Ride your pony.

How to dance properly.

[via Ace of Spades.]

The joke that writes itself.

Via Jonah Goldberg in The Corner: Fitness icon Richard Simmons cited for slapping man

Simmons, 55, known for his tank tops and outrageous manner, was ticketed for misdemeanor assault after allegedly striking the man across the face while in line at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Wednesday night, police said.
''He apparently said 'Hey everybody, it's Richard Simmons, let's drop our bags and rock to the '50s,''' said Sgt. Lauri Williams, a reference to a series of his well-known videos. ''Mr. Simmons took offense and said he had to 'bitch slap' him.''

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

This is the good part: There's going to be a limited re-release of Life of Brian (LA, NY, check local listings.)

This is the ass part:

Rainbow president Henry Jaglom says, "We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion."

"Important"? "Counter-programming"? Handy rule of thumb: when you become more pompous than the people you're trying to spoof, you have jumped the shark.

Babylon's a-fallin' to rise no more.



Compelled by one of the best reviews of anything I've ever read, by Matt Labash in the Weekly Standard, I just bought the most extraordinary cd box set I've ever heard, Goodbye, Babylon, a six-disc set of early 20th century gospel that runs the musical gamut, as Labash notes, of "everything from Sacred Harp singing to hillbilly romps to field-holler prison chants to front-porch blues to jubilee quartets to old-timey country to Sanctified-congregational singing to Pentecostal rave-ups." The sixth disc is devoted entirely to sermons, mostly from the twenties. (Sure, I got a few odd looks when I pulled up to the gas pump with a sermon about the Black Diamond Train and its passenger manifest of liars, gamblers, and thieves blaring from my car speakers. I maintain this is not only no worse than blasting Eminem so my neighbors can hear it, it's infinitely better.)

The review is amusing, maybe slightly more so for those of us raised as Southern Baptists, but the music is divine. If you have any interest in gospel or old time music, it's well worth acquiring.

Well, this is kinda pleasant, actually.


You are Walt Whitman! Champion of the
Transcendentalist American Ideal, Walt Whitman
is one of the first poets to use the "free
verse" form in America. He has been
imitated, but will never be duplicated, just
like you! Except for by everyone else who gets
Walt Whitman ;)


Which famous poet are you? (pictures and many outcomes)
brought to you by Quizilla

Cool. I dig Whitman.

[Via Rodya.]

Wanton hubris.

That's what Patrick Stewart's got, assaying one of Peter O'Toole's seminal roles in Showtime's ill-advised remake of "The Lion In Winter". The project has disaster written all over it; Stewart and Glenn Close are about as subtle as a matched pair of sledgehammers, and I suspect it's going to resemble a Master Thespian skit more than a serious attempt to invoke Goldman's vision of a Plantagenet family Christmas.

[Via Dean Esmay, via a heads up from Bernadine.]