“Some poor unsuspecting person is going to trip and fall into that stuff and become a @Marvel supervillain.” — a commenter unearthed by Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place.
Actually, it’s too late for that: Marvel Comics already has the Green Goblin, one of Spider-Man’s earliest adversaries. Dude experimented on himself with an unstable chemical and developed an alternate, evil personality that became the president of the United States — twice.
OK, so I made that last part up. But it would explain a lot.
How many different ways are there to write, “This fuckin’ mook is 300 pounds of bellowing bullshit in a 10-pound Brioni bag?”
Beats me. I’ve read a ton of variations on that theme, even had a few goes at it myself, to no particular effect. Manhattan Fats and his Brooks Brothers bandidos just keep rolling merrily along, stealing everything that isn’t screwed to the floor, stenciling his name in gold Krylon on whatever’s left, and bombing the rubble just to watch it bounce.
It’s like watching a CBS remake of “The Maltese Falcon” in which Kaspar Gutman grabs the bird, the real one, and gets away scot free, while Joel Cairo and Wilmer Cook announce their campaign for the White House, Brigid O’Shaughnessy gets a talk show and a book deal, and Sam Spade goes to jail. And we’re just supposed to sit down and watch.
Did I mention it’s a series, not a movie? On every channel and streaming service 24/7? And not so much as a tiny box of stale popcorn with a watered-down soda for the rubes. No fertilizer, no corn. Thanks, Obama!
Subscribe! Follow! Like! Share! CGI junk food in an A.I.-slop sauce. Eighty-six the side of fries. No fertilizer, no spuds. Thanks, Sleepy Joe!
It’s starting to feel like even the bots have run out of scrapes for this tepid potboiler. Take “It Can’t Happen Here,” “Idiocracy,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “It,” “Grapes of Wrath,” “Lost,” the final installment in “The Godfather” trilogy, and the entire Marvel Universe catalog (except for maybe “Iron Man,” which was really pretty cool), throw it all in a big-ass blender, purée the shit out of it until all the ingredients are completely unrecognizable, and serve with a side of Motel 6 toilet paper.
Are we all just hanging on in hopes the final season will include a riff on the “Godfather III” scene in which the Devil — like the rest of us, mumbling, “Awright, OK, enough awready” — finally cuts Michael Corleone’s strings, leaving him to topple out of his chair like the dirty old man Tyrone F. Horneigh falling off a park bench in “Laugh-In?”
Well … maybe that’s just me. And in any event, we should all remember that the rest of the mob did not perish alongside Michael.
*Apologies to Felix Mendelssohn and his “Songs Without Words.”
On May 30, 2024, Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
Also on this date: In 1431, Joan of Arc, condemned as a heretic, was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.
Sorry about that, Joan. In a righteous world you would have lived to a ripe old age and this other would have been a fatty chunk of long pig sputtering on the grill.
The Memorial Day Shopping Fiesta and Family Barbecue Getaway (Nothing to See Here, Move Along, Move Along) kicks off today with the murders most foul of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” and CBS News Radio, along with any remaining illusions that Americans live in a functioning democracy.
There is no truth to the rumor that the new national anthem for our next 250 years — or perhaps 250 days? Hours? — will be the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” reimagined by Black Sabbath. Or so we may hope, anyway.
One thing is certain: That cheery little ditty, along with an unauthorized Kid Rock cover of the Eagles’ song “The Last Resort,” will be in heavy rotation down in the Adolf & Eva Memorial Ballroom & Führerbunker. The lyric “Some rich men came and raped the land / nobody caught ’em” will be a huge laugh line for everyone save the slaves serving up the Big Macs and Diet Cokes.
Meanwhile, some good news: M-Day weekend gas prices are at a four-year high! But that won’t keep 39 million of us from cranking up the Family Yacht and burning a few tanks’ worth to spend time eating bad food poorly prepared and swilling tins of thin industrial lager with people we really don’t like all that much.
The Soma Double Cross takes five in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Last I looked go-juice was between $4.50 and $5 here in The Duck! City, which didn’t make AAA’s list of the top-10 Memorial Day getaways (the podium: Orlando, FL, Seattle, WA, and New York).
No worries here, bruh. I got my holiday shopping done early yesterday, before the ravening hordes could descend upon the grocery and strip the shelves bare like a cloud of fat betatted locusts. And today I ain’t driving nowhere, nohow, though I do expect to get out on a bike at some point. Yesterday was stellar in the Elena Gallegos Open Space; I saw only a few other trail users as I rumbled along on the old Soma Double Cross, and most seemed to be enjoying the wide-open space as much as I was.
Meanwhile, Republicans will be traveling home after shitting the bed in Congress. Here’s hoping their constituents have a few words with them about the horrible smell.
Got ourselves trapped again, eh, Thucydides old chap?
I see King Piggy the Sticky-fingered has covered himself with glory again. Doesn’t smell glorious, but then his snout is probably ruined from decades of horning fat rails of Adderall. His handlers should’ve maybe slipped a little more Thorazine into his Panda Express before letting him anywhere near a hot mic. Or his phone.
While Xi Jinping was making sly references to an Athenian historian’s musings on the Peloponnesian War, Piggy was squealing about how Sleepy Joe is to blame for — well, for everything, including the sinking of Atlantis, the crucifixion of Christ, and the 2008 real-estate bubble — and how “hot” the United States is now after he drove it into the ditch. “Hot” as in “on fire” and with nary a firefighter in sight.
The feeble old fool probably thinks “The Thucydides Trap” is a “Star Trek” episode, the one where Captain Kirk boinks the green gal.
Or maybe he thinks Thucydides is the antibiotic that saved him from one of the venereal diseases that constituted his Vietnam.
Shit, I’ll bet he can’t pronounce Thucydides, much less tell us anything about him. Probably never read any Barbara W. Tuchman, either. No Helen of Troy foldout.