Slow Paseo

Maybe it's the generally slow pace of my life on the dole right now, but I am really digging this wine called Slow Paseo. They make a great red and white, it's organic and it's $6.99 at Trader Joe's. Why not get two bottles for your afternoon of drinking and hopelessly emailing resumes?

The "Blue Sweater"

Can we please stop hearing from this broad with her "Blue Sweater" book, about how rich people and poor people connect? Enough!

Julia Allison won't leave me alone

Those of you who read Gawker regularly know far too much about Julia Allison. For those who don't, where do I begin?

She used to appear on TV a lot as an "Editor At Large" for Star Magazine talking about, you know, celebrities, then she was a dating columnist for Time Out New York, now she is some sort of "lifecaster" who runs a blog about herself (natch) and two one other real-life Sex and the City character and they go to parties, dress up in matching outfits and get photographed with people. (Bonus: the blog requires you to navigate with a horizontal scroll bar.)

Basically, she is everywhere in a certain corner of the internet, is generally reviled, and has the habit as referring to herself as a "brand".

Okay, so I'm ducking into a doorway in the East Village this morning to light a cigarette and my eyes wander to this:




















Is this that Julia Allison?

If so, this would prove she actually is a real person, not an ad agency composite like Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima.

Also, true fame can only (but may not) happen when you make yourself ubiquitous. If this is her place of residence, Kudos to Allison for putting her full name, sorry, brand, in her building's buzzer listing.

Julia, don't ever stop.

? at Trader Joe's Wine Shop

Just picked up a bottle of "?" which is a new red from California at Trader Joe's Wine Shop in Manhattan., $5.99. Went great with my smoked turkey, ham and cheese samich at lunch. Very drinkable, very cheap.

The Battle for the Conservative Soul

There is a highly entertaining battle going on in conservative circles and the Republican party over the Soul of Conservatism. In one corner you have mostly east coast conservative intellectuals and moderate Republicans like David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, George Will and Olympia Snowe arguing that the last eight years have been a nightmare for average people and that's why the voters are heavily trending Democrat. These sensible conservatives recognize that the Bush tax cuts did exactly nothing for working people, the Iraq war was and is an avoidable boondoggle, global warming is a real threat, and gay marriage is a non-issue for people under 30. They understand that their party has been on the wrong side of these issues for the last decade and that their party has lost these battles.

In the other corner we have the unhinged, blathering, tone-deaf extremists like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sarah Palin and my old classmate Andrew Breitbart, seeming to think we are in some sort of Lost time loop that won't let us out of 2003. To them tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy have saved the economy, the mission in Iraq has been accomplished, environmentalists are wimps, and gay marriage is an outrage. All we need is Four More Years! This camp has apparently learned nothing from the last two elections. They imagine some sort of hidden constituency that will only show its face if the party goes more retrograde and extremist. Hey why not try to repeal civil rights legislation and women's suffrage while we are at it? Perhaps we could restore the Colonial era death penalty for homosexuality? That oughtta bring out the voters!

The fact of the matter is that the Lost Decade, or the first decade of the 21st Century, is already over. We handed it to the neocons and in return they took everything we had and ran. The next decade (the Teens I suppose) belongs to us socially liberal/fiscally responsible types, the Democrats and moderate Republicans.

(And don't pay any attention to revisionists who would paint the Republicans as fiscally responsible: they demanded hundreds of billions to dump into Iraq and handed the drug companies more billions in the form of Medicare Part D. These people don't invest in our country, they hand out our money as gifts to their friends and corporate allies.)

Personally, I would just as soon see the delusional, backward conservatives take over the Republican party and nominate Rush for the presidency in 2012. This would free the moderates in their party to become Democrats.

Then the Party of No becomes the Party of Nothing :-)

Dark Magic

The video of the song we produced, "La Bruja", with the downtown glitter mafia known as Escandalo is done! It's up on that video site - what's it called again? - oh yeah, YouTube. The various mixes are available on iTunes and Juno for your iPads as well (I particularly like the Max Tannone remix, as well as the original of course). Watch, listen, buy!

The Lost Decade

It seems to be a perfect accident of history that we had the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and then the whatever-this-is-s. In the late 90s there were a bunch of clever clever folks who wanted to call this decade the Naughties. You see, "naught" is some sort of ancient British term for zero and this decade was going to be so very naughty, what with all the gay sex and subversive theatre and such. Thank God that term didn't stick.

What we got instead was a horrifying waste of time and resources, a stupid unwinnable war in Iraq in which we are only now recognizing Iran as the beneficiary, and a whole bunch of counterproductive bloviating by the Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs and Andrew Breitbarts of the world.

It was as if the 20th Century threw up on the 21st Century.

And here in 2009, with no one able to do so much as find a job, we are finding that the last 10 years, so full of new century optimism in the beginning, was entirely lost to Bush/Cheney and the like.

Only now do we realize it has been a Lost Decade. May we never surrender another ten years to such malevolent, incompentent assholes.

In which we review what just happened here

Well it seems that Andrew Breitbart (the founder of the right wing blog Big Hollywood) and his band of goons have left me now, and I have to say it is not without some wistfulness on my part.

As you know, it all started with my now disputed recollection that Breitbart hung with a druggy crowd and was a bully in high school. This attracted the ire of Signore Breitbart and his crew of internet sycophants, leading to the most traffic I have ever had on this blog (!) and a whole lot of lawsuit threats/general right wing thuggery in the comments. All of those comments remain on this blog for all to see. The only one that I deleted throughout this whole thing was one that I wrote.

Let us now pause to review the lofty rhetoric that took place last week in the comments:

My personal favorite came from Annie Hamilton. Let me introduce her by quoting from her Blogger profile:

"After undergoing brain surgery everything about life changed for me, including the way I think. I've had to rethink, relearn and reprocess much information over the course of several years and I've learned that I'm not as liberal as I thought."

Okay, now come with the hate:

"So, back to the anonymous Pussy Obamatard - keep sucking down that koolaid, idiot. but don't think for a second that it makes your 'leader' an admirable person. 47 % of the country didn't vote for your New Muhammed. and your doofus Kenya born Black Jesus took the third biggest payout [blah blah blah]"

Annie, if you're out there, please come back and provide us more details about your brain surgery!

It turns out that I'm not the only one who is "anonymous" on the internet. From Anonymous #1:

"Stick to manual labor, bro. You do not belong in a thinking man's world. Your writing is pure emotionalism that speaks more of your embarassing lack of intellect than it does of your deep, grand insights. Seriously, see a shrink and leave all this hateful petty masterbation [sic] to your sad lonely private time with porn."

Plees leev my masterbation habuts out of this.

From Anonymous #2 (or more from Anonymous #1, we can't tell!), the first of many calls for the conservative, trial-lawyer-hating Breitbart to sue me:

"Wow glad I'm not you dude .. hope Andrew is a forgiving guy and doesn't ring his lawyer after that rant."

I'm kind of hoping he does.

From J.W., more lawsuit threats:

"I wish him and his lawyers well.
(Hey Annie- your comments were great- I couldn't even start to compete!)"

I wholeheartedly agree. Her comment was my favorite too! But our dear Annie is a humble sort:

"J.W., you did just fine! and there's plenty of us 'crazy' conservatives out here in southern california! some of us know how to say 'no' to koolaid!! I quit abusing chemicals a long time ago! lol...once you grow up, have a family and figure out that there is a 'world' beyond your 'hair' products and the day after tomorrow, you wake up quickly. that was...oh, twelve years ago?"

Annie, I am 'glad' that you are 'no longer' a drug addict and had brain surgery. It's all fixed now! But notice in the second paragraph the self-congratulatory "I work so hard and that's why I'm a conservative" bullshit we see in so many of the Breitbartian posts:

"truly don't understand the mentality of liberals - it's so self serving and hypocritical. If people focused more on working their asses off, focused on responsibility, accountability, traditional values and social compassion - none of it would even be a point."

But I like my ass. I'm not interested it "working [it] off". I would rather work less hard, rely on reasonable social programs and still have an ass.

But now Annie gets dark on me:

"you're an idiot. don't you have a freeway to play in?"

I'm sorry, but we mainly have parkways and turnpikes here.

I don't really understand whose side Anonymous #3 is on:

"Andrew is right about you. Your observational skills are sorely lacking.

He is NOT a bully. He is in fact a pathological narcissist, himself long victimized by left-leaning West-Los Angeles elitists who failed to enshrine him with the proper attention while he was growing up.

Once again, liberal tyranny has failed to see past itself."

Woah, you just blew my mind!

From Anonymous #4, the dark hat who supposedly tracked my IP address for some reason even though it would take about 5 minutes of reading my blog and following my various music links to figure out who I am. Good work!:

"Who needs a lawyer when you have someone (like me) who is a geek- and can capture IP addresses and find out who idiots are?
I love my work!

Thanks Nic Fic- have a joke, smoke and a TOKE-
And expect a knock on the door shortly.
You cannot think the internet will let you get away with this- there are laws.
And YOU have been caught!"

There are laws. I'm just not sure which one I have been "caught" violating or who would bother knocking on my door.

Anonymous #5 is advocating caution:

"Question for anonymous lawyer guy: Is it cool for ol' Andy to sick his followers on this person the way he has? Might that be considered bullying? I mean, we're spending 100 large to on that stupid Matt Damon dare. Andy's rich, even though he was adopted, but legal costs kind of add up. Should we just stand down on this one and go back to thinking up names to call Obama?"

Answer: it's completely fine for ol' Andy to sick his followers on this person. This person kind of misses them. But yes, it is kind of bullying. Now what about this "100 large to on that stupid Matt Damon dare"? Please provide details.

But now Robot #5 has rebooted and is awaiting orders:

"I'll stand down now until Andy tells me what to do next."

You do that.

Anonymous #6 wants to "prosecute":

"Probably should take the page down- from what I have read.
What a jerk!
I am sure that Breitbart has all he needs to prosecute."

Hey, don't bother. One of those Obamatard liberal prosecutors would probably just plea bargain down to probation.

At this point the commenters turn on each other and start recommending various cleanse therapies and colonics because they are so full of shit. I agree.

Thank you everyone. This has been fun.

-Bryan (aka Nic Fit)

Full comments

Half off of $10 at Warehouse Liquors

Tonight I've been self medicating with a decent bottle I picked up at Warehouse Liquors for $4.99. Look for the Cantina di Montalcino Sangiovese in the bin at the left as you walk in.

Warehouse Liquors is located on Broadway and Astor Place in Manhattan.

(And to that conservative commenter who told me that because of my work ethic I will never enjoy a bottle of Chateau La blah blah blah, I think I'll live.)

Rhetorical Knots

So John Nolte (presumably Nick Nolte's less successful son and editor of, you guessed it, Big Hollywood) has his knickers in a twist today over some LA Times film critic claiming that long-dead (and largely forgotten) actor Randolph Scott was gay. The nerve!

Apparently Scott lived with (long-rumored light-in-the-loafers) Cary Grant for 12 years in Malibu, though both were very well-paid stars and could easily have afforded their own Malibu homes. But, hey, Nolte tells us, it was their bachelor pad. Okay, bro. He then goes on to "defend" Randolph Scott from this scurrilous accusation. Oh, and of course those of us on the left aren't allowed to question the idea that one's sexual orientation can be the basis of an "accusation":

Defending Scott against such charges can only mean one is anti-gay, right?

Well, how about pro-truth and pro-fairness?

The truth is that (according to Nolte's own post) Scott's and Grant's sexuality have been under dispute for years. Both men denied being gay repeatedly, which is not surprising considering that the alternative at that time was never working in Hollywood again. But, who knows, maybe they just liked having unnecessary roommates, like Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick.

But why is Nolte so worked up about an offhand assumption (which many people share) in some article about some early 20th Century actor?

Oh I'm sorry. I can't say that it's because Nolte thinks that being identified as gay is a bad thing. That would mean that I think that Nolte's "defending" against such "charges" is inherently anti-gay.

Yes, it would.

---

And by the way, at what point did the American right become sensitive about being called anti-gay? Wasn't that their official position for most of the 20th Century? What are you, a pansy?