"Maybe he deserves a second chance, I mean who did he really hurt
besides himself? Maybe it's time that we as a nation start staying out
of people's personal problems and vices. What are we doing spending
billions of dollars trying to keep people's private lives in order?
And I'm talking about legal age consenting adults here, not kids, we
obviously have to take special precautions to protect kids. But what is
this Orwellian hang-up of ours of sticking our nose into other
grown-up's affairs? What concern is it of ours if some mindless stoner
wants to spend his his life hooked up to a Turkish skull bong? Now,
I'm not pro-drug, they obviously cause a lot of damage, but I am
pro-logic and you're never going to stop the human need for release
through altered consciousness. The government can take away all the
drugs in the world and people will just spin around on their lawn until
they fell down and saw God.
"Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but it seems to really
enrage the vast cheese dog and beer quaffing nation out there when someone
decides to waste his own life chasing down chemical euphoria and I'm not
sure why. Our displeasure with someone hell-bent on self-ruination
through drug use seems really disproportionate to its direct impact on
us. And as a matter of fact, I believe we amplify that impact when we
attempt to enforce unenforceable laws. It not only costs us billions of
dollars, but it puts us in harms way as addicts are driven to crime as a
means to an end. Why do we chase druggies down like villagers after
Karlov? Let them legally have what they already have and defuse the
bomb. You know, I think the hysteria about drugs is often times baseless.
And this comes from me, a man who has never done cocaine in his life,
although I did smoke dope upon occasion during my stint as a student at
Oxford in the late 60s. And you know, the war on drugs is more often than
not fruitless and patently hypocritical, be honest with yourselves now.
What drugs are the most dangerous to the most Americans? Its a no
brainer: cigarettes and alcohol. Those are the statistical champions by
hundreds of thousands of deaths. And wouldn't you rather shoot a game
of pool with a guy smoking a joint than a guy drinking whisky and beer?
Someone smoking a joint doesn't all of the sudden rear back and stab his
partner in the eye socket with a cue stick, ok? He's too busy laughing
at the balls.
"And you know as far as harder drugs go, if somebody wants to shoot
up and die right in front of you, more power to him, you know? It's his
call. And you know the herd always has a way of thinning itself out.
We aren't stupid people here in America, no more than anyone else in
the world, so why are we obsessing on habits that harm no one but the
habitual, while we let real problems slip ever further out of reach. We
seem to be willfully turning away from reality, and from logic might I
add, to punish people, who in many instances are doing an extremely fine
job of punishing themselves, thank you. And in some cases they're not
even punishing themselves, but rather just following age old spawning
instincts that are as woven as deeply into their brain as their need to
watch Home Improvement.
"Is their anything more fruitless than trying to legislate sexual
behavior? You know according to the law, you can't even get a blow
job in Georgia? No wonder Sherman hustled through there. And really if
you stop to think about it, who is hurt by the time honored unavoidable
trade of prostitution? Only the guys who pay extra to be hurt. There
is no sane reason to cling to this archaic legal attempt to curtail an
activity that will be around until the end of time. You know, you could
come back to this planet ten thousand years from now and man could have
evolved to the point where he doesn't even take in nutrition from a
hole in head anymore, but I guarantee you that he'll still be cruising
ninth avenue trying to get a knob-shine from somebody named Desiree.
"What sort of perfect harried experiment society are we striving for
folks? One where you will be forced by the puritanical mentality of
your pin-headed Gladys Kravitz neighbors into a tightly constricted,
over-regimented existence? A life safe from the temptations and rewards
of the flesh? If that's your kink - go for it. But for the rest of
us, let's save the money we're wasting trying to regulate other people's
private lives. If an individual wants to smoke a joint, or shoot up, or
munch blotter like tic-tacs and drop out, let them. All right? Let's
put the billions we're wasting on a drug war, fought by fitness fanatics
on steroids and three-martini senators rolling in pork, let's put it
back in the educational system. Let's free the courts and jails of
lonely men and broken women who feel the need to buy and sell sex.
Let's let hookers and their johns have a safe building somewhere off the
streets, inspected medically and taxed up the wazoo. Let's go on from
there to tax liquor and cigarettes so that those industries can pay for
safe one-lane drunk-proof highways and air purification systems. Most
importantly, let's stop pretending that people are going to lead the
lives that we tell them to lead. Let's stop pretending that a few
simple prohibitions on substances and activities will yield up a nation
of Beaver Cleavers: polite, clean, sexless, and ready to serve their
fellow man, no questions asked. People are people. They're going to
with their lives what they want to do, whether you like it or not.
There is nothing you can do about them that won't break the bank,
overcrowd the prisons, or corrode an already oxidized judicial system.
People are perennially going to get fucked up and fucked, and we will
continue to get fucked over if we don't concede the fact that there
is absolutely fuck-all we can do about it.
"Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
You know, normally on my HBO show I come out here week after week and piss on
everything like a drunk yard cat. You know that. That's my job. I've always
felt I'm paid to find things that are wrong and then do my best to throw the
switch on the perimeter floods and light it up. Tonight we're suppose to talk
about what's right with America. Now I know you've got to burrow pretty deep to
unearth any underlying confidence in a nation that's sapped of its vigor,
strafed by violence, and pummeled senseless by the debasement of every
institution from the Armed Services to Baseball. That being said, Are we gonna
have some fun tonight?! Yeah, all right. That was rhetorical.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but you know, there's a lot right
right with
America! Nowadays, you just have to look a little harder for it. Sure, we're
sick of paying for illegal immigrant kids to go to school and we're going to
stop. But only a country that did it for a while can stop doing it. See? People
don't ever consider that. And okay, we nearly exterminated the Native
Americans. Nobody tries to hide that anymore. But we did change our textbooks
so the facts came out. I mean, who else does that? Only America. And as if
admitting the truth wasn't enough, we don't even tax their casinos. And us -
with a 4-trillion-debt! I'm saying not taxing billions in Indian bingo loot is
magnanimous and should be in the "What's Right with America" column! How's
about this - in America we let people in prison read, study law, even work out
so they can get themselves out of jail in much better mental and physical shape
to resume their lives of crime. A lot of countries treat their criminals like
animals, like sub-humans, as if they'd done something wrong!
Not America. Not this great country. I'm not a complete ethno-centrist. I
went over to France
earlier this year for a couple of months, to see if I might live there. And
while I enjoyed my time in Paris, I should tell you that the French hate our
guts. I cannot believe they actually gave us the Statue of Liberty. They
must've been throwing it out anyway. Because these people detest us. They look
at us and we are one, big, collective Jethro bearing down on them, rope belt
and all. And you know something? In all fairness, we might be hicks, but at
least we're hicks who tend to our armpits more frequently than once every time
Comet Kohoutek is in the solar system. These people avoid showers like a blonde
at the Bates Motel. They had to invent perfume. It wasn't an augmentation, it
was a defense mechanism. Trust me, when Louis the XIV guillotined you, he was
doing you a big favor separating your olfactory senses from your brainstem.
"Yeah, Claude, paint the water lilies a little later. Right now I need you to
pick up that loofa and storm the pit Bastille, all right?" Thank you, Pepe
LePeux. I had a cabdriver over there, smelled like a man eating Gorganzola
cheese while getting a permanent inside the septic tank of a slaughterhouse. I
said, "Hey, pal. There's an extra five in it for ya if you run over a f***ing
skunk." So, there'd another reason why this country's great.
We smell better than most. Another reason we're great is because we create
things here,things
of unique beauty, things that unconsciously interweave the American attributes
of ingenuity, optimism, gluttony, and narrow-mindedness. Things like: "All You
Can Eat" Restaurants ... The Clapper ... Street-legal, semiautomatic grenade
weapons that even the Tontons Macoute didn't have ... The Temporary Insanity
Plea ... Cutting-edge CD-ROM technology used for porno ... deep-fried cheese
... bans on toy guns ... rain ponchos for dogs ... Orange Julius ... Orange
County ... beer can hats ... plea bargaining ... being able to plug your
parents with bullets and getting acquitted ... indeed we're even free over here
to subscribe to 500 channels of cable only to find out that that piece of shit,
William Katt's superhero show, is on 498 of them ... You know ... As a matter
of fact, you want to know what's right with America more than anything? Our
right to speak out about everything that's wrong with it. And we're all free to
vent at will-at least for the next couple of days till Gingrich takes over and
straps the rat cage on our collective face. You know ... this really is a great
country. Remind yourself of it once in a while. Take the family on Route 66,
shop at the Galleria, buy a gun, have your breasts enlarged, have your penis
lengthened, sue your neighbor, eat three Big Macs, drive 120 and pay the
ticket, visit the White House - or better yet, jump the fence and go meet the
Prez in person. He likes that. He really really likes that. It's America,
goddamn it!!
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
All right, lets put our cards on the table. We got a dicey little subject
this
week: Sexual Harrassment. Now, its pretty easy for me to come out here week
after week to do some high concept screed about how, for instance, I think
violence is bad...oh, well, thank you Dr. Insight ! But this week were
crotch-deep in a good old-fashioned quandary, arent we? The age old battle of
the sexes situated in the Circus Maximus of the workplace. Look, I should tell
you right up front that while I'm sure many of you think of me as the world's
most insightful hermaphrodite, I am in fact a guy. So I ...so I have to confess
that my first thoughts on this issue were well, it can't be all that bad, can
it? Certainly a lot of these cases have to be trumped up, dont they? But then I
flashed on the fact that much of what goes through my head is shot through the
dick prism
You know, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what do I
really know about what it's like to have some fat, foul-breathed, ham-handed
boss leaning over your shoulder while you type or laying his hands on your
waist while you fax something? I have no idea about how it feels to have some
leering, pawing, needy co-worker breathing down your cleavage while you try to
keep the best job available in a small town without much opportunity so that
you can put your kids in clothes without the help of a deadbeat ex-husband;
that has got to be brutal . So all I can say, is to be really honest with you
and myself about what I have observed in my forty years of dragging a penis
around this pebble we call Earth (laughs). And that is this; I think men more
often than not are probably guilty of a lot of the shit that they are being
accused of. From my observations, a lot of guys act so badly and so stupidly
with women in nightclubs and at the beach and on the street, I know that if
they got some occupational leverage they would probably use it as a come-on.
Why are men like that? Well, because over the years men have written the rule
book...not all men, sit down, Donahue . But many men have written the rule book
that says its OK to look the other way when certain members of the male herd
squeeze, pinch, and demean women. Well now the rules are finally being
rewritten and as men and women go through this period of readjustment the bad
behavior is coming back to haunt us, isn't it? Because nowadays were hearing
more and more stories of men being accused of sexual harassment and
instantaneously presumed guilty until proven innocent. But just because MANY
men are guilty it is dangerous to jump to the conclusion that ALL men are
guilty. All right, now that we understand our game, lets introduce tonights
dualists; Jones vs. Clinton in the Board of Education building . Do I think
something happened between them? I most certainly do; he's a powerful man who
also happens to be a tenth degree horndog (laughs and applause) and you know
something I think most of you will agree once you get beyond all this faux
patriotic rebob about besmirching the Presidency with tawdry accusations, the
fact is Bill Clinton probably achieved emeritus status in the Players club
while governor of the state of Arkansas . There is too much rumor, too much
innuendo, and just enough evidence; bottom line, folks, where there's smoke,
there's friction.
You know, Stephanopoulos must be feeling like the guy that
Louis B. Mayer assigned to accompany Erryl Flynn around town. Georgie-boy has
become a sexual Red Adere and it appears our good president was sinking a
whole lot of wells in the mid-80s . Having said that, do I think he sexually
harassed Paula Jones? Hard to say and here's why: she did in fact receive
several salary increases after the incident. Whatever cheesy chicanery went
down in that hotel room it doesn't seem to have affected her wage-earning
ability. I also think that it undermines her case a tad that it seems to be so
much about the MONEY. Seven hundred thousand dollars? How'd they arrive at that
figure, what's that, a hundred K per inch ? You know something, theres a fair
to midland chance that old P.J. is a big-haired opportunist propped up by
small-minded politically thwarted enemies of the President. Now having said
that the sexual harassment charge might be suspicious; do I think that Paula
Jones might have been compromised by the clumsy, sophomoric sexual advances of
a presumptuous Huey not-so-Long type lording his power over a backwoods empire:
yes I do .
Do I think that Paula Jones could have been embarrassed by the
highest elected official in her state doing a Lurch impression with his Dockers
down around his ankles : yes I do. But I would say this to Paula Jones; the
next time a man drops his chinos in front of you, look him in the eye and say
Listen, you silly son of a bitch, pull your pants up and start thinking with
your big head for a change, OK pal? Look, nobody wants to make light of the
serious crime against women that men commit far too often; but isnt that what
frivolous complaints like Paula Jones are doing? We've gotta get clear with
each other on how our respective gender tribes wield sexuality in this culture.
Because some of this stuff should be a no-groiner.
Here are some guidelines: to the women who are ready to haul the bagboy at the
Safeway into court because he complimented you on your
culottes , take the extra second and try to
differentiate the innocuous from the malicious. And all the men who don't get
the fact that when she says no she means no, well I'm telling you
Quest-for-Fire-boy, she means NO , OK? Its over. Pack up your encyclopedias and
go knock on the next fucking door . Let me also advance the following immodest
proposal so we can all get on with our goddamn lives: I think we should pour
all our time, energy, and know-how into genetically engineering a third sex
that we can both fuck indiscriminately and never feel the need to phone the
next morning. We could call them...recepticants! And they would heal the world.
And while this solution may seem silly, its no sillier
than what were doing
now; which is a tentative sexual two-step in which neither partner wants to
lead, neither partner wants to follow, and everybody's feet are getting stepped
on.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong
The Russian Prime Minister has declared Space Station Mir too old and
decrepit
to be useful anymore. Naturally, the space station will now begin confirmation
hearings to serve on George W. Bush's cabinet sometime next week.
Bush leaned on Donald Rumsfeld to take time off from writing his memoirs of the
Battle of Hastings to serve as Secretary of defense. Rumsfeld keeps pushing for
that Star Wars Catapult Defense System, because he's afraid the North Koreans
might have the crossbow.
And on Monday, movers went to the Governor's Mansion in Austin, Texas to
transfer Bush's belongings to Washington. The move itself took very little time
once workers discovered that Bush had nothing upstairs.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but as a comedian, with George W.
Bush coming into office, I feel like the owner of a hardware store before a
hurricane. I hate to see it coming but I have to admit it's good for business.
I'll take my shots at Dubya, but I actually have high hopes for the next four
years. I see George W. Bush working hard to keep the ambitions of big business
and the military in check, and ensure that even the lowest job pays a dignified
wage. I believe he'll erase the animus that has divided Washington, and bring
both sides of the aisle together. I also happen to believe dogs can talk if you
touch them in the right spot, and everyone watching me is happy with their
body.
As much as I'm willing to give Bush a chance, I'm a little nervous about his
intellectual capacity. I mean, at least Clinton had his dick to think with.
And Clinton did a lot of thinking. If I were Bush, the first day I took over,
I'd have a convoy of six Rug Doctor trucks come chugging through the main
entrance of the White House, park right in front of the TV cameras, and start
dragging their steam-cleaning hoses through the Oval Office door. Well, come
on. It's got to be like buying Bob Guccione's mattress at a yard sale.
You can say what you want about Bush, but he's going to surround himself with
people who are so experienced that they aren't gonna let him eat at the
grown-up table for a long time.
And you can't understand the great and powerful Bush without peeking behind the
curtain at the clever bald man pulling all the levers: Vice President Dick
"It's Probably Just Gas" Cheney. Now, Cheney's heartbeat skips more than
Richard Simmons on his way to a Ricky Martin concert. You know, the job of V.P.
doesn't give you that much to do, so it would be a shame if the very first
state funeral he attended was his own. But Cheney is also smart, crafty and
persuasive, so give George credit for putting him on the team. Most
presidential candidates try to pick a running mate who won't outshine them, but
who would that be for Bush? Maybe Wilson the volleyball from the movie "Cast
Away."
Let's put Bush's cabinet under the microscope, or, as he calls it, "the
little-stuff-to-big-stuff thingy."
Now, we do need to cut Bush some slack on Linda Chavez. How could he possibly
know the woman had a Guatemalan slave? Chavez got out quickly. I guess she felt
that if people had a hard time with the illegal alien maid, they might respond
even more negatively to the 30 Haitians assembling "Salad Shooters" in her
basement.
Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft will not be able to fill Janet Reno's
shoes, but then again neither could Shaquille ONeill. But what I don't
understand is how Ashcroft can be so pro-Death Penalty when he lost his last
election bid to Mel Carnahan, a dead guy. What's really scary is that most
people thought Carnahan won the debates, too.
National Security Advisor nominee Condoleezza Rice has often been described as
W.'s "foreign policy tutor". Oh, yeah, I love the sound of that. It's nice to
know we're signing our nuclear arsenal over to a man who needs after-school
help. Don't you think the fact that he needs a tutor ought to be raising more
eyebrows than Eminem teaching kindergarten on the planet Vulcan?
Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tommy Thompson says his top
priorities include overhauling social security and Medicare as well as fixing
his stupid name. Hey, what kinda guy makes it past forty with a "y" on the end
of his first name? Hey, Tommy Thompson, nice to meet you, you loser fuck, I'm
Denny Dennerson.
For Secretary of State, Bush chose Colin Powell. Okay, no complaints there.
Nice to see that Bush picked a minority. After all, a minority picked him.
All in all, George W. Bush has to have had the same reaction that I did after I
got the job on Monday Night Football. Hey, what in the hell happened here? I
only applied for the job because I never thought they would actually give it to
me. So my advice, George, is take your lumps and jump in there. For me it was
the best thing I ever did, next to this show on HBO of course. Man, it's hard
kissing two asses at once.
You know, in the end, it's hard to know what history will make of the second
Bush presidency. Will it be regarded as an aberration in the electoral process?
A surprisingly capable underdog effort? Maybe just a placeholder in the strange
but easy-to-remember Presidential sequence "Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton."
Whatever is to be, there's one thing we know: It's time for Daddy's little boy
to grow up. George W. Bush's seemingly endless supply of free passes is now
officially drier than any of the oilwells he once managed. Well, I, for one,
wish him the best.
Now, I don't pretend to know anything about the Machiavellian intricacies of
politics, the " one - hand - washes - the - other - that - scratches - the -
back - that - spanks - the - monkey - that - gives - the - reacharound - " to
whomever. All I know is, with the Nasdaq numbers acting like they're in a fight
scene from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and the once-madly-thriving economy
now teetering like Forrest Whitaker in a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos, if I
were Dubya, the first thing I'd do when I set foot in the White House, before I
unpacked the video golf game, before I started crank-calling my old frat
brothers, before I snuck up behind Dick Cheney and popped an inflated paper
bag, the first thing I'd do is get my ass on the phone and send Alan Greenspan
a four-year supply of Omaha fucking steaks.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Well, tomorrow George W. Bush moves into the Oval Office and Bill and Hillary
tell the White House staff, "See you in four years." But what about Al?
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but Al Gore is about to leave not
only the White House but the flimsy IKEA lean-to that is the American
consciousness. He's about to sling his wobbly, too-tight high heels over his
shoulder and take the morning-after Walk of Shame out of the beer-and
sweat-stained frat house of Washington, D.C. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.
Tonight, I hope to answer the question, "Who is Al Gore and what are his core
beliefs?" So, Al, if you're watching out there, stick around, cause this'll all
be new to you.
Poor Gore. Desperate for approval, he violated the Number One rule in showbiz:
Work the shaft. Oh, I'm sorry, that's the number two rule. The number one rule
is: people hate flop sweat. It doesn't matter what color shirt your handlers
tell you to wear, Al. If the pits are darker than Ann Rice's dream journal,
you're in trouble.
Even the biggest Democratic apologist has to admit that Gore lacked something.
You'd think the guy who won the popular vote would be well, more popular. Hey,
everybody knows that winning the popular vote is sort of like winning a
People's Choice Award. Sure it feels good for a while knowing you've carried
the three - hundred - pounds - and - up turqoise-collector demographic, but it
doesn't mean shit if you don't back it up with the Oscar.
And let's all stop blaming the electoral college system. It's an essential part
of the democratic process specially designed to make sure that each candidate
is responsible for making false promises to every American, not just the ones
in highly populated urban areas.
So, how did Al Gore come to lose the presidential race? Simple. He ran. The
ability to come across as warm and genuine to the American public is simply not
in Al's Westworld wiring. "Al, you lost me at Hello."
And anybody who watched the debates knew this. It was like watching a pit bull
try to go duck hunting. He kept trotting back from the pond with nothing but a
mouth full of bloody feathers thinking he did a great job and not understanding
why everybody kept on petting the dumbass Texas Labrador with the bandanna tied
around his neck.
Al Gore is a supreme intellectual, there's probably nothing he doesn't know,
except perhaps who he truly is. The problem with Al Gore's intellectualism is,
he never lets us forget it. And though we value intelligence, nobody likes a
know-it-all. Sure, I enjoyed reading Proust in high school too, but at least I
was smart enough to lock myself in the bathroom and tell my parents I was
masturbating.
It was painful to watch Al try to emulate Bill Clinton's charming, personable
style while campaigning on the road. He gave it his best shot, but people got
the impression he wasn't really paying attention to them. Every time he'd try
to connect with some guy working in a factory or a waitress in a diner, he'd
end up nodding his head faster and faster and slowly inching away. His body
language always reminded me of somebody who's asked directions to the nearest
gas station, but can't actually listen to them because he's gotta whizz so
badly.
Try all he wants, Al Gore will never be Bill Clinton. A leader like Clinton
only comes calling once a generation. When Bill Clinton spoke to us, he looked
like he really cared what we were thinking, made us feel smart, made us feel
good about ourselves and made us think that he would always remember us. That's
a style that can only be honed by decades of trying to score strange tail in
cheap, roadside cocktail lounges.
When it comes to assigning blame for their recent loss of the White House, the
Democrats are going to be pointing more fingers than the Hindu god Vishnu at a
Dunkin' Donuts. But ultimately, the problem was simply this: Al Gore came
across as a phony, and George W. Bush came across as genuine. And after eight
years of being lied to by one of the smartest men on the planet, a lot of
people had decided they wanted a president with neither the inclination nor the
brains to mislead them.
I'll be honest, I like my presidents to be a little dim.The clever ones get
bored and try to tamper with my life. Give me a mildly clueless figurehead who
will meet with the Girl Scout who sold the most Thin Mints, telephone the
winning Super Bowl team in their lockerroom, fly abroad now and then to watch
funny foreigners dance funny dances, and most important of all, leave me the
fuck alone.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Midge. Moose. Moose. Midge. You know, alliteration is just one of the quirky
little twists that one can use to augment the English language. English, for my
jingoistic dollar: still the creme de la creme of all languages.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but to listen to all the alarmist
intellectual Henny-Penny doom-mongers going on and on these days about the
imminent death of the English language, you'd think the English language was,
like, ya know, totally dying, or something. Whatever.
George Orwell warned that banalities in the English language reflect a
corrupted culture. "Banalities" without the "B" is analities. That's funny.
English is not just the language of Britain, Australia, Canada, and certain
parts of Kentucky. It's also the language of business, diplomacy, and
technology.
Now, when I say English, I'm talking about what we speak here in the States,
without the funny accent. Because I don't know what language working-class
Brits are speaking over there in England, but it isn't like anything I've ever
heard. I saw the movie "Snatch" over the weekend and I felt more out of it than
Liz Taylor at the Golden Globes.
I have always had a deep and abiding love for the English language, from early
on in life. I've always loved the flirtatious tango of consonants and vowels,
the sturdy dependability of nouns and the capricious whimsy of verbs, the
strutting pageantry of the adjective, and the flitting evanescence of the
adverb, all kept safe and orderly by those reliable little policemen,
punctuation marks. Wow. You think I got my ass kicked much in high school?
You can gauge the esteem in which we hold the English language simply by
telling someone you majored in it. Now, the first thing they do is mentally
subtract twenty grand off what they think you make. The second thing they do is
ask you to bring them a menu and tell them the soup of the day. And why not? In
school, English was the easiest subject to bullshit your way through. There are
no Cliff Notes for Physics. You can't bluff your way through a Calculus
discussion just by watching "Calculus: The Movie." But when it comes to essay
questions, well, you can fake it like a hooker being paid by the moan.
I understand that English is a protean, evolving language that must constantly
change in order to remain relevant. But let's not go out of our way to
appropriate words from other cultures simply to justify making something more
expensive. Hey, you can add all the Italian suffixes you want, you're not
fooling anybody over there at Starbucks. It's still just coffee. Now ring me
the fuck up, you frappaloser.
And Starbuccos is not the only cultural borrower. Doctors tend to lift most of
their phrases from Greek, which is only fitting since every time I go to see
one, he somehow feels the need to spend the afternoon spelunking around in my
ass. All I know is if Hippocrates had been born someplace other than Athens,
they would have come up with an easier way to check my prostate than drilling
me like theyre George Bush and my ass is Alaska.
I wouldn't be so worried about the fate of the English language if more of us
could speak it properly. Forget Stone Cold Steve Austin or the Rock, if you
want to see real wrestling, watch our newly elected president pronounce the
word "unilateral."
Love the guy or hate him, you have to admit that when Bush is speaking
unscripted, the English language disintegrates like cotton candy in a monsoon.
Even he looks like hes surprised at whats coming out of his mouth, kind of like
Malkovich when he had that puppeteer inside his head.
Folks, the English language is very much alive. From where I'm standing, our
mother tongue is kicking ass and taking names. It's large and in charge,
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of piss and vinegar and ready to open up a
big ol can of whup-ass. It's calling the shots, it's bouncing and behaving,
it's all up in it, and it's all that and a bag of chips. For the love of God,
somebody please tell me what in the hell I'm talking about.
Now, while I have upon occasion been labeled the E.B. White of the word "fuck,"
you do have to admit that I went an entire football season without saying it.
Take it from a connoisseur, it should be used sparingly, like saffron in a
fucking paella.
See--the word "fuck" is a beauty, isn't it? From its fricative genesis,
blossoming into its ripe, rich middle until its cruelly truncated in its prime
by a merciless, glottal stop... In all of its earthy, salty, illicit
Anglo-Saxon glory, "fuck" is almost as satisfying to say as it is to do.
Now, some would say I contribute to the coarsening of the English language
through my casual use of profanity. To those critics, I would respond that my
discourse merely exemplifies the vaunted precedent of valorizing the oral
vernacular. I would further add that language is a living tissue, which must
occasionally suffer the rupture of subversion in order to convalesce with more
structural stability. So to those guardians of the linguistic gates who charge
that I shoehorn the F-word in wherever I can, merely to further a rather
tenuous career built entirely on a profane house of cards, well, why dont you
just go fuckerize yourselves.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Hey, is there anybody nowadays who doesnt want to be on TV? Sometimes even on
two different shows in completely unrelated fields where his option has just
been picked up for two years in one unrelated field and hes shamelessly using
the other field to suck applause marrow out of the helpless behavior-mod rats
stuck in his studio audience only because they unluckily stumbled into a
Partridge Family bus outside Manns Chinese Theater?
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but while show business from the
outside may seem like a nonstop whirlwind of gorgeous people, fabulous clothes,
sparkling parties and spectacular homes, the reality is exactly that. Sorry,
folks. I wish I had some balm to soothe you, but I don't. It's fucking awesome.
From Balinese shadow plays to bullfighters in Madrid to the porn studios of the
San Fernando Valley to The Craig Kilborn Show, the only human desire more
universal than the urge to put on a show is the urge to get paid for it.
Show business is rife with paradox. It's brutally competitive and yet attracts
people with egos as fragile as Strom Thurmonds hip. There's no doubt about it,
show business lures the people who didn't get enough love, attention, or
approval early in life and have grown up to become bottomless, gaping vessels
of terrifying, abject need... Please laugh.
What draws the average person into a career in Show Business? Simple--they want
to get laid. Take any one of the Backstreet Boys or the kids from N Sync and
put them behind a deli counter with a paper hat and day old meat stains on
their apron, and the only spears they'd have their hands on would be Vlasic
Kosher Dills.
Sometimes I'll be flipping through the channels on my dish and I'll happen upon
this television show from Iraq called "The Chabab Abeeely Program." And this
guy Chabab Abeeely looks really self-satisfied, singing, dancing, giving away
the Chabab Abeeely home game to the Chabab Abeeely studio audience, and I
always wonder: Does Chabab Abeeely really think he, Chabab Abeeely, is in show
business? Do you, Chabab Abeeely?
Why did I want to get into show business? For the same reason Chabab Abeeely
did. In hopes of being immortalized by the no-frills
Raymond-Chandler-if-he-had-no-talent narrative of the E Channels
smoke-enshrouded A.J. Benza. Hey, A.J. Violation of the Peter Principle. Ain't
it a bitch?
In the early eighties, I worked comedy clubs across the country nearly every
week of the year. Many times I drove fifteen hundred miles at a time in a
rusted out AMC Pacer with tires balder than William Shatner fleeing his house
during a 3 AM earthquake, and a blinking dashboard warning-light that said "Hey
Asshole, Somethings On Fire And It's Not Your Career" All this just for the
privilege of sharing a skanky one-bedroom apartment-slash-gulag with two other
jerkoffs in skinny, crinkle ties, one of whom invariably had a cough so bad
that a Welsh coal miner would tell him to get it checked out, and the other of
whom was constantly bragging about getting laid by two different chicks every
week for the past six years and screamed like Lawrence of Arabia galloping into
Aqaba every time he tried to urinate.
And yet, being in show business has its drawbacks... The other day I was at one
of my favorite eateries, and I got interrupted in mid-bite by someone asking
me, "Are you" And I said, "Yes, I'm Dennis Miller. Can we do this later?" And
he said, "Do what later? I wanted to know: Are you finished with that ketchup?"
The point I'm making is, if you're in show business, the only thing worse than
getting interrupted for an autograph during a meal is not getting interrupted
for an autograph during a meal. And when you begin to have more uninterrupted
meals than Rudolf Hess in Spandau, it's time to consider another line of work.
Trust me, you don't want to overstay your welcome in this town. Because you
start to panic and everyone begins to see those rivulets of sweat running down
your forehead, dripping off your chin, and it unnerves them, because they are
then reminded of their own tenuous little toehold on the steep, shale cliffs of
success, so they'll take any opportunity to loosen your pitons, causing you to
plummet backwards onto the jagged rocks at the base of the Piedmont and impale
yourself on a stalagmite where the others still in the game can then watch the
carrion birds feast on your exposed, still-warm entrails. [SING] "Theres no
business like showbusiness!"
And in show business, it can take decades to become an overnight success, and
only moments to be considered a lifetime failure. Ask Vanilla Ice. If he'll
come out from under your car at Meineke.
And don't think you can sleep your way to the top, because I guarantee you,
somebodys going to try to fuck you while youre sleeping. And the casting couch?
A total myth! There is no couch. Trust me, it's never anything more comfortable
than a rented card table covered in head shots ... Or so I've heard.
Listen, I would recommend this business only if you absolutely must receive
constant attention to be happy and fulfilled and you have already proven
yourself unqualified for a more pleasant profession like being a medical test
subject. Yes, the highs can be dazzling, but the views they provide are often
straight to the bottom of the chasm ahead of you. I am sorry, young dreamer,
but I cannot encourage you to join me in this difficult, wearying life, because
I fear for your financial well-being, I am concerned about your mental health,
I tremble at the pain you might cause yourself and your family, and most
importantly, I sure as shit don't need any more competition.
Look, bottom line, no matter how glamorous it appears to be, show business will
always be a grueling and frequently humiliating industry. And you know what? I
don't care who you know, you never start out at the top, no matter what
business you're in. First you're given oil wells, then you're given a baseball
team, and then, and only then, are you given the White House.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but this country's so intolerant
right now, they might as well change the plaque at the base of the Statue of
Liberty to read, "Go the fuck back to Fuckatania."
Listen, I will accept anyone's lifestyle, appearance, belief or idiosyncrasy
just as long as they don't ask me to pay for it or wanna sit next to me on a
plane and talk about it.
What I do object to are fringe groups who go beyond the notion of tolerance and
demand our approval. Sorry, but if you move in next door to me, and one day I
look out my window and see your wife cutting the lawn with her teeth because
she's a sheep, don't expect me to bring a covered dish over when you two
reaffirm your vows, okay?
Intolerance leads people to do strange things: go to war, burn books, riot at
soccer games, and eschew lactose, and there's never any logical reason. Most
arguments made by intolerant people have all the consistency of space shuttle
Thanksgiving gravy.
Why can't anyone just shut up and listen anymore? Whatever happened to the
genteel art of sitting back and letting someone go on and on thinking he's
right while you bask securely in the power of the knowledge that he or she is
completely full of shit?
Now, as mentioned earlier, today's poster boy for intolerance is Eminem. I
don't think there's really anything that damaging in Eminem's lyrics. He's no
more dangerous than a bleached-blond Chihuahua chewin' on an old dishrag.
Eminem doesn't upset me. You know why? Because he wants to upset me. Does his
rap instill hate and inspire intolerance? All I can say is, not in me. As a
matter of fact, it does the opposite. The more he talks about hating
homosexuals, the more I urge gay inclusion in all aspects of society. The more
crudely he rages against women, the more I crave their company and counsel. The
more he casts blame on corporate responsibility for global warming resulting in
the dangerous shrinking of the polar ice cap, the more I realize that you now
know that I'm totally full of shit and have never even listened to his music.
You see, the danger inherent in fighting intolerance is that often those
attempting to eradicate it end up practicing it, only in a mutated,
once-removed form. Liberals in particular are guilty of this supposedly
well-meaning recidivism. Honestly, it baffles me that the same people who blast
away at President Bush's selection of a religious conservative for Attorney
General won't give George W. any kudos for other cabinet choices which include
blacks, Jews, Asians, Hispanics and women. Does a fundamentalist Christian not
also represent a valued strand in our collective fabric? Who's really being
intolerant of other peoples differences here? And by the way, who cares if
Ashcroft's religion prohibits him from dancing? Who wants to see John Ashcroft
dancing anyway? After all, I hear he was born with two right feet.
And as far as Senator Teddy Kennedy's quavering voice of righteous indignation
constantly howling like a beagle at a Rick Wakeman concert at the prospect of a
right wing conservative holding sway over the countrys law enforcement
priorities... Give it a rest, Spam head. Let's not get into your view on womens
rights and the sanctity of human life, okay, because where those issues are
concerned, Teddy, you may not be, uh, shall we say, in control of your own
vehicle. Capice, Tay-o?
And let's not let conservatives off the hook, either. Especially the religious
right. Quick show of hands: if he came down and applied, how many here think
Jesus would actually be accepted into Bob Jones University? C'mon, they'd beat
the shit out of a long haired, peace-and-love hippy before he could turn the
first cheek.
I think the truth is that you can never make everyone happy. The same people
who scream about the freedom of choice for a woman to do what she wants with
her body are forcing people who want their body to have a cigarette out into
the streets to smoke. Some people who are against the death penalty are so
adamant that they would electrocute those who are for it, and some of those who
pray for the lives of the unborn also recite an extra "Our Father" when a
clinic is bombed.
Look, tolerance does not mean you agree with everything that other people say,
or that you subordinate your own best instincts to the tyranny of mass opinion.
It simply means you pretend not to know that everyone on the planet but you is
a total fucking moron.
The most unforgivable thing about intolerance is, by its inherent assumption
that one group, belief or lifestyle is superior to another, it fails to take
into account the ultimate truth which binds us all, black and white, gay and
straight, Republican and Democrat, Arab and Israeli, Hindu and Muslim, Catholic
and Protestant, Serb and Croat, Hutu and Tutsi: the fact that, at the end of
the day, we are all equal pains-in-the-ass, in the eyes of the Lord.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Boy, the Clintons' left Washington about as quietly as Kid Rock leaves a
Holiday Inn.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here but like an infestation of
cockroaches, a drunken party guest or a super-virulent strain of
antibiotic-resistant clap, the
Clintons are proving almost impossible to get rid of. Hey, is there any way for
an entire nation to file a restraining order?
Since we first met them, Bill and Hillary's political relationship has been
defined by a series of scandals, providing their marriage a much-needed
distraction from ever having to actually stop and figure out how to extricate
themselves from their biggest predicament: each other. Let's face it. If the
Clintons' marriage were any more about convenience, they'd have to install a
Slurpee machine and a Slim-Jim rack.
We've all been watching in astonishment these last few weeks, as the Clintons
merrily parade their greed and corruption past us like a garish Mardi Gras
float
powered by the drivetrain of Bill Clinton's gargantuan sense of entitlement.
Hillary steers, while Bill sits on the top tossing pardons out to the crowd
like a
drunken Bacchus with a perpetual hard-on for a scepter.
And it turns out the Low Priest who shepherded many of the pardon petitioners
to the quid-pro-quo altar is none other than Hillary's currently
eight-and-a-half-months pregnant brother, Hugh Rodham. Hey, who could blame
Jabba the Hick for acting as a supersized go-between? How would you
like it if your sister was in the White House for eight years and you couldn't
even cash in on it because of stupid laws and shit?
And the Hugh-Rodham-sponsored pardons were small, and quickly eaten, potatoes
compared to the Marc Rich debacle. President Clinton has repeatedly
insisted his pardon of Marc Rich was the right thing to do. Which should
probably tip you off to just how wrong it undoubtedly was.
You almost have to admire the sheer audacity of granting pardons to two
tax-scamming billionaire fugitives named Rich and Green. If the symbolism were
any more obvious, Andrew Lloyd Weber would be writing music for it.
And speaking of vacuous songwriters, the Marc Rich pardon was facilitated by
his former wife, Denise Rich. Now why would a former wife go to the wall for
her ex-husband? Well, in this case, I can think of a couple of billion reasons.
You know, she couldn't be any more in her former husbands hip pocket if she
were a piece of lint. Think about it. Denise Rich is the perfect unwitting foil
to do the bidding of low-rent Machiavellis like her ex and Bill Clinton. Every
time I see that footage of her standing there on stage next to Clinton in her
strapless, fur-trimmed, hey-baby-give-it-up-you're-in-your-mid-fifties Escada
frock, smiling that lobotomized, open-mouth smile, all the while clapping her
mitts together like she's a trained seal cleaning erasers, just so thrilled to
be part of the action that all the naysayers once told her was way out of her
league, well, all I can think is, "Wow, she's not even aware of what an
incredible dupe she's being played for." You know, there's nothing sadder than
a star-fucker who thinks she's a patriot. And I like her.
To be fair, it's not like other outgoing presidents and first ladies haven't
been involved in sketchy pardons, taken gifts they weren't supposed to, or
profited from their positions. It's just that no one has ever done it in such
bulk, in so short a time, eliminating the mid-level operative and passing the
scandal right on to you, the consumer. Let's face it: the Clintons are the
Costco of Sleaze.
And all of the lying, cheating and stealing can't be good for either of the
Clintons' karma. At this point Hillary's coming back as a dung beetle with an
overdeveloped sense of smell, and Bill will come back as... uh... well, Bill.
Face it, this guy's smarter than God.
But you must never count Bill Clinton out. He is completely alone right now,
but this is when he's at his absolute best. When the whole world has turned
their back on him, when the baying hounds are confusing the scent of his blood
with someone else's who's about to take the fall for him... That is the precise
moment he has you exactly where he wants you.
Perhaps Bill Clinton didn't so much betray his allies as seduce them into
betraying themselves. From the women's rights groups who took Clinton's side
against all the women he victimized to all the liberal compadres he discarded
when it was politically expedient to do so, Clintons proffered deal has always
been the same: I will help you achieve your goals if you simply abandon the
ideals that made them worthwhile in the first place.
I guess what I'm saying, Bill, is, we're on to you, and it's over, understand?
We've awakened from our long nightmare of codependence and addiction and we've
found someone new. Maybe he's not as smart or as exciting as you, but he treats
us nice and makes us feel pretty. We don't need you anymore, Bill, okay? So
stop calling and stop driving past our house at night and stop looking at us
like that. Now get off the porch and get out of here before we change our
minds.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
And an article in USA Today this week reported an increase in the number of
pet
owners taking their dogs to see psychiatrists. Hey, whatever happened to
yelling at your dog to get off the couch? You know, if I could lick my own
balls, I sure as hell couldn't need a shrink. Ah, who am I kidding? I can lick
my own balls. That's why I go to a shrink. I can't stop. Because I'm a human
being, with a bafflingly complex mind and a very stiff neck.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but even the best psychiatrist is
like a blindfolded auto mechanic poking around under your hood with a giant
foam "We're #1" finger.
Though definitely a Western phenomenon, psychiatry hearkens back to
traditional, tribal forms of healing, in which the right combination of words
and potions would ease your tortured spirit. I can just picture an African
Bushman, lying on a dirt floor, anxiously telling his medicine man this
nightmare he keeps having about showing up at work fully clothed.
Even though it was invented in Europe, psychiatry could only become the
multi-million-dollar business it is today here in the United States. We're the
only people in the world who are stupid enough to actually want to know what's
going on inside our minds. Americans couldn't be more self-absorbed if they
were made of equal parts water and paper towel.
Another reason psychiatry has flourished in the US is that, in the 1970's,
Woody Allen helped popularize the idea that going to a shrink is normal and
healthy. And just look what its done for him and his family. He and his
daughter-slash-wife have never been happier.
Now, ever since the days of Freud, psychiatry has been strictly limited to the
realm of the middle- and- upper classes. sychoanalysis is expensive, which
isn't too surprising when you consider it was invented by a major cokehead.
For me, the difference between psychiatry and psychology is just one of those
little nagging things I can never remember. Like stalactite or stalagmite.
Alligator or crocodile. Nipple clamp or nipple restraint.
But I do know that psychosis falls into two major categories, manic-depression,
and schizophrenia. Being diagnosed as one or the other has two immediate
benefits. First, it automatically defines a set of effective treatments and
second, it tells you which side you'll play on in the annual Crazy Fucks
Softball Tournament.
Nowadays, rather than dwelling on childhood traumas and repressed sexuality,
modern psychiatry deals more with correcting chemical imbalances in the brain.
Kind of like what some people did back in college, except then it wasn't called
psychiatry, it was called "bong hits."
Therapists face the daunting task of taking chaotic, violent and unstable
people and molding them into well-rounded, secure and productive members of a
chaotic, violent and unstable society.
Now, I'm not saying we should return to the days of lobotomies and
electroshock, but I do feel the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
Today, everything is a disorder or a disease that deserves our understanding.
Nobody is held personally responsible for their actions. And that's gotta go. I
think a good first step would be to change "not guilty by reason of insanity"
to "guilty by reason of insanity."
Basically I'm a pretty normal guy when it comes to my mental health. I guess if
I have one little problem that makes me consider seeing a shrink, it's a
white-hot hatred for all humanity that burns so intensely it literally sears my
insides. Other than that, I'm feelin' pretty mellow these days.
All kidding aside, I know what my problem is. I'm what you call a self-loathing
paranoid. I don't think I'm worth the time and effort it would take for someone
to hunt me down.
I view my head in much the same way I view my TV set. When something isn't
working right, I can either bang it with my hand, or call a professional to fix
the damn thing. In fact, I even have my shrink wear a tool belt and a name tag,
and rip a big one at the start of every session.
The key is to find a therapist that you click with, someone that you trust
implicitly with the deep, dark secrets you wouldn't even tell your accountant.
Now, I've had some great therapists in my life, and I've also had some who left
me questioning their credentials. No doubt the worst was Doctor Cletus, a
Jungian in bib overalls who, while I poured out the most intimate details of my
very existence, would thumb through back-issues of "Guns & Ammo" magazine,
occasionally glancing over at me, giggling and muttering, "Man, that is some
weird-ass shit."
And the best input I ever got from a shrink? Well, when I was younger, I was
plagued by feelings of inadequacy. So I went to see a psychologist. And he told
me the reason I felt inadequate was because I was inadequate. Now that guy was
a fucking genius.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but why are Americans so in love
with credit? Simple: WE'RE AMERICANS. We want everything, we want it Bigger,
louder, shinier, faster, and we want it NOW. Instant gratification is as
American as drive-through microwave apple pie. Of course Tantric sex was
invented in India. Here, we want to fuck just to get it over with, so we can go
out and buy more stuff.
This country was founded on debt. Hey, right off the bat, we got ourselves into
hock to pay for the Revolutionary War. And then, in 1803, we purchased the
Louisiana Territory, and they only sent us the clear title for that three weeks
ago.
Historians often contrast our love of credit with the frugality and
practicality of our Puritan ancestors. But come on: How frugal is it to buy a
separate belt buckle just for your hat?
You can't begin to understand credit until you understand its boozy
counterpart, interest. Credit is like a friendly bartender, wrapping his arm
around your shoulder and telling you it's okay, just put this round on your
credit card and take care of it with your next paycheck. Interest is the surly
bouncer who hustles you head-first out of the warm tavern and face-first into
the urine-stained snow bank, all the while mercilessly punching you in the ribs
as he methodically goes through your pockets, until he gets back every last
penny that you owe him.
Even the most thrifty among us need credit at some point or another. When you
mortgage a house. When you buy a car. When you're on e-Bay and you see a
mint-condition ice-packed human kidney that's still throbbing and would go
perfectly in your collection ... But who would have a collection like that
Clarice?
The irony is that responsible people who pay as they go never build up a good
credit rating. And without one, you're considered a bad lending risk. Just try
applying for a car loan or a mortgage. Trust me, you'll be ignored like the
busboy at Hooters.
There is a whole generation out there who, between ATM cards and credit cards,
don't even know what cash looks like. You take out a wad of bills these days,
and you might as well be pulling out beaver pelts to pay for that pizza. I have
had cashiers take the twenty-dollar bill I've given them and write my drivers
license number on it. Of course, we'll always need cash for strip clubs. Nobody
wants to see a naked chick swipe a card.
Now, I myself know what it's like to have bad credit. When I was 19, credit
card companies would send me letters telling me I had been pre-approved for
rejection.
Giving a teenager a credit card to teach them about money is like getting them
drunk and putting them behind the wheel of a car to teach them responsibility.
The interest rates on these cards make Tony Soprano look like George Bailey.
Bottom line: this country is more dependent on plastic than the casting
director for Pamela Anderson's "V.I.P." And true, while I appreciate the
convenience credit cards provide, what I really like are the cards themselves.
I like their size and weight and as a matter of fact, I have customized mine
with razor-sharp tungsten edges and balanced them for throwing with deadly
accuracy. I also took the liberty of having a graphic artist rework the little
holograms for me. My MasterCard shows a squirrel water-skiing, and my Visa
shows an old, fat couple fucking. My point is, credit can be fun if you just
let it.
If I have one bone to pick with the credit card companies, it's that they make
the place where you're supposed to put your signature on the back of the card
too small. And nobody ever checks the signature on the card anyway. When they
do, it's just for show; they're not really checking it. I know because, as an
experiment, on my most recent card, instead of signing it, I wrote, "Just ring
it up, shithead." So far, not a peep.
Now, one of the ways we judge which rung of the ladder you are perched on in
this society is by what color credit card you carry. For American Express, the
once-prestigious Green card can be replaced by the Gold card. Keep charging,
and you are eligible for the Platinum card, which can now be trumped by the
upper-echelon Black card. Soon you will be able to just have a bar code sewn
onto your ass, so that there's absolutely no way you can leave home without it.
In closing, let me say that today, I am fortunate, because I have the money to
pay off my credit cards at the end of each month -- but I choose not to. Why?
Well, my logic is that if a killer asteroid obliterates the earth, causing
tidal waves and cosmic fires that destroy every submicroscopic trace of life on
this planet as we know it, and I still owe three grand on my Visa, I win.
[FINGER]
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You know why Jack Kerouac was cool? Because he had no idea he was.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but cool is a gift. It's having
eight pounds of hip in a five-pound bucket. It's not bought, bred or
bequeathed. Clinton lost it, Gore can't buy it and Bush thinks it's spelled
with a "k."
America's drive to be cool is like an endless game of "Follow the Leader," with
all of us in a dog-sled-train, struggling to keep up with the alpha male
trendsetter, when all we can make out are the hazy, glistening outlines of his
ice-flecked, rhythmically pumping butt cheeks. Sorry, I got a little carried
away, there. I'm still recovering from Gay Week on Animal Planet.
The United States is the birthplace of cool. If the world was a high school,
America would be making out in study hall with Sweden, picking on India, and
smoking in the U.N. restroom with France and Colombia.
Coolness appeals to us because it represents being free from the constraints of
society while still living within it, dropping in to give Richie and Chachi a
dose of hard-earned street wisdom, and then headin' off to Arnold's to grab a
shake and pound a free song out of the jukebox when the Cunningham scene gets a
little too "square." By the way, almost triggering a petite mal seizure by
doing the finger quotes thing - uncool.
Now, there are many types of cool. There's the classic, iconic, Bogart
approach: cryptic and unflappable, squinting through the smoke from the
cigarette dangling between your lips, never letting a trace of emotion show
except for an occasional sardonic half-smile at the foolish world around you
that you couldn't give a rat's ass about.
As a matter of fact, some celebrities reach a cool of such mythic proportions,
it transcends their physical being. Frank Sinatra is so cool, he hasn't
bothered to take a breath for years, and he could still kick the shit out of
you.
Then there's the demographically researched, pop-media faux-cool, the type of
insouciance that bears the corporate patina of mass-marketed nonconformity.
This is shopping mall cool, easily attainable: You don't have to Harley to
Sturges; or Master the Guitar; or Trek through Nepal-- just plunk down your
Discover card and buy some threads at Urban Outfitters or a barbed-wire
bicep-tattoo at the Henna Hut, and not only will you enter the kingdom of cool,
you'll also get a valuable cash-back bonus that can be applied to cruise travel
or a Reader's Digest subscription.
I think some manufacturers may be trying a little too hard to envelop
everything with a hip aura. I was at a drug store and watched an old man spend
15 minutes trying to decide if he wanted his Ex-Lax in Extreme Orange or
Totally Wacked Wintermint.
There are certain places and situations where it's virtually impossible to put
up a cool front. For example, when your doctor gives you a prostate exam, or
when the supermarket cashier calls for a price check on super-small-size
condoms, or when the door man at the Vanity Fair Oscar party bitch-slaps you
for bursting into tears when he tells you he can't find your name on the guest
list, even though it should have been there it SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!! J-Lo, I
love you!
I guess the coolest I ever felt was when Carveys Church Lady was really taking
off on Saturday Night Live, and yet the entire nation was doing my George Bush
impersonation. Oh wait, that was Dana, too. Come to think of it, I've never
felt cool.
One of my favorite pastimes is to look around and try to determine who the
coolest person in the room is. For example the other day at Starbucks, as I
observed the 20-something counter jockey with the pierced prefrontal cortex and
the dust bunny on his chin, and the as-yet un-produced screenwriter sitting in
the corner staring at a four-year-old script-in-progress that still has fewer
words in it than his latte order, or the heavily perfumed walking designer rack
talking into her cell phone like she was trying to be heard over a fucking
chainsaw, I realized with some pride that I could honestly say I was the
coolest person in the immediate proximity, until I looked out the window and
caught the eye of the Guatemalan landscaper trimming the hedges outside,
obviously wondering what kind of schmuck I was to pay three dollars and seventy
five cents for a cup of coffee.
Let's bottom line this. For me, the only real cool people left are those who
don't buy into the coolness mystique. People who dont take themselves too
seriously and don't screw over other people and understand that life goes on,
the earth abideth forever, and what is cool today may not be cool tomorrow.
That's why it's best just to be yourself. You know, unless, of course, you're
an asshole.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
This weekend, ESPN is holding its first Extreme Sports awards. "Extreme
sports"? Hey, folks, let's call this what it is: weird shit invented by guys
who are willing to die to get laid.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but our obsession with extreme
sports has people all over the country jumping off bridges, skyscrapers and
mountain cliffs, and some of them aren't even invested in the stock market.
The concept of extreme sports is yet another component in the vast conspiracy
contrived to make me feel like I'm aging faster than a tuna sandwich in the
glove compartment of a black car parked in Phoenix, Arizona.
Extreme sports are usually played by middle-class white kids, because the
equipment involved is expensive, the activities often require costly trips to
exotic locations and, let's face it, unfortunately, if you're growing up in an
inner-city housing project, the mere act of walking to school is no doubt
extreme enough.
Gen-X sports have been so successful for advertisers, they're now afraid to
market anything without them. I saw Charles Schwab on TV the other day, trying
to yell something about moderate-growth mutual funds while wakeboarding off the
North Shore of Oahu, with his knee joints poppin' like two M-80s goin' off in
an underground parking garage.
Hey, you only have to watch a minute of extreme sports to distill what is
really going on here: psychopaths enriching osteopaths.
Now, when it was first introduced, bungee jumping was seen as the peak of
extreme, a wild, daring pasttime only the boldest madmen would undertake. It
has today become so mainstream that all bungee jumping platforms are required
by law to be fully wheelchair- accessible.
Then there's BASE jumping, a high fatality activity which involves leaping off
buildings and bridges with a parachute. You know, when I was ten years old, I
climbed up on the roof of our neighbors garage and jumped off while holding an
open umbrella. Only it wasn't called BASE jumping back then, let's see, what
was it called ... oh yeah, "Being a Fucking Moron."
If you really want to screw with a BASE jumper's head, wait at the edge of the
cliff, and just before he's about to go, ask for his girlfriends phone number.
You know, when I watch one of these Eco Challenge events, I always wonder what
the local natives think when they see the civilized folk "roughing it" with all
the state-of-the-art clothing and equipment money can buy. Meanwhile, the
Sherpas are climbing Everest with nothing on their feet but Wonder Bread
bags,and their gods forbid the use of twist ties. And how about when these
hikers pull out their calorically calibrated protein bars, while the guide from
the tribe, who is naked except for the animal horn on his penis just digs into
a pile of elephant dung and pulls out an undigested peanut, and calls it
macaroni. [SING] Yankee Doody went to town
Extreme sports are fascinating to someone like me, who screams like Maria
Callas in late-stage labor if I merely drive over a pothole with an open coffee
container between my legs. In my defense, I may not be as adventurous as I used
to be, but given the right set of circumstances, I am as extreme as they come.
Like the other day, I'm making my famous cinnamon baked apples. But just for
the sheer adrenaline rush, I stick the cloves in with their spikey ends
pointing out. Balls to the wall, dude!
I think I speak for many of my fellow Los Angelenos when I say that I find
extreme sports rather redundant when I spend a good deal of my day just trying
to stay alive in traffic, while pinned between 4 stegasaurus-sized S.U.V.s,
each being driven by a psychotically aggressive, Palm-Pilot-wielding, 98-pound
woman with the blood sugar level of Lot's wife.
I view professional extreme athletes with, at worst, mild puzzlement and, at
best, genuine respect. But what pisses me off are the amateur extreme athletes,
who don't just risk their own lives -- they make some park ranger, fireman, or
cop risk his life to save them. Every time I see a soldier who enlisted so he
could defend his country, end up having to put his neck on the line, rappelling
off a helicopter to save some middle-aged hero-wannabe jagoff who skied 20
miles off the clearly marked trail just so he can have a better pickup line
than, "Hey, baby, your place or my moms?", I can't help but hope that just this
one time, the kid from the National Guard is going to change his mind and
chopper away to get a well-deserved beer, but not before getting just close
enough to shout, "Hey, asshole, Charles Darwin says hi."
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but tonight I'd like to take a
step
back and evaluate the former oilman who just 83 days ago took on the awesome
responsibility of running our huge, complicated nation. And, if we have time,
I'd also like to talk about President Bush.
Now, the rap on George W. Bush is that he's lazy, takes naps in the middle of
the day, and would rather be watching television than focusing on what average
Americans want for their lives. Hey, that is exactly what average Americans
want for their lives.
President Bush took office promising to change the tone of the White House.
Where Clinton looked presidential and acted like a kid, Bush looks like a kid
and so far -- acts presidential. And while he has turned off the wocka-wocka
70's porno guitar of the Clinton years, so far he has yet to replace it with
much more than the fuzzy hissing of a patriotic late-night sign-off on a local
television station.
You can't talk about George W. without addressing the strange Bilbo-Baginnian
language that spurts out from between his lips like melted marshmallows coming
out of a squirt gun.
As a matter of fact, when the words in Bush's throat see their colleagues
heading up to his lips, they react with all the giddy panic of teenagers
watching a horror movie: "Don't go out there, man! He'll butcher you!"
Bush may not be smart, but at least he's smart enough to know he's not smart.
The wisest thing he did in the China spy plane standoff was let someone else
handle it. By contrast, a hands-on, eager-to-look-tough, micro-manager like Al
Gore would have reacted with all the composure of a drag queen getting his wig
yanked off.
Bush had the foresight to surround himself with smart people the way a hole
surrounds itself with a doughnut. W.'s team of handlers has him so well
trained, they're thinking of entering him in the Westminster Kennel Club show
as a short-attention-spaniel.
Bush ran on a pledge to improve education, and I believe he's going to pull it
off. By the year 2012, the average high school senior should be able to name
the capitals of all 45 states that haven't yet been flooded by the melted polar
ice caps.
Now, arguably the only thing this president has in common with our last
president is the completely unabashed, unapologetic affinity for drilling the
shit out of everything on the planet.
It's not that I don't agree with the bottom line on many of Dubyas stands,
because I often do. Do I care about the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge? Sure,
I guess so. But the mere mention of drilling for oil in it doesn't cause me to
foam at the mouth like a rabid fruit bat blowing Mr. Bubble. Give me a fucking
break. Every other vehicle in this country is a Lincoln Navigator with an
"Earth First" bumper sticker on it. You simply cannot blame George W. Bush for
not being able to let you have it both ways. Besides, do you know how many
caribou it takes to pull the average four-door sedan at a steady 65 miles per
hour? Believe me, the 405 would be fucked.
Hey, let's face it. He got into college by the skin of his teeth and into the
Air National Guard the same way. He won the presidential election by a margin
narrower than John Ashcroft's mind. Really, Bush's greatest achievement in his
life up to this point has been to lower our expectations of him so that
practically anything he accomplishes in the Oval Office is bound to impress us.
So much so that, if he can just finish out his term without stickin' a Roman
candle up his ass on a dare from brother Jeb, he's probably gonna end up on
Mount Rushmore.
Truth be told, I like the fact that President Bush is not slick, that he
mangles the English language. I prefer a guy in there who knows what he wants
to say but can't quite say it, instead of someone who is very eloquent about
promises he has no intention of keeping. So far, Bush has kept his pledge to
the American people. He's surrounded himself with the best minds in Washington,
restored civility to the Oval Office, and made it clear that this is an
administration that believes in big business and a strong military, while
working like a motherfucker on that 1.6-trillion-dollar tax cut he guaranteed
us last year. Now you may not like these promises he's keeping, but maybe, in
the end, what this country needs, above all else, is someone who just keeps his
word, even if that word is "Ca-rum-u-bob-ulate-tion-ism."
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
God, Madonna is shameless about publicity, isn't she? Somehow, I find it hard
to sympathize too much with her when she calls a live, televised, webcast,
stereo-simulcast, distributed-by-satellite, available-on-properly-equipped
cellphones press conference to complain that the media doesn't respect her
privacy. You know, it seems to me that the only time Madonna doesn't draw a
crowd is the opening weekend of one of her films.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but why is it that the only people
who are quiet and mind their own business nowadays are the serial killers?
Nobody minds their own business anymore. Americans stick their nose where it
doesn't belong more than Cyrano de Bergerac giving head.
We live in a nauseatingly confessional society. But it wasn't always that way.
There was a time when you wouldn't dream of telling a guy you just met that you
were an alcoholic. Unless, of course, you met the guy because you had driven
your car into his swimming pool.
True, thanks to our tight-lipped Puritan ancestors with their scarlet letters
and witch hunts, we've always been a nation obsessed with the doings of others.
In the past, however, we justified our pejorative meddling with some lame,
moralistic claptrap about "upholding community standards." Well, the fact is,
folks, community standards have now deteriorated like the relationship between
Brett Michaels and C.C. Deville on VH1's "Poison: Behind The Music." By the
way, I hear Poison is touring again. It's always nice to go see a retro-tour of
a hair band where the only drug they're now shooting up is Rogaine.
Hey, in our media-saturated culture, the border between news and entertainment
is crossed more often than a line in one of George W. Bushs coloring books.
The thing about the entertainment media's particular brand of voyeurism is,
we're so easily bored that, if somebody wants to keep our attention, they must
continually super-size the freak value. I was watching "Springer" the other day
and actually saw a couple get their marriage back on track by beating the shit
out of each other. I think Jerry's final thought was entitled, "I'm OK, You're
OK, Bitch."
Then there are the hapless casualties of voyeurism like Monica, Darva, and
Kato, forced to watch defenselessly as every nook and cranny of their personal
lives gets slurped into America's bottomless maw for other people's humiliation
-- all under the false rubric that a free and open society has the right to
know. At first fidgety, these quasi-luminaries ease into their new roles
quickly, seduced by the yodeling highs of celebrity that smudge the line
between the famous and the infamous, until there's no real point in their ever
saying goodbye. They turn into Abe Vigoda - you always think they're dead, and
yet, they're always RSVP'ing in the affirmative. It's sort of like Karmic
extortion. We wouldn't leave them alone, so now it's their turn. And in the
end, their fifteen minutes last longer than a cross-country airplane
conversation with a Jehovah's Witness who sells life insurance.
What I can't fathom are the people who auction off their privacy on the open
market. You can go online now and actually watch mutants and cybergeeks who
record every nanosecond of their lives - every snore, every burp, every
restraining order filed against them by William Shatner - and beam it out over
the Internet. It all raises the interesting philosophical question: How can you
broadcast your life when you don't have a life to begin with?
Do the media and the Internet feed this tendency, or merely reflect it? It's
hard to say. We're living in a time when personal boundaries are more blurred
than the camera lens in a Joan Collins photo shoot. You would think that this
would help to generate more openness between people, but all it seems to have
done is increase our mistrust. We feel perfectly comfortable spending hours
online, sharing our innermost thoughts and yearnings with complete strangers,
but we don't even meet the people living next door until there's a huge
earthquake and everyone's out on their lawns at one in the morning. As a matter
of fact, that's the scariest part of an earthquake - hearing your 58 year-old
neighbors Myrna and Leo explain how they had just strapped her into the
Vietnamese fuck basket, when all of a sudden, she started swinging back and
forth, like King Kong's balls on a hot day. "Well, thanks for the visual,
Myrna, I think I'm gonna go pick up a downed power line now, OK?"
One of the most disturbing trends in the demise of personal privacy is the
proliferation of hidden cameras. They're everywhere now. [POINTING AT CAMERA]
As a matter of fact, what's this? I just don't think that's right. When I'm by
myself, just like everyone else in this room, I do things that I would never do
if I knew I was being videotaped. I pick my nose. I scratch my nuts. I squeeze
blemishes. I work at my stubborn dandruff patch. I kick off my shoes and bite
my toenails. I use whatever's lying around to scrape my tongue. I pull nostril
hairs out and measure them with a small silver ruler I carry on a chain around
my neck and record their length in millimeters in an embossed spiral notebook.
I pinch my nipples until my eyes tear up, and I straddle things and yell
"giddy-up," while slapping myself on the ass with a Victorian carpet beater.
The point is, I should be able to pass my time waiting in line at the Post
Office any way I want to.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
And on Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average took another 80-point nose
dive, before rallying today. You know, lately, the stock market's been
performing like a blind dominatrix...you never know when she's going to hit
bottom.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the stock market is Las Vegas
without the slots, the hookers or the dependable odds.
The market's so volatile these days, so dependent on so many minute indicators.
A $50 billion manufacturer of 16 different microprocessing components, each
indispensable to the computer industry, can see its stock price plummet by half
or more, solely on the rumor that Benny Kelso on the loading dock says it hurts
when he pees.
Now, two phrases you'll often hear are "Bull market" and "bear market." In case
you're wondering about the difference, a bear market is where I lose money
because my stocks are plummeting along with everybody else's, while a bull
market is where I lose money because my stocks are plummeting all by
themselves.
Analysts are always telling us that the best way to invest in stocks is for the
long term. The only problem with that is, in an attention-deficit-disordered
America, the words "long term" indicate a time unit somewhere between the
career of a boy band and the bitch-slap of a hummingbird.
And now, with the advent of the Internet, an unholy alliance between the home
computer and the stock market has spawned the day-trader ? the kind of
proto-loser who is spotwelded into his Incredible Hulk underoos down in the
basement, his trembling, silver-Lotto-scratch-card dust-encrusted fingernails
frantically pounding "buy" and "sell" orders into his keyboard so loudly that
he can't even hear his mother upstairs crying out for the good old days when
all he did online was compulsively masturbate.
The widely-held gospel of Wall Street is "buy low and sell high." Thanks.
Thanks for the tip, Motley Fuck. That's like telling a bald guy "Getting laid's
easy...Just go to a bar and pick up Heidi Klum."
Now, I don't want to act like I'm a fiscal expert here. As a matter of fact,
when it comes to my own investments, I have only one question: What do all
those numbers mean? Seriously, what would I know about what things are actually
worth? I'm in show business, for chrissakes.
When the market began to tank last month, I couldn't get my broker on the
phone. Finally, his secretary admitted he had quit to take a job with Exxon,
but she couldn't quite remember which gas station it was.
I've learned some painful lessons about investing. In the future, when ending
conversations with an investment advisor, I will do so by saying, "I'm done
speaking with you now," instead of saying, "Bye-bye," which my former money
manager always mistook for an enthusiastic request to purchase shares in
whatever lean-to piece of shit-dot-com sham he was getting blowjobs and free
plane tickets to push that week.
Hey, there's no substitute for doing your homework before investing in a
company? good, solid, sound fiscal research. When I'm thinking of investing in a
retail chain, for example, what I do is go to one of their stores, and lock
myself in a bathroom stall. Then I curl up in a fetal ball on the floor and
emit a low, painful- sounding groan, and I time how long it takes one of the
assistant managers to come in and see if I'm okay. Wal-Mart? 3 minutes. Target?
Half hour. K-Mart? Kibbel the night janitor woke me up at three in the morning
and asked me if I had any rolling papers.
Hey, I know investing is a risky proposition, and I don't mind losing my shirt,
but can I have my pants back? Recently, let's say, over the past month, I've
put sixty-thousand dollars into Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Thank God I didn't buy
the stock.
And last year I bought Pets-dot-com at thirty. Two weeks later, it was dropping
faster than Al Roker on a greasy flagpole. You'd think I would have learned my
lesson, but instead I moved my remaining capital into something called e-Toys.
And last time I looked, that stock had broken through zero and was tunneling
into the molten magma at the core of our planet.
But the gloomy end of the unsurpassed bull market of the 90's did turn up some
unexpected bright spots. For one thing, remember that day-trading dilettante
prick neighbor of yours?the guy who threw a few lucky darts at the NASDAQ wheel
and showed up at every party for the next year in his Lincoln Navigator, downed
a few too many glasses of Turning Leaf Chardonnay and got all self-important,
going on and on like he was Warren Buffet with a soul patch talking about P/E
ratios and small-cap funds' place in the Keens-ian oeuvre and you figured,
"Well, he must know what he's talking about," and so you put ten grand in a
stock he recommended that collapsed like the Three Stooges' tent the following
week? You remember that guy? Well, right about now, he's replacing all the
deodorant cakes in the men's room urinals at Der Weinershnitzel before he
finishes off his shift standin' out front and handin' out half-off chili fry
coupons, dressed like a giant fuckin' bratwurst. I'd say karma is up about a
hundred points.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
And earlier today, Timothy McVeigh's execution was moved back to June 11th.
Ahhhhh. You know, I love a June execution.
Or better yet, let's forget June. Let's put it in sweeps week. Just imagine
what an ad would go for. You think I'm kidding? Trust me, if General Motors
thought it would move vehicles off its dealers' lots, they would sponsor a live
TV broadcast of Timothy McVeigh's execution. No doubt with some sort of
tasteful product tie-in: "Folks, if you thought that injection was lethal,
check-out the fuel injection in the all new 300-horsepower Cadillac Escalade"
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but what does it say about our
culture when the most escapist form of entertainment is currently called
"reality" television?
In the past, most networks tended to dabble delicately in the arena of reality
tv, but lately, they've been going for it like a hungry mutt on an ass-flavored
Milkbone.
One of the longest-running reality shows is "Cops," every episode of which
poses the burning question: "Why is that morbidly obese man not wearing a
shirt?" At least digitally scramble his mantits, OK?
Then theres "The Real World." Based on the premise that living rent-free in a
fabulous house on the beach with a bunch of attractive young people all the
while being videotaped by an ever-present camera crew is in any way, shape or
form "real." However, "The Real World" does provide us with the valuable
insight that, like, when you buy, like, orange juice, you know, and somebody
else, like drinks it without, you know, like, asking, that's, like, a personal
violation? You know?
And I couldn't watch "Temptation Island" because from what I gather, it would
have reminded me of one of my vacations when I was single. Remember when you
planned to hit the island and fuck anything that movedand nothing moved?
"Survivor" is the gold standard of reality programming, and when this craze is
over, appropriately, it will probably be the last one standing. I caught the
season finale of "Survivor." Watching this poly-merized tribal ritual through
the smoky tiki-torch kerosene-scented haze, just one thought crossed my mind:
How come that Keith guy is 40 but looks like he's 90?
Now I realize that if I were to be a contestant on "Survivor," I would probably
be one of the first to be voted off -- if not for my tendency to openly hate
other people, then for the visual and emotional assault that is me in bicycle
pants crying all the time. But my plan would be simple. As soon as the votes
were tallied, and Jeff Probst gave me the bad news, saying, "The tribe has
spoken," I'd say, "Oh yeah? Well fuck the tribe. I'm a 'Survivor!'" and I'd
bolt into the jungle, only to emerge every night to pick the other contestants
off one by one with poison darts.
Then I'd start in on the crew.
The truth is that, although people see reality shows as their doorway to
instant television celebrity, it's probably much harder to beat out the 35,000
other applicants vying for a spot on "Survivor" than it was for me to beat out
the one other applicant trying to be the host of Dennis Miller Live. Though
believe me, Lynn Redgrave did not go down without a fight. That is one scrappy
lady.
Now they've started double-layering the reality shows. They've had everything
from "Dateline" stories on "Big Brother" to the "Survivor" cast on "The Weakest
Link." But you know something? I'm not sure they've taken it far enough. I
wouldn't mind seeing that frigid dwarf chick from "Weakest Link", caught in
nothing but her chainmail corset and size 2 jackboots, running down an alley
from an immigration officer on a Fox special called "When Untalented Foreigners
Get Hired."
But while I've got my bones to pick with it, I do think reality television has
a deserved place in the roster of our nightly entertainment. In fact, I myself
have several ideas for new shows in the genre. The first is called "You Gotta
Be Shittin' Me," and it involves simply mounting video cameras atop gasoline
pumps at stations throughout Southern California.
I'm also pitching an alternative to "When Good Pets Go Bad." It's called "Put
the Goddamn Video Camera Down, Edna, and Yank This Mongoose off my Nutsack."
To make a long story short, the key thing to remember about this evolutionary
stage in the television medium is that TV tends to eat its own. And in a
classic example of plagiaristic television logic, the geniuses at NBC noticed
that every successful reality show sparked its own catchphrase "Voted off the
island," "Is that your final answer?" and so they decided that all they needed
to make a hit out of "The Weakest Link" was to plaster the phrase "You are the
weakest link" over so many billboards and bus-stops that it is now permanently
burnt into my brain like that time I walked in on Star Jones at the Universal
Amphitheater VIP bathroom. But you know what? You cannot build an entire show
around a single, easily-remembered catch phrase, and assume that just because
you repeat it week after week, people will ultimately attach some sort of
profundity or wit to it, and clap like trained seals whenever they hear it.
People are not that stupid. They're not going to fall for it, and it's simply
not going to work.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but tobacco is so entwined with
the history of this country, the only reason the Statue of Liberty is not
holding up a lit cigarette is that her torch provides a better backdrop for
final showdowns in shitty action movies.
Now, if you ask most smokers whether or not they want to smoke they'd probably
tell you "no," they hate it. But nicotine couldn't be tougher to kick if Lucy
Van Pelt from "Peanuts" was holding it with her fingertip.
Los Angelenos have been some of the most outspoken advocates against smokers
exposing us to their second-hand smoke. Which is ironic, considering that
compared to L.A. air, second-hand smoke is like aromatherapy. I'm so paranoid
about getting sick I'm even worried about third-hand smoke -- the smoke coming
off a second-hand smoker. Where's the research on that?
Now, as everyone who saw "The Insider" will remember, Russell Crowe's
character, in trying to testify against the tobacco industry, was up against an
adversary that would do anything to stop him, from e-mailing him threats to
targeting his wife and child to forcing him to fight off man-eating lions on
the blood-drenched floor of the Coliseum.
Because, by definition, their best customers are the ones most likely to up and
die on them, tobacco companies must constantly look for fresh meat. As a
result, they must aim their laser sites on the only group of people who are
easy prey because they are so naive, so easily swayed by peer pressure, and so
unready to make their own decisions as mature adults: Southerners. Also,
teenagers.
And they start 'em off young. Remember candy cigarettes? I used to love those.
At first, I only enjoyed one with an occasional glass of Kool-Aid or, say,
after a wild and crazy Slip-and-Slide party at Ray Luigi's place, but pretty
soon I was up to three packs a day. I never went in for bubblegum cigars; they
always seemed a tad, I dunno, pretentious.
Our war on tobacco is a microcosm for a fundamental contradiction in the
American psyche. We see ourselves as independent,
livin'-my-life-without-the-government-on-my-back Marlboro men until something
goes wrong, whereupon we turn into whiny, litigious crybabies looking for
someone to foot the bill for our fuckups.
Currently there's a raft of ex-smokers suing tobacco companies because they got
sick, and I just don't think that's right. Sure, I hate tobacco companies and
think they sell a quintessentially evil product, and then lie insidiously
through their yellowed teeth, all the while trading in their venal,
profiteering souls for a lucrative paycheck in this life, knowing full well
they'll spend all of time having their flesh raked by the fiery claws of Hell,
while the cries of all their victims resonate in their ears for all eternity.
That being said, I hate lawyers even more.
Yes, I feel sorry for the people suffering the effects of years of smoking.
Yes, I think the tobacco companies should be punished for their deceptions and
subterfuge. But suing a tobacco company because youve developed a health
problem from smoking cigarettes is like suing McDonalds because they failed to
inform you that the hot coffee you ordered will scald your lap if you spill it
on yourself. Hmm, bad example.
OK, let's try this one. Suing a tobacco company because you've developed a
health problem from smoking cigarettes is like demanding an apology from the
"Members Only" jacket people for your not-getting-laid in the 80's.
It's pretty clear that President Bush isn't going to lead a fight against the
cigarette companies, as he has stated several times that he believes the answer
to the problem lies in opening up the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve for growing
more tobacco.
I believe that right now the tobacco companies are missing a perfect PR
opportunity to turn the tide of public opinion in their favor. I'm speaking, of
course, about the energy crisis and the surrounding environmental concerns. For
example, if the lights go out during an unexpected rolling blackout, who's
going to have a lighter to provide emergency illumination? The smoker. If we
experience increased pollution from unregulated power plants, who's going to
require less oxygen because of diminished lung capacity? The smoker. And if
ecosystems fall like dominoes, rendering the human race a mere band of
cannibalistic scavengers wandering through a barren wasteland, whose flesh will
possess the pleasant smoky taste of barbecue? Thank you, smokers.
Hey, America grows most of the world's tobacco. If I were president, I'd go on
national television and tell those jagoffs from OPEC, "Hey, you know what's
tougher to kick than cheap oil? Those Yankee Devil Marlboro 100's that you're
always lightin' off a burning American flag. Yeah, that's right, Sheik Octane,
you heard me. I don't see any tobacco plants sprouting up from that desert
shitbox of yours. Now I want to see premium gasoline going for fifty cents a
gallon again, or you guys are going to be up all night chain-sucking on
goat-flavored Jolly Ranchers."
Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You remember Saturday morning cartoons? They're the two minutes of filler
between commercials for supersoakers and 16,000 forms of sugar. Including
salted sugar.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but while I sometimes find
advertising misleading, I do think it is necessary, as it often imparts vital
information to the consumer. For example, paper towels with two plies are more
absorbent. Wider gaps in tire treads help prevent hydroplaning. Fluoride fights
tooth decay, and visiting foreign countries makes you shit yourself. And then
you're back to the two-ply thing.
Advertising is not merely a human phenomenon, but a biological impulse found
throughout the natural world. Peacocks attract the attention of a mate through
a multicolored feather display. Baboons signal their sexual readiness with a
pair of red, swollen buttock. And both the duck and gecko offer a broad range
of attractively priced supplemental car insurance packages.
TV commercials nowadays are unrecognizable from what they were 20 years ago.
Now you get these out-of-focus MTV jump cuts with a throbbing technosoundtrack
and writhing supermodels in tankinis having simulated lesbian sex in the rain
and a nun riding a yellow bike and a little barefoot kid in a Guatemalan
village, and it's an ad for fucking pretzels.
I just wish people who wrote catchy commercial jingles in the 70's had taught
at my high school -- I think I would've retained a lot more important, useful
knowledge. I don't remember anything about geometry, history or science, but I
do remember that when it says Libbie's Libbie's Libbie's on the label label
label, you will like it like it like it on your table table table. And I swear,
if I find myself alone in my car car car one more time singing, "Plop plop fizz
fizz/oh what a relief it is", I'm going to hunt down the mind-control fuckwad
who wrote that piece-of-shit Pavlovian haiku, and demand that he give me that
part of my brain back.
You know, I'm seeing a lot more ads for medicines now. They're pushing pills
for allergies that are followed by a list of side effects that read like a book
of witch's spells. Nosebleeds, dry mouth, insomnia, shortness of breath, liver
damage. You know what? Keep your allergy medicine. I'd rather reach for a
Kleenex than have a blue arc of electricity connecting my nipples. At the top
of my list of commercials I do like are the ones for the local stereo store
starring either the stereo store owner, or the heavily made-up stereo store
receptionist the stereo store owner is trying to bang.
You know which television commercial makes me laugh? The one with the kid
sitting in his car in the parking lot, dancing like a robot to "Mr. Roboto."
Genius. Absolutely no idea what it's selling.
Now, I'm all for sex in advertising, but I think it's gone too far. Steamy,
provocative magazine ads are fine, but I was at the beach recently, and there
was a prop plane going back and forth along the shoreline trailing a banner
that said: "ADD INCHES TO YOUR TINY COCKDENNIS" And then there's no phone
number.
Recent advances in digital technology now allow dead celebrities to endorse
products that weren't even around when they were living. Just in case the heirs
to my estate are getting any funny ideas, I want to get it out of the way right
now: No matter what kind of cure for diarrhea they may discover in the year
2525, leave me out of it.
Now I might not be most objective guy to lecture you on the dangers of
pervasive consumerism, given my own occasional forays into the world of
advertising. But please believe me: I am just as concerned as any of you about
the omnipresence of advertising, and try and take my warnings tonight as a
desperately needed wake-up call... of up to 20 minutes for only 99 cents.
As a public person, I'm very picky about what I choose to endorse. A few years
back I got a call from some arms dealers. They wanted me to be the spokesman
for a Kalashnikov machine gun that they wanted to market to child soldiers in
Southeast Asia. I said, "What kind of sick fuck animal do you take me for? You
want Jon Lovitz."
You know, folks, it's inescapable. From the designer label on the protruding
elastic band of the immense size-52 underpants of the man in front of you in
the line at Dunkin' Donuts straining to point out the maple cruller on the
bottom rack of the display case - no, no, not that one, that one with the extra
frosting and the jimmies - to the drive to work where you are subjected to a
flashcard-like strobing of billboards that leaves your brain stamped with
subliminal impulses to fly United to Florida's Gulf Coast to take a Princess
Cruise to a Radisson Hotel in the Friendly Bahamas, where you'll drink Ronrico
White Rum and wear an oversized Tommy Hilfiger shirt, and Merrill hiking shoes,
while getting Lasik eye surgery, having your teeth whitened, getting approved
for a home loan over the phone and winning a large cash settlement for your
personal injury claim. And then the light changes, and you drive a second
block.
As a matter of fact, life for me is just the downtime between Chevy "Like a
Rock" ads, which have now officially lasted longer than Bob Seeger's actual
career. Attention, Madison Avenue: I give up. You've won. Here's my wallet,
just get it over with and paint a milk mustache on the Statue of Liberty, OK?
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Can you believe that there are actually people out there who want to portray
him as a victim? It's about time we put things right for the real victims of
crime.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but given our scant attention to
victims' rights, sometimes they're better off if the criminal is never caught
in the first place. At least that way they only get fucked around once.
Maybe the problem is, we're a culture already saturated with victimization.
We're all so loud, shrill, and adept at playing the victim in inconsequential
situations that an actual bonafide victim stands about as much a chance of
being noticed as an unemployed guy with a laptop and a goatee at a Starbucks.
The sheer volume of cases presently deluging the courts pretty much guarantees
that no matter how heinous the crime, its victims are faceless entities, mere
numbers on a court docket who are accorded all the dignity of a ring girl at a
cockfight.
The entire legal system is bent on ensuring the rights of the accused. Victims
couldn't wield any less power if they were the California electrical grid. The
disparity between the victim's and the criminal's rights is most obvious when
it comes to representation. Criminals who can't afford a lawyer get one
appointed to them by the court, while victims who cant afford one are relegated
to hiring the cycloptic paralegal who advertises during "Mama's Family."
In order to avoid creating vigilantes, society takes the right of retribution
for a crime away from the victim and makes it a matter for "the people." Of
course, in America this means the solemn burden of justice is in the hands of
the same "people" who created the Chia Pet, order the "Backyard Wrestling"
tapes, and have demanded 7 distinct flavors of Corn-Nuts.
Come on, there's gotta be a way to protect the rights of victims as well as the
accused. For example, victims should have a right to know when the animal who
attacked them is going to get out of jail. They shouldn't have to read about it
in the papers, or find out their assailant took tax-payer-financed computer
courses in prison and has just been hired as their boss.
And how about white collar criminals who bilk people out of their life savings
and are then given a slap on the wrist-sentenced to house arrest? The solution
is simple: Sentence them to house arrest in their victim's house. Trust me,
they'll be beggin' for prison.
As for paying restitution... Well, many criminals don't have any money. What
they do have is unlimited time and limited space. I think they should have to
spend their entire sentence pedaling a stationary bike in their cell that
generates electricity and sends it to the homes of their victims. Take a big
chunk out of those monthly utility bills.
And I can't believe that there is any argument against rules requiring
convicted child molesters to announce their presence in neighborhoods. Hey,
fuck that. I think they should have to wear bells on their shoes and a bright
yellow windbreaker that says, "I am a convicted child molester" on the back.
But I do have a solution that should make everybody happy: Let's force paroled
child molesters to live in the same neighborhoods where all the ACLU attorneys
live.
In the case of physical assault, the victim should have the right to choose his
assailant's cellmate. If done properly, this one easy step could serve the dual
purpose of making the victim feel empowered, and the criminal feel victimized.
Or, at the very least, sore.
In our increasingly vengeful society, guaranteeing crime victims their rights
is not just desirable. It's essential. It channels that need for vengeance away
from chaos and into socially acceptable expression. But if we continue to push
victims around, they may one day feel as if they have no choice but to take
back their rights in the only way they've seen work: by becoming defendants
themselves.
Yes, we are all innocent until proven guilty, but when a self-confessed monster
like Timothy McVeigh can stall his execution because of a few misplaced boxes
of documents that only show how much more guilty he is, we need to hustle his
ass up onto that gurney faster than the time it will take for his scumbag
lawyers to sign their upcoming book deal.
I endorse the execution of McVeigh. But every now and then I feel a pang of
guilt, thinking, "Could he suffer more?" In my fantasy, we get a Port-A-John
that's brimming with shit, lock him in it, and put the whole thing on a pickup
truck driving slowly cross-country on badly paved roads.
Some anti-death penalty advocates say that McVeigh's execution won't bring
closure to the survivors of the bombing. Maybe not, but it will bring closure
to McVeigh's eyes, and frankly, that's all I need right now.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Good to see you can actually laugh at death. Usually, talking about death and
dying makes people feel about as comfortable as Shaquille O'Neal flying coach.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but death is the price we pay for
life. Oh, by the way, I did see it much cheaper at Costco last weekend, so you
might want to shop around.
We have a lot of cute euphemisms for death: "croaked," "kicked the bucket,"
"bought the farm," "took a dirt nap," "met your maker," "cashed in your chips,"
"ordered-in from the dollar-an-item Mongolian Barbeque in the alley behind the
Gold-Chains-By-The-Inch stand downtown."
There is a school of thought, usually promulgated by the topaz-jewelry-wearing,
multiple-cat owning, ancient-Volvo-with-"Practice Random Kindness And Senseless
Acts Of Beauty"-bumpersticker-driving segment of our population, that says we
as a society need to remove the stigma from death and regard it as just another
part of life. These rainbow-and-unicorn simpletons ask, "Why do we insist on
portraying death as cruel?" Well, it's difficult to answer that question, but
if I had to hazard a guess, I would say, because it fucking kills us.
Other cultures, perhaps those with less material wealth but a far richer
spiritual heritage, embrace and celebrate death. But then, what do they have to
live for in the first place? Of course you're gonna have a big bash for Grandpa
Bo-ba-la, Bo-ba-la, Bo-ba-la[CLICK CLICK CLICK] when he goes, he doesn't have
to eat dingo shit off a flat rock anymore.
Another thing I don't get is when a society decides they need to keep the
remains of a beloved leader on display. That's great as long as they still
admire you, but look what happened to Vladimir Lenin. Now they've got him
standing up outside a Moscow restaurant, where parking valets pin car keys to
his face.
It's ironic that in our culture, everyone's biggest complaint is never having
enough time, yet nothing terrifies us more than the idea of eternity. In
America, we want to live forever, and a wide array of advanced cosmetic
surgeries now guarantees that at least certain parts of us will. In fact, an
increasing number of deceased bodies are now neither buried nor cremated, but
returned for a deposit. Experts say that over the past 20 years, there's been a
72-percent increase in the number of eulogies that end in the phrase "Nice
Rack."
Everyone who survives a near-death experience reports the same phenomenon, that
being a bright light. You know what that light is? It's the doctor, trying to
detect any brain function by shining a flashlight into your pupils, you
almost-dead clueless jagoff.
Now, the second worst way to die has to be in an airplane crash. The worst way,
of course, is choking to death on an apricot pit after waving off the only guy
offering you the Heimlich because he was too good-looking, and you were afraid
he'd stir something in you that's best left dormant.
Some people feel the need to have very bizarre funerals, trying to be the life
of the party even when they're dead by insisting that everyone wear a Hawaiian
shirt. These are the same assholes who get married on roller coasters. You
know, it's only a matter of time before some octogenarian prankster rigs his
body to pop up out of the casket like Big Mouth Billy Bass and sing, "Don't
Worry -- Be Happy".
And the cost of dying is unbelievable. Because just like in life, in death we
can't resist having the latest and best of everything. I mean, a casket with
Internet hook-up? Give me a break. When I go, stuff my ass full of candy and
toys and let some little Mexican kid whack me with a bat. I don't give a shit;
I'm dead.
At my funeral, I want to have a TV screen showing the end of "The Beverly
Hillbillies," where they're all waving goodbye, but they have my face digitally
superimposed over Granny's.
Einstein said energy can't be created or destroyed. I agree with that. I
believe there is a spark inside each and every one of us that lives forever.
When we die, I believe that energy leaves the body and floats towards some new
vessel. Now if we can just find a way to capture that spark before it finds its
new repository, we could keep California's power grid up and running for most
of the upcoming summer.
I urge you to view your inevitable demise not with grief or fear but with
acceptance and perhaps even hope. Your death is an end to sadness and pain.
Your death is a passage to a better world. Your death is a moment of
unification with the sacredness of eternity. My death, on the other hand?
Greatest fuckin' tragedy in the history of mankind.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
See? That's why we don't summer in Algeria any more: no right to protest.
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but, unlike in Algeria, the act of
civil disobedience is deeply woven into the fibers of our nation. From the
Boston Tea Party to the Beastie Boys' fight for your right to party, our
country has a proud history of civil disobedience.
It has been a part of American history ever since the aforementioned plucky
band of American colonists refused to pay a tax on tea, thereby paving the way
for a free, democratic nation that does not tax tea... except, of course, for a
local sales tax paid by the purchaser, an income tax paid by the seller, and
corporate taxes paid by the manufacturer... Civil disobedience is the greatest
engine for change the world has ever known.
However, all that today's so-called civil disobedient seems to be protesting is
boredom and guilt over having well-off parents, while killing time between Dave
Matthews concerts.
Throwing a chair through the window of Starbucks because you disapprove of
their treatment of coffee pickers in South America is juvenile. Throwing a
chair through the window of Starbucks because you asked for a grande latte
percent and they gave you a venti half-caf caramel macchiato, well, that?s just
basic common sense.
Do you know there are people who refuse to pay their federal income taxes
because they don't want their money going towards building weapons of mass
destruction? Now, while I applaud these citizens for their dedication to their
ideals and for having the courage to act on their personal conscience, I also
offer them one word of advice: move. It's a big world out there, Rainbow
McDolphin. If you don't feel like paying the cover charge at Club America, pack
up your Birkenstocks and find yourself another place to groove.
Many participate in acts of civil disobedience because it gives them an instant
community of like-minded brethren who keep them from having to spend their
evenings alone, perusing a three-year-old issue of "Mother Jones" magazine
under the flickering half-light of that cat-shit-powered lamp in their
hydroponic marijuana nursery, before crawling under their unbleached burlap
sheets for the unsatisfying solace of a non-gendered dildo carved out of a
cruelty-free handmade beeswax candle.
Give them this, though. Today's protesters are a lot more media-savvy than
their predecessors, striving to spend more time in front of the camera than a
lens cover. Sure, without a doubt, there are many people out there truly
sacrificing for a worthy cause. However, I opine that for every one of them,
there are many more who are in it for the publicity, the pussy or the buzz.
Come on: Al Sharpton on a hunger strike? Please. All he's doing is going on all
the diets he should have been on for the past 20 years, all at once.
I mean, look who's doing the protesting: garage band dropouts, the chronically
unemployed, limelight-whore politicians and B-list entertainers. People for
whom living up in the top of a tree for 3 years could only be considered a
lifestyle improvement.
Remember that girl in the redwood tree, huh? I think her name was Butterfly,
and she was living there to keep a timber company from cutting it down. She
stayed up in that tree for over a year through lightning storms and rain and
fires. And I have to say... I was inspired. So inspired, in fact, that about a
week after hearing about Butterfly, when the owner of a local shoe store
refused to give me a refund for what was obviously a defective pair of Ugg
Boots, well, I got a sleeping bag and some basic supplies and climbed up in the
green-striped canvas awning over the shoestore's front door. And I read a book,
took a nap, ate an olive-loaf sandwich, talked to some friends on my cell
phone... then an hour and a half later, climbed down and went home. I don't
think the shoe store owner ever even knew I was up there. But I knew it... and
a few people walking by knew it... and I... I just think sometimes you have to
take a nap in other people's awnings, that's all.
And a personal note to all the eco-zealots out there, inexplicably blocking the
roads to protest global warming: nobody loves this planet more than I do. I
live here, most of the time. But don't make me sit in traffic for six hours
because the only way Mother Earth will let you fuck her is if I stop using
hairspray, OK, Stinkbean?
You know, in 30 years, this country has gone from Vietnam protestors placing
rose petals down the barrels of National Guardsmen's rifles to tossing over
garbage cans and setting fire to police cars because we?re glad the Lakers won
the championship. I can't tell if we've grown soft or just lost our fucking
minds.
Ironically, nonviolent protest is at its most effective when it sparks the
authorities into violence, shaming them in the eyes of the world. So what I'm
saying is, if you're a cop, and some irate malcontent who's dressed up like a
sea-turtle is screaming in your face about globalization or multinational
corporations or whatever the latest codeword is for "my parents say I have to
be out of the house for at least four hours a day," well, pull out your billy
club and give him a good whack on that
so-many-piercings-you'd-think-it-was-a-fucking-tacklebox head of his. He'll be
getting exactly what he wants. And if not, well, at least I will.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You know, we have windmills here in California, but we use them for miniature
golf. Europeans seem to have little sympathy for our current energy woes. Hey,
who needs Europe, anyway. I always find it a little grating when Germany refers
to us as "power-hungry."
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the debate between
environmentalists and energy advocates in this country shows no sign of
abating, and as a matter of fact, is only getting more confusing. I mean,
you've got to love the philosophical clusterfuck that is a bicycle rack on a
Lincoln Navigator.
And this battle will no doubt be waged for years and years to come, largely
because it's fuelled by America's most plentiful natural resource:
narrow-minded self-righteous indignation.
The state of California is currently bearing the brunt of the energy crisis,
with rolling blackouts across the state affecting vital services like
hospitals, resulting in countless lopsided boob jobs. For the love of God, will
the horror never end???????
Our problem is, we don't have enough power plants in our state because with
every site allotted for one, someone finds a reason to stop it. Hey, you want
to block a power plant because it might interfere with a migratory path for
albino duck gerbils? I simply can't go along with that. We have to prioritize
and decide what's really important here, people. You want to see animals thrive
in their natural habitat? Go to the San Diego Zoo. I'm trying to microwave some
popcorn over here.
I mean, maybe I'm in the minority with this, but my ideal vision of the world
is where the only remaining species are somewhat literate human beings and
small, well-mannered Beagles wearing little top hats and bow ties.
Let's cut to the chase. The oil companies want to drill in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. But the environmentalists say it places in jeopardy a prime
breeding ground for Alaskan Caribou. Great, so now I have to pay four dollars a
gallon just so Donner and Blitzen can get their rocks off. I say we don't touch
the oil reserves and just invent a car that runs on endangered species. Yeah,
put a tiger in your tank. Literally.
If we are to maintain our position as a world power, we must dedicate ourselves
to finding acceptable alternatives to fossil fuels. Wind power and solar power
are clean, cheap, safe, renewable sources of energy, which, I believe, will be
widely utilized as soon as someone figures out how to establish a price-gouging
monopoly on them.
All kidding aside, I'm actually a big proponent of using alternative energy. As
a matter of fact, at this very moment, every single watt of electricity in my
home is being provided by an alternative energy source: a low-cost, underground
shunt-wire that my brother-in-law David has tapped into my next door neighbor's
fuse-box.
Now we're supposed to buy disposable diapers that are environmentally friendly,
diapers that break down more readily when placed in landfills. Hey, should
there ever come a time when I'm wearing a disposable diaper, fuck you, fuck the
planet, fuck everything.
As I've said, at my house, everyone is aware of the energy crisis, and we all
pitch in to do our part. For example, I never use the twin Boeing 747 engines I
bought to run my Dancing Waters Lagoon while running my Bumper Boats at the
same time. That just wouldn't be fair to others.
Another way I do my part is going down to the ride-share station in my
neighborhood and inviting a complete stranger to get inside my car, so we can
qualify for the carpool lane. It shaves about forty-five minutes off my
commute, and sometimes, if I'm lucky, the stranger will hold a gun to my head
and force me to blow him. You see? Saving the planet doesn't have to be all
drudgery!
You know, I may pretend not to care about what happens thousands of miles away
in a place I'll probably never see. But I know that all of life is deeply
interconnected and interdependent in a symbiotic, primal dance. That a
butterfly beating its wings in the African bush can dislodge a particle of dust
that makes a monkey sneeze, which startles a herd of gazelle into stampeding,
causing a rockslide down a hill which dams up a stream and floods it, creating
moisture which evaporates and cools the air, which rushes into the hot air
above it, becoming a cyclone, which whirls out to sea and joins up with other
storm clouds, forming an enormous raging squall that travels thousands of miles
across the ocean, disrupting electromagnetic fields and making my cell phone
cut out. Fuckin' butterflies.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Interestingly enough, "anxiety" comes from an old Greek word that means
"Dennis
Miller."
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but to me, anxiety makes sense. I
see it as a reasonable response to the frightening clusterfuck that is our
increasingly stressful world. The people who creep me out are the ones who
don't seem to be bothered by anything. My theory is that anybody who has it
completely together in times like these is either stupid, crazy or evil. I'm on
to you, Dr. Phil.
Mental health professionals believe that anxiety stems from not facing your
true emotional needs. That's why psychiatrists advise you to uncover those
hidden fears you dare not name-because then, and only then, can you can stop
being anxious and start being completely fucking insane, and that's where you
make the real money.
Over the last decade, pagers, cellphones and personal data assistants have
marionetted us into a Sysyphean existence where we are perpetually ten minutes
late for our next appointment. The only reason