Sometimes I just post'em people

Please enjoy the deadpan comedic timing of the simple folk who just won $270 million in their regional lottery. Forget the Mercedes and the 4X4, bridgework and a bra might be little higher priorities when the check clears. I'm just saying.

Texas and Ohio Cannot Come Soon Enough

Oh Hillary, your sincere moment was just that...for about five minutes that is until some smart people with great memories and video editing software decided to call your patronizing, pandering and dare we say, plagiarizing ass out.

Hello FCC? Have I got a complaint for you:Man Boobs

So one of the things we have got to change this year here at the Cerebral Itch offices is the old piece of crap Zenith console TV in the lunchroom. It's heavier than a dwarf star and the channel knob is busted off requiring needle-nose pliers to change the channel. It looks like intern Silvio lost the pliers again (probably used in yet another speaker fuse change for his pimped out '94 Toyota Corolla) which left those of us on the late shift stuck watching what was ever on the last channel viewed that day; and that would've been NBC. Leaving us helpless during dinner having to watch the always entertaining social train-wreck, The Biggest Loser or as we like to call it, "Fat People Crying".

None of us are regular viewers of this slick carnival sideshow, so around 9:45 our take-out Thai left our bodies through the same hole it entered due to a virtual parade of extremely large Man Boobs.

According to the Federal Communications Commission obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be broadcast at any time. The Supreme Court has established that, to be obscene, material must meet a three-pronged test:

1.)An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
Bingo - score one there. You have to be one sick mother to find big boy boobies hot

2.)The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and
Call me loopy, but I find a grown man's three-foot long droopy bosom patently offensive

3.)The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
Unless it's on the Discovery Channel on a Saturday night documentary about a pre-op transsexual on hormones (which is always fine entertainment after two bottles of cheap Shiraz) it's lacking all four.

So there you go, flunks all requirements by the FCC as far as we're concerned. Our letters are going out first thing tomorrow morning.

Never let it be said that this blog doesn't hit all the important issues

The John McCain glossary

The political team here at Cerebral Itch have been living and breathing this presidential campaign since 2004. A veritable full-bodied immersion into the vagaries of political discourse, politicking and promises. What one is left with after such an experience is the keen ability to hear words and pluck their true meaning from the superficial and rhetorical cacophony. This acquired ability has led to part one of a series in which we will provide you, the reader, a glossary that will allow you to see beyond each candidate's oft used phrasing and colorful prose. Our first candidate we will be examining - Senator John McCain (R-AZ):

Actual Quote: "I look forward to a lively and spirited debate"
Actual Meaning: "If they just look at me sideways, I'll sail over the table and stab my opponent in the neck with my f#@king pen"

Actual Quote: "My friends,"
Actual Meaning: "God I hate giving speeches to you know-nothing backward-ass Jesus freaks - but here I go,"

Actual Quote: "In/With all due respect
Actual Meaning: "Kiss my ass you civilian punk"

Actual Quote: "I respect Mr. Limbaugh"
Actual Meaning: "I hope that bloated carcass is found face down in his shower"

Actual Quote: "I am fired up and ready to go!"
Actual Meaning: "I now have the same team of re-animators that have kept Dick Cheney alive for the past seven years on my staff"

Actual Quote: "bomb, bomb, bomb -bomb, bomb Iran"
Actual Meaning: "bomb, bomb, bomb -bomb, bomb Iran" or "Oh sweet Jesus, I cannot wait to vaporize that country into a f#@cking glass bowl"

It's Saturday and video of Lionel Richie singing "Hello" on helium is about all we're good for

Happy Valentine's Day from George and John

I can't top this - Happy Valentine's Day

Shameless Plug: New Valentine's Day e-cards from Cerebral Itch - they're free!

So less than 12 hours since we launched the new VD e-cards they're turning out to be another hit. At latest count, Lovers, Go Obama are ranking one and two in popularity, and Cute Boy, Not For Lovers and Suckers all tied for third place.














The best part about our e-cards is that they're free. Also, they're just not for lovers; we've got some pretty bitter ones for our single friends - check'em out

In Memoriam: Roy Scheider

Today while driving, I saw a ridiculously dressed older man wearing too-short shorts, a silk jacket and a trucker cap festooned with commemorative pins. The first words out of my mouth upon seeing this fashion plate were, "That some bad hat Harry". The true Jaws fan will recall that line delivered dryly by Roy Scheider's character Chief Martin Brody to a droopy-boobed octogenarian wearing speedos and a bathing cap who keeps getting in Brody's line of sight while looking out for The Shark. It was one classic line out of so many from a phenomenal actor in a film that changed cinema forever.

An hour later I was saddened to learn that Mr. Scheider died this afternoon at the age of 75.

Roy Scheider was a twice-Oscar nominated (The French Connection and All That Jazz) actor who was in some of the best movies of the 70's and a couple of cool ones in the 80's. Klute, Jaws, The French Connection, Marathon Man, Blue Thunder and All that Jazz are all his. He was dry, intense, funny and played characters always on the verge.

With that said, he will always be Chief Brody. He will always be the quietly freaked out dad/cop who was just trying to save a few tourists at his own expense. A character that really resonated with a 10-year-old kid scared to the bejeezus watching a movie about a killer shark.

It's all about the inches baby

So a poll in the U.K. recently discovered that nearly half of British men surveyed would forgo six months of sex in exchange for a 50-inch flatscreen. I think it's safe to assume that their American brethren would find that a fair trade as well.

Cerebral Itch exhaustively scoured the results and applied it's unassailable experience with sex and flatscreens to find out how 1000 men came to trade in their wankers for wide-screen. We came to the following conclusions:

• The men were considerably ugly and probably weren't going to get laid anytime soon, so a big TV could help them pass the time
• The men were involved in a relationship with someone physically repulsive as them, so a big TV could be a fine reprieve
• Looking at smoking-hot porn in life-size high resolution was far superior to their actual sex lives
• A TV comes with a mute button

However, the results plummeted dramatically when the word "sex" was replaced with "masturbation" (okay, we made up that last part; but you know it's true)

Worst Day for Republicans...everokay, maybe the Lincoln thing was worse but c'mon

Super Tuesday served up the requisite surprises on both fronts: Obama surged to the point where Hillary is now positioning herself as the underdog and the Democratic race is on a trajectory that will possibly lead to to a deathmatch at a brokered convention. John McCain's national showing cinched his ascension to likely GOP presidential nominee. And bookending that headline was the head-shaking shocker of Mike Huckabee's Forest Gump-like good fortune enabling him to end the night in much better shape than Mitt Romney.

So one would assume that the following day for at least two of these guys would be a good one. Well, you would assume wrong; this is the GOP of the 21st century after all.

Senator John McCain gets booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). When you can't impress your party's base, um, you have no base.

Mitt Romney decides to hang it up. Not because he burned through $35 million of his own cash and had nothing really to show for it, but because he was doing it for the good of the party. So now we can add rationalizing sour grapes martyr to the list that includes moderate republican governor, faux-conservative presidential candidate and disingenuous jackass.

Hey Mike, you just won delegates in all the states that believe the earth is 6000 years old; what are you going to do now? Go on The Tyra Banks Show you say? What? Maury Povich and Dr. Phil were on hiatus?

Super Tuesday sidebar: Rachel Maddow chokes someone at MSNBC with an Apple

The one station that manages to stay on 24/7 here at the Cerebral Itch offices is MSNBC. It's our cable newstation of choice for a multitude of reasons. One, it happens to be half as crazy as FoxNews and twice as smart than CNN (not hard let me tell you). Plus, it's got the added suspenseful zing of Chris Matthews, the doughy drunk version of Network character Howard Beale and Tucker Carlson's career doing the Schiavo (He's gotta have pics of Dan Abrams doing something unholy). Most of all, we dig Olbermann. He speaks truth to power in a such a way that if "power" wasn't so goddamn moronic and knew how to use a dictionary, Keith could actually find himself in some trouble. But now we can add to that list of MSNBC cats we dig: Rachel Maddow.

Dr. Maddow (doctorate in political science and a Rhodes Scholar) is a well known radio host with her own show on Air America Radio. Her intellect and wit (along with crisp elocution) got her on Countdown. She obviously impressed the brass enough to get her the unenviable job of frequently sparring with Dickensian misanthrope Pat Buchanan on Hardball and election nights. So last night, there she sat. Holding her own with Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan on the MSNBC Super Tuesday battle bridge. Bond villain-esque acrylic catwalks, plasma screens as far as the eye could see and Rachel's little MacBook right in front of her and thus the comedy of this post. See, MSNBC is a joint-venture between NBC and Microsoft. Therefore, anytime Apple makes news it is covered begrudgingly. But there in plain view it sat, Rachel's MacBook with Apple logo glowing icy blue-white surrounded by a sea of Dell computers running Windows. Commence spit-take Microsoft executives.

The best part was twenty minutes later when Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann came back to the crazy quartet, Rachel's MacBook was folded at half-mast; Apple logo no longer visible. The subtle brand nonconformity was genius and soon quashed by some producer who probably just got his ass chewed off by MSNBC Marketing. All I can say is Steve Jobs should shower her in free iPhones and iTunes gift cards for getting past security and plopping his product down in the belly of the beast.

The whole thing almost made up for Hillary winning California.

Cerebral Itch SUPERBOWL XLII Recap Part I: And a vengeful god heard my prayers...

They call them the Seven Deadly Sins for a reason: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Pride and Envy are all destructive characteristics of the human condition that purportedly will eat your soul. Well, I'll take my chances and sign up for envy. Last night, with the culmination of the longest final second in NFL history, God finally got the memo and ended Tom Brady's ridiculously obscene streak of good fortune.

Look, I'm not going to sit here and say that you cannot be the most successful quarterback in NFL history, nor am I going to say you can't be rakishly good looking and richer than Croesus. I'm also going on record saying one can't date beautiful young starlets, impregnate them, leave them and immediately start banging the arguably hottest model to date. What I am saying is that one guy cannot do and be all of those things!

So when Eli and his boys ended Tom's lucky streak and snatched the last perfect thing Brady thought he was entitled to, I wept. I wept big freaking envy-free schadenfreude-laced sparkly tears that there is a god and he heard my prayers.

Cerebral Itch SUPERBOWL XLII Recap Part II: The Commercials

$2.7 million got you 30 seconds last night during SuperBowl LXII - some used it for good and some used it for plain un-creative oh so retarded evil commercials. Case in point, Sales Genie. Who once again thought it necessary to soil my television with their not only moronic advertising, but apparently this year they thought of being racially offensive as well. Let's see, using cartoon pandas with thick Asian accents owning a bamboo furniture store - not since Ping and Pong of the old Brady Kids cartoon have pandas been used so brazenly to stereotype - observe:



Not to be outdone on the stereotype front, Taco Bell decided mariachis with smarmy grins and mock seductive latin charm could get more people in their well lit polystyrene shitholes to destroy their digestive tracts. - observar:



Okay, now that we've discussed the worst, a quick rundown of the top Five SuperBowl XLII commercials as voted by the staff of Cerebral Itch:

1. e*Trade both of them - (finally someone figured out how to make talking babies funny: spit-up and making fun of clowns)
2. Career Builder - (just the right amount of macabre humor mixed with a cute f-you attitude)
3. Glacéau Vitamin Water - (Shaquille O'Neal + jockey silks = comedy)
4. Pepsi - (Funnier when you think of how much money they had to pay Carville to breathe the same air as jackass Dr. Frist)
5. Audi - (Huge points not for originality, but for casting Alex Rocco as the screaming sleeper. Alex Rocco played Moe Greene in the first Godfather movie. If the license plate on the car had said "Khartoum" we would've rated it number one - look it up)

Honorable mention: Bridgestone tires - Why they didn't mow down Richard Simmons I'll never know - it would've been number one if they had)

The CNN Democratic Debates with Me, Veejay and Ugly Betty

Only an idiot would not realize that last night's Democratic debate was going to be the hottest ticket in Hollywood. I say only an idiot, because our intern Silvio once again screwed the pooch and forgot to get us on the list. This led to me having to call in some marks with an old girlfriend over at CNN (and let me tell you, that blond kitten can hold a grudge). After my crow-eating, Veejay and I were soon northbound on the 5 fwy to see the Brutha and the Mutha smack each other around east of Hollywood Blvd.

Well, you know how it all went down: "kiss, kiss, punch you flat for friends, hee-hee, Republicans suck and are evil, kiss, kiss some more". Don't get me wrong, there were some choice one-liners from Barack, but the whole thing looked like they both got the email from Dean to get off the pissy train before Super Tuesday, suck up to Edwards, go after the Republicans and put Bill in the same suspended acrylic cage they put Magneto in from X-Men 2.

But the real news was whose asses were filling the seats watching the debate and how those asses were kissed afterwards. Sure, we went to cover it for the blog but mostly we went to unload most of our inventory of Dick Cheney/Do Not Resuscitate t-shirts. We felt that we couldn't be throwing redder meat into the den of Hollywood liberals than having those t-shirts sold out of the back of my Porsche for $150 a pop. Apparently word got out what we were selling, because within 20 minutes of the debate ending we were flush with about five grand cash and had a special order from Rob Reiner for 32 more shirts all in XXL. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The pre-debate reception was surreal. You will not find another time in Hollywood where there has been such a clash of A-list and D-list. Some schlock actor's stock went up just by breathing the same air as Spielberg, Diane Keaton, Warren Beatty. And then there were some people who pretty much changed their political affiliation because they got to see who else was on their team. Case in point, when you belong to the same political party as Fisher Stevens (Michelle Pfeiffer's dating mistake) and Topher Grace (that 70's Show residual check recipient and friend of Brad Pitt) you have got some serious soul searching to do to see whether you want to vote the same ticket. Stevie Wonder was downright pissed off when someone told him he was in the same room with out-of-work homophobe, Isaiah Washington. I had an Obama staffer tell me security was going to be dispatched immediately to get Jason Alexander the hell out of the place because everyone knows that any project he's touched post-Seinfeld has taken up residence in the shitter; they didn't want to take any chances. It was just sad though to see L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and S.F. mayor Gavin Newsom trying to get Chelsea Clinton to do jell-o shots with them. She politely declined and resumed chatting with the Spielbergs.

As I tried to work the room, Veejay had already charmed America Ferrera by commenting that he too was a supporter of Hillary (when in fact he's a Ron Paul nutjob). After Cameron Diaz, Ugly Betty comes in a close second who Veejay would like to shower with. Although, I can tell he was crushed to learn the she really doesn't wear braces and top out near 250 lbs (Veejay likes his girls to be of some size and slightly less aesthetically appealing than him so he can feel good about himself) he still soldiered on hoping for a love connection. Apparently he was successful or broke several laws because I still haven't heard from him and her agent just called me looking for her - ah, young love (I gotta call my lawyer again).