The White Stuff Is Here Again.

Mar 2, 2005

The freakin', feckless media. I detest them, the not-so-news outlets you love to loathe. So controlled and so controlling.

Take the Oscars. First we're "treated" to several weeks of pre-Oscar "excitement." Then the bloated, boring program itself. Finally, another week of constantly repeated video replays, sappy speeches, endless gossip about this one's dress and that one's breasts, ad nauseum. Curiously, but then again, so true to their scripts, there were virtually no repeats of, let alone passing reference to, Chris Rock's fabulous opening monologue on Bush which truly brought a blast of fresh air to insipid network television. Oh, I'm sure that Fox did a number on him, picturing him as at least a traitor, perhaps worse. The rest just ignored it as if it had never happened. That "newspaper of record", the New York Times devoted a couple of sentences to it. To me ... it was the brilliant, wonderful and hysterical highlight of what was a most tedious and tiresome affair.

The nattering extremists of the right will say he slandered the President. But that's just so much nonsense. Because everything he said was just, well, the truth.

In case you missed it, here's what he said --

Rock On Bush
"I'm not going to bash Bush here tonight. I saw 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' I think Bush is a genius. I think Bush did some things this year that nobody in this room could do. ... Because Bush basically reapplied for his job. And can you imagine applying for a job and while you're applying there's a movie in every theater in the country that shows how much you suck at the job? It would be hard to get hired, wouldn't it? I watched 'Fahrenheit.' I learned some stuff. Bush did some things you could never get away with at a real job.

"When Bush got into office, there was a surplus of money -- now there's like a $70 trillion deficit. Now just imagine you work at the GAP. You close out your register and you're $70 trillion short. The average person would get in trouble for something like that. Not Bush. Then he started a war. ... Now just imagine you work at the GAP. You're $70 trillion behind on your register and then you start a war with the Banana Republic because you say they got toxic tank tops over there. You have the war, people are dying -- 1,000 GAP employees are dead, bleeding all over the khakis -- you finally take over Banana Republic and find they never made tank tops in the first place."

Chris just rocks.

.....

What number snow storm is this? My friend Ted tells me that we have had less snow than an average year. Anyone else believe that? True, the media (them, again!) hypes each impending "blizzard" as if we were to be hit by the storm of the decade, if not the century. As a former store owner I remember what their incessant shrieking about impending weather did to business: it killed it, that's what.

When I was a kid we had real snow storms (I can't believe I'm talking like this). As a young one, my brother once got stranded across the street at his friend's house...the drifts were insurmountable - or maybe he just wanted an excuse to sleep over. And yet, we survived. In fact, it was fun and wonderful and exhilarating (as long as they didn't come too often). But today is another story. The media whoops it up. And then nothing seems to happen. So strange. I'm watching TV this morning and the weather man, that very white-toothed, almost Aryan looking, Sam Champion on ABC says Central Park got seven inches last night. I go to the window and if there were more than two inches on the street it was a lot. What's going on here?? There is such a huge disconnect between what we see on the Boob-Tube and what we know to be the truth as told to us by our own two eyes. That's why Chris Rock's comments on the Emperor and his new clothes were so refreshing. The truth will out. No kidding.


From my window at midnight last night. Underhill Avenue in the rather gentle snowstorm - a cold, lonely, but beautiful, street.

.....

Stephanie and Emily are back in town. Another show and so they sew and then off they go...to the show. We picked them up at the F train (they were supposed to catch the Q - but they get confused by all those letters on the trains). We drove to Bay Ridge to fetch their belongings - they had been staying at a colleague's apartment for the last few nights. While we were there we had dinner at Samm's on Third Avenue and 89th Street. (that's Brooklyn, by the way). Quite good. Try it.


Dinner tonight at Samm's in Bay Ridge.


Emily - "Matt - I told you, No Pictures!"


Stephanie - Too much Bling??


Two cousins at Samm's.