GIVE TIL IT HURTS!
I do not think that it means what you think it means.
If law-abiding Minnesotans were actually being thrown to the ground, detained, pepper-sprayed, and threatened, I would agree with you.
But these are not law-abiding Minnesotans. Not a single one.
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius)
Via Insty.
I dunno, man, it’s always great to see a passel of Lefty screechweasels getting the snot pounded out of ‘em, but I was expecting we’d at least see some teeth, hair, and blood left on that icy sidewalk, if not bone fragments, eyeballs, ears, and/or severed limbs. Do better next time, fellas.
🚨 BREAKING: Despite the screeching leftists following them everywhere, ICE is STILL being seen successfully making arrests around Minneapolis today
DON’T SLOW DOWN, GUYS! KEEP PUSHING! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/y7twOSqHaO
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor)
Don’t bother, they’re here.
New York magazine writer stumps Zohran Mamdani, top aides with ‘cost of living’ question
A magazine reporter stumped Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and his closest advisers with a question about lowering the cost of living in the Big Apple.Mamdani and his crew didn’t have an answer when a New York Magazine writer asked for a comparable city as the democratic socialist waxed poetic about his lofty “principle” of bringing down the cost of living in the five boroughs.
“I asked him and some of his advisers if there were cities that had pulled this off that New York could emulate, places that had managed to meaningfully lower the cost of living. None sprang to mind,” the article stated.
“Talk to policy experts, and they find the prospect laughable; the only cities where this has happened are ones where the quality of life dropped so dramatically that no one wanted to live there anymore.”
Point being…? What with the recent mass exodus of the last pitiful handful of sensible, intelligent souls from the ruins, NYC is already sprinting just as hard and fast as it can for the very bottom of that particular fly-blown dungheap. And with commie nitwit Zsa Zsa “A job? ME?!?” Mammyjammy at the wheel, you gotta like their chances. Taking the checkered flag in this particular race is nothing to get excited about, certainly. Even so, purblind City dwellers had better make the most of it and enjoy the Booby Prize while they can—this will be the last victory New Yorkers will have for a long, long time. Après MammyJammy, le déluge.
Clearly, the above-mentioned New Yorker hack didn’t get the memo: you never, but NEVER, ask a Socialist a question about economic policy. They know about as much on that subject as famous retard Tampon Timmeh! Walz does about string theory, therefore are sure to make a dog’s breakfast of the whole enterprise.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, gang, but after all the years, all the tears, and all the predictions of imminent doom which turned out to be a trifle premature, New York is truly over and done with. You only get so many spins of the cylinder before a loaded chamber comes up, so many goes at taunting the tiger before the tiger chews you to pieces and spits you out. About three weeks worth of MammyJammy (mis)rule ought to put the final nail in NYC’s coffin. Resilient as the City has proven itself to be time and again, selecting as Mayor a dull-witted, silver-spoonfed Muzzrat Richie Rich who has never worked a day in his useless life is a self-inflicted wound from which Noo Yawk Fuckin’ City will not recover.
Trump must continue to hammer the point home like a broken record: there will be NO bailout, NO federal relief programs, NO FederalGovCo knight in shining armor riding up on his snow-white charger to pull NYC’s chestnuts out of the fire in the very nick of time. New Yorkers, having voted for the assclown MammyJammy overwhelmingly—a landslide romp which, in effect, bestows one of the strongest mandates ever on an egomaniacal muttonhead who is singularly illl-equipped to wield it judiciously—now have no one but themselves to blame for what they’ll soon be getting. Let them get it then, Mencken-style (ie, good and hard), until they’re so completely downcast that the humiliation of this latest and greatest folly in a long and distinguished line of foolish, impenitent acts of municipal auto-annihilation shall be seared into their collective memory forever.
May New Yorkers rue the day they made such an suicidally-unwise choice. May the impending catastrophe scar them so indelibly they will be driven to reconsider…well, damned near everythiing, actually. May the enduring pain of this experience burn away, like a chill morning fog, their abiding arrogance; their deep-seated superiority complex; their ahistorical ignorance; and their counterfactual assumptions. May the sight of their once-majestic City burning all around them—collapsing into violence, lawlessness, and anarchy thanks to their own infantile prejudices and delusions—inspire them at long last to embrace humility, contrition, and thoughtfulness.
And if that doesn’t work out, just build a 40-foot high, razor-wire-topped, concrete wall around Manhattan, post armed guards along the perimeter, shut off the electricity, rename it Manhattan Island Federal Penitentiary. Then, should PoTUS’s chopper go down inside the Wall, send Snake Plissken in to bring the blaggard back out again.
Forcibly, violently, and painfully, thanks to the great and powerful Wizard of Oz Musk.
Elon Musk’s zeal for truth reveals the online frauds aiming to divide us
On Friday Elon Musk, having figured out that a lot of influential X accounts weren’t what they claimed to be, activated an X feature showing where users were actually posting from — and uncovered (at least) a million lies.Turns out a lot of users claiming to be disillusioned Trump voters, or anti-Israel Americans, are actually foreign frauds.
Like the one that posted: “Trump is Israel First. I’m done with MAGA. I hope Republicans lose.”
Americans turning on Trump over Israel?
Nope. The account was based in Turkey.
Likewise the woke-right “groyper” movement supposedly elevating white supremacist Nick Fuentes seems to be largely a foreign sham, and “Ron Smith, MAGA Hunter,” a prolific anti-Trump poster with a substantial following, turns out to be from Kenya.
Many users billing themselves as “Native American” with accounts specializing in divisive racial attacks on white people are actually foreign, and mostly from Bangladesh.
And so on, and so on.
Awful lot of jihadi weird-beards skulking behind those online guises, same-same with the ostensible Paleosimians whining about being the victims of “genocide” in Gaza from their homes in Turkey, Kenya, or Poland. Crack on Netanyahu, Israel, and (((***Dem JooJooJooJOOOOOOZ!!!***))) all you like, but don’t go acting all shocked and butthurt to learn that the people you’re associating yourself with online ain’t necessarily the people you think they are.
Kudos to Elon for yanking the rug right out from under certain unworthy, deceitful frauds, thereby prompting plenty of long-overdue attitude adjustment into the bargain. Kinda pathetic that so many of us so badly needed reminding of the most basic rule of online existence: Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, is as it seems here. On the Innarnuts you either take absolutely everything with a YUUUGE grain of salt, or you just aint tall enough for this ride yet, kid.
Ed O’Neill has new bombshells about his longtime bitter feud with his “Married…With Children” co-star Amanda Bearse.
The sitcom ran for 11 seasons on Fox, from 1987 to 1997, starring O’Neill, Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate.
O’Neill, 77 starred as family patriarch Al Bundy, married to Peg (Sagal), while Bearse, 65, played Marcy, their neighbor and Peg’s friend.
During a recent appearance on the “Dinner’s On Me” podcast of his former “Modern Family” co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, O’Neill shared that he had some “regrets” about his relationship with Bearse.
In a 2013 interview with the Television Academy, O’Neill revealed that he and David Faustino were the only cast members who were excluded from the invite list when Bearse married her wife, businesswoman Carrie Schenken, in 2010.
When O’Neill confronted Bearse about being excluded from her wedding, according to him, “[She said]: ‘This was a very tough call, but I just feel that you would find it amusing that me and Becky would come in tuxedos in a church and walk down the aisle, and you and David would be snickering and finding it funny,’ ” he said, incorrectly recalling her wife’s name.
“I started laughing and she said, ‘See!’ And I said, ‘Well, you know why? Because it is f–king funny, and I’m not going to be the only one that doesn’t think so.’ But it was funny. She had a little white tux and, to me, it was funny. But in other words, she may not have been wrong in excluding me.”
Well hey, at least he can look back on the whole dustup realistically, rationally, and with good humor now. Which won’t ever be enough to dulcify the rage-a-holic bull dagger, her outraged “wife,” or their absolutely furious Big Gay Circle O’ Friends, no matter how many years have flown by since. Still, it’s something, right?
These mooks are just too, toooo funny.
Defamation Suit Inbound? Behar: ‘Obvious’ Trump Is Epstein’s Pedophile Partner
ABC News may soon be facing down another costly defamation suit from President Trump. On Thursday’s edition of The View, moderator Joy Behar proclaimed that it was “obvious” that Trump was a pedophile in league with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and took part in the crimes the latter was convicted of.Amid a segment where they were asserting that the Trump administration wasn’t going to release the Epstein files as Congress demanded with a law earlier this week, Behar insisted it was “obvious” that Trump was a co-conspirator:
Of course, it was no such thing. In fact…
So the biggest backfire in history has begun. https://t.co/9AiG5qNDep
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2)
OOOOOOOOPS...
In the course of a phone converstion earler, my brother and I reached the conclusion that Trump would have to be just about the cleanest man ever to enter the US political arena. The Hateful Left has been running a full-court press nonstop against the guy since 2015— investigating, sifting through trash bins, dumpster-diving, bribing snitches, hiring PIs, you name it—trying relentlessly to find anything at all, fair or foul, that they could use against him. And after all that digging, all that effort, all that work, still they got bupkis, di nada, zipparooni, a big fat goose egg.
And this effort wasn’t just a minor thing fobbed off onto the interns, part-timers, and other interoffice small-fry either. Oh no, this was All Hands On Deck: Party members of every rank, position, and payscale; the Enemedia “eite”; high-level FederalGovCo officials, whether elected or appointed; everybody, but EVERYBODY, had both hands and at least one foot in this filthy, stinking mess.
Except Trump, looks like.
Poor morons, one could almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
What the hell, it’s about as much so as anything else is these days.
Ladies: You need to get yourselves under control.
A leading indicator of this age is the unprecedented rise of “women” raping other women, “women” exposing themselves on buses, “women” taking out their penises and masturbating in public, “women” touching female children in public bathrooms, etc.
Starting around, oh, 2018, the rates of “women” committing gross sexual offenses previously the domain of mentally-ill men absolutely skyrocketed.
It was unprecedented — and yet not a single “expert” in the field of policing or criminality offered any explanation for it. Not a single study, not a single white-paper report.
Equality, bigots. It’s called equity. Women can take out their penises and rub them against women standing in front of them on the subway, too.
And yes I started that sentence saying it’s “equality” and then stealth-changed the term to “equity” and you know that means? It means you’re a transphobic racist for noticing the change in terminology.
Or are you saying women aren’t ALLOWED to excel in male areas of achievement, bigot?!
Heh. Oh Lord no, far be it from me to ever say such an awful thing.
Here’s hoping he sues them into penury so extreme the whole coven ends up living under a Detroit bridge.
“YOU DEFAMED ME ON LIVE TV — NOW PAY THE PRICE!” — Kid Rock Drops $50 Million Legal Bomb on The View and Whoopi Goldberg After Explosive On-Air Ambush
Los Angeles, CA – November 3, 2025 – The airwaves of daytime television just got a whole lot more litigious. In a move that’s already igniting debates from Nashville honky-tonks to New York greenrooms, rock-rap firebrand Kid Rock—real name Robert James Ritchie—has unleashed a blistering $50 million defamation lawsuit against ABC’s flagship gabfest The View and its outspoken co-host Whoopi Goldberg. What began as a seemingly innocuous segment on cultural divides and free speech has erupted into what Ritchie’s attorneys are calling “a full-frontal assault on truth and decency,” broadcast live to an audience of millions.
This isn’t your garden-variety celebrity spat. It’s a seismic showdown between a self-made provocateur who’s sold over 35 million albums worldwide and a media juggernaut that’s thrived on hot takes for nearly three decades. At its core, the suit accuses Goldberg and her co-hosts of orchestrating a “vicious, calculated ambush” that smeared Ritchie’s reputation, tanked potential business deals, and inflicted “profound emotional distress.” As one legal eagle close to the case put it, “They didn’t just disagree—they drew blood on national TV. Now, they’re going to bleed in the courtroom.”
It started innocently enough. Ritchie, clad in his signature trucker hat and leather vest, leaned into the couch with his trademark swagger, cracking jokes about his “Sweet Southern Sugar” tour and reminiscing about his Detroit roots. “Y’all know I love this country,” he drawled, his voice a gravelly mix of Motown soul and rebel yell. “From the factories to the farms, we’re all in this together.” The audience chuckled, and even Behar cracked a smile at his quip about “building bridges instead of walls—unless it’s a mosh pit.”
But then Goldberg struck. Drawing on Ritchie’s vocal support for Second Amendment rights and his criticisms of “woke Hollywood,” she unleashed a barrage that left the studio audience—and Ritchie himself—reeling. “You parade around like some redneck savior,” Goldberg fired off, her tone sharp as a switchblade, “but let’s be real: your ‘American spirit’ is just code for hate-mongering and division. You’ve built a career on shock value, alienating half the country with your beer-soaked rants. Is this really leadership, or just another grift?”
The room froze. Ritchie, mid-sip of water, set his glass down with a thud that echoed through the microphones. Co-host Hostin piled on, nodding vigorously: “Exactly—your so-called patriotism ignores the marginalized voices you’ve trampled on for years.” Haines chimed in with a softer but no less cutting remark about Ritchie’s “outdated machismo,” while Behar let out a theatrical eye-roll that drew laughs from the crowd. What followed was a 10-minute evisceration, with the panel painting Ritchie as a “dangerous relic” whose influence “poisons the well of public discourse.” No punches pulled, no commercial breaks for mercy.
Ritchie sat there, jaw clenched, as the barbs flew. He attempted a few deflections—”Hey, Whoopi, I respect the hustle, but facts over feelings, right?”—but the hosts steamrolled ahead, framing his political activism as “reckless endangerment” to democracy. By the segment’s end, the applause was polite but tepid, and Ritchie exited stage left without his usual fist-pump to the crowd. Backstage, sources say he was “fuming,” confiding to his team, “That wasn’t an interview—that was an execution.”
T’Was indeed—and was also perfectly typical of what these shit-slurpers and others of their vile ilk do every single day under the guise of “fair” and “honest” “journalism.” Like I said: Penury. Bridges. Immiseration. Etc etc.
Yeppers, go get ’em, Kid, and don’t stop Rocking until their livelihoods are lost, their shows canceled, and their networks are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Kid Rock Inc.
Via Lakeside Joe, who quips: “This is gonna be fun to watch.” Said a real mouthful there, buddy.
Update! Don’t know how I could have mentioned Kid Rock without appending this righteous Kid classic hereupon.
Could only be the Right Honorable Sen John N Kennedy, R-La.
John Kennedy Just Ended Kamala’s 2028 Dreams in One Sentence
As we previously reported, Kamala Harris recently gave an interview where she hinted more strongly than before that she might run for president again in the future. During the interview, a BBC reporter humorously mentioned Kamala’s long-shot betting odds, underscoring that few take her prospects seriously. Kamala also previously claimed that people had told her she was “the most qualified candidate ever to run for president,” adding, “I’m just speaking fact.”I don’t have to tell you that nobody—and I mean nobody—has ever thought that, much less said it out loud where anyone might overhear it.
Naturally, when comedian Adam Carolla had Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on his podcast, they had to talk about Kamala’s delusions of grandeur.
Carolla played the clip of Kamala making her claim, and then turned to Kennedy for his reaction. “Well, I know the vice president,” Kennedy began. “We served in the United States Senate together. We were on the Judiciary Committee together.”
Kennedy didn’t hold back his assessment. “She was very scripted. I think she’s a lovely person, and she’s entitled to her opinion,” he said. “But I have seen the polling before she got in the race, and the polls showed that most Americans looked at the vice president and thought to themselves, ‘When her IQ gets to 75, she oughta sell.’ Now, that’s what the polling showed.”
He noted that the media attacked him for making that observation in the past. “I pointed that out at the time, and the legacy media beat up on me like I stole Christmas, but that’s what the polling showed,” Kennedy said.
As for why Kamala ended up in the 2024 race, Kennedy argued it wasn’t part of the original plan. “I don’t think she expected to be running for president,” he said, “but I also don’t think they expected President Biden to have a major league goat rodeo meltdown in front of the American people in his first and only debate. And so it was thrust upon her.”
As opposed to into her, as was the case when Kumala used notorious California grifter Willie Brown to suck-start her less-than-whelming political “career.” Quite a contrast with Sen Kennedy, who when it comes to politicians is rather the exception that proves the rule.
Carolla agreed that Kamala’s résumé doesn’t exactly scream “most qualified.” “Being DA of San Francisco or holding some position where you’re in the pockets of donors and contributors—I don’t know if I like those kind of qualifications,” he said. “I would take a guy who was a farmer, a veteran, a Navy SEAL, or who ran his own business. In my world, a welder who ran his own welding business—I like those qualifications better than
Kennedy closed with a broader reflection on leadership. “To be a successful political leader, you do have to be smart, but it’s more than that,” he said. “You have to be mature. You have to be governed by morality, not appetite and ambition. You’ve got to exercise power intelligently and know which bridge to burn and which bridge to cross. And you can serve in public life all you want, but if you don’t have those skills, then you’re not going to be a good president.”
He then contrasted Trump’s clarity with Harris’s incoherence. “Vice President Harris could never… she just couldn’t communicate,” he said. “It was like she was speaking in Sanskrit. Nobody knew what she was talking about. Trump, on the other hand—you may like him, you may dislike him, but you know exactly where he’s coming from. Most people, whether they like him or not, respect the transparency. And he’s pretty much done what he said he would do.”
Smart fella, that Kennedy is. Straight up, no chaser, no mucking about, never a pulled punch, the plain and simple truth delivered with an ‘aw, shucks” grin and a hearty chuckle—why, it’s almost as if the man doesn’t even know what “dissembling” means, nor much cares to. All of which is a BIG part of what makes him so exceptional, see.
Bombs away!
Generals Are Whining That Hegseth Has ‘Lost’ Them, but the Facts Say They’ve Lost the Plot
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is the subject of another scurrilous article claiming, without proof or evidence, that he has lost the trust and confidence of the flag and general officer corps. A story in the Washington Times uses mostly anonymous sources to make the claim that Hegseth, “has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public “grandstanding” widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials.” The whole article tells a different story.The core of the critique seems to be that Hegseth is incapable of thinking above the level of an infantry major, and that keeps him from focusing on real stuff like, well, we don’t know.
Follows, one long, loud, whine from these precious Deep State poseurs. To be perfectly honest, there might possibly be something in this world I give less of a shit about than what the Perfumed Princes of the Puzzle Palace think about anything at all, but if there is I’m sure I don’t know what it might be. Streiff has a little something he’d like to say as regards Mordor On The Potomac’s fearsome Chairborne (Rump) Rangers senior leadership caste, every word of which cuts like a Sykes-Fairbairn fighting knife.
The criticism boils down to basically a lot of people don’t like Hegseth’s style. The only damage they can come up with is an exodus of other FOGOs and senior civilians who have been told to leave. In their mind, this defenestration of deadwood and resistance is a loss of talent. It isn’t because those slots will be filled by people who want to do the job right. I thought the resistance to the concept of a “color- and gender-blind meritocracy” was particularly instructive and shows just how deep Marxist rot has invaded the military.
I’d also offer that the criticisms of his focus on appearance and fitness belie the fact that far too many of our senior officers don’t really care about discipline, esprit, or technical competence. If the standard for lacing boots is left-over-right, I can walk into any unit and tell immediately how well the chain of command works. If standards for height, weight, and physical fitness and beards are not enforced, you can bet your bottom dollar that maintenance, logistics, personnel, and a whole bunch of other systems are broken. You can also bet that a military without attention to detail will not focus on winning wars, but on getting the most medals. In the words of a man who knew about war, General George S. Patton, Jr.: “There is only one sort of discipline—perfect discipline. Men cannot have good battle discipline and poor administrative discipline.” He also said, “You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things.”
So self-evidently correct you can’t help but be embarrassed on behalf of GEN Curtis J Rumpswab, BRIG GEN Jennifer D Rottencrotch, and MAJ GEN Kwan’zaalishious’ “Lightnin” McCorkle VII for needing to have it read back to them one more time.
Let the Pentagon’s flabby, overpromoted, medal-chasing flag officer corps get back to us when they’ve actually won something more impressive than a free medium coffee from Dunkin Donuts in recognition of their many years of customer loyalty. As far as these abject failures feeling all butthurt over Sec Hegseth serving notice that their only easy day was yesterday, hopefully their “personal honor” has been traduced badly enough to leave them no choice but to resign their commissions and vacate their positions. Without these jackasses, who knows, we might actually be able to win a war for a change.
The Sen John Kennedy review.
Biden’s cognitive decline emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, Sen. John Kennedy tells ‘Pod Force One’
Former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline was so pronounced that it imperiled US foreign policy by providing an “invitation” to dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Sen. John Kennedy told “Pod Force One.”“I remember when Putin was lined up on the Ukrainian border, thinking of going in, weighing his option(s), watching President Biden have a short press conference and say, ‘Well, if it’s a small incursion, it might be OK,’” Kennedy (R-La.) told The Post’s Miranda Devine on the latest episode, out Wednesday.
“I’m thinking, Holy Moses, that’s an invitation,” added the Louisiana Republican, reflecting on the January 2022 press conference, during which Biden went off the rails while responding to criticisms of his agenda raised by the White House press corps.
Was Biden ever even ON the rails, really?
“It depends on what [Russia] does,” Biden said at the time when asked about Putin’s plans. “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.”
Kennedy recalled thinking at the time that the president’s rhetoric “was dangerous.”“I think he just started rambling,” the senator said, before rattling off other foreign policy flubs. “Afghanistan. [Biden] removed the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. He removed the sanctions on Iran from selling their oil. Now, President Xi in China is working with Putin and Russia and the Ayatollah in Iran, they see all this.”
“Rambling,” you say? Nuh-uh, Jack, not the Joe Biden I know.
“They’re working together, and they saw the president, who was not clearly in grasp — didn’t have a clean grasp on all of his faculties. They saw the weakness, and they made their move. And that’s how Ukraine started,” he added.
Kennedy also claimed that he could see the Democrat’s “neurodegenerative disease … got worse” over time.
“I figured his staff was getting maybe four hours, five hours of work out in the day. He couldn’t help it,” The Republican claimed. “His staff cleverly hid it until they couldn’t anymore. He had the debate in front of God and the country and the American people — and the American people saw it, and they said, ‘Look, this man is just, he’s like my grandpa, you know, who I just took the car keys from.’”
Astute fella, that Sen Kennedy. Got a real flair for language, too.
My heart, it bleeds for the poor dears.
Blue city ‘breaking point’: San Francisco wants Trump’s help on crime
Blue cities are cesspits of crime.Blue politicians don’t want to do anything about it.
At least some blue-city citizens seem to disagree with this approach.
Will President Donald Trump capitalize on the split?
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last week called for Trump to send the National Guard to clean up San Francisco, where his company is based.
“We don’t have enough cops,” Benioff told The New York Times.
“So if they can be cops, I’m all for it.”
Democrats responded with fury.
“This is a slap in the face to San Francisco,” huffed Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey.
Well, maybe to its leadership, but San Franciscans themselves seem to feel a bit differently.
In June, a citywide survey found that 80% of residents support “federal help and resources to deport undocumented fentanyl dealers.”
“Even in a city renowned for its bleeding heart, there is a breaking point,” Liz Le wrote in The Voice of San Francisco — “a collective exasperation with those who weaponize our compassion to fuel a crisis.”
it is to laugh. No cops, no Guard, no soldiers, no financial assistance, no nothin’ for them…other than welkin-ringing gales of sardonic laughter from Red State Americans as they delight in the satisfying spectacle of smug, Smarterer-Than-You hard Left assclowns being forced at last to stew in their own rancid juices.
Suffer, bitches.
For anyone who still retains even the most tatterdemalion shred of affection for the Greatest City On Earth, the city that never sleeps, so nice they had to name it twice, New York Fookin’ NOO YAWK—which, Lord help me, I do; I still consider my years in a succession of tiny, too-expensive mouse-holes on the good old LES* to be the absolute best years of my life, and no matter how terribly the shitlibs who run the place damage it, there will always be some part of me that loves the Big Rotten Apple—this video of 1960s NYC is really gonna grab ya, but good.
Via Ace; helluva find, buddy!
* Excepting my last apartment way down on East Broadway betwixt Clinton and Montgomery: stashed just east of Chinatown smack dab in the middle of the Williamsburg and Brooklyn bridges; convenient to absolutely nothing and/or nowhere at all; completely impossible to find a cab any time of the day or night; who even knows how many hundreds, perhaps even millions, of blocks’ walk from the closest F train (ie, Orange Line) subway station; perched atop an ultra-Orthodox shul and synagogue, providing daily opportunities for low ethnic humor to us non-payessed, goyische shmendricks; 3 bedroom/1 bath/full kitchen/spacious LR, two BRs on the front of the building with street -facing windows, 3rd BR with French doors, parquet floors, and a big window looking down on a street-level garden alcove; a three-floor walkup building in a quiet, calm, safe working-class neighborhood w/ mostly Puerto-Rican residents—that pad was incredibly roomy by NYC standards, quite affordably priced to boot; admittedly, our place was located well away from anything remotely resembling The Action (a/k/a The Scene, The Lifestyle, The Haps) but after a short while that started to look to us more and more like a benefit, rather than a drawback
Update! Dunno why it never occurred to me to check before, but a quick Luxxle search yielded this:
Yep, there she is all right: 241 E BWay, home sweet home.
Had a few most excellent old tunes that I’d jdamned near forgotten about altogether pop into my empty head the other day, and I been a-movin’ and a-groovin’ to ‘em ever since. First up, Jack Rabbit Slim’s slashing, energetic “Rock-A-Cha.”
Next up, Travis and Bob’s cool old chestnut, “Tell Him No,” which I used to play with Mook in the Parodis.
Then, we have the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her great, great rendition of “Didn’t It Rain.”
I dunno, seeing Tharpe wailing on that SG Custom always felt sorta incongruous to me, perhaps because I never could stand an SG myself. Doesn’t seem to bother her any, though.
Lastly but by no means leastly, my own personal favorite of the whole bunch: Larry Finnegan’s strange but haunting 1962 earwig, “Dear One.”
What, you didn’t think I WASN’T gonna delve a little further into this one, did ya? COME ON, MAN! I DID say it was one of my all-timers, ya know.
Finnegan’s wavery falsetto on the intro immediately gives way to a deeper, more chesty man-voice for the rest of the song. It’s just one of several odd, quirky little aspects of this quirky little tune. Others include the spoken lines from the girl who done him wrong, echoing the B-part lyrics sung by Finnegan.
The sudden 180-degree shift in narrative point of view from Finnegan in the victim role to the cheating hussy in this section is almost jarring, but not quite. As the song moves along through, then gets back to the regular chorus-verse-chorus choogle of most pop/rock music, the uninflected, zombie-like recitation of the lame explanation for her faithless betrayal begins to sound funny, really.
Especially the final part, to wit: “But I lost my head/And I lost my heart/And I lost your love to him.” Whuuu….? Lost HIS love, you mean, not YOURS. Right? i mean, how the fug you gonna lose HIS love to etc, ya silly bint?!? Like I said: weird.
Leaving all the departures from standard pop-song form aside, the thing you really want to pay close attention to here is the drummer’s shuffle-beat paradiddling around on the snare. The jangly, tinkly piano is nice, as is the bass line, the guitars, the basic melody, all of it. But it’s the snare drum that drives this thing, that propels the song from run-of-the-mill teenybopper fluff right up into the hightest heights of truly unforgettable music. Once you home in on that snare, that’s it: you’re gone.
As you will no doubt realize straightaway, as inventive and unusual as the entire tune is, it’s that rolling, rollicking snare drum that really makes the whole thing git up and snort. I gots no idea who that drummer is/was, but he’s a bona fide genius—even doing them paradiddles the whole entire song, pretty much, he still never plays ‘em the same way twice.
Reminds me of BP’s drummer Mark, who played similar-type rolls and shuffle-beats on the snare himself, except he pounded them skins so durn viciously you coud almost hear the heads scream in agony. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.
Update! Y’all prolly knew I’d just HAVE to do some poking around on this drummer business, din’tcha?
When it came to music, Larry counted Johnny Cash and Don Gibson as his two favorite artists. While at the university he and his older brother Vincent, then a senior at Boston College, wrote Dear One. They started knocking on the doors of record companies all over New York, but had no takers until they met Hy Weiss, the owner of the small but successful Old Town Records. Weiss had already produced such hits as So Fine by the Fiestas from 1959, and Let The Little Girl Dance by Billy Bland the following year, as well as Life Is But A Dream by the Harptones. Hy Weiss recognized Larry’s talent and saw the potential in Dear One. He also changed Larry’s last name from Finneran to Finnegan, figuring that dee-jays stood a better chance of remembering a common name like Finnegan.
Dear One was recorded at Mira Sound Studios, West 54th St., New York. According to Vincent Finneran, “There was no demo version of ‘Dear One’, just one recording with two takes. And the thing that made the song successful was the engineer Bill McMeekan. He put five microphones in and around the piano and three microphones on the drums which gave the song a unique sound. Dick Pitassy played piano. Two different girls sang on ‘Dear One’; one did the opening female lines and another did the later ones.”
One of the girls, Bambi LaMorte (today Mignon Lawless), remembers, “Larry dated one of my roommates (Sandy Bryant). I attended St.Mary’s College which is directly across the street from Notre Dame. I met Larry through Sandy. We would sometimes all hang out together. I was a music major and since I lived in Pelham, New York (about 20 minutes from Manhattan), Larry asked me if I would sing a female part on his recording. I said ‘Sure.’ We went to a recording studio somewhere in Manhattan over Thanksgiving vacation 1961 and recorded ‘Dear One’. The only professional musician was Gary Chester, the drummer. Larry felt it was important to have an experienced drummer. I believe there were two guitar players, both from Notre Dame. The only things I remember about that night were that the guitar players were not taking the recording seriously enough and kept making mistakes. Larry finally yelled at them and they shaped up. I don’t remember how many tries it took to get the original, but they did a lot of starting and stopping. I do remember that I had to do my part cold turkey, without any practice. I only sang the introduction to ‘Dear One’. They didn’t like the way I spoke the part, and overdubbed it later. I have no idea who the other woman singer is. Larry’s agent hired someone to do it. Larry and I went back to the studio one night and recorded a song we wrote together. I played guitar, he sang, and then we dubbed different instruments onto the recording. It was fascinating to experience his creativity at work.”
Jeez: two takes, no isolation, baffles, or sound damping, just ambient mics and roll tape boys! Sometimes it seems as if there’s a really cool story behind every hit song, out-of-nowhere artist, or recording-studio session, don’t it?
Don’t know how in God’s name this one got by me, but somehow it did.
The place was an absolute shithole. It smelled like puke and wet garbage. You wouldn’t dare to use the bathroom for anything but to hit up. It was crowded, poorly ventilated, too hot in the summer and too putrid and cold when the heat was on, which wasn’t often. But, CBGB’s was the brain-child of Hilly Kristal, and in the 1970s and 1980s, if you wanted to see the next wave in music, this little hole in the wall in the Bowery in New York City was the place to see it. …
This little shithole gave us introduction to some pretty amazing – and some seriously jerkoff – bands, like The Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads.
“CBGB/omfug” stood for: “Country, BlueGrass, Blues/Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers.”
Anything Alan Rickman is in is good. Juss’ sayin’…
He’s right, right down to the last detail. I’ve watched the trailer about six or seven times now, it ain’t ever gettin’ old.
I played CB’s myself several times, and met Hilly a couple of those times as well. Seemed like a nice enough guy, or he was to me at any rate.
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