Headline of the Day

NBC News: Astronaut Neil Young, First Man To Walk on Moon, Dies at Age 82/8.25.12

(Would-be) Headline of the Day

"Kristen Stewart Aborted Robert Pattinson’s Baby Into Rupert Sanders’ Mouth."

-- The Superficial, pointing out by way of a joke that gossip sites can now print any rumor about the Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson cheating scandal and get away with it

Headline of the Week

From the Huffington Post.

Well no shit.

Headline of the Week

Think Progress: Reporters For Right-Wing Publication "Daily Caller" Beaten By NYPD, Helped By Protesters/11.17.11

Now how did you read that?

Headline of the Week

TPM: Amish Mob Broke Into Homes and Cut Off Hair and Beards/10.12.11

Headline of the Week

The Huffington Post: Ted Haggard, Gary Busey On 'Celebrity Wife Swap'/9.22.11

Well, if you were wondering what the end of civilization would look like -- here it is.

Headline of the Week

Gawker: Gordon Ramsay's Porn Dwarf Double Eaten By Badger/9.15.11

Yes, this story is 100% true.

As for the badgers who apparently feasted on poor Percy Foster -- or had a light snack, as it were -- I guess Randall was right.

Head(less)line of the Week

The Daily Beast: Man Beheads Self in Virginia/8.31.11

"A man in Virginia beheaded himself Tuesday after an apparent domestic dispute. Police responding to a call about the dispute noticed a burning utility trailer and a white SUV nearby. They also noticed that the driver of the SUV had tied a cable around a tree, run it through the car window, and wrapped it around his neck. When police tried to get him to exit the vehicle, he accelerated and decapitated himself. 'Nobody has ever heard of anything like this,' the local sheriff said."

In other news, there's ingenuity in Virginia.

I kid, of course. First of all, the guy in question was from Chicago; second, what drove him to the point of deciding to, oh, you know, take his own head off was apparently an argument with his ex-wife. And that I can understand perfectly.

Quote of the Day/Headline of the Week/Sunday Sacrilege

"Let them measure my anus and see if it is dilated."

-- Spanish priest Andrés García Torres who, after being photographed shirtless with his arm around an equally shirtless young man, is now fending off accusations that he's gay

Freethinker UK: Accused of Being Gay, Spanish Priest Challenges Church to Measure His Anus/7.12.11

(via Christian Nightmares)

Headline of the Week

It isn't the actual headline of this story but the link on the HuffPo main page that takes you to the story: "Obama's Huge Weapon."

Although remember what I said last week about how the current Republican political model is unsustainable given the changing make-up of the United States? Well, here you go.

The Huffington Post: Hispanic Population Rising Faster Than Anticipated, "Huge Weapon" for Obama/5.31.11

Headline of the Week

Reuters: Porn Found Inside Bin Laden's Compound/5.13.11

Anybody wanna take a crack at some of the potential porn titles? I'm far too busy at the moment, but please have at it.

Headline of the Week

The Onion: Trump Unable To Produce Certificate Proving He's Not A Festering Pile Of Shit/4.27.11

Sunday Sacrilege/Headline of the Week(end)

Christwire: Coachella Is a Festival of Disease and Sin. Your Children Most Likely Will Die/4.15.11

Sure, Christwire is a satire site -- but go ahead and read through this hilarious piece and be honest with yourself about how long it would probably take you to figure that out if you didn't know it.

Headline of the Week

The Daily Beast: Man Catches on Fire While Watching Porn/4.14.11

Headline of the Week (Early Contender)

The Huffington Post: Meredith Vieira Polishes Colin Firth's Oscar/2.28.11

Headline of the Week

The Los Angeles Times: Charlie Sheen Begs to Return to "Two and a Half Men," Says His Sobriety is "Off and On"/2.14.11

Headline of the Week (Early Contender)

The Daily Mail: Folk Legend Joan Baez Injured After Falling from Treehouse/11.20.10

It's as good an excuse as any to bring back this sucker (and yes, I'm busy as hell at the moment so sorry for all the reruns):

"What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been" (Originally Published, 9.1.09)

I'll never forget it: On July 13th, 1985, folk legend Joan Baez walked onto the stage at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium -- site of the U.S. half of that day's massive Live Aid concert -- looked out over the crowd of rowdy kids, lifted up her voice as if she were a pastor at a revival and said triumphantly, "Children of the 80s, this is your Woodstock and it's long overdue."

I'll also never forget my reaction as I sat on a couch with my teenage friends, all of us watching the show live on MTV:

"Fuck off, hippie."

At first glance, my swift and admittedly crude dismissal of an icon of 1960s counter-culture might seem the product of my youth, immaturity and overall lack of ability at the time to appreciate the positive impact that Joan Baez and those like her had on the generation that followed them. You know something though? I'm now almost 40, and although there are those who would tell you that my level of maturity remains that of a teenager, I gotta say -- I don't give any more of a crap about Joan Baez today than I did in 1985. Looking back on it, I still consider her little more than a silly, pompous 60s cliché.

It's standard operating procedure, practically a rite of passage, for each new generation to fiercely rebel against the one that preceded it -- regardless of the optimistic nonsense that Pepsi's highly paid ad agency would have you believe. But for anyone unlucky enough to follow those who came of age in the 1960s, defiance to some extent has felt all but impossible. This is because, quite frankly, the 60s marked a high point in the evolution of American society as a whole and set an inapproachable standard across so many aspects of our culture -- music, art, political activism, even the act of defiance itself -- and it did this despite being one of the most turbulent periods in our nation's history.

And how do we know this?

Because for 40-some-odd years, the fucking Baby Boomers have never stopped reminding us.

Never in the history of this country has there been a generation that's cast a longer shadow without really having done anything to earn it than the children of the 60s -- specifically the so-called Woodstock Generation. For the most part, they're thoroughly undeserving of the immortality they've pretentiously bequeathed to themselves. But for God's sake, don't ever say this to the True Believers in the Boomer-Woodstock nostalgia aesthetic; they'll immediately begin lecturing you on the seemingly self-perpetuating legacy of the 60s protest movement, the brilliance of Abbie Hoffman, and the philosophical importance of shitting outdoors in the mud while Canned Heat plays Going Up the Country somewhere at the other end of the farm.

In case you hadn't already noticed, all this free love for the era of free love has really been pegging the meters lately thanks to the 40th anniversary of what was known officially as the Woodstock Art and Music Festival ("Three Days of Peace, Music and a Complete Lack of Hygiene"). Yes, it was 40 years ago that a bunch of hippies descended on the tiny town of Bethel, New York to drop acid, whirl around in circles and make memories that would last not only their lifetime but everyone else's -- because it was just that important.

If you weren't able to be there for whatever reason (you were part of the oppressive establishment or, you know, hadn't been born yet) the Woodstock folks need you to understand that, dammit, you should wish you could have been.

Such is the real legacy of the 60s, as filtered through the haze of bong smoke still looked back on with fondness by many of those who were there: It introduced the most narcissistic, self-congratulatory, self-indulgent generation this country has ever seen. A group of people political satirist Christopher Buckley jokingly calls "The Un-greatest Generation."

But once again, don't tell them that. As far as they're concerned, they own the goddamned world -- and to some extent they do, and have since they first went from being counter-culture warriors to being shallow, shameless Wall Street capitalists in the 1980s. When Wavy Gravy gave way to Gordon Gekko. When the Baby Boomers ascended to a position of real power in America, it was almost a certainty that they would do what they'd done since the 60s: shove their values (which always came down to one thing: them), their culture, and their nostalgia for their own childhood down our collective throats, allowing the rest of us the opportunity to fully grasp and revel right along with them in what they already knew so well -- their lives ruled. It was this gargantuanly egocentric attitude that gave us the "Me Generation" during the 70s and went on to bankrupt parts of this country, both financially and morally, in the 80s and beyond. No wonder "my generation" (no pun intended), the so-called Gen-X, eventually decided that the only way to fight back was to abandon all that phony, ultimately self-serving conscientiousness and just not give a shit about anything.

But we never could escape the warm bath of encomium flowing from a media machine designed not just to chronicle but glorify the Boomers as they made their way through life -- from their self-reflective 30s (the tedious navel-gazing of Thirtysomething and The Big Chill), through their ascendency to their rightful place at the very pinnacle of American society (the too-much-is-never-enough Clinton presidency), now into their autumnal years (story upon story devoted to how they're "redefining" retirement -- bringing the same level of self-indulgence to it that they've brought to every other period in their lives). To drop a phrase from a generation that existed long before theirs, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The reality is that although the 1960s themselves were an extraordinary time and I'd never devalue some of the truly impressive accomplishments that took place during that era, it would be great if we'd all be allowed to, well, get over it. An adherence to the standards supposedly set in the 60s has at times done far more harm than good. Think the 60s protest movement -- the way in which people are encouraged to protest, highlighting individualism (making my point perfectly) -- really has any relevance to today's climate? You're out of your fucking mind. When what was called for in the lead-up to the war in Iraq -- what would've been truly effective -- was a show of strength through unity and, yes, conformity among activists, what we instead got was what we've always gotten since the 60s: a bunch of dumb-asses in face paint and colorful t-shirts acting like buffoons. Needless to say, this struck fear into the hearts of absolutely no one in the political and media establishment. All it proved was that those who were opposed to the impending war would never be able to get it together enough to make a successful stand against the people calling the shots.

So why did we engage in this thoroughly impotent form of activism? Because we'd been taught since birth that "this is how they did it in the 60s, man!" (regardless of the fact that it can easily be argued that the real reason for the Vietnam protests in the first place was that none of the hippies wanted to get stuck going to war -- 'cause, wow, bummer man).

Big fan of those ridiculous Jesse Jackson-led marches? Do those really accomplish a goddamned thing? Not quite. And yet we allow Jackson to continually hijack any real dialogue and chance at lasting understanding simply because he's a 60s icon -- one who's always at the ready to inject himself into any public fight simply because it will get him on TV (making my point yet again). Or how about this one: Think about how every political or cultural scandal since 1972 has ludicrously been dubbed "Something-or-Other-Gate" -- named for the Watergate break-in ordered by late-60s pariah Richard Nixon.

The 60s is the decade that just won't die.

Those who lived it have spent the last four decades looking down their noses at the rest of us and saying, "You're welcome."

Joan Baez's comment at Live Aid was more revealing about an entire mindset than even she probably realized. So much that's happened since the 1960s has been compared against the standard supposedly set in the 1960s. This is especially interesting when you consider something: Live Aid was actually about alleviating world hunger; what was Woodstock about? You guessed it -- them. They came up during a time when maybe being an individual could be perceived as a threat to the squares in the establishment -- but did that ethos have to continue throughout the rest of their lives, even well past the point that they actually became the establishment? Did the Woodstock generation ever really grow up?

Look, Dennis Hopper is now a card-carrying conservative. The last Kennedy brother is dead. American Express is now aiming retirement package commercials at you featuring a smiling, gray-haired couple saying, "Never trust anyone over 90!" -- officially making you a walking punchline. Taking Woodstock came in 9th at the box office over the weekend.

The trip's over.

Will you please go away and leave us alone now?

Headline of the Week

The best part about this: You're pretty much guaranteed to only see it once in your lifetime.

(via Someecards)

Headline of the Week

To make a slight adjustment to a pretty good line from Dodgeball: It's too bad Hallmark doesn't make a "Sorry You Just Plummeted To Your Death in Irony River" card.

The Huffington Post: Jimi Hesdelen, Owner of Segway Inc., Dies in Tragic Segway Accident/9.27.10

Headline of the Week

CBS News: Obama a Muslim: How Silly Can We Become?/8.25.10