Tag Archives: Liz Lemon Gif

11.24.19
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The Glory of Denial

Denial just ain’t a river in Egypt.   — Mark Twain

What a week!

A gaggle of witnesses in the impeachment hearings of Electoral College POTUS Donald J. Trump sat before the House Intelligence Committee all testifying to essentially the same thing.

That thing is that Trump explicitly or implicitly threatened to withhold many millions of dollars of previously approved military aid to the Ukraine unless its new president agreed to investigate Joe Biden, Trump’s chief Democratic rival for re-election in 2020, for corruption.

sighhhhh

Then, an even bigger gaggle of other candidates competing for the Democratic nomination against Biden, who, you might remember from the previous paragraph, is STILL the leading candidate vying to compete against Trump to become the next Electoral College (and maybe even Popular Vote) POTUS, stood on an Atlanta debate stage on one of those evenings trading verbal barbs, sincere looks and well-thought out albeit pre-scripted arguments, in support of themselves.

Maya Rudolph as Kamala on SNL is your Christmas present 2019

Though most of them were ostensibly aimed at each other what they all were really targeting was a growing national and international audience waiting with bated breath to see which of them will become THE lucky gladiator chosen to face Trump in a virtual death match at the Hillary Clinton Coliseum of Public Ridicule to become not only leader of the US but King, or Queen, of the Free World.

Can you even stand it?

That was a rhetorical question.

It’s difficult to be an American citizen right now and go for even a single day where the subject of Trump, impeachment, Democratic candidates and the ubiquitous expression of quid pro quo doesn’t come up somewhere or at some time.

Even if you choose not to discuss it, you will doubtless be in some coffee shop, office building or household where it’s the prime subject or find yourself dragged into a discussion or gibe simply because you’re in the vicinity of something or someone determined to make their own remark, get your goat or simply express an opinion that makes you want to set your hair on fire or eat a package of Ding Dongs.

Or both.

We’ve all been Liz Lemon since 2016

If you participate in any of this too often it begins to feel like abuse, often self-abuse.  But ignore it for too long, e.g. more than a day, and you feel like a partying extra at the Kit Kat Club in the movie version of Cabaret.

Speaking of movies, there is a brilliant one out now from famed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar called Pain and Glory.  It is a semi-autobiographical tale about a film director in chronic pain who turns to smoking heroin as a means of denying both the medical and psychological challenges in his life, only one of which is getting older.

See you at the Oscars Antonio!

It is a deep, riveting metaphor for the lives we are all living now, despite how much critics, audiences and award givers will prefer Joker, Marriage Story, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and even Knives Out.  Heck, after the week we’ve just had a spoof of an Agatha Christie film like Knives Out with James Bond-ian Daniel Craig as the 2019 bumbling version of Hercule Poirot enduring the bitchy bon mots of a stylish rich boy played by Chris (Captain America) Evans, sounds preferable to this American citizen.

CHRIS EVANS IN A SWEATER! CHRIS EVANS IN A SWEATER! #swoon

Still, despite the glorious denial escapist entertainment offers and fulfills, it is that very critique the Almodovar film cautions us about glorifying in for too long.

To deny the reality we are living by whatever means available to us is okay for a while.  Most people don’t die from a brief encounter with their drug of choice, be it heroin, big screen entertainment, a chocolate cake cleanse or even a small string of indiscreet online sexual encounters instantly regrettable the following morning.

… or a Billy on the Street Netflix Marathon #elenaforever

But a wise filmmaker like Almodovar warns us with Pain and Glory that escape and denial will only get us so far.  Go down that road for too long and you will lose not only your focus but your health and your moral center.  Yet he also assures us that to simply continue as we are and not try something else, some new means of escape, is to remain stagnant in our miseries.

It is only through our journeys to throw enough stuff up in the air and explore an alternate road that we get insight and, hopefully, wisdom into who we are and what we’ve lost, or actually gained, in the process.

Wait… isn’t this the plot of Frozen 2???

Each event in its entire story is a metaphor for the risks and benefits of trying something new, and the costs of denial when we refuse to admit that merely going down a new road where we pick up a few pieces of gold, or golden wisdom, is no excuse for throwing the rest and best of US, nee our lives, away.

If ever there were a movie for this week and our Trumpian times it is this one, not a biopic offering life lessons from Mister Rogers or a whodunit about the kind of cartoonish, unsavory characters that are all too recognizable when we turn on our TV news shows of choice and gawk at our favorite partisan heroes and villains in Washington, DC. Certainly there are pleasures to be had in the above two films as well as many other diversions of choice.

but but but.. JAMIE LEE!!!  #knivesout

But now is not the time for any of us to revel too long in the glory, and the glory of denial, that they offer.

Especially not after the week we’ve just had and the ones that are inevitably coming ‘round the bend.

Randy Rainbow – “He’s Just a GURL Who’ll QUID PRO QUO!”

01.06.19
by

Cadavers in Revolt

NO, Kevin Hart will NOT host the Oscars this year despite self-elected Queen of Us Gays Ellen DeGeneres’ efforts to allow him to do so.

And NO, newly minted Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was NOT smeared when right wing Republicans began re-tweeting a video of her fabulous self doing the Breakfast Club dance back in college.

And CERTAINLY NO, not even newly minted Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) became marginalized EVEN SLIGHTLY when Trump tried to chastise her this week for saying: WE’RE GONNA IMPEACH THE MOTHERF-CKER! 

That way of thinking is SO, SO, SOOOOO 2015.   If you haven’t been keeping up with the times, well, the rest of us have.  So you wanted the guardrails off, well guess what?

THE GUARDRAILS ARE OFF, MOTHER F-CKERS!  GET OUT OF OUR GOD D-MNED WAYS OR WE WILL CUT YOUR D—CKS OFF AND FEED THEM TO YOU FOR BREAKFAST.   Yeah, you too, Ellen.

Oh it’s about to GO DOWN

Oh, and finally, guess what what?  No way in the god d-mned world will I ever be marginalized, ostracized or slightly, even vaguely, smeared by writing that.  Sure, this is a blog but I do have a watchful editor and as any self-respecting WOKE FEMALE in 2019, SHE (Note: My editor, yeah, she’s a GIRL) is certainly, totally on board with that…and more.

I gotchu Chairy

You can’t have it both ways, kids.  All this faux outrage only works when you recognize there are standards and practices, things you can’t say or don’t say in polite company and intellectual discourse.  Norms one follows and morals one adheres to that are generally accepted by the whole of society, or at least by a majority of Electoral College and/or Motion Picture Academy voters.

But when you spend two years (and in some cases, many more) either subverting or ignoring those parameters in hopes of a Supreme Court justice or two, career fame and fortune or just plain expanding your audience in hopes of world-view domination, you DO NOT GET TO COMPLAIN NOW.

I guess kudos for being consistent #ignorance

All right, sure, you get to complain.  Yell and scream all you want, it’s a free country, right now.  But do NOT expect it to register much.  The general American zeitgeist may not be too swift on the whole but on the whole they do eventually get what’s faux and what is most certainly cadaverous outrage.

This temper tantrum you’re now having about the majority speaking up and grabbing some of the power you slyly and not so slyly stole from us in your attempts to marginalize anyone who didn’t agree with you, or worse yet, render them voiceless, these days registers as nothing more and nothing less than:

CADAVERS IN REVOLT.

You WISH you had these moves

Give me a friggin’ break, Ellen.  People that don’t want Kevin Hart to host the Oscars because he made AIDS jokes in 2004 and apologized by way of saying it was a different time then, are HATERS?  (Note:  Your words, hon, not mine).

And seriously, Congressmen, you’re going to actually BOO Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and no one else when she cast her vote for Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House? And then say they were just playful boos?  What are you, eleven?  Are you playing kickball?  If you have a secret crush on her, why not playfully just go up to her and punch her in the arm?  Right, you can’t do that anymore in the age of #MeToo.  Then just speak to her privately and tell her you like her, despite everything.  No touching, though.

Oh, don’t back away from this, ELECTORAL COLLEGE POTUS and all of your minions and surrogates, one of whom is bound to be reading this.  Or at least, an acquaintance of a friend who might happen to whizz by it while surfing the web at 2 a.m. in search of Chair porn.

I’d rather look at this than “The Mule” #sorrynotsorry

You know for a fact that mother f-cker is just a term you use (Note: or he if you’re a surrogate) first thing in the morning at Mar-a-Lago in reference to your illegal alien cleaning lady when she doesn’t empty the gold plated garbage can of all those tissues you used the night before in your gold glited boudoir en suite.  Open concept, indeed.

Oh, do NOT start with us about mother f-cker, you MO FO.  You might not have been caught on tape saying the “N” word (Note: Yet) but you have proclaimed it’s okay to grab women by their p-ssies and have been widely quoted hurling F, S and B bombs by friends, acquaintances and co-workers on an hourly basis.

I mean….

Of course, you’re also the guy who told a friend that you thought Jared was A LITTLE SWEET (Note: GAY) when your daughter Ivanka first introduced you to her future husband so you’re right, it doesn’t make you quite as homo-hating as Mr. Hart.  Were it not your only offense.

#MeixcansAreRapists

#ShitHoleCountries

#GetThatSonofAB-tchOffTheField!

#GrabEmByTheP-ssy (Note:  Repeated for the number of times you’ve said it and it’s been written about over the last two and a half years and we’ve had to listen to it).

So please, when asked about the new Michigan Congresswoman referring to you as a mother f-cker at a bar, do not say stuff like:

I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America

You really missed your calling in standup #HILARIOUS

We’d much rather have you curse.  At least that’d be honest.

For a change.

Because as former POTUS (both Electoral AND Popular Vote) Barack Obama once so eloquently stated:

We Are The Change We’ve Been Waiting For.

Know that you, as well as so many other power brokers in the mainstream (Note: Yes, we’re speaking to ALL of you), helped get us here.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Dancing – Breakfast Club Style