No sleep tonight!
Sunday, February 28, 2021
Mexico Trump at CPAC Follies
Orlando, FL ...
THE REAL STAR OF FRIDAY’S CPAC SHOW: A gilded, larger-than-life-size statue of Trump … and you’ll never guess where it was crafted.
“It was made in Mexico,” said artist TOMMY ZEGAN, who traveled all the way to CPAC from Rosarito, Mexico, where he lives as an American expat on a permanent resident visa.
The supply chain: Zegan spent over six months crafting the 200-pound fiberglass statue with the help of three men in Rosarito. He transported it to Tampa, Fla., where it was painted in chrome, then hauled it from there to CPAC in a U-Haul, where he managed to cart it through the conference in just a black-and-white Hawaiian shirt and no CPAC credential. (Tickets were sold out.) “If someone offered me $100,000 I’d take it,” Zegan told Playbook.
There’s more: Zegan crafted an even higher-end, stainless steel version that cost his “life savings,” or $50,000. He said he’s aiming to sell that one for over $1 million. But if not, he hopes to see it in a future Trump Presidential Library.
---PoliticoPlaybook
New butter sculpture at the Idaho State Fair?
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Ted Cruz jokebook
Ted Cruz at CPAC:
"Orlando is awesome! Not as nice as Cancun ... but it's nice."
"We are gathered in darkness... "
And then on to ... the Covid jokes.
Rimshot.
Friday, February 26, 2021
Spuds
Mr and Mrs Potato Head have lost their genitals.
They are now both just Potato Heads.
Which is not a real thing.
This is called progress.
We know what is important.
American Idol
Draft sked for Trump's Sunday CPAC speech:
- 12.15 Entrance of Golden Calf
- 12.25 Worship & Adoration
- 12.30 Sacrifice of really hot virgin who kinda looks like Ivanka
- 1.00 MAGA prayer
- 1.15 Pence effigy burning
- 3.30 Kool-Aid distribution
- 3.50 Wet squad cleanup
- 4.30 Autograph divorce papers
- 5.00 Golf
- 9.00 Roses for Lindsey
- 9.15 Burgers & Coke
Serenaded by Australian Magpies
If Australian ex-pats hear this sound, they cry like babies. Oz magpies are said to be the "most doglike" of birds. Okay. Whatever.
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Interesting small print
A Car Shield commercial offers an odd disclaimer: they only insure cars with odometers that are between 5,000 and 150,000 miles.
The top limit is obvious.
But a car has to travel 5,000 miles (8,047 kms) before the company will cover it?
A brand new car is as risky a bet as an old one?
Bopped, shot and blown up
Muppets mastermind Jim Henson claimed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were too violent.
Years before the Turtles, Henson made these commercials. Yikes.
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Odd couple
I hope chief inspector Armand Gamache's next investigation centers on Louise Penny's planned spy novel co-authored with ... Hillary Clinton.
Has Hillary been to Three Pines?
Perhaps Clinton will be a doomed visitor to Penny's little town in the next Gamache book.
Can Canada's celebrated author of 17 "cozy mysteries" concoct a Cozy Spy Novel?
(A cozy contains little or no sex or violence, a kinder and gentler mystery.)
State of Terror is apparently already written, due out in October. Penny says it's about Clinton's "worst nightmare."
That would be a newbie US secretary of state, bucking the odds to solve terrorist attacks.
Can you say "Benghazi"?
Hasn't John le Carre already invented the cozy spy novel? Tinker Tailor, back in 1974.
I discover Inspector Gamache has his own web page. No back story, just his 17 books.
Photo: Gamache/CBC-TV
Royal Marines Always Sleep Naked
YouTube's algorithm tosses me this.
Did Alexa tell YouTube I sleep naked?
Or does it see I've watched Superhumans, the Brit series about unusual men and women?
I'm hoping it's the latter.
February is a special month
Gustavo Dudamel's music box included black composers long before there was a month for it.
Here, his rebranded "LAPhil" offers a bit of one of William Grant Still's five symphonies. Apparently "Philharmonic" is too weighty for our byte-conditioned brains to fathom.
Classical has to chase the kids, bro. Yo, Phil.
How has Dudamel not discovered the New Dance by Wallingford Riegger? Gustavo, please copy.
Monday, February 22, 2021
Odessa! How old am I?
YouTube boasts a host of middle-aged sadists, who put granny in front of an Echo or Dot and record the results.
Where are the authorities?
Arrest these people!
Food in a box
Ski gondolas
How very on point.
How very Telluride.
It costs about $20,000 a gondola.
Doubt this will keep restaurants from dying.
Sunday, February 21, 2021
The Invisible Man
Just found some of my old Fake Letterheads.
Best of all is the Northern Ontario Railroad's.
Make-believe railroad chairman J. Clarence Muirhead regularly sent out mock press releases on budget nights. He was a pretend railroad magnate.
Back in the '70s, newspapers and the CBC needed next-day reaction after federal or provincial budgets came out, ditto for reaction to Throne Speeches.
Mr. Muirhead provided them.
J. Clarence, who may have worked at the Star, used a nearby copy shop to fish the Globe, Telegram and CBC. He'd send them his realistic press release facsimiles.
"This budget can be interpreted many ways," JCM once wrote. "I believe northern Ontario may benefit from incentives. But does Ottawa really have a grip on the possible effect?"
Sure enough, Muirhead's quote would surface in a budget roundup story near the end, after a jump to an inside page. Usually verbatim.
Muirhead's talent was to be blandly quotable, but not crazy.
His quote was as good as the dozens of public relations squibs faxed and courier'd to newsrooms for reaction stories. J. Clarence passed in a crowd.
Nobody ever said: Hey. This Muirhead guy. Is this Northern Ontario railroad the same as Ontario Northland? Never.
Alas, overconfidence killed the cat.
J. Clarence Muirhead came across a beautiful 8x10 black and white travel glossy of deer crossing a snowy Scandinavian railroad track on a Star desk. It was a great photo. Just laying on a desk. Swoop, gone.
--gettyimages
By morning, the same pic had a nice new caption professionally folded to it.
"Deer cross Northern Ontario Railroad tracks near Pickle Lake, Ontario as winter arrives," it read. "Herds are common at this time of year, as they travel and seek cold weather yards."
Next, a plain brown envelope.
But only one pic! Who to send it to? One potato, two potato, three potato, four....
The envelope went to the Telegram from the CBC's favorite mail drop, Terminal A. Big. Familiar. A lot of corporate mail moves there.
A week later--a Monday--I arrive at the Star to major hub bub. Muirhead's deer-on-tracks photo is on page 12 of the first edition of the Toronto Telegram.
This is three years before the Sun is born.
The Star suspects the photo is fake. So does the Tely. Those are not just deer or caribou ... they are reindeer. Does Canada have reindeer? The photo appears to be Norway or Finland.
The hunt for J. Clarence begins.
Where is this Pickle Lake? 550 km north of Thunder Bay. Is there a railroad? Is it the Northern Ontario Railroad?
No such railroad runs from Thunder Bay to Pickle Lake. Oh oh. And the only reindeer in Canada are in the NWT. Whoops. The pic runs in just that first Telegram edition. Replate!
Years later, I hear that Tely day side loved the photo so much, they tried to reach Muirhead for a story the next morning. They were unsuccessful.
J. Clarence died that day.
But not his letterhead.
The Canadian Aluvium Corporation was popular in press coverage of the annual Miners Week that filled the Royal York, too. It was always discovering new deposits in Zambia.
Never fooled the Northern Miner tho.
So many weird penny stock mining companies prowled Canadian markets. Why not one more?
Aluvium is the mud at river deltas. Hey, I took Geography 101. I know what a drumlin is too.
But I never found a use for the Toronto Brain Farm letterhead. Might it be useful for those big Future Think confabs Big Government and Moses Znaimer host?
Now, who is TS Messy?
What's his deal?
If you're bored at your job, just leave.
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Dirty dog at Newsmax
A right wing no-name mocks Champ, the White House dog ... and Brian Williams steps up.
Dogs don't care about red states and blue states.
What most of them do care about is obvious, especially if you meet their eyes in shelters, pet rescue centers or on the street.
And if you adopt an adult dog--not a puppy--they've made a lot of compromises in life, perhaps as many as you've made yourself.
They get it.
And maybe you might.
I did.
* * * *
Meanwhile...
Friday, February 19, 2021
The Man is a Monster
Snowflake the Poodle, waits for Texas Senator Ted Cruz to come home from sunny Mexico.
It was 0 Centigrade in Cruz's house.
--michaelhardy/dailymail
MAD ZOOMER
Kudos to CTV for isolating this nine seconds.
Reminds me of The Mad Hatter ...
"All ways here are the Queen's ways."
Thursday, February 18, 2021
New tune in town
Why am I fascinated by the Harpejji?
The new-ish instrument sounds like this.
You play it like a piano, but by pressing strings, the sound is closer to a guitar or harpsichord.
A harpejji sells for $ 5,000-6000.
Confession: The harpejji makes me almost as happy as the weird scream of a theremin--the scary voice of every sci-fi and horror movie of my kid-hood. Remember this?
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Frozen
It's easy to be depressed about Toronto.
For those of us who knew it, love it, it recedes as if in a rear-view mirror. In a year of masks, line-ups and loneliness, the darkness multiplies.
But then comes ... this.
The first real snow of winter.
At midnight, the missing landmarks, brutal condos and bad news evaporate.
Johnny Strides floats down the middle of Yonge St. in a white night.
It is minus 18C.
Winter freeze-frames the metropolis.
In all this ache, there is comfort.
And I am in love again.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Yo Doox!
We have to name the new baby.
It's clear Prince Harry and Meghan need help.
After all, they named their first kid Archie.
Archie?
Like Archie, the comic strip doofus?
Like Archie the Bartender on 1940s radio?
Like Archie Bunker?
Like, Archibald?
Brilliant.
Good luck, Arch.
He's already cruisin' for a bruisin'...
So let's name their second kid ...
Troubled.
Murdoch.
Oprah/Opie.
Deux.
As in deux, French for two.
I like that last one.
Yo, Doox!
A girl would be Deuxieme.
Oddsmakers tell People mag the front-runners are "Spencer" or "Diana."
The same front-runners as last time, when they named the kid ... Archie.
Yeesh.
Slimed!
Alexandra Petri--the wicked witch of the Washington Post--writes of Donald Trump...
When the president seized me, stunned me with his venom, and covered me with digestive fluid from his chelicerae, I was initially taken aback.
But I reassured myself with this thought: President Richard Nixon never did that.
This is clearly not the end of the world. That would be clearly labeled and would be brought up by the other party. And the weather would be more ominous. Ravens would squawk and the sky would turn red ....
Okay, the firing of FBI director Comey looked bad. And when the president stunned him, pierced him with his fangs, wrapped him in a thick cocoon of impenetrable webbing, and left him to hang there for days, that timing was poor...
* * *
That's where I lost it.
I had a similar snorts-and-giggle fit, seeing a Pat Bagley cartoon in recent days for his Salt Lake City Tribune.
He too senses a greenish goo.
It takes a sec to register, but it's Republicans, checking their souls at the party cloakroom.
The Mitches McConnell & Romney, stage right. And you-know-who running the coatroom.
The United States got slimed.
Comedy is truth's best buddy.
Monday, February 15, 2021
"I am not a cat... "
He is not a cat. Or so he says.
"Isn't that exactly what a cat would say?" wonders one viewer.
"If he's lying, is it purr-gery?" asks another.
This is what happens when a Texas lawyer grabs his daughter's laptop for a Zoom court hearing.
Another viral kitty breaks the Internet....
Cat people are insane
"I take baths with my cat by letting her float in a plastic box with me in the tub..."
--user claim on boredpanda.com
* * * *
Ask your doctor if stronger meds are right for you.
Sunday, February 14, 2021
What the heck do I do with 37 media coffee cups?
Radio and TV shows always saw Toronto Sun staffers as free content. Countless Sun butts sat on Ann Rohmer's CITY-TV stool at dawn.
But the mandatory thanks-for-coming coffee cups are flotsam of the first order.
Is there a mug museum for stations and shows that no longer exist?
Does RetroOntario have a ceramics wing?
If you are another media dinosaur, what did you do with your crap?
* * * *
Postscript: a few hours later
I discover somebody's selling the CISS-FM cup alone for $42 on e-bay!
I'm rich!
Down a Deadwood worm hole...
I've spent most of the week down a Deadwood wormhole.
The famous HBO series elbows The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and The Wire in that handful of shows as good as TV ever got.
Deadwood was a bawdy, foul-mouthed frontier western that's been off the air 15 years. Imagine if Our Town, Reservoir Dogs and Satan had a baby.
There's only a taste of it in the trailer here....
I was looking for interviews with show creator David Milch, which is how I stumbled across the dozens of hour-plus interviews the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has been putting online for more than a decade.
Everybody is there.
You can spend an hour or more with Helen Mirren, Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Leonardo Dicaprio, Colin Farrell, each showing off before a loving audience of their showbiz union peers.
Some interviewers are a tad twee or sketchy, but the famous actors simply grab the rudder and start telling rowdy or oft-told tales.
I've now watched two dozen. My faves would be John Krasinski's hour of stories from The Office and after ...
And for anyone seeking nostalgia, Burt Reynold's bittersweet and hilarious swan song, taped in 2006.
Reasonable facsimile
--Karl Mueller book art
Karl Mueller did the crazy covers for both books of Page Six column recyclings, as well as the Sun's Rimmer cartoon strips and Fuddy & Lardette
Yo Mule!
Still crazy after all these years?
High five.
Saturday, February 13, 2021
Shots in arms
* * * *
Canada co-vid vaccine doses given per 100,000 population
Northwest Territories 29,134 doses given p/100,000
Yukon 27,110 doses given
Nunavut 15,795 doses given
Prince Edward Island 5,722 doses given
Saskatchewan 3,972 doses given
Manitoba 3,817 doses given
Quebec 3,272 doses given
Alberta 3,170 doses
British Columbia 3,167 doses
Ontario 3,003 doses p/100,000
Newfoundland 2,819 doses
New Brunswick 2,386 doses
The CBC's Covid Tracker is newly updated....
Friday, February 12, 2021
Happy New Year!
Go Ox, go!
Happy lunar New Year!
The Year of the Rat is over.
Welcome the year of the Ox!
The ox is a symbol of hardworking attitudes and reliability because of its role in agriculture.
The giant ox above is in ... Wuhan.
He's a creature of the night....
If the Superbowl were as entertaining as the gang at Bad Lip Reading, it would last eight minutes.
Here, Sunday's game highlights with new dialogue and voices.
The longer it goes on, the more inspired it gets....
* * * *
Postscript: Facebook claims the clip above has drawn objections. You can imagine your own reasons why that might be....
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Bald daily
Benjamin Rich--better known as YouTube's Bald and Bankrupt--has gone daily.
Famous for his off-route wanderings around post- Soviet states and the Indian sub-continent, he's now posting daily dispatches, a video diary of the off-beat and obscure.
Bald drinks with drunks and charms babushkas.
He's never seen a piece of Soviet-era junk or abandoned building he doesn't find charming.
Bald's sunny, funny disposition is at odds with the eerie, desolate or desperate places he explores. He's just left Estonia, is now in Ukraine.
If you are unaware of Rich's channel, he was once bankrupt, is bald and survived covid last year in a Serbian hospital.
As introduction, Bald's attempt to take a dump in Serbia, and yesterday's posting from his first day in Ukraine....
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Tuesday, February 09, 2021
Comparison shopping with $25,000
The legend goes that in Wayne Gretzky's rookie season and a few years after, Oilers owner Peter Pocklington locked the kid in a warehouse.
There, The Wayner would sign Titan model 2020 hockey sticks until his arm gave out.
The Pock would give the sticks to his friends and biz folk as team promotion.
A guy at the Sun got five of them!
How else would I have one?
The Titan sticks, which Wayne preferred in his early years, go on e-bay for about $1,500.
A game-used autographed stick goes for $6,500.
So would you rather have a pair of Nike sneakers never worn by 46 presidents ...
Or FOUR autographed Gretzky Titan 2020s Wayne actually played with?
There's only one of him.
Hyperpriced Hyperdunks
Oh happy day!
With a minimum bid of $25,000US, Sotheby's auction house is offering Barack Obama
Nike Hyperdunk sneakers.
Are these game worn?
No.
So they've never been on his feet?
No.
So they're just one of two sets of custom shoes?
Yes.
Priced at more than $25 grand?
If there's a buyer out there for this, would you be interested in some stinky Trump sweatsocks?
A set of irons from the sure-to-be-upcoming line of Trump Golf Gear?
Oh wait! How 'bout some hockey sticks?
Monday, February 08, 2021
Jeep® | The Middle
Every troll and mean tweeter has something to say about Bruce Springsteen's Jeep ad.
At the moment, there are nearly 7,000 "comments" on--apparently--the most notable thing to happen yesterday.
The most pertinent: "It is very brave of Jeep to leave the YouTube comments open on this."
The predictable negative response is running about to 10-to-1. "Virtue signalling" is the kindest of these screeds.
But sad music and Springsteen's unity homilies do provoke some inspired backlash:
"Is this from his new album, Born to Vomit?"
"Rich celebrities and corporations need to shut up."
"When did we reunite? Did I miss it?"
"Let's pretend we like Republicans..."
"This is worse than the Kylie Jenner Pepsi ad."
"I wonder how Jeep dealerships feel today?"
"Jeep? You're a car company."
"I'm still buying a Bronco..."
* * *
About 9 p.m. last night, a bud texted me: "What did you think of The Weeknd's halftime show?"
"What is this Bowl you speak of?" I sent back.
* * *
Where is The Middle copywriter this afternoon?
In hiding? Certainly not in ... The Middle.
* * * *
Postscript: This Jeep ad was promptly removed from YouTube three days after the Super Bowl. By that point, there were more than 12,000 negative comments that mocked it.
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