The Mystery Of The Sexy Christian

Well, I've been pretty excited here at the Comfort Zone due to the horrible, sexy, and tragic news of Jeff Gannon AKA Jim Guckert AKA jdg17@aol.com. Salon.com has a good summary of the story, for those of you just joining us, as does the story in Editor And Publisher. They both manage to skirt the sexy issue - which, I have to admit, is completely beside the point. But, as noted in my tagline, that's what I write about.

In case you're interested, and I'll bet you are, here's the sexy photo that everyone is talking about: sexy Jeff Gannon's AOL picture, which was on his AOL homepage along with the words "Still sexy after all these years." Just not this year, Jeff.

The actual story is that Bushie The Lesser had a plant in the White House press corps who asked such hard-hitting, investigative, and relevant questions as:

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy.[Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there.
How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Which, you might notice, isn't really a question so much as statement. The only part he forgot was to say:

Could you lower your pants so that I can lick your ass clean your with my tongue before I kiss it?

It should also be noted that Rush Limbaugh, not Harry Reid, talked about soup lines. More specifically, Rush Limbaugh said that Harry Reid said there were soup lines, and then Gannon left out the "Rush Limbaugh making things up" part in his question.

Yesterday Jeff Gannon was on Wolf Blitzer to explain himself, and although previously he said he was "hiding in plain sight" and appreciated all the media attention, he changed his mind after he was stalked...on his way to church. I find that highly laughable, as he's previously described himself as "a two-holiday Christian," which I guess means he celebrates Christmas and Mardi Gras. This whole scandal must have convinced him that he's much more of a Christian than he was before.

Save me, Jebus!

He also said that the whole question of "how did a fake reporter working for a fake news operation get White House press credentials without a background check" question was irrelevant because he was just issued a day pass. What he left out was that he was issued a day pass...every day for two years. He's as much a legitimate reporter as I am - which is to say, not at all.

He also explained away the fact that although there are several web domain names registered under his name, including JeffGannon.com and HotMilitaryStud.com, the dirty ones were "for a client" from years ago and never had any actual websites associated with them. I guess the fact that he was in the military and clearly considered himself a hot stud are just superduper amazing coincidences.

Apparently, the photograph of him in his underwear was him taking his clothes off right before he took a bath in the blood of Jesus Christ. Right after that, he was waved into the White House with minimal background checks, and then, totally by coincidence, whenever a hard line of questioning occurred, Bushie would call on him for tough follow-ups like, "Why are your eyes so pretty?"

This reminds me of a quote I came across from Lewis Black the other day (in the 2/16/04 Time Out New York), who says:

At least the Democrats try to hide their shit. These guys just take a dump right in front of us and go, 'Oh no, that's not there. What
you're smelling is, um, that you didn't bathe.'

Really, I don't know why the conservatives are defending this pussy, because this whole story is a great big sexy distraction from legitimate news, like how Condi Rice lied before the 9/11 commission.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get to church. The fact that I'm totally nude and covered in body oil is NOT some sexual thing. It's your fault...you were anointing me, remember? Just like Jesus got anointed? And I didn't want to get the oil on my clothes, so I removed them. Nothing to see here!
That is all.

If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Already...

...And You'd Also Be Flat Broke, Because The Rent Is Damn Expensive.

The most exciting thing ever is happening in New YorkCity: The Gates! For those of you who haven't heard - and you should have, because even my Mom knows about them and she lives in Minnesota - you can click on the link above and see an illustration of what they are and what they will look like.

I'd always thought that Christo's previous stuff was not really all that interesting, other than being a punchline on one of my favorite Simpson's episodes. That is, I should say, not until now!
I just went out at lunchtime to have a looky-loo at them as they're being set up, and they already look superfantabulous, even though they haven't undone the billowy curtainy bits yet (that's supposed to happen this weekend). Central Park is currently a dreary, wretched gray color, due to it being winter, except now it's shot through with these bright orange gate thingies all running through it everywhere. It just looks neat and surreal and fun. If you live in New York you should definitely make sure to have a look at them - they're only going to be here from this weekend through February 27th.

If you don't live in New York, you should really move here as soon as possible, but that's unrelated to the Gates, actually, and is true at all times.

That is all.

Strange Fruit

The other day Solomon and I were walking home from seeing Fiddler On The Roof with Harvey Fierstein, and as we walked by the former home of the WWF Theme restaurant on 43rd Street I recalled that Tama Janowitz, author of Slaves Of New York, once wrote a series of hilaaaaarious restaurant reviews for the New York Press several years ago. Despite that fact that I have trouble remembering the names of people I've met five minutes ago, I was able to remember several different ones - about the WWF restuarant, about donuts, and about an unusual tropical fruit that smelled horribly and which she served to friends as if it was a type of smelly cheese.
In her review of the WWF restaurant, for example, as I recalled it, she didn't seem to actually know the official name of the restaurant (or in this case, wrestaurant), and just kept calling it "the wrestling restaurant". She also did a review of donuts in which she talked about donuts and gave the impression she was going to compare four different kinds of donuts, but then forgets to buy two of the four varieties, and decides she doesn't want to issue an opinion on something so personal as one's donut preference, so after two pages you come up with no review, really, but the stories involved were terribly funny - they must have been, since they stuck in my mind all these years.
I think "missing the point" is such a funny concept, especially when combined with aggressive digression. It reminds me of a documentary I saw once about Andy Warhol where he described why he made movies ("it's easier - you just turn on the camera") and how they thought it was fun to make a movie and do lots of zoom-ins where you just missed the subject entirely. While he was saying this on the voice-over, the documentary cut to clips where they were doing just that - having a big scene of people, several nude and all of them high, and then zooming in on someone's knee, for example. Perhaps not coincidentally, Tama was friends with Andy pre-mortem.
Yesterday I gave myself a treat, and printed out all of her reviews, which are available online, and read them in chronological order last night. E thought I was insane as I sat there laughing at a bunch of restaurant reviews, but they are really very good. There were several that I think I missed the first time around, and the ones I had read were just as funny the second and third time around (I read some bits aloud to him). She has a great style of writing with lots of subjunctive clauses, which I like, and she also does a few other things I like, such as 1) using the phrase "as is my wont" and 2) making lists of only two items.
They are really all very funny reviews - there are fifteen of them, I see, but really I think the very best one is the one about the durian fruit, but the donuts, the wrestling restaurant, and the review of Gotham Bar & Grill are all terribly funny as well. With the one about the Gotham Bar & Grill, for example, begins as follows:
In the morning I woke next to a huge signed cookbook called Alfred Portale’s 12 Seasons, a card saying "Gotham Bar & Grill, Adrian Gjonbalaj, Manager" and a diagram of a vagina with arrows pointing to various parts with notations such as "stainless steel labia majora," "raised copper clit" and "perforated steel labia minora." Another note said, in a scribbled handwriting, that there were vagina tables in a restaurant called NV, which had been designed by Paul Carroll.
Apparently I had been out to dinner the night before.
So if you're looking for something clever to read today, I would recommend those, which I have thoughtfully linked for you HERE so you don't have to look them up or sort them or anything.
I guess someone at the paper didn't find missing the point to be quite as amusing as I do, since her review of a Senegalese restaurant starts out by saying "I cannot tell you if Chez Gngagn Koty's is a good Senegalese restaurant or a bad one..." and it is, perhaps not coincidentally, her last review in that paper.
Also, Ed Shepp today has a nice fantasy involving Uma Thurman that is very funny, too, and is a good deal shorter than those 15 reviews for those of you with ADD.
My point, now that I'm getting around to it, was that I wanted to talk about the durian fruit today. Any of you ever had a durian, or perhaps even just walked by one? I'm really curious about them now. If you know anything about them at all, post a comment.
That is all.

See You Next Tuesday!

Today I have a funny video clip of Ann "The Cunt" Coulter getting her facts wrong. It might be old, but it's new to me! Ann Coulter, for those of you who don't know, is one of titular "Lying Liars" in Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. She's shown in this video clip insisting Canada sent troops to Vietnam, except they didn't. When she's confronted by her interviewer, she just insists she's right, and then when it's apparent the interviewer isn't going to back down, she just says, in a very slightly less strident tone, "Indochina?"

I just keep rewinding the part where she says "Indochina?" - it gets funnier every time, like a little kid asking for a present they know they don't deserve for Christmas. No, Virginia, they didn't send troops to Indochina, either. She finally says she's going to look it up, and the interviewer just openly laughs at her, since that is what she was supposed to do before she opened her yap.

One thing that I can't get over is looking at her book jacket cover when I'm in airports, which apparently is a major outlet for her "books". She's wearing a fitted sleeveless blue leather vest with nothing underneath, much like those worn by Grace Jones as either May Day in The Living Daylights or Zula in Conan the Destroyer (I'm not sure which - the costuming was inexplicably similar for both).

I can't find a full-torso shot of Grace in that outfit, but this one of Anne and this one of Grace look pretty similar to me, at least in terms of the vest material. I just keep thinking how hot and sweaty and stinky Ann Coulter must be in that thing, especially by the end of a long hard day of misinformed punditry.

I bet Anne is the kind of woman who doesn't really pay as much attention as she should to her armpits, so there's just a little too much stubble in there, and the stubble has little gobs of deodorant stuck in it, but since she's a "lady" we're not supposed to notice. Uck.

Grace Jones gives the impression that she'd beat the crap out of you before she fucked you, so I'm sure you wouldn't mind, or even notice, if she was sweaty or not, you'd be so busy trying to protect your genitalia from being kicked by her spike-tipped thigh-high boots. With Anne Coulter, however, you'd probably have to buy her dinner and listen to her stiff-lipped tirades for weeks, gazing into those droopy Diane Keaton-esque eyes and trying not look her in the armpits, before she'd eventually submit to a missionary position throwdown. I'll bet she'd still manage to talk through the whole thing and ruin what little pleasure her icy vagina could offer.

You might wonder why I'm so caught up in Anne Coulter's looks, but really the only reason that anyone pays any attention to her is because she is a blond white woman who wears tight clothes while saying what Fox News wants her to say, and, as evidenced by the above video clip, says completely untrue things with enough confidence that people start to believe it.
Once those myths are out there, like "Tommy Hilfiger hates black people" or "Social Security is in danger and we need Bushie The Lesser to 'reform' it", it just becomes accepted as fact and people never stop to question it.

Oh, we were looking for "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities," not "weapons of mass destruction"? And you found them? Good for you! I guess you're NOT a miserable failure!

Canada's looking ever more attractive, eh?
That is all.