Celebri-chimps. Or Maybe Chimp-lebrities.

This is a chimpanzee.

Oh, my gosh, how beautiful is this animal? Look at those expressive eyes! Granted, he may be thinking about nothing more clever than flinging poo at the next photographer who comes along. Or he may be wondering when humans will finally learn to communicate with him so he and his primate brethren can share the wisdom they've accumulated over so many millennia. Or pondering the degrees of separation between him and Cheeta, which I'll bet is a popular chimp pastime.

Whatever he's doing, he's doing it with an intelligence that some say rivals our own. And with a DNA match between chimps and humans of somewhere between 95 and 98 percent, it's no wonder they sometimes act and, yes, look a lot like us. Or vice versa.

That 2-5% genetic difference supposedly accounts for the evolutionary gap between us. I don't think we're too far apart, actually, other than our superior looks and obviously more advanced behavior. In fact, let's take a look at some of the simple behaviors that separate the primitive chimp from the sophisticated human.

The ability to act with CGI anacondas, make bootylicious music videos, and judge bad singing on national television.

The ability to practice Scientology, maintain a wildly erratic Hollywood career, and act like a bouncing lunatic on talk-show couches.

The ability to adopt hundreds of children with a common-law wife and star in incomprehensible Terence Malick films.

The ability to run for President despite not knowing the difference between a cowboy and a serial killer, and having to compete against that other total flake MILF conservative politician.

The ability to indulge in massive quantities of drugs and whores, get fired from a $2 million a week job, and go on a national tour despite having little stage presence and no act.

The ability to somehow manage to be a gay Japanese beloved sci-fi hero talk-show guest spokesperson compulsive Tweeter. (Oh myyyy.)

The ability to star in three increasingly pointless Transformers movies and take up more or less permanent residence in the gossip columns for various exploits not related to acting.

The ability to cause a worldwide sensation by kissing in public on their wedding day and be the young, beautiful faces of an archaic and crumbling monarchy.

The ability to make millions by starring as a wholesome teen on the Disney Channel, then turn 18 and blow the whole wad on slutty stage costumes and fake weed.

You know what? I shouldn't be comparing humans to chimpanzees. It's not nice, it's not true, and it's certainly not fair to the chimps. And if you can't figure out who I used as my homo sapiens models of behavior, scroll past the vociferous chimp for the answers.

Jennifer Lopez, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Michele Bachmann, Charlie Sheen, George Takei, Shia Laboeuf, Prince William, Kate Middleton, Miley Cyrus. Of all these, I think George Takei compares pretty favorably to a chimp. The rest are a bunch of monkeys.

Monday Miscellany, Part 2

You may have heard that Charlie Sheen has been doing live shows around the country.  Or maybe you haven't heard because you've been encased in some kind of opaque, soundproof cube.  I'm pretty sure coma patients have awakened asking about the "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour as their first words.  The Japanese people who have suffered at the hands of the earthquake and tsunami, for all their hardships and losses, at least have been spared the non-stop media blitz about Charlie and his goddamn live shows.  (Text "REDCROSS" to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross instead of buying a "Sheenius" t-shirt. Please.)

In any event, Mr. Sheen has had his ups and downs with this tour.  After eight dates, audience reactions have gone something like this:

He seems to be batting "could be worse" overall.  We'll see what happens in Boston on April 12.

Meanwhile, here's a picture I found on TMZ over the weekend.  It's Charlie after his (average) show in Connecticut.  This is what winning looks like:

OMG, WHERE IS HIS TOOTH?  Maybe he's got a piece of chocolate or radicchio up in there, but it looks to me as if the warlock has lost one of his fangs.  This is almost certainly not as a result of heavy drug use.  I prefer to think that he's just been in an awesome Chuck Norris-style kickboxing fight with a belligerent non-believer.  You should see what the other guy looks like.  Charlie got off with a broken tooth, a couple of bruised eyes, and apparently he got some stubble punched onto his face. 

Go with me on this.  My alternative theory is that Charlie has hired a homeless drug addict to be his media decoy/body double.  And by "hired," I mean "pulled out of his cardboard box and pushed directly into the cameras without any attempt to clean him up." 

Winning, indeed.

Notes from the Pop Culture Vortex

Today we have a few random thoughts about celebrities and junk.  Absolutely nothing of substance here.  I feel like taking it easy.  Plus, the computer screen is getting harder to read the longer I go without those new glasses...

"American Idol" should have a Monkees theme week.  I love the Monkees, completely and without irony.  The singers would have a ball with their songs.  Casey would rock "Goin' Down," Lauren could belt out "Pleasant Valley Sunday" while having no idea what the lyrics mean, and Stefano would pretty much nail anything by Davy Jones, because they're kindred spirits.


Stefano is a Nehru jacket away from pop superstardom.

 Charlie Sheen has filed for trademarks on 22 of his catchphrases, including "Duh, Winning" and "Tiger Blood."  I don't know how long it takes to obtain trademark protection, but it seems to me there's a window of opportunity here for a true entrepreneur to issue a crapload of cheap, low-quality merchandise emblazoned with the unprotected Sheenisms.  Flood the market with the stuff now and scuff up the brand a little, before Sheen gets lawyered up. Also, the fabrics should be embedded with arsenic and the inks should produce a rash when touched.  Maybe create an original design that says "Charlie Sheen trademarked 'Vatican Assassin' and all I got was this suppurating boil."  I can't be the only one who thinks that would be hilarious.  Richard Branson, I'm looking at you.


You're hardly a stranger to crazy schemes.

 I've lost interest in the idea of a Three Stooges movie since Sean Penn dropped out of the project.  It's true: Penn originally planned to play Larry Fine.  That certainly would have brought an edge of, er, gritty realism to the project.


"Call me 'Porcupine' one more time, motherf***er."

Did you know that Christopher Walken doesn't have a Twitter account, an e-mail address, a computer, or a cell phone?  Seems he doesn't like technology.  You know, I'm pretty much OK with whatever Christopher Walken does or doesn't like.


"I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years
before I realized I didn't have an iTunes account.

Now, little man, I give this iPod Shuffle to you."

Finally, I don't watch "Celebrity Apprentice" because I try to be at least a little selective about my pop-culture obsessions (Bronx Zoo Cobra, yes; Donald Trump comb-over, no).  So I missed this wonderful meltdown on last Sunday's episode.  Meat Loaf - my very favorite loaf-based singer - went off on poor crazy Gary Busey over missing art supplies.  Art supplies.  Seriously.  Meat went all bat out of hell on Gary, who almost dropped his lozenge-shaped dental veneers in shock at the verbal beatdown.  He practically started singing "I Would Do Anything for Love, But Those Are My Motherf***ing Sponges"  right there in the Trumposphere.  It was beautiful.  And inspirational:  From now on, whenever I'm feeling discouraged and thinking I just don't have my priorities straight, I'll remember that the man who sang "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" screamed at a bewildered recovering addict on national TV over a bag of crafting materials. 



Have a nice day!

Obama is FIRST!!!

President Obama officially began his campaign for re-election this morning.  In case you're keeping count, it's nineteen months until the 2012 election.  If you were to conceive a child today, you would go through your entire pregnancy, give birth, and celebrate your child's first birthday before the next Presidential inauguration.

Notice I said "you," not "I."  The Mayan prophecy of the end of the world is more likely to come to fruition in 2012 than I am.  And it would be less earth-shattering, to boot.

She's pregnant? Shit, it is the end of the world!

But I digress.  So the Prez has thrown his hat in the ring, asking America to keep him for a second term little more than halfway through his first.  A cynic might say that a man more confident of re-election would not declare so early.  A realist might point out that potential Republican rivals like Haley Barbour, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty have been putting out feelers and issuing coy will-I-or-won't-I statements for several months now, making an early declaration necessary just to avoid appearing late to the party.  A 24-hour news network might sigh with relief that there's finally something to talk about besides Charlie Sheen and Twitter.


Anderson Cooper would happily continue to talk about himself.

In the interest of full disclosure, I voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 after considerable soul-searching.  In past elections I've voted for Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.  I've never cast a Presidential vote for a Republican candidate.  That doesn't mean I've always been happy about the votes I've cast - choosing between John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004 truly was like deciding whether I wanted to spend a summer day scooping dog poop or scraping up roadkill.  So anyone who wants to pigeonhole me politically will do best to remember that I'm half-crazy and willfully independent and proceed accordingly.

In any event, this is not a post about politics, except to say that I really, really hate politics.  I find it so bizarre and distasteful that we as a nation elect a leader based on advertising.  This isn't a low-fat spread we're choosing here; if we pick I Can't Believe It's a Crappy President because of a catchy slogan, we're out more than $1.69 when it doesn't turn out to be to our liking.  The leader of the free world is non-returnable.  If you don't like that Pepsi, you can buy a Coke at the next vending machine.  But we have to wait four years to send a bad-tasting President back where he came from.  And we have to keep drinking the entire time.

You'd think, then, that we'd be a little more careful about how we choose.  Maybe we'd read the labels instead of believing what TV commercials cram down our throats.  Maybe we wouldn't fall for celebrity pitchmen or misleading statistics that are meant to influence rather than inform.  Hell, maybe we'd insist on having an impartial source for facts that presented all sides fairly and kept its opinions to itself.  The Food and Drug Administration would never state an official preference for Skippy over Jif, yet we increasingly gravitate to "news" outlets that cater to a specific political bent.  And they don't even use the ironic quotation marks the way I just did there.

Presidential candidates who declare earlier and earlier - or launch "exploratory committees" or state "I'm so not running for President, y'all" like an off-duty lounge singer who doesn't want to get on stage oh well if you insist maybe just one number - actually help drain the campaign of nutritional substance.  The media feel obliged to give them camera time, because they're potential candidates so they must be important, right?  But you can't fill a 24-hour news cycle with hints and demurrals; not because they're not news but because they're too damn short.  The candidates know they can't say anything of substance this far in advance of the election, so the newscasters pump up their sound bites with rebuttals and commentaries and stories about the stories, until the news becomes so meta that you expect to see a couple of robots in the corner of the TV screen.


"I don't get him, Tom."
"Nobody does.  He's the wind, baby."

And then the candidates see themselves on TV and keep saying more and more about nothing to keep themselves there.  And the news channels keep tweaking their broadcasts to be more interesting.  As the election gets closer, everyone looks at what Iron Man 2 made at the box office vs. Winter's Bone and decides that loud and violent beats sophisticated and substantive and makes sure the campaign includes lots of over-the-top acting and implausible plotlines.  And when November 2012 rolls around, we all realize that we can make everybody shut up by voting.  In a re-election year, about 40% of us actually bother to turn out to vote for whichever candidate we're less sick of.  Two years later, we start the entire four-year cycle over again.

This is democracy in action.

I'm not going to get excited about the 2012 campaign yet.  President Obama is only halfway through the contract we gave him.  I'll let him keep working awhile before I entertain an extension or a replacement.  I'll wait until someone actually decides to run against him before considering anyone who runs against him.  In the meantime, Obama and the Non-Candidates (which would be a great band name) at least deserve props for keeping so many people employed in the critical fields of marketing, spinning, fundraising, and arguing.  Building a website is kind of like restoring our manufacturing base, right?  See, America is on the right track already.

Alcoholism Fail

Apparently I'm a terrible alcoholic.  On February 28, I issued a throwdown to Mr. Charlie Sheen, namely that I wouldn't drink until he was dead.  (I sincerely wish Charlie a long and healthy life; I just don't think it's very likely.) 

So it's been two weeks now since I've had a drink.  And it's been pretty easy to abstain.  I'm surprised and a little disappointed at that.

Here's why I'm surprised.  I really thought I might have a drinking problem.  I like vodka.  I mean, I really like vodka.  And until recently, I drank a lot of it.  My libation of choice was to mix three fingers of vodka with six ounces of Coke Zero, drink, repeat.  Tasty.  And not a big deal, except that I was starting to have some other annoying symptoms of a problem:

1.  I was drinking more and more - two and even three cans of Coke Zero (each with six fingers of potato juice, remember) a night.
2.  I was starting to hide those empty cans fom my Beloved Spouse so he wouldn't know how much I was drinking.
3.  When I woke up after a night of drinking, I had a sour stomach and a guilty conscience.
4.  My face was starting to get that puffy-wrinkly look of a lightly toasted marshmallow (attractive on Mr. Sta-Puft, maybe, but not on me).
5.  I would stock up on junk food when I planned to drink. (Did you think that weed was the only thing that gave people the munchies? Think again.)

There were others, but those are embarrassing enough.  In any event, given the fact that I was doing all these stupid things and continuing to drink anyway, I figured I might experience at the very least withdrawal symptoms, and at the worst uncontrollable cravings, when I stopped.

Nope.  Nothing.  A couple of days of wrestling with the physical habit of pouring myself a drink, but otherwise, nada.  No DTs, no pink elephants, no Lost Weekend-style freakouts.  I feel great, I look better, I'm not eating bags of Doritos until deep into the night.

So apparently I'm not a drunk.  That's the surprising part. 

The disappointing part?  I'm going to have to find some other personal tragedy to be the topic of my best-selling memoir.  And I'm running out of cards to play - I can't draw on an abused childhood, a life of poverty, a history of substance abuse, an eating disorder (I tried that one, but my love-hate relationship with food has way too much love in it).  Counting my blessings for a normal, healthy life is not the stuff of an Oprah Book Club pick.  I'm screwed.

The only part of my life that I'm truly unhappy about is the puny (but beloved) readership of this blog.  Charlie Sheen has the best of all possible worlds - an epically f'ed up life and a bazillion followers online.  Lucky bastard.  I can't compete with that.  So please, please don't share or forward http://www.always-drunk.com/ to anyone you know.  It's bad enough to be happily sober.  Without obscurity, I have nothing.

17 Famous Degenerates in Their Youth

You can always tell who's going to grow up to be a dope-smoking, booze-swilling, promiscuous, obnoxious douchebag.  Just look at 'em, these dregs of humanity.  All of them degenerates in their own way.  Clearly they never had a chance to be normal, and obviously they never accomplished anything in their lives.

Someone should have taken a good look at these early photos and known what was coming.  Parents, if your children look like any of these, beware.  You don't know what could become of them.

1.  Sex-crazed old geezer who lives in a mansion surrounded by scantily-clad pinups clamoring to get into his magazine (and his dressing gown).


Hugh Hefner

 2.  Comedian who lived fast, died young, left a drug-bloated corpse and a briefcase full of blues.


John Belushi

3.  Small-town Texas girl and hard-core drug addict; could sing a little.

Janis Joplin

4.  Spoiled rich hotel heiress with a criminal record and a history of wild sex and drug romps.


Paris Hilton

5.  Unrepentant pothead rapper and perpetrator of the phrase "fo shizzle" on an unsuspecting world.


Snoop Dogg (ne Calvin Broadus)

6.  Serial addict and manic-comic-turned-actor-in-bad-movies-turned-Oscar-winner (surely was high when choosing to film Toys and Patch Adams).


Robin Williams

7.  Has-been actor and raging alcoholic, inexplicably popular in Germany.


David Hasselhoff

8.  Washed-up diva, crack user, reality-TV star, and (alleged) lip-syncher of the National Anthem.


Whitney Houston

9.  Demon-loving rocker who brags of decades of promiscuity and introducing young people to over-the-top stage theatrics.

Gene Simmons (ne Gene Klein)

10.  Drug-addict suicidal rock star who left behind a wife and daughter and changed the course of popular music.

Kurt Cobain

11.  Foul-mouthed scumbag radio broadcaster with no redeeming qualities and the most popular show on satellite radio.

Howard Stern

12.  Shameless dope-smoking outlaw hippie country music singer of marginal influence (apparently shown here in the earliest-known prototype football helmet).


Willie Nelson
(Trivia fact:  Willie is not short for anything;
it's his birth name.)

13.  Early rock-and-roll singer, star of 32 of the worst movies ever made, died of a drug-fueled heart attack while sitting on the john.


Elvis Presley

14.  Son of a Navy admiral, then wrote "Light My Fire" and became (in order) a bad poet, sex symbol, and dead rock legend by age 27.


Jim Morrison

15.  Unstable pop singer who struggled through years of eating disorders before dying of a heart attack at 32.


Karen Carpenter

16.  Slacker, drug user, indifferent businessman, not very bright.  Tried a career in politics.


George W. Bush

17.  And, of course, Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen Ruins Lent

Dear Charlie:

I had planned to give up drinking for Lent this year.  But if you recall, I already stopped drinking on February 28 as a challenge to you to not die.  So now I'll have to give up something else on top of booze in order to complete my period of contemplation and self-discipline in spiritual preparation for Easter.  That kind of pisses me off.

Thanks for ruining Lent, Charlie.

Love,
Always Drunk

Really, Oil Prices? Really?

You may have heard that there's a little trouble in Libya these days.  Seems a large proportion of the citizens have decided that 41 years is long enough to pretend your leader isn't a steaming pile of crazy.  Plus, they're tired of listening to him read out of his stupid green book.


I don't speak Arabic, but that's how it sounded to me.

Gaddafi, having exhausted the supply of Libyan soldiers willing to massacre their own countrymen, has been bringing in mercenaries from all over Africa to do the job.  The Libyan opposition is fighting back with everything they have (topping the list:  incredible tenacity and bravery, followed by mostly WWII-era weaponry and rocks).

The upshot of all this is that the conflict shows no signs of ending soon.  The natural consequence is that crude oil futures have shot up like Charlie Sheen's pecker in a houseful of porn stars.

Stop.  Just stop.  Stop thinking about that simile for a minute and focus on these stupid oil futures. Talk about mercenaries; those bloodthirsty bastards mowing down peaceful protesters in Tripoli have nothing on the douchebags that control world oil prices.

Close your eyes and think about democracy.

Trading on the commodities exchange is a complicated and sophisticated affair.  I can't pretend to comprehend all the factors that go into the buying and selling of futures.  From what I do understand, however, it involves dwarfs on unicorns throwing twelve-sided dice and werewolves specially trained to scent the sweat of millionaires.

The result is that oil prices (as well as other commodities like gold, cotton, and good weed) don't follow normal economic rules of supply and demand.  Oh, sure, prices rise as demand rises, and fall when supplies are high.  But they also rise when someone (like that guy in the suit up there) decides that prices should go up because people should be afraid that something bad should happen any minute now, based on intensive market analysis and also a Magic 8 Ball.

So the commodity traders have noticed that there's instability in Libya right now.  And, hey, Libya has oil!  And oil production in Libya is being disrupted by the fighting, because there's no one to operate the oil wells because they're too busy being shot at.  This could be bad, think the traders.  This could cause the price of oil to skyrocket if the fighting stretches out indefinitely, if Gaddafi decides to cut off the world from his oil, and if no other country steps up production to replace the lost volume. 

If all those things happen, think the commodity traders, the price of oil could easily rise from $82 a barrel (where it was around Thanksgiving) to $105 (where it's trading this morning).  And boom - almost if they controlled the price of oil with nothing but their minds - that's exactly what's happened.

But wait.  What if we relied on minds with something in them?  Then we might catch a glimpse of what are called (by people outside of the financial sector) hard facts.  Like, for example...

...when it's not busy slaughtering its own people, Libya produces about 1.7 million barrels of oil a day.  That's a lot of oil.  Except that a bunch of other countries (11, to be exact) produce a hell of a lot more.  Norway pumps more oil than Libya.  So do Canada and Mexico, and those guys love us, right?  The good old U. S. of A. produces better than four times Libya's output, every damn day.  And then there's Saudi Arabia, which pounds out 11 million barrels per day and has pledged to increase production to cover any shortfall from Libya.  Because they really, really like being rich.

Can they do that?  Well, let's see, it's estimated that world oil production could be dropping by as much as a million barrels a day during the Libyan conflict.  Total daily world production is somewhere north of 80 million barrels.  That's, uh, let's see...with a remainder of...God, I hate math.  Anyway, using those conservative figures, that comes to a 1.25% decline in supply.  Saudi Arabia keeps that much oil on hand just to lube their racing camels. 



Camel racing is a real thing. 
Camel lube jobs, not so much.

 Speaking of supply, it's not as if Gaddafi's precious oil is exactly critical at the moment.  World oil reserves have been steady to creeping upward for at least 18 months now and in fact rose a half-percent in January.  Apparently there's been a recession or something, and consumption has been constrained by all those people who can't afford and/or are living out of their cars.

So let's review.  Supply:  Good.  Demand:  Flat.  Disruption:  Minimal.  Saudi Arabia:  Rubbing its hands together in anticipation of higher exports. 

Price of oil:  Up nearly 20% in the last 60 days.  Price of gasoline:  Up 34 cents in the last two weeks.

Far be it from me to suggest that the commodity market is full of greedy fearmongers who place their own short-term profitability above the forces of economics, logic, and sanity.  Or that speculators may be tearing apart the economic recovery with the same gusto with which they manufactured the economic crisis a few years ago.  Or that they may be fueling Gaddafi's and other Middle Eastern rulers' inflated sense of power, against which their respective peoples are rebelling in the first place. 

I just want democracy to succeed, and gas to be less than $3 a gallon.  But I guess I'm just selfish and short-sighted that way.

Rats I Have Known

The world is full of rats. 

In fiction, rats take many different forms.  They can be portrayed more or less realistically, like Templeton from the classic children's book Charlotte's Web:


Who are you calling center square, duckie?

Or they can be extremely stylized, as in the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine":

My hero

Recently, the "Dick Tracy" comic has guest-starred some of the more interesting rats I've seen (and by "interesting," I mean "drawn as if the artist had never actually seen one but had heard them described by someone with a debilitating rodent phobia):



Sweet dreams.

In real life, rats all look pretty much alike:

Some have Afros

 

Some need corrective lenses



Some are a disgrace to rathood

 

Some, despite stylish headgear, call to mind...

...rats of a different time.

Charlie Sheen is not a rat.  I'm not sure what he is.


Forgive my crude Photoshopping.