Meow House Theatre

I started another improv workshop this past weekend.

“Improv” is short for improvisational theater–the type of acting/theater that is the basis for sketch comedy and … obviously … improv shows. This is the kind of performance taught at Second City in Chicago, improvOlympic, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in LA and NYC, ImprovBoston (that’s where I go), and many other places. Del Close is considered the founding father of improv and you may have heard of him even if you didn’t really know who he was. A lot of SNL actors got their start in improv, as did a lot of the writers and performers on most of the late-night shows such as Conan, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, MadTV, and others.

There are all different types of improv workshops and no matter which one you take, they are all hilarious. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes it just ends up that way. Plus, a big thing in improv–probably the biggest “rule” (although there really aren’t any rules)–is that you always say “yes” to your scene partners. You don’t negate their ideas; you take whatever they offer and expand on it. Then they expand on what you said, and so on and so on. If you block the development of the scene by saying “no” (literally or metaphorically), you’re kind of putting a dead-end on on the performance and making it hard for the other person to move it forward at all. The resulting effect of this “Yes, and …” mentality is that every idea is fantastic. Every proposal is fucking GREAT. It doesn’t matter how absurd or ridiculous it might be to the general population; it’s absolutely wonderful to the people you’re playing with. (Sometimes, yes, there are better choices one could make; but the idea was still legitimate and exciting and magically delicious.) There is a huge amount of validation you get during a workshop and it is so different from real life where your ideas get shot down, you have to justify them, you have to explain the background, etc. Doesn’t work that way in improv–if you say your new product is a silk-and-cheesecloth Man Bra that’s going to have George Clooney singing “The Way You Look Tonight” for its marketing campaign, then it is taken for granted that that’s going to happen and it’s going to be fabulous. (That was a real scenario we put on last week, by the way.)

Plus you spend most of the workshop laughing in one way or another. You laugh at yourself, you laugh at silly physical movements you are supposed to make–which are either funny because people can do them even though they’re so ridiculous or they’re funny because nobody can do them quite correctly–you laugh at other people both being funny and not actually trying to be funny but it ends up that way despite their efforts to be serious. It’s quite wonderful to spend 3 hours laughing or at least smiling. Nobody can leave in a bad mood.

Everyone ought to take at least one improv class in their lives. You don’t have to aspire to be an actor or anything else; you just have to enjoy having a good time. Plus it’s cheaper than downing a few at a bar every week and it’s way better for your system.

Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake. Starbucks Vanilla Cupcake.

That’s it, okay? That’s IT!

Originally published in an abbreviated format April 24, 2006

Pentimento is a term used to describe when the top layer of a painting starts to fade away or become transparent, and previous versions (or sometimes an entirely different work) can be seen underneath. Thus, the viewer can see what the artist’s final rendering was and what he started out with, and how the two differ; or can see how two different paintings meld together over time to become one, one that can neither be extricated from the other nor incontrovertibly understood what was the original and what came later.

Pentimento is also the title of a book - one of my five favorite books of all time - by Lillian Hellman. This is the book upon which the 1977 movie “Julia,” starring Jane Fonda as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as her radical leftist and ultimately doomed friend Julia, was based. Pentimento was published as a memoir of Hellman’s childhood in New Orleans and New York City and of her later years as a playwright and author; her 30-year association with Dashiell Hammett; and her time living on Cape Cod and teaching at Harvard during and after the time Hammett was dying. She said she chose that word as the title because she wanted to record what those people and events in her life meant to her then, while they were happening, and what they mean to her now [at the time of the writing], now that she can look back and see them in the context of her life before and after them.

I was almost devastated to learn, many years after first reading this most affecting of works, that Hellman likely fabricated large parts of it: that many of the events she described so movingly did not happen the way she said, or even at all. It was like a punch in the gut. The visualization I had created in my mind shattered - I felt the same as if I had just found out that my dearest friend in the whole world had lied to me about her entire life. I guess that’s the mark of a good author. The ability to create such vivid imagery and emotional connection in the reader’s mind, that is; not the lying.

Hellman responded to the people questioning her veracity by saying she had changed names and layered certain characters in order to protect her friends and in particular Julia’s daughter, who she claimed still lived in New York and whose father was some famous person, a doctor if I remember correctly. The writer Mary McCarthy once went on The Dick Cavett Show and, referring to Hellman, said, “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Hellman filed a multi-million dollar slander suit against McCarthy for this remark but the suit was dropped by her estate when she died.

One good thing that did come out of this - well two good things because I still love the book, even if it’s fiction - is that Hellman talked quite a bit about her friendship with Dorothy Parker, and this got me interested in reading about her and she thus turned into one of my favorite authors. I love Parker. She was a master of the quick-witted jab, and I am a huge fan of people who can just pop them out with no preparation. This is actually what improv actors have to be really good at: they don’t know what the other person is going to offer and they need to be able to take whatever it is and run with it and turn it into something bigger and not block the development of the scene by making dead-end statements. Actually Parker probably did “end” a lot of scenes because she was not improvising; she was shooting back at foolish pretentious people who thought they were being clever, but they were usually far surpassed by Parker, and they were left with their mouths hanging open, dumbly stunned, while she turned on her heel and walked away. But she would have been great in that art form.

As for pentimento, sometimes I look back at things I wrote long ago and think about them from where I am right at that moment in time. Sometimes what I read has the same picture underneath, and sometimes the original words are faded and ghosted and I can no longer remember everything that was originally there.

On March 8, The Colbert Report featured Representative
John Yarmuth (D) of Kentucky’s 3rd in its popular and often (unintentionally) hilarious “Better Know a District” segment. (See end for link to clip.)

Back in January of this year, Joseph Gerth, the Metro Notebook writer at the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal, had reported that Yarmuth would be the featured candidate in March; and knowing that Colbert often asks his BKAD subjects to answer the question “George Bush: great president or the greatest president?” Gerth asked readers to send in their own responses to this question–and mine was one of the ones published!

From Boston.com:

Priests to purify site after Bush visit

By Juan Carlos Llorca, Associated Press Writer | March 9, 2007

GUATEMALA CITY –Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

——————–

According to the article, the aim of Bush’s tour is “challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush ‘history’s greatest killer’ and ‘the devil.’”

See full text here.

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George Bush … even the Mayans think he’s got bad mojo. O what a topsy-turvy world we live in. Their ancestors–who practiced human sacrifice and who induced what would today be called serious child abuse caused by long-term near-mutilation of the skull–cannot rest in peace because Bush’s “bad spirits” will disrupt their sacred burial site.

Granted, the human sacrifice notwithstanding, these pre-Colombian Maya were highly advanced in mathematics and astronomy while they were tearing out people’s hearts. George Bush probably is familiar with the third practice, at least metaphorically, if not the first two academically. Gentlemen’s D and all that.

I truly wonder where we would be in the world if Al Gore had not been robbed of his win. If he had refused to concede. Would he have been re-elected in ‘04? If not him, another Dem? Kerry? A Republican other than GW? Someone else? Of course if Gore had run again he probably would have won, unless he did something really stupid. Then again, Bush did something really stupid and he got re-elected. Maybe he got re-elected because he did something stupid and people were desperately hoping they were wrong, and that he’d fix it? Maybe nobody really thought it was stupid in Nov. 2004? Or didn’t want to believe it was stupid? It’s really amazing what fear and provoked manufactured hysteria will do to people.

Meanwhile with more than 2,500 Americans killed in combat and more than 3,000 total dead, plus tens of thousands (or more, depending on your source) of Iraqis killed, plus 23,000 Americans wounded and thus intimately acquainted with conditions at our fine military medical rehab facility in Maryland, and with the U.S. no closer to getting out of this sandstorm than we were on May 1, 2003, this surely is a “mission accomplished.”

Where was I? Oh yes, the Maya peoples are being disturbed from eternal slumber by George Bush’s bad karma.

They can’t write this stuff any funnier on TV!

Now I’m feeling like I want to torture myself so I’m off to watch Faux News for a bit. Just for a while, until they make me throw up a little in my mouth. Hey it’s good material, and it will give me something to write about once George Bush stops offending dead people.

I went to see The Colbert Report again. Another very fun time. I went with another person who shall be known by the nom de plume “Lefty.”

I was late to my flight because I thought it was at 8:30 but it was really 8:15. I knew I was going to miss it. And AGAIN there was Meow Drama In TSA Land. I got pulled over for “special screening,” where they go through all your stuff and make you stand there like Jesus on the Cross, or a Lynndie England Kodak Moment, so they can check for hidden weapons or bombs or whatever it is that hasn’t been found on any of the millions of people screened since that shoe bomb guy had his 15 minutes and screwed up things for the rest of us for all eternity. My sincere fucking thanks, Mr. Incompetent Shoe Bomber. They took every piece of electronics equipment I had and swabbed it (for explosives residue) and x-rayed it. Thankfully (?) I had already missed my actual flight so I was not in a hurry as I had to wait 1.5 hours for the next one. I am often pulled out for screening on international flights (because of my passport) but not on domestic.

For some reason JetBlue did not charge me anything to switch my flight, nor whatever increase in fare there might have been. I was glad it wasn’t cancelled because snow had been predicted, but it was clear in Boston. New York, though, did have snow, so I’m glad I made it. That’s the danger of flying in winter – you never know if the plane is going to be able to take off. I then took the E train to 53rd and 7th. I couldn’t check in at my hotel yet so I left my stuff, went and had lunch, and walked down Broadway. I also found a paper store and bought a cool violet marker in case I was able to get Stephen to sign something (which didn’t happen so it was a waste of $6.95). That NYC sure has some expensive pens. When I thought it was late enough, I headed back to primp before leaving for TCR. Of course my room was still not ready, and even after 3:00 – the advertised check-in time – it was not ready. The manager said, “Well checkout time is noon but people ask if they can stay until 1:00 or 2:00, and that puts us behind in our cleaning,” to which I replied, “Well if you have other customers who are waiting for those rooms, then you should tell people, ‘I’m terribly sorry but regretfully this time we will have to stick to the posted checkout of noon’.” Then I said, “I need to get in my room. Now.” He was all, “What are you so angry about?” I fucking HATE that. I was not “angry,” for one; and I loathe it when someone is in the wrong and when called on it, shoots back with “Don’t get all huffy” or “Why are you upset??” It’s passive-aggressive or psycho-sexual or some other hyphenated emotional manipulation technique, and it’s often men who do it to women who aren’t supposed to be able – they think – to speak up for themselves. Anyhoo the room became ready right then so I checked in and fixed my face and put on more clothes since it was quite cold out, and walked the few blocks to W. 54th. I love the grid system. I love lower Manhattan too but it’s so much easier to walk anywhere higher up. And their pedestrian crosswalks change to “Walk” with mysterious regularity. In Boston, sometimes you literally have to wait 5 minutes. Even if you push the button.

To the studio: I ended up 6th in line. Mark M. the audience coordinator came out and we talked for a bit. He said Aspen was great, if anyone is wondering. You really must watch his short films “Ferris Wheel” and “Prom.” They are on his site, markmalkoff.com, or on YouTube. Oh, by the way, he said they do NOT want people to give extra tickets (like if you requested four but only ended up with you and one guest going) to people in the standby line. I was confused because I thought this was okay, and it’s not like they (TCR) would know anyway. Mark said he didn’t want to be a jerk about it but “If I see anyone trading off tickets to people on Standby, you’re all out.” (And then added with a big apologetic smile, “I’m sorry to be a hardass, thank you so much for coming, we appreciate it so much, but please don’t trade off tickets!) So anyway, don’t give tickets away; or at least make friends with these people BEFORE they ever make it known they are waiting for standby, somewhere off in a non-TCR-related section of the street. I think he and I talked some more and then he went to work. Then another guy I have met before came out and I talked to him too. By then it was almost 6:00 and time to go in.

The security has been stepped WAY up. They have real security guards now going through your bags, not TCR employees, which is who I think did it before. About 30 people got flagged when they went through the detector and got wanded. One woman went through, set it off, and said (pointing to her huge bejeweled belt), “Oh I really don’t want to take it off.” This is after they said about a hundred times, “Take off your belts, they WILL set off the detector.” So everyone behind her had to wait while she went back through, took it off, and went through again. On behalf of everyone behind you left waiting in the cold, I say, “Thank you, Belt Lady.”

One of the staff came over to me and Lefty and we talked to her for a minute. She said she didn’t know when they’d open the ticket requests again - they got many thousands of emails in the 2 weeks it was opened. She also said that if she recognizes people’s names or faces, they will de-list you; and the Web site says they can revoke the ticket at any time, i.e., pull you from the line and/or waiting room. (This made me worried, obviously. Next time I’m dyeing my hair and putting on a fake nose. Yes I am paranoid.) (Lefty thought she said that if people email outside of the normal “open window” that they add them to the list but I understood it as they DON’T add them, because they have thousands ahead of them already. So I’m not sure which one of us is right.)

They finally let us in (no Toss for us, booo) - on the way to the set you can see this little lounging area and Killer was there with some of the other crew. He looked just as dangerous right then as he does on TV. (Although later he was smiling so much I hardly recognized him. “Killer” is all an act, obviously.)

I was in the front row again, yay for people who can get there early. Although next time I’m not going to even try for the front, I don’t think. Pete did his warmup, which was a lot shorter than last time. He said he never knows if he’s going to be out there 5 minutes or 40 minutes. I guess it depends on where they are in the writing. Then Mark M. the real stage manager came out, then Pete came back out and then announced that Stephen was coming out and he does and he runs out and runs around the desk, throws the mic in the air, runs to the other side of the room, and runs back. I think he did the slap-hands thing here (not really a high-five – just a run-by-slap) and I caught him the second time. Still must be using the mango butter (or something) - very soft. The entrance was pretty much like last time but he was more energetic then. More leaping last time, although he did do one leap at some point. May I make note again that his pants are too big. Brooks Brothers Measurer, you need to get this waist/inseam thing straight. Or get a new tape - yours must be stretched out.

Something else I noticed that I meant to mention last time: there are a whole bunch of books on the shelf behind the desk that appear to be “For Dummies” books. I’m not sure because the front isn’t visible. It would be really funny if they were. There is also a bookshelf backstage with about a hundred reference books on it, which made me happy. I <3 reference books and have at least a hundred myself. The Merriam-Webster dictionary is there - not sure if it's got the correct "T" page in it.

Anyhoo, Stephen said they had a billionaire waiting on the phone (never occurred to me it would be Redstone – I thought Warren Buffet, maybe talking about something to do with his giving all his money away before he dies) and he didn't want to keep him waiting but asked if anyone had any questions to start, and again I did not get picked. The Dark Forces of Unasked Questions are clearly working against me. That's okay because later on when they were setting up the cameras he looked straight at me and mouthed "Hi!" and waved, and I waved back. He might have remembered me from last time or maybe he just picks a random person to wave Hi to. It’s more fun to assume he remembered me clearly and distinctly. It’s the hair – it’s like Pippi Longstocking trying to hide herself in a crowd. Ain’t gonna happen.

He only took a couple of questions, one from Lefty who said that her 8-year-old daughter loves Stephen: "Thank you, that's my core demographic, 8-year-old girls." Then she said that her daughter thinks he's 26, to which he responded, "I love her”; then she said her daughter thinks Jon is 60 - Stephen laughed and said, “I love her even more! Can I get that written down so I can mail it to him?” Everyone laughed. Then she gave him a bag of Cheetos and he said thanks and told someone from the staff to put it with his dip. Another big laugh. He just pops out these one-liners with no effort. Then she had more of an actual question and he said, “Oh no, you don’t get all that AND a question” but then he told her to go ahead and she asked who writes the toss (he said TDS does). The next one was from a guy who first introduced his wife and Stephen said, “Thank you, I get it, I’m flattered, but I’m not into that sort of thing” - huge laugh from the audience. The guy said he just started the Double Eagle Publishing Co. and wanted Stephen to have the first edition of their first book, which Stephen took and said to put with the Cheetos. [Laugh]

Then it was time to start the show and he asked for more of that artificial love he had heard earlier (O Stephen, so humble you are) and did this thing where he went from side to side with his hand going up and down (up means yell, down means quiet) and then said something like “Now you see how Hitler took power.”) (He had said the same thing last time I was there.) He went behind the desk, they prepared to start, and once they did it turned into Night of Adorable Flubs. It was a great night for screw-ups. Within four words, he had messed up and had to start again. Of course everyone in the audience hooted loudly with appreciation – at the flub, not at the redo. Show me one person who does not LOVE his flubs and character breaks. A whole reel of them would be heaven. They restarted and he said “Tonight” with more force than before, with a “Hah! I’ll get it this time” look in his eye. Then there was a technical problem and Mark M. the real stage manager told him to stop and Stephen was all “Well it wasn’t my fault this time!” So then they restarted again and first he looked up at the sky and said, “Now we’re even” (you know, I wonder, was he talking to God or to Sumner Redstone??) and this time is the time the take took - and he said “Tonight!!!” really emphatically, because everyone was laughing. That’s what people at home saw. He almost got through the whole thing except when he came to the Ernest Gallo part, he said “Ernest Gallo, in your ah-no” (instead of “honor” with the R) - and knew he screwed up and started laughing again and said they had to redo that one too and said that considering what he was about to say it was quite fitting that he messed up right then. (Then he got out the line, which was “Farewell, Ernest Gallo, in your honor I’m doing tonight’s show hammered” - audience went wild. Then when the opening credits started and he was off-camera, he stood up and bowed and blew kisses at the audience.

While on the Redstone call, he messed up his hair with the phone cord when he did the Hokey Pokey and had this little lock sticking straight out and everyone saw that he was quick to put his hand up and and smooth it back down. He must have been able to feel that it wasn’t right. I think he did it again when we cut to commercial. Gotta preserve the hair. By the way, Sumner Redstone actually lives in Massachusetts so I wonder if he was really in LA. Maybe it was too horrible for “Stephen” to have to admit to himself that his billionaire boss chooses to reside in Gaysrael. Such knowledge would give him nightmares. Well guess what Stephen, “He’s here, he’s a billionaire, get used to it!”

The Word was very funny but I missed a lot again because I would rather watch the real Stephen than the monitor. It’s good to watch some though so you can see how different he looks on screen and have the real person there to compare. When he said the part about “I went to a straight bar with my girlfriend, then took her home for a hot night of vaginal sex” I thought, “That’s straight out of the mouth of Chuck Noblet.” And then came another flub, after he showed the picture of “The Professor,” when he got to the part about sucking our troops into homosexuality’s warm exfoliated—he stopped here and said he wanted to do a pickup from The Professor, and then laughed and said that guy looks just like his brother Bill, and kept looking at the picture on the monitor and grinning. Poor Bill, I hope he doesn’t really look like that. Actually The Professor looks a lot like my dad, but he deserves it.

I forget if he made any mistakes during Easter Under Attack. I don’t think so. (Damn.) He was laughing at our laughing at the graphic. I’d like a Shoot-’Em-Up Jesus myself. Good screen saver.

Then was the interview, which was a bit hard to see from the front row on that side because it’s far away. Interesting though, and when it was over Stephen stayed there almost the whole commercial break talking to the guest (Michael Specter). Then he came back and did the close and afterward got up and started looking at the wall, or down into a divider near the wall, and walked the whole way across behind the desk and then came out and said something like, “A year and a half and I’ve never looked back there – it’s fascinating” and then he thanked us all for coming and grinned and said, “And thank you for putting up with all my incompetence” and then he smiled at everyone and left.

When we were exiting, there was a guy handing out flyers for The Fuck Monkeys and I looked at it and said, “Oh, you must be Matt!” and he got this big smile of surprise on his face and said, “Yep, I’m Matt” and I didn’t know what else to say – he was probably wondering, who are you, weird person who knows my name? – so I just said, “Well hi!” Then I saw that other guy I know and talked to him for a minute. Then we bundled up and exited.

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Lefty wanted to wait for Stephen to come out and although I already have my signed book and DVD, I said I’d wait for a little while since I didn’t have to fly back. Shortly people started coming out - various staff I don’t know, then Mark M. came out and said bye, then several of the writers came out within about 30 minutes, and then Mark the stage manager did - so I remarked, “If all the writers are leaving, then Stephen will probably be out really soon.” Good, because it was pretty cold. Then he did come out, immediately followed by three fairly scary-looking security guards, and came down the steps and said hello and signed an autograph for Lefty’s daughter. I asked if I could take his picture and he said, “Yes, but please make it quick because I have got to get home.” This is when I promised myself I’d never do this [wait after the show] again. He had an SWC backpack and I asked if it was custom-made and he said, “Yup.” Then he signed flags for the two other people waiting and they took a picture and then he bounced off to his car and off he went and off we went.

I actually felt really awful about even taking 3 minutes of his time. Something must be happening there with all these new security guards. One whom we were talking to earlier said it’s the same way at The Daily Show now too, although I’m not sure when that started because I don’t recall anyone mentioning it yet. I felt guilty just pulling my camera out of my pocket - like it would be viewed as a possible danger motion until it was obvious it was just a camera. I hate to think that some Left-Wing-Nut doesn’t realize it’s an act and hates him for being “Stephen”; or some Right-Wing-Nut is angry that “Stephen” is making fun of conservative religiously-skewed-when-convenient rhetoric. The day he starts exiting out the back of the building is coming soon.

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Let’s see, fangirly stuff: Teeth still very perfect. Great smile during/after all the flubs. Pants too big! Hmmm, maybe it’s easier to do all the flying leaps with looser pants. He also drinks a lot of water and he has a very obvious oral fixation that has more to it than just chewing on pens. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. (The picture I took, by the way, is of him with a pen in his mouth. I’ll post it later.)

Edit: here’s the picture I took:

During one of the commercials they put on “Lump” by POTUSA and Stephen started doing the “My Humps” dance to it. I swear it was the same one. He must know more than one dance … but this did fit “Lump” just as well as “My Humps.” It’s an all-purpose shimmy, I guess. The audience yelled and clapped at this, naturally.

He made a lot of funny faces again while off-camera. He’s really “on” for the whole show, not just when they’re taping. At one point either when he was off-camera or coming back from the commercial, he put the script in front of his face so only his eyes were showing and proceeded to make his eyebrows move independent of each other. Really fast, too. Left right left right wiggle wiggle wiggle, while his eyes are going around and around, all googly. I don’t know how people do this eyebrow thing. It’s a real talent.

So then I had dinner and went to bed and flew out the next day. Goodbye TCR, until the next time.

The End.

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TSA Postscript: For chrissakes AGAIN on the return flight I got pulled aside for the full TSA search! Again they went through all my stuff, did the Stand Like Christ And Feel Very Exposed While Lynndie England Takes Your Picture thing, and I was done and they said I could leave. I pulled my suitcase off the table and the dimwits who had done the search had not zipped it shut so everything fell out onto the floor. I said, loudly, in an annoyed voice, “You know, they could have TOLD me that they didn’t zip it shut; now I have to pick all this stuff up.” This woman (not the one who did my search) said, “Oh, it’s okay, that happens to everyone.” Ummm duhhhh??? I just looked at her and said, “Well if it happens to ‘everyone’ then maybe you guys should start telling people the searchers don’t zip the bags shut when they’re done searching!” You could practically see the “what a great idea!” light bulb go off over her head. And these are the people entrusted with making sure no nefarious characters get on our planes. I’m not feeling very reassured.

Once Upon A Time, there was an army hospital where wounded veterans went to get rehab and treatment after being shot or blown up by a landmine.  You know, just the little things that happen to soldiers.

And every day, the hospital took care of these soldiers who were wounded because they were sent to a war under false pretenses by a shrub of a president who said he was “The Decider” and since he decided we were gonna get that oil, bygummit we were, by any means necessary.  Weapons of mass destruction, yeah that’s the ticket.  Sounds good and scary.  They’re REAL, I tell you, REAL!!!  (But I digress.  Back to the hospital story.)

Until one day, someone at a newspaper noticed that this hospital was teeming with filth and actually NOT taking care of these soldiers very well at all, not to mention having some of the system’s worst bureaucracy and inefficiency that anyone should have to deal with, let alone these soldiers and their families.

And because of that, some brave, brave people from Congress went on a tour amongst the mold, cockroaches, and rodents.  And they were duly horrified at this outrage.

And because of that, all of Washington got in a flutter about who was responsible for this mess of a medical facility.

Until finally, the guy who was running the hospital got fired and was replaced by … wait for it … the guy who previously ran it for 20 years and got it into the revolting mess it was in in the first place!

And so now, a lot of people feel a whole lot better about all the “help” they gave in “fixing” this problem.  And we can all sleep peacefully at night because of it.  Except, of course, the soldiers who have been and are being treated there.  They are still stuck with the shitty treatment they have been given as payment for fighting an unwinnable and falsely initiated war.  What a wonderful way to say “Thank you for fighting for us.”  It warms the cockles, don’t it.

The End.

So by now everyone who isn’t living in a cave has heard Ann Coulter’s latest.

From CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/04/coulter.edwards/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Prominent politicians from both parties and a gay-rights group on Saturday condemned right-wing commentator Ann Coulter for her reference Friday to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a “faggot.”

*snip*

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I’m - so, kind of at an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards, so I think I’ll just conclude here and take your questions,” said Coulter, whose comment was followed by applause.

*snip*

But the New York Times reported that she responded, in an e-mail, “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.”

Boy that chica knows how to yuck it up. She’s a laugh riot. Besides the fact that Edwards is almost certainly not gay - which wouldn’t matter anyway - this was very low on her usual scale of “quality” commentary. Couldn’t she think of anything more interesting and perhaps relevant to say? A “faggot” comment is so 1999. Does she do her own writing? (Can you imagine a more embarrassing job to have to tell people you have - “I write Ann Coulter’s spew for her.”) I ran into someone recently whose job used to be autographing 8 x 10s for Sally Jessy Raphael - he had to sign them with her name and draw a heart over the A in Sally. Not even that is as bad as being forced to admit you write for Ann Coulter. Although she’s such an egomaniac that she might not want anyone to even edit her material, let alone write it. She must be someone’s dream client, oh yeah baby.

Now let’s get catty. I believe we’ve established the fact that I’m straight as an arrow. But I can look at a beautiful woman and appreciate that she’s beautiful. I like to look at Cosmo covers as much as the next guy. Girl. But Ann Coulter has all the allure and beauty of a man in bad drag. Get that girl a sandwich while we’re talking. I’ve seen better man-disguised-as-woman getups in the back of the free weekly. And that’s right scary, considering she is, I’m pretty sure, an actual biological woman. Her neck is HUGE. She and Stone Phillips could make a kid whose neck would reach World Record proportions. Assuming Phillips would ever stoop so low, and I don’t think he would.

Anyhoo, she’s one of the most skankified man/wo-man creations I’ve ever seen. So when her vitriol comes spoojing out of her mouth, I, frankly, can’t even listen to all of it because I’m fascinated/horrified at this apparent genetic abnormality that walks, that talks, that breathes just like you and me.

She might want to work on that. And get some new material. She’s really dumbing it down for herself lately. The “Those 9/11 widows are in glee over their husbands’ deaths” remarks made it a lot easier to get past her “I’m the walking dead, now with a giant neck” look. “Faggot” comments make her look like she’s losing her touch. Awwwww.

EDIT Mon. 03/05/07:
A friend has told me that my remarks about Coulter’s seeming manliness could be construed as offensive to the transgender community. Specifically, the term “genetic abnormality.” This was absolutely not my intent at all. Although it is true, she does have a rather manly look but that doesn’t mean she’s anything except what she appears to be. Her appearance is, of course, largely the product of her genes and she had no choice in that. Her ideas, on the other hand, are all her own, and are far more unusual (to put it kindly) than anyone could ever say her “look” is. I also would never insult transgendered persons by equating them in any way with Ann Coulter, unless they have a similar mindset, which is very doubtful. Any abnormality in her genetics resides in the synapses of her brain, in a manner of speaking. Nowhere else.

I honestly - kidding aside - think her neck is either a goiter or on the way to becoming one. I hope she’s aware of thyroid meds. She is certainly aware of disparaging other women, having referred to female attendees at the 2004 DNC in Boston as “corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons.” I was there and I definitely am not “corn-fed,” nor hairy, fragrant, or anything else she was implying.  Frankly from watching the RNC on TV, I’d much rather be associated with the women who participated in Boston. Those Republicans were some of the stiffest walking dead I’ve ever seen. Loosen up, for pete’s sake. You’re supposed to be having fun.

From www.boston.com :

Angelina Jolie to adopt Vietnamese child

March 2, 2007

HANOI, Vietnam –Angelina Jolie has filed papers to adopt a Vietnamese child, the country’s top adoption official said Friday.

A U.S. adoption agency representing the 31-year-old actress filed the papers at Vietnam’s International Adoption Agency, said Vu Duc Long, the agency’s director.

“She just filed the papers this week,” Long said.

Those crazy celebs.  Jolie is taking this United Nations Goodwill Ambassador thing way too seriously.

Interestingly, the article says she has filed papers to adopt as a single parent - not as a couple with Mr. Pitt Of-The-Rock-Hard-Abs. Now I thought the Star or People or one of those other respositories of celebrity informercialtainments said they had gotten secretly married? No? You mean they were wrong???

As an aside, I have always found Jolie to be an … enigma. Not she herself or her acting or her inner light or whatever it is she’s got, at least according to the media. But rather, the fact that sometimes I see pictures of her where she is so breathtakingly beautiful that I can’t stop looking, eyes wide, speechless. And I am as straight as an arrow. I don’t like girls, never have. I’m riding the “C” train, next stop Canal Street. Express all the way, baby. Mmmm-mmmm. (Yeah I stole that from Colbert. Deal with it.)

Uhhhhh … back to Jolie: in other pictures - like the one in the above link - she looks like a dessicated corpse. Sometimes even worse, and that’s gotta be hard to manage. I don’t get it. Who can explain this? Because whatever she’s taking, I want to stay far far away. I can live with not being breathtakingly beautiful but I never want to look like Jim Carrey in The Mask, which is what I think of most of the time when I see these pictures of her.

I say that a lot. It’s probably my favorite swear word. Right behind it comes god fucking dammit, and then goddamn motherfucker. But jesus fucking christ is definitely number one. I was talking religion recently with my sibs and I said, “‘Well, I don’t believe in god but I do say ‘jesus fucking christ’ a lot.” They both totally cracked up.

Just say it: jesus fucking christ, jesus fucking christ. It’s so melodious. It rolls off the tongue. It’s got good iambic pentameter:

I find I use it mostly when I am annoyed or impatient at something not going right; whereas I say god fucking dammit mostly in traffic when trying to deal with insane drivers. (I myself drive perfectly, of course.) Goddamn motherfucker is generally reserved for people, obviously, often when watching political commentary on TV, such as looking at Shrub and saying, “What a fucking goddamn motherfucker.”

Once Upon A Time, there were three little girls who went to the police academy.

And every day, they performed a variety of very dangerous jobs, such as “crossing guard” and “typing DD-5s.”

Until one day, they each got fed up and answered a blind ad for an all-girl super-secret spy detective agency.

And because of that, they left their legitimate if slightly boring at-least-to-that-point positions with the municipal police department and entered the world of “when faced with a gun, just show us your tits.”

And because of that, they did pretty well, being quite attractive, until time took its fateful toll and nobody really wanted to see their tits anymore. Oh, and the ratings kinda went saggy too.

Until finally, they were forced to find new jobs in a field more suited to their remaining abilities.

And so now, they work for me. My name is Charlie. I’m The World’s Greatest Director of Bad Plastic Surgery and B-Grade Movies For Aging 70s Poster Divas. You Too Can Be A Star!

The End.