The Grouchy Editor

 Ass You Like It

“Shake your wiener!” — Welcome to Myrtle Manor’s Chelsey, above

TV Report

Winning Me Back:  Welcome to Myrtle Manor.  OK, I’ll admit that a lot of this stuff is probably staged (how many trailer parks conduct beauty pageants?), but the knuckleheads at Myrtle Manor are an engaging bunch, gosh darn it.

Losing Me:  The Walking Dead.  Major, longtime characters keep getting killed off by the show’s writers, and I’m just fine with that, which is probably not what AMC’s producers have in mind.

Game of Thrones:  Downton Abbey for the dungeons and dragons crowd.  It’s soap opera, but so well-produced, well-acted, and visually arresting that it’s easy to get sucked in to its fantasy world.

Orphan Black:  I don’t know if it’s a good sign or a bad sign when your opening episode goes out of its way to showcase the heroine’s derriere.  OK, I’m lying; it’s definitely a good sign.

Basic-cable channels seem to occupy a nudity no-man’s land.  Not bold enough to flash full-frontal and too timid to bare boobs, basic channels opt instead for shapely rear ends.  So do we.  Keep up the good work, basic cable.

Tatiana Maslany and her two co-stars on the premiere of BBC America’s Orphan Black.

Myrtle Manor’s Chelsey doing what people usually do at trailer parks:  strutting her stuff in a beauty pageant.

Game of Thrones’s Emilia Clarke demonstrates why teenage boys want their parents to get HBO.

An extra on the set of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

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From New York magazine:

No, no, no.  Bad idea.  You’ll ruin the show for teenage boys and for … other people.  You want male nudity, go watch Spartacus.   Below, a gratuitous penis for Matt Zoller Seitz (and, of course, for Myrtle Manor “wiener girl” Chelsey).

Meanwhile, on Survivor, Brenda (below) strives for success.

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I haven’t been watching much Rachel Maddow lately.  She spends too much time on issues of great importance to a relatively small number of people, including gay rights.  But when Maddow turns to matters like government corruption or military misadventures, there’s no one better in cable news.  On Tuesday, she and Eliot Spitzer skewered former SEC chief Mary Schapiro, and it was terrific journalism.

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Two weeks ago, I introduced a “please let them be struck by lightning” list by spotlighting a pompous, irritating spokeswoman for AARP.  Money-grubbing, shameless Fred Thompson, shilling for AAG in the picture above, makes the list this week.

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The thumbs are all buried now, and that’s a bummer.

I thought Roger Ebert was a superb writer but a critic with … uh, peculiar taste.  But if you love movies, Ebert was a big part of your past, and it’s sad to see him go.

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These endless smoking bans and tax hikes are making me bitter.  A Norwegian professor named Bharat P. Bhatta says that fat people should pay more for airline tickets because they create more jet-fuel consumption.  Ten years ago, I would have said that was mean-spirited.  Not anymore.

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Evidently, there are only two issues that warrant media attention these days:  gun control and gay marriage.  I don’t own a gun and I’m not gay, so I do not, as they say, have a dog in these hunts — at least, not directly.  But all of this babble about “fairness” and “equality” is a joke to single Americans — gay and straight.  Here’s why.

(The article addresses single women, but most of the points apply to single men, as well.)

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It’s not often that I agree with the talking heads on Fox News and on MSNBC.  Dr. Keith Ablow (above), a talking bald head, was singing my tune when he said government should get out of the marriage business:  “That means:  No preferential treatment at tax time, no preferential treatment for married folks by insurance companies.  Everyone should be treated as an individual.”  Meanwhile, over at MSNBC,  Bob Franken was proposing pretty much the same thing:  time to dump unfair benefits for married people.

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Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at a museum.  Performance art, or mental illness?

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Bill Carter of the New York Times has praise for Barbara Walters, who is said to be retiring next year:  “She was doing interviews with every big figure in the news at that point in her time.  She was part of that whole shuttle diplomacy era, flying back and forth in the Mideast between Begin and Sadat and all the other big figures, like Castro and Gaddafi and all these very famous figures in history.”

Depressing, because now we have Dennis Rodman doing that job.

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Here are pictures of Jeffrey Toobin getting clobbered outside of the Supreme Court.  I don’t know about you, but I enjoy seeing Jeffrey Toobin getting clobbered.

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Black Hysteria Month

Like O.J. before him, Tiger Woods is rebounding from scandal with the help of a blonde from Minnesota.  Tiger’s courtship techniques, well documented in text messages to a former flame in 2009, seem to work well for him.  Did the Woodsman dust off some of the charming gems reprinted below to woo Lindsey Vonn?

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Oprah is reportedly doing a sex scene in an upcoming film called The Butler.  Guess I’ll go ahead and cancel my cataract surgery, because I’d hate to accidentally see that.

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“I’m only in my 60s.  I’ve got a nice long life ahead:  big plans.” — woman in AARP commercial

I don’t usually wish physical harm on people, but if a bolt of lightning struck this smug woman, strutting through the woods as if she owns the world, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

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TV Report Card

Vikings — moderately entertaining, but no great shakes

Bates Motel — moderately entertaining, but no great shakes

Top of the Lake — moderately entertaining, but … the jury is out

Here’s the problem with AMC’s The Walking Dead.  The zombies are slow, stupid, and about as life-threatening as a June bug infestation.  The only time these sluggards pose a threat is when you are dumb enough to do something like sleep in a tent, outdoors in the woods.  Early on in this series, the heroes — you knew it — slept outdoors in tents in the woods.

Meanwhile, on The Americans:

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It’s been awhile since we checked in with the gang at Survivor:

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Hmmm … did someone on The Big Bang Theory get a boob job?

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Dumb Quote of the Week

“Lena Dunham, for instance, is totally great at being naked.” — Libby Gelman-Waxner in Entertainment Weekly.  If we need any more proof that men and women are from different planets, this quote ought to do the job.

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Who is this Roma Downey, a producer of History’s The Bible?  Is she the one who chain-smoked and hosted that 1980s talk show?  Or is she the actor who got sent to jail and drug rehab?

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Myrtle Manor “Wiener Girls” Chelsey and Lindsay (see below)

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Facebook honcho Sheryl Sandberg made the rounds plugging her new book, Lean In, in which she preaches that women can “have it all.”  Or so I heard — do you really think I read this stuff?

I figured that superwoman Sandberg, as part of her having it all, lays claim to some virile, race-car-driving husband.  Or possibly a pool-cleaning boy toy.  Here are two pictures.  Guess which dreamboat belongs to Sandberg.

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It was rather rich to see that anti-bullying crusader, Anderson Cooper, in Rome as part of the media’s collective kiss-ass over the Catholic Church’s latest  P.O.P. (protector of pedophiles).

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TV Report Card

Growing on me:  The Americans on FX

Beginning to lose me:  Welcome to Myrtle Manor on TLC

The two shows do have one thing in common …

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If I am ever on trial for my life, I will instruct my lawyers to reject any gravel-voiced, older females during jury selection.  I notice that on Nancy Grace’s program, an inordinate number of callers are gravel-voiced, older females, and they often seem to harbor vast quantities of hostility.  None of these angry ladies on my jury, if you please.

I picture these women at home, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a Camel in the other, glaring bitterly at their television screens.  Sort of like a couple of women on a well-known animated sitcom …

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It’s been much too long since we’ve heard from my favorite celebrity grouch, Daniel Craig.  Happily, Craig was in a New York supermarket when he encountered a picture-snapping fan.

“Is watching me food shopping with my wife really all that interesting to you?” Craig reportedly screamed as he snatched the offending camera.  That’s my boy.

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Will someone please explain to me the popularity of Justin Timberlake?  Are boundless energy and ubiquity the same thing as genuine talent?

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I watched the premiere of Welcome to Myrtle Manor on TLC.  There.  I said it.

Heaven help me, but I enjoyed the damned thing.  Pictured above is series regular Roy.  Roy is a hairdresser.  Pictured below are Myrtle Manor residents Anne (left) and Miss Peggy.  Miss Peggy is an exhibitionist, and Anne is … well, Anne.  Let’s all hope and pray that there are no tornado scares at the trailer park.

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Let me see if I have this straight.  Decades after the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda still gets spat on by angry veterans and denounced in Congress, but Dennis Rodman gets a pass for his love-fest (above) with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un?

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OK, America, let’s go ahead and legalize discrimination against smokers.  But while we’re at it, let’s also make sure that your fat husband can’t get a job and your alcohol-guzzling wife gets fired, because they are making the cost of my health insurance go up.

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Quote of the Week

“John Boehner can barely control his caucus.” — MSNBC’s Karen Finney.  I know how Boehner must feel, because there are times I can barely control my caucus.

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More good news for job-seekers:  They are still seeking a proofreader at The Huffington Post.

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Oscars Wrap-Up

Adele picked up an Oscar for her song from the movie Skyfall.  I’m thinking of calling the picture above, with Adele towering over Kristin Chenoweth, “Sunblock.”

Lending a touch of glamour to the proceedings, Oscar winners Jennifer Lawrence, above left, and Anne Hathaway, right, posed for photographers after the big show.

I guess that when you have two gay guys producing the Academy Awards telecast, there is no way to avoid god-awful musical productions, but geez.  Perhaps they thought they were throwing a bone to heterosexual men with their “We Saw Your Boobs” number (above), but even that fell … uh, flat.

It takes a lot to steal the show from Adele, who sang the Oscar-winning “Sunblock,” but Barbra Streisand (“The Way We Were”) and especially Shirley Bassey (above, belting out “Goldfinger”) managed to do just that.

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Thank God that poor, downtrodden Ben Affleck got an Oscar so that we can all relax and stop feeling sorry for him.  Ben was inspirational when he told us how life had been a struggle for him, but that we should all follow his example and just keep on fighting.  And when the cameras cut to Ben’s movie-star wife shedding movie-star tears in the audience, I had to reach for some tissues.  Well, OK, so it wasn’t a tissue, but brown barf-bags are also made from trees.

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Quotes of the Week:

“At the time you were kissing Mr. Burns’s lips, did you know he was dead or not?” — prosecutor’s question for Jodi Arias at her murder trial on Monday.

The topic on Wednesday’s Red Eye was working from home.  Bill Schulz said, “The alone time does tend to make one odd … you watch a lot of weird stuff.”  Yes, like Red Eye at 2 o’clock in the morning on Wednesday.

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I’m having trouble following this “Blade Runner” business in Australia, possibly because it’s taking place in South Africa, not Australia.  The “Blade Runner,” legless Oscar Pistorius, is on trial for killing a model.  First, we got the shocking news that the trial prosecutor will also be tried for homicide.  Then we were again coldcocked, this time with reports that Pistorius’s brother will also be tried for homicide.  I fully expect to hear, any day now, that the judge is accused of some murderous rampage.

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Apparently, we were all supposed to be wowed over the retirement of that Catholic creep in Rome.  Why this pedophile protector isn’t moving out of the Vatican and into a prison cell is the real story, but you’d never guess that from fawning media coverage.

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Lots of exciting news at The Huffington Post.  They still have an opening for a proofreader, and secondly … well, here is my hopeful post in their comments section:

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At some point, haven’t we all?

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“He called me a fucking idiot.”

— Jodi Arias testifying at her murder trial on Wednesday.  Her colorful language somehow slipped past HLN’s censors, causing me whiplash as I sat at my computer and prompting HLN anchor Ryan Smith to apologize to surprised viewers.

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Taylor Swift revenge songs … Taylor Swift revenge dress ….  Am I the only one who’s beginning to wonder if the problem here might be Taylor Swift, and not the endless series of ex-boyfriends she seems hell-bent on trashing?

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If I continue to have this problem with ConsumerAffairs, do I report it to ConsumerAffairs?

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Retailers often emphasize sports when they promote their big-screen, high-definition TVs.  I think a better selling point would be the programming on the Science channel.  Nothing quite like watching computer-generated asteroids hurtling toward Earth, or supernovas bursting in crystal-clear detail on shows like How the Universe Works and Through the Wormhole.

This story is not particularly newsworthy, but it is a good excuse to post a cool outer-space picture, so here you go.

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The Love Boat

I used to wonder what a poop deck was.  Not anymore, thanks to the passengers on the ill-fated Triumph.

I actually feel a bit sorry for Carnival’s P.R. people, who are having to answer so many idiotic questions from the media.  They should have simply issued a two-word press release:  “Shit happens.”

Oh and by the way, media … this cruise-ship business was mildly interesting, but Jon Stewart was correct in calling you out for going, uh, overboard with your frantic coverage.  Inconvenienced vacationers are page 2 news.  What do I consider page 1 news?  Well, this …

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Eggheads, Airheads, and Dogheads

Security expert James Lewis was on Face the Nation.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a man whose noggin so closely resembles an egg.

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I was under the impression that most bubble-headed anchors work at Fox News, but it’s hard to ignore CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield (above).  Banfield and Anderson Cooper shared this memorable exchange during last week’s East Coast snowstorm:

Banfield:  One other thing that I’ve been doing, Anderson, all day I’ve been doing the president’s measurements.  And I think this — as the governor of the state said — this is when it’s going to start getting a lot more serious.  The snowfall is going to start getting a lot more thick.  We’re going to get those 3 to 5 inches an hour.  And our official president’s measurement, we have reached Millard Fillmore.  I’ve been waiting.  I’ve been waiting to reach Millard Fillmore, which is about seven inches or so.  But now I can tell you every ten minutes or so, we are going up a president.

Cooper:  Hey, Ashleigh, I know you’re cold, but what are you talking about?  I don’t understand.  The measurements of the presidents?

Banfield:  Anderson Cooper, get your Kathy Griffin on.  I have a second-grader, so this is how the rulers are when you’re in second grade.

Cooper:  OK.

Banfield:  They’re the presidents.

Cooper:  I see.  OK.

Banfield:  Get with the program.  I’ve been measuring it in president.  We started at George Washington.  We’re at Millard Fillmore.  I’m waiting to get to Cleveland, not second term, first term, because that’s halfway.

Cooper:  It’s been a long night, hasn’t it, Ashleigh?

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“They go straight back home, they make a beeline back to the apartment, back to the home for more anal sex.  You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

That’s a quote from Nancy Grace, who has been taking a keen interest in the trial of Jodi Arias for the murder of her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.  Trial watching has also been a welcome opportunity for Nancy and BFF Casey to enjoy some long-overdue bonding (above). 

Photoshop, you ask?  Certainly not.  We aren’t professional graphic artists here at The Grouchy Editor, so if ever we did attempt to alter a photograph, you would most likely be able to tell.

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I guess this demand from the right for a picture of Obama shooting a gun (above) is some sort of manhood test.  OK, but it seems only fair then that we all get to enjoy this manly photo of George Bush from back in his cheerleader days:

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I realize that we can’t all be fashion models, and I love casual Fridays as much as the next guy, but geez Rachel, what is this?  “Hobo chic”?

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More proofreading woes at The Huffington Post:

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“We interrupt this week’s coverage of nutcase Jodi Arias’s murder trial to bring you coverage of rogue nutcase Christopher Dorner, an ex-cop on a murderous rampage in California.”

I understand the hand-wringing over our tendency to treat hard news as “infotainment,” but good grief, is there no end to these outrageous diversions?  Guess I should ask Nancy and Casey.

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“I know more about Jodi Arias’s — let me just say rear end, for a better word — than I ever dreamed I would know.  That’s not exactly why I went to law school.”

— Nancy Grace, not fooling any of us

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Term that needs to be abolished:  “rock star” — unless it refers to an actual, honest-to-goodness musician.

Hillary Clinton, love her or hate her, is often referred to as a Democratic “rock star.”  Hillary is many things, but she is certainly not a rock star.  She is an aging, heavyset politician who wears pantsuits and glasses — the very antithesis of “rock star.”  Likewise, that scrawny geek from Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, is no one’s idea of a “rock star.”

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As long as we’re banning things, let’s ban the Super Bowl party.  If you are a genuine football fan, it’s next to impossible to watch the actual game during these parties because there are “casual fans” in attendance, blocking the TV screen, paying attention only to commercials, and making non-football-related conversation.  Who needs that?

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          Eddie Munster haircut, circa 1964

          Eddie Munster haircut, circa 2013

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Lord knows I bitch enough about annoying commercials, so it’s only fair that I praise a — stop the presses! — good one, on the rare occasion that one comes along.   This Kayak spot is funny.  Of course, I won’t feel that way after I’ve seen it 1,400 times.

It’s impossible to escape awful commercials.  Not if you expect to watch television.  But you can at least pick your poison.  If you want to avoid the cloying appeals of retired celebrities like Henry Winkler, Fred Thompson, or William Devane, who all strive to convince us that they are just like us, just regular folk, you must steer clear of cable-news channels.  Likewise, if you can’t stomach one more acne-cream ad, say goodbye to MTV.

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This attraction Obama has for flies at press conferences is beginning to go beyond bizarre.  Perhaps he needs acne cream.

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