Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Wednesday, October 01, 2008 )

Why did the bi-partisan economic emergency bailout plan crafted by the president and Congressional leaders fail to pass the House of Representatives on Monday?

–*House Republicans were enraged about a plan that would help bail out rich people and said they would not be satisfied until tax cuts were added that would help bail out rich people.

–*Alaska’s representatives wouldn’t sign it unless they got an earmark for a glorious new “Bridge To Somewhere.”

–*John McCain led a fifth column effort against the plan, wanting so much to show that he is not like George Bush that he would even drive the economy into a Malthusian state of abject poverty and cannibalism to do so.

–*Everybody was about to vote yes on the bill when Congress was suddenly overrun by a phalanx of wild hogs.

–*Republican congressmen believe nobody should ever interfere with the free market, or even say, step forward with a fire hose if the whole free market were being consumed in a conflagration of smashing marble columns and broken glass.

–*One Congressman said the bailout would put us on the path to socialism. “If you lose your ability to fail, soon you will lose your ability to succeed,” he said. He then went home and set all of his young children free.

–*Conservatives want to make sure we learn the lesson that every action has a consequence. Even though, whether the bill passes or not, many of the biggest Wall Street executives responsible for this mess are going off with golden handshake deals, retiring to their Roman style pools to spend their free time getting hand jobs from Swedish milkmaids until they die with smiles so big you can’t pry them off their faces.

–*Bailing out Wall Street firms, said one Republican, is exactly what the Bolsheviks would have done. (I wish I was kidding on this one, but some monumentally stupid dill weed named Thaddeus McCotter from Michigan actually said something quite like this. He also called the package a “bag of dung.”)

–*Without the bill, many poor people are going to have a hard time getting student loans and mortgages. Republicans seem to believe only in the concept that wealth trickles down, and don’t care about that other famous one about shit rolling downhill.

–*Not to change the subject, but Barack Obama did you say you were going to attack Pakistan? Are you fucking nuts?

–*A Great Depression is just what we need to help us get our priorities straight.

–*Nobody was that enthusiastic about the bill since there would be no after-party thrown by AIG.

–*… and no after-party thrown by Lehman Brothers.

–*You know, if a bunch of hippies were sitting around an ROTC building on fire saying “Let it burn,” they would be branded criminals. And yet, when a bunch of Republicans are doing the same thing with the economy because of their extremist belief about free markets, they somehow consider themselves patriots. Congratulations, fuckheads. You’re now in bed with Ralph Nader.

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(Originally posted Tuesday, September 30, 2008 )

Stephanie and I shot Episode 9 of “The Retributioners” this weekend with three incredibly talented actresses, whose work I’d like to showcase here over the next couple of days.

One of them is Marni Penning, an actress and comedienne who is generating some comedy heat lately on YouTube with her awesome Sarah Palin send-up videos. Check out the latest:

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(Originally posted Monday, September 29, 2008 )

What stupid ordinances and rules are in our city’s code and legal charters?

–*Everyone in Merrymont, S.D. can carry a sawed off shotgun on the liturgical calendar day known as Maundy Thursday.

–*Yonkers, N.Y. offers diplomatic immunity for people who drive recklessly or commit a crime of passion against a faithless hot blooded swarthy wife of Mediterranean extraction in a knife-wielding jealous rage.

–*In Slattern, Michigan, donkeys cannot use shampoo.

–*In Sacerdotal, Utah, you can return all grapes with seeds.

–*And you can also return all grapes of wrath.

–*In Sandy Shale, Montana, any employee of the United Parcel Service may take a dump in your furnace.

–*In New York City, any truck over 15 feet may not drive through a tunnel with clearance of 12 feet. This is also an observation of the laws of physics.

–*In Teaneck, N.J., it is legal to drive the wrong way down a one way street as long as you can prove you are doing so to get home and procreate with your legal wife.

–*In Belleville, Nebraska, you cannot form an interrogative statement, i.e. use a question mark, in the presence of a known lap dancer before noon on Sunday.

–*In Carbondale, Alabama, it is illegal to dress as a member of the clergy unless it is really, really heightening your sexual fantasy.

–*In Matternly, Oklahoma, gays cannot marry but horses can.

–*In Hatteras Beach, Georgia, if you bought your car in a leap year on February 29, it will never exist in the eyes of the law and you don’t owe insurance, licensing fees or inspection tax on it.

–*In Flagstaff, a car with one flat tire is officially a derelict vehicle and can be towed. But a woman standing helpless by the road with a flat tire is officially sexy.

–*In Mavensbrook, Illinois, you cannot whisper in somebody’s ear if he is a known pickle fetishist.

–*In San Gimingano, California, a man cannot use caller ID without filing registration as a known “passive-aggressive.”

–*In Battery City, Maryland, it is legal to bite somebody to death as long as you can prove they were trying to do the same to you.

–*In Carlsbad, Colorado, you may not kill any whales unless you have addressed them and they do not answer back, which means it is likely in self defense.

–*In Texas, it is illegal to perform female circumcision unless you already come from a home country where the practice is enthusiastically adopted by millions.

–*In Brooklyn, you can’t call somebody a mook.

–*In Port Jefferson, accepting stolen goods is a crime unless your mother stole it for you to make you look less dumpy so maybe you could get a husband.

–*In Washington, D.C., it is illegal to loan your bullwhip to a known felon or pretend to be an infant for tax purposes.

–*In Hampstead, R.I. all tags should be ripped off mattresses immediately

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(Originally posted Sunday, September 28, 2008 )

Live Blogging the First Debate of the General Presidential Election at the University of Mississippi on Friday, Sept. 26.

8:55 p.m. CNN pundit Michael Ware, in a pre-debate snipe, wonders when both presidential candidates will just give up the posturing and pastiche and tell the truth in an honest discussion. The viewers accept this whining as part of the political pastiche and heed it not.

8:59 p.m. CNN features its version of the EKG: an audience receptiveness meter divided into Democrats, Republicans and independents whose positive and negative reactions are measured at the bottom of the screen. Over the course of the night, it will reveal that many Republicans react positively to tax cuts and Sarah Palin and also that they need defibrilation, stat!

9:00 p.m. Jim Lehrer jumps right in with a question about the plan to bailout Wall Street investment firms with a $700 billion package. It is amusing that McCain and Obama, for sake of distinguishing themselves from each other, must pretend they have different positions on this matter, as if they had different positions on whether to flee a burning building, shoot Old Yeller or run from Godzilla.

9:03 p.m. Nobody steps up and says the truth: Even your grandmamma knows the bill has to pass. It’s a question of binary logic, not value judgment. No bailout = New Great Depression. The only reason it hasn’t passed yet is that not all the Congressmen have yet been able to make their Cynthia Plaster Caster phallic impressions on it.

9:05 p.m. Jim Lehrer keeps asking the candidates to look at each other as if this were marriage counseling or the Metallica reality show.

9:05 p.m. “Tell Obama what you’re feeling, John.” Then come tears. Lashing out. Catharsis. Hugs.

9:10 p.m. McCain says repeatedly he saw the Wall Street mess coming months ago. Actually, a few months ago he said specifically that he wasn’t an expert on the economy, so he understands if you don’t believe he really understood collateralized debt obligations. After all, not even Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s understood them. Now that he thinks about it, what McCain meant to say was that he saw it coming that Bruce Willis was dead halfway through “The Sixth Sense.”

9:15 p.m. McCain says Obama is going to raise taxes on people who make less than $40,000, on people who make less than $15,000, on people who don’t make any money, on the underground Morelocks, on the more gentle above-ground Eloi, and on the people of South Park. Sarah Palin.

9:16 p.m. McCain says he can’t believe Obama is going to raise taxes now–when Republican tax cuts and deregulation have turned out so good for everybody.

9:17 p.m. Socialized medicine. Stop evil. Kill the terrorists. Earmarks. Hate our freedom. The Monster at the End of This Book. Oh! It was Grover all along!

9:18 p.m. McCain suggests a spending freeze on everything but $600 billion for the Iraq War, $800 billion for the bailout of bad Wall Street bank assets, a $1 trillion “Bridge to Somewhere” and a $1.25 butter brickle from Baskin Robbins. But after all that, absolutely no more spending! Really! I promise.

9:25 p.m. McCain reveals an ambitious new plan to freeze spending and have you clothe, educate and police your damn selves like they do on “Survivor.”

9:35 p.m. In a time of war with the country on the verge of financial turmoil unseen since the Great Depression and a number of people forced out of their homes, McCain raises the issues most on people’s minds: earmarks and bad mani-pedis. If you are unimpressed by that, perhaps you would like to look at McCain’s big pen.

9:40 p.m. Hillary Clinton’s name is invoked like that of a dead saint whom we all forget we spent a lot of time scourging and boiling and defenestrating when she was alive.

9:45 p.m. McCain says he only approves untrue campaign advertisements when he thinks they’ll work on the rubes in his own party. And you can take that to the bank.

9:46 p.m. McCain says he only picks unqualified vice presidential candidates when he thinks they’ll appeal to the rubes in his own party. And that’s straight talk you can count on.

9:47 p.m. McCain vows that we will win in Iraq, Brazil and Mexico.

9:48 p.m. McCain misuses the phrase “existential.” Existentialists declare victory.

10:20 p.m. McCain sums up by saying Obama would give us four more years of the Bush presidency, that Obama is a Republican and that he ordered the invasion of Iraq.

10:30 p.m. When called out for distorting Obama’s positions and party affiliation this way, McCain apologizes and says, “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t be doing that kind of campaigning if it weren’t working so utterly utterly utterly well.”

I hope this live blog sates Fran’s bloodlust.

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(Originally posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 )

Lindsay Lohan gay

Clay Aiken gay

Lindsay Loham Samantha Ronson gay

“Lindsay Lohan” + drugs

“Lindsay Lohan” + “looks 80 years old in person”

“Clay Aiken” + gay + duh + “not news”

“Wall Street” + overleveraged + bailout + “financial crisis”

Congress + bailout + objections + posturing + proprietary + “girly men”

“George Bush” + crisis + “government intervention” + “nationalize” + “communist takeover”

“Pakistan” + “politically unstable nuclear power” + “border skirmish” + “international incident” + “oh fuck”

“$700 billion bailout”

“$700 billion bailout” + “depressed economy” + “looming accounting scandal”

“looming accounting scandal” + “depressed stockbrokers” + “Lindsay Lohan” + Lesbian + masturbate

“Dancing With the Stars” + “Kim Kardashian” + “No talent” + “brain dead”

“Cloris Leachman” + GILF

“Where can I find a GILF in Hazlett, New Jersey?”

“Where can I find a Dunkin’ Donuts and a GILF in Hazlett, N.J.?”

“Cloris Leachman” + “Academy Award” + “Last Picture Show” + “moving story” + “loss of American innocence”

“Kim Kardashian” + “lost innocence” + “sex tape”

“Hazlett, New Jersey” + “bus schedule”

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(Originally posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 )

NEW YORK (API) — Clay Aiken’s stunning confession last week that he was a gay man was followed by an equally surprising reaction by his one month old infant son, who responded: “Duh!”

According to most child development specialists, Aiken’s son Parker, born August 8, should not even be capable of speaking yet. Still, he responded to Aiken’s revelation: “Dad, I know I haven’t been around very long, but your being gay was kind of easy to pick up on. You don’t hide it very well.”

Among the things Parker pointed out was Aiken’s tireless efforts to woo male baby nurse Herman Mansegard and to seduce maintenance man Jaime Lazardo, and his scads and scads of gay porn.

“Also, the whole musical theater thing was kind of a gimme.”

Aiken said that his reason for coming out now was that he didn’t want to live a lie in front of the public and his son. Parker applauded Aiken’s courage, but added “Come on, give us a little credit. That whole tiptoeing around the issue. That was us being accepting already.”

Aiken has expressed worries that his longtime fans might be troubled by his completely unsurprising revelation and he is even worried about losing a few of them.

“It’s a lot to take, but I know the last thing my fans would want is for me to be dishonest to them,” said Aiken as infant Parker rolled his eyes and slapped his head at this completely unnecessary dash of pathos.

“Really Dad, I know I’m only six weeks old, but come on. You’re laying it on a little thick, aren’t you? We get it.”

Aiken wanted other people to feel comfortable coming out of the closet and know that what’s most important is to grow up in an atmosphere of acceptance.

Parker responded, “I feel like we spend a lot of time coming to terms with things around here. I wish somebody would just f**king feed me.”

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(Originally posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 )

Stephanie and I have been getting a lot of mad props for “The Retributioners” from TV Week‘s new media correspondent Daisy Whitney, one of the brightest lights of the online content cognoscenti. Now she’s mentioned us as part of the “Axis of Comedy” channel in her New Media Minute. Check it out.

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(Originally posted Monday, September 22, 2008 )

Steph and I just uploaded the latest episode of “The Retributioners,” “Episode 8: Feeling Up Ophelia.” In this installment, Stephanie goes back to confront a Shakespeare in the park director who she says sexually harassed her and fired her from “Hamlet.” Featuring Jeff Topf.

Remember, we are now part of the Axis of Comedy and want to encourage all our fans to check out our work there.

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