retooling the tonight show, one tool at a time.

i wouldn't call myself a jay leno fan.

well, ok, maybe that's going to far...

i would say that i hate jay leno's comedy. ok, that's a little more reasonable.

yet, somehow, like so many other things, i have seen enough of, or heard enough about it to be able to speak on it. so here i go: jay leno's WHCD schtick was totally recycled, and i knew that even before politico released this little nugget. dude, leno, your corny. hang it up, man.

look, leno, i know you're a comedian, and too be fair, you certainly ripped on the bush administration enough, but i feel like you don't know how to walk that line between lampooning the absurd, or the unfortunate, or the idiotic, and making disparaging comments that will actually hurt the cause of something positive.

this of course is only my opinion of what is positive, but i don't think that there's any subjectivity to the statement that leno skews way right these days, and his comedy doesn't just push obama toward good things by publicly shaming him where he fails, but also publicly scolds him where he succeeds, and creates a leno fan base that (often too ignorant to get their news anywhere else) will have a warped view of this administration. now, call it what you will, liberal double standard, hypocrisy, but i just feel like bush didn't do much good in the world, while obama is trying to. where leno's bush years comedy was more like pointing out the obviously comical, his obama years comedy is off in the realm of taking fox news talking points and dumbing them down (watch his show, discover that it is possible) into a bonehead one-liner formula.

so what could we have expected when he gets the political comedy gig of a lifetime, and doesn't even bother to write new material?

"cash for flunkers", jay? seriously?

that joke is hardly even funny the first time around. even if you consider things that simply rhyme to be funny, this joke is pretty elementary.

and he's standing in front of the most elite crowd of the year, dumpster diving through his own old, hack material.

comedically speaking, obama wrecked leno.

much like i advocate making dubbya and palin the new host and hostess of the wheel of fortune (because he is good at asinine banter with simpletons, and she might be able to recognize the english alphabet if it were presented to her, one letter at a time, on giant glowing TV screens) i say, give obama the tonight show. he's charismatic, smooth, funny, and he knows a thing or two about current events. meanwhile, leno is pointing out typos in small town penny-saver ads, poorly ripping off SNL skits, still dunking on paris hilton (yep... still), cackling his way through his completely hacked "jay walking" man-on-the-street bits, and sticking his tongue up celebrities asses.

what's more, i can stand to listen to obama's voice for more than 3 consecutive seconds. leno, on the other hand, gets the dogs in my neighborhood all worked up, and then i'm listening to blood curdling squealing from all directions (yeah, that's right, leno's voice sounds like the loosing party in a chihuahua fight).

and frankly, i'll take gaffin' joe on guitar any day over kevin eubanks. fuck, man, eubanks is such a toooooooool. but even better, lets go trans-administration. let's get gaffin' joe in the announcer booth, and get slick willy clinton on sax as the band leader. at least gaffin' joe can put a sentence together. can't say as much for stuttering john. besides, with slick willy as side-kick, all the jokes about chasing young tail will ring comically true, not just creeppily plausible, like with eubanks.

obama set up shop on leno's face at the WHCD.

come on, man, "you know what really tickles me? ... eric massa." that's fucking gold.

"true love is the hardest thing to find... well, that and a birth certificate" dude, that's conan level self-deprecation right there.

having recently had the chance to see conan o'brien live, i can comfortably say that there is no one i'd rather watch on late night TV.

he truly was the rightful heir to the tonight show throne.

but that throne has been sullied. sullied by leno and his tired ass captain sully jokes, and conan doesn't want it anymore. so fine, i will follow coco to TBS. he has more than earned my adoration. but as for leno, by presidential decree, i say we air drop his ass out in the middle of the sahara with kevin eubanks, stuttering john, and nothing but one of his old stanley steamer million dollar classic cars with the water tank running low.

it could be a new NBC reality show. now that's a leno i'd watch in the 10PM slot.

sometimes you gotta say, "fuck it, i'm going to a peta anti-foie gras rally in yountville, california"

and fuck it, i will.

hey, why not?

as misguided, unfruitful, or just plain back-asswards as peta's efforts can be at times, they still have fantastic intentions (this according to me), and do more for animal rights in this country than any other org.

so why not go to a one hour rally, at a restaurant that most people have never heard of, in a city no one has ever heard of, in a state that has already passed legislation creating an impending ban on the thing being protested?

why not indeed.

* * * * *

a brief history of the french laundry

the french laundry (is the name snooty enough for ya?) in yountville, CA is a restaurant that is so good that you have to be somebody amongst somebodys just to get on the months and potentially years long waiting list to spend $250 a plate on a fixed 2 meal menu (plus wine, selected from their prestigious 101 page list). an eatery voted "best restaurant in the americas" (yes that says americas, as in two friggin' continents), a restaurant that received 3 stars (highest honor) in the michelin guide, an honor only bestowed upon 81 establishments in the entire world (the michelin guide is so goddamn snooty that the rankings are defined as such: one star "a very good restaurant in its category, worth a stop", two stars "excellent cooking, worth a detour", three stars "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey", dude, i consider cho's dim sum to be exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey, and i'm pretty sure he deep fries his spring rolls in decades old rancid squirrel grease, so the michelin guide is not exactly loosey goosey with the compliments), a restaurant so high maintenance in its cuisine that the chef will par cook an egg, then remove the yolk with a razor blade, season, and whip it, then place it back inside the white to finish cooking so that it will have not just the perfect palate, but the perfect texture, in an enigmatically flawless package (how did this chicken lay a chocolate mousse flavored egg?).

despite a ban that will go into effect in 2012, it appears thomas keller, the chef at the french laundry, will continue serving foie gras until he is actually legally prohibited from doing so. chefs the likes of wolfgang puck have already stopped serving foie gras in their CA establishments, but then again, they have a higher profile, and more product to move.

* * * * *

a brief history of foie gras

foie gras (pronounced fwah grah, and translated as fat liver, which just goes to show exactly how refined the french are. being that foie gras is a french cuisine, we can imagine that ordering it in france would be similar to going to an american diner and ordering a "slice of the rotting pig corpse", instead of a "pork chop") is the fattened liver of a duck or goose. fattened through force feeding the animal corn, as dictated by french law (seriously). foie gras is such a fancy pants delicacy that it is typically served in one of four ways, of which pâté is the least fancy.

having been born in a country where we think that the fanciest things in the world are champagne, caviar, and pâté, it's hard to believe that there are three levels of foie gras fancier than pâté, especially since foie gras caviar is impossible, and foie gras champagne is almost less appealing than actively participating in 2 girls 1 cup. as an ignorant american, i can only assume then that the 4 levels of foie gras in ascending order are 4) foie gras pâté, 3) supersize foie gras pâté, 2) supersize foie gras pâté with cheese, and 1) the supersize bacon ranch foi gras pâté with cheese (actually: pâté, parfait, mousse, and whole meat).

* * * * *

is it me or does tortured meat seem to make the most luxurious meals?

force fed migratory fowl yield foie gras.

genetically mutated, non-ambulatory barn foul make damn tasty fried chicken, and low fat alternatives to red meat (gotta love that turkey jerky).

baby cows slaughtered before they are able to walk are $72/lb veal chops.

compared to the above, castrating the cow to "purify" it so that it can be certified kobe beef seems almost tame when you take into consideration the beliefs that kobe beef cows must also be served beer daily, massaged with sake, and brushed to tame and manage their fur.

i don't know if i'd trade my testicles for a lifetime of beer and asian massages (after all, without my fun bits, how could i enjoy the happy ending?) but i'd certainly give up my man nuggets before i submitted to the life of a chicken nugget.

* * * * *

all in all, i'm not sure why i want to go to this peta thing.

maybe it's because after years of supporting peta's ultimate goals, i feel like i owe them a little effort by way of supporting their means (and i certainly wasn't about to get on the sea kitten bandwagon, or throw paint on liz taylor).

maybe it's because fancy restaurants make me uncomfortable, and i'd like to stand outside one with an angry mob, yelling at the chef.

but probably it's becuase i can't resist the sheer randomness in the prospect of waking up sturday morning and saying to myself, "fuck it, i'm going to a peta anti-foie gras rally in yountville, california. i'm going to the most prestigious culinary establishment in the western hemisphere, and i'm gonna burn that mother down."

update 2: i may never get to sleep at this rate...

BP, the company responsible (or one of them, anyway) for the oil spill has a solution very much in line with gene taylor's solution, but a little more proactive:

let the spill break up and dissolve.

BP isn't just going to let the sun and wind take care of that though.

oh, no, BP has a plan:

dispersants.

BP is using chemicals that can dissolve and disperse oil spills when used in high volume.

sounds great right?

wrong. not only has BP already bought up fully one third of the entire world's supply of dispersants, and yet there is no end to the leak in sight (meaning we will run out of them well before the leak stops, apparently on its own, i guess is BP's mode of thought. remember how the nazis wanted to dam off the straight of gibraltar, and drown the mediterranean, but there actually isn't enough concrete in the world to do that? yeah, it's kind of like that. herman sörgel would be so proud), but the dispersants are known, known as in we already know them to be more toxic and hazardous than raw oil.

oh good...

for a second there i thought we were going to experience some long term effects from this whole thing. turns out the real long term effects will be from the solution.

now i can rest easy...

update: this is what they thought was going to happen...

you know, sometimes i say/write shit, just because i'm in the heat of things, and want to represent an extreme emotional response, simply to get an extreme emotional response.

then i read something like this and it blows my mind...

i was 100% right.

rep gene taylor said, "people shouldn't be so scared" about the spill in the gulf, "it's not as bad as i thought" and that the spill looked like "rainbows and chocolate milk".

oh.

OH!

how stupid of me!

if it looks like rainbows and chocolate milk, it can't be bad. in fact i bet it's a magical miracle from the lord jesus himself!

we drilled so deep we killed satan, and the earth is rewarding us by erupting in rainbows and chocolate milk!

zipitty fucking doo dah!

hurrah! huzzah!

tell you what taylor. you can have the first glass of chocolate milk, and let me know how it tastes.

this fucking a-hole took a 3 hour tour from 1,000 feet above the spill, and he thinks it will "break up" on its own very quickly.

er...

uhhhhhhh...

break up?

how so, fuck face?

and even if the spill did "break up" where would the pieces go?

they'd still be floating around in the ocean somewhere. or washing up on some shore.

or shall we just assume that the feathered and furry aminals will coat themselves in rainbows and chocolate milk and fly away with it to a magic land called extinction junction, and we can resume cranking out 8mpg behemoths over at the nummi plant (just kidding, toyota closed the nummi plant months ago, displacing thousands of jobs. jokes on... those thousands of recently unemployed people who can't collect unemployment because the state thought it more productive to sit around measuring their cocks than pass a budget, and the fed thought it better to play legislative chicken with people's lives. go congress, go prius!)

even more good news from rep taylor. the plan is to let nature take its course and allow the spill to evaporate on its own time(?).

oh, good. for a second there, i thought we were going to have to do something... to help alleviate the catastrophic effects of our ignorant and selfish actions.

that was a close one.

errrr... what exactly did you think was going to happen?

so i know i don't post here as often as i should. but the fact is, i write a ton of stuff either when i've been drinking, or post-ultra realistic dream... that kind of thing, and i just don't have the confidence in the piece to put it out there until i've proof read it while clear headed, and it's not that i don't like it when i'm thinking straight, it's just that i never go back to it.

but you know, i think it's time i just didn't queue it up for post. time that i just let it spill out, to gush forth like black, iridescent fossil fuels from beneath the gulf of mexico.

so here it is...

i'm a guy. just a guy. just a guy who knows a girl. just a girl who was born to a guy. just a guy who is responsible for placing haliburton in the persian gulf.

and you know what?

this girl is one of the most stand up, selfless girls in the whole world.

and i doubt her father is a bad person.

how could he be?

he made a pretty amazing child.

so when i hear that haliburton is on deck to take this whole gulf of mexico spill on the chin, what's a guy to think?

i know haliburton is a fucked up, amoral corporate whore-fest that only wants to make a buck, and if they happen to ruin a large portion of the planet, well, most of them make enough money to move somewhere that they didn't destroy.

and certainly i don't plan on defending them simply because i personally know someone who might be hurt if i went for the throat.

but this is my life.

i think and act often in cold rational detachment, mostly because i have to, mostly because i find myself in these conundrums in which personal experience, and logical thought come to a baffling and contradictory intersection right on my goddamn face.

and ultimately people get hurt, because we are people, and we don't deal in cold rational detachment, even if it gets the conundrum off your face.

but i don't really feel like going for the throat here... why? you ask.

because we were drilling holes, miles deep in the earth, with the intention of dredging up billions of gallons of toxic sludge.

and we fucked up.

no goddamn shit.

what the fuck did we think was going to happen?

that we were going to drill so deep that we would never run out of oil?

or that we would drill so precise that we could never in a million years make a mistake?

mistake or no, this was bound to happen eventually.

ever heard of an earthquake?

a volcanic eruption?

i should fucking hope you've at least heard of a volcanic eruption.

remember last week when you couldn't get a flight back from your wine tour of the parisian countryside because iceland spewed all over eurasia? yeah, that's a volcanic eruption, and shit like that happens, without warning, all the time. especially in places where large, odd, and extremely deep punctures in the earth's crust happen to be.

so ladi fucking dah. here we are with the left hand punching in the launch codes to blast innocent brown people into keeping our gas prices under 4 bucks, and the right hand holding a sign proclaiming "drill, baby, drill!".

and new orleans gets a giant metaphorical cock up the ass, once again.

meanwhile, the government owns a car company that the taxpayers are bailing out, and congress is calling them out for lying to the public, and not even about the things the public knows that that company is lying about, which it is, but we seem to be ok with those things, because we've been lied to about them long enough that it's almost weird if we're not being lied to about them. and one of the things that that company is lying about, yet nobody seems to give a shit about, is their gas mileage, but you know what? nobody cares that that company is lying about it because nobody gives a shit where gas comes from.

as long as it comes from that little nozzle at the ARCO, what difference does it make?

well, when it stops coming from that little nozzle at the ARCO, and starts coming bursting out of the ocean floor at about a thousand gallons a minute, it actually makes a big difference.

we just went from slowly strangling the environment, to instantly drowning it.

fuck fuck fuck, fuckitty fuck fuck, fuck fuckin fuck.

are we this stupid?

i submit that the answer is so above and beyond, far and away, some concept so yes-like, that there is actually no possible way for human brains to understand how much the answer is yes.

not a bunch of human brains that created the situation that we are now in.

you FUCKing idIOTS!

we have absolutely, and for a very long period of time, demolished the nature of a very large portion of the planet.

uhhhhhhhhh...

do you think it might be time to stop now?

you know, i do. but as for a majority of the world, let me take a wild guess...

i submit that their answer is so above and beyond, far and away, some concept so no-like, that there is actually no possible way for my brain to understand how much the answer is no.

do our children literally need to drown in spilled petroleum before we cut this shit out?

you know what? why do i even ask silly questions like that?

we get cancer, birth defects, and record SIDS numbers from carcinogens we put into the atmosphere. we blame someone else.

we get diabetes, and heart disease from foods we choose to consume. and we blame someone else.

we create new continents made entirely of garbage in 5 separate places on the aquatic map. we blame someone else.

we live miserable, pathetic, sheltered, unhappy lives for a staggeringly long time. we blame someone else.

the list goes on. the punchline stays the same... we blame someone else.

some people may wonder why i hate the world.

ha.

that list is long and depressing.

but if we break it down to just one topic...

chernobyl, three mile island, exxon valdez, the gulf coast spill, the persian gulf wars, the explosion of cancers, hiroshima, nagasaki, agent orange (brought to you by the producers of valero gas, think again before you fill up at that trendy new petrol station. think about vietnamese children with fabric patterns melted into their skin...) the pacific garbage gyre, styrofoam (packing peanuts), asbestos, CFLs (danger: product contains a toxic amount of mercury. but they last so much longer, so long as you don't follow up on that claim...) silicone surgical implants, animal testing, animal cruelty, the amount of petroleum and other deadly pollutants necessary to make just one single cel of film (seriously, one film is the equivalent of a tire fire like the size of the empire state building, and i won't even tell you what it takes to make those lithium ion batteries that your prius runs on...), and why we waste that on shit like hot tub time machine... seriously, do i need to go on?

i swear to god, every morning that someone doesn't find me hanging by a belt from the rafters, must be some kind of miracle, because that depressing list is just a portion of one, one single topic for which i find myself completely and utterly depressed, disgusted, and disappointed with this life that i've heard so much about.

we cannot undo the things we have done, and now we will raise many generations of children who won't know that the mississippi delta shouldn't be black and greasy.

does life suck this much when people are stupid enough to create this kind of a world?

i submit that yada yada yada... yes.

congratulations. i'm almost certain that 99.9999999999% of the population will have learned nothing from this.