Hiatus

We will return to your regularly scheduled programming Septembr 1st... Enjoy your August.

Jayson Blair, Kaavya Viswanathan Join NYT Ed Board

The New York Times editorial board TOTALLY ripped off my gag. The good news is I've already posted this joke three times - here, here, and here. (I realize that each was less funny than the last, but the horse is now dead.) Who's laughing now, Sulzberger?!

Thank god for those half-Japanese girls

Who among us doesn't fondly recall being crammed in the back of your best friend's older sister's Honda and driving to the local venue for that glorious rite of passage - your first show? Happily fetching water and sno-cones for the big kids,y our permanent shit-eating grin barely allowed you to take advantage of the errant beer you might suddenly find in your hands. For us, that show was Weezer. We loved that show, and every fist pump has stayed with us through every show we've seen since. Perusing the Internets today however, it looks like it all may be over. Our reaction to this is fraught with conflicting emotions. For example, Weezer was emo before emo was cool. Being anything before it is cool demands a little respect. But emo is so uncool that it leaves a big black mark on that achievement. Also - Their first two albums were awesome. But after months of "Weezer returns!" hype, each album since has been so craptastic that we have stopped paying any attention to them at all. We've even heard the term "To cry Weezer" has been adopted by the music industry to mean a band that overhypes its album in an effort to make up for its sheer suckiness. (ex- Man, Arctic Monkeys really cried Weezer, huh?) Sordid history aside, Rivers apparently dished to MTV a few months ago on the future of the band. We'd like to take this opportunity to respond to a few things Cuomo left hanging in the air. On the reason for the breakup: This is an obvious typo. The phrase "Make Believe back in 2005" should read "Pinkerton back in 1996" On new material: Right. Coz all your best songs were written when you felt "excited and creative" rather than "depressed and self-loathing". On his new digs: Ooo. How romantic. Also, nothing screems Weezer to us like a Japanese mega-mall. On what to do with the new material: No solo career. Thanks. Bye. On the prospects of a greatest hits album: You already made two GH albums. They were called Weezer and Pinkerton, respectively.

Insert 'desperate gays' joke here...

I'm no supporter of efforts to limit marriage or define it in any particular way. If you don't believe me, I'll show you the pics of me circa May 2004, wearing a rainbow flag (and little else), cheering Ellen Goodridge as she walked out of Cambridge City Hall with her brand new wife. As a matter of fact, I am all for the proposal to get government out of the marriage business altogether, leaving it up to religious leaders of the various faiths and denominations to work out who will allow whom to marry. Let the bureaucrats do the civil union thing, (for ANYONE), and if the God Squad is all that concerned about who is marrying whom, let them work it out their own selves, without any impact on peoples' statutory privleges. That said, I feel like the gays up there in Mass. are getting a little ahead of themselves. Here they are, arguing for what they feel (and I agree) are their constitutional rights. Their opposition, however misguided, has worked to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot with the standard tripe about gays destroying marriage. So the gay-rights kids sued, claiming the proposed constitutional amendment is unconstitutional. Exactly. Aren't all amendments? Isn't that why they have to amend the constitution? And who does the attorney general think he is to decide what amendments are and are not constitutional? What ever happened to that whole demorcacy/voting/will of the people thing? How many rhetorical questions should I ask in one paragraph? Can I stop now?

Is "Mais pourquoi?" French for "What the fuck?"

You can only ask so much of a Viking

One of the best things about America is our general willingness to bully our hyper-commercial, lowest common denominator culture on the rest of the world. We've happily watched as precious morsels like the Whopper, CosmoGIRL, or Hasselhoff (who's BACK! AGAIN!) have been stuffed down the collective global throat. The whole c'mon-you-know-you-want-it frat boy approach to globalization extends beyond K-Fed's latest hit to things like geomilitary politics and multinational economics, most recently seen in the Iraq war and the sheer number of U.S.-based multinational corporations. Some countries suffer our hubris better than others, but those shifty Scandinavians have always been the most sangfroid of the lot. Until now, that is. Becuase there are some things you just don't do - lines in the sand that must not be crossed. So when the U.S. recently joined efforts to stop a coalition of countries from restarting large scale commercial whaling programs, Norway lost its shit and started blowing whales up left and right, while horrified American tourists viewed helplessly from whale-watching boats. If you ask me, we had it coming. Norway needs lamp oil and corsets just as much as we need coffee and reality TV. And do you think the U.S. would sit idly by and watch if Norway tried to outlaw things near and dear to our national heart, like NASCAR or global warming? No! We'd just start blowing up Chevy Impalas and delicate international treaties. Since we're a vindictive bunch, we'd also probably round up all the cheap, odd-looking IKEA crap we could find and barbecue the shit out of it. And we would make damn sure some Norwegians were there to see it.

Fireworks and thunderstorms are NOT the same thing

Dear Christian right, Your god has clearly abandoned you AND your idea of America. That is the only explanation for the GIANT CUMULONIMBUS CLOUDS hovering over your "annointed" government when there are supposed to be FIREWORKS! Only an angry god would do this. Where's your righteousness NOW? Love, Scourge

America, this is the best I can do

Jimi said it best. But only Marvin could get away with layin' it down to a beat.