The Loud Shall Inherit the Earth

Since the financial crisis, collapse has been on everyone’s lips. The players in this general talk of implosion: doomsday preppers, gold bugs, and gun nuts, and people who are fashionably hysterical about doomsday preppers, gold bugs, and gun nuts.

So let’s say society took that silly walk over the precipice: who would rise under such a scenario? My guess is that it would be the great pandering orators; feel good folks like Bill Clinton and Sarah Palin. Substance barely matters here in the pre-apocalypse, but at least it matters somewhat. Right now people do take notice if you're Dr. Prodigy Patel, the world's greatest neurosurgeon. They may not care as much about your frontal lobe tinkering as they do about born again benchwarmer Tim Tebow, but at least neurosurgeons still get some respect.

But if society broke down and existence became more like The Road, substance would not matter at all. No one would follow a mousy brain doctor.

The people who would rise would be the great superficial talkers, the ones who could fill the threatening silence with verbal comfort food. Anyone who spoke with precision or unassuming expertise would get nowhere. The untrained ear (which comprises the vast majority of ears), barely understands subtle oration now, and would make even less of an effort to fathom it while scrounging for another unappetizing post-apocalypse meal.

Ironically, one of the people most heralded by those worried about collapse is a prime example of someone who wouldn’t rise under such circumstances: Ron Paul. Consider just some of his talents: medical training, military experience, and an esteemed track record as a high school athlete. The man has about as much substance as you're likely to find in a person. But despite all these qualities--qualities that are uncommon by themselves, let alone combined in one person--no one would follow him post-apocalypse. Why not? Because Ron Paul isn't a rousing speaker. He would either bore the survivors or go over their heads. They might even trample him in their rush to hear Oprah Winfrey's next speech.

Being a verbose dolt is always a surer path than being a learned square. It is an even surer path these days; just look at the 40 year boom in the self-help racket. Self-help exists because once people leave the nest to become adults, they still look for people to be their parents. In the pre-self-help days, when people didn't get divorced every three years and switch religions each time there was a heat wave, their spouses and clergymen acted as de facto parents. Whether they actually loved their spouses or believed their clergymen was irrelevant. They still had a stabilizing force to pat them on the head and say that everything was going to be okay. As those stabilizing forces shriveled, they turned for direction to sophistry factories likes Dr. Phil.

Post-apocalypse, we would all feel like children again, and the people who would capitalize on this would be the folks best able to recite "reality" back to us in bumper sticker form. Even without electricity the soundbyte would be king (perhaps especially, as there would be no Wikipedia to fact-check people with).

So for those who think a societal breakdown would cause a Great Purging of the Morons, I couldn't agree less. You optimists would probably be horrified by the folks who would rise in the wake of such a collapse. We would probably see a lot of pro-wrestlers become leaders; not because of their biceps, but because of their tongues. It wouldn't be a reflective Buddha-type who would take the reins. It would be Ric Flair.

Collagen Lips Sink Chicks

Every woman in Manhattan has at least one nosejob under her belt. Some have three or four. It's like their noses are some kind of weed that keeps growing back and requires constant trimming. Because of this, whenever I leave Manhattan one of the first things I notice are women with their original noses. I have come to find untouched noses somewhat exotic.

That said, I've made peace with nosejobs. Manhattan has more broken bridges than a Sherman campaign, so I've accepted that if I'm going to keep living in New York, NY, I'm going to have to get used to cutting myself on artificially pointy noses (I now put on safety goggles before each kiss).

What I won't make peace with are lip implants. These things look horrendous 100% of the time. Whenever I see a lipjob coming my way I take cover in the nearest alley.

When I encounter a lipjob my first thought is that I looked too quickly. Surely her lips couldn't really look THAT bad, right? After a second look I'm thinking: Is it a makeup job from an Ed Wood movie? Did she accidentally glue a rubber coin purse to her face? By the third look I'm reaching for my camera phone so I can share this cosmetic tragedy with the world.

Breast implants at least make sense on paper, but who is getting excited about plus size lips? I can't recall a single time I've heard a guy brag about dating a woman who needs a paint roller to apply chapstick.

Remember how everyone always raved about Sheryl Crow's incredible lips? Well if you recall, Ms. Crow's lips were not large. They were pert.




I believe Sheryl Crow* won some award like Sexiest Mouth in Music. Or maybe it was Sexiest Mouth in Rock. Or maybe is what Sexiest Mouth on a Woman Who Dated a Steroid Fiend (which would actually be impressive considering she'd be beating a field full of athlete trophy wives). Whatever the award was, Crow's pert, medium sized lips look a helluva lot better than the Dr. Frankenstein experiment that is Lana Del Ray.




If you're an average looking woman who thinks she needs an edge, here's what you do: WORK OUT LIKE A MANIAC and get your body into decent shape. A tight figure (especially in this age of hyperflab) will make you a far rarer commodity than a woman with lips that stop traffic for the wrong reasons.

By the way, the lip implant trend does not bode well for the future. One day all these women getting lipjobs are going to be old grannies. The rest of their face will have shrunken, making their non-biodegradable lips look even more monstrous. Remember how when you were a kid your biggest fear was getting a kiss from granny? Well the next generation of kids are going to be forced to kiss grannies with lips that start at their chin and end at their forehead. Not gonna be pretty.



*By the way, Sheryl Crow is still pretty hot. I should have included her in my tribute to women who never hit the wall.

Small talk only comes from small brains

I spent many years working many different types of retail, and never ceased to be amazed by how insulting and condescending the public could be. Because of this, I have to talk myself out of drop kicking any customer I witness being condescending and/or trite.

Case in point: fruit stand workers in Manhattan. Across Manhattan, there are gentlemen who stand on the sidewalk in almost any kind of weather and sell a variety of fruits and vegetables at a lower price than you typically find in grocery stores. What a wonderful convenience.

What isn't wonderful is all the nonsensensical small talk and patronizing tripe fruit stand guys are subjected to by the idiot public.

The last two weeks have brought sub-freezing temperatures to New York City, and I keep hearing morons telling the fruit stand guys to "Keep Warm" and "Don't let yourself get too cold!"

Like this guy doesn't know enough to protect himself from the elements when the windchill hits 10 below.

I'd love to hear a fruit stand guy shout back:

Really, you mean mittens are a must when it's so cold not even Pyro can get a match going? I've spent the last six hours using these completely frozen grapefruits to do some duckpin bowling on the sidewalk, and here I was thinking I just had a bad batch. Thanks Human Version of Wikipedia! My humble Bengali roots didn't prepare me for this highly technical knowledge.

If you really want to make these guys feel better, give them a tip.

Shooter Games, Shooter Films, and Moneyshots

Today is the one month anniversary of Sandy Hook, and the discussion of the causes behind the shooting continues. One topic has been the possible link between violent entertainment and violent real-life behavior. This topic always surfaces after such incidents.

What is the relationship between death on the screen and death on the street? Put it this way: I frequently hear people say that Rudy inspired them to keep playing when people said they couldn't or that The Pursuit of Happyness inspired them to brush themselves off and follow their dreams. I also hear folks say they watch certain movies or scenes from movies to "pump themselves up" for certain activities. So why are we so afraid to consider that Die Hard might inspire something comparable in the other direction?

Look at kids and pro-wrestling. Nearly every kid sees the wrestling moves on TV and tries them in real life. I speak from experience on this. I doubt I would have invented the camel clutch on my own.

I also know I'm not the only one who has been involved in conversations about how the ubiquity of harcore porn has altered sexual expectations and responses.

If seeing something on the screen didn't influence your behavior, there would be no such thing as commercials.

When I went to the movies recently every single preview was for an upcoming explosion extravangaza. People love this stuff. Hollywood wouldn't keep sinking money into big budget bloodbaths if there was no demand. The vast majority of viewers walk away without seriously mimicking the carnage. But for a deranged viewer, why couldn't it be one of the contributors to his ultimate meltdown? If people are going to claim that uplifting, inspirational entertainment has a positive impact it seems like a stretch to say that violent, nihilistic entertainment can't have a negative effect on viewers' perceptions and behaviors.

Obviously humans were violent and aggressive before violent movies and video games. But does that automatically mean that continual exposure to certain kinds of violent entertainment can't help shape the way that aggression is expressed? People also had sex drives before the pill came along, but once it began to circulate, behaviors changed.

If violence on the screen doesn't desensitize people, then why has movie violence escalated so much? Go watch the darkest, most existential noir film from the fifties and see how tame it is compared to today's PG-13 films (to say nothing of R-rated ones). If our expectations and reactions weren't changed by continuous exposure to violence, we wouldn't be experiencing dimished returns when it comes to onscreen blooshed. 

Actions speak louder than calls to action

The much discussed climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, and with it, the image of NYC underwater due to climate change made its way into the global warming discussion.

That was almost seven years ago, and in this era of property market depression, NYC property prices have still at least managed some ebbs and flows (as opposed to just a straight drop).

One might ask: If people truly believed that NYC was due to be underwater in the near term, wouldn't you expect them to rent, or to perhaps buy in less flood-likely areas like Westchester or White Plains?

The US did not sign onto programs like the Kyoto Protocol, so there has been a perception that the rest of the world is working on climate change while Americans continue to plunge their heads in the sand. Strange then that there continue to be so many foreign (presumably climate change aware) buyers of NYC real estate.

And these sales are not due to crazy bargain prices. NYC real estate remains among the highest priced real estate in the country. If we assume everyone really believes in a potentially waterlogged Manhattan in the near future, why haven't property prices fallen like a broken elevator?

Perhaps the public's level of belief in the consequences of climate change aren't as deep as the headlines would have us think. Actions speak louder than calls to action. What you do is what you believe.

 

More phrases that need to be retired

Feel free to stop saying the following:

I didn’t ask to be born.

Actually, you kinda did. Who else made that frenzied journey to fertilize the egg? It wasn't your guidance counselor. Perhaps you weren’t classically sentient, but you certainly participated. You begged to be born, struggled for it even. Out of millions of sperm, you were the one that jumpstarted the egg. You succeeded in spite of the odds, something you probably haven’t done since.

And lest you think being a mere sperm lets you off the hook, remember: you were a part of your father before you became your own being, so you were part of the being who choose to engage in the procreationary behavior that originated your counterproductive existence. So at the very least you were an accessory to the crime.

The 70s were the golden age of porn.

This is one instance where the oldies were not goodies. 70s porn featured convoluted plots, bushes thick enough to be chastity belts, and sex so tame it is just a notch above abstinence. Nowadays all you have to do to see anatomic degeneracy is slow down a Disney film. I'll take a pass on "Debbie Sort Of Moans While Pretending To Do Dallas".

If women ran the world…

Recently named most flawed premise of all time by Car and Driver, the statement if women ran the world is usually followed by: “There'd be no war! There'd be no poverty!”

Putting aside the bloodthirsty horseplay of H. Clinton, C. Rice, and M. Albright, why don't we cut to the group most young grrrls cite as their heroes: The Amazons.

The Amazon women were so preoccupied with warmaking they chopped off their right breasts to enable arrow shooting and spear throwing (even Amazons knew that girls throw like girls). Their turn-ons included ritually slaughtering male children. Yet the same grrrls who tout matriarchies as the cure for Earth's troubles cling to these brutes like trophy wives at a Hollywood premiere.

So yes all you difference makers, things would be different if women ran the world...chicks would be barefoot and pregnant in the War Room.

Cave Rain Man?

I just watched my first full length 3-D film: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about the Chauvet Cave, which is a cave in France containing the oldest cave paintings yet discovered. Far from sloppy blobs, the drawings offer quite detailed portraits of horses, birds, bears, etc.

Some of these drawings are estimated to be 32,000 years old, more than twice as old as any previously known drawings. Some are quite detailed. For instance, there is a striking portrait of a rhino that seems to be running, as evidenced by the flipbook-like style of the artwork.

When these drawings were produced (and they weren’t produced all at once; there is speculation that some were done 5,000 years apart), daily life was torturous enough to make waterboarding seem like an episode of Double Dare. Europe was covered in glaciers. Freezing to death was a constant threat. Bows and arrows weren’t around, so in order to eat, man had to grapple with formidable beasts at fairly close range. Yet despite these hardships, MAN still felt the need to express himself. Procuring meals that were only modestly rancid and minimizing his frostbite wasn’t enough. He had to contextualize his existence through art. He had to say something about being here.

Mostly, these expressions were just straightforward depictions of what he observed; realistic treatments of the animals he encountered. The artists apparently felt no need to identify themselves. We see no signatures on the artwork. We see no cigarette holders left behind by snooty cave art critics. It is kind of refreshing.

And we see no drawings of humans. Not exactly. There does appear to one humanoid-animal drawing with religious overtones, one that seems to chime with the ancient fertility cults. And most significant to me, there are lots of handprints, all evidently done by one guy. We know it was one guy, because this gentleman had a crooked little finger that seems to recur in all of the handprints. He of the Crooked Pinky made several impressions of his hand on different walls.

So at a time when simply remaining alive from dawn until dusk was a grand achievement, when obtaining even the most basic components of sustenance was a risky and complicated endeavor, The Crooked Pinkied Artiste still thought it was worth his time to record his handprint again and again and again. As Cave of Forgotten Dreams makes clear, the Chauvet Cave offers us MAN’S oldest known attempts to capture his surroundings, as well as some of his early gropes at religion. And in the handprints of this single crooked-fingered doodler, I see the world’s oldest recorded neurotic.



My handprints can be found all over Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Hot Women who Never Hit the Wall

Beauty doesn’t last forever, and sometimes, it barely lasts at all. At some point, most women seem to undergo an abrupt change for the worse. Even beautiful women. One minute they’re hot enough to power Satan’s tanning bed and the next minute they’re just another face in the crowd. It isn’t easy to explain, and isn’t always a function of age. And once that special something vanishes, it never seems to reappear. My friends and I call it “hitting the wall.”

Occasionally there are stunners who dodge Father Time’s cruel machinations and retain the freshness that made them stand out from the other standouts. Some that come to mind:

Chris Evert: Tennis champ, girl next door, and the reason white skirts were invented. The fact that she has aged so well is even more remarkable when you consider how much time she spent in the sun. Ms. Evert played her best tennis at the French Open, where she even managed to appear ladylike while covered in red clay. There is a mud wrestling joke to be made here, but we’ll swerve around it out of respect for this classy specimen.

Alyssa Milano: Definite contender for most attractive Alyssa of all time. A woman whose looks remained top floor even as her career hid in the basement. Usually when the resume gets spotty, the face follows suit. Not in this case. A woman who looks dirty and sweet with her sex drive on repeat. And being a vegetarian, you know the wet spot wouldn’t smell like nitrates.

Marisa Tomei: This perennial knockout might even be getting better with age. And allegedly, she has a lust for uncool sitcom characters. Given my resemblance to Bud Bundy, it is virtually impossible for me not to be in there.

Salma Hayek: In the truly elite stratum of cartoonish sex appeal. Still going strong at 44, motherhood and all. So smokin’ that a source close to the U.N. tells me they are considering a bill that would change the expression to “Gentlemen prefer brunettes.”

Faye Dunaway: So hot in Bonnie and Clyde she should have been preserved in amber and used to create a Jurassic Park full of hot chicks. So hot in Chinatown she made an already tragic story more tragic. You have heard of cheekbones that could cut diamonds. Unlike diamonds, Ms. Dunaway’s cheekbones truly are priceless. It has been said that Helen of Troy had “a face that launched a thousand ships.” If Helen had gone clubbing with Dunaway, she would have spent the first half of the night buying her own drinks and the second half alone at home, wearing sweatpants and reading The Bell Jar for the 75th time.



My Twitter feed is as gorgeous as ever: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Phrases that Need to be Retired

Second place is the first loser.

As we go to print, there is still not one documented case of an actual winner using this phrase. In reality, those who say it are ironclad losers trying to sound like their life is one big trophy case.

Size matters.

You will find this sentence in every commercial and magazine article, yet writers and advertisers present it like they're breaking a taboo. Even worse is the way they act like there is still some debate raging about whether size matters. I should capitalize by selling bumper stickers that say: "Size matters…and I vote!"

Palin is dumb.

I'm not sure who is dumber; Palin, or the people who say this like it is an original thought. When I hear this line, I reply with the equally insightful, "Wrestling is fake."

I like real women.

A guy usually states this at high volume in the presence of a girl who is self-conscious about her weight (i.e., every girl). And if he's really feeling it, he adds the old "emaciated women are disgusting" chestnut, followed by a shot at a "disgusting" chick like Heather Graham. Of course Heather Graham would actually be his first choice, but Ms. Graham would never settle for this pandering rube. So to score points with the human fish bowl he might have a prayer with, he pretends he is not "shallow" by saying he prefers the look of a “real” woman. Somehow everyone misses the fact that a preference for the "real" look is still a judgment based on looks. Wake up and smell the coffee ice cream.

Keep Louisville Boring

Louisville, KY is a hard town to pronounce, and an even harder town to visit. Appropriately, it brings to mind another hard to pronounce word; ennui.

Louisville is a desperate, colorless misuse of pavement. It's a gas station that doesn't know it. A place that just kinda happened.

An unhealthy mist hangs over the city. I suspect it's a fog created by the nitrate-heavy sweat the locals produce after feasting on the local grub. Before visiting Louisville, I'd never heard of a major sandwich shop running out of wheat. I have now. I guess in some cities, there is a last call for wheat bread. In a place where the grass is all blue, not even the horses can eat green.

And should you want to escape across the Ohio River, you're escaping to...Indiana. I hear Phillip K. Dick was going to work this into one of his novels, but was afraid no one would believe it.

One night I was directed to an area called FOURTH STREET LIVE. Basically, it's a dismal food court made super dismal by the blare of droning peasant music. You might say it's a meat market where both the food and women are rancid.

Although Halloween was still a ways off, a number of ladies were dressed as trampy devils. This failed to improve FOURTH STREET LIVE. How can a college town herd half-drunk, half-dressed college chicks into a central locale and still manage to be boring? Louisville makes it possible.

Of course, there is no accounting for taste. I'm sure some guys enjoy spending their Saturdays being sized-up for a brawl outside a Taipei Express.

After the disorienting brush with FOURTH STREET LIVE, I browsed the city's hipster section. Like all hipsters, the ones in Louisville come off as apathetic; only there, they really mean it. Not much use for irony in a town where the joke is on you. So I guess if you're looking for something different, Louisville's hipster sincerity is a rare attribute, though I don't see that as a fetching chapter in a tourism guide.

On the flipside, at least you can be sure that what happens in Louisville stays in...oh wait, nothing happens in Louisville.



The real promised land is my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Scenes from a New York Barber Shop

I need a haircut. I need a lot of other things too; complete facial reconstruction or a decent Brad Pitt mask, but there are only so many shopping hours in the day.

On my way home this afternoon I passed a hot Eastern European woman who was distributing flyers for a neighborhood barber shop offering $10.00 haircuts. I asked her if she came with the haircut. She said yes, but only if I multiplied the price of the haircut by 1,000,000. There are only so many zeroes in my bank account.

The barber shop was nearby, and one of the barbers was idling out front, so I assumed they were hungry for business. Maybe I'd even be a miser and talk them down to $9.00.

I asked the guy if the flyer was for his barber shop. He said no. I looked around and didn't notice any other hair-clipping establishments on the street. I looked up at his awning. Indeed, it was the same address as the one on the flyer.

"This coupon isn't for your barber shop?"

"No, that's not here."

"So this isn't for your shop?"

"No, not here."

I appealed to the awning. His reaction told me the appeal isn't a form of jurisprudence that has reached the barber community.

Classic New York. You get an offer for a discount, and the whole thing turns out to be fine print. It's not even a "bait and switch." It's a "bait and deny all knowledge of the bait." And the baiter acts like you're the idiot.

I gave up haggling with the guy. Whether the coupon was "real" or not, it definitely was for his shop. How this "misunderstanding" came about is for the reader to decide. I'm all for conspiracy theories, but I rather doubt one of the barber's enemies from the Old Country took the time to print fake flyers for his shop and then hired a hot chick to hand them out. True, she may not exactly have been "hired." I have heard of Eastern European hotties being used for sex trafficking. What I haven't heard of is them being used for dandruff trafficking.

I still need a haircut.

It's not the Heat, It's the Commentary

Finding loopholes in anti-torture law is a full-time job. Most people don't have time for two full-time jobs, so in place of lawful genital-tasering, they resort to small talk about the weather. It scratches the torture itch while keeping them out of jail.

Summer is when the serious INQUISITORS come out. You won't read this in your New York City guidebook, but congregating around street vendors this time of year is the surest way to experience the weather-talk version of the rack. Here's the torment you'll encounter each time two strangers meet:

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Phew, another hot one!"

Meathead-eorologist #2: "Yeah, humid too."

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Phew, what's it supposed to be like tomorrow?"

Meathead-eorologist #2: "I hear it's going to be even hotter."

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Will it be humid too?"

Meathead-eorologist #2: (Eyes bulge) "Gee, I don't know! This looks like a job for Weatherman!"

[Meathead-eorologist #2 steadies his trembling hands just long enough to flick on the Weatherman-Signal; flooding the muggy sky with a W-shaped distress sign. Will our hero respond in time?]

Weatherman heroically answers the call.

Weatherman: "YES, IT WILL BE HUMID TOMORROW."

Repeat after me: It's summer. In New York City. It's going to be hot. What's that, you're feeling the heat? So is everyone else. No need to mention it. If it were 95 in January, we'd have something to talk about.

Do you spend every December 23rd telling strangers how Christmasy it is?

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Phew, it's really Christmasy out here!"

Meathead-eorologist #2: "Yeah, tomorrow's gonna be even merrier."



My Twitter feed is partly funny with a chance of haze: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The Little Generalization

Whenever a short man does anything someone else dislikes, he is accused of having a Napoleon complex. Stubby landlord wants you to pay on time? It's because he's not 6' 1". Diminutive brother-in-law looks out for his sister? Clearly a French History major. And if either guy denies having a Napoleon complex, it's a textbook case of the Napoleon complex.

Let's clear this up: Napoléon Bonaparte was 5' 6.5", which was average for his time. So the alleged relationship between NP's actions and stature is undersized at best.

More importantly, why is Napoléon the only historical figure with a pop-psychology term named after him? Tubby drunks aren't told they have Yeltsin Disorder. Asians who don't brush aren't diagnosed with Mao Syndrome (boozed up, non-brushing fatsos have yet to produce an icon).

For the record, those whose actions actually resemble Napoléon's are typically tall. The average American CEO is 6' 0". American politicians too tend to be above average in height. Yet no one says, "Due to a lifetime of standing above their peers, these men develop a bullying nature that continues into adulthood."

No, they're just thought of as pricks.

But just imagine if Danny DeVito laid off 4,000 people: "AWWWW, AWWWW, he's just mad 'cause God downsized HIM!!!!! Know what I'm sayin'!? [High fives en masse.]

WE GO LIVE TO THE SLIGHT DRIZZLE STORM DESK!

Among the many things I hate about news broadcasts are their clumsy attempts to switch from one topic to the next. This is especially painful when they try to toss it to the weatherman.

Anchor: "But for now, the Manhattan Rapist remains at large. And speaking of rape, I understand a cold front will be forcing itself upon us this weekend, right Chet?"

Weatherman Chet: "That's right, John! This weekend Jack Frost will be climbing through our windows at night and grabbing us when we least expect it."

When did weathermen become the center fielders of the newscast? Why does the entire show revolve around Ricky Raindrop? Weathermen all get their data from the same sources anyway. It's not like Channel 5 is going to predict partly cloudy while Channel 2 is forecasting The Rapture. All you should care about is which newscast has the hottest weather girl.

And how come no one riots when weather teams use dramatic, theatrical tones to report non-events? What does a 35% chance of rain actually mean? It means a 65% chance of no rain. Do we really need Avatar-caliber graphics for something with less than a 50% probability of occurring?

Worst of all, viewers are held hostage by these dubious data. Imagine you were off to a Yankee game, and before heading out, you heard a sports reporter say:

Reporter: “Tonight there’s a 35% chance Derek Jeter hits a homer.

You wouldn’t go, “Damn, better bring my glove!”

Of course, you can’t justify a spooky sounding S-T-O-R-M D-E-S-K if you telegraph that what you’re covering is a lack of something.

Why not just devote the whole newscast to wacky figures? Example: In 2008, there were 516 recorded homicides in NYC. Instead of a real crime beat, why not just set up a homicide “prediction” desk? Hire a hot chick, call her the Action 5 Homicide Honey, put her behind the SENSELESS VIOLENCE DESK and teach her to say, “Today we’re looking at 1.4 murders around town. The record high: 8 murders back in 1990. The record low, set all the way back in 1891, 0 murders.”

Anchor: “Hmm, not much murder back in 1891. Simpler times. Okay, speaking of bloodshed, we’ve got Rachel reporting from the Gaza Strip.”