Sunday, May 31, 2009
The current list of things that are going to make me hurl if I have to hear any more about them
1) Susan Boyle2) Jon and Kate and all their little kids
3) Phony talk radio speech that is designed to make liberals and progressives outraged
4) Remakes, sequels, and reboots coming out of Hollywood
5) All members of the Lohan family
6) Most any primetime show on FOX
7) The execrable NBA
8) People who go on and on about what a great thing the phenomenon of Susan Boyle is
9) Twitter
10) TV Political pundits
Seriously, I'm sick to death of all those things and I wish they go away right this second. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post. Thank you.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Cake?
He knows I watch a lot of movies...
1. Gattaca
2. Happy Go Lucky
3. Role Models
4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
5. Eating Raoul
6. Wallender: Firewall
7. Inland Empire
8. The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen
9. Repo Man (going to watch again soon since I saw they have it at my local Blockbuster store)
10. Zodiac (I saw the first half of this on an On Demand channel but then they took it off before I could finish it. Then I saw it for sale on DVD for $3.99 so I bought it. I'm going to watch it from the beginning again soon.)
I tag you with this meme if you want to do it.
Friday, May 29, 2009
How many pints of strawberry jam do you get out of two quarts of strawberries?
And no, I'm not sending any of this to any of you. Maybe if I make some more I'll send some out, maybe.
Pop Culture Friday
What are your favorite local advertisements, the ones you and your friends/family remember for years after they aired?
My favorite local commercials are from a long defunct grocery store chain that was named for and run by a cranky old virulent anti Communist rock ribbed Republican hippie hatin' man called Cas Walker. He owned and ran a chain of stores in east TN, southwest VA, and southeast KY. He also sponsored a TV show and here's one of the commercials for it and for a wonder drug ol' Cas loved:
Here's ol' Cas with a message to thieves, and back then the word 'thieves' for him meant black people:
As cheesily good as those two clips were my two favorite Cas Walker commercials are lost in the airwaves now. My favorite ad of his was an ad touting his meats. He looked into the camera and he said, "You can beat our prices, but you can't beat our meat." The other one I loved was an ad that showed a bunch of lilly white kids beating on watermelons and grinning like jackals as someone sang, "Thumpin' good, thumpin' good, Cas walker melons are thumpin' good."
Cas also printed a "newspaper,' which was really just a few pages that highlighted what was on sale that week in his stores, a few articles extolling capitalism and excoriating anyone to the left of Richard Nixon, and a crazy poll question that usually went something like this:
I support the war in Vietnam because
A) I love America and our way of life!
B) Communism must be stopped before it hits our shores!
C) I don't support the war because I'm a dirty no good pot smoking hippie who wants everybody to go on welfare!
Cas died and his grocery store empire was broken up. The store closest to me, the one in Pennington Gap, VA, was sold to the Piggly Wiggly chain, which was one of Cas's most hated rivals.
Now, what are your favorite local commercials?
Don't believe the hype

Portable air conditioners like the one above, and no, that's not our house, are not so much portable as they are stationary. You have to keep them in one place because they have to have an exhaust hose to vent the hot air they create and the hose has to go out a window. And they're not so much quiet as they are loud as hell.
I bought one yesterday to put in our upstairs bedroom. The rest of our house stays relatively cool and we're hoping to be able to get away with using the main AC as little as possible downstairs, the basement stays cool all summer, but all the heat of the day rises and it sits in our bedroom like a 400 pound teenage girl with the words 'Future Juicy MILF' tattooed on her lower back. Even with a oscillating floor fan the hot air hangs around longer than Dick Cheney at a shoot your friend in the face party. So I saw a portable air conditioner at Target and I bought it. The picture on the box didn't show the ugly exhaust hose and the copy on the box touted that you could move the unit from room to room, so I thought, 'Great! I'll get one for our bedroom.'
Big mistake.
Did it cool down the bedroom in question? Yes.
Was it as loud as letting a 747 land in your back yard? Yes.
Was it ugly and not at all like it was pictured on the box? Yes.
Will Target be getting this one back? Oh hell yes.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The pretty cartoon lady has a few questions
In what world did graduating summa cum laude from a Ivy League university mean someone is stupid?In what world does someone who never got water boarded tell someone who did that what happened to them is not torture?
Why do Republicans want the federal government out of our lives except when it comes to what goes on in the bedroom?
Why is it okay that we let people who believe that Jesus Christ came to America after he got crucified and that there was an advanced civilization here during that time despite there being no archaeological or historical evidence of either thing being true keep non related consenting adults who want to get married from doing so?
Why is the recession over when big corporations make profits again? Shouldn't we say it's over when working people can afford to buy houses, cars, send their kids to college, and take vacations without having to go into debt for the rest of their lives?
Why do we let people who get health insurance from the federal government keep us from having the same thing?
Why do all the internet browsers suck so much?
Why is the beach always so close to the ocean?
Why are they going to 'reboot' the Tomb Raider movie series? Didn't they suck enough the first time?
Does this look infected to you?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
American women speak out about how President Obama has made their country less safe since he took office

Susan Thompson of Tuscon, AZ says that President Obama's tax cut for middle class people has made her life less safe. "With the extra money I bring home in my paycheck I can now afford to get high by sniffing large amounts of spray on deodorant instead of doing meth. The bikers I used to buy meth from have to make up for my lack of business from somewhere and so they're now selling their shit to the neighborhood kids who break into houses in our neighborhood to steal stuff to sell to get money to buy meth with. If I didn't have all this extra money I couldn't afford all this sweet sweet huff material I buy now."

Janet Morrisett of Belle Plains, OR says, "I got so scared after I heard a black man was going to be our President that I forgot to take my birth control pills. And look what happened:

Allison Rhea of Del Rio, TN says, "I'm afraid that if they close Gitmo then the terrorists will win and I won't be able to compete in the all Suzi Quatro look alike contests that I do now."

Margie Crotts of Roanoke, VA says, "Obama has made my weight balloon since he got that hamburger with Dijon mustard on it. I thought to myself, 'If my President likes Dijon on his burgers, what else might it be good on?' Now I eat it on everything."

Faye Leitch of Miami, OH says, "I'm afraid that the terrorists that Obama used to pal around with, you know the ones Sarah Palin warned us all about, might take my children if they aren't minty fresh. So I'm constantly sniffing my kids, so much so that I got fired from my job. Now all I do is go Gault and sniff my damn kids."

"My house is safe, Obama and his socialist buddies won't be able to redistribute our belongings," claims Inez Wager of Dothan, AL. "If they try I'll kick them in the balls with my boat shoes."
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
A Micro Monkey Movie Review
Best Mike Leigh film ever. Sally Hawkins is luminous and cute as a button in this sweet slice of life movie. Eddie Marsan is creepily great as well. Highly recommended.
Who's holding our Crunky now?
Monday, May 25, 2009
Cheney had to torture
Dick Cheney had to order the torture of others in his war of terror. People like him always torture. And by 'people like him,' I mean small ruthless people who put the needs of the few before the needs of the many time after time. I mean people who sat out going to war when he was young but had no compunction about sending other people's kids, mostly poor and black and Hispanic people's, off to a far off land to die for their country in a useless unwinnable war. I mean people who have enriched themselves at the government teat while denying others, mostly poor people, basic human services from the same government that he got rich off of. I mean people who willingly demonize and scapegoat gays for the political benefit while sheltering his own gay daughter, her partner, and their child from the same ridicule they've subjected others to. I mean people who tell others to go fuck themselves on the floor of the US Senate while they stand helplessly and laugh nervously when others tell them to do the same thing while they engage in political grandstanding in the rubble of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Dick Cheney ordered torture knowing his hands would remain clean. His kind of folk always jump at the chance to show once again how above us little people they are. They take some perverse pleasure in flouting the rule of law and rubbing our noses in it.
He had to order torture to make himself look big and unafraid after 9/11 happened on his watch and because he did order torture he'll go down in history as a world leader who was no better than other tin pot dictators who used torture and mayhem to cling to power. He'll share a seat at the torture table with people like Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Alfredo Stroessner, and Robert Mugabe.
And because he willingly, almost gleefully, ordered the torture of others, he should be held accountable for his crimes against humanity. That, my friends, would be a fitting Memorial Day tribute to the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their lives in the fiasco we call the war of terror on Iraq.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Devil Baby!
Devil Baby,
Devil Baby,
Devil Baby
is the daughter of the devil.

Devil Baby's eyes glow red,
glow red,
glow red,
because she's the daughter of the devil.
Don't be dumb enough to try to save the Devil Baby's soul,'cause she don't have one,
don't have one,
don't have one.
Monkey Movie Reviews
As far as I can tell the film was about some people who were making a movie that nearly got made in the past but didn't because the two lead actors were both murdered. Laura Dern plays an actress who gets cast in this film and then as the movie, Inland Empire, moves forward she actually becomes the character in the film she is making. Then she somehow becomes another woman as well and the whole thing falls apart when she "dies" on the streets of Hollywood. I may have it all wrong or I may have it right, I seriously could not tell. After three and a half hours into it I gave up. I'm not even going to pretend that I understood most of it, let alone what the fuck the people with the bunny heads were supposed to mean.When you start a David Lynch movie you sign on expecting a certain amount of weirdness and a lot of symbolism. When you start this movie you get a solid metric ton of weirdness with a shitload of 'What the fuck.' I love most Lynch movies and I think Laura Dern is a handsome woman who is nice to watch on screen but a person can only take so much cinematic bullshittery.
If you like your movies obscure and inscrutable, then I highly recommend this film. But if you hate films that drag on for ever and make you want to throttle everyone involved about the head and neck, then stay away from Inland Empire. I'll give Laura dern a pass for making this but David Lynch, you got an ass whippin' coming for making this one homey.
I saw this movie last night:
It's very funny. It's very very funny. It was written by Paul Rudd, the nicest seeming guy in Hollywood, and a couple of the guys who were in The State. It's got most of the people from The State in it as well, so if you liked that show and the myriad of stuff they've done since, most of which I do with the exception of that show Stella, then you'll like this movie.Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Jane Lynch, the kid who played McLovin, and the little black kid are all exceptionally good. Lynch and the little black kid steal the movie.
I recommend this one highly, although, I'll warn you if you don't like to hear little kids cussing like sailors and the sight of naked boobs offends you, then stay away from this one because it's got both of those things, in spades. The extras rock as well, especially the deleted and alternate scenes and the 'in character off script' scenes.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
I'm all about giving back
and some illustrations by James Thurber
and Edward Gorey
on one of my Picassa Web albums. You can access it by clicking here. Feel free to use any of the illustrations or clip art in whatever you want to use them in, no need to give me any creidt when you do either. In fact that goes for all the stuff I post on Picassa and Flickr, except for my personal family photos, most of which are now on Facebook only.
Pop Culture Friday
What movie do you keep quoting lines from even if no one gets the reference but you?
Hands down, no contest, for me it's Repo Man.

It's chock full of great quotable lines like:
"John Wayne was a fag."
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"Have a nice day."
"Day, night, it don't mean shit."
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"Someone says plate, then someone says shrimp...then someone says plate of shrimp."
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"Credit is a scared trust. You think they got credit in Russia?"
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"Feeling 7-Up, I'm feeling 7-Up.""Let's go get sushi and not pay."
"You read that book I gave you?"
I used to quote lines from Pulp Fiction but after it became the approved hipster thing to do, I quit it. Although sometimes I'll let a "Bacon tastes guud. Pork Chops taste guud," slip from my tounge. And "Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead."
Stripes and Caddyshack are also a couple of my go to movies to quote from. "Chicks dig me because I rarely wear underwear," is nothing short of classic. One of the proudest moments of my pop culture life came to me on an overcast day on the golf course a few years ago. I was playing with an older dude who I am sure had never seen Caddyshack and when it started to sprinkle he said, "I guess I better go on in." I looked at him and I said that memorable line first uttered by Bil Murray as Groundskeeper Carl, "Oh, I'd keep playin', the heavy stuff isn't gonna come down till later." He looked at me like I was an idiot and he went in out of the rain. As I finished playing the front nine by myself, I could not help but chuckle at my quotings.
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Now, what are your go to movies for quotes?
Mary Nell found Jesus...
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Admit it
Seriously, which one of you is the hater?
If Google stamps out that blog I'll just put up another with the same kind of content. Then I'll also put up another blog with the same content on as many blog sites as I can find. You will never stop me from posting vintage stuff, including vintage cheesecake.
Welcome back Ida
the more unhinged some of the Christians become.
They carped for years that if evolution were true then there would be "missing links" between humans and other primates. And now when more and more of them are showing up, they now claim that they are not the missing links they were talking about. But if you listen closely, you can hear Kirk Cameron's mind being blown and Patricia Heaton's soft sobs.Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Here's Chester with a word about Michael Vick who got released from prison today
Who's holding our Crunky now?
A Monkey TV Review
But a few weeks ago all that came to an end and what does PBS do for a follow up? They are running a series of mysteries based on the books of Henning Mankell. All of them star Kenneth Branagh as the world weary nearly alcoholic Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander.
I skipped the first one because I could not get past the fact that a bunch of British people had been cast to play Swedes. It got on my nerves. Plus I thought Branagh was playing Wallander as more put upon than world weary in the first movie.Then I gave the second one a try last Sunday night. And you know what? I highly enjoyed it. This one was called Wallander: Firewall. As you can probably tell from the title computers figured into the plot very significantly. When the film began a teenage girl had brutally stabbed a cab driver to death and then as Wallander investigated that murder things got more out of control and more murders happened while a plot to bring down the world financial system was unmasked. Things got solved but not tidied up, and that's one of the reasons I like the mysteries of Henning Mankell, he takes into account the randomness and banality of crime and why people murder others. It's a different way of telling a mystery to be sure, Mankell is no Agatha Christie by any stretch of the imagination, and that's a good thing.
I'm still peeved about the fact that no one remotely tries a Swedish accent but all in all, this series of mysteries is very good. It's well filmed, it's atmospheric, it's well acted, and the adaptions of the novels are first rate. Based on my viewing of the second movie in this series I recommend this set of mysteries highly.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Disappointed
- They have continued the Bush era practice of invoking national secrecy when it comes to letting those 'enemy combatants' having a free and open trial. (For the record, I don't think any of those people we've been holding indefinitely mean me or mine any harm. They are not my enemies. My enemies are the ones who ordered the torture of others and who plunged this nation into a never ending war.)
- They have not repealed the idiotic 'Don't ask, don't tell' rule. Despite what right wing and homophobic people and pundits say, letting homosexuals serve openly in the military will not lead to homosexual orgies in fox holes and on military bases, pedophilia, or the breakdown of our national defense. Limp wristed lisping effeminate men wearing gauzy scarves and pink leisure suits are not going to lead our nation's military if 'don't ask, don't tell' is repealed. What were going to get instead is some of the most willing men and women who have the best and brightest minds are going to be retained in our armed forces and others who thought about serving but who were afraid to do so will now serve willingly and openly. What homophobes have failed to realize is that if you sign up to join the military, duty and service comes before base bodily urges.
- They have frozen out single payer health insurance advocates in the national health insurance debate.
- And most egregious to me personally is the fact that President Obama's EPA has just approved over 40 permits to let mountain top coal removal mining begin again. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mountain top removal coal mining, the gist of it is this, the coal companies take pristine mountains like these:


This type of mining ruins not only the mountain range, it pollutes the water all around the mountain, the chemicals used in and brought up as a result of the mining infect the area in and around the mines, and it devastates the land and the people who live on it, it makes the land uninhabitable and unusable. The water that used to be absorbed by the tree and plants now runs off the barren mountains and into huge holding ponds that are filled with a toxic sludge that is made up of rock dust, coal dust, and chemicals like arsenic and mercury. And that sludge seeps into the ground water and it then flows and contaminates ground water in surrounding communities. So, unless you're an idiot, you can see why this practice of mountain top removal coal mining is short sighted, hideously wrong, and needs to be stopped.
I may be wrong but I think candidate Obama said he'd stop doing these things if we elected him President. Well sir, we did what you asked, so it's time you did what you promised you do. And if you don't, then you're driving me and others like me into the arms of real progressive candidates who will do something about these injustices. I didn't vote for you to become my President just so you could act like a god damned Republican.
Go Jesse go
Jesse Ventura tears that conservative shrew Elizabeth Hasslebeck a new one:
I love how she tries to equate Nancy Pelosi's faulty memory with the fact that her beloved her ex Vice President ordered torture. Ventura is right, the whole thing could have been avoided if we had just followed the rule of law and not tortured in the first place. I'm betting Ms. Shrew will be going on FOX Noise and claiming that Ventura was rude and oh so mean to her.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Good news!
one of my all time favorite blogs is back!
Yay Caroline and her crayons!
6 for 2! 6 for 2!
Now for the good news, AMC on Demand is running the original series before the new abomination hits the airwaves. For those of you who are not familiar with The Prisoner,
it was the epitome of 1960's conspiracy cool. It was a show about a spy, referred to only as #6, who resigns one day, gets gassed by a mysterious group, and then wakes up in a village that he can't escape from. Everything in the village is tightly controlled by the people in charge. Of course #6 tries to break out and be free from the insidious village and of course the agency in charge tries to keep him contained inside the village. It's all very symbolic and yet it's a very engagingly hip well told story.
I remember watching it when I was a kid. My older brother Charlie loved it and when he deigned to let me watch it with him I was happy as a clam. Until that big white killer balloon thingy was unleashed that is, then I'd get scared and run off to find Mom.












