Canada is the pond. Stephen Harper is the pond scum.

THE YEAR AHEAD

Harper & MacKay: Vile Liars about Torture

Zap that Ay-rab Dick! Make 'em Scream "O Canada!"

Torture Those Camel-humpers! Is that the voice of your Canada?

It’s the screaming voice of our warmonger Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

What torture! Mon Dieu, Canadians would never turn over prisoners to be burned with cigarettes! Is that the seeming opinion of Harper’s Bully Squad led by his Minister of Defense, Nova Scotia Tory hack and liar Peter MacKay?

LIAR

Is there anything Peter MacKay won't say for fear of not getting his invitation to the Christmas Ay-rab Beheading at 24 Sucksit Drive?

What kind of torture are we talking about here? Really heavy stuff or just Disembowelment Lite?

Recorded sadism includes: blows to the testicles, inoculation with dog diseases, near-drowning under wet towel until you gag or have seizure,shaking Stephen Harper's hand. Nothing major. Same stuff that happens in the back play room at a Tory party in Ottawa to anyone who disagrees with the PM.

Beefy, toilet-seat-faced liar John Baird and Harper’s goon squad of toxic mutants have now been ordered to try to discredit one of the only honest men in Canadian government, diplomat Richard Colvin.

Colvin stated that all prisoners handed over to Afghanis by Canadian troops were likely tortured.

Colvin sent documents stating this to Peter MacKay, Minister of Defense.

MacKay has been caught having to admit that, yes, documents were sent, but now the thin creep denies ever seeing such reports. Of course. All the top people around Harper knew about the torture. And, true to form for this government, they are all now lying about it.

According to a new poll, 50% of Canadians believe Colvin. I guess the other 50% voted for Harper.

Did Harper and the rest of the pro-torture scum in Ottawa know about the broken fingers, the acid poured on penises? Sure they did!

And these are the filthy liars you elected to run our Canada into moral and reputational ruin. A crazed warmonger for a prime minister, surrounded by the vilest, cruelest crew of liars ever to lizard-crawl out from under government-protected rocks. Shame on Canada! Shame on the conservative morons who elected these tawdry men and women who are a growing embarrassment to all Canadians of good will.

Can’t any of you remember when Canada could hold its head high proudly in any council of nations as peacekeeper to the world?

Of course, the Tories want us to be Americans. That is Stephen Harper’s dearest pillow wish: "Dear Goddy, never mind the rapture. Jes' make me President."

So who cares, anyway? Right? They’re just Ay-rab enemies getting a knitting needle propelled up their anus. What's a punctured colon, after all, except a mild spell of fecal peritonitis. I mean, shit, Dude, what a suck! Peritonitis still gives you a couple days to live.

Besides, former leader in Afghanistan, Smiling General Rick thinks torture is part of war. Funny, the Geneva Convention that deals with war crimes doesn’t agree with Smiling General Rick.

But there was General Hillier this afternoon at the hearing trying to discredit totally a diplomat who was upset by what that diplomat learned in Afghanistan. Hillier slammed Colvin and said Colvin had no knowledge of the campaign.

This is Hillier's familiar bully soldier trick. No civilian may comment upon the war at all or Hillier will jump down his throat. Well, this is Canada. ANY civilian may comment on your murderous tromp through my country's history.

Watching on television, in case you are interested, Hillier, you Americanized saluting-machine, I did not believe one fucking word you said.

But what I did smell was army cover-up by means of brutal yelling and table-thumping.

Well, fuck you, General! I, like one half of this country of Canada, suspect god-dam well that you were saving your ass by lying.

You are the last kind of cowboy that Canada needs - ever.

You may have fooled some of the unthinking morons who stand mooing on overpasses saluting corpses, but you don't fool me. YOU are the cause of those corpses speeding down the 401, pal. And you can stick a couple of corpses right up your military ass.

It seems that handing over prisoners to certain torture is actually a war crime. Now there's something Canada can dream about: The Liar Harper in the same prisoner box as other international war criminals. "MEIN FUEHRER, I CAN WALK!!!!"

Liar

But, fuck all this crybaby noise, let’s start a new memorial highway, okay, pious Canadians? You doughheads that groove on mindless memento mori, let's gather bleating on the overpasses.

Let’s call this one: The Highway of Dupes or Avenue of Shattered Screams.

Let's compose major pop songs to sing, as rigs packed with excised fingers and toes roll by to Canadian hotdog factories. Everybody now, sing loud, sing proud: "O Canada, I just cut off a hand. O Canada, ain't warm blood grand."

Don’t do anything, Canadians. Just stand there and practice baaing.

A small voice from the crowd: "Taliban scum today! Canadian welfare recipients tomorrow!"

O brave new Tory world, that has such creatures in it.

Soupy Sales: A Farewell to Larmes

Soupy gets his head scratched by his dog White Fang.

Thursday, October 22, 2009: One of the people who made me laugh hysterically as a young teenager died today at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York. Soupy Sales was 83.

How do you thank a man who gave you a thousand, thousand laughs?

Soupy Sales showed a young me that laughter was a highly appropriate response to a good deal of what fate might dish up in your face. This is my modest addition to his memory.


“Oh-luh-uh-Oh” bellowed White Fang, the large mean dog, so big we kid viewers only saw one giant paw as it slammed into poor Soupy Sales’ head and knocked him off camera.

Innocent Soupy came back on camera, his face, smiling, beaming widely, but bearing Soupy’s trademark look of astounded wonder. Soupy said, “What was that? Do you hate me, White Fang, doggie of mine?

Remember we kids viewers only saw the paw of White Fang, like Soupy’s head, in big close up. BCU in old television tech. talk, borrowed from film scripts.

The paw dropped in a fake mope gesture and White Fang sulked. “Luh-uh-uh.”

Soupy perked up. “Okay, White Fang, I forgive you.”

This time White Fang’s paw bunched into a fist and slammed Soupy square in the kisser. “Awwwww, can’t we be friends, White Fang?” begged Soupy.

White Fang emitted a suspicious, non-commital “Luh-uh.”

Soupy smiled as widely as humanly possible. White Fang smashed the cream pie directly into Soupy’s forehead.

Soupy with White Fang's paw and puppeteer Clyde Adler. A behind-the-scenes photo I'm glad we kid TV watchers never saw. As an old TV producer, I note the old Zoomar Extender on the lens, clicked on so Soupy's BCU will be in focus.

When I was 14 and my brother was 13 in the mid-1950s, we roared along with “Lunch with Soupy Sales” and later “The Soupy Sales Show.” We watched it on WKBW, a Buffalo TV station, where it came live at noon on a limited ABC Saturday network feed from its originating station, WXYZ in Detroit.

Before he went full network, Soupy had the lowest budget of any kids’ show in America. Most of the show was a medium-wide shot of Soupy’s kitchen, a tatty cardboard set, whose walls swayed and bulged every time an actor walked past it. There was the infamous backdoor at which Soupy received his only guests. Beside the door was the wall buzzer with the sign above it: Do Not Touch. Every show the buzzer rang.

The budget was so low, only two persons could appear on camera, Soupy and his long-time puppeteer and collaborator, Clyde Adler, creator of White Fang (bad dog), Black Tooth (good dog) and Pookie the Lion. Clyde was the puppeteer behind Hippy the Hippo and Marilyn MonWolf. Clyde was also The Man at the Door. Basically, Clyde was everybody on the show who wasn’t Soupy.

There was never a studio audience because the set and the set-ups were so cheap, they would have been embarrassing. But "no studio audience" was perfect for the early Soupy. The two guys and the Detroit TV news-and-weather crew shooting the show had thirty minutes of surreal silliness each show. Compare honest Soupy to the wheedling treacle of Buffalo Bob on Howdy Doody, smarming the kiddies like an old queen up her last alleyway and so arthritic she can barely lift her skirt one last time. Buffalo Bob was a symphony of cringing, lickspittle pleadings all of whose subtexts were “please, please like me.” The smarter kids in the Peanut Gallery on Howdy Doody always knew that Buffalo Bob was a phony-baloney suck.

Whenever one of Soupy’s solo flights of silliness had petered out, there would come a knock at the back door and viewers would see usually only the two arms of the visitor, almost always in the early days of the show, puppeteer Clyde Adler’s arms.

Of what shticks, pratfalls, slapsticks, whoopee cushions, rubber chickens and wheezy old gags did the Soupy Sales Show consist? Whatever they were, their cheapness, their showbiz tawdriness, was my chief delight. Soupy lip-synched badly to crappy pop songs. Screamingly funny because of Soupy’s facial takes. Soupy’s pie-in-the-face smile told viewers that anarchy did indeed reign in his world. But he couldn’t help it. He loved being alive and fifty setbacks per day were NOT going to waylay our Soupeleh. He did not have a mean bone in his body. Shucks, he and we just happened to be trapped in this shoddy little earth space; yet he loved it although it was insane. If you, the viewer, would shrug your mental shoulders, then you too could learn to love it.

Pookie the Lion, an arm puppet at the window: “While you were away, Soupy, a guy came to the door and wanted to see you.”

Soupy: “Gee. Did he have a bill?”

Pookie: “No, he had a nose just like you.”

That joke was ancient even in the earliest days of vaudeville. But Soupy’s beaming delivery brought it back to goofy life.

A Bit of Biography

Although I knew none of this when I was 14, here’s a swatch of internet potted bio:

“Sales was born Milton Supman in the tiny town of Franklinton, North Carolina, on January 28, 1926. He was the son of the only Jewish family in a town where his father's dry goods store sold sheets to the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan. The family's name was so often mispronounced as "Soupman" that his parents jokingly nicknamed his brothers "Hambone" and "Chickenbone," bestowing on him the name "Soupbone," which was eventually shortened to Soupy.

After fighting in the Pacific in World War II and participating in the invasion of Okinawa (while honing his comedic chops aboard his ship's public address system), Sales returned and began his entertainment career in 1949 in Cincinnati, where he worked as a morning DJ and did stand-up in local clubs. By the early 1950s, he did stints as a script writer at radio stations in West Virginia and Cleveland, while moonlighting as a stand-up comedian and DJ and moving to Detroit.”

Soupy at his Detroit home base TV station. Note the lenses mounted on a sprung, hand-turned turret. I think the cameras are an old Westinghouse pedestand and an RCA ped runner.

Why We Loved Soupy

My brother and I screamed with laughter at Soupy’s smiling acquiescence to dire predicament. One of the reason’s he was funny was the very looseness of the performance. Although some of the jokes were on cue cards (which Soupy often showed to the camera) Soupy was never up tight or nervous. Shit happens, he seemed to say, and you gotta roll not with it, but IN it. Oh my!

My brother and I loved Soupy because of this guileless anarchy. Whatever happened got laughed at. Nobody else on TV could do Soupy’s insouciance or even come close to it. Only 1950s TV watchers will remember the carnival of Halloween death-doll masks that appeared on television then: live-from-the-grave Ed Sullivan, Dinah ‘Phony-as-a-Recorded Fart’ Shore (No, Dinah, YOU go and see the USA in your Chevrolet), Perry Como (“Folks, Honest, I only put a little Thorazine in my Old Spice Aftershave”).

Bunch of stiffs.

But Soupy was alive and kicking and, of course, was a blessedly inane dipstick.

Only one other comic ever made me laugh harder and that was Curly in “The Three Stooges” barking his animal sounds as beautiful women scorned him or authority figures dismissed him. As a dorky teenager, I identified like mad with both Soupy and Curly.

In the mid-1950s Soupy’s off-the-cuff, anything-goes style was new to TV.

Did Soupy, a noble pioneer, pave the way for Monty Python and Saturday Night Live and yadda-yadda-yadda? I don’t know but I suspect not.

Soupy Sales was the sole proprietor of his very own lunatic kitchen.

His death today made me remember how many glum November noons he brightened with his unique brand of existential nonsense. Whatever else Soupy accomplished on earth, he showed two Canadian boys that, yes, the world was crazy and funny and full of shit, but those qualities did not give the world ANY immunity and we were free to laugh at it. The indifferent cosmos gave no fecal exemption for earthlings.

Rockin’ good advice, Soupy.

Wherever you are, thank you, sir, for a million crack-ups, fallings-down-on-Casselman-living-room-rugs, amid bursts of immoderate laughter so deep that mildly embarrassing personal misfortunes of a urinary nature once or twice befell a certain onlooker.

Soupy performs his famous mouse dance.

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Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009

Hey Bill:

That was a great tribute to Soupy....your digression on Buffalo Bob was hysterical and it re-kindled memories of sitting at Jacob’s ice cream parlour downtown and watching Howdy Doody at 4 pm......and then home to watch Sagebrush Trail at 6 pm on WBEN TV from Buffalo.

Soupy was so funny to us....what a simple format as you have shown with the photos of staging...

They had so much fun doing those shows...there would have been a lot of ad-lib...I will try to get some video clips of an old show on internet..

Talk soon.

“Oh Lo-Oh Lo....” WHAP !.....( pie in face)

- Your Brother

Olympic Winter 2010 Medals Just Unveiled! Gosh!

Nazi Vancouver Cops Can Now Break Into Your Home, Grab Anti-Olympic Signs and Haul You Off to Jail for Six Months

British Columbia’s and Vancouver’s deep love of fascist tactics never seems to end.

As of last Thursday, the City of Vancouver, softly peeing its municipal panties, is worried that anti-Olympic protest signs might cause the noble athletes to get all nervous during the upcoming winter games. Those trembling athletes after viewing a street sign that says, "Down with the Olympics" might just inject their illegal, performance-enhancing steroids into their dicks instead of their arms. Golly!

On the other hand, such a procedure might save them the cost of a Viagra pill taken just before the hourly Olympic Village nude orgy.

So, believe it or not, in the same city that let four Mounties electrocute a Polish visitor, the slimeballs of Vancouver City council have snuck in a bill that would allow those same trustworthy cops that murdered the Polish visitor to break into any house in Vancouver and find bad, bad, bad signs and jump up and down on those bad signs and, well, just tell those darn protesters that they are going to jail for six months and paying a 10,000 dollar fine.

That is an outrageous breach of a Canadian’s civil liberty.

Now Canadians can’t even be against something as stupid as these foolish winter games. There are many people like me who think the Olympics is an obscene corporate money grab. It should be titled: World Youth Drug Trials.

This proposed Vancouver law ought to be cast out of council chambers and relegated to the bin of bad policy, the same bin in which are kept all shameful laws.

- bill casselman

Brain-Dead Tattoo Urge Explained

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Why People Get Tattoos

Much pseudoscientific, sociological drivel has been written about tattoo acquisition. I don't think it is at all mysterious.

If one has no identity, if one can accomplish nothing early in life, if one's low intelligence and milk-and-cookies-milquetoast personality cannot contrive an identity or at the least cobble together a ramshackle selfhood sometime after puberty, well then — never fear — the feckless, zero-sum doofus can go out and buy an identity and wear it home on a t-shirt or under his left tit.

The tattoo of frisky sperm on his left testicle may proclaim some brain-stem to be “a, like, totally awesome rebel.” Yeah, right, duuuude.

Earth residents are preponderantly moronic and it eliminates the need for I.Q. tests when some of them label themselves with tattoos.

This is an excerpt from my etymology piece on Tat: The Tattoo & Trash word.

If you liked the paragraphs above, check out that column on my website.

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Readers Write:

October 28, 2009
Dear Hater,
I enjoyed reading your segment on "why people get tattoos," found under the
world word "Tat." I had some good laughs. You have a great sense of humor.
However, since you clearly stated that we may feel free to send you e-mail,
I have a few suggestions and try to forgive my poor grammar--I'm in a rush:

1.) It seems that you enjoy mainstream media. I know this because you say,
"why people get tattoos," thus, the reader can affirm that your opinions
and, God forbid, intellectual conversation following the heading should
apply to all people with tattoos. However, to formulate an opinion based on
mainstream society and celebrities and then deem it true to all proves your
love and devotion to mainstream, regardless of your respect for their
decisions, or in this case, lack thereof. Perhaps you should dwell upon how
fine of a line exists between Lindsay Lohen's "shhhh" tatoo on her finger or
the classic meathead's tribal "tat" vs. a successful NASA aeronomical
engineer's "Do the Right Thing" tattoo on his forearm, or a spinning image
of a diceased sibling tattoo'd over one's shoulder blade. This may come as
a surprise, but not everyone is concerned with how others accept him or her
as individuals. Therefore, my first suggestion before you change the
heading is to pull your head out of the sand and possibly consider coming
back to Earth. I love the use of vocab, though!

2.) Change the "Why People Get Tattoos" heading to better fit your content.

3.) Ok, so let's face the facts, you're trying to make money. Hopefully
you're doing a great job (heck, you got me e-mailing you!). Aside from your
interesting content of the origin of words, mainstream drivel may drive more
traffic than bland, intelligent fact. I understand that your website is
concerned with the origin of words, but is the unethically sarcastic
tone/content of your discussions the route you wish to take? You can always
stay mainstream and prove a real, responsible point (or two!). This
attracts more respect to yourself as an individual, considering the brand of
you as an author and your website involves your full name. Doing so may
also hint that, while you may not respect humanity, you don't wish to
contribute to its "preponderantly moronic" ways. All the above being said,
do you not agree that the better path is to disect maintstream for its
absurdities while contributing some type of reasonable statement of your
own? Doing so may create a credential for people to depend on, ensuring
their support.

Today, we see haters all around the world. To hate is not to simply
disagree. Haters are people that attempt to spread their beliefs/disbeliefs
to others (and may even succeed). But the most important aspect of the
"hater" is their ability to "hype" a subject and carry it forward as a
world-class discussion. The topics that seem to fade from world interest
and our History books are the topics that lack haters. So allow me to thank
you for making the world go 'round. We need your type.

Maybe just clean up the content, for your own sake.


Regards,
W. Chase McArthur

P.S. Hope you enjoyed my "I'm in a rush" excuse for poor grammar

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Vanessa emails:

I went ahead and read the full article... My husband and I are both what you might consider 'tattooed'. He holds a PHD in neuro psych, while I have a bachelors in Painting and a Masters in Art History. Oh, and I am a tattoo artist. I will admit I spend a great deal of time talking people out of terrible ideas that I know they will regret later n life (we tell every person wanting a name, only get the name of someone you are related to by blood).But the majority of people I tattoo are intelligent and aware. I just gave a physicist his first tattoo last week. Also, I think it is important that you know that 90% of those in the tattoo community do not really like the the words "tat" or "ink". We also don't like the term "gun" when referring to tattoo machines. Quite honestly I found your opinion generally uninformed.

Also, in anthropology, tattooing as a tradition is found on every continent. I could therefore make the argument that, for some people, there is an inherent desire to modify ones body. Your lineage may have come from an un-tattooed tribe. Who knows? Maybe, most importantly, you should simply stop passing judgment on those who are not like you.

Posted by Vanessa to Casselmanual at November 26, 2009 11:58 AM


Bill Casselman answers Vanessa Nov 26 2009 1:21 pm

I see. So we should believe someone who makes money from tattooing others that punching holes in your epidermis is an ancient and noble art.

As for me, one who disagrees that it is totally healthy? Well, Vanessa tells me "to stop passing judgment on those who are not like you."

If your PhD neuro in psych (whatever THAT is, I don't believe one word of it) did what you recommend, dearie, all scientific inquiry would cease.

Ever hear about Newton? About Einstein? They challenged what people who were not like them believed. They refuted the scientific orthodoxy of their time. Just as I refute the brainless yahoos who walk around having permanently blotched their skin.

That's how humanity progresses, by challenging the validity of what most folks do.

The majority of tattooed people are NOT intelligent and aware. They are crackheads, criminal scum and frowsy, drunken losers. My psychological insights into SOME tattooed people are from widespread and numerous psychological studies.

By the way, if you have a Masters in Art History, girlie, I will eat it. If you do, it certainly did not feature any training in logical argument.

You have quite a streak of fascism in you too. So, members of the "tattoo community" will tell us how to speak and how we ought to refer to them? Really. Sort of like White Supremacists and fascist groups do, eh? No thanks, Brunhilda. I think you and the Thought Police can move on down the road. Maybe you can catch a squirrel and tattoo it and record its screaming?

So far, Canada and the USA are democratic. So, pardon me, Vanessa, but I do not think I shall be handing over to the likes of you and your branded cohorts the right to think for myself, to report broadly accepted scientific evaluations of self-mutilation or any other body-marring shenanigans that you painted nutbars get up to.

his mark,
X

(Bill Casselman)

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Roman Polanski Case: No Such Thing as a 13-Year-Old Slut

A Few Ideas You May Not Have Considered

In the Recent Arrest of Roman Polanski

Isn’t it a wonder that in all of human history there has never been such a thing as a 13-year-old slut?

The Story as of September 28, 2009:

Mr. Roman Polanski was arrested in Zurich by Swiss police, on the basis of a warrant issued in the 1970s by the United States. Polanski initially admitted guilt in 1977 and spent a short time in an American prison. He then fled, took French nationality and has since lived in France, where he is protected from extradition. But Switzerland has a hazy, woozy extradition treaty with the United States. It appears that Polanski’s lawyers will attempt to fight the extradition order in Swiss courts.

One of the political strands of this story not written about often is Switzerland’s historic role as neutral lickspittle, as cringing international suck-ass, as lispy-lipped non-participant pantywaist in anything that might get its Swiss clock cleaned.

The role of stand-offish virgin is one the Swiss perfected throughout World War Two. Switzerland kept murmuring sweetly how neutral it was, meanwhile accepting into its obscene yawning vaults tons of Nazi gold obtained by melting Jewish dental fillings. The Swiss are dirty cowards. There can be no forgiveness for their breath-taking, soul-withering hypocrisy or their obdurate greed.

Remember, you little raclette-slurping snow gnomes, carving a statue of Moses in butter for the Zurich Dairy Fair does not constitute a Wiedergutmachung. Putting Golda Meir upsidedown on a Swiss stamp will not earn you God’s smile. Switzerland, you are slime through all of history.

Nowadays Switzerland is checking its underpants for brown spots almost daily. Switzerland wants to curry US favor because the USA taxation department, the IRS, is about to destroy its vast, hugely profitable secret Swiss bank account scam that has helped the world’s bloated moguls to stash hidden money, to hoard pelf and to shroud boodle in unnamed Swiss bank accounts for decades. Switzerland fears more USA reprisals and boot kicks, so it tosses a sop to vindictive, arthritic Uncle Sam, namely, one old Polack to pop into jail. This time, one of the world’s greatest film makers, Roman Polanski.

Yes, Polanski got a 13-year-old damsel drunk at Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood mansion in 1977 (Jack wasn’t there) and then had sex with Anne of Nude Gables. I, for one, do not approve of child abuse or sex with minors. Sex with miners is a totally different story - - - always remember to bring Listerine and strong soap.

The girl, now a healthy successful woman, whom Polanski sexed, has for years begged the Los Angeles Police NOT to continue their harassment and attempts to nab Roman Polanski. The intrepid inquirer can only speculate on WHY this woman would want to totally forgive Polanski. After all, the hulking beast raped her? Didn’t he? Jumped right on her, bumped his uglies, and destroyed her life forever. Well…maybe not.

What puzzles me always in adult/child sex cases can be stated simply: isn’t it a wondrous happenstance that in all of human history there has never been such a thing as a 13-year-old slut?

Ain’t that wonderful? The 14-year-old vixen who accidentally rubs her bikinied pussy against Uncle Walter’s leg at the Baptist Praise Jesus pool party does not exist. Such unnatural and foul lusts have never besmirched happy days of innocence and freedom. During all the quirks and oddities of sexual encounters in history, underage females have never whistled the come-on to randy old male goats.

All men are beasts and should line up around 12 years old to have their dicks cut off.

No 13-year-old apprentice harlot has ever waved her pert bum in grandpa’s face. Nope. Angels down to the last stick of Juicy Fruit gum.

No embryonic slattern ever cooed provocatively into a hairy ear, “Oh, Uncle, I can’t reach my see-through g-string. Could you tie it for me, pretty, pretty please. If you do it for me, I’ll suck you off so good you’ll think you stuck your dick in a Martian vacuum cleaner.”

“What?” says shocked Uncle. “I hope I didn’t hear that.”

“Don’t shit me, Gramps. You heard. And for 50 bucks, I’ll rim you,” purrs Little Boo Pee.

Of course, an adult male or female must have self control and is totally responsible even if propositioned by a child. Psychological and social bullshit.

Now, Your Honor, you may ask: are there any exculpatory bits of evidence? Nothing can excuse an adult raping a teenager. If it happened. But just what had America the Beautiful done for and to Polanski? We can't blame America for the fact that Roman Polanski's mother was gassed by the Nazis at Auschwitz, can we?

Wellsirree Bob, let's see now. There was the modest incident of the Manson gang (doped-up Yankees all) who broke into his house and sliced open his pregnant wife, gutted her like a hog. Would that, Your Honor, tend to have a somewhat unstabilizing effect on a normal man? Just to make sure, Your Honor, you corrupt, doddering, sclerotic old hypocrite, let's do that to your wife and see what happens to you in the years immediately after her disemboweling.

Polanski pled guilty to some hanky-panky, made a deal with a US judge, and then became paranoid that Ol’ Judgy might jus’ fergit zactly what that deal was. So Polanski fled the home of the grave and the land of the okay-if-you-got-bucks, flew to France and became a French citizen.

Another American hate strand now enters the story. Amurrican heroes hate France, because, when that godsend to humanity, George W. Bush and the filthy, gasping Cheney, told everybody in the world to go forth and shoot Iranians, France said no. Thereby France earned the almost eternal wrath of America. So the L.A. Police Goon Squad says to itself: We play this smart, men in blue, we gonna kiss some major Washington ass here, boys. We’ll grab that little moppet-diddling Polack and we’ll piss off France and make very happy the yoyos in the Fed who supply some of the financial support to our Los Angeles Police Force, particularly important now that the golden state of California is flat busted broke.

So, when next you view the LA constabulary apes stratching their asses and smelling their paws, remember there are many, many reasons for police action. Some of them are corrupt.

Watch some of Polanski’s best film work:

1962 Nóż w wodzie (Knife in the Water)

1965 Repulsion

1966 Cul-de-Sac

1968 Rosemary's Baby

1974 Chinatown

2002 The Pianist

Could I possibly be asking for special consideration for Roman Polanski, just because he is a great artist, more sinned-against than sinning?

Abso-fucking-lutely!

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Addendum by Bill Casselman Sept. 29, 2009

This morning, Canada's national pro-business newspaper, The Globe & Mail, let loose its shrieking coven of man-hating, toxic female writers and told the girls "Git Polanski!"

First up was some cowardly matron charged with scrawling a suckily anonymous Globe editorial just crammed with man-hate. The solemn editorial deliberately omitted details about how fraudulent Polanski's first trial was. The Globe editorial clerk-typist cared not one whit about the kangaroo-court atmosphere of Polanski's original trial, overseen by a corrupt, publicity-seeking judge (Gonna git me a movie star and a Jew!), a Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office prosecutor who gave the judge instructions on how to sentence Polanski (!!!) and the sluttish girlie who accepted bags of Polanski money that has permitted her to loll in Cleopatrical sumptuousness ever since.

The Globe & Mail states plainly that such abuses of American justice mean nothing. Go after Polanski and bag him like an Arkansas squirrel on stew day. It's the Amurrrican way! And we all love Amerika.

There is not one iota of cogent proof that Polanski's crime was indeed child molestation. There is heavy suspicion that when he fed champagne and Quaaludes to Little Miss Muffet and then had both vaginal and anal sex with her, it was nothing new to her. Mommy or her pimp smelled big Hollywood bucks. That's what may have happened.

This was a so-called "aspiring actress" whose mother or parental entity let a 13-year-old girl attend a "photo shoot" in the sole company of an older male at a Hollywood castle. Nothing weird there, gullible schnooks, is there? The mother never had an inkling that she might be pimping her daughter, just to get hold of some movie money. Of course not!

And what a pious true-blue tower of adolescent integrity the girl was. Within minutes of arriving at Jack Nicholson's Mulholland Drive mansion, Lolita is posing topless and swigging champers. So then she fought like a tigress to defend her young virtue....well maybe that line MIGHT not apply? What about the words "teeny slut," would they apply here?

How, by the way, did Wee Jenny Wren get to Jack Nicholson's Hollywood mansion and end up, so-to-speak, in the hot tub's lubricious bubble bath? Oh, she just happened by, while selling Girl Guide cookies and asking at the door, "Thay, Mister Man, what's a peeeeeeeeenis?"

"Justice is a simple thing," drones the magisterial Globe, shaking its withered dewlaps at all who would disagree. The Nurse Rachett who penned that editorial piffle does not seem to understand that the judicial procedures in the Polanski trial were a criminal sham.

To the Globe editorial page: shame on you. But it is no surprise that, as always, Globe lips protrude as they approach American anus. Let's keep them Yankee tycoons happy. After all, look what they did lately for the world's economy!

Next out onto the jittery and mortgaged vaudeville stage of Globe & Mail misandry galumphs pop writer Lynn Crosbie, or, as I, a regularly appalled reader refer to her: She Who Walks by Night. Wee Lynn, butcher knife in hand, metaphorically lifts Polanski's robe to see if anything swinging can be lopped off. Lynn thinks it dreadful that some men might like 15-year-old girls. Had any lessons about male sexuality lately, Lynn? Mistress Crosbie fails to mention the boodle Polanski paid Samantha, the non-slut girlie, so she could repose in sybaritic luxury.

Crosbie then bids Polanski to stand up like a man and take his punishment. Lynn Baby will, no doubt, secure docket seats for that event. Bet she can just hear those Jew testicles go splat on the floor.

Now it is time for the Globe and Mail to seek the redress of newspaperly balance, to try to find one of their male writers who does not type in a tutu and lace panties, to write a few paragraphs from a point of view other than Lynn Crosbie's mouth-corrugating hatred.

- - - bill casselman

* * * * *

September 29, 2009

V. writes...................

"You wonder why the girl doesn't want him prosecuted? 'Cause he paid her a ton of fucking money in settlement of civil suit and gave her a life no hot little number could ever imagine. There was just this summer a documentary on HBO about Polanski and the judge really did fuck him up. The judge reneged on his deal with P's lawyers because he was getting media heat for the 45 days sentence. Watch the video if you can; the judge is exactly as you describe him.

I agree with all you say."

* * * * *

Stratford Ontario Shakespearean Actors Can't Talk

About the 2009 Season
of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Ontario, Canada


By Bill Casselman

Thursday, August 20, 2009

I have attended hundreds of different performances at Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival since the 1950’s. I remember the tent beside the river. I remember Bruno Gerussi as Julius Caesar.

I remember the first day! I was a precocious eleven years old. Invited by his friend Tyrone Guthrie to join in the premier season, Alec Guinness lived for a brief time in Stratford, Ontario. On July 13, 1953, Guinness spoke the first lines of the first play produced by the festival (Shakespeare’s Richard III): “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” And I remember my first star sighting: Alec Guinness riding a bicycle along a bank of the Avon River one summer morning before a matinee and graciously stopping to autograph a young boy’s souvenir program. I have it still. He was kind enough and crafty enough NOT to ask a boy on a mid-summer morn about school. Instead Alec Guinness asked me what I most liked to play at during “the hols.” I didn’t know what that meant. He explained. I replied that vacation meant paper route, swimming and playing cowboys in the reedy banks of the Grand River.

I remember mighty performances, among the best — Christopher Plummer as King Lear, where thought and actorly attention had been paid to every single line of the text, as Plummer’s intellect moderated his superb stage technique. It was the theater-going highlight of my life. A great actor had THOUGHT about every line and every movement he would make in the play. The Stratford company of stumblebum tv-rejects could not even keep up with Plummer. He buried them. Talk about premature burial. Plummer buried them before they came out on stage. It is always the eternal problem with “a company of players:” half of the no-talents couldn’t read an eye chart, let alone enunciate iambics.

Granted, such theatrical moments are rare. Another, not at Stratford but in Toronto, was Peter Brooks’ 1970 all-white wonder-circus of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Again, every actor knew what every word he or she spoke meant. The play abounds in the sweetest sounds ever to flow from the lips of men. When the high poetry of well-known passages was needed, the actors did not try to scuttle or capsize the poetry or its renown by throwing away the lines. They gloried in Shakepeare’s word cascade.

On the other hand, Stratford actors choose or are instructed to scuttle poetics in every play. It is deeply fucking annoying. Directors bid the actors to toss overboard the poetry, because they know their cast cannot perform it. For largely the same reason, directors may airily decide to set The Tempest in an Albanian pencil factory during World War Two. But why on earth do that? They hope displacement of venue will disguise inability to speak Shakespearean verse with aplomb, with ease, and with poetic flair.

Even this summer, an otherwise journeyman job of Macbeth by Colm Feore was poisoned, as Feore took every famous passage and sank it with deliberately prolonged and unnatural pauses, deflationary delivery and all the other shabby tricks of the thespian who knows the audience knows the lines and their delight in the words must be destroyed somehow, so that the audience will not be able to judge just how poorly the actor is delivering the known lines. This tattiness is SO counterproductive to good theater.

These familiar lines in Macbeth are well-known because they are lines of the greatest poetry ever written in English. So, here we are together in a theater, and what does Colm Feore as Macbeth do? Everything in his stage power to render the soaring poetry as flat and stale as he can make it. Fuck you, Feore! I paid to hear the poetry, not to see you wag your dick, you pompous buffoon. No matter what you think, lean little Colmy, you do not know Macbeth better than Shakespeare did. So shut the fuck up with your gulps and neck-twistings and insertive pausings and let me hear the poetry!

Now I know this drab-on-purpose delivery is a so-called “modern” style. It’s supposed to make Shakespeare more realistic. Realistic! Ghosts and fairies and Ariel and Puck. Shakespeare is not realism. It is high poetic drama. Another reason for the flat delivery of Shakespearean lines is a reaction against the excessive declamatory speech-style of Victorian and Edwardian actors. But that was long ago, kiddies. Present-day directors and actors have gone too far to the other extreme, where not a shred of the bard’s verbal beauty is permitted to be heard on stage. To many audience members, including me, this abandonment is a huge piss-off.

May I suggest that next summer the whole Stratford company of actors tries something new? Deliver the poetry, as poetry: sweet, mellifluous, dulcifluent. You actors, do not run and hide from musical English, but instead let us hear it, every sonorous syllable of his honeyed verse, spoken in melodious rills of utterance ? Do you know what would happen? Pleasure. The pleasure of the poetic text heard by the audience. Not the annoyance of the audience listening to Colm Feore try to derail the engine of every great Macbeth speech. You did not make the speech more realistic, Feore. You just covered up the poetry with plebe-tongued gibberish and prole Band-aids.

Do you know why actors prefer the staid, club-footed approach, the sounds-like-real-speech approach to Shakespearean delivery? Because it is easier to do than learning to speak exquisite poetry. One can even hear some rump-fed scuzzoid thinking, Screw that high-falutin’ talk. Oberon oughta sound jes’ like he were born in Watts. No, he should not, you semi-literate, Ebonics-honking guttersnipe. And, until you learn to speak theatrical verse, get the fuck off a stage I am paying for!

Now to this season at Stratford, Ontario: mediocrity’s parade. A Lady Macbeth played by an actress so awkward in the mere enunciation of English sentences that the theatergoer could watch her straining just to pronounce a rich, complex Shakespearean pentameter, straining to make lips move, lips that had never paid any attention to English words before, except as a dialect slur, a Lady Macbeth who had not the slightest idea of what the words she uttered meant, so unused to speaking clearly that it was an evident, painful burden for her to even form and speak aloud polysyllabic English words. Outrageous! And the management of Stratford wants Broadway show prices for us Canadian sheep of the audience to watch this untalented woman learn how to speak our language. Out-fucking-rageous!

It was not as bad as the effeminate Macbeth a few seasons ago, where the audience feared not that a lisping Macbeth would stab Banquo to death, but that he would fuck Banquo to death.

I will not go on, except for this final thought. What is missing from most productions at Stratford, Ontario is any sense of urgency to succeed. We are subsidized, they seem to whisper. So it doesn’t matter if the play fails. And the director is the bumboy of someone in Stratford management. So he gets a get-out-of-jail-free card too, no matter what abortive stage slop he turns in this season. Consequently, everyone is under-rehearsed. Scant thought is paid to meaning, delivery, technique. Even the sets are getting shabby at Stratford. Did you notice Mark Antony standing to give his Roman funeral oration this year on - - - unpainted plywood!

What I do not understand is: what exactly did these amateur stumblebums who comprise the majority of the Stratford company, what did they learn to do in theater school?

They can’t speak; they can’t move; they can’t understand complex texts.

Of course, they have the other unfortunate burden of being — ugly. Yes, these little gardens of effeminacy and acne will never get to act on television. But if they are going to parade about the theater world sticking their snotty little nose-jobbed noses in the air and proclaiming that they are too sensitive for the vulgarities of television and film, these effete Geiger-counters of mincing delicacy, they might at least learn how to speak and move on stage, sometime before they charge us one hundred dollars per seat to watch their cow-tongued and butterfingered revels.


Bill Casselman

..........................

P. K. replies to this column:

My friend Wendy, a brilliant Shakespearean actress, sent me this note on
Facebook after I made her read your rant: "I'm going to marry your friend Bill Casselman - make him come to New York!"

Reply to this blog

Sandy said...

Let me guess the word of the day.

Is it 'OLD'?
Or 'CROTCHETY'?
Or 'POMPOUS'?
Or 'BITTER'?
Or 'UGLY'?

Your name dropping, profanity laced 'review' says a lot about your character, and none of it is good. I certainly wouldn't want to know you, let alone sit next to you at the theatre.

In these times when arts are struggling we need people who celebrate them- that does not mean they shouldn't have critical commentary, but this long winded diatribe is unwarrented.

Do us all a favor and crawl back under whatever rock you came from.

August 22, 2009 2:20 PM

Old, Crotchety, Pompous, Bitter Bill Casselman replies:

Dear Sweet Little Airhead Sandy –

Thanks for telling us the method by which we make things better at Stratford.

Keep lying, eh, Sandy-Wandy. We should celebrate the arts even when they are defective shit.

My diatribe is precisely warranted. The actors must learn how to speak.

Keep being a ditsy asskisser and spend the rest of your life looking out through pulled-over wool.

Yours for truth,

Evil, Lizard-Like Bill Casselman

August 22, 2009 4:40 pm

Another reply:

L.P. emails: " Now this is the Bill we've all grown to love.
How refreshing to read a contrarian critique.

Would that we'd seen Macbeth this year. Well, perhaps not. "

ducKy Boyd said...

Rockin'! Nice to see someone with the balls to say it like it is. I much prefer to see Shakespeare done "classically", not in this "modern interpretation" nonsense. It's more interesting and makes you LISTEN, whereas this "let's make it current" crap turns it all into spectacle and takes away from the words. Good on ya!

August 25, 2009 12:49 AM

Anonymous said...

This rant reminds me of a joke. A wag is walking down the street, smoking a pipe when he is approached by a homeless man for change... to which the wag replies:

"Sorry my good man... Neither a borrower or a lender be. William Shakespeare." Said the wag with a patronizing grimace.
To which the homeless man responded "Fuck you, you fucking cocksucker... David Mamet."

But I must admit Colin Feore's "Eubonic" approach to classical text has gotten out of hand... the night I saw Macbeth... instead of the dagger speech he just said "Yo I gotz ice this Motherfucka' 2night, I gotz to get paid." Added to this his incessant use of the "N" bomb when referring affectionately to Mc Duff, indeed any of his cohorts was slightly jarring... and doing a major disservice to the poetry... although I am a big fan of random expletives like how they are use in this article... I think Colin Feore should "De Blackify" his cadence... when Christopher Plummer would add a swearword or two to Shakespeare's work, it was often "Fucking queer" or "Silly Cunt".. something very caucasian, hence more in tune with "the Immortal bard of Avon's, TM" intentions...

August 25, 2009 8:36 PM

"Amusing and racist rant" wrote, about this piece, J. Kelly Nestruck, Theater Critic, Globe & Mail on Twitter.




"The racism completely detracts from his argument." Says Sol Chrom on Twitter.

Sol, my little brains' trust, the racism IS my argument! Bill Casselman



Keith Thomasek runs a pussyfooting, suckhole website called FestivalReviews. As long as the opinions are timid, well-behaved, brief, and not terribly well written, Keith vets and allows them on. Keith got in touch with me recently. I wrote a 1,000 word column (the one above) especially for his site. He read it and could not bring himself to publish it, because it spoke frankly about black actors at Stratford this summer who can't speak English sentences, never mind enunciate Shakespearean verse. Dat be baaaddd! U mus nebber say dat.

Our tinted brethren are always correct and always talented; to imply otherwise is utter racism. Is that how we shall make these actors learn their verbal crafts? I think not.

What is left of Keith's heart is in the right place. But it is now obvious what will not be allowed on FestivalReviews, namely, any insights that are vivid, bold and corrective. Kiki, like so many other amateur thumb-twiddlers, crouched on the edge of Canadian showbiz trying to find their balls, can't.

by Bill Casselman August 27, 2009