Cheap Blogging Crutch - 5.4.10

Welcome to your semi-daily assortment of linkage, hastily cobbled together by yours truly as Matthew continues to recover from the nasty bout of Syphilis Super AIDS that has crippled him for close to a week now. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you send stacks of unmarked, non-sequential bills to my attention, c/o Jon & John's House of Starchy Living and Temperance Den, Brooklyn, NY.

An adaption of Hunter S. Thompson's "Prisoner of Denver," which he co-wrote with Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal, has been picked up for treatment by Motion Picture Corporation of America. Given the pace at which The Rum Diary adaptation has moved, "Prisoner of Denver" is set for release in the summer of 2028.

Phoenix Suns Managing Partner Robert Sarver announced that in protest of the new Arizona immigration law, his team will wear their "Los Suns" jerseys for tomorrow's Cinco de Mayo game against the San Antonio Spurs. No word yet on when Sarver will learn that the Spanish word for sun is "sol."

What I Wore narcissism fashion blogger, Jessica Schroeder, has landed a book deal with Random House imprint Ballantine. The literary community rejoiced at the news that pretty, self-involved, materialistic New York women will finally be represented in contemporary media.

Soothsayer Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight updated his forecast for the upcoming UK election, predicting that Conservatives will win 308 seats. As an American, this means absolutely nothing to you. And they still haven't fixed Steve Coogan's mother's wall, the bastards.

Finally, on a happy note, Paul Rudd sweats funny.

Contract law

Via Reavis Eitel comes a look at how the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson viewed TV production companies, interviews, documentaries, and contracts. Especially contracts.

Click to embiggen, you awful jackass.

Chart of the day

According to Gallup, in 2009 America is the most supportive of legalizing marijuana as it has ever been. 44% of the country not only want to burn one, but is going to bump into you while it dances to "Trippin' Billies" at a DMB concert. When the question is made more specific, legalizing and taxing weed in your own state, 2% of the population checks out and support drops to 42%. In fact, the only area of the country that outright supports legalization is the West, where 53% support everyone not being so goddamn uptight about pot as well as sewing patches onto baggy corduroy pants.

So are we ever going to see action on legalizing something that isn't harmful and stop wasting law enforcement's time prosecuting potheads? No, of course not, that would open up our elected betters to charges that they're "soft on drugs" and that they want to turn the streets over to tea shade wearing dope fiends who constantly jack off when they can't find a rape victim. Still, we're almost to the point where support become overwhelming and our elected betters are forced to listen to the public. I mean just look at how well that's going with health reform and the public option. Wait, bad example.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.18

CBO dismisses co-ops' relevance
Lost in the shuffle yesterday was a little revelation from the Congressional Budget Office. The co-op's, the supposed non-socialist answer to a public plan that would provide all of the benefits of price reduction, competition, and coverage without the fascism, are ineffective, don't reduce costs or increase coverage. I'm betting little things like that won't stand in the way of co-ops being in the bill. Why? Because we're governed by adults.

Okay, you lazy bitch
Hunter S. Thompson, from the grave. Letters of note brings us a 2001 letter HST dashed off to the soon to be defunct studio the Shooting Gallery, complaining that they were dragging their feet on an adaptation of the Rum Diary, which is something that only was able to start filming this year. It's classic Thompson, with liberal use of the underline function and phrases like "waterhead fuckaround", threats of dismemberment, as well as constant assaults on their professionalism and dilettante behavior.

Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz predicts recession's end: not now, but 2012
Now, now, This counts as staggering optimism from Stiglitz. Sure he's pessimistic about everything that's going on now to deal with the financial apocalypse, but he's confident that in the future the recession will eventually end. Oh, not because of any actions taken or laws passed or bailouts handed out, just because he's a big Mayan calendar buff and he feels the world will end in 2012. That headline is a little misleading, it should read: "Stiglitz predicts recessions end, along with all life as we know it in 2012."

Baucus and the Threshold
It's pessimistic economists showing optimism day, as Paul Krugman looks at the Baucus bill and deems it to exceed his low, low, low, low, low expectations. Hell, he even has convinced himself that it will be improved when it gets to the full Senate. But he mainly centers the article around the question that while the Baucus bill has large flaws it is an improvement over what we have, so at what point do people have to accept that fact, accept that the bill won't have everything they like, and move forward and support it?

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
That's right, more people die from lack of insurance than drunk driving, homicide, and drunk homicide combined and have a 40% higher risk of death than peopl ewith coverage. That's a very controversial opinion Harvard researchers have put forth: that people without coverage are more likely to die from things that coverage can help prevent. It could be worse; they could be insured and just be deemed too sick to use it.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.27

Ted Kennedy On The Rocks
Michael Kelly's epic 1990 GQ profile of a thoroughly soused, jittery, puffy, red, whiskey soaked Ted Kennedy. Of note: numerous scenes of public drunkenness, a drunken back of the restaurant sex session, how Cape Cod really didn't consider it summer until Ted had driven his car on the sidewalk for the first time, and the work in the Senate and issues Kennedy was fighting for while carrying a blood alcohol level of .99. Great read.

Why Hunter Thompson passed on the O.J. trial
Jon Freidman talks to former San Francisco Examiner editor Phil Bronstein about one of the greatest things to ever not happen: Hunter S. Thompson covering the OJ Simpson trial with the official mandate of "try anything". It then devolves into a discussion as to why the newspaper industry is dying. Bah! This HST tidbit needs to be gone over in much more detail. Imagine the possibilities.

It's time to forgive Pete Rose for his sins against baseball
With Hall of Fame voting upcoming and the recent readmission of Michael Vick to the NFL, now comes the deluge of "Let Pete Rose into Cooperstown" columns. The premise this time? That making him wait 20 years to get into the hall after betting on baseball games he managed is punishment enough. Yes, mildly inconveniencing a man for violating the only rule that MLB posts up in locker rooms, is sufficient punishment. I think everyone underestimates baseball's wonderful reputation for grudge holding. Just ask Shoeless Joe Jackson, or, wait 40 years and ask Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Sammy Sosa.

The 50 most-viewed Wikipedia articles in 2009 and 2008
And what did we learn this year? That Hitler (#17) is always more popular than Vagina (#36) and the Twilight movie (#43), but not as popular as Lil Wayne (#16) and Transformers 2 (#14). We also learned that America isn't as childish enough, with only the aforementioned Vagina and Sex (#21) representing for all the giggling teenagers out there.

Aggressive fox bites 2 people, steals sweater
And you laughed when we tried to warn you about animal uprisings. Rest assured this is no viral marketing for the Fantastic Mr. Fox, the only virus going around is rabies. The sweater that fox stole is real people! We are all bearing witness to the animals' Fort Sumter. Beware, they are coming and they'll take our hoodies, our cardigans, and our windbreakers if we're not careful. Just remember if you see a fox wearing a sweater: he's the leader. Don't be a hero, call the authorities. I told you we shouldn't have banned fox hunts.

Broken In Brief: Ted Kennedy realizes lifelong dream of meeting Michael Jackson

Hyannis Port, MA--Approximately 52-54% of a nation was reassured today when, upon learning of the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Massaquiddick), they were quickly reminded that the senator's passing offered him the opportunity to finally meet Michael Jackson.

Speaking apart from the official statement released to the press, daughter Kara Anne Kennedy said, "I know that despite all the work he considered undone, my father is up there, feeling honored to share table with the King of Kings and the King of Pop."

Aside from the Massachusetts Senator's well-known fondness for Jackson's work, insiders point to Kennedy's Roman Catholicism and Jackson's rampant pedophilia as evidence that, as one unnamed source said, "They'll have plenty to talk about."

When asked to expound on how a lifelong non-clergical pedophile was allowed into heaven, insiders explained that, contrary to popular belief, when Hell is full, the dead shall not walk the earth but instead be relocated to Heaven.

"We're forgiving that way," said one angel, on condition of anonymity. "Luck of the draw, more than anything else."

During the scheduled sit-down with the King of Pop, the Senator is expected to inquire about the making of the Smooth Criminal video from Moonwalker, while Jackson plans to thank Kennedy for passing the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which helped cover the medical expenses of so many of the kids he diddled.

Afterward, the man affectionately known as the "Liberal Lion" will be led off to engage in another lifelong dream: a thousand-year drinking contest with Ed McMahon, Babe Ruth, Dean Martin, Hunter S.Thompson, Andre the Giant, Boris Yeltsin, Charles Bukowski, Winston Churchill, and every dead Irishman ever.

Farewell and adieu you bastard

Hey, if any of you are around when I die, can you please make sure that whoever at McClatchy newspapers does write up my obituary (Blog God Dies During Pitched Orgy/Gunfight on Moon) that they don't let Joseph Galloway write it. He wrote one for Robert McNamara and it really brings to mind Matt Taibbi's "obituaries" for Boris Yeltsin and the Pope or Hunter S. Thompson's for Nixon. He begins by quoting Clarence Darrow on enjoying reading certain obituaries and goes from there.

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McMamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.

He then proceeds to measure his hate for the man against that of David Halberstam, before finally ending on a happy note, retelling a story where an angry artists almost succeeded in drowning McNamara. I thought you had to wait until a man was buried before you pissed on his grave, but there we are.

But it does bring to mind the disease we have as a society to completely gloss over the sleazy, morally bankrupt, criminal actions, etc... of people who die when writing their obituaries. Everyone was generally a good person who loved their kids and worked hard, and any reference to scandal will be prefaced with the phrase "some disagreed..." or by use of the word "conflict." Only serial killers get described in apt terms. Meanwhile Michael Jackson gets the whole child rape and two decades of extreme bizarreness thing gets glossed over and Robert McNamara turns into some unimportant, uncontroversial, peripheral figure in the Vietnam war. Excuse me: Vietnam dispute. Just wait until Dick Cheney dies. You won't believe the glowing obituaries he gets when he finally shuffles off in 2075, or whenever that pact with Satan comes due.

The good and the Weird

The good news? After about fifteen false starts, it looks as though Johnny Depp's adaptation of The Rum Diary is actually going to begin production. With Amber Heard taking on the role of Chenault, no less.

The project, which Depp, Christi Dembrowski and Graham King are producing, begins March 30 in Puerto Rico. "Rum" is a production of King's GK Films and Depp's Infinitum Nihil. Also producing are Film Engine with A.J. Dix, Anthony Rhulen and William Shively attached alongside Robert Kravis and Greg Shapiro.

The Weird, buried near the end of the article, is mention of Woody Harrelson's upcoming zombie flick.

Heard, who just booked the lead in John Carpenter's haunted house thriller "Ward 19," also nabbed a cameo in Columbia's "Zombieland," starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson. She will play the object of Eisenberg's affection who turns into a zombie.

Harrelson is now officially competition. Matthew and I are of the opinion that by the time the next presidential election rolls around, everyone -- EVERYONE -- will have made a zombie movie.

Including us. We start pre-production in June. The reanimated corpse of John Cassavetes is attached to direct.