For his work directing Back To The Future and its sequels, as well as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the 10-year old me considered him the greatest helmsman in the history of Hollywood.

The Academy shared my high esteem after Zemeckis masterminded the epic Forrest Gump, marshalling totems from four decades of Americana into one gigantic Hanksathon that thrilled viewers and critics alike. He was named the Best Director of 1994.

Unfortunately, Zemeckis’ career soon began to turn for the worse.

Maybe it was some kind of alien signal that infiltrated his mind while filming Contact, which was pretty good except for the totally implausible McConaughey character. His next film, What Lies Beneath, was probably the most cliche-ridden film I’ve seen in all my days, and what’s worse, Zemeckis was fronting like he could hang with Hitchcock. Then came the grueling Cast Away, a desperate play for Oscar glory with FedEx ads plastered all over it.

All this was merely prologue to the horrid turn his career would soon take. Zemeckis decided that motion-capture technology was the future, and used it to adapt The Polar Express. The result was a melange of creepy looking figures prancing about on the screen, destroying my childhood memories of the classic Christmas book and replacing them with uncanny valley nightmares.

Despite the tepid critical response, Big Z then doubled down on the technology, using Disney funding to build his own studio. His continued his appalling rampage by cranking out the blasphemous motion-capture edition of Beowulf and then moving on to last winter’s Christmas Carol adaptation with a bizarre Jim Carrey-alike in the role of Scrooge.

Zemeckis then hit rock bottom when he went public with demands that Oscar create its own category for the horrible motion-capture films that he and only he is interested in making.

Mere weeks later, Jim Cameron’s Avatar not only beat him at his own game, it completely wiped his studio off the map. Cameron re-invented the special effects that Zemeckis spent a decade beating into the ground — Cameron insisted on calling his technology “performance capture” to distinguish it from Zemeckis’ abominations — and embarrassed him at the box office.

Now, Disney has shut down Zemeckis’ studio and sent him packing. The arrogant manner in which Zemeckis squandered his talent has long enraged me, but today I smile.

Finally, justice has been served.

The beginning of Zemeckis’ downfall was the aforementioned What Lies Beneath. This movie’s twist was that Harrison Ford was the bad guy, despite the fact that we have been conditioned to trust him over the first two acts of the movie, not to mention two decades of filmgoing.

That’s fine, but Zemeckis pooped all over the audience by giving the twist away in the theatrical trailer. His theory? People WANT to know the ending before they go to see the movie. Fuck you, Zemeckis!

Don’t even get me started on his pretentions to make a Hitchcockian thriller, all the while copping out with a supernatural plot that neatly ties up the loose ends of a preposterous story.

Ebert executed an excellent takedown of this turd of a film:

There’s a bag of tricks that skillful horror directors use, and they’re employed here by Robert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump”), who has always wanted, he says, to make a suspense film–”perhaps the kind of film Hitchcock would have done in his day,” according to his producer, Jack Rapke. Hitchcock would not, however, have done this film in his day or any other day, because Hitchcock would have insisted on rewrites to remove the supernatural and explain the action in terms of human psychology, however abnormal.

[...]

I’ve tried to play fair and not give away plot elements. That’s more than the ads have done. The trailer of this movie thoroughly demolishes the surprises; if you’ve seen the trailer, you know what the movie is about, and all of the suspense of the first hour is superfluous for you, including major character revelations. Don’t directors get annoyed when they create suspense and the marketing sabotages their efforts?

Actually, Zemeckis boasted about his trailer technique in promotional press for the film!

This arrogant “I understand the moviegoing public better than the critics” attitude led him to fart his career away over the following decade. After his failed attempt to recapture Oscar glory with Cast Away, Zemeckis went down the motion-capture rabbit hole, into a dark place…and dragged movie viewers down with him.

The beauty of Chris Van Allsburg’s “The Polar Express” is its magical realism, epitomized by its famous concept of a bell that can only be heard by those that believe in Santa Claus. The illustrations in this Caldecott-winning book are superb and evocative. In short, it is a genius piece of storytelling, enhanced by tremendous artistic talents.

Zemeckis took this masterpiece and decided to innovate it using the motion-capture techniques shown above. The result was a horrifying, skeevy sideshow of technology gone wrong.

i09 hit the nail on the head when they described this film as “A world of Tom Hanks faces, shudder and mutated children. When those kids smiled they looked the demons from Devil’s Advocate, which probably isn’t what this Christmas film was going for.”

The reason why this technology goes beyond lame to a place that’s frankly frightening is an effect known as the uncanny valley. Wikipedia explains it thusly:

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

Maybe the crowd-sourced encyclopedia isn’t the best scientific evidence, so here’s a little reinforcement from Scientific American:

The flop of the 2004 animated film The Polar Express is largely blamed on the “creepy” feeling people get when they look at very realistic-looking robots or human animations. These too real facsimiles fall into the so-called uncanny valley, between acceptably fake-looking human representations and real, healthy humans. Psychologists have long wondered whether this aversion has an evolutionary basis, and new research on macaques suggests that it does.

Princeton University researchers presented images of real monkey faces, unrealistic animated faces and realistic animated faces to five monkey subjects and recorded how long they gazed at each. Similar to the human response to objects in the uncanny valley, the monkeys avoided looking at the most realistic animated faces.

Even MONKEYS understand that this technology is monstrously bad!

If you want to make a Pixar-like computer-animated cartoon, then by all means, have at it. If you want to use effects to enhance a live-action film, awesome. But when you lean on an FX crutch that leads you to create imagery like this…

…you are crafting a cinematic nightmare.

Zemeckis’ next project was an adaptation of the classic Norse epic poem Beowulf. This ancient masterpiece is fascinating on literary and anthropological levels and inspired such modern classics as “The Lord of the Rings” – Tolkien was an Oxford don who was considered the foremost Beowulf expert of his time. His essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” called for an understanding of the film not only as a historical document but also as a literary work of genius.

Naturally, Zemeckis couldn’t wait to get his hands on this legend and transform it into a motion-capture atrocity. The Wiki entry contains all sorts of horrifying nuggets on this front:

Zemeckis did not like the poem, but enjoyed reading the screenplay. Because of the expanded budget, Zemeckis told the screenwriters to rewrite their script, because “there is nothing that you could write that would cost me more than a million dollars per minute to film. Go wild!” In particular, the entire fight with the dragon was rewritten from a talky confrontation to a battle spanning the cliffs and the sea.

[...]

Robert Zemeckis insisted that the character Beowulf resemble depictions of Jesus Christ, believing that a correlation could be made between Christ’s face and a universally accepted appeal.

[...]

Southern Methodist University’s Director of Medieval Studies Bonnie Wheeler is “convinced that the new Robert Zemeckis movie treatment sacrifices the power of the original for a plot line that propels Beowulf into seduction by Angelina Jolie—the mother of the monster he has just slain.’ What man doesn’t get involved with Angelina Jolie?’ Wheeler asks. ‘It’s a great cop-out on a great poem.’”

I think I would rather watch a video of the performance above than the final result run through the motion-capture meat grinder.

Since Robert Zemeckis knows better than anyone else what makes great cinema, he immediately began looking for another literary classic to disrespect, tarnish and adorn with effects straight out of Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3.

Joe Morganstern of the Wall Street Journal hit a critical grand slam with this explanation of why Zemeckis’ “Carol” is such an unmitigated waste of celluloid.

To put it bluntly, if Scroogely, Disney’s 3-D animated version of “A Christmas Carol” is a calamity. The pace is predominantly glacial—that alone would be enough to cook the goose of this premature holiday turkey—and the tone is joyless, despite an extended passage of bizarre laughter, several dazzling flights of digital fancy, a succession of striking images and Jim Carrey’s voicing of Scrooge plus half a dozen other roles. “Why so coldhearted?” Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, asks the old skinflint. The same question could be asked of Robert Zemeckis, who adapted and directed the film, and of the company that financed it. Why was simple pleasure frozen out of the production? Why does the beloved story feel embalmed by technology? And why are its characters as insubstantial as the snowflakes that seem to be falling on the audience?

A catch-all answer—and by now an all-too-familiar one—lies in the unnature of that technology. Like “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf,” which were also directed by Mr. Zemeckis, “A Christmas Carol” employs a motion-capture process that translates the movements of live actors into fantasy images. For its advocates, the process is cost-efficient and good enough. For its detractors, including me, motion capture has become synonymous with a special sort of semi-lifelessness—body language that is vaguely impoverished, faces with limited mobility and dead eyes.

In the global marketing push for his new film, the director has dismissed such problems as essentially solved. But they haven’t been solved at all; they’ve only been mitigated, and partially masked by the novelty value of 3-D. Motion capture remains an impediment to capturing emotion.

FilmDrunk ran this hilarious transcript of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew blasting Zemeckis’ filmic atrocities:

Kevin Murphy: I’ll just start the bidding with the entire Robert Zemeckis Christmas movie library. [A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express.] He’s really tried, with his dead, doll-like eye animation that he does, to destroy Christmas for children all over the world.

Mike Nelson: Smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley, aren’t they? You just don’t know whether to scream or be delighted.

KM: Just to warm myself up for seeing [A Christmas Carol], just to amp up my hate a little bit, I watched the Christmastown/Nuremberg-rally scene in Polar Express. The end, when the elves are marching in formation, and Hitler—oh, I’m sorry, Santa—comes out…

Bill Corbett: [Laughs.] Hitler Claus!

KM: It’s severely backlit behind him, and everyone is just sort of…

BC: [evil voice] “Ho Ho Heil!”

KM: [Laughs.] Yeah. I can’t get on board with Roger Ebert about A Christmas Carol. I think he’s one hundred thousand percent wrong.

BC: Did Roger Ebert like it? Wow. What’s going on with that man?

KM: I don’t know. Maybe he likes misery and horror for children.

The fact that Robert Zemeckis, the guy who directed fucking Back to the Future, flushed his career down the motion capture toilet is offensive enough. That he felt he deserved laurels for this “achievement” is truly staggering.

This article from La Tercera, also discovered by FilmDrunk and translated from Spanish, reveals some quotes from Zemeckis that betray amazing arrogance. He compares his achievements in motion-capture to the animation innovations of Walt Disney himself and suggests he should not only win an Oscar, but a SPECIAL Oscar acknowledging his unique talents.

“I would say it would be appropriate to create a new category, as when Walt Disney made the first animated film. He was given a special award because no one had done that before,” said the pioneer in applying new technologies to cinema.

Zemeckis’ henchman Jack Rapke is also quoted in the article saying that Carrey deserves an Oscar for his performance. Why don’t you jokers (a) stop toppling masterpieces of Western culture and (b) stop awarding yourselves Oscars for at best mediocre, and at worst blasphemous, cinematic diarrhea.

Luckily for me, the market intervened. Disney watched in horror as James Cameron greatly surpassed Zemeckis’ “achievements” in motion capture technology.

Avatar has its critics, but one thing that’s universally acknowledged is that it is a technical masterpiece that manages to bridge the uncanny valley. The Na’vi were believable figures on the screen, rather than horrifying dead-eyed monsters. Not only that, but Avatar’s massive box office gross completely wiped the floor with Zemeckis’ “Carol.”

So let us stand and applaud as Disney drops the guillotine on Zemeckis’ reign of terror.

Walt Disney Studios pulled the plug on Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture company on Friday, the latest in a string of cost-cutting moves. ImageMovers Digital, which is based near San Francisco and employs 450 people, will slowly wind down production over the next few months.

In some ways, the ghost of Christmas past paid Mr. Zemeckis a visit. His hugely expensive “A Christmas Carol” was a big disappointment for Disney, especially considering how much promotional muscle the studio put behind it. And despite his pioneering work in motion-capture technology, Mr. Zemeckis has been leapfrogged in the genre by James Cameron and “Avatar.”

[...]

Mr. Zemeckis said in a statement, “I’m incredibly proud of the talented team that we assembled.” He added, “Their pride and dedication to making quality movies is evident in everything we have produced.”

If by that you mean, your studio was obsessed with plastering crappy special effects over everything, besmirching great works of art in the process, then I completely agree.

Were I to obtain a DeLorean with the ability to go back in time, I would have to consider heading to the mid-90s in order to slap some sense into Robert Zemeckis.

He used to be such an awesome director. Now he’s an delusional joke dwelling deep within the uncanny valley. I’m just thankful that his corporate parents realized what many of us have known for years – it’s high time to pull the plug on his operations.

I guess the fallout from the economic apocalypse isn’t ALL bad.

Gaze upon the stately manse of Teresa Giudice, Real Housewife of New Jersey.

Bravo’s Real Housewives “franchise” is a truly wacky collection of ladies from around the nation, and it seemed impossible back in May that the Jersey girls could outdo legends like crazy NeNe from Atlanta, trampy Gretchen from Orange County, and haughty Countess de Lesseps from NYC in terms of sheer personality and outrageousness.

Yet Teresa and her partners in crime proceeded to deliver one of the most bizarre, compelling, and hilarious reality TV runs in recent memory.

Danielle was a former coke whore and snitch who had phone sex with someone called “Gucci Model!” Caroline’s son Christopher wanted to open up a chain of strip club car washes! Dina’s husband was mysteriously absent and potentially mobbed up! There was also a boring one, but 4/5 is a pretty good track record.

Teresa was arguably the best character on the whole show, with a tiny forehead, three little daughters that she relentlessly stage-mothered, a ridiculous guido husband from the “construction” industry, a fat bankroll of cash, and newly implanted fake “bubbies.”

My favorite, though, was the absurdly large house she built for herself, which she proudly declared was composed of only “granite, marble and onyx.” This nouveau riche masterpiece would have made Louis XIV feel ashamed.

Now, in a startling turn of events, the bank is foreclosing on Teresa Giudice’s mob mansion.

Let’s take a look back at the house – and the woman – that grabbed our attention last spring and made our lives more magical, forever.

The blog Scented Glossy Magazines did a great job of wrapping its arms around the spectacle that was Teresa and her ambitious plans for her mansion after the premiere:

“My whole house, it has nothing other than marble, onyx and granite.”

YES, there were many more ridiculous things said on the premiere episode of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, but Teresa’s proud statement about her bajillion dollar tacky-ass home just captured the essence of the whole show, an essence that can only be described as vulgar, tasteless, and true to every stereotype we’ve ever heard about north New Jersey.

[...]

Teresa’s husband Joe is in “construction,” and she pays a furniture bill of $120,ooo in CASH. You draw your own conclusions.

Teresa should also be given credit for the most jaw-dropping moment of the show when says she’s building The Palace of Marble, Onyx and Granite because it makes her “shkeeve” to look at other people’s houses. “I don’t want to live in someone else’s house–that’s gross.” Totally! That’s why I demand a brand new toilet every time I have to pee someplace other than my own house.

Despite all of those disparaging comments I just made about her, she is my favorite, and not just because her husband could have me whacked at any moment.

Richard Lawson was a tremendous asset to Gawker before he moved on to TV.com, and he was possibly at his best when discussing RHNJ, which was one of his last assignments before he bailed.

Here’s his amazing meditation on Teresa and her house, in his inimitable style:

Teresa. Ohhhh Teresa. You are my absolute favorite. Your wig might be pulled a little too far down your forehead and you may sweat olive oil, but I can forgive it. Teresa’s story this episode was called “Maybe and Marble.” The ‘Maybe’ part has to do with her three daughters, Limoncello, Aranciata, and Buca di Beppo. Buca is Mommy’s little vicarious cashcow superstar. She sings (I guess?) acts (sort of!) and looks like a nice bite-sized portion of veal parmigiana. Teresa likes to take all three of her daughters shopping at least three times a week, mostly because she likes her entire family to match. What her husband is going to say at “the office” when he shows up in his whimsical Reno Sweeney sailor girl costume, I do not know. But Teresa gets what Teresa wants.

After the three little ones—Shrimpscampi, Beretta, and 8 1/2, screamed and brayed and mommy payed for their little outfits (all in cash! suspicious! Ricooo!), it was time for Teresa to sew her wig to her forehead and head on over to Il Palazzo di Giudice, the marble and onyx clusterfuck of a “French chateau” that Teresa and her mysterious husband are building in some blasted corner of the elbow state. The thing is… absolute insanity. Marble refrigerator. Onyx grass out front. Granite pillowcases. There’s a fourth child, Giancarlo Giannini, who is just built entirely out of those three rocks. Teresa kisses him on the head when she sees him, then has the workmen move him into the closet. The house is supposed to be done in three weeks and ohhhh holy god aren’t you SO EXCITED to see what it looks like? The unveiling episode is going to be spectacular. Teresa will descend the staircase dressed in a gown made entirely of quartz and shreds of the Italian flag. Her mysterious husband will emerge all pixelated from the basement with three goombas dressed in suits made entirely of shark. The showbiz daughter, Mama Celeste, will be launched into the heavens by a fireworks canon. When everyone is standing around drinking room-temperature Pinot Grigio and chilled Chianti, suddenly there will be a great rumble and moan. The earth with tremble and people will fall to the ground. Then a great cracking will be heard and the house will disappear. It was too heavy! It’s fallen through the Earth and is now sitting ass-up in China somewhere.

So everyone will shuffle off in their Cadillacs and Teresa will just stand there, itching her wig line. “C’mon babe, we gotta go,” her antsy husband will say. “Just one sec,” Teresa will say dejectedly, staring at the gaping hole in the ground. After a short while there will be a whistle and a whine and then a thwump. Teresa just had to wait to catch her baby Barilla as she tumbled out of the sky.

Enough talk. Let’s see some photos of this tack-sterpiece, courtesy of Homes of the Rich!

It’s quite possibly the most hideous home I’ve ever seen.

That analysis includes the flooded out ruins in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward.

And now, according to Radar Online, it belongs to the bank.

Teresa Giudice has gotten herself in some financial hot water, and it looks like the New Jersey born and raised housewife could soon be losing her dream home.

DLJ Mortgage Capital Inc have filed papers with the Superior Court of New Jersey to repossess the house that Giudice owns with her husband Joe.

Michael K from Dlisted quips, “I thought that Teresa and her husband only paid with cash. I was under the impression that their gaudy house of tackiness was paid for with blood money and threats. I have to say that I’m a little disappointed, because he’s not the crime boss I thought he was. Sad midget mobster is sad.

But don’t worry, Teresa and her Planet of the Apes forehead will be fine. If she gets kicked out, she can always go live in the gorilla exhibit at the nearest zoo. I’m sure they will give her a table to flip so she’ll feel right at home.“

Maybe if you all support Teresa by clicking through to her personal website right now, and splurging like a Mafia princess with a fat wad of cash, we can save her granite, marble and onyx masterpiece.

After all, who wouldn’t want items like the “Milania Fantasy Bracelet,” “Baby Safari Print Clippies,” or, best of all, a line of T-shirts built around Joe and T’s inane sayings?

Now, run along and start buying things. SAVE CASTLE GUIDICE!

As for me, I’m saving my money to buy one of Christopher Manzo’s strip club/car wash franchises.

Heading into Year Two of the Economic Apocalypse, some curious cultural trends are developing. Here’s one that really surprised me.

Funnily enough, songs first made popular during the Great Depression are burning up the charts at the dawn of the twenty-tweens.

That’s right kids. Remember when “electronica” was the hot new musical trend? When rap-rock ruled the airwaves? Or when emo was the big new thing?

Throw all that out the window, because there’s a new genre that is absolutely dominating record sales.

Standards!

Yes, the classic pop chestnuts of the Great American Songbook may be eligible for AARP, but they have once again become as popular as they were in the days when Jacob Gershowitz and Israel Baline tore up the charts while masquerading under their hep alter egos, “Geo Gershwin” and “Irv Berlin.”

Strike up the band with that fascinating rhythm! Shoo bop shoo bop, skiddily bee bop bow!!!

An incontrovertible sign of this new trend appeared last week, when a highly anticipated battle of divas turned in an unexpected direction.

Gawker’s Brian Moylan previewed the showdown as “A Battle for Gay America’s Soul“:

September 29th is a day that will go down in ginfamy (that is gay infamy) as the day that Mariah Carey, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and Britney Spears battled for supremacy in gay hearts and minds. Who will stand victorious?

That’s right, today is the drop date for Mariah Carey’s Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, a collection of slow jams that includes her instant classic cover of “I Want to Know What Love Is;” Madonna’s greatest hits double-disc collection Celebration, that features two new singles; and Barbra Streisand’s Love is the Answer, a collection of cabaret standards. Not to be outdone by those older and wiser, Britney Spears tried to steal some of the spotlight by releasing the single “3″ today. Smooth movie Britney. And it’s pretty good, as far as catchy, crappy pop songs go.

So, who will be the big victor in the Diva Death Battle 2009? Lady Gaga of course! What? She doesn’t even have an album out today! Precisely, but she is poised to be the gay icon of the youngest babygays that are just taking their first fledgling steps on the big pink road we call queendom. While there is definitely plenty of crossover between the Madonna/Mariah/Britney crowd, only confirmed bachelors of a certain age are going to be purchasing the new Streisand.

Silly, silly Moylan. Gayheaded hyperfocus blinded him to the reality of the situation.

Dance floor tracks can be quite continental, but cabaret standards are a girl’s best friend.

In retrospect, Mariah, Madonna and Brit Brit never had a chance. Nor did any other artists who released records that week.

When the dust settled after a frenzied week of record sales, MTV.com was aghast at the results.

One of their favorite musical acts, cheesy emo rockers Paramore, were expected to dominate the week with their new album.

That’s not how it played out…

Paramore shouldn’t feel too bad that they were just barely beat out for a #1 debut by one of pop’s all-time classic divas: They beat out a mega-selling modern diva — and notched their best first week ever in the process.

Though the band’s third album, Brand New Eyes, will bow at #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week, after selling 175,000 copies, they can rest easy knowing that they were just a nose behind legend Barbra Streisand, whose album of jazz standards, Love Is the Answer, snagged the top spot with sales of 180,000. The feat, Babs’ ninth #1 album, gives her at least one top debut in each of the past five decades.

The news was not as good for Mariah Carey, whose Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (168,000) sold considerably less in its first week than her last album, E=MC2 (463,000), according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan.

With eight new contenders, next week’s top 10 got. Rockers Breaking Benjamin hit #4 with Dear Agony (134,000), followed by revived grunge icons Alice in Chains, whose first new album in almost 15 years, Black Gives Way to Blue, debuts at #5 (126,000). Madonna’s final effort for Warner Bros., the greatest hits album Celebration, isn’t much of a cause for one, landing at #7 on sales of just 72,000, tailed by country singer Miranda Lambert’s Revolution (#8, 66,000). Kiss and Tell, from “Wizards of Waverly Place” star Selena Gomez (and her band, the Scene), is less than 75 copies behind at #9.

“Just a nose behind”?!

Take all the cheap shots you want, MTV — Babs made those cash registers sing!

The following week, another shocking upset rattled the music world.

Once again, record sales predictions thoroughly underestimated the power of standards, and another shit band was shocked to learn that they’d been bested by an old-timey crooner.

This time, it couldn’t have happened to a bigger group of d-bags.

Did you know that in KISS’s epic career, they’ve never had an album reach the No. 1 on the Billboard chart? After they released their record last week, that final prize seemed at hand…

The stage had been set; a six month lead-up to their return kicked off by a celebrated appearance at the American Idol finale, Gene Simmons sharing the mike with Adam Lambert. Their first album release in 11 years was being backed by the current gold standard of record releases — a Walmart exclusive. With the album tracking in the 150,000 sales range, the music press had all but proclaimed it a lock on the #1 slot.

And then today, somewhere out there in KISS’ tour bus, Gene Simmons stepped over passed-out groupies and the bodies of decapitated farm animals from last night’s victory party. He made his way towards the front of the bus where today’s Billboard had just arrived, pausing to roll his cow tongue up and down the cooling strippers’ pole, giving himself a little bracing jolt before he took in the new issue which would feature his made-up face under the banner hed “#1!”

And then he looked down and saw…Michael Fucking Buble.

Standards 2, All Other Genres Zero!

Buble CRUSHED the saggy, aging KISS, smashing their record sales after an Oprah appearance pumped up his profile:

After only three days of sales, Michael Bublé’s “Crazy Love” opens atop the Billboard 200 chart with 132,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, giving the pop singer his second No. 1 album.

Bublé’s last set, 2007′s “Call Me Irresponsible,” debuted with 212,000 at No. 2 before moving to No. 1 the following week. “Crazy” is the artist’s third top 10 album, as his second studio set, “It’s Time,” debuted and peaked at No. 7 in 2005.

The release of “Crazy” was pushed up from its original date of Oct. 13 to Friday, Oct. 9 — likely to capitalize on Bublé’s chat and performance on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” that same day. Because SoundScan’s tracking week ends at the close of business on Sunday evening, Buble’s opening frame is all the more handsome, since it only had three days of availability.

Rock legends Kiss crash in at No. 2 with new Wal-Mart-exclusive studio album “Sonic Boom,” selling 108,000 copies. It is the band’s highest-charting album ever, and the 108,000 opener is its second-best sales week since SoundScan began tracking data in 1991.

Second-best is right! Eat it, Gene Simmons!

Needless to say, this standards trend will inevitably culminate at the 2010 Video Music Awards, where the big controversy will be an “accidental” Streisand nip-slip, or Jane Monheit and Diana Krall making out in front of everybody.

The cast of The Wire will stick up for you!

So, Mike Phelps took an Olympic-sized hit from a top-of-the-line Roor bong at a South Carolina frat party.

All hell broke loose after the above picture got out…

The local po-po arrested a bunch of hapless stoners and pumped them for info on Aquaman instead of, you know, asking where they got their drugs from. Not that we’d encourage any investigation of small time drug users in a jurisdiction with several unsolved homicides.

Kellogg’s said “Oh hell no” and pulled his endorsements, which we’re SURE was purely for moral reasons and not a cost-saving measure in light of the economic apocalypse.

Then Phelps had to apologize to China for being one toke over the line!! Sweet Jesus.

Well, Phleppsyboy, everything we’ve seen about you out of the pool indicates that you’re something of a douche. We wish we could find a link to the story about Phelps jealously texting male swimmers that their ladies were hitting it with NBA stars in Beijing, just because said ballers were ignoring him. But we can’t, so trust us…

Anyway, you might feel really alone right now, but you aren’t.

Ziggy Sobotka, Bodie Broadus and Bubbles are on your side, according to NYMag’s VULTURE blog!

Let’s start with these amusing comments from James Ransone, who played troubled dockworker Ziggy in Season 2.

“I am literally shocked that he lost the fucking Kellogg’s endorsement. It’s a fucking cereal. What do you think stoners eat?” said James Ransone, who played hapless dock worker and small-time dealer Ziggy, at a Sports Illustrated party on Wednesday.

Does “literally shocked” mean he stuck his finger in a socket because he was so distraught at the injustice?

“That’s my next tattoo. A portrait of Michael Phelps ripping a bong on my back,” Ransone continued.

“The ultimate irony is that I hate weed because it’s disgusting and awful. The last time I tried to smoke pot I was 22. I watched Boogie Nights and cried myself to sleep while eating Cool Ranch Doritos.”

More comments on the situation were forthcoming from series regular JD Williams, the actor who portrayed Bodie on the show’s first four seasons:

“Do you know how long it takes to smoke from a bong? For them to take that picture, he had to be doing the slowest, longest hit ever!”

(That makes no sense, but whatever.)

Bodie takes hits so fast, he can’t be photographed. Be a man!!!

Williams also thought Phelps shouldn’t have copped to the crime so quickly. “I’m not a big advocate of lying, but he probably could have kept us at bay a little longer,” says Williams. “He could have said, ‘Actually, there was no weed in there. I was just showing everybody, like, how if I was doing it, how I’d put my lips on the bong.’ It would have boiled over. But he just gave it up right away! Like, ‘Yeah there was weed in the bong and I was smoking it. I’m young. It will never happen again.’ You’re 23, homeboy! Trust me, if you’re 23 and smoking weed now, you’re gonna smoke some more.”

We can count on the actor who spent the most time on the show, five-season veteran Andre Royo, to give the most forward-looking, pragmatic outlook. The more time you spend with David Simon, the smarter you become.

André Royo, who played lovable junkie-informant Bubbles, thought Kellogg’s loss was medical marijuana advocates’ gain: “At the end of the day, I think it’s a great advertisement for weed,” said Royo at benefit on Monday for Women’s Expressive Theater.

Bubs looks on the bright side…

“It didn’t slow him down. He broke records! I can see Michael being the face of whatever that marijuana-legalization proposition is in California: ‘You, too, can get eight medals if you smoke a bong.’”

So there you have it!

Coming soon, Herc and Carver defend A-Rod against steroid outrage.

Freed from the responsibility of actually passing legislation, you can snipe and obstruct and throw sabots into the machinery.

One thing that’s great about being in the minority is you can force the majority party to own particularly embarrassing pieces of pork-barrel spending that inevitably find their way into every major bill.

This practice, and the joys of exposing it, have been in evidence during the weeks-long stimulus package debate.

The latest target for GOP scorn?

Nancy Pelosi’s love of the salt marsh harvest mouse!

The conservative WASHINGTON TIMES is fired up and ready to go:

Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.

Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents the city of San Francisco and has previously championed preserving the mouse’s habitat in the Bay Area.

The revelation immediately became a political football, as Republicans accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to keep so-called earmarks that fund lawmakers’ favorite projects out of the legislation. Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi, countered that the accusations were fabricated.

[...]

“One of the proudest boasts of Democrats supporting their trillion-dollar spending plan is that it doesn’t contain earmarks. But it seems like powerful Democrats will still find a way to bring home the bacon,” said a frustrated Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, who took direct aim at the mouse.

“This certainly doesn’t sound like it will create or save American jobs,” Mr. Steel said. “So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little” critter?

Well, the salt marsh harvest mouse certainly seems like an interesting little beast…

It hides during the day and comes out at night, it’s one of the only mammals that drinks salt water, and it can only be found in the salt marshes of the South Bay.

We don’t object to spending money to save this creature per se; however, with stimulus spending under a conservative electron microscope, Speaker Pelosi really needs to pick her spots when it comes to earmarking funds for San Fran.

And it’s our contention that she has really dropped the ball on this one.

Why spend valuable stimulus funds to save a little rodent when there is another cause in the city of San Francisco crying out for federal assistance – one that is far more stimulative than any mouse could ever be!!

How about earmarking funds to save the debaucherous, wild, incredibly fun and SUPER stimulative activity that has traditionally accompanied the Bay to Breakers road race?

Bay to Breakers is the oldest continuously-held road race in the country. A 12k event that began in 1912, it hosts upwards of 100,000 runners each year.

But more importantly, it’s an excuse for wild and crazy San Franciscans to take to the streets, get blasted and throw down!

Crazy floats, public drunkenness, and nudity are the order of the day as a wild parade snakes through the streets following the runners.

An ROTI-affiliated team took to the streets last year and truly represented. To preserve their anonymity, we’ll simply refer to them as “Team I Heart HJ’s.”

Here are some of the still images they captured at the 2008 edition:

Now if that isn’t a recipe for economic turnaround, I don’t know what is.

You’ve got plenty of drinking – a shot in the arm for the beverage industry. Repurposing of old clothes and furniture for new and revelrous purposes – we call that recycling of the awesomest kind! The infusion of cash into the body paint and feathers industries will provide a much needed boost.

Not to mention the undeniable lift such an event will give to the spirits of citizens beaten down by the economic apocalypse!

And wouldn’t you say that streets lined with empty cans and bottles, discarded float materials, and various post-party detritus are “SHOVEL READY” for the sanitation workers that must pick up all this junk while hosing the pee off the streets?

But because Nancy Pelosi is too busy saving a fricking mouse to notice, Bay to Breakers is cracking down on the party atmosphere.

Like banishing beads and masks from Mardi Gras or removing the red carpet and gold statues from the Academy Awards, the banning of floats, beer and nudity at this year’s Bay to Breakers will take all the fun out of it, many longtime revelers say.

City leaders and sponsors of the 98th annual wacky footrace announced several major changes Wednesday that detractors say will turn the over-the-top, only-in-San Francisco party into a 12K footrace like any other race in any other city in the world.

At the May 17 event, police will cite or arrest anybody openly drinking alcohol or appearing to be drunk, and will physically remove floats and any other items on wheels like shopping carts with kegs in them, officials declared.

People dressed in oversized costumes must run at the back of the pack, walkers must stay to the right while runners stay to the left, and no in-line skates, bicycles or skateboards are allowed. Nudity is not allowed, though police said they aren’t planning to issue citations for indecent exposure.

At least the Elvis costumes can stay.

Gabrielle Harris, a 29-year-old publicist who lives in San Rafael, has run the race three times and called the changes devastating.

“We all kind of leave our hearts in San Francisco, and Bay to Breakers is a huge part of the reason,” she said. “It’s one of the most amusing and unique events I’ve ever experienced.”

Curmudgeonly residents who live along the parade route complain that the participants disrespect their ‘hoods. Community activist Leela Gill griped, “People were vomiting, drinking and throwing trash along the route,” she said. “The Panhandle itself was trashed, and the neighborhood around the Panhandle was trashed. Residents were shocked at the disrespect people showed.“

Race organizer Angela Fang said, “We’re still focused on the fun, vitality and unique culture of the race — we’re just removing the alcohol and the hazards. We feel that these changes will enhance the race experience for all involved.“

Clueless. As far as we can tell the alcohol and the hazards are the whole damn point!

Some look at this situation and see a need for an authoritarian hand to crack down on these ruffians. ROTI looks at it and sees a huge opportunity for stimulus!

Just think – take a couple of mil out of the mouse budget and dedicate it to saving Bay to Breakers. Hire extra cops to maintain public order, truck in two thousand port-a-potties, hire all the peeps you need to enforce registration, and hire lots of sanitation workers and temporary city employees to whisk away all the mess and damage caused by the melee of fun!

San Franciscans will flock to the streets, spend tons of money on booze and outfits, get so schnockered they spend even MORE money on munchies and God knows what, and will all go home happy and temporarily distracted from the Greatest Depression.

Meanwhile, MORE San Franciscans – including some unemployed workers given sustenance for the day – will swarm the scene, maintaining order and cleanliness!

It’s a win-win, folks.

This race was begun to raise the city’s spirits after the devastating 1906 earthquake. Now a financial earthquake has struck, and Bay to Breakers is needed more than ever.

Too bad Speaker Pelosi cares more about a danged mouse than she does about stimulating San Francisco’s economy.

Sure, the advertising world of bygone decades makes a fantastic setting for a TV show (though we’ll admit, we’re not regular viewers…guess we’re still a little bitter that the show usurped the Wire’s final chance at awards show glory).

However, it was also the heyday of ads that are disturbing, off-putting, or simply bizarre to modern sensibilities.

Flickr user SA Steve has compiled a truly mammoth collection of vintage advertising images.

The selections below only scratch the surface of his epic compilation…

Let’s start with a lovely holiday treat that is sure to appall your guests with its combo of fat-laden cheesiness and stomach-turning visual grossness.

You think prescription drug ads are strange now?

Try the old days, when anti-psychotics were sold via print ads featuring terrifying eyeballs…

Sanka. The only coffee brand that won’t result in child abuse.

What was with coffee back in the day? Dudes were beating up their entire family over it!

On a lighter note, in this time of economic apocalypse, this next ad presents an idea that urban roomies might want to consider.

Look, the fella on the right is leading a singalong! We’re guessing it’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.”

This next one is so dated and offensive, it’s almost come full circle to being witty and postmodern.

SORRY in advance for this next image, but there were a bunch of these and ultimately, our will to resist posting one was whittled down to a toothpick.

A toothpick that was snapped in half by the VERY weird dude lurking in the background of this ad!

Here’s a REALLY charming image, summoning a move that has worked for us countless times. The ladies go BOY-CRAZY when you blow smoke in their grill!

Try it this weekend, fellas.

This next one ought to make a comeback as part of the GWOT. Donate your Truth Dollars to fight Bin Laden in a propaganda war!

Let’s wind up this trip through the offensive, unintentionally funny and simply strange world of old-school advertising with an image that really, really, really does not make us want to buy the product being advertised.

SA Steve has over 1000 images in his collection.

You may want to set aside your afternoon to peruse them all.

The LA Dodgers are one of the most storied franchises in baseball history, and they play their games in the second-largest city in America.

Unfortunately, their owner would be better suited for a market like Florida, because he has little in the way of baseball knowhow and lacks the requisite money to represent LA with any consistency.

While Frank McCourt made his fortune, such as it is, by developing parking lots, he still managed to royally screw up the parking situation at Dodger Stadium – just when you didn’t believe it could get any worse in gridlocked Chavez Ravine.

Most big-city owners rely on experienced baseball minds to run their franchise, but McCourt has installed his wife Jamie as Dodger President, despite her utter lack of credentials. Just to fully affirm that he believes in the power of nepotism, he’s also hired his son as marketing director.

McCourt first tried and failed to buy the Red Sox, before zillionaire John Henry and his merry band swooped in and outclassed his bid. Now the ex-Bostonian desperately grabs every former Red Sox he can get his hands on: witness the conga line of Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, Bill Mueller, and for the love of God, he actually thought it was a good idea to hire Grady Little!!

McCourt’s evident Northeast bias hasn’t been ALL bad for the Dodgers in the McCourt era: McCourt made a decent move by hiring Joe Torre after the should-be Hall of Famer was let go by the Yankees, and the Manny Ramirez trade carried the Dodgers into the postseason.

All that’s well and good, until you realize that the Dodgers basically got Manny for free, and now that it’s come time to pay up for a playoff-caliber MVP, they’re pinching pennies again.

The perma-grumpy TJ Simers gripes today,

I think I understand why CC Sabathia wanted to play for the Dodgers, then talked to Frank McCourt on the telephone and signed with the Yankees.

It will be five years next month since the Boston Parking Lot Attendant bought the Dodgers after a failed attempt to buy the Red Sox and told everyone at a news conference the Dodgers have the best fans in sports.

I immediately followed that up with a question: Had you been successful in buying the Red Sox, what would you have told Boston fans?

Never have trusted much of what the guy has to say after that, and he hasn’t given much of a reason the last five years to change my mind.

We’re not talking mistakes here, the hiring of Lon Rosen and his plans for loud music and a Dodgers mascot, or the Tipper Gore Lady, $2 Tuesdays, the wife’s sudden affection for Little League fields or flip-flopping on Paul DePodesta and Grady Little.

It really doesn’t have anything to do with the ridiculous chants of “Hee-Seop Choi,” or J.D. Drew’s escape clause. This isn’t about Jason Schmidt, Andruw Jones or Jason Phillips.

And it’s more than keeping the poor folks from using the new concession stands and restrooms on the field level once the game has started, or the decision not to upgrade the concession stands and restrooms everywhere else this off-season.

It’s a matter of trust, McCourt promising five years ago at a packed news conference to be “transparent” in everything he does, while saying, “I know what it takes to inspire and to lead,” and “I’m not afraid to spend whatever it takes to bring a world championship back to Los Angeles.”

Now that you know him, do you believe him?

Do you believe he’s not afraid to spend whatever it takes to bring a world championship to Los Angeles?

Do you think he knows what it takes to inspire and lead?

Do you feel McCourt is transparent, as the dictionary defines it, “open, frank and candid?”

OK, so I’ll give you “Frank.”

Hey theah buddy, how does an incentive-based one yeah deal sound to ya?

Despite getting a playoff run for the price of disappointing prospect Andy LaRoche, the Dodgers refuse to pony up for Manny, sticking to their guns on a 2-year, $45-50 million dollar deal. This is almost assuredly not enough to get the job done, yet McCourt and GM Ned Colletti seem to naively believe that their efforts are sufficient.

“I just find it curious,” Colletti said. “We made a [contract] offer and never heard back. We made a [salary] arbitration offer and never heard back. Maybe we have to look into the communications we’re using.”

So what are the chances that Ramirez will be a Dodger next season?

“If he shows up in spring training, we’ll find him a hat, we’ll find him a shirt and we’ll play him in the field and figure it out then,” Colletti said. “But I can’t wait until the day he shows up to go after a third baseman or a shortstop or another reliever.”

Huh?? Is this some kind of a joke?

The only reason the Dodgers got a free trial of Manny being Manny is that the two $20 million per year options held by the Red Sox were not sufficient compensation in the eyes of Ramirez and his agent, the nefarious Boras.

And now they don’t understand why a contract offer of the same length and only slightly more per year isn’t inducing the wacky outfielder to sign on the dotted line?

Without Manny, the Dodger offense in 2008 was limp; with him, it was potent. Sure, it’s never good to overpay for an aging slugger, but it’s ALSO never good to give away one of your top prospects for a half-season rental. A reasonable, market-price contract offer to Manny is the difference between the Dodgers competing for the playoffs in 2009 and disappointing their fans for another year.

Apparently in this time of economic apocalypse, 3 or 4 years at $25m per is out of McCourt’s reach.

The lowlight of the Dodgers’ flaccid pursuit of Ramirez was when team prez Jamie McCourt suggested that the megabucks it would take to sign Manny might be much better spent on a bunch of charity baseball fields:

Would Dodgers fans react negatively if the team were to pay big money to free agents when the nation’s economy is in sharp decline and many Americans are losing their jobs?

That was the question posed by Dodgers President Jamie McCourt as she made an appearance with her husband, team owner Frank McCourt, Tuesday at an event where it was announced the club’s charitable foundation would help build 42 youth fields around Southern California.

“If you bring somebody in to play and pay them, pick a number, $30 million, does that seem a little weird to you?” Jamie McCourt asked in an interview at the Evergreen Recreation Center in East Los Angeles. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We’re really trying to see it through the eyes of our fans. We’re really trying to understand, would they rather have the 50 fields?”

The Dodgers recently made a two-year, $45-million offer to slugger Manny Ramirez that they later withdrew, and the McCourts seemed to be hedging against lavish spending during a time of such great economic uncertainty.

Jamie McCourt said the fact that the majority of contracts were guaranteed was a significant issue.

I think, oddly enough, maybe if things weren’t guaranteed, then we could pay for it,” she said. “If people can’t play anymore, it’s like, ‘Oh well, see ya.’ Different story. Whatever money they are guaranteed could be money that we could otherwise have given to community.”

HUH? What is this, Moot Point Debate Society?

If you hate guaranteed contracts so much, you shouldn’t have purchased an MLB franchise, lady.

There’s certainly a strong argument to be made that signing Manny to a 4 year deal will result in overpaying him for one or two seasons.

But Dodgers fans have been overpaying to see a mediocre team for the last 20 years.

Yet, as Simers goes on to point out, the Dodgers have had no hesitation about laying out dollars and/or years to some pretty crappy players:

We’ve all been trained here in the Entertainment Capital to know better, never thinking of the Dodgers as big-time bidders, and doesn’t that say something about the McCourts’ ownership reign?

Maybe if Teixeira is free, McCourt pounces — the acquisition of Ramirez and Boston’s agreement to pay the remainder of his salary the highlight so far of the owner’s time on the job.

As for offering money, the Dodgers gave a five-year guaranteed deal to Juan Pierre a few years back and recently a three-year guaranteed pact to [Casey] Blake.

But they have offered only two guaranteed years to Ramirez, the only player in the last 20 years to put the Dodgers within a sniff of the World Series. The Dodgers pick the oddest places to play hardball.

Now maybe McCourt and Ned Colletti have already put their heads together and come up with a winning plan, and for the record, I did not laugh out loud while typing that sentence.

But as transparent as McCourt and Colletti have been to date, one wonders if they have anything in mind other than waiting and picking through the leftovers.

One player who they won’t be retaining is shortstop Rafael Furcal, who’s apparently agreed to a three-year pact with the team he originally came up with, the Braves.

After Furcal had an injury-plagued 2008 season, the Dodgers decided to offer him an insultingly incentive-laden contract. The Braves, meanwhile, noticed that when Furcal’s back wasn’t bothering him he played tremendously well, and they got the deal done.

While the Dodgers delude themselves, making idiotic decisions like inking Andruw Jones while spurning far more useful options, the Artists Formerly Known as the Anaheim Angels have made big signings like Vladimir Guerrero and Torii Hunter, have been perennial playoff contenders, and won a title in the not-too-distant past, which makes it a lot easier for their fans to accept when players like Francisco Rodriguez get poached by Northeastern baseball titans.

The big-market West Coast teams will never have the endless sums of money that the New York and Boston franchises can draw upon, but they have no excuse for not making SOME quality snags in the free-agent market. If 36-year-old Manny is deemed to be too big a risk, then there are – or at this point, WERE – other middle-of-the-lineup or top-of-the-rotation options available.

Casey Blake ain’t one of them, though.

Hey, it could be worse – the team could still be owned by FOX.

UPDATE: Clearly stung by our criticism, the Dodgers have reportedly re-engaged Furcal’s representatives even as a deal with Atlanta was imminent! That’s more like it, McCourt!

This is fairly horrifying…a huge crowd of Long Island shoppers overwhelmed a WalMart, and a worker was crushed to death in the stampede.

The AP reports that 50-inch TVs for under $800 are being cited as the motive in this murder.

NEW YORK — A worker was killed in the crush Friday after a throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains burst through the doors at a suburban Wal-Mart, authorities said.

At least four other people were injured, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island was closed.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark., called the incident a “tragic situation” and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. … I literally had to fight people off my back.”

Nassau County police said the 34-year-old worker was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 6 a.m. The man’s name was not released and the cause of death was not immediately known.

A police statement said shortly after the store’s 5 a.m. opening time, shoppers “physically broke down the doors, knocking (the worker) to the ground.”

A metal portion of the door was crumpled like an accordion.

Shoppers around the country lined up early outside stores in the annual bargain hunting ritual known as Black Friday. Many stores open early and stay open late, and some of the most dramatic bargains are available in limited quantities.

Among the bargains offered by Wal-Mart for Friday were Samsung 50-inch high definition Plasma TVs for less than $800.

Witnesses told the Daily News that before the store was closed, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the worker’s life.

“They were working on him, but you could see he was dead,” said Halcyon Alexander, 29. “People were still coming through.”

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital for observation, and she and the unborn baby were both reported to be OK, said Sgt. Anthony Repalone, a Nassau County police spokesman. Four or five other people suffered minor injuries, he said.

We hope that Halcyon Alexander was held for questioning. With a name like that, we wouldn’t trust him/her/it.

So let’s recap. The angry mob was so impatient that they essentially broke into the store when it didn’t open promptly at 5 AM.

After ripping the metal door to shreds, they swept into the store like a furious wave and a man died because they were so eager/desperate for good deals on consumer electronics. A pregnant woman was jostled and had to be hospitalized.

Then as EMTs tended to the dying temp worker, customers continued to stream into the store without more than a passing glance at the dead man in the entranceway.

God bless America?

Come Christmas, McKenna Hunt, a gregarious little girl from Safety Harbor, Fla., will receive the play kitchen and the Elmo doll she wants. But her mother, Kristen Hunt, will go without the designer jeans she covets this season.

For Ms. Hunt and for millions of mothers across the nation, this holiday season is turning into a time of sacrifice. Weathering the first severe economic downturn of their adult lives, these women are discovering that a practice they once indulged without thinking about it, shopping a bit for themselves at the holidays, has to give way to their children’s wish lists.

“I want her to be able to look back,” Ms. Hunt declared, “and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.’ ”

[...]

Reyne Rice, who studies toy trends for the Toy Industry Association, said mothers do at least 80 percent of the holiday shopping in a family, and in past recessions they have been the first to do without. They tend not to get a new coat for themselves, Ms. Rice said, so they can provide for their children.

[...]

“While times are difficult, the last thing parents are going to cut from their budget is the Christmas present for their child,” said Gerald L. Storch, chairman and chief executive of Toys “R” Us. “We are not seeing price resistance for the hot toys.”

Quite possibly, this is the most appalling thing we’ve read since Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

When are people going to realize that the reason our economy is trashed is not merely the misdeeds of Wall Street fatcats, but the inevitable outcome of a decades-long orgy of frivolous spending and rampant consumerism by the American people??

This article dropped mere hours ago and yet we already have our pick of over a hundred scathing opinions in the NYT comment section and across the blogdome.

GAWKER, predictably fast on the draw, unloaded with both barrels:

Notice that she seems to be nicely up-to-date with last season’s pricey denim; that she is standing in a garage larger than many apartments; that it seems to be furnished with an operative extra refrigerator; and that discarded toys (from prior Christmases?) are plainly visible in plastic boxes in the background. This typifies sacrifice in America today? The coming depression is so going to eat the nation alive, and the world will laugh, because we deserve it.

NYT reader comments offered a mix of outrage and chastisement:

Arla from NYC wrote, “I am in NO WAY criticizing Ms. Hunt for her determination to bring joy to her children, for that must be the intent borne in her statement above. However, I hope for all beleaguered mothers and fathers in America, that we look to our families, children included, to look upon these years as a time when the family stood together, sacrificed together, became more unified, more loving. A child’s best memories may not, probably will not, be centered around having more “stuff.”“

“Mom” from Albuquerque said, “I think that the current economic situation presents a great opportunity. As a college professor, I am seeing that the current generation is having problems thinking about and imagining things. I believe that some of the problems I see are due to lack of pretend play by the students. So, go to goodwill and buy some hats and different clothes for the kids to play in. Get them boxes to make houses out of. It’s great for them to just be kids again – it’s critical for their development. Make up stories with them, take them on hikes or to the woods. This could be the best, simplest and most rewarding Christmas of all.“

Finally, Jason J. of Silver Spring pretty much sums it all up:

““I want her to be able to look back,” Ms. Hunt declared, “and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.’ ”

Finally, we need to teach our children to show appreciation of others, put others’ needs ahead of their wants, and to provide them with a thorough education in financial literacy so the country can avoid a future of high debt, deteriorating quality of life (which is guaranteed to decline marginally in the future due to the national debt and a paralysis for dealing with social security and medicare funding issues that have been dubbed the untouchable “third rail”.”

Let’s all agree to go down to Florida right now and destroy little McKenna’s Christmas toys. For the good of America.