November 28, 2009

NO FLY ZONE - or: Voyage of Butt Discovery

My butt is a No-Fly Zone, meaning that it’s so nasty back there that even the flies don’t come near it. It’s not because I don’t wash it. Every Saturday night I go to the Industrial Car Wash on Eleventh Avenue and 46th Street and pay six bucks to go through the wash cycle. I stand on a dolly, which they hook up to the chain drive, and it pulls me through the big brushes, while a team of Albanian guys in rubber suits hose me down and scrub me with steel bristle brooms. Then a guy vacuums my crotch and my butt to suck out all the lint and encrusted material. Sometimes I even pay an extra fin for a wax job, so that when I emerge, my butt is a shining example of American Ingenuity, gleaming like a new Pontiac Grand Prix in the dealer’s showroom.

Still, it’s not enough. As any car buyer knows, a gleaming exterior can belie all the soot and crass that has been allowed to build up within the vehicle’s internal mechanism, and what blows out the exhaust pipe can be less than heavenly.

As they say in the computer business: GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out, and I have got the same problem. After a lifetime of ingesting nasty intake like macaroni and cheese, calzone, egg rolls, stinking garlic bagels, O’Henry candy bars, triple Whoppers, Philly Cheese Steaks, creamed corn, refried beans, 50 cent Papaya hot dogs, enchiladas with Tabasco sauce, pork rinds, Cheese Doodles and every other kind of wretched pollution, what tends to emerge from my butt resembles a kind of sulfurous, burning lava that disintegrates everything in its path and emits a poisonous gas that would be the envy of deranged, homicidal mass terrorists, if only they could conceive a delivery system that would enable them to use it in their never-ending quest to achieve world domination without themselves first falling victim to it.

I have received offers from al-Qaeda, the Nazis, Chinese intelligence, Hugo Chavez and the Iranian government seeking to pay me millions for the formula for what comes out of my backside, but it’s impossible to duplicate. What do these idiots think, I took notes? Oh no! As A-Rod will tell you, when you achieve a grand slam homer, it’s more of an art than a science. All I can advise these terrorists is: if you want to invent a truly noxious substance with the potential to kill thousands, stick a cork up your butt, go up to La Casa del Mofongo on St. Nicholas Avenue and eat as much mofongo con queso with hot sauce as you can until the gas pressure in your intestines builds up to such a red alert level that the cork explodes out of your rectum like an artillery shell and kills somebody on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge from a concussion. Only then will you achieve true enlightenment.

Naturally, like a comedian who causes trouble and anxiety for everybody around him but is himself untouched by the fallout of his own incontinent behavior; or like Typhoid Mary, who left a trail of death and suffering but never fell ill herself, the monstrous vile substances that emanate from my backside never bother me. For me personally, it’s nice, like taking a stroll in the botanical gardens. In fact, it has beneficial advantages, like getting a seat on the subway. Sometimes, when I am bothered by a gay guy in a bar, I just bend over and give him a little blast of whatever happens to be cooking up down there, and he quickly retreats to the other end of the room. Now, that is something to truly be proud of, because gay guys really love toilet odors, otherwise most of their social contacts wouldn’t take place in public bathrooms. You never hear about gay guys hanging out in perfume factories. So, when my butt is even a turn-off for gay guys, you know that I have achieved an accomplishment of historical significance!

The only women I can get are French women. French people have a high tolerance for stinking backsides because of a lifetime devotion to smelly cheeses and rancid, stinking pots of week-old fish soup. French is the only language for which there is no word for soap. When I go to France the president pins a medal on my butt.

Which brings me to the point of this little narrative. I recently went to my doctor, who wore a respirator for her examination of me. Part of the process was a rectal examination, where she had to push her finger up my butt to check my prostate. She said, “I hope this doesn’t embarrass you”. I answered, “Embarrass me? Hell, no! When I go down to Mexico I have to pay fifty bucks for this”.

She told me that my prostate seemed OK but that she was giving me a referral to a proctologist because it was time for me to get a colonoscopy. Now, this was always one of my dreams - to be on a reality show. Because what is a colonoscopy, where they send a Roto Rooter up your butt with a camera attached to it, except a real reality show? Not only would it be flattering for me (“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille”), but all my adoring fans would get to see me in the most intimate of settings, an “Incredible Voyage” right up my butt and through my intestines. Who knows what special guest stars might show up for an appearance? The Giant Hemorrhoid, enraged at being disturbed in his lair, might be motivated to defend his turf by attacking the camera like the giant squid in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. I could already see the theater marquee – “Journey to the Center of My Butt”.

The proctologist’s office sent me a packet of literature relating to my impending visit, but I was so busy consulting with my wardrobe director and my hair stylist that I neglected to read it until one hour before my scheduled visit at the doctor’s office. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it contained two prescriptions for medications that I was supposed to have taken the night before – one for some glop that I was supposed to drink and the other for a suppository that I was supposed to insert into my butt – as if there wasn’t enough up there already! Well, no point fretting over the past. I would have to go forward and fake it. Maybe the doctor wouldn’t notice.

The butt doctor was a Japanese guy, Dr. Hiroshima Suzuki. When, at the pre-examination interview, he asked me whether I had taken the medication, I lied, “Sure!” “Good”, he exclaimed, rubbing his hands in anticipation. They laid me down on an examination table and anaesthetized me. I was out like a light. I dreamed of being called up to the stage and awarded an Emmy by Lady Gaga for Most Beautiful Butt as Kanye West protested that the prize should have gone to Rihanna.

Soon I was awakened and told that the procedure was over. I was instructed to put my clothes on and wait in the waiting room. When Dr. Suzuki called me back into his office, his face was a mask of rage, like an old World War II movie. “You didn’t take the medication”, he screamed. He showed me some color photos, taken inside my butt. The photos were beautiful and the lighting was perfect. Who knew that the camera was even equipped with a flash? A couple of them showed little pimples, pink and shiny. “Those are polyps, which I removed”, he told me. “I don’t think they are malignant because they look very healthy. I will send them to the laboratory for analysis, just to be sure”.

Then he showed me some beautiful brown and green photos. “This is the stool that remained in your intestines, that would have been removed if you had followed instructions and taken the medication”. The doctor was really pissed off. Imagine his disappointment. He was anticipating a date with a nice, clean intestine, and instead he was confronted with a filthy, disgusting butt polluted with all manner of nauseating shit. He even had the photos to prove it.

Nevertheless, the photos were beautiful and, as I said, dramatically lighted. More than anything else, they resembled a far-flung galaxy depicted on slides taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. I was tempted to ask him for a signed copy, but I kept silent because he was so enraged that I feared he would pull out a samurai sword and decapitate me like the death camp commander in “Death March to Bataan”.

Visibly controlling his rage, he exclaimed, “I wash my hands of you. Now you have to go to the Medical Imaging Laboratory, where they will subject you to a more thorough Barium Enema examination.

I didn’t like the sound of that. Barium? Wasn’t that something radioactive? Oh, now I was in it! Oh God, why didn’t I drink the stupid stuff and shoot the suppository up my butt like I was supposed to? I was really afraid. Once you are in the clutches of these doctors, anything could happen, and if you expired they would just put you out with the medical waste and you would be discovered washed up on a New Jersey beach with the used AIDS syringes and bloody bandages.

This time, when the information packet arrived in the mail, I read all of it immediately. It instructed me to buy a preparatory enema kit and a bottle of laxative. The night before the appointment I was to drink the whole bottle of laxative and insert the bottles of fluid in my butt and squeeze all the stuff in there. There were three bottles of enema. That meant there was going to be about a quart of stuff going up my butt, but after my unpleasant interview with Dr. Hiroshima Suzuki, I wasn’t taking any more chances.

The night before the Barium Enema, I drank all the laxative, which wasn’t exactly Veuve Cliquot champagne, let me tell you! Then I went into the bathroom, bent over and jammed the first bottle up my butt. Now, you would think, what could be easier than jamming something up your ass and squeezing it? Well, unless you have got a rear view mirror, it’s surprisingly difficult to find your anus. Most people enlist the aid of a close friend, I suppose, but I was having none of that. If, as the old saying goes, the heart is a lonely hunter, then the arse is a moving target. Anyway, if I didn’t at least have the manual dexterity to find my own butt and shove some junk up it without public assistance, how talented could I really be?

At last I found my butthole and jammed the nozzle of the bottle up it. Then I had to squeeze the stuff in, which required more strength than you might imagine, seeing as how I was bent over double. The whole bathroom got stunk up from my butt. Finally, squeezing as hard as I could, I realized that I needed to withdraw the thing from my butt, unscrew the nozzle, let some air in, replace the nozzle, bend over again, reinsert the thing in my ass and start squeezing again. I said to myself, “No way am I going to continue with this”, but then I remembered Dr. Suzuki turning purple with rage, so I did it.

Finally, I managed to squeeze all the stuff into my butt, but no sooner than I had gotten it all in then I felt the irresistible urge to pop it all out again, which I sat on the pot and it all popped out. What can I tell you – I am not anal retentive by any stretch of the imagination.

So I had to repeat this process two more times, during which the laxative kicked in, which meant a whole night of stinking misery, let me tell you! And the freakin examination had not yet even begun. Next day, I showed up at the Imaging Clinic. They lay me on a table face down and inserted a tube up my butt, which they pumped full of stuff and then, just for good measure, they inserted a balloon and blew it up to keep the guck from shooting out. There’s no adequate narrative to describe the sensation of five pounds of radioactive white paste being shoved your butt, and then a balloon. It’s like if they shoved a basketball up your butt, not too charming. Then this lady doctor told me, turn on your left side, turn on your right side, hold still, while they shot x-rays. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”

This torture went on for quite a long time. They couldn’t get enough shots. It was kind of like being a fashion model for French Vogue, except instead of cool shoes and suits, the photos were of my butt blown up with Elmer’s Glue and dammed up by a balloon. Finally, they pulled the plug on my butt and told me to go in the bathroom to expel all the paste, some of which had dribbled out of my backside and down my leg, where it had hardened to a white crust.

Finally, they let me get dressed and get out of there. I had to go directly from the clinic to my job on Wall Street. My butt was still filled with air and it kept escaping all day long. Also, there was still plenty of barium coming out, and when I went to the toilet on my job, I found that the stuff had seeped through my underpants and caked the inside of my French designer jeans. Fortunately, the pants are made of very thick fabric, so it wasn’t visible form the outside. Ha-ha, can you imagine that I would still be working at a Wall Street insurance company if that gook had been visible from the outside?

Next time I'll be ready. My plan is to shove a Zhou Zhou mechanical hamster up my butt and let it run around my intestines, soaking up any excess shit on its little fur coat. That should get my butt all cleaned up for the doctor's inspection.

My girlfriend, Magpie, is amazed that I would have the nerve to post this account on the internet. How could I do otherwise? This is all totally original material. You think I’m going to pass on the chance? Not bloody likely!

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November 22, 2009

BARACK BENDS OVER

America is a republic. We don’t have royalty here. In America, as Huey Long once rhapsodized so poetically, Every Man Is A King. Anybody, no matter how humble, can rise to the top by virtue of his own efforts and look the President in the eye (whether you have got the nerve to look your old lady in the eye when she goes on a rampage is another matter). We don’t bow and scrape to royalty.

Bowing is an acceptable formality of respect in many Asian countries. Businessmen routinely bow to each other when presenting their business cards. It’s nice. In this country it is acceptable for martial arts enthusiasts to exchange formal bows before they kick the shit out of each other.

But nothing prepared me for that photo of President Barack Obama bowing to the emperor of Japan, so low that I feared that he would scrape his forehead on the marble floor of the Chrysanthemum Palace in Tokyo.

This is not the first time I have seen Obama bow low to foreign royalty. A picture exists of him genuflecting before the king of Saudi Arabia, like a hooker preparing to administer a blowjob. He better not try that stuff in New Jersey, otherwise former governor Tim McGreevey will sneak up behind him and give him a hotshot in the backside, and he will end up in one of those homes for male unwed mothers that they have got in New Jersey. Nine months later a little New Jersey Butt Baby will shoot out of his ass, which they will then have to spray with a power washer to get all the brown stuff off, y’know what I mean? This is where New Jersey Butt Babies come from, guys bending over for each other in public toilets on the Garden State Parkway. It is a species of life peculiar to New Jersey, and it should stay that way. We don’t need babies popping out of men’s butts inside the beltway in Washington, Sen. Larry Craig notwithstanding.

Where Obama got the idea that he has to bow before foreign royalty, I can’t imagine. I think he has read too many books, and not the right ones. Let me set him straight. Look, Barack, Americans do not bend over for foreigners, ok?  THEY BEND OVER FOR US, at least while we have still got some money. If the political class of this country continues to run the economy into the ground and we end up in the shithouse, there will be plenty of time for us to bend over to bogus princes and emperors at a later date, but that time has not yet arrived.

In that photo of Obama bending over to the emperor of Japan, he looks like a freakin Whooping Crane getting ready to take off in an old Akira Kurosawa movie. Those pricks should be bending over to us. We gave them a decent political system and plenty of opportunities to get rich, even after they behaved like barbarians and raped half of Asia.

Forget the emperor of Japan and the bogus of king of Saudi Arabia. Americans do not bow down to anybody, unless we are getting ready to kick their ass.

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November 21, 2009

A Wall Street Christmas Carol

It was the week before Christmas
And there was joy on Wall Street
The earnings forecasts
Had all been beat
Profits were up
Payrolls were down
Blackberries were ringing that joyous sound
The smell of money
Was in the air
Bonus time would soon be there

At the George Soros Hedge Fund, the traders waited expectantly for Soros to come down to the trading floor and distribute their bonus checks.

Trader 1 - Oboy oboy, I can’t wait. My mouth is watering!

Trader 2 - Well, don’t slobber all over my suit. I just got it out of the cleaners.

Trader 1 – You don’t know what this means to me. I had to give up my place in the Hamptons.

Trader 2 – You don’t know what suffering is. My wife walked out on me. Of course, now she heard that I am getting back on my feet, so she wants to patch things up.

Trader 1 – You gonna do it?

Trader 2 – Hell no! I got my eye on a younger model.

This exchange was heard by Tiny Tim Geithner, the little crippled office boy, who happened to be pushing his broom down the aisle.

Tiny Tim – You guys shouldn’t be so focused on materialism. Remember, Christmas is the time to express joy to the world and charity to your fellow man.

Trader 1 – Why don’t you shut the fuck up, you gimp! Is that what they taught you at Wharton?

Trader 2 – Don’t pick on him. Can’t you see he’s a freakin retard? Hey, Geithner, how’s your stimulus doing?

The Traders – Ha ha ha ha ha!

Tiny Tim – If it wasn’t for the stimulus you guys might have had to go out and do some real work. Most of it ended up right in your pockets.

Trader 1 – Where else should it go? To some freakin solar panels? If you want to make money, you have to spend money.

Trader 2 – And nobody spends money better than we do!

The Traders – Ha ha ha ha ha!

Trader 1 – Quiet now! Here comes the boss with our bonus checks.

[Enter George Soros, bearing a thick bundle of envelopes]

Soros – Hi, fellows, ladies. Before I start, I’d like to thank you for all your hard work work this year. The fund had a landmark year. Earnings are up 35%, and we are anticipating an even better year next year. [distributes the envelopes]

Trader 1 – Hey, boss, there must be some mistake. There’s no check in here!

Trader 2 – Yeah, it’s just a freakin UNICEF Christmas card!

Soros – That’s right. In the spirit of the season, I have decided to contribute the firm’s bonuses to the UNICEF fund for disadvantaged third world children, so that they can have clean water and food. That’s our Christmas present to the underdeveloped world. You folks are making a good living, so I figured that you would be happy to contribute to ending world misery.

Trader 1 – Are you crazy? I was counting on that money!

Trader 2 – Yeah, how do you expect me to live on a measly 250 grand?

The Traders – We need cash! We need cash!

Trader 1 – Please sir, may I have some more…..money!

Soros – Hold on there, guys! I came to this country as a displaced person after World War II. I had to work my way up from nothing. It took years of chiseling and scheming to get to where I am today. Now I feel like it’s time to give something back to the world. You lot have never missed a meal in your lives. You have had everything handed to you on a silver platter by your parents and by the taxpayers, who have subsidized your education and have rewarded you with unbelievable tax breaks. Now you are being obliged to do something nice for other people. If there is anybody here who objects to this arrangement, there’s the door. You can go over to Goldman Sachs, hat in hand, and see if they’ll accept you.
Anybody care to leave?

The Traders – [silence]

Soros – Yeah, that’s what I thought. See you all back at work on Monday. [Soros leaves]

Trader 1 – Boo hoo hoo! [to Tiny Tim] this is all your fault, you and that prick Obama, for spreading commie propaganda and undermining the American Way of Life.

Trader 2 – I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’m probably going to have to move to (sob) Queens. Jeez!

Soros goes home to his Fifth Avenue mansion. He changes from his bespoke suit to a simple loincloth and spins cotton on his spinning wheel, chanting Hindu mantras. Then, after dining on a simple meal of wheat germ and alfalfa sprouts, he retires to his small bedroom and goes to sleep in his narrow bed.
After dozing soundly for several hours, he is awakened at midnight by a blinding light that erupts from the darkness.

Soros – What manner of madness is this?

Voice – And well you might ask! Don’t you realize the chaos you are causing on Wall Street?

It’s the voice of Bernard Madoff, who emerges from a curtain of light and steps into the room.

Soros – Madoff! I can’t believe my eyes!

Madoff – The same way I couldn’t believe it when the money dried up and revealed me to be running a stupid three-card monty game on Third Avenue.

Soros – I thought you were serving life plus a hundred and fifty years in the federal pen.

Madoff – I am, but I got a furlough so that I could come and talk sense to you. Even Obama thinks you are out of your mind.

Soros – What do you mean?

Madoff – I mean that the world is held together by a system of continuity. As the events of the last couple of years have proven, any breech in the chain can cause the collapse of the whole system.

Soros – That’s rich, coming from you!

Madoff – I did my part. Remember, social progress is not just built on the labor of honest men. Villains also play their part. I may not have been a creator of value, but I redistributed wealth. Many honest people depended upon me and, for the most part, I performed for them. Nobody complained about me until the system imploded. Even now, plenty of people are keeping silent because I did very well by them. It’s only the ones who were not clever enough to see the writing on the wall who got hurt. Just like the larger system.

Soros – I see what you mean.

Madoff – You think I like it in the pen, with the animals and sex offender? With the lowlife scumbags and degenerates? I kept silent and took the rap for my whole family and all my associates who were all in it up to their necks along with me. I am a man of honor.

Soros – Anyway, that’s all part of history.

Madoff – You could say that if you want to, but if you believe that you or anybody else on Wall Street is better than I am, then you are sadly deluded, for all your snobbishness. We didn’t create this system, we inherited it. You do the best you can within the limitations of your capabilities. You think I meant to hurt people? No. That’s just the way things worked out.

Soros – Why are you telling me this?

Madoff – Because your traders and your employees are like Vestal Virgins in the service of your personal temple of finance. They would go to the end of the earth for you and even fall on their sword for you if they knew that you would stand behind them and their families. That’s why I am beseeching you personally, don’t take the bread out of their mouths and squander their resources for a cause to which they do not personally subscribe, just to indulge your own personal idiosyncrasies.
Look, my time is up. I have to report back to prison. Just remember, next month or next year you could be in there with me.

And just as suddenly as he had appeared, Bernard Madoff vanished, and the wall of light along with him, plunging George Soros into darkness. Soros lay there for several moments. And then, convinced he had experienced a nightmare, he turned onto his side and quickly descended into a deep sleep.

He found himself flying high over the Empire of Mexico, witnessing the epic struggle that pitted the eagle against the plumed serpent of Tenochtitlan; the construction of the Aztec and Mayan pyramids; the conquest and the revolutions of 1810 and 1910. He saw the struggle and misery of the wretched muledrivers in Chiapas and Tabasco states; the hundred years’ rebellion of the peasants in Yucatan, who rallied around the Talking Cross until they were eventually crushed by the military, and the backbreaking, soul-crushing despair of the Mexican peons, who, knowing no other destiny than the fatalism of their pre-Columbian ancestors, consigned themselves to a destiny of hopelessness and despair.

Then he saw telephone linemen setting up mobile telephone transmitters and young Mexicans happily connecting with each other, liberated from the historical burdens and ignorance of their progenitors. With each telephone sold and each ringtone registered, Soros witnessed a few pesos ringing into the account of Carlos Slim Helú, the richest man in Mexico, the richest man in the world.

Soros found himself sitting in Slim’s Mexico City office suite, across the desk from the great man.

Soros – Why have you summoned me here?

Slim – To plead the cause of your employees, whom you have grievously offended. Don’t you realize that you have breached a compact between yourself and them and destroyed the covenant between a patron and his employees?

Soros – Those are pretty words, coming from a man like yourself, who is reputed to be one of the meanest, cheapest capitalists in existence! The accounts of your avarice and hard-dealing are legion.

Slim – It’s true, everything that you say. But it’s the only way I know how to operate. I’m no genius. I steal. I bribe officials to sign sweetheart deals. But if you look at the history of Mexican capitalism, within the historical context of Mexican civilization, where people used to rip each other’s still-beating hearts out of their bodies and throw them into the fire, I have done what was necessary. Otherwise, you would be sitting across the desk from somebody else.
I exploit my employees. I underpay them and I fuck them. But human intelligence being what it is, if I were to afford them all the dignity and consideration that are due to them within the context of western civilization, I couldn’t make money. There would be no telecommunications and Mexican society would still be locked in the dark ages that I found it to be when I started.
I admit that I am no philantropist. Whatever good works I have achieved have been at the urging of my public relations advisors. I would prefer to use my money to make more money.
Nevertheless, without the efforts of my employees I could have accomplished nothing. What am I going to do, shimmy up a telephone and connect a satellite dish?
And it is for that reason that I have summoned you here from your bedroom in New York City – to implore you to restore the bonuses of your employees, in order that I and the capitalist class around the world may continue to exploit the workers and the public, and that we may continue to rake in the money.
Remember, capitalism is a stinking, rotten, corrupt system. It’s a whorehouse. But it’s all we have right now.

Soros – OK, I’ll take it under advisement. Now, can I leave?

Slim – You are free to go.

Soros turned over in his bed and once again descended into a deep slumber. No sooner had he done so, when he was smashed in the head by a soccer ball. He sat bolt-upright in his bed. Facing him was Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi – Mi dispiace, signore. That ball was kicked by one of the forwards from my football team, AC Milan.

Soros – Don’t tell me that you are going to plead the cause of capitalism to me. This is getting to be a very strenuous night’s sleep.

Berlusconi – How could it be otherwise, signore? But in my case, I am hoping to elevate the argument to a socio-political level that might appeal to the more philosophical instincts of a person with your refined sensibilities.

Soros – Having met with Carlos Slim, I am prepared to concede that you may be striving at the maximum of your intellectual capacities, but nevertheless, considering the grave, might I say heinous, acts you have committed as Italy’s richest capitalist, considering how you have distorted Italian society and destroyed the lives and mental phychology of countless millions of Italians and Europeans, anything that you might have to say to me in defense of your behavior would be completely superfluous.

Berlusconi – Might I remind you that I represent a culture that stretches back to the beginning of human history. The methods to which you refer, which might seem to a person like yourself to be venal and corrupt, are, in fact, time honored solutions to intractable complications of human nature. Remember, when confronted with the Gordian knot, Alexander the Great broke through by the uncomplicated solution of obliterating the knot with his sword.
This is Italy we are discussing, the Italy of the Caesars, the Medicis and the Popes, who were reknowned for their intrigue, deception and hunger for power. No American can even conceive of the complications of Italian psychology, and I am not expecting you to. I desire from you a leap of faith, that I am not engaged in politics for personal gain, but to restore Italy to its rightful place of influence and glory in the modern world.
If I am to pierce the Gordian knot of Italian inhibitions and self-destruction I need to wield a sword of modern solutions. You can’t imagine the impossibility of governing Italians, with their inertia, their greed, their vainglorious egotism. My solution is to concentrate all power in myself, to appoint a bureaucracy in my image, to control all information. Basically, you have to believe in me personally. It has been done before, all throughout history. Only, I hope to accomplish it without resorting to violence, using the power of persuasion.

Soros – Speaking as an American, I think you’re out of your mind.

Berlusconi – That’s a determination for you to make. Only, your country is very young. Your history is still in front of you. I hope that the Americans will not have to endure the trials that other countries have had to face, but I am not optimistic for them. It might be that only in a thousand years’ time your descendants will come to recognize the wisdom of my actions.

Soros – Look, this has been a very long night for me. Can we please get to the point?

Berlusconi – My point is for you to come to an entente with your employees, who have been faithful to you, and forget the philosophical conceits that led you to redirect their Christmas bonuses.
Also, I might suggest that you come to Catholicism. Why do you think Jesus is always portrayed as blonde and blue-eyed? Because he was not a Hebrew, he was a Roman centurion who stayed out in the sun too long and fell victim to heatstroke and delusion. The Jews only appropriated him for commercial purposes. Come to the Catholicism and the Pope. It’s philosophically more modern and, despite its obvious defects, more esthetically pleasing.

Soros – Well, I really have heard quite enough for one night. Now, if you don’t mind, I like to get some sleep.

The following day the Traders were assembled on the trading floor, discussing their financial woes.

Trader 3 – My kids’ tuition bill is coming due for Dalton, and I don’t know how I’ll cover it.

Trader 4 – I’m three months behind on the payments for my Lamborghini.

Trader 5 – What tears me up is that there are great deals on condos all over town and I’m stuck living in a rental. My folks didn’t send me to Dartmouth so that I would end up like this!

Trader 3 – Every time I see a poor kid, I want to kill him.

Trader 1 – Quiet! Here comes George.

[enter Soros]

Soros – Fellows, I’ve come to apologize. I was wrong to arbitrarily appropriate your bonuses for humanitarian causes with out consulting you first. Here are your checks.

The Traders – Hooray!

Trader 1 – We’re saved!

Soros – The most important thing is the easy availability of liquidity. Poor people are just a drain on the economy.

Trader 2 – He’s seen the light!

Soros – There are some cases of champagne in the freight elevator. Somebody call up some hookers. Let’s party!

The Traders – Right on!

Soros – Oh yeah, one last thing. Where’s that little prick, Tiny Tim?

The Traders – We got him right here.

Soros – Throw him out the window.

Tiny Tim – Helllllllp meeeeeee! [squish]

It was the night before Christmas
And the world did agree
What we really needed
Was a good party
The joy it did spread
Up and down Wall Street
As the banker perused
Their fat balance sheets
The widows and orphans
Banished from sight
Good tidings to all
And to all a good night

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November 02, 2009

JOHNNY DEMON - World Series Game 4

Johnny Demon, I calls him, the terror of the basepaths.

A lot of newsprint has been wasted about how dangerous the Angels’ Figgins and Aybar and the Phillies’ Rollins and Victorino are for stealing bases, but last night Johnny Damon scored a hat trick and shook up the series by pulling off a single with two out and two strikes in the ninth and then stealing two bases in one play, setting the stage for Texeira, A-Rod and Posada to lock up the game. Of all the geniuses, and I am sincere, Damon’s brilliant base stealing will go down in history for clinching the title for New York.

This is a memorable World Series, not just for the fantastic pitching on both sides and the Yankees’ blazing hickory, but also for all the goofy things that make baseball such an unpredictable and unique sport. Like A-Rod being used as a pincushion for Phillies pitchers. Instead of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Phillies pitchers have been playing target practice with A-Rod’s body like a pitching machine gone berserk. Maybe after the series A-Rod can remove the “kick me” sign that Philadelphia has taped to his back. You can’t tell me that those shots don’t smart!

What about the goofy umpires? It’s like a Nearsighted Mr. Magoo cartoon, with umpires calling balls foul that landed fair, calling fly balls caught when they actually bounced, calling runners out when they were safe, missing calls at the plate. “Hey, we’re only human!” they cry. Yeah, right, another missed call. These umpires are not human, they’re cartoon characters. I’m taking up a collection to buy them thick glasses, white canes and seeing-eye dogs!

What about A-Rod’s freakin fly ball bouncing off the television camera in right field during Game 3, when the umpires had to march downstairs and watch on television as the ball smashed into the screen like a commercial for the “2012” disaster movie? No other country has got a wacky sport like that!

The best thing about having the games played in Philadelphia is that you get to see a fat lady in a Halloween costume sitting behind the dugout instead of having to look at Rudolph Giuliani’s ugly, stoopid mug in the first row behind the dugout in Yankee Stadium. Since it was Halloween, he probably would have shown up wearing his dress. Yuck!

There’s an old joke that goes, “I’d rather be in Philadelphia”, which comes from things being so bad that even being in Philadelphia would be preferable. When President Reagan got shot, and they asked him how he felt, that’s what he answered. Nothing goes right there, even the freakin bell is cracked. Now, I guarantee you this – even the Phillies are California Dreamin’. They wish they could be playing the Angels out in Disneyland, anywhere but having to face the Yankees’ Murderers Row of batters and AJ Burnett, like they have to do tonight. Different batters have better luck off different pitchers, and Sabathia was a little bit of a soft touch for the Phillies, notably Chase Utley, who Chase-d Sabathia off the mound twice, with three homeruns in this series. Utley just seems to feed off of Sabathia’s pitching, but Burnett is a little more problematic for them, having wiped the Phils out in Game 2. Phillies fans might end up having to use those dopey little towels for wiping away their tears during the seventh inning stretch when, instead of the Marine Band singing God Bless America, they are reduced to following along the karaoke version of “Cry Me A River” on the big screen.

On the other hand, it could still go the other way. The Yankees have to face Cliff Lee, who shook them around like a dog shakes around a rag doll in Game 1. You never know. If Ryan Howard awakes from his current beauty sleep and Jayson Werth goes back to his previous sterling performances, things could still end up terribly wrong for the Yanks. Remember, they have been ahead by three games before and ended up losing big to the Red Sox. When New York teams clutch they really clutch big-time.

Which is why the sportswriters should moderate their insulting, triumphalist tone. They are like a midget standing at the sidelines screaming, “Let’s you and him fight!” They remind me of Giuliani, who was a Vietnam draft dodger, taking a hard line on Iraq. Talk is cheap. If something untoward happens for the Yanks in this series, these pencilneck drips will be standing in line eight-deep to blame the very players that they are fulsomely idolizing in today’s editions.

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Posted on 11/2/2009 ( Permanent Link )
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