February 26, 2010

At One Point in Time, in Our Very Own Universe, Kanye West Did Something that Wasn't Totally Douche-y

Alex Leo at the Huffington Post interviewed "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about their thirteen years of being the funniest, most non-partisan satirists in America.

When asked about the varying perceptions about the show being either "conservative" or "liberal" in its messages, Parker responds:
"I look at it like this," Trey added. "I have a cat, I love my cat and it's like someone coming in and saying, 'Hey, is that cat a Republican or a Democrat?' He's my f---ing cat, leave him alone."
Over the years, Parker and Stone have been particularly aggressive (and most hilarious) when it comes to their jabs at the Hollywood community, but that focus has created a false perception in come circles that the duo fancy themselves as GOP-ers. Absolutely untrue, they say:
"Ripping on Republicans is not that fun for us only because everyone else does it," Matt explained. "It's so much more fun for us to rip on liberals only because nobody else does it..."

..."There's something uniquely aggravating about the smugness of liberal Hollywood," Matt said. "You have to laugh at Alec Baldwin when he gets political. You have to. He is an amazing actor, he may even be a great guy, but that shit is funny. Sean Penn getting on TV on CNN and talking about politics, Sean Penn running around Katrina and Haiti that is funny. That's all. That's f---ing funny. And we're going to make fun of you, Sean Penn."
Leo then asked which celebrity had the "craziest reaction out of any they mocked".
"Well the craziest was probably Kanye [West] last year. We thought we would be more like 'Holy shit should I get a body guard? Should I get a gun?' and instead the next day he wrote in all caps 'YEAH YOU GUYS ARE RIGHT. I'M SORRY,'" Matt said in wonder.

"We were like 'Dude, what?' and for the first time it made us feel bad. If Sean Penn is like, 'Hey what do they think they're doing,'" Trey said in a voice halfway between Cartman and Penn, "We're just like, 'Hey dude, f--k you.' But for someone to actually say, 'Yeah it really hurt my feelings and I really should look at myself,' it's kind of like punching the kid and then he just sits there and cries."
Don't beat yourself up too much, fellas. If there's ever been a kid who desperately needs a punch to the gut, it's Kanye. A guide to the episode here.

February 25, 2010

Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 1

Years ago, I ran for City Council in my hometown. There was no primary challenger, so had I won the election, I would have represented roughly 35,000 constituents. [SPOILER ALERT] I lost. But before the last of the dimpled chads had even been scrutinized, thousands upon thousands of you began filling my inbox, begging me to recount my tales from the campaign trail.[citation needed]

That din of adulation can no longer be ignored.

With an operating budget that would dwarf the average garage sale, my most effective commodity was shoe-leather, which is unfortunate because I am naturally very lazy. Plus, I don't particularly like people. One example why:

On a sunny Wednesday evening in October, I eked a hesitating path toward a beige-ish one-story on a dead-end street -- one more of a hundred houses I'd approached since five o'clock. An elaborate zigzag of a homemade redwood wheelchair ramp consumed the grassless front yard on its way to an unhinged aluminum screen door, and the roof over the front stoop sloped under the weight of a large dead tree limb that certainly hadn't dropped there recently. Standing there in the yard, propped against one corner of the ramp, a messy-looking fellow dragged deeply from a filterless cigarette, then stared daggers into me as he exhaled through his nose like an angry cartoon bull.

"Evenin'," I said, in my most condescending faux-folksy drawl.

Smoking Bull tugged his lips in over his dentureless gums, then spit heartily onto his own shoe. "Shit," he said, before scraping at the spot with the sole of his other foot. The shift in weight distribution wrecked his entire world, evidently, since he immediately flailed his arms and grabbed at the railing to keep from falling backward. By the time he'd re-situated and located my face again, I had a pretty good idea of just how drunk he was.

"I'm running for the City Council this year," I plowed on despite the fact that his entire head had acquired a slow sway, and one eyebrow seemed to be stuck in the 'surprised' position, "and I'd like to know if you've decided who you're going to vote for." (Insert thousand-watt insincere smile here.)

"She's a sonuvabitch...," Bull managed. Despite the odd gender confusion, I assumed he was talking about the incumbent, which was promising for me. "She voted for the... the smoking bans."

"That's true. Now if I'm elected, one of the things I'd like to--"

"She passed the smoking bans and we didn't get trash picked up like... like she promised." Bull drew his sleeve mightily across his nose, then gestured with his cigarette. At this point I could no longer determine if he knew I was still there. "Branches from... branches from the... sat out on the curb for a month."

"You mean after the big storm last summer?" I asked, but I might as well have invited the wheelchair ramp to prom. Bull -- more Wild Turkey than man -- was having a conversation to which no other human being had been invited.

"And I called... Mom called and all she... She didn't even return the call." After two or three attempts, Bull's cigarette found his lips. Drawing again, his limbs seemed to settle a bit around him as each toxin fought for dominance.

I sensed my opportunity, and pounced. "So then I guess I can count on your vote in November?" (And yes, the question feels just as desperate the thousandth time as it did the first.)

Bull seemed to notice me again. Then, somewhere in his mind, swizzled as it was with sour mash and nicotine, he dug deep and drew upon a faith more stalwart than any religion: party loyalty.

"I'm voting for her... same as I did the last two times," he told me. "She's the Democrat."

And that was that.

February 22, 2010

Part-Time Athletes of the Northern Hemisphere, Unite!

[UPDATE added below]

The casual observer might have thought that everything that can be done while skiing is already an Olympic sport. Fast skiing, slow skiing, drunken skiing, weird Princess-Toadstool-from-Super-Mario-Bros-2 levitation-trick skiing, "Look-Ma!" skiing, Nordic thug life skiing -- it's all there. But somehow, somewhere between "What if we shoot rifles on skis?!" and "What if we ski on flat terrain for hours?!", no one ever thought -- until Vancouver 2010 -- "What if we race?"

And thus Ski Cross was born.
Skicross [sic?] pits four racers through a course of banked turns and washboard jumps that lends itself to close contact.

"That gives you eight poles, 12 edges, and guys are racing down a course with huge jumps up to 100 feet through the air," said Errol Kerr, a New Yorker who competed for Jamaica.
Granted, those three numbers that Kerr emphatically tossed out mean nothing to me, but I've never been anywhere with eight poles and not enjoyed myself. (See what I did there?)

Honestly, I find almost nothing about the games compelling, but the top-notch (and never-ending) network coverage with all our favorite faces could make a darning convention seem interesting, so I've watched more of these Olympics than I could possibly explain away with a just-out-of-reach remote. It's like Tool Academy is suddenly being hosted by President Clinton, or Bruce Willis is starring in a Kevin Smith "film".

It also doesn't hurt that the US is making a surprisingly good showing, or that our National Snow Bunny reminds us that Michael Phelps looked like a homeless meth addict from the neck up. Now if only we could go back to the days when the Olympic Games provided a stage for a proxy war in place of soldiers on the ground. Unfortunately, I don't see the Afghan Olympic Team giving us a Miracle on Ice opportunity any time soon.

UPDATE: In light of the hoopla surrounding the US ice-hockey team's win over Canada yesterday, I find it necessary to quote a Facebook status update:
"Miracle on Ice 1980" is to "US v CAN 2010" as "Gandalf" is to "Judge Harry T Stone".

February 16, 2010

"Fireflies" by Owl City is a Terrible, Terrible, Terrible Song

There's a lot of downtime as a super-powered crimefighter. To help ease the boredom of sitting around in a secret underground lair waiting for evil to rear its head, I had satellite radio installed, and the team settled democratically on the "Top-40 Hits" station.

Now, at least four times a day, I am subjected to "Fireflies" by Owl City. To complement the grating, ubiquitous robot voice that's now overused by everyone from Cher to Ke$ha to T-Pain, "Fireflies" employs some of the most pedantic, saccharine lyrics since Raffi rowed a boat. Masticate, if you dare:
You would not believe your eyes
If ten million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they'd fill the open air
And leave teardrops everywhere
You'd think me rude
But I would just stand and stare

I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
'Cause everything is never as it seems
[The song breaks for a moment here to allow the listener to empty his vomit bucket and replace the liner.]
'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand lightning bugs
As they tried to teach me how to dance

A foxtrot above my head
A sock hop beneath my bed
A disco ball is just hanging by a thread
Sheesh. Singer / "songwriter" Adam Young says he was "inspired" to "write" the "lyrics" while camping. He saw a bunch of bugs and "After that night, it got me thinking", he said. So a swarm of bugs got you thinking about writing a song about a swarm of bugs? That's deep, man.

As a public service, I offer the following palate-cleanser:
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth"

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl
From Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". What are your favorite / least-favorite lyrics? Share with the class in the comments section.

February 12, 2010

I Don't Think All "People" Are Idiots, But All "Homo Sapiens" Are

Thankfully, President Obama is attempting to follow through on his 2008 campaign promise to repeal the ridiculous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy regarding gays serving in the US military.

Despite the fact that DADT is a Bill Clinton political brainchild from the go-along-to-get-along days of the early 1990s, the push to scrap it has mostly come from the political left, whose insistence that all homosexuals aren't necessarily shaved Chupacabra brings some sanity to one of America's fiercest debates.

Or at least that's what I thought. Turns out, though, that liberals are just as irrational as conservatives when it comes to Adam and Steve sharing a foxhole. Look upon these poll numbers and weep:

79% of Democrats support allowing gay men and women to serve openly.
43% of Democrats support allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

That is not a typo. I checked.

Sixty years after the Mattachine Society, forty-one years after the Stonewall Inn raid, thirty-three years after Anita Bryant, and seven years after Lawrence v Texas, there is a thirty-six percentage-point difference in what employment liberals think "homosexuals" should be allowed to pursue versus "gays".

Whence comes the discrepancy? We can speculate that the term "gay" elicits a much friendlier (literally) image than the taxonomic "homosexual", but doing so insinuates such an immense level of epidemic puerility that even my epic misanthropy won't abide it. In order to prevent the impending voluntary collision between my head and the nearest brick wall, I'm going with "transcription error" and calling it a day.

Shape up, folks. If anyone wants to start his own army that won't allow gays, or blacks, or Jews, or even homosexuals (!) to serve, then I'll help him pick out snazzy uniforms. The right to set up whatever backward, bigoted clubhouse that revs your engine is inviolate, but the United States Armed Forces -- a public institution -- has no more right to bar qualified homosexuals than they have to bar Catholics or Jersey Shore fans.

February 8, 2010

And that, Alanis, is Irony

I didn't watch the Super Bowl. I have a rare genetic aversion to post-season NFL games called "being a Kansas City Chiefs fan". Plus, there are precious few diversions in life to which I'm willing to commit four straight hours, and staring at a glowing box isn't one of them.

Thankfully, the unshaved girl-power dames over at Jezebel had nothing better to do. Watch with glee as they complain about commercials that portray women as complainers.

A couple choice quotes ([sic]s abound):
Amazing how there is no personal responsibility from the male characters in these commercials "being told what to do" maybe if men paid rapt attention when we were speaking or showed some leadership as the men of the house they wouldn't have to be marketed to as such passive aggressive, irresponsible babies.
And:
Yeah, asshole. You deserve a big, gas-sucking car for DOING SHIT YOU SHOULD ALREADY BE DOING. It's called being a grow up! You think women don't have endless boring work meetings or that maybe birthing that kid was super fun?
Hat tip to the tireless SugarFree.

February 4, 2010

Brother-in-Law Links™

Hat tip to Darrell for marrying my sister.

Will Google Actually Deliver my Earnings in Canvas Bags Stamped with Dollar Signs?

[UPDATE added below]

Curiosity has overcome me. Today I signed up for Google's AdSense program, which will post ads on ScotticusFinch based on content. I simply must know what Google's automated server squirrels will come up with.

Will my general malaise trigger ads for posh Miami depression-treatment clinics? Will a foaming conniption about the Deflector-in-Chief lead to a pitch for Dreams from My Father? Or will every day simply be a rotating parade of ads for Guatemalan Viagra, low-interest ARMs, and mail-order brides? Stay tuned.

I'm also instructed not to actively encourage you to click on the ads (which should start appearing in about 48 hours). So don't. Or whatever. It's not like I pay my interns anyway.

UPDATE: Day one -- all lawyer ads. Could Google be foreshadowing a police confrontation in my future?

February 2, 2010

How to Win Friends and Influence Peasants

Check out this fascinating collection of North Korean propaganda art.
Seldom seen by the outside world, North Korea's propaganda art colors the cities and countryside with vibrant images of brave soldiers, happy and well-fed peasants, and a heroic and compassionate leader.
You think Coca-Cola ads get inside your head? Imagine living every day within a totalitarian state ruled by a fighter-plane-flyin', 38-under-par-golfin', opera-writin' despot.


The Korean text reads: "Do not forget the US imperialist wolves!"