Shatnerkhan VIII Will Have to be Convened

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Shades of Mediocrity!  Mother of Mercy!  Can this be the end of Shatner?  Or at least Kirk?

William Shatner – A Demigod of Bad Acting

Well, here we go again.  You know maybe Trump can appoint Shatner to some kind of ambassadorship to Canada or Hollywood or some other make believe place.  Or maybe Elon can shoot his rotund corroded hulk to Mars as a send-off.

The Jig is Up

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I read today that Rachel Maddow is taking a pay cut over at MSNBC.  She will go from making $30 million to $25 million a year.  Well, I guess she’ll still be able to afford all the lesbian leisure wear and sensible shoes her heart desires.  But it must be devastating knowing she’s already peaked and from now on she’ll have to start clipping out coupons to take that trip to Davos.

I guess the changing world isn’t just impacting the deplorables.  The Masters of the Universe haven’t just disrupted the lives of the factory workers whose factories were shipped off to China but they replaced cable television with on-line video games, TikTok and YouTube.  The market for Maddow, Anderson Cooper and the rest of the cable news “stars” at CNN, MSNBC and even Fox News is rapidly shrinking.  The era of thirty or even twenty-million-dollar cable news contracts is over.  That kind of money is reserved for people who can draw enormous audiences.  Joe Rogan is an example and so are the ”influencers” who have YouTube channels that draw tens of millions of viewers.  Meanwhile CNN and MSNBC can’t even break the hundred thousand viewer mark lately for their crummy shows.  And yet all these shows pay their talent millions of dollars.

That math doesn’t work.  As previously discussed, these cable channels will be spun off from their parent companies and forced to sink or swim.  And the only way they can swim is to either:

  • Reduce their costs down to almost nothing, or
  • Provide value that will attract more customers

But how can people like Joy Reid or Joe Scarborough attract an audience?  They’re talentless hacks.  All they can do is keep reducing their price to match their employer’s death spiral.

But eventually an equilibrium will be reached and a new model will take hold for providing news and opinion to the digital masses.  I’ll be honest I’m not sure exactly what will emerge.  What makes sense is a bunch of subscriptions that run the gamut from hard news outlets that possess reporters in the field, to opinion writers, to entertainers.

Something like that makes sense to me.  After all there was nothing permanent about the cable networks or even the “big three” news teams of the broadcast networks.  All of them were artifacts of the changing landscape created by the waves of innovation in journalism caused by the introduction of first radio, then tv, then cable tv and finally the internet.  All of these were commercial endeavors and each eventually changed shape to accommodate the market forces that developed.

The dominance of leftists in the current media landscape seems to guarantee that the majority of those about to be unemployed will be people I despise.  I can’t pretend that won’t provide me with great satisfaction in the weeks and months ahead.  So many of these people are smug, entitled losers who lack the self-awareness to anticipate what they are heading for.

Well, enough lefty bashing.  Time will tell if what replaces the current system will be an improvement over the MSM.  All I know for sure is that it won’t include Joy Reid and Joe Scarborough pulling down multi-million-dollar salaries.

Trump vs Morning Shmoe and Lycra

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Update:

I don’t normally revive an old post.  But this post from 2017 just seemed timely due to Joe and Mika’s recent antics.  It seems back then I spelled Schmoe without the c.  Well potato, patatta.

 

 

Morning Shmoe (MS) – Welcome back from that commercial break and it’s 13 and 1/8th minutes after the quarter hour and we’re here at the newly refurbished set of the Morning Shmoe Show.  And Lycra Spandexy and I were just saying how much better it is to be us, young and in love and not old and racist like President Trump.

Lycra Spandexy (LS) – Yes, he’s a creep with small hands and bad hair.  He’s not beautiful like me.  I am still very, very young and don’t need a facelift and would never get one and besides it’s called a dermatological procedure and everyone gets them because they’re young and not because they need them.

MS – That’s right sweety.  But this is not about us.  It’s about this very bad man.

LS – Yes, he’s a very bad man.  And there was no blood and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

MS – Okay honey, let’s move on.  So, as you all know we’re deeply in love and being together here on the show and also constantly morning, noon and night, all day every day is great.  We never tire of each other’s company and we do everything together.  Every single blessed thing.      ….        And it’s great!   Really, really, really   …     great.

LS – Yes, and I tell Shmoe every little thing that pops into my head.  Like yesterday when the girl doing my nails told me that I had a cold sore on my lip and I said it was a white-head and she said it was herpes and I told her that my dermatologist told me that you can tell if it’s herpes because you get that tingling feeling ahead of time and then you use the Abreva and then it’s a lot less icky and nobody can notice it under the make-up on the show and I don’t have to go on assignment for a week and that’s really great and I told her that it was a white-head and I knew that because it looked like a white-head and I popped it with a pin and squeezed out the puss and then it hurt but not much and it looks like it will heal without a scab that’s noticeable so I won’t have to go on assignment for a week.  And Shmoe was so interested while he sat there listening and drinking that scotch without the water and I asked him if he wanted some water but he just kept filling up that tumbler and I said, “Boy that’s a lot of scotch and he just kept smiling and nodding his head and it was great.”

MS – Yeah that was great.  Really, really, really   …   great.

LS – But Producer Jorge says we have a caller on the line.  Hello caller, you’re on the Morning Shmoe Show.  What would you like to say?

President Trump (PT) – Hello Lycra, it’s me President Trump.  I was told by some of my friends who are forced to watch terrible shows like yours for a living about the nasty things you’ve been saying about me.  I figured I’d call up and set the record straight.

MS – Trump, you’ve got a lot of nerve calling us up and invading our safe space.  But we’re not scared of you and we won’t be intimidated by your bullying.

PT – I won’t need to bully you, I only want to ask you one question.

MS – What’s that?

PT – Did the network force you to marry her for ratings?  Because if not then I don’t get it.  I mean to have to listen to that blathering for an hour or two in the morning is doable, but all the time?  I mean come on!  Don’t you ever feel like just putting a bullet in your head to stop the incessant babble.

LS – Hah, that’s ridiculous.  Just because you are a cave-man and don’t value women for their intelligence doesn’t mean all men are that way.  Shmoe loves to hear my opinions.  Like this morning when we were in the middle of that long commute from Jersey and I started telling Shmoe about what my mother told me the other day about how when I was a little girl and my sister stole my “My Pretty Pony” doll and I told her to give it back and she said it was hers because she said I promised to give it to her if she told me what Marcy said about me to Charlene but I told her that I found out from Debby what Marcy really said and it wasn’t what she told me and my mother said that I really hurt my sister’s feelings and to this day she still wants that doll and she told my mother that my face looks too tight after that dermatological procedure that I didn’t have done and I told Mom that that was mean and I thought that my sister’s butt had gotten really fat and I wasn’t going to give up the doll.  And then I asked Shmoe wasn’t he going too fast and why was he swerving toward the guard rail and then he laughed and laughed.  And he laughed so hard that a tear was in his eye and then I told him that I was enrolling us in a couple’s yoga class and there was a jazzercise section too.

MS – I’m sorry folks but I’m out of time.    …  BANG.

PT – Thought so.

The End of Yellowstone

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So, something happened to Yellowstone.  I think Kevin Costner got sick of playing cowboy “JR” and quit.  Well, good.  It’s a bizarre nighttime soap with a cast of characters that run the gamut from absurd, to revolting to demented.  Now granted, the visuals of Montana and the use of excellent non-mainstream country music does make watching the show interesting from time to time.  But it’s still a weird and wacky cartoon in my opinion.  But Camera Girl loves her some psycho-drama.  So of course we’re in.

And the current situation does appear to be headed for a small screen Armageddon.  The first episode opens up with John Dutton (Costner’s character) dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Montana Governor’s mansion.  His insanely driven daughter Beth and his likeable son Kayce converge on the scene to plan what to do about the death of their father.  But Beth is already sure that the death is murder set in motion by their adopted brother Jamie.

And she’s right.  The flashbacks show that Jamie is in cahoots with a vixen from a hedge fund company that will do anything including murder to get their hands on Dutton’s land to build a resort and airport complex.  And we see deals being made with black ops contractors and other ridiculous things.

Okay, so this could be a lot of fun.  I already know how I think this will end.  Kayce Dutton’s son is half Indian.  I’m guessing the ranch becomes a Native American possession with Kayce as the steward of the land on behalf of his son.  It goes along with a bunch of anti-colonial jibber jabber that Kayce’s wife was spouting a couple of years ago.

But the fun will be a full-fledged shooting war between the Dutton Ranch and the bad guys.  Who knows, there could even be tanks and helicopters with sidewinder missiles.  Kayce is the head of the livestock police (really?) and apparently that gives him access to armored vehicles and other military grade equipment.  He’s not just the dog catcher.

There will be bullets and rocket propelled grenades and all kinds of ridiculous stuff going on.  And as a finale Beth has sworn a blood oath that the last thing Jamie sees before he dies is Beth laughing at him.  Now that I’d like to see.  Because it is the outcome that the show has been working up to from the beginning.  Beth is barking-at-the-moon crazy but Jamie is a cowardly, smarmy, disloyal worm and seeing him get terminated by Beth will be enormously cathartic.  Of course, I’m pretty sure Beth and a bunch of other characters will probably end up dead too.  But that would make the whole crazy thing a little less improbable.  So sure, why not?

So, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.  Let the lead fly and let all the cowboys, cowboy up.  We’re headed for the last roundup and when the dust settles all the black hats will be pushing up daisies and one cowboy and one Indian and their son will be left living happily ever after.  How can you not love that?  Well, sorta.

It Couldn’t Hurt

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The unthinkable has occurred.  Camera Girl has joined the resistance.  Somehow, she’s discovered the 4B Movement.  I don’t know how it happened.  I keep her inside a hermetic bubble, into which no outside influence is allowed.  Like a Svengali I mold her every thought and gaslight her entire notion of what’s going on in the world.  But somehow, it’s happened.  She has declared herself part of the 4B; No barbecue, burger, brisket or bologna.  And as a further sign of her radicalized state of mind she’s added another 4B’s; no breakfast, bagel. bialy or bacon.  Shades of Lysistrata!

A complete food strike.  It’s diabolical.  And there’s nothing I can do.  I don’t know how to buy or cook food.  I’m not even sure what I currently eat.  The dishes she makes for me are complex and confusing.  If left to my own devices I’ll probably wander through the supermarket buying the easily identifiable items like bananas and seltzer.  It looks pretty bleak for me.  I tried to placate her.  I told her I’d stop watching YouTube videos of Kamala voters screaming and crying.  I told her I’d let her watch NCIS and other girly soap operas.  But she just ignored me.  Her tactic is to eat her meals before I get up in the morning.  When I get up at 10:30 am I can still smell the coffee and bagels wafting around the dining room but all that’s left is an empty coffee mug and some everything-bagel crumbs on a plate in the sink.

I can’t figure out where she’s hiding the food.  I suspect it might be in the kitchen cabinets but because of the illogical way she arranges things I’ve never been able to find anything but trash bags and window cleaner in those places, so what’s the use.  In desperation I’ve been sneaking out to the edge of the swamp looking for the crumbs and crusts that Camera Girl leaves at the edge of the water for Moe the Crow.  I’ll give him this, he puts up a pretty stiff fight for his food.  But I’m just too strong for him.  I will have to get there a little earlier though.  The bread gets very soggy from the ground water almost immediately.

I’m thinking of getting some outside help.  I’m going to write a letter to President-elect Trump and see if he has any advice for me.  I mean he’s always fighting with “nasty women” and he’s managed pretty well for himself.  Well, he did get sued by that harpy who claims he raped her in Bloomingdales.  And he is on his third marriage.  And he did have that Million-Woman March against him back in 2017.  But probably all of those experiences have made him wiser about women and anyway I feel he owes me after I stuck up for him with Camera Girl and all the other women who over the years have argued with me about what a terrible man he is.  Surely that wisdom can do me some good in my present predicament.  The “art of the deal” must have a chapter on food strikes.

Well, if all else fails. I will fall back on what every man has as his birthright; the male brain.  As Shakespeare very beautifully expressed it in Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason.”  That’s right, how noble in reason.  We are the thinking animal and we can think our way out of any crisis.  I will buy food myself and by trial and error I will figure out how to cook it.  I can write the equations for the heat transfer of an electrical resistance stove top.  I can figure out the amount of time it takes for a quart of water to reach its boiling point at a particular power setting.  I know how the proteins in animal muscle become denatured at high temperature.  Fire is the invention of some male ancestor of my species and I can master its application to any technology.  As Prometheus is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!

Maybe if I tell her how nice her hair looks lately, she’ll make me some coffee and a pumpernickel bagel.  It couldn’t hurt.