Pop Quiz!

Question 1. Here's a picture. Who do you think this is?

All righty then.

Question 2. Here's a second picture, taken within a few hours of the first. Who's this?

Question 2 is easy, because there are only two possible answers. Your answer is either "Lindsay Lohan," or "I'm a serious, mentally stable person, and so I have no idea that that's Lindsay Lohan."

And, despite the fact that the papparazzi apparently thought that the person in the first photograph was also Lindsay Lohan, it's not. That's Debbie Harry.

Lindsay Lohan was born in 1986, and will be 26 in July.

Debbie Harry was born in 1945, and will be 67, also in July.

85% Don't Know; 15% Scared to Death

You had to be there

Who Knew There Was an "Ed Wood Film Festival?"

The Honorable Anthony David Weiner, Member of Congress

Seems Low to Us

“At one point, there were 400 Schmucks in America."

National Anthem Screwup

Pop Legend Rick Astley is 45 Today

Here's his "Together Forever" from 1988.

No, really.  I promise.  I swear that's where the link goes.  Would I lie?  I would not.  It really, really goes there.  Truly.  Honest!  Cross my heart.

We had momentarily forgotten just how horrid the 1980s were.

Steampunk Palin

This exists. Our first reaction was, "Say what?" While our second reaction was, "Of course!" The Internet is a great seething cauldron of complex meme-molecules combining, re-combining, splitting, morphing. Some mutations are fatal, while others form sub-species, like Hitler Rants or Rickrolling, that show signs of immortality. In our view, steampunk reached its height as a science fiction sub-genre with The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. But on the Internet, no popular culture DNA is ever truly lost.

Get Off My Lawn

Happy 2011, the year in which the oldest baby boomers, born in 1946, turn 65.  Television, The Bomb, moon landings, coonskin caps, The Pill, feminism, the Viet Nam War, The Beatles, and much else are wholly-owned.

None of us got smallpox, few of us got polio.  We invented sex, and have since refused to agree on its rules.  Our men discovered facial hair; our women conceived leg hair.  During 1967's Summer of Love, some of us moved to San Francisco, where some of us remain preserved in amber.  For the first time in history, we perceived that our parents were neither omniscient nor omnipotent, so fuck them.  We celebrated non-conformity and established a dress code for it.

We don't go to church because our parents made us go when we were little.  For a while, we didn't shower or bathe for similar reasons, but then changed our minds (see, "we invented sex," supra).  We invented the Internet, personal computers, and Star Wars.  We know the difference between Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock.

You're welcome.  Those of you born after November, 1963, continue to send us money, we've spent everything Mom and Dad gave us.

These Are the Droids You're Looking At

It's impossible to explain. You'll have to look for yourself.  Via our correspondent in Hanover, Vox clamantis in deserto.

Because Nobody Doesn't Like Cheeseburgers

Twilight . . . with cheeseburgers.

Trekkies. Zombies. Inevitable.

The Wages of Cultural Ignorance . . . . .

. . . . is this:

Looks like Frank to us.

R.I.P Frank Frazetta

From today's New York Times:

Frank Frazetta, an illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, died on Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.

The cause was complications from a stroke, said Rob Pistella and Stephen Ferzoco, Mr. Frazetta’s business managers.

Mr. Frazetta was a versatile and prolific comic book artist who, in the 1940s and ’50s, drew for comic strips like Al Capp’s “Lil’ Abner” and comic books like “Famous Funnies,” for which he contributed a series of covers depicting the futuristic adventurer Buck Rogers.

[snip]

His most prominent work, however, was on the cover of book jackets, where his signature images were of strikingly fierce, hard-bodied heroes and bosomy, callipygian damsels in distress. In 1966, his cover of “Conan the Adventurer,” a collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, depicted a brawny long-haired warrior standing in repose on top of a pile of skeletons and other detritus, his sword thrust downward into the mound, an apparently naked young woman lying at his feet, hugging his ankle.

Drive your enemies before you, Frank, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Annals of Delicious Grease

"The Double Down — which consists of two boneless chicken filets that enclose two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of cheese and a mysterious substance known as Colonel’s Sauce — was clearly concocted in a laboratory manned by maniacs.

"The whole idea of replacing bread with chicken — fried chicken — is so brilliantly horrible that I’m surprised Leviticus has nothing to say on the subject. Surely, while God was prohibiting fortunetelling and bestiality he could have mentioned something about misuses of fried-chicken slabs.

"Still, you can’t put the genie back in the grease-stained bottle, so I say let’s go for it. Anything goes from here on out, and I for one don’t intend to be left behind by the salty tides of suicide cuisine."

Gulp down the whole thing: Embrace Suicide Cuisine With New Fast-Food Delicacies

Browncoats?

Thursday's Boston Globe included a story by someone named "Beth Teitell" which seeks to answer the question, "We all know about Scott Brown's truck, but what's the story behind that coat?" Maybe Boston Globe reporters don't have access to Google. Perhaps they're so well educated that they spend their time reading scandalous poems by Ovid, rather than slumming with the great unwashed middle class. She wonders:

Scott Brown’s pickup truck got almost as much attention as the Senate candidate, but somehow his equally ubiquitous, equally everyman barn jacket cruised below the pundits’ radar.

And yet, there it was, starring in his now-famous truck ad. There it was again, waving to motorists. And voting in the election.

But what do we know about that brown jacket, really?

Is it possible -- just barely possible -- that our elite arbiters of politics and culture know nothing about Browncoats?

People Need to Pull Their Pants Up

From Matt Drudge

Is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid following in the surgical footsteps of the Speaker of the House, Joe Biden, and Cher?

Post-Thanksgiving Ruminations