Now, isn’t that special?
Not since Bono glided through concert arenas in a giant lemon for U2’s POPmart tour has stagecraft been so far in the forefront as it is for next week’s Republican National Convention.
Today’s Times reveals some of the excellent bells and whistles we’ll be witnessing when President Bush delivers his speech before literally many, many delegates in New York. (For the President, Special Setup Is Planned at Convention, by Michael Slackman.)
A very special president deserves an extra-special stage. (It goes without saying that if Mr. Bush had participated in this year’s Olympics in Athens, it would’ve been a Special Olympics, indeed.) As the article points out, to create a sense of “special intimacy” (there’s that word again!), a centrally-located in-the-round stage will be erected.
What other special theatrics are in store for the convention?
President Bush will descend on a harness from the rafters wearing 25-foot angel wings.
Vice President Dick Cheney will enter dressed as a gladiator and slay an animatronic tiger affectionately nicknamed “Edwards.”
The 1.5 million gallon water tank from Cirque du Soleil’s O will be assembled in Madison Square Garden so that Condoleezza Rice may lead synchronized swimmers in a routine set to Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries.”
Four cannons loaded with indoor fireworks that spell out “LOWER TAXES” will be fired at the ceiling
Those hilarious stunt-dunking guys in gorilla suits will go buck wild!
The living Beatles—all two of them—will reunite to sing “Fixing A Hole” with new lyrics about Iraq
A CGI-assisted video will show John Ashcroft at the signing of the Declaration of Independence
Donald Rumsfeld will smile for five seconds
Delegates arriving by swift boats and yachts and walking a pink carpet lined with photographers and writers from The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, and The National Review asking “Who are you wearing?” and “Do you think Britney is rushing into marriage?”
Live, via satellite, Jesus will bless the delegates
Twenty uniformed members of the armed services will form a pyramid, and a trained elephant will lift a veteran of the Iraq war out of his wheelchair and place him on the top so he can wave an American flag with his remaining arm
A (taped) speech by Ronald Reagan about how much he loves America and apple sauce and swimming and how his male nurse is stealing from him and someone is coming into his room and using his phone and can he have some more apple sauce please, mommy?
Paris Hilton and Haylie Duff will speak together, putting an end to any rumors that they’re in a feud
Alan Keyes will deliver a speech ten times better than what’s his name’s and then sing Outkast’s “Hey Ya” with new lyrics about compassionate conservatism.
Karl Rove will sit behind an enormous green curtain doing… things. Don’t worry about what he’s doing. Really—it’s fine.
Donald Trump, closing the convention by pointing at John Kerry and saying “Ya fired!”
And, if that’s not all, it’s free bat day! Well, for the cops outside it is.
Categories
If It’s Brown…
Dear Newspaper and Magazine Headline Writers,
Hi. How are you? (I know you can’t answer questions posed in a letter, but I want you to know I’m wondering how you are.)
We gotta talk (er, ‘write,’ whatever). I know I’ve made fun of you guys in the past, and I know that’s totally uncool. I was, like, in a bad place then, guys. I was just lashing at you for problems I was having with myself. Can you forgive me?
But, listen up. You gotta stop using GALLO’S HUMOR as a headline for Brown Bunny reviews, okay? I’m talking to you, New York Post, and whoever the hell you are, Zap2it.com. And, this sort of hurts me to say it, but you too, New York Times Magazine: I loved you the most.
Oh, come on. Don’t cry. Please, please. Stop. I’m not just here to criticize, I’m here to offer help. If Vincent Gallo ever convinces international financiers to fund another film for him, you can use these headlines, okay?
Earnest Gallo Whines
Heaven Vincent
Gallo Blows
Vincent, Man, Go!
A Vince Among Men
A Gallo Down Dirty Shame
Vincentient Being
My Gallo Friday
Lather, Vince, Repeat
They might not be perfect, but who is, right? (Pobody’s Nerfect!) I still think you guys are great. BFF?
Yours,
Matt Haber
According to ScriptSales, Tina Fey and her agency, Endeavor, have just sold Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill for mid-six against seven. (Which anyone who’s seen Adaptation. knows is ‘industry speak’ for “I know industry speak.”) The story of “[a] Hasidic Jew and a grizzled rock musician [who] form a band,” was inspired by a report on NPR and will inevitably star Adrien Brody (in a furry hat) and Colin Firth (in a name tag, since no one knows who the fuck he is). And the best part? While delivering some scripts upstairs, we heard that Brett Ratner might direct it!
As that last sentence hinted, we just started our new day jobs in the mailroom of the mailroom at Endeavor. (We couldn’t get into the mailroom proper without M.B.A.’s.) It’s a little thing called workin’ your way up the old fashioned way, by being abused, and humiliated – and urinated upon – for years. It’s awesome, and a great use of our combined $245,000 educations. (How’s that for a mid-six against seven, huh, boss?). And, we actually managed to scoop a copy of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill‘s first-act outline from the main fax machine before Hector, one of the senior mailroom guys, busted us. We’re gonna do our best to score the other two acts when Hector goes on his 3 PM Jamba Juice run, and, yes, that’s Pacific Standard Time, for all of you who think anything of note happens in New York.
In the meantime, check out this exclusive Tina Fey comedic buzz…
Categories
Settings > Repeat > On
In today’s excitingly fresh edition of the New York Times’ Circuits section, reporter Rachel Dodes has put together a charming little piece about iPods and the way in which they’ve begun changing music fans’ listening habits. In “Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain”, she presents a cute anecdote about a Columbia University grad student who threw a delightful dinner party while entertaining his guests with music played in a random order from his library of digitized music files, only to have the partiers erupt into laughter when the Shuffle-Button-as-DJ transitioned from Guns N’ Roses into Elton John, which was apparently quite embarrassing.
“Such are the perils of using Shuffle, a genre-defying option that has transformed the way people listen to their music in a digital age. The problem is, now that people are rigging up their iPods to stereos at home and in their cars, they may have to think twice about what they have casually added to their music library.
Shuffle commands have been around since the dawn of the CD player. But the sheer quantity of music on an MP3 player like the iPod – and in its desktop application, iTunes – has enabled the function to take on an entirely new sense of scale and scope. It also heightens the risk that a long-forgotten favorite song will pop up, for better or for worse, in mixed company.”
Well, it certainly hasn’t heightened the risk that a not-so-long-forgotten article from the Times’ family of newspapers might be repurposed by the parent company. Writing for the Boston Globe on April 7, 2004 – a whopping four months ago – writer Joseph P. Kahn entertained readers with his “iPod Shuffle revolutionizing listening habits”, which, you guessed it, discusses iPods and the ways in which they’ve begun to change music fans’ listening habits. Or, in his own words, since the “Circuits” section’s editors felt a literal transcription to be unnecessary,
“Even more wondrous than its sophisticated technology, though, is how the iPods and their ilk are changing the way music is being experienced, or reexperienced, by all sorts of audiophiles in all sorts of settings, from health clubs and school cafeterias to malls and subway cars.
…
When thousands of titles are transferred onto the machine’s hard drive and in rotation, users say, what happens on the listening end can be aesthetically stimulating, even liberating. This is not necessarily because the tracks are unfamiliar, but because the software’s shuffle-play capability juxtaposes them in intriguing ways, not only across an entire 5,000-track collection but within, say, a compilation of blues tunes or Broadway melodies, or even shuffling through only the tracks played in the past 90 days.”
For what it’s worth, we, too, are guilty of repurposing our own content, in the sense that we’ve already made light in the past of the Times’ short institutional memory.
An officer at the Department of Defense “delivers final reports of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations…A four-member panel headed by [former Defense Secretary James] Schlesinger issued a report accusing the chain of command from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down of leadership failures that created conditions for the abuse of prisioners late last year that sparked anti-American outrage across the world.”
The image that initially started the abovementioned investigation.
Categories
Swift Boat Veterans Against Borgnine
What exactly happened on that PT Boat? Only Lt. Cmdr. McHale knows for sure.
“USA’s Kerri Walsh, bottom, and teammate Misty May celebrate after beating Brazil in the gold medal beach volleyball finals during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games at Faliro Beach Volleyball Stadium in Athens, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004. (AP Photo/Adam Butler)”
(Thanks to Jessica B.)
From Remarks by the Vice President and Mrs. Cheney Followed by Question and Answer at a Town Hall Meeting, Davenport, Iowa, August 24, 2004:
QUESTION: We have a battle here on this land, as well. And I would like to know, sir, from your heart — I don’t want to know what your advisors say, or even what your top advisor thinks — but I need to know what do you think about homosexual marriages.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the question has come up obviously in the past with respect to the question of gay marriage. Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue that our family is very familiar with. We have two daughters, and we have enormous pride in both of them. They’re both fine young women. They do a superb job, frankly, of supporting us. And we are blessed with both our daughters.
With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free — ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to. The question that comes up with respect to the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction, or approval is going to be granted by government, if you will, to particular relationships. Historically, that’s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that basic fundamental decision in terms of defining what constitutes a marriage. I made clear four years ago when I ran and this question came up in the debate I had with Joe Lieberman that my view was that that’s appropriately a matter for the states to decide, that that’s how it ought to best be handled.
