The Grouchy Editor

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.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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:

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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:

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Bernie Madoff’s pants are in the news, but I’m thinking of buying an “I Love Bernie!” t-shirt because Madoff seems to be the only person in recent memory who was able to stick it to the rich the way the rich continue to stick it to the rest of us.

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Mila Kunis caught hell for stating the obvious:  Fat people just need to try harder if they want to lose weight.  When will celebrities learn that it never pays to speak the truth?

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Michele Bachmann defenders are outraged that she was asked about being a “submissive wife” at the Republican debate.  Hey, she started it.  Besides, Bachmann’s reply, in which she equated the word “respect” with “submission,” was classic bullshit.

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Liberals beware, because Fox News is tapping into a cultural niche that’s traditionally belonged to you:  televised humor.  I am referring to Red Eye’s Greg Gutfeld, who is suddenly everywhere.

But this guy, who can be quite amusing — for the uninitiated, think of him as a poor man’s Bill Maher —  drops the funny business to spew demented conservative crap in nightly “Greg-alogues.” Oh, and Louis C.K., I love your FX series, but did you really have to provide a platform for Gutfeld on your show?  At least you misspelled his name in the credits.

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Good job, Jon Stewart, exposing Megyn Kelly’s hypocrisy.  Kelly, who recently returned to Fox after taking maternity leave, believes that government benefits are out of control — unless they happen to benefit her.

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“Endless Pools”?  Oh, please.  There is nothing endless about them; they are glorified bathtubs.

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Headline of the Week:

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Craig Ferguson took his show to Paris last week, and the result was brilliant television.  Ferguson is at his best with just-plain folk, and his tours of French landmarks mixed with man-on-the-boulevard interviews were refreshing.

And whoever decided to send along cute-as-a-button Kristen Bell as Craig’s sidekick deserves a promotion.  What a great team they make.  And what a shame that Ferguson, Bell, and skeletal robot Geoff have to return to the CBS studio.

Dancing at the Moulin Rouge, sliding across the floor of Versailles, chatting up the owner of Shakespeare and Company, dining with French actor Jean Reno, “dropping” expensive wine, and cutting gourmet cheese — entertaining stuff, all of it.  And educational!

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Sarah Rocha had a bone to pick.  Sarah who?

Sarah is a reader of Entertainment Weekly who was unhappy with a recent EW story about Daniel Craig, the film star who suffered the indignity of a media blitz for his crappy new movie, Cowboys and Aliens.  When EW’s interviewer was brazen enough to ask Craig how he felt about promoting his films, Craig growled, “I can’t do the tits-and-teeth stuff.  I’m not hardwired to do that.  I can’t sell.”

When asked about his wedding to actress Rachel Weisz, Craig snapped, “This question answers itself. …  No disrespect, but if you think it through, that’s the reason we’ve said fuck all on that subject.  Because it was private.”  When the journalist foolishly persisted, inquiring about Craig’s wedding ring, the sullen star barked, “You just see a line in the sand and want to fucking step over it.”

Sarah Rocha sent a letter to the EW editor:  “I’m sick of actors who act like jerks during interviews when personal questions come up, like Daniel Craig. … Boo-frickin’-hoo, famous people.”

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They are going to eliminate more post offices.  Makes sense to me, since e-mail has all but obliterated snail mail.  What does not make sense to me is all the sniping about the good ol’ U.S. Postal Service.

I’ve been around a long time now, both sending and receiving thousands of letters and packages, and in all my years I can recall one time — one time! — when something I mailed apparently got lost (in Puerto Rico).  As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. Postal Service has done an amazing job, so quit yer bitchin’, people!

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About the time Obama was elected president, I heard that he was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, which is about Lincoln’s admirable ability to play well with others in Washington.

I’m afraid that Obama took the book’s message too much to heart.  Some rivals will never be on your team.  Obama might be wise to head the advice of a guy who played on another team, baseball legend Leo Durocher, who famously told us:  “Nice guys finish last.”

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

While Web sites like The Huffington Post trumpet stories about celebrity brown-noser Piers Morgan’s possible involvement in Britain’s phone-hacking scandal, CNN seems to be hoping the issue will simply fade away.  Morgan himself pretends the scandal is beneath him, blithely booking Hollywood has-beens on his interview show, ignoring the gathering storm.

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Comedian George Lopez told Morgan that all of television’s late-night hosts dislike Jay Leno.  I suppose ratings-king Leno would chalk that up to professional envy, but I don’t like him, either.  My distaste for Leno stems from the book The Late Shift, in which he is depicted as so insecure that he hid in a closet to eavesdrop on NBC executives discussing his future at the network.

Leno is a rich, smirking phony who seems most interested in expensive cars, stealing jokes, and belittling the average Joe (and Mary).  Of course, I could be wrong.

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I understand that entrepreneurs are what make America tick, but geez, I am unhappy with companies like EZ Moves.  By creating gizmos that help women move furniture (above), open pickle jars, etc., these companies are making the male of the species irrelevant.  So stop it!

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People who aren’t hooked on reality shows like CBS’s Big Brother (above) don’t realize how obsessed — or crazed — some of the fans are.  Every tinkle and tooth-brushing is documented on the Internet.

Yesterday, I read this analysis of Big Brother houseguests (also known as “hamsters”), some of whom were forced to eat slop for a week:  “Tonight a lot of talk about farts.  Seems the slop causes major gas issues in the hamsters’ bellies, so the house really stinks.” 

Did someone say that reality shows aren’t real?

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Dog videos on YouTube can get old, but not this one, which might be the King of All Dog Videos.

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Tea-Baggers?  Yeah, like I’m going to place my trust in a group of people foolish enough to name themselves after men swallowing balls.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)