All posts by James

About James

James Seidler is a writer living in Chicago. The editor for the now-defunct humor publication FLYMF, he has now decided to maintain his web presence and smart remarks through this blog.

South Bend’s Indominatable Spirit

Humor, , ,

I maintain that whenever my hometown of South Bend, Indiana, shows up in the national news, it’s because something extremely weird happened.

Whether it’s a marauding pack of dogs eating most of the wallabies in Potawatomi Zoo, a man stabbing his brother over a Hot Pocket, a small airplane landing on US-31 (possibly the busiest stretch of road in town), someone murdering homeless people and stuffing them into manholes downtown, or an elderly man tackling a naked crack addict who was in the process of chasing middle-school girls at their bus stop (oh, how I wish I still had a link for that last one), some seriously weird stuff goes on there.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t also reference South Bend’s lively spirit, epitomized by the Chicago Sun-Times (via the AP) in their story, “83-year-old gets lost dancing at inauguration.”

To quote the article, it doesn’t sound like he got lost at all:

Mussa Muhammad says his “spirit jumped sky-high” when President Barack Obama took the oath of office Tuesday. He became separated from his group and, he says, “just danced and danced” with a couple of young women he met along the way.

Muhammad’s tour group waited five hours for him, but left Washington after tour leaders spoke with his wife. Rev. Lefate Owens of Elkhart Community Missionary Baptist Church says she assured them that Muhammad would be all right.

…

He arrived in South Bend Wednesday, still wearing the black-and-white suit with red dots that he wore to the inauguration.

The South Bend Tribune article has more details (and a photo of the suit, which the AP description does not give justice). It’s a must read, even if you didn’t grow up there.

Update: The story made all of the local news channels as well. Some highlights:

NBC 16

Quote: “If there’s rhythm, it makes me move. This is how I missed the people. Girls coming from everywhere wanted to dance with me,” Muhammad explains.

How did he explain that to his wife?

“She knew. She’s the only lady in my life.”

There is also video of him dancing (but not in his suit).

WSBT 22 just have “Update: Missing South Bend Man Found in D.C.”, although they do add “Stay with WSBT.com for the latest on this developing story, and read more about it in Thursday’s South Bend Tribune.”

Finally, FOX 28 has a nice interview with the man and his wife, complete with footage of him wearing the suit, but there’s no footage of him dancing in it!

COME ON LOCAL NEWS, GIVE US WHAT WE WANT! Mussa Muhammad dancing in his suit! I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Taibbi Takes Down Friedman (Again)

Books, Well Worth Reading, , ,

Writer Matt Taibbi provides another hilarious takedown of a Tom Friedman book, this time skewering the mustachioed moron’s latest effort, “Hot, Flat and Crowded.” Friedman’s hypocrisy and obtuseness are given ample space, but the best lines engage the billionaire New York Times columnist’s raging malapropisms.

 

(Taibbi summed up Friedman as follows while eviscerating his previous book, “The World Is Flat”:

[Friedman] has an anti-ear, and it’s absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that’s guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.)

This time, it’s even easier for Taibbi:

My initial answer to that is that Friedman’s language choices over the years have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need to break a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need to invade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you might want to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem worked out. Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn’t actually do anything apart from talk about shit in a newspaper. So in my mind it’s highly relevant if his manner of speaking is fucked.

Bush By The Numbers

Politics,

In their January 2009 “Index” feature, Harper’s Magazine has an excellent numerical breakdown of Bush administration events. The whole list is worth reading, but the following really stood out.

Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39

…

Minimum number of detainees who were tortured to death in U.S. custody: 8

…

Number of incidents of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2007: 897

Number on shows during the previous seven years: 110

…

Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40

Number if votes by rich Americans were the only ones counted: 4

Matt Taibbi Skewers Bush One Last Time

Humor, Politics, ,

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi bids our worst President farewell with a hilarious imaginary exit interview in the pages of his magazine. Bush’s incompetence, incuriosity and inability to do anything more than be a monstrous bastard are all giving their just summation.

 

There’s only an excerpt available online, but the funniest parts seem to be in the print version, which is well worth tracking down. My favorite exchange:

We’re now in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Do you feel any responsibility for what’s happening?

Hey, markets is markets. Whatever happens in a market is what’s supposed to happen. You’re not supposed to interfere. That’s why they call the market the hidden hand. If I can see your hands, it’s communism.

 

Are you saying that what’s happening is good?

 

I’m saying if you hand a retard a pistol and he shoots himself, that’s the market. And markets are good.

 

So when it comes to the economy, your policy was to hand out pistols to retards.

 

All I’m saying is that if you did hand him a pistol, he might shoot himself and he might not. But if he does, that’s capitalism, and that’s the system we live by. It’s America.