I-Blog: Law and Order

Would YOU buy gold from this man?I’ll bet I’m not alone in this:  If I see G. Gordon Liddy hawking even one more gold coin I’m going to “Elvis” my television set.  That horrid quavering voice:  “Buy your gold where I buy mine!”  Okay, if I do – forget about “protecting me” against inflation – could it possibly protect me against any more of this nut’s commercials?  And by the way, didn’t Liddy do time for burglary?  What the hell is he doing dispensing investment advice?

But his is far from the only TV commercial I’m sick of.  I’m also ready to plunge screwdrivers – Phillips head – into my eyeballs if I see that “John Gotti-looking” dope asking again if Geico “can really save me 15% on my car insurance”, followed by some utterly asinine and infantile conclusion.  Or the repulsively perky redhead, “Flo,” babbling about another insurance provider that you know is just waiting to blow you off should you ever have the temerity to actually file a claim.  And the E-Trade baby:  What is that?  Maybe mildly amusing for the first, I don’t know, 52,000 times I saw it.  But now the kid just gets me to thinking far too much about Planned Parenthood options.  And yet as annoying as all of those inarguably are, they’re merely a warm-up for ----- Fred Thompson.

Hard to believe that it’s been just three years since the ex-GOP senator from Tennessee was putting vast swaths of this country into a coma with the most numbing – and doomed – presidential bid ever.  That was after his equally sleep-inducing role as district attorney Arthur Branch on TV’s “Law and Order;” also a couple of direct-to-DVD films…his vapid U.S. senate term…and, very early on, his service to his country as minority counsel on the senate Watergate committee during which he distinguished himself by basically being in the way.

Someone should reverse Fred's ability to speak publiclyAnd now?  One of the most grating television commercials since “the discovery of photoconductivity,” by a man so loathsome he must’ve been born with an expired “use by” date:  Fred Thompson. 
Fred currently appears on TV, it seems, about seventy times an hour for a company that sells “reverse mortgages.”  That’s a mortgage that let’s people who have one foot in the grave tap into their home equity to pay for rising health care costs and other “golden years” issues, like caskets, then leave their children the unwanted job of trying to sell the joint to pay off the loan when their parents die…which they will do.  Die.
Some analysts describe  “reverse mortgages” as sort of our new “sub-prime mortgages.”  Really. What could possibly go wrong?  “No risk, government backed,” all of that crap.  There were exactly 157 reverse mortgages arranged in 1990.  In 2009, there were 114,692.  And since then, pushed by certain TV hucksters, they’ve really taken off.  Hey, where are Dick Fuld, Ken Lewis and Angelo Mozilo when you need them?

So this is what Fred Thompson does today -- try to slick-talk America’s “senility set” into buying sleazy “lifetime” mortgages that their kids will be on the hook for when they’re unable to sell pop’s house to make up the $1-million owed on the dump that’s now worth $300,000.  Terrific. Fred Thompson: “reverse moron.”

The I-Man's Blog: Punxsutawney Fool

Stunning that we’re still actually required to go through this asinine “Groundhog” nonsense.  I know it’s just one day out of the year.  That’s one day too many.

In the great pantheon of idiotic activities, Groundhog Day has got to occupy a special space – somewhere between cow-tipping and state of the union addresses. And especially the Groundhog Day celebration as observed by the town that spawned the inanity, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

 If, like me, you’re looking for where to fix the blame, you have to go back to a group of European immigrants who brought some weird customs with them to the Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania area back in the 1800s…and, apparently, enough alcohol to inebriate everything from Punxsutawney to Pittsburgh. Yes, drink enough and you actually think that you can predict the end of winter weather by brutalizing a woodchuck.  Which they did.  And still do.

Believe it or not, each year 30,000 people have so little to do of any consequence, that they actually travel to Punxsutawney to freeze to death and watch a half dozen ‘drunk Punxsutawney town fathers in stovepipe hats weave their way onto a raised platform and drag a drug-addled marmot out of a crate to judge whether the thing is able to “see its shadow.”  The projected “remaining length of winter weather” is somehow based on the results of this exercise.  I know…lunatics.  Nevertheless, that’s the deal.

The administrators of Punxsutawney’s Groundhog Day observance would take exception to me suggesting that they’d stuffed a horse tranquilizer down their exploited animal’s throat before displaying it to the television cameras.  They deny, vehemently and indignantly, that the abused animal is in any way, well, “abused.”  The thing’s not drugged, they insist, to make it compliant nor is it banged over the head Sarah Palin “whack-the-halibut” style just before they yank it out of its cage.  That doesn’t square, though, with my admittedly “thin knowledge” of marmot behavior.  But if you Google the damn thing you get the idea that if somebody stuck their hand into the cage of a groundhog that had all its faculties they’d draw back a bloody stub.  In fact, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got a little lesson in marmot behavior when “Staten Island Chuck” – that’s New York’s rip-off of “Punxsutawney Phil” – took a chunk out of one of the mayor’s fingers in 2009.  Advice to City Hall:  Next time, “use the drugs.”

Anyway, a quick definition of Groundhog Day?  “A stultifyingly stupid event conducted for, and by, embarrassingly lame losers.” 

There are a couple of things I notice that have an annoying way of periodically recurring, and each is about as welcome as the other:  Groundhog Day – and herpes.  As far as I can see, the only meaningful difference between the two is that the latter doesn’t predict much…with the possible exception of having to compose a really challenging “personals ad.”


The I-Man's Blog: Say 'Cheese'...

Rex and Michelle Ryan, in less disgusting timesA new puzzler for the I-man in the “relationship” arena:  Most recent one prior to this, you may recall, was how people could possibly find sending – and receiving – penis pictures to be “romantically stimulating.” That awkward Brett Favre “digital genital” cell-cam episode?  “Look, Barbara, that nice Brett Favre just emailed me a couple of candids of his schlong.  How thoughtful.”  Well, here’s the new one, and coincidentally it again involves the New York Jets and anatomical features.  Feet.  Specifically, the feet of Coach Rex Ryan’s wife, Michelle.

To review how we got here:  Initially, a half dozen videos came to light of Michelle Ryan displaying her feet in a manner that seemed to say, so I’m told, “hold me.”  Now, a series of photographs has surfaced that augment those original videos by actually showing a guy doing just that – fondling Ms. Ryan’s feet. They also show Ms. Ryan – or certainly a dead ringer for her – posing in what people, coarsely, sometimes refer to as a “beaver shot,” with feet still prominent in a pair of strappy little black pumps.  Coach Ryan, asked about all of this during some post-game press sessions, declined to comment beyond saying it’s a “personal matter.”  Indeed.

What stumps me is the whole “foot fetish” thing in the first place. Take off your shoes and socks for a minute and look carefully at your feet.  Are you stimulated?  Should there be a tattoo down there cautioning, “To avoid risk of serious injury, seek immediate medical attention for an erection lasting more than four hours?”  Or even “three hours, fifty-nine minutes?”  No. Not necessary.  In fact, when I consider body parts that could possibly be construed as “arousing” at all, I’d have to put feet pretty far down the list.  But maybe I’m just naïve.

file this under: never a good ideaGenerally, though, to me feet aren’t “pretty.”  What they are is “gnarly.”  And while such interpretations are subjective, I’d have to place Ms. Ryan’s feet right up front in the “gnarly” file.  Frodo feet.  Not Megan Fox feet.  That is, if even Megan Fox feet might qualify as “stimulative.” I suspect not. But again, perhaps I’m just naïve…and Brett just wasn’t “sexting” the right body part to elicit the desired response.  He fired off a photo of his penis when he should have fired off a photo of his…feet?  What could Brett Farve’s big ol’ stinky furry feet possibly look like?  I shudder to think.  How about, I don’t know, Terry Bradshaw’s feet?  Good lord. Or, say, Camilla Parker Bowles feet, for godssake.  Is that a photograph you want to see?  Camilla Parker Bowles’ fungus fouled gunboats leering up at you out of your iPhone?  Or anybody’s?  “Stimulating?” How about “nauseating.”

Better idea, smooth talker:  Leave your penis in your pants, your feet in your shoes and don’t ever get the idea that maybe nostrils might be sexy.

The I-Man's Blog: John Boehner

Well, that didn’t take long.  A few blogs ago, talking about the new congress, I wrote something along these lines:  “You thought Nancy Pelosi was a long day?  They’ll have to come up with a new method of telling time to measure John Boehner’s capacity to wear you out.”

I’m there.  Pelosi hasn’t even handed the Speaker’s gavel to him yet and he’s completely worn me out.  What is it with this crazy bastard?  If John Boehner ever actually manages to climb the stairs to the Speaker’s platform without dissolving into a blubbering puddle of lacrimal psychosis disorders, I’ll be astonished.  Along with a host of other unenviable traits, the sonofabitch cries at anything and it’s creeping me out.

What the hell is that?  If you look at him cross-eyed he disintegrates. Can’t function. And I don’t mean just a tear or two you dab away with a quick application of a corner of Kleenex.  No, no.  This is street-screamer crazy.  It starts with a quaver in his voice.  Then there’s the eye shift followed by the lip bite and the horridly long pause as he struggles to keep it together. Then total, estrogen-fueled, moon-pie implosion as words choke out in ragged squeaks and his hands wave around helplessly. Jesus god. It makes you want to dig a hole and die it’s so embarrassing. And this could be our President should something horrible happen that decapitated America’s top leadership?  That’s not so farfetched, either, given how screwed up everything is.  Wikileaks, as just one example, getting a digital download from an Army buck private, for godssake, of every intelligence secret we ever had short of our damn nuclear codes.  How the hell could we operate with a “commander in chief” who couldn’t be permitted to get two feet away from a “handkerchief”? 

Our Edmund Muskie on steroids says he no longer can even visit a school without having a meltdown, because he can’t handle “seeing all those little children pursuing the American Dream.” Gag me. You know what he can’t handle?  He can’t handle the fact that you can’t smoke in school. Even in the boys’ room. Not that he might not want to hang out in the boys’ room whether he’s smoking in there or not. I don’t know. I do know that John Boehner brings fresh intensity to the word, “phony.”  If he’s so concerned about kids in school running after the American Dream, then he might want to set an example for them so that they’re able to run by knocking off the kind of cigarette habit we haven’t seen since the late Marlboro man turned his lungs into charcoal deposits. It also might enhance Boehner’s believability to a degree if he stopped his addiction to buckets of “fat-cat cash” from Big Tobacco for a few minutes.

One final thing Mr. Boehner might do to get some of the shuck-and-jive off him; come clean on the tanning deal.  To this point he flatly denies that he’s a regular at the local Irradiation Cancer Salon.  Actually, it could be that he’s not.  Those things just turn you “uranium red” and make your skin flake off in sheets.  I don’t think you can achieve Boehner’s particular hue unless you run yourself through one of those Earl Scheib chambers that “spray” on the sham color. Either way, the bottom line is who does he think he’s fooling?  If he can’t just say, “Yes, to go along with my utterly phony concern for others I also fake a year-round tan,” what else is he willing to lie to us about?

So, here’s what I’m predicting, and you know I’m not often wrong sizing up this kind of thing:  I’m saying that when we all get a full dose of this stilted stiff…as god-awful synthetic, pretentious and counterfeit as she was, we’ll soon be chanting, “Bring back Nancy.” For Mr. Boehner not only drank the Kool Aid, he marinated in it.  And it was orange.

The I-Man's Blog: Tree Travesty

There is only one scenario in which I can conceivably see myself becoming enthusiastic about the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.  If, in all it’s soaring, 75 foot, multi-ton glory, it fell over on Brian Boitano “in mid Triple-Lutz” on the skating rink below.

I have been decidedly unenthusiastic about the “tree tradition” ever since I came to New York.  This year’s tree ceremony has done nothing to change my mind. 

 For all the years the Imus in the Morning program was headquartered at NBC, at what was then the RCA building, every f-ing holiday season I could look forward to not being able to park my limousine in the plaza that divides the building’s entrance from the stupid skating rink.  Why?  Because that’s where they put the idiotic 75 foot tall dead plant. 

 The tree aggravation would begin in November, as it did this season, and continue well beyond Christmas.  Every year.  No relief.  And for what?  So that hordes of babbling clods from Kansas could come and gawk at the thing with their fingers in their nose?  Not only is vehicle access to the plaza blocked during what is a truly awful season, traffic conditions across the entire midtown area become enough to make Bangladesh look appealing. God forbid somebody has a heart attack, and you can just about bet on it, because the nearest ambulance might as well be in Antarctica.

Besides the personal inconvenience I had to weather for far too long, there is the other signature, and seminal, event of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree experience that has imposed itself on us yet again:  The lighting ceremony.  The moment when a freezing, sneezing crush of humanity passes every conceivable kind of viral infection among themselves as they crane their necks to get a glimpse of Al Roker engaged in an insipid conversation with some sap who makes Snooki look like Marilyn vos Savant.  That’s right before he introduces Kenny G – or this year, the reconstituted Boyz II Men – rendering some equally insipid holiday tune, while, often as not, a squad of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ice dancers humiliate themselves in elf outfits on the skating rink. 

And, of course, “The Climactic Moment.” Roker, or from time to time Regis and Kelly, along with some guy who’s fresh out of an AA meeting in a Santa suit, all counting down in cringing unison to throw a switch that will cause half a billion tree lights to abruptly make a carbon footprint the size of Al Gore’s head.  The really special treat this year?  Helping with the countdown – Jeff Zucker. The soon-to-be ex-CEO of NBC Universal the minute the NBC-Comcast merger gets nailed down. As my producer Bernard McGuirk so aptly put it, “What screams ‘Christmas’ more than Jeff Zucker standing there with his shirt unbuttoned to his navel?”  Short answer:  “Anything.”    

And regarding the environment, does anybody ever express any remorse about the damned tree?  No they don’t.  Here’s this noble, living, breathing, “consumer of carbon dioxide” that had been standing – in the case of a 74 foot Norway spruce, about half a century – suddenly and violently assassinated by an “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wannabe” with a chainsaw, draped with a bunch of overwrought crystal crap, displayed like some jarring botanical hussy and finally ground up in a woodchipper for dog-run mulch.  Great.    

Still, I can find reason to rejoice:  Rejoice that the Imus in the Morning program is now headquartered at the WABC Radio and FOX News buildings where limo access remains unimpeded by the impositions of thoughtless holiday ingrates. 

So, once again this year, and as every holiday season since 1933, the iconic Rockefeller Center Tree has been set ablaze.  Just, unfortunately, not with a blowtorch.