The long, cold summer of my discontent

Fuck me! Now that "Amazing Race," "Survivor," and "American Idol" are done, and "Sopranos" and "Big Love" are due to wrap up in the next two weeks, that's it for TV. What the hell and I supposed to do during the summer? Read? Talk to my wife?

Skin grows itchy... and cold... unfamiliar feeling... can't feel my... nostril hair... can't see... peripherally...

This leaves me with no distractions between all the painful baggage I drag around all day; my weak spine bows under the crushing weight. I can't stand to look my problems in the face. Without TV, I have no internal monologue. Without TV, I have no friends. Without TV, I'll be swallowed up by my own personal Charybdis, swirling e'er closer to the center of the wet maelstrom 'til I'm dragged under and the air is buffeted out of my lungs by watery fists of malice.

It's high time I bail -- I'm late for my evening of weeping into my pillow as I cut my lip nursing a cracked bottle of brandy into unconsciousness.

The Boloney Culture

What a beautiful Thursday afternoon to be outside the box! It's your old pal Buddy Boloney, back in the driver's seat after too long an absence. This is the perfect time to be sprung from that pine and leather prison, because last night was the pop culture equivalent of the Super Bowl, World Series, Olympics, Tonys, and Blockbuster Awards combined -- the American Idol finale! Good-man Boloney has to admit, this is one of the only things on God's Green that can bring a tear to the marble eye of this dummy. Maybe that's because I have no tear ducts! Hotcha-hotcha, I gotcha!

Whatta show, folks! It had everything, from bombast... to more bombast. It also had excess! Also, I distinctly spied some gibbosity, distension, intumescence, and a healthy dose of immoderacy. There were American Idols, past and present! Faded pop-stars from yesteryear, parading their embarrassingly time-worn voices out on the stage of the Kodak Theatre for millions to cringe over. I mean, is Meatloaf trying to become a self-fulfilling prophecy? What was that sound he was making with his throat? It was like he was trying to belt a Steinmanian opus from 1975 with his face, but his torso was separately pleading with the audience for a carne esada burrito from Taco Bell.

On and on the parade went: Elliott Yamin, my jug-eared meshugge bubbeleh sang behind-and-to-the-right of Mary J. Blige, who was apparently intent on destroying the little man with soundwaves. Eventual winner Taylor Hicks quote-unquote "shared" the stage with a Judy Garland-esque Toni Braxton, who sang awfully low and ground her hips into Hicks like she was trying to wriggle him on like a pair of Denim (a dummy pun about her son's name -- Google it). The twelve "Idol" finalists then came out for a tasteful medley of Bacharach songs, accompanying the man himself and his band on a bunch of standards until muse-arach Dionne Warwick emerged from the video scrim and warbled her own time-damaged version of "Walk On By."

One of the weirdest pairings was some kid named Sandecki, an audition washout, sharing the stage with Jeff Gannon-approved Clay Aiken. I don't know where Aiken has been hiding since "Measure of a Man" was released, but where ever it was, they stole Diana DeGarmo's bangs and grafted them to the diminutive redhead's scalp.

Get where I'm going with this, peeps? Picture your old pal Buddy laying on his side against a black background wearing a white suit and a jheri curl: "Cause this is Filler! Filler night! You're fighting for your life inside of killer, filler tonight!" (Buddy loves the production work of Quincy Jones... always has.)

Mayhap the only surprise of the night was the abrupt appearance of Prince on stage, here to prove that he still wiggles and combs his hair on stage with the best of them. Now that was a great thrill, to see him up there singing songs no one on Earth recognized. I was waiting for an appearance by Jesse... and now Jerome, but to no avail. (I realize that's more of a "Purple Rain" reference, but your old friend Buddy has been looking to score a Morris Day joke in here somewhere.)

By the time Hicks and Katharine McPhee (whom some uppity pinniped unfairly claimed was uncomfortable in front of large crowds) mounted the stage one last time, it was Anticlimax City, population: who's ever on your couch. Boy from Bama won in what was surely a rout over the overmatched Looker from La-La Land, and that is just OK with Buddy Boloney.

For the rest of the night, all was right in the world, until I heard that the French face-transplant lady was going to talk to Barbara Walters. If I wanted to see a horror show of that scale, I'd rent "Saw II!" I don't know which face is gonna look worse! Hotcha hotcha, I gotcha!

Guessing Game

What is this? Seriously, WHAT is that thing in the picture above? Is it a person human? Is it a bag of clothespins? Is it a Mars Orbiter? Is that a muffin top? Is it a "Monopoly" board game?

It looks like something I should recognize, but my brains can't quite get it. I see familiar pieces, but the assortment and arrangement are unfamiliar...

Is it a fruitbat? Is it a salad? Is that thing a Tamagotchi? Is it a stack of rupees?

At first glance, it could almost pass for Faye Dunaway -- if you squint hard and drizzle drain cleaner between your wide-open eyelids.

I think it might be a "Mortal Kombat" arcade machine. Or is it a mince pie? Perhaps, a Blackhawk helicopter? Or, Minneapolis...

Finale

Hey folks, it's me -- the lumbering, docile dugong, inhabitant of the shallow depths, here to tell you that the "American Idol" final will be won by Grey-Haired Human in a walk.

As a dugong, I've enjoyed this season quite a bit. I daresay I'll be a little misty-eyed when next Tuesday rolls around and I'll have nothing to watch at 8 p.m. Oh, how I'll miss the sub-sonic banter the judges share between the contestants singing! Earlier in the season, I especially enjoyed the delightful antics of the Calflike Juvenile-Human and his high-pitched lisp of a singing voice. It sounds quite nice under the water -- you'll have to take this dugong's word for it.

In the end, it seems like the right three kids got to the finals in Grey-Haired Human, Shiny Large-Udders, and Large-Eared Diabetic Human. Better them than Hairless Screaming Human who made all of his songs sound like "Creed." You have to imagine how much his tones lose under the waves. It's the elkhorn coral that ruins it, I think.

So now, you humans have used your flippers to text message your votes in numbers greater than that of your Pod-Leader elections... and you have decided on Grey-Haired Human. Shiny Large-Udders can create a mellifluous sound (and well as feed many a calf, methinks! Rowwrr!), but her inexperience performing in front of a large pod seems obvious.

The jerky, spastic antics of Grey-Haired Human reminds this dugong of a childhood friend -- a squid named Gary. I don't think I've ever seen Grey-Haired Human shoot a jet of ink yet, but maybe he's saving that for the "Idols on Tour" stage show.

Jollies

When I was a kid, we used to say that someone was getting their "jollies" if they enjoyed something a little too much. There was a sexual connotation to it, of course, as if you were getting off on a cheeseburger or an Atari game.

Now, it just sounds stupid to me. Where did we get that phraseology from? It sounds like something older people might say, and yet there we were, 11 years old, accusing you of "getting your jollies" if you liked that Madonna song a little much.

This week's proscription

Maybe this is an east/west coast "culture tastemaker" thingie at work, but ever since late winter we've been noticing a preponderance of young women opting to pair the slimming bermuda short with a knee-high boot of some sort, creating an odd couture chimaera; a veritable fashion cyborg, if you will (artist rendering, right).

What is going on here? Shorts in the winter was strange enough -- anyone care about air temperature anymore? But now that the weather has turned, this hideous hybrid has become a sort of de facto formalwear -- the split-leg of the pant with the above-the-knee brevity of a skirt! "Just let me toss some boots on to totally defeat the purpose of wearing short pants and, voila! I now look ridiculous, with only my knee joints exposed. Awesome!"

It takes months for these things to occur to me, because once you see the weirdest clothing combination you can imagine, it's only a matter of seconds before there's someone else coming up the avenue aping the first.

In that vein, "Coming up next: Why did anyone decide to unearth the hoary footless-tight from 1987 and pair it with denim jean shorts? That and more, after the break."

Mad face

Boy, the whole "getting-upset-and-shaking-fist-at-the-newspaper-world-TV" thing is kind of hard if you're not really angry at anything. At the moment.

Of course, the above is subject to change on a moment's notice.

(Ed. note: Head is actual size.)

Poor Barbaro

Those bastards -- I watched what they did to Barbaro the horse on Saturday. He burst out of the gate and, in the parlance, "took a bad step" and came down funny on his hind leg, fracturing it significantly in a bunch of places. Were it not for the quick thinking of the jockey Edgar Prado, the horse might have died right there on the track rather than being recoverable via surgery.

Of course, there's the problem right there -- how frequently horses are destroyed trackside behind a plastic scrim, the only thing that prevents the masses from seeing a horse's death by lethal injection.

I know a great many people who get a lot of enjoyment out of this "sport," but enough already. This is a live animal, not an Indy car. Horses are not treated like living beings in this "sport" -- they are bred eugenically, cleaving their bloodlines ever thinner through a century of inbreeding until they are mere knife-like assemblages of muscle tissue with no hardiness.

Speaking to an apologist the other day, he said, "These animals are bred to run -- they love it! They can't wait to open up on a track. That's what their bodies are designed to do." I don't disagree. They have been bred to do nothing but run. What about what a real, natural horse looks like? They're stockier, shaggier, and more importantly, have thicker legs. I'm sure horses out in nature don't "break down" (again, the industry euphemism of choice) from the mere act of running.

The grievous list of horse racing's inhumane crimes against equinity doesn't stop at the eugenics. The graceful creatures are also juiced to within an inch of their lives with complex serums like clenbuterol, EPO, and lasix, designer drugs that dialate a horse's bronchial system and supress fatigue poisons, all to make them more machine-like in their performance.

The inherent animal cruelty of the industry makes me sick every time I think about it. There is no upside, no saving grace -- this is institutionalized abuse, plain and simple. Barbaro's life was saved, but a miserable equine life of abuse is the foundation upon which this "sport" is based.

To the guy with the prosthetic leg

I applaud your sense of equilibrium in wearing shorts and sandals out in the world; you have to be comfortable, no matter what a catastrophic accident does to your leg, right?

But why the disembodied rubber foot inside the sandal? Creeping my shit out...

In the tradition of "Madagascar," "The Ice Age," "Over the Hedge," "Robots," "Cars," "A Shark's Tale," et al...

This summer, prepare to be mildly entertained by an ill-conceived idea tossed together by a committee of marketers in Studio City, CA. Dreamworks presents...

Featuring the "voice talents" of: Garry Shandling, David Spade, Kyle Secor, Callista Flockhart, Julianna Margulies, Eddie Griffin, Kevin James, Jennifer Tilly, with Jon Voight as the voice of "Bunghole," that lovable scamp of a bear. With special guest appearances by George Carlin, Cloris Leachman, and James Cromwell.

If there are a few more dollars out there left behind by "Shrek" and "Finding Nemo," this poorly-made, bottom-line oriented movie will find them!

Babydrop, take two

Britney nearly drops the kid. Again. She was thisclose to spilling Sean Preston's little bowling ball-like head in front of FAO Schwartz, like so much volleyball.

You know, I have this feeling like if it was happening behind closed doors, it would be a tragedy -- but since it's being played out in public, it's art.

Buck Rogers's typewriter

I love the carefully employed use of the above typeface -- at some point in human history, this was an unironic font that summed up all of our hopes and dreams about space travel/imperious robot command systems aboard Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft.

The thing that is so singular about this font (I have no idea what it's called) is that you know exactly what it's talking about. There's no bullshitting, hemming, or hawing -- we gon' up into space, bitch. It's totally unambiguous. I fully associate it with Space Mountain (below), and the old Gil Gerard "Buck Rogers" series of my youth. I guess there's an element of fun, as well as... danger.

Also -- there's a small I.T. device in my office called a "Data-Vac" specifically used for sucking up dust within the intricate innards of PCs; all the type on the box is set in the above face. What that says to me is (in the best Orson Wellesian voice-over I can muster): "The apex of human achievement, space exploration, has finally been married to that most quotidian of household chores, vaccuuming."

And it's about time, NASA.

Jerez

I want to redo the last twelve years of my life -- study business at the most prestigious of schools, intern under captains of industry, get into development and or hedge fund management...

Make my first million by the age of 28, buy a Lotus, squire a quiet little knockout Korean/Armenian Ford model, get my handicap under 28, start my own business/law firm/multinational concern, take on partners, spread laundered billions around the Caribbean in unmarked accounts, have five heart attacks by the age of 31 -- all so I can have my own boardroom with this painting hung up at the head of the room:

It's a long way to go, to be sure, but it's worth it -- this thing is fucking awful and scaryweirdvomitous at the same time! Check out others like it at the Museum of Bad Art.

Keeping score

Just noting -- the fantastic "Arrested Development" was canceled by Fox after it was chased from timeslot to timeslot by an apathetic audience who never gave it the recognition it deserved...

Yet "Two and a Half Men" is still alive and going strong over at CBS, anchored by reputed child pornographer and drug/gambling/sex addict Charlie Sheen and liliputian charm machine Jon Cryer.

Okay, I think I got that straight. But why did my brain just try to crawl out of my nose like a mummy's?

Christmas is going to be late!

The North Pole was all atwitter the evening of December 24th... elves were bustling here and there, carrying big felt sacks filled with presents all about. They were loading Santa's sleigh full of surprises for good boys and girls all over the world -- white and black, Arab and Jew, China-man and Occidental, Canadian and Zoroaster alike.

This was the big night, when every toy the busy elves worked so hard on all year long would be wrapped and packed for their intended well-behaved children. Even the reindeer could sense the excitement; they wriggled in their bridles, anticipating the big night's work ahead of them pulling Santa's sleigh across the nippy night sky.

Everyone was so excited -- but no one stopped to notice that Santa was nowhere to be found!!

As he was filling the glovebox of Santa's sleigh with fenugreek (Santa's favorite snack), Drew the fixer elf happily dawdled without a thought to the big red guy's whereabouts. As she shined the sleigh's skids, Nessa the helper elf didn't have a bit of worry about when Santa would get there. No, it was only Vic, the manager elf, who was looking at his fobbed timepiece, noticing that it was getting late for Santa to not be at the sleigh. The big guy always liked to go through the final checklist himself.

"Where is Santa!? Where is the big man?" Vic bellowed as loud as his little elfin lungs would allow. "We have to get Santa here -- or Christmas will be late!"

So the elves scrambled all around the workroom, looking in sacks, under chairs, behing doors -- but St. Nick was no where to be found! It was only when Woody, the cooking elf, went into Santa's own office that he found a locked door off to the side -- Santa was in the potty!

Woody banged on the door with his tiny little knuckles, excitedly blurting, "Santa, Santa, are you in there? You have to make Christmas happen!"

Woody pressed his ear against the door trying to hear a response, but only heard a grunt, followed by a splash. "Woody, is that you?"

"Yes Santa... we need you! Christmas is going to be late!"

"Okay, okay, Woody. Give Santa a moment. I'm taking a shit."

Woody was puzzled. "What are you taking?"

"A shit. I'm letting a deuce, Wood. Don't elves have assholes?"

"What-holes?"

"Look, you little freak -- Santa is having a thing with loose, runny stool right now. I think it was that bisque Mrs. Claus made last night. I told her the clams were expired."

Woody kept his little ear pressed to the door, trying to discern what was happening. "Santa, I'm scared."

Santa coughed, and released a vile pocket of air from his anus with a crackle that rattled the door. The noise was followed by a wet splash, like someone expelling he contents of a large can of soup into a bucket. "Santa's not feeling well, Woody. It smells oddly metallic in here, like I ate a... handful of nickels."

Woody motioned with his fine-boned hand for all the other elves to join him at the door, to hear the weird things going on in Santa's potty. Ear after ear was pressed on the door, trying to get a clue as to what was happening in Santa's secret chamber. "Uhhhh... er... hupp... ooooohhhhh," Santa would say, followed by the same wet, slapping sound of bisque violently exiting Santa's rectum. "Oooooohhhhh... stab me in the side and let all this shit dribble out of me... get this fucking poison out of my body."

Vic, the manager elf, placed his fobbed timepiece in his tiny green, felt vest, put hand to brow, and shook his head in frustration. "Christmas is going to be late this year. We're fucked."

Bob's trying to come up

I'm at home last night all alone, what with the whife being out at the beach and all, and I hear the doorbell ring.

I'm not decent, so I run up to the pinhole to get a peek. There's a good chance it's our neighbor, Naomi -- she loves the unprompted drive-by chat. But, no dice -- all I can see are the shoulders of a grey overcoat.

"Hello?"

"Yeah, it's Bob."

"Bob?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

That's funny... not expecting a Bob. Because I don't value my safety, I open the door a crack to catch a look at him. Bob looks at me, and realizes he doesn't know me.

"Is this apartment 10 D?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I guess I have the wrong apartment."

I let Bob go and close the door. I settle back in, trying to watch "The Amazing Race" finale in peace, when, minutes later, our doorman rings the apartment from downstairs.

"Hello?"

"Bob is ready to come up."

"I don't know Bob... he's not coming up."

Beat. "Okay."

Bob didn't make a third go at it.

Studio 60

That lucky duck Aaron Sorkin is landing on his feet over at the peacock network -- they're leading their fall TV lineup with "Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip," his dramedy about an "SNL"-type show. Since they're tossing it all over the upfronts this week, you should watch the six minutes of footage that are in circulation -- it looks like a monster.

I really enjoyed "SportsNight," but by the time "West Wing" came around, I'd lost my taste for authority-type characters walking briskly ahead of subordinates while barking dialogue at them. Seemed like a trope he went to the well for far too often. Mind you, he had great actors in Richard Schiff and Bradley Whitford, but the confines of the Washington setting were not pop culture-y enough for me.

Now, it appears like Sorkin's found the sweet spot: a workplace comedy/drama built into his milieu -- L.A. entertainment. We should fully expect his better predilections towards rat-a-tat dialogue and quirkedgy characters to take over. Boy, it's strange to see Matt Perry look like he's in a position of authority -- but I believe it, just so long as he keeps elocuting that idiosyncratic Sorkinian speech.

The Perry aspect is intriguing, and the cast seems estimable consisting of the former "Friend" and "Wing" alumnus Whitford in the lead, supported by Amanda Peet, Brian Weber, D.L. Hughley, and Judd Hirsch, among others. A strange melange of pedigrees, to be sure, but I look forward to seeing how they play together.

Public breakup

So, Paul McCartney and Heather Mills are dissolving their marriage after nearly four years. I love their stated reason: "Intrusion from the media."

Yeah, as if Heather isn't one of the English-speaking world's most craven camera-whores. Regardless of whether she is trying to get some attention on one of her noble pet causes, she will unscrew that fake leg of hers at the first sight of a Leica camera body.

Don't bullshit me, Limpy McStump... you love that fucking lens -- more than your erstwhile husband.

Gauloise

I'm loving this video of the late Serge Gainsbourg, pissed off his ass, telling Whitney Houston he wants to fuck her. Classic.

Leave the situation

Watching the "Big Love" on the HBO after "The Sopranos" and liking it... obviously, or I guess I wouldn't keep watching it. But I'm struck by the conclusion I keep drawing from every episode -- each character's troubles are caused by them denying what they really want. Which is to say, each character deep down wants a singular marriage, and the tension in the series comes from the plural marriage scenario.

I keep rooting for Ginnifer Goodwin's Margene to take her babies and leave to find a good (read: young) man who'll give her all the attention she needs. I want to see Bill Paxton's Bill Henrickson give Chloe Sevigny's Nicolette the boot back to the Juniper Creek Compound, leaving her to wend her way through life at her father's side. And I want Bill and Jeanne Tripplehorn's Barb to enjoy the quiet, sexy marital bliss they would so clearly enjoy were it not for the business of managing a huge, octopedic family unit.

Is this a brilliant conceit by show runners Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, to keep jangling the character's nerves so they never find equilibrium -- or, is it a black hole? Maybe I crave neatly-sanded edges too much and won't sit for uneasiness on this scale... but it feels like they're making a show about an idea akin to a gay man who's desperately trying to stay in the closet. There's drama and character tension, sure, but also a serially-portrayed dishonesty at its core.

Frippery

I level charges of frippery at you! Frippery, I say! I'm engaging in frippery right now! Blatant frippery on a huge scale.

Unconscionable frippery.

Dare I say, I've never seen frippery to the degree with which it's being perpetrated here, right now? Frippery beyond comprehension! Zounds!

I don't even know what frippery means. The thing is, I don't want to look it up in the dictionary because then it will spoil the conception of it I cling to in my head.

I don't even suppose it has anything to do with Robert Fripp, anyway.

Shore

Me and the wifular-object spent the weekend out on Fire Island. For those who don't know, it is a long, thin spit of sand that runs parallel to Long Island's south shore, acting as a significant barrier beach. It is, naturally, a place of second homes for wealthy New Yorkers, much like any stretch of shoreline within 500 miles of Manhattan winds up becoming.

To be precise, we spent our time in the small village of Cherry Grove -- which, along with its sister village The Pines, forms one of the oldest and most substantial gay communities in all the tri-state area. The wife has been visiting since the mid-1990s, and although I grew up only a few miles north from there, I never laid eyes on it until three years ago. Now, we spend a week there every June. I've always been amazed that such a place -- a gay place -- existed so close to the redneckly intolerant expanse of suburban Long Island, with its predominantly white, Irish-Italian Catholic/Jewish populace.

It's great to feel at home in a place where our straight coupling is the sexual minority -- without exaggeration, we're the only man-woman pair to be found in all of town in the heat of summer. And yet, we're welcomed with smiles and hugs everywhere. I daresay that the opposite example wouldn't be found in too many other places.

On the way out of town, the citygoers tend to make their way back to New York via a complex transit combination of ferry, coach, train, and subway. I fell in with the crush Sunday afternoon, standing on the Long Island railroad platform in the town of Sayville, waiting for that train... and I started to notice something. Every man on that platform was carrying either a Prada bag or rolling Louis Vuitton luggage. Everyone.

It's like, "I GET IT -- you're gay. Message received. It's not like I missed the point on the island the last week or so -- I was the only one with a spare tire and no nipple rings." The amount of conspicuous consumption was a little much of a muchness.

If Zagat reviewed people....

From the upcoming "2006 Zagat Survey of Humans":

My new TV uncle

Through sheer force of will, Terry Dietz has plowed his way through most of this season of Survivor. In shades of Tom Westman, New York fireman and Season 11 winner, Dietz has used old-guy endurance and old-guy intelligence to outwit the nitwits he's sharing the Panamanian island with. Although last night he was bested in immunity, his first such loss in that challenge, he's faced down any and all comers since the tribal merge and strode like a colossus among lesser men.

Even though my original TV dad is still Tom Westman, I'd graciously allow TV uncle Dietz to throw the ball around with me, teach me how to ride a bicycle, change the oil in his TV car (which, appropriately enough, would be some big V8 with magged out tires and shiny rims, because uncles always have cooler autos than your own parents). Soon enough, my TV dad Westman would get angry at TV uncle Dietz over how he's "screwing his life" up, and if he'd "only give up the constant boozing -- for chrissakes, you stink like the goddamn sauce right now! And what is it -- 10 in the godddamn morning?" And my TV uncle would be saying, "Ah, go fuck yourself, Mister Fucking High Horse! Your going to lecture me on drinking just because you're fucking jealous that I didn't knock up that waitress and marry her on a lark! Don't get angry at me now you can't have fun anymore. I fucking told you to get rid of it, but NOOOO! You didn't listen." To which my TV dad would say, "You don't talk about my wife that way, asshole. Shut your fucking mouth before I kick all your fucking teeth in." TV uncle would retort, "Go the fuck ahead, Big Man. Just fucking try it." Within minutes, TV mom would be crying her eyes out, trying to stop TV dad from hitting TV uncle in the head with his balled-up fist. Soon enough, TV police officer would be called to the scene to fill out an incident report, wherein TV mom would suggest that TV uncle also has a "cocaine problem, too. He's up to three grams a day." All the while, TV me would be in my room, hiding behind my TV bedroom door, quietly sobbing in fear and sadness into the soft, wooly head of my TV teddy bear, the only real, safe friend I have.

Them deers

This was a little local news nugget that happened to slip by most news venues the last day or two: a pair of deer were seen in a Bronx front yard one dewy morning, and, after being chased by police (for some inexplicable reason), one was impaled on a fencepost and presumed drowned as it fell lamely into the river and the other was tranquilized for relocation.

This follows a black bear shooting in New Jersey by police and also the infamous coyote chase in Central Park, which resulted in the tranquilized canine later dying from shock.

Why is the first impulse people have is to yell "KILL IT!" when "wildlife" wanders in front of them? Are people so bothered by fucking deer that there's no other recourse than to hound them to death? New Jersey has practically made a sport of killing bears eating out of garbage cans -- but no one ever stops to think about how far the McMansions of Bergen County have encroached on bear environments.

Fuck it -- rather than plan responsibly, just shoot the fucker in the head and plan that dormer on your ugly-ass house in Suburban Hellscape, N.J.

The James Woods Jokebook

OK, let's get this shit rolling -- I don't have all fucking day to waste on you and your fucking pissant questions.

Joke number one: What did the big flower say to the little flower? Hey bud.

Fucking funny, right. OK, moving on:

Joke number two: What do you call a cat in the freezer? A catsicle.

This shit is so easy, even you can score with it.

Joke number three: Why did the guy throw the clock out the window? He wanted to see time fly!

Nice -- right asshole? Try this one on for size:

Joke number four: Why did the computer go to the doctor? Because it had a virus.

Now you're getting it. I'm gonna throw some curveballs at you now.

Joke number five: Why are fish so smart? Because they live in schools.

This is a good one, shithead:

Joke number six: A woman is seeing her gynecologist and he asks her if she'd liked to be numbed before the procedure. She says yes, so he kneels down in front of her pussy and says, "Num-num-num-num."

Fuck yeah! OK, douschebag, this is my last one:

Joke number seven: How many women does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None, because they're all a bunch of lazy-ass fucking bloody-gashes who take papa's poker cash away every time he fucks them in the ass in his fucking room at the Sands. Fucking cunts.

I think we all get the idea. Blow off now, kid. Go fuck yourself.

Hurdy-gurdy

Dance! Dance like a little chimp! Make them put money in the cup! Always dancing!

Whether it's for the doctor, the ice cream man, the woman serving your pizza, dance! Spin around and fall down! Make them laugh!

Try hard to be clever! Clench your teeth and dance faster -- you've got their attention now! Don't stop dancing, you furry little freak, with that delightful little monkey-size cap on your furry little head! Dance, freakish primate!

Look at his face! Smell him! That's the monkey! He won't stop dancing! Just a quarter will do! Watch him twirl! Listen to his squeaks!

Monkeychimplad! Dancing freakapeguy! Make them laugh!

Babies advice

Oh, hello -- I didn't see you come into my dark demesne! I'm Azmodeus, the black deity of misery and suffering. I was thumbing through my copy of "UsWeekly" here in the lower bowels of the Bottomless Pit and I came to this little number about Britney Spears being preggers again. Wonderful! Congratulations, mom and dad! And so soon after little Sean Preston -- new, unnamed baby makes four!

Yes, the news certainly brought a smile to my leathery, cold, grime-encrusted visage. There's nothing Azmodeus loves to hear about more than bouncing baby boys and girls brought into the world by incapable, immature, emotionally-retarded quasi-adults. Why, just the other day I was cleaving the souls of the damned in twain with my mighty war-axe when I heard about little Preston Sean falling out of his "defective" (*wink-wink*) baby seat. Well done!

I had been coasting on the gratitude I've felt towards Lynne Spears for masochistically pushing her daughters into the white-hot glare of the spotlight, just to see them debase themselves sexually and disintegrate under the withering scrutiny of our pop culture apparatus. Watching Britney walk barefoot into public restrooms and soothe her tortured psyche with Red Bull and Cheetos was just a bonus. Ah yes, Azmodeus was pleased -- but Britney finding that suburban poseur back-up dancer? That was enough to allow a single black-oil tear to escape my atrophied lachrymose duct.

So, I say huzzah to the couple! Azmodeus would love to see a large brood growing up in that Malibu spread: Scads of children, all suffering emotional neglect and questionable hygiene (and perhaps borderline physical abuse). Let me say business hasn't been this good since Bruce Willis and Demi Moore starting dropping overfed, entitled little wastrels into the world back in the ’80s.

Of course, this is all just a mere aperitif to whet my appetite for the day when little Frances Bean Cobain learns to spawn. Oh lucky day!

Frank Herbert's "Suburb of Dune"

Guy I know just got back from Las Vegas -- can you believe people live out there? As in, a shitload of people? It was, last time I checked, the desert. As in, fucking gila monsters and cactus die from the heat. As in, sand and death. Not a good idea to have a suburb in the middle of that shit. Don't these people like green, leafy things?

I guess there must be some attraction to live in a place that's desolate, barren, and naturally inhospitable. Let's put a racino on Mars and see if some sucker with a gold chain, spread-collar, and a hairy chest gets the idea to build a condo next to it.

"Da Martian soyface -- it's only a dry heat! Dat, plus the 85 puhcent carbon dioxide atmosphere makes it a great place to raise da kids!"

Hi, I'm a humpback whale!

Yes, it's your good friend megaptera novaeangliae. You may have seen me on your TV sets on such channels as Discovery, National Geographic Explorer, and public television -- or if you're really lucky, you may have even seen me up close from the deck of a boat. (And for the record, I know that public TV isn't so much a single channel entity as it is a free-airwaves concept that varies from market to market. Don't condescend to me.)

I have to make this short, because the owner of this computer doesn't know there's a large, sea-borne mammal in his office... and besides, it's quite hard to type on this PowerBook with these massive fins.

I've found that there's a certain mystery in that little pink biped "magician" (I'm employing air-fin quotes as I type for added emphasis) who likes to live in saltwater tanks for weeks on end. What is your species's damage? I have to be in the brine. My food is there -- thousands of tons of plankton a month, all strained through the numerous baleen strands that fill my mouth. Besides, if I were out of the soup, my innards would surely collapse in upon themselves.

But this idiot -- this foolish member of your dry little species, with that please-smack-me-with-your-fluke look on his face, the heavy-lidded eyes, and the I'm-a-daredevil-and-I-can't-help-but-be-smacked-with-your-massive-fluke demeanor. This douschewhistle is a tremendous fraud -- even more tremendous than my ability to dive and stay below icy, arctic waters for nearly an hour at a clip.

Before I slide through this nice (albeit unwittingly so) person's home on my moist fins and make my way back to the chilling blue depths I call home, I implore you to pay greater heed to whom you offer your valuable media exposure to -- certainly, you have more deserving heroes than this mountebank. I understand that your once-voluptuous teen sex-object Lindsay Lohan is reclaiming her image as a serious artist via a project with famous pink biped director Robert Altman. Why don't you talk about that for a while?

But, what do I know? My brain is only the size of a watermelon.

Small Wonder

Whatever happened to that show "Small Wonder?" The one with the little android girl? She wore those cute little dresses, had those little ringlets... and I guess was able to bench press a Chevy, and stuff. Remember? I guess those nitwits at central programming just decided it was ahead of its time and canceled it. I guess they didn't see its potential.

What if they remade it as a movie, like "Bewitched?" With Pink as the android -- and Stephen Colbert as the... father... guy.

Smug is now at $3 a gallon

Among my favorite reasons for living the urban life is the access to extensive public transportation. New York has, like, the largest subway system in the known universe, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere in the four contiguous boroughs you can't get to.

I love it today, especially, because of the fucking high gas prices -- I've literally driven a car only twice over the last 12 months, and I haven't owned a vehicle since 2001. What seemed like a sine qua non growing up in the ’burbs is now either an extreme luxury or a nuisance, depending on how you think about it. I love not giving a fuck about gas prices. I love not giving a fuck about anyone else's hardship over high gas prices. I love not giving any fucks about the Saudi oilfields, or the saber-rattling of Hugo Chavez and Argentina's oilfields.

I'm not part of the problem. I'm part of the solution.

Not only am I not creating an extra demand for fossil fuels, I'm also not contributing to greenhouse emissions with a personal auto anymore. And of course, since I'm in this position, I can't see why anyone else wouldn't want to be in the spot I am.

Hence, the entry of staggering levels of smug. In fact, if there were a per-barrel price on smug right now, it would be at record lows on account of a glut.

Nugget of a Factoid

While taking in a little mindless movie madness earlier this evening ("Mission Impossible 3"... and I can't promise I won't go see "Poseidon" next weekend either) it occurred to me that, improbably enough, this wasn't the first pairing of Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman on screen together -- if you think back to 1999, remember that they briefly crossed paths in Paul Thomas Anderson's bloated "Magnolia" as guru Frank T.J. Mackey and nurse Phil Parma, respectively.

Who's that girl?

Ever wonder what Madonna would look like if she had scrubbed the last three grams of natural joy out of her life? Well, wonder no more -- here is incontrovertible evidence of her exerciserexia. This is from that huge 58-page W magazine spread on Ms. Ciccone, apparently brought ahead through time from the year 1985 by Marty McFly -- who else might give a fuck?

"Get your damn hands off my over pop-star, Biff.

Impossible mission

Maybe it's just my schadenfreude at work, but there is something satisfying about "Mission: Impossible 3" taking in a projected $40-45 million on opening weekend, dreadfully far below the wonks' estimates for what the first big tentpole movie of the summer should earn.

Nikki Finke posits in the piece linked to above that it is, of course, Cruise-fatigue which is to blame for the low gross. I'd like to believe that, but Cruise-fatigue didn't torpedo "War of the Worlds," and that came smack in the center of CouchGate.

Give me another Cruise-flick with declining grosses, and then we can start discussing a serious consumer backlash.

Review of a movie I haven't seen: "Silent Hill"

I enjoyed "Silent Hill"very muchly. Based on the popular series of gruesome video games, Christophe Gans has done an admirable job of adapting an expansive plot and twisted visuals into the framework of a motion picture, all the while sidestepping the pitfalls of such other video game adaptations as "Super Mario Brothers," "Remains Of the Day," and "Excitebike."

I especially liked the scene with the helicopter... there was this ingenious setpiece that involved a whirlybird and an array of CGI characters. I know it sounds ludicrous, but you have to take my word for it. The main character is riding on the skids of an Apache attack helicopter when it swoops through a hangar full of gun-toting baddies. To me, it rivals the 100-man "Burly Brawl" from the Matrix Reloaded."

Special mention has to go to the casting of Henry Winkler as the principal, a role that could be seen as stock if not for the deft, actorly handling of his tough-love philosophy. Winkler's scenes are electric, and his chemistry with lead Radha Mitchell was incredible.

Idiot photographer

The idiot photographer that my newspaper employs is out shooting the big Derby-like-thingie in Louisville, Ky., and has but one objective at the track -- to take a clear, well-lit photo of uber-betty Petra Nemcova, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue model and cling-to-a-tree-in-a-tsunami survivor.

How can you screw this assignment up? Well, leave it to the moron with the 8 million megapixel camera.

Negative body image

I've never been called "lanky." I would love to hear it, but it isn't true. I'm more what you would describe "eggplanty." Lanky is a good word -- it's a real boon to hear, should someone issue it your way.

Eggplanty is not. Neither is muffin-top, which is what spills out over my pants and fills my tucked-in shirt. It's not pretty.

I just saw a lanky guy walking down Pine Street. He was tall, thin -- lanky, I'd guess. Sumbitch has probably been described as being lanky many times in his life. I'm guessing no one has ever walked by and said, "Hey look -- there's that guy from the place who does the thing, and he has a revolting inner-tube of cellulite around his waist and a chip on his shoulder, and he wants a goddamn fruit-pie stuffed into his mouth along with an entire fucking Toblerone bar, immediately. Look at him! Look at the freak! The dancing freak! With the muffin-top!"

I try to misattribute my unsightly piles of skin and cellulite -- I tell my Oilbaum that I have a significant accumulation of what is called "character jelly." There's no flair in being a plain-old tub of goo, which is exactly what I am. Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.

YET another installment of..."Re-lettering She-Hulk Pages"

I'm going to the well again, this time with "She-Hulk #8."

Contraception

Good work, punitive-rollbacker moralists -- gains we've made as a nation since the early ’80s in terms of reducing the abortion rate are being erased by a greater national predilection against using birth control.

The statistical evidence that the rates of birth control use among both the poor and the better-heeled has decreased is all the more shocking. What does it mean? Is it only a symptom, though, of national moralism/anti-contraception teachings? Perhaps there's also a soupçon of widespread post-AIDS ignorance... no way to know for sure.

Another installment of..."Re-lettering Fantastic Four Pages"

This week's sample comes from "Fantastic Four: A Death In the Family."

Showtime

At least once a year, me and the Lipbalm catch a show on the Great White Way... or, off the Great White Way. Last year, the show of choice was my pick -- the Mantello-directed revival of Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross," starring Liev Schreiber and Alan Alda... only, not starring Schreiber the showing we saw. Thus far, our 2006 show was Tuesday night's preview showing of Friel's "Faith Healer," with a dream team cast of Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, and (wait for it... wait... hold... holding... we're holding... and... release) IAN MCDIARMID!

The fucking EMPEROR! PALPATINE! The man who mastered my childhood! And everything afterwards! The reason I wanted to go into acting and never did!

The show is an import from Ireland and is only at the Booth Theatre for a few more weeks, so I wasn't going to let a Fiennes and McDiarmid title bout pass me by.

The performances are marvelous, pretty much consisting of four interrelated monologues -- but the characters never occupy the stage at the same time. So, despite the power of each actor, there is something disconcerting in not seeing them act against one another. Moreover, while stirring, the monologues each dip over 30 minutes in length -- do the math and you'll see that the show almost touched three hours. Call in a Red Bull or seven, people.

The show's biggest flaw was the length, something easily remedied by a dramaturgical flyover and trim. Seriously -- it could have easily afforded a twenty-minute edit and been all the more powerful for it. Also, Cherry Jones, one of my favorites, was directed to be histrionic at times, a disappointing style choice by director Jonathan Kent. The show was stolen, however, by McDiarmid's turn -- the man shows why he is a legend of the British stage scene for 30 years. Fiennes is great too, but I don't worship at his altar like I do THE EMPEROR!

Also satisfying is the people watching -- the opportunity to go to the thee-aht-tuh affords you a glimpse at all the wealthy, pulled faces and rent-controlled biddies who come out to people the audience of serious dramas. It's half social register, and half voting-booth operators.

To each his own

Disney is going to make a tamer version of its "Mission: Space" ride after a German tourist woman died of a brain bleed after riding it.

Hey, why not just create a tamer version of "It's a Small World" in FantasyLand? Why not make three speeds for every jerky sissy with a cerebral thrombosis waiting to happen?

A "1 A.M. on Bravo" Movie Review: "Frequency"

Bravo was showing the 2000 Dennis Quaid vehicle "Frequency," and I watched it. All of it.

The premise is one of my faves -- wish-fulfillment theatre. The not-yet-Christed Jim Caviezel finds a way to talk over a ham radio with his dead dad back in 1969, a day before a firefighting accident was to have killed him. Caviezel tells his dad what not to do, and saves his life. Annnnnd -- he tampers with the space time continuum. Before I get into all that, let me admit that I'm a sucker for wish-fulfillment theatre; "Six Feet Under" was one of my favorite shows (talking to the dead), and I always love me some time travel. If only he had a few days of connection with dear ol' dad, dayeinu ... but instead, he winds up mucking with history like Homer Simpson in that chronal-toaster-vignette in that one "Treehouse of Horror." By saving dad's life, he kills mom somehow. And on and on it goes, until he gets the right combination of things to go right so that dad bloinks into existence, and mom isn't serially murdered.

Blah blah blah it descends into a murder mystery whodunit whokillsit whocares in the last hour, becoming thoroughly tedious. The worst part was that when Caviezel would change the past, the wrought effects would also bloink into existence abruptly in the present. I mean, if he had changed the past, wouldn't it have always been that way? Huh? Huh? Jerkie movie.

Full disclaimer: My stepfather Bill Reynolds, an FDNY vet of 24 years, assisted on the pyrotechnical aspects of filming of this flick back in 1999.

Quacksucking motherquackers!

There's a little construction project raging across the street -- they've set up this scaffolding that houses an enormous, canary-colored penis that is a garbage sluice for construction waste. Every morning for the past two weeks, we're woken up at 8 p.m. sharp by the sounds of hardhats throwing what must be, like, eighteen bowling balls down this tube into the bottom of an empty dumpster. CLANGITY-CLANG! This shit goes on for four hours every morning -- it's like they do the noisiest part of the job at dawn, and all the quiet sawing and nail-driving towards dinner time. It's like living across the street from Bizarro-Superman Contractors, LLC.

It's been two weeks without any kind of decent sleep, and I'm falling to pieces. For my part, I'm going to poison them all with chlorine gas, find out where their widows live, and punch them in the fallopian tubes.

Sailing the seas of bile

Just a man alone on a frigate, crashing through waves of scorn on a vast sea of bile.

Lash the topsails of menace! Winch the mainsail of depravity! Hoist the forecastle of despise! This vessel is a unstoppable on the high seas...

Swells of idiots, riptides chockablock with morons and impediments, tidal waves of buffoons and blackguards... this sea is a disaster waiting to happen. But -- it doesn't wait. Critical disaster is carried on the wind -- the smell of the pungent saltmist of calamity upon the snapping gales of hate is obvious, but not as obvious as the deep well of dread living down in the liver, complete with little handcrank, bucket, and rope -- just like in the cartoons.

Waveforce crashes port and starboard, tossing the craft lo and yon, hither and thence -- all sorts of bullshit places like that. A hominid is left on the slippery deck, running up and down; it's up to him to keep this bitch from pitchpoling. Energetic bursts of red-green, like wet fists, bash and buffet.

Crack the hull. Sink -- go deep, slip into the liquid ice just feet below the surface. Feel the cartilagious carnivores nick meat from the bone.

This is the tainted-emerald sea of bile. The best human company a man can ask for, barring saltpeter in the food. This is worth benefits and 401k; worth the jackass standing at the top of the stairs lighting a Parliament, impeding your path; worth mailing an envelope full of talc to City Hall. It's worth whispering to squirrels about, like Bernie G. does in Union Square.

The 132nd Kentucky Derby

Ah, the smell of freshly-cut grass, the mint juleps, the clumps of sod thrown about -- it's time for the "most exciting two minutes in all of sports," the Running of the Roses.

Straight outta the serene hellscape of Lexington, Ky., the planet's most self-indulgent and self-important "sport" grabs the spotlight on the first Saturday in May and ruins my life for a good four months before and after that single afternoon. I have found out, curiously enough, that I do in fact live at the office at my cubicle, and not at what I thought was my apartment. The internal planning at the job is so bad that we will spend five "work" days in the span of three "actual" days honing tens of thousands of column inches of copy about inessential, impenetrable arcana that is of importance to absolutely no one.

It's galling to undergo the equivalent of having your organs removed while you're awake, and watching the surgeons toss the bleeding tissue onto the soddened floor of the abattoir. All that hard work -- essentially, for nothing.

Days of enjoying life, hours of sleep, miles of exercise -- gone forever, so some fat fuck in Ozone Park in a powder-blue windbreaker can tear out the paper's editorial copy from the data and toss it on the floor of an OTB.

That's why this year I'll be sending the Iranians some of our state atomic secrets so they can furnish me with a neutron bomb to drop on Churchill Downs.

It's fucking inbred horses running around in a circle, douschewaffles. Get a life and give me my own back.