One thing that people don't know about me is that I ran for President of the United States of America, and to the Republic for Richard Stans, in 2000, 2004, and 2008 as the nominee from the War Party.

Our platform was elegant in its simplicity.

War Is Good. War Works.

In the War Party, we like all kinds of wars. We like long, cruel wars like Vietnam; and short, funny wars like Grenada. We don't care.

War. What is it good for? Absolutely everything.

War boosts the economy AND reduces the population. It stimulates research and technology. World War II brought us computers, helicopters, and modern rocketry.

The poster boy for the War Party is Harry Lime, who said, "In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love-- they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

But, you say, isn't it difficult to get people to agree to go to war? No. "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

That quote was from the Godfather of the War Party-- Hermann Goering.

People ask me, "Grouchobeer-- are you going to run for president on the War Party ticket in 2012?"

The answer is, "No."

"Why not?", they ask, plaintively.

The reason is that, as happens to most "crackpot" third parties in American politics, our platform has been co-opted by the so-called "Major Parties".

I really don't care. I'm happy as the proverbial clam as long as Obama keeps his campaign promise and invades Iran.

You may have heard the commercials for Cash4Gold.com, where they offer money for your gold jewelry. Did you know that they pay ONE THIRD what any pawn shop would give you? True.

Have you seen the new commercials for the Volkswagen Routan minivan? If not, go to RoutanBoom.Org , and watch the extended one. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Back already? You must have a high-speed internet connection. I won't even get into my general horror of gas-guzzling, global-warming-causing minivans and Republican-voting, lipstick-wearing hockey moms today. This commercial, in and of itself, is startlingly, stunningly, the-fuck-were-these-cretins-thinking bad.

First of all, its talk of Babies and German engineering carries with it a faint whiff of Nazism and the Master Race. Let us not forget that the Volkswagen company was founded by Adolf Hitler.

Secondly, it thinks it's so damn clever, and it just isn't. Perhaps a brilliant comedic actress could sell it, but Brooke Shields ain't exactly Thelma Todd. BROOKE FRIGGIN' SHIELDS??? Isn't this the same woman whose last quarter-hour of infamy came from her dustup with Tom Cruise over the fact that she had undergone psychotherapy and medication for postpartum disorder so severe she had constant thoughts about throwing herself out of a window? BROOKE SHIELDS? What, was Susan Smith unavailable?

Nobody would stand for it if a car company made light of breast cancer or genocide, but somehow, it's ok for them to do cute little commercials about overpopulation, the #1 problem facing the planet, which will be the end of civilization as we know it. Ironically, when the Apocalypse comes  we're all dressed in animal skins and blasting away at each other with shotguns from our tricked-out muscle cars, there won't be a minivan or a hockey mom left on the road.

Hey, that's a good thing.

The movie THE LAST OF DICK CHENEY, b/o the eponymous Gnomix (and the SC series EVERYBODY LOVES DICK) is now live at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg01NZxL1y8

I ordered the LARGE cup of coffee!

If he had one of these cars forty years ago, he'd be president today.

Iceland mourns the death of Santa Claus.

Santa Claus sleeps with the fishes.

In the West Bank today, an Israeli soldier killed Santa.

An elephant went on a rampage after a game of elephant polo.

Lakshmi takes her dog out for a walk.

The Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers is
cracking down on the Writers Guild of America with strikebreakers.
Moments after this picture was taken, Hulk killed Sarah Silverman.

Well, I have my Halloween costume for next year.

A girl like that, you don't eat all at once.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Missiles fly.

Pope John Paul II roasts in hell.

One is a terrible lizard with a brain the size of a cashew,
and the other is a replica.

I am reading "The Comic World of the Marx Brothers' Movies" by Maurice Charney, which I don't recommend. Charney is a pedantic nitwit, who, if he actually met the Marxes, would be de-pantsed and thrown into a snowbank. However, there is one sentence that is funny, albeit unintentionally.

Of Harpo, he says, "He is on intimate terms with his horse."

THIS is the worst production ever of THE MIKADO.


We apologize for any inconvenience.

NZ veterinarians are planning to put down this 7-legged lamb,
but everybody knows a lamb like that you don't eat all at once.

FBI informant Joe Barboza, Senate Committee on Organized Crime informant Willie Cicci.

"Oh yeah, a buffer. The family had lots of buffers."

"One move and the diaperhead gets it."

All my movies are now available at iTunes for free download onto one of those MP4 devices that the kids today love so bad.

grouchobeer productions will hold the World Premiere of the machinima "Dubya and the Monkey in YOU BET YOUR LIFE'", based upon the comic serial, Sunday, May 27, at The Freedonia Gazette Open House in New Hope, PA. Coming soon to an iTunes and an internet near you.

Currently in post: "Porter Goss, International Man of Mystery" and "Porter Goss in CHINATOWN". I am laboring mightily to get them under 10 minutes so I can put them on Youtube.

Expect big news, possibly this weekend, about a co-production, perhaps even a professional gig.

Yesterday, the Pope was kidnapped off the street in Sao Paolo, Brazil,
by masked Mossad agents, thrown into the back of a van, and driven to
a jungle airstrip, whence he made a 22-hour flight on a cargo plane to
Tel Aviv, where he was finally put on trial for war crimes.

Paul Wesolowski, editor, is holding the 25th-- and possibly last-- Annual Freedonia Gazette Open House on  Sun., May 27. He is the world's foremost Marx Bros. expert and his collection is astounding in both breadth and depth. Returning after being conspicuously absent last year is the great video producer Robert Bader, who, every year scours the world's film archives to come up with clips that one has not only never seen, but did not even know ever existed. (Last year, your humble correspondent was the de facto programmer using Paul's discs.)

Paul's other passions are cacti and regional root beers, so every year, I brew a cactus-flavored root beer with a Marx-themed label, and here is this year's label:



COPACABANA was a 1947 movie centering around the famous NYC nightclub. Groucho is Lionel Q. Devereaux, an agent whose client/fiancee (Carmen Miranda), a Brazilian bombshell, also impersonates a French chanteuse (don't ask). In keeping with this theme of duality, Groucho the agent, who since his last movie, A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA, had grown an actual mustache in real life (in previous movies, his mustache was greasepaint), introduces a hot young comic-- Groucho, avec greasepaint mustache, who sings the song, "Go West, Young Man" by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. (I cannot confirm this, but I assume the song was in the first draft of the Marx Bros. movie GO WEST, which was written by Kalmar and Ruby.) "Young" Groucho sing with pretty cowgirls against a backdrop of painted cacti. Well, Paul and Bob will get the reference.