Kevin Marshall's America
Carl Paladino, professional crank and one-time Republican nominee for Governor of New York State
Carl Paladino has written Jimmy Vielkind a scathing letter of blustery rhetoric that sort of reads like a Christopher Hitchens essay, that is if Hitchens were preoccupied with his failures in life, was not that clever, and only wrote while drunk Facebooking.
In the rant, Drunk Hitchens accuses Vielkind of being a tool of the administration and part of a diseased press corps:
Jimmy, I’m writing this letter to you as I believe you to be the most glaring example of the hideous and dysfunctional Albany press corps.
…
Jimmy, you are incapable of analytical thought and nevertheless trying to wear adult shoes. You feel smug with your liberal Albany press corps delinquents spewing out Cuomo/Silver-speak to a frustrated and bewildered citizenry who are trying to understand why the wonks in Albany protect the status quo and fail to attend to their needs.
Well, the joke’s on him, because between all the cuts in recent years and the prevalence of the internet, there IS no real press corps to speak of other than Jimmy and a handful of others.
All joking aside, the letter is pure insanity and would be thrown in the crank file were it not for the fact that people actually thought this guy, who resembles an exhausted Ruben Kincaid in the throes of a manic episode, could run New York State.
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For those who don’t know, Hollywood’s “Black List” is an annual compilation of the hottest/best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. Deadline has the full list, and the Times Union’s CJ Lais shares his thoughts here.
My thoughts on the Top Ten, which are wholly premature and/or unfair:
1. THE IMITATION GAME by Graham Moore.
A biopic of British World War II cryptographer Alan Turing, who cracked the German Enigma code. He later kills himself after being arrested as a homosexual.
THOUGHTS: Turing’s story is one that’s ripe for a biopic and is, fittingly seeing as how it tops the list, the hands down most intriguing of all the screenplays on this year’s List.
2. WHEN THE STREET LIGHTS GO ON by Chris Hutton & Eddie O’Keefe.
An 80′s-set story of a town dealing with the murder of a high school girl and her teacher.
THOUGHTS: The synopsis reads like a prototypical film grad treatment.
3. CHEWIE by Evan Susser and Van Robichaux.
Seven-foot tall Peter Mayhew is the protagonist.
THOUGHTS: This sounds like garbage. Typical masturbatory geek bullshit; the kind of thing that will get praise and excitement from blogs and websites devoted to the Comic Con crowd and be heralded as the type of thing that should be more successful and/or should get a wider release despite its objectively poor quality.
4. THE OUTSIDER by Andrew Baldwin.
A former U.S. prisoner of war rises in the criminal underworld of post-World War II Japan.
THOUGHTS: I think I have a new favorite movie that’s never been produced. It’s a setting rarely tackled in contemporary North American cinema and one that’s ripe for intrigue (see Akira Kurosawa’s work from the period). I love me some noir. Let’s do this shit.
5. FATHER DAUGHTER TIME: A TALE OF ARMED ROBBERY AND ESKIMO KISSES by Matthew Aldrich Continue reading »
A man and his 11-year-old daughter go on a three-state crime spree.
THOUGHTS: Remember “A Perfect World”? Apparently The Black List doesn’t. Or does and just thinks it’ll work again.
I keep seeing this Folgers commerical on Hulu. Apparently it’s a couple years old.
The story, from what I can gather:
A man comes home to his family. He’s been in “West Africa,” because Africa you see is not a gigantic continent full of various ethnicities and peoples whose differences tear asunder small nations forced together by artificial borders, but rather one big country called Africa. Full of, you know, black people.
So he was out in West Africa helping the West Black People not become miserable and non-white. First he comes to the door to meet his sister, who immediately identifies herself as Sister and gives him a big hug.
Things get weird around the 30 second mark, when West African Jesus and Sister start acting like they want to have sex with each other until their spot is blown up by their parents:
Apparently, the best part of waking up is preventing your children from engaging in incest.
I’ve written in the past that Rick Perry was George W. Bush but without the charm or charisma. I was, admittedly, being far too kind to the man who has had more work done on his face than all four Presidents on Mount Rushmore combined. I was relieved to see, though, that the guy at least has a sense of humor about himself.
Check out this great video he did for Funny or Die:
In the video, Perry lampoons and satires the public perception of him as a clownish, glad-handing doof who shouldn’t be trusted to handle a head of lettuce let alone the affairs of an entire state or country. He also delves into the misperception of him as affably bigoted, woefully uninformed, and boastfully ignorant.
The best line comes, though, when he goes into broader territory that accuses Obama of engaging in a fictional “war on faith” and claims that children are no longer allowed to celebrate Christmas. I groaned a little bit at the copy, because the portrayal of a politician on the far Right as paranoid with delusions of oppression is overplayed and hacky. Perry’s delivery, though, is so earnest that it makes up for it and had me falling out of my seat.
Who needs SNL parodies when you have Rick Perry around to parody himself?
Also, hey, doesn’t Funny or Die usually have their graphic at the beginning and/or end of their videos or some sort of acknowledgement that it’s a joke? And why isn’t this on their site anywhere at all or even their YouTube page? Weird.
Tomorrow night (Wednesday, December 7th) is the 17th Laughs on Lark Comedy Showcase featuring yours truly along with Matt Kelly, Matt Mitchell, David Boyd, and host Jaye McBride! The show also features members of improv comedy troupe The Mop & Bucket Co. acting out your best (and worst!) holiday memories.
All this for only $5. Show starts at 9ish.
Bring your laughing shoes and an extra set of pants!
I somehow missed this last Friday, but caught it when it was posted on Market Block Books’ blog.
Check out the bottom headline:
“It’s possible”
Now, the story itself is actually about Small Business Saturday, a promotion started by American Express to encourage people to visit small businesses in their hometowns. Pretty self-explanatory. Except you wouldn’t know it from the headline, which instead suggests that it’s “possible” to shop in Troy.
If I was interested in a woman and I asked my friend if I had a shot and he said “it’s possible,” most likely it’s just a nice way of saying “hahahahahaha no.”
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A popular theory being propagated is that the Occupy Crackdown is organized at the federal level. It’s not true…and it’s also part of the problem.
One of the biggest issues I’ve always had with conspiracy theorists is that they get so wrapped up in the fantasy and paranoia it induces that it blinds them from seeing the real issues that they often skirt around. Mind you, not every conspiracy theory has its hidden merits, principal among them the ones involving faked moon landings and NASA photoshopping pictures to hide “space elevators.” Note – remind me sometime to tell you aboutthe world I ventured into when a friend introduced me to an absurd documentary that claims, amongst other things, that the moon is simultaneously home to ancient civilizations and ruins, alien visitors, and terrestrial governments. But then there’s those like Naomi Wolf’s claim that the police crackdown on Occupy protestors was an organized effort and mandate from the federal government.
Thing is, it wasn’t, and Naomi got most of her facts wrong in her overzealous effort to paint an exciting espionage thriller where the government isn’t as dumb as you think it is. Worse, though, is that it’s exactly this kind of grand fictionalizing of the system that distracts from what’s really wrong: in particular, that corruption is right in your own back yard.
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After suffering a stroke two months ago, stand-up comedian Patrice O’Neal has died at the age of 41.
I’m a baby in stand-up comedy. I got up on stage and told jokes once in college, bombed in the span of three minutes, then didn’t do it again until nearly ten years later, this past July to be exact. I’ve just started the transition from open mics to actual for real gigs.
Unfortunately, I’ll never get to meet and thank Patrice O’Neal.
I first saw him years ago when he appeared as a regular panelist on the short-lived “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn” on Comedy Central. Something about him struck me immediately, though I didn’t get a chance to see him do actual stand-up until I happened upon a special on Comedy Central several years later.
Bottom line: he was just funny. Period. It seemed effortless. I don’t have to tell you that it wasn’t, and never is. On close examination I realized that O’Neal’s gift – and what every stand-up comic should take with them – is that comedy isn’t just words.
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In 2010, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson suggested that without the bailout unemployment would reach unacceptable levels of 8 to 9%. It currently sits at 9%.
Bloomberg has released details of the Fed’s bailout of major banking institutions during the financial cirsis of 2008, and the results are astounding. $1.2 trillion was doled out to those deemed “too big to fail,” with Bank of America and Citigroup making $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion respectively off money loaned to them by the Fed.
This information was withheld from not only members of the press but members of Congress themselves, including those who sat on committees approving and extending TARP and similar regulations that ensured banking institutions wouldn’t implode due to their own excess and irresponsible – some would say criminally negligent – mortgage and lending practices.
I’m not comfortable with the suggestion that the bailout should not have happened, given the circumstances. One damning quote repeated in this article and circulated throughout the last several months comes from Henry Paulson, the former Secretary of the Treasury. In his 2010 book On the Brink, he gave the projection that without the 2008 Fed bailout and TARP, employment would spike from its acceptable level of 6.1% all the way to the outrageous levels of 8 or 9%…which is exactly where we now find ourselves.
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