the commune, 5/07/07: You'll learn to love it or die trying

$Clinton: \$

Orangeburg, SC

Junior Bacon

Clinton thrills Southern audiences with her Yosemite Sam impression

acing charges of pandering to Southerners by affecting a fake drawl when speaking to audiences in the South, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton responded to reporters this week with an angry retort of “Shoo, I ayne got no suuthurn assent, y’all” before spitting on the floor and leaving the room.

This latest incident follows a strong trend for Clinton over the last few weeks, leading pundits to suggest she’s attempting to poach votes from Democratic challenger and authentic southerner John Edwards, knowing full well that a Democrat who can’t carry the South has as much of a chance at the presidency as a black man from… oh. Nevermind.

Adding fuel to the fiery allegations, Clinton appeared at a rally in Raleigh last week wearing a NASCAR hat, and proceeded to pepper her speech with references to country music songs by Clint Black and Toby Keith. Even more strikingly, Clinton spoke to a group of campaign donors in Charleston a few days later, smoking a pipe and ordering around several people of color dressed as servants onstage.

“I don’t know where she gets her ideas,” questioned Tim Linenbrook, Professor of Cultural Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “No one in recorded history, Southern or otherwise, has ever acted like Hillary apparently thinks we Southerners act. In spite of having lived in Arkansas for years, she seems to have formed her impression of the South from a mix of Deliverance and The Dukes of Hazzard.”

Clinton’s detractors insist this is not a new behavior for the senator from New York, citing numerous incidents in which the former first lady appeared to pander to African-American audiences by incorporating clichéd and very incorrect forms of Ebonics into her speech and adopting very broadly stereotypical behaviors. The most notorious example of which may have been an appearance in Chicago in March, when Clinton ended her speech by shouting “Fuck tha police!” and tossing buckets of KFC into the crowd.

Leaders from the Latino community in Los Angeles also took issue with Clinton’s decision to issue her entire speech at that campaign stop in the form of graffiti spray-painted onto road signs above the 405 freeway.

Valley girl advocates (yes, they exist, and we found them) also charge that Clinton pulled the same trick when speaking at a fundraiser in Orange County three weeks ago, popping her gum loudly while speaking about Medicare and using the word “like” seventy-eight times over the course of four minutes.

“What-EVER,” Clinton responded when questioned about her dubious Southern California speech patterns.

Political pundits across the spectrum, however, admit that they’re on the edge of their seats in anticipation of Clinton’s upcoming speaking engagement in Whippany, New Jersey, a town noted for its unusually high concentration of Kazak immigrants, since Clinton is rumored to do an absolutely killer Borat impression.

the commune news has often been accused of typing with a Southern accent to appeal to our readers in the South, but this impression is usually caused by undiscerning readers stumbling across our special commune for kids editions, in which we dumb everything down to sub-retard levels to boost our readership in daycare centers and Oklahoma. Lil Duncan is the commune’s Washington correspondent, and screamed “OH GOD YES!” is three different accents while on location reporting this story.

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Grape Nuts? Bullshit Nuts is More Like It

You ever had this “cereal”? I hope so, because I for one hate to suffer alone. I’m serious, what ever happened to Rice Krispies or Fruit Loops? Now those were some cereals. None of this roadside gravel bullshit. It doesn’t even talk when you eat it. Even my ex-wife did that. And fun fruit flavors? Don’t let the “Grape” part fool you; the only fruit this crap tastes like is Heath Ledger. Boring.

Life is like a bowl of Grape Nuts, and by that I mean it sucks. Sure, it comes in a lot of flashy packaging, and there’s a wombat on the box, but inside it’s just a bag of dirt from Nevada. Kids? Had ’em. Jobs? Did ’em. Movies? Slept through ’em. Transexual adventures? Saw a 20/20 on ’em once. Didn’t seem all that appealing.

º Last Column: Health Food is Full of Shit
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You know that song, “Shock the Monkey”? I tried that once. Went down to the zoo in 1985 and told one of the apes there’d be Republicans in the White House for the whole of his natural life. He threw a rubber T-bone steak squeeze toy at me. I still don’t know what that song was about.

When I was a young man I wanted to be a lumberjack. Can’t remember why, must’ve been all those “Don’t Be a Fag, Cut Down a Tree!” ads that were on the radio at the time. Anyway, I thought that might just be a good life. Spending all your time out of doors, getting nature back for every time it had rained at an inconvenient time during your life. But there was one thing I hadn’t counted on: cutting down trees is a goddamned lot of work. I’m serious, it’s not like in the cartoons or those lumberjack video games, where you swing the axe with one hand and the tree goes down like a huge stick of warm butter or a horny teenager at Crystal Lake. Those goddamned trees have their mind made up about standing, and it takes some serious convincing to get them to see things your way. It’s a battle of wills and the chances are good you’ll decork your spine before the tree even starts to lean.

That’s when I got the idea to cut the whole process short and cut to the chase with a couple sticks of dynamite. Now that’s speaking a language trees can understand. When you say jump, they do, and cartwheel end over end for good measure. But as you might imagine, there was some serious resistance to my startling new innovation in the world of lumberjacking, as there always is when a brash newcomer struts in and turns things on their ass. And you know those big Brawny paper towel meatheads didn’t want some skinny mug with a dynamite connection horning in on their racket. That, and there were some problems with not being able to find the tree after the dynamite went off, since depending on the prevailing winds it could end up a half-mile in any direction, and they always seem to build elementary schools at the most inopportune locations. And there was some jabber about 90% of the usable wood being destroyed in the explosion, as if their meathead-and-axe system worked flawlessly right out of the gate.

I wasn’t a lumberjack for long. Didn’t exactly shock your monkey with that one, did I? Yeah, the lumberjacking industry and I decided to go in different directions. I learned the lesson that there are some dreams too beautiful for this world to handle, and they learned… come to think of it I don’t think those meatheads learned a damned thing. Nuts. I hate coming out on the wrong end of a learning experience. But like I said, life’s a bitch and all she’s serving for breakfast is Grape Nuts. Would it kill life to make French toast? I doubt it. But that’s life for you.

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I'm Finally Coming Around to Shaved Vaginas

A lot of people look at me and they’re quite impressed to see a man my age, part of the ‘80s generation, who’s so hip and into what’s “now.” But I have to admit, there’s some things that bring out the old fart in me, and until recently, completely shaved pussy was one of ‘em. It just gave me the chills, and while it never stopped me from fucking away, it always left me a little disappointed—but not any more. I’ve had a change of heart about shaved vaginas.

Not a week went by, in the past, where I didn’t go so art gallery opening or book signing and a friend or random guy in line didn’t try to convince me hairless twat is the way to go—I don’t know what brings it out in these people. As soon as you make a gagging noise at a bare beaver in a nude photo displayed high on the museum wall, some joker thinks it’s his personal mission to sway you from your preference for fuzzy trim. “It’s more sanitary,” they’d say. “It’s nicer to the touch.” Well, if that’s true, we should all shave our heads, too. I mean, I do, but you see my meaning. Maybe I’m stuck in the past, but if you’re not spitting hairs out onto your lover’s thigh constantly, to me, it’s just not real fucking.

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I’ve always thought it gave the impression I was fucking pre-teens or something. Disgusting. I mean, I make it a point not to ask a lady’s age because it’s a rude question, but if she says she wants to fuck like a horny toad when I ask, I at least look for some sign I might be going to prison. Now that women are going bald on purpose down there, where’s the line? It’s like I’ve got to card my one-night stands, and that’s no fun. But as I’ve said, I’ve kind of cleared that whole “bare pussy makes me want to vomit” phase.

You can ask if I just started to roll with the times or had a bad experience or something, but I’m not exactly sure what swayed me on this complex argument. Maybe it’s all the upskirt shots of famous celebrities that we’re seeing lately. It might be the girls I’ve been bagging like a teen-aged Piggly Wiggly employee, who knows. Or it’s probably just that if you see shaved vagina after shaved vagina on your gym spy cam, eventually you just become familiar with it. All those things may be a factor. But seeing a girl of unknown age discreetly soap up her bald pussy when she thinks no one is watching no longer bothers me like it used to. You could even say I like it, although I’m ultimately hoping this whole thing is still a fad. Yes, in sixteen years’ time, when the children of today are the hot young fuck sluts of tomorrow, I hope that we as a nation are swimming in bush again. A man can dream, can’t he?

I guess it’s true what parole officers say—you can take the man out of prison, but you can’t quite take the prison out of the man. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I’m always going to be the boy who group up beating meat to thick jungles of pubic hair on skinny, busty nude models in issues of Playboy, Penthouse, or even Oui. Just because those publications have changed or ceased to exist, and the arena is now filled with drunken college girls flashing their goodies for T-shirts, doesn’t mean that I’ve grown along with that trend. I’m stuck in the past, maybe, wrapped in tendril after tendril of short curly hairs. But I like it that way. It doesn’t mean I’m going to give up fucking girls whose names I don’t remember, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to fondly remember those simple days, before full-body waxes.

º Last Column: I Could Never Audit Your Heart
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Quote of the Day

“Learning without thought is labor lost; except in public schools, where it keeps most teachers employed.”
—Confused-ass Carmen

Fortune 500 Cookie

You’ll have a brush with death this week, and that fucker has some of the yellowest teeth you’ve ever seen, so make sure you go first. This time the lyrics to the song you’re pretending to know the words to actually are “Watermelon, Watermelon, Watermelon.” You’ll make the most expensive movie ever made in your kitchen this week, for ten dollars. Lucky strikes, camels, kools, and bel-airs.

Try again later.

Former CIA Director Doesn't Know Sports

We’re heading into the biggest blockbuster summer in the last few years like a cannonball, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them get the jump on me just because they’re too afraid to send me screeners of their mega-hit films. I’m going to go ahead and review these highly anticipated money-munchers based on the trailers alone. Unfair, you say? Just beating the other critics to the punch, since they made up their minds before they saw the films, too. See how right I’ll be.

Spider-Man 3
Safe money’s on this little colorful costume nugget to reap the big bucks. Some people say it cost about $300 million to make, some people say the actors were hardly necessary. Like the other Spider-Men, this one will no doubt make a fling at a story and super-hero angst, but what you’re really going for is to see CGI people slammed repeatedly against walls, cars, trains, and other CGI people. Sam Raimi wants to go out on a big bang, assuming this will be the last time he’s allowed near the Spider-franchise, so there’s about 435 villains fighting Spider-Man in this one. Half of them just because they’re still pissed about Pleasantville, so go figure.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End
While the boys are off achieving erections in Spider-Man 3, the girls will be swooning their brains out with Hollywood’s hottest male model/actors in this flick. Fans of the first two films… actually, I have no way to end that sentence, as I’ve never actually met “fans” so much as people who didn’t want to see the producers shot and killed. But there’s more swaggering Johnny Depp, more timid Orlando Bloom, and more tossed-around pointlessly love-triangulated Keira Knightley, who is becoming world famous for doing nothing outside these films. Expect more weird gross-out pirate gags, more buckles savagely swashed, and the real high point of the film everyone’s waiting for, Johnny Depp out-Keith Richardsing Keith Richards himself. Shitloads of boats, too, just for the record.

Shrek the Third
Now here’s an amazingly creative film—nothing in the contents, mind you, only the use of “the Third” in the title rather than the big number “3.” Expect Shrek fans to be stymied, wondering where the sequel went and why another movie has “Shrek” in the title. Eddie Murphy continues to finance his house while Mike Myers hangs by a thread over the dangling precipice into film obscurity. And of course, the heart of any Shrek film is present—plenty of burps, farts, pees, and poops to beat the band. You could just stay home with your 68-year-old Scottish grandfather and get the full effect of the whole thing. But then, you’d keep your $8 bucks, so I can understand the experience isn’t complete without losing your cash. Enjoy the CGI horse being flogged dead.

Across the Universe
There will be bigger films than this, more expensive films, but I doubt there will be more inventive and creative films than this. After all, movies come and go, but how many can absolutely ruin the entire musical catalogue of a band as iconic as the Beatles for the rest of your lives? Julie Taymor, the pure evil force who put Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway, has dared to take the most complex and emotional songs of Lennon & McCartney and trivialize them with ridiculous straw characters and cliché-ridden situations that will forever make you weep. As with any Taymor effort, its stocked with cool visuals and sub-human storytelling. Let’s all chip in and buy her some oil paints and canvases and ask her to bury her camera in the dirty once and for all. Put that artistic eye into some still medium that doesn’t require people to say words or anything. And for God’s sake, leave the Beatles alone. Why don’t you ruin ABBA or the Bee-Gees, or a band we can live without?

Gosh, that felt good. And as I assumed it would, I clearly demonstrated seeing the movies is hardly necessary. Which puts me in comfortable company with the people who picket the movies for their content. Until next time, when I promise to actually watch the movies. Sort of.

Grape Nuts? Bullshit Nuts is More Like It

I'm Finally Coming Around to Shaved Vaginas

Quote of the Day

Fortune 500 Cookie

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Former CIA Director Doesn't Know Sports