So he looks and sounds like had a stroke

OK, Dick Clark is rough, but only as rough as any stroke victim looks. They cloistered him in a little box indoors, but they should have let Dick breathe in the cold, brisk air with his people. Way to go, Dick and his handlers - way to add stigma to disease and infirmity. If they gave the reins over to Seacrest for any reason other than Dick's arduous effort taking a toll on his stamina, then they should be ashamed of themselves.

And, frankly, I was convinced Mariah would only perform in something less than a bikini, which is why I was skeptical about an open-air medley in Times Square.

Why do I feel protective of Dick Clark?

Drug subplot

Totally ruined "Three Men and a Baby."

What I liked

Hey! 2005 had a lot of good stuff! And some bad suckass stuff too! I didn't like flooded Banda Aceh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and New Orleans. I loved season 2 of Deadwood. I loved the manchego we bought from Murray's Cheese Shop. I didn't like many of the (draconian) practices of our government. I did like getting my morning run up to four miles this year.

The best things that happened to me were:

-My domestic paht-nah-ship this past September 18 at the W Hotel (referenced all over the web, look it up) to the loverly Janice Erlbaum, and the subsequent honeymoon to Elbow Beach, Bermuda (above - in paradise, no one can hear you scream).

-A January trip to Little Dix Bay beach on Virgin Gorda (below) in the British Virgin Islands and the phenomenal snorkeling ('cuda, squid, turtles, etc.) to be had... not to mention all the rum and teacakes one can fill one's fat ass up with.

-A week away in June at Cherry Grove, Fire Island, a new annual tradition that fills us with sunlight, piña coladas, and grilled skirt steaks. And plenty of cock on display in the beach (not so much on the boobies).

–My first trip to Walt Disney World, deconstructed from every angle possible on these pages.

-Getting engaged on my birthday this June, and having dinner with my in-laws at Jean-Georges later that night.

-Shopping for the wedding suit with my father in-law Larry Erlbaum, a man who has given me more of himself in the four short years I've known him than my actual bastard father gave me in the 16 years he was (more or less) around.

-Related: Tasting wedding cake at Sylvia Weinstock, scouting out the wedding venue, working on table decor, drafting up guest lists, designing the invite and program ourselves... so on and so forth.

-Catch-all: Continuing to live the life of therapeutically-managed happiness and honesty. Not slipping back into weight-gain, not losing grip of openess with the wifemestic partner through the tough places.

-"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of the Sith"... I waited 22 fooking years since Jedi for this one to come out.

My drawback list is, ironically, the same as it was last year... sure, world hunger, strife, flooding, transit strikes, and racism are suck, but those are mostly external suckings. What really ails me is the continued strain arising from my brother's ongoing TBI/coma recovery - for all the massive quantities of splendiferousnessosityapalooza that makes me happy (see above, read it thrice), there is always a tincture of sadness and anger at what happened on October 3, 2004.

See y'all Next Year alongside Dick Clark's whithered, stroke-shamed, Cryptkeeper-like countenance... strap in, homies, and bring your dirt rakes.

The emaciated corpse of Dick Clark!

It will apparently be wheeled out Saturday night for audiences to gasp at in horror. Quelle horreur! Zounds!

Or at least that's what Dick's people are starting to make his shindig over there at ABC seem like, what with the press blackout on Dick's condition/appearance. It's like his people are trying to conceal either one or two "ugly" things we can't handle:

1.) All of Dick's skin has fallen off in a single dry sheet, and his skull is phosphorescing an eerie green glow that's accompanied by the noxious fumes of burnt hair.

2.) They have installed his brain into the body of Rudolf Hess.

No way to tell until showtime... be there or be square!

Way to go, Willie!

That's putting your money where your mouth is (except when toking, of course)! Willie Nelson is doing a big biodiesel thing, wherein he assuages his conscience by supporting family-run bean farms and sticking it in the eye of Huge Petrol.

The Soy Industry - motivating people to switch to alternative energies, one burnt-out counterculturist at a time.

The high cost of gold

In the latest instance of the Salad regurgitating the New Jork Times all over y'all's new shirt, their third article on the procuring and processing of gold ran in today's edition. Let me sum up the series:

Gold is bad. VERY bad. AWFUL bad.

You see, to extract a few ounces of good old "AU" out of the earth, you need to destroy thousands of tons of topsoil get at it. Then, because all the gold on the planet is only in trace (read=atomic) form, you need to saturate the earth with cyanide to separate the molecules for collection and smelting. So, to recap: Destroy the earth and poison it irrevocably, and then you have a pinch of what you need, to be added to the several mllion more pinches that it might take to smelt one single ring.

The cost of gold is at historic highs now, but in spite of the monetary, it pales in comparison to the millions of acres around the planet that have been despoiled by greedy, ruinous multinationals who flout international law (looking at you, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold of New Orleans) by paying juntas to protect their backwater strikes and also by dumping catastrophic amounts of spoil and mercury into vital waterways. Jakarta, Indonesia, is a prime victim of said rough trade.

What can we do? Buy estate jewelry and avoid new pieces (the way you would avoid other mala in se luxury items as caviar and fois gras) whenever possible. I'm not too sure that silver and platinum operations are better, either.

Scold scold scold!

Just once....

...in a movie, when some guy on his knees in front of an assassin offers to "double what they're paying you - I'll triple it!" to save his own life, I wish the gunman would take him up on his offer and walk away. Or, take up the countercontract and kill the original hire-er.

So, how's Tuesday for the class-war?

OK, there's this. And this too. I love the Old Grey Lady, I really do (please *PLEASE* hire me!), but I often audibly wonder (at passers-by, while sans pants) who the audience is for these some of these lifestyle articles. I mean, are we an aspirational fiefdom of middle-class folk, swarthy and "According to Jim"-watching, who have our noses pressed up against the glass window of exclusionary prosperity, fogging it up with the steamy breath of abnegation?

The former article is about the "gift" of cosmetic surgery from mother to daughter, et al, as a new holiday treat for the better-heeled among us. The latter deals with mom handing down her Prada and Roberto Cavalli to daughter, maintaining Upper East Side fashion continuity among anemic, haemophiliac bluebloods. The kicker, to me, is that there isn't a scintilla of self-awareness to be found anywhere - an awe-inspiring feat, if I may say. To paraphrase Jerome Kalman Seinfeld, who are these editors? Again: To the New York Times, Is this a strivers' target, or a lateral-looking glimpse for the benefit of the better-shod (not) among us?

Arrgggh - I'm just looking for a class-war to ignite! Let's just make sure we schedule the class-war before the race-war, because I'm busy that day at my spin class.

She ain't messing with no Broke-Back

A great movie, as I'm sure everyone everywhere has read about already. The two leads - dead sexy dudes - were superb. The photography was gorgeous, the supportings were great, this flick was the whole package. Consider us here at the Bowl believers in the power of Heath "Ten Things I Hate About You" Ledger and Jake "Bubble Boy" Gyllenhaal.

Mystifying - when the dudes go at it in the graphic-but-not-that-graphic buttsex scene, much of the theatregoing crowd laughed and giggled at a scene that was not very titterworthy. I mean, is this not New Jork? Are we not the most sophisticated audience out there? The M4M action makes y'all laugh, huh?

!Cuidado¡ Piso mojado

I love the yellow signs that mark a wet marble floor - "piso mojado," it exclaims en éspanol. "Wet floor," of course, but when the BombGirl were on vakay in Orlando, wet floors abounded because of all the rain. And "piso mojado," to me, sounds like a dish at the Cuban restaurant I frequent downtown, kind of like "ropa vieja" (which itself means "dirty laundry," so how is "wet floor" a stretch?). So, naturally, after a few days, whenever we went into a wet-floored restaurant at Disney, I would ask her, "Have you had the piso mojado? They make it great here."

...and with that, the world's slowest moving bandwagon begins grinding forth towards putting "piso mojado" on every Spanish menu in Nueva Jork.

No Runway?

No Project Runway tonight - bogus! Repeats - phwah!

You... you... crummy bums!

Schroedinger's Minky

Hey! Look! The New Jork Times Science section ran a story that seems to feature a Russian Blue puss, much like our own Minky!

What a bad little Shmink! He deserves a time out in that little beryllium-atom-filled box, to think about the bad things he's done.

Shame! Shame on the Mink!

Car givers

I hate it when commercials show some DINK couple of Aryan Aspenites wherein the husband surprises the wife with a new Lexus. Does the car dealership actually have a festive gift bow installation machine that helps "wrap" the auto? And what kind of aspirational message is this, that if you have big enough piles of money around, you should take out a pitchfork and toss a few bales of cash your local car dealer's way? Who is the audience for these commercials - "The War At Home" viewers? I suspect that anyone with enough scratch to buy a spare Infiniti Q45 has something better to do than watch "Rita Cosby Live."

Fuck you and your new Lexus, you plutocrat tax-dodgers. I hope that a snow drift collapses on you and your wife at Vail next spring, chickenfuckers.

Turncoats

Regis "ABC" Philbin anchors FOX's New Year's Eve show? Ryan "FOX" Seacrest anchors ABC's New Year's Eve show? Isn't crossing networks like Egon said, "Don't cross the streams - it would be bad. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

Shampoo is better!

I go on first and clean the hair! Conditioner is better - I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh, really, fool? Really. Rrgggh... rrrgggh.... Stop looking at me, swan!

Kingdom of Wishes

On two occasions yesterday, me and the wife-like object were watching the telly, and we saw a nigh-constant stream of Christmas Day programming that was DisneyWorld related - a parade in the morning, Kelsey Grammer-narrated commercials all afternoon, and the fricking coolest "Modern Marvels" on the History Channel late last night.

Yessss, we hear! We hear and obey! Will move to Osceola and live for Space Mountain! We shall obey!

Scratch/licked

So, watching Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People the udder night, and halfway through the Netflix DVD goes all fuckie on me. I take it out and toss some glass cleaner on that bitch, and try to play it again. The result - naught. That cee-esser is dead.

I have to ask (plaintively) why, Netflix, why? It was 1 a.m., and all I wanted to do was finish out a movie in peace with a cat on me. You're handing out shoddy discs, you cee-essers - this is not the first time we've given up on a disc before the movie was up.

The way I see it, you owe me time back and disenchantment points taken off my cosmic till, because the time will come when something wonderous will come my way, everyone around me will be going all "oooh, ahh!" and shit, and all I'll be able to do is look ironically at said wonderment and crack wise, detachedly and disassociatedly.

I don't want to be dead inside, hugecorporateplex.

Merry Chanukksmas

Since we here at the ’BombShelter are really just athiest nonobservant Jewtholics, I'll take this opportunity to wish all the boys, girls, and bois of the world a Merry Thing That You Celebrate, even if you don't celebrate anything at all.

I'll also remind the world that it's OK for a 30-year-old man to STILL receive toys as Christmas presents, even if such a practice is societally frowned upon by culture bigots and anti-Toyites. There are still a few shopping/wrapping hours to go out and find the ARC-170 Clonetrooper Starfighter (as seen in Episode III) for that special blogger in your life.

Get on the stick, people.

Referral stats

There is a bit of satisfaction to be had at being at the top of Google search for "cadaver salad," but it's being located within the searches for "James Purefoy's cock" that intrigue me the most.

One Day In September

With Steven Spielberg's "Munich" coming out today, I would be remiss if I didn't highly recommend Kevin McDonald's One Day In September, a documentary from 1999 about the same. Michael Douglas narrates, and it features interviews with a lot of the key media players and a lot of archival footage, including shots of what happened at the airport when everything went down the tubes. You come away from this secure in the creepy conviction that the Germans actually helped the Palestinians get away with this - the security and negotiations were flawed and almost not taken seriously (!). Netflix this bitch today.

Say no to drugs

Gawker linked to a blogger named "Edgar Winter" the other day and a little shingle he calls Cocaine Corner. Edgar loves to boast of blow addiction, like many other New York jackasses, and never fails to talk about how cool it is to snort rails.

Huh? Cool? Who dropped this motherfucker on his/her head? How fucked up do you have to be to spin a silver lining out of chemical dependence?

Maybe it's just me being shrill, seeing as to how my douschebag uncles in Selden, New York, moved from dealing the weed to the powder back in the mid-1980s. These were men who very poorly concealed their razors and mirrors from the eyes of a precocious 12-year-old, who was world-weary enough from his own combative household to know there was something grim afoot. They were wired asswipes, on all the time, treating their wives and daughters like shite. Maybe my own father saw the good time rolling in Selden, and tried to convince mom to let him move blow out of the house. Not like any of these unrelated factors would have soured me on coke or anything...

The call goes out: Pass me my dirt rake, for there are beatings to hand out and ’splosions to undertake.

As an aside, Neil Young has a cool song called Cocaine Eyes.

Pitted Olives

The scene of the crime - the chalk-lines, the silverware... I'm talking, of course, about the W Hotel Union Square, and the restaurant that fed our wonderful wedding party, "Todd English's Olives." And the reason I bring it up is because my beautiful domestic goddess and I are having a quiet Christmas dinner tonight in the very halls where we made so much magic back in September. This is like a nano-anniversary for us, and we relish the chance to sneakily sneak up into the Great Room of Happiness to relive the moment.

It was so important to make the magic happen close to home - so we can re-celebrate it easily, and constantly. If only the Magic Kingdom were south of 34th Street.

Slanted "Runway"

Steve Perry-lookalike Daniel Franco was tossed off Project Runway in last night's ep, which was an entirely unfair call by the judges. His line of lingerie was dead-sexuh, and well-made to boot - you could eyeball the craftsmanship even on our 30-inch Sony Wega. Falling on his sword was a very touching gesture by Dan, but it needn't have been necessary, seeing as to how Santino Rice's lingerie pieces looked like a fucking CAKE THAT TRIED TO JUMP OUT OF A GIRL (left). While I love irony and all, Santino was the clear louzre of this week's challenge, and there ain't no pinning that shit on starchy, ineffectual, Kilborn-esque Emmett.

We like Santino - actually, he's our prohibitive favorite to take the whole dang thing (according to the Las Vegas Scurry/Erlbaum Sportsbook). Personally, we endorse him because he reminds us the most of season 1 fave Austin Scarlett, he of the rouge, lipgloss, and tricorner hat. Regarding Santino, I think a post-9/11 world needs a bitchy queen like him to win a competition like this to heal all of our hearts - but, the judges kept him last night in spite of a shoddy, nonsexual attempt at ladies' undies.

That Daniel Franco clearly did better at. And that upsets me, that they're knocking off losers strictly for programming sake, and not for skill. Did we not learn our lesson with Wendy Peppers, people?

Troll watch

Here at 100 Broadway, there is this woman from the 3rd floor, a little round troll of a thing, who is like four feet tall with long, ringlet-y hair. She has the look of an entitled housewife from Syosset - and the only reason my notice is ever drawn to her is because she is constantly downstairs, directly in the vestibule, working on her thrombosis by PUFFING HER FUCKING LUNGS OUT on a pack of Marlboro reds.

Fuck her, and fuck her arteriosclerosis - I have no desire to get sucked into cancer by this gorgon. Have a little super-ego and get out out of the communal doorstep into the open air if you want to commit trollicide via tar.

Don't make me pole-axe you... I have a lot of shit to do, and that's just bad form to start my day out with a hobbit-murder.

On the PATH to oblivion

Transit strike sob story: Too cold to walk to work (and I busted my ass for four miles on the treadmill already), so I decided to venture to the PATH train to get downtown. BIG MISTAKE. If someone wants to see an publicly-run institution that makes the MTA look as sharp as Rainbow 6, look no further than our blind mole rat friends over at Port Authority. There was nary a single sign or helpful person to be found to elucidate route changes regarding the strike.

I had heard that Manhattan PATH trains were running in a single-seat ride configuration from 33rd St. to World Trade Center, so I hopped on the first train that came through - which, of course, was headed for Hoboken. Transfer number one - I get off at Christopher St., and wait for another train to WTC. Is there any hint of info at Christopher? Nein! Shweinhund!

Train ride number two took me from Christopher St. to Pivonia, NJ - VEEEERRRRRYYY SLLLOOOOWWWLLLYYYY - where the conductor told a bunch of us to wait for another connection to WTC. Pivonia=25 minutes of inertia; no announcements, no info. Train to WTC finally pulls in, and instead of heading into Manhattan, it goes deeper than planned into Jersey to Grove Street, an unannounced route change. This, too, occurs fitfully, with stops and starts - mostly stops. From Grove St. it's off to Manhattan, but not before we sit in the tunnel for two to three minutes at a time, intermittently hiccupping forth under the river.

The math: On foot, the walk is about three miles, taking 35-40 minutes. Via subway, 13 minutes express from Union Square to Wall Street. Via PATH: Just shy of one hour to traverse the same distance.

Congratulations, PATH! You're the Salad's first "Prick Of The Week!" It took a lot to upstage the tremendous tools at the MTA, but you dug down deep and gutted it out. You could have been fucking heroes, but you worked hard at being a pile of goddamn worthless jackasses. Bravo.

One of the many thousands of things Stalin got wrong

This is awesome! The gist is that Josef Stalin wanted his breeding scientists to create a half-man/half-ape army of superwarriors. Does it get any cooler than that? I think that's along the lines of what Destro and Cobra Commander had made for the Dreadnoks in the "Pyramid of Darkness" telemovie.

Hee hee... everyone knows what happens when cross ape and man successfully:

"YOU MANIACS - YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

More like, " 'Closer' To Sucking!"

"Closer" was off the mark, not well done at all. Too overwrought, miscast (Julia, Jude, Natalie), and too glib. I can't buy Natalie Herschlag... ooops, Portman, as a stripper. The only redeeming thing going for it was our man Clive Owen, ever the sport in whatever place you put him (see "Sin City" for chrizzakes). He filled his line-readings with anger/rage as well as a heady tincture of sadness and regret. His was the only schlock worth buying, because he sold it so well. Law, Roberts, and Portman sounded unconvinced by the dirty words they were being asked to memorize.

Yes, I have a man-crush on Clive. Slash away, ladies.

From the archives

This cartoon character was mothballed by his animation studio - and that seems like a good idea in retrospect. Our history in this country hasn't always been pretty. Nevertheless, In the interest glimpsing at our complete cultural record, I present the forgotten "Antisemite Sam."

(If I have to phonetically sound out the joke here, I'm gonna quit.)

Misses it all

More than a week back home, we're still CRAVING the Magic Kingdom, way more than we mightcouldshould be. On Saturday night, we watched a Food Network joint about the Christmas food A-Team at Disney World, watching them build giant ham feasts and massive gingerbread houses that we wanted to eat every calorie of. We watched it and felt like Jamie Foxx in that rehab scene in "Ray," where he's all soaked, withdrawing, and jonesing for solid white chocolate Mickeys.

It's not like real life is terrible - sure, there's much suck in each of our lives, as different in each case as it is miserable, but it doesn't eclipse all the great we've chess-ed around the playing board in 2005 - not to mention, all the great things we've done since our lives became intertwined in 2002. (Speaking of which, it's our anno in a week and a half! Whoopee and praise for us!)

Nonetheless, we amscrayed from town for a week and reaped tremendous benefits - my inner 8-year-old was hugged and patted on the head and told he was a good boy and rewarded with taffy. I needed that. But, the side effect is that we miss it. The food. The sounds. The feeling of the rides. The smells.

Definitely the smells. I even miss the bathrooms, all cinnamoned up and neutral as they are. It's a hallmark of the Disney magical magicalness - no faeces will intrude upon you or your family's vakay, and I love that about the Mouse.

Rescue us

Yeah, you sure are rock and roll, Denis - but aren't you like, married with a few kids? aren't you too old for this kind of shit? Leave these kind of Soho Grand shenanigans to the Vincent Pastores of the world, sir.

Kawng

Good... too long, well casted, tragic. But too long.

Samberg busts out

Last night's SNL featured Jack Black and Neil Young, and while this go around by Jables wasn't nearly as mediocre as the last time two years ago, it was still below Jables' high comedy standard. His Santa Claus/Debbie Downer sketch was funny, as was his monologue song about King Kong.

What was more notable about this episode was the DV short "Chronic of Narnia" by new guy Andy Samberg (left) and vet Chris Parnell (right). While I'm usually loathe to praise Parnell, who has a great bunch of tools but has still not found his voice after lo these many seasons, I have to say that this was perhaps the funniest sketch he's ever had a hand in. He and Samberg bang out this gangsta rap about the most banal of afternoons, going out to Magnolia for cupcakes and then uptown to see "Narnia." The "hardness" they project was pitch perfect, to the point where they actually came off as sounding very Beastie, circa "Ill Communication."

I have to give a lot of credit to new fish Samberg, who up to this point has been a Kutcher-like cypher, mostly inert. This sketch, coupled with his hermaphroditic alien/"Enemy Mine" sendup later on, proved to me that he has some chops. Welcome to the party, kid.

Also notable - since he assumed "writing supervised by..." credit, you have not seen a whole lot of Seth Meyers, going back about six or seven episodes now. He is one of their most versatile males, a real counterpart for Amy Pohler. Two people I have been glad to do without these last few weeks, however, have been Horatio Sanz and the recently-partruated Maya Rudolph, two performers who overwhelm the show even in small doses.

And remaining on the chonically underused list: Wil Forte; Fred Armisen; and my man Bill Hader.

Groovetube

We actually own this thing. What can I say? It's a lot neater than it sounds.

Mood

Blade Runner Blues

Listen to it - Vangelis at the height of his abilities, from the second- or third-best film of all time. How can you not get into a dreamy mood, hearing the delicious moogy hills and valleys of his synth soundscapes. A waaaaaaaay underrated album...

Confessions

During a quiet moment in class working on phonics, a first-grader at Lynwood Elementary school took a single dime out of his coin purse that his mother gave him for milk money. He got up from his seat and walked over to the teacher, coin held out for her to take. He didn't know why he was compelled to do this, but the daze of the act felt akin to auto-pilot. The teacher, tickled, broke the silence and boisterously exclaimed, "I can't take MONEY from a STUDENT!"

The boy slinked back to his seat, embarrassed by both the loud burst of attention in front of his classmates and the seemingly groundless origin of the impulse to get up in the first place.

Mix it up

Hate to pull the rug out from under the body politic, but the official implement with which to cause people bodily harm (in anger/rage) is now the garden trowel.

Cast all dirt rakes aside. Or, better, save them for spring landscaping.

On This Date In History!

On Dec. 17, 1978, the Los Angeles-based rock group Toto were the only adult contemporary music band to survive the deadly Jim Jonestown massacre in Guyana. They would later go on to chart-topping success with top 10 radio hits "Africa" and "Rosanna."

Ambrosia was not as fortunate - they, along with Foghat and 10cc, were found among the dead.

A bad sportsmanship

Echoing Whitney Pastorek's take on the whole matter, Randall, of "The Apprentice" fame, was an extremely bad sportsmanship when he kept fellow Trumpspirer Rebecca (or, as Slavic assassin-goddess Alla kept calling her last night, "Ree-becca") from her own "Apprentice"-ship when Count Trumpula was about to whip out a surprise offer to Ree-becca. He consulted with Randall on whether or not to pull the trigger, and Randall dropped the kibosh on it, reasoning that the show is singularly-titled, not plurally. Not so cleverly, he referred to a plurality of apprentices as "apprentii," which might have been funny if the show ended in "-us." But, I'm not as smart as Randall, who apparently has advanced degrees from both the Douschenozzle Academy and the prestigious Grammar-Pun Lyceum.

Ree-becca - she of the bat-eyes, she of the Islander-injury, she of the volume - was turned aside like so much volleyball, a trifle to be swept away like a Giancarlo Gianini movie. It wouldn't have cost him a damn thing, but I guess big R's dead grandma was whispering to Jennifer Love Hewitt, telling her to tell her grandson to bust that dewy ingenue in the other ankle, Gillooly-style.

The most frustrating thing? I called it... ask the wifal-like-object. I said Dizzie Tizzle was going to offer them BOTH jobs, in keeping with the carnival atmosphere of a season as lame as Ree-becca's stride. I think that soul-pounding Caroline Keppcher was similarly taken aback by the here-it-is-now-it's-gone offer. If anyone could have reminded Krump one last time how Randall ignored Doppler5000, it should have been her.

The Official Comedy Learning Annex: Phonics 101

In our next installment, we look at homophones and their comedy potential. Which is the funniest use of the phonic "sole"?

A. The lower area of a shoe










B. The South Korean capital












C. The fish














The answer is... B., the capital of South Korea. Many first year comedy students have a preconceived notion about sea-life and humor, so they are inclined to choose an aquatic option where applicable. However, this lesson shows how well geography and Far-Eastern culture can serve the myriad purposes of mirth.

Tossed salad and scrambled eggs

Hot damn! Damn hot! While we were on vakay at Disnay, I caught sight of one of the reefer boxes on McPaper's front page at our hotel and saw the first glimpse of Kelsey Grammer in full "Beast" makeup for the X-Men 3 sequel. Whoo hoo! I'm so glad they got that part right - it looks like a direct transport from the four-color panel. Despite their flaws, these X flicks have had good makeup on their sides. Or, is it good casting under the makeup, a la Rebecca Romijn Lettuce and Alan Cumming.

Maybe still, it just might pay to be indigo.

Transit strike

Oooh! Topical! Transit strike! Oooh! Pay attention here! PATH trains! Cab zones! Oooh!

Why is everyone in New York being a pain in my goddamn aching zygomatic arch? Can't Peter Kalikow and his misshapen crew of freak-fuckers toss some surplussy goodness to those brusque kumquats who barely maintain our antiquated transit system (apologies to Erik Seims) and make everyone happy? I don't want to know if mom and dad are fighting - just make sure there's Bosco on the table and smiles on everyone's faces. I'll deal with the repressed anger and resultant excema later on in my 20's.

How does this affect me? That's supremely the point - it affects me PERIOD! I'm sure they KNOW I'm hazardously close to walking to work, or cabbing it. So what if I live two miles from my office - I can't sustain any kind of dent on my Comfort Zone.

Abstract: These things are not OK when they happen to me.

It's supposed to be snowy and rainy and precipitation-y tomorrow morning. There are no promises about what will happen if I have to hump my ruck down Broadway - no assurances motherfuckers won't get they asses consumed in a blinding driving snowstorm (see Alferd Packer, above).

Gloden Gobes

Like most every other thing on earth with DNA and an affinity for movies, I was underwhelmed by the ’05 crop of Golden Globe nominees. I can't say I saw *any* of them, mostly because their choices all seemed like work to watch.

"Cinderella Man," unhhhh....

"North Country," oof....

"Squid and the Whale," orrrg....

Me and the Domesticpartnerbomb will see "Brokeback Mountain" for the hot dude-on-dude wrangling, but aside from that, I don't wanna see "Match Point" or "Walk the Line." I! Don't! WANNA!

My friend Dave Renard asked me for my five best flicks of 2005, and I was hard-pressed to offer anything beyond "Jarhead" (very good, but not great) and "40-Year-Old Virgin" (great, but with comedies being disreputable entertainment for intellect-yules and all...).

The point? I guess I really liked "Episode III" and "Wedding Crashers" - which will get me pilloried - but this year was dry like riesling. All our good movie-ing was done on Netflix this year, meaning that "Bridge On the River Kwai" and "OldBoy" rocked our world more than Joaquin Phoenix.

Buttery cashmere

Twenty-five degrees out, wind chill makes it feel like 15 - what do you do? Wrap yourself in cashmere. Fucking cashmere, bitches... nothing else like it. Love wearing it, love looking at it. Would swaddle myself in it every day were it not so prohibitively expensive. In keeping with he demagogery of my pleat post, every gentleman should own at least one cashmere sweater, eminently versatile with slacks, jeans, and/or your favorite sportcoat.

The wifemestic partner and I prize the few pieces of cashmere we own, from her sweaters to my personal fave, the full-length black topcoat from Barney's, a sweet little number I scored on clearance at the Woodbury Commons in upstate New York with some post-wedding green.

I could almost look forward to it being so cold, just so's I get to wear that bomb-ass jacket. If only my prick wasn't freezing off.

BILL BRASKY!

"He killed Wolfman Jack with a trident!"

"He uses the Shroud of Turin as a golf towel!"

"He once ate the Bible while waterskiing!"

"He drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls!"

Steeped in blondes

Watching the new "Superman Returns" trailer a few days ago, I was struck by the fact that they cast blondie Kate Bosworth, she of no reputable movie work to date, as Lois Lane, one of comicdom's most famous brunettes (after Wonder Woman of course).

Does the amount of wispy, Aryan actresses in Hollywood bother anyone else? What is the point of complaining - after all, Movietown is built on the lore of a corn-fed blonde getting off the bus from Bunghole, Nebraska, and getting spotted by a casting agent. After the successive waves of blondies tossed our way in the last few years - Gretchen Mol, Sara Foster, Rachel McAdams, Hayden Panettiere, Judy Greer, Teri Polo, etc. - and very few of them having any kind of lasting effect, I'll take the liberty of saying, "No more."

The point of this all was Lois Lane. So, why Kate Bosworth, and not... Kerry Washington (left)? She's in a ton of movies right now, getting very close to striking a few leads for herself. She's obviously radiantly beautiful, intelligent, and versatile - go out and rent "Lift," where you'll find her and an able supporting cast act out a well-conceived script about a black mother/daughter pair's class-striving in Boston. She was superb, and the movie was all but forgotten.

Besides, wouldn't it be great to see a black Lois Lane? If they hired a gay man to play Superman himself (B.J. Routh - Google it), how would a cross-racial love interest be a stretch? Why brunette-ize a blonde to play the part, when there were far better choices in the headshot piles - maybe, like Washington. Bunghole, Iowa, apparently doesn't want to see faces that don't resemble its own.

Shake Man

I don't have to create a quip about this particular fellow... this news item makes it's own gravy.

Poor bastard.

Sweet theme park hangover

Don't want to work. Don't want to eat broccoli. Want to eat chonklit, want to ride on rides all day long. I long for Fastpass tickets and a thrashing on Space Mountain.

I'm trusting the blogosphere (you) to make matching contributions to my 401k so that I can quit the working-stiff life and travel to Disney theme parks around the world.

Domo arigato, DisneyWorld Nippon!

Bookbomb

I'm so proud of my domestic partner - we got home yesterday just in time to receive the Publisher's Weekly review of her Villard book "Girlbomb," coming out next March. It's so wonderful, so official - this is really happening to her, and I feel like the luckiest man alive to be at her side while this is about to break loose.

So, do us and our cats' college fund a favor and pre-order the book! Send us back to Disney next year!

Burning up upon re-entry

Indeed, we must all re-enter Tomorrowland eventually. That makes for a sad bunch of shmoopies... here's us, 6:45 a.m. Sunday morning watching another beautiful Orlando sunrise, feeling robbed that our inner-eight-year-olds wouldn't get to enjoy the spoils of another pleasantly-forecasted day in the Magic Kingdom.