we drink whiskey like our fathers


Michael Spano, Smoker, New York, 2000

* The Rude Pundit on Bill O'Reilly's interview of president bush. excerpt:

"Yeah, yeah, the whole jack-off fest is still going on, with O'Reilly handing out bits of it at a time like he's feeding pigeons. But so far, here's the stupidest things said in the first two parts of the interview between the Leader o' the Free World and the Duke of Falafel:

"1. When O'Reilly asked Bush why 60 percent of the public opposes the war, Bush said, "Because they want us to win. They believe — they are wondering whether or not we have the plans in place to win. They want to know whether or not we have the flexibility on the ground to constantly meet the enemy." So, like because we want to win, we want to get out.

"2. Along with that logic, Bush also says the American people are pussies: 'I can understand why there's frustration, because the enemy knows that killing innocent people will create a sense of frustration and they know that they know America. They know we are a conscience-driven people that value life. And the more people they destroy and the more innocent lives that are destroyed, the more likely it is we will retreat in their way of thinking.' Yep, killing innocent people makes Americans want to run the other way. God, how loathsome we are.

"3. You can take the man off the fake ranch, but you can't take the fake ranch off the man. Bush said, 'As you know, we picked up a fellow named Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Intelligence folks believe or suspect that he was a person that masterminded the 9/11 attacks.' It wasn't torture. Just a fellow having his nuts vice-smashed by folks.

"4. When O'Reilly asked Bush about defining torture, Bush got all pissy once again: 'We don't talk about techniques. And the reason we don't talk about techniques is because we don't want the enemy to be able to adjust. We're in a war...one thing is that you can rest assured we're not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don't want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield.' Motherfucker sticks to a talking point like a barnacle sticks to a whale.

"Watching O'Reilly interview Bush is like watching a horny mongoose hump a steering wheel."

* "Tom Wolfe ate the world and vomited lava. Dickens dined at a different table every hour of his life. Moliere, tasting society, turned to pick up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, the fun of loving and being loved, of moving and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto." --Ray Bradbury, 1973, "The Joy of Writing," from Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity [via]

* On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

To watch the film click here. [via]