Friday links! Ascending order of weirdness edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Google image search: "weird sausage." Nice to see Marilyn Manson is almost done with his studio art MFA.

American culture is such a particolored cavalcade of weird shit right now that it’s sometimes hard to believe in the standards of realism. Consider, for a moment, that the most vibrant movement currently afoot in our national politics believes that the first black president is a second Hitler, and that Hitler himself was a socialist. Or ponder the knowledge that, having failed to block health care reform with misinformation and threats of filibuster, Republican congressmen have begun to attack financial reform with misinformation and threats of filibuster. It’s as if a promising but unpracticed undergraduate creative writing student were currently writing the narrative of American politics, with all the characters acting too closely to type and an increasing number of surreal flourishes to distract us as the plot fails to cohere. In other words, it all seems kind of made up. In preparation for a weekend that will doubtless conform to natural realism more faithfully than we’d like, this Friday’s link roundup is devoted to stories that our too good to be true, arranged in order of decreasing plausibility. That their truth seems to diminish in as their goodness mounts is surely commentary on something, but it’s probably better if we don’t think about what. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the descent into an entirely fictionalized culture, built for our amusement with the lineaments of the real.

Continue reading

Hillbillies to murder South Park over made-up book

By Dan Brooks in Religion 15 Comments

The prophet Mohammed, seen here wearing a bear costume in an episode of South Park. He's in there. He's in heaven, too.

Last week, the 200th episode of South Park reprised the show’s Super Best Friends gag, in which the primary figures of various world religions—Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, Vishnu, Moses, John Smith and Aquaman—serve as a crime-fighting team a la Hanna-Barbera’s Superfriends. Presumably in satire of the Jyllands-Posten debacle, Mohammed sits in the back of a moving van for most of the new episode, only to finally emerge wearing a bear suit. These expediences were to avoid the Koranic prohibition against visual depictions of the prophet, which a majority of the world’s Muslim’s consider blasphemy. Even though the use of the bear suit clearly satisfies the laws set down for the authors of the Koran by the creator of the universe sixteen centuries ago in anticipation of the invention of television, frame-based computer animation and basic cable, at least one Muslim group has suggested that Trey Parker and Matt Stone should be put to death. In a message posted on RevolutionMuslim.com, Abu Talha Al-Amrikee said, “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.” In case you’re wondering, Theo Van Gogh was the Dutch filmmaker who was stabbed to death after making a movie arguing that Islam condones violence toward women. Argument refuted: counterexample.

Continue reading

DNC, RNC both spending money like there’s no 2012

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 4 Comments

Michael Steele at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where he was described as "the bald guy," "the guy with the mustache," "the guy in the suit," "the, um, he's kind of...he's got glasses..."

Good news, everybody: the GOP isn’t the only national political party taking the money that you thought would help express your political views in Washington and using it to buy caviar strap-ons. Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed that “both the national Democratic and Republican committees spend about two-thirds of the money they take in on the care and comfort of committee staffs and on efforts to raise more funds, with lavish spending on limousines, expensive hotels, meals and tips.” Props to Jacek “Monster In the Closet” Pruski for the link. Those of you who have worked in nonprofits know that the appropriate level of operating costs for a charitable organization is generally agreed to be about 20% of income. During the fundraising cycle that ended in February, the DNC took in about $100 million, and spent $60 million on travel, catering, hotels, entertainment, staff salaries and “office supplies”—a line that, in the RNC’s annual report to the Federal Election Commission, included liquor, jelly beans, and a $900 tab at the Little Door restaurant in Beverly Hills. First of all, if you’ve ever eaten at the Little Door, you know the manilla file folders are incredible. Second of all, the RNC took in $109 million last fundraising cycle, and spent $74 million of it. Where did all that money go?

Continue reading

Right Network finally gives conservatives something to watch on cable

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

Right Network spokesman Kelsey Grammer, seen here supporting our troops or possibly shooting a sequel to Down Periscope.

First of all, everyone who said I would never figure out a way to work a Down Periscope reference into this blog owes me a Coke. I know you were all saying that. Second of all, thanks to everyone who alerted me to Combat!’s horrible comments problem, by which perfectly innocent remarks about how insightful and probably handsome I am are rejected as spam. It turns out that several clever Viagra salesbots have been submitting comments that are copies of previous comments, only with links to boner pills added in, in an effort to fool my spam blocker. I guess, technically, they did fool it, but they fooled it into putting everyone whose comments got copied on its spam list. The only solution I’ve found thus far is to manually un-spam legitimate comments, which I will continue to do until the spammers give up. I assume that’s only a matter of time, since they’re computer robots and all. But enough of that. Today’s post is not about computer robots; it’s about real Americans like Kelsey Grammer, who is the spokesman for a new cable TV channel for real Americans called Right Network, which will premiere this real summer in America. Spit out your Skoal, ’cause here comes a taste:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_mQPvKXw3U&feature=player_embedded

Obviously, this thing is going to be really good and not exacerbate any existing problems at all.

Continue reading

Is it just impossible to sell a cell phone or what?

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 6 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfpAkNyHAtQ&feature=player_embedded

Everyone’s favorite Meghan Gallagher sent me the foregoing ad for the new Microsoft Kin, which promises to do for cell phones what Bing did for internet search engines. If you’re wondering, the song is by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, a band I liked without reservation before they sold their best work to a phone commercial and forced me to yet again consider how much of my aesthetic taste is aesthetic taste and how much is just contrary esotericism.* Anywhom, the ad has provoked an extremely small firestorm of controversy, due to allegations by Consumer Reports that it promotes sexting. You remember sexting, right? It’s the totally real thing that teenagers do all the time nowadays, when they’re not cyberbullying or attending rainbow parties. I quote intrepid CR reporter Mike Gikas: “The video…includes a downright creepy sequence in which a young man is shown putting a Kin under his shirt and apparently snapping a picture of one of his naked breasts. The breast is then shown on the phone’s screen, just before the guy apparently sends it to someone.” Needless to say, Gikas did not get away with referring to a man’s bare chest as his “breasts,” or, worse, “the breast,” and comments-section hilarity ensued. Despite the obvious sophistication of its reporter, the CR piece prompted Microsoft to re-edit the spot so as to remove the breaxting, as well as change the Kin’s slogan from “Send a grainy picture of your breasts or breast!” to “We’re all in this together!” Except, of course, those of us who are peering at our phones. Which brings us to Combat! blog’s question of the day: Is it just impossible to sell a cell phone or what?

Continue reading