The Truffle

Once upon a time, I read X-Men comics. Shaddap! It was the 1980s, before they were ever a franchise. There weren't any movies, cartoons, action figures, or slash fanfics. At least no slash fanfics that I know of. So no, I wasn't geeky. I was cool , mmmmmm-kay? Anyway, as I grew up and became more (AHEM!) sophisticated, I started reading stuff like Sandman and lost interest in following the ever-expanding X-Universe. This is probably a good thing, because just as I was getting into Sandman , Rob Liefeld was becoming le hot artist des comics and Marvel was starting to suck ass. In retrospect, this was a good thing. For those unfamiliar with Liefeld: Ever wondered what would happen if a comics fanboy, addicted Punisher, Nick Fury, and other gun-totin' comic-book manly men, somehow landed an artist's gig without formal training or even a basic grasp of human anatomy? Well, you'd have Rob Liefeld. His artwork usually has lots of screaming, scowling, squinti...

...but Tom Tancredo is dropping out of the presidential race.

It's bad enough that their stupid foreign policies don't work. Now Time magazine doesn't want them anymore. Yes, the great Kristolhammer juggernaut is no more. In their place, the magazine has hired some tweek from the National Review who wrote a dumb book called The Party of Death that sold about 50 copies. Says "Jim" in the comments section: This action coming from the pile of crap magazine that named a commie "Person of the Year" as opposed to General Petraeus. I think enough is said about them right there... "Jim" forgets 2004's Simian Man of the Year, George W. Bush. And its 2005 cover girl, Ann Coulter. My, these wingnuts are so sensitive, aren't they?

...along comes James Pinkerton, the dumbest editorial columnist this side of Jonah Goldberg. Pinkerton, it seems, was hired to fill a Kool-Aid drinker quota at Newsday. Before Election Day, he was predicting that La Hill's ambiguous stance on licenses for illegal immigrants could sink her in 2008. Two days later, after the elections, it seemed that illegal immigration really wasn't the hot rod issue Pinkerton's and his GOP buddies thought it would be. Whoops. I mean, this guy is just fucking stupid. Recently, he's been channeling other people. Like German military generals. And now, the mayor of New York City. He really needs to give this up. Could the Democratic nomination really go to Barack Obama - you know, middle name Hussein? And could the Republican nomination really go to Mike Huckleberry? I mean Huck Finn; I mean Huckabee. Whatever. Woo hoo! Awesome parroting of wingnut cliches, dude! Islamophobia and class hatred in one fell swoop! Pinkerton should co...

Amidst the discussion of Geneva Conventions, waterboarding, Gitmo, and whether 'Merica really should be the "good guy" on the world stage, I have questions for the faux patriots and torture defenders: Suppose an innocent person ends up in Gitmo? Suppose this very person is subjected to--what's the right-wing PC term?--"advanced interrogation techniques"? See, there's such a thing as mistaken identity. A perfectly innocent man may have the same name as, say, an al Qaeda operative. Or he may bear a close resemblance to said operative. Obviously, these "advanced interrogation techniques" are woefully ineffective in this case. For one thing, the prisoner, being innocent, would have no information to provide in the war on terror. At what point do the interrogators realize that these techniques aren't working? Or that maybe they've got the wrong guy? Imagine an innocent man being taken from his home country and spirited away to Gitmo. ...

There's a tribute band for every act you can think of. Like Hair Supply , billed as "the greatest heavy metal tribute to Air Supply in the tri-state area!" They even have a MySpace page. And curiously enough, one of the band's Myspace friends is a metal Bee Gees tribute band. Both bands are currently without record deals, alas.

Here's "Save It for Later," a kewl toon.

Am I the only person in this country who really doesn't care that Mitt Romney is a Mormon?

And you thought our legal system was fucked. Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand and sing like a canary. An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case. In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said. The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino — the Italian names for the characters — as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros. Instead of naming only the companies and their legal representatives, clerks also wrote in the witness list the names of the cartoons that decorated the toys and gadgets the man had reproduced, said Fiorenza Sorotto, vice president of Disney Company Italia. "Unfortunately they cannot show up...

No, this post isn't about BushCo. It's about a bunch of cops in Wichita who tasered a hearing-impaired man wearing a towel and nothing else. Badtux has his own theories and wonders if this episode is a porn movie in the making. Really, tasering a guy in a bath towel? Which Mensa candidate thinks this is a good idea?

Something tells me this picture wasn't taken at a kosher deli. (Originally found at Gothamist. )

Rudy Giuliani seems hell-bent on making certain nobody in NYC votes for him. So far, he's succeeding. Now, it turns out he billed NYC taxpayers for his extramarital canoodling. Is Pat Robertson kicking himself yet? Or, you know, wishing he'd endorsed a nice, proper Christian like Huckabee or Thompson? Meanwhile, where's Bloomberg? Wouldn't it be nice if Rudy repaid the city and the money were distributed as tax rebates? Yes, it would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath.

Senator Craig is going to wish he'd simply retired three months ago. For over a year people have been telling me that Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman was working on a thorough investigative piece on a secret that had long been out in DC gay circles, that homophobic right-wing Republican Senator Larry Craig was addicted to sex with men. Some of the closeted gay Republicans on Capitol Hill occasionally-- rarely but occasionally-- get a pang of conscience about demonizing other gay people and will refrain from voting to destroy the lives of gay men and women and their families. But not Larry Craig. All the time he was out hunting for anonymous sex in toilets and gay bars he was part of the 100% crowd of hysterical anti-gay extremists. He strongly opposed prohibiting job discrimination against gays and lesbians. He strongly opposed expanding hate crimes legislation to include crimes perpetrated against gays and lesbians. He strongly supported legislation and even a constitutional ame...

This sweetie is a Madame Alexander Russian doll. I got her on eBay.

On this day--World AIDS Day--I've been thinking about my favorite movie of all time, Airplane! I know what you're thinking: "Okay, Truffle. Isn't this kind of a non sequitur?" Let me explain. Sometimes, a film has one actor who steals every scene he's in. In Airplane! that actor was Stephen Stucker, who played Johnny the flight controller. Everyone in that movie had great lines ("I am serious, and don't call me Shirley!"). But Stucker? He had the best ones. "How about Mr. Rogers?" "Johnny, what can you make of this?" "Well, I can make a hat. Or a brooch! Or a pterodactyl.." "The fog's getting thicker!" "And Leon's getting laaaaaaaarrrrrrger!" "The tower? Rapunzel! Rapunzel!" "Oh, it's a big, pretty white plane with red stripes and curtains in the windows and wheels and it looks like a really big Tylenol." Years later, I looked up Stucker's IMDB ent...