Category Archives: Michelle Obama

Hot Air

[MG Note: Pardon the weird paragraph leading today; WordPress is eff-ing up.]

Scandal!

Just when you think the Far Right-wingnut mob can’t get any farther or nuttier (and how many times have I had to type a version of that lead over the last few years?) they up and shock the bejesus out of me.
And any other sane person, for that matter.
Are you sitting? Okay. That latest deranged rumor about Barack Obama is that he and Michelle are not the biological parents of Malia and Sasha.
Obama

The Mother Of All Frauds

Yep. A gang of Obama-obsessed jingoists on a website called The US Patriot (“home to the best Conservative news on the net”) has uncovered this earth-shattering news that’s sure to make Watergate and Iran-Contra and the October Surprise look like childish indiscretions.
“[S]ome Americans,” the site intones, gravely, “feel that the two girls have very little resemblance to their parents.” Later, the post’s author reveals, “[N]o one has ever claimed to see a picture of the First Lady pregnant or with a newborn.”
Hmm. What could be up here? No doubt something horribly devious, considering this Prez is the worst America-hating non-citizen who’s ever lied, cheated, and defrauded his way to the leadership of the Free World — which won’t be free very much longer after he and his pals enslave us all.
Whoever wrote this scoop — there is no byline — says unimpeachable sources (“others claim…”) have unearthed evidence the two kids might have been born in Morocco and then adopted.
Thank god for people like those who staff The US Patriot! Why, without them, we’d all be speaking Morroccan now.
[h/t to Ray Hanania.]

False Flag

Not to be outdone, the loons on the Left have their own brand spanking new mad, mad conspiracy delusion.
ISIS, acc’d’g to one or two as-yet-uncommitted mental patients on the Wingnut Left, flat out doesn’t exist.
Meme
All of which makes me wonder why scads of folks are so bored by the vagaries and complexities of real life that they must create spectacular fictions to get themselves through the day.

Fogey Fun

The Loved One and I had a lot of fun out with the Fergusons and Joneses last night at the Bloomington Playwrights Project production of Kalamazoo and then, post-show, at Ferg. world HQ.
Kalamazoo

“Kalamazoo” At The BPP

Kalamazoo was a rare bit of entertainment dealing with the lives, loves, hopes, and dreams of, well, old people. As in, Ick, old people.
The play was written by Michelle Kholos Brooks and Kelly Younger. Brooks is the daughter-in-law of legendary funny man Mel Brooks and his influence shows in the play. The gags and one-liners — lots of them Borscht Belt mots buffed up to a contemporary sheen — come rapid fire as two old fossils, widowers both, hook up on an old-person dating site and fall, by fits and starts, in love.B-town luminaries in attendance for the opening night performance included Bloom mag publisher Malcolm Abrams and political doyenne Charlotte Zietlow.
And Tyler Ferguson’s late evening jambalaya feed was fab.

Hot Air, Please!

Baked, Bumped, Besotted, Etc.

The list you’ve been waiting for:

From The Weeklings

Click Image For List

Wait a sec: $3 million on cocaine? Steven Tyler of Aerosmith sez that’s how much he’s spent on blow in his lifetime. Doesn’t that sort of count as a crime against humanity? Like, y’know, when there are people dying of starvation somewhere while he’s pissing all that scratch away to get bumped?

Anyways, all the usual suspects are here: David Bowie of the late 1970s and early ’80s, Nick Drake, Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart, Fleetwood Mac when Stevie Nicks was burning a hole through her nasal septum, Marvin Gaye on the road to getting shot to death by his daddy-o, Billie Holliday — natch, and even one of my teen faves, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

Brown

Arthur Brown, Wearing His Trademark Flaming Mask/Helmet

[h/t to Maxxwell Bodenheim of Forest Park, Ill. for pointing this out.]

Those Who Do….

Spent a cool night in the recording studio with the multi-talented Tony Brewer yesterday. He’ll be the next guest in my new interview series, Big Talk, carried over the air by WFHB and in print in The Ryder mag.

Jeremy Hogan Photo

Tony Brewer [photo by Jeremy Hogan]

I dunno, I think I might give myself an inferiority complex if I keep doing these chats. First up was cartoonist, graphic novelist, record producer, musician, and otherwise walker-on-water Nate Powell. Now it’s Brewer, who’s been a sound effects guy, poet, roller derby announcer, pro typesetter, improv comic, artists’ consortium bwana, filmmaker, DJ, and…, aw, I’m getting tired just typing out what he’s done.

How do these people do it? I know I get exhausted washing the dishes. I need to take a nap after brewing my morning coffee. Where do all these movers and shakers get the drive and energy to do what they do?

That’s one question we may eventually answer in the Big Talk series. We’ll see.

Logo by KLR

The New Radio/Print/Online Interview Series

So, here’s the Nate Powell chat that ran on WFHB. The full interview will run in the March edition of The Ryder. The Brewer tête-à-tête should air within a week or two, depending on how quickly I transcribe and edit the piece. But, trust me, there’ll be a lot of naps interspersed with the work.

Drinking Games

Just thought I’d bring up a blast from the past. Remember when Michelle Obama told schoolkids they oughtta drink an extra glass of water a day ‘coz it’d make them healthier or some such thing?

The joke became, Now the Me Party-ists and all those crazy Right Wingers’ll come out against water, haha.

And, lo and behold, that’s what happened!

All true. Rush Limbaugh and the Washington Times and a bunch of Tea Party loons got all uppity, saying the FLOTUS’s science was hogwash and that she was now turning into Mrs. Michelle Hitler Stalin Attila the Hun bin Laden Obama.

The Guardian Photo

Tyrant!

These, kiddies, are the folks the Dems are now a’scared of in this fall’s mid-term elections.

Politics today is so frustrating. The other guys are whack jobs and my guys are tadpoles (i.e. invertebrate larvae). Sheesh.

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.” — James Thurber

LOOK TO THE SKIES!

Looks like that big fist of rain up around the Chi-town area is getting ready to come down upon us.

We’re still not ready to complain about another washed-out weekend, though.

NOAA Satellite View, 9:15am, EST

STRAIGHT FROM HIS LIPS

In the category of People Will Believe Any Bullshit Anyone Tosses At Them, this book cover has to rank among the top ten:

And just to show how bizarre Homo Sapiens sapiens is, a London-based gossip columnist in 1956 described Milwaukee’s greatest piano player thusly:

“… [A] deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.”

Ice-covered?

Upon reading this, Wladziu Valentino Liberace sued the gossip columnist and his newspaper, The Mirror, for libel. And won!

Liberace on the witness stand swore he wasn’t a homosexual (even though the columnist had not explicitly accused him of being gay) and said — I remind you, under oath — that he’d never had a homosexual experience.

And you wonder why some people believe Barack Obama was born in some terrorist madrasah in Kenya run by Karl Marx’s heirs, abortionists, and pedophiles.

INTELLIGENT LIFE?

And then there’s this from I Fucking Love Science. Many people were sorely disappointed the other night when the moon did not, as advertised, turn blue.

See, there was supposed to be a blue moon a week ago today. The Twitter-verse went full-tilt apopolectic when our celestial nightlight did not shine in the wavelength range of 475 nanometers.

Colors On The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Anyway, tons and tons of deep thinkers flooded the hell that is Tweet-ville with irate complaints that the moon was, well, still white.

To wit:

And you wonder why some people believe it was Barack Obama who crashed the economy.

CRUST OF BREAD AND SUCH

Still wondering if the Romneys understand what it’s like for the rest of us? That is, those of us who didn’t grow up uber-wealthy?

Read this:

This is not to say a rich guy can’t have empathy. Franklin Roosevelt never missed a meal in his life but he had a feeling for those who had.

TRADING PLACES

RUNNIN’ OUT OF FOOLS

Originally recorded by Aretha Franklin, this version was done some 30 years later by Neko Case, perhaps the only woman who could do justice to it other than the Queen of Soul.

Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

I Love ChartsLife as seen through charts.

From I Love Charts

XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

SkepchickWomen scientists look at the world and the universe.

IndexedAll the answers in graph form, on index cards.

Science Is Awesome (formerly I Fucking Love Science)A Facebook community of science geeks.

Present/&/CorrectFun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

Flip Flop Fly BallBaseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

Mental FlossFacts.

Click For Full Article

SodaplayCreate your own models or play with other people’s models.

Eat Sleep DrawAn endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

Big ThinkTapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

The Daily PuppySo shoot me.

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something. But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains.” — former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson

WILL YOU BE MY HERO, PLEASE?

How about that Alan K. Simpson?

The old bird who used to be a demi-villain to liberals back in the ’80s is now a darling of the left set because he tongue-lashed his fellow Republicans over the weekend.

Simpson appeared on CNN with Fareed Zakaria Sunday and called GOP legislators’ anti-tax intransigence “madness.”

Anti-Tax-ists

Just goes to show how far we liberals and progressives have fallen when we have nobody to idolize but Republicans who occasionally say something that makes sense.

Simpson, by the way, says only a combination of solutions can revitalize the economy. That includes higher taxes for some Americans.

GO!

Click this logo for the Pencil’s events listing, the best in Bloomington, natch:

FACE TIME

I’m the most curious guy you can imagine (and that’s true on a number of levels.) But there are certain things I don’t need to see or know.

One of them is the video of the cops shooting that crazy nude man who was eating the face of another man.

Here’s A Pretty Cardinal

In fact, that’s all I know about the story. I fear that if I click on any of the articles about it, I’ll see too much.

There’s nothing more I need to know about it.

UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARIES

Get ready for the flood of stories on the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of IU student Lauren Spierer.

Profit-driven media is big on anniversaries. I look at it as lazy journalism.

If you think the Spierer anniversary will be bad, just wait until November, 2013. That’ll mark the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

He Did It, Okay? Can We Move On Now?

Oh, and steel yourself for yet another wave of conspiracy books, documentaries, and articles.

VEGETABLES ARE SOCIALIST

Michelle Obama’s new book comes out today. “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America” recounts the story of her White House garden.

Which reminds me that the unimaginably bizarre Rush Limbaugh raked her over the coals last fall for her garden.

“We do not like being told that we can only eat what’s in her garden,” he ranted on his radio show, which is listened to by tens of millions of mammals daily.

BTW: he also called her “uppity” once. But neither he nor his listeners are racists. How do I know? They say so — when they’re not busy calling a professional woman who happens to have dark skin “uppity.”

Sometimes I just want to scream.

HARVEST FOR THE WORLD

I don’t remember if I’ve posted this song before but no matter, it’s worth hearing again.

The beauty of this Isley Brothers tune is that, while acknowledging that things are largely going all to hell, there is always hope. Every time I hear it, this song makes me think of morning.

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.” — Frank Zappa

SAVE US, RICK

Gotta say it: I miss Rick Santorum.

The political debate has pretty much petered out now that the wackiest altar boy in the nation has quit the presidential race.

We Miss You, Man

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are involved in a staring contest over who loves women more. Romney said recently, “93 percent of the job losses during the Obama years have been women who lost those jobs.” Obama, in turn, has dispatched his wife, not to correct Romney’s awkward sentence construction, but to say her man is the greatest thing to happen to women since the invention of chocolate.

Michelle Obama actually said this about the her husband’s deeds for women: “We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light.”

Oy.

Suffragette Introducing Featured Speaker Barack Obama

And in some weird, Twilight Zone-ish turn of events, Ann Romney, a woman who has struggled valiantly to assemble a staff of nannies and maids, has become an icon for all the hard-toiling homemakers of this holy land.

Oy, oy.

I don’t suppose this debate-for-the-ages will rank with the Lincoln-Douglas wrestling matches of 1858.

Sigh. Oh, for the madness of Rick Santorum.

MAN ON THE THRONE

And, yes, I’m a political geek.

See, I’m pumped about the release in two weeks of the fourth volume in Robert Caro‘s brilliant series of books on the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It deals with the 1960 presidential election, Johnson’s ascendency to the presidency following the Kennedy assassination, and his electoral coronation in 1964.

Johnson Drives His Beloved Amphi-car

LBJ was one fascinating man. He stole elections, bullied opponents, battled for civil rights legislation, loathed John F. Kennedy and then served under him as vice president, allowed the nation to slip into a senseless war in Vietnam and found himself mourning that course of events. He issued orders to members of his staff while perched upon the porcelain princess with the door wide open.

Caro won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Power Broker,” his look into the life of New York City strongman Robert Moses. (BTW, Oliver Stone is working on an HBO biopic based on Caro’s book.) He copped another Pulitzer for the third volume in the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, “Master of the Senate.” For my dough, Caro has to win a third Pulitzer for “The Passage of Power” if it’s even half as good as the previous three tomes on the man.

Robert Caro

Pick up any of the aforementioned Caro books; you’ll understand a lot more about how America works if you do.

BEYOND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

Dig this observation by social ecologist Peter Drucker:

“Like the forces of war, depression shows man as a senseless cog in a senselessly whirling machine which is beyond human understanding and has ceased to serve any purpose but its own.”

Peter Drucker

The quote, written in 1939, has been interpreted as a description of the madness that was the Great Depression. It sounds to me more like an indictment of unfettered capitalism itself.

MONEY

“Don’t give me that do-goody, good bullshit.”

The Pencil Today:

POT VERSUS KETTLE

I’d imagine the number of local residents paying the slightest bit of attention to last night’s debate between Republican candidates for president hovered somewhere around, oh, zero.

This is, after all, Bloomington, Indiana, the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union and geographical magnet for this holy land’s unscrubbed beatniks, bomb-throwers, abortionists, and other Democrats.

So, The Pencil will do y’all a favor and point out the most eye-opening statement made by one of the fine and decorated statesmen and women who gathered to verbally spar in that other locus of undesirables, Washington, DC.

Minnesota Congressbeing Michele Bachmann dug deep into her her pocket thesaurus and threw a sophisticated two-syllable pejorative at Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Bachmann: “Fingers crossed — Someone Has Less Of A Clue Than I Do.”

The issue was Pakistan and Perry had just pronounced all future financial aid to that nuclear armed Stone Age nation a no-go as long as its leaders wouldn’t keep “America’s best interests in mind.”

Y’know, the way every other nation on this spinning globe keeps the well-being of the land of Donald Trump, Lindsay Lohan, and Black Friday in the forefront of all its deliberations.

Well, our plucky gal Michele found Perry’s logic rather lacking. Bachmann is a member of the House Intelligence Committee which, if nothing else, proves our elected representatives possess a sense of humor. She reminded Perry and the world that this country gains a lot of inside dope on the doings of the wild-eyed gun-toters who populate much of Pakistan’s desolate countryside. Our dough, Bachmann insisted, also insures that the borderline lunatics who run the place aren’t overthrown by certified lunatics.

Bachmann characterized Perry’s statement thusly: “I think that’s highly naive.”

Kudos to Bachmann on grasping the fact that the syllables of a word needn’t be separated by consonants.

Now, imagine how discouraged the cowboy governor is this morning to realize that Michele Bachmann — Michele Bachmann — considers him naive.

The election, folks, is a mere 49 weeks away.

“KILL URSELF”

I have a Twitter account, I’ll admit it. On the other hand, I haven’t touched it in more than a year.

Twitter is the 140-character preserve of semi-literate pro athletes, pathologically self-involved Hollywood stars, and that portion of the populace that was born, sadly, with the condition known as anencephaly.

Take the recent Twit (screw “Tweet” — I’m going with Twit) from Washington Redskins pass catcher Jabar Gaffney.

Poor Jabar was in a funk after his team lost to the rival Dallas Cowboys Sunday. Some Cowboys fan sent him a Twit ridiculing him and his Redskins mates. (By the way, I was under the impression that this was the year 2011. And still there’s a pro team called the Redskins? The Redskins?!)

Anyway, Gaffney promptly advised the Twit-sender to, um, commit suicide.

Yup. Gaffney thumbed these proto-words into his connection to the civilized world: “… I’m just proud I ain’t you get a life or kill urself.” The line is close enough to the human language known as English that I needn’t translate it for you.

Naturally, the NFL and representatives of the sane population of America had apoplexy. Hell, if people can blame Judas Priest, whose song obliquely referred to the ultimate form of self-determination, for a couple of teens’ deaths in 1985, then Gaffney’s unmistakable advisement is fraught with peril.

Gaffney then quoted another Twit-person who agreed with his original broadside. Gaffney thumbed: “I do want that man to kill himself..one less cowboys fan…”

Existential Advice

Sheesh. Now we know there are at least two people in this nation who don’t know ellipsis is indicated by three dots, not two. America is indeed going to hell.

Cooler heads got to Gaffney and he apologized — the way many celebrities, politicians, and corporations apologize these days, which is not at all.

Gaffney Twitted a third time, “They say I can’t tell people to kill themselves didn’t know freedom of speech had limitations so I’ll just say #uknowwhattodo #HTTR better?”

In case this puzzling series of electronic grunts is indecipherable to you, I’ll help. Gaffney is saying: “My heavens, despite the landmark US Supreme Court decision wherein the noted jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. opined that shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater is a practical violation of common sense, civility, and the spirit of the original 1st Amendment, I was under the impression that the concept of Freedom of Speech is sacrosanct. I will therefore alter my original pronouncement by saying, ‘Sir, do you recall that action I advised you to take which, apparently, I am not at liberty to utter in a public setting? If so, please take it.'”

Big time sports and the reprobates who perform in it and operate it are becoming less and less attractive by the week.

DON’T CRY FOR ME HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY

The Loved One was incensed that First Lady Michele Obama caught the raspberry Sunday at a NASCAR race in Miami.

Obama: “I Can’t Hear You Because I Have These Big Things On My Head.”

Many in the crowd of some 80,000 booed the president’s wife lustily when she was introduced prior to shouting “Start your engines” into a microphone.

Aside from the fact that the speedway was filled with people who find deafeningly loud cars continually turning left at life threatening speeds entertaining, the race, it must be said, was held in Florida. That double-whammy indicates the crowd probably was lacking in thinkers who grasp the subtleties and nuances of today’s domestic and geopolitical debate.

Who was the last Nobel Prize winner to hail from the Sunshine State?

No matter, I actually tried to defend the crowd, which caused my lovely bride to eye me through narrowed lids.

I said, “The fact that people feel free to boo the wife of the boss of the most powerful nation on Earth is a good thing.”

The Loved One shook her head almost imperceptibly. And, I have to admit, I’m not thrilled with my argument either.

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