Wednesday, March 23, 2005  

World Gone Mad

God damn Barry Bonds. God damn his melon head, God damn his little girlâ??s voice, and God damn his steroid-ravaged knees. His presence on my fantasy baseball roster was the one thing keeping me from fielding the Bad News Bears this season, but he â??jumped off the bridge,â?? and he just took my $24.95 with him. Thatâ??s right; Iâ??m paying Yahoo twenty-five bones for the pleasure of watching my collection of defects and booze-hounds bumble their way through weekly beatdowns that will probably be so severe as to actually break the Internet. If you find that your favorite website wonâ??t load in the next month or so, just assume itâ??s because my boys of summer just lost another game by the score of 7 to Q.

Oh, well. Thereâ??s always American Idol. Whatâ??s that? Iâ??m supposed to hate American Idol? Weâ??re all too hip? Too smart? Itâ??s for red-state suckers and doe-eyed housewives? Bite me. You, you, and you. Bite me twice. This is drama at its purest. This is Aristotelian. This is raw desire coming into conflict with that most dastardly of villains: the American electorate. Why would I want to watch anything else? Who wants to watch smart-aleck kids in some fourth-rate sitcom when I can genuinely ruin somebodyâ??s LIFE with a toll-free call? Donâ??t misunderstand me. Itâ??s not all schadenfreude. These kids can fucking bring it. They are legitimately talented, and this yearâ??s crop of pop is no different. Hell, the show might very well be won this time of year by a fat guy with Don Johnsonâ??s beard or a black chick with Thomas Dolbyâ??s hair. And if thereâ??s a god in the sky, some time in the next few weeks, Bo Bice will smash Constantine Marullisâ??s greasy, smirking noggin in with a mike stand draped in Aerosmith bandanas. How can The World According to Jim compete with that? It canâ??t. I love the show unreservedly. I love the singers, and I love the judges â?? Paula Abdul (fucking crazy), Simon Cowell (fucking mean), and Randy Jackson (the worldâ??s first black wigger). Bread and circuses, my ass.

You want bread and circuses? Go to Florida. Go see Terry Schiavo. Thatâ??s the sinister distraction, ladies and germs. Itâ??s a non-event. Political grandstanding. Nothing but grist for the right-wing hate mill. Itâ??s smoke and mirrors, and donâ??t get fooled. Itâ??s easy to think that thereâ??s something going on, as the usual crowd of conservative pundits bleating and braying out the window. Donâ??t let that chunkamunk hophead Rush Limbaugh trick you into caring; donâ??t let Michael Savage, the gayest fascist ever, buffalo you into paying attention. The only important things going on here is that (a) the Republicans are starting to feast on each other -- it might be the beginning of the end for Tom DeLay, the odds-on favorite for the captaincy of the Olympic graft squad, and (b) itâ??s makes mighty good cover so the GOP can run amok and get going on its agenda to dust off some other long-standing wet dreams, like drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a place that George W. Bush and his oil-company cronies have wanted to fuck over so long itâ??s amazing that they didnâ??t book a charter flight and head up there to gang-rape a caribou.

Is this what weâ??ve come to? Is this America, where our natural resources are sucked dry, our political process can be subverted brazenly with no consequence, where Barry Bonds can just fuck me, and where a woman in a coma gets more TV time than I do? The world has gone crazy!

More proof: Iâ??m doing comedy in Lowell â?? LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS â?? this week. The last time I was in Lowell, a drunken Italian in a track suit gave me a pressed ham through the window behind the stage. This is the Lowell version of getting a lai around your neck when you land in Hawaii. One show at Dick Dohertyâ??s Comedy Escape at the Doubletree on Friday at 9:00, two shows Saturday at 7:30 and 10:00. And to round out the crazy talk, Iâ??ll be hosting the open mike at Dick Dohertyâ??s Comedy Vault on Sunday night. Thatâ??s right, Iâ??ll be spending Easter in a dank hole surrounded by that most pathetic of creature: the aspiring comedian. What better way to celebrate the day Jesus rose from the dead than to watch eighteen shitfaced wannabes die? Come on down and dig the carnage.