Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Monday. How are you? Another day, another opportunity to drag Ben Shapiro. The extremely online right wing Daily Wire editor attempted to celebrate D Day on his Twitter, but his smug dedication promptly backfired and got him dragged into battle. Rather than simply writing a post appreciating our veterans, and the trauma and warfare they endured, Shapiro kept his tweet extremely on brand by managing to make the battle of Normandy about PC culture.
Shapiro got quickly dragged to the trenches by receipts documenting the whining nature of his own content, and how he has called for comedians to lose their jobs due to anti-Trump comedy. On top of that, a lot of veterans and family members of veterans chimed in to tell Shapiro to keep his trap shut and stop hurling false equivalences. Shapiro really, really put his foot in it this time around, and people were quick to show him all of the ways his tweet was a bad take. Naturally, his infamous temper tantrum during a BBC interview was bound to come up in the thread. Per usual, Shapiro would have been smarter to sit this one out and leave his tweet in drafts. Live and learn.
A high school English teacher in San Antonio, Texas was fired for being racist, after her racism was revealed because of her very old lady understanding of technology. Georgia Clark thought she was sliding into President Trump's DMs when she begged him to dispatch the modern-day Gestapo to "remove the illegals from Fort Worth." Clark tweeted at @realDonaldTrump assuming that they were private messages, when the racist pleas were, in fact, public tweets. "Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated," Clark tweeted at the president, using the dehumanizing term for undocumented immigrants. "Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them. Drug dealers are on our campus and nothing was done to them when the drug dogs found the evidence," she insisted. It's very clear from her tweets that Ms. Clark hates her students. She tweeted on May 17th that she had contacted "the feds" directly, and accused the campus police of conspiring with a "Hispanic assistant" to... keep children safe, I assume. In another tweet, Clark "sent the president" her cell phone number, hoping that somebody from the White House would call. On Tuesday, the Fort Worth Independent School District voted unanimously to remove her from her role of educating children, many of them Latino. According to city data, Fort Worth's population is a third Hispanic. Members of the community attended the school board meeting to advocate for Clark's removal, much like she advocated for theirs. The New York Times reports that according to the school board's review, Clark was disciplined in 2013 "after referring to a group of students as 'little Mexico' and one student as 'white bread.'" The district superintendent sent a note to parents on May 29th, writing, "Let me reiterate our commitment that every child in the district is welcome and is to be treated with dignity and respect." While ever child should be treated with dignity and respect, join mein a tasteful round of pointing and laughing at Clark and yelling "HAHAHAHA SUCK IT, LADY!"
When your family is mired in conflict and criminal-adjacent, with an extremely high likelihood of having committed crimes yourselves, it's probably a bad idea to tweet, period. It's an even worse idea to tweet that you are "en route to The Hague." The Hague, if you didn't know, is a city in the Netherlands known for being home to the International Criminal Court, where people go to face trial for committing genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. It seems like Ivanka Trump didn't know that. Because if she did, why on Earth would she tweet this??????
IDK, Trump family, but have you ever considered using some of your millions in blood money to hire a social media person???? Or, like, get a friend to tell you when your tweets are a bad idea (most of the time)??? You are making it far too easy on the rest of us who live to drag you. I mean, give us a challenge, for once!!! Fingers crossed Ivanka Trump actually IS en route to the Hague to serve time for crimes she is no doubt complicit in... but she has no idea and is about to experience the worst surprise party ever. But far more likely the only consequences she'll face today, or any other day, is a dragging on Twitter, "The Hague" of Internet media platforms. It's literally all we have.
If you didn't know, it's Pride Month. Cities across the world are hosting pride parades and shows and benefits supporting the LGBTQIA community, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, where ever there is a pronounced display of LGBTQTIA pride, there is also a slew of homophobes ready to proudly wave their flags of fear and misinformation. In cases of religious homophobia, the bigotry is often couched in terms of faux morality and the notion that God (or whatever deity) has specifically designated that sex and romance should only take place between a man and a woman. The church's obsession with policing the LGBTQIA experience is full of hypocrisies, many of which are all too easy to point out, and it can be deeply satisfying to watch a sanctimonious homophobe go down for their words. So, when Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin decided to weigh in with a "reminder" that Catholics shouldn't celebrate Pride Month, he got shut down swiftly, and in a beautiful manner. The frame worthy karma moment started with Tobin's claim that Pride Month promotes a culture that is "contrary to Catholic faith and morals." It wasn't long before the actor and former wrestler Dave Bautista weighed in with his two cents on Tobin's view. Bautista fully channeled the loving yet protective vibe of Drax the Destroyer in his tweet extolling his lesbian mom and her active volunteering and compassion for others (which outshines Tobin's claims to religious goodness). He also topped off his call-out by suggesting that Tobin's view does not represent all, or even most Catholics. This of course brought a lot of joy to his many fans. A lot of people were quick to point out how the Catholic church has been a breeding ground for abuse, and perhaps bishops would do well to focus on the problems in their own community. Many Catholics also chimed in to say they align themselves with the LGBTQIA community, and they appreciate Bautista not lumping them in with the homophobic church members. Suffice it to say, Drax the Destroyer is all about Pride Month and not here for Catholic bishops spewing homophobia.
Two Smoothie King stores in North Carolina have closed due to customers experiencing disgusting displays of racism from the franchise's employees. A customer named Tony Choi recently posted on Facebook about his horrible experience. While there with his two young children, an employee thought it would be funny to write Choi's name as "Jackie Chan" on his receipt. Really? As you can imagine, people who saw Choi's post were not pleased. But it didn't end there. A spokesperson for Smoothie King told Yahoo Lifestyle that the employee responsible for the incident was fired, and that the location where it took place has been shut down. In fact, two locations were shut down, because this was not the first time something like this had happened. According to Yahoo Lifestyle, an African American woman received a receipt that referred to her as the n-word while dining at a Smoothie King. The employee involved in that incident was also fired. Smoothie King announced that both locations would be closed while they re-train their employees to make sure nothing like this happens again. I'm glad to see that actions are being taken, but damn, people, we have got to do better.
So, instead of doing this blog thing I shield be listening to this album...
I bet it's entertaining. If I had a TARDIS I would probably end up at a farm somewhere in America as this happened...
What the hell? They tell me if I go to Walmart I'd see some odd sights. I didn't believe it until I saw this...
A few weeks ago Trump threw a temper tantrum about impeachment in the Rose Garden and he had props. Well, he did it again...
Ha. I was looking at a photo of Trump in that ridiculous tuxedo he wore when he was in England and it reminded me of something...
Kind appropriate, right? When he was in England the British sure had some bloody good anti-Trump protest signs like this one...
Hmmm. So, when I saw this it reminded me of something...
Then it hit me...
Hahahaha. Now one of the best things about the Internet is you can see porn so easily and free. But if you're at work you could get in trouble. So I came up with a solution...
You're welcome. Haha. Now from the home office in Port Jefferson, New York here is...
Top Phive Things What A Cat Does
5. Cats do what they want.
4. They rarely listen to you.
3. They're totally unpredictable.
2. When you want to play, they want to be alone.
And the number one thing a cat does...
1. When you want to be alone, they want to play.
If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. The British Royal Family exists solely to be talked about, providing the realm with reality TV centuries before television was invented. The British tabloids are a combination of access journalism and racist fanfiction, and gossip rags on both sides of the Atlantic love to make shit up about the House of Windsor. Here again is...
Rumor: Prince Harry is a foot fetishist.
That's odd. Everybody talks about how great of a person Keanu Reeves is. I didn't realize how great he was until I saw a fee stories about him. So, if you love Keanu you'll love this new pheature called...
Okay, so a while ago on the Phile this comedian would come on and try to tell jokes that never were that funny... or jokes at all. He hasn't been here in a while but decided to come back hopefully with some really funny jokes. So, once again please welcome to the Phile...
Me: Hey, Ollie, how have you been?
Ollie: Okay, I guess, Jason.
Me: Great. SO, you have some new jokes for us?
Ollie: Yes, I do.
Me: Okay, let's hear them...
Ollie: How do you wake up Lady Gaga?
Me: Hmmm... I don't know. How?
Ollie: You set an alarm for a reasonable hour.
Me: That's pretty lame there, Ollie. That's not a joke.
Ollie: Okay, how about this one? What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
Me: I don't know. What?
Ollie: Wheres my tractor?
Me: That's not a joke either. Try again...
Ollie: A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks, "Why the long face?" The horse replies, "My wife is dying of terminal cancer."
Me: UGH! That joke is supposed to end with just the bartender asking the question. The horse didn't need to answer. I'll give you one more chance.
Ollie: What did the plane say to the Trade Center on 9/11?
Me: I don't want to know... what? I'm dreading this answer.
Ollie: Boom.
Me: That's enough. Get the fuck outta here. Ollie Tabooger, the guy who doesn't know how to tell a joke, kids. I hate that guy.
Once you have kids, it’s probably time to stop wearing white.
It is with a heavy heart I report to you that the president's stupidity appears to have reached new heights... or new lows. Unsatisfied with just denying earth science and condemning humanity to an unlivable future because of climate change, Donald Trump has set his sights on the solar system, saying dumb stuff about the moon and Mars that you wouldn't accept from somebody over the age of six. Flip-flopping a mere three weeks after declaring his administration's intention to stage of a revival of the moon landing, Trump declared that NASA should focus on "Mars (of which the moon is part)."
Um, it doesn't take a very stable genius to know that THE MOON AND MARS ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!!! Let's parse this tweet for the weird syntax. Not only is Trump spreading Fake News about space, he all of a sudden learned that one should not end a sentence with a preposition? He learned to say "of which the moon is part" and not "which the moon is part of," improving his grammar but still not understanding these basic kindergarten facts? Or does Trump understand that the moon and Mars are indeed two separate entities, but simply phrased his directive incoherently? Does Trump mean that the moon is part of the MISSION to Mars, and is simply unable to communicate effectively in the English language? According to journalist Matthew Gertz, Trump's "of which the moon is part" business comes from his attempt to live-tweet what he saw on Fox News, whereon a NASA guy said that a mission to the moon will help them ultimately get to Mars. NASA's "Moon to Mars" initiative is a real thing that seeks to use a moon trip as a gateway drug to Mars. Why couldn't the president just have said that?
The 100th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...
Roger will be the guest on the Phile in a few weeks.
The guest will be Sean Marshall who played Pete in the 1977 film Pete's Dragon, one of my favorite Disney movies of all time.
When my tongue is burned from drinking hot beverages I realize how much I under appreciate the time my tongue is not burned.
Okay, this is realllllyyyy cool and exciting. I wish my dad was alive to see this. Today's pheatured guest is is an English actor, voice actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer, and comedy legend. Please welcome to the Phile the one and only... John Cleese!
Me: Hello, John, I'm soooo excited to have you here on the Phile!! How are you?
John: I'm good, Jason, great to be here.
Me: So, your latest stage show Why There Is No Hope you talk about the failings of world leaders. Why did you want to talk about the topic now at this point in your life?
John: Well, I was much more cautious when I was younger because I made the mistake of wanting everyone to like me. Once I let go of that, which is clearly impossible, whatever I do some people don't like me, so I do speak out a lot more strongly than I used to. I want the people in charge to be good decent people. The great problem at the moment is that the enormous number of the world's leaders are total arseholes.
Me: Ummm... you hit that on the nose. Do you think you're rare in saying that?
John: Not many people say it in such a right way.
Me: So, what can you say about Trump?
John: The extraordinary thing about Trump is he seems to have a much closer relationship with other dictators like that disgusting man Mohammad bin Salman who organsed Khashoggi's murder and dismemberment, and of course Trump won't speak out again him. Trump won't speak out against this massacre of Muslims. He won't actually see that it's connected with appalling movement about white supremacy. So there's this madness of Putin and Albasheer... where are the decent ones?
Me: This seems very serious, sir. Is the show humorous?
John: Well, I can make a great deal fun out of all of it. But I was just talking seriously because it doesn't require as much effort as trying to be funny.
Me: That's true. It's pretty hard to be funny. Okay, so, when did you start to like comedy?
John: Well, it takes me back to very much when I was at school and we used to organise our Thursday's around the show "Hancock's Half Hour." He was wonderfully funny, it was written by Galton and Simpson, two of our vey best writers. And he did not many programmes as you might think. Because eventually he was lured away to ITV, and the show's were never quite as good again, but he was THE comedian. He was one that I say people organised their evenings around. He was an influence, but the biggest influence to the Python's, everyone of us, except for Terry Gilliam, who was in America, was the Goons with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. They had a lot of surreal humour, much more like Pythons.
Me: My dad was a huge Goons fan, as well as a Python fan. And I remember watching reruns of "Hancock's Half Hour" when I lived in England in the 80s. So, when you got older did your tastes change?
John: Well, when I got into the late teens and early 20s I discovered the old comedians. We'd always talk about Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy and I began to discover Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and then W.C. Fields. Then stuff started coming across the Atlantic, on record if you believe like Bob Newhart. Massives of different people being funny in different ways. The names I just mentioned were just the best.
Me: Was this stuff you watched with your family or did you watch it alone?
John: No, it was very mixed. I mean we all loved Hancock, my father didn't get the Goon show at all. I remember going up to him, we had a wonderful British humourist magazine called Punch, and I remember going up to him triumphantly and showing him a review in Punch of the Goon show saying how good it was. Mum and dad loved "Fawlty Towers" but neither of them got Monty Python at all. They were people with very different senses of humour.
Me: What was the best show you ever saw in your life, John?
John: I saw it in Cambridge before it got to London and it was called Beyond the Fringe and it had Peter Cook and also Dudley Moore. Alan Bennett whom become one of our very best play writers if not the best and Jonathan Miller who is a sort of genius all the way around. It was the funniest show I've ever seen in my life. And Peter really was the star, to me he was extraordinary. If you wanted five minutes of funny material you could switch a tase recorder on and record for five minutes. He could just do it. I think the only trouble Peter had is after about thirty years he couldn't do it as easily anymore and he wasn't so used to sitting down and grinding it out as the rest of us have to.
Me: Did you know Peter Cook at all?
John: I got to know Peter very well towards the end and I loved him very, very much and I thought he was wonderfully funny.
Me: Dudley Moore ended up having a pretty good movie career but Peter didn't. Why do you think that was?
John: It was interesting because his medium was sketches. He wasn't anything like so in full length stuff, he made one or two films and he wasn't as good in films as Dudley was.
Me: How did that show Beyond the Fringe influence your own career?
John: Well, when we saw it it didn't strike us as anything other than wonderfully funny, wonderfully intelligent. When it got to London the critics all labeled it "satire." It was the first time on a big scale people were making fun of things like the Prime Minister. It hadn't been done before. It was considered disrespectful, literally disrespectful to impersonate the Prime Minister. That was all beginning to change and basically Beyond the Fringe just broke the barriers. Soon behind it came political television going out to millions of people instead he audience in "Fortune Theatre," which was quite small, holding about 500 or something. It was going out massively successful on BBC television "That Was the Week That Was" and David Frost. And after that it was never the same, since then people have been able to make fun of political figured without any feeling they were doing something that is morally wrong.
Me: Life of Brian is coming back to the movie theaters for it's 40th anniversary. When Life of Brian came out there was a lot of controversy behind it, right?
John: Well, Malcolm Muggeridge in a TV debate which Michael Palin and I took on, Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Suffolk whose name was Marvin Stockwood just after the release of Life of Brian. Muggeridge said it's a tenth rate film. Well, he was entitled to his opinion but it has twice recently been voted best British comedy ever. So to call it "tenth rate" really shows very poor level of discussion that was going on by the "Christians." We actually won the debate hands down with the public because we actually behaved better than they did. It's wonderfully ironic. It's very hard to get people to talk about these things without getting upset. I believe there's such thing called an afterlife. I can give you evidence that I think that's the case, I don't mind of people don't think there's an afterlife. I'm very happy, but if I give them a good example what I said I like it if they said "that's interesting." Not "you won't change my mind" but "that's interesting."
Me: What do you remember about that debate on TV? Were you surprised?
John: Well, we didn't know how it was going to go. Tim Rice was in charge and I liked him, he's nice and bright and has quite an authority about it. I think my surprise was I was so disappointed with the poor quality of the arguments put over by the Muggeridge and the Bishop of Suffolk. They just weren't intelligent arguments.
Me: Was their argument that Life of Brian was blasphemous, am I right?
John: Yes! And at one point Malcom Muggeridge said that Brian is supposed to be Christ. And I said, "No, that's why at the beginning of the film we show Brian and the camera pans over to the next manger and there's all sorts of beautiful ethereal music meaning that's where Jesus is. Not where Brian is, so we establish that." Malcom missed the first twenty minutes of the film because he turned up late. They're just shoddy!
Me: Some movie theaters refused to show the movie, right?
John: Yeah, particularly in America the protests were stronger in America in New York they were ever in England.
Me: How did you guys feel about that?
John: Well, it didn't make much sense. It was quite clear we were making fun of the way people followed religions, but not making fun of the founder of the religion. As I say, Christ would not have appeared no one had proved a burning heretic. So, if we make "fun," if that's the right word, burning heretics is not even in accordance of Christ teaching then you can't say that's an attack on religion. It's actually a defence of Christ teaching.
Me: The film almost didn't get made, but it did because of George Harrison, am I right?
John: Yeah, I'll tell you honestly, Jason, I'll be dead soon so I don't really give a damn. Most people have no idea what they're talking about. And most people in charge have no idea what they're talking about, they have no idea they have no idea what they're talking about so they have a lot of confidence. When we have this wonderful film, Life of Brian, we took it to every producer and studio in the U.K. then in the U.S. and not a single one of them would give us seven million dollars, that's very small for a movie. And not a single one of them would give that for a film recently voted the best British comedy film ever. We had all given up, we had literally given up. Peter Sellers asked me to go make a movie with him in Vienna. Eric Idle rang me up and said we've got the money and I said, "What are you talking about? No one wants it?" And he said, "George Harrison is going to put the money up." He said he gave the script to George and George took it home and laughed so much that he rang Eric in the morning and said, "I'll put the money up." Eric said, "What are you talking about?" George said, "I'll mortgage my house." Eric said, "Why are yo doing this?" And George said, "Because I want to see the movie."
Me: What did you think about when you heard this?
John: I just think that's the most touching story and dear old George who is certainly "up there" because he's a lovely, lovely man. I just thank him because without George the world will not have Life of Brian, the best Monty Python comedy. That just shows you how clueless about 90% off the people in charge are.
Me: I have one last question, John. You're one of the most celebrated comedians in the last fifty years...
John: Wait. What do you mean "one of the...?"
Me: Haha. You are perhaps the most celebrated...
John: The world's greatest, most warm hearted, tallest, utterly terrific comedians since the world began.
Me: You are everything that comedy needs and you have been for fifty years, how does that feel?
John: That's a lovely thing to say. Well, I want to go on before I die. I hope people see that it comes out of a deep desire to that we live in a slightly more sensible world.
Me: I'm not saying this to stroke you ego, but...
John: You just had your last question.
Me: This is part of it, it's a longer question...
John: You said it's the last question you asked me, and that was the last question...
Me: The last one wasn't even a question, it was telling you that you are one of the greatest comedians ever...
John: HA HA HA. I got you in the defense you old bastard.
Me: I'm back peddling. Hahahaha.
John: Alright, one last question. Go on.
Me: Okay, last question here...
John: Ha ha ha. I can't trust you at all, can I?
Me: What keeps you going out on that stage? You know you could retire...
John: Poverty. You'll be surprised how little money I have at this stage of my career.
Me: You've only been divorced four times... where's the money gone?
John: Well, largely gone to women. I often think of Rod Stewart saying he's not going to marry again, just find a woman he doesn't like and buy her a house. I don't have a lot of money and I want to buy a place in the sun because my wife and I are absolutely soppy about animals. We want to have a little bit of territory where we can have a donkey and maybe a llama or a wallaby if we're allowed to. Just being around animals just makes us happy.
Me: Cool. John, it's an honor to have you here on the Phile. Please, please come back again.
John: It was lovely chatting with you, you silly man.
That was so great! That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to my great guest John Cleese. The Phile will be back next Monday with some of the original Power Rangers... Austin St. John, Walter Jones and Amy Jo Johnson. You Power Ranger fans should be happy. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
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