November 26, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, as my girlfriend Magpie and I were watching the ever-deteriorating situation in Iraq unfold on the evening news, I brought up one of my recurring themes, that the infernal descent of American involvement in that country would only be brought to a conclusion by the establishment of an international conference involving all the interested parties.
In their desperation to find a structured solution to an ill-misbegotten quagmire of delusion and blunders, the administration is even seeking to involve Iran, which will be a strategic disaster in the long term given the Iranians’ longstanding hostility toward us and the west. The Iranians, on the other hand, figure that if they sit tight and do nothing they will end up plucking the world’s second or third largest world oil preserves like a piece of rotten fruit off a tree.
I told Magpie, “Nobody listens to me. But I guarantee you, Kissinger is going to propose an international conference on Iraq, and then the idea will start to gain traction.”
Magpie’s response was, “Why don’t you shut up and let me watch TV?”
OK, I’m an idiot. People only listen to what I’ve got to say to the extent that they can tell me to stick to what I know, which is essentially nothing, and leave the deep thinking to the established experts, like Kissinger.
Never mind that Kissinger’s deep thinking has never brought anything but misery and suffering to the people of the world. If you examine the history of Kissinger’s involvment in Latin America and Asia, the result has been right-wing dictatorships that have all eventually collapsed.
Nevertheless, given the instantaneous historical amnesia that affects the intellectual class of society, this tomato can, Kissinger, still has credibility. And he, at least, remembers that The Congress of Vienna and The International Conference at Versailles were responsible for restoring a tenuous sort of temporary stability after two European conflagrations.
Kissinger remembers that, although nobody else seems to. Except 200motels.
So I was not in the least surprised that less than a week later Kissinger issued a statement to the effect that the Iraq war was unwinnable and that the only solution for a structured American withdrawal was an international conference.
I read this on the bus on my way to work, and when I arrived, I immediately called Magpie.
“See, it’s developing exactly the way I told you.”
Magpie’s response: “I seem to remember something about an international conference, but I don’t remember you mentioning Kissinger. Why don’t you just go to work and bring home some money?”
Well, that’s why we have women, to remind us we don’t know shit.
Quite aside from that, I’d like to take a couple of minutes to fill in spaces that Kissinger, in his brevity, didn’t bother to explain.
The first is that Iraq’s neighbors; Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are not the only interested parties that would be attending a world conference on Iraq. Every oil-consuming country has an interest. That includes Japan, China, Europe, Russia and practically any other country able to afford the cost of sending a delegation.
The second issue is, what countries have the military capacity to install troops in Iraq to allow the Americans to withdraw? This narrows the field down considerably. The Europeans are already tied up in Lebanon and Afghanistan. They don’t have enough divisions to occupy Iraq.
That leaves Russia and China, who have large standing armies. But they are not going to be willing to shoulder the financial burden of deploying to Iraq, which means that we would be forced to shoulder the cost of replacing our withdrawing forces with those of counties who have their own strategic designs on the region. Essentially, we would have to pay for two wars, our failed effort and that of our designated babysitters, who we would be paying to steal oil that we wanted to steal.
This solution will never fly in our own country politically, which brings us back to square one. Don’t count on the Democrats to come up with an original solution for an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. Even if they had an idea, they would keep it to themselves. The Democrats are going to be perfectly happy to leave the prosecution of the Iraq war squarely in the lap of Mr. Top Gun, there, and let him die the death of a thousand cuts. By the time the 2008 elections roll around, the American people will be so revolted with video clips of exploding Iraqis and lame, feeble excuses by administration apologists, that they will be happy to install a Democratic administration and solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.
Maybe then we’ll get the social services we deserve in this country to bring us the kind of standard of living and social stability the Europeans enjoy, instead of the precarious catch-as-catch-can existence so many of us are forced to endure on a daily basis today.
We should give thanks for Bush: he is a congenital moron, the product of many generations of marrying cousins. His idiocy brought the current political and social system to an impending meltdown.
The only worry is that this Nancy Pelosi, with her 90210-style petty grudges and personal grievances will install another set of thieves and chiselers like Murtha and Hastings, giving the Republicans who, assembled like so many ghouls and zombies, arms stretching through the gates like “Dawn of the Dead,” are hoping to get their hooks into the American people for one more round of flesh-eating mayhem.
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Posted on 11/26/2006
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November 24, 2006
I lost 5 pounds in one day. I changed my underwear. But people still call me fat. “Here comes old fatso!” they say. People tell me they can see me coming around the corner while I’m still in the middle of the block.
Yeah, I’m fat! THE FATMAN! Ho ho ho I’m freakin’ fat! I took off a couple hundred pounds but I still can’t fit into my Santa Claus suit.
I’m so fat, I don’t leave a ring around the tub – I leave stretch marks. Peeping toms reach in the window and pull down the shade. I had my blood tested and my blood type came back “Ragú.” I turned around and my friends threw me a Welcome Home party.
I’m sick of cell phones. Now you got to hear everybody’s personal business. Even when it’s nasty, it’s boring. This broad was yakking into her cell phone, “He raped me. And the next morning he raped me again!”
Why don’t they get a harmonica instead? [pulls out harmonica and plays a few bars] I figured out a way to jam the harmonica up my ass, and now I can play duets.
And now, ladies and germs, a new feature of our show – The News From France! [plays a few bars from “La Marseilleise” on the harmonica]
You know you’re in France when an airliner flies over and it’s got hair under its wings.
You know you’re in France when you’re driving through a city and you see the toilet paper hanging out to dry.
The French made a movie about America and they called it “Dude, Where’s My Cheese?”
The French are smarter than we are: they invented a birdbath for the pussy.
But French is the only language that has no word for soap. Though, they have fourteen words for “fart.”
The last time I was in France I fell in love with a beautiful French girl named Paulette. “Oh, baby,” I told her, “You got everything I love in a woman. Your mouth smells like garlic, your feet smell like cheese and your butt smells like fish. (It must be Friday) How about me and you hop into the trunk of your subcompact car and get our rocks off?”
She said, “Oh anything for you my American dreamboat of a fatman. But first I want to hear your big hit record on the charts with a bullet, or you ain’t driving nowhere tonight, buddy!”
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I know when I’m licked – all over! I took out my harmonica and started playing. [plays the first few bars of “La Vie en Rose”]
Quand tu me prends dans tes bras
Et tu me parles tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose-eh
And Paulette cried, “Oh, my big fat stinking cheese of a man, give it to me! GIVE ME THE FRENCH BREAD IN THE CULO, I WANT IT SO MUCH!”
Just then, in through the door barges Paulette’s boyfriend, Marcel Leboeuf, the toughest truck driver in Marseilles, who has just broken out of St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary, which is a jail that is so tough [audience asks: “How tough is it?”] which is so tough that even the cockroaches got tattoos!
And Marcel Leboeuf is holding a knife in one hand and a razor in the other hand, and he’s got a gun sticking out of his pants!
And Marcel Leboeuf says to me, “Fucking English!” He says “Fucking English, I’m going to cut off your stinking “couilles” and shove them into your fucking black hole of a “cul.”
Well, without going into a detailed translation, I realized I was in a world of fucking “merde.”
But then I remembered: the only thing the Frenchmen can’t resist is music. So I took out my axe and started playing:
Allez venez milord
Vous assesoir a ma table
Il fait si froid dehors
Ici c’est comfortable
And Marcel grabbed Paulette and the two of them started dancing around the room.
Seizing my opportunity, I jumped off the balcony onto the sidewalk, ran down into the métro and took the train back to my hotel.
And that’s the story of my great French love affair.
[Audience starts booing and throwing tomatoes]
See you all next week – if they let me.
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Posted on 11/24/2006
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November 12, 2006
BAM BAM BAM
LARRY - Who’s there?
LANDLORD - It’s the landlord!
[Larry opens door]
LANDLORD – You got the rent money yet?
LARRY – Not yet boss.
LANDLORD – Well, if I don’t get my money by tomorrow you and those other two clowns are evicted.
LARRY – OK, boss. [slams door]
[Moe and Curley emerge from hiding behind the sofa]
LARRY – Where are we gonna’ get the money?
MOE – Don’t worry. Look what I got here! [Moe produces a flyer]
$1,000 PRIZE
AMATEUR HIP-HOP CONTEST
TONIGHT
APOLLO THEATER
125th STREET, HARLEM
LARRY – But Moe, we don’t know anything about music.
MOE – Relax, I’ve got it all figured out. First we need some cool clothes. Curley, put these pants on.
CURLEY – OK, Moe. [Puts on pants] Moe, these pants are too short and they’re falling down around my butt!
MOE – That’s the look. Where did you get those yellow drawers?
CURLEY - They used to be white.
MOE – [smacks Curley] Why, you pig! You’re disgusting!
CURLEY – You say the sweetest things! [kisses Moe]
MOE – Why you… [tries to poke two fingers in Curley’s eyes, but Curley is too fast. He protects his face with his hand]
CURLEY – Nyuk nyuk!
[Moe swings his arm around like a propeller and hits Curley on the head like a hammer]
BONK!
CURLEY – That smarts!
MOE – Now shut up and put on this shirt.
CURLEY – That ain’t a shirt, it’s a dress! [puts on shirt] Moe, this shirt is hanging down to my ankles.
MOE – You look cool. Now we need some earrings for you.
CURLEY – Earrings are for girls. I’m not a girl!
MOE – If you don’t shut up and do what I tell you, I’m gonna turn you into a girl in about one minute. Now, what can we use for earrings?
LARRY – All we’ve got are some paper clips and some animal crackers.
MOE – Well, we’ll have to hang the animal crackers from Curley’s ears with the paper clips.
CURLEY – Good idea! Then if I get hungry, I can eat my earrings. [puts the animal crackers on his ears]
MOE – Now we need to get you a chain for around your neck. We’ll use Rover’s dog chain. Larry, get one of the hubcaps from the kitchen to hang from the chain.
LARRY – But Moe, those hubcaps are what we’re using for dishes.
MOE – We’ll have to eat out of the Frisbee. [attaches the hubcap to the dog chain and hangs it around Curley’s neck] Not bad… Now we just need to put a do-rag on your head.
CURLEY – What’s a do-rag?
MOE – Don’t you know anything? When you get your hair processed you put a do-rag over it to protect your conk.
CURLEY – But Moe, I ain’t got no hair!
LARRY – What are we gonna use for a do-rag?
MOE – Go steal a pair of pantyhose from Mrs. Murphy’s clothesline.
[Moe ties the pantyhose on Curley’s head]
MOE – Now, cop an attitude.
CURLEY – What’s that?
MOE – You have to be nasty and threatening.
CURLEY – [barks like a dog] Grrr! Ruff ruff ruff!
MOE – No, you have to be mean enough to scare people into thinking you want to kill them.
CURLEY – But Moe, I’m a happy person. My parents owned a candy store and I always had all the candy I wanted. My mother used to feed me six meals a day. I don’t have a mean bone in my body!
MOE – Try to imagine that your father went to prison and your mother was a crack addict. You lived in a cardboard box under the 125th Street Bridge and rats bit your face when you were sleeping.
CURLEY – [crying] Boo-hoo-hoo!
MOE – Alright, This is not working. Larry, go get that bottle of castor oil from the medicine cabinet. [holds Curley’s nose and pours the whole bottle of castor oil down his throat]
CURLEY – Yuck, ugh, hack hack, cough, shit!
MOE – Now you got it! Now make some hand signals.
CURLEY – Like what?
MOE – Like you’re a TV antenna and you’re trying to improve reception so we can watch the Knicks game.
CURLEY – Like this?
MOE – Yeah, exactly! Now start dancing. Make believe you’re a Halloween skeleton on a string.
CURLEY – How’s this, Moe?
MOE – Nah, that’s too much like real dancing. Make like you’re an epileptic having a grand mal fit. No no no! That’s not jerky enough. Wait, I’ll help you. [goes over to the desk and takes out a jar labeled “Brazilian Fire Ants”] [to Larry] I was saving this for an emergency and I guess this is it.
[Moe unscrews the jar and empties the fire ants into Curley’s pants]
[Curley starts jumping around like a lunatic]
CURLEY – Wheep wheep wheep! Oh oh! Yadda yadda yadda! Oh no, oh no, oh no! [Curley starts smacking his body with his hands, rolling around on the floor, raises himself to a sitting position and drags himself across the floor on his butt]
LARRY - It looks like he’s getting the hang of it pretty good.
MOE – He better, or tomorrow night we’ll be sleeping on a subway grating.
[Scene fades to backstage at the Apollo Theater. The Stooges are dressed identically, and all three are wearing wraparound sunglasses]
STAGE MANAGER – You boys are on next. Are you ready?
MOE – Just one more thing, boss. [pulls open the top of Curley’s shirt and throws in an electric eel. Curley’s shirt starts flashing and smoke and crackling noises come out of it]
ANNOUNCER – And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct from the secret underground dumps under the White Castle on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, The Funky Stooges!
AUDIENCE – Yay!
[The Stooges go onstage, Larry and Moe strutting back and forth like a chorus line while Curley, shocked to shit by the electric eel in his shirt, does a St. Vitus dance at center stage]
LARRY and MOE –
We may not be pretty but we the crew that never loses
That’s why the women call us the Funky Stooges
Larry Moe and Curley are our given names
Makin’ love to pretty girls is our only aim
We may all be dummies who never went to school
Maybe we are stupid but we think that is cool
STOOPID – that’s our middle name
STOOPID – being dummies is our game
STOOPID – we can’t read or write
STOOPID – we love to drink and fight
S-T-O-O-P-I-D
That’s how were meant to be
D-U-M-M-M-I-E
Brainless idiocy
We don’t work or go to school
We just goof off like a fool
We too smart to get a job
We would rather steal and rob
We will never go to Yale
We would rather go to jail
AUDIENCE – Yay!
ANNOUNCER - Well, you boys are the winners. Now, before we award you the thousand dollars, tell us: who is your favorite rapper? 50 cent? Jay-Z?
CURLEY – We like Clifford the Big Red Dog.
AUDIENCE – [shocked] Gasp!
[The Stooges get booted out the back door into the alley]
LARRY – Oooh, we lost the money!
MOE – [to Curley] Who told you to open yer big yap?
CURLEY – I’m a baaaaad boooy!
MOE – Why you…. [chases Curley around the alley]
Scene fades.
THE END
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Posted on 11/12/2006
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November 10, 2006
Bush’s permanent majority has melted away like a polar icecap under the effect of global warming, the existence of which he never recognized, though he must be starting to feel the heat now!
He knows he’s defenseless. He’s aware of all the awful things he’s done, though, like every wise guy who has ever lived, he never contemplated that his streak would come to an end.
Like a particularly odious, cowardly minor Roman emperor who one morning awakes to find that his bodyguard has slipped away during the night, exposing him to the naked wrath of his long-oppressed subjects, Bush awoke to find his flabby Praetorian guard of crooked, grafting flunkies had been ridden out of town on a rail by an inflamed electorate.
The White House had better lay in a large supply of Vaseline for Bush, because now that he has lost both houses of Congress and is virtually defenseless, his butt is going to get reamed out like a two-dollar crack whore on Saturday night.
I’m not sure I’m in favor of impeaching his sorry butt now that his legs are effectively cut off anyway, and he may prove more useful as a punching bag for the Democrats leading up to the next election, but I am definitely in favor of pursuing congressional hearings into various of his blunders, like 9/11, as a way of controlling him with the threat of impeachment, the same as the threat of armed force would have been a more effective way of controlling Saddam Hussein than an actual invasion of Iraq.
Bush is susceptible to all kinds of pressure now and, contrary to his Top Gun image, he is not a tough man. He is Mr. Softee, and he will be easy for the Democrats to muscle around. The big risk is that if he is too brutally banged around by vengeful Democrats he will become a figure of sympathy for the more softheaded sob sisters of society.
He could serve as an excellent lightning rod for our sins. Maybe we should send him and Cheney on a month-long tour of Pakistan.
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November 08, 2006
When I heard that Sylvester Stallone was making another sequel of “Rocky,” I couldn’t believe my ears.
Sure, Stallone keeps in shape but he’s pushing 60 now, and nobody’s going to suspend disbelief to the point of believing that a guy that age is going to survive in the ring against a heavyweight bruiser half his age.
Fortunately, I’ve got a good connection in the movie business, so I got an advance copy of the DVD.
The film opens in the Sonny Liston Memorial Home for Retired Pugilists, where Rocky is dozing off in the television room after an exhausting match of dominos.
Adrian runs up to him. “Rocky, I just overheard Sister Mary Magdalene crying in her office. If she isn’t able to come up with a million dollars, the town council is going to demolish the home for a sewage treatment plant.”
Rocky says, “Don’t worry, Adrian, I’ll go back into the ring and get the money.” He says, “I’ll start training right now. Wheel me into the kitchen.”
Instead of toughening his hands pounding on sides of beef in the frozen meat locker, Rocky punches on hamburger patties in the kitchen.
Instead of doing roadwork by dragging a log through the snow, he does sprints pushing a shopping basket up and down the aisle in Pathmark.
The night of the big fight, Rocky is in his corner in Madison Square Garden. The ring announcer announces the fight, “Let’s get ready to RUMBLE! In this corner, in the red trunks, from the Russian Federation, The Heavyweight Champion of the World, Vladimir Klitschko!”
In this corner, in the union suit with the button-down butt flap, from Philadelphia, Rocky Balboa!
The bell rings. Klitschko hits Rocky with a left, a right, a hook, an uppercut. Rocky only manages to stay on his feet by holding on to his walker.
Between rounds, Rocky’s cornermen take out his teeth and administer him CPR.
In the twelfth and final round, Rocky pushes his walker into Klitschko and knocks him over. Klitschko hits his head and passes out. Rocky is declared the winner.
Adrian jumps into the ring. “Rocky, you won the fight! You got the million bucks!”
Rocky is so overwhelmed, he clutches his heart and collapses.
Which is the same thing that is going to happen to this movie.
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Posted on 11/8/2006
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November 08, 2006
I recently received a fan letter from a devoted reader, part of which reads as follows:
Dear 200motels, you stink. Plus which, you don’t know shit. How come you waste everybody’s time with your nonsense when all you are doing is taking up bandwidth that could be used by a serious, informed American?
If you were any good you would be in Vanity Fair Magazine instead of skulking around the Portosans behind the fish stalls at the Fulton Street Fish Market exposing yourself to nuns and adolescent schoolgirls. You and I both know that no editor will touch your garbage, so fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Signed, L. Maric?n.
Dear Mr. Maricón,
Thank you for your thoughtful letter of support. It’s true, I stink, but it’s a conscious strategy to get a seat on the subway. Actually, this woman complimented me on my fragrance. “What have you got on?” she asked.
I said, “I got a hard-on, but I didn’t know you could smell it.”
Actually, being repulsive, redundant and unpalatable to the literary establishment puts me in good company. Leo Tolstoy had to spend his own money to get “War and Peace” into print, as did Marcel Proust for “A la recherche du temps perdu” Fortunately for these guys, they had a few rubles to take a flyer on something they believed in. What about all the poor suckers throughout history who had something cool to share with the world, but who were kicked out on the street by an idiot editor and didn’t have the coin to see their stuff through to publication? Lost forever.
Editors don’t know shit, or they would be writers. That’s especially true of New York, where the least betrayal of artistic inspiration is the kiss of death in a market that intentionally dumbs down the environment to give a chance to all the mediocre talents bursting with ambition. You think I’m kidding? Tina Brown’s book is yet another rehash of Princess Diana, who was stale copy even when she was alive. Vanity Fair is full of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Brittany Spears and neo-conservatives. Not exactly the spearhead of the avant-garde, y’know what I mean?
Let’s say for the sake of argument that 90% of my stuff stinks, I’m not arguing. That means I hit with one out of ten. That means that after wasting people’s time nine times, I have the elements of one good piece.
OK, I made people suffer ten times, but I’ve got one thing that might end up as something unique and different. Writing is the same as stand-up comedy. It’s a bitch to put together 10 strong minutes of stand-up, but at the end you’ve got something to go coast-to-coast and maybe make it to Jay Leno. After that the movies. No way I’m going to get discouraged, no matter how many suckers tell me to go kill myself. I’m not going to give it up.
How do you get to be an editor in New York? Graduate college and get a journalistic job, which immediately turns you into processed cheese. After a few corporate episodes you get promoted to editor.
I don’t have anything against this system, but it has nothing to do with me. I used to resent it, because since people are loathe to work with anybody who knows more that they do, I got shut out for knowing too much.
But now, with the internet and blog technology, I can take my case directly to the public. And, as in stand-up comedy, I don’t care if a few tomatoes get thrown at me, because I can come up with more ideas than the audience can come up with tomatoes.
In the Humphrey Bogart movie “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” the gold miners get ambushed by some Mexican bandidos. The leader of the bandits tries to sucker the white guys by telling them he’s a sheriff. When Bogart tells them to show their badges, the Mexican becomes enraged and screams, “We don’t need to show you no stinkin’ badges!” and starts shooting.
I got the same thing to say to you, Maricón, I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ editors.
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Posted on 11/8/2006
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November 05, 2006
I never go anywhere without The New York Post. Everything I know I learned in The Post. Here’s a picture of that Jewish Nazi in Brooklyn. He’s the president of the Mel Gibson Fan Club.
This picture inspired me to invent the Mel Gibson Inflatable Sex Doll, where you pull the string and it yells, “Fuck me, rabbi, fuck me!”
The Post always prints fantastic photos of Paris Hilton. They’re using her as the model for a Beverly Hills version of the Statue of Liberty. Instead of a torch, she’s holding up a dick. The base doesn’t read “Send me your huddled masses,” it’s going to read, “Give me your billionaire asses.”
I was riding the subway next to this real cute blonde. I said, “You smell pretty good. What do you have on?”
She said, “I have Chanel No. 5 on.” She said, “You smell pretty good too. What do you have on?”
I said, “I’ve got a hard-on, but I didn’t know you could smell it.”
She said, “I’m into computers.”
I said, “Let’s hook up my hard drive to your modem and I’ll give you a download.”
There’s a lot of freakin’ animals riding the subway. This guy had his legs spread all across the aisle. He was drinking coffee and clipping his nails with a nail clipper. I said, “Hey, one of your fingernails just flew into my pizza!”
The reason the Republicans are against abortion is that they need more kids to molest. Also, when Cheney’s loaded he finds that orphans are easier to shoot at with his shotgun than clay pigeons.
The French are smarter than we are. They invented a birdbath for the pussy. And they need it, with all the dicks that they got going in and out. Did anybody see the new “Marie Antoinette” movie? This is a movie about the French Revolution that never saw a Frenchman.
It’s got Lindsay Lohan playing Marie Antoinette and Jason Timberlake as Louis the Fourteenth. In the movie Louis the Fourteenth starts screaming, “Who sat in my cheese!!?? Marie Antoinette, did you sit in my cheese?”
“No, your majesty.”
“C’mere, bitch!” [mimics pulling up Marie Antoinette’s dress and sticking his finger in her]
[to audience, leering] It’s good to be the king!
[smells finger] Nope, that’s not cheese, that’s fish. It must be Friday.
Everybody ready for The New York Marathon this weekend? My favorite is the Mexican team. They practice as hurdlers, jumping over walls. What’s this? [runs around backward with arms in the air] That’s the French team. Right them is the Arab team with a stick of dynamite jammed up their butt. And right behind them is the American team with a match. The winning team gets free accommodation at the INS Detention Center at Kennedy Airport.
[motions to the back of the room] There’s Dick Cheney with a shotgun, telling me my time is up. Thank you very much!
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Posted on 11/5/2006
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November 01, 2006
I don’t want people to start thinking that this is a political blog site, because that’s the kiss of death. I see this as a comedy/literary blog site. If you don’t think my stuff is funny, maybe you’re not smoking the right stuff.
Nevertheless, with the election coming up and the Republican Party seemingly ready to go straight to the depths of hell, which is what they have worked so hard to accomplish and what they so richly deserve, I don’t want to pass up my last chance to kick their bloody and prostate body for one last time before I go back to other, vastly more entertaining diversions.
This election is going to tighten up considerably in the last days, regardless of what anybody believes. And, like the monster in “Alien,” the Republicans are not going to allow themselves to get pitched into a boiling vat of red-hot molten metal without one last venomous attempt to destroy humanity.
In this last week leading up to the balloting they are going to use every insult buried in the dark chambers of their black souls to try to scare voters away from voting Democratic, accusing the Democrats of cowardice, treason, being agents of Osama Bin Laden, stealing bread out of the deserving mouths of hereditary billionaires, advocating buggery and every other monstrous malediction their sleazebag strategists can conjure up.
They’re even insulting Democrat’s faces. Last week Hillary Clinton’s opponent for the senate, John Spencer, told a reporter that she was spending a fortune of money on plastic surgery. Now the politics of attacking people’s faces is infuriating enough, believe me! I have had that shit played on me personally. New Yorkers seem to think they can say anything to a person, and when you punch the shit out of them for doing it, they’re shocked, SHOCKED!
In most of the United States, if you tell a person, “I don’t like your face,” it means you’re ready to kill or be killed, but in New York, where people’s self-esteem is already so battered and degraded that they’re willing to accept almost any indignity or humiliation in order to live long enough to find a sucker even lower down on the food chain than they are to take it out on, it has all the impact of saying “Good morning,” or “Pass me the Cheerios.”
Unfortunately for these morons, I’m from Chicago, where you can really end up in a world of shit for cutting too close to the bone with a person. It’s cultural. If you fuck with me, I’m not going to look for somebody else to take it out on. I’m going to look for a way to go back to the source of the problem.
A lot of people don’t like me for this, and it has caused me a lot of headaches, but I don’t care. At least I can look at myself in the mirror and say, “There is something more than a scumsucking sleazebag.”
I got fucked out of a lot of money by my father’s family. Generally, it hasn’t bothered me too badly because I can take care of myself, but a few years ago, during one of the recessions, I was forced to take a job for a while which I really felt was beneath my dignity. My girlfriend, Magpie, and I accepted an invitation to spend the weekend in the country, and while we were there, our hostess, who has not been able to resist behaving insultingly toward me at various times, decided to twist the knife by telling me, “You know, your family didn’t do anything wrong by stealing your inheritance. These things happen all the time.”
Now, I wasn’t soliciting any advice. Normally, I would have told her to mind her own business and while she was at it, to go fuck herself as well, but I was a guest in her house and it was far from New York, so I just said, “I guess you’re right.” That shit totally broadsided me at the time and I wasn’t thinking. But I haven’t forgotten it. And I have gotten even over the years at my leisure, but people with abusive natures have thin skins, and they are not satisfying victims.
Similarly, Hillary Clinton, who has a much thicker hide than I do, has resisted the temptation to tell John Spencer, “Why don’t you extract your ugly head from your rectum long enough to go hang your pathetic self from a bridge?” She knows she’s far enough ahead of him in the polls that in a couple of weeks he’ll be chop suey. She has bigger fish to fry than getting into an insult war with the Republican mayor of fucking Yonkers. So, like she just lamely responded, “I used to be cute when I was a kid.”
OK, Hillary Clinton ain’t so cute anymore. Whose fault is that? With her money she could get the best personal trainer in the business, go to a spa and lift weights, get a nip/tuck job, fly to Paris for a new wardrobe.
I believe that if a person does not have enough sense to have a nice appearance, how can you trust him to do anything right? That’s why I love former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is a thief, an assassin and is guilty of just about every outrage to humanity that you care to enumerate. The guy looks like the star of a Pedro Almodovar movie, and at age 70 he’s no kid.
Berlusconi started life as the normal middle-class kid of a bank employee, worked as a lounge singer on cruise ships and, using his father’s banking connections, built a media and real estate empire that made him the richest man in Italy. This guy is what Trump wishes he was. He is the legitimate article. Unfortunately, unlike Trump, he was not born into a fortune so he has had to cut a lot of corners, and he is perpetually under indictment.
What of it? The Italian people don’t lean to condescending moralism, which is one of the features that endear them to me. Recently, The Financial Times, which hates Berlusconi with the moral fervor of the anglo-saxon conservative tribune that it is, ran a beautiful portrait shot of him, and the guy looked so fantastic and handsome that my heart was bursting with admiration for him. God Bless Him with his beautiful hair transplant, lean athletic body, $10,000 suits, castles in Sardinia, his mistresses and his football team. How I love the guy!
Hillary Clinton could be fantastic and glamorous like that. She has brains and culture. Unfortunately, Republican attacks on her over the years have sapped her self-esteem to the point where her fashion sense is on the negative side of the gauge. She wants so desperately to be accepted and elected that she intentionally degrades her appearance so as not to offend some idiot office manager in Rolla, Missouri into voting against her.
A long time ago one of my bosses, whom I refer to as Pops, impressed by my ability and determination, asked me, “Why haven’t you considered going into politics?”
I told him, “Pops, with my record I couldn’t get elected dog catcher,” and in the hypocritical, moralistic climate of the country, no truer words were ever spoken. But I also told him, “I don’t have the stomach for retail politics. I don’t want to have to shake hands with strangers and I don’t want people coming to me with their problems.”
See, politics is not just about stealing and flying to Scotland (Gawd, Scotland, yet!) for golf trips. You’re expected to be a fucking people person.
Fortunately, I have always had enough highly developed job skills that I have been able to keep being employed without having to depend upon the good will of the world at large.
The positive side of a thing like that is that I can look any man in the eye, though I truly detest making eye contact with New Yorkers, who are a bunch of lying scumbags. New Yorkers just lie to keep in practice.
I can also say that whatever I have stolen, it has been at the low end of the scale. No less an authority that my old boss, Pops, who was no slouch at stealing, believe me, told me with great sincerity, “You’re as honest a man as anyone I know,” which essentially meant that he felt reasonably secure that I wasn’t stealing from him. Remember, we’re talking about the fashion business at this time, when thievery was as much a part of human existence as eating and breathing. Just to give you an example, our trucking contractor, our garbage pick-up and the labor union representing our factory help were all Gambino fronts. When Tommy Gambino came into our place for a look around, Pops and all the old-timers treated it like a diplomatic visit from the Queen of England. After he left, they all gushed, “Did you notice how wonderful and polite he was? Just like a regular person!”
Compared to these barnacle-encrusted throwbacks, I was a clean guy. Pops appointed me to check the workers’ parcels and handbags when they left the place at noon and at night, and I caught quite a lot of thieves, at no small risk to my own person, because Latin people don’t feature being shown up for thieves. Meantime, while I was enforcing vigilance at the door, the Company’s executives were looting the place with both hands in the executive suite. So typical!
Stealing in New York is full-time and relentless. Nobody can live on what he makes. My father’s family stole from me, figuring I would make it up by robbing somebody else. My girlfriend, Magpie, still pines for her German boyfriend, Vautour, who built up a ponzi scheme by robbing immigrant janitors out of their life savings, which he squandered on speedboats and houses in the Hamptons. First he got rid of her, then the feds got rid of him. But she still doesn’t mind reminding me that I stink (sorry, I don’t swindle people with bogus investment schemes and go to federal prison. I’d rather work for a living).
In “Les Misérables” Jean Valjean did 20 years in the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread, and was subsequently hounded by Inspector Javert for decades after. This may have been written as a fiction by Victor Hugo, but he didn’t just make it up. He either knew a real story like that or had an anecdotal source for it. So the Koslowskis, Skillings and Ebbers shouldn’t feel so bad. They got a comparable sentence for stealing hundreds of millions and billions. Nevertheless, some really big whales escaped the net.
Which begs the question: how much is enough? Does a thief ever stop and say, I have all I need? If Jean Valjean had not been apprehended with the loaf of bread, would he have been back the next day to steal a horse?
That was the guiding principle behind Mayor Giuliani’s crime program: get them while they are stealing small, before they start stealing big. And he was universally applauded. But even as crime dried up at the street level, it was roaring full speed on Wall Street, with nobody the wiser. And those in the know weren’t talking.
Not that the mayor of New York is responsible for going after securities fraud, but the same people who applauded Giulaini’s safe streets initiative pounced on Eliot Spitzer for being a dangerous radical and a threat to capitalism.
Anyway, Spitzer is now moving up to the governor’s mansion. In his place, Andrew Cuomo, and it remains to be seen how much talent he will bring to the job.
The first issue they will have to deal with is the State Comptroller General Alan Hevesi, who detailed a state employee to chauffer his wife for years while he was the state’s top auditor. Maybe he figured nobody was going to audit him. Nevertheless, Hevesi is also a slam-dunk for re-election, and his first official act will probably be to resign and let Spitzer choose his replacement.
But does stealing ever reach a saturation point, like pushing yourself away from the Thanksgiving table, or does your appetite expand with the supply, like an over inflated Macy’s Parade balloon? That would seem to be the case. Italy wasn’t big enough to satisfy Silvio Berlusconi, who is now also under indictment in Spain for the same activities he pursued in his own country. Publishing magnate Conrad Black’s avarice led him to gorge himself in three countries.
The parable of my old boss, Pops, is a telling fable. The guy spent his whole life chiseling and stealing until he had enough to keep his whole family in the chips down to the tenth generation. Most of it he gave to his sons while he was alive so that it wouldn’t end up in probate. A little bit he kept for himself to live in retirement with his longtime girlfriend, Bonnie.
One day he fell ill and his sons convinced him to sign over a power of attorney for the little bit that he kept for himself. When he got better, Pops asked his sons to get rid of the power of attorney and restore his money to him. They refused, and put him on a shoestring budget (he never spent any money anyway). When he died, Pops’ sons evicted his girlfriend from his condo and cut her off without a dime.
So I think we can infer that stealing is an open-ended activity, and that it is hereditary. But if Pops’ family was rife with larceny, what to say about Sanford Weill, the Citicorp chairman who was to Pops what the Intrepid is to a leaky rowboat?
Nobody suffered more at the hands of Eliot Spitzer, at least financially, than Sanford Weill, whose company Spitzer nailed for every tacky off the books transaction imaginable. If people can resist anything but temptation, Citicorp’s bankers, analysts and creative accountants displayed their wares like two dollar crack whores and figuratively broke down Enron’s doors with irresistibly delicious structured finance deals and bond offerings that Skilling, Lay et al couldn’t resist until Enron was finally bled dry, while the bankers were simultaneous hawking their “financial products” to WorldCom, Adelphia, etc. After all, if you have a product, why not market it everywhere?
It was a perpetual motion merry-go-round of greed and stealing unequaled in human history, and Sanford Weill presided over it like a king in front of a particularly delectable Viennese pastry until Spitzer showed up like an unpleasant waiter and presented him with the bill.
But Spitzer didn’t just stop with Sanford Weill. He’s now going on to Weill’s daughter, Jessica Bibliowicz, who seems to have her own pact with the devil. Not content to just be the spoiled daughter of a super-loaded multi-billionaire, Jessica-baby has set out to show the world that she can make her own money. Unfortunately her skill set is rather limited, and the best she was able to do was to set herself up as – get this - a life settlement broker, who lines up sick, old people who are willing to sell their life insurance policies to unscrupulous companies for ten cents on the dollar because they are in desperate straits and need cash now.
These sleazy operations, which, incidentally, are founded by some very large so-called “reputable” corporations, get the old people to name them as beneficiaries for their life insurance, pay them a few bucks, and then continue paying the premiums on the policies until the old geezers kick off, and then they collect the inheritance.
It’s a sickening racket, and to make matters worse Spitzer is charging Bibliowicz, who was nominally supposed to represent the interests of the policy holders, with accepting kickbacks from the purchasing companies for keeping the sale price low.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but that’s all they’re willing to pay.”
Now what is the heiress of a multi-billionaire doing chiseling sick people in wheelchairs and walkers out of their life insurance? She’s conforming to the law of the jungle. And that’s what we’re living in – a jungle. No wonder the Frenchmen don’t want any part of it!
The system, as it is presently structured is configured to make bottom feeders out of all of us, even those at the top. That’s why I’m throwing my support to Spitzer. He at least seems to want to raise us above the level of scavengers and vultures. So does Hillary Clinton, who is first and foremost an idealist and philosophy student, regardless of all the low digs John Spencer has to say about her face.
God Bless America and God Bless Hillary Clinton. May she sweep into the White House with her shabby wardrobe and clean up the vile mess left behind by the Republicans.
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Posted on 11/1/2006
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