FLUNKING OUT OF INFLUENCER CLASS

 

Scotland. Just don't ask me where, it all
looks the same to me.

Last week, my wife, daughter, and I returned from a driving journey around Scotland. The country is as beautiful as the travel videos promise, even as the clouds in the Highlands tend to hide the top of whatever landscape you're looking at. (As with the US, the southern part of Scotland was warm and sunny.)

You like mountains? Hoo boy, have they got mountains! Like, the way New York has pigeon droppings. (I'm comparing the amount, by the way.) You get a kick out of sheep? There seem to be towns that have more ovis than homosapiens. And the food! Everything I'm not supposed to eat they serve in abundance. I loved it, even if my upcoming bloodwork lands me on my hematologist's "bad patient" list. 

If you're in the mood for a
Highland fling.

And yet with all things Scottish surrounding me, what did I make time for? Looking at my credit card app.  Restaurants, hotels, my Highland cow underwear briefs -- the sun never set on a day when my card wasn't paid off, clean and clear.

This isn't my usual routine. When I'm in the safe confines of home, I pay off cards only once a week. If you think even that's a bit much, I'll have you know our money manager does the same thing. 

All this influences me to do is congratulate
myself for making coffee at home.

What do he and I have in common? We're old, unlike the 24% of Gen Zers who "experience intense pressure to display material wealth on social media", according to a recent piece published on The Hill. This "material wealth" ranges from overpriced lattes with flower-shaped foam to first-class airline seats paid for over time, either with 20% APR or an interest-free, four-month installment plan. I remember reading one Gen Zer breathlessly explaining the latter as "essentially getting it for free!" Not when you get hit with a charge on the 17th of every month, it isn't.

I've seen these "influencers" around New York. They're always young women who appear to have spent an hour applying make-up before leaving the house and wearing expensive duds they put on the four-month payment plan, while taking selfies with their phones held high, often with their lips puckered like those of Daisy Duck.

My 30-year-old daughter doesn't fall into this category. A few weeks ago, she was able to move from her three-bedroom apartment she shared with two friends to an affordable Brooklyn studio apartment all by herself, while working one full-time and one part-time job, paying off her college loan, and tithing to her savings account every payday.  Ask her if she thinks dropping seven bucks every day on a latte is a wise way to live. 

You had me at "Bonjour". 

As for me, I've had a Blu-ray (pictured on the left) in my Amazon cart for a few days. The only reason I'm even considering buying it is that my wife enjoys French movies. And if I have to watch a French movie with her, it might as well be on the old side. 

But it's non-essential. It waits in my cart until the time I pull the trigger -- which might not ever happen, even though it costs less than three lattes. Ergo, I don't appear to be in the influencer class. 

Pity, then, you'll never see me modeling my Highland cow briefs. Pity my wife will.

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REMAKE, REMODEL

 

Soon to become the Paramount Apartments?

What happens to a company town when the company leaves? Detroit provides an answer. Los Angeles could be next.

You may have heard that the Ellison family has threatened to move Paramount and Warner Bros. from Hollywood to the more welcoming corral of Austin, Texas if the merger isn't approved. 

Everybody sing: Hooray for Bayonne-wood!

It's not like the movie business hasn't been moving for years anyway. Paramount has already signed a 10-year deal to use soundstages at 1888 Studios in -- what the? -- Bayonne, New Jersey when construction is finished in 2028. Its art deco design will hark back to the movie industry's golden age -- which, if you want to get all technical, started in New Jersey.  The area on which it stands includes 22 acres of the surrounding harbor, where even more stages will be constructed on barges. Beat that, Burbank!

View of downtown, fully furnished,
move-in-ready.

I have no dog in this fight. Yes, I have a good friend in L.A. who works in "the industry" but I believe (or hope) he's been working steadily. And it isn't like Universal, Disney, and the others will fold their gilded tents overnight and move out. Yet if you scroll through enough videos of what downtown Los Angeles looks like these days, you'd think the place was dead already.

Television production has already been sneaking out the back door. It seems like for every series filmed in L.A., there's another filming in New York, New Jersey, Canada, or, in the case of the Fox sitcom Going Dutch, Ireland. Yes, it's cheaper to film an American TV series in Ireland than keeping the all-American cast in L.A. Want to hear something screwier? The show takes place in the Netherlands. 

Ship to shore no more.

Risk-averse studios being so fond of remakes begs the question: Could Hollywood remake itself? Such a thing can be done. I know, because I come from a town that was forced to do such a thing: Newport, RI.

Rewind to 1973. Pres. Richard Nixon orders the Navy Base closed after 143 years of patriotic service. Somewhere between 14,000 to 18,000 jobs were lost, sending local unemployment up 20% and costing a billion dollars to the economy. Even the Secretary of the Navy, hauled before Congress by Sen. John Pastore, admitted it wasn't necessarily a good idea. Officially, it was a cost-cutting measure, but suspicious locals claimed Nixon was still ticked off Rhode Island voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. 

Newport as I don't want to remember it.

Newporters went into a panic. What would they do without all those swabbies throwing their money around at the bars, tattoo parlors, and hookers? (I don't know for a fact there was sex trade in Newport, but where there's a horny military man...)

As the last ship sailed, the locals took a second look and realized that in depending only the Navy Base and summer tourists, they had allowed much of the city, especially the downtown shopping district, go to seed. 

Almost makes me want to visit the old place again.
Almost.

Over the next few years, the downtown area underwent a radical transformation. Rickety storefronts were razed, replaced by shiny new businesses. A new road made transportation easier, streets were cleaned, and shoppers returned.

As tourism gradually became a year-round business, Revolutionary War-era houses were restored and repainted, to resemble their original selves. The long-gone Jazz and Folk Festivals returned, this time on sunny afternoons along the water, all ages welcome. No longer was the Newport Creamery the epitome of fine dining, not with all the classy restaurants popping up along Thames Street. Even my crumbling old high school was rebuilt. 

Ignore this, however.

Newport completely remade itself -- and it took a potential disaster like the Navy Base to

do it. 

Now I'm not comparing my hometown to L.A., even if it does have something called NewportFilm, described as "A year-round documentary film organization presenting screenings, filmmaker conversations, and educational programs." But if those provincial folks could revitalize their city, surely the cosmopolitan Angelenos are capable of something similar. A brand-spanking new Navy Base could do the trick! 

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A GALA DAY IS TOO MUCH

What has the Met done to
deserve this?

If you're unfamiliar with the Met Gala, consider yourself lucky. Ostensibly a classy, high society fundraising event for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's costume division, it has devolved over the years into a fashion freak show for celebrities, B-listers with big followings, and the incurable viruses known as Kardashians. 

For this, we have Anna Wintour to "thank". Wintour, whose windshield-sized sunglasses and official job title as Vogue magazine's "Global Chief Content Creator", offer a hint at how insecure the poor woman is. (Watch the documentary The September Issue to see how her medical and professorial siblings look down upon her. It almost makes one feel sorry for the fashionista.)

The Gala occurs on the first Monday of May, although next year's event has already made headlines for the wrong reasons, seeing that it was going to honor fashion designer John Galliano. I'm not sure anyone outside his industry had heard of him until 2010. That was when, within a day or two, he allegedly insulted a Jewish museum curator and an Asian man, and definitely delivered his infamous "I love Hitler" routine. Definitely, because it was caught on video. And saying it in Paris, the city of Nazi collaborators? The chef's kiss.

Forget about loving Hitler; this guy
was to be honored for his fashion
sense?

In short order, Johnny-boy -- whose own fashion style seems to be "expensive Halloween costumes" -- lost his job at Dior and was put on trial for antisemitic abuse. The usual excuses for his behavior -- "work-related stress" and "multiple addictions" -- were trotted out like a past-its-prime racehorse. To my eyes and ears, that video shows a guy with zero stress, even if it is the wine slurring.

After a two year "self-loathing" penance, Galliano got a gig at Oscar de la Renta, thanks to the intervention of -- guess who! -- Anna Wintour. In the intervening years, he returned to the good graces of the fashion world because, y'know, he draws nice clothes and dresses like a drunken pirate. 

So Wintour decided that enough time had passed to honor fashion's most outspoken asshole -- which is no mean feat -- especially since he had gotten the Anti-Defamation League's "resolve and not repeat the sin" blessing in 2013. In announcing the Gala's honor of Galliano, Wintour said: 

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano. [...] He’s a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment—something that he will live with for the rest of his life. The exhibition won’t shy away from any of the darkness in John’s past. It’s part of what has shaped him. The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.”

Kanye on the runway.

Saying "I love Hitler" and telling Jewish people they would have been gassed is part of what shaped him? Well goddamn, Anna, that's right up there with Kanye West's c.v.

But wait, there's more! Wintour forgot that her Galliano wingding was going to happen on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Since this is the fashion world, it's unclear whether such a gaffe is ironic or appropriate.

"Hello, Page Six? You'll never guess what
that old bat is up to now!"

By now, you're probably wondering why nobody at Wintour's office didn't mention that this event might not be a good look for her, Vogue, or the Met museum. If you've seen The Devil Wears Prada 1 or 2, you already know the answer: her underlings were too afraid. So they did the next best thing by making off-the-record-cover-their-asses phone calls to the New York Post. 

Deciding that this wasn't the kind of comeback he was hoping for, Galliano Galliano's lawyer put out a statement announcing he was bowing out so as to not "place the Met in a difficult position" -- showbiz for Don't fire me, I'll quit, it's a better look for me. 

For the love of God, somebody please throw a pie
at their faces.

And as for Anna? The woman who said no designer was no more deserving of
the honor? Her official statement on the Met's site says, "John's decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is. I believe this is the right decision, and both he and the Museum have my full support" -- showbiz for Let him take the fall for my stupid decisions, it's a better look for me. 

So who's the second-most deserving designer Wintour could honor? Hey, Kanye West's side-hustle is fashion design, maybe he's available. 

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THEY SAY THE NEON LIGHTS ARE BRIGHT...

More like "oldest shows still running".

While waiting for my bulgur and millet porridge to heat, I took a break from
listening to the UK news and turned my attention stateside. Specifically, NPR's 25-minute deep dive that can be boiled down to Whatsamatter with Broadway, Anyway? The two people interviewed were a lawyer and a "Broadway sensitivity specialist". 

Well, there's your answer. Producers shell out good money on shysters and people who create fancy-sounding job titles that nobody can understand. Well, that and A-list movie stars (Denzel Washington, George Clooney) and B-list pop singers (Mel B, JoJo, and others you haven't heard of) getting paid sky-high salaries, leading to outrageous ticket prices which go sky-higher via Ticketmaster, StubHub, and other bandits.

Other problems mentioned were the plethora of revivals, the dearth of new quality plays, and stars needing to take time off due to "exhaustion" -- or what Alan King referred to as "the rich man's disease."

They didn't even have time to change out of
their pajamas.

Exhaustion -- hah! If only they went through what the Four Marx Brothers did in 1929, filming The Cocoanuts in Astoria during the day, then doing Animal Crackers onstage in the evening. And three of them had to commute from Long Island for the pleasure of driving themselves to the brink of nervous breakdown.

High salaries and yet another revival of Death of a Salesman aside, allow me to offer my own problem, at least with musicals: nobody writes great songs anymore.

It seems like a dream now, but there was a time -- early 1930s to mid-1960s -- when musicals featured songs that became hits. Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, followed by the likes of Lerner & Lowe, Rodgers & Hammerstein -- giants of the theater world whose music became part of the American landscape like Mt. Rushmore. 

My toes are tapping already.

Somebody can correct me, but it seems like the last time a Broadway show tune
song became a massive hit you couldn't escape was "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music in 1973. Only the most rabid theater fan could name any song from Wicked, Maybe Happy Ending, The Great Gatsby, The Lost Boys, Two Strangers, and whatever else was running lately. The only shows with familiar songs are either based on movies (The Lion King) or are of the jukebox genre (Just in Time). 

Giants one roamed Times Square.

If you want a real shock, go the YouTube page of filmmaker Max Hechtman and watch his "supercuts" of the 1961 and 2021 movie versions of West Side Story's production numbers. You'll know the songs immediately and will probably recall most if not all the lyrics. Now imagine what opening night audiences at the Winter Garden felt in 1957. That's what happens when you have Stephen Sondheim writing the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein composing the music. 

Wicked can run from now until climate change burns down the Gershwin Theater. The movie version can be remade as a CGI cartoon and turned into a streaming series, and none of the songs will have the massive cultural impact as any one of West Side Story's numbers. 

Maybe next time NPR wants to figure out Broadway's problems, they can interview the ushers -- you know, the people who watch the shows night after night. They might have a better p.o.v. than the sensitivity specialists. 

Irony alert: "Send in the Clowns" is the one Sondheim number I never liked.

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YOU CAN'T SING WITHOUT OPENING YOUR MOUTH

Hey don't forget, a bunch of swell women, too!

In 1938, the sponsor of Bob Hope's radio series switched from Woodbury Soap to
Pepsodent. Hope, already known for political jokes, received only one piece of advice from his new boss: "Remember, Democrats and Republicans brush their teeth." 

What he was saying, of course, was Take it easy, don't offend our customers. 

Boy, does that seem quaint now. Social media has allowed celebrities to clue us in as to how they vote, what they support, and, in the case of John Leguizamo, who they don't want watching their movies. You'd think he'd appreciate the irony of making money off people who would like to arrest him, but they're already "boycotting" The Odyssey for political reasons, anyway.

Bruce Springsteen is now catching flack from right-wingers who are offended that he's taken stands against ICE shooting innocent Americans, the wannabe dictator in the White House, and his corrupt enablers who are doing their best to prevent a fair election. Only in 2026 America can this be considered divisive.

Greetings from Bristol, TN

The former fans who have turned their back on their former Boss clearly weren't listening to the lyrics back when Springsteen was still an Asbury Park phenom. Any lyric about "the working man" is political. (Even Tennessee Ernie Ford's "16 Tons" -- St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go/I owe my soul to the company store -- could have been a Springsteen song.) 

That would have been made clear when he released "Born in the USA" in
1984...if he had made a point of enunciating the lyrics in an acoustic version rather than yelling them incomprehensively over an anthemic arrangement that rivalled "Born to Run" for sheer bombast.

Which, in my humble conspiratorial opinion, was the whole idea. Make sure the title was sung clear as the noonday sun, while the rest of the song -- about a Vietnam vet who returns to the USA without a job or anybody who really cares -- could be shouted out at concerts by fratboys as "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah", and referred to by then-President Reagan as a "message of hope". As in Bruce and the producer hoping it would go to number one. 

Nah, he's not really pissing on the flag.

What's different now is that Bruce is explicitly political, on and offstage. It's a road that Mick Jagger recently said he doesn't take: "The bottom thing, really, is that my job in the live music world [for] those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can. For two hours or whatever it is, to forget all their problems of the world and their mortgages and whatever, just to give them the best time they can have." 

Well yeah, so does Bruce Springsteen. The difference is, the Rolling Stones' music was never political. People who tell Bruce to "shut up and sing" don't listen to him anyway -- or, if they ever did, never really paid attention to any of his lyrics that didn't include "car" or "drive". 

Springsteen fans eagerly come out for every album, every concert, every TV appearance because they know what he's saying. They agree with him. Democrats and Republicans both listen to music, but, as with toothpaste, ultimately prefer their own products. 

PS: The only Springsteen recordings I've ever owned are the 12-inch remix of "Dancing in the Dark" and an early mix bootleg of "Born to Run" that's even more bombastic and overstuffed than the single he eventually released. Many of his fans loathed the former due to its synth-dance arrangement, and would probably gag at the latter. I get a kick out of them. Ergo, I'm not a real fan.

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LOTSA BOTS

I have a rough idea of how many people read this blog. Some receive updates either from me or Blogger itself. Many of those readers forward certain pieces, usually involving politics, culture, or movies to friends who might enjoy them. And I can tell when the friends forward them to others. 

Once in a while there's a spike when either a piece really hits home, or a bunch of bots try to leave a comment without bypassing the "prove you're a human" page. But in the past week, my review of the 1958 drama Cop Hater, published five years ago, appears to have caught on in an alarming way, as this graph shows:

In the early hours of July 17, Cop Hater bounced from zero (where it had been for three weeks) to 250 and stayed in that general area for the next five days. As I write this (July 23, 1:00 P.M.), it's currently at 75. The total number -- 1,220 -- is primarily from that time frame.

Yeah, I wouldn't trust this crew.

No other piece has seen this happen during those five days. When similar weird spikes happened many years ago, they coincided with a rise in readers bots from Hong Kong, Russia, and a few Eastern European countries. This week, the majority of hits --35% -- have come from the U.S., followed by Singapore at 17%. The other countries are in the single digits. 

Is it possible all these Cop Hater hits are coming from Singapore? Well,
Singapore Business Review reports that bots account for 50.4% of internet traffic in that country. Of that amount, 45% are "malicious".  That sounded like Singapore would be the likely source, although note the phrase "in that country" rather than "from". 

A little more nosing around brought me to a recently published piece from something called SUURV, which in itself sounded pretty sus. But the headline definitely was the real deal:

Aha! Those Singaporeans were the culprits after all! You can read the how and whys here if you're interested (and if you, too, have noticed a sudden interest from a country you have never thought of without the word "Sling" following it). 

The SUURV columnist gives some helpful advice on how to stop the Singapore bot numbers from showing up on the blog, but I'm not likely not follow it. Not only do I not understand what he's talking about, I get a kick out of seeing how some mindless bots are trying to convince me to do whatever it is they want me to do.

But this leaves a very important question: Of all the movies that could have been chosen as their prime target, why Cop Hater? What was wrong with Ingagi, Myrt and Marge, or I Am Suzanne! 

To you it's for exercise. To the police in
Singapore, it's advice not to commit 
another crime.

Well, plenty, I suppose, but that's not the point. Something about Cop Hater -- or the title -- drew the attention of these bots or their programmers. Maybe even the police force itself. There's a site devoted entirely to three countries that use corporal punishment with a rotan for certain crimes -- in Singapore's case, 47 of them.                                                             Sounds like nasty business, to be sure, but Singapore also has one of the world's lowest cases of violent crime, to quote the site, "partly no doubt because the authorities have managed to make the island almost entirely gun-free" (not to mention gum-free, also!).

The weapon so nice, he named it twice.

Weigh the choice. In exchange for getting rid of guns, and thus having a very low rate of violent crime in return, would you be good with your local police force using what James Brown called a licking stick?                                                                          But we're getting off topic. Why Cop Hater? Who's responsible? And will Kash Patel come for me after his next bender?                   

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FRIENDS TO THE END (OF THE CHARGE)

You can forget about this, too.

 It's an adage as old as the hills: money can't buy friends. 

Sez you! All one needs is anywhere from $18,000 to $146,000 for the best bestie you could ever had. And that's just a one-time payment! Sure, it's pricey, but here's the beauty part: unlike your current friends, they'll never dump their problems on you. 

In fact, you can complain about anything you want, from your stupid boss to how your parents screwed you up by feeding you spinach out of a can. Not only won't they mind being used as an emotional garbage disposal, they'll nod and agree with everything you say. Now that's a friend. Oh, and did I say they're incredibly good-looking? 

Quick, which looks more human?

All you need to do in return is recharge them every few hours. For these perfect friends are robots, courtesy of
UBTech Robotics from, where else, China. You can tell they're Chinese-made because they look like your typical dreamboat anime cartoon characters -- not quite Asian, not quite white, but 100% hunh?

The idea behind these "ultrabionic companions" is that some people, particularly those who have been marked with the curse "May you live a long life", have seen friends and relatives exit stage right, left, and in between. Finally, they can have a friend or loved one who will never wither and die. (That's where the recharging comes in.) 

There's a joke to be made about incels
and "chest sensors" but you make one
up yourself.

This isn't to say only old people have all the fun. We hear plenty about the "loneliness epidemic" affecting all ages. Now those Gen Zers can put their winnings from crypto, gaming, and gambling to good use. 

What young man wouldn't love a girlfriend who didn't roll their eyes in utter boredom while he explained in mind-numbing detail about becoming the champion at the latest PlayStation Tournament? Someone who blinked her eyes like a doe, dressed like a classy 19th-century prostitute, and had the face of a girl who may or may not be at the age of consent? 

And if she's not? Who cares? There's no law against having impure thoughts about a robot!

Go ahead, ladies, take as many pictures as you
want. He doesn't care. Except about you.

And listen up, young women! You, too, can have the man of your dreams. And
not some A.I. Romeo who communicates only via text. Their cyborg sweetie speaks softly, gives a "tell me more" tilt of the head when you share secrets you wouldn't mention to a therapist, and never tries to fix your problems. He's there to listen, with no strings attached. Why can't all men be like robots?

And their clothing choices are just as
ridiculous as humans'.

And if it's a loved one you miss, not a problem. UBTech will create a duplicate for you with the help of photos and recordings. I know plenty of people who would be happy never to see certain people from their past ever again but to each their own. 

So far, 13,000 humanoid-hungry people have put in orders for simple, table-top armless companions whose bodies end at the navel, up to the real-life kinds that walk and wave their hands. I'm not sure which is creepier.

Killjoy therapists believe robo-pals will only worsen the problems lonely people already have. But as an Al-Jazeera reporter assures us, "The firm believes the business case is sound." Nice to see China embrace capitalism so heartily! As long as lonely people have five or six figures to drop on plastic, wires, and chips wrapped up in pseudo-skin, it seems the only companion that UBTech's president needs is a good money manager. 

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A VARIETY OF TOPICS

Doesn't matter if you're on the left or right -- everybody says Hollywood (the catchall word for all things showbiz) isn't what it used to be. But has the entertainment world really changed all that much? Let's thumb through the October 2, 1929 issue of "the Bible of show business" Variety to see.

You can't turn on any news program without another actor or politician complaining about the possible merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. And yet, it almost happened in 1929-- the same month that Fox Film was going to take over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The only that stopped these mergers from happening? The stock market crash three weeks later. Like they say, Timing is everything. Honest to God, the idea of a contemporary studio still called Paramount-Vitaphone would have been the greatest thing ever. 

But this merger went through. RKO and Pathe weren't going to let the
destruction of our financial system stop them! And nobody cared about no damn merger!

Remember when pop stars Britney Spears, Amanda Byrnes, Drew Barrymore, and Selena Gomez were provided with room & board at psych wards? Maria Orska, star of German stage and screen, got there before they did. 

Think stage plays today have a tough time turning a profit? The Casino Theatre in Newport, RI says, "Hold my Narragansett."

A day doesn't go by without protests regarding A.I. taking the jobs of real people like carpenters and set designers. But the Schufftan film process had a head start. 

Tell me about it! Have you seen The Real Housewives of Boise?

What's the difference between having to pay for a livestream of a lousy, 27-second heavyweight boxing match and buying a movie ticket for the privilege a week later? (Answer: about 40 bucks.)

Nothing changes in the Motherland. You'd they'd catch on that their people just wanna have веселье. (That's "fun" for all you running dog capitalists.)

Admittedly, this is more political than showbiz, but -- are you listening, Mayor Mamdani?

Killing workers over the stupidest things is an American tradition.

Suing people over the stupidest things is an American tradition.

This is from four years earlier, but I couldn't resist. Threatening to deport people for the stupidest reasons is an American tradition.

                                                                

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TRASH TALK

God save the King.

 As we await conspiracy theories involving the death of Lindsey Graham -- personally, I think he drove off a cliff after misplacing his moral compass -- let us turn to the Goon Show-style antics otherwise known as British politics. 

Nigel Farage, a self-styled "man of the people", got himself elected as Member of Parliament via the Donald Trump route: pretending to be a right-wing populist while being part of the establishment he was ostensibly campaigning against. His Reform Party was catching on in a big way until it was discovered Farage had accepted £5 million from a British crypto bro. 

Even the Brits know how to make "the
politician face".

Farage, a clever lad from Farnborough, huffily stated he didn't have to declare the money because it was a "gift" and not a campaign donation. Unlike Trump's MAGA zombies and the Republican party in general, Farage's "explanation" didn't go over well with anyone in any UK political party. 

Instead of simply retreating to his estate in order to write his unread and unreadable memoirs, he resigned and called for a by-election in Clacton (could anything sound more British?) with himself in the running. 

This puts a temporary halt to the Parliamentary investigation into his finances. Farage is convinced that he'll win, giving him the chance to say something like, "The people have spoken, so an investigation into my sketchy finances is a waste of taxpayer's shillings."

The "establishment" parties quite rightly consider this a dodgy wheeze, and refuse to run their own candidates against him. Therefore, it was up to a real man of the people to give Farage a run for his £5 million. Enter Count Binface, the 5,900-year-old "intergalactic warrior" from the planet Sigma IX, who covers his face with a garbage bin.

Bin there, done that.

Wait, I know what you're going to say: How can someone from another planet
represent Clacton? And isn't he a little old for the job? 

Read his platform before judging. Outside of the more attention-getting promises -- nationalizing Adele, force lawbreaking bicyclists to ride unicycles, renaming the London Bridge to Phoebe Waller Bridge -- there are others no politician would touch. Requiring water company execs to swim in polluted rivers "to see how they like it"; banning "loud snacks" from theatres; and demanding "trains that work" 

Count Binface au naturel.

If a candidate in New York made these promises, they'd get elected in a heartbeat. And as things stand now, the same might be true in the UK, where Count Binface is beating Farage in the polls 33% to 21%. Yesterday, one of the British news shows I listen to reported that betting parlors that had Binface's chance at 500-1 a month ago are now putting the odds at 5-1. Nigel Farafe must really be what the Brits call a prat.

And here's what's funnier. It's no secret that Count Binface is really a comedian named Jonathan David Harvey. And that if he were to win, the biggest problem is that MPs are not allowed to wear suits of armor or non-religious headgear. 

Let's see David Muir try this.

Still funnier? Watching "news readers" keep a straight face while conducting serious interviews with a guy wearing a garbage can on his head. Damn, I love the British style. 

Political nerds around the world will slavishly watch the results of the by-election in Clacton on August 13. And although even Count Binface himself doesn't expect to win, neither did Donald Trump in 2016. Let this be a lesson to so-called political experts everywhere: forcing polluters to swim in their own waste has a certain appeal. Don't count out the Count!

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