- Harold Ramis
...Sadly for the rest of us, he got his wish...we are indeed sad to bid too-soon a farewell and a happy eternity to Harold Ramis, one of the funniest, most talented and influential comedy writers ever to tickle your funny bone who died at age 69 of autoimmune deficiency...Harold arguably made more people laugh than anyone else...I first became aware of him in "Ghostbusters" where he played the absurdly nerdy super-brain Dr. Egon Spengler alongside Bill Murray...but far more than his acting Ramis was the genius behind many of the most memorable comedies of the '70s and '80s, including the classic "Ground Hog Day" which is worth watching over...and over...and over...he was also credited with writing "Animal House," "Caddyshack," "Analyze This," and "Stripes," all of which are considered classics of a progressive comedy genre that suffuses an underlying social message with sophmoric humor that makes its audience think as well as guffaw...Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Caddyshack “tears the lid off the apparently placid life at a WASPy country club to expose bigotry, ignorance, lust and a common tendency to cheat on the golf course”...Ramis himself said “comedy is inherently subversive, we attack the winners”...so what's the career path for a comedy writer like Harold Ramis?...as a kid, Harold loved TV so much that he would get up early and stare at the blank screen until the kids' shows started (yes, there was a time some of us can remember when TV was not programmed 24 hours a day!! -- though others of us stared at the blank screen after it went off at 1 AM)...he then went on to work in a psychiatric ward and as a comedy writer for Playboy before joining SCTV and Saturday Night Live...to this day I actually start laughing whenever I see a picture of him...I'm sure Harold would appreciate that I even chuckled upon seeing his picture in his obituary...yes, he was that funny...
...From Berlin (1936) to Moscow (2014) with love...inspired by Hitler's taking the Sudetenland shortly after hosting the Olympics, Russian "President" Vlad ("the Invader") Putin took over the Ukrainian region of Crimea last week...the parallels to 1930s Germany are deeper and more frightening than has been acknowledged...consider: that in 1932-33 Hitler seized power via a crooked and secret dirty deal in defiance of elections, and in 2012 Putin returned to power in an irregular, highly questionable election...that in 1936 a clueless and corrupt International Olympic Committee awarded the Olympics to a bully dictator under the false pretense that it would encourage him to behave more responsibly, and in 2014 a clueless and corrupt IOC once again awarded the Olympics to a bully dictator under a similar pretense...that in the 1936 Olympics Jewish athletes were prohibited from performing, and in the 2014 Olympics gay athletes were prohibited from even showing their faces...that shortly after the 1936 Olympics Hitler brazenly invaded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and claimed it for the Fatherland while the West bowed and scraped, after which 97% (imagine that!) of the population voted for their conquerors...and immediately after the 2014 Olympics Putin brazenly invaded Crimea and claimed it for the Motherland while the West fiddled and fumbled and fretted while watching helplessly, after which - in a truly amazing historical coincidence -- 97% of the population voted for their conquerors (you can't make this stuff up)...of course the West's hands are far from clean, with the US having actively cheered and enabled an unconstitutional revolt that chased the democratically elected Ukraine President Victor ("Victor") Yanukovych from his country, and England saying and doing absolutely nothing so as to not upset its own filthy and corrupt financial collaboration with Putin's Russian tycoon buddies and other interests...all of which demonstrates once again, as in Lebanon, that the US and its allies are all in favor of democracy only as long as it elects people we like...with "friends" like us, God help the Tatars and other decent freedom-loving Crimeans...
...Let them eat cake, or nothing...for a little decadent palace humor, Yanukovych's over-the-top palace has to be seen to be believed, so cut and paste this video link into your browser and check out the personal golf course, the spooky fake cat curled up on a carpet, and the gold-outfitted bidet...makes Marie Antoinette look humble by comparison...
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000002732759/inside-the-museum-of-corruption.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140225...
...good thing he wasn't toting his standard-issue AK-47...next time you put your hard-earned money into a vending machine and it gives you nothing in return, who ya gonna call?...I suggest Robert McKevitt of Milford, Iowa...McKevitt, an army veteran of Kosovo and Afghanistan, was working his shift as a forklift operator at Polaris Industries when he decided to grab a snack from the company vending machine, so he deposited $1 and pulled the lever for a Twix candy bar...that's when things got interesting...the candy bar got snagged on a hook and wouldn't fall so Resourceful Robert hopped on his forklift, picked up the uncooperative machine and dropped it onto the concrete floor just like anyone would do...three candy bars fell out but just as he was scooping up his treat, McKevitt's boss happened by..."That machine was trouble," McKevitt said after he had lost his job, his unemployment benefits, his girlfriend, custody of their child, and his home...pretty pricey candy bar...
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| Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and Harol Ramis in "Ghostbusters" Credit: Columbia Pictures |
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| Vlad in his KGB finest: "Would I look better with a little mustache?" |
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000002732759/inside-the-museum-of-corruption.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140225...
...good thing he wasn't toting his standard-issue AK-47...next time you put your hard-earned money into a vending machine and it gives you nothing in return, who ya gonna call?...I suggest Robert McKevitt of Milford, Iowa...McKevitt, an army veteran of Kosovo and Afghanistan, was working his shift as a forklift operator at Polaris Industries when he decided to grab a snack from the company vending machine, so he deposited $1 and pulled the lever for a Twix candy bar...that's when things got interesting...the candy bar got snagged on a hook and wouldn't fall so Resourceful Robert hopped on his forklift, picked up the uncooperative machine and dropped it onto the concrete floor just like anyone would do...three candy bars fell out but just as he was scooping up his treat, McKevitt's boss happened by..."That machine was trouble," McKevitt said after he had lost his job, his unemployment benefits, his girlfriend, custody of their child, and his home...pretty pricey candy bar...
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| Robert McKevitt: "Where's my forkin' lift!!" |
That oughtta buy some nice steaks!
...What!!! How DARE they spy on ME!!...Senator Diane ("I Am") Feinstein (D-LaLa Land) wins this month's award for double-talk and good old-fashioned phony posturing...Feinstein, who's vain obsession with coloring her hair brown well past the age of consent has long since made her look ridiculous, has blasted the CIA for actually having the gall to spy, snoop and steal from the Senator's own Intelligence Committee files and computers...what makes the Senator's sudden outburst ring very hollow is that she has long been one of the CIA's and NASA's biggest cheerleaders -- as long as they were only spying on ordinary citizens like the rest of us peons...but as Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, "It was an astonishing 'J’accuse' moment because Feinstein has been the bulwark protecting the intelligence community against critics worried that we’ve become a surveillance state, 'the privacy people,' as she has called them. But she saw things differently when she was the victim of government spying"...we can only surmise that she was afraid they found her stash of Clairol AgeDefy...
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| Senator Di: "Don't you understand, spying could make my hair turn its natural grey!" |
...The sun also rises...This month we found a delicious new brew on tap in Newport, Ireland: Clew Bay Sunrise, a golden ale from Mayo's new local brewery in Islandeady...so hop on over to Mayo and quaff a fresh pint...and if you can't make it there, toast the first day of Spring anyway!....
- the Brewmeister -
