Fernando Botero, Painter of Retards

An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it. – Fernando Botero, 1932-20??

Fernando Botero Angulo is totally famous — so famous, in fact, he calls himself “the most Colombian of Colombian artists”. He’s so proud of his Colombian heritage, he dropped his last name and moved to France! In 2005, he gained public recognition by exploiting the Abu Ghraib slumberparty.  I love his art in a way that makes me a bad person.

He paints stocky people with large foreheads (aka fivehead), beady eyes, and blank expressions.  Now, I’m not saying he’s obsessed with Down’s Syndrome. I’m just strongly suggesting it.

Warm fuzzies crawlin’ all over me

In a pitiful attempt to win our favor, loyal ЯR participant Keywork has written a cloying review of our beloved website. It seems he’s such a big ass-suck fan, he could do nothing but praise our groundbreaking family website. Enjoy, friends! 

You Can Have My Ration.

Ration Reality. I stumbled upon this incoherent, slimy sac of anal seepage a few months ago. And I can tell you this: don’t visit this blog, Bagel has syphilis. Yes, the editor, Bagel of Everything, has syphilis. Frat boys beware. Never in my life have I ever read such horrible propaganda. Let’s look:

Sex, Drugs, and Stupid Lyrics

All of BuckCherry’s songs sound the same, are about the same thing, and the lyrics are retarded. I love them, and so do you. We can’t help it. We love sex, drugs, and hepatitis infested frontmen. But this song, Porno Star, just takes the stupid lyrics prize.

Catcher in the Rye is a real good book

Zach Action has written a follow up to my very own bagelicious book review: J.D. Salinger is Naked. I love this man.

Zach’s Zany Reading Recommendations: Catcher in the Rye

TLDR Biographies: Egon Schiele

Too Long; Didn’t Read Biographies: Part 1

I do not feel punished; rather purified - Egon Schiele, 1912

Egon Schiele June 12, 1890 – October 31, 1918

Egon lived only 28 years, but what a fucked life it was.
Estranged from his mother, he lived with his syphilis-crazed father and little sister (whom he was suspected of molesting) until age 15, when The French Disease took his father.
Egon enrolled at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1907, just months before Adolf Hitler was rejected from the school.
In 1912, he was arrested for abduction and seduction of young girls, and possession/creation of pornographic drawings.

Concert Notes: The Bruce Willis Blues Band – Tachi Palace Casino

My wife has never met a slot machine that she didn’t like. Sadly, her love is very nearly always unrequited.

Her love does, however, occasionally get us free shit. It’s been a while – 8 or 9 months – since we’d been to Tachi Palace, as it’s quite a drive to get there for us, and because quite frankly it sucks. But, the other day we received a voucher in the mail for free tickets to see the Bruce Willis Blues Band perform live. There would be complimentary beverages and food offered, so that was quite a selling point.

Analog to Digital and Crack Again

This fuckin’ cutey-cute-cute ball of cuteness is one of my favorite songs. The accompianing video elevates it higher than James Brown on an interstate police chase. It’s by hometown favorites, Grandaddy (if your hometown is Modesto-Fucking-California). Sadly, they are no more, due in part to drugs, alcohol and madness… and drugs. They reached such great heights for a band so strange and unsuited for mass marketing and commercial success… and they’re from Modesto, the town that turned out George Lucas and my father, two of the most colossal disasters in modern history (sorry dad).

The Ghosts of Greatness Past

 …or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Bomb

 RationReality continues our probe into the minds of modern musicians with examinations of two highly regarded bands: Wilco and Nine Inch Nails. Although they may seem like unlikely bedfellows they are both part of a phenomenon we’ll refer to as manic confusion. This phenomenon has multiple sources. It’s only known cure is Ration Reality Intelligence.

NIN and Wilco have transformed themselves many times. I suppose it was inevitable that this would take a bad turn somewhere along the line. The issue at hand is their latest incarnations. Both acts have stripped away what they saw as artifice in favor of a leaner, less complicated sound, forgetting in the process that their complexity and avant garde tendencies are what got them to where they are today. Both bands began their careers with bare bones type records, Wilco’s A.M. and NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine. A.M. barely caused a ripple when it was first released in 1995 and is almost universally regarded as their weakest album. 1991′s Pretty Hate Machine was a much greater success but in retrospect merely a precursor to much more critically and commercially successful albums.

Television Wrap-Up for 6/13: NBC ‘Last Comic Standing’ Premiere

 

Tonight was the season premiere for season 5 of Last Comic Standing.  I somehow managed to miss out on season 1 of this show, but watched seasons 2 and 3 religiously.  Season 4 managed to fly completely under my radar – not quite sure how – which leads us to season 5. 

I really wanted to hate Bill Bellamy for hosting it instead of Jay Mohr, but he actually did a better job than I expected, so that was good.  He wasn’t memorable, but he was competent.  The judges for the auditions are three of the season 2 / 3 contestants – Alonzo Bodden, noted internet gay sex peddler Ant, and Kathleen Madigan - and they were just as funny as ever.  (In Kathleen’s case, that means ‘not very.’)

 The New York City auditions were a severe disappointment.  It’s hard to believe that the Big Apple’s vein of comedy has been tapped dry, but … the product they brought up was pretty disappointing.  Six contestants from NYC were chosen to move on.  They were:

1.  Dwayne Kennedy.  Black gentleman, fucking hilarious.  He might unfortunately get tagged as self-hating, though: his jokes mostly played off racial stereotypes relating to black men.  He was definitely the funniest of the people from New York, and I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.   

Sopranos Without Papers

First of all, let me say this: FUCK YOU ALL. (Except for The Bagel of Everything who is not only the h.b.i.c., but also a conscientious objector to The Sopranos).

Was I the only one who watched that horrendous fucking mess of shit, blood and cum that preceded that totally debatable debacle of an ending? Chase’s attempt to tie everything up with a little yellow ribbon was like a rape joke at an open mic night on a Sunday in the fucking Vatican.

You know what woulda satisfied me? A.J. getting blown by the teenybopper and both of them being subsequently BLOWN UP IN THE FIREBALL to the throbbing bass line of Outkast’s Bombs Over Baghdad. Take that you whining fuck! You and your yellow Nissan Xterra! How is it that you’re clinically depressed and suicidal but you have perfectly groomed Prince-like facial hair? Huh? How? Fuck you, you fucking twerp. You could have been a gangster but you turned into a gayer Al Gore, but with way less charisma, but now your dead and both environmentalists and Detroit automakers rejoice. I’ve been praying for your death since the first season. If David Chase had any balls, sense of justice or true talent, this would be the grand prize for eight years of viewership.

Next, Carmella’s spec house is picked up by a tornado which sends it twirling through the air only to crush her and her stupid Porsche Cayenne (aka the gayest car ever), leaving her tacky acrylic nails hanging out from underneath. Janice finds this seeming disaster and eats a dozen canolli’s from Ferrara’s (best in town, trust me), then takes a huge candy-coated shit in Carmella’s cold dead hand to the strains of Whoomp! There it is! by Washington, D.C.’s own, Tag Team.

Then we have sweet, sweet Meadow… sweet, charmed, spoiled stupid, stupid, stupid Meadow… go to med school, go to law school, go to taxidermy school for all I fucking care, so long as you die a slow, painful and gruesome death. Something Coen Brothers… something with a garden tool… like a weed whacker! That’s the one! She goes to home depot to get glass rods so she can hand blow herself a new dildo and she runs into Phil’s nephew’s daughter’s step-son’s S.A.T. prep coach’s assistant pencil sharpener who recognizes her from Cum Catcher Weekly and asks for an autograph. Meadow is annoyed but begrudgingly obliges. But it’s not enough for the intrepid young pencil sharpener known to his close friends as Puke Skyhooker. PS lures the dimwitted Soprano into the garden supply aisle and whips out his newly acquired cordless weed whacker. The plodding, awful beheading begins sending screams throughout the airplane hanger-like mall of tools. The staff pursue the sound but when they arrive to see PS’s artistry, they applaud and give him an orange vest.

Then, the sound fades away and the screen goes black…

Cut to Tony skipping down the street and whistling Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

The End.

-jody