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Bush Narrowly Escapes Near-Ethnic EncounterPresident resting comfortably among white people once again April 1, 2002 |
Washington, DC Ansel Evans File Photo: President Bush attempts ethnic greeting.
Alfredo Garcia, a lawyer of Hispanic descent, attempted to embrace the president in a gesture of greeting Wednesday afternoon before he was wrestled to the ground by secret service agents who intervened. A visibly shaken President Bush was then rushed into a limousine and transported away from the scene.
Garcia is being held and debriefed by the secret service. His wife, Marta Garcia, claims her husband is a lifelong Republican and campaign contributor who just wanted to hug the president, despite all warnings to keep his hands at his side and away from Bush as he passed through the area.
"We're not ce...
resident George W. Bush was protected from physical contact with a member of a minority group thanks to the efforts of the secret service Wednesday.
Alfredo Garcia, a lawyer of Hispanic descent, attempted to embrace the president in a gesture of greeting Wednesday afternoon before he was wrestled to the ground by secret service agents who intervened. A visibly shaken President Bush was then rushed into a limousine and transported away from the scene.
Garcia is being held and debriefed by the secret service. His wife, Marta Garcia, claims her husband is a lifelong Republican and campaign contributor who just wanted to hug the president, despite all warnings to keep his hands at his side and away from Bush as he passed through the area.
"We're not certain Mr. Garcia intended the president any harm," said secret service commander Dick Gautier. "It's entirely possible it was a misunderstanding or severe breach of protocol. What's important is that the president is still sheltered from contact with ethnic people."
Many in the Republican party are asking how this could happen? How could the secret service allow such an obvious Hispanic get so close to the president to nearly embrace him?
"Obviously we'll be reviewing the case to see if anyone here dropped the ball," Gautier said. "He was a very American-looking man, dressed nicely, a campaign contributor and Republican party supporter. I don't think anyone expected him to be ethnic in any way. Clearly we have to instruct our agents to be more observant in the future."
President Bush has released no official statement at this time, though he is reportedly resting comfortably and watching "The Lawrence Welk Show" reruns to forget the incident. the commune news can't wait around all day for you to get your shit together. Lil Duncan has a pair of legs that won't quit, though her ass does take breaks every ten minutes.
 | Academy Fucks Up commune Oscar Pool Something AwfulHistoric year of self-congratulation throws prognosticators a curve April 1, 2002 |
Hollywood, CA Junior Bacon Denzel & Halle: Thanks for the heads-up, Hollywood
A move trumpeted as ground-breaking and courageous by Academy publicists and people trying to sell newspapers nation-wide, the Academy was deftly able to both punish Russell Crowe for acting like an asshole (and for doing an action movie in 2000, making them look bad for giving him his 1999 The Insider Oscar that year), and open the door to give Tom Hanks another Oscar the next year there's an outstanding black actor in a leading role. Unless, of course, Robert DeNiro or Sean Penn get really sick and the Ac...
roving once and for all that you don't have to be white to win a token acting award, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences kissed it's own ass Sunday by awarding the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars to known black people Denzel Washington and Halle Berry.
A move trumpeted as ground-breaking and courageous by Academy publicists and people trying to sell newspapers nation-wide, the Academy was deftly able to both punish Russell Crowe for acting like an asshole (and for doing an action movie in 2000, making them look bad for giving him his 1999 The Insider Oscar that year), and open the door to give Tom Hanks another Oscar the next year there's an outstanding black actor in a leading role. Unless, of course, Robert DeNiro or Sean Penn get really sick and the Academy has to hurry up and give them more awards before they die.
Washington received his Best Actor Oscar for his work in Malcolm X, which inconveniently came out ten years ago, in 1992, the year they gave Al Pacino the Best Actor Oscar for his work in The Godfather Part II, which came out in 1974. In 1974 the Best Actor Oscar went to Art Carney, because he likes puppies.
But the Academy is nothing if it's not just, at least on a 20-year scale, and the rest of the deserving 1974 field would get their kudos in time. Dustin Hoffman would go on to win his 1974 Lenny Oscar in 1979, while Jack Nicholson had to wait until 1983 to win his 1974 Oscar for Chinatown.
The developments in this year's awards have changed everything for black actors, and by that I mean Denzel and Morgan Freeman, who both now have a chance to be nominated again. Reaction on the street has been unanimous, with Americans from all walks of life joining together to say: "That's cool. But Training Day? I guess, whatever."
The reaction at the commune offices was much more passionate, as no one had counted on this being the Academy's year to pat itself on the back. As a result, the commune's annual Oscars office pool was won by Lil Duncan, who hadn't seen any of the nominated films and filled out her ballot with some help from an issue of People magazine. Ivan Nacutchacokov had the most to be upset about, as he had spent weeks developing a complex algorithm to determine the winners, but had left out the variable that among the front-runners, the blandest film always wins.
When Ron Howard was announced as the winner of the Best Director Oscar, Nacutchacokov laughed at first, then realized it wasn't a gag announcement and stormed off in a huff, requiring him to be tasered by security personnel. No one was entirely sure the tasering was completely necessary, but they weren't taking any chances since Ted Ted had thrown our original television set out the window in a rage during the ceremony's opening title sequence, and our TV set budget had been badly depleted during Australia's poor showing at the winter Olympics last month. the commune news. Great. Just fucking great. Red Bagel is the commune's aider and abeditor, and wants everyone to know he's seen Showgirls more times than any man alive.
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 April 1, 2002 The Room"Uncle Trey had a big rambling old house that he lived in; bigger, many thought, than a confirmed bachelor like him would ever need. We liked it, though, because it gave us lots of opportunities to play whenever we would visit him. We had the run of the house, upstairs and downstairs, except for one room that Uncle Trey warned us to never, ever go in. It was a room in the basement, at the back of the house, underneath the service porch. Most of the time we stayed away from the basement anyway, but sometimes we'd go down there and sneak a peek at the door to the forbidden room. It was a heavy door that was always locked, and we wondered what could be on the other side of it.
In the rest of the house, Uncle Trey kept artifacts from his travels around the world, and that was usua...
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"Uncle Trey had a big rambling old house that he lived in; bigger, many thought, than a confirmed bachelor like him would ever need. We liked it, though, because it gave us lots of opportunities to play whenever we would visit him. We had the run of the house, upstairs and downstairs, except for one room that Uncle Trey warned us to never, ever go in. It was a room in the basement, at the back of the house, underneath the service porch. Most of the time we stayed away from the basement anyway, but sometimes we'd go down there and sneak a peek at the door to the forbidden room. It was a heavy door that was always locked, and we wondered what could be on the other side of it.
In the rest of the house, Uncle Trey kept artifacts from his travels around the world, and that was usually enough to keep us busy. We'd put on turbans and sit on pillows around the giant hookah in the India Room, and look at the funny pictures in a book called Kama Sutra. Or we'd test how well the native shields would protect us from the sharp spears on the walls in the Congo Room.
One time our curiosity got the better of us, though. Uncle Trey had to drive Stephanie to the hospital after a game of "Torture the Marxist Rebel" got out of hand in the South America Room. (In our defense, I have to say that neither Goose nor I thought that the car battery the electrodes were hooked up to was live.) With just the two of us there, and the prospect of Uncle Trey and Stephanie being gone for some time, we decided to take a trip to the basement.
Goose wasn't good at very many things at all, but there was one thing he had learned, and that was how to pick a lock. In just a few short minutes, we had unlocked the series of combination locks and padlocks on that big door and swung it slowly open. Inside, it was dark, the walls all painted black, and it took us a little while to see what the room contained. There were all sorts of devices hanging from the walls and the ceiling; most of them were made of leather or metal or a combination of the two. It looked like whips and belts and pokers and such, and there was a metal stand in the corner that looked like a barbecue, with a glowing fire in it and six or seven pokers or branding irons or something sticking out of it. The last thing we saw before we shut the door again was the big table in the middle of the room, with the straps all over it and somebody we didn't recognize tied down there and looking back at us.
It was almost a year later that we saw a picture on a milk carton and realized that it looked a lot like the kid we had seen in Uncle Trey's room that time. It was kind of hard to tell, though, because the kid in the picture wasn't wearing a ball gag in his mouth." º Last Column: New Yorkº more columns | 
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Quote of the Day“We didn't land on Plymouth Rock… we landed just beside it, and then the damn thing rolled onto us. Needless to say, we didn't step in bird shit either. Just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
-Professor Milton XFortune 500 CookieIt's official: You've made the Ambassador's shit list. It's funny you can never find a gun when you really need one. Try thinking outside the box this week… in fact, general consensus is you shouldn't be wearing a box everywhere in the first place. Suck a lemon; make lemonade.
Try again later.Top 5 Worst Ways to Start a Letter| 1. | Dear Cum-Dumpsters... | | 2. | Remember you said you wouldn't lend me money even if I had abducted your family? Well… | | 3. | Fellow Grand Dragons... | | 4. | Long time, no lawsuit... | | 5. | Boy, when you moved away without telling me where you were going I thought I'd never find you… | |
|   Irony Bites President Bush in the Ass BY roland mcshyster 4/1/2002 Welcome back, Americanos, I hope the Oscar season left you with a smile on your face and twinkle in your eye. Here in Entertainment Policeland it's back to business as usual, sorting through the wheat to find the entertainment chaff and keeping a sharp eye on Wynona Ryder all the while. I don't know about you, but the last thing I need is some hat-stealing Hollywood brat bringing the heat down on my own private Idaho. But you didn't come here to be reminded of the harsh realities of the real world, so down with the downers and up with the Ask Roland!
Q. Rolaid, I have to admit that I was disappointed to check your column after I heard of the death of Chuck Jones, only to find that you hadn't written any kind of retrospective honoring this true Hollywood legend. W...
Welcome back, Americanos, I hope the Oscar season left you with a smile on your face and twinkle in your eye. Here in Entertainment Policeland it's back to business as usual, sorting through the wheat to find the entertainment chaff and keeping a sharp eye on Wynona Ryder all the while. I don't know about you, but the last thing I need is some hat-stealing Hollywood brat bringing the heat down on my own private Idaho. But you didn't come here to be reminded of the harsh realities of the real world, so down with the downers and up with the Ask Roland!
Q. Rolaid, I have to admit that I was disappointed to check your column after I heard of the death of Chuck Jones, only to find that you hadn't written any kind of retrospective honoring this true Hollywood legend. What gives, man? You too good for Chuck Jones or something?
Arty Luther, Moose Bend, ON
A. Arty, Chuck Jones truly was a Hollywood legend as you say, and karate-kicking men of his caliber really are few and far between. I'll never forget the fierce ass-kicking he delivered in Delta Force 2: Operation Stranglehold. And he always did it with a certain panache, a certain tang. I've been meaning to get around to writing a heart-warming retrospective for him since I heard the news. But the truth is I recently got a sticky hand out of a gumball machine in front of the grocery store and that's really been dominating my free time as of late. Sorry.
Q. Roland, what's this bullcrack about them having to rename the new Austin Powers movie because the bigwigs decided Goldmember (the original title) would confuse audiences who had entered a time warp and thought they were going to the theater to see the original Bond picture? What the crap, Roland?
Marcus Gomer, San Ysidro, CA
A. I'm right there with you, Marcus. This is poop of the highest degree. Only moviegoers bent out of their minds on pharmaceutical-grade nerve gas (and the elderly) could have confused the new Austin Powers flick with the original James Bond picture Goldthingy. To make matters worse, this is a blatantly hypocritical move on the parts of the bigwigs who allowed the release of In the Bedroom, which moviegoers will forever be confusing with countless films, including: In the Army, In the Basement, In the Closet, In the Bass Barn, Inna Gadda de Vito, Vinnie Bedhead, Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's Bedroom, Sin: the Bedroom, In a Bad Way, In Her Bad Womb: Deadly Mothers 3, Rin Tin Tin in the Boardroom, and Shaft in Africa. Not to mention cloning Ashely Judd and passing the clone off as a separate actress named Charlize Theron.
Movie reviews? I thought you'd never ask!
In Theaters Now:
All About the Berenstains
Even as a kid, you always knew it was just a matter of time before that loveable bear family went honey-nuts and tore into a crime spree. And this is the film that I think best captures what it would really be like if brother bear and sister bear both copped a massive coke habit and had to venture out of the forest to score a fix. Personally, I had envisioned a little more carnage but I guess in the end it's really a children's film so it's understandable that they'd tone down the reality of a bear attack on a Manhattan bank a little bit.
Ice Age
The eighth (and hopefully last) film in Vanilla Ice's self-styled and increasingly ludicrous "I'm the Prophet" series rewrites history with an eye for crediting Vanilla with every evolutionary leap in the history of mankind. This time around we're treated to a barely-coherent plot that was obviously stolen from a Sprite commercial, featuring Vanilla as some kind of supernatural man-god who ruled prehistoric times and could only think to use his power to have saber-toothed tigers bring him Zimas. The laughable proceedings are considerably rocked up by Ice's completely original theme song for the film, She's Cold As (*ding*) Ice, raising this picture an almost-imperceptible notch above past efforts Icecalibur and Vanilla of Arabia.
Mentident Evil
Really a novel idea here: What if a toothpaste manufacturer got fed up with their lot in life as an also-ran behind Gleem and Close-Up (the red-headed stepchildren of the toothpaste industry) and decided "The hell with it! We're putting out an Undead flavor!" Sound far-fetched? It might if the same thing hadn't happened in France last year. There probably won't be a lot of Oscar nominations thrown at this film, but there are enough exploding zombie torsos to keep all but the most bloodthirsty housewives happy, so I give it a "yes".
Picnic Room
Ah, Jodie Foster, what happened to you? Sorry film fans, but it seems like everybody is pussing out on us all at once here, as everyone's favorite action heroine and director David Finger (Fight Cuba) have turned in a film that's quite possibly the most boring thing you've ever seen. I suppose there's some appeal for audiences who are really hungry, but I personally need more suspense in a film than whether or not someone's going to pass the marmalade.
Pig Trouble
I think the movie studios are just now getting to the bottom of the sack of hate-mail they got after they put out "Babe" and didn't bother to let anyone know the movie was about a pig, of all things. Sure, it was a big hit, but how many guys went to that movie expecting to see Cameron Diaz or somebody get naked on the big screen and instead they got two hours of talking pork chops? I don't even want to count. Anyway, it looks like the studios have finally adopted the more sensible policy of marking their pig movies more clearly, and for that I applaud them. As for this specific film, how the hell should I know? Once bitten by a pig movie, twice shy my friends.
Now on Video:
Joy Ride
Shameless product-placement film based around the dish soap. This one might actually attain cult classic status because it is so ridiculous. The premise: a bunch of demographically diverse early-20's friends head on a road trip to Mexico to get soap when their local grocer runs out of Joy and they refuse to settle for the alternatives. A coming of age ensues. In the end, the film is almost redeemed by the chemistry between Katie Holmes and the rapper DMX. Almost.
K-PAX
Kevin Spacey is the DJ for this lite-rock station that broadcasts from deep space. Has kind of a Good Morning, Viet Cong appeal to it, but more than anything it pissed me off to think that the whole universe is listening to Matchbox 20. Yuck.
Sexy Bees
This funny CGI cross between Antz and Basic Instinct has got its laughing pants on, but I'm not sure if kids are going to be able to follow the "Is the murderous lesbian Queen wearing panties or not?" subplot.
Television:
Looks like old Roland McS got so wrapped up in the Oscars he forgot to do anything else with his TV in the meantime. Sorry for the lack of TV and Games, but I'm sure you weren't missing anything. Now let's see what you're not missing!
Gag the Bunny (Fox)
In the tradition of the envelope-pushing Queer Factor on Fox, this reality gameshow terrorizes Playboy playmates by kidnapping them, hauling them away in serial killer-style vans, tying them in dimly-lit basements in small farmhouses, and see who can escape first. And these girls are really in it to win, either that or they haven't been told their primetime TV game show contestants.
Baby Bop (CBS)
Not only is the entire CBS audience doddering senile old folks, now the programming execs are, too. How else could former PBS Barney co-star, the walking muppet stand-up comedian Baby Bop, get his own sitcom. I just don't buy this goofy dinosaur as a father of three and a sports column writer. Is he even old enough? Is it a he or she? I guess if you're on CBS these aren't important questions. Not up my alley, though.
Anal Reaming Controls the Universe
Now this is up my alley! But even the commune won't let me tell you what it's about. Just watch it. Yeah, it's on Fox, but these guys have absolutely nothing to lose. Trust me, every show will be doing this next year. I know I will be.
Video Games:
Freedom Force (PC)
PC gaming comes back hard with this innovative game about Honduran rebels. YOU are el capitan, YOU train the troops, YOU are the only thing standing between the evils of capitalism and the everlasting peace of communist revolution. Not available in the United States.
Resident Devo (Gamecube)
Anybody else hear Nintendo's last gasps? I thought hanging on to Mario and Luigi by the cahones was showing how out of touch they are, now they go and come up with this game based on the early '80s band. You're a landlord who rents a bunch of new apartments to these New Wave noisemakers, then have to evict them when you catch them whipping it. I'm not sure what they are, but they are not men.
Might & Management IX (PC)
PC gaming comes back hard again! This is the 13th game about a retired wizard who takes over managing a Denny's, but I guess 13 is a lucky number because they finally got it right! It's one hell of a strategy game from start to finish, if I ever finish it. You choose when to throw the old fries out or introduce the pita fajita to your thousands of customers. The fantastic designer program allows you to create your own
restaurant layout, complete with playland for kids and nap area for yourself.
That's all for this month, consumeritas! I hope it rolled your oats this time around and that I'll see your sunny faces next time the Entertainment Police wagon comes rollicking into town. Until then!
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