This Alarming Man

Cruelest, yet funniest comment I've heard so far about Morrissey's onstage collapse:

"English blood, Irish heart, Taiwanese lungs."

Sigh.

This picture. It saddens me.

This was the guy in charge, right here. Khaki hat with silhouette of breed of pet dog. Black shorts with black socks. Eagle-emblazoned socks. Matching Crocs. Damn, that is one sharp-looking tourist.

These multiplicitous dots,

Bright small specks,

Have O such a space to fill.

Each warm red point

Inside my body

Is fooled into distance by all other points.

So saith Valery, the poet.

He was speaking of great distances,

Which in the body, I think,

Mimic those outside the body.

By as far as we fail to reach others,

So do we fail to reach ourselves.

People are not points,

But create them.

And we etch our lines from point to point

Like breathing constellations.

This Machine Schools Fascists

I said Got-DAMN! Senator Franken (D-MN) (yes, the guy the Republicans threw everything against, for increasingly apparent reasons) is on some kind of roll lately. Whatever this guy drinks for breakfast, I want some. Here he is absolutely destroying attorney Mark de Barnardo, who was defending Halliburton's sanction of the drugging and gang rape of one of their female employees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6kiZIlMFto

And then today, I found this-- it's Franken schooling some poor Hudson Institute shill, regarding bankruptcies caused by extreme medical expenses:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgqqSHr0wVA

About which all I can say is, it's a good thing she was sitting down. He's making Obama look awfully puny and conciliatory at this rate. Franken '12, I say.

Welp. I have just found the most unintentionally-hilarious painting of all time:

"Marcus Curtius" by Benjamin Robert Haydon

You can read more about this remarkable disaster of a man here:

"A Genius for Failure"

"To pass the time, I led the other airport patrons in a game of existential charades. This is like regular charades, except you attempt to convey vague philosophical concepts with your body instead of just simple nouns and verbs. I was particularly impressed by an older gentleman's portrayal of "nothingness," wherein he kept pointing into an empty thermos he was holding. A diapered two-year-old helped his mother characterize "existence before essence" by spontaneously reaching into his diaper to display its contents. As a finale, I did my impression of "absurd infinity" by lying on the floor, extending my arms and legs to form a figure eight, and bleating like a frightened sheep. Many of the patrons shouted out things such as "lunacy" and "madness," but none ever guessed correctly."

http://www.whiteshoe.org/archive/010423pilot.html

Eric Idle needs to stop.

I feel presumptuous, questioning the motives or actions of someone who is, without argument or equivocation, enshrined in the absolute comedy empyrean. The man, I hardly need to remind you, gave us "Wink wink, nudge nudge" as well as brave Sir Robin. And "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". If none of these have ever tickled your funny bone then you are pretty much a complete loser.

But for the love of Terry Gilliam's animated God, he needs to give it a rest. There's something depressing, something I find really disheartening, in Idle's relentless flogging of the Python mythos for various mass-media projects. I don't care if he relies on the reputation of his previous work-- holy Christ, is he ever entitled. But by continually churning it up, repackaging it, and presenting it in new (actually not-so-new) guises, he's watering down one of the things that made Python so incredibly... incredible.

After The Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python Tour, The Greedy Bastard Tour, Spamalot, and the Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy) cavalcade, not to mention Python getting its own Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor, it's all no longer even close to strange. It's certainly no longer surprising. (Well, obviously. That happens to all work, given time. But I think you get my point). The original motivation behind Python was an exasperated raspberry blown at the boring, repetitive structure of scene, setup, punchline, scene, setup, punchline. Not to mention the almost surreal levels of inanity in the British power and social structure. In a nutshell, it was supposed to be subversive, bizarre, flirting with inaccessible. All the writers of the show were determined to avoid the knee-jerk, catchphrase writing they had been exposed to growing up.

But now, well, look:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/theater/reviews/08python.html

Oh goody! "An Evening Without Monty Python"! Another chance to hear the same damn sketches over and over and over again, stripped of context and pigeonholed into the exact same fucking format they were trying to break in the first place. The reviewer seems to get the exact same sense of vague nausea that I do off the whole thing, citing Terry Jones: "The fact that Pythonesque is now a word in the Oxford English Dictionary shows the extent to which we failed."

I'm being hidebound and reactionary, I can tell. My nose is pointing up towards the ceiling. But look at Michael Palin. You wouldn't exactly imagine "An Evening With Michael Palin: He Does His Compere Impression For an Hour and a Half". Or the Spanish Inquisition Revue. Nope. He dropped the whole thing, worked on "Ripping Yarns" (well worth a look in its own right), and is now primarily known for his funny and engaging travelogues. Point is, he's doing his own thing. Terry Gilliam works on his ever-so-slightly unusual films. Graham Chapman died. All original, fresh moves. But Idle's still mining the same ore. At this rate, I sullenly (with the tinge of satisfaction everyone gets from being in dudgeon) predict the Meaning of Life off-Broadway show, musical, dance cycle, placemat, or home entertainment board game.