My World and Our World

We started work this week on the Man Show, that is, if work means spinning around in your office chair until you're dizzy and eating free Doritos. So if you've emailed me or called and I haven't got back to you, it's because I'm busy spinning in my chair and acting like I belong there. We'll start fliming next week, field pieces. Dunno when we start the in-studio stuff. I don't know when I start getting paid and for some reason it feels impolite to ask but I know the first thing I'm buying is a hunk of shit car. Everybody buys a new car when they get a TV show. My goal is to get the biggest heap of shit on the lot. I've been searching eBay for an old Chevy Vega wagon or perhaps a Dodge Rampage, the 80's version of the El Camino. Neither Renee nor Rogan really see the humor in it. I still find it amusing. I'll let you know what I come up with. Any suggestions? Randy McCleary - the phenom banjo player that played with me in Peoria - found possibly the coolest thing that's ever been given to me, save for herpes. It's a gospel album from the mid-70's by John Ashcroft and Max Bacon. It doesn't have a date but it has to be from 73- 76 because it says that Ashcroft is a Missouri State Auditor and goes on to praise these guys for mixing God and Government. I can't find shit about it on the web. I've googled every key word on it. Nothing. It's gonna be worth a shitload as soon as he starts putting people on trains to death camps. If anyone can drum up any info on it, let me know. ##################################################################### Hey Floyd J Phillips, the reason I don't call you back is that you never say in your message why you're calling. Unless you're someone that I talk to all the time, that fucking annoys me. You can reach me on my message board. It seems to be where people go when they have nothing to say. ##################################################################### And on the world front... Good work, war-heads. For the cost of a few thousand dust-blown lives and a few flat tires, you have now brought democracy - rule by the people - to a place where the large lot of the people still hate you. I know it's a long shot but now that Iraq has had the gift of democracy thrust upon them, would there be anything funnier than Saddam Hussein winning the first election with 100 percent of the vote? If I were running for president of Iraq - and I may - the no-brainer path to victory would be a radical anti-US platform. Knowing how easy it is to whip the populace into a frenzy against a common, if not actual, enemy - any semi-pro Hitler fan with a clear speaking voice and a pair of pressed khakis could easily win a landslide just by telling folks that GW is the whole reason they have bad teeth and flimsy shoes. People are flooding the streets - or at least the streets that have cameramen on them - to kiss the troops with unwashed mouths and you think that's proof that they are ready and waiting to get a BlockBuster card and begin the American Dream. The problem is that whether it's Saddam Hussein or Ross Perot, these people still have a plate full of dick and empty cupboards to go home to and that will always make them martyr-eligible. You gave them freedom. Freedom to do what? Farm dirt and read the Koran? So now they can do that without the threat of being tortured. That's a good thing, the "no torture" part. But eventually they will get tired of eating tumbleweeds and beating their gargoyle wives and will fall in love with any tyrant who can make them believe their lives are worth something more. It's like killing an abusive boyfriend only to have the liberated girl hug you for helping her and a week later she has a new guy kicking her across the trailer. As long as the US is an omnipotent presence in Middle East politics, the US will be the easiest figure - right or wrong - to focus these people's anger towards. Giving them freedom and a dangling chad isn't enough. If you want to stop them from strapping bombs on themselves for the next cult leader, you better give them some shit to play with. Give em free samples. B-52's full of Gameboys and skateboards. Jello shots and DVD porn. Disposable cameras, Frankenberry, XM radio, juice boxes, whippets, Elimidate, PT Cruisers and Matt Damon and Free Nights and Weekends until they are as apathetic as we are and their Gods and Leaders are merely name brands. You know once you had call-waiting, you could never live without it. If you keep the people dumb, you'd better keep em distracted. You put a retard in the same house as guns, you'd better give him a yo-yo or someones gonna make an oops.

Tell Me SOMETHING

If there is one good reason to be against the war in Iraq, it is that it's less fun to watch than Arena Football. Not only is it tedious, it has squeezed out all the other news that I'd waste hours watching.

The war just doesn't have the pinache to merit "round-the clock" coverage, much less leave me hanging on the conclusions to my previously scheduled melo-dramas already in progress.

I need closure, Goddammit.

What about Lizzie Smart? Did she really get married to Weirdie in a crazy secret ceremony? Did he consumate the marriage in the mountain teepee? Will she ever escape from the current religious zealots?

How about the Raelien clone babies? Will Michael Jackson try to clone little Culkins so he never has to live with the heartache of them get old and un-fuckable? And what became of Scott Peterson and his missing wife? Will Great White be playing a Shriners Convention anytime soon?

You started me on this trivial bullshit - make up an ending.

Please give me something other than the war. "Slowly but surely" may be good for the troops but it's sucking the life out of me. The most painful part is watching the bobble-heads trying to constantly make it sound like we are moments away from a revelation or defining turn of events. Like a football game that's a first-half blowout and then you have the Al and Dan in the booth making chit-chat trying to keep you tuned in til the end.

Maybe it's time to bring in some writers to do punch-up work. The war has had some moments but they always drop the ball. Consider the story that they had dolphins spotting mines in the port of Umm Qasr. Not really watchable but it's a great start. Punch it up. How about sending apes with Uzis in Nasiriya, shrieking and firing wildly in all directions. Or shitting pigs air-dropped right into Baghdad? Massive sows with irritable bowels, force-fed and dropped by parachute over the capital, swirling and shitting, shitting and swirling.

Instinctively you would say that would have no military significance but then who would actually try to consider the ramifications? They say the element of surprise is tantamount to victory. Surprise, surprise, a shitting pig just landed on the hood of my Fiat. I think I'll just surrender.

And therein lies all that is wrong with the world and why I'm happy that my lease will be up soon. Because these ideas are why I am considered a comic and not a military genius. One would think I was joking.

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One point that I have to make to every Bill O'Reilly in the world that says the war protesters should shut up and support the troops. If you ask any anti-war protester if he or she supports the troops, nearly 100 percent will say yes. So if you - of bombastic right-wing opinion in the media - are truely concerned about the morale of the troops, you would make that quite clear in any mention of protests, aside from your own personal point of view. But you just want to win an argument, to promote your own point of view by painting protesters as "anti-troops". You don't actually give a fuck about the troops. If you did, you would concede - in every mention of anti-war protests - that those protesters support the troops. So that the troops know it. But you don't care about the troops, Bill O'Limbush. You are ego. You are viral.

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I've seen a few episodes of Jimmy Kimmel and they have mostly been very admirable train wrecks. I hope it catches on. It may not go smoothely but then again smoothe don't necessarily make funny. I laughed more at the fact that he had Mike Tyson as a co-host than I have ever laughed at Leno ever. Of course, Tyson made the show more uncomfortable than anything but just the balls to try made it worth the hour.