Hope, Arkansas is a small town of barely 10,000, but it’s the birthplace of a popular two-term Democratic president as well as a strong Republican contender for ’08, Mike Huckabee. What is this tiny backwater crap hole’s secret to being a successful political breeding ground? Here’s a few “fun facts” about Hope, none of which are true:
* Boasting a public education system that extends to 6th grade and a magazine section at the local Wal-Mart, Hope is renown as a major cultural capital in Arkansas.
* A 1990 census erroneously reported “taxidermist” as the most common occupation in Hope. It seems residents were confused when asked if they mount animals.
* Hope has a Dale Earnhardt bumper sticker-based economy.
* Local hospitals were overrun in 2000 when hundreds of homosexual tourists descended on the area, not realizing what exactly Hope’s “Gay Bash 2K” was.
* You can always tell who the mayor is in Hope: he’s the one wearing a necktie with his overalls.
* During the boy-band boom of the late 1990s, Hope natives N*CEST topped the charts with “I Kissed Her (My Sister)” and “I’m in Love With My Daughter/Niece.”
* At last count, the audiocassette of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck If…” had outsold The Smiths’ “Meat is Murder” 11,327 to zero at Hope’s Flying J Truck Stop along Interstate 30.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
2008 Predictions: MUSIC
The music industry. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be careful - so here's my predictions for what 2008 will hold for the world of music ...
Oprah will disappoint the studio audience at the taping of her 23rd season premiere by ONLY giving each of them a free digital download of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.”
The Eagles enjoyed phenomenal success in 2007 with the reunion album “Long Road Out of Eden”, available exclusively at Wal-Mart. The 2008 follow-up “One Last Flight, One Last Fight” won’t do quite as well after a misguided decision to only sell it at Baby Gap.
Ryan Adams will release five full-length CD’s: a solo acoustic disc, a folk-pop effort with his band "the Cardinals", a hard-rocking collection featuring members of well-known NYC noise-rock groups, a 30-track novelty hiphop album, and the all-instrumental soundtrack to a new experimental film by Ethan Hawke. Then January will end, and he’ll decide what to do with the rest of the year.
1980s female hiphop music will enjoy a major comeback, spearheaded in part by critical acclaim for the new album “Salt n’ Pepa’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Frustrated with Neil Young’s reluctance to tour, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash will recruit a replacement with the hope of appealing to a younger, wider audience. Subsequently, the least-successful tour of 2008 will be “Crosby, Stills, Nash … and Usher.”
Paul McCartney will spend much of his fortune developing a functioning time machine. He will then transport a mob of screaming teenage Beatlemaniacs from 1964 to the present to beat Heather Mills to death with her prosthetic leg.
Eddie Vedder will endorse a radical left-wing third party candidate for president. You won’t read about it anywhere, because no one cares.
50 Cent will release “Kenny G Unit”, an attempt to crack the smooth jazz market. He’ll then be assassinated by a drive-by shooter later in the year while Jazzercising in Central Park with David Sanborn.
In December 2006, Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo played his career-worst game when country music sensation then-girlfriend Carrie Underwood was in attendance. In December 2007, Romo had an even WORSE performance with pop starlet girlfriend Jessica Simpson cheering him on. By December 2008, Tony Romo will have become celibate, devoting all free time to his new restaurant chain “Tony Romo’s: Yet Another Place for Ribs.”
CD sales will continue to plummet in 2008; the year’s biggest hit will be Daughtry’s 2-disc set “Daughtry 2: A Double Dose of Daughtry” with 712 copies sold. In second: Paul Simon’s musical tribute to Shakespeare, “Wherefore Art Garfunkel, Romeo?”
Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers will regret having spent the bulk of 2008 sitting by the phone waiting for Sting to call again.
Oprah will disappoint the studio audience at the taping of her 23rd season premiere by ONLY giving each of them a free digital download of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.”
The Eagles enjoyed phenomenal success in 2007 with the reunion album “Long Road Out of Eden”, available exclusively at Wal-Mart. The 2008 follow-up “One Last Flight, One Last Fight” won’t do quite as well after a misguided decision to only sell it at Baby Gap.
Ryan Adams will release five full-length CD’s: a solo acoustic disc, a folk-pop effort with his band "the Cardinals", a hard-rocking collection featuring members of well-known NYC noise-rock groups, a 30-track novelty hiphop album, and the all-instrumental soundtrack to a new experimental film by Ethan Hawke. Then January will end, and he’ll decide what to do with the rest of the year.
1980s female hiphop music will enjoy a major comeback, spearheaded in part by critical acclaim for the new album “Salt n’ Pepa’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Frustrated with Neil Young’s reluctance to tour, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash will recruit a replacement with the hope of appealing to a younger, wider audience. Subsequently, the least-successful tour of 2008 will be “Crosby, Stills, Nash … and Usher.”
Paul McCartney will spend much of his fortune developing a functioning time machine. He will then transport a mob of screaming teenage Beatlemaniacs from 1964 to the present to beat Heather Mills to death with her prosthetic leg.
Eddie Vedder will endorse a radical left-wing third party candidate for president. You won’t read about it anywhere, because no one cares.
50 Cent will release “Kenny G Unit”, an attempt to crack the smooth jazz market. He’ll then be assassinated by a drive-by shooter later in the year while Jazzercising in Central Park with David Sanborn.
In December 2006, Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo played his career-worst game when country music sensation then-girlfriend Carrie Underwood was in attendance. In December 2007, Romo had an even WORSE performance with pop starlet girlfriend Jessica Simpson cheering him on. By December 2008, Tony Romo will have become celibate, devoting all free time to his new restaurant chain “Tony Romo’s: Yet Another Place for Ribs.”
CD sales will continue to plummet in 2008; the year’s biggest hit will be Daughtry’s 2-disc set “Daughtry 2: A Double Dose of Daughtry” with 712 copies sold. In second: Paul Simon’s musical tribute to Shakespeare, “Wherefore Art Garfunkel, Romeo?”
Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers will regret having spent the bulk of 2008 sitting by the phone waiting for Sting to call again.
Friday, December 21, 2007
2008 Predictions: POLITICS
Year's end is a time when all aspiring psychics (and psychos) gaze deep into their crystal balls and make ridiculous, desperate guesses as to what the future holds. Here's my stab at predicting what goings-on will occur in the world of politics during the coming year:
I predict Dennis Kucinich will leave his wife for a much younger, hotter, taller, thinner woman.
John Kerry will cause another minor scandal when a Youtube video surfaces of him announcing, "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for doodie" to a Capitol Hill restroom attendant.
In 2007, pundits predicted Mitt Romney's relatively high poll numbers would fall once voters realized he was a Mormon. They were close; his poll numbers will actually fall when voters realize he's a MORON.
Larry Craig will continue his lifelong pattern of madcap heterosexual hijinks by discretely engaging in steamy vaginal intercourse with a steady stream of willing and attractive feminine female women. What a typical straight male!
With Rudy Giuliani already running, Michael Bloomberg joining the race as an independent will spark a new trend. Look for several of the following famous names to appear on the 2008 ballot: David Dinkins, Ed Koch, Gavin Newsome, Marion Barry, "Diamond Joe" Quimby, Mayor McCheese, The Mayor of Simpleton, and John Mayer.
Hillary Clinton will face her defeat at the Democratic National Convention with dignity by agreeing to pose nude for "50 Plus" magazine and donating the proceeds to Barack Obama's campaign.
In an electoral mix-up reminiscent of 2000's butterfly ballot mishap, elderly former NYC resident Republicans now living in Florida will accidentally vote en masse for a Phillipino high school teacher named "Julie Ani."
Newly-elected President Obama's first act in office will be to appoint Al-Qaeda members to every position in his cabinet. Aw, shucks - Fox News was right! He was a gosh darn Muslim all along...
I predict Dennis Kucinich will leave his wife for a much younger, hotter, taller, thinner woman.
John Kerry will cause another minor scandal when a Youtube video surfaces of him announcing, "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for doodie" to a Capitol Hill restroom attendant.
In 2007, pundits predicted Mitt Romney's relatively high poll numbers would fall once voters realized he was a Mormon. They were close; his poll numbers will actually fall when voters realize he's a MORON.
Larry Craig will continue his lifelong pattern of madcap heterosexual hijinks by discretely engaging in steamy vaginal intercourse with a steady stream of willing and attractive feminine female women. What a typical straight male!
With Rudy Giuliani already running, Michael Bloomberg joining the race as an independent will spark a new trend. Look for several of the following famous names to appear on the 2008 ballot: David Dinkins, Ed Koch, Gavin Newsome, Marion Barry, "Diamond Joe" Quimby, Mayor McCheese, The Mayor of Simpleton, and John Mayer.
Hillary Clinton will face her defeat at the Democratic National Convention with dignity by agreeing to pose nude for "50 Plus" magazine and donating the proceeds to Barack Obama's campaign.
In an electoral mix-up reminiscent of 2000's butterfly ballot mishap, elderly former NYC resident Republicans now living in Florida will accidentally vote en masse for a Phillipino high school teacher named "Julie Ani."
Newly-elected President Obama's first act in office will be to appoint Al-Qaeda members to every position in his cabinet. Aw, shucks - Fox News was right! He was a gosh darn Muslim all along...
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Dennis Miller's Got a Brand New Bag
Unless you’re a connoisseur of the high art form known as “AM talk”, you might not be aware that smarmy, smirky, obscure-reference-loving comedian/commentator Dennis Miller has recently RADICALLY REINVENTED himself as a smarmy, smirky, obscure-reference-loving right wing radio host.
I’ve always found Miller impressive if not particularly FUNNY. When I was a lad of just twenty or so years, my rock band was working with a producer a couple of decades our senior who was a HUGE Miller fan.
One night after a recording “sesh” (that’s “session” for all you Squaresville residents), he fired up the VHS with a Miller HBO special, and proceeded to pause the tape after every “joke” to explain in detail the multi-layered cultural references contained within each smugly-delivered observo-nugget. The sixty-minute program took about 3 ½ hours to get through. I was definitely amazed at the breadth of knowledge both men exhibited, but I certainly wasn’t laughing.
Anyway, the fact that Miller unquestionably possesses a functioning brain makes his radio program a worthwhile alternative to 95% of what the AM talk universe has to offer. His reasoned, libertarian brand of conservatism is clearly superior to the repressed-homosexual-cowboy-Bush-love-hero-worship of many of his right-leaning radio peers.
My biggest objection to the show is Miller’s overuse of the phrase, “I like the cut of your jib.” At first, it’s like, “Ah, that’s kind of cool, like something James Cagney might’ve said.” But after he’s used the line on Ann Coulter, the junior Republican senator from Wyoming, Jim Breuer, the chief political correspondent at Politico.com, Gary Sinise, Rudy Giulliani’s campaign manager, Dick Cavett, and an ESPN baseball analyst (all within a single twenty-minute segment, mind you), it becomes a bit tiresome.
And I have to admit, as well read and “in touch” as I believe I am, I still find myself thoroughly confused and befuddled by much of Miller’s incessant obscure referencing. So in closing, I’d like to officially review Dennis Miller’s radio show in the style of the man himself: Listening to “The Dennis Miller Show” is like watching Germaine Greer edit Wikipedia entries with the homeless on an Apple IIe during the Spanish Inquisition while Jeremy Piven and Xerxes the Great team up to lobby Congress to force the reintroduction of New Coke. (No, I have no idea what it means either)
I’ve always found Miller impressive if not particularly FUNNY. When I was a lad of just twenty or so years, my rock band was working with a producer a couple of decades our senior who was a HUGE Miller fan.
One night after a recording “sesh” (that’s “session” for all you Squaresville residents), he fired up the VHS with a Miller HBO special, and proceeded to pause the tape after every “joke” to explain in detail the multi-layered cultural references contained within each smugly-delivered observo-nugget. The sixty-minute program took about 3 ½ hours to get through. I was definitely amazed at the breadth of knowledge both men exhibited, but I certainly wasn’t laughing.
Anyway, the fact that Miller unquestionably possesses a functioning brain makes his radio program a worthwhile alternative to 95% of what the AM talk universe has to offer. His reasoned, libertarian brand of conservatism is clearly superior to the repressed-homosexual-cowboy-Bush-love-hero-worship of many of his right-leaning radio peers.
My biggest objection to the show is Miller’s overuse of the phrase, “I like the cut of your jib.” At first, it’s like, “Ah, that’s kind of cool, like something James Cagney might’ve said.” But after he’s used the line on Ann Coulter, the junior Republican senator from Wyoming, Jim Breuer, the chief political correspondent at Politico.com, Gary Sinise, Rudy Giulliani’s campaign manager, Dick Cavett, and an ESPN baseball analyst (all within a single twenty-minute segment, mind you), it becomes a bit tiresome.
And I have to admit, as well read and “in touch” as I believe I am, I still find myself thoroughly confused and befuddled by much of Miller’s incessant obscure referencing. So in closing, I’d like to officially review Dennis Miller’s radio show in the style of the man himself: Listening to “The Dennis Miller Show” is like watching Germaine Greer edit Wikipedia entries with the homeless on an Apple IIe during the Spanish Inquisition while Jeremy Piven and Xerxes the Great team up to lobby Congress to force the reintroduction of New Coke. (No, I have no idea what it means either)
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