GIN AND TACOS

How deep into the barrel of things to cover/sample must we dig before modern hip-hop artists are forced to actually start writing their own songs?

Every 6 months, something new comes out and causes me to say "OK, it can't really get worse than this.

" Then a few months later, it gets worse. To wit: Trick Daddy's homage to the Talking Heads' "Sugar." I am convinced that this song is personally responsible for Jesus refusing to come back for another couple of years. He turned to God and said "Did you hear that fuckin' song, dad? I'm not going back. These people don't deserve to be saved."

Then came the Black Eyed Peas cover of "Misrilou." Well, let's just say every Black Eyed Peas song counts. Have they ever done anything that wasn't a cover? Are they even a real band or are they just a CGI-animated corporate logo created to endorse every product on Earth?

And now, we've reached endgame: Gnarls Barkley covering noted hip-hop icons and pioneers the Violent Femmes. If you have been staying up nights thinking that the world needs a sorta-rapped version of "Gone Daddy Gone," prepare to sleep easy.

In light of this aggressively awful monstrosity, I think ginandtacos needs to start a pool guessing the next unlikely song to be turned into a hip-hop smash. The Kingston Trio's "Sloop John B?
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" Or how about a little ABBA? "Fernando" perhaps? Or maybe we can delve into the catalog of the 70s horn bands.
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Chicago? I'm putting good money on a 50 Cent version of "If You Leave Me Now.

"

I kid, I kid. Everyone mentioned herein is a great musician, and I'm just jealous of their phenomenal talents.

I'm bored to death with far right-wing social conservatives turning out to be closet queers, wife beaters, drunks, pedophiles, or adulterers. It's so damn predictable. If you haven't quite figured it out yet, please realize one thing: anyone that far to the right is hiding something. Period.

So apparently Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, likes the gay hookers. And meth. It's nearly impossible for me to summon up the strength to mock him and point out the hypocrisy. Wow, another virulently anti-gay Jerry Falwell knockoff secretly likes the dick. Haven't we heard this before?

Tell me I've been bad

What the fuck is wrong with these people? It's like they can't get it up unless they think that whatever sex act they're about to consummate is going to condemn them to hell.

"Hey congregation! Gay marriage is a sick, perverse sin!" (*Oooh, I'm a dirty dog. Tell me I'm a bad boy….*)

"Be sure to vote Republican, folks!" (*Oooh, I'm a nasty liar…you better punish me, Mr. Gay Hooker*)

"Marriage is between a man and a woman! Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" (*Mmmmm, I love it when you make me lick your balls*)

Something tells me that in about 20 years, christian fundamentalism is going to be considered a fetish rather than a religion. It's obviously less an interpretation of the Bible than it is a precondition to its adherents getting hard.

About a month ago, someone asked me if there were any (living) comedians I actually like. For someone who is a comedian, said person was understandably confused by the fact that I apparently hate every comedian on Earth. David Cross? So fuckin' overrated, it hurts.

Dane Cook? Get me a rifle. Carlos Mencia? I've taken shits that made me laugh more. Lewis Black? Basically a decade-long version of Chris Farley's "van down by the river" character that struggled to stay funny for 3 minutes.

Basically, modern stand-up comedy is a group of people who are so f'n bad as a whole that anyone who's even halfway decent (Sarah Silverman, Cross, LouisCK, Eddie Griffin, Daniel Tosh) ends up being treated like the reincarnation of Lenny Bruce. Yes, they're funny. No, they're not anything special.

So I'm losing a lot of faith in stand-up. Mostly because I blow at it, but moreso because everyone else seems to blow at it too these days. For some strange reason, I've been getting most of my giggles out of people with bizarre and/or retarded comedy alter-ego characters. Sort of like Sacha Baron Cohen, only, you know, funny. What? FUCK YOU. No. He's not funny. Borat isn't funny – it's Yakov Smirnov with a big budget. Ali G isn't funny. And go watch "Talladega Nights" if you REALLY need proof of how piss-poor this man's comedic skills are.
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Just marvel at how everything on screen dies every time he opens his mouth. Amazing, really.

Anyway.

I love Hard Gay. Go ahead and take that last sentence out of context, please. Hard Gay (aka Masakai Sumitani) is the kind of ridiculous shit that Americans think of when we think of Japanese TV. I spent the better part of this past summer watching Hard Gay clips on YouTube. Whether he's using his skills to help out local businesses, reminding Japan of the importance of Father's Day, interacting uncomfortably with children, or engaging in Hard Gay Social Improvement, this man is just plain hilarious. Of course you also get the comedy bonus of awkward Engrish translation. The character is offensive and completely demeaning to gays. And funny.

On a completely different note, I'm almost as obsessed with Nardwuar lately. Canadian comedian and complete jackass John Ruskin (yes, his parents really named him John Ruskin) legally changed his name to Nardwuar the Human Serviette years ago – and when anyone calls him John, he points out (loudly) that no one calls Iggy Pop "James Osterberg.
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" Basically, this guy is really, REALLY annoying until you reach some tipping point at which you realize he's brilliant. He's an ambush interviewer who focuses on politicians and musicians. He's also intelligent as shit and likes to freak people out by asking them questions about obscure aspects of their past. He gets a lot of "how the fuck did you find out about that?

" looks. A lot. He also gets threatened with physical violence a lot. The best moments come when he interviews unsuspecting people who don't know whether to take him seriously or call the cops. His interview with Panic at the Disco is priceless.

What? You need a stand-up fix? Fine. Russell Peters. He'll be huge soon, I promise.

As of this morning, I have been alive for 28 years.
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Quite a miracle, when you stop to think about it.
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At the close of the 19th century, the global life expectancy for a male was 35 years. In ancient Rome and Greece, life expectancy was 28 years (so Jesus both died young and beat the odds by 5 years). Today, in the three lowest life expectancy nations of sub-Saharan Africa (Swaziland, Lesotho, and Botswana) the average male can expect 32 years on this Earth – compared to 81 in Japan or 77 in the US of A.

Furthermore, my status as a free man here in 'merica is equally remarkable.
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If you take the cohort of african-american males born in any given year and then check back on them in 28 years, 22% of them will be dead or incarcerated. For white males, the same figure is 4%. Thanks, entrenched social inequality!
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I could recount the extensive list of great people who accomplished great things and checked out before they turned 28, but suffice it to say that birthdays cease to be fun once you get out of college. Aside from the fact that you end up working on 5 out of every 7 birthdays after that point, it turns into a rather melancholy reminder that you're A) getting closer to dying and B) you haven't really accomplished anything. No one actually expects you to have done anything when you turn 19. But turning 28 – or 30, or 35, or 40 – and saying "Wow, I make minimum wage and can't really point to anything noteworthy I've done"….well, that's just not worth celebrating.

So here's to 28 years of me. One year closer to losing my hair. If nothing else, I'll celebrate by considering the fact that the national GOP is having to spend millions to protect House seats in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Idaho to be a birthday gift from the Lord. I'll consider the fact that I have to start teaching a 3-hour night class tonight (after my regular 75-minute lecture) to be….what's the opposite of a gift from the Lord?

Oh, right: a swift kick in the nads.

What do John Kerry, Evan Bayh, Marty Meehan, Frank Pallone, Bob Andrews, and Lloyd Doggett have in common?
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They're all 100% safe Democratic incumbents in Congress who are unopposed in 2006. They also have more than $2,000,000 in their campaign funds yet won't kick any of it out to the DNCC or highly competitive races elsewhere.

It's not like the Democratic Party is habitually outspent by the GOP, and it's not as if there are a bunch of competitive or open races going on right now. Heavens no. Evan Bayh certainly doesn't live in a state in which the two most expensive House races in the nation are taking place.
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Heavens no.

While Kerry and Bayh are hoarding their money for a 2008 Presidential run, the House members sitting on piles of cash right now have no excuses. None. And hoarding for a presidential run isn't exactly a good excuse. We'll remember this in a few years, guys.
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I'm guessing your fellow Democrats will too. Something tells me that Evan Bayh could afford to pony up half a million bucks for IN-8 and IN-9 and still have plenty of change.
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And every safe/unopposed/incumbent Democrat in both chambers could easily afford to pony up $500 apiece for ID-1 and WY-At Large. Will they?

Voter guides. God, how I love voter guides. They're the very best kind of comedy, and best of all they're free.

If you're not familiar, voter guides are "scorecards" put out by most major politically-active interest groups and non-profits. So, for example, the NRA will distribute guides to its members (and anyone else who's interested) in which incumbents and challengers are rated, either by letter grade or percentage.

Why are they so goddamn funny? Because the "ratings" are based on the select issues of interest to the organization issuing the ratings. And nothing more. So, for example, the NRA voter guide might give Mark Foley a 100% Super-Duper A++ because their ratings only count his votes on gun-related issues. How he votes on anything else (or who he tries to bang) is irrelevant to the NRA. Therein lies the potential for comedy.

To wit: Don Sherwood. If you're not familiar with Congressman Choker, in 2004 his mistress made a 911 call frantically asking for police to come to the hotel where she and Sherwood were screwing. Apparently Donnie saw fit to beat and choke his mistress for reasons known only to him. After attempting to deny that he and Ms. Cynthia Ore were anything but friends, he finally admitted a 5 year extra-marital affair with her.

Sounds pretty "anti-family" in the language of the GOP, doesn't it? Not according to James Dobson! In the eyes of Focus on the Family's Family Research Council, Don Sherwood gets an 85% rating and a strong recommendation. See, as long as the member in question votes appropriately on a small sample of abortion and gay marriage related issues, he or she is pro-family. Amazing, isn't it?

Closeted child molestor? Adulterer? Abuser? Alcoholic? It doesn't matter! Just vote against gay marriage (and for protecting the pledge of allegiance, which is apparently somehow relevant) and you're well on your way to being Offically Certified as Pro-Family. By no less of an authority than James Dobson!

And before you ask, they quickly took Mark Foley off their sheet last week. But fear not, archived copies of the guide reveal that he got a 42%. Not great, but ahead of over 200 Democrats – the overwhelming majority of whom got 0%.

In summary:

Now that the national Republican apparatus is starting to realize just how badly things are going to go in November they're attempting to set up a "firewall" in the Senate. That is, they've written off the House. It's already gone. But now they're contingency-planning for the unthinkable, which is losing the Senate as well. As ginandtacos predicted a few weeks ago, the possibility of a 50-50 Senate – or even a small Democratic majority – is very real.

So the GOP has decided to set up its firewall around three (OK, two.

More on that in a minute) Senate races to make sure that doesn't happen. States in which it was previously unthinkable that the GOP could lose now need to be saved, triage style, at any cost. Virginia, Tennessee, and Ohio used to be GOP slam-dunks. Now they're desperately trying to hold on.

That means that all pretense of fairness and decency are tossed out the window.
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Ginandtacos has highlighted how the language of the GOP has resorted to race-baiting, gay-bashing, and rural-urban division in the last few weeks. But it's failing in Ohio. Sherrod Brown has a big lead (as much as 9 to 12 points in recent polls) and that's being written off as a loss per Ken Mehlman's comments on Meet the Press last Sunday.

So they're really, really getting desperate in Virginia (where George "macaca" Allen is treading water) and Tennessee. So desperate, in fact, that they've decided to throw caution to the wind and engage in some blatant racist pandering in the Ford-Corker race.

Now, the ad in question is nowhere near as racist as, say Willie Horton or Helms-Gantt (the most despicable ad of my lifetime, hands down). But really, short of painting someone in blackface and showing them cashing a welfare check while eating watermelon, nothing could be more racist than Helms-Gantt.

Nevertheless, this RNC ad from Tennessee shouldn't feel too bad. It's still really racist! Top work, guys.

Can you believe there are still two more weeks in which this can get worse? I'm really afraid that by early November they'll be making ads that say "Look, if you don't vote Republican, negroes are going to rape your daughter and Jews are going to sacrifice your sons for their heathen blood rituals.

"

Ennoble your internet-instead-of-working time by devoting 8 minutes of your life to watching this.

The Iraqi Army – standing up so we can stand down!

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^(tm)

Freedom is on the march!^(tm)

We're winning!^(tm)

Cost: $6000
Composition: solid steel
Weight: ~400 pounds
Practicality: nil
Being able to do this: priceless

Why play a bass drum when you could be playing a bass drum that's audible from space?

I want you all to know that I had an opportunity to be in this man's video and I turned it down.
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Given that the only other person in the video is a talking hamburger puppet, it looks like everyone else turned down the opportunity too.