A Few Cheap Jokes, & a Few Thoughts on the Arts (posted 1/31/22)

I’m sure you all saw the story on the highway crash involving a truck carrying some research monkeys that could be infected by God knows what.  The account I read suggested that a female motorist stopped to see if the truck driver was all right, and he asked her if she could check around the back of the truck to see that nothing was badly damaged.

When she did so, the story said that she “came into contact with at least one of the monkeys,” and she’s now gone into self-quarantine.

First, I hope that quarantine goes better than the covid ones, or else brace yourself for a monkey-pox outbreak of Biblical proportions. 

Second:  Hey truck driver, how about giving the good Samaritan a little head’s up on the trailer-load of infected monkeys before asking her to check things out back there?!

Third, my initial thought upon hearing “rabid monkeys causing chaos in the northeast” was, of course… “Biden’s cabinet?”  

But when I didn’t hear anything about the lead monkey getting captured as he stopped to groom the intoxicating-smelling hair of the female passerby, I knew we weren’t talking about Joey Gaffes.    

On the crime front, if you’re looking for another reason NOT to live in a city run by soft-on-crime Dems, consider the latest in what seems like dozens of cases of people being shoved onto subway tracks by an apparently limitless supply of thugs, mental patients and dead-inside ghouls who make up a substantial slice of Biden’s base voters. 

In this case the victim was able to avoid a direct hit and was only injured, though many previous victims have not been so lucky.  

But don’t worry, because the leftist brain trust has your back.  No, they’re not considering jailing more criminals or institutionalizing more of the mentally ill.  They’ve got an even better solution: don’t stand so close to the tracks, you dope!

I’m not kidding.  The person in charge of the MTA – in a quote I swear I am not making up — said, “I don’t want to tell people that they should stand on subway platforms and feel like they’re, you know, in threat of their lives.  But everybody should stand away from the edge of the platform.”

Or how about all New Yorkers wear red capes whenever they ride the subway?  That way, they can stand on the platform flourishing their cape to attract the attention of any murderous Biden voters in the area.  I don’t think I have to spell out what happens next, but I will anyway:

• Dem-voting meth fan notices the red cape, flares his nostrils, and paws the filthy platform floor
• As he charges, the alert urban bullfighter yanks back the cape as the Dem voter dives forward
• The squeal of train brakes and a hearty “Ole!” mark the end of the would-be murderer
• But he still manages to vote in the next 12 elections

All hilarious kidding aside, I agree with the MTA big shot: wary New Yorkers should avoid standing too close to subway tracks. 

By the way, what’s the closest red state to NYC?  Because that’s how far I’d recommend standing from the subway tracks. 

And now, to give you subject matter whiplash, I have a few thoughts on the arts:

First, I’ve seen the trailer for the new film version of MacBeth, and it looks incredible!  Denzel Washington – an amazing actor and an admirable human being (an exceedingly rare combination) – is MacBeth, Francis McDormand is Lady MacBeth, super-gifted oddball Joel Coen directs, and Shakespeare wrote it! 

I can’t wait to see it.

On the other end of the artistic spectrum, we have a talented writer marring a book with his politics, and a washed-up rocker providing some delicious schadenfreude.

The writer is novelist Daniel Silva, who writes the series of thrillers featuring Gabriel Allon, an Israeli art-restorer and assassin.  I’ve really enjoyed that series, but I was disappointed to see the way Silva allowed his lefty politics to turn the last third of his latest novel, The Cellist, into cartoonishly Trump-hating agitprop.

The book’s villain is a Putin-figure, and it takes place in the aftermath of January sixth, an event which Silva turns into a far-leftist conspiracy theorist’s fever dream: the protestors were a heavily armed, they mounted a serious coup attempt that came within a whisper of toppling the US government.

But those distortions of real life are not enough, and Silva writes a sub-plot in which Biden was nearly assassinated at the inauguration by a crazed right-wing congresswoman who then shoots his protagonist.  He also imagines that Trump himself calls the Putin stand-in, warning him about a plot against him, and nearly getting the book’s noble title character killed.

But even more unbelievable than all that, Silva presents Joe Biden – the real-life one – as a righteous figure who wants to heal the nation, and who will take a firm stand against Putin, and who – get this! — has all his wits about him. 

Talk about asking your readers to suspend their disbelief!

Silva had given signs of his political leanings at various places throughout the series, but he was also the rare lefty who actually defends Israel’s right to exist.  His fictional protagonist got his start as the primary Israeli assassin who took out many of the Palestinian terrorists who murdered the Jewish Olympians at Munich, and Silva doesn’t sugarcoat the jihadi aspects of the Islamic world.

That’s why it’s so disappointing to see an accomplished writer and an obviously smart guy show himself to simultaneously be such a simple-minded, ham-fisted anti-conservative loon.  After I finished the book, I looked into Silva’s bio, and was not shocked to find that his wife works at CNN, and that he used to. 

So I’ve added him to the long list of artists whose work I admire, despite their idiotic politics. 

Speaking of idiotic politics, I have so enjoyed the saga of old Canadian hippie Neil Young facing off against Spotify in a quixotic attempt to get Joe Rogan cancelled! 

The story is a perfect distillation of the four apocalyptic horsemen (horse-persons?) of modern leftism: hypocrisy, ignorance, arrogance and totalitarian bullying.

Let’s start with hypocrisy. 

Last year, the self-styled rebel who casts himself as an enemy of Big Business and the establishment… sold the rights to at least half of his music to Big Business for a reported $150 million.  Why did he do this last year?  Because Biden has been trying to push through a huge increase in the capital gains rate, which would require a lot more taxes from Noble Neil. 

So all of a sudden Mr. “Tax the Rich” is dodging taxes like a veteran Democrat politician.

Plus, he now gets to virtue-signal as if he’s willing to sacrifice song-writing profits for his bold stand, when the only ones who will take a financial hit will be his corporate partners who were gullible enough to trust Neil Young!

Ignorance:  And what was the issue that had the septuagenarian hoser all upset?  He’s offended that Rogan has been spreading “covid misinformation!” 

Wait until the arthritic Canucklehead finds out that everything that Rogan suggested – vaccines don’t prevent infection or spread, masks are only facial decoration, lockdowns don’t work – has now been said by the CDC.

How about arrogance?

Neil Young’s middle name should be “Is Not.”   His last hit was on the charts when Imhotep Pelosi was celebrating her 2300^th birthday, and Ted Kennedy was wearing a fake neck brace to evade responsibility for killing a young campaign worker.

He gets around 6 million downloads a month, a figure that is about a million times more than I would have guessed.

Meanwhile, Joe Rogan gets around 200 million.  Plus he’s a big deal right now, and he doesn’t have the sideburns of a deranged Civil War general.

So naturally, Neil Young figures he can go mano a mano with Rogan, and he called Spotify to demand that they show Rogan the door. 

Man, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the nasally crooner from America’s Hat made that phone call!

NY:  Hello, Spotify?  This is Neil Young, and I’m offended by Joe Ro—What’s that?    

Spotify (sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher):  Wah waaah wah wah?

NY: Neil Young.  From Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Spotify:  Wah wah?   

NY: No, it’s not a law firm.  It’s a rock band.

Spotify:  Waw ah wahh?

NY: No, that’s Stills.

Spotify:  Wah wah wah walrus?

NY: No, that’s Crosby.  I’m Young.

Spotify:  WaWa! WaWaWa!

NY: That’s not funny!  Now listen, I’m offended by Joe Rogan, and I’d like you to get rid of him.

Spotify (long silence): Wa?

NY: Because he doesn’t understand science.  He disagrees with me, and he’s misinforming people.

Spotify (long silence):  Wa Wah Wa?

NY: Neil Young.

Spotify:  Wa Wa Wah?

NY: N-e-i-l  Y-o-u-n-g.

Spotify: Wah wah wa wa?

NY: I already told you: I want Joe Rogan gone! 

Spotify: Wa Wa Wah 200 million.

NY: I don’t care how many downloads he has.  It’s not aboot that, it’s aboot principle, and—

Spotify: WaWa! Wah wah wa?

NY: That’s how we say it up here.  Shut up!  Listen, I’m putting my foot down.  You can have Young or you can have Rogan, but you can’t have bo—

Spotify: Click.

NY: Hello?  Hello? 

And, scene.  

Finally, totalitarian bullying.

It wasn’t that Young disagreed with Rogan, or that he wanted to express himself.  And it wasn’t that Young wanted to make a stand, and pull his music from Spotify.

He wanted to cancel Rogan. Censor him.  Get him fired.

Because elite leftists don’t want a debate, and they don’t tolerate dissent.  Speech that disagrees with them is violence. In fact, they sometimes insist that even silence is violence.

We disagree.  Because when it comes to being threatened with having to listen to a Neil Young song… silence is golden.

Avenatti/ Infectious Highway Monkeys  2024!