The Sporadic Curmudgeon

Some of you who haven’t managed to scour it from your memory may remember the exceedingly unfortunate tale of the man in Enunmclaw, Washington who died after being on the painful end of a horizontal hula session with a horse. At the time, Washington was one of the few states with no bestiality laws on the books. As you can imagine, the legal oversite was quickly rectified. (Sorry about the pun.)

Well, the first charges have been filed under the new bestiality law, and the case is a real doozy: a woman came home to find her hubby literally screwing the pooch on the back porch. She had the presence of mind to snap off a couple of pictures with her cell phone, and immediately called the cops. I suspect she made a few more calls right after that: “Hey, Mom? Tell Dad he was right.”

I know from personal experience how badly it hurts to lose a girlfriend to another guy. Hell, I even know how badly it hurts to lose a girlfriend to another girl. (Less than you’d think on that one, though… the libidinous imagination has dark and mysterious curative powers).

But to lose your husband to a pit bull terrier?

That just bites.

Here in Las Vegas the local CBS affiliate just aired a “Where We Stand” piece with short speeches by the Senatorial candidates. On the subject of national scholastic testing, Republican John Ensign made a very revealing Freudian slip: he was concerned that some students are being promoted through the school systems regardless of their “economic achievement.”

Goodness, can’t have that, can we? Why, there’s no telling what kind of riff-raff might manage to claw themselves up from the gutter where they belong.

This weekend the fine folks at Turner Classic Movies are broadcasting the Mount Rushmore of trash films, Russ Meyer’s 1965 masterpiece Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

If the title alone doesn’t make you willing to perform just about any degrading act imaginable to see it, then you have no Elvis in you.

It’s about cat-suited lesbian go-go dancers with huge breasts karate-chopping their way across the Mojave Desert in a tricked-out Porsche while generally wreaking havoc and snarling lines like “I never try anything. I just do it. Wanna try me?” Filmed in glorious mid-sixties black-and-white, it stars an actress named, I kid you not, Tura Satana.

That’s as close to being everything you need in a trashy movie as you’re ever going to get. It’s John Waters‘ favorite film of all time.

I’d tell you the time it’s playing, but TCM is a bit confusing on the subject. Their website claims that Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is showing October 20 at 2AM Eastern, but that makes little sense, since the film would be playing the night of Thursday/Friday and this movie is made for Friday nights. I suspect it’s actually playing October 21 at 2AM Eastern, the night of Friday/Saturday. In any case, check your local listings.

On a personal note, I am very fortunate to have spent a rainy afternoon talking with Russ Meyer back in the mid-eighties. He was quite a guy, and one of the good ones.

In a mind-boggling display of the sort of thinking that would get you pegged as a stone-cold sociopath if you were taking the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Our Fearless Leader said today that he was impressed by the level of violence Iraqis are willing to tolerate:

And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.

That’s like the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan marvelling that it takes so long for a lynched man to die.

There I was at the computer, struggling with a complex logic problem for work, when the phone rang. All of my elaborate abstract mental constructs vanished forever as I sprinted across the room to pick it up.

“Hi!”, said a bright, familiar voice. “This is Whoopi!”

I sighed. Another stupid telemarketing machine trying to get me to buy something by playing a celebrity recording.

“No, it’s really me!” the voice continued.

Oh, I thought. So I hung up on her.

Special Irritated Update: Since writing this post, I have received two calls from Senator John McCain and one from Jerry Lewis. To what do I owe my newfound popularity with D-list celebrities? The only thing I’ve changed about myself recently is my brand of deodorant. I had no idea stars were so attracted to computer programmers’ underarms. Who knew?

By the way, I hung up on McCain and Lewis, too.

Due to my recent gig as consultant extraordinaire, I am exposed to much higher doses of daytime television than usual. Psychotic draconian jurists, demos of the ease with which various products absorb blue water, criminal masterminds obsessing about toaster pastries, you know the drill. Normally I can slough this sort of dreck off.

But there are two ads out now that just drive me up the friggin’ wall:

1. A male and female chef are standing in a restaurant kitchen telling us how glad they are that butter and salt are no longer used on food. Apparently we are to believe that lobster, a vile species that communicates by pissing in each other’s faces, is much better served au naturel. Then comes the capper, the line that makes me want to throw something through the screen in the irrational hope that it will hit them. “We’ve added flavor… to taste.”

   What? Excuse me? What can that possibly mean? Finally I think I figured it out. They’ve added bullshit… to cow pies.

2. A new and profoundly disturbing talking doll is shown. It makes grotesque approximations of human expressions as it speaks, its unnatural mouth working hideously like a carp with a lip tumor. The doll can be fed some green goo, which I’m assuming is soylent green in liquid form. And what happens after dolly’s ghastly meal? She purses her nightmarish lips and happily burbles “I made a stinkie.”

   Yes.

   “I made a stinkie.”

   What other phrases is the doll capable of, I wonder? “I pinched a loaf?” “I squeezed out a little sister?” “That one almost busted an O-ring?”

As I see it, three cardinal rules of marketing have been broken here. Circular conundrums do not compelling advertising copy make. Consumer products should not have a functional anus. And for God’s sake, if a consumer product does crap its pants, it should never, ever tell you how bad it smells.

Special Barely-Tangential Note: A friend informs me that she had a friend in law school who believed that lobster was merely an excuse to eat butter. He also said that cocaine was just an excuse to eat snot. I believe there’s more to it than that, however. If I recall, cocaine made my snot-eating highly efficient and remarkably interesting.

According to an ABC News story, not only did the Republican leadership attempt to cover up Congressman Mark Foley’s sexual behavior toward teenage boys, which they learned about five long years ago, they apparently only bothered to warn Republican pages about him:

A Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.

…

Pages report to either Republican or Democratic supervisors, depending on the political party of the member of Congress who nominate them for the page program.

Several Democratic pages tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley.

Yep, nothing says “Family Values” like letting kids fall into the clutches of a potential child rapist because they work for your political opponents and disclosure might endanger a House seat. Can’t make a grab for absolute power without breaking a few eggs. Or cherries, I suppose.

That’s real heartland flag-waving true-blue kids-are-our-country’s-future family-man stuff right there.

Foley is a sick, sick man, and if he is responsible for any abuses he should face the consequences of his actions. But if he did molest any kids, much of the responsibility falls on the Republican leadership that knew and did nothing to stop it.

I’m not just spouting off, here. My childhood was — well, “challenging” might be one way to put it — and the adults around me who knew of the abuse and just looked the other way while thinking happy thoughts made it far more difficult to bear.

Speaker Hastert, this happened on your watch. You were informed. If something happened to a single child because of your coverup, you deserve some good old-fashioned Biblical justice. I think an eye for an eye and an anal rape for an anal rape sounds pretty fair. Right in front of the Washington Monument at high noon, on your hands and knees while wearing a Congressional Page’s uniform.

Update: For the record, the abuse I underwent as a child was not sexual, and was only peripherally physical. I was relentlessly demeaned and ridiculed by the most important authority figure in my life for seven ugly years, and did not at that age have the strength of mind to counter it. Not the worst crime in town, but cruel and damaging nonetheless. I came to hate myself; something I still must deal with every single day.