Archive for September, 2007

When Mitt Romney was running for Governor of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, he said a number of things I just couldn’t bring myself to trust.

When he was Governor, he put a good deal of effort into placing blame for problems on anyone but himself and taking credit for things that he didn’t really do.

When he decided to run for President, he started telling people that he’d basically been lying about a number of things the whole time he was running for and serving as Governor. How else could he get the support of the Republican base after telling everyone he’d be better for gay rights then Ted Kennedy?

Do I think Romney’s a hypocrite? How could anyone not? Now we get this little tidbit of information from the Democratic party’s site.

Oh, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. Whatever are we going to do with you?

I used to have a decent amount of respect for John McCain. Back in 2000, he was a Republican I could have actually considered voting for. Of course, he was pushed out of the race by the kind of dirty tricks that would later be used against quite a few Democrats.

I lost a lot of respect for him when he strongly backed Bush in ’04. This was the guy whose people had used the religious right and ugly rumors to push him out of the way four years earlier. This time around, the Democratic nominee was one of his closest friends in the Senate. There was even talk of McCain as Kerry’s running mate. But McCain stuck with Bush, Bush’s war and Bush’s alliances, clearly hoping the party would view 2008 as McCain’s turn.

Since then he’s brown nosed the right, started talking nonsense in support of a nonsensical war, cozied up to the religious fanatics he’d previously attacked, and in general tried his damnest to be just like the jack-off who cheated him out of the nomination before. And now this.

Clearly, there’s a lot of editing in there, so maybe the context of what he’s saying here might allow one to see it in another light, but I kind of doubt it. Fuck him.

Welcome, slumming readers of Crooks and Liars and Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O’Reilly, Intl.

Sylvia’s

I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful.

I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.

There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, “M-Fer, I want more iced tea.” You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.

Schmuel’s Kosher

I ventured down to Manhattan’s Lower East Side the other day to check out this traditional deli. Schmuel’s is famous for its breakfasts, so despite the evening hour, I decided to try some items from both the breakfast and dinner menus.

The breakfast was just terrific. I had a bagel with a surprisingly generous schmear (which is the Jewish word for “smear”) of cream cheese. I also had the potato pancakes, or Lockies as they call them. They were a bit greasy, but you slather enough sour cream and apple sauce on them and they’re a real treat.

I was then ready to try out the dinner menu. I wanted to taste their corned beef, which I’ve heard is different from the normal corned beef regular people eat, but get this: they wouldn’t let me. They claimed that because I’d eaten dairy products from the breakfast menu, it was against the law to serve me any meat! I told them I’m friends with a lot of cops, and I’d know if there was a law against eating meat. I mean, it wasn’t even a Friday!

Finally, the manager came out, and much to my surprise, he offered me a big bowl of kasha and another order of lockies, on the house! I bet that was a first, if you know what I mean.

All in all, I can recommend Schmuel’s, but watch out for their crazy “laws”.

Tony’s Family Restaurant

Tony’s is just a few short blocks from Schmuel’s and boy, is it worth the drive over. Sure, the name is a little off-putting, since the idea of an Italian “family”… well, you know what I mean. But I checked out the men’s room — no guns hidden in the toilet tanks — and made sure they didn’t seat me in a corner, so I wasn’t too worried.

They’ve got all your favorites at Tony’s: spaghetti and meatballs, ziti and meatballs, linguine and meatballs, the whole enchilada. And just in case you’re in an adventurous mood, they have three different kinds of cheese to sprinkle on top of your dish.

One little piece of advice, just to be on the safe side. Pay cash. Why risk letting them see your credit card?

Abdullah’s Lebanese Cuisine

What an eye opener! Wonderful aromas and flavors of the Mediterranean, from kebabs to stuffed grape leaves. And get this: they serve something called falafel! No, it’s not the same as that rough sponge you use in the shower. It’s some kind of beans, ground up and deep fried. Very tasty, but I couldn’t help but laugh over the name.

But the best surprise of all was that not a single suicide bomber was there, or if there were any, they were well-hidden and chickened out like the cowards they are. Everyone was just sitting there, politely enjoying the food and conversation, and they didn’t even seem concerned about whether they’d survive the meal.

This is an absolutely terrific use of a film clip that’s already recognizable by a huge number of people, which serves to make it even more viral. Apparently, it’s been around for a few weeks, but I’ve only just found out about it from a post by Muhammed Saleem at Pronet Advertising.

It’s all to promote a new Dylan greatest hits album, because the world just can’t live without yet another Dylan greatest hits album, but who cares? Sometimes the promotion is better than the product being promoted. Remember Subservient Chicken? I thought that was great, but it sure as shit didn’t convince me to eat at Burger King.

I was doing some research for a blog post earlier today. I needed to get some information on a member of Congress who’d officially come out as an atheist, so I ran a Google search for [atheist in congress]. Look what I got in the onebox:

It seems my mother has been speaking with Larry and Sergey. They’re all in cahoots, trying to get me a date even when I’m not looking for one. A word of advice: I’m not going to date someone all the way down in DC, even if she is an atheist. I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly nice atheists right here in Boston, so stick that in your algorithm and smoke it, Google.

Have you seen this yet? Skip to about 2:30 (around 3:55 on the countdown timer) for the relevant part.

Maher makes some great points, one of which I pointed out early this year when Mitt Romney responded to someone saying he’d never vote for a Mormon.

One of the great things about this great land is we have people of different faiths and different persuasions, and I’m convinced that the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.

Translation: you may not like my religion, but at least I’m not an atheist.

A few of Maher’s points don’t quite work for me, however. I don’t know where he got his data, but I don’t think nonbelievers (atheists and agnostics combined) make up 20% of the voting public in the US — or to be more precise, I don’t think enough nonbelievers would admit they are to bring our numbers up to 20%.

But the main problem is that, if as he points out 70% of Americans believe it’s important to have a president with strong religious beliefs, then you simply can’t compare nonbelievers (or “rationalists,” as he prefers to call us) to other minority groups. If a politician makes a point of telling the African American community that s/he’s on their side, that does not automatically equate to not being on the side of white people. You can support women without losing the male vote. There are enough straights who support gay rights that you can come out in favor of at least some semblance of equal rights for the GLBT community without losing the support of everyone else.

But about as close as you can come to supporting nonbelievers is one of those namby pamby statements about how the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion includes the freedom not to have one. You can’t say that there’s nothing wrong with the idea of an atheist president, although we’ve undoubtedly had some. If a candidate dared say they weren’t religious they’d be dead. It was only this year that a single member of the House, Pete Stark of California came out as a nontheist, and that’s after being in office for some 34 years.

Sorry Bill, but supporting us means losing support from the majority. That’s just the way it is.

Hey kidz, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day today, and you know what that means. It means you’re supposed to talk like a pirate, smartass.

And don’t forget to pay a visit to Cap’n Dyke, the Lesbian Pirate Queen.

Yar.

Remember a few days ago, when I wrote about AT&T’s “decidely stupid” new advertising campaign, but noted that it probably wouldn’t last long, since they would soon be premiering a series of new ads directed by Wes Anderson? Well, I was sort of wrong. The decidedly stupid ads are the new ones by Wes Anderson. I should have guessed by the Brechtian staging that they were his, but since they’re so decidedly stupid, I guess I never imagined he could suck so much.

You can see all five of them (hopefully that’s all there is at Goldenfiddle.

I’m so disappointed in Anderson. I loved the Amex spot he did. I just hope The Darjeeling Limited is better than this nonsense.

It’s finally happened.

I wrote back in May about the path the “new” AT&T was taking to rebrand itself away from the Cingular name. They’d already gone from “Cingular is now the new AT&T — your world, delivered” to “Cingular’s name is now AT&T.”

With their latest (decidedly stupid) campaign, they’ve switched the tagline to simply “the new AT&T works in more places” — no more mention of Cingular (although the mobile page on their site still tells us that “Cingular is now the new AT&T”).

And it seems this (stupid) campaign is to be fairly short-lived. AT&T has already announced that Wes Anderson is going to be directing some new corporate spots with a new theme: Your Seamless World

AT&T Inc said on Tuesday it was launching a new corporate advertising campaign, with ads designed to convey a younger, edgier style associated with wireless.

The company’s “Your Seamless World” corporate ad campaign features situations that “speak to the on-the-go lifestyle of today’s consumers and businesses.”

The campaign includes six television spots overseen by Wes Anderson, director of films including “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

AT&T also said it will now use orange as its primary corporate color. Ads, company signage and its Web site are undergoing a “color makeover,” the company said.

“The new initiatives are designed to highlight how AT&T helps connect people to their worlds wherever they live and work,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a statement. “We want to ensure this message is reflected in our brand.”

So we can expect an orange death star in the near future. Joy. Actually, I think we can hope for them to drop that awful Oasis song. Anderson’s known for his use of music, and he has better taste than that.

I suppose the next step is to drop the “new” from “the new AT&T,” but I have a feeling that they’re going to be reminding us that they’re new for quite some time, letting “new” get very old on us, because that’s the youthful and edgy way to do things.

My old bud Blue Gal, for some unknown reason, posted this video on her blog today:

In the summer of 1979, I had a job at “Pizza Pub #1,” right by the train station in Roslyn, NY. We had one very very regular customer who’d come in every day without fail. He’d order two slices and a coke, and put two songs — the same two songs every time — on the jukebox: I Will Survive and Roundabout.

After all those plays almost 30 years ago, plus all the times my older sister played the song (she used to go see Yes in the round at Madison Square Garden every year), plus having it slowed down for me here… I STILL CAN’T UNDERSTAND THE DAMNED LYRICS!

Call it morning driving supersonic in and out the bonnet?

Mamas come out of the sky and stand there?

Tent your summers we’ll be there and laughing too?

Wha??

One other thing: if you watch the video, take note of how bored Rick Wakeman looks. He’s got one word going through his head, over and over: faster!