Reader AL kindly sends along this video to counter the notion that Clay Aiken won’t be able to turn himself into a jet fighter:

It seems every news story about the AIG bonuses now makes reference to anonymous death threats that are pouring into the company.

I started making left-wing political cartoons one month after 9/11. At that time, most people weren’t exactly pumped to hear someone making fun of the whole idea of a “War on Terror” and calling President Bush an idiot. I got my share of nasty emails.

I also received death threats. (I soon learned this comes with the territory.) I set up a special folder in my email program where I dumped all the creepy junk: the missives from the guy who fantasized about sodomizing me with a grenade launcher; the guy who said he was gonna personally beat the shit out of me; the guy who asked inappropriate questions about my wife, etc. etc.

Anyway, my point is: Did I go around crying about all these threats? NO. Did I punk out like a little baby and stop making cartoons? NO. Did I go whine to Congress about “Boo-hoo, I can’t tell you who got the bonuses, they might receive a nasty email”? NO. I took a deep breath and rolled up my sleeves and — after a strange phone call in the middle of the night — got my number de-listed and went about my business like a champ.

And mind you, when I received these threats, I wasn’t working in some high-security office building and living in a fancy gated community with no sidewalks where you need a passcode just to go to the golf course. Hardly. I was a schlub in a bathrobe living in a third-story Brooklyn walk-up. The only way I could’ve been a softer target would be if I was made out of Yoplait.

And I wasn’t exactly getting paid millions of dollars for my troubles, either. I was temping part-time for $20/hour and GIVING ALL MY GODDAMN MONEY AWAY, because it was post-9/11 America and we were all supposed to pull together and chip in for the common good. Remember when?

My God, though — if I had been making that sweet AIG money, not only would I have happily endured a few more death threats, I WOULD HAVE ACTIVELY LET PEOPLE TRY TO KILL ME.

Pay me $700,000 a year, or however much the AIG guy whining in today’s New York Times made, and you can threaten me with death all goddamn day. Because do you have any idea how much money that is??? Hell, I’ll let you throw rocks at me. I’ll let you poison my soup. You can slash my tires and spray-paint my driveway. AND ONCE I GET ALL THAT MONEY, I’M TOTALLY PAYING OFF SOME STUDENT LOANS AND FIXING THE GARAGE ROOF AND BUYING SOME NEW PANTS. Because that’s an insane amount of money.

These AIG losers bring the country’s financial system to its knees, get paid millions of dollars for their troubles, walk away unscathed, and then turn around and complain because some idiot using a computer at the public library decides to hit “send” before catching his breath?

Meanwhile American teenagers are getting shot at in Iraq because maybe the Army will help pay their college tuition?

“Death threats?” Seriously?

Here’s my proposal to all AIG bigwigs:

You give me the money you made at AIG and I’ll shoulder the impossible burden you’re living with.

Any takers?

From thismodernworld, a 1999 NY Times article about repealing Glass-Steagall:

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another’s businesses …

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. “This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation’s financial system.

LOL, God bless those handful of dissenters with their dire warnings, forever lurking around in the lower depths of news articles, spreading doom and gloom.

By the way, I forgot how short Bob Mould’s guitar strap was; LOL, his flying V is flying pretty high up in the sky there, pretty far from the ground, cruising altitude 40,000 feet, LOL.

EGG ON MY FACE ALERT: Just off the ol’ Blackberry with a major Hollywood insider who says the rumors of a Claymation Transformers II reshoot are way off base.

This source sez the robot scenes are being reshot using Clay Aiken in a series of robot costumes.

This new process has been dubbed “Clay-Aikenimation.”

After ditching the CGI footage for looking “like some wack-ass Atari shit,” and deciding against Claymation as “too messy,” Transformers II director Hakim Bey decided to cast Clay Aiken in the role of ALL THE ROBOTS.

“Clay has been very patient throughout the whole process,” according to my source. “He’s getting a kick out of playing all the robots — the Transformers and the Deceptitrons (sic), or whatever they’re called, I can’t really remember because frankly we’re all a little drunk right now.”

Apparently the computer nerds who developed the CGI effects are furious that they’ve been kicked to the curb. “I can’t wait to see Clay Aiken try to turn into a truck, yeah, that’s gonna look GREAT,” said one CGI-programmer geek I talked to.

Said another CGI designer: “I don’t care how much yoga that dude (Clay Aiken) knows, ‘Downward Facing Dog’ doesn’t mean you can bend yourself into looking like a [EXPLETIVE] jet fighter plane.”

OUCH!

This story is still developing … I’ll add more deets as they become available …

That’s why they should spell it HOLLYWOULD, people — because where WOULD we be without it?

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“Doctors and Mental Health Professionals Volunteer to Help Torture Survivors”

LOL, at least join the CIA where you can get paid to do it.

Dr. Go-offsky is in the building, and he’s writing prescriptions.

That we even need a new raft of compensation regulations strains the boundaries of credulity. It makes you question the values of your countrymen. They were the principle beneficiaries of a decade-long bubble that they inflated. These Ivy League bundles of privilege were given every possible advantage and then took yet more than that. They took the advantages of high school seniors applying to college this year or entering the workforce next year. They took the advantages of seniors who had saved for retirement and parents who had invested to build their own business. And now they’re refusing to help defuse the bomb at the center of our economy unless we pay them retention bonuses. Worse, they’re threatening to flee the scene of the crime andmake money off the carnage. That, it’s been argued, is why we need to keep paying meeting their demands: Because we need them working for us rather than against us. It’s chutzpah as the Yiddish define it: A child who kills his parents and then begs for lenience because he’s a pitiable orphan. It’s shameful.

I love thinking about patriotism and its relationship to money/the economy. Remember when people jumped down Biden’s throat when he said paying taxes was patriotic? WTF? OF COURSE IT IS. It’s how the government gets the fucking money it needs to function.

“Shared sacrifice” and “shouldering the burden” and “honor, honor, honor” only come up in the context of the military. Why is the financial system not bound to the same codes, the same goose-bump vocabulary? “He made the ultimate sacrifice; he had his bonus stripped.”

LOL, I hope all the kids serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are totally pumped to protect our way of life right now. Everyone should go AWOL tomorrow.

More big news about the Claymation Transformers sequel … whispered in my ear by a little bird named “Anonymous Big-Shot Hollywood Producer” … apparently there’s concern that the Transformers production will actually run out of clay … sez my source: “Things got tense on set yesterday when (Director Hakim) Bey realized a fight-sequence reshoot would require 50,000 additional tons of clay … he threw a craft-services bagel at his PA and yelled, ‘Where are we gonna get all this [EXPLETIVE] clay?’”

BONUS SHOCKER: Per my source, Bey went on to throw a craft-services yogurt cup at his DP and screamed, “Everybody go dig up some dirt and soak it in water and make me some [EXPLETIVE] clay, I need everyone to dig in the dirt right now, we need more clay, this is a [EXPLETIVE] clay emergency!”

Another source weighs in to say: “The production is now way over-budget and way under-clayed; Bey’s afraid he’s been played — he thought he had it made in the shade with an A+ grade, but those days have faded like Fannie Mae did, and now dismay is the way of the day, I say.”

I’ve been working the phones to find out details, and just heard this from a SFX guy in the loop: “Optimus Prime is only halfway constructed and he’s looking all dirty and grimy with clumps of grass sticking out of his shoulder because they didn’t have time to clean the clay before they started building the robots.”

Seems like only a clay miracle can save this troubled production now …

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Guys, if you haven’t noticed, the economy is in trouble. The money isn’t working like it’s supposed to. 

I think what we should do is, keep all the financial guys who’ve been running the show in charge, but pay them more money, so they’ll do a better job. 

Just off the phone with a major Hollywood agent … he tells me shocking news about the Transformers sequel … apparently they’re ditching all the CGI because “it looks really cheesy and fake,” and instead they’re going to re-shoot the robot scenes using CLAYMATION … and yes they are modeling the robots at actual size, in case you were wondering … these will be the largest claymation models ever produced … Wallace and Gromit, you’ve officially been dethroned … needless to say my interest in this film has spiked … some grumbling from the cast members about how they have to “stand around for like twenty hours while the crew moves Optimus Prime’s arm forward one inch at a time” … this has wreaked havoc with the production schedule … new release date: August 2050 … can they maintain the buzz until then? We’ll find out …

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