Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: June 2007
Steve Gilliard, RIP
Only a few of my readers follow the progressive blogs, and I don’t know how many of you read The News Blog with any regularity. I know (from searching my blog posts just a moment ago) that I have shouted out Steve on more than a few occasions.
Well, it’s been a sad weekend for the progressive blogosphere, since we’ve lost one of our most incisive voices. Karen and I were regular readers of The News Blog. Steve could move us to write, to act, to donate to his blog (which is a bigger deal than you might imagine — we usually reserve our donations for ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club, and progressive political campaigns). He could also infuriate us from time to time, which is why I took him off my blogroll at one point. But I kept sneaking looks by way of others’ blogrolls.
Others have highlighted their favorite Gilly posts, like this one from Meteor Blades. This one from September 3, 2005, remains one of my favorite Steve Gilliard rants. He’s writing about the way New Yorkers were ahead of the ball with regard to Bush — it took Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath to wake up the rest of the country. What follows is an excerpt. Read the whole thing here.
Instead of hearing what we had to say about Bush, you called John Kerry a coward, mocked Max Cleland, blamed everything but herpes on Bill Clinton. You enabled Bush into this mess and now you’re shocked?
Now, Fox can be outraged, now, Wash Times and Union Leader call Bush weak? Well, his coward ass disappeared in 2001. But you rather blame Michael Moore for that.
He can’t even explain the Iraq war to a grieving mother.
So what did you do?
Write the most vile things about her and her dead son. Attacked her patriotism and her honesty.
Well, motherfuckers, and that means you, fat ass Goldberg and your master, Rich Lowry, PNAC Bitch Beinart, the racist wannabe white Malkin and the little fucktards at LGF, Bareback Andy and “Diversity” Instacracker, all you backstabbing, fag hating uncle tom ministers, you can see Dear Leader in action. America’s largest port is gone, maybe forever, gas is $5+ a gallon and FEMA is coming. Whores come faster with old men than FEMA is getting to NOLA.
How did your wartime President react? Like Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded in 1944, with corrupt indifference.
Meteor Blades’ pick highlights Steve at his thoughtful best; this post, however, catches his incandescent rage. What a voice. We’ll miss you, Steve.
D.
P.S.: At DailyKos, pastordan has the perfect prayer.
Labyrinthine errors
I came to Pan’s Labyrinth ready to be entranced. Or, at the very least, entertained. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro is a favorite of mine, has been ever since his creepy 1993 vampire flick, Cronos. Cronos took vampirism to new places. Forget repressed and awakened sexuality; Cronos was all about obsession and addiction.
Del Toro followed Cronos with a string of successes, most notably Hellboy, but also Blade II and the less commercial ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone. The man consistently delivers cinematic eye candy, material so interesting, disturbing, and beautiful that you could ignore the story and still come away satisfied. Pan’s Labyrinth is no exception, and in fact, you might do well to do just that. This film falls down on story.
The time is 1944, the setting, the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s Nationalists have control of the country, but they find themselves fighting Communist guerrillas. Our protagonist is an 11- or 12-year-old girl, Ofelia, the sensitive daughter of a tailor’s widow. The widow has remarried the cartoonishly evil Captain Vidal, commandant of a Nationalist base charged with rooting out the local Communists.
Paris Hilton’s Prison Diary
The minute, the second I learned that Paris Hilton would keep a prison diary, I said to Karen, “Now, THAT would make a GREAT blog!”
Right away, the comic gears began to turn, and my mind became a kaleidoscope of all the Hilton canards. The pettiness. The vanity. The jealousy. The idiocy. All the Deadly Sins wrapped up in one petite blonde brazilianed package.
And then, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck I discover someone has beaten me to it:
The Inner Thoughts of Paris Hilton
Each post concludes with the ass-bandage,
Disclaimer: This site is intended for parody only and was not created by Paris Hilton nor intended for any purpose other than entertainment.
Coward.
Well, at least now there’s nothing to distract me from finishing my romance and participating in Samhain’s Best First Line contest (see Kate for the full dish). (And don’t forget Kate’s contest where you can, like, win stuff!)
Let’s do us some live-blogging tomorrow night, okay? See ya when I see ya.
D.