Hollywood Riot

Let me guess, he wrote his own speech?

Memorial Day is a sombre time of remembrance, especially while we wage two wars and lose young men and women almost every day. George W. Bush, the Commander in Chief responsible for the most costly military blunder in U.S. history, had these moving words to share with the grieving family members of fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery:

“On this Memorial Day, I stand before you as the commander in chief and try to tell you how proud I am,” Bush told an audience of military figures, veterans and their families at Arlington National Cemetery. Of the men and women buried in the hallowed cemetery, he said, “They’re an awesome bunch of people and the United States is blessed to have such citizens.” 

That’s it? They’re… awesome? The brave men and women who have given their lives to this country deserve a better accolade than that. Are you the President of the United States of America or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? The scientists and engineers at NASA, who successfully touched down the Phoenix Mars Lander yesterday, are an awesome bunch of people. Maybe he just got confused and thought he was congratulating the scientists. Soldier and Scientist both start with S, after all. Wouldn’t surprise me. 

For a very moving Memorial Day story, check out this NPR story concerning Sgt. Merlin German, the “Miracle Man”. And thank you to all the soldiers and their families.

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Political opinion certainly isn’t a modern invention, but we do have a few new novel systems in place to deliver the stories. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, internet. The boom in 24 hour news coverage on channels like CNN, MSNBC, FOX News etc. is unprecedented. Most of the personalities on these shows are opinion-based, with a few facts thrown in for gravitas. It’s entertaining, but has it gotten out of hand or what? Take this current election season, and specifically the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The pundits had stayed on the fence, for the most part, until one night after Bumfuck Primary #42 when Tim Russert outright declared Obama the Democratic nominee:

First of all, this guy is taking himself way too seriously. Secondly, there’s something else going on here, an air of acceptance. “Oh, well, if Tim Russert said so… then it’s OK for me to think the same thing.” I don’t mean to single Russert out, but that clip gives me the shivers. And I’m not even a Hillary Clinton supporter. Welcome to 1984, children. That proclamation, and the subsequent snowball effect that made it safe for the media to start openly referring to Obama as the nominee, despite the fact that Rev. Wright might still hop out of the bushes and mow everyone down with his white rage, is almost scarier than wiretaps. Warrentless and warrented wiretaps, illegal or legal. Big governments have been doing that since the technology was invented and spying itself has been around for as long as we sneaky humans have. If you’re worried about snoops, play death metal really loud and communicate via carrier pigeon.

However, this brave new media world we live in has never occurred before. Information has traditionally been passed down slowly via stories and cultural performances and then eventually through the written word and then, much later, the printing press. Because the process of relaying information was so time consuming, people didn’t have the resources to expound on every point. Stories were boiled down to their essence. Nowadays, programmers and producers have the opposite problem. There isn’t enough hard news to fill a 24 hour cycle, but there is plenty of hot air to go around in the form of pundits. Stick one of these self-important windbags in front of a camera and they’ll easily give you an hour of whistlin’ Dixie. We have been conditioned to give credence to these “talking heads,” as we tend to think of these people as experts. Yet, most of them are just really loud.     

Not to mention WRONG. Oh-so-certain Tim Russert made his Obama declaration nearly a month ago, but Clinton still hasn’t dropped out. What an incredible underestimation of Hillary’s grit, her determination… her delusion. So why are these media pundits even on the cable? Why do we believe them? Remember, these are the same people who failed to get the word out about WMD’s and Iraq before the war. The information was there, but it wouldn’t have been very popular, especially to the cabal of rednecks in the Oval Office. Which appears to be the same reason Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the war in Iraq, and the same reason why she comes across as very un-Presidential today. Convictions are easy to throw out when you’re faking them to begin with. 

Let’s look at how France does it, as I believe they have an enviable system. Those nuclear powered, riot-lovin’ French get to watch Melissa Theuria every morning on the French equivalent of CNN, called LCI. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but for some reason I feel better about the world after watching her. Bill O’Reilly and his hideous mug make it easy to change channels, but Melissa is… hard… to… ignore. Great crepes, she’s the beautiful face of Big Brother that Orwell never saw coming! 

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OK, it’s official- TIME and CNN have done lost their minds. Before Dick Cheney could even begin to imagine a way to take advantage of his evil weather experiment the cyclone in Myanmar, these two wacko news outlets roll with a whopper of a headline:

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Whoa! What the hell? The survivors are lucky the brutal junta controlling their nation is finally starting to let aid workers in. Nobody wants to invade you, Myanmar, trust us. Don’t listen to TIME or CNN. Let those planes in!!

To TIME and CNN: shut the hell up. Who asked you, Dick Cheney? Seriously, cover the news and report it and go home. Your airy suggestion to invade Myanmar is ridiculously infuriating. The U.S. spent $5 million per day as our military helped the tsunami victims a few years back, which really improved the situation. That relatively paltry figure doesn’t even come close to how much we’re spending on gasoline consumption alone in Iraq each day, so invading a country is neither easy nor cheap. Like we did in Bosnia and elsewhere, the U.S. and International Red Cross should just ignore the junta and air drop shipments of food and aid in. Even if half of it is confiscated by the military, it would provide some relief while a better resolution is worked out.

If we send the rest of our Marines storming in, that messed up Myanmar government will prop up their poor civilians with fake guns and we’ll end up shooting the very people we are trying to help. That will lead to some other radical group (The Myanmar Militia or Burmese Roaring Tigers or whatever) to spring up and start attacking the invaders (U.S.). What are we left with? Another un-winnable war in some foreign land.

Of course, this all changes the moment someone discovers oil there. Then, naturally, we invade the shit out of Myanmar. And if that happens, my theories on Dick Cheney’s weather machine will gain some serious traction.

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What do you do when you’re 19 years old, a sophomore in college, involved in a popular fraternity, majoring in criminal justice, and hard-up for cash?

Get a job at the student union or the local burger joint?

Hell no. You sell meth!
It pays a lot better.

This week, federal agents raided San Diego State and arrested 96 people (75 of them students) on charges of some pretty serious drug trafficking. These guys weren’t selling dime bags of weed to medical marijuana users - no, they were selling (a lot of) cocaine, meth, ecstasy, prescription painkillers… you know, the hard stuff. And they had a bunch of guns and a fat stack of cash, too. They even had Amy Winehouse’s personal cell number.

But you know what they didn’t have? Student loan balances. Zing!

Some may say these 75 students at San Diego State were just drug-dealing scumbags by nature. Some may say that fraternities are breeding grounds for morally reprehensible behavior. I’d suggest a combination of the two, along with a healthy dash of opportunistic lessons from Corporate America thrown in.

These guys saw an opening in a money-making market - a niche if you will, and jumped on it. Maybe they learned that in Business 101, which I’m sure they all got A’s in. Or maybe from watching MSNBC. Or taking notes on Big Business and the U.S. government. After all, isn’t that what we’re teaching them - that it’s all about money - who cares how you make it, or who you hurt, as long as you’re raking in the benjis?

Now I’m not saying these boys shouldn’t be in trouble. But let’s just remember they are frat boys after all. They’re really, really, really stupid. They sent a mass text message about a “cocaine sale” for crying out loud! [Attn faithful customers, me & my associates will be out of town for the weekend. Better stock up now -we've got bargain basement prices on blow!] Who does that?

Frat boys, at least in my experience, are very rarely able to think for themselves. Kind of like Marines. I liken them to sheep. Have you ever heard what happens on fraternity “hell nights” (usually involves a goat, a piece of toast, and 15 kegs of beer)? No self-respecting individual would succumb to that. Even if it meant they would be the next President of the United States (I’m talking ’bout you, W - you old Skull and Bonesman). Again with the zing!

After all, W sold cocaine when he was in a fraternity. Oh wait… my mistake, he just snorted a lot of it. According to some, he still does… in the White House.

I wonder if he got the text message about the cocaine sale?

All that’s beside the point. The point is — I’m thinking San Diego State might want to add a new course to their business curriculum next year… Hard Drug Trafficking 101 or something like that. Course description: Learn the ins and outs of this profitable business, what not to do (text messaging with drug prices), and how to fly under the radar instead of all over it.

Starla, Out.

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I fear for the day when actual substance creeps into this presidential campaign and replaces the sloganeering and politicking. Watching the two Democratic candidates duke it out has been a heaven and hell experience. Mostly hell. Whoever lands the nomination, one thing’s for certain: we all face months of renewed posturing and name-calling from both Democrat and Republican sides. What’s the truth? Who’s for real? What time is lunch because, man, I am hungry.

Our current system of economics is pretty screwed up. I’m no expert on monetary policy (I went to film school), but even I realize that we’re taking a long walk off a short dock. We had a budget surplus in America before Dubya was elected, correct? A surplus that his own father fought for and, read my lips, lost his re-election because of. Right quick after his first “election win,” George W. Bush put together an unprecedented (and, turns out, ridiculous) $1.6 trillion tax cut. This caused a battle in Congress- mainly because it was such a surprise. George W. Bush hadn’t really discussed dissolving the surplus achieved by both President’s Bill Clinton and Dubya Senior. GOP members defected (Jim Jeffords!), Senators felt threatened and bullied, and Congress buckled and passed almost the entire amount. Ah, and to think… those were the good ol’ pre-September 11th days. Americans didn’t pay much attention, as that was the Summer of the Shark, but it began a disastrous trend: Dubya going against his central campaign promises, and pursuing a shady agenda with confidence knowing that Congress didn’t have the backbone to stop him.

OK, you got us George! You fooled the Supreme Court back in 2000, shame on you. Then, you fooled us all a second time with Iraq. Shame on us. We’re gonna be mad if you fool us a third time! Oh, right, you actually did sanction torture. You’re good at this. Shame on us? I mean, you. Oh hell, I don’t know the exact saying, and neither does George W.  The most important thing is that we not fall for the same bullshit that the Dubya Administration fed us. We’re not sure which candidate is most likely to fall off the Campaign Promise Wagon™ first, but there’s been enough crap thrown around already to ensure that anybody and everybody is a contender.

No matter how honest and nice he seems, Barack Obama is stuck with that name. No matter how noble and intelligent we pretend to be, Barack Obama is stuck with that name. I’m not an Obamaniac or a Barackorite, but give me a break. Connecting him with Osama bin Laden because their names share a few vowels is one of the Top Ten most idiotic things I’ve ever heard. I once had a co-worker named Michael Jordan. He could collate like a madman, but he looked like a turnip on the basketball court. Obama is not Osama’s brother. We can’t vouch for his health insurance plan, but Hollywood Riot confidently predicts that Obama will NOT fall of the Promise Wagon and start blowing shit up like low-brow rural Republicans would love for you to believe. Here’s a website decal/bumper sticker to help drive that point home:

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I’m also not a Hillary… person. She fell off the Promise Wagon long ago. Hollywood Riot has already discussed her future plans, and they don’t involve being President. Watch out for sniper fire and click on Clinton’s twitchy eye to read more.

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Grumpy Old Man McCain can live in Iraq for the next hundred years all he wants, but I’d rather my neighbor’s child (or mine for that matter) return home before he’s John’s age. War is hell, McCain, and you should know that better than anyone. But you don’t, which means you are bat-shit insane. Please don’t be President. The following attack ad is very extreme, but also very effective in scaring the shit out of dissuading voters. If this man is elected your next president, Hollywood Riot predicts that his shrapnel-spotted ass will remain firmly entrenched in the front seat of his Campaign Promise Wagon for the rest of the century. Dead or alive.  

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Ron Paul is the one candidate who doesn’t want to be President for the sake of being President, but that also means he won’t be President. Which is a shame, because he’s never fallen off the Promise Wagon and, votes be damned, he never will. Don’t fret, Paulateers! Looks like this young patriot might pick up the Re-Love-ution torch someday…

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