Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Yee-haw indeed.

With yet another Primary To End All Primaries, fresh talk of elitism, and yesterday's utterly incomprehensible WWE news item, I've been reminded of one of my favorite Onion opinion pieces (click through for the whole column):

-----

BY DUANE BICKELS

Well, damn, man, it's pretty soon gonna be president election time again, and that means we gotta start thinkin' about who's gonna be the one we want to be president. That's some important stuff, who's president, because whoever's president will be in charge of the whole dang shootin' match. And, if y'all are like me, you know America's president needs to be the kind of old boy who, in the first place, kicks him some damn ass, and in the second place, don't listen to all that bitchin' about how he shouldn't be kickin' so much ass. And, if you ain't like me, guess what? My vote cancels out y'all's!

Now, you probably waste a whole lotta good-fishin' Saturdays readin' yourself the papers, watchin' all the talk on the TV, and sittin' around thinkin' real hard about which way you gonna vote. Well, it's a real shame, then, ain't it, that all that time you spend in real careful considerin' don't count for nothin', once my vote runs y'all's right off the road.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Nothing about this is OK

Kinda cool in theory, but anything that results in driving wrestling fans to the polls is... uh, what's the opposite of good?:

-----
Clinton, Obama and McCain on WWE's `Monday Night Raw'
Monday, April 21, 2008 4:42:11 PM
By DERRIK J. LANG

A smackdown among presidential candidates?

Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain will appear on World Wrestling Entertainment's live "Monday Night Raw" (8-11 p.m. EST on cable's USA network) but instead of smacking each other down, they separately will deliver some wrestling-themed stumping in taped messages before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary.

"Tonight, in honor of the WWE, you can call me Hillrod," Clinton says in her message. "This election is starting to feel a lot like `King of the Ring.' The only difference? The last man standing may just be a woman."

Obama borrows The Rock's famous catchphrase during his appearance.

"To the special interests who've been setting the agenda in Washington for too long and to all the forces of division and distraction that has stopped us from making progress, for the American people, I've got one question: Do you smell what Barack is cooking?" Obama says before flashing a smile.

McCain, meanwhile, looked to Hulkamania for inspiration for his message.

"Looks like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to celebrate their differences in the ring," McCain says. "Well, that's fine with me, but let me tell you: If you want to be the man, you have to beat the man. Come November, it'll be game over. And whatcha gonna do when John McCain and all his McCainiacs run wild on you?"

The candidate appearances will be used to promote "Smackdown Your Vote!" -- the WWE's voter registration drive.

Monday, April 14, 2008

What is wrong with New Yorkers?

The New York Post has confirmed the existence of a Marilyn Monroe sex tape, recently unearthed and sold to an anonymous New York businessman for $1.5 million. Which should be criminal, incidentally, considering that pictures of JLo's kids went for four freaking times as much - I guess the economy really is in the toilet.

But I digress. The real point of this is that the buyer of the tape "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried," according to the story, and will not release it.

In other news, New York-area hardware stores reported a huge jump in torch and pitchfork sales today.

(link via Newspeak)

Parse-happy Monday

Just saw this headline on cnn.com:

Boy killer loses appeal

Yeah. I used to like that boy killer, until he totally sold out. Just for fun, let's try some different punctuation:

"Boy-killer loses appeal." Well yeah, watching him kill boys would get old.
"Boy, killer loses appeal." Does he ever! I can hardly stand to look at him now.
"Boy/killer loses appeal." I grow weary of this mild-mannered young man by day, cold-hearted murderer by night.
"Boy killer loses. Appeal?" The game-over screen on a defense attorney video game.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Too cold.

OK, so domestic violence is never funny, but sometimes it gets damned close. Consider this story:

-----

Vanilla Ice was held without bond Friday following his arrest on a charge of simple domestic battery after an alleged argument with his wife at their South Florida home.

The 39-year-old rapper's wife called the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on Thursday night, saying he had kicked and hit her. She later told deputies he had only pushed her, the arrest report said.

The report said Vanilla Ice denied pushing her.

-----

What nearly pushes this over the top into the "funny" category? The reporter's insistence on referring to the accused by his stage name. Also, the opportunity it affords us to wonder what kind of person would marry Vanilla Ice (answer: her name is Laura, and they have two kids named Dusti Rain and Keelee Breeze, which is fantastic).

But the moral of the story is simple: if you want to keep your marriage violence-free, you must remember to stop, collaborate and listen. Good night everybody!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Today in Simpsons news


Way to prioritize, Venezuela. Also, Pixeloo's second foray into de-tooning cartoon characters (after creepy-uncle Mario) looks like this:


Tuesday, April 8, 2008

One week late

Sometimes, I work hard for the funny. Other times, people e-mail me press releases with headlines like:


Toby Keith Joins Wayman Tisdale on Barry White Remake


To reinforce this sign of the apocalypse, some visual aids:


Toby Keith


is collaborating with Wayman Tisdale:

on a cover of a song by Barry White:

OK, so they can all be referred to in some sense as "musicians," so they have that in common, but I guess what I'm getting at is that only one of the three has been on television saying "This truck is the big dog daddy." And it wasn't Barry White. Or Wayman Tisdale.

It was Toby Keith, is what I'm saying.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Suffrage succotash

Here's a fun video, wherein a guy goes to a prestigious prep school with a petition to end women's suffrage. Don't wanna spoil it, but it turns out we may need more dictionaries in our schools.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Pugnacious penultimate purloiner

Apparently Gazette columnist David Ramsey just met Lou Brock, Baseball Hall of Famer and all-time no. 2 base-stealer, and learned that he often challenges strangers to fights, sometimes scaring them pretty badly, as a joke.

My new goal: to get famous enough to do that and have it be funny.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Welcome back, haters

A BBC report says that 35% of non-Americans view the U.S. as a positive influence, up from 31% last time they checked. Woo!


I guess the world has noticed that the U.S. is starting to get its act together. It has a new job and an apartment, and has stopped staying out God-knows-where until all hours of the night, at least most of the time. The nation is also thinking of going to church next week. This time we can really change, baby, we know that. Just give us a chance.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Today in Foolery

Behold, Porkchop's soon-to-be-annual list of favorite April Fools jokes on the interweb, updated all day (note, most of these links won't work on April 2):

Lord of the Rings Online: Battle of Amon Hen

D20 punks the Gazette

Kaketaku

Super Pii Pii Brothers

Virgin and Google team up to colonize Mars

YouTube rickrolls absolutely everyone

Microsoft unveils new XBox accessories we'd actually love to have

Collegehumor.com bought by 17-year-old

GMail introduces custom time stamps

Belated






We were sorely remiss, kings of self-congratulation as we are, in not marking the first birthday of this blog on March 29... but it's never too late to point out just what an awesome birthday that is.

  • Jennifer Capriati
  • Coca-Cola
  • Perry Farrell
  • Eric Idle
  • The Knights of Columbus
  • Christopher Lambert
  • Lucy Lawless
  • Elle MacPherson
  • John Popper
  • The Royal Albert Hall
  • Amy Sedaris
  • Vangelis
  • Sam Walton
  • Wrestlemania III
  • Cy Young
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted on March 29, 1951 (lame), but the last U.S. soldiers left Vietnam on 3/29/73 (yay!).