgot to show up.
7. The Jews We’ll rebuild that Temple Lord, right after we get back from Lowe’s.
8. Easter Islanders As soon as a white man showed up with some work for them to do, these punks bailed. So busy playing with their statues they couldn’t even be bothered to raise food or reproduce. I’d say more about them, but these guys are the ultimate cube phantoms. We know they work here, but nobody remembers ever seeing them.
9. The Irish Too lazy to speak their own language properly. Oh, they had a lot of potential at first. They showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed every day, busy preserving western culture after the Fall of Rome. But they’ve been phoning it in for two thousand years now. There is a suspicion of substance abuse, and there always seem to be troubles at home.
10. Antarctica These lazy bastards produce nothing, and we’re always bailing their asses out, and I for one am sick about it. These damn Antarcticans are useless.

Chapter Three: Be Mr. Punctuality

Chapter Three

Be Mr. Punctuality

“What?” I hear you shriek. “Get up early in the morning when the sun isn’t up and it’s cold outside and drag my half-dead ass to work on time? You’re crazy. I thought this jive ass blog was supposed to be teaching me how to be lazy. This has been a complete waste of time. Shee-it. I coulda been taking care of my Webkinz.”

Well. Let me start by saying I do not like your tone at all. You don’t give me an attitude like that. You don’t know me. You did a google search on laziness, it’s not like I owe you the Critique of Pure Reason. So you had better get out of my face. I’m trying to help your slacker ass here, so you can either listen or you can just keep talking to yourself. Me, I don’t care.

Now for those of you who came here to pay attention, my most important piece of advice is for you to show up on time for work every day. I understand your reservations on this matter. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t show up for work until a civilized hour, such as four thirty, or quarter to five. That is, if I bothered to show up at all. As of today, I have yet to find a job where they were cool with that. I’ve heard some very encouraging things about France. I have looked into relocation. The problem with that is the French. No matter how little you do, these people can figure out how to do even less. These people invented not doing anything. The French were really active for about four years after the Roman Empire collapsed, and they have been recuperating ever since. The laziest American ever couldn’t hold the average frog’s baguette. There are many things the French may teach us about laziness; you will never beat them on their home court. We must admire them from afar, well out of the range of smell.

No, there is no getting around it, you’re going to have to go to work. That’s the key thing right there, to be seen going to work, not actually doing anything. Show up, every day, bright and early. Be there when the boss unlocks the door (but not before, it makes you look ambitious). Punch that time clock promptly at start time. Be waiting with your lunch box when your boss comes to pick you up.

Section C: The Laws of Laziness

Part C:

The Rules

1. Always Show Up On Time

2. Be The Coffee Guy

3. Customer Service

4. Don’t Be The Boss’s Friend

5. Don’t Be The Go-To-Guy

6. Developing a Serious Health Problem for Fun and Profit Obesity is too limiting. Diabetes is a pain with the diet and the special food.

7. Be One of Those Crazy Church People They know you can’t come in Sunday, because that is the Lord’s Day.

8. Be a Barnacle

9. The Cubicle Lawyer Using the Man’s rules and regulations against him.

10. Injuring Yourself at Work-the Road to Nirvana If you do this right, the only work you’ll ever do is cash your fat disability checks, my friend.

11. Half-Assing Military Style

12. Who Will Look After The Children? Using your little latchkeys to shave hours off of the day.

13. The Phantom of the Workplace If he didn’t draw a paycheck, we wouldn’t even know he worked here.

14. The Joy of Giving How to use your company’s charitable foundation to not do anything.

15. The Old-Timer How has he lasted so long? By boring everybody to tears.

16. Weirdo The boss knows how important Gen Con is to you.

Lesson Two: How to Be Lazy

Chapter Two

William Faulkner once said that work was the one thing, save sleeping, that we could do eight hours or more a day, and so man would always be unhappy. Those might not be his exact words, you can look them up if you want, but that’s not the point. The point is, I’m not going to look it up. I have only a vague idea who William Faulkner was. I’m thinking that maybe he was a writer of some kind, and as a writer, he is automatically an expert on laziness, and should serve as an example to us all. Unless he was something else as well, perhaps he was a doctor or something, and then we should forget him. Unless he was a lawyer, and then we should all be inspired by his legend.

What I’m getting at is that James Faulkner was a famous drunkard and raconteur who hung out in Hollywood for years coasting on his literary reputation. Sometime, in order to be lazy later on in life, you have to do something early on. Then, for the rest of your life you can drink to excess, act insultingly to the wait staff, and go to bed at five in the afternoon. That’s what Bob Faulkner did, and look where it got him. He’s famous and he’s dead.

But what about those of us without major literary awards, fat publishing contracts, and studio legal departments to bail us out when we get caught with an underage starlet in the backseat of a stolen Packard? How can we be lazy just like William Penn Warren?

Well that’s where I come in. I’m going to tell you how. What are my qualifications? Well, I have an [1]Ivy League degree and a Silver Star from my military service. But more importantly, I have over twenty years of experience of not working for a living. I do not have wealthy parents (they owe me money, those cheap bastards), I am not that smart, I am generally untalented, I am not sexually attractive, and I am the very opposite of famous. So if I can make it this long by not doing anything, so can you. Unless you’re stupid or something. Then maybe you should get back to work.

Irregardless (or is that regardless?) I have boiled all of my accumulated knowledge down into the following pearls of wisdom. These are the lessons passed from one generation to another over time immemorial, from that clever slave who sweet-talked his way off the pyramid job for that sweet gig with the fan in the oasis, down to that guy who sits on carts out in front of the supermarket. You must guard well these secrets, for if they should fall into the wrong hands, we will have to have one of those meetings after business hours. If you are to profit from this secret lore of laziness, you must learn these seven or eight rules, you must live to love them, and you will love to live them. Then you can live to learn them.

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[1] All records of my education and military service were lost in a fire, or earthquake, perhaps a hurricane. But rest assured I would never lie to fill out a resume or to impress girls or to get out of jury duty.

How to be Lazy

How to be Lazy

Chapter 1

Early morning, May 13 1607. Three ships sail up the Chesapeake Bay. Their mission: to establish the first successful English settlement in the New World, an event that will lead directly to the creation of the United States of America.

The site for their colony is chosen, and is named after their king. Jamestown is born. However the years ahead will be very trying for this plucky little fort on the edge of a swamp. The settlers are indolent “gentlemen” who have never had to soil their soft white hands with an honest day’s toil in their lives. Their only purpose in this grand adventure is to find gold without investing much in the way of effort. Without crops or proper shelter to withstand that first winter, a cruel “Starving Time” begins, and almost two thirds of the original settlers die from malnourishment, disease, Indian attacks, and ennui. The future of Jamestown is dim until a bright young “go-to guy” with the likely name of John Smith takes control of the operation. His first order is that he who does not work does not eat, and he was apparently serious about that or something. Under his tough management, the colony survives, and eventually flourishes, and then finally dies out, its true location a mystery to this day.

What can those of us who do not want to work learn from this? There are lessons here for us if we but read carefully. For where know-it-all Captain John Smith may have seen lazy, shiftless gentleman too slothful to work enough to support themselves, we see visionaries, whose most crucial mistake was being born too soon.

For the 17^th century was no time to be lazy. There was no central air, no Wii, no cookie dough ice cream, no Scooby Doo marathons on the Cartoon Network. These valiant pioneers were still living in the bad old days when idleness was a dream to which only royalty could aspire. No, laziness is a modern innovation, like Ipods or teleportation.

While it is true that there have always been people who didn’t do anything, it is also true that laziness was a neglected science until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Until then, lazy people were just as miserable as working people, if not more so. Active people like to work; they enjoy bending over the crops from sun up ‘til sundown and they tingle at the gentle brush of the master’s lash. Not so for our prehistoric goldbrickers. Those early do-nothings were people out of their time. Who is more miserable than somebody who does not want to work but has to? For those of us who are not so psychologically warped that we enjoy the tasks that our good lord and master sets before us, we can never be so happy as we are when we are not doing anything.

Laziness does not exist in a vacuum. Without the creature comforts of modern science to please us and gullible simpletons to do our work for us, laziness dies. So, all of human history, up until about 1870 or so, these are the dark ages of laziness. In those unenlightened times, even royalty had to do some sort of work. First, they were always defending themselves from their fellow royal bastards, and b) if they didn’t keep moving they’d freeze to death in those drafty castles. Anyone less than Holy Roman Emperor couldn’t even dream about not pulling their weight. If you were healthy, you had to work. If you were unhealthy, you had to work. There was no Workmen’s Comp or disability back in those “not-so-good-old-days.” You worked or you were put to a horrible death. Then you worked until you died a horrible death.

So the next time you’re drinking beer down at Hooter’s when you should be buying sheet rock at Lowe’s, or you’re smoking out back with some of the maintenance crew when you’re supposed to be submitting your E-Docs, pause and take a moment to thank those brave, foolhardy, forward dreaming, jimson weed addled souls of the Virginia colony. Thanks to their unwilling sacrifice, their dream is now our reality.

Superhero or Not Superhero?

SUPERHERO/NOT SUPERHERO

Superhero: Attacking an enemy with a tree you ripped from the ground.

Not Superhero: Attacking an enemy with a limb you picked up off the ground.

Superhero: Going to Tibet to acquire superpowers.

Not Superhero: Going to college.

Superhero: Torturing a criminal until he gives you the information you want.

Not Superhero: Reading him his rights and waiting for his lawyer to show up.

Superhero: Attacking an invading army all by yourself.

Not Superhero: Waiting for back up.

Superhero: Taking out all your anger and frustration on supervillains.

Not Superhero: Going to therapy.

Superhero: Undergoing experimental quasi-scientific procedures with no idea as to what could happen.

Not Superhero: Animal testing or computer simulations.

Superhero: Blowing up aliens who land on your planet.

Not Superhero: Asking them if they come in peace.

Superhero: Being impotent with women, yet able to level a midsized city by blinking.

Not Superhero: Getting laid.

Superhero: Being replaced with your evil twin.

Not Superhero: Not having an evil twin.

Superhero: Only owning one outfit.

Not Superhero: Having a wardrobe.

Superhero: Coming back from the dead.

Not Superhero: Dying.

Superhero: Exposure to massive amounts of radiation gives you cool superpowers.

Not Superhero: Exposure to massive amounts of radiation gives you radiation sickness, killing you in a truly horrifying fashion.

Superhero: No matter how much of an advantage your enemy has, you always win.

Not Superhero: Losing.

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