The looters and moochers are gathering again, my friends.  We are now under the heel of an anarchist totalitarian voodoo doctor bent on destroying America.  For 50 years, they have plotted revenge.  Their weapon: a small modification to the tax code!

See, right now you’re nodding your head.  This is so clear to you, because you have common sense.  Those radical elitist intellectuals think you’re just going to stand aside while they fill their new Dachaus and Buchenwalds with those who won’t kowtow to their caudillo.  They think you won’t protest when people who won’t worship their Golden Calf are killed by death squads and ground up into some kind of burger to be fed to schoolchildren being indoctrinated in promiscuity, godlessness, and the mongrelization of the races in their state-run summer camps.  I’m just kidding about that last part, folks.  Or am I?  Just throwing that out there.  Read more »

This photo was taken at our summer house in the Hamptons.  That’s me on the bottom!  My uncle, above, was a notorious prankster.  I remember spending days in his subterranean laboratory on our estate, helping him pipette various strains of his recombinant Ebola virus, or fixing his home-made calutron to separate out the isotopes of uranium.  Read more »

1. You awake in a white room.  My God, you’re colorblind!  No, wait, you’re not.  Gradually you remember why you are here.  The supervillain-psychiatrist Doctor Praetorian has imprisoned you in the monochrome room until you work through issues stemming from your experience, as a child watching through a keyhole, of witnessing your mother ritualistically whitewash your father—or, alternately, so you won’t be able to interfere with his plan to achieve world domination via a threat to evaporate all the world’s oceans.

If you meditate in the lotus position until your mind is clear, turn to section 11.

If you practice the Crane position, a ridiculous but allegedly unstoppable karate stance you learned from your teacher, Mr. Miyagi, turn to section 2.

If you realize, “With a mustache like this, I must be Armenian,” turn to section 3.  Read more »

“Afar off the towers of Florence.  And she wandered as though in a dream o’er wavering seas of barley touched with crimson stains of poppies.  All unobserved he came to her.  There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use.  No such eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the lack of it; he simply enfolded her in his”—forensic analysis of her vocal cords would later show she had been reading aloud from the book “Torrents of Lust” by Philip Roth, which now lay, pages rumpled, bound in red morocco leather, on the Persian rug.  The onionskin leaves had gold edges; a narrow strip of burgundy silk dangled from the spine.

On the floor beside the book was a framed Hokusai print with its glass shattered, a women’s engagement ring with a large pink diamond, the gold band engraved with the words “Fox News: Fair and Balanced,” a smoldering stick of incense from the Spice Islands, an African mask carved from ebony wood, several Jack Chick tracts, an open box of Wheaties, and a Nambu Type 14 8mm pistol, two spent shells next to it, still muzzle-hot.  Read more »

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Héro instantané. Ajoutez juste l’eau.

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Vive le différence!  While France is justly celebrated for its long tradition of brilliant and challenging cinema, Hollywood specializes in taking that brilliance and grinding it into slick pablum.  In 1998, while millions of illiterates thrilled to the spectacle of Adam Sandler playing an angry manchild in “The Waterboy,” select intellectuals such as myself knew that this infantile farce was actually based on an obscure French film, “Le Garçon de l’Eau,” which is far superior in every way.  Whereas “The Waterboy” swerves between being puerile, antic, and mawkish, “Le Garçon de l’Eau” is wise, witty, and investigates human nature with profundity and compassion.

Both films nominally concern a socially inept, sheltered, stuttering water-bearer for a collegiate sports team, suppressing a volcanic temper stemming from constant teasing and his mother’s emasculating manipulation, who realizes his talents as a dynamic athlete after learning to release his anger.  Success leads to a relationship with sultry beauty Ms. Vallencourt (Fairuza Balk in the American version, the immortal Catherine Deneuve in the French), a confrontation with his mother (Kathy Bates and also Catherine Deneuve), and a final meeting with a rival university team.  Read more »

Michael Dukakis bestrode the deck of the Alejandro Jodorowsky, his washboard abs rippling.  The mighty battleship cut through the turbulent seas, and cold, salty spray crashed over the bow.  “Maybe I should put a shirt on,” Dukakis mused.

On the bridge, surveying the horizon with steely gray eyes, Dukakis pulled a crisp white tunic over his latissimi dorsi.  “Bring my hot coco,” he commanded peremptorily.  Dukakis regarded the picture on the mug, of a clown in bright primary colors filling out a W-2, and chuckled.

“The World Controller is on the wireless, sir.”

Dukakis took the handset.  “What is it, babe?”

The World Controller was grave.  “Michael, there’s something I have to tell you.  We are all androids.  We’re replicas of humans who lived during the Golden Age of Earth.”  Read more »