B12 Solipsism

“One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko” (Mike Royko)

Factoid I did not know, Mike Royko, one of the famed Billy Goat denizens, coined the long-lasting epithet for Jerry Brown.

For the uninitiated, ‘Governor Moonbeam’ became Mr. Brown’s intractable sobriquet, dating back to his days as governor between 1975 and 1983, when his state led the nation in pretty much everything — its economy, environmental awareness and, yes, class-A eccentrics.

The nickname was coined by Mike Royko, the famed Chicago columnist, who in 1976 said that Mr. Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote,” which in Chicago political parlance meant young, idealistic and nontraditional.

The term had a nice California feel, and Mr. Royko eventually began applying it when he wrote about the Golden State’s young, idealistic and nontraditional chief executive. He found endless amusement — and sometimes outright agita — in California’s oddities, calling the state “the world’s largest outdoor mental asylum.”

“If it babbles and its eyeballs are glazed,” he noted in April 1979, “it probably comes from California.”

[Click to continue reading How Jerry Brown Became ‘Governor Moonbeam’ - NYTimes.com]

Of course, Mike Royko eventually came to be a Moonbeam supporter, and hated that the nickname stuck:

All of which made Mr. Royko’s epiphany even more striking. It came in 1980, at the Democratic National Convention, where Mr. Royko said that the best speech had come from — you guessed it — Governor Moonbeam.

“I have to admit I gave him that unhappy label,” Mr. Royko wrote. “Because the more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year’s politics who understands what this country will be up against.”

Apparently, there is a national movement to call Jim Bunning by his proper name. Who knew? I just called him an ass, but that was a bit imprecise

Okay, this is simply a suggestion that should be forwarded to everyone on your email list:

Please immediately rename your butt crack, “Jim Bunning”.

Now, I know this isn’t much of a diary, and I even may take it down in 30 minutes or so, but what could be more fun than starting a nationwide trend of renaming our butt cracks, “Jim Bunning”?

Simply put, every time you would normally be tempted to use words and phrases like “asshole,” “bung hole,” “ass crack,” “butt hole,” “anus,” “shithole,” “arsehole” and, yes, “butt crack,” simply substitute the phrase “Jim Bunning” in its place! Imagine the scenarios…

[Click to continue reading Daily Kos: Just for fun, let's rename our butt cracks, "Jim Bunning"!]

Just doing my part, even though Google no longer allows their search algorithm to be hijacked like this, unfortunately.

There’s a bit of a dust-up in my mother country:

An atheist group in the Irish Republic¹ has defied a new blasphemy law by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations on its website.

Atheist Ireland says it will fight any action taken against it in court. The quotations include the words of writers such as Mark Twain and Salman Rushdie, but also Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI.

The new law makes blasphemy a crime punishable by a fine of up to 25,000 euros (£22,000; $35,000). The government says it is needed because the republic’s 1937 constitution only gives Christians legal protection of their beliefs.

The new law was passed in July 2009 but came into force on 1 January.

[Click to continue reading BBC News - Irish atheists challenge blasphemy law]

What kind of nonsense is this? Are there not more pressing items on the agenda than governments sticking finger in their ears to block out words they don’t want to hear? Anyway, the BBC, staid journalistic organization that it is, did not provide any samples of these quotations, so I had to find the site on my own.

Just a few excerpts, because I laughed at most, but you should read them yourself.

13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”

[Click to continue reading 25 Blasphemous Quotations « blog.atheist.ie]

Religion and its zealots, hissing with hysteria, are so damned ridiculous.

1. Is this the common term? Thought that was a defunct nation, a nation that existed from 1919 – 1922. Maybe the British press reverses the order of the words of the Republic of Ireland for some stylistic reason? [↩]

A few interesting links collected December 23rd through December 29th:

• Fun phrases in Latin – Ridiculum sum, ergo sum

• 

• Glenn Greenwald – Karl Rove: Champion of “traditional” divorce – [he ] engineered multiple referenda to incorporate a ban on same-sex marriage into various states’ constitutions in 2004 in order to ensure that so-called “”Christian conservatives” and “value voters” who believe in “traditional marriage laws” would turn out and help re-elect George W. Bush. Yet, like so many of his like-minded pious comrades, Rove seems far better at preaching the virtues of “traditional marriage” to others and exploiting them for political gain than he does adhering to those principles in his own life:Karl Rove granted divorce in Texas

• 

• 

• Animated stereoviews of old Japan ::: Pink Tentacle – In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan.

  A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image.

“Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary” (Stephen Calt)

Ooh, I’m getting a copy of this dictionary. Sounds fun…

Enter Stephen Calt, a blues historian and amateur linguist whose new book, “Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary,” published by the University of Illinois Press, is an impeccably scholarly, irresistibly readable guide to the language heard on the recordings of the great blues singers who were active in the first half of the 20th century. If there was ever a time when you found yourself wondering what it means to get a “stone pony” or “make a panther squall,” Mr. Calt is your man. As far back as the late ’60s, he was interviewing aging blues singers and sifting through arcane printed sources in the hopes of untangling the verbal mysteries of the music he loved.

…

All this and much, much more is made manifest in the pages of “Barrelhouse Words,” perhaps the only dictionary on my bulging bookshelf that can be read for pure pleasure from cover to cover.

Part of the pleasure arises from Mr. Calt’s donnish sense of humor. He must have been smiling quietly to himself when he defined “crying shame” as “an exceedingly lamentable occurrence.” No less enjoyable, though, are the examples of contemporary usage that accompany his definitions, all of them drawn from classic blues records. A few are genuinely poetic, while others are drop-dead funny. Look up “business, pork-grindin’,” for instance, and you’ll be confronted with this stanza from Kokomo Arnold’s 1935 recording of “Sissy Man Blues”: Lord, I woke up this mornin’ with my pork-grindin’ business in my hand / Now if you can’t send me no woman, please send me a sissy man. This is a family newspaper, so if you can’t figure the rest out for yourself, turn to page 42 of “Barrelhouse Words.” I haven’t laughed so hard while reading a reference book since the last time I consulted H.L. Mencken’s “New Dictionary of Quotations.”

[Click to continue reading Barrelhouse Words Defines the Blues | Sightings by Terry Teachout - WSJ.com]
[non-WSJ subscribers use this link for full version of article]

postscript: I hope there is an entry on Little Red Bike, as discussed here

I had not heard Kokomo Arnold’s version of this song, only these two, with similar lyric. Connie McLean sings: with my business in my hand, and Josh White sings what sounds like “pork grinding business“, but the words are a bit hard to make out:

1. Connie McLean’s Rhythm Boys- Sissy Man Bues

   
   The Copulatin’ Blues Compact Disc

2. Joshua White- Sissy Man

   
   Roots N’ Blues: The Retrospective

I’ll have to look for the song. Looks like an album of 24 Kokomo Arnold songs is available at Amazon for $8.99.

A few interesting links collected December 1st through December 3rd:

• BBC News – Fifth of Scots have poor literacy – ha ha, Fifth of Scots…
• Roundup: Domestic Bliss | Wired.com Product Reviews – Baratza Virtuoso Coffee Grinder The difference between just-crushed and preground beans is like the difference between filet and jerky. I need the Virtuoso. Conical burrs mash beans without heating them and dulling the flavor like blades do.

  
  “Baratza 585 Virtuoso Coffee Grinder” (Baratza)

• Pondering Google’s Move Into the D.N.S. Business – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – Why is Google doing this? There is plenty of money to be made in this layer of the network. Companies pay for premium D.N.S. products that provide extra security, and D.N.S. operators can steer Internet users who mistype Web addresses to sites stocked with advertisements.
• Using Google Public DNS – The Google Public DNS IP addresses are as follows: 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 You can use either number as your primary or secondary DNS server.
• Fullundie: 2131 South Michigan Avenue – A totally incredible batch of garage and psychedelic rock & pop singles from the vaults of 60s Chicago label USA Records and the affiliated Destination, the company charted a few hits, but released a ton of killer singles that have been lost for decades.2131 South Michigan Avenue was put together by Sundazed and it’s absolutely one of the most beautiful and rewarding lost 60s rock compilations we’ve seen in ages.

[click to embiggen photo]

Today’s New York Times Magazine has an awkward typo: William Safire, who died September 27th, is listed as being on hiatus. Yikes. Last week’s NYT Magazine said Safire “is on hiatus for a few weeks.” Ok, last weeks magazine was excusable, it was only a couple of days after Mr. Safire’s death. But to alter the byline means someone edited it since last week. Awkward…

They have now appended a correction to the online version of the article

A note with the “On Language” column on Page 14 this weekend refers to the absence of the regular columnist, William Safire. Mr. Safire died last Sunday, after some copies had gone to press.

Some additional reading October 4th from 10:05 to 12:48:

• Wife of Japanese PM Brings UFOs, Aliens into Global Affairs | Underwire | Wired.com – Hatoyama… has told reporters she knew Tom Cruise in a former life (with or without Thetans). She also claims to “eat the sun” to gain energy — making this reporter wonder if another of her former incarnations might’ve attacked Tokyo.

• 

• Food Safety Documents – The New York Times – Tracing the hamburger that left Stephanie Smith paralyzed, through government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still such a gamble

• From Snapshots from a Flounder

• WTF? Wisconsin Tourism Federation changes name after internet jokes – Telegraph – The Wisconsin Tourism Federation has changed its name, after being made aware that its acronym WTF had become crude internet slang. They are now aware of all internet traditions…
• Recipe: The Basic Burger :: Mark Bittman :: Culinate – Given concerns about the safety of store-ground meat (E. coli, salmonella, and the like), you might want to try grinding your own meat for burgers. Buy a chuck roast, cut it into small cubes about an inch square, and pulse a small batch (about 1/2 pound) at a time in a food processor. Make sure you don’t pulverize the meat and it’ll be wonderful. Freeze what you don’t use immediately.

“Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo” (Werner Herzog)

“Herzog on Herzog” (Werner Herzog)

As always, Werner Herzog has interesting things to say. And this makes me laugh, since whenever I watch a Herzog film¹ I turn on the Director’s Commentary. Sometimes, if the film is a little slow, the commentary is much more enjoyable, and his accent is fun to emulate.

RC: In Grizzly Man, like most of your documentary films, you provide the narration.

I grew into this somehow. In the old days I had the feeling that, yes, I should do it, because I wouldn’t know of anyone who would be as credible as my own voice.

RC: It does seem like the best person to narrate a documentary would be its maker.
It’s a question of credibility, and I don’t care how bad my German accent is. I make myself understood anyway.

[Click to continue reading WERNER HERZOG - Vice Magazine]

Indeed you do, Mr. Herzog, indeed you do.

Also, he is allegedly starting his own film school.

I will be starting my film school very soon, and I will make a point about a sense of literature for young people who want to step into filmmaking. One of the prerequisites will be that those who apply have to read this, this, and this.

RC: It’s amazing that you’re starting a film school. Can you give me a sampling of what will be on your syllabus?
For example, Virgil’s Georgics. They don’t have to read it in Latin, but there are some good translations around.

Oh, and of course, Bad Lieutenant: New Orleans Port of Call

There’s been quite a bit of controversy around that film and no one’s even seen it yet. Abel Ferrara, the director of the original Bad Lieutenant, was outraged that you were doing what he considered to be a remake. But you steadfastly deny that it’s a remake and claim to have never even seen the original.
I don’t need to see the film that was made sometime in the 90s. Mine has a completely different story and a completely different setup. Basically what happened is that one of the people who had produced the first Bad Lieutenant held rights to the title, and they were hoping to establish some sort of a franchise. I don’t mind, I can live with the title, but I always felt it had to be something else. I tried to call it Port of Call New Orleans, but I couldn’t prevail. So now it’s Bad Lieutenant and then it has the subtitle of Port of Call New Orleans.

1. I’ve seen about a third of his films, but will eventually see most [↩]

“Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation” (University Of Chicago Press)

Apparently, the study of wolf behavior has advanced since the theory of an Alpha Male was first put forth by L. David Mech:

The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book’s info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.

One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.” In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the “dominant breeder” can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a “subordinate breeder.”

[Click to continue reading No more 'alpha male'! : A Blog Around The Clock]

I’d be surprised if the term alpha male stopped being used in non-wolf literature – too much time has passed, and the phrase has its own meaning now. Hegemonic masculinity, political pyscho-babble, you name it.

Some additional reading August 14th from 12:05 to 12:45:

William Blake:

• Think You Can Rip Someone’s Image From the Internet and Use it For Free? Think Again, You Just May End Up Sued and Lose | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection – “It was interesting to hear yesterday from photographer Christopher Boffoli who has done a lot of freelance work lately for the West Seattle Blog. Boffoli wrote me and told me about a situation where a Seattle based Realtor, Laura Miller with Catalyst Commercial Partners, used an unauthorized photo of his for a real estate listing (photo above) of hers and ended up having to pay him a $1,000 small claims court judgment over it.

  I’ll let Boffoli tell part of the story”

• Change of Subject: Getting aboard a health plan — it’s time to throw a lifeline to 60 million Americans – “they’re fine with the idea of providing coverage to everyone. But only if it costs them nothing and leaves them with all the advantages, priorities and prerogatives they currently enjoy. In other words, the old “I’d haul you up, but you might swamp my rowboat” argument.

  Others tell me they view access to quality health care as something they’ve earned — either by working hard or being related to someone who works hard. And if others want it, let them earn it too — the old, “Go build your own rowboat, you slacker!” argument.

  Still others say that those without coverage can always fall back on the patchwork of public hospitals, charity and Medicaid — the old “You don’t need a rowboat. Driftwood will do” argument.

  Obviously, though, too many swimmers are drowning:”

• Krugman- Republican Death Trip – NYTimes.com
• - “President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.”
• Court extends Tribune Co. control of Chapter 11 case — chicagotribune.com – “A bankruptcy judge said Tribune Co. can keep control of its Chapter 11 case for three-and-a-half more months as it looks to sell off some assets, including the Chicago Cubs, in its bid to exit bankruptcy protection.

  Judge Kevin J. Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., on Monday gave the publisher of the Chicago Tribune an extension to Nov. 30 to file its reorganization plan to emerge from bankruptcy and to repay creditors. He also set a March 15, 2010, deadline for the media giant to win creditor support for a plan.”

• delicious blog » Sharing Made Easier: Email and Tweet Your Bookmarks – “If you use Twitter and want to send bookmarks to your Twitter feed, associate a Twitter account (only a single Twitter account can be associated at one time) by logging into Twitter under the Twitter panel. You have the option to send all your saved bookmarks to Twitter by selecting the “Tweet all bookmarks unless private” checkbox when you add the Twitter account. If you’ve selected this option, your Twitter account will appear by default in the Send field.”
• 
• Juan Gris

“The Wonder of Whiffling: (and Other Extraordinary Words in the English Language)” (Adam Jacot de Boinod)

The author of Toujours Tingo

Toujours Tingo

Adam Jacot de Boinod, has written a new book:

“The Wonder of Whiffling” is a hugely enjoyable, surprising and rewarding tour around the language of the British Isles (with plenty of fine coinages from our English-speaking cousins across the pond, Down Under and elsewhere). Discover all sorts of words you’ve always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one’s money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell. Delving passionately into the English language, Adam Jacot de Boinod also discovers why it is you wouldn’t want to have dinner with a vice admiral of the narrow seas, why Jacobites toasted the little gentleman in black velvet, and why a Nottingham Goodnight is better than one from anywhere else.

Monsieur Jacot de Boinod¹ also added, in comments to this post, the following

Delving passionately into the English language, I also discover why it is you wouldn’t want to have dinner with a vice admiral of the narrow seas, why Jacobites toasted the little gentleman in black velvet, and why a Nottingham Goodnight is better than one from anywhere else. See more on http://www.thewonderofwhiffling.com

Tangentially, and surprisingly, I’m at the beginning of a cagg of my own. Vowed to forswear booze for at least a month² – my target to resume consumption is Labor Day. Why? Mostly vanity, my pants were getting a little snug, and I was polishing a couple of bottles of wine a day. Cause and effect, most likely. Anyway, possibly more on that subject

1. I assume I’m spelling that correctly, my French language skills have atrophied to point of parody [↩]
2. along with gluten – bread, pasta, etc. – and a few other items [↩]

President Obama’s cynical, quirky style of humor is one of his most endearing characteristics. I can relate to that kind of joking: it is the kind of language I might use myself.

Matt Bai writes about the original Skip Gates press conference question where Obama remarked

But perhaps the more jarring if overlooked moment in Obama’s answer came just before that, when he endeavored to cast himself in the place of his friend Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose trouble began when he needed to break into his own home. “I mean, if I was trying to jigger into — well, I guess this is my house now, so it probably wouldn’t happen,” the president said. Then he flashed a mischievous grin and added, “Here I’d get shot.” [view YouTube clip]

It’s hard to imagine an edgier joke than this — the nation’s president, its first black president at that, teasing about being gunned down in the White House foyer. Had Obama not gone on to malign a cop, it almost certainly would have dominated the next day’s punditry. And yet the moment was in keeping with what we have learned about Obama in the months since his inauguration. The president, it turns out, is quite funny — and sometimes a little reckless. Obama had to make his first apology just days after being elected president, for joking about Nancy Reagan’s séances. He ran into trouble with advocates for the handicapped in March, when he suggested to Jay Leno that his bowling on the campaign trail belonged in the Special Olympics. And before the Super Bowl, he angered fans of the singer Jessica Simpson by appearing to make light of her supposedly ballooning weight. (Fortunately for Obama, fewer than a dozen of those fans are old enough to vote.) You have to have a pretty determined sense of aggrievement — or just a dim view of the president generally — to take genuine offense at such throwaway one-liners. And yet they tend to obscure, if only for a day, Obama’s more serious objectives, undermining the comedian in chief’s reputation as an innately disciplined politician.

…

More recently, Obama sounded mystified by plans for a new presidential helicopter. “The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me,” he remarked dryly. “Of course, I’ve never had a helicopter before, you know? Maybe I’ve been deprived and I didn’t know it.” Other presidents mastered the telling of the canned political joke. Obama’s shtick is that he finds such stagecraft, the falsity and pomposity of modern politics, to be as laughable as we do.

Such a perspective is entirely new in the White House, born perhaps of the same deconstructionist ethos that gave us “The Simpsons” and The Onion — self-aware acts of ridicule that would have seemed wholly out of place in the age of “All in the Family.”

[Click to continue reading The Way We Live Now - Funny How? - NYTimes.com]

Refreshing, and a welcome contrast to the smug frat boy humor of the previous resident of The White House.

Or something like that, whatever Chuck D was saying.

那个¹

look for a moment at China through the eyes of young [American] athletes on their first visit, and China can feel, once again, like a new frontier.

Take, for example, Mandarin’s most unfortunate homonym. The English word “that,” when used as an adjective to indicate something as in “that glove,” is translated as neige and pronounced “nay-ga.” It also is used routinely as a space-filler akin to “umm” in English. But as American visitors frequently attest, neige can sound uncomfortably close to the n-word.

“We spent the whole first week thinking, ‘What?’” said one U.S. boxer.

The confusion is hardly unique to the team. Robert Davis, a fluent Mandarin speaker who heads China programs for the Chicago Public Schools, has escorted more than 150 Chicago principals and administers to China in the past eight years, many of whom are African-American, he said. He discovered long ago that he should feature a discussion of the word neige in his pretrip orientation.
[From U.S. Olympic team learns to roll with the punches on trip to China -- chicagotribune.com]

Usage here, dictionary definition here

1. a repost from my old blog [↩]

You’ve probably seen or at least heard mention of most of these rants

Modern YouTube ranters include Christian Bale, William Shatner, Alec Baldwin and Lily Tomlin, the arrogant actors; Jim Mora and Dennis Green, the furious football coaches; Axl Rose, the intense rocker; Pat Condell, the smug atheist; Rick Santelli, the fed-up CNBC reporter; and Kanye West, the imperious musician. In a less-masculine key are end-of-rope rants by Chris Crocker, the Britney Spears superfan, and Tricia Walsh-Smith, the vengeful and off-kilter ex-wife.

Fictional YouTube rants — scenes from movies and TV that have found a second life online — include Jeremy Piven’s dressing-down of his therapist in “Entourage” (“I thought . . . you could give her [his wife] a pill that could either fix it or make her a mute!”) and Al Pacino’s savage tirade in “Glengarry Glen Ross” (“Where did you learn your trade . . . , you idiot? Who ever told you. That you. Could work. With men?”).

Watch all these rants — there should be a greatest-hits album — and intriguing patterns emerge. First, the Chicago connection. Axl Rose’s heated 1992 soliloquy about his cruel family took place at a theater outside the city. Lee Elia, the onetime manager of the Chicago Cubs, ranted memorably about disloyal fans at Wrigley Field. This year, Rick Santelli raged against the president’s housing plan from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. “Glengarry Glen Ross” is set in Chicago — the hometown of its author, David Mamet, the nation’s leading playwright of rants.

Second, rants happen in prose, and often ugly, spluttery prose. Not poetry. Verse tirades (including Shaquille O’Neal’s rap roast of Kobe Bryant and Nas’s “I embrace y’all with Napalm” ripping of Jay-Z) are far too elegant to be rants, which are simultaneously more dangerous and more pathetic. The rhyme that dominates rants is not a rhyme at all but a repetition: a word matched exactly with itself, as in Bale’s harangue on the set of “Terminator Salvation,” in which he spit out a single obscenity some three dozen times. (As a general rule, inflection substitutes for reason.)

[Click to continue reading The Medium - The Rant Moves to YouTube - NYTimes.com]

This is placeholder text:I want to find as many of these rants on YouTube as I can. For amusement purposes only, of course, no wagering allowed.

Ricky Roma all but destroys Williamson after the latter screws up Roma’s big sale. One of the two great scenes from Glengarry Glen Ross, and one of Pacino’s best monologues.

Christian Bale Goes nuts on the set of “Terminator Salvation”

Jessica Savitch goes on a tirade. Don’t know if she’s totally in the wrong though, after all the anchor is the one that ends up looking silly, even if its everyone behind the scenes that screwed up

Live performance in Rosemont (Chicago), Illinois, 1992.04.09. Axl talks about the things he said in his Rolling Stone interview about his upbringing.

Elia’s outburst occurred on April 29, 1983, after the Cubs suffered a one-run home loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The rant took place during a postgame session with reporters in his office. Elia was pissed off at the continual booing by the Wrigley crowd (both during and after the game) and frustrated that no one could see beyond the Cubs’ 5-14 record for any of the progress he felt the team was making.
The fact that Elia’s rant has been preserved for posterity is something of a miracle. In the early 80s, “baseball reporters didn’t work with tape recorders. But radio guys certainly did. So it was that Elia’s outburst came to be a part of the public domain.”
Les Grobstein, aka “ubiquitous” Les, was lurking on the edges of Elia’s office, with tape rolling. For Grobstein, graduate of Chicago’s Von Steuben High School, “it was his Zapruder moment.” Elia commented that he dearly wished Grobstein “had gotten a flat tire on his way to Wrigley that afternoon.”

The title explains it all. Michael Richards becomes combative and explodes in a vile, racist diatribe at Laugh Factory in LA.

Bill Shatner asks the question -- ‘What is it with George Takei and his issues with me?’ The question is based on George Takei’s recent marriage and the multitude of press stories about his decision not to invite William Shatner to his wedding

-- Alec Baldwin yelling at his daughter