Bukkake Without Borders

               You gotta love the Japanese. They never invent anything, but they innovate everything. Electronics, the auto industry, the ten man American gangbang. We don’t need plots or sets or actors. We’ll streamline the whole goddamn thing and we’ll call it Bukkake! What does it say about a culture whose idea of recherché erotism is to get 100 interchangeable widgets to blast the punim of some allegedly willing respondent with man-glue? Not much apparently, as this type of film grossier has become as mainstream as D-listers getting out of limos without underwear.  And you know the Japanese…they'll want to take it global!

              There used to be a time in the erotic arts when the actors actually kissed and looked longingly into each other’s eyes before they tore up each other’s shit. In the frontier days of porn bodies also looked human with their various levels of hirsuteness and imperfections. Women were round and curvaceous and didn’t possess the futuristic, bondo-ed, snare drum look of today’s sommeliers de cum.

              Films had plots with set designs and wardrobe. Parodies of genres were not uncommon as anybody who has ever seen Mike’s Hammer can readily attest. Today if you watch an adult film there only isn’t a plot, but there isn’t any lovemaking going on either, just of series of gaggings, clubbings and impalings. And if that doesn’t give you pause to ejaculate add a little bondage, expectoration and humiliation. Women give hand jobs like Sarah Connor cocking a shotgun. Men call women and their genitalia despicable names, then spit on, or slap the corresponding orifice. Whatever goes is the “creep de jour”.

             A naked body for the sake of nakedness is not good enough. Tattoos, piercings are the accoutrements that help us get off now. This is the problem with the wild frontier of the Internet.  Too much until it is not enough. Now it is not uncommon for a 12 year old to know what a booty call is, or to have the website Busty Midget Cock Riders bookmarked, or for that matter own the director’s cut of some German shise film.

            Playboy magazine suffers because of the extremity of what is offered elsewhere. The girls next door are exactly what they are girls who would matriculate at the local university their only kink: to walk around nude in their bedrooms and if you were lucky enough to live next to one you might get a peak which would last you to the last days of your minority.

           When I was in 8^th grade my friend Stu beckoned me over to his locker where he showed my a wrinkled, dog-eared, black and white photograph of some wrinkled, dog-eared woman laying on a bed with her legs spread. As I recall she looked rather relaxed as she stared into the lens. That was the first time I ever saw so much of a naked woman my experience being limited to perusing through a paper bag filled with the stroke mags, (Swanks, Pampers and Nuggets to be precise, mild Playboy knockoffs of the era ) I happened to find one day along with an unopened six pack of Colt 45 malt liquor in the bushes behind the municipal tennis courts near my house. How it got there is anybody’s guess, but as I think about it now, the reprobate who tossed it there probably was being called to dinner by the piercing whistle of a tired and aggravated father and hastily ditched the enterprise.

          Well, to say that the erotic voltage I felt standing by Stu’s locker after witnessing the glory of this very average woman was minimal would be an understatement, but as 13 year-old boys go the image became so embossed in the sulci of my brain I was easily covered for the next two years until my parents who had the foresight as to the needs of a 15 year old boy got me a prescription to Playboy.

          Too much until it is not enough.

          I miss the kinder gentler days of 69 when a girl sat on your face because you deserved it and not as a punishment and anal sex was for very special occasions like finding a cure for cancer or negotiating a peace treaty between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Today, the bar is so low it has become the new goodnight kiss.

Latimore Bivens DeGroot D-list Philosopher dead at 97

        Eccentric philosopher Latimore Bivens DeGroot was found dead in his apartment today. Dubbed The Discount Nietzsche by his peers, DeGroot believed that a philosopher’s mark was measured not in the oeuvre of cohesive thought he left behind, but in how many times he was quoted and spent most of his waking hours composing concise, witty, paradoxical remarks that ran the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime. His ability to turn a phrase and receive almost instantaneous attribution from that phrase caused great jealousy among the most credentialed and rarified strata of academia.

      Martin Buber was quoted as saying of DeGroot, “The guy was an intellectual gonif without one shred of original thought let alone a degree. He was a complete momzer! Latimore DeGroot was a charlatan as a thinker and couldn’t present a cogent argument to get out of a paper bag. However, he had this way of distilling in a few words what took  Kierkegaard, Kant and James whole careers to master.”

      Neighbors said that DeGroot had a mordant wit coupled with a healthy respect for the sublime. More than a few times when financially short, he attempted to pay the rent with a few chosen bon mots. Neighbors also state that in the past few years DeGroot hadn’t been the same rarely leaving his apartment and that basically he had just given up and wouldn’t be surprised if the autopsy revealed the cause of death as “complications from indifference”.

      Among his papers were a series of quotes still in the carriage of his Royal portable typewriter he was probably preparing to release into the public discourse none of which were backed up by any serious consideration. DeGroot’s attitude was, why bust my balls? He as fond of saying, “Humans only remember the greats through their epigrams, not the dry, dusty volumes that no one gives a shit about including their mothers”.

      DeGroot instituted efficiency into thinking. Why spend precious hours every day in deep contemplation killing yourself, when a few hours each month was more than enough to conjure a couple of neat, syntactical aphorisms that might allow him entry into Valhalla some day.

Below is a sampling…

1. “I have great faith in the sanctity of doubt...”

2. “Capitalism tolerates racism until it affects the bottom line.”

3. “Freethinking is never free.”

4. “Evolution waits for no man.”

5. “As the surface show wraps its tentacles around the throats of the masses it leaves little room for contemplation in a time that desperately calls its name.”

6. “When you contemplate cosmic insignificance it really boils down to the notion that all of our actions are geared to getting around this very notion.”

7. “As we crest the top of the hill the bottom begins racing toward us. It is only then we realize we were yoked to this inevitability all along.”

8. “Memorials are only performed for the living as the dead have met their fates in the only way they can.”

9. “Life is a constant struggle, which makes it the greatest work of art of all!”

10. “The conceit regarding reality is that it must be avoided at all costs.”

11. “There is nothing more certain than an uncertain man.”

12. “The Truth might not even be the truth.”

13. “Laughter is the cure for the disease of life.”

14. “In fealty we trust.”

15. “Life is one…slow…steady…fade.”

16. “The severity of man’s denial is commensurate with the size of his cable package.”

17. “If mankind were a stock I’d have to give it a ‘sell’ rating.”

18. “All is lost!…eventually.”

19. “It’s all a damn lie! A vital one to be sure.”

20. “It’s easy to have hope. Hope is free.”

21. “One of the great things about reaching your seniority is that a completely horrible day can be salvaged by one good, solid bowel movement.”

22. “If a thousand flies land on something chances are it's a piece of shit!”

23. “If your eyes are closed does it really matter who’s fucking you in the ass?”

24. “Halloween is for people who are ashamed of their own natural casings.”

25. “A fart or as I like to call it, a fanfare for the common man.”

26. “I’m sorry your Weltanschauung doesn’t gibe with the cosmos’.”

27. “In this country the bar is very low and the short bus is getting longer.”

28. “For those of you who have attempted to pierce the natural casing of my being by painting me as a horrific misanthrope, a curmudgeonly, cynical, nit-picking moaner and a dyspeptic agent of the highest order, all I can say is fuck you!”

29. “The one thing you can safely say about mankind is that it sticks to its guns by not giving a shit!”

30. “Do not think hard. Think smart!”

The New Porn

To quote a washed up Russian comedian still doing 2 shows a day at a theater named after the same titular washed up performer in a town known for late shows at 4:30 in the afternoon, "What a country!" What a country indeed. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. And what bravado am I referring to? I'm talking about the guts to open up your monthly investment statement, that’s what!

If your portfolio has been shrinking of late you are not alone and probably suffer existential feelings of insignificance with actual loss of physical mass a distinct possibility commensurate to the reduction of your balance sheet. This is what defines Americans in the United States of America, net worth. If you do not have any it doesn't matter even if you've found a cure for cancer, you're nothing.  Lose 50% of your net worth; lose 100% of your self worth!

The huzzahs in this country go to the men and women who can rack up the zeros. We venerate them and worship at the hems of their P & L statements. They are the real stars. And yet for most of us this idol worship never pays off because we don't have what these titans have, the unidirectional undauntedness to get up every morning and, as God is their witness, make another million dollars.

A generation ago the Gates and Buffets of the world would quietly go about their business without the world slavering for a wink or nod. They were puppeteers who pulled the strings from behind the curtain. It was believed that big personalities were the bane to a company’s bottom line. Captains of Industry strode around their domains in slippers barely causing a ripple in the minds of the consumer. Donald Trump changed all that. Today, in the age of celebrity titans not only exercise stock options in full public view, but exercise their egos as well.

Financial reporting has replaced pornography as our dirty little fetish. All day long we obsess over the tickers, the inside scoops, the Armageddonous or pie-in-the-sky predictions as so called experts and pundits submerge us under an avalanche of empty speculation.

And what is the meaning of it all?  “Something is holy to everyone” as one theologian wag put it. The sad part is holiness has morphed from a cosmological consideration to a quantifiable one…the value of the local sports team, the gross of the latest blockbuster. This new porn is just another way to reduce daily life into manageable bites while simultaneously narrowing down experience.  It has very little to do with the value of quality or artistic expression. The capitalist system was not designed for that.  Most other worthy endeavors are kicked to the curb as exercises. The creative arts, teaching, social work, careers with not a lot of financial upside struggle to maintain viability.

So what do you do when you don't give a shit about mutual funds, IPOs or moving millions of units and instead would rather exalt like Walt Whitman in the presence of a leaf of grass? In this country without enough venture capital you’ll never get it off the ground.

Let Us Now Praise Regular Men

             A gray tufted geezer was spotted today he of splayed belly and duck footed gate shuffling into a place with the straightforward name of Sid and Willie’s barbershop. Sid and Willie’s barbershop home of the “regular" man’s haircut as if by looking around at the pool of mediocrity waiting for their regularness to be polished back into high relief, you had any other choice.

           
            The man in question, being so far from regular that a haircut delineated as such should have no real purchase for him except that on the surface, Madras short-sleeved shirt, khaki slacks, tasseled loafers, he is a case study. From the outside this man resembles middle class America, right out of central casting replete with a cordiality of manner that might prompt the doyen of regularity Norman Rockwell to blow his brains out.

            However, if you do have the stones for a grudge match with finitude and are in need for a little existential sobriety to boot, Sid and Willie’s is the place. Sit down in the waiting area on any one of the rust and waterproof tandem beam seats and before you are called to your destiny enjoy the herky jerky parade of tertiary stage decrepitude, codgers with government subsidized walkers who upon clearing the door’s threshold are followed closely by their own elderly issue with canes. These future decomposers are at Sid and Willie’s in hope that either Sid or Willie can fit them in so their souls can receive a final trim. 

            It is one thing to have your ears lowered, it’s another thing to have your IQ lowered too. In Sid and Willie’s case three barbers cut heads (the third man is a cousin) and everyone including the patrons watch Fox in a trance. Men’s barbershops are not think tanks or bastions of free thought. They are places that have been preserved in formaldehyde where the channel is never changed and the only good opinion is no opinion. Patrons keep it close to the vest not offering anything remotely resembling a human dimension, unless the topic is grout, then it’s off to the races.

            What is a “regular” man’s haircut anyway? Is it a style that only regular men wear with confidence? Or is it a tonsorial destiny that men must avoid lest they be deemed regular? Either way asking for a regular man’s haircut is not only a desperate plea for intervention, but also a blast from an existential shotgun. Regular men descend on Sid and Willie’s to get this haircut because it best represents their style of life and that would be a “regular” one.

            A "regular" man’s haircut is for regular men only, men who fulfill a destiny that has been handed to them by virtue of their regularity, appointments are kept, lawns are edged, traditions are followed. Laws are always abided. Loved ones are loved. There is no room for introspection because introspection requires specialness something in short supply for regular men. Iconoclasts and the savage minded need not apply.

            Why would any man willingly sit for a coiffure that delineates the pecking order when deep down he knows that only regular men ask for “regular” men’s haircuts? I ask this because I am next with either Sid or Willie, (it really doesn't matter. It all depends on the serendipitous pace of each) and The Grim Reaper is sitting next to me impatiently riffling through a ten-year-old copy of Popular Mechanics.

            When I was a little kid my mother would send me to the local barbershop to get a “regular” boys haircut for $1.75. Fast-forward 50 years and now I’m at Sid and Willie’s asking for the same thing in a man’s version for 12. How does a man with so much early promise find himself 50 years later enduring stories about grout in the most rudimentary of tonsorial parlors?

            Simple…because it’s goddamn hair! This isn’t brain surgery for twelve bucks! I’m getting my haircut. Would I rather go to a chain shop and have to endure the infantile palaver of a 19-year-old high school drop out for 20? I think not. Practicality rules the day when it comes to haircuts something only “regular” men know about.

                       

           

Y, D and Full of C

When an adult says, “youth is wasted on the young” what exactly does he or she mean? It means that all of youth’s energy and exuberance does not make up for its lack of reasoning and maturity. Youth will always choose the wrong path even with the advice of an experienced helpful witness, summarily alacrity is thusly wasted.

On the other side of the coin if that same adult says “If I knew then what I know now” he is saying that in order to really appreciate being “young dumb and full of cum” it helps to have your wig screwed on tight. My friend Mike had this experience where he relived his undergrad days at the age of 42. He went back to get his masters degree at the same college he stumbled through 23 years earlier.

This cat was calling me at home where my wife and children sleep regaling me with tales of knocking over succulent hard bellies 20 years his junior because now he had the moola and slick rap and wasn’t the same pockmarked Neanderthal from his minority. I told him that it was wrong for him to call me with his tales of debauchery and that I had absolutely no need for succulent hard bellies anymore because I was a mature and seasoned adult and no longer Y, D and full of C. When you are a parent you have to watch the language. You never know who might be in earshot and anyway I was getting ready to go to a parent/teacher conference.

Another sad thing about aging other than the stealthy encroachment of corporal oblivion is the perception that as we age time accelerates. The older we get the emptying sand in the hourglass seems to increase speed, time compresses and the “days run away like wild horses over the hill.”  Just to quote Charles Bukowski should be victory in itself, but I am trying to make a larger point here.

This is the inherent rub with youth. They have too much of it and I don’t, yet my insatiable thirst for knowledge at the age of 60 is in direct opposition to Youth’s lust for the pedantic. What I would give to go back 35 years and immerse myself in the areas that really mattered and not satisfy myself with the mother and daughter 3 way that availed itself at Disco Deli night at Sands delicatessen in 1978. Maybe if I had forsaken that sandwich and instead repaired to my quarters and stoked the other flame I wouldn’t have had to get restraining orders on those two sideshow freaks. But this is the point. Youth is wasted on the young. Instead of burying my head in Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, I was serving my Hebrew National to a couple of deranged suburban fressers.

Jay Leno used to joke that when you are 19 you have pimples, no prospects, but a great dick. When you’re 50 you have money, prestige and nothin’ happenin’ down here (grab self for comedic emphasis). Life wouldn’t be so ironic if it wasn’t so ironic.

The point is this: Blink and you’re 50. Blink again and you’re dead! Two blinks are all it takes for life to flick you into eternity like a spent cigarette butt if you do not wise up and take your silly ass home. Not to You Tube, Face Book, or Twitter, but to a world where the spirit of inquiry takes precedent over an out of context appearance of some D Listers jelly roll. What is there to be gained from watching a masquera-ed 14-year-old shrieking newbie queen come flying out of a closet?

So here it is in a nutshell. Do not waste time. Learn everything you can that doesn’t involve a sports team. The brain like any other organ needs repetitions. Do not waste your days voting which no talent TV skeezix is the most talented. Also, social websites are an illusion. They drive people apart as opposed to bringing them together. How you portray yourself on Facebook bears scant resemblance to your authentic self. Studies show that people have less intimate friends, friends you would confide your deepest feelings to now in the age of the social media then 20 years ago.

I blinked and now I’m 60. When I get aroused it sounds like a rusty drawbridge going up. The flesh always fails. When you are young the days seem endless, but that is nature’s ultimate illusion. Time is not on your side. 

Read the masters! Listen to a great variety of music. Go to museums. Study philosophy. All of it will open up new vistas and possibilities. If you fill your hours with curiosity and wonder the sexiest one in the room will suddenly be the person who can quote Proust and the true meaning of life will open up like the legs of that wild ass bimbo you keelhauled by the dumpster last Saturday night.

Recently Discovered New Yorker Cartoon Captions

             An envelope labeled The New Yorker was found in a dumpster directly behind The New Yorker offices. In it was a one sheet of possible cartoon captions written by someone calling himself Latimore Bivens DeGroot. With the package was a note stating that just because he wasn’t able to draw he shouldn’t be penalized and that his captions were funnier that 90% of the obscurantist claptrap currently being published by the magazine. DeGroot considered his position as a great indignation and wouldn’t wish it on a dog.

            When asked to comment Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker said, “It’s true. We do throw out captions, not because they aren’t funny, but because they are too funny. This magazine built its cartoon reputation on only presenting the most arcane and obtuse captions available. And we are willing to pay through the nose to get them. Sorry, but this cat isn’t the only one that has ended up filed behind this building.”

            Degroot spent his final years cranking out non-sequiturs for the famed magazine, but never made a sale. Below is a sampling.

1. A pervert and opportunist Marvin once got a rim job from a blind dog.

2. Meticulous and petty, Leonard planned for 6 months to step on the heel of his archenemy’s shoe.

3. What William lacked in his taste in women he made up for in range.

4. Not one to come to grips with the inevitable, Barney referred to death as “enjoying some quiet time.”

5. Seymour wore 3D glasses 24 hours a day in an effort to lessen his feelings of insignificance.

6. Once his lawn was perfect, Harold began getting invited to the best parties in the subdivision.

7. Sheldon Grossman was such a loser his wife left him for a Sheldon Grossman impersonator.

8. Ezekiel lost a much coveted fundraising job to an organ grinder’s monkey.

9. Henry’s low self-esteem was finally attributed to the fact that he was a descendant in a long line of men’s room attendants.

10. Even though Melvin’s only friend was imaginary he still liked to talk to him wearing his Bluetooth earpiece.

11. To Willie’s dismay there was little demand for post mortem caricaturists.

12. Every time that telephone rang Bernard was seized with an uncontrollable fear that his wife was still alive.

13. Manny came to realize the jig was up as perforations were beginning to give him trouble.

14. Cosgrove should have known the end of his marriage was near. For 30 years his wife’s pet name for him was “the mark”.

15. A penurious Latimore spent his final days sleeping with his favorite dime.

Bad Hair Day

Why is body hair bad all of a sudden? Why can’t you find a strand of it on anybody on the Internet without having to look shifty eyed, checking the angles of your partially closed bedroom door just to get wistful over a nicely sculpted female pelt? Am I a pervert or what just because I like women to look like women? No pubic hair?  The way it should read is this: “No, pubic hair!”

Who had the “eureka!” moment that if we can completely denude the human body someone millions and millions of dollars could be made? Who had the entrepreneurial vision to suggest that if we could convince humans that hair was bad a new industry would be born as well as a captain of that industry? Is razor burn attractive to you? Or is your thing an unsymmetrical pair of female mud flaps without the natural valance of pubic hair? Maybe the sight of a man’s goosepimply nut sack bouncing off some unknown’s splayed tookie is your ticket to o-ville?

For that matter why would any man knowingly take a cutthroat to the pink repository of his future issue even if the tonsorial act in question lessens drag and increases torque?

Well you don’t have to be the smartest pig in the barnyard to locate this acorn just check out that smorgasbord of outré taste, that wayward lesbian brother of the smart set, that gutter jockey who masquerades as the arbiter of the public taste, Porn! That’s who!

Smooth and shiny, the men and women who make their livings in the skin trade resemble Ken and Barbie dolls with thyroid problems so bereft of anthropological clues that they are actually human you’d think you were watching a sex ed film directed by the Wachowski Brothers. As with fashion, porn has the ability to demarcate taste and if the players are completely shorn then anyone who previously enjoyed the evolutionary residue of a hairy twat is now regarded as a weirdo who must trawl the zeros and ones with a virtual black bar over his eyes because now he is the aberrant one.

Look, I’m not a wild man. I don’t need a woman’s pubic hair cascading out from under the hem of her skirt. But lets face it, Labiums Majus and Minus by themselves are not that attractive and without hair most resemble a half a pound of chipped ham. Pubic hair adds symmetry and contrast to the female body and completes that beautiful triangle with the breasts. But its main purpose is to capture the pheromones that attract the opposite sex.

I look at this fetishization of body parts as symptomatic of an immature culture that is in denial of its animal nature. The fact that deep down we are not much better than animals copulating in the streets causes anxiety in the hardest of men and we do our damnedest to falsely rise above it.

You see this no more blatantly than in the fascist nature of women’s footwear. Especially in porn where the foot is covered in spiked heels as if the naked foot is too reminiscent of our animal natures, a cloven hoof so to speak and by disguising it we can deny our rough, scaly finitude.

However, if you do accept this premise a tremendous irony reveals itself as no woman has ever been called hot who wears Birkenstocks. EVER!

            

Two Girls One cup

As a 60 year-old man I am virtually in the dark when it comes to mastering or understanding the continuously rolling thunder of modern technology. As you see, my current computer is a wood burner and my cell phone has a crank on the side of it. Needless to say, most technological innovation including the comings and goings of the captains of that industry fall on deaf ears, namely mine. I have even less knowledge when it comes to parsing out the latest gossip of even the most famous habitués in our culture so it is no wonder that I was clueless regarding a fragrant little Internet startup called Two Girls One Cup.

I had been informed of this site a few weeks prior by an acquaintance with tertiary stage syphilis allowing me to give it no purchase until I stumbled upon it one night after an exhaustive search for actual cups. Apparently, the site has been up for sometime and if it wasn’t for my interest in acquiring new vessels for potables I would still be in the dark that our society as we know it is not only scraping the bottom of the barrel, but breaking through it to the muck on the other side. Two Girls One Cup is a site that appeals to an under served constituency of such low derivation that after watching 20 seconds of it you know immediately what it would be like to work at a Dairy Queen in Berlin.

To encapsulate the story, one of the two girls pretends she’s a soda jerk and the other a soft serve machine. Once the cup is filled with the flavor of the day they look longingly into each other eyes and proceed to enjoy the nasty Spackle with unusual gusto and verve. Ironically, the scene had an air of romance to it, and I was half expecting the soft server to present the other with a friendship ring to commemorate this German exercise in community. The only thing missing in this piquant little melodrama was the gang from the local fraternities and sororities arriving with the huzzahs of teen bonhomie punctuated by the ordering of large x-rated parfaits. Astoundingly, the acting was better than initially anticipated and I absolutely believed that the motivations of each dookie fresser were true to the clip’s limited story arc.

 I analyzed this v-curio in a specially constructed woodshed that only could be opened from the inside to avoid contamination from the prying eyes of neighbors and the FBI which allowed me the unencumbered time to do the due diligence it richly deserved. For a month I eyeballed Two Girls One Cup frame by frame using modern techniques usually reserved for more vaunted historical ephemera like the Zapruder film, but the former champ of recherché subterranean arcana “Brown”, the story of a shit loving, biker gang, a VHS tape perpetrated on me by a gay mentalist with the name of The Amazing Crisco had nothing on these shise essen chicks when it came to enjoying the Captain’s log. 

These girls had found a niche as we like to say in my niche of the woods and I especially admired the way they also had managed to buck 250 thousand years of natural selection in the process.  Two Girls One cup is a rag to riches story, as two girls after childhoods of obviously horrific toilet training, take matters and matter into their own hands and parlay it to the top of the dung heap of American entrepreneurship. True, the narrative lacks the vision of a Federico Fellini or even a Russ Meyer, but what it lacks in nuance it more than makes up for with an enthusiastic medley of summer corn and Spanish peanut skins.

Reality The EZ Way

I was working on a cure for depression, but my agent convinced me that there’s no money in despair. He said the big dough is in reality show programming. Do you have any idea what Seacrest is pulling down these days producing reality TV not including tips? Dick Money was right. Why waste time on projects like world hunger and AIDS when all cataclysmic events are designed to thin out the herd anyway and if all diseases were eradicated what would we do with everybody? Natural disasters and disease have an ameliorating effect especially on parking and housing prices and anyway, it’s not my job to tamper with cosmic perfection. My agent knew of my predilection for eating and that I still owed him 500 Simoleons. If I didn’t show him a couple of sawbucks soon, I might end up in a dumpster somewhere. So I took his advice, did a little research to find out how this world of reality TV works then disappeared for a few months to woodshed some reality show concepts that I’m sure will garner the attention of any hungry, production company momzer worth his weight in bullshit.

1.    Going, Going Gone takes place in Florida retirement village where everyone rides mall scooters. The women play cards and kibitz while the men play grab ass with the nurses. Controversy ensues when the men receive collapsible grabbers for Father’s Day, which dramatically increases their ass grabbing range by 200%.

2.    Perverted Justice-Scumbag white-collar criminals are thrown into a maximum-security prison where murderers, rapists and shakedown psychos dispense their own brand of…PERVERTED JUSTICE!!! Bernie Madoff is technical consultant on this project.

3.    Bimbo Island- 20 bimbos all named Kayley or Caleigh or K-Lee try to get off an island using nothing but their tits.

4.    Cougar High- A high school in Anywhere, USA has budget problems and can’t afford a cheerleading squad for the football team. The mothers of the players volunteer. “Hey Mrs. Jenkins, aren’t you going to shave for the big game?” When Mrs. Jenkins does her first jump split sightings of Jerry Garcia are reported for no apparent reason. Special future cameo appearances will include: Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, The Smith Brothers, Adolph Hitler and Dan Hedaya.

5.    Touched By A Priest- Bad timing was this priest’s only crime. He really was doing good work.

6.    I Didn’t Know That Was My Baby- Hidden camera style show that records the reactions of idiot women after they are presented with babies they never knew they even gave birth to.

7.    Judge Girlfriend- no nonsense African-American, street chick dispenses practical justice like shoes up asses, slaps upside heads and ululating the ever humiliating “No you di…int!

8.    Do What You Gotta Do- A game show that follows average citizens on their daily rounds of jones crushing, marrow sapping errands, waiting for hours at the DMV, standing behind a woman with 100 items in an 8 items or less line, arguing with an HMO administrator about denied coverage for a pre existing disease and being able to murder them with impunity.

9.    Pimp My Life- a random couple gets a complete physical, sartorial, and home interior makeover. After all is revealed, a masked man enters with a Tec-9 and wastes everyone on the set.

10. The Real Sister Wives of Lancaster County – Behind the scenes look at plural marriage as sister wives reveal the ups and downs of loving a not particularly handsome, yellowing, fur matted, religious martinet. In the pilot episode Lucinda reveals her feelings about Cora Sue: “Bitch stole my look!”America’s Funniest Intervention videos- Uncontrollable sobbing by the real victims of an alcoholic’s destructive behavior…the owners of the liquor store!

11. America’s Funniest Intervention videos- Uncontrollable sobbing by the real victims of an alcoholic’s destructive behavior…the owners of the liquor store!

12. Ultimate Reality- Day 18,250- Follow the daily adventures of a man in a loveless marriage with 3 kids that can’t stand him who has worked at an unfulfilling, soul crushing job for the past 25 years. The twist? There are no cameras.

I can see the green light now…

Ars Gratia Artis

                        In the elder days of art

                                       Builders wrought with greatest care

                                           Each minute and unseen part

                                           For the Gods are everywhere

                                                          H.W. Longfellow

                                   

How ironic that the greatest clarion-call to a nation of Philistines, was made currency by a former immigrant from a Cossack ridden Ukrainian village whose main stock in trade was the promulgation, dissemination and manipulation of the public trust? Louie B. Mayer’s MGM was the last place you’d ever expect to find art as many a bloodhound and spaniel panting, exhausted could testify their vaunted noses not withstanding, yet these 3 Latin words art for art’s sake are exactly what this world needs to save it from certain destruction.

As a capitalist nation we are being buried under a cascade of useless gewgaw, perpetrated by the availability of easy credit, forged by a system whose illusion of freedom is its bread and butter and predicates its success on molding any theoretical foundation into a malleable product to be bought and sold. This is what modern life has come down to: we are a country of consumed consumers consumed by false needs. God Bless America Tea cozies only $1.99! Capitalism is the ultimate illusion that can transubstantiate at a drop of a hat and re-appear as something we cannot do without as anyone who watches bad TV in high def can bear out. The severity of Man’s denial is commensurate with the size of his cable package!   

Advertising in its nefarious styling creates needs where none has gone before. Miraculously we are willing to pay 4-dollars for a cup of coffee and take pills because we find out our penises might be too small and subjugate our own identities by morphing into a bunch of tertiary stage syphilitic sycophants wiling away the hours wondering what will ever become of Kim and Kanye. We spend every waking moment glued to the comings and goings of the lives of other people instead of living our own. We are transfixed by celebrities gloating ad nauseum about their cribs and wonder why I can’t have a crib like that too. I would like a Lamborghini and a Hummer shining in the Southern California sun. You can, bitch! In 50,000 easy monthly payments. 

And is there a more egregious example of Capitalism’s will to power than the complete embracing of Big Business by organized religion? The Holiest of Holies has become the Hoiest of Hos as religion is packaged like six-packs. The Catholic Church, which once boasted 99% penetration in Latin America, is down to 70-80% in most of these countries. The call from the Vatican is to stanch the flow of Catholic defectors to its biggest competitor Protestantism. Priests who abused children were kept on as fewer men went into the Priesthood and business being business…well you know what I mean. Don’t forget that The Pope is businessman too. Wal-Mart VS Target anyone?

The melding of business 101 and religion cannot be seen more clearly than with the proliferation of Mega-churches. Mega-churches are the latest religious venture to commune with Capitalism. These so called houses of the holy which seat upwards of 20,000 customers are replete with food courts (over 1 million Righteous Burgers sold), church cafes (try a Rapture-cino!) video stores (Own The Passion of the Christ for Eternity!) magazine stands promoting biblical magazines (the Virgin Mary is soooo hot), and apothecaries (try finding a condom there) selling faith based lozenges. If you want to sell more dogma how do you do it? Mega-churches are the equivalent of God Amalgamated and will incorporate any proven business practice that helps them to sell the Word. And what could be better than owning a business that has the world’s most willing investors, investors investing for the ultimate long term and where dividends do not cost the Church a red cent? Taking a page out of the big business playbook organized religion has rejiggered its tenets with the flash and substance of a Liberace concert.

In any culture it is always the established standard that forms the transference that becomes the impetus for public complicity. Communism, socialism, capitalism cannot succeed unless the people buy into it. Without socialization of the masses the new paradigm cannot work. Either the masses revolt or fall under the spell of the prevailing standard. You see this everywhere from ethnic cleansing to the popularity of I-pods, but nothing was more endemic and egregious in its hollowness than the wholesale patriotism exhibited after 9/11. Millions of American flags were bought and fixed to any flat surface that could take the hedge against mortality. Every car, cab, van and sign facia hunkered down behind the mantra of “God Bless America” This anesthetization of the public zeitgeist lasted so long that even the most sub mental new what G_d B_es_ Am_i_ca meant. My local drycleaner used the catastrophe to solidify his customer relations by declaring, “We clean American flags free of charge” “Would you clean them for free if someone brought in 100 flags?” I offered. Many retailers spit shined “God Bless America” positioning it as some cool, simpatico statement by claiming, “Buy here because God does”. That’s sexy! That’s hot! Sheesh! Will God reward us with a hefty bottom line because we believe in Him or are we really just the most virulent hucksters who ever played the game? It is so easy to use Him because it’s the Green Jesus that we really worship. And because the business of America is business WTF?  Lowering the bar is the nature of Capitalism.

Reality shows parlay human suffering to amazing profits. We cannot take our eyes off even the most pitiful sideshow act. So what if Lobster Boy and the Human Blockhead are caught flagrante dilictu in a seedy doublewide trailer. All they are trying to do is share a little down time. What’s wrong with a little love among freaks? I’ve seen the way you do it Mr. And Mrs. Straight America. Ya get my drift? It’s all right with me that Mr. Straight America makes love in a big diaper and bonnet. I could care less unless it’s green-lighted for13 episodes then I’m all over it. You know it’s gonna blow up.

Well now it’s my turn. I’ve got a show that I’m ready to pitch to Fox It’s got all the ingredients, baby! Topicality, salty dialogue. OK, here goes…It’s a sitcom about a typical nuclear family, mother, father, brother and sister, but here’s the catch…the daughter is a stem cell…that’s right a stem cell, cute and perky. Very contemporary. But Mom and Dad are very protective of her for obvious reasons. In the pilot it’s prom night. When the daughter’s prom date shows up wearing a lab coat and holding a clip board…the parents become suspicious, suspicious of his intentions toward their daughter, traditional yet very moderno… Whaddya say? Look Out, That’s My Daughter Thursdays on Fox. Check it out! Heck, if you don’t like that I got something else that’s guaranteed to go through the roof. What do you think about a video game called Virtual Abortion? Safe, legal…it’ll be huge for both sides. We expect to move 50,000 units the first year. This has win/win written all over it.

We are a people that have been reduced to the level of lab rats and are willing accomplices to our own demise. Smart phones rule the day as modern man insulates himself from things that might really matter. Give us our Internet, 500 channel cable, home theater and we will only too happy to bathe in the glow of the sentient, white noise. The only opinions we have are spoon fed to us by corporations. E-mail and cell phones drive us further away from each other and from ourselves. We crave to be entertained 24 hours a day because the thought of being alone with our own thoughts is too much to bear. Would we really need to pay athletes and celebrities millions and millions of dollars just to entertain us if our inner lives did not put us to sleep?

The Capitalist system offers little in a way of spiritual nourishment.. Modern life has created a nation of wage slaves working just to go on a two week vacation, then spending the next year paying for that two week vacation until its time for next year’s two week vacation. Repeat and rinse. The rise of a vociferous evangelical right lends credence to this dissatisfaction. The essence of Capitalism is the capitulation of the status quo. People can’t believe that life in a Capitalist system is really like this. The system creates the need and its citizens refuse to do without mortgaging its future by making minimum payments in perpetuity. Unfortunately the pursuit of material goods is akin to buying the worst product ever made with complete dissatisfaction and no money back. Are we really satisfied to chase the virtual carrot and in turn sealing our own doom in the process? We have managed to sublimate the most important thing about being alive, the actual living of life. By removing the forward movement we have been turned into a species whose sole reason to be is to eat and make garbage. I took a photograph of myself on the toilet eating a Big Mac. I titled the finished print “Cutting Out The Middle Man”.

If life in the United States is all about the Benjamins, where does that leave real art? Art has been relegated to the remainder bin of American endeavors. Opera Houses and symphonies struggle to remain vital as their worth in the eyes of an indifferent society weakens. Funding routinely gets slashed from the National Endowment for the Arts. School curriculums are continually gutted of writing and art programs. How can a society survive when beauty and human dimension is shunted in favor of saving a buck? How does everything except the humanities get mandated as laudable for teaching to our children? Is this why our greatest masterpieces have less distinction than Paris Hilton’s? Art is the unguent that savage men must have. At its highest levels it quells the murderous drive that compensates for being alive in the cosmos. Artists create art on the hope of attaining an apotheosis that art engenders. It is this apotheosis that potentially can bring people together. Art is the ultimate language that binds us all in the pursuit of the cosmic connection as anyone who has ever listened to Ennio Morricone can surely attest to. Great art prompts the calling to life and is as close to the Godhead as we’ll ever get. That is why artists do it. Can the artist explain the unexplainable? No, but it is the highest calling to try.

If mankind would only put down the remote and try to find a way to express itself, and realize that the diminishment one feels for not having the latest this or au courant that is really a call to arms. Instead of allowing a bankrupt system to whittle away what it is to be human, if we would only write a poem, sculpt, dance, or make music instead of picking up a gun, art can be used to push forward and embrace that mystery and make “art for arts sake” the mantra of a new age.

Capitalism has managed to turn a country away from the Jeffersonian age of Enlightenment to the corporate age of unreason. We love our politicians like we like our sitcom characters one-dimensional. We live in a time when well roundedness should be the prime characteristic of any country’s leader, but we seem to only have an affinity for cardboard cut outs. Vaclav Havel was a poet and novelist who as president elevated the Czech Republic to a nation of introspection. The Bush administration because of its Devout Absolutism lowered the arts to the level of a $1.99 tea cozy. Barack Obama is not much better, not because he doesn’t care, of that I am not completely sure, but because no man can escape the meat grinder of American politics of which sausage sells infinitely better than filet.

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