Fifteen Seconds of Fame

Only if Ann Althouse actually read the site…

What’s a VC? Viet Cong? I’m confused.

@Benedick:
Venture Capitalist, a now rare breed in these days of fiscal ruin and hobo beans.

@ManchuCandidate:
If a hobo bought it would he have enough left for a 40?

STINQUE DISTANT EARLY WARNING: Huckabee running ads for his Fair And Regressive As Humanly Possible Tax idea in LA Times / Trib today, with further ads to come in major metropolitan newspapers near you. In other words? Huck to Jindal: I can do anything and, therefore, it’s on like Donkey Kong.

@fupduk:
Depends on the quality of the booze. Enough for rubbing alcohol, but not enough for something that won’t make you blind.

I clutch my Spy coffee table comemorative to my chest as I sleep, choking back tears and trying to turn back time.

@Prommie:
I still have a bunch of Spys from the 90s, kept in a cool dry place.

@Prommie: @ManchuCandidate:

me too! me too! hermetically sealed in a caribbean storage locker.
i credit spy for twisting my mind at an innapropriate impressionable age.
i credit spy for my babble here, “the coolest place to be”
and rocket j. squirrel of course.

@ManchuCandidate: @Prommie: I just ordered mine through the link above, hope the kickback to Stinque is good. I had a sub to Spy in the early years, and carried it over to my first few overseas assignments with the UN. Needless to say, I had some ‘splainin to do when my office mates would see me pick up my mail; they all thought I was CIA anyway…

BTW, Nojo, good working seeding the comments over at Althouse. Wait til she gets a look at CB’s words of love!

nabisco: Huh?

Meanwhile, kids, Nate Silver is the man:

If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of fourth graders, that’s because he is. They might be the next people to actually vote for Republicans again.

Swish!

@baked:
Did your furbabies arrive in the Holy land?

@nabisco:
Could have been worse. Soldier Of Fortune?

@ManchuCandidate: Ah, Soldier of Fortune! Favorite of the deranged. We had a big case in my county years back, it was made into a TV movie, the book about it was Blind Faith, insurance agent has affair with small-town socialite, decides to off his wife, so he insures her life for $3 million, and then hires a hit-man from an ad in Soldier of Fortune. Ooops. That didn’t go well.

@Prommie:
The only folks I knew who read that magazine regularly (I have read but not bought a copy) are usually the type who think camo track pants are formal wear.

@ManchuCandidate:
manchu, the paperwork for the import licence is complete, their fares are paid for, should be no more than one more week! we screwed up their microchip numbers, set us back a few days. so much idiocracy with them, and my “absorption”, which is totally finished with TODAY. i don’t have to walk into one more gov building and get frisked!
thanks for asking, you know how i’m suffering without them.

@ManchuCandidate: Funny, I had to convince a colleague (retired Brit. special forces) to not have his copy sent by overland diplo pouch in former Yugo. He was new to the civilian and humanitarian world and didn’t see how all those people with guns might think he was maybe a, well, soldier of fortune.

Hey, I fell asleep during Jindal’s speech but woke up with a new “pre-owned” car in the driveway and an Amish rollaway fireplace in the living room. Did Bobby Candidate sell vacuum cleaners door to door before scoring that Rhodes?

Santa Fe: Crime Capital of the Southwest –

An unknown person stole $50 in crystals and $50 in beads Friday from a residence in the 600 block of Gomez Road.

OKAY NOW I am very confused…

Cox posted that Twitter thing, not Wonkette, right?
I signed up for Twitter, like yesterday, so it was a bit serendipitous that this pair of shorts is now commenting here, obsessively, like calling a lover who wont call back. The last offshoot rEVOLution was Cynic’s Party, which failed, miserably. This is apparently kicking more ass than previous said site. However I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON with Wonkette’s “acknowledgement” or lack-there-of, because Ralph Nader keeps cock-blocking me. Also.

And also.

@redmanlaw: Home of the strongest burglars on earth. $50 in beads? Must weigh close to 500 pounds.

@shortsshortsshorts:
To be fair to the folks who set CP up, it didn’t fail miserably.

It failed because
1) they decided to make more changes (as their right) which the commenters did not like
2) commenters revolted (JNOV led the charge IIRC)
3) Harsh words were exchanged
4) ????
5) Here we are.

@nabisco: I have an overwhelming urge to buy a whole bunch of Sham-Wows.

TJ/ My (probable soon to be ex) dingus employer just announced some 3200 job cuts + abolishing employee Stock Options (considering the stock is worth ZERO, big fucking deal and a personal big fucking deal as I didn’t get them anyway.)

This of course is on top of the 1800 or so cuts they were going to make before they went into Chapter 11 which is not really mentioned by the finanze newz.

I’m looking forward to burning my books for heat and eating beans off a tin plate.

I went to add you to my Twitter. Turns our you’re already there. How about that. Y’all just don’t tweet enough for me to notice.

@chicago bureau: Imagine this cage match: Fuckabee v. Jindal v. Talibunny battling for the “soul” of the Republican Party.

@ManchuCandidate: 6) Profit!

@blogenfreude:
did you ever watch the spin-off on bbc “cage rage?”
funny thing, i watched a discovery channel show last night about the coliseum before rat resumed control of the remote.
same same same
dammit people! EVOLVE!

@blogenfreude: I WILL EXORCISE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.

… too soon?

@Prommie: Jindal seriously struck me as a third rate television ad pitchman. I cannot for the life of me figure out how the typical bayou Louisianan takes him seriously enough to even get his name on the ballot, let alone vote for him.

@baked: I had a bout of rage last night and flung the remote into the fireplace. After the moment of “what the f&ck do I do now?” passed, I found it incredibly calming to piece the thing back together and get it working. It’s basically a circuit board, some rubber buttons, a couple of batteries and a plastic housing. I may do that more often!

@ManchuCandidate: Most sites that I go to generally last about 6 months. Apparently my avatar is a bad omen as it tends to focus on things that need to be destroyed. Rebranding is taking time.*working on it*

@nabisco:
Folks will do anything for beads.

@nabisco:
there’s that famous nabisco temper again. (you and manchu would be some pair in a cage match) we all have our mishogas. i know all about the rubber buttons. i burned a few letters off my keyboard, no mystery to you guys how, and half a dozen of my keys are rubber buttons!

@FlyingChainSaw: You’ve obviously never priced beads before…

@IanJ: Everyone knows beads are free if you flash your tits. I believe that’s the economy FCS is working in.

@Mistress Cynica: True, I forgot it was that season. Seattle doesn’t really enter into the festive mood, between a near complete dearth of Catholics and the fact that it’s witch’s-tit weather around here, not so much flash-your-tits.

@baked: Never watched that.

@redmanlaw: @FlyingChainSaw: @IanJ:

Perhaps with the plunge in home prices, they are looking to buy back Manhattan.

As nobody seems to be commenting anymore, ONE OF YOU should help out and write a post for my website, as I will be whoring it out to various PUMA blogs shortly. YOU MUST CLICK ON MY NAME and email me, because that is all that matters, in America.

@shortsshortsshorts:
can’t you see we’re busy here, basking in our coolness?

@Hose Manikin:
good one, sarah

@superdave: One Twitter message a day, which is just a device to feed the blurb at top. On rare occasion, it’s also useful for posting status reports if I’m futzing with the server.

@nabisco: Kickback’s about 5 percent, I think — it varies with monthly volume. And the Spy book is really nice — I bought it because Prommie raved about it.

@shortsshortsshorts: Yes, Ana Marie Cox — the Wonkette — posted the message saying that if someone has the bucks to underwrite the site, she knows someone who could help with it. I find that fascinating, because it shows she’s still interested in her baby.

And we celebrated our first anniversary last month, dating it from the first post at Homofascist’s Army. “We” meaning all of us, the moveable feast that finally found the right quarters. There would be no CP or Stinque without us.

@Prommie: I saw the Sham-Wow guy pitching something else a night or two back. Carnies across America are insanely jealous.

@Prommie: @ManchuCandidate: @baked: I’ve got some old copies floating around my basement. Read that rag religiously for a while. Primordial snark. I should see if I can hunt up the Hillz-as-dominatrix cover.

I was just thinking of them the other day when I read that the short fingered vulgarian was broke again. I recall them busting on Judy Miller for sleeping with sources and Ahnuld for serial groping 20 years before it come out in MSM.

@nojo: Has it been one year already? I guess this is about the time when one of y’all starts snoring, or at least I start noticing.

@fupduk: I stopped collecting mags once my brother pitched my Mad collection and cut up all of my Trouser Press to decorate his attic room in the early 80s. But getting the “short fingered vulgarian” reference always made me feel like part of the NY in-crowd, even when I was eating frijoles in Managua.

@nabisco: January 19 is the Official Anniversary. I may note other mileposts in passing, but The Legend Begins There.

Hey more good news! Not only will Senator Burris refuse to knuckle under under to demands for his resignation from the very people who enabled him to take the seat, but he will run for reelection! Yay!

@baked:
I am sure I don’t know what you mean.

@fupduk:
Heh. I liked their celebrity math and their somewhat serious investigative journalism.

I loooved the relentless Trump-bashing. And who was it, Henry Kravis, that they called the “diminutive investment banker?” Something like that. I can get delight from remembering things I can’t even remember, I cannot remember what they called him, but I remember I was amused, so I am amused again.

@nabisco: I have the Trouser Press Guide to 90s Rock, I love it.

Carnies, the kings of the hobo world.

@nojo:
Perhaps you should follow Anne Marie’s example and start dropping hints that if anyone has the bucks to buy the CP moniker, you might know “someone” who would help restore it to its previous glory. Nothing wrong with “Stinque”, but I thought “Cynics Party” was the right name. Without the apostrophe, of course.

Speaking of CP, I went back there looking for some old comment gems to recover. I couldn’t search or find anything pre-disqus. Is all that content lost to the ages?

@Prommie: Ira Robbins was the best. Cristgau more erudite, sure, but never more of a completist.

@Prommie: One of my favorite running gags — I think it’s in the book — was “Chronicle of Our Death Foretold”, where they counted down the months until Trump predicted they would fold.

When the deadline passed, they wrapped it up with “Death Be Not Short-Fingered”, where they ran an actuarial prediction of Trump’s lifespan.

@Hose Manikin: There was some monkeywrenching server problem shortly before the exodus, I think.

@nabisco: That’s right — I planted a bomb couldn’t fix their disintegrating database, which killed comments and posts. That, and Hunter said all you commenters are cliquish shitheads.

@nojo: Consider yourself a goddamn national hero then. Sully McSullenberger has nothing on you, obviously.

I wish I had known about this hodgepodge earlier.

@nojo:
Well, you can’t deny that Hunter was right, but he overlooked the obvious – the cliquish shithead commenters were the entire and only raison d’être for the site.

@nojo:
hunter was always an arrogant bitch. i remember him snarling some seriously shitty comments at me. he thought his posts were too good to be commented on. the only words he wanted to see were his own. hope he’s reading this. how’s that stick up your ass hunter? wtf kind of name is hunter anyway. he was born pretentious.

@nabisco: I don’t really collect mags, they sort of just collect themselves into partially read piles.

@Prommie: I was thinking of your taste in music when I was looking for a video of Beyond the Wall of Sleep by The Smithereens. I also found a great gem of a tune, Miss Shapiro by Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music w/post Roxy/pre-U2 and Talking Heads Brian Eno on keyboards and vocals. (Nojo prolly knows that tune and can tell you who else did it on a live album.) You should google it up. I also found Sombre Reptiles by Eno solo, but I don’t like it as much as I used to, at least last night.

Don’t forget to check out the link for Sepeltura mixing the metal and the samba on last night’s thread. I also heard some samba drums on the Slumdog Millionaire song on the Oscars, maybe Flippin could confirm since she has the soundtrack.

Worked at the office until 11:30 last night so I took the morning off, although I reviewed a bill and sent some emails from my desk on the treadmill. (“Earn $$$ at home! Let me show you how! [Requires sense of balance]”). Time to head in.

Looks like we’re closing the bar for Lent, so I’ll be over at Sam’s Club buying NyQuil by the case well before Easter. I’d send you the Cap Rock if we had any left. Heh.

@Hose Manikin: @baked: As former Gawker Media Commenters, how can we not be cliquish shitheads? That was the price of admission.

Managing a site brought out the Percy Weasley in Hunter — he hated comments going “off-topic”, kept insisting that everyone play within the lines, and fretted that the raucous crowd was driving away decent folk who feared diving into the moshpit. He felt CP itself was wildly veering off-topic, which was the first red flag.

But it was Greg who viciously attacked JNOV for viciously attacking him about the Notorious Podcast. Greg seemed to think he was still interning at Wonkette, where sniping at lowly commenters from on high was part of the game. I can’t tell you how much that pissed me off, which was the final red flag.

The Middle Flag (this is a flag-waving post) was Greg’s planned CP redesign, which would have shoved “recent comments” as far down the page as they could go, among other violations of common sense and competent design. Both Greg & Hunter felt CP should be about the posts, when we all know the party’s Below the Timestamp (in Hunter’s immortal phrase).

I need to work up a Stinque FAQ one of these days…

@redmanlaw: Behind, sir. The Smithereens singer, Pat Dinizio, ran for congress here in NJ as a libertarian some years ago, got nowhere. They had a great dark chunky sound, with harmonies.

@nojo: I tried so so so hard to be polite about the notorious podcast.

It sucked shit.

Greg and Hunter sound a bit delusional. I have never read a blog for the posts, always, and only, for the comments.

I think of this place as a bulletin board. Fuck that hierarchy shit. Bloggers and Commenters, huh? Bite me, we are all commenters on this bus.

@nojo:
That was what made the place interesting. Otherwise, it would be like all the other political blogs out there.

Here is a fun Spy fan site, he calls it a “review” of each issue, but its better than that, http://fawny.org/spy/spy-october-1986.html?spy0214

I could use some help on the poll: What exactly does “cheesecake” mean in that context?

@Prommie: It was the latest Gawker Media redesign that finally drove me away from the lot of them — even Seth’s posts at Defamer, which I found impossible to read and enjoy in their new trappings. And the new nested comments (“conversations”, in their lingo) break up the flow into so many tiny pieces that there’s no point even trying to play anymore.

You may recall that Hunter proposed a bulletin board, which everyone (including me) shot down immediately. That’s not what we do here, despite some similarities, and understanding the difference is crucial.

One of the extraordinary things Gawker sites did was create communities of commenters around each blog, which is why we’re all here today. A week or two into CP, I felt compelled to offer the overlords a design that featured a shot glass as part of the logo — “Cynics Party” as festive gathering, not ersatz political movement. That insight was lost on the Politburo, but it remains at the heart of this here enterprise.

@mellbell:
Cheesecake as in Girly/Glamor/Cleavage photos.

@mellbell: “Cheesecake” in this case refers to risque (but approximately work-safe) photographs. 50s pin-up girls are cheesecake.

Shorter version: All posts are conversation-starters. And then the conversations take on their own life.

@mellbell: Now that you mention it, it was Jim who did the wet t-shirt shot.

@nojo: Yes. yes, exactly.

@nojo: In the midst of all this discussion of the raison d’etre of “this here enterprise,” I’d like to say that although the comments are the heart and soul, the posts are excellent, all of them. [secret message to Nojo, which I should probably put on Facebook, but I can’t operate Facebook yet: I consider you qua poster as primus inter pares, by which I meant excellenter than the other excellent ones, but when I looked the phrase up, it seems to mean only the most senior among equals, which had not been my understanding of it. What the hell? All hail Nojo]

@nojo: Well yes. And the group that hangs out here seems to me to be unusually diverse and accomplished, each in our own way. Would it be wrong to point out that we commenters had at least as much to say that was of note than those ostensibly in charge. Often more.

Now I must go to bed to read about George Orwell. Had gum surgery today. Ugh.

@Prommie: More of a Spy vs. Spy guy here.

@lynnlightfoot: Ironically, “Morning Sedition” was supposed to be an easy link dump, solving a problem that bedeviled Early CP: dependable daily posts.

But then Hunter starting doing an evening link dump, and rather than suffer Dueling Link Dumps I ceded the game and embarked upon more elaborate topical posts.

The irony? Hunter kept promising (himself and everyone) he’d keep to his schedule, and he kept letting it slide. And although I’ve been tempted many times to just run a link dump instead of trying to conjure a post from a slow news day, I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Although I might yet. Some days are really slow.

@Benedick: Would it be wrong to point out that we commenters had at least as much to say that was of note than those ostensibly in charge. Often more.

It wouldn’t be wrong at all. In fact, it would be quite correct, then and now.

@nojo: You could start the day with “good morning” and we’d find a way to talk theatre, Sport, bewbies and cannibal anarchy by 10 a.m.

@redmanlaw: Bring on the Warm Jets. Somehow I don’t think Nojo was a Roxy fan.

@nojo: Gotta love a Garcia-Marquez reference. I adored Spy.
As to CP, I finally realized that our little friends saw it as a career-building exercise, part of their blogger “portfolios.” Having commenters whose writing skills, political insights, and snark far outshines yours is not ideal in those circumstances. Also, they were a bunch of immature crybabies.
For anyone interested, Megan is moving to NYC (Queens, to be exact). Insert bridge and tunnel joke here.
@Benedick: Feel better, darling. Hope you got some decent meds.

@Mistress Cynica: If you’re not driven by compulsion, it ain’t gonna work.

@Benedick:

Demand Lorcet and yell until your periodontist gives it to you. Cause a scene in the office if you must–with children weeping in the waiting room as they listen to agonized screams–but you simply must have it. I got it when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and I went on a week-long trip that I thought I was never coming back from. It rules.

Feel better soon ; )

@Original Andrew: He told me Advil. Damn. However, it seems to be working. It’s in situations like this that my stoical butch thing really pays off.

@Mistress Cynica: Thanks. Not too bad.

@Benedick:

Advil?? Is this the fucking Dark Ages, like here’s a stick to bite down on for the pain?

What’s the point of paying those huge doctor’s bills and insurance premiums if they don’t give you the good stuff?

@fupduk: @Prommie: @ManchuCandidate: @baked: I loved Spy. I loved it so much. It is the main reason I am flying home this year – to visit my copies and read them to myself on the floor of the storage unit. I need to have them here, with me! At all times!

OH, and I’m reading Kurt Anderson’s Turn of the Century, has anyone else read this, or did I miss some sort of hype about it? Because it is LONG, and it’s … kinda weird.

@Original Andrew: @Benedick: Advil? Does this man have an actual license to practice? I once broke down crying in my rheumatologist’s office and she sent me away with a script for 100 Lortabs, just to get rid of me.

@Original Andrew: Ah, modern pharmacology. When I had all four wisdom teeth pulled at the same time, I got Darvocets and a suggestion that I drink lots of vanilla milkshakes to keep the swelling down. Nice thing to recommend to a lactose-intolerant dorm dweller. I was high enough afterwards that I did run into a car in a parking lot. I got out of my car and yelled incoherently at the other driver until he drove off. It was the lot of a discount store called “BigN”, where I bought some Xmas tree ornaments for my first tree away from home, some of which I still own. Good Times.

@Mistress Cynica: @Original Andrew: Here in small-town America we don’t hold with your big-city ways on account of how we are teh real Americans who have no need of your fancy pharmaceuticals.