Jesus, teh Obama, do I always have to do ALL YOUR WORK FOR YOU?

Oh, teh Obama. Teh Obama, teh Obama, teh Obama. If I've told you one thing over and over again since you started running to teh president, it's that you can't get anything done in American politics without getting help from celebrities. I tried to warn you after jigg razzlefrazzle the blah (the artist sometimes referred to as Judge Reinhold, but not on this here blog here since his refusal to endorse Oscar the Grouch for President) endorsed someone else other than you for president, but you didn't listen. You didn't listen then, and you don't listen now, and it's surprising that a man with ears the size of satellite dishes would not listen that much, because you would think that ALL you would do is listen, which is not true. It's like you have to wrongfully arrest a high-profile black Harvard professor just to get five minutes alone with you these days, teh Obama!

This is not the change we can believe in. Again.

And just look at the state of your Heathcliff Healthcare Reform-Time Play Pal, or whatever clever and catchy thing your marketing experts are failing to call it. Nobody wants it! Nobody was actually interviewed for the writing of this piece. Nobody very clearly went on record in support to teh Obama or to his Heathcliff Healthcare. I HAS QUOTABLE SOURCES. I AM JOURNALIST.

But this is not about me. This is about you, teh Obama, and how I can help you win back public support for Heathcliff Healthcare from more people than Nobody. All you need is two celebrities and a little bit o' hope.

Here's whatchagottadoo:

1. Get the Jesus Endorsement

Show a picture of Jesus and Heathcliff Healthcare (seriously, how is there not a man, woman, or post-op transsexual dressed up in furry mascot suit yet?) with their arms over each other's shoulders, all smiles and birthday cake and Skittles. And a banner that says, "Jesus endorses the Obama healthcare plan and the public option!"

Then you get Jesus to write a statement on his facebag page like Sarah Palin did. For instance:

I support the Obama healthcare plan because there are like 300 million Americans and I am totally fucking exhausted from having to answer prayers from people without insurance. Come on, mankind. Do you have any idea how many wide wide receivers there are that need My help to catch touchdown passes? Go Steelers! JK! LOL! My point is that I am a Busy Dude. I don't have time for that AND sick people. What am I, Superman? LOL.

Also, from what I hear up in Heaven, Obama's a pretty great guy. Then again, We really don't get that that many Republican voters visiting the Great Death Panel in the Sky.

See? Piece o' cake, teh Obama!

And then you can stand there at your town halls and be like, "who's gonna fuck with Jesus? You gonna fuck with Jesus?" Then you throw down the microphone, walk off stage, and write me a thank-you card.

2. Get Harry Potter to Bounce at Your Town Hall Meetings

People wanna show up with guns, I have a real simple fix. It's called magic. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.

Psych! That is totally not where I read about it.

But cereal, teh Obama, this is Problem Solving 101. If you have a leaky pipe, you call a plumber. If you have people calling you a Nazi and carrying rifles and handguns to your rallies, you get Harry Potter out there to run your crowd control operation. Dude handled a fully-grown cave troll when he was 11! (SPOILER ALERT.) AND he beat freaking Voldemort! (SPOILER ALERT x2.) Some whacked-out muggle with a big metal stick isn't gonna be much of a threat.

Of course, those same asshole protesters who are out there with signs calling you a Nazi will probably show up with new signs that say "you can expelliarmus our guns, but you can't expelliarmus our ridiculous overblown partisan rancor!" But the joke's on them because yes, we can.

News from the Campaign Front

I'll be honest, the atmosphere around the Oscar the Grouch '08 campaign offices has been pretty grim lately. We fumbled what looked like sure endorsements from jerk rimjob the blah (aka judge reinhold, whose name is still unworthy of capitalization), and from Ron Paul - although we were able to claim at least a minor victory in getting him to endorse third party candidates in general. The category definitely includes us, so in the most technical of senses, we actually did get Ron Paul's endorsement. Then again, technically, so did the freaking Communists.

We're also making zero headway with the Children's Television Workshop and noted chef Jim Henson. CTW is still pretending not to read this blog, and Jim Henson, it turns out, is dead. (Spoiler alert.) Bobby Flay was willing to come on board to help us out, but the grilled Gonzo he auditioned with was fucking terrible. What a hack.

Also, we have no money. The only greenbacks in the entire campaign office are the green backs of Oscar's puppeteer-controlled hands, which he keeps slapping me with every time I deliver him another piece of bad news. And bad news hasn't exactly been in short supply lately. So we got domestic abuse going for us too. But please don't tell Oscar I told you, or I don't even know what he'll do - probably send me to Bobby Flay's house to be made into inedible smoked Smokey.

I am pleased, however, to announce two pieces of good news today, the proverbial silver linings on the cloud that is otherwise raining bird shit and dog shit and the pain of being slapped by a Muppet all over me.

Firstly, we have dumped Pervez Musharraf from the ticket. Oscar's new vice president will be pause none other than drum roll sound effect Miss Piggy exclamation point.

Something seems wrong with that last sentence. But NOTHING seems wrong with our new VP choice, a pig that you can truly put lipstick on, although you will get viciously karate chopped if you try. True, Miss Piggy may not have a retarded baby, but she does have some pretty weird-looking children on account of being married to a puppet frog.

As expected, the Mrs. Miss Piggy the Frog selection has considerably shored up our support among the Muppet American community, where we currently hold a 65-30 lead over Barack Obama, who has been widely mistaken for a Muppet because of his massive ears. Other than that, putting Piggy on the ticket has done jack squat. For me personally, it means having to deal with the two most high maintenance puppets this side of Statler and Waldorf, both of whom have endorsed John McCain, by the way.

Still, it qualifies as good news, because Oscar and Miss Piggy told me so, and because they're the ones with their fingers on the buttons that, when pressed, administer high-level electrical shocks to the battery clamps on my singed nipples. Please, if you're reading this, send help. These fuckers are vicious!

I'm kidding! I love being tortured by icons of children's television! Where was I? It's so tough to concentrate past the blinding pain...

Oh, right - the second bit of good news. Which is this: no matter what else happens, Jesus is still my friend.

And he'll zap you any way he can. Word. Who needs to win an election when you have friends like this?

Sixteen down, only two to go!

True, the Oscar the Grouch for President '08 campaign can't claim a single state primary victory. Nor can it claim a political affiliation with, or an endorsement from any major or minor party. True, the Oscar '08 campaign has underperformed even the most modest financial expectations, managing to fund raise a paltry $0.0004 to date (3/4 through our website, www.ilovecheese.com!). True too that the Oscar '08 campaign strategy is essentially relying on this blog, which you are the only person not reading, to spread the word.

Sounds pretty bleak, no? But the Oscar campaign can still claim this:

It's still going.

Now that Hillary Clinton has suspended her campaign, allowing for Barack Obama to knuckle-tap and shoulder-brush his way to Denver (that's where the Democratic National Convention will be held, also where I ate at a Sonic restaurant for the first time), the total pool of candidates is down to 2, not counting Ralph Nader, Ron Paul (now available in libertarian flavor!), the late Sonny Bony, Carrot Top, and John Kerry '04.

But is the media talking about any of them? No, sir, the media is not talking about them. Instead, sir, the Jew- and Gay-run media only has the names of TWO presidential candidates on its coverage agenda these days, and boy, sir, is Jim Henson (a white, deceased, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or WDASP) pissed off.

So what though, because my point is about electoral math. Not the kind where people are winning states and counting delegate votes though, just math relating to electorations, or elections, as the kids say these days. (Hey, by the way, are you enjoying all these parenthetical asides? I'll bet you're not!) And going by the math, we have experienced a steady attrition in the number of candidates for President during the last 18 months. At one point, there were as many as EIGHTEEN! Now, we're down to TWO!

Think about it: where once we had EIGHTEEN candidates, we now have TWO. If the pattern holds (and they wouldn't call it a pattern if it didn't), we're likely to be down to ZERO candidates long before Barack Obama gets a chance to test out his dance moves on stage in Denver.

This is great news for Oscar the Grouch. (I know, I know, another parenthetical. They're annoying, right? Not surving any purpose?) With zero other candidates, all Oscar has to do is keep his name in the running.

American voters are like robots (Clinton supporters in particular), so they most likely won't know what to do if they see a ballot with no names on it in the major party slots. They will probably step out of the voting booth without voting for anyone. Which means that if Oscar can get anywhere near 50% of the Kenny Crandall write-in vote, he might win a plurality, and be swept into office. (Probably not though. Oh, god, another parenthetical aside!)

I know, it's a long shot. (Who do I think I am, Stephen Colbert?)

I'm just saying, that at least we have a plan, which is more than you can say for all those primary dropouts like Bill Richardson whom I miss terribly. (It's almost it's own little conversation, completely separate from the heavy politix talk going on OUTSIDE the parentheses. Which is so stupid, I could, like, gag, right?)

Honestly, this all still goes back to juggs rimshot the blah (previously known as "Judge Reinhold." see also, Benedict Reinhold) and his failure to re-endorse after Bill Richardson dropped out in February. My mind is like a rudderless ship, and I, a mere robot standing on the deck of that ship, awaiting my voting instructions from my evil Sesame Street overlord. All hail the Oscar! All vote for the Oscar!

(So, it's been a little hectic at the Fruit Plant lately. Company volleyball is in full swing, and since they decided to hold our last game at 5:15PM on a Tuesday - in California - we basically had no shot of making it there on time, even with the time difference AND the express Holiday Inn shuttle to and from the airport. Anyway, sorry about not blogging.)

So I think it's worth suggesting to Barack Obama and John McCain that they follow the lead of their former rivals and quietly drop out of the race for president too. Write them letters and tell them so. Send them emails. Stalk the candidates personally, if you must. Just get them to quit. It's the perfect plan.

(Oh, hey! Remember when I mentioned eating at Sonic in Denver?


Technically, it's a short distance outside of Denver, but still within the greater Denver metropolitan area.


Okay, the guy in this photo is not me. It's my friend Drew who recently got married, who was also at Sonic, and who is wearing a Rutgers shirt to prove that he's from faaaaaar away. Also, the girl in the picture is not me either. She's a Sonic employee, which can be hard to tell. Even harder is why Drew isn't being more chivalrous and taking the tray for her.)

Put a Banana in Your Ear, Banana King

Though mankind clearly reached its cultural zenith with Zac Efron's perfection of the popular "shaggy do" last year, there are still occasional bursts of ingenuity and art that stand out like pimples on the otherwise pimple-free and art-free landscape of human achievement.

There is, for instance, the banana. And the fine cinematic work of judd rinefart the blah, who seems to have no interest in whether I ever start capitalizing his name or calling him Judge Reinhold again. (For the record, all it would take is for him to endorse someone other than Bill Richardson, so I can know what to think.) There is also the unicorn. And broccoli salad. And the banana. And the paper clip.

It's also true that the unending quest of our species for self-actualization and greatness has occasionally produced some very decent television as well, as proven by the first 18 seasons of Little House on the Prairie. But then again, we've also managed to produce Ted McGinley, a force of nature so powerful and so deadly that he has his own category on jumptheshark.com, a website that, in an ironic twist of fate, jumped the shark during a very special episode starring Ted McGinley.

This, of course, all leads back to Zac Efron's hair, which has been strangely and sadly absent from major news cycles for months now, leaving us to focus on the aforementioned pimples.

And wow, did I just find a juicy one.

Feast your eyes on Charlie the Unicorn. And please pay particular attention to what happens at the 3:44 mark, as it is relevant to my cause of action against you under the Freedom of Information Act. Also, because it is awesome.

Dear Jesus,

Yes! We totally did it, Man! Or should I say, Son of Man! You can come back now and judge us. I think we finally have You beat.

Your pal in You,
The Smoke Monster.

P.S. Why does www.unicorn.com redirect to the IBM website?

Can I please be a nerd for a minute, please? Wait, I already said please.

...Because I'm lying here watching Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (I needed something to nap to, what can I say? It was either this or Soapdish), and I just have to say that I completely disagree with the portrait of Isildur that Cate Blanchett paints with her sepulchral narrative. I think it's an insult to Isildur-Americans all over Middle Earth.

Because I read the books a few years back (I needed something to nap to then, too), and my impression was that, at the very least, Isildur deserved the benefit of the doubt for having been seriously contemplative of the question of what to do with the Ring after It came to him. He was deeply conflicted about choice - and the subtext was clearly that his deliberateness was exploited by the Ring, that's how smart that fucking Ring was. Maybe the Ring won't bring you the paper, but it will certainly put your dog to shame.

Unfortunately, the way the movie makes it sound, Isildur was this weak-willed, incompetent hack with a sniveling expression, and not a single line of dialogue with which to redeem himself. Personally, I would have made Isildur's part a musical part, and made the movie 20 minutes longer to squeeze his story in there.

Take note, lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring, the movie: there's a reason I capitalize The Ring, and not you anymore. I am not to be trifled with. Just ask juggs rinehart the blah*. You know what time it is?

(* the artist formerly known as Judge Reinhold)

The Oscar Party

So I recently wrote culinary genius Jim Henson a letter asking him for a little more public support of my Oscar '08 campaign - not only because it's the right thing to do, but also because if I'm going to get anywhere, I'm going to need to start racking up the celebrity endorsements. Who better, I thought, than a man whose entire career was devoted to exploring the intricacies of Muppet cuisine, and also, breasts?

Henson had been suspiciously tight-lipped in the media about Oscar's fledgling candidacy which, frankly, struck me as a little bit rude. Like, hello, Jim Henson?! I was decent enough to make a candidate out of your meal ticket; the least you could do is acknowledge me! That was basically the gist of what I wrote to him (not pictured). And I fully expected him to come seek me out at my Detroit residence, hat in his hand, and beg my forgiveness, or at least to offer me his fantastic recipe for sauteed Fozzy Bear with shallots and garlic.

Turns out, he's dead.

Now I'll never know the secret to how he made his Kermit the Frog au poivre so moist. So I've got THAT going for me.

Then I saw a headline somewhere that Vanity Fair had canceled their Oscar party, scheduled for this past weekend. Okay, I admit, I wasn't invited in the first place - which is a little bit strange, if you think about it. Only, please don't think about it. Think about fruit, like I do, all day long, five days a week, 365 weeks a year.

The point is that even without me there, I am sort of in love with the fact that Vanity Fair was having an Oscar party to begin with. Although, you kind of have to ask yourself why they wouldn't invite me as a courtesy, if nothing else, since the whole Oscar thing was, after all, MY IDEA.

Sadly, the first I heard of the Vanity Fair party was the cancellation. So my invitation is kind of a moot point. And now, Vanity Fair won't return my calls or emails asking for their guest list either.

Jerks.

Then yesterday morning, I heard that former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader announced his bid for the presidency on Meet the Press. Not that I would watch such a dorky show to begin with, since I have a life and my Sunday mornings are usually spent snorting blow off some hooker's ass in the back bathroom of some trendy Manhattan club. This weekend, I happened to take a break from partying my brains out so I could assemble some Ikea furniture on my living room floor - the Expedit bookcase in black-brown, and the Norden gate leg table (both of which are quite lovely, and very well assembled). But even so, I didn't turn on Meet the Press, because unlike me, that show is dorky. I believe I already used the word dorky to describe Meet the Press earlier in this paragraph, so it must be true.

The salient point, of course, is that, with Nader in the race, Oscar might lose the green vote. And Oscar '08 is really nothing without the green vote. Without the green vote, Oscar the Grouch is just a guy in a trash can, which, I can only imagine would make his electability go down faster than a White House intern ten years ago. (Zing!)

Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I got all hopped up on all the green talk this year and just went a little overboard picking a candidate who was, quite literally, green. Maybe Fred Thompson's bid made me think a grouch could work as President. Though, come to think of it, if a grouch can't even finish higher than fourth in a Republican primary, what chance does he have in the general election? (Zing again!) America might be clamoring for change, but maybe they're just not ready for Oscar the Grouch yet. Lord knows there were enough Oscar headlines in the news this morning to make a person think otherwise, but maybe... just maybe... I was... wrong.

No, that's not it. This is all Judge Reinhold's fault.

Dear Judge Reinhold,

Shame on you, sir, for not standing up and immediately endorsing another candidate after Bill Richardson backed out of the presidential race. You have left me, and hundredths of thousands of impressionable voters like me high and dry. We don't know what to do, and we are looking to you, Judge Reinhold, because Jesus is voting Republican (again).

If I ever see your silly face in a movie again, which is doubtful (another zing!), I will refuse to laugh at your zany antics or the madcap high jinks you land yourself in due to some colossal and only remotely plausible misunderstanding of your circumstances.

How could you leave your public guessing like this? How could you, Here Come Da Judge Reinhold? Nay, nay, I won't even call you that anymore. You are no longer deserving of your nickname, which was a token of esteem and respect in a time and place where esteem and respect, like clean underwear, are in short supply. You aren't even worth of the capital letters put on all proper nouns and names. From now on, you are simply to be known as judge reinhold the blah, which will occasionally be spelled wrong, just to emphasize my point.

F*** you, judge rinegold the blah. And no, the asterisks do not stand for L-I-P, or O-I-L, or even I-R-E. They stand for something much, much worse. But I'm not going to tell you what it is, which is just like YOU NOT TELLING ME WHO TO VOTE FOR!

Yours in song,
Smokey R.

Vote the Grouch in '08!

I know that as a bloggerist, I am unqualified to give anyone in the world advice on how they should vote. Like most bloggerists, I don't really know anything. I can't even read for crying out loud, and the only language I speak fluently is parakeet, which can't truly be considered a language since most of the words, or "awful squawking sounds," that comprise the language are verbs. In fact, the only three nouns in the entire parakeet language are "food," "poison," and "Barack Obama," who they just CANNOT stop awfully squawking about.

Anyway, as you probably know already, I only take my political advice from winner-pickers like Judge Reinhold, and let's just say that "da Judge," as I refuse to call him, has left me in a bit of a pickle. Not literally, of course, since I am physically much larger than a pickle, and would most likely split it in twain if I were left in one. But in the metaphorical and existential sense, I am very much inside that pickle, and it stinks in here. Because "da Judge" told the world that Bill Richardson was the horse he was backing in the 2008 presidential race. And by horse, I think he meant the candidate who barely bears even a passing resemblance to a horse, but is from a state that is absolutely filled with horses.

Sadly, Bill has withdrawn his Richardson from consideration, which is sort of like taking turkey off the table at Thanksgiving dinner, leaving us with nothing other than more boring Thanksgiving staples like stuffing (John Edwards), cranberry sauce (Barack Obama), and a crying woman (Hillary Clinton/Dennis Kucinich) among the Democrats. (I won't even get into food analogies for the Republicans, because Mike "I used to be a fat man" Huckabee would probably eat them. Seriously, can't you just picture the Huckster getting bribed into signing really bad treaties in exchange for an extra slice of Heavenly Ham at a state dinner in Israel? If not, it's probably because you're not even trying really.)

This is a crisis. Help. Please. Someone. Help. Help me, Judge Reinhold. Yawn. Help.

Okay, since no one is answering my cries for help, and since "da Judge" has basically left me to my own devices, I'm going back to the tried and true tactic of a national write-in campaign, which is how I have always voted in the past. Instead of letting myself be limited to only the candidates who WANT to be President, I will choose the person or being I think is best and write his/her/its name in instead - only this time, I'll actually publicize it in this here blog here, in a manner that does not constitute advice at all!

Please note that I have very strict standards. My candidate will be subject to the following rules:

1. He/she/it may not be gay.

I think this year's candidate is a no-brainer. You've seen him on television, you've seen him on a few flicks that went straight to video, and you can see him right now if you look deep within your hearts, or perhaps the trash can outside your apartment building. I'm speaking, of course, of Oscar the Grouch.

I think his credentials and leadership experience speak for themselves. Frankly, it's hard to imagine anyone whose record would stand up to close scrutiny better than Mr. the Grouch's. Just look at Grouchland which, under Oscar's capable guidance, has blossomed from a total dump into an ecologically friendly utopia with a progressively democratic government that is among the most popular in the world among its citizens. A recent United Nations study ranked Grouchland as having the third-smallest carbon footprint per capita among member states. And despite a languishing tourism economy, Oscar's administration oversaw a Grouchland GDP that expanded to $1.066 trillion in 2006 (roughly the same size as Brazil!), fronted by a balanced federal budget and a working social security program.

Oscar knows how to handle a campaign too. Who can forget his memorable run against longtime incumbent Kermit the Frog, headlined by the slogan "you think it's not easy being green? Try LIVING IN A TRASH CAN!"

All this, and doesn't even have any legs! Kind of makes you regret some of your life choices, doesn't it? Those legs have been holding you back long enough.

Anyway, as I said, I'm not qualified to give political advice. But if you want to know whose name will be on my ballot this year, I'll give you a hint: it starts with "Oscar the Gr" and ends with "ouch," which is what all the other candidates are going to be saying when Oscar puts the smackdown on their silly asses in November.

Here come da Judge Reinhold

Sorry, Barack Obama - if that IS your real name. But just because you landed Oprah as one of your backers does not mean you'll land me. I don't even read the books she recommends in her book club - at least, not since the one and only time I took a recommendation from Oprah and read She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb, after which I briefly became illiterate and blind. It was only thanks to Michael Chabon that I managed to recover. (Thanks, Mikey. Much love. W00t. -Smokey R.)

Anyway, just because the big O says so, it don't mean I'm gonna vote for BO.

Ew. B.O.

And just because Hillary "Dennis Rodman" Clinton has Fabio in her camp, it don't mean I'm gonna vote for her neither. Fabio's political endorsements used to carry a lot more weight with me back before he started doing the ads for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter's chest oil division. Seriously, you just can't respect a man who doesn't even use real oil to oil up his fabulous pectoral muscles - or at least, I can't. Or, at least, if that man's name isn't Mr. T, Chuck Norris, or Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, I can't.

Besides, Fabio is totally a B.O. guy at heart. You can completely tell he's just faking it with Hillary for the sex.

Sean Penn can rave about Dennis Kucinich all he wants, but Dennis Kucinich rhymes with spinach, and we can't have a president in this country who rhymes with a vegetable. That's just unacceptable. Not that I'd listen to Sean Penn anyway. Not only was this man stupid enough to MARRY MADONNA he was also stupid enough to DIVORCE MADONNA. That would be like divorcing Leonardo da Vinci, or divorcing Nostradamus, or performing oral sex on a doped-up Rush Limbaugh for anything under 30 of your American dollars. I think we can all agree those things are ridiculous, even if I'm not sure how.

The point is this: it takes a certain kind of celebrity to get my attention. It takes a person with gravitas, with class, with three - count 'em, three - Beverly Hills Cop movies under his belt. It takes a person who can play a close talker on Seinfeld, and who can star in a classic '80s parent-child switcheroo movie with Fred Savage and somehow manage to be less convincing as the parent than as the child. It takes Judge Reinhold, who this week announced his support of Bill Richardson, for whom I shall now gratefully and gladly cast my vote, even though ol' Billy Dickboy (that's what I used to call him) broke my heart when he stood me up for a date at a beach bar on Fiji in 2003 and never called to explain.


Bill Richardson, Bill Richardson, thou has cleft my heart in twain,
Thank you, Judge Reinhold, for restoring it to wholeness again.