So, the Dirty Show. It’s been going on since we’ve lived here, but this was our first time going. John Waters was the draw, of course – we’ve both been fans for a while, Alan of his movies and me of his post-Hairspray persona as this cuddly post-smutmeister who keeps telling people what a smutmeister he is.
His one-man show is raw, but also funny, which makes the raw go down easy. “What ever happened to pubic hair? I went to court to show bush. Now no one has one.” He talks about his parents a lot. He talks about assholes (the real ones, the ones we all have). He talks about his projects; when I heard his Hairspray-sequel TV series, currently in development hell, is called “White Lipstick,” I knew he would get it all right. He manages to come across as a perv and your favorite uncle all at the same time.
Afterward, he did a signing that went on for hours and hours. Everybody got a picture. We didn’t participate, as we were busy touring the rest of show, trying to find the pearls among an awful lot of bad oysters. It’s not that I find the human body artless, it’s just that you have to do more with it than just show me a big red dick. And dicks were scarce compared to the seemingly endless parade of tits ‘n’ vulvas. The sideshows were more interesting, including a touring burlesque show featuring a dwarf stripper and a man whose whole act was a hymn to the hot dog. There was also one of those gymnasts who performs aloft suspended and entwined in a long length of cloth, whatever they’re called. At first I thought she was nude, but after she came down I saw she was wearing a flesh-colored bodysuit with the anatomy spray painted on, and quite well.
Really, the only thing left to the imagination was why so many women into baroque lingerie, especially corsetry, are overweight.
I only saw one piece I could take home, a sketch that looked like a bunch of birds of paradise flowers but turned out to be, yes, more vulvas. But it was clever. And alas, it had a red “sold” sticker on it.
The rest of the weekend was half fun, half duty — a wedding, plus FAFSA and related forms. The wedding was at the National Shrine of the Little Flower, better known as Father Coughlin’s old church. Which is spectacular. Fr. Coughlin was the original Rush Limbaugh, and had quite the career until the diocese reined him in. The church has a theater-in-the-round thing going on; the first guests weren’t sure where to sit, but we all figured it out. The bride was beautiful, the groom flubbed some hand-holding instructions and we all went out to face the cold front howling in. Current temperature: 2 below, and the night has only begun.
Let’s hope we get a little relief by the end of the week, but I’m not hopeful.
Connie said on February 16, 2015 at 6:08 am
FAFSA? You are way too early, you have almost two weeks left.
I agree with JoeK’s comment re Miley doing 50 ways, I was impressed.
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ROGirl said on February 16, 2015 at 7:18 am
About 10 years ago I went to a show at the Montreal Art Museum of Pablo Picasso’s erotic art. It was pretty shocking at first, starting with some very early drawings of sex acts between prostitutes and his friends. As I progressed through the rooms, the initial reaction diminished and my thoughts turned to, “Oh, another penis, another vagina, another couple f..king.”
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adrianne said on February 16, 2015 at 7:36 am
Father Coughlin, just one in a long line of demagogues in priest’s robes. There are Catholics out there who still haven’t disowned this menace. To them, I say, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
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coozledad said on February 16, 2015 at 8:32 am
Yeah, the new Father Coughlins are getting all bent out of shape over the 50 Shades of Gray movie. Roy has chronicled two instances of them using a fake G.K. Chesterton quote to describe people who have to pay for their kink as being on a spiritual quest. It appears as either “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God,” or “the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”
When you get two of those in the same week it means it’s coming directly from the ministry of shite.
I knew someone who rang the doorbell at the whorehouse, and he wasn’t looking for God. He was looking for relief. That’s not to say we shouldn’t bow our heads in the presence of sex workers, because their calling requires a commitment similar to St. Catherine of Siena, who is reputed to have sucked at the buboes of plague victims in a frenzy of compassion. This guy was only going to get serviced professionally.
His dick was the size of the average adult human femur. If he’d worn a regulation catholic school dress, you would have still seen the sickening lurch of his glans from knee to knee like the prow of a tanker in heavy seas.
One time in the showers after Phys Ed in junior high, Dexter Hayes asked him if he had to call in sick every time he got a hardon. Dex wasn’t far off, because Bob told me when he got an erection he went into a kind of trance state, likely because his other brain was starved for oxygen and glucose.
I know I’m callous about other people’s belief systems, but this guy believed he had a personal savior. It occurred me that his God had some ‘splainin’ to do. Maybe that’s why he kept going to the whorehouse- looking for that explanation. Instead, God killed him in a freak boating accident, probably out of embarrassment.
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brian stouder said on February 16, 2015 at 9:41 am
“…a freak boating accident”..!
There’s gotta be a tremendous punch line lurking here, just beneath the surface (cue foreboding Jaws music)
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Bitter Scribe said on February 16, 2015 at 10:17 am
IIRC, Coughlin was a supporter of FDR until the latter broke from the silver standard for U.S. currency. Coughlin advocated for silver very shrilly, irritating Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau enough to make him reveal that Coughlin and his church had invested heavily in silver certificates. Coughlin went ballistic, denouncing the filthy Jew and turning on FDR in increasingly anti-Semitic tirades until his ecclesiastical superiors told him to shut up.
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basset said on February 16, 2015 at 10:34 am
We were quite looking forward to the SNL retrospective last night and couldn’t get through it, or even very far into it. I’m so out of touch that I didn’t recognize either of the two men who appeared first, or most of the people who kept walking onstage until they got to Paul McCartney and Paul Simon.
Twenty minutes in and still nothing from the old days… wait a minute, here’s a bunch of little pieces of old sketches edited together, apparently the idea there was to bring out catchphrases and references we’re supposed to relate to but most of them were unfamiliar. We made it as far as the Jeopardy game and said the hell with it, let’s look for the classic stuff on YouTube. And damned little of it there… the show advertised a SNL app you can use to find em but I don’t see it on the app store. And you kids get outa my yard, hear?
We did find this, though… used-up old prog fans like me who are familiar with the many permutations of King Crimson will find it just about unbelievable, at least I did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64VGyoIyBgc
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brian stouder said on February 16, 2015 at 10:46 am
Basset – you’re ahead of me; we never even tuned in.
Was the thing 3 hours? I’d as soon watch the Jerry Lewis telethon – which is to say – it was a non-starter for us
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coozledad said on February 16, 2015 at 10:57 am
If this guy ran a little black shoe polish through his hair, he’d be a ringer for the dead-eyed piece of trash our district sent to the state senate this past election. And he hails from Mississippi, too. Too much cousinfucking.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/four-grand-juries-later-mississippis-run-nr-run-judge-indicted-for-assault/
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coozledad said on February 16, 2015 at 10:59 am
Sorry, meant state house. Duke Energy sex crumpet Larry Yarborough.
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Joe K said on February 16, 2015 at 11:25 am
Basset,
I watched it and posted late last night about it, I’m with you I didn’t really know a lot of the performers, Chevy Chase I think has dementia, he looked bad, when they did the tribute to people that had passed on at the end Bill Murrey announced that General Franco was still dead.I laughed out loud on that, but I imagine only a few people got the joke. Sir Paul looked good but sounded off, Jayne Curtain was good, and Mylie nailed 50 ways to leave your lover.
Pilot Joe
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LAMary said on February 16, 2015 at 11:52 am
I watched the British Baking Competition or whatever it’s called and Downton Abbey last night. I don’t think I could have stayed awake through the whole SNL thing.
We saw John Waters last spring after my kids gave me a copy of his most recent book for mothers day which gave me a ticket to him talking about the book, taking Q and A and a book signing. He was very funny and a little dirty at that event too. There were also crazy fans who asked bizarre questions.
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brian stouder said on February 16, 2015 at 12:24 pm
OK Mary – you have intrigued me!
Give us an example (suitably edited, I suppose) of a crazy fan/bizarre question – please!
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Mouse said on February 16, 2015 at 12:36 pm
SNL tribute was just great,brought brought back a lot of good memories,watching the show through the weed smoke haze.Never been been much of a Miley fan(although she is pretty cute naked),I thought she just killed 50 Ways.
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Dorothy said on February 16, 2015 at 12:55 pm
We watched the first hour of SNL (3.5 hrs, Brian) and enjoyed most of wha we saw. Basset the first two youngsters you didn’t recognize were Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake. Unless you kept up with the shows even at a rate of 30-40% over the years, you’d probably be lost when they referred to past skits. The Jeopardy skit slayed me! Darrell Hammond doing Sean Connery is a guaranteed laugh. Tonight we can skip the commercials on the replay, probably saving us at least a half hour.
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Sue said on February 16, 2015 at 1:46 pm
Made it through 2 hours of the SNL special then had to give up.
Joe K, I think the problem with Chevy Chase last night is that he knew he was not among friends.
So I don’t see too many movies but I went to see Kingsman this weekend. I didn’t realize product placement had gotten so ridiculous. WTF, a McDonald’s commercial (basically) in the middle of a movie? Also at least half an hour too long, wow. On the plus side, Colin Firth.
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alex said on February 16, 2015 at 2:28 pm
Here’s a delightful time waster from the Rolling Stone that ranks SNL’s 141 cast members from worst to best.
I had no idea there had been 141 and didn’t recognize or remember most of them.
I haven’t found the show funny or edgy in years.
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Sherri said on February 16, 2015 at 2:37 pm
Who knew Mylie Cyrus actually had talent? I assumed all the twerking and tongue stuff was to hide a complete lack of talent, but I agree with everyone else, she was spectacular on 50 ways last night. I watched about half the show before giving up. I was expecting more clips. I’ll probably scan through the rest of it today to see if they buried more in the last half.
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LAMary said on February 16, 2015 at 2:50 pm
The fan/nut questions were of the sort that refers to some very minute detail in a movie. And the question would take fifteen minutes to ask.
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brian stouder said on February 16, 2015 at 3:16 pm
Arrrrrggghhh!!! I hate those!
The effect that folks who don’t know when to stop, in such a setting, is very like a fingernail scratching on a chalkboard.
‘Course, Pam always thinks that I talk too much*, if I venture a question or a comment at a public place
*her definition of “too much” = saying anything at all! Especially at school board meetings and the like
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 3:28 pm
Mylie Cyrus has a great singing voice, and a huge fan base…last week I heard some young guys discussing her very revealing photo shoots and videos and they agreed: to them she is a sexual turn on. Well, when I was a boy when Ike was President, I caught a glimpse of some Marilyn photos my uncle had posted up on his bedroom wall, and I knew that was the type of woman-form I appreciated most, and I eventually married a girl with that shape and looks, even. Yet Mylie looks like a boy, and turns these young men on.
Lady GaGa is another one; she offends so many with meat suits and her antics and penned lyrics, yet she can sing jazz as well as anyone in the past two generations, no shit Sherlock, it’s true.
Of course NBC had to run the show up against the NBA Showcase, the All-Star Game from New York City. No patience to watch one after the other via recordings. I flip-flopped and missed am lot of both.
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 3:31 pm
0 degrees here at 3:30 PM. Damn, Sam! http://espn.go.com/nba/allstar2015/story/_/id/12333530/saturday-night-live-special-dominates-nba-all-star-game-tv-ratings?src=mobile&rand=ref~%7B%22ref%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F%22%7D
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Suzanne said on February 16, 2015 at 4:01 pm
I’m in the minority on Miley & 50 Ways. I thought it started out great but fizzled. She was dressed decently enough, though. I’ll give her that.
I only watched the last hour or so of the show. It was a little too frenetic for me. But maybe I was just cranky from the cold and tired.
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Deborah said on February 16, 2015 at 4:01 pm
Does anyone have a link to Miley doing 50 Ways from last night’s SNL special. I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 4:11 pm
Suzanne and I agree. Miley seemed to be straining to finish that song. And hell, Paul Simon was right there…he could have sung it.
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 4:24 pm
And now cancer takes another great.
http://www.tmz.com/2015/02/16/lesley-gore-dead-its-my-party-dies-cancer/
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Jim Neill said on February 16, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Here you go Deborah. Fifth video from the top.
http://www.gostudioone.com/snl-40th-anniversary-special.html
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Jim Neill said on February 16, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Correction…Fourth video from the top.
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Deborah said on February 16, 2015 at 5:25 pm
How old was Leslie Gore when she died?
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LAMary said on February 16, 2015 at 5:35 pm
68
She recorded ” It’s my party” when she was 17.
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Jolene said on February 16, 2015 at 6:47 pm
Ta-Nehisi Coates won a Polk Awardfor his piece in The Atlantic on reparations. The awards are given annually for outstanding work in journalism.
The Times has a list of all the winners. Lots of good reading here.
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Jolene said on February 16, 2015 at 7:25 pm
Some SNL data,
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Jolene said on February 16, 2015 at 7:31 pm
Something to argue about: In honor of Presidents’ Day, a rank-ordered list of the best and worst presidents.
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Sherri said on February 16, 2015 at 7:53 pm
That President ranking list represents the kind of thing I dislike about Vox and Matthew Yglesias. Vox does some good stuff, but there’s a lot of superficial crap to wade through to find it. This could have been an interesting piece, if it appeared to have as much depth as a dorm room discussion of the merits of the Presidents, but throwing John Kennedy and Warren Harding, for example, into the same bucket without any real discussion of why is kind of mind-boggling. Really, Warren Harding?!
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coozledad said on February 16, 2015 at 7:56 pm
I have to take issue with 1.George Washington-Slaver, his handling of Shay’s rebellion, keeping the door open for the most venomous of the remaining soft Tories like Hamilton and 5.John Adams, who set the pattern of “if you don’t like it watch your mouth” so beloved of the classes who periodically invest the wealth of the commons in bullshit pyramid schemes.
Roosevelt was good, but he was white. Obama’s had a much steeper hill to climb, with the”loyal opposition” embracing every piece of shit from Putin to that jumped up Bush family satrap Netanyahu. Of course the Republicans(and their modern ideological forbears, the Dixiecrats) went for Hitler, and quite openly, until the Japanese fucked up the German timetable. I’d call it a tie.
George Herbert Walker Bush lost his ’64 Texas senate battle to a Democrat who recognized the necessity of the Civil Rights Act. This alone disqualifies him from recognition as a decent human being much less a decent president.
In 1964, Yarborough again won the primary without a runoff and went on to general election victory with 56.2 percent in LBJ’s 1964 Democratic landslide. His Republican Party (GOP) opponent was future president George Herbert Walker Bush, who attacked Yarborough as a left-wing demagogue and for his vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yarborough denounced Bush as an extremist to the right of that year’s GOP nominee for president Barry M. Goldwater and as a rich easterner and a carpetbagger trying to buy a Senate seat. It has since been learned that then Governor Connally was covertly aiding Bush instead of party nominee Yarborough against President Johnson’s wishes by teaching Democrats the techniques of split ticket voting.
That family has no legitimate place in our politics. It’s only the oil scuzz that keeps them there.
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 9:19 pm
My ancestors fought Washington’s command troops during The Whiskey Rebellion…I used to be proud of that…now I don’t give a shit nomo. George actually rode out to the battles…some disagree; I always believed it, but no more research from my end.
I am going to watch last week’s Backstrom now. Rainn Wilson plays a very weird investigator, show is set in rainy Portland, Oregon.
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 9:25 pm
HEROES. http://nypost.com/2015/02/16/woman-critically-injured-after-jumping-from-burning-building/
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Sherri said on February 16, 2015 at 9:29 pm
Now this is a good President’s Day list – the Presidents assigned to their matching college football power: http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2015/2/16/8046589/the-presidents-assigned-to-their-proper-schools
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coozledad said on February 16, 2015 at 10:16 pm
Dick Nixon will always be Duke-the failed quarterback sneak on two consecutive plays in two consecutive possessions.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 16, 2015 at 10:20 pm
This link, to the Medium-based syllabus he used last fall for a class I could only dream of taking, is an amazing thrill ride through how David Carr thought, and a vast window onto just how much we lost when he died. There are not enough writers out there like him.
https://medium.com/press-play/press-play-4b26bed77b7d
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brian stouder said on February 16, 2015 at 10:35 pm
Jolene – interesting list, indeed.
I was all set to reject the list right off the bat, when they ranked Washington ahead of Lincoln – who was truly head-and-shoulders above any and every other president, period.
But then when I saw the high rating for US Grant, I eased up.
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Dexter said on February 16, 2015 at 11:13 pm
Most of you won’t know who this man http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2015/02/16/martin-hoot-mcinerney-dies-detroit-auto-dealer/23508243/
was, but I can assume with confidence the Derringers know…he was a real giant in the automotive sales business in Detroit and other locales. I knew of him mostly for his philanthropy…J.P. McCarthy, the radio king until his death, spoke well of Hoot, and J.P.’s successor, Paul W. Smith, mentioned him often, as well as did old curmudgeon Frank Beckmann, all of WJR radio… business-wise, Hoot was all-Detroit, and he was proud of his Toyota dealership as well. I guess “buy American” is really dead. Hoot McInerney was the real deal alright.
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