lewis black lives in philly in buzz bissinger's house

cmk' saturday wrap up
march 31, 2012

we're here. where's smerconish?

since turning 50, smerc has been wpht-mia a lot. normally, i would be bummed about this; however, not this time.

i found out what buzz bissinger is all about and he is so much more than lights and friday nights! just as i was totally floored by bernie parent when i had the great fortune to attend smerc's book club, http://www.smerconish.com , held last month in collingswood, nj - thank you patty pat!

that evening, bernie parent was one of smerc's featured authors, and i admit it - my first thought was, "ugh. hockey." and, it is here and now i must fess up just how wrong i was. and now i want to be bernie's bff.

bernie parent is optimistic and positive and all about balance; very zen. if the dali lama were a tall, hockey-playing cannuck he would be bernie parent.

go flyers!

tell me this buzztweet isn't so lewis black?

well, imagine my surprise when i discovered buzz bissenger was more than pigskin! and the fact that most every other smerc listener hated him made him all the more appealing to contrarian moi!
buzz's sardonic, dry style is very lewis blackish and he pulls no punches. i might have a  ladycrush on buzz, i'm not sure. friday afternoon, i messaged his fb account with the following:

• i think it's sorta creepy when fb sends me a message that some total stranger thinks i'm friend material. so, i'm introducing myself before fb sends you that creepy message from me.
  i'm catherine. i'm the one smerc fan that likes your show. you're like lewis black, whose delivery is better than crack.
  anyway, i'm not a football person so i basically ignored the whole 'friday night lights' thing. sorry. you'd ever know i had marshall texas blood in my veins. however, i am now your fan and now we can be friends. but i will never like football.
  it's a win win. peace-
  catherine m.k.
  
  i patiently waited and sent buzz a friend request after i had given fair and ample warning i was doing so, and having heard no objections after a reasonable amount of time (and not to look anxious or nothin') sent the "omg, i'm pathetic please be my friend" friend request.
  

  

  you'll always be my favorite

  saturday, 31 march 2012 - 11:30 am and i have yet to hear back from buzz. but i am like my new hero, bernie parent and i am very, very patient. i will really, really try to not judge sports people any longer. i will.
  i will try.
  and nobody's perfect, let's not forget that when i'm really trying.
  
  in a nutshell, this week smercsucked due to michael's absence.
  'cept for buzz.
  buzz was freakin' awesome. 
  
  

  

  i think i could wanna go to there

  
  cmk
  
  ps- jesus, even he's balding! i bet he's a flippin' pisces, too.
  this also gives me fair warning eddie vedder may indeed be bald some day. fair warning to you too, edved. i am usually right about these things. just sayin'.

olbermann: twit-glutton and karma

oh you be quiet, keith

you freakin' tweet-hog!!
11 (eleven) 144(one hundred and forty-four) character filled tweets!
don't you have some equally bitter webmaster-type person that can put your twit-tirade on a more appropriate format?
that my friend is 'twit-gluttony'.
add glutton to one or two pre-existing deadly sins keith, and welcome to, "hey! you're pretty much fucked!"
again.

for those who have not subjected themselves to olbermann's second scribed bunch of sour grapes, business insider shares keith's twatpology here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/olbermann-canned-from-current-tv-2012-3

i never paid you any mind when you were on espn doing sport stuff. i did run into you once in starbucks, at 'the commons' in avon, connecticut.
as a philly transplant, i was not expecting much from a dude that drinks starbucks and climbs into a vehicle with connecticut tags, and from that day forward you have always lived up to my philly expectations of you.
of you and connecticut.

never having watched you do sport stuff, (i am risking the ass u me thing, but this is worth the risk) i can't see that snarky attitude of yours workin' around a bunch of manly sports guys. i mighta' had to deck your ass if you acted all whiny on my sports show. ugh.
you were msnbc's original rachel maddow, without the obvious girl-parts; which by the way, is required for snark.
unless you're a gay man, and that is the only exception whatsoever when testosterone can pull of snarky.

plain and simply put, you just don't have the parts. which made it weird to watch you verbally pull bill o'reilly's hair on a nightly basis.
well meow!
but you're a man and men are not supposed to pull hair.
men do a roundhouse to the jaw and knock the other guy out with one perfectly machismo punch, and walk away.
keith, you are a snarky nag in a man's body and i believe your gig is up.
leave it to us pros. thanks!

"thanks keith! now i'm in first place!"

cmk

zimmerman man-fans

the more the better. i think.

i had the unfortunate benefit of listening to wednesday's smerc callers addressing the trayvon martin case, and for the most part i have drawn the sad conclusion, we still need the al sharptons to shine a great, big spotlight on injustice, if not but for weeding out  bigots and idiots.
as if bigot and idiot are separate. 

*many of whom listen to the show.
i still say, we give al his walking papers and send him on his merry way to his msnbc gig, 'politics nation', and we all know even al scratches his james-brown-head and asks himself, "how in god's hell did i pull this one off?" i know al sharpton has some naughty karma comin', i just don't know when.

as a replacement i suggest harold ford, jr. because i like him. i like lenny kravitz, too.
and on the hot scale, while ford isn't awful on the eyes, kravitz is so easy he's practically skanky.

one point i keep hearing over and over again is the image portrayed by the media of trayvon martin, represents someone younger and smaller than the 17 year old shot dead by george zimmerman. it was suggested he looked 14, and the photographs used were judged to be unrepresentative of the hulking, menacing kid on purpose!

as the mother of 4 children i am going to explain something to you people who have never been placed in charge of memorializing your branch of the family tree. let me further say in my defense, i never asked for this job because i completely, absolutely suck at keeping track of anything smaller than a child.

when my children were all young, i could go pick one up, put it on the couch, and take photos of it until i ran out of film with rare objection. i stood on many-a-sideline screaming and hooting and hollering about my sport-child, snapping photos in between hoots.
there comes a point, when the child begins to whine and moan and groan at you on a fairly regular basis, and asking them to pose for a picture only gives them one more thing to bitch about, so screw that.
i still find it a lil hypocritical when i creep on their fb pages
and see photo after ph/scratch that, album after album of them posing for someone else and doing utterly stupid shit; obviously i am meant to take this personally, so i have, and i'm done photographing my children.
add a.d.d. to that and you have my filing system.
i do not have one album.
all my photos are in a box in a closet i can see from where i am currently sitting.

i tell you all of this because of the hypothetical i will now pose:
my child doesn't come home one night. at some point my child will be deemed legally missing and i can notify the police.
i am probably in a panic when the police request a recent photograph of my missing child.
i run to my box of photographs and grab the first photo i come to that most closely resembles my missing child.
i would not stop to make sure the photo was from his junior year, out of a uniform of some sort, or was particularly as tall or as heavy as my child.
i would hand it over to the police and say, "this is the best one i have right now. please use this and when i am finished with this meltdown, i will get you a more current photo."

the 1210 sleuth-set has it all figured out, with little if anything of a factual nature to consider. beyond trayvon martin's death as the result of being shot by george zimmerman  everything that follows  is conjecture or verbal accounts from witnesses i don't know from rocks. i heard more reasons for zimmerman to shoot-on-sight than i wanted to hear and it left me very depressed.
and then i realized al might hang around longer, which was even more depressing a thought.

i just want to let you know why moms don't always have just the right picture, and i have debunked one bigot-idiot-theory.
feel free to bring on another.

p.s.- for those children whose mothers don't have albums or "baby's first steps" journals, it doesn't mean we don't love you, we just have lots of shit to do )

cmk

*smerc- you may wanna rethink your fan base. just sayin'

vogue's p.o.s. mother of the year

dara-lynn weiss, your dinner is served

yeah, i said piece of shit.
if shit is low-cal, dara-lynn weiss will run to add it to the list of acceptable consumables for her daughter, bea.

many believe bea's luck-of-the-sperm birth into a 99%er's dream family will be her boarding pass to the new-elites' american dream. i suggest bea will spend a good deal of her boarding time in an eating disorder recovery facility.

mental health patient and bea

i highly recommend renfrew, on spring lane, in philadelphia.

i cannot in good conscience lay this all at the monolo blahnik's of ms. weiss. IF, and that is a large if,  bea's pediatrician called her obese and instructed ms. weiss to walk-not-run with bea to the nearest weight watcher's meeting, the pediatrician should be reported to the ama or the carpenter's union for being an utter tool.



let's get real - dara-lyn weiss is an egotistical asshat that cannot bear the stigma of a daughter who does not rival a cadaver with her body mass index.
asshat says: One day Bea came home from school in tears, confessing that a boy at school had called her fat. The incident crushed me, but it was a wake-up call. Being overweight is not a private struggle. Everyone can see it.

dara-lynn weiss is also a hypocrit as she stuffs several cookies in her own piehole while restricting bea to one, or none, or 89 push-ups depending on ms. weiss's mood of course.
asshat says: When she was given access to cupcakes at a party, I alternated between saying, "Let's not eat that, it's not good for you"; "Okay, fine, go ahead, but just one"; "and "Bea, you have to stop eating crap like that, you're getting too heavy," depending on my mood. Then I'd secretly eat two when she wasn't looking.

dara-lynn weiss thinks this is unfair.
asshat says:The struggle is obviously not over. I don't think it will ever be for either of us. Bea understands that, just as some kids have asthma, her weight is something she may always have to think about, unfair as it seems.She will probably always want to eat more than she is supposed to. She will be tempted to make bad choices. But now she has the foundation to make these choices in an educated and conscious way. Only time will tell whether my early intervention saved her from a life of preoccupation with her weight, or drove her to it.
http://www.nymag.com/daily/fashion/2012/03/mom-reacts-vogues-fat-7-year-old-girl-story.html?imw=Y

there is nothing shocking when vogue magazine celebrates  the ugliest, beautiful people. vogue magazine is for vapid, self-absorbed asshats who will applaud ms. weiss for her pro-active role in her daughter's health.
that's what vogue readers will say.

renfrew will say your daughter has an eating disorder.
and when the admissions clerk asks you if you have any idea when bea's eating disorder began, you can tell them ms. weiss, it all started with the april issue of vogue.
oh, and great luck with your book.
as a bookseller, yours will be one i seem to misplace all the time.
every time.
cmk

Analyzing 911 calls in Fla. shooting death by Smerconish

Analyzing 911 calls in Fla. shooting death by Smerconish

hot old lady in love park

i left love park's candlelight vigil for trayvon martin a few minutes ahead of the peaceful crowd. those who could stand plummeting temps and winds that literally blew me down the sidewalk two times, went on to occupy something in philly, while i briskly walked to my illegally parked jeep.

i peed for a second time at the krispy kreme on chestnut, plucked a parking ticket off my windshield, (philadelphia parking kiosks only take quarters while my camera bag was filled with nickles and dimes), and headed toward the art museum. i made my way on to a user-friendly schyulkill- this means i am headed west leaving the city after 7 p.m. est.

the schyulkill is always friendly when you're leaving.

too late for smerc, i tuned into wpht http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/station/talk-radio-1210/   

and hung out with gary arnell for a chill drive home.
arnell's guest, jenice armstrong, columnist for the philadelphia daily news, was reporting live from ground-zero, love park. seemingly surprised by the small number gathering for the candlelight vigil, http://www.philly.com/philly/gallery/Trayvon_Martin_vigil_at_Love_Park.html?viewGallery=y ms. armstrong seemed even more perplexed by the national attention the death of trayvon martin was receiving. 

i listened further as ms. armstong recounted philly murders in recent past, that, according to her garnered no attention whatsoever, posing the question, "where was the outrage over these murders?".

in a column, posted 3/26/2012

http://www.philly.com/philly/living/20120326_Jenice_Armstrong_.html?cmpid=138894519
armstrong highlights 4 recent philadelphia homicides near or around the gunning-down of trayvon martin and in conclusion states, " Not to take as much as a Skittle away from Trayvon, but aren't these people's untimely deaths worth our getting worked up about as well?"

answer: of course they are! and what did you do about them, jenice? and your job doesn't count.  

trayvon martin's murder has received attention that eluded our fellow philadelphians for one reason and one reason only-

al sharpton.

al

did anyone in philadelphia call al blueberrypie sharpton?
i am pretty sure sharpton works a lot like batman, and requires at the very least a phone call, if not a shaft-like help-us-hologram in the sky.
i find the naivete in your question, well, weird at it's least.
the civil rights movement gave birth to the much needed organization and representation for a very underrepresented group of americans.
whites had always been above and beyond represented in every possible constitutional way, and had no need for such organization. and imagine in 2012 if there was a national association for the advancement of white people.
it was never needed, nor would it be tolerated.

young black men are murdered at an outrageous, disproportionate rate every, single day in this country. 

as a journalist, but more importantly as a black female journalist who, i am assuming lives in or at least near philadelphia, i ask you this: 

 how do you not know yourself what to do to draw attention to your hometown - which currently places 1st for homicide rates in 2012?

the world's perfect puppy, lucy

i am an aarp card holding woman in the suburbs of philly and i know who to call. when my puppy, lucy, hears al on msnbc recalling his pie-thieving days in brooklyn, she growls. even my dog knows - call al sharpton!
nothing brings the racial tension to the table like al.
no one can spin the murder of a young man by a gun wielding security officer into a racial frenzy, like al.

now, if sharpton were not such a self-promoting opportunist, i would applaud and encourage his participation in every homicide in every city across this great nation.
the problem with al is, he forgets why he is there and only sees the color of one's skin. i just find that odd from a man who quotes dr. martin luther king.
sharpton should have term limits, much like our congress should have term limits. out with the old, in with new.
sharpton, like his fellow sexagenarians, are antiques to the system. sharpton wants to march in a world that needs less and less marching. 

not exactly stealth

if al could fly to florida, stir up some shit and then fly back to his rockefeller center office in new york, new york, hop in his corporate limo, and get back to his day job at msnbc, that would be great. but al can't do that. al needs to be the story; needs to be the show; he just can't walk out of the limelight.
we need a navy seal-type who slips in under the tv camera radar, wreaks all sorts of havoc, then slips out as stealthly as he came.
mission accomplished, bin laden is dead, claps hands together and that's that.
last night i stood among fellow philadelphians where i saw some angry, some sad, some determined, some militant humans meld together; i saw folks i thought probably had some money in their pockets and some i knew did not. i saw old and young, human and canine.  i listened, i participated, and i then i drove home.

that's what i did, jenice. my job is working in a bookstore. my obligation as a human being was to choose to be in love park.
reporting the news is one thing.
being the news is another.

cmk

no more division, please.