* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents,
you’re “exotic, different.”* Grow up in
Alaska eating Mooseburgers, a quintessential
American story.

* If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic
Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a
maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating,
you’re well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer,
become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review,
create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000
new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law
professor,  spend 8 years as a State Senator representing
a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the
state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee,
spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a
state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and
serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public
Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t
have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl,  4 years on
the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with
less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a
state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified
to become the country’s second highest ranking
executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years
while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant
churches, you’re not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress,
and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the
next month, you’re a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education,
including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding
the fiber of society.

* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence
only, with no other option in sex education in your
state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter
ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a
position in a prestigious law firm to work for the
betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up
to raise a family, your family’s values don’t
represent America’s.

* If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with
at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who
didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a
member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska
from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

“Never take someone for granted, Hold every person
close to your heart, because you might wake up one day, and
realize that you’ve lost a diamond, while you were too
busy collecting stones.”

C. Scott

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”  Albert Einstein

During this Presidential Election I realized each candidate has a narrative just like how this fruitcake explains Obama’s roots as being raised by two fathers.  Usually when a Freudian slip takes place a reporter immediately corrects the mistake, but no such correction too place.

Art of the deal

Photo: Doug Kuntz

Ruth is more of a glass half full type

Sometimes there’s only one explanation for the pricey art purchases people make, and Hamptons gallery owner Ruth Vered (who was arrested when she served wine without a permit at an East Hampton art opening several months ago) knows it. “What are we supposed to do? Do you expect someone to spend $100,000 if he’s sober?’’ said Ruth at the Amaryllis Farm Equine Rescue benefit co-hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow at photographer Steven Klein’s Bridgehampton home. Now, what would you have to serve to get someone to drop a million dollars on a painting? —BL

When one peers into the giant, vacuous abyss that is our Doucheworld, one can’t help but feel lost in an utterly hopeless vortex. Douchebags are everywhere, and their seamless assimilation into our culture is alarming. Long gone are the days when the presence of a giant Douchebag would bring out our collective ire, and we would join together to humiliate and shun him. Today, these people are our role models and sadly, many of us have just accepted this. It no longer matters that any one we look up to even has any shred of talent. They must merely just look the part and act the part, and we will happily not question them.

How else do you explain this douchebag?

Devendra Banhart. Banhart is best known as the greasy, patchouli oil covered, credit card hippie that is enjoying the pleasure of banging Natalie Portman. But it’s important to credit him for his real offense, his music.
Devendra Banhart is being credited, by some, with starting a whole new “exciting” type of music. With such lyrics as: Little monkey swinging by me, from your fig tree,

Your Jewish canteen, Baby pigeon yellow diamonds”… it’s hard to understand how Devendra could have gone unnoticed in this Doucheworld culture for so long. His type of music has been cutely dubbed “Freak Folk” by music critics who themselves are giant Douchebags for even pretending to like this shrieking art school drivel. These critics take this gamble, in hopes that if this horrible music ever becomes popular, they can say that they were the one who discovered it. Jim Haynes of the Wire summed up Banhart’s sound as, “… Using voice, guitar and (a) four track, his raw songcraft is terrifyingly effective at communicating the breadth of human emotion”. You see, many believe that if you can see genius in something, than you must be a genius yourself. While this may be true, manufacturing it makes you nothing more than a colossal elitist Douchebag.

For those of you that have never heard of Freak Folk, it can best be described as folk music without the social commentary, harmony, soul, or talent. It is obvious to anyone with working ears, that it is truly impossible to even consider this barrage of irritating sounds “music.” This is not your author’s opinion; it is indeed, fact. According to the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, “music” is defined as: “vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.” Therefore, by definition, Devendra’s auditory assault isn’t even technically “music” because it lacks any of these descriptions. It takes effort to listen to, and anyone that is a fan of this simply is projecting something on to the music. Perhaps they just want to be like those horrible critics and be apart of something exciting so that they in turn, are exciting themselves. It is these Douchebag critics and unimaginative fan’s projections of talent on Banhart that makes our world what it is: a Doucheworld.

To really understand the vast wasteland that is Devendra Banhart, we must understand where he came from. Banhart is a child of New-Age Hippies and a product of a prestigious San Francisco art school. I guess you could say his Doucheness was set in stone before he ever got a chance to be free from it.

His parents were followers of the “Maharaji”. The maharaji was a portly little boy from India who came to America to spread the “one true word” of God. After that failed, he started to teach his own variation to the “one true word” of god. These variations had less stipulations to be holy or virginal, and didn’t require as much work, so they spawned a “new age” movement and a devout cult following from LSD burnt out hippies who loved the idea of saying spiritual things instead of actually doing the hard work in order to achieve self-enlightenment.

Two of the maharaji’s followers mixed their THC laden, pseudo-spiritual genes into creating Devendra Banhart. Devendra was then taught from an early age that; if you speak slowly, move your hands about and blurt out nonsense with confidence, you have become enlightened and must spread the “one true word” of god through art.

When Devendra was 14 he was accepted on a full scholarship to the prestigious San Francisco Art Institute for his drawing ability. It was here that he learned that women preferred musicians to people that can draw and began writing songs that would soon propel him to a level of fame where he would one day be referred to as: “the Douchebag that gets to fuck Natalie Portman.”

Latching on to Miss Portman has garnered Banhart more attention than was ever deserved. Portman, who should have a forced clitorectomy for misusing her vagina, has yet to free herself from the delusion that Banhart is a talented artist. Banhart is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with our culture. He is the male Paris Hilton. He looks the part and acts the part, but does absolutely nothing to deserve the attention. He is a self-confessed terrible guitar player and his lyrics sound like he writes his songs using only refrigerator poetry magnets.

The combination of Natalie Portman’s fame, self promoting music critics and an entire generation of “music” fans that want to be more interesting than they really are by latching on to anything that seems different, we as a collective group have slowly taken the attention off the actual art and put it solely on the “artist.”

Remember when music was only about how it made you feel? It took more than just acting like a musician to be a musician. It was at least expected that you could play an instrument, write a lyric, and even carry a tune.

Video didn’t just kill the radio star; it killed the star entirely.