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8:36pm on Monday the 8th 2010f February
MONDAY'S GREGALOGUE: THE COFFIN COMMENT
Okay.
The video I'm about to show you is like a parking garage of creepiness: wrong on every damn level.
It's President Obama at a Washington fundraiser last week. He's soaring high on health care rhetoric, when he brings up a dead campaign worker. Well, actually he brings up himself. Pay attention, not just to him, but how the audience responds. If you're a cow, it'll turn all four of your stomachs.
(roll tape)
It takes a lot to give me the willies. But you know what? That gave me the willies. And also scurvy, rickets and the bird flu.
Some times you come across something a politician says that is so beyond comprehension, you start wondering if he might be losing it. Now, I've never said that about Obama. Unlike the jeering libs who regularly devoured George Bush over his stuttering syntax, I always chose to focus on what Obama says, instead of how he says it.
Which is why, maybe, the big O is so much scarier than Bush. Consider what he did at that fundraiser.
-He remembers the Obama shirt, but not the name of the woman wearing it. Gross? Creepy? Try a combination of both: Greepy.
-Once again, he used the deceased to make a political point. I hate this crap, because the goal is to use an example of loss or suffering to prevent those who disagree from raising an objection. It makes me think we were too hard on John Edwards. After all, he just chased ambulances. This guy is chasing hearses.
-He made it all about him. While the rest of the world wrongly focused on Rahm Emmanuel's "retarded" comment - this is where the real outrage lies. Obama brings up the final moments of a woman's life, and feels compelled to insert himself there. This reflects a gaping narcissism whose ghoulishness is only matched by the adulating guffaws of a cackling audience.
It's so gross, maybe it is funny.
And if you disagree with me, you're probably a racist homophobe who hates dead people.
So Bill O'Reilly had Jon Stewart on his program last night, and as expected, tempers flared. Roll Tape.
((PAUSE FOR SOT OF GIRLS PILLOW FIGHTING))
Wow, it looks like the one in the oversized football jersey took a pretty big hit. But if you think things calmed down, you were wrong.
((PAUSE FOR MORE GIRLS PILLOW FIGHTING))
Yep, it was an entertaining spectacle, with Stewart and O'Reilly both scoring legitimate points. However, I take issue with one thing Stewart said.
Sorry, I mean everything.
First, he made a big deal about Fox News laying off President Bush, while now it lays into Obama.This, friends, is nuttier than squirrel poop.
While Bush was president, he was trashed by a left wing posse who delighted in military defeat, for it meant their side was winning. To them, "dissent was patriotic," even if it meant dead troops. Fox wasn't ignoring Bush's actions, it was reacting to that - what I would later call the "patriotic terrorist." I witnessed a fully realized anti-American lynch mob, who would rather win an election than a war - and that made me more of a conservative than 9/11, my life at Berkeley, or all those head injuries combined.
Wanna see proof of my point? Ask yourself, where the feverish anti-war movement is, now that Obama is in power?
Lastly, Stewart's got to stop whining about Fox News tilting to the right. The New York Times just ran a piece pointing out the dearth of conservatives in journalism, theater, therapy and academia. You've got a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, a Democrat for a President, a liberal media, a leftwing Hollywood, a liberal art and music culture - you've got it all. And you're mad Fox News isn't playing ball? What happened to that whole "dissent is patriotic" crap? It seems Fox News only looks right, because everything else is left.
Anyway, I wish I could have said this to Stewart in person. But I'm not allowed near him. You send a tube sock full of bird seed and nude photos, and suddenly they think you're a threat!
WEDNESDAY'S GREGALOGUE: CELEBRITIES WHO MAKE KIDS SICK
So the Lancet, a British medical journal named after a really sharp object, retracted a horrible study attempting to link measle vaccines to autism. Now this would really be great news, if the study had not come out, oh, 12 years ago. It's really scary that it took a medical journal over a decade to admit what nearly everyone else with a working brain knew: the study had more gaping holes in it than Tom Sizemore's septum.
But sadly, although the study author has also been discredited for this harmful crud, it doesn't matter. People who believe in junk science will continue to believe in junk science, because their egos won't allow any other option. And so they will continue preaching to parents a dangerous and false belief that ends up killing kids.
I speak of Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and all the saps at the Huffington Post who by their own earnest idiocy, misled the public into skipping vaccinations. The potential result: measles outbreaks all over the globe - and ultimately, dead kids.
It's hard to make jokes about that, so I won't.
But I will make jokes about gasbags like Carrey and McCarthy, two cretins who can't be content simply making us sick to our stomachs with their work - they also gotta make our kids sick with ego-driven medical advice. Now, I'm not a celebrity, but here's my medical advice for this sort of behavior: whenever a star offers an opinion on important health matters - citing flawed studies they know a nearly comatose Larry King won't bother checking - they should be given a vaccination of their own. It should be full of lead and shot straight up their ass.
And if you disagree with me, you're probably Arianna Huffington.
Tonight we've got the lovely Reshma Shetty (from Royal Pains), the witty blogmaster Alex Blagg, Congressional candidate from that delightful country, Hawaii, Charles Djou, and a special guest to be named later.
What do celebrities like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Benecio Del Toro, Danny Glover, Naomi Campbell and Oliver Stone all have in common?
Was it sex with Punxsutawney Phil?
No, but you're close.
All of these stars have had their pictures taken and/or partied with Hugo Chavez: their happy faces cheek to mottled cheek with the latest trend in socialist splendor.
He is after all, proof that it can happen! The third way! A new Castro! An anti-capitalist David, taking down that Yankee Goliath!
Being around him, means you're more than just an overpaid movie star, you're an overpaid movie star who matters.
So I gotta wonder. Where are these jackasses now?
Well, in the past few weeks we've seen Chavez blame America for the Haitian earthquake - furious, I imagine, over having to watch Marines save lives, while he farts into a hemorrhoid pillow.
And then of course, he's nationalized a grocery chain, devalued currency, and beaten the crap out of his own citizens. As police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at innocent protestors (who always knew that Chavez's anti-Americanism was just a cloak to hide his authoritarian rule, economic incompetence and profound halitosis), I ask again: where is Hollywood?
Why hasn't Penn come out and condemned Chavez for insulting our compassionate military?
And what of Glover - surely an earthquake machine is even too far-fetched for his goofy mind?
And how about Naomi Campbell - surely she could take a moment from beating her assistants, to tell Hugo to lighten up.
But I expect too much. After all, these are celebrities - they treat political issues like Fendi handbags - a stylish flourish to hide their shallowness and the insecurity it breeds.
And, really: coming out against a tyrant won't earn you points with James Cameron - so why bother. Hell, those protestors deserve it anyway. They don't even shop at Fred Segal!
monday's gregalogue: When an expert is not an expert
So every day another embarrassing revelation exposes climate change experts as confused bumble-heads. The latest? Apparently the UN panel on climate change based recent conclusions regarding vanishing ice from mountain tops on anecdotes found in a "mountaineering" magazine.
Now, this would be hilarious, if it wasn't for the fact that quadrillions of dollars are at stake. (And just so you know: quadrillions can buy a lot of unicorn porn.) I'm not going to use this latest revelation to hammer these "experts," even though they'd do that to a "skeptic" like me, if they had the chance. I just want to nail two key points:
*this news shows exactly why climate change researchers must release data and reveal methods. If they have nothing to hide, then their work's credibility will only increase. The fact that they're trying to avoid that makes me think they're basing their data on articles from Cosmo. FYI: global warming can and does make it harder to find your g-spot, says Darla, age 23, data analyst.
*There are few real experts on climate change - only pawns used to justify policies that will inevitably sodomize our economy. By the way, I include myself as a non-expert. I was an English major, who spent the last twenty years drunk, shirtless and weeping. But this is a good thing: whether you think humans cause global warming or not, we're all in this boat of ignorance together, and therefore should be more tolerant of opposing views. If so-called experts are culling mountain ice data from Penthouse Letters (apparently melting glaciers totally cause chicks to remove their tops faster, says Vic, 25, a pizza deliveryman), then we are all so-called experts.
That should make you happy.
And if it doesn't, then you're probably a planet-hating racist homophobe who eats polar bears for breakfast.