UPDATE: The Juice Is No Longer Loose

Orenthal James Simpson
FREE MAN
July 9, 1947 - December 5, 2008

Watch Judge Jackie Glass lay the karmic wood to OJ and see The Juice's subsequent reaction. What a long strange trip it's been.

Original Post: October 4, 2008

Vodka Baths and Secret Police Dreams

To get an idea of just how hard the Ruskies have been hit by the global economic slump, look at recent market statistics on the country's most vital commodity. Not oil. Vodka. Newly impoverished Russians can no longer afford their national spirit. Sales are plummeting and stockpiles are soaring. The government says that store shelves are stocked with six times as much unsold vodka as last year at this time.

"People are having to save money, including on drinks, and this is connected to the impact of the financial crisis on people's disposable incomes," Pavel Shapkin, president of the National Alcohol Association, told Reuters. It's enough to drive Russians to drink. And it has. Shapkin said that 1,458 people died of alcohol poisoning in September, most of them after drinking homemade or bootleg spirits that are cheaper than store-bought vodka. It was the first time that alcohol poisonings grew in Russia since 2006.

That prompted vodkamakers to call for an American-style solution: a government bailout."At times like this, any grandmother can collect some old bottles, fill them with whatever she wants, and sell them to the alcoholics that are trying to save some money," Shapkin said. "The government has to do something for these people trying to afford the most basic essentials in life."

This is one case where the Russians are luckier than us because our government is too busy helping out Banks and Cars to be looking out for Joe Alcoholic. But heck it's easy enough to make your own hooch. Be Still My Liver.

Fat Asses Love Hot Weather

Louisiana is America’s sickest state. An annual state-by-state report that measures factors like smoking, obesity, and health insurance coverage put the Bayou State in health hurt locker and free-thinking Vermont at the top. But who's happier? One hint. GUMBO

The five healthiest states are:
Vermont
Hawaii
New Hampshire
Minnesota
Utah

And the five unhealthiest:
Texas*
Tennessee
South Carolina
Mississippi
Louisiana

California and New York were smack dab in the middle just like that delicious extra slice of bun in a McDonald's Big Mac.

Sherman and Peabody Spin the Globe of History

The sordid history of Sherman and Peabody themselves.

Klaus Kinski is a Fun Guy

"Why am I a whore?" That's the question the late German-born actor Klaus Kinski asks himself early in this wildly raw and misanthropic memoir, and it's a query with multiple meanings. "Kinski Uncut," which is finally being issued in an unexpurgated English version after becoming a cult favorite overseas (it has been published in six languages), is an almost satirically dark tour through the primordial ooze of Kinski's inflated ego. Brimming with buggery, bigotry and mindless violence, it reads like a (muddled) Celine novel as updated by Keith Richards' dark twin. It's unlike any celebrity bio ever put to paper.

Kinski's Cassanovian pursuit of sex ("I need love! Love! Nonstop!") gives the book its narrative push -- from roughly the age of 10, he feasts on nuns, teenagers, the teenager's mothers or whatever sack of animate female flesh falls into his path. Unfortunately, Kinski's whorishness extended into his career, too. While he appeared in a handful of memorable films ("Nosferatu," "Fitzcarraldo," "Aguirre: The Wrath of God"), the haunted-eyed actor also made literally hundreds of schlock-filled quickies, sometimes as many as 11 per year.

Kinski doesn't provide much New Age analysis of how he found himself locked into such a bitter, isolated spiral. Chapters on his impoverished upbringing in prewar Berlin, where he stole food to survive, and his conscription into the German army in World War II offer meager clues. His various wives and his daughter, the actress Nastassja Kinski, receive only the barest mentions.

Kinski spends more time blasting directors he's worked with. Werner Herzog, with whom he made his best films, is called a (take a deep breath) "miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, blackmailing, cowardly, thoroughly dishonest creep." Steven Spielberg offers Kinski a part in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but he turns it down because the script is "moronically shitty." David Lean "has a red Rolls-Royce Cabriolet, which, aside from the satyr [Kinski's latest sex toy], is what interests me most about making 'Zhivago.'"

Needless to say, this kind of nonstop venom isn't for the squeamish -- and maybe it's not for anyone. But "Kinski Uncut" does have a kind of raffish, gothic, back-lit charm. A compendium of sick thrills, it is -- if nothing else -- a fail-safe antidote to a shelf of bright, happy, as-told-to biographies.

~Dwight Garner

Jacked To The Gills: Mumbai Terrorists on LSD & Coke

Just like the Mahdi militiamen of Fallujah, it turns out the Lashkar-e-Taibat in Mumbai were out of their minds on drugs. The Pakistani bred terrorists used the nominally recreational drugs of lsd and coke to prolong their murderous rampages.


So to recap the current world at war drug sponsors: Somali pirates have their khat, the Taliban musketeers have their heroin, the Mahdi army has their epinephrine and now the Paki's have lsd and cocaine.

But what in the name of pharmacology is propping up our American GI's in the face of this mind bending enemy? 3.2 'near beer' and extra strength Tylenol? This is a psychotropic culture war America should be able to creatively dominate. We invented the 60's! Can't we co-opt some of our Latin American cocaine buddies like Reagan did with the Contras and turn the tables on these drug gobblin zealots? In the meantime, someone in Williamsburg please call your guy, our fighting men and women need spacefood STAT!

Who knew our homegrown epitome of debauchery the Merry Pranksters would one day become the raison d'être for religious psychopaths the world over. Mercy!

Related Posts~
A Drug For Every Age

Axl vs Kanye

The formerly blissed-out music critic Simon Reynolds
does a fine job of separating the wheat from the chaff
in The Egos Have Landed, a deft examination of the
methodical madness of both Axl's Chinese Democracy
and Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak. On behalf of Simon and myself,
could we please step away from the ProTools?

Passé Comitatus Already

Having never met a law or constitutional stipulation he liked, George Bubya is planning to illegally militarize our cities to the tune of 20,000 armed soldiers. The Civil War era Posse Comitatus Act was devised explicitly to prohibit this type of troop deployment within the borders of the United States and while it has long stood as the final bulwark against a nefarious government, its provisos have slowly been eroded by the malignant Big Brother/New World Order mission. This final bushwacking, which began with the so-called “war on drugs," is a wholesale overturn of the Act under the guise of “disaster preparedness.” Once again, the specter of 9/11 is being used to undermine the constitution and our civil protections.

Our already overstretched military will now be deployed within the United States “just in case” there are multiple simultaneous mass terrorist attacks. I thought the government had tapped our phones specifically to prevent this kind of bad guy action. Now we are supposed to relax in the knowledge that when the bombs go off, the US military will be there to shoot anyone left milling about? Convenient timing Mumbai. Alex Jones and Naomi Klein are gonna shit themselves when they see this report from The Real News Network featuring Bruce Fein.


UPDATE: Alex Jones wades into the fray.

Lest We Forget

Before you christen India's problems as so very different from our own, consider this recent run of similarity. In 2004, twenty-one women were killed in the northern Indian city of Lucknow after the promise of free saris set off a stampede. The lure of discounted stylish wraps had 10,000 people lined up in advance and turned the women into animals. While in the States on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, anxious shoppers breached the doors of a Wal-Mart and their mad dash killed a 34-year-old male employee. The Black Friday stampede on Long Island was fueled by the promise of consumer electronic bargains. What wouldn't you do for flat screen plasma?

Chanting "push the doors in," the crowd of 2000 pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening. Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers. It didn't work. The mob barreled in and bum-rushed. When the Christmastime madness ended, Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

Lest we forget the murderous tragedy of Bombay, it should be noted that much of India's spiritual life is so dedicated to the possibility of reincarnation they refrain from killing even bugs. Jainism is one of the worlds oldest and most influential religions while Long Islanders are resolutely dedicated to the worship of affluence. Sadly, in both cases the crushing desire for material goods will forevermore be associated with the trampling of human life. I guess we should thank Lakshmi that among the advertised specials there were no discounted saris.

Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as "The Incredible Hulk" for $9.

Jon Swift: President Bush Should Pardon the Wal-Mart Shoppers

For the Last Time Hitler was Not a Monorchid

Ron Rosenbaum is tired of all the bullshit about Hitler's light nut-sack theories and wishes you would just read his book, Explaining Hitler. Rosenbaum is a smart guy writing knowingly about the hidden aspects of culture and his pieces in Slate are on my regular internet highway stop. The tantalizing subjects of his work include the link between Yale's Skull and Bones Society and the CIA; J.D. Salinger's walled-in house; the Zagat restaurant guide; Borges's efforts to disprove the existence of Time; the Shakespeare Wars and an homage to my personel favorite Charles Portis. But this unending Hitler sex concern is worrisome. Don't get me wrong, its fascinating stuff but i am starting to wonder who has Rosenbaum's balls in a bind.

What They Hate About Mumbai

My bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.

Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.

Suketu Mehta, a professor of journalism at New York University, is the author of "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.”
To read the full article of What They Hate About Mumbai go to the NYT



And a piece by Christopher HitchensOur Friends in Bombay














An interesting book about life in Mumbai by
Gregory David Roberts, who obviously loves it.

UPDATE: And Another Reason To Hate The Taliban

As we pointed out on 10/03/08, the Taliban, like some James Bond supervillian are attempting to corner the market on opium. Not since Auric Goldfinger starting painting prostitutes gold has such an insidious plot been hatched. The Taliban are pushers plain and simple, able to justify anything for their fucked up beliefs. Goldfinger at least had style and put his treasure to use in some original, albeit mad scientist ways. His obsession with gold was explicitly sexually: the yellow briefs, a collection of yellow-jacketed pornographic books and his penchant for fucking gold-painted women. He traveled in a yellow-painted car, employed a blonde secretary and even had a ginger cat. Though the cat was sadly eaten by Oddjob, his Korean henchman, who in hindsight and despite fricasseeing said feline seems a much better guy than the Taliban's Mullah Omar.

Goldfinger's colorful crimes were endearing compared to a hardline bunch of ignorant, psychotic fiends embracing pseudo-science and fairy tales of genies and angels. Caught in the grip of Muslim orthodoxy, the Taliban champion revelation over reason and predestination over free will. Like Mao they fear educated masses more than anything and their damning of mathematics as being against Islam is just one of the ethical glitches in their arch-evil manipulation of opium market forces. You have to wonder if these charlatans in beard and robe are dark age authoritarians who just need an Ian Fleming-type PR flack spinning 'drug dealer as hero tales' from the back of the cave.

Edible Brooklynite: John McSwain

The Jihadis among us talk of the promise of a Paradise complete with 99 black-eyed virgins. It's a nice lure but eternity with a bunch of hardline buzz-kill fundamentalists sounds like a perpetual pain in the ass and that's not a pun aimed at middle easterners' purported predisposition towards homosexuality. Though perhaps that should be a concern. I mean, how else could there be that many virgins left over to begin with?



Owning a patch of Paradise filled with nubile innocents sounds great except for a few years of awkward missionary sex. You'd need patience and a helluva sense of humor and there's only one guy I know enlightened enough to turn that scenario into nirvana, the perpetually effervescent John McSwain. This tall Floridian drink of water, with a bourbon back, has his own vision of Paradise, the Cheeseburger tattooed on his arm. So if McSwain can manage to die in Jihad and there's no swine in his burger recipe, looks to me like we have redefined heaven. And with plenty of burqa'd carhops to spare, the prospect of Paradise is looking better one bite at a time. Lets just call it McSwain's VirginBurgers and everybody willing to die is welcome.

For franchise information...

PS: If you Jewish guys wanna get in on the virgin land rush, we can '86 the cheese.

There's No Place Like Home

This peek at 70's rock stars in their parent's homes is illuminating for contrasting generations and its overall innocence. It's cute to see Frank Zappa, Grace Slick, David Crosby, the Jacksons, and Elton John hanging with their peeps in what are now somewhat patronizingly termed vintage surroundings. Just imagine the antique pickers frothing at the mouth over these mythical digs.

Still everyone's place looks a bit square and sad without a flat screen television to dominate the space. How on earth did they manage? It's no wonder they became minstrels, their parents were obviously Luddites forcing them to play stringed instruments and read (gasp) books. Regardless, I bet their libraries didn't hold a candle to this mad scientist's refuge. That there is some real star power.

Ruck Fussia

After reading my prediction that Zimbabwe is doomed, Russian politico Igor Panarin counters with the assertion that the USA is done for and it will soon split into 6 parts. You know what this means? More government!

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, Panarin said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles." He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions." He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong. He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all."

Governor Palin, can't you do something about this Russian incursion into the American pysche? How stupid could we have been to let those Michiganders have control of all our cars.

Do The Collapse Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has been a country for 28 years but it looks like the honeymoon is over. It's hard to say the place is even on the brink of collapse so far down is the situation. The former Southern Rhodesia is a place famous in the British book of imperialist venture. A land renowned for hunting and exploration. Robert Baden-Powell's scouting movement, the parent to Boy Scouts of America was founded there. But few would argue that the 20th century has been a spiraling nightmare for the former British colony as mercenaries fought brutal unending wars all across Africa in attempts to prop up white rule. Since Zimbabwe's creation at the end of Rhodesian Bush War it has gotten progressively uglier and uglier. President Robert Mugabe once thought to be a savior not only for Zimbabwe but all of black Africa has run place into the ground, chasing success away at the expense of authoritarian control. All semblance of order, economy or national direction is lost. It's clear Mugabe is no boy scout though neither was Cecil Rhodes nor Ian Smith leaders of white rule in Rhodesia before him. The stories of war are so entertwined with place that even a hippie like Warren Zevon penned a song, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner about the dark mayhem Africa has lived through. See also the Congo

The Mugabe of today is an obvious tyrant living an "Emperor's New Clothes" existence. Jimmy Carter said yesterday from a news conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I think it's the established policy of the Mugabe government that there's no crisis in Zimbabwe. The entire basic structure in education, healthcare, feeding people, social services and sanitation has broken down. These are all indications that the crisis in Zimbabwe is much greater, much worse than we had ever imagined.

And now we find a country with no health controls locked in the grasp of a cholera epidemic that's threatening to decimate hoards of people. And there is no cavalry, no one is coming to Zimbabwe's rescue. Sometimes its hard to imagine this kind of shit. Endless death shits.

Do The Collapse is of course reference to a Guided by Voices record produced by Ric Ocasek. The album signaled GBV's ditching of the lo-fi Dayton sound for promise of the big time. Hopefully, someday Zimbabwe can ditch its lo-fi history and turn a corner to peace and prosperity but until then, don't drink the water brother!

Frontline has some incredible resources about Zimbabwe and the disasters of Mugabe

UPDATE: A death warrant has been issued with immediate effect to all Zimbabweans following the closure of major government hospitals and clinics countrywide.

What Would Jack Ruby Do?

What the fuck was Ruby thinking?

The Breeders Will Have Their Say

The New York Times jumps our train from 11/13 noting that Rev. Ed Young of The Fellowship is still at it. His campaign drive for non-stop reproduction of little jesus freaks is entering it's second week. Seven days may have been good enough to create the earth but these guys are after something fundamentally different than the birth of a diverse and evolving planet.

Conservative groups as diverse as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference are all aboard with the The Fellowship's religious factory farming initiative and are driving national birthrates sky high. These guys make old fashioned Roman Catholics look like prudes. And while good god-fearing people at home having sex with the people they love may not come as a shock they are a definite impact on the population and the political fortunes of the US. In comparison to say the lackuster mating rituals of Vermont free-thinkers, George Clooney, american intellectuals, power lesbians, computer engineers, and even those lovable lunkheads at Jackass, it would seem America is going to get more and more religious and more and more conservative as these babies come of age. So whenever you have a chance young intellectual, forgo the prophylactic and breed. Tell your gal it's for the intellectual good of the country, The floundering economy may have killed the space race but the sex race is officially on, so Mr President you better make some hay while the sun is shining or at least get in there knock boots with Michelle. Planned parenthood indeed.

D.B. Cooper Outed!

Deep Throat and D.B. Cooper were the two most mysteriously elusive characters of the last half of the 20th Century. Not long after Mark Felt was fingered as Deep Throat, attorney Galen Cook is positing that Bill Gossett, an ex-Marine who lived out his days undiscovered in Oregon, was D.B. Cooper. The identity of the legendary skyjacker has eluded the vaunted FBI since he jumped from of a Boeing 727 with 200,000 dollars somewhere over Washington State on the night of November 24, 1971. The FBI has investigated over 200 suspects but none has ever been confirmed as the skyjacker and the FBI has publicly stated that they don't believe the skyjacker survived the jump. The tale of that night has since entered into the realm American Folklore and the mysterious perp emerging a legend.

But Cook begs to differ and can be heard here a few months ago discussing the case. Since then he's named Bill Gossett as his definitive pick for the real D.B. Cooper.

According to Bill Gossett's son Greg, Gossett told his three sons he was the skyjacker and often spoke of the D.B. Cooper skyjacking even telling one of his wives that he could "write the epitaph for D.B. Cooper." Jumping from a 727 is no bullshit so it was always assumed that whomever the crazy bastard was he had some experience. Gossett indeed had parachute trained with the Marines in 1964 would have been 41 on that fateful Thanksgiving Eve 1971 when he plummeted scot free into infamy.

Now a Salt Lake City judge and friend recounts that "In 1977 he walked into my office and closed the door and said he was D.B. Cooper. I told him to keep his mouth shut and don't do anything stupid, and not to bring it up again." Gossett outfoxed the whole world by doing just that. He kept his mouth shut and didn't do anything stupid. His skyjacking remains a legendary exploit and it's about time the right guy got the credit.

Now with those two mysteries characters identified, if somebody could just tell me who the fuck Mullah Omar is I could get on with my life.

Texas Is The Reason or Shoot Here

An old man told me that growing up in Dallas his 1st birthday party just happened to be on the very day John F Kennedy was assassinated across town. He strongly remembered all the mothers crying around the television and the party ending abruptly with his father cleaning his rifle. Since then theories have abounded about what happened to JFK on November in Dealey Plaza and his birthdays have always been a bit of a bummer. Thanks for the anniversary, Texas.



There is the extended play version of what happened on November 22, 1963 as well as the jauntier Misfits' single.