INT. McCAIN CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS – NIGHT

JOHN McCAIN (Gordon Jump) is pacing as his ADVISERS look on. In the background, several TVs are tuned to Barack Obama’s address to the Democratic Convention.

McCAIN: My friends, I gotta tell you, tonight with that speech Obama set my ass on fire like his tongue was a Zuni rocket and my bunghole was the deck of the U.S.S. Forrestal. I’m in trouble here, my friends, and desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m going to make history tonight and name Joe Lieberman as my running mate! Imagine that, a Jew on the ticket for the first time in–

ADVISER: Uh, actually, Senator, Al Gore ran with Lieberman in 2000.

McCAIN: What? Oh. Well…What about Colin Powell? Nobody’s ever picked a black man for veep before!

ADVISER #2: Well…No, but…Obama…skin…kinda…black…ish…

McCAIN: YOU PEOPLE ARE NOT HELPING ME!

McCain paces, a bright red flush rising up his face like a thermometer. The Advisers murmur amongst themselves.

McCAIN: What about a woman? No one’s ever –

ADVISER: Geraldine Ferraro in –

McCAIN: (SAVAGELY) I mean a HOT woman! I wouldn’t let Geraldine Ferraro clean out my spit valve if I was down to my last dollar in the cheapest whorehouse in Saigon and she was giving away Green Stamps!

ADVISOR #2: But who? Kay Bailey Hutchinson? Carly Fiorina? Condi Rice?

McCAIN: No! No! No!

Suddenly, the door to the conference room opens and a wide-eyed YOUNG WOMAN stands on the threshold.

GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN: Oh, I’m sorry! I’m looking the NRA seminar on shooting elderly lawyers in the face…

McCAIN looks thunderstruck for a moment, then he wheels and POINTS at Palin.

McCAIN: I want…THAT Gov!

[Cue Theme Song]

Pageants, Oil Spills, Snowflakes
That Gov!
Abusing, Office, Indictment?
That Gov!
She knows how to gut a moose…
Joe Biden should have such a phat caboose!

PUMAs, Pro-Life, WTF?
That Gov!
Names her, Children, Stupidly,
That Gov!
She’s got 4 kids and one other,
She’s her own son’s grandmother!
If you find a Gov to love,
Only one Veep,
To keep,
Then she’ll be That Gov too…
That Gov!

h/t to Mary for the idea.

UPDATE:  In the comments below, Doghouse Riley recalls the That Girl theme as an instrumental; and so it was, until the final season, when lyrics were added, a gesture which apparently acted on the audience much the way a cross affects a vampire.  Anyway, for those who missed it, here’s the Season Five theme song, replete with diamonds, daisies, snowflakes, and of course, That Girl.

And the Hoosier Sage keeps the party rolling by deftly shoehorning Governor Palin into the sensible low-heeled pumps of another beloved sitcom career gal:

…so here’s mine, to the tune of the Mary Tyler Moore Theme (neighborhood of D, boys):

Who can turn the world on with a dube (but won’t enjoy it)?
Who can qualify for Veep
when her previous job was at Jiffy Lube?
Shot a moose once in her pajamas,
Named a daughter for a
race track in Alabama (okay, Tennessee).

Oil all around why won’t we drill it?
Wildlife runnin’ loose won’t someone kill it?
She might just make it after a-alllll.
She’s like that guy from Walking Ta-alll.
She’ll kick Joe Biden in the ba-allls.
She’s gonna make it after all!

Berets in the air, people!

MORE good news! | 22 Comments »

It’s from our friends at WorldNetDaily:

Dem cops cuff, stuff Christian girls

ELECTION 2008
Dem cops cuff, stuff Christian girls
Sidewalk chalk messages challenged Obama’s moral positions

Yeah, Operation Rescue is back!

But if you read the story, you’ll find nothing about the cops being Democrats (although Operation Rescue does hint that some kind of vast liberal conspiracy might have been behind the arrests, and darkly notes that the cops could have ”had orders” from somebody, possibly Obama, to arrest the Christian teens). 

And, sadly, there’s nothing about the Christian girls getting stuffed.  So, we can only assume that something got edited out of the story before it made it online.

But here’s a little more about the Christian teen martyrs who were brutalized by the pigs just for peacefully coloring with chock.

Streets of gore

[25-year-old Courtney] Blythe was raised in an extended family of anti-abortion activists. After graduating from Montreat College outside Asheville, N.C., she returned to her hometown to work for Room at the Inn, a pro-life Catholic maternity home. She’s now an organizer with Survivors, a Christian group that mobilizes teenagers and young adults for confrontational street protests.

During the summers, Blythe helps run Survivors’ nine-day training camp in Rosemead, Calif., which she calls a “pro-life boot camp.” Budding activists, starting at age 14, are taken to beaches, commercial neighborhoods and abortion clinics for in-your-face encounters that often involve the same graphic photos on display in Denver.

Campers also receive a crash course on what the movement calls “pro-life apologetics.” “They train you in how to argue with anyone and prove them wrong,” says Ian Giacopuzzi, a shaggy-haired 17-year-old who participated in Monday’s demonstration. Giacopuzzi, who says his father was active in Operation Rescue, first attended the summer camp three years ago.

Ian’s 15-year-year-old sister Julia was one of the the two Christian girls who were cuffed and stuffed.

The protesters’ youthfulness, in particular, outraged Joan Lipkin, a theater director and pro-choice activist who is visiting Denver from St. Louis this week. “What these people are doing is street theater,” Lipkin told me. “But they’re also engaging in child abuse. There are minors here who are being brainwashed and manipulated in ways that are most disturbing.”

From an activism standpoint, though, using children can be very effective, if unsettling. Kids haven’t developed adult filters yet, so it’s easier to train them to goad passersby relentlessly. And goad they did. [...]

Blythe insists that provoking passersby is a critical strategy for the anti-abortion movement to succeed.

Because nothing makes a person change their mind about a sensitive issue such as abortion like being heckled by an obnoxiously self-righteous teen.

Oh, and here’s our runner-up best headling of the week (also from WorldNetDaily):

California plans to drug depressed patients to death

Once again, if you read the story you will find that you were a victim of the old “bait and switch,” in that the story is actually about a CA bill which would allow medical professionals to give large quanitities of pain killers to terminal patients to “induce a state of decreased or absent awareness (unconsciousness) in order to relieve the burden of otherwise intractable suffering.”  

The wingnuts object to this bill because since the patient would be unconcious, he could eventually die of starvation if he wasn’t, you know, fed.  And that would be immoral, since God intended people to suffer (otherwise He wouldn’t have given them intractable pain), and He doesn’t want terminal patients to die until He kills them. 

And hey, if we allow doctors to drug terminally ill people to ease the suffering of their last days, then it’s inevitable that soon evil nurses and greedy heirs will be pressuring depressed people to kill themselves. 

(WND didn’t come up with that idea themselves — they quote Republican Doug La Malfa of Yuba City: “They’re already feeling vulnerable, and now, confronted with ways to end your life – this is a very delicate and, I think, dangerous idea here. You could have people like heirs that are anxious to get the estate started and quietly coercing people into making decisions like this.”) 

Now, please enjoy the opening of this fine WND story:

Just as Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama was in Denver preaching to a crowd of thousands of fans about the “change” he wants to see in the United States, his party compatriots in the California Legislature were making a “change,” by approving a controversial plan that would allow nurses to assist terminally ill patients with suicide.

 I like how the writer managed to bring Obama into the story while basically accusing the Democratic party of endorsing murder.   It’s techniques like that which give WND its extra wingnutty flavor and its own special deranged charm.

Uncategorized | 17 Comments »

I’ve always found David Brooks’ act more creepy than entertaining — an upper crust Republican (though admittedly moist and flaky) who presumes to speak for the Appleby patrons of America’s Heartland — his claims to authenticity smack of a sort of White Face minstrelsy, or somebody cutting out eye- and mouth-holes in Grant Wood’s American Gothic and droning on about his topsoil in a bad Percy Kilbride impersonation.

But today’s column is a real headscratcher, because I don’t know whether to be offended by his attempts at comedy, or impressed that he had sufficient self-awareness to plagiarize from somebody who’s actually funny.

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

If he’d worked just a little harder he could’ve snuck in a sardonic reference to the Olive Garden too, but I guess he figured he should start slow and warm up in the early grafs, or else he might develop a hairline fracture of the funnybone, and then they’d have to shoot him.  But he soon hits his stride, and really begins flying in the second graf:

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.

Okay, that’s kind of funny, although I enjoyed it more when I first read it in Woody Allen’s Side Effects:

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.  One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.  The other, to total extinction.  Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional.

“Heh, just a little verb tense joke there for the Times Crossword nerds.  Where my nerds at?  Shout out!”

It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

Whereas David loves the present, but in a parallel universe, because on Earth-22 he’s a superhero who can shoot a potent sleeping gas from his nipples and disarm the unconscious criminals instantly, rather than having to wait for them to read his New York Times column first.

We meet today to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans, a generation that came of age amidst iced chais and mocha strawberry Frappuccinos®, a generation with a historical memory that doesn’t extend back past Coke Zero.

This passage is funnier if you remember that it’s David Brooks speaking, the David Brooks who can’t imagine that Reagan’s talk of “states rights” at the fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman were murdered, was intended to flatter the racial sensibilities of his audience, some of whom may known, helped, or been the murderers.  David Brooks who thinks Reagan’s tax cuts, not his tax increases, raised revenues, and who can’t remember who, in Doghouse Riley’s immortal words, “Who th’ fuck bailed out the S&Ls after there was nothing left to loot?”  David Brooks, who just turned 47 and doesn’t even remember New Coke, is turning the gimlet eye of satire upon today’s youth, with their effeminate beverages, short attention spans, and historical amnesia.

We must bring together left and right, marinara and carbonara, John and Elizabeth Edwards. On United we stand, on US Airways, there’s a 25-minute delay.

Again, if he’d really been trying, he could have worked in a joke about the peanuts.

Ladies and gentleman, I never expected to be speaking before you today. Like so many of our speakers at this convention, I come from a hard-working, middle-class family. I was leading a miserable little life, but, nevertheless, overcame great odds to live the American Dream. My great-grandfather fought in Patton’s Army, along with Barack Obama’s great-grand uncles’ fourth cousin once removed.

Okay, I admit, this one goes over my head.  The joke here is…what?  That a guy with close relations scattered all over the globe talks about his family too much?  Mentioning the Greatest Generation is now as quaint as talking about your ancestors who fought in the Civil War?  Can’t Republicans wait until the tiny and ever-shrinking class of veterans they pretend to respect are actually dead before they start making fun of them?

And today we Democrats meet in Denver, a suburb of Boulder, a city whose motto is, “A Taxi? You Must be Dreaming.”

Ah, so that’s why he’s making with the yuks.  Dave’s been cut off from his usual source of material

UPDATE:  More here from the Hoosier Sage, with Bonus Anita Ekberg Cleavage!

Revenge of the Nerds | 12 Comments »

Brian, in case you haven’t had the pleasure, works for the Media Research Center, and apparently volunteered to research the annual convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, since he sat through “speaker after speaker express[ing] hatred and contempt for political and religious conservatives while plotting how to advance the homosexual activist agenda through journalism.”

Since he’s not a journalist, Brian must have gone disguised as gay, at least judging by the photo that accompanied his piece, seen at left (I think he’s the shorter one, with the double butt vents).  And his sacrifice is deserving of respect, because when it comes to investigative journalism, there’s no substitute for engineer boots on the ground, and because even without a shirt, walking around Washington, DC in a leather vest and cap in late August is going to cause prickly heat.

I’m left wondering whether Americans know the extent of the media’s bias on homosexual issues. Do they know that the news media have thrown themselves fully behind the gay rights movement?

Yeah, I mean, whatever happened to hiding behind a woman’s skirts?

NBC/National Journal reporter Matthew Berger said he experienced “reverse Stockholm syndrome” while on the campaign trail covering GOP religious conservative Mike Huckabee. “Stockholm syndrome” is what afflicts hostages who come to love their captors. If Berger’s feelings changed after traveling with the Huckabee campaign, they went in the opposite direction. He acknowledged how difficult it is for a journalist to do his job when you “hate” the people you’re covering. Berger said he was happy when he was transferred to the “gay-friendly” Rudolph Giuliani campaign.

So Berger preferred Rudy’s “9/11″ Tourette’s to listening day after day to Huckabee’s observations, such as gays live “‘an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle,’ and that gays with AIDS should be isolated,” and “Unless Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain to tell us something different, we need to keep that understanding of marriage”?  What a sissy.  My old Little League coach would’ve just told him to stop sniveling and walk it off.

Sending an outspoken activist like Berger, the former president of NLGJA’s Washington D.C. chapter, to cover the Huckabee campaign is like sending a hard-right activist to cover the Obama campaign.

Ah, I see you’ve met Ron Fournier.

What was NBC thinking? Maybe they had no choice. Does NBC have anybody on staff who doesn’t hate religious conservatives?

To be fair, it’s possible he didn’t start out hating religious conservatives.  Perhaps familiarity bred contempt.  Or maybe the crappy music and incense-like clouds of brimstone just gave Berger a headache; I know that kind of thing can make me a bit testy.  Or maybe NBC simply had a spot open on the Huckabee campaign and assigned Berger without first querying him about his queerness, because it would have been disrespectful, creepy, and illegal.

Discussing attitudes toward homosexuality, Los Angeles Times opinion pages editor Robin Rauzi revealed Big Media contempt for the rubes in Flyover Country: “We feel our readers are ahead of where they are in Kansas City.”

I suppose if the LA Times fashion editor said the same thing it would be equally true, but somehow less offensive?

During a sparsely attended (11 out of hundreds of conferees) session promoting objectivity in news coverage, a reporter from a Florida newspaper acknowledged his biases: the “public’s right to know,” and “equality.” By “equality,” he meant the homosexual activist political agenda.

This might sound like projection, but we should point out that during the conference Brian slipped in his bathroom at the Holiday Inn Express while blowdrying his hair and fell into the tub, electrocuting himself just like Mel Gibson did in What Women Want.  When the paramedics restarted his heart, he realized that he now had the ability to read the minds of nearby homosexuals.  And Brian really didn’t appreciate the paramedic’s disparaging thoughts about the leather vest-shaped rash on his torso.

He revealed the tension that ought to have bedeviled every journalist at the conference: how to avoid ideological bias while covering the news.

And by ‘bedeviled,” Brian means every gay journalist should literally have a tiny man sporting a crimson bodystocking and horns hopping up and down on his or her shoulder and jabbing a pitchfork into their neck until their carotid artery ruptures like a high pressure hydraulic hose.

On a partisan level, the conferees clearly leaned toward the Democrats. One speaker frankly admitted that the homosexual activist community generally expects most gays to be Democrats.

Except for the Congressmen and televangelists.

Teh GAYZ! | 9 Comments »

Somehow I got on the mailing list for the “Pink Elephants,” which is either an email group for Republican alcoholics or a social group for women of a certain age (like the Red Hat Society, but for the queen size gal).Anyway, they send me “talking points” every week, so I know what I should think about stuff (usually Democrats) for that period.  And I feel that I should share the wealth, so here are a couple of points for YOU to talk about:

 A Party Divided  

Millions of Democrats believe Barack Obama is not ready to lead. Democrats are concerned that Barack Obama does not have the experience, judgment and leadership we need today when our country is facing critical challenges at home and abroad.

This is a “talking point” because Republicans hope that millions of Democrats will believe that all the cool Democrats don’t think that Obama is ready to lead, and somehow they just got left out of loop. 

But here’s a talking point for you to spread around at the water cooler at work, or on the Internets, or at the local bar (wherever you choose to hang out) : millions of Americans are concerned that George W. Bush does not have the experience, judgement and leadership we need today when our country is facing critical challenges at home and abroad, including many critical challenges that he helped to create.  So, are you going to take leadership advice from the party who gave us the WORST PRESIDENT EVER?!?  What are you, STUPID???

But on to the next bullet on why Obama is too inexperienced to lead us out of this mess:

Barack Obama says he wants energy independence, but he opposes new drilling at home; opposes nuclear power; and opposes encouraging invention of an advanced, affordable electric car.

Obama opposes encouraging the invention of an advanced electric car?  The bastard!  I bet he is also against encouraging the invention of a flying car that can talk and fight crime!  And just what is his policy on encouraging the invention of personal rocket ships and energy-efficient death rays?   Voters need to know!

On Iraq, Barack Obama says he wants peace, but even today he opposes the surge strategy that succeeded in Iraq and will succeed in Afghanistan.  Barack Obama’s policy of unconditional withdrawal could result in renewed violence and a third Iraq war. 

Yes, any day now the surge will succeed in Afghanistan.  You just keep watching – things could be be hunky-dory over there as early as tomorrow, so just be patient and believe in The Surge.  But hey, if it doesn’t look like it’s working, it’s just because you have insufficient faith.

Oh, and it seems awfully wasteful to start a third Iraq war when we haven’t really finished the second one yet.  So, I guess that’s why we should vote for McCain: he’s old, and having lived through the Great Depression, is probably pretty frugal.  I bet, despite not knowing how many houses he owns, he saves soap slivers and darns his own socks.  I think this should be your talking point for today.

Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

 The latest fresh, new face at Town Hall is YAFkinder Hannah Giles.  Yes, your suspicions are correct — here’s her bio:

Hannah Giles is a part of the Young America’s Foundation and a journalism major. She is the oldest daughter of Townhall.com columnist Doug Giles.

But hey, she could still be a deep and original thinker, and a skilled and interesting writer.  Let’s give her a chance, people!

Don’t Be a Zombie: Question Your Leaders!

It is 2008: time once again for the great American presidential debates. Well, at least time for their intensity levels to rise, and time for every word to be scrutinized.

Yeah, we have presidential debates all the time, but it is only during election years that it is time to actually take the time to pay attention, at least some of the time.

The presidential elections are no joke, and every American person should want to know the character of the person they are voting for and the policies that person represents.

Persons, persons who need persons who are running for President, are the luckiest American persons I know.

All ears and eyes are open, as American look to their leaders to prove how they will lead.

But sadly, no matter how wide your ears are open nor how hard you look with them, they will show you very little about your leaders leadership abilities.

Okay, enough fun, let’s get to the gist of Hannah’s message:

Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008, former First Lady and presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) spoke at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Her goal was to unite Democratic voters and get them to support Barack Hussein Obama in his race for the presidency.  [...] She went on to express the urgency of electing Barack Hussein Obama as president this fall, despite the many differences she may have with him. Anything but a Republican, and in this case, anything but John McCain. The crowd was digging it, her South Florida Democrats were ready to act on command. Upon reaching this point of connection with her audience, Sen. Clinton presumptuously bellowed from her podium, “republicans should hold a press conference, apologize to the country for what they have put us through and then decide they are not going to run.” The crowd roared with applause, and she was pleased.

Now, lets take a moment to analyze and discuss this concept that Sen. Hillary Clinton just birthed: She wants the Republicans to hand the 2008 election to the Democrats. Sounds like a great idea, if you are a fan of communism, and an admirer of men like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  

Um, who wants to break it to Hannah that this was what we call “rhetoric” (and that Hillary really didn’t just birth the idea of one- party elections), so that Hannah can gracefully say, a la Emily Litella, “Never mind”?

Nobody?  Okay, then here’s Hannah’s stirring conclusion:

And when a person as influential and well-known as Sen. Hillary Clinton suggests that the Republicans forfeit their place in the competitive American political arena, she is asking them to submit. America has never submitted: Not to the British during the Revolutionary War, not to the Japanese after the bombings of Pearl Harbor, not to the torments of communism and certainly not to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. If America has not submitted before, then how can (and why is) Sen. Clinton asking at least half of the country to do so now? Due to the constant presence of underlying dogma, it is absolutely essential that the American people read deeper and understand what is being said and done during the fast times of presidential campaigning. After all, the free and prosperous American life depends on it.

I can’t add anything to that.  Well, I could, but nothing that would be as funny as what Hannah said.  But if you want to try to deconstruct Hannah’s argument, be my guest.

Uncategorized | 32 Comments »

We now continue our Bataan Death March through the 1943 Columbia serial, The Batman!

Chapter 10:  Flying Spies

Well that sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?  Flying spies.  Unfortunately, there’s only one spy, and he doesn’t actually fly, although he does spend a large part of the episode sitting in the passenger cabin of a DC-3, eloquently miming the existential dread of a man whose hemorrhoid donut is slowly deflating.

When we last left Batman in Chapter 9, The Sign of the Sphinx, he’d assumed the identity of gangster “Chuck White,” and donned a disguise which consisted of unbuttoning his coat and borrowing Billie Hayes’ rubber nose from “H.R. Pufnstuf.”  Still, he put slightly more effort into it than Superman does.  Anyway, this low budget masquerade allows the actor to get out of those itchy woolen tights, although it doesn’t seem to accomplish much else, since at the end of the episode Robin has leaped from the deck of an ocean liner left over from a more expensive movie and disappeared into the dark and fetid waters of Gotham Harbor, while Batman lies crushed beneath the ship’s gangplank.  How does he come back to life this week?  Why, with the help of Greenpeace.

After the recap of the last chapter, we see that Batman and Robin landed in a net that’s somehow hanging between the dock and the side of the ship.  And fortunately for lovers of truth and justice, it’s one of those new Bat-Safe nets, so once again the Dynamic Duo and Special Guest Star Flipper narrowly escape death by suffocation in a purse seine full of tuna corpses.

The Batman and Robin return to Wayne Manor, apparently walking in the front door after pausing to grab the newspaper off the lawn.  As a rare example of a one-room mansion, Wayne Manor is cramped, but with a rustic charm.   Alfred offers to sponge out the bat suit, but Bruce declares that the Batman isn’t done for the day, which apparently means he hasn’t yet succeeded in sweating completely through his puffy, Depends-like underpants.  He turns with a cape-swirling flourish, hunches over, and squeezes through the grandfather clock like a bone-in ham pushed through a mail slot.

Inside the Bat’s Cave, the hoodlum they captured last episode is still sitting awkwardly beside the Batman’s desk, trying to come up with a good answer to the Dark Knight’s demand that he, “give us an example of a situation where you faced conflict or difficult communications problems.”  He muffs the interview, and suddenly the Batmobile screeches to a stop outside a police station and the trussed-up thug is rolled into the gutter, because apparently it’s one of those “safe surrender” spots for newborns, and they’ll see he goes to a good home.

Meanwhile, Dr. Prince Daka discovers that the Batman is still alive, but he can’t even pretend to be surprised, probably because it would crack his make-up.  But all that is forgotten when he suddenly receives a radio call from “Section 50.”   Like all the Japanese spies, Section 50 resembles an insurance salesman from Modesto, or maybe a floorwalker from Dayton’s Department Store, underscoring the fact that nobody in Daka’s Japanese spy ring is Japanese, including Daka.  Anyway, he reports that they managed to get some of that radium Daka’s been trying and failing to steal for the past nine episodes; apparently it was going cheap at a garage sale or something.  Daka gazes reverently skyward, testing the tensile strength of those fake epicanthic folds he wears for work, and whispers, “The radium will enable us to complete our atom disintegrater.  And start our work of destruction!”  Oh right, that was the plot, the radium and the ray gun thing.  So by chapter 10 they’re finally getting ready to start work?  This makes me suspect that the spy ring is just a hobby, and Daka’s day job involves home contracting.

Cut to Bruce and Dick, who are lounging around Stately Wayne Room, when a telegram arrives from Washington.  At that very same moment, however, Bruce’s forgotten girlfriend Linda barges in, so Bruce hands his ward the coded message and mutters, “Take it in the lab, Dick,” in a way that just sounds dirty, I’m sorry.

Linda has come to pick a fight with Bruce, because she’s jealous of Chuck White, convinced that Bruce is cheating on her with his own banana-nosed alter ego.  Fight successfully picked, she storms out again, just as Dick re-enters through the clock (that’s the nice thing about using just one of the sixty rooms in your mansion — you only have to rent the Rug Doctor two, three times a year, and maybe once after the holidays for a quick freshener).

Dick has decoded the telegram, which reports the theft of some radium, and says, “this looks like a job for the batman!”   But Bruce says no, it’s a job for his other superhero identity, Chuck White, Big Nosed Regular Guy.

Back at Imperial Japanese Headquarters and Amusement Park Ride, Section 50 calls again to tell Daka that a courier is flying in with the radium, but the police are checking the baggage of all arriving passengers.  He suggests that “you use Plan 18.”  Considering that the spy ring has had only had one task so far — acquiring radium — you’d think it would rank a bit higher — Plan 3 or 4 at least — but no.  Turns out that Plans 1 through 17 are only good if Webelos have stolen your bank statement, or you’re being chased by bees.

But Batman has his own plan: to pad out the episode!  He puts on his utility nose, then takes a cab back to the Sphinx Club and hangs around until a random thug hires him to commit treason, then they take another cab to a different place, where Bruce sits in a waiting room and reads a magazine.  Meanwhile, Daka spies on him by peering through the eye holes of that portrait from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

The gangsters take Chuck to the Melody Ranch, where they all stand around and wait for the radium to go skydiving.  Bruce is now in a perfect position to gain the hoodlums’ trust and infiltrate the spy ring, but he arouses their suspicion when he succumbs to a sudden, Tourette’s-like urge to perform bird calls (his one fatal weakness, although in later years it would make him a popular fixture on the Sullivan show).

Since he’s blown it anyway, he runs over to his car so he and Dick can scramble into the back seat and grunt and struggle into their tights.

Meanwhile, the thugs stick a highway flare in the ground.  In a DC-3 conveniently overhead, a Flying Spy looks down, sees the flare, then lugs a hatbox into the toilet and breaks outs the window (which has modesty curtains, just in case another plane flies by when someone with a shy bladder is trying to pee).

The movie’s not really clear on what time it is, although I think it’s supposed to be after dark (the scene is shot dull-for-night) but nobody has any trouble spotting a base jumping hatbox full of radium.  As Batman and Robin are vastly outnumbered, they must use stealth and exploit the element of surprise, so they lumber into the light of the flare and smack around the first guy they find.

Robin takes a vicious blow to the upper thigh and rolls around on the ground, while the Batman is quickly overwhelmed by hoodlums.  Suddenly, he jumps into one of the getaway cars and takes it for a joyride.  A thug shoots out a tire, but the Batman maintains control, and as he glides down a gentle embankment, the passenger compartment suddenly bursts into flames as though underneath his costume, the Batman was a quivering aspic sculpted from jellied gasoline.

So let this be a lesson to you.  Lock you car.  Take the keys.  Don’t let a good Bat, go bad.

Next, Chapter 11:  A Nipponese Trap.

Movies | 9 Comments »

Ivan over at the quintessential classic media blog Thrilling Days of Yesteryear reminds us, gently, cough, cough, that last Wednesday was the Fifth Blogiversary of Wo’C.  [Excerpt from inaugural post redacted due to rogue HTML artifacts that were infesting the rest of the site.]  Unfortunately, Sheri’s house has turned into a M*A*S*H unit for two litters of kitties, so she doesn’t have time to write that long-awaited thumbsucking essay about How World ‘O Crap Has Changed Blogging As We Know It, but feel free to leave your anniversary wishes in the comments, which I hereby declare The Interactive Hallmark Card of Tomorrow!

Flying Car Sold Separately.

Now a word from our sponsor | 15 Comments »

Well, we’re back. Not only are we back, but thanks to the air travel and some overly optimistic outdoors activities, my back is back to square one. Which means I’m back on the pain meds, and back to blithering. So in lieu of anything trenchant or topical…here’s some cat pictures.

As it happens, I returned to the apartment just in time to catch Riley and Moondoggie in the midst of a Smug-Off. Riley leads off with a very creditable George Sanders, circa All About Eve. Note the classic use of the single elevated brow.

“You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.”

While Moondoggie responds with a tart and full-bodied Clifton Webb, served alá Laura…

“I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbor’s children devoured by wolves.”

Wild Things | 11 Comments »

I’m currently in transition, leaving Portland a lowly caterpillar, entering the silver chrysalis of the aircraft, and emerging in Los Angeles a beautiful butterfly with a bad case of the Dramamine munchies.

Hope to be back with something blogworthy later this afternoon.

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