Breaking Hard: Clusterfuck at Times Square

Well, that’s one way to upstage Leno. Not that it’s a challenge.

@nojo: Is Leno on SNL?

@SanFranLefty: NerdProm, aka WH Correspondents Dinner.

@nojo: Gah, that’s appalling they couldn’t get Stewart, Letterman, Colbert, or CoCo.

PeeWee League all the way.

@nojo: The WH Correspondents Dinner is tonight? I must have misplaced my invitation. And shit, I don’t have anything to wear!

Taxi!

P.S. NYPD: failed device is when your vibrator’s batteries run out of juice. Thwarted terrorist attack is much more informative, not to mention politically useful.

Who wants to take bets on whether this was a domestic “freedumb fighter”?

Busy night: Moonies selling Washington Times. This one’s been developing for months, finally came to a head.

@nojo: …after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s family cut off most of the annual subsidy of about $35 million that has kept the Unification Church-backed paper afloat…

Well really, why throw good money after good? Their work is virtually complete, how much of their mission is left unfulfilled?

But: There was a three-foot-long black snake in the main conference room the other day. We have snakes in the newsroom — the real live variety, at least.

Get these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking conference table!

Mrs RML went to nerdprom back in the day when she was at the Dallas Morning News DC bureau. Sat at Donna Brazille’s table.

I saw that a metal show went on at the Nokia Theater tonight (Overkill, a band I heard on the Devil’s Dozen countdown* show today) because that is the metal thing to do.

*going from 12 to 1, counting backward like the Devil would. Metal!

@redmanlaw: Like the twelve days of Christmas? Partridge in an anal pear tree? Metal!

OT: Had the idea the other day to establish Assbook.com, the anti-social networking site. Then realized I’m too lazy to even check if the domain name is already taken, and founding an intertubes empire would take way too much human interaction anyway.

@SanFranLefty: Obama said he was happy to go on before Leno, because you know what happens to people who follow him.

Y’know, I think it’s bedtime now. But I’d really like to stay up to catch some SNL, since I haven’t seen it in months, maybe years.

There’s a handy-dandy ffw button on my cable remote, but it doesn’t seem to work. So I called up Cox Cable for some customer service:

Pedo: I can’t seem to get this thing to work. I want to watch SNL but the ffw button doesn’t cooperate.

Cox: Sir, you can’t fast-forward into the future.

Pedo: Then what the fuck am I paying you for? I want fuckin miracles! Rainbows and magnets and shit! Pelicans eatin’ my cell an’ shit. What the fuck are you good for if you can’t give me a simple fast-forward button that works?

Cox: Um, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

From there, it deteriorated…

@PedonatorUSA: Then what the fuck am I paying you for?

The commercials that say “Cocks. Your friend in the Digital Age.”

@nojo: Indeed, in any age.

Breaking: endorphins from the most fooking awesome deep tissue massage interupted ny SeeEnEn showing Google Earth blurred around the theater district; Don Lemon is on it.

Is Blog reporting from out his window? Did Cats close?

We also threw in “magnets – how do they work?” at the boys’ end of the table at dinner tonight.

@Nabisco: No report from here – I was asleep after my foodie orgasm … and feh – I used to walk past that corner every day for a few months (2 years ago). If they get me, they get me. And the idiots on CNN are speculating on a motive – bet you four dollars that the perp is a teabagger upset about that Muslim in the White House.

Like the good old days of the IRA in London.

How long before the Talibunny appears on TV shrieking about why Obama keeps forcing Americans to turn to violence to end his satanic reign?

I hesitate to point out that, had the bomb gone off and been powerful enough, the show it would have shut down is The Lion King …

@blogenfreude: So you’re saying our main suspects are true musical theatre fans. Benedick, I hope you have an alibi.

NYT sez the feds and NYPD are looking for a 40-something white man videotaped getting out of the SUV. Teabag much?

@SanFranLefty: Elsewhere, “a top Pakistani Taliban commander” is taking credit, perhaps opportunistically. Might be best to wait this one out.

@Mistress Cynica: If you’re going to take out a theatre the Minskoff is a pretty good choice (I refuse to call anything the Nokia theatre. What next? The Diet Tab Theatre?). It was shabby two days after it opened its doors and has the single ugliest entrance of any theatre in New York. Only redeeming feature is plenty of wing space and decent dressing rooms.

@PedonatorUSA: I guess no naturalists work at the Wash. Times. If you have lots of rats, the black snakes will come. I have always thought of the Wash. Times as a snake pit, turns out it actually is.

@PedonatorUSA:

Q: Fucking planes! How do they work?

A: Motherfucking snakes.

@redmanlaw: Heh. How’d that go over?

TJ/ I’m holed up in my bedroom, because our living room air conditioner was ruined by the February flood. I got’s no TV in here, so I’ve been watching documentaries all afternoon.

First was The Cruise. I liked it, but I didn’t like the fact that Timothy “Speed” Levitch makes sense to me most of the time. Um. Yeah.

Next I watched Brother’s Keeper. Also good, but quite sad in so many ways.

Now I’m watching We Live in Public, and this may be the end of me. I’m only three minutes into the movie, and I’m like, “Oh, shit.”

Have any of you seen any of these?

@JNOV: Have any of you seen any of these?

No. Where do you find these documentaries of which you speak, if not on teevee? Don’t tell me “streaming online”, because then the buffer gods on the interwebz will laugh at me.

I watched “Brothers” on the plane from French Indochina, with Maggie’s brother Jake and Spiderman. It was treacly and the ending uninspired, but I had to stifle a few sniffles when they thought Jake was dead then he wasn’t and his eldest daughter started acting out and shit. Daddy loves you, biscuits!

Meanwhile, Riot breaks out in Santa Cruz. Victims include a Jamba Juice, Urban Oufitters, and my eyes after reading wingnut blogs tomorrow.

@Nabisco: Oh, Beesko, I’m so sorry: yes, I’m streaming them from Netflix. I couldn’t tell you the last major movie I’ve seen. I will be seeing Iron Man in the theater — that’s for sure, but that will probably be the only movie I see this year.

@nojo: I’m sorry – what? Riots? In Santa Cruz? Santa Cruz, CA? Is that some euphemism for a stoner pillow fight?

@nojo: Oh, great. A fucking anarchist May Day party (which kind of doesn’t make sense). Ugh. Asshats.

ADD: Going back to this truly fucked up documentary. It’s pretty well done so far; it’s taking me on a Capturing the Friedmans type of emotional roller coaster ride.

@JNOV: And then you wonder why you can’t sleep at night.

@JNOV: @nojo:
Re: Santa Cruz anarchist riots – my most reviled and hated pretentious trustafarian grocery store in Ess Eff (Rainbow Grocery) was closed yesterday for May Day – I saw the signs as we drove by en route to Trader Joe’s. Mr. SFL and I have a special Rainbow Grocery voice we use for the vegan hipster Mission-dwellers based upon our one time we’ve been in there. When we got home from our one trip there, we discovered that most of the vegetables were infested with worms.

I’m sure their cashiers started the riot in Santa Cruz. RG was in the news a while back because some jackass who worked there kicked out a Jewish guy who was either wearing a yarmukle or a t-shirt with the Israeli flag on it (I forget which and am too lazy to look it up) in the name of the oppressed Gazans.

@SanFranLefty: So it was like a riot just for fun?

@SanFranLefty: Eugene “anarchists” pull the same shit. Some years back they firebombed a Chevy dealership because, well, I dunno. And neither did they.

@FlyingChainSaw: Early reports are that members of the Pro-Perspirant Alliance went on a rampage when one of their Sweaters (they don’t have “members”) had slapped on a bit of Right Guard that morning before work.

@Mistress Cynica: Right? Although the subject matter of We Live in Public is nothing like Capturing the Friedmans. Documentaries aren’t usually all that suspenseful, but these two make you think, “He’s an asshole. Wait, maybe he’s not. Oh, yes, he is! Oh, maybe he’s not…” and at the end, you aren’t really sure if he is or not. We Live in Public was made by Ondi Timoner — she also made DiG!, and I liked that one, too.

@SanFranLefty: I wore red yesterday. That’s about as much as I get into May Day now.

@JNOV:
i did see capturing the friedman’s. so whattaya think?
i think he’s guilty.

@SanFranLefty:
WORMS in veggies??
thanks for that. now i have nothing whatsoever to eat. i found worms in a piece of flounder i was preparing for baby bakette and haven’t touched fish since. and i haven’t eaten animal flesh since…ever.

t/j StinqueSport
what a horse race this time. right to the wire, in the ongoing lefty, dodger, and baked’s scrabbalooza. no decision yet. do you know how exciting it is to see over 700 points on a scrabble board? no? ok.

@baked: They say if you really want to see the worms in your fish, and there are worms in your fish, pour some pepsi on it, for some reason, pepsi and worms, they are not friends, and the worms will come swarming out. Or so they say.

The Times Square Bombing Epic Fail; it screams “copycat,” not original. The strange, seemingly confused use of every possible bomb ingredient, for example, fertilizer, and gasoline, and propane, you take some McVeigh, and some Columbine, even though it didn’t work there, and some, of this, and some of that, basically using every ingredient you ever read about in a news report for the last 10 years. I bet there was a hollowed-out shoe in there, too. A real bomb-maker focuses on one method, one recipe, and works it.

Its just a vibe, a distinct copycat vibe, like, the vibe given off by Coldplay, this bomber is to the Taliban as Coldplay is to Radiohead, as Oasis is to John Lennon, as Billy Joel used to be, to whatever was a bland middle of the road hit 8 months before.

@JNOV:
skype won’t work, so i have to discuss in public.
now ya have me all fixated on the friedmans.
it was very well done. takes you on a great ride of true reasonable doubt, but ultimately i believe he done it.
really want to hear your thoughts on this.

@Prommie:
so why haven’t you tried it? looking at raw fish makes me gag, i won’t be pouring anything over it. ugh i’m gagging now.

i’m so over the whole bomb thing. it was a garden variety new york city sociopath. think deniro in taxi driver. what i’ll remember about this is chucky talking to cnn bobblehead and using the word unexplicable, which isn’t a word and bobblehead responding with, will that be helpable? what i’m wrapping my brain around is the real story of the day,and the next zillion days, the oil spill.

@Prommie: I feel like this was a purposeful dud designed to observe and analyze the response by the police to better exploit it next time. Reminds me of the abortion clinic bombers who would have a small explosive go off at the clinic, and then when police and fire swarmed to the scene, the bigger explosives would go off.

@SanFranLefty: Shit, sis, that is seriously – and scarily – spot on. Let’s face it, as much as we’d like it to be a Teabagger from, say, Pennsyltucky pissed off at the Sociamalistic Kenyan Broadway play combined with “Reds” and some other show about god, it could also be one of the many non-Ay-rab recruits the bad guys have been courting trying to do his one solid pre-game piece for the capo di capo. Or yeah, a Teabagger with very good ops planning.

Anyone watched “Born Free” yet? She’s a minority Tamil with an attitude, and totes badass.

I think you give them far too much credit.

@Benedick:
you know what’s interesting? this has lined up left coast right coast stinquers. the new york contingent is unanimously saying–meh.
speaking of new york, armadinnerjacket is fucking hilarious. the entire conference is doing the same thing i was doing…sliding down in my seat hunched over with one hand sliding down over my eyes. team USA! is up at 3. hills is gonna divulge classified info. oh boy!

@baked:

Do you mean “Capturing the Friedmans”?

@baked: What is that jerkoff doing in the US? I’m kinda behind in the news.

@Dodgerblue:

He’s got a right, apparently. Anyway, his douchtastic speeches tend to make the rest of the world side with the Americans (I mean, outside of the Arab countries, anyway), so let him speak!

@Tommmcatt Loves The Giant Floating Head:
yes! see JNOV’S post, she brought it up…did you see it?

@Dodgerblue:
the UN’s conference on nuclear disarmament and proliferation or something. should have held it at the minskoff theater.

@baked:

Yes.

I think the dude was a pedophile, and I think that he received child pornography, but I’m not sold on the circus of child sex the authorities came up with. It seems too far-fetched. Maybe he touched some kids inappropriately, and should have been punished for that, but this wholesale rape thing…the witness, you know, that one guy, seems too vituperative somehow. It smacks of moral panic.

I don’t think the son was involved at all. I got the sense overall that someone was hiding something that disproved the mass rape thing- one of the witnesses, perhaps, or one of the policemen. I’m not entirely sure that any of the Friedmans, even the mother, are capable of hiding things. There’s a kind of neurotic showmanship to all of them. They were in a lot of pain, but somehow they get off on displaying it. Does that make sense?

@baked: I can’t believe this guy is dumb enough to lob a nuke at Israel. Iran would cease to exist as a nation.

@Dodgerblue:

Iran would begin existence as a gigantic river of molten glass if that happened. Shit, if anybody launched a nuke I have a feeling various countries would be looking a little vitrified. Those hair-triggers still exist, even though foreign policy isn’t based on them anymore.

@Tommmcatt Loves The Giant Floating Head: The Kurds could walk in with a butter knife and take over, if there were anything left that they wanted.

@Tommmcatt Loves The Giant Floating Head:
absolutely perfect sense tommie. and you come to my conclusion in your first 7 words. a bizzare family and and a terrific documentary.

@Dodgerblue:
just talking about nuclear weapons makes me embarrassed to be human.
i have to go in the garden now and weep for the gulls in the gulf coast.

@baked: Don’t forget the once-again-endangered brown pelicans. Also, every oyster bar in NOLA.

@baked: Sorry I’m late replying. I left that movie knowing only that the police screwed up that case (if there was one) big time. Made me think of the rash of daycare ritualistic abuse allegations and the the rash of ER personnel passing out because they smelled “something” when they drew patients’ blood. Mass hysteria.

Speaking of mass hysteria, does anyone watch the Boondocks? A new episode just aired “It’s a Black President, Huey Freeman.” No spoilers, but it’s something else.

@SanFranLefty:

Actually, I’m more inclined towards a tinfoil-hat perspective in this case: what if it was an FBI sting operation gone wrong? It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve told a bunch of devout yoyos that they were joining al Qaeda. Perhaps this time one of them decided to “get extra credit”…

@Nabisco: Shot in Santa Fe. They shot an interior in the building next to my office. I saw Natalie Portman on the sidewalk in a 70’s style white ski jacket getting a coffee from a cart at dusk. Looks like the house was all lit from the outside for a daytime interior. They also shot some stuff at a soundstage at the college near Casa RML. Tobey and his wife lived up the street from my office in a shady/big house part of downtown. “Thor”, the Marvel superhero movie also with NP, also had its HQ in the hood here. I suppose I should see Brothers just to check out the landscape. Also, the True Grit remake is wrapping up here now before shuffling off to Texas.

@JNOV: On May Day, I wrote an employee termination policy for a tribal enterprise.

@baked: I made a fly for fishing that looks like a worm. Awesomely effective. Almost as good as a real worm.

@Mistress Cynica: They *are* notorious cell phone stealers.

@redmanlaw: I ran away!

ADD: Wait. Or it ran away? Now I have to watch it again…