And so, the clock runs out on another weekend as we near the last day of what has been one of the deadliest months for celebrities in recent memory. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but it feels like it’s true, and that’s all that matters (I’d use the word “truthiness,” but I was reading a review of the Ford Fiesta in Automobile Magazine – yeah, I get that for free for some reason; don’t ask me why, as I really don’t much care about cars, but I’m kind of a free magazine whore, and when they offer, I just take ’em – and they said that “truthiness” was a “Generation Y” word, so I guess I can’t use it. It makes me wonder what comes after Generation Z, though).
I didn’t have a chance to pay much attention to “current events” over the weekend, other than to keep an eye on the celebrity death watch (Abe Vigoda is still hanging in there, by the way), but I did catch a couple of things.
The President had a luau over the weekend at the White House, in lieu of the traditional “Congressional Picnic.” I wasn’t invited, but it sure did look like lots of fun (I’d say it’s the most leis in the White House in one day since the Clinton Administration, but that sort of humor is beneath me). Anyhow, it’s nice that our congress critters had a good time. They work so gosh darn hard doing the people’s business, they deserve to have some fun once in a while. Too bad our NYS Senators couldn’t attend, but Governor Blinky still has them grounded until they finish their homework.
There was some sort of coup in Honduras, which is a country to the south of here, I think. Kind of like Mexico, only “southier” (and a little “eastier”). Apparently the military swooped in, arrested their President and packed him off to Costa Rica. But they didn’t kill him, which doesn’t seem very Central American Military Coup-like. They obviously weren’t trained at the School of the Americas.
John “Poppa” Boehner called the recently passed (in the House, anyway) Climate Bill a “pile of shit.” Ironically, I think John Boehner is a pile of shit. He’s just afraid he’ll have to cut down on his tanning booth hours. Cap and Trade, Johnny. I’ll sell you some of my carbon offsets.
Bernie Madoff gets sentenced today. His lawyer says he should get 12 years. Prosecutors want 150 years. Hey, why not just split the difference?
An Argentinian woman has admitted knocking boots (as Andy Sipowicz used to say) with Mark Sanford. She looks kinda like Claudia Black from Farscape. In an effort to be fair and balanced on the political sex scandal front, I’ll mention that one of John Edwards’ former aides says John and his squeeze made a sex tape. Oy, let’s hope that one stays hidden.
I reckon that’s about all, and I have to get ready for work anyway (aint that a revoltin’ development).
Oh, and this just in from the Today Show: Michael Jackson is still dead. The Jackson Family is mourning the loss of its top earner beloved member. Any predictions as to who comes out with the first tell-all book?
Here fishy fishy fishy. Goin’ fish…in’! :blues: Gone.
I always wondered what shade Boehner requested when he went to the tanning salon and now I think I’ve got it. :crap:
Come to think of it, he probably asks for the matching hairstyle/piece. :crap:
As they use to say back home, I didn’t know they could stack it so high. Also takes one to know one. Elvis died (OK, that’s enough…)
PoS!
Last night upon hearing the news of the BET awards I thought about the concern for Jackson family privacy. I’ll bet they keep the results of that 2nd autopsy they ordered private. Uh-huh.
“Kind of like Mexico, only “southier†(and a little “eastierâ€)”
😆
You should copywrite that one before Colbert gets ahold of it.
vernon- I hope a review of maron and black is forthcoming?
I didn’t think it’d be possible for both Jessie and Sharpton simutaneously to try cashing in for the last time on their ‘celebrity‘.
They’re standing at the end of a long line of the Jackson family hoping to squeeze one last drop of attention out of the publicity sponge.
Fred Travalena dies at 66; master impressionist and singer
🙁 :gate:
Oh, Mort, where is thy sting?
I never heard of the guy but I found this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI0do_XBdOY
where he just picks up momentum and ends with a brilliant ‘morphing’ of the last nine presidents.
Rich Little would never have touched the Rumsfeld material.
thanks vern.
:gate: Fred Travalena
I seem to recall a syndicated tv show from back in the 70’s or so that had a whole bunch of impressionists doing skits. Monet, Renoir, Pissarro….
No, wait, it was more like John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little, and Fred Travalena, among others. God, it was funny. Wish I could remember the name of it. Unless maybe I dreamed it.
These days, I seem to clearly remember things that people tell me never actually happened.
Ah, it was The Kopykats.
January 12, 1972-April 5, 1972. Seven segments of this thirteen-week comedy-variety series brought together a group of highly talented impressionists calling themselves The Kopykats: Rich Little, Frank Gorshin, George Kirby, Marilyn Michaels, Charlie Callas, Joe Baker and Fred Travalena (last four segments). Those segments were later syndicated under the title “The Kopykats.” Guest hosts included Steve Lawrence (January 19), Orson Welles with Ron Moody (January 26), Ed Sullivan with Will Jordan (February 9), Raymond Burr (February 23), Robert Young (March 8), Debbie Reynolds (March 22) and Tony Curtis (April 5).
Dude, your memory is kind’a scary 😯
That is because given his tender young age, he was impressionable.
Being a bit older I was off the TV around then. As a matter of fact that show ended around the time Nixon authorized bombing the fuck out of NVN. That was Google, not memory but that was when the VN thing was getting pretty intense.
The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.
New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/29/ricci-decision-5-4-ruling_n_222233.html
We watched a lot of the news back then, what with my brother being over in Vietnam and all.
My dad always liked to watch funny stuff, so I remember a lot of that. He was especially fond of the British comedy shows they ran on the local PBS station. He was with the Brits for a lot of the time over in China/India/Burma during the big one, and always got a kick out of them. I remember a friend of my sister’s wanting to know if our dad got stoned, because he liked Monty Python and The Goodies.
There was some good stuff on, back in the early 70’s. All in the Family, the Mary Tyler Moore show, Maude, Sanford and Son….
Lots of SciFi when I was a kid, too, some new, some reruns. Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Start Trek, Time Tunnel, Dr. Who, Space 1999….
Scary movies on Friday nights and Monster Movie Matinee on Saturday after the cartoons (never was much for the Westerns on the other channel). L’il Rascals reruns every morning before school.
Ah, those were the days. And you didn’t have to figure out how to change the channel; just twist the knob.
Great music back then, too.
I don’t really miss being a kid anymore, but those were some pretty interesting times. I think if I remember more than other kids my age, it’s probably because my siblings were all 10+ years older than me, so maybe I was just paying more attention. Used to hang out with my sister and her friends a lot. My mother always lamented the fact that I was exposed to so much “grownup” stuff at an early age.
When my brother got his draft letter, we knew it was coming, since he drew a 54. I still remember my mom crying at the site of the envelope, though. When my sister marched on Washington, we watched it on TV. I remember them reading the daily body counts on the Today Show every morning. So many Viet Cong, so many South Vietnamese, so many US. We always had the best score of course.
I started reading books like Johnny Got His Gun, Catch-22, Cat’s Cradle, and The Trial when I was in about third grade.
Yeah, I think maybe I was a pretty impressionable kid back then.
I keed the young PJr. a little.
There was a period of time when I went to college from 1970-1972 in NYC that I did not watch much TV. The joke is that up until I got there and as soon as I left there, I watched way too much TV. My dorm floor had a TV in the lounge and I did see some stuff like All in the Family. My school got shut down after that VN bombing started and I did not return the next year.
I had older sisters who showed me a lot of stuff I probably would not have gotten from my parents, mostly music related. I was lucky to have them like an extra set of cooler parents.
Autopsy indicates Billy Mays died of heart failure. He actually bumped Michael Jackson out of the lead story on the Tampa/St Pete local news yesterday and today.
They threw me out of HSN about a year before he started there, but I remember his partner Anthony Sullivan very well. We always had to staff up for his appearances because Sully could sell the shit out of pretty much anything. By the time Mays came along, Sully went behind the scenes and let the booming voice do the talking.
Several local stations interviewed Sully yesterday. He sounded pretty torn up, which is understandable as Mays was only 50. From all accounts he was a really great guy and was actually soft-spoken away from the cameras and mics.
And yes, I just posted three paragraphs on Billy Mays without being ironic, sarcastic or smart-ass. So it CAN be done. I just don’t do it that often.
Wow, today was really shitty, even on the Monday scale.
Olbermann just dissed Dana Milbank- huge jealous MSM dick
http://gawker.com/5303442/huffpos-nico-pitney-vs-washington-posts-dana-milbank-pathetic
:slap:
Mrs Art remembered “Kopycats” and she’s ten years younger 😯
Must have quite a show for people to remember one season.
Does anyone one remember a show on some network in the early sixties that I don’t think even lasted a whole season about a couple of brothers who had lost their parents who were living on a houseboat by themselves? I think it was called “Boys Life”.
I just remember that one of them was about my age in Junior HS and the other one was in HS and I’ve never forgotten it.
The writing wasn’t condescending towards kids, they dealt with challenges as young adults a little wise for their years but it was all very believable and really shook me when it was canceled.
Also, there was a show hosted by Richard Boone (from “Have Gun Will Travel” a great western series) that featured an original drama every week (Richard Boone Theatre?) that was unlike anything since.
I agree with pj that there was a lot of quality teevee and music ‘back in the day’ that challenged your mind, was emotiionally satisfying and far, far superior to most of the cultural crap that we’re subjected to now. (Sorry, I’m having an old fart moment). 😕
I remember this one, vaguely.
That’s IT! Thanks vern. I was more a ‘boy’ than a man when it was on.
“It’s a Man’s World was “ahead of its time”: it depicted the restlessness, idealism, and increasing iconoclasm that began to emerge among American youth during the early 1960s.[6] Broadcast at the family hour, It’s a Man’s World did not shy from the themes of premarital sex, feminism, and the gulf between adults and adolescents, which began to be known as the generation gap. The program coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights disputes, and the emergence of protest singer Bob Dylan. It attracted a minor cult following on college campuses, but it failed to attract mass audiences.
I knew I thought it was pretty cool for it’s time. I just had everyone about 8 years younger than they were. It was a great show. :nod:
Skunked, sweaty and sunburn. :yawn: