July | 2013 | The Electron Pencil

07/07/2013

Dead Man's Curve, Death, Health Food, James Gandolfini, Jan & Dean, Randy Udall, The Sopranos

Your Daily Hot Air

Life & Death

First, a preamble: I acknowledge it is good policy to eat well and exercise in order to live a healthier, more comfortable life. (Along those lines, I’m also in favor of good weather and traffic safety, but we’ll tackle those controversial issues another day.)

Anyway, two deaths in the news in recent weeks have grabbed my attention. James Gandolfini and Randy Udall. Both died relatively young. Gandolfini was 51 and Udall 61.

Gandolfini & Udall

■

Randy Udall was a member of the storied, multi-generational political family dynasty of the West and Southwest. His kin included Mark, a senator from Colorado, Morris, a member of the House from Arizona, and Stewart, Secretary of the Interior under JFK and LBJ. Other Udalls began holding political office as far back as the 1880s and a brand new generation is settling into legislatures and statehouses as we speak. Here’s the Udall political family tree.

You Probably Can’t Read This, But You Get The Idea

■

Gandolfini, in case you’re a Nepalese hermit, was the beloved actor who played Tony in the landmark cable series, The Sopranos. His family didn’t exist in real life but it, too, has been treed.

Ditto

■

Two known guys; two shortened lives. Conventional wisdom has it, though, that Udall’s exit was an unfortunate, tragic happenstance. Gandolfini, the CW holds, has nobody to blame but himself for his early departure.

The wags say Gandolfini pretty much killed himself. Udall’s death, on the other hand, is being positioned as somehow organic and in harmony with nature — “natural causes,” the news stories insist.

That’s because Udall was a hiker, an amateur naturalist, thin as a rail, brown from the sun, his lung capacity probably rivaling that of a harbor seal.

James Gandolfini was a jolly mound of rigatoni- and braciole-derived heft.

The Smoking Gun

■

For all the food fetishists out there (and Bloomington, believe me, is crawling with them), I’ve got a bit of news for you: They’re both in the same place right now.

That is, six feet under.

No, not the HBO series. Buried.

I can’t help but thinking a lot of folks believe they can hold off check out time indefinitely. I’m loaded with Facebook friends who put up urgent posts that meats, breads, the wrong kind of fish, prepared foods, non-local foods, cookies, cheeses, pasteurized milk, rhubarb, peanuts, hot dogs, cold cuts, reduced fat anything, couscous, frozen yogurt, trail mix, granola, energy bars, bran muffins, blueberry pies, rice cakes, smoothies, bananas, and pretty much everything else in the world that’s edible are as dangerous as so many cyanide cocktails.

I have no idea what these people eat but whatever it is, they’re not happy about it. That’s because, I’m certain, most food fetishists aren’t terribly fond of the whole idea of sticking things into their mouths.

James Gandolfini dug digging into an enormous plate of melon and prosciutto risotto or truffled polenta. And you know what? He was happy as a clam before, during, and after mealtime.

It’s a good bet poor old Randy Udall had to make do with a garden salad minus any olives, Parmigiano-Reggiano, anchovies, feta, or — horrors! — croutons. I can’t imagine him patting his nearly non-existent belly with a satisfied smile on his face.

Udall swore up and down he derived happiness from trudging through miles and miles of wilderness, braving rainstorms, mosquitoes, poison ivy, and all the other health propagandists doing the same thing. He died while on a solo backpack hike along the Wind River Range in Wyoming, his walking poles still in his hands. Gandolfini died in Italy, probably with a toothpick between his fingers.

I’m sure they were both happy. I’m just as sure they’re both dead.

▲

Dead Man’s Curve

This is the only death song I could find that isn’t sickeningly sweet or terrifyingly ghoulish. The best I can say about is that it fits.

▲

07/06/2013

3 Comments

Arena Rock, Barack Obama, Don Cornelius, George Zimmerman, Kansas (band), Michael Jackson, Motown, Neil Peart, Paul McCartney, Rare Earth, Rodney King, Sex Pistols, Stevie Wonder, Ted Nugent, Trayvon Martin

Your Daily Hot Air

Times Change

And often for the better. Dig this remastered blast from the past. Rare Earth was the first all -white group to have a hit on the Motown label. This album cut goes on for nearly 22 minutes, as did many anthemic and iconic tunes did back in 1969 and ’70.

■

These are blue-eyed soul brothers if there ever were any, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Don Cornelius. You can cite this tune as proof if you care to make the argument that music was better three, four, five, or six decades ago. Which seems a fool’s errand as far as I’m concerned.

This track has a drum solo that goes on for — get this — more than three minutes. Hell, plenty of rock ‘n roll era songs lasted just three minutes in toto.

Here’s a confession: I detested drum solos. In fact, when I stopped going to big, arena-rock concerts sometime around 1975, one of my main reasons was the fear that I’d climb the rafters and jump off to my certain death if I was subjected to yet another drum solo.

Neil Peart Bangs Away

■

I ask you, my loyal readers who are old enough to remember big shows at the International Amphitheater or the Chicago Stadium or Market Square Arena in Indy or Freedom Hall in Louisville, what was the purpose of the drum solo? Did you enjoy hearing them? Why?

Honestly, I want to know. Because I always felt they drained the life out of any concert. I recall always starting to look around the arena in a state of sheer boredom when the drummer got going. I could never understand why the people around me went apeshit at some point during the drum solo.

Anyway, I assume there aren’t drum solos anymore, which seems a huge mark in favor of today’s concert-goers.

I await your comments.

▲

History

My last arena-rock concert was Paul McCartney & Wings at the Stadium in 1975. McCartney was my least favorite Beatle and by the mid-70s his music was unlistenable. By the ’80s, when he pushed treacle like “The Girl Is Mine” and “Say Say Say” with Michael Jackson and “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder, he should have been brought before the World Court for crimes against humanity’s ears.

Still, a guy I knew was scalping tix to see McCartney and I felt compelled to buy them for the then-princely sum of $25 the pair because of the history of the thing. Within a year and a half I’d made the full transition to punk music and more intimate venues like the Aragon Ballroom and Tut’s.

The Aragon

■

In fact, somewhere in my box of keepsakes I still have the tickets for the Sex Pistols New Year’s Eve show at the Ivanhoe Theater, one of four stops they had to cancel because they couldn’t get visas in time. They only played seven dates on their American tour, the highlights of which being Sid Vicious carving the words “Gimme a fix” in his chest and Johnny Rotten coughing up blood due to the flu.

I get the feeling that some arena-rock aficionados and drum solo lovers might call me out on this one but I’m not claiming the Sex Pistols were anything more than a sensational middle finger directed at the pretentious prog rock of the day. As long as they helped bury Kansas, the Pistols’ll be okay by me. Suffice it to say I’ve seldom, if ever, listened to them on iTunes.

▲

Court & Spark

Right now my money’s teetering between conviction on a much lesser charge and a complete acquittal for King Doofus George Zimmerman in Florida.

Book it: He ain’t gonna fry for a 2nd degree rap. He was getting the bejesus kicked out of him by Trayvon Martin (not that I blame the kid) and any reasonable jury has to nix the murder call.

I don’t think the jury really wants to let the pudgy Guardian of the Neighborhood walk but they may have to. And if they do, what’s the reaction on the streets going to be? Are we in for a reprise of LA 1992?

The Thick Blue Line

■

Back twenty years ago after the Rodney King verdict came down South Central LA residents tore up the town, leading to 53 deaths and a billion dollars-worth of damage. But that was well before the election of Barack Obama and the resultant sense among the lower primate orders of the American electorate that “outsiders” and “aliens” (read the N-word here) were taking over their holy land. If dark-skinned folks take to the streets after a potential Zimmerman pass, are the armed-to-the-teeth Ted Nugent wannabes of America going to wade into the fray?

Role Model

■

It could happen.

Then the Prez might be pressured to send in federal troops and once that happens, the militias and tinfoil-hat gangs will really take the gloves off.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.

▲

07/05/2013

1 Comment

Aaron Copland, Anarchism, Barack Obama, Conspiracy Theory, Dinesh D'Souza, Fanfare for the Common Man, Grover Cleveland, Joe DiMaggio, Joe the Plumber, Judson Phillips, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Ben Cramer, Rush Limbaugh, Samuel Wurzelbacher, Soma Coffee, Tea Party Nation, Ted Nugent

Your Daily Hot Air

Love It Or Hate It?

Barack Obama yesterday did what American presidents do every Fourth of July. He told us how fabulous we are, how rich our history is, what intractable problems we’ve solved, what insurmountable obstacles we’ve overcome, and how we have the unique ability to face all the challenges of the future.

Then an orchestra played the 1812 overture, a bunch of fireworks were shot off, everybody went home, and this morning some of us are back at work.

Obama On The Fourth

■

More than some of us are bitter because we have to pay outlandish taxes to support lazy bums, welfare queens, and clever pimps. I’ve always held that the vast majority of flamboyant patriots love America but hate Americans.

Anyway, Obama fulfilled his presidential duties no better or worse than any of his 43 predecessors (actually, he has 42 predecessors; Grover Cleveland, having served non-consecutive terms, is counted twice). The nation’s Cheerleader in Chief is always the big star on Independence Day and normally no one doubts how loyal he is to this holy land.

Barack Obama, of course, is different. He is, according to many, a Kenyan-born Muslim, homosexual, terrorist. He’s not one of “us.”

One Of Us

■

I have to wonder, therefore, what the lunocracy thinks when they see Obama waving the flag and celebrating the land they’re certain he’s not a part of.

Just for giggles’ sake, here’s a sampler of observations over the years from the Neptunian Right re: Barack Obama:

◗ “He is an evil, dangerous man who hates America and hates freedom.” — Ted Nugent

◗ “Barack Obama does not like the American system of government. He doesn’t like our founding fathers either…. Obama does not love America. He hates America.” — Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips

◗ “[Barack Obama holds] an ideology remote from what Americans believe in or care about… something completely separate from American thought altogether.” — Dinesh D’Souza

■

◗ “[W]hen it comes down to his ideology and mine, there’s a difference. I love America, and I don’t know what he does.” — Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber”

◗ “I think it can now be said, without equivocation — without equivocation — that this man hates this country. He is trying — Barack Obama is trying — to dismantle, brick by brick, the American dream.” — Rush Limbaugh

So, what do these and other like-minded deep thinkers feel when Obama tells us how fab we are on the Fourth?

I know they don’t have him on their short list for the best American prez ever. But given the above citations, they have to believe he’s the finest actor our great nation has ever produced.

Funny thing is, not one of my go-to sources for wingnut-ism even mentions Obama’s appearance at the pep rally for the Fourth in Washington yesterday. Which is a shame; what a golden opportunity for them to write and rant about the man’s shameless hypocrisy and how pervasive and underhanded his efforts to overthrow this great land are.

Who knows, maybe the Deranged Right is losing its edge. That’d be too bad; I’ve long felt they are the comic geniuses of our time.

▲

Anarchy In The USA

Soma Coffee is The Electron Pencil’s alternate office, as you well know if you’ve been following these screeds for any length of time. The joint was open yesterday, which I didn’t even know about until I came in this morning. I spent my Fourth napping, writing, washing a dish or two, and sharing in a nice smoked beef brisket with my next door neighbors. Overall, it was my typical Independence Day.

I Wonder If I Can Write Off My Coffee

■

Not so typical, as I learned today, at Soma. The place has a life-sized cardboard cut-out of that iconic Marilyn Monroe photo, the one where she’s standing over a subway grate and her skirt is being blown upward. (BTW, acc’d’g to the riveting biography of Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer, The Hero’s Life, Joltin’ Joe whacked Marilyn around pretty handily after that particular photo shoot. The story goes that DiMagg didn’t want his wife to be viewed as a “slut” and so he punched her up, but only in places that would be hidden by her clothes. Ick.) Anyway, the cut-out is in the coffeehouse’s bathroom which, at least in these hinterlands of South Central Indiana, is noted far and wide for its compelling decor.

Sadly, some kid Anarchist with a Magic Marker® defaced the cut-out while the rest of us were congratulating ourselves for being Americans.

Recruitment Poster?

■

Taciturn Mike, a mild-mannered electronics engineer for the Navy whom dedicated Anarchists might deem a vile tool of the military-industrial complex, wonders why the vandal didn’t decorate, say, the county courthouse or some other symbol of corrupt tyranny with the anarchists’ logo. He also wonders what the offender had in mind: Does he expect the graffito to goose this year’s Anarchist recruitment figures?

I have no such wonderment. The Anarchist in question is simply an asshole.

▲

Fanfare For The Common Man

This, babies, is the sound of patriotism.

▲

07/04/2013

Episode 39: Unsportsmanlike Conduct

BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

◆

— Thirty-nine —

Julie Baby lives in the Drake Hotel at Michigan Avenue and East Lake Shore Drive. The historic Drake stands at the west end of Chicago’s most exclusive block, the centerpiece of the Gold Coast. Ann Landers lives on this block, for pity’s sakes. The block’s eight fussy old highrises face north, looking down at the skimpily-clad sun worshippers on Oak Street Beach the way a clutch of stately dowagers might look upon so many floozies and hooligans through their lorgnettes.

Of course, that’s in July when Chicago enjoys it’s all-too brief summer. It’s early October now. The street gutters are already dammed with fallen leaves. It’s jacket and heavy sweater weather. This morning, when Anthony walked out of the house, he did what most Chicagoans do; he exhaled sharply — yep, he could see his breath.

In fact, no fewer than four Natchez Avenue neighbors checked to see their breath as they left their homes this morning. They were, in addition to Anthony:

Lenny LaFemina, assistant corporation counsel in the city’s Law Department
Jerry Pergler, Northwestern University journalism student, WBBM-TV intern, and — for today at least — freelance reporter
Sal Sanfillipo, one of Chicago’s Finest…, er, a police officer, let’s leave it at that.

All four will converge outside the Drake Hotel. Julie Baby’s place.

Julie Baby. That’s the name Abbie Hoffman has bestowed upon the Honorable Julius J. Hoffman, appointed judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois fifteen years earlier by President Eisenhower. The Hoffmans share a surname but Abbie and Julie Baby are not related. Boy, are they not related.

Hoffmans

■

Julie Baby has made it undeniably clear since their trial began in his courtroom in April that he doesn’t like Abbie and the rest of the Chicago Eight. Doesn’t like, hah! Loathes, is more like it. He has already ordered Bobby Seale bound and gagged in court. (Then again, Seale did yell out that the judge is a pig, a fascist, and a racist.) Judge Hoffman has called Abbie and Jerry Rubin obscene. (But, too, they have dropped the F-word a time or twenty.) Abbie shot back that the judge was the only obscenity in the courtroom — that, and Julie Baby was a shande fur de goyim (an embarrassment before the gentiles.)

So, things aren’t exactly going swimmingly for Abbie and the boys. If the trial were a ball game, the officials might invoke the slaughter rule. The Weathermen have decided to take the game directly to the head referee, the Honorable Julius J. Hoffman, right outside his front door. Oh, are they pissed! Almost as pissed as Julie Baby is that his old pal, Da Mare, was so humiliated by them and their kind last year. Julie Baby is gonna make somebody pay. But not before the Weathermen try to make him pay as well.

East Lake Shore Drive

■

Somebody blew up the statue at Haymarket Square three days ago, on Sunday. The statue stood overlooking the Kennedy Expressway, depicting a turn-of-the-century cop holding his hand up, commemorating the Haymarket Massacre, another in the city’s long history of police nervous breakdowns. Now, nobody’s actually saying the Weathermen bombed the statue but…, well, y’know.

And here they are today, about 400 strong along with another 400 lefties, peaceniks, and little old ladies in tennis shoes funneling through the narrow pedestrian underpass beneath Lake Shore Drive, gathering at the Michigan Avenue intersection. Bad vibes all around, baby. The peaceniks and the little old ladies who just want this stupid war to end are tut-tutting the Weathermen not only for, as they believe, blowing up the Haymarket statue, but for wearing motorcycle and football helmets as if they’re ready for war themselves, for surreptitiously clutching stones and bricks, for the rage that burns in their eyes.

Weathermen

■

Bad vibes. The cops already have strategized what to do about all these commie bastards wearing helmets, robbing them (the cops) of the sheer joy of smashing their skulls. The word is passed — hit ‘em on the back of the neck, hit ‘em in the small of the back, in the kidneys, whack ‘em on the backs of their knees, go for their balls.

Bad vibes. The sound of broken glass. Car windows are being smashed. Store windows shattered. The Weathermen had said “The Power’s In the Street!” in the weeks before these Days of Rage. No one needed to be a Weatherman to know which way that wind was blowing.

■

Bad vibes. Lots of teargas.

Bad vibes. Some of the cops have unholstered their service revolvers.

Bad vibes. The mass of marauding protesters has broken up into smaller groups. The cops are trying to break these up by driving squad cars directly into them. Somebody’s gonna get killed, man!

Bad vibes. Anthony is scared. This isn’t just a case of out-of-control cops swinging their nightsticks at anything that moves. This is the real thing now.

■

Anthony thinks, Maybe I oughta get the hell outta here. His thoughts are interrupted by the deafening thud of a lead-gloved fist hitting him flush in the eyeteeth. Anthony tumbles to the pavement, lucky that whoever had cold-cocked him had hit him with the square of his knuckles, diffusing the blow a bit.

Bad vibes. Anthony struggles to his feet, blood gushing out of his nose. He hears a gunshot. Then another. And a third. This is not a game.

Bad vibes. A guy bumps into Anthony, almost knocking him again to the pavement. The guy has a grenade-sized jagged rock in his hand. To the guy’s right, about fifty feet away, a familiar figure raises his revolver and aims. Sal Sanfillipo does not want to see one more store window broken, goddamn it. To the guy’s left, also about fifty feet away, Jerry Pergler stares wide-eyed at the tableau before him. The guy looks into a triad of hollow black depths: Sal’s two blank eyes and the barrel of his gun. “Fuck you, pig,” the guy screams. “Kill me, motherfucker!” Sal thinks, Wit’ pleasure, you piece a shit.

Anthony actually pees — not too much, a tablespoonful, maybe — in his pants.

Now a human battering ram blurs into Anthony’s field of vision, driven by piston-like legs hardened by four years of Coach Ara Parseghian’s two-a-day drills. This battering ram, this missile, this A-bomb in wingtip shoes propels himself into the body of the guy in Sal’s gunsite with the force of a Volkswagen Beetle. The poor sap with the jagged rock in his hand expels simultaneous bursts of air and intestinal gas that might have made Anthony titter had he not feared the poor son of a bitch might be killed by the tackle. The guy’s Raggedy Andy body whomps into Anthony’s, nearly knocking him again to the pavement. The guy, still clutching the jagged rock, hits the sidewalk on his backside, the momentum of the blow sending his feet back over his head, the start of a triple backward somersault. Oddly, the man who has tackled him, assistant corporation counsel Lenny LaFemina, lies inert in the gutter.

Anthony and Sal rush to the guy with the jagged rock in his hand and Lenny, respectively.

“You okay, man?” Anthony asks the guy. The guy nods, woozy.

“You okay, buddy?” Sal asks Lenny, but Lenny does not respond for a piece of his fourth cervical vertebra has punctured his spinal cord. “Oh my fuckin’ God,” Sal hollers, “he’s paralyzed!” Another nearby cop hollers back, “That guy kicked him in the head!” A third hollers, “He hit ‘im wit’ sumpin’!” Yet another hollers, “It was a lead pipe!” A fifth hollers, “Naw, it was a rock, get it outta his fuckin’ hand!”

Now Anthony is shoved out of the way as the five cops cuff the guy, a process which entails the use of three nightsticks, a blackjack, a pair of brass knuckles, and Sal’s special little trick, the five-fingered ball-sack twist which causes the guy to squeal like a scared queer piglet.

By the end of the afternoon, Lenny LaFemina learns he will never walk again.

By the end of the afternoon, Anthony Pontone learns the guy with the jagged rock in his hand will be charged with attempted murder.

By the end of the afternoon, Jerry Pergler has gone to the WBBM-TV news editor and then to the city editors of Chicago’s four dailies, hoping to sell his eyewitness account of the incident. Each of the media gatekeepers dismisses Jerry with some variation of this message: “Beat it, kid. Whose fuckin’ side are you on?”

◆

It is now dark. Anthony, riding the Lake Street el home, stares out the train window at the West Side and Garfield Park and the east end of the war-torn Austin neighborhood. Lots of empty lots, the burned-out shells of three- and four-flats having been razed months ago, the lots now owned by smart speculators like his dad, Tony the Fist Pontone, and his father-in-law, Al Dudek, and Rocco Bianco and Mickey Finnin. The Brothers put the torch to their ratholes after Martin Luther King was killed but that didn’t get them any better homes to live in. Anthony thinks back to August, 1968, when he and his cohorts made The Whole World Watch. Lotta good that did; the war’s still going on. Anthony flashes to the day’s events on East Lake Shore Drive. But Bobby Seale’s still bound and gagged.

Anthony thinks, This isn’t working, man. None of it. Anthony realizes he’s a lot more pissed off right now than he was when he decided to go to the street outside Julie Baby’s home this morning. Days of Rage, hah! This is Anthony Pontone’s Moment of Rage. He wants to pound on the windows of the el train as it pulls into the Ridgeland Avenue stop in Oak Park. Anthony is so filled with hot energy that he decides to walk home from the station. The two and a half mile walk takes him a little less than an hour. Anthony feels as though he wants to climb out of his own skin.

Bad vibes, man. Anna’s home. Sitting at the kitchen table, wearing one of her dad’s oversized old dress shirts, the top three buttons undone, her pendulous mom-breasts clearly visible, her now-thick thighs calling out to be squeezed.

Anna says, “What happened now? There’s blood on your shirt.” Anthony does not answer. Instead, he grasps Anna’s ponytail and pulls her close to him for the first time in…, months, is it? Maybe a year or more? Anthony smashes his mouth against Anna’s. She pushes him away, “C’mon now, Anthony. Whaddya doin’?” Anthony pulls Anna by the hair down to the floor and rips open her old man’s oversized shirt, three buttons clinking off the fridge. Anna says, “No!” Anthony says nothing as he unzips his blue jeans. Anna feels as though she’s going to hork. Then again, this man is her husband and doesn’t she have a duty to give herself to him? She resists the twin urges to hork and to claw his eyes out as he puts himself inside her.

To be continued

◆

All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

▲

07/03/2013

2 Comments

Andrew Breitbart, Bestiality, Big Hollywood, Bob Greene, Doktor Zoom, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, Gene Wilder, John Nolte, NPR, Skittles, WFIU, Will Murphy, Wonkette

Your Daily Hot Air

Ghoulish Giving

NPR stations around this holy land probably do this, too, but I’m only familiar with the act as committed by Bloomington’s own WFIU.

That is, the really creepy begging on-air for you, the listener with a foot in the grave, to write the public radio station into your will.

A little promo runs every day on Morning Edition. Some somber-ish music plays in the background as the announcer tells us we can make “an investment in WFIU’s future” and leave behind a valuable legacy. The financial support page on WFIU’s website expands on the concept. It tells us that these are “Gifts that cost you nothing during your lifetime,” as if the station’s doing us a big favor. The page also gives us options for giving cash, stocks, real estate, or other personal property. It even shows us how to make that very last donation by signing over our life insurance or retirement plan benefits.

“But First, Let’s Sign Those Papers.”

■

I know the ad is directed to us all in general, but I can’t help thinking about the poor souls who are pushing 85 or 90 and maybe have an electrical system that’s about to short out.

The station is saying, sans all the prettified verbiage, “Hey, when you’re dead, can we have your money?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, public broadcasting needs our support. The Loved One and I pitch a c-note over to WFIU every year, natch. And, yeah, the Republicans every once in a while threaten to cut off federal funding for NPR because, as we’re all well aware, public radio endorses forced sterilizations and compulsory abortions and works feverishly behind the scenes to convert all white children into homosexuals. Nevertheless, we continue to listen and want to help pay for Will Murphy‘s fleet of Maseratis.

(And, BTW, every time the Republicans threaten to cut off funds, public radio and TV fundraising phones jump off the hook.)

Anyway, I dig that public broadcasting fundraisers must be creative. I mean Garrison Keillor’s not gonna pay himself for his valuable time. Still, this legacy business is really unseemly.

Look, my brother has made himself a nice, tidy pile over his lifetime and, don’t get me wrong, I’ve put the touch on him once or twice, or was it half a dozen times? — no matter — the point is, even I wouldn’t have the cagliones to say to him, “Hey, Joey baby, I was just thinking, wouldja mind filling out a nice round figure for me in your last will and testament and, oh yeah, I think I’d look awfully good behind the wheel of that Chrysler 300 of yours.”

I don’t want to get all Bob Greene-y on you here, but I don’t think this kind of ghoulishness would have flown even twenty years ago.

Yes, That Bob Greene

◆

[Big Mike Note: While I was googling pix for this post, I discovered that there’s a whole genre of erotica surrounding sexy babes and hearses. I have absolutely nothing to say that would make this addendum any funnier or snarkier. I just want you to know about it.]

▲

I Am Love The Walrus

As you know, without Wonkette, I would be blissfully unaware of every important development in this crazy, mixed up world. And, (h/t to Doktor Zoom of Wonkette) here’s what’s important to the lunatics employed by the thankfully dead Andrew Breitbart’s network of interwebs agit-prop sites: this holy land’s advertising industry and Hollywood are in cahoots to foist bestiality upon us.

Yup. As evidence, John Nolte of Big Hollywood last year cited a weird little commercial for Skittles in which a couple of hot tomatoes talk about their sizzling love for walruses who gobble the multi-colored candies.

■

Indeed, nothing like pix of chix making out with walruses to entice Murricans to try animal sex.

OTOH: I have to wonder if bestiality really is on the rise. What else, after all could explain the existence of Breitbart bloggers better than the coupling of Homo Sapiens sapiens and Pan troglodytes?

Hey, Baby, How ‘Bout It?

▲

I Am In Love With A Sheep

Redux on this vid; I’m fairly certain I’ve run it before, but it’s always worth a reprise. This is the single funniest wordless double-take in the history of film. And it’s proof that Gene Wilder was a comic genius. Go ahead, laugh out loud, even if you are at work.

▲

07/02/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

Sometimes I think World Net Daily was made up just for me.

For my entertainment. For my edification. For my sense of superiority over the gang of lunatics that puts it out.

■

Maybe this is what I’m missing out on by not being a sexist slob or a racist. Scads of folks across this holy land seem to feel they are better than others simply because said others either possess vaginas or dark skin. It must feel good to know in your heart that women are weak and stupid and blacks are criminal and lazy — and you’re not one of them.

Superiority must be a trip, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of being a sexist and/or racist?

So yeah, I feel superior — moral- and intellectual-wise — to the jabbering chuckleheads who populate the WND universe.

The WND pantheon includes busts of that great philosopher Chuck Norris, who has fap-fantasized about becoming the president of the Republic of Texas after it secedes (oh, please!), and the redoubtable Jerome Corsi. You may recall Corsi swearing up and down during the 2004 presidential campaign that John Kerry had faked his Vietnam wounds. And, more recently, he has posited that Barack Obama is some kind of a Kenyan fag abortionist or something.

Chuck Norris And Friends

■

The WND faithful also are regularly treated to the screechings of Phyllis Schlafly and David Limbaugh (who almost makes big bro Rush sound occasionally sane).

Yeesh.

WND is chock full of ads for gold (the preferred safe investment harbor for survivalists), magical vitamins and elixirs, fountains of youth, and even for the newly-martyred Paula Deen. The fly on this pile of horseshit is none other than former baseball pitcher John Rocker, who pens a regular op-ed column for the site.

John Rocker, for chrissakes!

Anyway, wouldn’t you know it, last week’s US Supreme Court decision to coerce all good, white, straight men into butt sex has the WND crew all aflutter.

Some self-described Christian lawyer named Matt Barber, a regular WND contributor, is convinced he’s going to be imprisoned sooner rather than later as a direct result of the gay marriage ruling. And you know what happens in the joint, don’t you?

■

Anyway, Barber recounts a hand-wringing email exchange he had with another self-avowed Christian lawyer, who remains nameless in his Monday column. After speculating that the gay marriage OK will lead to the obligatory state-sanctioned unions of brothers and sisters (ick) and rampant polygamy (just a tad less ick), Barber’s pen pal pronounces:

In my 35 years as a Christian, I never seriously believed we might end up in prison for our faith — except, perhaps, for something like a pro-life demonstration. This is the first time it seriously occurs to me that the trajectory of the nation is such that it is possible in five to 10 years.

Because, as you are well aware, the Christians are such an oppressed minority in this country.

Barber couldn’t agree with his friend more. He writes:

Do I believe Christians will face real persecution, such as loss of livelihood, civil penalties, physical abuse or even jail? Absolutely.

So, there you have it. Gay marriage equals Christian concentration camps.

And, yeah, I’m superior to these howler monkeys, moral- and intellectual-wise.

It does feel good. Thanks, WND.

▼

Borrowers, Lenders & The Mob

Margaret, the Big Cheese at the Book Corner, Bloomington’s only independent bookseller where I peddle ’em Mondays through Wednesdays, will probably clunk me in the head for this one but, I gotta tell you, I’m becoming addicted to the library.

Not The Library

■

I’m reading a couple of books a week now, mainly because I’ve been borrowing from the Monroe County Public Library. I have zero idea why I haven’t done this before.

Think of it: your town or big city has within it a system wherein you can take books, CDs, or DVDs home for your personal use — for free. All you have to do is flash a library card.

You may say, Sure, Big Mike, we know all about it, but when’s the last time you did it?

I mean, even the fire department charges your survivors for sending an ambulance over when your heart explodes from a lifetime of sliders and Pop Tarts. The library doesn’t charge you a penny. How can it be that there isn’t a line around the block when the place opens in the morning?

Anyway, I’m just finishing up a book called When Corruption Was King, written by Robert Cooley with help from former Chicago Magazine editor Hillel Levin. Cooley was a mobbed up, kinky lawyer who was in bed with legendary Chicago First Ward bosses Pat Marcy and Fred Roti, who did the bidding of the city’s Outfit.

Alderman Fred Roti

■

The Outfit, of course, is Chicagoese for the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, wiseguys, goodfellas, or whatever Hollywood wants to call organized crime. According to Cooley, the Outfit, through Marcy et al, controlled Cook County’s courts, much of the Chicago Police Department, and too many city agencies to list here. Suffice it to say if you wanted a quick building permit, a zoning variance that the neighbors had been fighting tooth and nail, or just to get your teenaged kid off for denting the skull of some hapless Puerto Rican with a baseball bat, your lawyer paid a visit to Pat Marcy and slipped a nickel or a few dimes into his pudgy hand.

A nickel, in Chicago parlance, is $500. A dime, natch, is a grand.

So, the First Ward boys were the extra-legal funnel through which all smart city business flowed. Marcy and crew took care of the average citizen in the know as well as the big boys who ran the city’s gambling, vice, and narcotics operations, among other colorful pastimes. Most Chicago crime experts believed Marcy was a “made guy,” meaning he was an officially approved member of the Outfit. And, no, the Chicago mob didn’t have any elaborate ceremonies and rituals, the likes of which were portrayed in The Godfather and every other crime movie made since. In fact, the Outfit was an equal opportunity employer, welcoming members of every ethnic group imaginable into its ranks, so long as they were good earners and were willing to snap a guy’s thumb when called upon to do so.

Fiction

■

Cooley revealed the fixing of murder cases and the buying of state legislation through efforts of Marcy and his guys. Big circuit court judges who’d previously nurtured reputations as law-and-order hard-asses were in truth, Cooley and Levin wrote, guys who’d fix any case for a buck.

See, Cooley was a big player in these shenanigans until, he says, he got fed up, had a change of heart, and walked into the US Justice Department’s Chicago office unannounced and told the feds he wanted to play ball with them. Cooley then wore a wire when he did business with the First Ward boys. The evidence he amassed led to dozens of arrests and convictions and the eventual dismantling of the First Ward pigsty.

Cooley’s no Raymond Chandler or even John Grisham but his story is as riveting as anything they could come up with.

And, by the way, the kind of pervasive corruption that Cooley helped bring down in Chicago’s First Ward may be a thing of the past now but it was built upon the passing of cash from one hand to another.

The last I heard, cash still buys things. Enough of it can still buy permits, justice, and legislation. Only now, the system is nationwide, or even global, as opposed to Pat Marcy’s petit-realm. Look at the so-called Monsanto Protection Act for proof.

We need a new Robert Cooley.

▲

07/01/2013