Jill V

There are almost no words for how beautiful this Tonight Show mashup is: NBC anchor Brian Williams and reporter Lester Holt are edited into Sugar Hill Gang’s classic “Rapper’s Delight.” We’ve seen similar compilations of news snippets, but this one’s seamless — each word is perfectly timed. The sound/video editors deserve Emmys for this. We simply can’t stop watching it. Also, Kathie Lee Gifford in the shortest cameo in video history.

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Nice pug, would abdicate throne for, A+

This is the stuff of Martin Scorsese movies, only without the inevitable stylized downfall. It’s been over five years since the following was published in Los Angeles City Beat, and I still think the cream of Cissie’s con was to run her operation wide open in the middle of a Hollywood then busy blaming the nation’s Drug Problem on ghetto pushers and slippin’ gangbangers. The period’s culture let her hide in plainest of sight, luck had little to do with how she operated, and she was long gone when the last hammer went down.

Cissie abides and I still hear from her now and then, What follows reminds us that while even the most charming rogues aren’t perfect, occasionally their crimes are.

The Last Resort

Who “Cissie” actually is is irrelevant to our story and how I came to know her none of your business. Who she was – the girlfriend, helpmeet and eventual business partner of the number two associate of a gentleman she calls “Don Manuel,” the still-living onetime North American representative of the Medellín drug cartel – well, that was something in the late ’70s. If you did a gram of coke in the L.A. basin in 1982, chances are it came to the country on Cissie’s small person, although she was a stranger to me until we met to share her story. Rest assured, our paths would’ve crossed sooner or later, given the dramatic way the town shrinks the longer you stay here.

Strikingly pretty in her early 50s, Cissie has faded tats, a trim figure and the thousand-yard stare of an unreconstructed rock ’n’ roll party baby, of which there are thousands in L.A. Many of these ladies eke out the odd ASCAP check and that’s pretty much her too, since one of her songs wound up in a classic Gen-X action movie. She lives quietly now in a midcity neighborhood probably best described as Koreacockwood, a vague precinct not exactly Hancock Park, only indifferently Koreatown, and Hollywood by tattered courtesy. At the foyer of her top floor apartment is a quasi-Santeria shrine, festooned with faded photos of people who’ve died, along with offerings.

Over the phone, Cissie is open, charming, plausible – and scarcely less so in person. Not that morality has much to do with what follows, but I find her commitment to who she was and loved to be the most compelling thing about her. Though my own career as drug outlaw has been on the consumption end and my taste for alkaloids close to nil, I’ve met her spiritual likeness on the sales end of pretty much everything saleable in America. As hospitality, she clips off a fat sativa bud and tosses it at me. I tamp it down, fire it up and pass it back.

I ask her why she is bothering to tell her story now, after all this time and in the middle of a different and worse era. “Believe me, my reasons aren’t all that deep” she drawls, stammering a little for the first time since I’ve known her (not long). “It’s time to tell it and, um, as long as everybody else is telling their story and getting on that train and getting paid. I got a damn good story to tell, and all my friends for years have urged me to tell it. The thing is, I can’t write! I sit down and try to and find I can’t. It’s not necessarily a role model story for women, but it’s a powerful one anyway.”

The Last Waltz

On the table is a pile of faded pictures, of 1970s people in a frozen series of long-ago goodtimes. “That’s me. Cute, huh?” she says, handing me an image of a sweet-faced, succulent blonde housewife, about eight months gone in virtuous pregnancy. “That was around 1979,” she drawls in flat upstate Michigan tones L.A. will never erode, biting off the words.

“I had about a million bucks taped to my belly. It was just before getting on an airplane. This guy,” she seems scattered, but her eyes lock eyes with mine, measuring me, “is the one who got me into it. His name was Danny, he was the one I told you about over the phone. He got me into the whole thing.” She holds aloft a photo of her with a hard-faced, soft-eyed tough guy in a Saturday Night Fever suit, a hairline up the scalp and a proto B-boy glare quite unfashionable back in the Bee Gees’s heyday. “His name was Danny and he was the old guy’s golden boy at the very start of the Medellín cartel. I was head-over-heels in love with him. He was a little prick and I hated him, too. He was just perfect!”

By 1978, Cissie was out of an all-girl Catholic high school and into a series of cover bands as a petite, blues-howling front, gigging for whatever small change was then available in southern Michigan. Vacationing in Fort Lauderdale with a girlfriend – two bikinied nymphets padding along Bahia Del Mar like those playboy sleuth Travis McGee would brood over in John D. McDonald’s novels – she met Danny in a restaurant bar one evening. “He was clever and funny and charming,” she smiles, still smitten at the memory. “And it was love at first sight. Danny saw himself as my Pygmalion. When I met him that night I was wearing jeans and suspenders; I was just beachy cute.” She squeals and holds up another bleached photo: “I still have the spandex pants he bought me!”

Another Kodak is fished from the pile, this one of an ornate cream-colored luxury car – “There’s my Gucci Cadillac!” she yells, flapping the photo around. “It was a present from him when I moved to Florida. It was from Bramon’s Cadillac in Miami and it was supposedly the first one ever made. Look at the inside. Gucci everywhere. The big “G” and the stripe. It came with a set of luggage and listed for about $22,000 back in 1978. I sold this car to my friend in Laguna, and then she sold it to some older lady there, so it might still be around. That would be funny.”

Cissie is shy of last names and resists using proper nouns like “Medellín” or “Pablo Escobar” in tape-recorded conversation, as well as being wary of causing “Danny’s” family grief. Her stories root her securely in the fattest part of the Florida cocaine boom of the late ’70s, as use of the powder began to spread out of show-biz and the demimonde and into the parties and bedrooms of the American middle classes. The Medellín cartel had already begun shooting cops within Colombia itself (including the 1976 murder of two agents who’d arrested cartel overlord Pablo Escobar) to anchor its base of operations, recruiting Colombians within the United States to wrest control of distribution from Cuban gangs dominating the trade. Danny, born in 1949 in Colombia and living in New York from 1968, waited tables and sold cars before turning a considerable talent as hustler to fueling the ever-bigger, ever-wilder party America was throwing in the late Vietnam years. He also saw something of himself in his new lover. “It was natural talent I had,” Cissie says bluntly. “You have to have some ability already, but he taught me. When we met, it was like looking in a mirror, spiritually, and we were soul mates.” She decided to stay in Florida.

“I married a friend of Danny’s brother and they paid me $7,000 to marry this guy, and I couldn’t turn it down,” she cackles. “We shook hands, had lunch and that was it. It was to get the guy his papers and I got paid to do this. This was ’78 and that was my first li’l ole job. I got paid to do this. Before that, it was tests, y’ know, like he was testing my loyalty. He’d come over to my place with his friends and cut up a whole bunch of cocaine in my living room, leaving me the mess to clean up. Little tests, which I passed.

“Eventually, I got him to front me one kilo and I was in business for myself.” The trips to California started soon after, with Cissie in friendly competition with Waldo, Danny’s other guy on the West Coast. Of course, there was little room for the wife in all this and Danny’s marriage ended when his wife found out about Cissie. “This was a coupla years after we met,” she remembers with rueful humor. “Raphael, one of Danny’s brothers, had a sister who was a snake, and she told her about me and the bitch keyed my Porsche. I was blonde and they were all dark, and I was hated by some for that. I saw what she done to my car, and she and I raced our Porsches down PCH, and I had a .38, the kind with no trigger that you have to cock, and I emptied it into her car. Then we had a ‘peace meeting’ – Danny, her and I – and she lifted up the table and threw me against a mirror, so obviously there was gonna be no peace. I don’t know how he thought he could arrange that. And the sister was arranging the whole thing just so she could fuck him!” she snorts, still marveling at the amount of duplicity in the world.

I ask an obvious question, and Cissie answers. “This was a real job,” Cissie insists – the topic is a comparison to Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Scarface. “I wasn’t anything like her. She did coke through the whole movie and never left the house. You didn’t see her crawling on her hands and knees through the Colombian jungle.”

“You did what?” I must look incredulous, because she adds sheepishly, “I had to get under a fence once, and we couldn’t get in otherwise. Little Miss Drama Queen overdramatizing everything.”

“These things happen to us all,” I muse. “What’s a little B&E among friends?”

“There was no moment when I said ‘yes’ to the life, because I was manipulating Danny toward letting me work anyway,” Cissie says, circling back to a prior subject, as we’ve done several times. “When he finally did, God, every fiber in my body was tingling because I’d led him that way, passed every test he gave me. I had family, finally. I came from a divorced family who pulled me this way and that in court, and I divided weeks between them. I was 11, and they tried to get me to make life-altering decisions. That kind of shit fucks you up. They were such a family and the men kissed each other! There was nothing like that in Michigan. I felt like I belonged, plus I was with little Mister Kingpin. He was a ‘favorite son’ in the organization. Then my own tree began to have people under it.”

Cissie talks in spurts again. “My mother loved it because I gave her money,” she says. “We had a party when I paid off her mortgage and I bought her a 7-Eleven franchise two blocks from her house. I took her to Saipan and in Honolulu on the way there I gave her $5,000 just for herself. She left her purse and somebody swiped the five grand. Boy, was I pissed and I wasn’t a pleasant girl back then. My mouth and tongue were really sharp. I must’ve said something bad to her and she cried, so I gave her another $5,000. Because I felt guilty.”

Cissie found L.A. a wide open and inexhaustible market for cocaine – “It retailed for up to $100 a gram in those days,” she recalls. “I could get $65,000 a kilo in L.A. You couldn’t get that kind of money for it in New York. You could buy it for $20 in Florida, but it was if we paid up front $8,000.” Soon, she was moving scores of kilos from her home base in Boca Raton, with drivers making relays from south Florida to L.A. “Wholesale, I only had five buyers I’d meet in L.A. They took about 15 keys each and they were all just your basic, normal white guys. One was a farmer up north and another was a guy who dealt in antique cars. Another was an older gentleman in Laguna and another a middle-aged surfer boy at Huntington. People no one would ever expect, like the Kevin Nealon guy in the show “Weeds.” None of them were hoods, all of them were normal in every way. We’d go to each other’s houses, visit each other’s children.”

Most of her crew were girlfriends. “A couple of them actually started off as housekeepers I got through Danny, and we became friends,” says Cissie. “The one who threw the kilo in my Jacuzzi came from my hometown. She was the girlfriend of Pio, one of my drivers, and she was over at my Costa Mesa house doing too much coke and thought she saw a murder up the street. She called my mother, and I heard about it and came over there, and found out she cut open a kilo and dumped it. At that time, they were worth $50,000. I found that out because the pool guy tested it. So she left after that. One time, I took 10 girls to Haiti on vacation, and there was a lot of jealousy – everybody was getting drunk and getting high. Drama becomes way excessive and vicious. The girl I paid to stay and watch the drugs robbed me three months later. Then Waldo, the guy who disappeared and they never found his body, well, his worker guy and my worker chick hooked up and burned me.”

What happened to Waldo? “Yeah, well, I found 21 kilos in his house. He was the one I originally held the kilos for myself when I first went into business out here. We were friends and competed who could sell the most after Danny set me up. His wife was a chick named Lynn [Armandt], who was the other woman in the Donna Rice scandal with Gary Hart. She was on the Monkey Business with Donna and told her story to Barbara Walters [and sold to the National Enquirer for $25,000 the infamous picture with the luckless senator’s arm around Ms. Rice]. She was married to Waldo to get his papers, but they practically lived together, and she really loved him, and she disappeared, and she came out here and she was the only one who knew the safe combination. And Danny and Mario and Eddie and the rest of ’em came out to Vegas about it, and they wanted to know what was going on, since there was 26 kilos involved. 72 hours passed before Lynn and I got to the safe, and found 21 keys in there and he’d taken five.

“Lynn was friends already with the girls in Florida and all these Pittsburgh ladies who were my girlfriends, like normal chicks,” she adds. “These I took into the business. Another family extension. Lynn later went on Barbara Walters. She was pretty hot. She had a bathing suit place at Turnberry, which was a hub for drugs. I used to see James Caan there all the time. Like that’s a big surprise!”

Of course, getting the product from Colombia was often trying. “Sometimes we’d use an oil tanker for bigger shipments,” Cissie narrates, her voice picking up speed and comic outrage. “It would stay in international waters in the Bahamas and the cigarette boats would go get it off the tanker. There were two captains on that ship – one of them an ex-general in Batista’s army and the other guy was some fishing boat captain from Key West and there was one motherfucking compass on the whole ship and it broke! They were out there six days and ran out of water and food, a 250,000 gallon tanker with 40,000 pounds of weed and about 1500 kilos of coke. Where the fuck are they? We found them off a Bahamian island, on their way from Barranquilla. We lost them for six days and didn’t get far. That was how dumb they all were. This kind of thing could happen 25 years ago. It was like being in another world.”

When in town, Cissie stayed in Beverly Hills. “The place on Roxbury was called the ‘butterfly’ apartment because of the butterfly wallpaper that was made of cloth,” she says, still a little bemused by her fortunes.

“I rented it for the parking space below it, which was where I parked my car with the hidden compartment that held 20 keys. I only had a few coke parties with friends there because the worst place in the world to do business would be Beverly Hills – nosy old neighbors. I could sleep there before driving back to Orange County. I also bought a condo on Thayer I lived in about a week. I also lived in Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach and a condo in Palm Springs I went to all of once, because I’m an idiot. I thought it was a trendy thing to buy!” She whoops with laughter. “It’s only money and now it’s all gone anyway! I loved Newport and Laguna and operated a lot out of there.”

This brought her a predictable level of social access. “It got me anywhere I wanted to go. I sold coke to everybody, record moguls, showbiz people, you name it. Whoever I hung out with. I was making a killing and laughing about it. I retailed only to record execs and movie stars. Of course, the very fact I was their coke dealer kept me from being introduced around. It was a case of too much information and I knew their secrets. I think that screwed some things up for me. I had some fabulous affairs with a few powerful men.” She speaks flatly: “That was fun.”

Back in Florida, she kept a house around the corner from Danny at the Boca Bath and Tennis club, and the ’80s were nearly half gone before Cissie began to think of getting out of the life. The death toll among her Columbian associates was beginning to climb, eventually to reach what she says was 80 percent. “Most of this happened in Colombia,” she recollects, and most were dead from a combination of boredom and simple machismo. “They’d rip each other off,” she remembers with cynical wonder. “Say you gave ’em $500,000 up front and say you can get the coke $4,000 a kilo. By the time it gets delivered, it’s up to eight. So you give ’em the half million and they’d have all kinds of coke, you know, try this and try that, but the stuff you paid ’em for isn’t here yet. That kind of stupid shit. Somebody’d say it was lost or stolen and people would get pissed. And they got killed because it all went to their head. They were invincible and could do anything. It was a game of whose penis is bigger and who can piss farthest. The paradox was you gotta have that kind of attitude or you wouldn’t be in this game in the first place.”

“In the Scorsese movies,” I interrupt, “one sees that attitude – the emotional problems of a tight-knit bunch of morons playing with guns and money. It was inherent in the business that people make ruinous mistakes and die.”

“Exactly! That’s it!” Cissie shouts. “The whole thing just imploded. There was enough for everybody, but they all wanted just a little bit more. The risk has to equal the reward and where’s the reward in that? They were risking ripping off somebody when they already have all the money they could ever spend in their lives. For what? The thrill of fucking somebody over.”

“Since machismo holds no charm,” I put in, “What was your payoff?

She is simple and blunt – “Money,” she sparkles, wriggling happily and grinning. “The smell of it. Oh, my god! I got to be a big shot! That one Billy Joel song is about me. It’s a powerful feeling and unbelievable. Especially at that age.”

The Last Days of Disco

By 1984, Cissie, worth $10 million a year to the Medellín cartel, had all the cash she ever thought she’d need and was looking to get out. She’d also caught Danny in one affair too many. “Oh, there was a breakup,” she snarls softly, “when I caught him in bed with a chick. It was I don’t-know-how-many times before that, but this was the last straw.” That was also the year she took her one and only bust.

“I was driving the last of some office stuff back to Boca Raton from Corona del Mar for a something I was going to open up,” she begins, gathering up an earlier conversational thread about a jackleg movie producer who eventually took her for half a million dollars. “Pio was driving a U-Haul truck and I had my big silver Impala that held 75 kilos, but was empty. We were entering the freeway at Tucumcari, New Mexico, and Pio got us pulled over for failure to signal long enough. I was like what-the-fuck?, and out steps the cop in his SWAT jumpsuit. They basically profiled Pio, because he had long hair and a mustache. I don’t know how they had the right but basically they searched everything down at the station and I had two ounces of weed they never even took because they were convinced they had Ma Barker after they took the car apart with an air-jack hammer and found the hidden compartments, and the safe from the office had $150,000 in cash, a .357 magnum and my vibrator. I got mouthy with them and I knew there was nothing there, and then they found a dirty coke grinder that was field-tested at 84% pure, which put it up into another category, and they decided to charge me with second-degree felony trafficking.

“They took the money and the IRS took half of it. I got a letter from them saying don’t try to take it back,” she relates, still incredulous. “Tucumcari took the other half, but they didn’t have shit except my money, so I never saw it again. I got booked, spent the night in jail, but we were never arraigned and it was dropped. The lawyer cost me $50,000. We saw a thing on 60 Minutes called ‘Cocaine Corridor’ soon after that that Tucumcari police had netted $500,000 in six months along the 10. The jail even had a color TV because the Colombians had bought it and left it for the prisoners!

“If my car had been full of cocaine we would not be having this discussion,” Cissie says flatly. “The fact that it happened after I decided to retire was enough to convince me to stay retired. My life would’ve been over if $2 million of cocaine was in that. I’d never see the light of day, plus I’d owe the Colombians. Thank God I didn’t hand over my passport because it had like a thousand stamps to Colombia on it!”

“Why did you leave all that?” I ask, knowing the answer already. “I hadn’t slept in five years,” Cissie marvels. “Zoom, fly, back-and-forth. Dollars, powder, green duffel bags full of shit. You lived it, you breathed it.”

“Yeah, but did you get to keep any of it?”

“Close to a million in cash,” she shoots back, “but I tried to save everything. I shoulda cut my losses and I mighta still had all that. Money went out and none came in. Eventually, I wound up sitting here. I didn’t manage it well at all. It was all gone by about ’90. The party was over. I went to New York, I came back here. I tried to live a normal life as a waitress, then I wanted to act. Neither worked out, but luckily I was still able to write songs. That’s how I kept going and I’m lucky enough to be paid for that. The ending of the story isn’t so good, because I go back to a normal life.”

By 1990, the money was gone, except for odds and ends like the brown paper bag crammed with $14,000 a maid found in a washing machine. “I pulled $100,000 out of a bank in Saipan and the bank collapsed,” she laughs. “I became a legend, apparently, because I took down a corrupt bank. Meanwhile, I’d lost a shitload of money! Again! Because it went into receivership, I kept getting small checks. That dribbled out a few years. I had houses, condos, shit like that to sell. The money I lost in Tucumcari was like a domino effect. I didn’t have Dean Witter or Merrill Lynch telling me to do anything, and if I did, I would’ve said, ‘Who are you to tell me anything?’”

Danny died in a shootout in Columbia in April 1991. “I hadn’t spoken to him in six months, but we were on friendly terms,” Cissie remembers, looking distant, “He had over 30 bullet holes in him. I went over to girls after that. Danny was a tough act for any man to follow.”

Looking around at Cissie’s apartment, stuffed with colorful Caribbean art and yowling with dogs and cats she’s rescued, I think of her man Danny’s long run in a difficult game, her own brisk and efficient sense of self-preservation and mumble an idle remark about her being too pragmatic to feel much survivor guilt.

“No!” she giggles, for a moment a teenager again. “I have guilt over out-surviving the money!”

The post How An Underemployed Michigan Rocker Chick Became The Cocaine Queen Of 1980s L.A. appeared first on Happy Nice Time People.

Are  you sitting down? OK, this will come as a surprise, but people in Utah are going to protest the gay marriage! Pick your jaw off the floor, because it’s true! It happens next Tuesday in Salt Lake City (you’re done being shocked at this point, right?), and features famous heterosexual Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage and Robert Oscar Lopez, who is a reallllly peculiar sort-of gay anti-gay activist (!?) who for some reason is not a Wonkette superstar (yet). But the best, best, BEST part of the rally is their suggestion that you “PLEASE WEAR PINK (OR RED) AND BLUE TO SUPPORT TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES”. Fun! It’s the closest these people will ever get to cosplay. But why not take this idea where it clearly wants to go? Click “Read More” to see just how much more fun and meaningful this rally could be.

Here’s the original version of the brochure, via Pony Pal Joe.My.God (it was later altered to the less-fun “to support Man/Woman marriage”):

Neat! I like the design! Let’s keep it going:

>

This is going to be the best opposite-marriage rally EVER!

Luv, Princess Sparkle Pony.

Previously in this series: How To Tell If You Are In A Noel Streatfield Novel.

1. You have one dream, and it is very small, and everyone around you wants to crush it.

2. Your grandest ambition is to open a small school with four chairs and three well-behaved students, and to someday own a vase with a flower in it, and perhaps to have a second dress.

3. You take that part about the second dress back; you dare not fly so close to the sun, lest Icarus-like, your wings are singed.

4. You have just been walking in the rain, and everyone who raised you is dead, and you are glad.

5. A beautiful and shallow woman that you hate is your best friend for reasons you cannot explain. The more she demands your respect and esteem, the more cruelly you withhold it, which drives her wild. She mocks your station in public; you criticize her morals in private. You suspect her of being Catholic. One night you share a bed and have a fever dream together. She marries a terrible man and sends you fat letters stuffed with passion and longing.

6. Someone compares you to a sparrow. Someone compares your best friend to a scarlet-breasted robin. Someone compares the man you secretly love to a hawk or a crow.

7. None of your pupils are interested in Latin. Your pupils are scatterbrained monsters.

8. You have an enemy who claims to love you. You are competent at embroidering, but not accomplished.

9. You draw horrifying shipwrecks and lightning-ruined oak trees in your spare time. You have never danced, not even once, not even in your dreams.

10. You never tell anyone anything.

11. Someone you have never met has died and left you 20 pounds; you are the richest woman in the world and no man is your master now. You quit your soul-crushing job and move into a cottage. The cottage has whitewashed walls and a small chair for you to sit in; you have never dreamed of so much happiness.

12. You went to France once. You didn’t think much of it.

13. Something has been forbidden to you.

14. You know a man with easily excitable features and very dark whiskers. The two of you argue frequently over points of theology and may very well be in love. He handed you a flower once, and you have never forgotten it.

15. You have a terrible violence in your heart.

Read more How To Tell If You Are In A Brontë Novel at The Toast.

Netflix Instant has thousands of great movies available to watch, but due to contracts with studios, sometimes they are only available for a limited time. On January 1, a ton of movies will be coming off the streaming service.

If you were planning on watching Miller’s Crossing, Do the Right Thing, Braveheart or any of a few dozen others, you better do so soon. You can check out the full list below.

Thanks to Vulture for the heads up. They also mention these might not all disappear forever, but come January 1, they will be gone for at least some time.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Do the Right Thing
Can’t Hardly Wait
Miller’s Crossing
Being John Malkovich
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
Half-Baked
Titanic
Braveheart
Requiem for a Dream
Dark Shadows (TV series-all seasons)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
The Long Goodbye
The Kids in the Hall (all seasons)
War Games
The Young Girls of Rochefort
We Were Soldiers
Top Gun
Serpico
Capote
Born on the Fourth of July
The Secret of Nimh
Roman Holiday
Platoon
Brick
Session 9
Intolerable Cruelty
Foxy Brown
Flashdance
Dressed to Kill
Heaven’s Gate
Man on the Moon
As Good as It Gets
What Dreams May Come
Desperado
Body of Evidence
In the Name of the Father
Gallipoli
The Faculty
True Grit (John Wayne version)
Biloxi Blues
50 First Dates
Elizabethtown
Species
Species II
Saturday Night Live: The 2000s (available until 12/31)
Inside Deep Throat
Jarhead
The Great Train Robbery
The Andromeda Strain
Far From Heaven
The Mask of Zorro
The Odd Couple
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
Not Without My Daughter
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
I’m Gonna Git You Sucka
For the Love of the Game
In Like Flint
Romeo and Juliet (1968 version)
Jude
Seed of Chucky
Hard Target
Scary Movie
The Skulls
Tales From The Crypt: Bordello Of Blood
Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight
Rob Roy
Remo Williams
Street Fighter
Back to School
Ned Kelly
High Art
World Trade Center
Windtalkers
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
Troll 2
Pumpkinhead
The Woman in Red
October Sky
The Russia House
War and Peace
An Inconvenient Truth
A Shot in the Dark
Of Mice and Men
Cold Comfort Farm
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
Talk Radio
F/X 2
1492: Conquest of Paradise

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We open in a fucking airport. A fucking AIRPORT!!! Of course Love Actually, the apex of cynically vacant faux-motional cash-grab garbage cinema would hang its BIG METAPHOR on the bleak, empathy-stripped cathedral of turgid bureaucracy known as "the airport." Of course. And then, of course, Hugh Grant's voice pipes in to tell us how inspiring and magical the airport is, because when you're at the airport you can't help but notice that "love actually IS all around." THE FUCKING AIRPORT!!!!!

Read more...

(YouTube link)

There are plenty of Yule log videos on the internet, so people who don't have a fireplace can have something comforting to stare at while enjoying the holidays with family and friends. Lil Bub instantly improves upon all those videos by sitting in front of the warm fire and purring. For an hour. Send this video to someone you love. -via Laughing Squid

Madrone owner Michael “Spike” Krouse is at it again. This time, however, it’s in the form of a little bit of neighborhood philanthropy. In between buying Pop’s in the Mission, raising money for an employee in need and just being an all around Divis heavy-hitter, Spike found the time to help raise money for The Creative Arts Charter School by hosting his newest show entitled Great Art Starts Here. The show features 366 self-portraits, all made by students at CACS, two of whom are Spike’s own children. In fact, every student at the school made one, including the Kindergartners. Here’s the kicker: He took the artist’s stipend he usually provides to professionals doing installations at his bar/gallery and donated it all to the school. He then went one step further by putting a snazzy, see-through donation box up on the wall and I hope that the next time you find your low-life self getting tanked over there you toss a buck or two in, ya know, for the kids.

According to Spike, there were many reasons behind putting this show together. Predominantly, he wanted to give back something back to the school and the community while allowing kids to explore their own creativity at an early age. Spike told me that what makes the art these kids create so cool is how free and honest they are in what they do. Furthermore, allowing an outlet like this for them to display their art at such an early age helps build confidence in any endeavor they might tackle in the future. During the daytime—when the bar was closed—at the at the Divisadero Art Walk, Spike invited kids and parents to admire their display. Later, he had a nighttime reception as a way to build community amongst parents at CACS. In addition to all of these benefits, the show ultimately helps raise awareness about the school itself—which is very cool and located over on Turk and Pierce. All in all, I’d say the show brings nothing but positivity to the neighborhood and I applaud Madrone for throwing some of these whippersnapper’s pieces up on a wall. But enough of all this. Let’s check out some of the goods.

Personally, I’m a fan of the younger artists since its always super-conceptual (even though they don’t really have a say in that). The cyclops decision was no doubt an aesthetic risk, but I think she pulls it off.

I think the colors on this one are the real stars of the show. It’s also informative: This child likes to jumprope.

Clearly created by an relatively older fellow, the stoic expression on this kid is something he will try to recreate in his figure studies at RISDI many years down the line. Right now, it just comes to him naturally.

This person means business.

Did someone say chiaroscuro? It took me a second to really appreciate this one. It’s freaky, in a good way. This kid knows what a light source is all about.

Personal favorite.  He’s like a young Keith Herring.

GREAT ART STARTS HERE will run at Madrone until February 15th. Go check it out, and make sure you throw a couple bucks in the donation box.

Madrone Art Bar

500 Divisadero Street

(415) 241-0202

-Stephen Jackson

This Sunday is National Haiku Poetry Day, so I thought I'd share a few of my illustrated favorites:

Soft blue and brown swirls
somehow incomplete without
a beheaded deer.

Soft evening breezes
Radioactive tampons
Lighting my undies

Just clowning around
What a way to be headed
Coulrophobia

She drives me crazy
Like no one else (ooh. ooh.)
Someone check the oil.

Waves of well wishes
A sea of celebration
Happy...Stan? You ok?

Thanks to Grace R., Maria A., Kristina K., Samantha T., & Fay K., who know that haikus are easy, but sometimes they don't make sense.

Refrigerator.

Welcome to “Rum and Rom-Coms”. Basically what this is, is I watch a romantic comedy and get drunk while doing so. At the end, I give the film a rating according to how drunk I had to get in order to finish watching it. The higher the number, the worse the movie is. As always, feel free to view as a multi-pager or as a single page.

You guys, I know, it’s been awhile. For some reason I decided to cut back on my drinking for a few weeks, thinking that would somehow detox my sad excuse of a body and change my sad excuse of a life for the better. Not trying to promote alcoholism here, but I have to say that at least when I was frequently drinking I’d find it easier to wake up in the morning (to puke), which would basically force me to get my day started. I’d also have far more regular shits. Anyways, it’s the holiday season and since Christmas is coming up I figure I’d try and find a horrible Christmas-y rom-com. It has to be a Christmas one since Hanukkah or Kwanzaa ones don’t seem to exist (don’t give me that Adam Sandler “Eight Crazy Nights” bullshit).

In case you didn’t know, I am a Jew who has never celebrated Christmas. The last name Stevenson really masks how Jewish my upbringing was. That’s all thanks to my dad, who is a Gentile (or as mom lovingly called him, “a mistake”). When he suggested getting a Christmas tree one year my meshuggah mother kicked him out of the house and filed for divorce. Alright obviously I’m exaggerating, but she did give a very stern “Hell no”, and they did end up getting a divorce. Ha, good times.

To sum up, my experience with Christmas has been solely through what I’ve seen on television and in film. Overall, shit seems pretty lame. I think the only Christmas movies I really like are “Home Alone”, “Jingle All the Way”, and “Love Actually”. I really didn’t want to like “Love Actually” but my vagina wouldn’t have it any other way.

Perusing through Netflix, I find a movie called “A Holiday Engagement”. I think the poster looks like that movie with Sarah Jessica Parker where she visits her fiance’s family for Christmas and they all hate her because she’s Sarah Jessica Parker. However, now that I’m reading the synopsis I know it’s definitely not that movie. It reads: “Hillary’s plan to hire a good-looking guy to act as her boyfriend backfires when she brings him home for the holidays to try and fool her family. The joke ends up being on her when the fauxmance invites real complications.”

Fauxmance? Well, of course this is going to be good. This sounds like that movie with Debra Messing where she hires someone to be her boyfriend or something? But, the cast list here has no Debra Messing. Rather it has Bonnie Somerville (???) and Shelley Long. Yup, this has TV Movie written all over it, so I know I have break out the good stuff: Jim Beam.

I’ve got a full glass of whiskey with ice, and a second cup of vanilla flavored coconut milk. It’s the only sweet beverage I currently have. I know the two will not mix well. Rather, I shall drink them side by side. Actually, I decided to take two shots of whiskey just now and chased them both with coconut milk. This feels fauxhealthy.

The movie is starting. It was made in 2011. That’s not so long ago, yet Hillary (our protag) is waking up to a radio alarm clock. Do people really still do that? There are a lot of things I am willing to suspend my disbelief with, but a radio alarm clock in 2011? Come on. This Bonnie Sommerville lady looks like Reese Witherspoon if Reese Witherspoon was a puppy. Okay that whiskey hit me kind of fast. Wow, now we’re supposed to believe she really won some radio contest. She’s calling into a radio station like this is the ’90s or some shit. Turns out, she is just in the running to win a trip for two to Mexico. Her boyfriend is calling on the other line, and we see him in an expensive red sports car type thing. Douche alert!

So she’s excited and telling him about the potential trip to Mexico and he’s all like, “Mexico? Hillary, we have palm trees and sand here.” That’s all Mexico has to offer I guess. It’s quickly established that this guy is a stuffy corporate type (douche) who hates Mexicans. Now he’s trying to bail on spending Thanksgiving with her family.

Hillary is giddy and happy. The total opposite of this tightwad, Jason. She loves life and he loves money. She loves trips to Mexico and he loves business. How did these two even hook up? Well opposites attract, according to every romantic comedy in existence.

Now the scene cuts to her and her more fun-loving, but less attractive best friend. She’s holding a camera, and the two of them are walking around town trying to find a story. Of course she’s a reporter. There are only three or four jobs women have in these movies. If they live in suburban towns they’re either teachers, nurses, or work in a bakery. If they live in cities they either do something in advertising, or are magazine columnists, reporters, or pastry chefs.

So she gets a call that her newspaper shut down as she is interviewing some guy dressed up in a cell phone costume. I am pretty sure this guy is our lead (the fauxman in the fauxmance). He says he’s an actor then they talk about how print is dead. Print is dead but radio is alive and well, apparently.

Now she’s at dinner with her shithead boyfriend complaining about losing her job. He’s all like, big deal you don’t need to work, and she’s talking about her very important piece on adopting dogs and cats. “We saved hundreds of animals from being euthanized.” Yeah who else is going to write about cats if she doesn’t? Was Buzzfeed around in 2011? Anyways, he wants them to move to Pittsburgh for a big fancy lawyer promotion. She doesn’t want to, but he’s pretty much saying, I AM MAN DO WHAT I SAY.

So now she’s back at home contemplating her tragic upper-class white woman problems. As it turns out, they’re engaged but don’t live together. What is this, the ’50s?

Okay what the hell kind of text messaging is this with pictures of their faces showing? Don’t even show text messages if it’s going to look like a sixth grader learning Photoshop for the first time. This movie is so bad already I don’t know how I am going to get through this.

It’s the next day and Jason is dumping Hillary for being hesitant about becoming his property. Well sorry buddy, but sometimes women want to have their own thoughts, and feelings, and dreams, and pursuits. I am so thankful that I’m not engaged to a rich lawyer. I’m thankful I’m not even dating a rich lawyer. Heck, I’m thankful I’m not dating anyone at all! I need more whiskey.

Jason literally just said, “I can’t be with a girl who’s out saving dogs and cats and god knows what else!” Yeah what do you think you’re doing with all this saving bullshit, Hillary? What’s next, saving PEOPLE? Have you no decency?

She’s back at home now crying to her best friend as the radio plays in the background. Listening to the radio at home? WHAT YEAR IS THIS I’M SO CONFUSED. Oh, turns out she won that holiday vacation in Mexico. She’s not even happy about this win. Who’s she going to go with? Her friend? Hell no. Mexico is for lovers.

She’s complaining now about how she can’t face her family and tell them this horrible news. She’s going on some rant about how all her sisters have perfect men and she doesn’t blah blah blah.

Oh, but wait! Tricky best gal-pal comes up with a brilliant idea to post an ad for a fake fiance. Let the games begin. Hillary breaks down, and decides to go through with it after hearing her mother leave a long voicemail about how excited she is for Hillary to finally have a man in her life blah blah blah.

It now cuts to her making a video. Ever heard of Craigslist? Why the Hell would you need to make a video for this, just write a paragraph and offer money like any sane person hiring a fake fiance would. This video is being uploaded to some kind of website that is not at all explained. It’s called Ultimate.com and looks like it was made by the same sixth grader who designed the text message graphics. I guess it’s some sort of dating site? Who does video messages on a dating site? What kind of dumb shit is this? Of course there’s a montage of all the creepy and wacky dudes responding to her video. Every rom-com needs a montage. That’s rom-com rule number one. Rule number two is, “make Alison want to kill herself”.

Wow these guys are so crazy. One guy likes to surf, and is really dumb. No way can she bring that guy home to mom! Now this one openly admits to having IBS. That’s Irritable Bowel Syndrome in case you didn’t know. Gross! This guy is a double no way! Ha, they saved the funniest for last. There’s a guy on the run from the police who needs to go to Mexico ASAP. He even asks if she can get him a fake passport. LOL. Man, good stuff! But, as funny as that all was, our Hillary is still left with no fake fiance.

No wait, one last guy pops up and he seems to be normal. Why, if it isn’t David, the cellphone guy from earlier. He fits the bill perfectly.

Okay I’m already too bored with this crap and need to be way more drunk. I’m pouring myself another glass of whiskey. I think this counts as my fourth since I took two shots, and finished my first glass already. I’m barely twenty minutes into this damn movie.

They meet up, and do a background check on this David guy. If he pulls off this ruse with her, she’ll give him the trip to Mexico that she won. He’s clean. Turns out he’s just some loser whose only Internet presence is a bunch of Flickr pictures of him with his ex-girlfriend in Mexico. Whoa, what a coincidence!

They do the drive to mom’s house, and when they arrive mom surprises them with a big engagement party. Can you say awkward? Sidenote: I can’t believe that’s Shelley Long. She is barely recognizable. Even her voice sounds different. Since when did she get so old? I just saw her guest star on an episode of “Frasier” that aired over twenty years ago and she looked great.

The party is lame, and David has to pretend to be all lawyer-y. He also has to make up a story about why Hillary is not wearing her engagement ring. There’s also a boring podiatrist that is supposed to be funny because he likes feet and all he talks about is feet.

I don’t get why so many of these movies make certain types of doctors obsessive nerds about their profession. If they’re a family doctor, or surgeon they’re usually a “great catch”– completely outgoing, well-adjusted, and fun to talk to. However, if they’re something like a dentist or podiatrist, then they’re a lame nerd ripe for getting dumped or made fun of. All these “dorky” doctors talk about is that body part they specialize in. What I’ve never seen is a gynecologist obsessed with vaginas. That might actually be funny.

I really don’t know why I’m sucking up to the podiatrist community so hard right now, but if any podiatrists need help in their fight to change the way they’re represented in the media let me know. I will carry a spear for you.

Shelley Long is basically this uptight mom who needs her daughters to be perfect. The only way for a woman to be perfect is to be married to a rich guy and make babies. Hillary is at least trying to establish some sort of independence and saying that it’s the 21^st century. …The kind of 21^st century where radio is king and 30-year-old women still care what their parents think.

Now mom is all like I have to plan this wedding and is hardcore guilt-tripping Hillary into letting her plan it.

Gah, we are in epic conundrum mode. Hillary’s mom doesn’t know that there’s no real wedding happening, but Hillary can’t tell her mom that because she’s mom-whipped. Being under the extreme pressure she’s in, she blurts out that she’s getting married in a month. Yikes! More complications are sure to arise from this!

Hillary’s father wants to fry the Thanksgiving turkey, but it explodes so now they have to have Thanksgiving at a Mexican restaurant. How quirky and unconventional.

More whiskey time. I think every rom-com should just be called, “When Boring People Find Each Other”. I’m not really paying attention to the movie so much. Chugging this Jim Beam is a lot more important.

Also, some guy just sent me an OkCupid message, it reads: “Hey, I’m just curious but are you interested in friends with benefits? :) No harm in asking, I’m just being honest! Let me know what you think and we can start talking.”

As much as I love it when a guy is “just being honest”, I think I’ll have to decline this generous offer. Upon looking at his profile I have concluded that we should just be friends with no benefits. The kind of friends that never interact with one another and don’t even know each others names. Pretty much the kind of friendship I had with everyone during middle school.

I guess I should get back to the movie. Hillary and this David character are bonding over their shared love of print media. David says, “I just want to hold something”. Oh you two and your love of holding things. Just give in to this red hot lust and have some boring sex already.

Now they’re in the process of planning the fake wedding. David, Hillary, and mom go wedding dress shopping. I guess this is supposed to be a funny scene where some crazed single woman who isn’t even getting married wants the same wedding dress as Hillary. David fights the single girl for the dress, and Hillary is now even closer to falling in love with him.

God, this movie is so boring. I didn’t think anything could be worse than “Pizza My Heart”, but this is definitely worse. I’m trying to pay attention but pretty much anything that isn’t this movie is more interesting to me right now. For instance, did you know that there’s a small bug stuck inside the ice of my whiskey drink? No, there’s no way you could know that you’re reading this days after I write this. By then I will have ingested the bug and it will have been totally worth it as long as I got to keep drinking this whiskey.

Hillary’s mom brought a priest to the home to talk to the fauxcouple and we find out that David is a Jew. Whoa! What a surprising twist. She wants him to get baptized so they can get married at her mom’s favorite church. Now they’re having some fight where David is reminding Hillary that they’re not really getting married, and Hillary realizes she was being crazy. Women, right? All we want is a goddamn wedding, real or not!

Pause. I’ve taken one more shot. I’m almost out of Jim Beam. This movie better be over soon.

I don’t know if I’m the odd woman out here, but I have never thought about my future wedding. I’ve mostly thought about never having one, and when I try to picture myself getting married all I get is flashbacks of me crying at my Bat-Mitzvah.

Well, Hillary tells David he should leave and she gives him the tickets to Mexico. David wants the tickets so he can reunite with his ex-girlfriend there and maybe they’ll be in love again. He leaves, and now there’s a subplot where Hillary’s sister is seen with a man that isn’t her podiatrist fiance. Turns out she’s in love with this man who is a waiter, and not with the foot-obsessed podiatrist freak. Oh, but mom wanted her to be engaged to a podiatrist so this grown woman caved in to her mother’s pressure! God, what kind of family is this?

The next morning David comes back (yay), and now him and Hillary kiss. Oh my, it’s such a magical kiss. They’re in love now, that one kiss made them realize it.

So it cuts to them at the piano. Both are singing a Christmas song called “Gloria”, which happens to be Hillary’s favorite Christmas song. Okay wait, what Jew knows the lyrics to “Gloria”? That’s not even a top 40 Christmas song. I have never heard this song before in my life. I doubt that’s even a Christmas song a Jew wrote. Should have gone with “White Christmas” or “Let it Snow”.

Wow okay we got some big “tell” action going on here. Hillary’s dad said that Hillary loves to sing, but never sings in public. But, now she’s doing it here with David. Yes, this is definitely love.

Drama alert: The real fiance, Jason, just showed up! Everything is found out. What a mess! Jason wants to get back together with Hillary because he didn’t get the promotion. Now mom tells David to buzz off so he doesn’t ruin her chances with the shitty lawyer, and he’s confronting mom about how badly Hillary wants to impress her. He’s giving her that “she did all this for you” crap. He’s even pulling the, “have you ever even read one of her articles?” line.

Hillary, some words of wisdom from me to you: just be a disappointment. I learned this one weird trick at a young age. At this point, my mom just needs me to give her a grandchild before I’m 40. That’s a lot more doable than marrying an Israeli doctor and having six kids. See what I’m saying?

Well, mom is beginning to realize that she’s been a complete bitch. She reads Hillary’s article about saving dogs or whatever. What the Hell is the name of this paper? The “Park Post Herald”? Can you have “Post” and “Herald” in the same name for a publication? Anyways, mom reads it and it is dawning on her that her daughter is a talented writer. Jesus, how great can an article about adopting a pet be?

So David leaves, and Hillary is reunited with Jason. Of course he’s still a shithead, so she’s determined to get David back. She runs after him, and they declare their love for one another. Cool. Great.

Yup, so now they’re married. They got married, after knowing each other for maybe one month. Yeah man, love. It does that shit. Wow, what a powerful movie. Really good stuff.

Okay, not all the whiskey in the world could make me enjoy this movie. Boring characters, shitty plot, and podiatrist discrimination. That’s the perfect recipe for a crap film. Not only that, but there wasn’t that much Christmas-y stuff going on. The movie poster had a wreath on it, and they even sang a Christmas carol, but the majority of the film took place during Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s because I’m extremely drunk, but I have never been more mad at a movie in my life.

So in total I had three shots of whiskey, two whiskey drinks with coconut milk on the side, and am extremely drunk right now. My tolerance isn’t as high as it was about a month ago, so my head has got some spinny action going and my teeth hurt. Is that a side effect of drinking too much? I need to go to bed and possibly drunk text about thirty different people. Actually first I need to eat a lot of bread and peanut butter.

On the drunk scale, “A Holiday Engagement” gets a prestigious 10/10. I almost gave up on watching it, and drank all the whiskey I had. If you’re not familiar with how the scale works, the higher the number the worse the movie is. If I had to get black-out drunk to watch it, it’s a big turd. Okay, that’s it from me.

–

Alison Stevenson is a writer and stand-up comedian based in Los Angeles. Aside from Filmdrunk, she also writes for VICE and has contributed to Death + Taxes, Heeb, Oyster, and more. Her comedy has been featured on Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, and Splitsider. You can read more about her on her website, http://nodancing.tumblr.com

Sure, Las Vegas gets the over-the-top glitz like Cher, and legit stars (we will fight you if you disagree) Bette Midler and the Spectacular Spectacular that is Elton John’s piano outfitted with 68 LED screens ON THE PIANO, PEOPLE, but New York, you are going to get pugnacious angerbear Billy Joel playing at Madison Square Garden for the foreseeable future. Get excited!

In an unprecedented move, Billy Joel announced at a New York press conference this afternoon that he will play Madison Square Garden once a month for the indefinite future. “Playing Madison Square Garden is an experience that never gets old,” Joel said. “A show a month at the Garden for as long as there’s demand means more opportunities to connect with music fans and provides a unique and memorable show every time we play here.”

Yes, the man that launched 1,000,000 nights of bros closing down the bars by drunkenly singing “Piano Man” will now allow you the opportunity to drunkenly sing “Piano Man” with 18,000 of your closest aging baby boomer friends. Billy Joel can regale you all with tales of how yes he has gotten in oodles of accidents and then gone to rehab but those are two totally separate things you guys. He can pick fights with audience members! He can blind you with that giant shiny head of his!

Get over to Madison Square Garden, people, because you’re only going to have an indefinite number of chances to see Billy Joel before one or both of you dies. HURRY.

[Rolling Stone]

The post New Yorkers, You Will Never Escape The Boomer Scourge That Is Billy Joel appeared first on Happy Nice Time People.

A couple of comics about Edward, the Black Prince. I love that a man who was brutal in many ways was celebrated as "the Flower of English Chivalry" even into the 1900s. That's from a towering statue in Leeds, where I am headed for this year's Thought Bubble Festival! Love Leeds, love Thought Bubble, love the Black Prince, love his statue. I admit that last year I was proud of myself for identifying the figure from afar - it's all that bullet shaped armour around his head (amiright), a style we all wish would come back.

Also, glory be! New shirts! I am so glad to be stocking the store with new things. The Venus one is not in yet, but coming, but head on over to check out the rest. Deck yourselves in them, deck your friends, deck whoever! Just click the link:

For at least a year now, I’ve been saying that we’re in the middle of a Matthew McConaughey renaissance, an epoch that those more cleverer than me have since dubbed, “The McConnaughssance.” After he was robbed of his two rightful Oscars for Magic Mike (supporting actor and best song), he went on to earn rightful acclaim in Killer Joe, Mud, Dallas Buyers Club, and has roles in the upcoming Wolf of Wall Street, the awesome-looking HBO series True Detective, and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Our favorite shirtless Whole Foods shopper is in the midst of one the all-time hottest hot streaks, and today Yahoo Movies is celebrating it with this new infographic/Venn diagram that ranks every McConaughey role according to key factors such as:

• Idealism
• Acclaim
• Shirtlessness
• Hustle

Glorious.

And while he may often appear shirtless, it’s important to remember that he often wears a special talisman (shark tooth necklace) that gives him +100 bongo powers.

I love that McConaughey’s best roles are the ones that feel like they just followed Matthew McConaughey around for a while. I love that he got his first role by talking up the Dazed and Confused casting director at a bar and booked his second during one of his first auditions, simply by showing up in a 7/11 hat and looking like a baseball player (it was for Angels in the Outfield). His life seems to be one long story of things working out fine, like borrowing a sweatshirt from a guy in Whole Foods and just running into him at a party six months later. I don’t know if the things-working-out-fine came before the chill attitude or if it was just the law of attraction, but either way, who wouldn’t want to hang out with a guy like that? Did I mention he has a brother named “Rooster” and a nephew named “Miller Lyte?” Goddammit, Matthew McConaughey should have his face on Mount Rushmore because that man is the American Dream.

[great job, YahooMovies]

If you are a person of a Certain Age, you cut your teeth on watching Mary Tyler Moore rock a newsroom but then you grew up, moved on, and watched Candice Bergen go full H.A.M as Murphy Brown. Would you like to feel old? The show’s run started 25 years ago and ended 15 years ago, just before Aaron Sorkin birthed his bouncing baby West Wing.

Unlike a lot of its 1990s teevee show peers, Murphy Brown hasn’t been rattling around the airwaves forever in syndication since going off the air, and you can’t stream it anywhere. ANYWHERE. But now it is finally, blessedly, going into syndication on something named the Encore Classic channel, which better be in our cable package, dammit, because we are going to watch Candice rock those 1980s big shoulder pad power jackets SO HARD.

Also, too, we’re going to LOL forever remembering how Dan Quayle thought it would be a good idea to use the show to sadsplain about how single moms were undermining the very fabric of ‘Merica in 1992 not long before Big Dog Bill Clinton and crew wiped the sad bland Quayle off the map.

It doesn’t help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice. I know it’s not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it!

The cornerstone of our moral values is shut the fuck up Dan Quayle, so we worship at the altar of Murphy Brown.

And before we go: from the department of what might have been, but thank god it wasn’t: there were discussions about reviving the show circa 2012:

“…but “only if Sarah Palin had run,” Bergen notes. “And [showrunner Diane English] said, ‘Only six episodes. That’s all I need.’ That would have been so much fun. Like ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Murphy’ was at its best in covering hardcore political events and getting some people from politics onto the show. That was really fun for us.”

Bullet dodged, potential Palin presidency-wise, but still – how great would that have been?

[Zap2it/hat tip to Jezebel]

The post ‘Murphy Brown’ Goes Into Syndication And Power Suit Aficionados And Dan Quayle Mockers Rejoice appeared first on Happy Nice Time People.

Yes, yes, mustaches. I get it. You're growing a mustache. It's for charity. Charity is good, men's health is good. And it's November. Movember. Yes. What you did there, I see it.

Read more...

Spooky, right? I wonder where that tradition stopped, where you look in the mirror and see your future husband's face on Halloween. Judging by the card collections, it was pretty popular!

Just a couple of sketches for the season.

I was busy a while back designing shirts! They should be up in the store soon. Keep track of things on my tumblr, where I post sketches and updates and things I find interesting!

Have you ever been walking around with your ridiculous bluetooth headset, yammering away at your manservant and explaining how if the Jag isn’t spotless when you get home, he’ll be back out on the street? And while you’re doing that, have you ever thought “hey, you know what? I could look even more like a tool!” If you’re that person, than these Bluetooth gloves are for you.

Instead of a discreet headset that makes you look like you’re hearing voices until people see the earpiece, you can keep YOUR EMPTY HAND up at your ear the whole conversation, which will not look crazy AT ALL, believe you me. There’s even a helpful video so that you understand how to hold your hand when you are pretending to take a call, just in case you were never five years old and playing baby salaryman or mini-mogul or something. Whatever it is that kids do.

[Be good girls and boys and run along and take a look at our complete Christmas list, would you? Also, bring us a brandy.]

The post Give Unto Us This Bluetooth Glove And It Will Be A Joy To Us Forever appeared first on Happy Nice Time People.

Ah, Norway! Land of my people! A Norwegian television station has announced that they plan to broadcast the world knitting record for the fastest time from "sheep to actual finished sweater"—earmarking a full five contiguous hours for the purpose. That's five hours of shearing, spinning, and knitting (plus four hours of fleece-themed knitting pre-show). On TV.

Read more...

Well, they did it. They made a Sexy Hamburger costume, because your hilarious jokes about “I’m a Sexy Businesswoman!” “I’m a Sexy Mail-Lady!” actually came true like almost a dozen goddamn years ago, and there was nowhere to go but WTF!

Here is the thing though. That is a terrible Sexy Hamburger. IT DOES NOT EVEN LOOK LIKE A HAMBURGER AT ALL! At least the Sexy French Fries say “hot fries” on them so you know what the fuck you are supposed to be looking at.

Here is Sexy Corn. Does that look like corn to you? Then you should probably STOP RAPING DEFENSELESS VEGETABLES.

Here is a Sexy Carrot. It at least has a cute hat? And reminds us of the Twitter feed @realcarrotfacts, which will never betray us like @ehorse or whatever that thing was called that had you all so verklempt last week.

This one … well, we don’t really see a problem with this.

[Yandy]

The post Your Dumb ‘Sexy Hamburger’ Costume Doesn’t Even Look Like A Hamburger, Jeez! appeared first on Happy Nice Time People.

Saint Coronatus joined a convent in Heiligkreuztal, Germany, in 1676.

Paul Koudounaris is not a man who shies away from the macabre. Though the Los Angeles-based art historian, author and photographer claims that his fascination with death is no greater than anyone else’s, he devotes his career to investigating and documenting phenomena such as church ossuaries, charnel houses and bone-adorned shrines. Which is why, when a man in a German village approached him during a 2008 research trip and asked something along the lines of, “Are you interested in seeing a dilapidated old church in the forest with a skeleton standing there covered in jewels and holding a cup of blood in his left hand like he’s offering you a toast?” Koudounaris’ answer was, “Yes, of course.”

At the time, Koudounaris was working on a book called The Empire of Death, traveling the world to photograph church ossuaries and the like. He’d landed in this particular village near the Czech border to document a crypt full of skulls, but his interest was piqued by the dubious yet enticing promise of a bejeweled skeleton lurking behind the trees. “It sounded like something from the Brothers Grimm,” he recalls. “But I followed his directions—half thinking this guy was crazy or lying—and sure enough, I found this jeweled skeleton in the woods.”

The church—more of a small chapel, really—was in ruins, but still contained pews and altars, all dilapidated from years of neglect under East German Communist rule. He found the skeleton on a side aisle, peering out at him from behind some boards that had been nailed over its chamber. As he pried off the panels to get a better look, the thing watched him with big, red glass eyes wedged into its gaping sockets. It was propped upright, decked out in robes befitting a king, and holding out a glass vial, which Koudounaris later learned would have been believed to contain the skeleton’s own blood. He was struck by the silent figure’s dark beauty, but ultimately wrote it off as “some sort of one-off freakish thing, some local curiosity.”

But then it happened again. In another German church he visited some time later, hidden in a crypt corner, he found two more resplendent skeletons. “It was then that I realized there’s something much broader and more spectacular going on,” he says.

Koudounaris could not get the figures’ twinkling eyes and gold-adorned grins out of his mind. He began researching the enigmatic remains, even while working on Empire of Death. The skeletons, he learned, were the “catacomb saints,” once-revered holy objects regarded by 16th- and 17th-century Catholics as local protectors and personifications of the glory of the afterlife. Some of them still remain tucked away in certain churches, while others have been swept away by time, forever gone. Who they were in life is impossible to know. “That was part of this project’s appeal to me,” Koudounaris says. “The strange enigma that these skeletons could have been anyone, but they were pulled out of the ground and raised to the heights of glory.”

To create Saint Deodatus in Rheinau, Switzerland, nuns molded a wax face over the upper half of his skull and fashioned his mouth with a fabric wrap.

His pursuit of the bones soon turned into a book project, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, in which he documents the martyred bones’ journey from ancient Roman catacombs to hallowed altars to forgotten corners and back rooms. Though largely neglected by history, the skeletons, he found, had plenty to say.

Resurrecting the Dead

On May 31, 1578, local vineyard workers discovered that a hollow along Rome’s Via Salaria, a road traversing the boot of Italy, led to a catacomb. The subterranean chamber proved to be full of countless skeletal remains, presumably dating back to the first three centuries following Christianity’s emergence, when thousands were persecuted for practicing the still-outlawed religion. An estimated 500,000 to 750,000 souls—mostly Christians but including some pagans and Jews—found a final resting place in the sprawling Roman catacombs.

For hundreds of skeletons, however, that resting place would prove anything but final. The Catholic Church quickly learned of the discovery and believed it was a godsend, since many of the skeletons must have belonged to early Christian martyrs. In Northern Europe—especially in Germany, where anti-Catholic sentiment was most fervent—Catholic churches had suffered from plunderers and vandals during the Protestant Revolution over the past several decades. Those churches’ sacred relics had largely been lost or destroyed. The newly discovered holy remains, however, could restock the shelves and restore the morale of those parishes that had been ransacked.

The holy bodies became wildly sought-after treasures. Every Catholic church, no matter how small, wanted to have at least one, if not ten. The skeletons allowed the churches to make a “grandiose statement,” Koudounaris says, and were especially prized in southern Germany, the epicenter of “the battleground against the Protestants.” Wealthy families sought them for their private chapels, and guilds and fraternities would sometimes pool their resources to adopt a martyr, who would become the patron of cloth-makers, for example.

Saint Valentinus is one of the ten skeletons decorated by the lay brother Adalbart Eder. Valentinus wears a biretta and an elaborate deacon’s cassock to show off his ecclesiastical status. Today, he is housed in Waldsassen Basilica in Germany, along with his nine brethren.

For a small church, the most effective means of obtaining a set of the coveted remains was a personal connection with someone in Rome, particularly one of the papal guards. Bribery helped, too. Once the Church confirmed an order, couriers—often monks who specialized in transporting relics—delivered the skeleton from Rome to the appropriate northern outpost.

At one point, Koudounaris attempted to estimate in dollar terms how profitable these ventures would have been for the deliverymen, but gave up after realizing that the conversion from extinct currencies to modern ones and the radically different framework for living prevented an accurate translation. “All I can say is that they made enough money to make it worthwhile,” he says.

The Vatican sent out thousands of relics, though it’s difficult to determine exactly how many of those were fully articulated skeletons versus a single shinbone, skull or rib. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where the majority of the celebrated remains wound up, the church sent at least 2,000 complete skeletons, Koudounaris estimates.

For the Vatican, the process of ascertaining which of the thousands of skeletons belonged to a martyr was a nebulous one. If they found “M.” engraved next to a corpse, they took it to stand for “martyr,” ignoring the fact that the initial could also stand for “Marcus,” one of the most popular names in ancient Rome. If any vials of dehydrated sediment turned up with the bones, they assumed it must be a martyr’s blood rather than perfume, which the Romans often left on graves in the way we leave flowers today. The Church also believed that the bones of martyrs cast off a golden glow and a faintly sweet smell, and teams of psychics would journey through the corporeal tunnels, slip into a trance and point out skeletons from which they perceived a telling aura. After identifying a skeleton as holy, the Vatican then decided who was who and issued the title of martyr.

Saint Munditia arrived at the Church of Saint Peter in Munich along with a funerary plaque taken from the catacombs.

While there doubters within the Vatican, those on the receiving end of these relics never wavered in their faith. “This was such a dubious process, it’s understandable to ask if people really believed,” Koudounaris says. “The answer is, of course they did: These skeletons came in a package from the Vatican with proper seals signed by the cardinal vicar stating these remains belong to so-and-so. No one would question the Vatican.”

The Dirt and Blood Are Wiped Away

Each martyr’s skeleton represented the splendors that awaited the faithful in the afterlife. Before it could be presented to its congregation, it had to be outfitted in finery befitting a relic of its status. Skilled nuns, or occasionally monks, would prepare the skeleton for public appearance. It could take up to three years, depending on the size of the team at work.

The talented nuns of Ennetach decorated the ribcage of Saint Felix in Aulendorf.

Each convent would develop its own flair for enshrouding the bones in gold, gems and fine fabrics. The women and men who decorated the skeletons did so anonymously, for the most part. But as Koudounaris studied more and more bodies, he began recognizing the handiwork of particular convents or individuals. “Even if I couldn’t come up with the name of a specific decorator, I could look at certain relics and tie them stylistically to her handiwork,” he says.

Nuns were often renowned for their achievements in clothmaking. They spun fine mesh gauze, which they used to delicately wrap each bone. This prevented dust from settling on the fragile material and created a medium for attaching decorations. Local nobles often donated personal garments, which the nuns would lovingly slip onto the corpse and then cut out peepholes so people could see the bones beneath. Likewise, jewels and gold were often donated or paid for by a private enterprise. To add a personal touch, some sisters slipped their own rings onto a skeleton’s fingers.

Saint Kelmens arrived in Neuenkirch, Switzerland, in 1823 – decades after the original wave of catacomb saints were distributed throughout Europe. Two nuns decorated his bones.

One thing the nuns did lack, however, was formal training in anatomy. Koudounaris often found bones connected improperly, or noticed that a skeleton’s hand or foot was grossly missized. Some of the skeletons were outfitted with full wax faces, shaped into gaping grins or wise gazes. “That was done, ironically, to make them seem less creepy and more lively and appealing,” Koudounaris says. “But it has the opposite effect today. Now, those with the faces by far seem the creepiest of all.”

Saint Felix of Gars am Inn, Germany, was regarded as a miracle-worker.

They are also ornately beautiful. In their splendor and grandeur, Koudounaris says, the skeletons may be considered baroque art, but their creators’ backgrounds paint a more complicated picture that situates the bones into a unique artistic subcategory. The nuns and monks “were incredible artisans but did not train in an artisan’s workshop, and they were not in formal dialogue with others doing similar things in other parts of Europe,” he says.

“From my perspective as someone who studies art history, the question of who the catacomb saints were in life becomes secondary to the achievement of creating them,” he continues. “That’s something I want to celebrate.”

Devoted patrons often gave their own jewelry to the saints, such as these rings worn on the gauze-wrapped fingers of Saint Konstantius in Rohrschach, Switzerland.

In that vein, Koudounaris dedicated his book to those “anonymous hands” that constructed the bony treasures “out of love and faith.” His hope, he writes, is that “their beautiful work will not be forgotten.”

Fall from Grace

When a holy skeleton was finally introduced into the church, it marked a time of community rejoicing. The decorated bodies served as town patrons and “tended to be extremely popular because they were this very tangible and very appealing bridge to the supernatural,” Koudounaris explains.

Saint Gratian, another of Adalbart Eder’s Waldassen skeletons. Here, the saint is decked out in a re-imagining of Roman military attire, including lace-up sandals and shoulder, chest and arm guards.

Baptismal records reveal the extent of the skeletons’ allure. Inevitably, following a holy body’s arrival, the first child born would be baptized under its name—for example, Valentine for a boy, Valentina for a girl. In extreme cases, half the children born that year would possess the skeleton’s name.

Communities believed that their patron skeleton protected them from harm, and credited it for any seeming miracle or positive event that occurred after it was installed. Churches kept “miracle books,” which acted as ledgers for archiving the patron’s good deeds. Shortly after Saint Felix arrived at Gars am Inn, for example, records indicate that a fire broke out in the German town. Just as the flames approached the marketplace—the town’s economic heart—a great wind came and blew them back. The town showered Felix with adoration; even today, around 100 ex-votos—tiny paintings depicting and expressing gratitude for a miracle, such as healing a sick man—are strewn about St. Felix’s body in the small, defunct chapel housing him.

As the world modernized, however, the heavenly bodies’ gilt began to fade for those in power. Quoting Voltaire, Koudounaris writes that the corpses were seen as reflection of “our ages of barbarity,” appealing only to “the vulgar: feudal lords and their imbecile wives, and their brutish vassals.”

In the late 18th century, Austria’s Emperor Joseph II, a man of the Enlightenment, was determined to dispel superstitious objects from his territory. He issued an edict that all relics lacking a definite provenance should be tossed out. The skeletons certainly lacked that. Stripped of their status, they were torn down from their posts, locked away in boxes or cellars, or plundered for their jewels.

Catacomb saints were often depicted in a reclining position, as demonstrated here by Saint Friedrich at the Benedictine abbey in Melk, Austria. He holds a laurel branch as a sign of victory.

For local communities, this was traumatic. These saints had been instilled in people’s lives for more than a century, and those humble worshipers had yet to receive the Enlightenment memo. Pilgrimages to see the skeletons were abruptly outlawed. Local people would often weep and follow their patron skeleton as it was taken from its revered position and dismembered by the nobles. “The sad thing is that their faith had not waned when this was going on,” Koudounaris says. “People still believed in these skeletons.”

The Second Coming

Not all of the holy skeletons were lost during the 18^th-entury purges, however. Some are still intact and on display, such as the 10 fully preserved bodies in the Waldsassen Basilica (“the Sistine Chapel of Death,” Koudounaris calls it) in Bavaria, which holds the largest collection remaining today. Likewise, the delicate Saint Munditia still reclines on her velvet throne at St. Peter’s Church in Munich.

In Koudounaris’ hunt, however, many proved more elusive. When he returned to that original German village several years later, for example, he found that a salvage company had torn down the forest church. Beyond that, none of the villagers could tell him what had happened to its contents, or to the body. For every 10 bodies that disappeared in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Koudounaris estimates, nine are gone.

In other cases, leads—which he gathered through traveler’s accounts, parish archives and even Protestant writings about the Catholic “necromancers”—did pan out. He found one skeleton in the back of a parking-garage storage unit in Switzerland. Another had been wrapped in cloth and stuck in a box in a German church, likely untouched for 200 years.

After examining around 250 of these skeletons, Koudounaris concluded, “They’re the finest pieces of art ever created in human bone.” Though today many of the heavenly bodies suffer from pests burrowing through their bones and dust gathering on their faded silk robes, in Koudounaris’ photos they shine once more, provoking thoughts of the people they once were, the hands that once adorned them and the worshipers who once fell at their feet. But ultimately, they are works of art. “Whoever they may have been as people, whatever purpose they served rightly or wrongly as items, they are incredible achievements,” he says. “My main objective in writing the book is to present and re-contextualize these things as outstanding works of art.”

Only the head of Saint Benedictus – named in honor of Saint Benedict, the patron of the monastery – arrived in Muri, Switzerland, in 1681.

Accomplishing that was no small task. Nearly all the skeletons he visited and uncovered were still in their original 400-year-old glass tombs. To disassemble those cases, Koudounaris thought, would “amount to destroying them.” Instead, a bottle of Windex and a rag became staples of his photography kit, and he sometimes spent upward of an hour and a half meticulously examining the relic for a clear window through which he might shoot. Still, many of the skeletons he visited could not be included in the book because the glass was too warped to warrant a clear shot.

For Koudounaris, however, it’s not enough to simply document them in a book. He wants to bring the treasures back into the world, and see those in disrepair restored. Some of the church members agreed with Koudounaris’ wish to restore the skeletons, not so much as devotional items but as pieces of local history. The cost of undertaking such a project, however, seems prohibitive. One local parish priest told Koudounaris he had consulted with a restoration specialist, but that the specialist “gave a price so incredibly high that there was no way the church could afford it.”

Still, Koudounaris envisions a permanent museum installation or perhaps a traveling exhibit in which the bones could be judged on their artistic merits. “We live in an age where we’re more in tune with wanting to preserve the past and have a dialogue with the past,” he says. “I think some of them will eventually come out of hiding.”

The plans for a neo-Nazi paradise in Leith, North Dakota, are running into a few speedbumps, it seems. As we noted a while back, white supremacist Craig Paul Cobb has been buying up a passel of abandoned properties in the town of 19, hoping to get enough like-minded bigots to move in and take it over. The existing residents are not one bit happy about it. Nor are other North Dakotans, including the Lakota and Dakota grandmothers pictured above, who according to the Last Real Indians blog “captured and burned” a Nazi flag from the town while a group of several hundred Native Americans and others protested the neo-Nazi presence in Leith last Saturday. We advise the White Power Rangers to recognize when they’re beaten, and to not piss off the grannies any futher.

Leith is near the Standing Rock Indian Nation. Dakota protester Phyllis Young gave the neo-Nazis a good rhetorical wag of the finger:

“You are in Dakota territory.”

“Lakota means allies, Dakota means peace, and that is what we continue to struggle for in this land.”

“My uncle stormed the shores of Normandy to eliminate your forerunners, the Nazis, that killed millions all over the world, so we know what your intent is, to criminalize Dakota territory.

“You will not do it. The grandmothers will stand up to you. The women will take you on.”

Chase Iron Eyes said that the neo-Nazis “represent a dying cause.”

“You have nothing. That swastika is even our symbol.”

“You have appropriated our intellectual properties because you have none.”

In addition to the opposition of locals and the wider North Dakota community, Cobb and other new property-owners in Leith have another serious issue: Poop.

The Bismarck Tribune reports:

An order giving white supremacist Craig Cobb five days to come up with a plan for installing running water and a sewer outlet into his home in Leith expired Monday and it’s possible the house could be declared uninhabitable.

The order was written by the Custer District Health Unit’s environmental health practitioner Aaron Johnson, who said Cobb owns two other structures in town that possibly will be removed next month.

Cobb is believed to be using an outhouse on the property, and has said that he buys bottled water for drinking and washing. Depending on advice from the Health Unit’s attorney, the unit could issue an order declaring the house uninhabitable or take Cobb to court. The other properties purchased by the neo-Nazis are in similarly sad shape; one was in the process of being condemned even as Cobb sought to sell it to a supporter.

Let’s have a round of applause for zoning and sanitation laws, part of a functioning civil society. Oh, also, we strongly condemn the theft and destruction of private property like Nazi flags. Theft is wrong, and not even wonderful angry grannies should do that, even when it’s awesome (yes they should).

[LastRealIndians via Dangerousminds / Bismarck Tribune via RawStory]

Olivia Newton-John is 65 today! Yay! Which actually makes her older than I would have guessed, I think. Wait, she was therefore 30 FUCKING YEARS OLD when she played high school senior Sandy in Grease:

And 32 when she played roller-skating young Kira in the incomprehensible Xanadu:

True story: I had never seen Xanadu until I was 40-ish, and then only under duress. Once the male lead came on, I proceeded to yell “HEY WAIT THAT IS THE GUY FROM WARRIORS” and make the bottle clinking sounds and say “Warriors, come out to PLAAAAYYYY”

…over and over until we shut Xanadu off.

Last year, she did a song with John Travolta that I was going to mock the shit out of but it is actually a kind of sweet, kind of hokey, song about coming home to see people you love, complete with awkward adorable dancing old people:

Takeaway: She still looks good. Travolta still looks like his head swelled, literally, an enormous amount post-1970s stardom. Is he on steroids or something??

Olivia Newton-John hasn’t always had such a great run of it, though. There was the boyfriend that faked his own death and went to Mexico. Just recently, there was the actual not-faked suicide of her groundskeeper at her house while Olivia and her husband were out of town. (Seriously, dude? You commit suicide at someone else’s house where you happen to work? Cold.) After the suicide, Rosie O’Donnell, who was supposed to buy the house, backed out of the sale, so Olivia had to have an exorcism on the place. No, really:

Grease star Olivia Newton-John ordered an exorcism at her $5.6 million Florida home to expel the spirit of a suicide victim.

Mrs Newton-John, 64, flew in a Catholic priest to conduct the ritual after Christopher Pariseleti, a 41-year-old contractor, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the house last month.

She is said to have ordered the cleansing ritual to reassure potential buyers that the property is not haunted.

For real unironic congrats, ONJ, who still actually looks really good at 65:

Dayyyuumm.

[final photo by PR Photos]

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Hey, who let these old guys into my closet?

Alexander Payne directed Election, one of the best comedies of all time, as well as Sideways, About Schmidt, and The Descendants, not to mention producing the criminally underseen Cedar Rapids. He has a knack for small-town comedy with a dash of melancholy (melanchomedy?), and his latest, Nebraska, looks like a similar mix of pathos and chuckles. It stars this year’s Cannes Film Festival best actor Bruce Dern and Will Forte as a father and son trekking their way across the flatlands in search of a possibly mythical sweepstakes prize. Stacy Keach and Bob Odenkirk also star, along with the awesomely named “June Squibb.” And it’s shot entirely in black and white, to show that America’s Heartland is a bleak, grey hellhole where coloreds aren’t allowed.

Or because it looks artier, hell, I don’t know.

After receiving a sweepstakes letter in the mail, a cantankerous father (Bruce Dern) thinks he’s struck it rich, and wrangles his son (Will Forte) into taking a road trip to claim the fortune.  Shot in black and white across four states, Nebraska tells the stories of family life in the heartland of America. In theaters November 15th.

I don’t know, it kind of seems like it’s about a guy who wants his wayward son to carry on. Shoulda called it Kansas.

[HD available at Apple]