An American Lion

This is where Norman Rogers practices the manly art of curation.

Custom Search

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton

Norman Rogers recounts the summer he spent hiding from the stern love of his father and living as the world-famous “frisky mole boy” in the Groton, Connecticut sewer system. The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton seduced the women of the town and solved crimes, all while subsisting on a steady diet of depravity and confusion.

Rampage of the Innocents is my unfinished but brilliant Historical Romance Novel (now, with more sex and violence for my teenaged readers)

  Archives

Categories

drupal statistics module

PageRank Checker

TopOfBlogs

Blog directory

Independent Political Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

An American Lion - Blogged

Politics blogs & blog posts

BlogRankers.com

Blogs lists and reviews

blogarama - the blog directory

Join My Community at MyBloglog!

add page

http://www.wikio.com

Seed Newsvine

http://www.wikio.com/

Powered by Squarespace
This form does not yet contain any fields.
    An American Lion

    Entries in Comedy (19)

    Saturday
    Jul312010

    You Don't Talk Smack to an Iowan

    Miss Iowa Katherine Connors, left, laughs with Washington Nationals relief pitcher Miguel Batista, right, before a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies, Friday, July 30, 2010, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)Well, the jury is out on that. I don't think Iowans are anything to write home about. If America lost Iowa, we'd all tell Idaho jokes.

    Recently, a relief pitcher with the Washington Nationals (a team that is actually the South Dakota of baseball) made a joke about Miss Iowa. He said:

    [Miguel] Batista created an unintentional furor on Tuesday night, when the 39-year-old journeyman was called upon to replace injured star Stephen Strasburg at the last minute. Most of the 40,000 fans in the ballpark began booing when the change was announced.

    "Imagine," Batista said after the game, "if you go there to see Miss Universe, and you end up having Miss Iowa – you might get those kind of boos."

    [Miss Iowa Katherine] Connors was sitting in a beauty salon in Marion, Iowa, about an hour away from her hometown of Bettendorf, undergoing a five-hour process of having hair extensions integrated into her brunette mane when her cell phone started buzzing.

    "I got a text message from a friend while I was getting my hair done and he said, 'A pitcher's talking about you right now on ESPN and now you're getting compared to Miss Universe,'" Connors said. "I was like, 'What is going on?'"

    Batista's comment didn't sit well with some of her Iowa brethren, who claim former President Ronald Reagan among their favorite sons.

    "A lot of people are mad about it because somebody's talking smack about Iowa," Connors said. "You do not talk smack to an Iowan."

    On Wednesday, Batista sent flowers and made a phone call to apologize to Connors, and the Nationals invited the pageant winner to participate in the first-pitch ceremony, where she shared duties with a guy dressed as rum pitchman Captain Morgan.

    What happened? Well, Miss Iowa went to represent herself, and she kicked butt.

    Iowa, take heart. At least you're not South Dakota, right?

    Wednesday
    May262010

    Andy Borowitz Kills Them Again

    I'm here for the pie, and some Andy Borowitz, pleaseIf Andy Borowitz had to stand in front of an audience and actually speak this crap, he'd be booed from the stage and driven from comedy:

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - At a conference of oil leak experts in Washington today, attendees proposed plugging the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with executives of BP, the company responsible for the catastrophic spill.

    "We've tried containment domes, rubber tires, and even golf balls," said William Cathermeyer of the National Oil Leakage Institute, a leading consultancy in the field of oil leaks. "Now it's time to shove some BP executives down there and hope for the best."

    Submerging the oil company executives thousands of feet below the ocean's surface could be a "win-win" situation, Mr. Cathermeyer said.

    "Best-case scenario, they plug the leak," he said. "And at the very least, they'll shut the fuck up."

    Great stuff. It took you all day to come up with that? Let's see. There's a big hole and there's oil gushing out of it and we supposedly hate the people who run BP, so we'll use their carcasses to stop up the big hole? And that's the best use of your time and creativity? That childish, obvious solution? This stuff is about as entertaining as an alcoholic Santa with a pantload of mud.

    I mean, even Jay Leno would turn that down (I'm guessing--Jay's kinda desperate for laughs).

    This is what passes for social commentary? This complete and utter lack of creative thought? This feeble, stumbling excuse for an original thought? This trite, obvious slice of lameness? Good God, some people get by on their looks and some people get by solely because of charity and pity, and who knows what Borowitz gets by on because talent ain't it.

    Saturday
    May222010

    More Lame-Assed, Obvious Comedy From Andy Borowitz

    Hang in there, Andy Borowitz! Someday you'll have an original, funny idea

    Bwah!

    MINNEAPOLIS - (The Borowitz Report) - In a sign of his increasing prominence in the so-called Tea Party movement, a new poll shows Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul topping former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin among voters who describe themselves as morons.

    In the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research Institute, 42% preferred Paul, 36% preferred Palin, and the remaining 22% were unsure what the word "prefer" meant.

    According to Davis Logsdon, who supervised the poll for the University of Minnesota, Paul's surging popularity among morons is bad news for Palin, who previously had a lock on that important constituency.

    Someone pays money for this bullshit? Or is this charity? Is someone doing something for this guy so that he keeps some groceries in his rented icebox? Do they publish his pieces out of sheer pity? Does he have to pay someone fifty bucks a day to keep from having his mother's ventilator turned off? Jeebus.

    Look, there are many successful people whose comedy I do not care for. The problem with this piece is, and this is going to shock you--ha! wait for it!--that we already know that people who think they're smart consider former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin an idiot. But, do you know what? That's stale. That's old. That's like a Rich Little impression of Ronald Reagan. Yeah, it meant something once, but let it go. Let it be said that you moved on from the easy jokes and went with something daring. The human experience is one of exploration and really, really busting your ass to do something excellent. Have you ever been unimpressed with a three bedroom rambler in the suburbs? Compare that to a Frank Lloyd Wright house that's built into the base of a waterfall surrounded by trees and limestone, done up entirely in stained glass and open space, my man. I'm not saying you have to be a genius--we all know half the stuff Wright came up with they couldn't build. But at least try to do something original and daring, right?

    You're not breaking new ground trying to display your Northeastern sense of entitlement and superiority by trying to link someone who does something stupid to Palin and thereby turn it into a piece that gets run on the Huffington Post. This kind of thing is trite. It's pedestrian. It confirms a belief that we know is out there. It walks over old, tired ground. It's not August, 2008 anymore. It's not even worth a chuckle because no thought went into it. It's formulaic. It's what someone does when they're out of ideas--been there, done that!--and can't come up with anything worth doing. They don't even leave the comments on this kid's stuff open--at least, not when I looked at the post--because no one could even work up the indifference to give it a reaction of meh.

    Where are the abandoned pieces this kid has tried to produce? Where's any evidence that he's taking this massive platform that he has to a new height of awareness in terms of satirical comedy? Reading Andy Borowitz on the Huffington Post is like finding an old copy of Reader's Digest and discovering that whoever put out that issue of Reader's Digest went with the leftovers and the remaindered scraps of bullshit that weren't up to par for the other issues they were putting out. His stuff doesn't even rise to the level of Life in These United States, and, brother, anyone can get an idea up to that level, no problem. There are insurance salesmen that have spent their entire lives reliving the thrill of getting a fifty dollar check in the mail because someone put their dowdy little blurb about Aunt Barb's trapezoidal technicolor mushroom freakout in Arizona in the September, 1983 issue.

    Am I being unfair? Or am I just sick and tired of the fact that blogging ain't the meritocracy people pretend it to be? If you applied a reasonable level of criticism to what you see quoted above, there's no way you could justify posting it anywhere, other than in the pile of abandoned ideas and flat jokes.

    Thursday
    May062010

    How the Hell Does Andy Borowitz Keep His Gig?

    Kitty doesn't like any of your jokes, sirHere, in something resembling a court jester dressed in familiar but tired jesterwear, is Andy Borowitz:

    Taking great pains to explain how Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad was able to make it to JFK airport and board an Emirates airliner before being nabbed, authorities today said that they were following Mr. Shahzad, "but only on Twitter."

    A spokesman for the surveillance team following the suspected terrorist said that they were closely monitoring Mr. Shahzad's tweets, "but he must have figured something out because all of a sudden he blocked us."

    The surveillance team's revelations come on the heels of the Dept. of Homeland Security's shocker that it had friended Mr. Shahzad on Facebook weeks ago and had even played the popular online game Farmville with him.

    "A few days before the Times Square incident, Mr. Shahzad attempted to blow up one of our sheep," a Department spokesman said. "In retrospect, that should have been a red flag."

    Bwah. Hah. Hah. Huh?

    Twitter is about as up to date as a Rich Little impression. I'm not sure if we still have Twitter. I know that I haven't logged into it in months; we autopost to it from Posterous. I suspect that a number of other people have moved on as well.

    There's nothing wrong with a little satire, although I don't engage in it for obvious reasons. Satire tends to sail over the heads of the broader audience, which has no attention span and can't think beyond one basic personal level, which is, "how does this make me money?"

    In the case of Borowitz, saying that the authorities were "only following him on Twitter" gives you limited, stale access to jokes like "we knew we were onto something when Demi Moore re-tweeted one of his attaboys," and "we lost track of him when he started his own Tumblr account and started re-blogging pictures of chicks with dicks." The satire falls a little flat when you realize that it was a fairly serious SNAFU when the government lost track of this man, briefly, and allowed him onto an airplane, despite having in place a security system that was supposed to prevent this sort of thing. Borowitz is just cranking out whatever he can get out there, and I can respect a man who goes to the filler and to the safe, bland, rote jokes. Hell, Jay Leno has made a fortune out of being little more than a merchant of the light, obvious chuckle.

    How does Borowitz keep his gig? Well, the Internet rewards relationships and mediocrity, and if you're really, really good, but no one knows you, forget it. Enjoy your few hundred readers. The vast majority of us who have actually done something with our lives and know how to accomplish things are too busy to schmooze Ariana Huffington or her lackeys at parties for lame bloggers. I'm sorry--I spent decades building a massive financial empire, albeit, one the government dismantled when they sent me to prison for alleged insider trading. It's too bad I never became a famous blogger. You and I know the score on that front. There's no money in this anyway.

    Saturday
    May012010

    A Bland and Mediocre Time Was Had By All

    We should be wary of a crazed Jay Leno, trying to tell jokes so dangerous that they might cause the room to burst into flames...I cannot admit to caring who says what about whom at a White House Correspondents dinner.

    This is a little like a high school reunion that is held far too often, and one which celebrates the efforts of a vast number of people who accomplish very little on a day to day basis. With print and television media being about as relevant as a guy who thinks making buggy whips is the way to go, why would you even worry who shows up to tell bland jokes?

    Seriously--it's Jay Leno. He is now the Gold Standard for being futzy and gutless. Yawn.

    Jay Leno and Barack Obama are taking the stage for laughs.

    is the entertainer on Saturday for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner with the president. The annual black-tie dinner attracts a mix of celebrities, elected officials, political appointees and journalists.

    Like entertainers at previous dinners, Leno is expected to make some jabs at Obama and other politicians on Saturday. Obama has his own set of jokes.

    Journalism awards and scholarship are also presented at the dinner where 3,000 guests are expected. Among the celebrities expected to attend are Alec Baldwin, Mary J. Blige, Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Alba and Michelle Pfeiffer.

    I'm sure that Jay will throw away the jokes and really go nuts on the crowd. At one point, Jay might even start screaming and calling them whores.

    Saturday
    Apr172010

    Satire is a Dead Art Form

    I abhor satire. It's the lazy way to use snark, if you want to be specific about it. And snark died before it got old, and it got old so fast, I can't remember the last time I saw a bit of snark that wasn't dated and hamfisted.

    Apple has run afoul of the thought police by being thought police, themselves. Apparently, they rejected someone and their snarky ridicule of public figures by denying a political cartoonist access to the lucrative Apple Application or "App" market:

    The saga of the Rejected Political-Cartoon App rears its head again. Only this time, the heat of a Pulitzer has helped stoke the fires of controversy.

    On Monday, Comic Riffs spoke with political animator Mark Fiore about his iPhone app that he says Apple rejected back in December. That rejection might have been end-of-story. Except that coverage of his Pulitzer win cast a spotlight on the app rejection. And in a case of conspicuous timing, Apple suddenly has urged Fiore to resubmit his app, the cartoonist says.

    Haven't we been down this road before? And more important: Hasn't Apple yet decided how to resolve the larger issue of political satire apps instead of suffering PR black-eyes with each skirmish?

    Both questions, of course, are rhetorical.

    As MAD artist Tom Richmond told Comic Riffs last November, his iPhone app "Bobblehead Rep" -- a literal database of congressional representatives developed by entrepreneur/filmmaker Ray Griggs --- was rejected by Apple. The reason? According to the official rejection letter, Richmond said, his app was turned down because "it ridicules public figures" and "is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement."

    In America, we have lost the responsible gatekeepers who used to keep ridiculous people where they belonged, and that was, out of the media and out of our polite discourse. Now, you can be a Grand Wizard of the Michigan Hate Militia and have all kinds of strange ideas about animals and people and fetuses and monkeys and garner the considerable respect of people like Cokie Roberts and David Broder because they "speak" to people once in a while who claim to be from the "heartland" of the country, thereby giving them insights that regular people cannot comprehend.

    Satire should go the way of the dinosaur, the Sega Genesis and the typewriter--into oblivion. Talk about being outdated and useless. Why would any sane person waste their time engaging in satire?

    Monday
    Apr052010

    Another Eager Beaver Runs Screaming from the Obama White House

    Kalpen Suresh Modi

    Being disillusioned is tough on a young man. When I left college and started to look at my prospects after getting my degree at Princeton, I was bound and determined to go to work for a large corporation. Father had other plans for me.

    Within days of slipping out of Princeton with my degree in hand and my cap and gown still on, Father had his people track me down in Manhattan, where they rolled me up in a carpet and tied me to the back of a flat bed truck. They drove me all the way to Groton in a driving rain storm. Father handed me a white shirt, a black tie, and a cheap fedora hat and told me to prepare for a lifetime of selling riot control vehicles. I balked, of course, but after being tied up and driven around strapped to the buckboards of a panel van, I gave in.

    I was good at it, but my first love was wheeling and dealing, breaking up and selling companies for profit. I had a few lost years, but I always thought about what it would take to break away from Father and do things my own way. I hated the idea of not having control of my own fate.

    The disillusion I felt is probably different from that felt by this young man:

    Kal Penn’s reps confirm that the actor will leave his post as Barack Obama’s associate director of public engagement to return to his acting career.

    First up for the actor: a new “Harold & Kumar” movie, this one with a Christmas theme. New Line Studios has confirmed that the movie, to be directed by newcomer Todd Strauss Schulson, will begin filming in late June with an eye on a holiday 2011 release. (Creators Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are moving to Universal to direct “American Pie 4.”)

    The studio, now a division of Warner Bros., is still deliberating whether it will be shot in 3-D.

    Penn began his White House stint last year, shortly after his character on the television show “House” was abruptly killed off in April, per Penn’s request to join the Obama administration.

    Well, that makes sense, I guess. If you want to be taken seriously, what you do is, you leave your job in the White House to go do the third sequel about two goofballs directed by someone replacing the guys who quit to go do American Pie 4.

    Monday
    Feb012010

    Bill Watterson Speaks

    Calvin and Hobbes

    It’s not every day that a cranky recluse says something, but, with the passing J.D. Salinger, here comes Bill Watterson:

    With almost 15 years of separation and reflection, what do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?

    The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.

    I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can’t explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don’t think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.

    What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?

    Well, it’s not a subject that keeps me up at night. Readers will always decide if the work is meaningful and relevant to them, and I can live with whatever conclusion they come to. Again, my part in all this largely ended as the ink dried.

    Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

    This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

    It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.

    I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

    I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.

    There you go.

    By the way, have a look at this and tell me what you think [pdf alert].

    Friday
    Jan152010

    No Dialogue Necessary

    Cartoon

    I think I get it.

    I should feel bad about something. Strangely, I just want to know if my ski gloves are where I put them.

    Sunday
    Dec272009

    Dave Barry is Still Alive? And Writing Things?

    When I saw that Dave Barry had a column on the calendar year 2009, I sat back and marveled at the fact that Dave Barry is still alive, and someone is still printing what he has to say:

    To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:

    Bad news: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.

    Good news: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.

    Bad news: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.

    Good news: A lot more people were tweeting.

    Bad news: Ominous problems loomed abroad as — among other difficulties — the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.

    Good news: They finally got Roman Polanski.

    God, the comedy gold in one Dave Barry column could illuminate the world. Our greatest national treasure is Dave Barry, people.

    Dave Barry.