AssembledWrong

54 posts
AssembledWrong is an egotistical part-time playwright/full time person who can sometimes string a few words together to form what could potentially be referred to as, in certain circles, a joke. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Life, Death and Violence: A Study of February 17

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Today is going to be hot. It’s 50 degrees here on the North Coast, and we would totally go to the beach today if it wasn’t so cloudy. Clouds aren’t hot. The sun? That’s hot. Get ready, kids, because it’s everyone’s favorite daily: Life, Death and Violence. It’s gonna be a hot, hot heat.

LIFE! (Conception is hot. The actual miracle of birth? Not.)

Everyone born today is either hot, or has made a career out of the word “hot.” We’ll also be bringing you the exception to the rule.

  • 1490: Charles III, Duke of Bourbon: This sexy thang look spectacular in a suit of armor, and why wouldn’t he? He’s a hot, distinguished French military leader who defied the stereotype and never surrendered, until he was killed in battle, which, of course, means he surrendered in life. Those French! Always surrendering!

Charles, like any smart person, married into nobility when he married his wife, Suzanne, Duchess of Bourbon. This marriage led to his being named the male-heir to the House of Bourbon and therefore, we assume, an unlimited supply of Maker’s Mark. Lucky man! Damn, we still can’t get over how gorgeous he looks in that suit. Barney Stinson should redefine “Suit up.”

He became a turncoat and fought for the Italians after losing a promotion and having his wife’s money, which she left to him, taken away when the mother of the King of France decided it was hers because she was Suzanne’s closest blood relative.

1836: Gustavo Becquer: Salaciously hot. He is totally pulling off that soul patch in a way that Apolo Anton Ohno only dreams about. Gustavo was a Spanish poet during the post-Romantic era, which, naturally, increases his hotness tenfold. Let’s read a poem:

The dark swallows will return
their nests upon your balcony, to hang.
And again with their wings upon its windows,
Playing, they will call.
But those who used to slow their flight
your beauty and my happiness to watch,
Those, that learned our names,
Those… will never come back!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Naturally, we’re smitten. Fun fact! His brother painted that portrait of him and when they changed their names, they took the same fake last name. Family should stick together.

  • 1963: Larry the Cable Guy: Not hot (sorry, we’re just not into bears). Larry is known for being a redneck, but that’s only on stage. He’s not even from the South! He’s from Nebraska. However, our nephew is obsessed with Mater, so we’ll give him a pass.
  • Still, we’ve always been a fan of scripted comedy as opposed to stand-up, with the exception being Kathy Griffin because she’s just so funny and because as proper gays, we have to like her. Have to. We made Kathy Griffin laugh with a Celine Dion joke when we met her and it was one of the greatest moments of our lives.
  • What we’re saying here is that we’d much rather talk about Kathy Griffin, but it’s Larry the Cable Guy’s birthday, so we should get back to that.  Larry the Cable Guy owns three champion bucking bulls that participate with that other PBR, Professional Bull Riders Inc. Now that’s a fact that’s fun! Their names are Chicken on a Chain, Booger Butt and Git R Done.

  • 1981: Joseph Gordon Levitt: Not hot. Better than hot. The most beautiful man in the world and our main celebrity crush. There are so many things we’d like to do with him and it was probably a sign when we were younger and watching Third Rock from the Sun and only wanted to watch the scenes with Joseph Gordon Levitt in them.  Look at that smirk on his face! So cute! He’s totally our Aubrey Plaza.
  • And what a name! We know that three-namers are associated with serial killers, but you know what? He is killing us with his serious good looks. The man (he’s thirty today!) is funny and smart and quirky and rocks in so many movies, our favorite being (500) Days of Summer which is our ultimate love/hate movie because we love it, but we’re basically Tom and being the romantic in the relationship hurts. WE LOVE YOU JGL! Call us!

And, last, but certainly not least!

  • 1981: Paris Hilton: HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARIS! You’re 30 now! That’s totally hot!

DEATH! (Picking up a guy at a funeral? Hot. Picking up a dead guy at a funeral? Not.)

Let me open up my newspaper to look at today’s obituary, and by newspaper, I mean Wikipedia. Let’s talk about hot dead people because necrophilia is sexxxy.*

  • 1673: Moliere: The original king of comedy and bad boy of theater, Moliere had several of his plays banned by the French government for being too perverse (on pressure from the Catholic Church). We’re currently re’reading our favorite play of his, The Misanthrope, which, if you haven’t read it, you really should. It’s a fabulous tale about an asshole who spends the entire play criticizing everyone including himself.
  • Moliere is also known for having one of the most ironic deaths ever. During a production of what was to be his final play, in which he played a hypochondriac, he succumbed to his tuberculosis. He was able to finish his performance, but died shortly after. Guess it wasn’t such an imaginary illness after all. Sad. A tragic way for a really funny guy to leave this little blue ball we call home.
  • (Excerpt from Act 1 Scene 1 Le Misanthrope)
  • “Great Heaven? let us torment ourselves a little less about the vices of our age, and be a little more lenient to human nature. Let us not scrutinize it with the utmost severity, but look with some indulgence at its failings. In society, we need virtue to be more pliable. If we are too wise, we may be equally to blame.”

  • 1939: Willy Hess: He played violin, taught at Harvard and was concermaster for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His violin was a Guadagnini which we think means it was a really good violin, but we’re pretty sure he’s not dead. We’re pretty sure we’ve seen this guy at Metropolitan, like, a lot, when we used to go there on Tuesdays.

  • 1961: Nita Naldi: This sultry silent film star was typecast as a femme fatale/vamp and boy was she able to pull that off. She was also in the Ziegfeld Follies and became famous after working with Rudolph Valentino and Cecil B DeMille while signed to the Famous Players/Lasky studio. She declared bankruptcy in 1932 and when she tried to make a comeback, was criticized for her weight. Hollywood never changes.

  • 1970: Alfred Newman: Oh wait, there’s another Alfred Newman. That’s a picture of Neuman. NEWMAN! The most decorated composer in all of cinema, Alfred Newman was a force to be reckoned with. He won 9 Oscars and was nominated 45 times! He’s only second to Walt Disney in both wins and nominations for a single person. What we’re saying is that the guy was a really accomplished film composer.

VIOLENCE! (Napalm’s hot. Mustard Gas? Not.)

  • 1838: We don’t understand a word of what is said in this, so we’re just going to copy Wikipedia’s words exactly and let you guys figure it out. It sounds cool though: Weenan massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal are killed by Zulus. Seriously, we’ve read the Wikipedia page and all we get is that people died and that it took place in South Africa. Every other word confuses us.
  • 1865: Union forces burn Columbia, South Carolina to the ground on orders from General William Tecumseh Sherman (he denied these reports) Hot! Literally, that must have been a hot day, what with all the fire. That Sherman sure liked burning things, but maybe that’s why he’s known as the first modern general. You know, because he was cool with killing citizens.
  • 1871: After months of BANG BANG! SHOOT EM UP! ZING! POW!, the Prussian army captured Paris, thus ending the Franco-Prussian War. Wait, James Franco built a time-machine and lost a war against the Prussians? Watch out, JGL, your status might be in jeopardy! We here at LD&V have uncovered an exclusive photo of James Franco in his apartment, reacting to the loss while the Prussians marched upon his city.

That’s so Franco! And so French! Oh, the French! Always losing!**

OTHER NEAT THINGS THAT HAPPENED! (Future duelists? Hot. The moon? Not.)

  • 1801: It’s a tie! The House of Representatives casts a vote and ZOUNDS! The winner is Tommy Jefferson! The loser gets the vice-presidency and that would be our high school hero, the one and only Aaron Burr! Why is Aaron Burr our high school hero? Because we really hated reading The Federalist Papers, like, with a passion and we were so glad that somebody shot that sonuvabitch Alexander Hamilton. GET OFF OUR MONEY ALEX, WE STILL DON’T LIKE YOU!
  • 1904: Madame Butterfly opens. We never really liked that one.
  • 1913: A lot of really important artists exhibited their work in the NYC 69th Regiment Armory.
  • 1933: Happy Birthday Newsweek! Oh, what’s that? You’re completely hemorrhaging and had to be sold to the Daily Beast and now Tina Brown is running you and everyone’s being fired so that you can focus on an online presence because print is dead? Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to rub salt in the wound. Do you need some neosporin?
  • 1965: Project Ranger photographs the moon in preparation for the Apollo missions.
  • 1996: Gary Kasparov beat IBM’s Deep Blue at chess. Too bad Brad and Ken aren’t doing so hot against Watson, but, hey, at least they know Toronto isn’t an American city.
  • 2008: Kosovo declares independence. Happy birthday, Kosovo! You go(sovo) girl! That was a terrible joke. An absolutely terrible joke. We’re ashamed of ourselves, so much that we’re just going to end today’s Life, Death and Violence right here without so much as a witty conclusion paragraph.

Oh! We couldn’t do that to you! You’re so special to us. Our readers? Hot. Dolphins? Not (but they sure are pretty cool!)

*Necrophilia is not sexy.
**We’re French and Irish. We’re allowed to make fun of those two nationalities as much as we please, thank you very much.

CALL US JOSEPH!

Life, Death and Violence: A Study of February 16

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Good morning little birds!

Today on Life, Death and Violence: Animals! Animals are so precious, except, well, when they’re not. Then they’re not precious. One would not consider the vampire bat or the honey badger to be precious animals, we would suppose. Puppies are precious. Baboons are not. Puppies in teacups broke PreciousMeter, the site used to rank preciousness.  Precious views are down, but that’s not accurate because the new redesign precious levels are just so perfectly precious that PreciousMeter just can’t compute those figures.

LIFE! (or, how we learned to stop worrying and give birth in a teacup)

  • 1804: Jules Janin: Mr. Janin wrote a book called The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman. We here at LD&V had hoped to find out what this amazingly titled book was about, but there seems to be nothing to find other than that it is French horror (frenetique) and that Janin had originally planned the novel as a spoof of the genre, but then fell in love with it and, so, we present to you, an imagining of The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman: A Comedy

Priest: Do you have any final words?

Guilltoned Woman: Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have killed that donkey over there .

SLICE! The guillotined woman is beheaded.

Guillotined Woman: I knew I should have held on to my hat.

FIN

Note: Jules Janin was really fat. Evidence:

  • 1834: Ernst Haeckel: This German biologist, zoologist and philosopher is responsible for such liberal buzzwords like “ecology,” “phylum” and “recapitulation theory.” Burn the witch, we say! He also painted some pretty paintings of animals that we’re pretty sure we saw in ZooBooks when we were 8.

  • 1941: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIM JONG IL! We can’t believe you’re only 70! Shame you’re no longer the sexiest age possible like Dear Leader Bloomberg (69).  We just sent you a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue and a bobblehead in your image. Here’s hoping it gets through your borders. Remember Kim, don’t arrest the messengers or else they won’t give you the bobblehead. You’ve been asking for it all year, so just do us this one favor.

  • 1959: Speaking of vicious animals with short tempers, a big happy birthday also goes out to John McEnroe, the performance artist credited with founding the Anger at Tennis Balls submovement of 1980s Absurdism. Happy Birthday John! Can’t wait for your MoMA retrospective (or are you going to be at New Museum?)
  • 1967: Like animals, sometimes people just aren’t loved as much as others of their kind. Case and point: Keith Gretzky. We didn’t even know Wayne had a brother, but, then again, we were never huge Gretzky fans mainly because we always got lost in Steve Yzerman’s eyes.

DEATH! (or, how we learned to stop worrying and just succumb to that Spanish Flu)

No one cool or animal related died today, sadly. We do however, have Russian ingénues, French writers (but those die every minute, right!?), Roman emperors, a great American artist and English soap manufacturers! It all sounds so exciting! If we were you, we’d definitely pull up a chair and pay attention.

  • 307: Flavius Valerius Severus: And they said Albus Severus had a bad name! Flavius was emperor of the Roman Empire for a few months before he was murdered like a dog. He was a commoner who rose through the ranks, which is probably why he was murdered although some sources say that he was forced to commit suicide.
  • 1844: Joseph Crosfield: He made soap. Here’s a picture of him:

  • 1917: Octave Mirbeau: Journalist, travel writer, art critic, novelist, playwright. We think he died from an accidental Adderall overdose (can that happen?). He was an advocate of Van Gogh when it wasn’t cool to like Van Gogh, making him an early adopter of the hipster movement. He’d probably be all over Ann Liv Young today, or maybe not since she’s mildly popular. Anyways, he wrote some good stuff that’s still popular and he’s never been out of print. You go Mirbeau!
  • 1919: Vera Khlodnaya: The first Russian silent film star. Only five of her estimated 50-100 films survive. She’s pretty and she died of Spanish Flu during the Great Pandemic of 1919

  • 1990: Keith Haring: That guy who did those outlines died due to complications related with AIDS. Seriously though, we think this is the saddest death today because Keith Haring’s really cool and we totally went as one of his outlines for Halloween last year (amongst other costumes)

VIOLENCE! (or, how we learned to stop worrying and love the jihad)

  • Hezbollah was founded in 1982 sparking decades of violence and war in the Middle East (well, more so than would have occurred without them).
  • BOOM! BANG! SHOOT EM UP! Bombs explode and gunfire is released upon the government headquarters of Uzbekistan in an assassination attempt on the Uzbekistani president. We always thought former Soviet Bloc countries had a weird way of partying like it’s 1999.
  • Also in 1999, Kurdish rebels take over a variety of European embassies after Turkey holds hostage one of the rebel leaders. Said rebel leader is pictured below.

OTHER NEAT THINGS THAT HAPPENED! (or, how we learned to stop worrying and let our toddlers watch Coupling)

  • 1899 – Knattsprynufelag Reykjavikur, Iceland”s first football club is founded. We’ll give 500 monopoly dollars to the first person who can prove that they can pronounce that.
  • 1923: King Tut’s tomb is discovered
  • 1957: The Toddler Truce is abolished! This was a mandatory rule that the British government had placed upon the television corporations that their could be zero programming between the hours of 6p and 7p so that children could be put to bed before the grown up shows came on. We don’t know who the British government thought was going to be in bed that early, but it certainly wasn’t rambunctious little babies like us! We were baby geniuses who had to be up all night working with Toddler’s First Chemistry Lab. Mom would never buy us cesium and we’re still mad about that even though we don’t like science anymore.

  • 2005: The NHL SHUT DOWN and announced the complete cancellation of the 2004-2005 season after months of lockouts. We were devastated by this news as we’re huge Red Wings fans and everyone knows that the Wings are the best and don’t you even DARE to suggest otherwise. WE THROW OCTOPI ONTO THE ICE. OCTOPI! Hardcore. OKAY!? GO WINGS! Go hockey in general, really. Hot, burly men on ice beating each other up with their sticks while chasing some rubber is great television in our eyes. Our father likes it for different reasons, however. Still, hockey is awesome.

That’s all folks. See you next time on Life, Death and Violence. We’re going to go take a trip on Memory Lane with our stash of ZooBooks*. To be honest, we’ll probably order a t-shirt with a toucan on it as well to, you know, wear ironically.

*That Panda is stressing! This is how happy pandas become sad pandas.

Life, Death and Violence: A Study of February 15

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It’s New Music Tuesday so we here at LD&V are introducing a new feature: Flashback Tuesdays. Our first pick is the number one song the week of February 15,  1986: How Will I Know? by the one and only Whitney Houston.

LIFE! (Coperni’NO HE DIDN’T!)

Today is a popular day for popular people to be born.

  • 1564- Galileo Galilee: The famed astronomer who championed Copernicanism (Earth revolves around the Sun) and was placed under house arrest during the Inquisition because of it is also the star of a really fantastic play by Bertol Brecht*. He also continued the development of the telescope based on Dutch schematics, developed the microscope and was responsible for a number of technological and scientific advances. He would have been pardoned and been granted a life of freedom had he recanted his views at his hearing, but the man stuck to his guns, which is incredibly noble and brave.
  • 1710: King Louis XV of France: He’s basically the cause for the French Revolution.
  • 1820: Susan B. Anthony: Women can vote because of the efforts of this magnificent lady, but, tragically, she died 13 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919.
  • 1954: Matt Groening: Created the Simpsons and will always have a special place in our hearts, even if the show has been on for about ten seasons too long.
  • 1955: Janice Dickinson: Just look at her.

  • 1964: Chris Farley: Beloved American Comedian
  • 1980: Conor Oberst: Lead singer of Bright Eyes, lust object for every emo girl and gay boy from the ages of 14-21 (though we liked him better with the shorter hair)

DEATH! (It’s sad)

Today’s deathday is overshadowed by one huge name, Nat King Cole, one of the greatest vocalists of the jazz and big band eras. He was a three pack a day smoker which led to his early demise at the tender age of forty-five. We’ll let the music speak for itself.

VIOLENCE! (ZING! BANG! BOOM! POW! ZAP!)

  • 1898: SHOOT EM UP! BANG! BOOM! The USS Maine exploded off the coast of Havana, Cuba, causing the United States to declare war on Spain. The Americans would win, granting Cuban independence as well as effectively destroying the once mighty Spanish Empire. Yellow Journalism also played a heavy role in swaying public opinion during the war and shaping the American national identity. This is the war that brought the Americans to the forefront of interfering in global affairs as before, it was primarily a country in isolation, warring only with those that infringed upon its borders. With Cuban independence came great economic gains to American interests (at least until the Cuban Embargo) and, ironically, to Spain as well as Spanish companies in the Americas went back and invested in the Iberian Peninsula.
  • 2003: 600 cities worldwide united in peaceful protest against the Iraq War.

OTHER NEAT THINGS THAT HAPPENED! (They’re neat. Trust us)

  • 1758: Mustard is introduced paving the way for developments that would mark President Obama an elitist for preferring the far superior dijon variety.
  • 1897: The Oscilloscope was invented, making it far easier to tune our instruments. That is, if we played any. I mean, there was that brief stint with the violin a few years back, but that didn’t go nearly as well as we’d hoped so we just gave up. Honest though, we don’t give up on everything. Just instruments. And bad dates.
  • 1903: The best thing to happen to toys before Bakelite™.

  • 1955: Diamonds are a girls best friend, but cubic zirconia turned out to be a lot lighter on the wallet.
  • 1972: William Kolff patented the artificial heart, saving millions of future lives in the process. He would also develop the kidney dialysis machine making him a medical wizard in our eyes. Team Kolff! (we imagine ourselves saying later in life when we’re old and frail instead of young and spry)
  • 2005: YouTube was launched, killing the illusion that we could properly manage our time.

Thank you for joining us once again in this fantastic world of ours. Until next time, remember, diamonds last forever, but you can’t eat them or cubic zirconia (and you’re just cheap if you’re going to be buying us the fake stuff. Just go to the mall and get something low carat and cheap).

Besides, the way to our heart is with food. We’ll take a patty melt with a side of fries and a Faygo Rock N’ Rye**, please.

*Seriously though. Read Life of Galileo. It’s a great play.

**We are aware that that billboard advertises RedPop!, but it’s the same brand and Rock N’ Rye is just better, okay!? Foodie regionalism is fun.

Life, Death and Violence: A Study of February 14

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Happy Singles Awareness Day everyone! Not all of us can be lucky enough to spend it flirting with our Facebook fiancées who live across the pond (I know. I’m so lucky!), but we can all be lucky enough to do some book-learnin’ so that we can be smart enough to land that lucky lad (or lass) to share a bottle of Johnny Walker Green next year, when the holiday will magically transform into St. Valentine’s Day™. (Note: Before I snagged  an author account about a half hour ago, I had posted a briefer today in history in the Morning Open Thread. There will be minor overlap because some important stuff did happen today, but I’m going to try my best to make this as fresh as those amazing grapes you get at the Union Square Farmer’s Market in August (i.e. PURDY FRESH))

IT’S ALIVE! (When life rises from the ashes of a placenta)

Beloved dwarfish king mayor of NYC turned 69 today! BAWM CHICKA WOW WOW.  I’ve sent a large pepperoni pizza, a sprite and a pack of cigarettes to his apartment and arranged for a crew of Irishmen to follow him around tonight waving, waving with all the wave they have! If I still lived in New York, I’d totally go smoke in the park even though I quit because, seriously, 14$ for a pack of Luckies!? Outrageous!

You know who else was born today? Pat O’Brien, but also, someone named JoJo Starbuck. That has to be, like, my favorite name ever. It’s amazing on so many levels. Plus she looks like a lot of fun (she’s 60). Evidence:

To round out the life portion of our programme (now that we have politics and athletics), Italian Baroque composer Francesco Cavalli was born several hundred years back. A piece from an opera of his is at the top of this post.

OH MY GOD!? HE’S DEAD!? HE’S DEAD!? WHAT!?

Just kidding. It was actually the ornithologist James Bond is named after. You only live twice, Mister Bond. Once as a mild-mannered birdwatcher, and again as a sexy, sexy, sexxxy spy. What I’m saying here is that Daniel Craig is hot and can I please have him for Singles Awareness Day?

Today’s Dead Saints are Cyril and Valentine. That crazy Russian writing was invented by Cyril and his bro Method Man Methodius.

VIOLENCE (Won’t someone please think of the children!?)

Nothing violent today happened except for some Prohibitionist Chicago gang wars. That’s boring. Except, well, I guess, not, because seven people died due to Al Capone and Bugs Bunny Moran not being able to be friends.

OTHER STUFF THAT HAPPENED THAT’S KIND OF COOL

  • Eli Gray woke up late and lost his patent for the talky phonograph to Alex Bell.
  • The Importance of Being Earnest opened and Oscar Wilde’s career began it’s tragic descent thanks to the libel case against his lover’s father that was initiated in the weeks after the opening.
  • Today is the 30th anniversary of the Stardust Disaster in which 48 people were killed in a fire at a Dublin discotheque after they found that all the main fire exits were chained and padlocked.

So that’s today in history, everyone, I’ll see you tomorrow when it’s socially acceptable to be a single person again and I won’t have to leave the house with a grocery bag over my head so as to hide the shame.