Let’s take a look at the newspaper while we still can. Oh, I see where they caught 12 year-old Alexa Gonzalez in Queens, New York writing her name on her desk in school, using a lime-green marker. They suspended her, then they called the police who then led her away in handcuffs. “Standard operating procedure,” the authorities said. “It was an erasable marker,” the girl said.
In family court, Alexa was assigned eight hours of community service, ordered to write a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience. If she’s completely honest in that essay, she’ll just wind up in handcuffs again. And I’ll bet she knows that, too.
It turns out Alexa was lucky. In 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was handcuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in kindergarten.
Jeez, did any of these fools ever talk to a kindergarten teacher? And who knew they made handcuffs that fit 5 year-olds? When they took his mug shot, the police were ipso facto guilty of kiddie porn.
Friends, it gets better.
In Staten Island 9 year-old Patrick Timoney brought a two-inch-long toy gun to school. And by “gun,” I mean “something made out of Legos.” Look at the damn photo.
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If you have not done so, please read Whitney Farmer’s last Un Pop Culture on this very website before reading this.
It’s 2 in the morning and I’m thinking about how much I hate to fly.
I had a meeting in San Francisco yesterday (Thursday) and that made it possible for me to drive. If it’s somewhere I can get to by train or car and it takes less than a day to get there, I’m driving or taking Amtrak.
I H A T E T O F L Y.
I LOVE to drive, I LOVE road trips. I listen to audio books or I dictate notes or ideas with my voice memo function on my iPhone or I sing along to my ‘road trip CD.’
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For reasons beyond my comprehension, a publisher has decided that there is a market for a book about John Edwards’ sex life. The Politician is advertised as if it is supposed to be a high-minded book about the 2008 presidential campaign run by John Edwards. Maybe that’s what it is. Unfortunately, the author, Andrew Young (a former campaign staffer, not the real one, in his appearances on television, appears to me to only be promoting the sleaziest aspects of his story.
The bare bones are old news: John Edwards had an affair with a woman working as a freelance videographer for his campaign. He lied about the relationship, even after the woman gave birth to a daughter he fathered. At the time, his wife, Elizabeth, had only recently discovered the return of her cancer, originally diagnosed after Edwards’ 2004 campaign for vice-president.
That’s a horrible story, one I find especially distasteful because I liked John Edwards’ campaign. He was the only candidate speaking about poverty in this country, and why it is so important to fight against it. I’m disappointed that he’s not a better person. And I’m disgusted at the way some in the news media blame his wife.
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The Man Who Was The Phantom now handles the law in a different arena. Billy Zane is one of the stars of the new ABC series THE DEEP END. Billy, and co-star Tina Majorino, fill us in on why they chose to return to TV on this midseason show. And no matter what you read, AVATAR is not the #1 movie of all tine. We’ve got the numbers to prove it!
Last night, I was taping up my favorite motorcycle boots with gaff tape during the end of a reggae show, talking with one of the world’s greatest bartenders/world’s greatest motorcycle customizers who once used to be one of the world’s scariest drunks. The band who was headlining had been scheduled to perform at the club eons ago before I had even begun to work here, but there had been a deal-ending complication through no fault of theirs which had kept them from our stage until this night. My partner-in-conversation and I were talking about how over and done things in the past can be, and about how different the present is and future will be. After punching the clock in the dead of night in the middle of winter, people tend to get thoughtful.
We are now about a month past the winter solstice, the time of the year when the day is darkest and longest in the Northern Hemisphere. The new year has settled in and some storms have come and gone. There is one storm that I thought about last night. It was the worst show that we had ever had, one that had broke out into violence. Two of my guys went down bloodied when the crowd decided to work together to take out our security, for kicks with kicks. It was a punk rock show which tend to be some of the most fun we have, but this one was a nightmare. I couldn’t believe that it had happened the way that it did.
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Editor, writer, and artist Kevin McCarthy lives in Milwaukee, WI. http://mccarthy-comics.com/
So many things to talk about this week. We’re gonna have to make it quick.
Dear Art & Chris,
We had an ad prepared for the Super Bowl that has riled up a bit of controversy. It depicted two football fans putting aside their team loyalties and making out. These fans were both men. It would have pushed our site into new prominence but it was rejected by CBS standards and practices. Were we in the wrong here?
-Elissa Buchter, spokesperson ManCrunch.com
Elissa,
We’d like to be more angry about this but that emotion is being pushed down into our psyches by another one, confusion. What does ManCrunch mean? We could not be more clueless but it sounds gayer than seven dudes blowing eight dudes. That said CBS was totally in the wrong here. They’re saying two men making out, completely obscured mind you, is somehow less acceptable than a sport where every play starts with a dude putting his hands under another guy’s butt? An event that will end with a bunch of guys crying and hugging? I bet they were worried your ad would just be way more masculine.
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Actor Tony Hale comes by to talk about his NBC webseries, CTRL, but what what we want to know is when we’ll see an ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT film. He gives us the latest, plus can Zac Effron really be Spidey and can you guess what the #1 movie was over the weekend?
We all know the routine. Lucy Van Pelt holds the football, Charlie Brown stands ready to kick it thinking “well, maybe this time she won’t pull the ball away at the last minute and I won’t fall on my ass.” So he starts his run. And he gets to the ball. And Lucy pulls it away. Leaving Barack Obama flat on his ass.
Mr. President, pal, here’s some news. Begging for bipartisanship is worse than trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. Neither can accomplish anything, and in your case you’re going to continue to get blamed for not being bipartisan anyway.
We know this because we’ve been paying attention for the past year. Trying to meet these people halfway hasn’t accomplished anything except make you look weak and, now, foolish. All the Republicans have to do is block everything and blame you for not succeeding and they will win back the Senate this fall, and maybe the House. And the White House in two years.
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As I write this I’m at an undisclosed location on my way to Las Vegas. I didn’t expect this to be the plan, but here I am.
Once again I have to write this article using my Blackberry, which as of lately it’s become a life-saving productivity tool, well worth the investment.
Why am I going to Vegas? It’s my friends birthday and these are his wishes. I gladly enjoy helping people and I’m a giver. So if he wants Vegas, Vegas I will give. Very unselfish of me.
I haven’t been in front of my computer in a while, and I haven’t needed it. Not when I have my Blackberry. No wonder Obama couldn’t live without it.
Gotta go now. Vegas needs me.
For the last few months, I’ve been ghost-writing a book for one of the most powerful people in New York City you’ve never heard about. He’s the maitre d’ at a midtown steakhouse that is crazy busy, crazy expensive, and mobbed with the kinds of movers and shakers you read about in Forbes, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal.
Since I eat very little meat, and I don’t really care if I’m sitting at a so-called “power table,” this is like a foreign country to me. I’m not going to pay $65 for a piece of meat. I’m not going to spend thousands of dollars on a bottle of wine. And it hasn’t been my experience, in business or on dates, that someone else wants to spend that much money on me.
Naturally, I’m mesmerized.
Usually, I go up to the restaurant after the lunch crowd and before dinner, to talk to the maitre d’ about what he’s learned about people. However, last week I went during the dinner rush on Thursday night, the busiest night of the week. I thought that, by getting there before five o’clock, I was allowing myself plenty of time to settle in and observe.
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I’m not a cynical person.
Yeah, right.
I wasn’t a cynical person until I started to give a shit about things in the world. I’m from the hood and in the hood you don’t spend a lot of time worrying about anyone other than yourself and your family.
It was not until I reached my twenties (last year Jean) that I really started to give a damn about things outside of my life. I mean things that had to do with the world. I’ve always loved history but thought of history only in terms of entertainment, much like I would think of a good movie.
Wow, how cool is ‘Kit’ on Night Rider? Wow, how cool was the American Revolution?
That was how I thought of history.
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NBC has given their freshman medical drama MERCY a jump start by adding James VanDerBeek to the cast,. “Dawson” is here to tell us about his place in the show, plus are you ready for a JOE DIRT cartoon and Media Mercenary Ric Meyers covers the new HUMAN TARGET.
“What are we? Since that’s your question, I’m going to answer you. We’re this country, and it wouldn’t be a thing without us, nothing at all. Who does the planting? Who does the watering? Who does the harvesting? Coffee, cotton, rice, sugar cane, caco, corn, bananas, vegetables, and all the fruits, who’s going to grow them if we don’t? Yet with all that, we’re poor, that’s true. We’re out of luck, that’s true. We’re miserable, that’s true. But do you know why, brother? Because of our ignorance. We don’t know yet what a force we are, what a single force – all the peasants, all the Negroes of the plain and hill, all united. Some day, when we get wise to that, we’ll rise up from one end of the country to the other. Then we’ll call a General Assembly of the Masters of the Dew, a great big coumbite of farmers and we’ll clear out poverty and plant a new life“. (p. 106).
This passage is from the book “Masters of the Dew” by Jacques Roumain, one of Haiti’s most beloved writers. The grandson of a Haitian president, he was a novelist who died mysteriously at the age of 37 while serving as Charge D’Affaires to Mexico on behalf of the Haitian government in 1944. The circumstances of his death have in some places been described as political retaliation, that he was brutalized while unlawfully detained in police custody because of his political affiliations, or because of his opposition to the previous U.S. occupation of his country.
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