The Grouchy Editor

 Wild Kingdom

I was watching Cujo on AMC, and ads for the SPCA kept interrupting the movie, with Sarah McLachlan imploring viewers, “Will you be an angel for a helpless animal?”

I repeat:  This was during a screening of Cujo.  You know, the story about a big dog with rabies that kills everyone?  This dog:

I don’t know, AMC.  Do you think Cujo viewers were likely in the mood to rescue helpless animals?

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“Do you want a moat with alligators?”

That was a question MSNBC’s Martin Bashir put to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio during a discussion about the Mexican border.  I wasn’t interested in moats with alligators, so I flipped the channel to Fox News, where Shepard Smith announced that dozens of tigers, grizzly bears, lions and monkeys were running loose in Ohio.

I flipped back to AMC, but the movie about a rabid dog was no longer playing.

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The best reason to vote for Obama in 2012:

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Sorry, but when you go onstage looking like this, you are going to get the snide “fat” comments.

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OK, so I’m a little late to the party, but I am getting hooked on the History channel’s reality show, Pawn Stars.  The series has a winning formula:  Customers bring in their junk — a lot of it fascinating, some of it valuable — and it’s evaluated by Las Vegas pawn store employees Rick, Corey, Richard, and “Chumlee,” all of whom exhibit folksy charm.

Just one question:  Why aren’t there more female customers at the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop?

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This is how my dictionary defines “classic” —

I keep seeing the word “classic” used to describe movies and TV shows that are more than, oh, roughly ten years old.  Last week, I read that Hollywood is producing remakes of the “classic” 1980s movies The Thing and Footloose.  Entertaining movies, certainly, but classics?

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Great news from CBS:

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In promos for the new CNN show Outfront, host Erin Burnett waxes nostalgic about “growing up in a small town.”  Yeah, right, like she is just one of “the folks.”  Burnett’s actual background?  She grew up as the daughter of a corporate attorney and then enrolled at Williams College, an elite private school.  In other words, Burnett is just the latest in a string of sexy rich girls riding the Barbie Doll bandwagon of cable news.

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The creators of TV ads must spend hours brainstorming ideas on how to produce the most grating, nausea-inducing means of assaulting viewers.   That’s the only theory I can come up with to explain this monstrosity from Goodwill.  Click here, if you dare.

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Rapper Ice-T told Jimmy Fallon that anybody can write a book.  “Sure you could write a book,” the literary genius said.  “It’s not that hard.  I mean, what you do is, you get with a co-writer that teaches you how to actually write books.”

Ice-T and his equally brainy wife, Coco (who also “wrote” a book), join Snooki in proving that yes, indeed, anybody can write a book — just like anybody can sing as well as Ice-T in the shower.

In keeping with “The Weekly Review’s” theme of showcasing female buttocks, here are pictures of authorial sensations Ice-T and Coco at the beach.   Stop gawking at Ice-T’s man-boobs.  You are looking at Ice-T’s man-boobs, aren’t you?

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This is a mug shot of Delbert Huber.  Huber is a farmer accused of shooting and killing his neighbor during a dispute over fifty bucks.  Huber is from a small town near the small town where I grew up.

Now you know everything you need to know about Delbert Huber — and me.

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Washington Post columnist Jen Chaney wrote about the upcoming televised marriage of skanky Kim Kardashian to Frankenstein’s monster:

I think Minnesotans would be wise to take any sort of putdown from Kardashian — a spoiled, worthless idiot if ever there was one — as a compliment.

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Andrea Tarantula — excuse me, Tantaros — was guest ombudswoman on Fox’s Red Eye and led off the show by promising to deliver her comments while topless.  She didn’t follow up on her promise, but now we know why viewers tune in to this show in the middle of the night.

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Smug, unhip, and irrelevant Dennis Miller poked fun at the “losers” participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests.  Hey Dennis, know what a real loser is?  A rich, middle-aged jerk who references obscure Greek philosophers, thinks that makes him an intellectual, and laughs at his own jokes.

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Hey, Entertainment Weekly, do you miss Charlie Sheen yet?

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Years ago, I was a reporter working at the Republican National Convention in Dallas.  One day I overheard 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney speaking to a companion.  He said something like, “I couldn’t believe the quality of the food at that place!”

So it seemed fitting to me that Rooney’s final commentary on Sunday ended with, “If you do see me in a restaurant, please, just let me eat my dinner.”  Bon appetit, old fart!

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Folks in Minnesota are excited about the Lynx, a women’s basketball team on the verge of winning the WNBA championship.  Women’s sports often struggle to attract media attention and, until recently, the Lynx have been no exception.

The pictures below have absolutely nothing to do with sports, and I suppose it’s sexist to post them, but look what I found on Lynx guard Candice Wiggins’s Facebook page.  Hey, it’s the first rule of advertising:  Get the customer’s attention.

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hmmmm … lots of lingering shots of  Dylan McDermott’s bare backside in the first episode of American Horror Story, butt the show seemed to go out of its way to avoid any displays of female flesh.  Connie Britton had sex  — without so much as removing her slip.  A maid played with herself — without removing her uniform.

Ryan Murphy is the openly gay brains behind Glee, Nip/Tuck, and now this series.  That might explain things.

As for the show itself, the jury is still out.  I didn’t think it was particularly scary, but it was stylish and had some fun nods to horror films of the past.  I especially dug the music, which borrowed everything from the whistling in Twisted Nerve to Bernard Herrmann’s soaring score in Vertigo.

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Seems like every week there is some pressing reason to post a picture of a sexy actress’s rear end.  This week, it’s David Letterman grilling George Clooney about Vera Farmiga’s bare ass in Clooney’s movie Up in the Air.

Letterman:  “You see her butt … I was just curious, was that hers, or a stand-in’s?”

Clooney:  “I’m not really at liberty to answer that question.”

Clearly, some research was called for.  Someone needed to get to the bottom of this.  According to Web sites that study this sort of thing, the derriere in question belongs to a body double named Sarah Tuttle (above).  But just in case Dave is reading this, here is a picture of Farmiga’s actual butt, from something called Running Scared:

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The media informs us that Jesus Christ died this week.  Funny, because I thought I was getting along just fine in life, more or less, for many years before I even heard of Steve Jobs.  And I suspect that I will get along just fine, more or less, now that Jobs has gone to iHeaven.

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Thursday’s “breaking news” by The Onion was inspired satire.  Here is an excerpt:

Too bad the media is populated with humorless halfwits.  Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin whined that “the satirists at The Onion took things too far.”  Malkin was probably taken in by the spoof and is now bitter about revealing her own naivete.  I’m not sure which is worse, being duped by such obvious tomfoolery or being afflicted with terminal crabbiness.  Incredibly, the panelists on Fox’s Red Eye debated whether or not the story was funny.  Isn’t Red Eye supposed to be a humor show?

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The two most annoying laughs on television:  a woman in a Wheel of Fortune commercial, and actor Seth Rogen on any talk show.  If you are a glutton for punishment, you may listen to them both and decide which is more unbearable.  Click here for the braying donkey (Rogen) on David Letterman; click here for the cackling hyena in the Wheel of Fortune ad.

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ESPN’s documentary Catching Hell chronicles the mob mentality that victimized poor Steve Bartman (above) during the 2003 baseball playoffs.  Bartman’s grab for a foul ball was deemed “fan interference” by Chicago Cubs fans, who then blamed the team’s ensuing loss on Bartman.  After watching all of the crap these idiots put Bartman through,  I am hoping that the Cubs never get to a World Series, simply because their “fans” don’t deserve one.

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Political Scoop of the Week:

“My wife was betrothed to him.” — Larry King to Joy Behar, somehow garbling his description of the childhood relationship between his wife and Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman

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Scarlett Johansson wrote a Huffington Post blog about the plight of Kenyans.  I left a comment on the blog, praising her (sincerely) for drawing attention to a good cause, and praising her (sincerely) for taking nude pictures of herself that are now all over the Internet.

My comment was deleted for violating terms of the Web site.  Ridiculous.

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Eva Longoria never fails to amaze me.  Not only is she a talented actress, but her sporting exploits are legendary.  Below are pictures of Eva excelling at volleyball and at baseball.  Longoria recently propelled Tampa Bay into baseball’s playoffs by clouting a game-winning home run.

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It’s the new Fall Season on network TV!  I couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on any of the excitement, so I tuned in to four of America’s most popular shows.  This is what I learned:

Two and a Half Men is painfully, embarrassingly bad television.  I’m guessing that it sucked when Charlie Sheen was the star (I didn’t watch), but it couldn’t possibly have been worse than the uninspired drivel with Ashton Kutcher.

Dancing with the Stars was equally dreary.  I did learn why viewers never get to see Nancy Grace below the waist on her HLN show.  Can you say “chubby”?

The mass appeal of Modern Family escapes me.  The “shaky cam” is annoying, the political correctness is heavy-handed, and I almost — not quite, but almost — wished there was canned laughter, if only to remind me that the show is supposed to be funny.  Ed O’Neill, so memorable on Married … with Children, is wasted here.

Simon Cowell — I am sick of this guy.  His grumpy shtick was amusing years ago, but I am tired of watching the famous Cowell scowl.  The X Factor versus American Idol?  They are the same show.

Summary:  I must be completely out of touch with the American viewing public.  The public is addicted to junk.  On the other hand, I am hooked on Survivor.

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“If the thing happens to come down in a city, that would be bad.” — Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, reassuring none of us about the falling space satellite which, according to the image shown above, might have tumbled down in my neck of the woods ….

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Feminist of the Week:  Mike Tyson

This is what Tyson had to say last week, talking about Sarah Palin on an ESPN station: 

“You want her to be with somebody like [Dennis] Rodman …. You want someone like Rodman — yeah baby!  Let’s get that donkey in here now.  Just imagine Palin with a big old black stallion ripping.  Yeehaw!”  And later:  “She could always get boned out by a black person, a vote to bang her.”

And more:  “Everybody got to get that out of their system when they get out of college.  If you’re a black man, every white girl, every uppity middle-class … everybody got to get their share of love.”  Believe it or not, I’ve omitted some of Tyson’s more colorful comments.

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Then why don’t you quit Fox and work somewhere else for free?  I’m sure Paul Ryan would support that:

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Anderson Cooper is officially … everywhere:  CNN, 60 Minutes, talk shows, New Year’s Eve specials.  Try as I might, I haven’t really been able to ferret out anything truly despicable about the guy, but that does not mean that I want to see so damn much of him.  Get out of my living room, Cooper, and take your girlish giggle with you.

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On the other hand, it seems obvious that the Salahis need some company, so I am pulling out my hide-a-bed, just for them.  But tell that creep from Journey to buzz off.

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I watched a TV interview with a representative of Ducks Unlimited.  Yes, my life really is that sad and pathetic.  The rep was asked what attracted him to Ducks Unlimited (silly question) and he replied:  “Something just snapped, and I became a water fowler.”

I could not let this kind of comment pass without some good-natured ribbing, so I Web-searched Ducks Unlimited, found it, and sent off an e-mail.  I got this reply:

Hi [Grouch]

Welcome back to Minnesota.  I appreciate your comment and wish I could have taken the remark back.  To be clear, “you guys” is me.  I was the dude that made the comment.  Unfortunately, at that moment I didn’t represent the best of Ducks Unlimited or the great volunteers of Minnesota.

Thank you for the feedback,

Dave Flink/Minnesota State Chair/SCSU 1980

There are so many things wrong with this.  Welcome back to Minnesota?  What does that mean?  And the guy apparently went to my college (SCSU).  And he graduated the same year that I did.  Do I somehow know him? Worse, does he know me?  The lesson:  Be very careful before you mess with Ducks Unlimited.

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CBS anchorman Scott Pelley has an unfortunate Ted Baxter thing going on.  Like Ted, Pelley looks and sounds like he’s seated in front of a mirror, practicing his anchor voice.

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And you thought that Jay Leno has a gigantic chin?

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I’m not sure why the nude pictures of Scarlett Johansson are considered big news.  She’s an attractive actress showing off her bare ass — like that’s never happened before.

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There must be a God:

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This is the kind of thing that happens to you when you live next door to a writer:

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I’m no conspiracy buff and certainly no structural engineer, but it still seems odd to me — counterintuitive — that an airplane crashing into the upper floors of a skyscraper could bring the thing to the ground.

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“He’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders, quite literally.”  —  Piers Morgan, talking about Obama and proving that even the English don’t understand English.

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There is a TV ad for something called Micro Plus, a hearing-aid thing that supposedly lets you overhear conversations taking place at a distance.  In the ad, a bikinied babe walks past two other women and knowingly smirks as one of the women says, “She has an amazing body!”

This gadget seems like a good thing, but what if you wear it, walk down the street, and hear:  “Look at the pot belly on that loser!” or  “Look — that guy has a brown spot on the seat of his pants!”?

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Dear Grouchy,

The Philadelphia Eagles have made dog-lover Michael Vick fabulously rich with a $100 million contract.  Don’t you agree that it’s good to give people a second chance?

T. Woods

Florida

   Dear T. Woods:

Everyone is in favor of giving people a second chance.  But that isn’t the issue with Vick.  The issue is awarding “second chances” that are lucrative beyond belief.  There is a difference between being allowed to earn a living, and being handed the keys to paradise.

Grouchy

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I recently bashed Entertainment Weekly (again) for its politically correct agenda.  Also recently, I championed the U.S. Postal Service, which is in danger of extinction.  So what happens this week?  You guessed it:  My issue of EW got lost in the mail.

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So Oprah’s celebrity interviews are disingenuous?  Why am I not surprised?

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Funniest show you never heard of:  Hell Date.  You haven’t seen it because 1) it’s on BET, and you’re white; 2) it went off the air in 2008.  But hey, you can still catch reruns or see it on the Web.  It’s funny.  Unless it’s fake.  I’ll have to ask  Ryan O’Neal.

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Men Behaving (and Dressing) Badly

Poor Bruce Jenner.  We all know that his wife, Kris, wears the pants in the Kardashian-Jenner household, but this item in my local paper about daughter Kim’s wedding was simply too much:

I saw nothing about whether or not Wang also designed Bruce’s earrings.

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Gawker and The Huffington Post inform us that Fox’s Bill O’Reilly is just another aging cuckold.  According to Gawker, O’Reilly was unable to satisfy trophy wife Maureen McPhilmy, who sought solace in the arms of a Long Island cop.  Big Bill allegedly then pulled strings in an attempt to damage the cop’s career.

If you get your news from Fox, don’t hold your breath waiting for the all-spin network to weigh in on this story.

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Dear Grouchy:

Whatever happened to that story you promised about Arnold Schwarzenegger and a Japanese schoolgirl?

M. Shriver, Los Angeles  CA

   Dear M. Shriver:

Never let it be said that we here at The Grouchy Editor are slothful researchers.  In our May 22 review, we incorrectly reported that embattled movie star/governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had once been photographed fondling an underage girl.  Maybe that assertion was the result of, ahem, someone’s early-onset Alzheimer’s, or perhaps it was simply a case of overzealous journalism, but whatever the case, we’ve since located the photograph in question … and it is not of the former governor.

It’s an image of  fellow action star Steven Seagal, who is captured getting his jollies at a smiling lass’s expense (the caption reads:  “Feeling up a Nipponese schoolgirl!”).  The photo was published in a 1995 edition of Celebrity Sleuth, and here it is.  Our apologies to Arnold.

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I was channel surfing and landed on two hefty, middle-aged women discussing the economy — and it was so refreshing.  No kidding.  CNN anchor Candy Crowley (above left) and economist Christina Romer (above right) might not be typical TV eye candy (pun intended), but somehow I put a lot more weight (pun intended) into what these two were saying than I do when I’m forced to listen to the usual gang of pretty bubbleheads.  You go, fat girls!

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So Obama caves, again, and bumps his Big Speech back a day to Thursday evening.  This guy is like the smart kid who sits in class and has all of the right answers — but who then gets beat up by bullies and has his lunch stolen.  Those of us who voted for him thought we were getting a guy with some balls, but we picked the wrong kid; we should have voted for the woman with balls.

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OK, so I suppose I have a sick sense of humor, but when I read that a 66-year-old woman spent 12 days in a Canadian jail for “heroin smuggling,” I thought it was the funniest story of the week.  Click here to read about it.

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Baseball’s Jim Thome clubbed the 600th home run of his career — and America yawned.  Methinks there are two explanations for the apathy:  rent-a-players, and steroids.  Steroid abuse has tainted baseball’s once-hallowed records, and rent-a-player jocks (like Thome), who seldom spend an entire career with one team, have made the concept of team “loyalty” into a joke.

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Dear Grouchy:

Why are you so homophobic?

J. Cagle, New York

   Dear J. Cagle:

Two words:  Entertainment Weekly.  I’m a subscriber, and I’ve noticed that there are two opportunities that EW never misses — the chance to pummel raging heterosexuals like Charlie Sheen and Tracy Morgan, and the chance to plug that fading TV phenomenon called Glee.

Surprisingly, EW fessed up to its Glee obsession in its August 12 issue:  “We’ve been huge fans of the show from the very beginning, and we have the angry letters complaining about our constant barrage of Glee covers to prove it.”  Wow.  Can’t wait to see next week’s issue, with its cover from Glee.

Dear Grouchy:

Why are you so grouchy?

The World

   Dear World:

Can’t help it.  I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly.

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HLN’s Joy Behar keeps referring to the Speaker of the House as “John Boner.”  Texas Governor Dick Perry wants to move into the White House.  Now, if Republicans could just get New York’s Peter King to switch houses and run the Senate, we could have a country led by Peter, Dick, and Boner.  Take that, women’s libbers.

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