We live in a world where good men are murdered and mediocre hacks thrive.

Jesus - murdered; Martin Luther King - murdered; Malcolm X - murdered; Gandhi - murdered; John Lennon - murdered; Reagan... wounded.


Thus spoke Bill Hicks (Him again? Oh alright then...) back in the 80-s. Well what about our hellish decade, in which Amy Winehouse is dead and Lady Gaga gets to perform with Brian May and be cheered by millions? How lucky is Bill not to have lived to see it, and how sad the world without him.

Too literal, Amy baby...

Where the passive-aggressive assholes shop!

This commercial is my current pet peeve. For those of you who don't speak Hebrew, the idea is that the husband wakes up in the middle of the night with a cold, so he wakes his wife up and sends her to "Super Pharm" to get him some medicine. While there, she spots the nail polish rack, buys two almost identical colors, and asks him which one looks better. Luckily for him, she got him headache pills.

Mmmm, where to begin, where to begin?

First of all, kudos for managing to degrade both men and women equally. Really, nice job.

Secondly, here's my definitive list of midnight medical conditions that would justify waking up the spouse: if you're bleeding in a way that might cause loss of consciousness. If you are choking. If you're experiencing heart or appendicitis symptoms. If you've soiled the bed in some way. If an internal organ has popped out. If your water broke. If a wild animal is eating your face. If you woke up and don't remember who you are. Anything else wrong - you wait until morning. If you wake up with a cold, put on a warmer shirt, a scarf maybe, make yourself a hot tea quietly! then try to go back to sleep.

Thirdly, and more importantly, is this: I know that I'm very old-fashioned and outdated, but I remember when commercials used to send the message of "buy this, it's what all the successful people are buying". All the cool kids eat these chips, all the rich businessmen have this car, all the modern women wear these shoes, etc. Lately, and I didn't notice exactly when this happened, the people in the commercials are bastards, swindlers, morons, they have bad marriages, dysfunctional relationships, they are bad parents - and still I'm supposed to want what they have! How'd you like to be stuck in line behind this passive-aggressive asshole? Not that this one would ever be caught shopping for himself - I'm sure that his wife buys everything for him, from underwear to birthday presents for his parents.

In conclusion, the next step that I recommend for the creators of this commercial, is what Bill Hicks used to recommend to all advertising and marketing people, i.e. this:

Glenn Beck has Nazi Tourettes

Lewis Black is one of the best stand-up comics of the last years, and Glenn Beck is a stinking fascist. This week on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" Lewis Black went off on Glenn Beck's nazi fetish:

Roseanne

Some people are younger than me, and they are too young to remember. Some people are my age or older, and their memory isn't what it used to be. Between these two groups, the number of people who remember Roseanne in her prime are few and far between. My sister is both young and knowledgeable, and she reminded me of good old Roseanne, the domestic goddess, the universal goddess that made one of the best TV shows in history long before TV's "golden age" that we're still enjoying today.

The most remarkable thing I want you to notice about this show is that the characters in it actually laugh at each-other's jokes. The only other sitcom I know of where this occurs is "Curb Your Enthusiasm" - it took about 15 years and a guy like Larry David to repeat this feat - it didn't even happen on Seinfeld. In every other comedy show the character says something funny, and then everyone in the room struggles to keep a straight face wile the audience laughs. Not these people. That's why Roseanne and Dan look like an actual couple, they have an amazing love relationship that any of us would be proud to have. When they fight they actually yell at each-other at the top of their voices and tell each-other really hurtful things, and still manage to be a loving couple through it all (look up an episode named "Lobocop"). They are so believable together that Roseanne's real-life husband made a nuisance of himself with jealous fits and tried to write their love scenes out of the scripts.
If I remember correctly, in its later seasons Roseanne made a point of breaking taboos that people try to keep away from even now. They also had the brilliant idea to cast Shelley Winters as the grandmother. I also know that they jumped the shark a bunch of times before they finally gave up. I'll have to re-watch all the episodes (I'm on season 2) before I can talk about all that.

One day I'll write something long about how artists achieve inner peace at the expense of their creativity, and how we are torn between being happy for them and the heartbreak of losing them forever. Roseanne married and divorced Tom Arnold, then she lost her mind for a while, then she found Kabbalah, lost half her weight and cut 20 years off her face. She had a talk show that got canceled, and now she is mostly a gray-haired political activist. She hasn't lost her edge completely, but the good old days will never return. I am here to shake the dust off the good old days:

This is an episode from the first season of Roseanne:




This is her first TV stand-up appearance:



And here she is annoying a stadium full of baboons:



Finally, this is today's political activist Roseanne:



I've skipped her blonde beauty stage because I find it hard to stomach, you're welcome to Google it yourself.

Please remember this whenever you're tempted to believe that women aren't funny, that there's nothing good on TV, that romance is dead and other dark thoughts that make a person give up on this world.

כתבת השבוע 3

הפעם - הכתבה המבאסת של השבוע:י

נ.ב. ברור שגיביתי את "היטלר מחפש חנייה בתל-אביב".י

Lady GaGa and Beyonce: "Telephone"

In this horrible decade of mediocrity that we live in, which couldn't be wished away by all the people who celebrated its end two and a half months ago, there lives a magical princess named Lady Gaga. She created her name from a Queen song - one of their later, tamer songs, not their early and truly good ones.Well, she couldn't very well call herself Lady Liar or Lady Mustapha, could she?

And while her idol Freddie Mercury was burning himself out on sex drugs and rock'n'roll, she was getting a good musical and religious education, to prepare her for her first record deal at the age of 19. And even though she had all the right role models, all she could ever write for herself were boring little pop bubbles that make a ga-ga-ga noise in your ear. Fortunately for her, she also had a real talent for design, which helped her make some great looking videos for her not-so-great songs, and made her very famous and successful indeed.

But, the princess couldn't stay in her little bubble of success; she had dreams of being Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott. But instead of trying to create her own Kill Bill, Natural Born Killers or Thelma and Louise, she thought it was enough to reference their aesthetics, in a nice safe way that was in no danger of making little girls run away from home and shoot people.

And so, in Lady Gaga's new video "Telephone" she's in a prison, where all the inmates are wearing her cool costumes. And she is naked in her cell, but only to disprove the rumors that she is a hermaphrodite. And she dresses like Madonna and kisses a woman, but only the one that looks most like a man. And she is released by her lover, but she is let out, she doesn't break out in an insane bloodbath. And her lover is the sexiest pop star in the world - Beyonce - but she'll never kiss her, because Beyonce does look like a woman, and besides everybody knows that she's married to a scary thug. Instead they have a weird little dialogue in which Beyonce isn't allowed to use any "cuss" words. And their car says "Pussywagon", but they probably didn't get it from the hospital rapist. And they end up in a diner, where they poison a guy - the most "female" crime of all - they most certainly don't stab or shoot or beat anyone to death. Instead, they dance. And at the end they hold hands and together decide to not jump into the Grand Canyon. After all, how can you "be continued" if you die in the end?

Perhaps if George Carlin had been among Gaga's inspirations, she would've been exposed at some point to his "It's not enough to know which notes to play, you gotta know why they need to be played", and we would've been spared this roaring rampage of regurgitation.

Radical Narcicist

Looking for Lary David's stand-up on the internet is like searching for diamonds ... if diamonds were something there's only two of in the world, and they were relatively easy to find ... aaanyway:



Here he manages to have an environmental message while proudly remaining a total prick:



There's also a longish interview of him with Ricky Gervais. It's really cute how Gervais is all star-struck in the beginning:  Part one, two, three, four, five, six.
|

I'm not with Coco.

Seriously, are we supposed to fight now for the right to be entertained by Conan O'brien? He stopped being funny a long time ago. In fact, NBC waited for him to become almost as un-funny as Jay Leno before they let him have his show. So no, I'm not with Coco. I am, as always, with Bill.