I’m sick and tired of these assholes in the Establishment Media going off on this tangent of “Well, uh, the Democrats are on an aggressive campaign to oppose the President’s plan to reform Social Security, but aren’t offering any alternatives.”

Well, I’ve voted Democrat for my entire life (and admittedly, voting with fingers pinching nose on more than one occasion,) and I have an alternative:

Wanna hear it?

O.K.

Here’s my alternative to Dubya’s plan to “save” Social Security:

Don’t fuck with it.

There. How’s that? Now you have an alternative.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The funds are going to run out in 2042 (according to Dubya’s bean counters’ forecast, and we all know how accurate and honest THIS administration can be.) I’ll be 80 years old by then. And like, the whole country is going to sit idly by and say, “Gee. You mean all this money that I’ve had deducted from my paycheck is gone, and I’ll never see any of it in any shape or form? Oh, huh, aight, I’m cool with that.” Yeahrite. Things are fucked up enough as it is today; can you even imagine what the social climate will be like by 2042? Want to see an armed revolt the likes of which the world has never seen before? Get up in front of the American public and tell them THAT.

And how the fuck is private investment of our Social Security payments an attractive alternative? Uh, yuh, if you’re a Wall Street investor you’re chompin’ at the bit right now. But any fool knows that the stock market works in cycles, and if this investment scheme were implemented, say, within five to ten years, most of these Gen Xers would be shit out of luck after one or two downturns and I’d bet the farm that they would have LESS then if they simply were deducted from their pay as it stands right now.

Or better yet, how’s this for an option? When we pay Uncle Sam every year in Federal income taxes, we can choose whether, oh, at least ten percent or so of our tax payments go to our choice of: defense (where a monster chunk of it goes anyway,) or to augment the Social Security fund! Let’s see how many true patriots we have around us THEN.

So… what’s up with this Midtown Monthly shit?

That’s the name of this little paper I get in the mail here in the 95816 once every month or so. As far as I can tell, it’s the work of approximately 3 people with one person writing most of the content. Most of the pages are filled with display ads from quaint lil’ yuppie businesses ‘round town (and it appears that most of them are actually located outside of the Midtown area.) The actual reading content is mostly advertorial crap with a two page fluff piece on time management thrown in the paper’s center, written by the same person who writes almost all of the other stuff, natch, and which goes in 140 different directions, yet in the end, says nothing.

What really made me want to spit my soda when I picked this rag up: a cover story licking the shit clean out of Paul Petrovich’s ass. Petrovich, he of the dreaded Sacramento Art Nazi Movement, he who has the gall to white over an original and attractive mural on one side of the street, and on the other, post a hideous equine hunk of scrapheap shit right smack in front of the Safeway, and then pay the equivalent of about 25 Safeway employees’ wages to plop up a water tower that is completely hollow and has no fuckin’ practical purpose whatsoever. Hey, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to take a short hop to pick up milk or Fritos or whatever, but this guy really needs to stay out of the art world. As far as his senses of aesthetics and urban culture are concerned, he has his head totally up his ass.

But hey, perhaps I should either pity the folks at Midtown Monthly, or even strangely marvel at their incredible level of being out of touch with the real pulse of the Midtown that they claim to be a part of. Perhaps they saw a certain unfillable niche: after all, the Bee tends to cover the hard news and the News & Review goes after the “wacky” stuff, so hey, the upper middle income carpetbaggers who bought Victorian fixer uppers for WAY too much money need SOMEthing to read, don’t they? And you have to hand it to them: they just spit this shit out to everybody in certain zip codes who has a mailbox. There’s no mailing label, and therefore, no mailing list, and THEREfore, nobody can cancel their delivery because hey, we don’t have an address to remove! Admittedly, that’s some pretty clever tactics.

Yeah, fuck it. Maybe I took these folks too seriously. Maybe we need people like Petrovich around to remind us once in a while that the old saying is true: when money talks, bullshit does walk. The best way to deal with this shit is: next month, when their rag involuntarily pollutes my mailbox, to: 1.) Take it straight to the recycling barrel, and 2.) There is no number 2. As for anyone in Midtown reading this: Who’d care to join me?

So we finally got out to see Kevin Spacey’s latest flick, “Beyond The Sea.”

At last glance, rottentomatoes.com gave it a 41% rating, leaning over into the rotten side. The reviews have been pretty mixed, with two examples being: the local hired gun for the Sacramento Bee, Joe Baltake opining: “You have to hand it to Spacey. He gets by on sheer willfulness. He believes so much in his cockeyed dream that we come to believe in it, too." And then you have John Anderson of Newsday trying (too) hard on the diss tip: "It's a car wreck, a sideshow. You simply have to watch, there are so many things going so terribly, terribly wrong."

For most of you writers, giving both good and bad reviews, I just have one question:

What fuckin’ movie were YOU folks watching?

There’s no “cockeyed dream” going on here and it certainly isn’t a “car wreck”. Spacey succeeds in telling the story of a guy whose entertainment career (and life) was, to say the least, pretty convoluted and more complex in its progression than most of his peers (and considering Bobby Darin’s various fields of accomplishment, that’s not a very big peer group.) It was a great movie to see on a large screen as opposed to the tube at home, in that almost everything is shot Doris Day lush and vivid. And everybody from Spacey on out to the kid playing lil’ Bratty Bobby puts in fine performances, portraying characters that are believable yet have that level of Hollywood flair that reminds you that you’re watching a movie, not a debate between two goobs on “Survivor” over how to cook the rat stew.

This experience gives me a reminder about how insignificant film and music “reviews” generally are. Short of, say, Lester Bangs (who actually got people to discuss music, because of his genuine love for music, as opposed to certain hacks nowadays trying to play the sonic dictator out of their lack of self esteem,) most reviewers never had shit to say anyway in terms of actually assessing art. Nope, it’s a sense of “See this, see that. Listen to this, listen to that.” And in order to avoid being accused of trying to be the cultural fuehrer of the rest of us poor innocent unwashed peons, they dress their opinions in gaudy, tacky vocabulary that reads like only the most unforgivable rhetoric since the last time that Ronald Reagan stood behind a podium.

So in the end, remember this. If you want to buy a CD, or see a movie, or go to a museum exhibit or whatever, just make your mind up and fuckin’ do it. Most arts “critics” are just frustrated, mean spirited people with an overrated assessment of their own minds. If they did not determine that they were worthy harbingers of truth and justice and beauty through their golden pen, then someone who got paid and/or their Mommy told them that they had a “talent” for telling other people how and what to think. (Who knows, maybe Moms got paid too.) So don’t see “Beyond the Sea” because I thought it was pretty good. See it because you chose to do so. And if you don’t, then I hope that you’re in a world where you can make your own choices, because the ability to truly use one’s own critical thinking and choose is more valuable than all the diamonds that you could possibly hoard.

Sometimes irony takes on a life of itself. Sometimes it wraps itself completely into people and their fates.

One of those music sites that basically let artists post their own glowing PR blurbs (I’m guilty of the same charges, so I’m not copping out) had this to say about a new band, started by the brothers from Pantera, called Damageplan:

"So, I ask you... how can you go wrong with four badass motherfuckers like Damageplan? The name says it all...Devastation is truly on the way."

Indeed.

I’d hate to say it, but I saw this happening a long time ago. Not specifically to these guys: I didn’t really care about Pantera either way (there are a lot of worse metal bands out there) and haven’t heard much of Damageplan. But I’d figure that, considering today’s mixture of stupidity and arrogance in our present human landscape, I could just as easily have been playing open mike at the True Love or somewhere and had some idiot jump up, yell something about me breaking up Industrial Hate and fill the air with bullets. Which would truly be sad since everybody knows that Satan broke that band up.

But all kidding aside, regardless of how much you hate somebody and/or their music, nobody should be getting shot just because they want to go out and see some live music. So kids, before you think that you’re going to make your fifteen minutes by blowing away your chosen artisan target, please just leave the guns at home. Or better yet leave yourself with them at home. Or even better, instead of a weapon, invest in an instrument or a PC or something and show us what you’ve got to say.

There’s really no other way to put it.

Fuck Rural America. AND the South.

Are you people that brain dead, or what? What impressed you the most about the Appointed Chief Executive that wanted you to help put him in the White House for four more dubious years?

Was it how masterfully he’s managed to kill over a thousand (so far) of our finest men and women in a completely time-wasting and costly war that had no reason to be started other than to show gullible idiots that he’s actually doing something to go after terrorists, and therefore, deserving of re-election?

Perhaps it’s his dogged commitment to preventing even victims of rape or incest from obtaining a safe and legal abortion? (Hmm, after considering that point, no wonder he did so well in the South.)

Or perhaps it’s the fact that his corporate buddies will reap further breaks and absolution from gradually squeezing their labor pools like a sponge, that is, the ones whose jobs aren’t exported overseas.

Oh, wait a minute; it’s the flip flopping thing, isn’t it? Well, Dubya’s supporters have a point there. He’s no flip flopper. When Bush makes a mistake, he sticks with it. When he bullshits the American people, he won’t back off the lies. While I have still failed to see the appeal here, I can certainly concede that his groupies are certainly correct in that regard.

No, I think I’ve figured out the reason that he won in these areas so handily.

Look at the map of the final results. Notice that big huge sea of red in the middle of the Continental U.S.? That’s Bush country. These are the same folks that like to give Hollywood studios big bucks for movies where there’s lots of killin’ and blood and blowin’ up things real good. They pump up the ratings for shows like "Fear Factor" where contesatants are forced to eat bugs and shit. Since the start of the Iraq war, they’ve actually found an excuse to watch the news for once. Even when the military doesn’t let the embedded Establishment Media reporters show the full carnage, people from these areas get off on the descriptions of soldier maiming and civilian beheadings. Hell, Lynndie England is probably a masturbation fantasy girl rivaling Pam Anderson in some of these states.

So it’s really not surprising that Bush did so well in these states. These folks are validated as Americans and patriots at the expense of the bloodshed of others. And in a society now weaned on reality TV, that makes perfect sense.

And now we have the pundits saying dumb shit like, “Now the Democrats will have to rethink their strategy and improve on the message and do whatever it takes blah blah blah…” Psychic moment: The Democrats will get even more “middle of the road” (read: conservative leaning) and turn off even more people from showing up at the ballot box. Including myself. It’s never been a better time to say, “Fuck it” and change my party affiliation to “Decline to State.”

As depressing as it is to see that the suckers outnumber the smart (and let’s face it, we don’t have 58 million millionaires in the USA, so SOMEBODY was bullshitting themselves when they picked the name “George W. Bush” on the ballot,) I know that I will recover with G force speed. After all, to bastardize a reputed Nixonian statement, now I DO have Georgie Bush the Lesser to kick around some more. And you bet that I plan to continue. Tenfold, mothaphuka.

Here’s a sincere request to everyone who has been bombarding my mailbox with campaign ads:

Please cut the shit. Now.

Oh, sure, I’m resigned to the fact that in the next four mail days before the election, I’m going to get another daily pile of freshly killed trees all covered in gloss trying to get me to vote for this and that. Unfortunately, all of you muthaphukas are wasting your time. I’ve already made up my mind on the candidates and initiatives.

There is nothing in terms of the sheer volume of mailers that has even come close to the race for Sacramento City Unified School District, which at a modest estimate must have taken up about 75% of my campaign mail so far.

Jay Schenirer, you are the most obnoxious mail bomber of all. I must have received at least 30 fuckin’ pieces of cardboard with your name, your name sent as an endorsement by someone else, or your name included on a list of school board candidates. All this tells me is that you have way too much money and are too entrenched in Establishment associations to have any grip on the realities and challenges facing today’s schools and the kids and teachers in them.

And Kevin Johnson, you just plain creep me out. On the same day that a letter with your name and no return address is in my mail, you leave a message on my answering machine. Hey, man, I loved watching you play in the NBA but at this point a restraining order may not be out of the question.

Fuck it. I’m voting for Jerry Houseman because he’s a retired teacher and principal and he hasn’t been filling my box with shit. The rest of you aren’t even getting marked.

And Arnold… what the fuck are YOU thinking? Are you that self- centered to believe that, if a majority of people were stupid enough to elect you as governor that they’d be sheeplike enough to just go and vote for the initiatives as you dictate? Nice of you to go against the party line on stem-cell research with Proposition 71, but as far as most of the other stuff, too bad you had to waste all of that postage. Yuh, right, I’m gonna vote against Proposition 72 just cuz you told me to. For starters, when’s the last time you had to have a health plan, Arnie? And although it’s sad to see Gray Davis come in as your bitch in the P.R. stunt… Whoops, I mean political campaign against Proposition 66, the fact is that making violent crimes a third strike and not sending people up for 25 years to life over a shoplifting charge just makes common sense and is rather American in nature. This isn’t Singapore, as much as you’d probably wish it could be. Especially since your films have plenty of violence and hardly any sex, you wouldn’t have any problems.

Anyway, all of you parties involved, if you would, please chill the fuck out with the junk mail. I have a ballot waiting for me, which means that I’m armed with an inalienable right to freedom of choice and I intend to use it. Thanks.

Here’s my take on what happened this week in baseball:

God was sitting around bored out of His skull on Tuesday night. So he grabbed the remote and started mindlessly flipping channels, and settled upon the sixth game of the American League Championship Series. Sure, He had certain issues with Rupert Murdoch and the Fox Network, but what the Hell, they still had “The Simpsons” on the schedule. Anyway, He was taking in the atmosphere at Yankee Stadium, the crowd riled up and anticipating a final victory over the Red Sox, when some time during the third or fourth inning, Fox cut to a quick shot of a fan holding a sign which read, “GOD IS A YANKEE FAN.”

This pissed God off to no end. At that point, He declared, “Let the team with the most dirt of the Earth and the most humiliated to this day persevere”, or something really Godlike and similar to that.And that’s how my Sox pulled off four wins in a row and took it from the Yanks.

But although I’m not religious, a funny thing happened before the seventh and deciding game. I was walking to work and had what was not so much a prayer as a wishful thought about the evening’s outcome. It went something like, “We need a victory tonight so painful and obvious that every Bronx Bomber and their smug fuckin’ legion of fans will cry like pussies straight until next April.” Or something like that.

Sure enough, the Sox spank them 10-3.

So, God, on the off chance that You are really listening to what I’m hoping for, and I’ve still got Your ear, here’s a few more requests:

I’d like, of course, to see the Sox sweep the Cardinals, although what just happened was so fuckin’ cool that I almost don’t care whether they win the Series or not. I also would like to see Kerry win in a landslide, the troops get out of Iraq ASAP, affordable health care for all, food, housing, education and meaningful work for all who want it, and a good price on a DVD recorder.

Ok. That’s it. Thanks for Your time.

Let see. What impressed me the most about last night’s debate?

Was it how Kerry came across as knowledgeable, intelligent, confident, and well, darn right presidential, while Dubya looked and sounded like a beleaguered old codger in the defendant’s box on “Judge Judy?”

Was it the part where Kerry called out the Appointed Chief Executive on his assertion that we had to go to war in Iraq because “the enemy attacked us, Jim…” by pointing out that, uh duh, al Qaeda and not Saddam had actually done the attacking? (In all honesty I’m sort of disappointed that Kerry didn’t also include the fact that we were attacked by mostly a bunch of inbred Saudis financed and egged on by a member of a family who’re buddies with the Bushes, but then again, he really didn’t need to at that point.)

Or perhaps, was it the fact that the Bush campaign predicted a virtual slam dunk of Kerry in this debate on foreign policy when in fact, Kerry clearly and unequivocally punked Dubya’s ass?

No, my favorite thing to remember will be the time right after the debate, when viewers were jamming C-Span’s lines with their opinions. Not one, but two of the Bush supporters referred to the Senator from Massachusetts as “President Kerry.”

To coin a possible future Bushism, now that goes beyond Freudiast slippage. It’s apparent even his supporters know that they’re pushing the wrong guy for the job.

KINKADE, YOU ARE HURTING MY FUCKIN' EYES.

Thomas Kinkade is an agent of Satan. No doubt about it.

I just can’t cope with how all of these fuckin’ no taste morons can pony up the ducats, year after year, to acquire this festering stinkpile of mass produced bric-a-brac disguised as art and proudly displaying them in the parlor or in the dinette of the double-wide or whatever, like they just scored a rare Monet or some shit. Kinkade is the equivalent to the major record label music machine: slapdash casual innocuous crap tailored to appeal to people with no personality to speak of that could be reasonably detected, peddled ad nauseam to the tune of a cash register chime in the zillion millions. The muthaphuker doesn’t even paint most of his own shit anymore. I mean, selling prints and lithos of your work is one thing, but having people in a fuckin’ factory paint in between the lines and then selling it like it’s your own work? What the fuck is that? Was even Warhol that sleazy? Well, yeah, maybe to a point but not THIS sleazy. How can all these suckers let themselves get jerked like this?

And now Kinkade wants to build a bunch of housing developments. He has this vision of every single thing in your home being something Kinkade. Which transcends merely artistic vision or even old fashioned corporate greed. No, this goes into the territory of creepy personal control through culture. Play ye not God. May this capitalist asshole fall out of fashion and go belly up. Soon.


Some examples of Kinkade's shitty art

If you ever, ever, ever buy Google stock, you are a FUCKIN' IDIOT. Hey, if you want to waste your cash, Vegas is much more fun and it will probably take a longer time for you to go broke. I don't care much for gambling OR blowing my money on guaranteed dot bomb stock so I'll pass on the, ahem, opportunity for both. All this IPO is going to do is make a select few into billionaires and smaller investors on a one way voyage to East Shit's Creek.

Wal, I guess that Govahnar Ahnold here in Caleeforneeya is trying to out dick Dick (Riordan) with stupid shit to say. In an effort to win over the star struck goobs who showed up to see him at a shopping mall in Ontario (where I've been before; appropriately enough it's within spittin' distance of a truck stop) Schwarzenegger called the members of the State Assembly "wimps" and "Girlie Men" for not cowtowing to his celebrity status and refusing to pass a budget which appeases the robber baron fuckwads who put him into office using their oligarch's campaign in grassroots clothing known as the Recall Election of 2003. These are the people you've put in power, California: socially retarded pigs who speak like 7 year olds who think that they're being Joe Cool of the schoolyard using terms like "dirty, stupid girl", "girlie men" and wimps". Way to go, folks. Of course it's easy to realize that when idiots come together in a form of consensus at the ballot box this is what results. One more day without a budget (19 at this writing) and prolly more to go. What has really changed under Sacramento's dome after this sham campaign to dump Davis? Since you're simple folks who voted for the Gropenator, I'll spell it out for you...
 
J-A-C-K-S-H-I-T.

Dick Riordan... and I mean DICK... is a stupid, dirty old man who just. Needs. To. Go. Now...



See Dick Run. His Mouth.