A schediastic hootenanny

1. There's frontal female nudity and repeated hog and chicken butchery in the opening credits of every episode.

2. The dialogue of any given episode contains at least seven hundred uses of the words "cocksucker" and "fucking", shattering the previous record for fucks-per-minute held by Raymond Huffman of San Francisco, CA.

3. An ongoing subplot of the show involves a Chinese man who takes money from the townsfolk to dispose of corpses by feeding them to his pigs.

4. William "Larry" Sanderson plays the hotelier-mayor of deadwood, who talks like a hillbilly version of William Wordsworth.

5. Drunk-ass Calamity Jane.

Okay, maybe it's not the greatest show of all time. But man, it's got a lotta pep for such a depressing show. And what other television program has had the artistic vision to show us a middle-aged man, his face hamburgered by a savage beating, having a thumb stuck up his ass for like ten minutes, followed by the same character giving an endless pompous soliloquy while being fellated by the owner of said thumb? I mean, other than "Touched By an Angel"?

Rain, rain, go away.
Come again some other day.

Snow, snow, please depart.
Do not fall around my heart.

Hail, hail, hit the trail.
Please take sail now without fail.

Fog, fog, hie thee hence.
Go somewhere I cannot sense.

Sleet, sleet, gehen Sie raus.
Don't come down upon my house.

Wind, wind, take a hike.
You're a thing I do not like.

Sun, sun, flee from here.
I don't like baseball and beer.

I.

Ten things you have to believe this week to support the President: (1) that the power of the Congress to check the powers of the president is outdated and should be abolished; (2) that the best man to represent the U.S. to the United Nations is a man who has spent much of his career arguing for its abolition; (3) that the best man to advise the President on women's health issues is a man who repeatedly anally raped his wife; (4) that Tom DeLay's troubles are a figment of the media's imagination; (5) that a commitment to establishing freedom and abolishing dictatorship all over the world is not inconsistent with retaining Pakistan and Uzbekistan as allies; (6) that the responsibility for rioting and violence in two middle eastern nations can be traced to an article in an English-language news magazine; (7) that Social Security is in peril and can only be made right by increased private investment in the stock market; (8) that overall, the fact that more and more large companies are being allowed to default on their obligations to their workers is a good thing for those workers; (9) that Iraq and Afghanistan have become bastions of democracy; and (10) that a strong military policy can incorporate dozens of base closings and drastic cutting of veteran's benefits during wartime.

II.

I was reading the original Legion of Super-Heroes stories in Superboy the other night, and one of the things that Supes does when he visits the 31st century is to visit an ice cream parlor. (Apparently, the writers were so enchanted with this idea, they used it again when Supergirl travels to the future, although she gets an even lamer line when it happens. "Write the girl dumber," you can hear the editors say, "we don't want to make Superboy look bad.") But it's not just any ice cream parlor, oh no! It's a crazy futuristic space ice cream parlor! And, in the detail that really kills me, they have NINE FLAVORS -- one from each planet in the solar system. Leaving aside what these flavors may have been (what's Jupiter going to have, Frozen Liquid Hydrogen Cup?), how fucking lame is that? NINE goddamn flavors? Baskin-Robbins has thirty-one, and that's just from one planet! In a thousand years, you'd think the number of available ice cream flavors would go up, not down. Sucks to your crappy century, Legion of Super-Heroes.*

III.

The least surprising story of the year award goes to...

*: There's also a bit about how Superboy goes to see a bunch of school kids, and they're learning -- in class -- about Superboy. And the teacher has a robot that looks like Superboy who lifts a hundred tons to prove how strong Superboy was. WHAT THE FUCK CLASS WAS THIS? Civics? Algebra? English Interlac? What class would teach you about a hero from a thousand years ago who was really strong? I hate comics.

The new issue of UR is out, and I'm all over it: you can read my review of the new Boredoms album, my review of It's All Gone Pete Tong, and a local film feature on movie nights at Delilah's, among other stuff.

Unfortunately, this being UR, they don't put the full content of the magazine online, so you won't get to read all my pieces, nor will you get to read the entirety of the ones online. Also, for some reason, the graphics are all wrong. Anyway, if you're in Chicago, pick up an issue for the whole schmeer. Assuming you have an interest in my piffly entertainment writing, which, I mean, why would you?