George W. Bush, visiting what is left of New Orleans today, made the following statement:
"My attitude is this: New Orleans, better days are ahead. It's sometimes hard for people to see progress when you live in a community all the time."
Yeah. What do people who actually live in New Orleans know about what it's like to live there.
For everybody who lost someone or something to Katrina (and those who've visited New Orleans know that's all of us), I have Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927.
For all the patronizing people in power who think they know better than the people who have to live the life, I have nothing but contempt.
I said I wasn't gonna blog about him, but it's killing me if I don't.
I saw Larry Craig on TV this morning. He looked just like on his booking photos after his arrest for teh gey mens room sex.
I don't have a verbatim transcript of his statement handy, but this is how I remember it:
I am not gay! I've never been gay, even when I was fooling around with guys in college, I was completely straight! I am not gay!! I will never be gay, even if that lovely Rupert Everett ever starts returning my calls. I mean, I am not gay! I don't even like show tunes! I am pure country & western. It doesn't get more butch than cowboys, right? Not gay! No gayness! Not g-a-y. You got that, you media hacks? With a "y." Youuuuu guys made me confess to a crime I did not commit, the crime of hot, hard bodies rubbing against each other in an excitingly public place. I did not do that. He didn't even go for it! That proves that I AM NOT GAY!
Because it's so damn obvious, here's the video dedicated to Men's Room Larry - George Michael's Outside.
There is so much of this stuff, I won't even bother to blog about the Republican senator from Idaho who was arrested for doing a George Michael in an airport men's room (his handler's call it a “he said/he said misunderstanding” which unfairly makes it sound like he had some kind of relationship with the arresting cop other than wanting to nibble on his privates.) I mean, the "Idaho? He da ho!" jokes are just too obvious.
Because conservative perverts are in season, there's an update on sexually perverted sex pervert and disgraced former Congresspervert Mark Foley in the news. And it's a bit of a downer:
WASHINGTON — Former Congressman Mark Foley is unlikely to face criminal charges for sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenage boys, sources close to the yearlong investigation have told Scripps Howard News Service. (...)
Sources close to the investigation told Scripps that to date, there has been no criminal finding against Foley. Once the investigation is completed, it will be turned over to prosecutors in Pensacola. Pensacola has jurisdiction in the case because that is where Foley was when one of the explicit messages was sent.
Joe diGenova, the former U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, said investigators likely could not prove the case had merit.
"My guess is they probably have been unable to find evidence of an actual relationship," diGenova said. "Although the e-mails were suggestive, they didn't violate a statute."
To Mark "everybody knows the thing with the ladies man was a cruel joke" Foley, pictured here in his high school yearbook, I dedicate this clip of Patti Austin singing "Gettin' Away With Murder." Watch Patti wear a pink flamingo on her head early on in the clip, an outfit Mr Foley is sure to have worn on many occasions in the past.
To all the corroded military brass who decided to fire brave men and women, even Arabic translators because they were gay or lesbian, I dedicate Otis Redding with You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your Well Runs Dry.
Sometimes you just have to whine about something for miracles to happen. Katherine Harris is back!
She is a featured speaker at the Family Impact Summit. If said impact is too hard, her fabulously inflated breasts serve as life-saving air bags, I bet!
I hope we get some good pictures of her and Ann Heche's crazy mother.
There are so many great causes you can support if you have a little extra cash. You could feed the hungry. You could help keep Wuppertal's AIDS charity afloat in difficult times. You could help two really talented artists with disabilities publish their comic book. You could finance research into dozens of diseases or save the rain forest.
Or you could throw some money at Ted "Pastor Meth" Haggard, so he can continue to feed his cravings for rent-boy schlong and crystal meth. He says he needs your money to feed his family, of course, but why can't he do that when he:
received a salary of $115,000 for the 10 months he worked in 2006 and an $85,000 anniversary bonus before the scandal broke, according to church officials. The church’s board of trustees gave him a severance package that included a year’s salary ($138,000). He also collects royalties on his many book titles.
Haggard owns a home in Colorado Springs that has been for sale. It has a market value of $715,051, according to records from the El Paso County assessor.
How about it? Brothers, can you spend a dime?
I dedicate this clip by my hero, Curtis Mayfield, to all those who don't wanna be junkies.
We all thought he was gone for good, sent to the slammer, sharing a cell with somebody who actually knows the meaning of the expression "reacharound." But it looks like Rick Olney is back.
So here is a warning by Tony Isabella, also known as "America's Most Beloved ComicBook Writer and Columnist"
For a while there, it looked as if the vile Rick Olney had somehow acquired at least enough sense to stay offline. That was clearly foolish optimism on my part as he has once again surfaced to mock those to whom he owes money; to insult and threaten those victims and the good people who have championed the cause of his victims; and to proclaim conventions and publications that have no basis in reality. So, again, here is my...
WARNING ABOUT RICK OLNEY
A message to all my friends and readers...
If you are approached by an individual named Rick Olney or any representative of the man, if you are approached by Olney or anyone else representing entities known as The Mighty Mini-Con, TightLip Entertainment, ORCA, Mohawk Valley Newsletter, or any commercial entity or enterprise associated with any of the above, including online vendors, I strongly urge you to run in the other direction. You can find some details here:
You can find many more horrifying details on Olney and his business practices by doing a search on his name and the other names listed above. Really. Go look. It will amaze you.
If you trust me, do not attempt to do business with Olney. In fact, feel free to pass along this warning to any comics professionals, aspiring comics professionals, retailers, exhibitors, media guests, and fans you know.
Olney is not someone you want to do business with.
It has been estimated he owes freelancers anywhere between $40,000 and $100,000. The courts have already ruled against him in several cases where freelancers sued him for non-payment. Though Olney has yet to make good on these court-mandated judgments, auctions run by Unscrewed have raised several thousand dollars to help freelancers who were put into dire straits by Olney’s refusal to pay them for work they had completed.
He is being investigated for charity fraud. Other investigations of a different nature are ongoing at this time.
The list goes on and on.
Although I had hoped not to involve myself in this further, recent Olney actions, such as advertising a convention that seems to have happened only in his own mind, claiming that he is still planning to publish comic books, targeting foreign artists he hopes have not heard of him, and attempting to recruit naive American artists, the greater good demands I and my fellows continue to speak out in this manner.
Check out the UNSCREWED website for the impressive list of creators who have signed a version of this warning. Feel free to re-post this warning, which has been translated into several languages, to any forum you like.
Anything Olney is involved with should always be consider suspect.
Olney continues to troll - trolling as in a pimp hanging out at the old bus station - MySpace and message boards and Yahoo groups looking for fresh meat to exploit, for naive young artists foolish enough to believe that he's going to give them their big break. Before they work for him, they should really talk to the many writers and artists who he hasn't paid for past work. They can find many of "Olney's Orphans" at the Unscrewed website.
This last bit isn't an update, but bears repeating.
Despite threatening to sue me and many others, Olney has yet to institute any legal action against anybody. Indeed, as mentioned above he has been on the receiving end of several lawsuits and has already had several judgments against him...with more certain to follow.
You've been warned.
To repeat, feel free to pass this warning around or post it wherever you like. Oh, sure, I'm setting myself up for another impotent threat from Olney, but that's a chance I'm more than willing to take if I can prevent even one fan or pro from getting involved with this blight on comicdom.
Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf is not a Southern Baptist priest, surprisingly, but a performer with a so called Circus of Horrors. Little Dan had to be hospitalized when he accidentally glued even littler Dan to a vacuum cleaner. Pulling said household appliance across the stage with said private part is Dan's act.
“I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short lived.”
He said short lived. OK, it's funnier when I'm the one with the puns.
The Scotsman reports that it took nurses hours to remove the hoover from little Dan's little Dan. They sure had a tall tale to tell when they got home.
I dedicate this song to Dan the Demon Dwarf. Get well soon!
Those kuh-razy, wacky Southern Baptist priests are at it again.
The Reverend Wiley S. Drake (yes, baptist priests have the greatest names) of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, forgot that endorsing political candidate can cost a church its tax-exempt status when he endorsed Mike "I lost weight, vote for me" Huckabee.
Drake said the Bible calls for "imprecatory prayer" when someone "attacks the church." He gave as examples of such prayer:
"Persecute them. ... Let them be put to shame and perish."
"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."
"Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg."
If this were one of my beloved comic books, "Wiley Drake" would probably turn out to be a demon posing as a priest, but in the real world, he's just another man of the cloth who completely misunderstood the assignment.
I mean, wouldn't it be easier to just pray for Huckabee to win?
Some American friends are traveling to Paris and asked me what else there is to do than the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and spotting President Sarkozy's mistresses.
I started writing down things off the top of my head, and since that stopped me from writing a blog entry, I'm just copying and pasting it here for your informative information informating.
High things to get on other than the Eiffel Tower ► Ferris wheel in the jardin des tuileries ► Tour Montparnasse (a very tall very ugly building - nice thing about this view is that you cannot see the Tour Montparnasse when you're on it)
Slightly creepy but still marvelous things Père Lachaise cemetery - some of these tombs are hundreds of years old in this veritable necropolis. Plus, you can visit the graves of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison and French kings and poets and philosophers. Look for the fabulous black and white marble tomb of a 1920s flapper girl socialite with a hand-written note on a framed autographed picture on the marble coffin reading "Death does not become me, does it?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pere_Lachaise
The Catacombs In the late 1700s, these old Roman tunnels were turned into a mass burial sites to clean up unsanitary churchyard cemeteries. The result is spooky and filled with more history than you can shake a thigh bone at. Decorative arrangements of skulls and bones on the walls, an underground chapel and tales of the French resistance using the tunnels during WW II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_catacombs
The old "Muséum national d'histoire naturelle" (natural history museum) is situated in the gorgeous botanical garden (Jardins des Plantes) and is a breath-taking old building filled with dinosaur bones and two-headed mutant lizards in pickle jars. It's like a journey through time to when museums were still cool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9um_National_d%27Histoire_Naturelle
Shopping La Rue Mouffetard Very lively, long and winding street with an open market, traditional Parisian bistros and cafés and small shops. Buy some jujubes from the open market to nibble on. Try on some shoes. Have a chocolat chaud.
The Bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine At several stretches along the river Seine, you find these little used book stalls that have been around forever. Some of them sell ancient books, some sell used comic books from last year, some sell 60s magazines. How about getting a 1960s issue of Elle with Twiggy on the cover as a unique souvenir?
Flee market at Saint Ouen Only on weekends, and not for you if you hate crowds! Everything from cheap knock-off clothes to antiques and arts and crafts. And thousands of people. http://www.parispuces.com/en/Default.asp
At the other end of the spectrum: Avenue Montaigne Christian Dior, Chanel, Pierre Cardin, Christian Lacroix... For the material girls in you.
You should also check out the Galeries Lafayette on the Boulevard Lafayette, one of the fanciest department stores in the world.
Gayish things Le Marais Several gay stores and gay owned restaurants on and around the street Rue Ste. Croix de la Bretonnerie. You'll also find the Picasso museum and the beautiful Place des Vosges here, so bring some time and comfortable shoes.
Cecil Howard Sinclair spent many years in the service of his country, but there will be no service in his memory at the "High Point" mega church in Arlington, Texas because the Navy Veteran who served in Desert Storm was also gay. As MSNBC and the Houston Chronicle report, "High Point" reached a moral low point when they first agreed to do the service, then embarrassed and spat in the face of Sinclair's grieving family, all the while claiming "It's not that we didn't love the family." They just can't be seen to show compassion to a man who had a loving relationship to another man, nor to his family. The shameful pastor in question is Gary Simons, brother in law of Joel Osteen, of the enormous Lakewood Church in Houston, America's largest church. I am no Christian, but it seems to be quite clear that you can't be much further removed from the teachings of Jesus Christ than some of those mega churches. Somebody call Prince, there're Thieves in the Temple tonight.
Even though she literally lost half her weight after gastric bypass surgery, Patti Austin proves that she is still all there, both on her puntastically titled latest CD, Avant Gershwin, and in a truly fabulous interview she granted the Bay Area Reporter. Please go and read the whole thing, it'll do more for your brains than checking up on what Britney's been doing wrong again.
Every generation gets the music it deserves. This generation is getting the music it deserves, unfortunately, because our generation did not fight for this generation to be educated musically. As a result, the music is exactly what you get when you don't know anything about music!
That's an interesting point I didn't consider - music education was already considered quite unimportant when I was in highschool in the 80s, and programs have been cut a lot more since then. And while not every songwriter had a great theoretical knowledge of music, I agree that it can't hurt.
Patti has never shied away from the odd jocular comment about other singers and their vocal abilities and affectations, and this interview is no exception:
Quite a few years later, [Rosemary Clooney] backed me into a corner and said, "I don't want you to ever stop singing the Great American Songbook. You must continue to sing it, because you are the heir apparent." I said, "Well, I'll take that. Can I get it in writing maybe?" She said, "You don't need it in writing, you are it." I said, "What about Natalie Cole?" And she used a very bad word with Natalie's name in reference to it. I said, "You're talking about genetic perfection here, Nat King Cole's daughter! She's no fricking slouch." She said, "Well, you'll be Ella and Sarah. The bottom line is, I'm calling you the heir apparent. Go get it, and don't stop singing this music."
Now go read the damn thing. Or if you need to be convinced that laying off the pork chops did not make Patti lose her vocal chops, compare these two clips from before and after the weight loss:
The good people of Nevada must have been fully aware they elected a moron to office when they picked Jim Gibbons. After all, he thought it was a good idea to get drunk with a cocktail waitress in public while his campaign was in full swing. And then to accompany her to her car and let her drive home drunk.
And that's it! A woman who once worked so hard none of her staffers could put up, I mean, keep up with her, reduced to sitting at home torturing large rodents?
Will somebody get that woman a reality TV show already? Bravo? Spike? Anyone? It could be called "Hello Kitty!"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 22-year-old man who was "not fully clothed" jumped the north fence into the White House grounds on Sunday and was immediately apprehended, the U.S. Secret Service said.
Hmm... No wait, that guy was only 22. I guess Tommy is still safely in his cell, sharing quality time with his cell mate Bruno, the hermaphrodite hooker with a heart of gold.
Turns out there was a perfectly good explanation for why Southern Baptist pastor Tommy "Testes" Tester offered sexual favors to the cop who came to arrest him for exposing his little savior to some children - he was afraid of him:
"He said they (Johnson City police) scared him--he was scared to death and didn't know what he'd said or what he'd admitted or anything else," Morris said.
According to the Johnson City Press article, Tester allegedly pulled up in a blue 2007 Toyota Camry and offered to give Johnson City police officers oral sex when they arrived at 308 S. Belmont Street to investigate a report of indecent exposure.
Now, I heard about imagining the other person naked when you're nervous in a job interview or a similar situation, but this seem to go a little far, doesn't it? I mean, I'm afraid of the dentist, but I've never offered him oral sex. Maybe it's all part of Southern hospitality?
According to bgay.com, divine drag queen drunk driver Tommy "Testes" Tester worked for the Christian Radio station WZAP-AM. The station is obviously named after gay director John Water's trademark "Zap!" sound effect in the legendary "Homer's Phobia" episode of The Simpsons.
Who knew Christian radio in the South was this fabulous?
Their e-mail address is RAMorris@wzapradio.com . Let's flood them with requests for a fitting soundtrack to this deliciously sordid affair, like the Weather Girls' It's Raining Men, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive and Carl Bean's I Was Born this Way. Any song from the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert movie will do, too.
Rumors that said movie will be remade once again for American audiences, this time as Tommy Tester, Trollop of Tennessee, have not been substantiated at this time.
Tommy Tester (does that sound like a porn name to anyone else?), a baptist minister, was arrested in Tennessee. Evidently, he drove under the influence of vodka and something called oxycodone (I am guessing that's not acne medication?), was wearing a skirt, took a leak in front of some kids at a car wash (won't somebody please think about the children?) and offered oral sex to a police officer.
This guy would be perfect for John McCain's campaign. I hear John is always hiring.
