CINCO DE MY OH MY IS THAT STEPHEN COLBERT SOMETHING.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“These aren’t pigs in blankets. These are mini hot dogs wrapped in some kind of dough.”

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Who is more likely to find a receptive audience: Moussaoui at his sentencing hearing or Colbert at The White House Correspondents' Dinner? And, a related question: Which of the two men does George W. Bush more want to see dead?

SLAM OF THE DAY:

Anyone with an appreciation for the use of negative space would love the MRIs of his brain.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“These aren’t pigs in blankets. These are mini hot dogs wrapped in some kind of dough.”

THEME OF THE DAY:

Redundancy.

PROPOSED BAND NAME OF THE DAY:

The Stasis Junkies.

EUPHEMISM OF THE DAY: (A Propos of the aforementioned non existent band.)

Risk aversive is the clinically dignified term for wimp.

BRIEF RECS OF THE DAY:

Jhumpa Lahiri's story in this week's New Yorker.
The David Smith exhibit at the Guggenheim (closing in a week).
The Intro article on "Freud and Totalitarianism" in last week's Sunday NYT Mag section.
The article about a liberal post 9/11 foreign policy in the same.
The deciding game of the Suns-Lakers series on Saturday.

(I may have some more (which is to say something) to say about some of these things at some point, but I am rushing to get out of here for some Cinco de Mayo drinks. Full disclosure I am also---courtesy of the Some Council-getting paid a dollar for every time I used the word "some" in this posting.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY #2

"Nice guy. Nice guy. An asshole. But a nice guy."

"I'LL TAKE A PASS ON THAT ONE" MOMENT OF THE DAY:

Getting an Instant Message Prompt from an unknown person with the moniker RURU. RURU? Uh, that'd be NONO.

STEPHEN COLBERT THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

It would have been great to have had an inset image of Bush's face throughout the Colbert Speech, so you could monitor the vicissitudes of his eye batting chagrin and pursed lipped rage. Or at least see which "jokes" he got.

EXCERPTS OF THE DAY:

"If Colbert came off as "shrill and airless," in Lehman's words, inside the cozy terrarium of media self-congratulation at the Washington Hilton, that tells us more about the audience than it does about Colbert.

Colbert's deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush's well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press' pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it -- and the truth -- with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner -- an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: "He wasn't funny."

This is a battle that can't really be won -- you either got it Saturday night (or Sunday morning, or whenever your life was made a little brighter by viewing Colbert's performance) or you didn't. Personally, I'm enjoying watching apologists for the status quo wear themselves out explaining why Colbert wasn't funny. It's extending the reach of his performance by days without either side breaking character -- the mighty Colbert or the clueless, self-important media elite he was satirizing. For those who think the media shamed itself by rolling over for this administration, especially in the run-up to the Iraq war, Colbert's skit is the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you, Stephen Colbert!" --From Joan Walsh's article "Making Stephen Colbert Go Away" at Salon.com

--

"Colbert has found a way to do the impossible: to satirise the unsatirisable (made up word, but you get my point). We've all been shocked and floored at what these Repugs can do, how stupid and brazen they can be, that they impossible to turn into satire. Well, Colbert did it. That's an act of brilliance. He took it just far enough past what they do in the course of a normal day, that he was able to turn it into satire. Brilliant.

I don't know how he was allowed to speak, but I suspect that he exploited a huge hole in the Repug edifice: those people are territorial chimps, especially Shrub, they respond to animal-level, non-verbal dominance cues. And Colbert has got that schtick down so cold... he really looks and acts and has the voice tone (notice: these are non-intellectual, mammalian cues) just like a wingnut, that it puts those people at ease. Of course they "knew" his schtick... "knew" in an intellecutal sense, but their "gut" didn't throw any alarms because their "gut" told them that underneath the schtick he was just like them. This is why his whole "gut" bit is so devastating: his very presence on that stage was a visceral (pun intended!) reminder of why your "gut" is not what you should rely on for policy decisions. He spoke to the Repug powers that be in their own language-- the language of alpha-male dominance-- and chumped them.
In short, absolutely brilliant. "

-Blog comment on Daily Kos by goatchowder on Sun Apr 30, 2006 at 04:31:06 PM PDT

NEW TERM FOR THE DAY:

Ironoclasm.

QUOTE OF THE DAY #3: (Found on some blog commentary)

"George W. Bush is just like Forrest Gump. Except that Forrest Gump is honest and cares about other people."

REPEATED FLASHBACK OF THE DAY:

"The last third is Backwash." Truly brilliant.

NBA ON TNT QUESTION OF THE DAY:

What IS that on the left side of Ernie Johnson’s face? I can’t believe no one is commenting on it. It’s like the Colbert speech.

QUIP OF THE DAY:

I have a sleep disorder: I only snore when there is someone else in the room.

QUOTE OF THE DAY #4: (Bringing the jazzed and the jaded into delicious contiguity.)

"Omigod!!! Whatever."

-Overheard on the street

THEME OF THE DAY #2:

Quotability.

RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY:

He wasn’t the most organized knife in the sock drawer.

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Posted on 5/5/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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