Festival 8
Moeller TV Festival 8 commences today at noon at my home in Des Moines. Thanks for your submissions for the Open Remote segment. Phone or text me for directions at 515-249-3457. Here are the festival greetings from Aaron and me, as they appear in this year's festival program:
This Is It: Moeller TV Festival: The Movie
When the Moeller TV Festival was tragically killed this summer at the hands of shady doctors and predatory housing lenders, we were on the verge of our greatest comeback. Even though Chris's type-A personality and delusional political aspirations usually present him as the overriding "voice" of the festival-- running roughshod over the proceedings, constantly fiddling with the contrast on the TV, ordering the Top Chef guys (catering in the kitchen) to send out more mustard packets for the sub sandwiches-- I'll always consider the TV Festival my baby. With tears in my eyes, I immediately considered our lasting legacy and started to piece together these final programs for a special big screen edition of our late friend. This is what could have been.
I admit that before he died, his career was on life support. Known as "Freaky Festy" in the tabloids, Moeller TV Festival had come to be known as an oddity to millions. Despite the constant plastic surgeries and creepy allegations of plying underage viewers with "Jesus Juice" and then diddling with their things, I truly believe Fame at a Young Age was his great undoing. The Moeller TV Festival had so much notoriety from early on that he was simply ill-equipped to deal with it in an adult way. But when it comes right down to it, he had a lot of love in his heart and wanted nothing more than to share it with the world. Year after year, his love came out in his programming and when those great shows were on and we were laughing until our knees buckled and crying 'til our noses bled, it was absolute magic.
He was never better. WE were never better.
In fact, I think TV Festival's brother Jermaine said it best when he asked, "Can I sing at the funeral?"
So this is it. "Moeller TV Festival: The Movie". We have a great one this year, one that will last in perpetuity and keep reminding us of his eternal brilliance. Enjoy it. And be sure to log on to amazon.com to pre-purchase "Moeller TV Festival: The Movie: The Book," which further chronicles the dreams of the young dancers who only wanted to dance in front of thousands with the man that inspired them.
I've always loved you, knuckleheads, and I always will,
Aaron Moeller
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What famous television characters are saying about the Moeller TV Festival (interviewed by Chris Moeller)....
Sam the Eagle ("The Muppets"), "The Moeller brothers have presented some very WEIRD programs over the years, and I, for one, am simply appalled by the spectacle of these shows and presenting them for public viewing. I ask, what is the socially-redeeming value of a presentation entitled "Who Pooped the Bed?" This entire gathering is one of sick, degenerate, barbaric freaks. It is disgusting and distinctly unpatriotic to hold this event, not only one time, but once every year.
Latka Gravas ("Taxi"), "In my country, it cost 50 lithnich to attend a TV festival. And there is no TV, only the mountain people in the village to act out the favorite stories. It is a pain in the yatkabee. Thank you very much."
Al Swearingen ("Deadwood"), "Progress, I guess some would call it, that a pair of loopy-fuckin' Siamese monozygotic half-breeds could produce an event that calls to mind the fuckin' Romans to the Coliseum for an afternoon bloodletting. Don't I yearn for the days when men could announce their fucking intentions to lie the fuck back in their homes and massage their johnsons instead of descending like locusts upon a gathering of grab-ankled imbeciles. That's the fucking sum and substance of it."
B.F. "Hawkeye" Pierce ("M*A*S*H"), "TV Festivals would be commonplace all over the world today, if they would just put an end to this damn war."
Cliff Clavin ("Cheers"), "It's a little-known fact that TV festivals date back to ancient Mesopotamia, where they were organized by priests and thought to bring good fortune and a healthy childbirth to pregnant women. It's well-documented. There wer only two seasons on the early Babylonian calendar-- summer and TV Festival. In some parts of the Tigris-Euphrates region today, insurance offices still give away the old calendars.
Yakov Smirnoff ("The New Hollywood Squares"), "In Soviet Union, television festivals watch you."
Jeff "B-Dog" Boomhauer ("King of the Hill"), "Yo, man, I tell you what, man. That dang ole' TV festival, man. With the dad gum comment box. Talk about just keep quiet, man, write it on the card. Yeah, man, dang ole', tasty sandwiches, man."
Lucy Ricardo ("I Love Lucy"), (crying) "Rick-ee, I want to go to the Moeller Television Festival!"
Celebrating the Armistice
We've reached another somber Armistice Day. Ninety-one years after the end of World War I, the United States military now engages itself not in one, but two wars simultaneously-- one for Iraq's oil, and one for Afghanistan's oil pipeline, both about extending America's capitalist and imperialist reach.
Our leaders tell us that the wars are about liberating people, but an estimated 128,000 to one million Iraqis are now dead, not liberated, just as there were two and a half million people dead from our excursion into Vietnam a generation ago, and four and a half million dead before that in Korea. In Afghanistan, we're "officially" in search of a Saudi nationalist hiding in the mountains, yet our strategy strangely is to bomb the Afghanis that live in the cities. No, our true mission there is to install and support the dictatorship that will most adequately protect the pipeline.
All but one of our World War I veterans are now dead, but our servicemen and women continue to be sold a phony bill of goods. The sad fact of the matter is that their deaths in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have all been for naught. Americans have not been made safer. Our national interests have not been in jeopardy in any of these conflicts. The dead have been robbed by their government in the most heinous way imaginable-- their lives were taken under the false pretense of spreading and insuring liberty. In fact, the mostly-poor die in American-led conflicts so that rich men can stay rich.
The advocates-- the proverbial cranks and shafts-- of the war machine surely espouse an appreciation for the unequal sacrifice of our military veterans. They engrave their names on shiny walls, praise their courage on bumper stickers, and even believe perhaps that the futility of one person's death in war will be made somehow less by sending a next generation of soldiers into bloody conflict-- as if throwing one corpse upon another will help justify having thrown the first.
Armistice Day was originally established as holiday because our grandparents and great-grandparents were so universally grateful that World War I (and it was still simply "The Great War" at that time) had come to an end. There was recognition of that particular conflict as the epitome of war's fruitlessness. The Kaiser had been deemed evil and the war justified, but now 10 million soldiers were dead in the mud in France, millions more shellshocked, gassed, and crippled, and 40 million civilians joining them in graves across Europe. Recognizing the Armistice was meant to be an annual reminder of war's pain and suffering, an occasion to
denounce war, not one to wave nationalist flags, to parade around in mothballed uniforms, to make wretched speeches flooded in hypocrisy, or worst of all, to make mockery of our decent impulse to honor our veterans.
The Kucinich barometer
If you're a progressive not sure of what to make of the 1,900 page health care bill passed by Congress on Saturday, then you probably first do what I do-- see if Dennis Kucinich voted for it.
Well,
he didn't. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat, says the legislation "locks us into a for-profit system that the government subsidizes."
"It's not going to save money in the long run," he said, "It's not going to provide the broad healthcare services the American people need. It's going to limit choices people have over a longer period of time, and people will have to buy private insurance. This bill doesn't effectively moderate what [insurance companies] can charge for premiums, or co-pays, or deductibles; it just says people will have to have insurance. Well, insurance doesn't necessarilly equate to care, and care comes at a cost."
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If you're not going to be at the Moeller TV Festival on Saturday, that's likely because you're planning to attend
the Eero Saarinen exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. Saarinen is the architect of
the Gateway Arch in St. Louis,
my favorite example of "art for art's sake" in the heart of an urban metropolis, but also of such buildings as
John Deere World Headquarters in the Quad Cities.
Damn Yankees
During the early 1950s, a pair of writers named George Abbott and Douglass Wallop collaborated on the book for a Broadway musical that would be called "Damn Yankees." It told the story of a Washington Senators (team now defunct) baseball fan who makes a pact with the devil to help his team win the American League pennant. The title alluded to the general disdain that most baseball fans feel towards the richest, most-often-crowned team that also plays in the largest city in the United States and the Major Leagues.
Well, that richest team was just crowned again as World Champions last night-- and for the 27th time in their history. Twenty-seven is a lofty number to be sure, but let's surround it with a little context. During the middle part of the 20th century, the Yankees enjoyed their greatest stretch of success, virtually owning an era that stretched from the late '40s to the early '60s. The 2009 title, in contrast, is the team's first since 2000. Nine years isn't a long period of time, compared with Chicago or Boston championship droughts or visits by Halley's Comet. But if you consider the fact that the Yankees boast a $200 million and more payroll, $70 million more than the second-highest in the league and $130 million more than even the league median, your jaw begins to rise a bit.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your favorite team is the Minnesota Twins. They're the Minneapolis/St. Paul entry in the same American League, a circuit that the Yankees have won only 40 times in the last 89 years. Your team boasts a 26-year-old catcher (Joe Mauer) who is already one of the greatest sluggers at his position in the game's history. You have a recent (2006) league MVP patrolling first base, a former World Champion shortstop, one of the game's most-consistently dominant closers, and a solid starting lineup and pitching rotation that produced an 87-win season in 2009. Now suppose I tell you that next year, your team is allowed to keep all of its current players for the same price as '09, but that they're now allowed to
quadruple the size of that payroll. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
I won't join in with the chorus of Yankee-haters today that's going so far as to label the Yankees' 2009 championship illegitimate, but you'll forgive me if I also don't stare in awe of their recent. The Yankees, by all rights, should play in every World Series. Period. They can outspend their injuries and their contractual mistakes. They can replace the too-heavy player and coaching baggage at will. As Yankees, middling journeymen players get an October spotlight opportunity to become immortal, professional choke artists are afforded 8th and 9th chances at post-season redemption, and a career Yankee/team captain with Hall-of-Fame numbers comparable to a Paul Molitor gets a split-screen with Babe Ruth on a national Pepsi-Cola television ad throughout the season. Everything's better in the Bronx.
Is a salary cap a good solution in leveling the field? Maybe-- if it's important to you to have George Steinbrenner pocket an extra $80 to 90 million each year instead of spending it. We tried suppressing free agency once before, and the result was 20 Yankees championships in the 41 seasons between 1922 and 1962. Since Marvin Miller came on the scene in 1965, promptly liberating the players, the Yankees have claimed only seven more titles in 44 years. You'll forgive me if I'm not eager to race back in time to the so-called "Golden Age" of the game.
What about this idea? The luxury tax? Said tax is in place now and will cost the Steinbrenner clan upwards of $20 million next year, but it doesn't seem to have slowed them down much, and the smallest-market recipients of the Yankees' extra profits currently have no mandate or obligation to invest that money back into their clubs, and why are we subsidizing the most badly-run clubs anyway?
We could all try voting Republican. Despite the 27 titles, the Yankees haven't won one under a GOP presidential administration since Eisenhower. This is true, actually. Since prevailing over the Milwaukee Braves in '58, the team went oh for 5 under Nixon, oh for 3 under Ford, oh for 8 under Reagan, oh for 4 under Bush 41, and oh for 8 under Bush 43-- a combined zero for 28. Pretty amazing. Even the Florida Marlins, with their solitary pair of championships in 1997 and 2003, spread it around better than that. Also, the Supreme Court tried this solution in a celebrated judgement in 2000, and we all know how well that turned out.
No, friends, the solution is simple. A level playing field is, indeed, vital to the game, and the best way to achieve it is to bust up the New York City/Tri-state market. Franchises relocate, and when they do, the economic studies always suggest that it's the corridor linking Manhattan to the graceful estates of Connecticut that would best absorb an incoming Major League Baseball franchise. Let's hear no more talk of Portland, OR, San Jose, or Las Vegas. A true home team for the ESPN crew in Bristol, Connecticut is what we need.
Oh, Papa and Baby Steinbrenner will scream bloody murder at first with cries of "market-share-this" and "territorial rights-that," but sacrifice has always been the name of the game. Baltimore gave up its territorial rights to Washington D.C. in 2004, decades after Washington had graciously surrendered its to Baltimore; the two Chicago clubs opened their arms to a new team up the road in Milwaukee, twice; the Los Angeles Dodgers surrendered Orange County and San Diego in separate deals; while the Cardinals signed off on expansion in Kansas City, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta over the years. "Break up the Birds," they shouted after the Cards won 9 pennants and 6 championships between 1926 and 1946.
Cut the Yankees in half, financially, and you've still got yourself two $100 million-plus payrolls, my friend-- and a matinee-idol shortstop for each side. The new NYC team should also play in the American League to maximize fairness. Sharing a city with a league opponent didn't prevent both the Giants and Dodgers from winning championships during their halcyon days in the Big Apple. And New York City baseball fans
deserve more baseball. Especially after their $850 million investment in the new Yankee Stadium as taxpayers
only created 15 new permanent jobs.
Hey, that gives me another
great idea. The relocated franchise could
also play its home games in the new Yankees Stadium. That's double the return on investment for city residents-- 162 regular-season games each summer in the Bronx, instead of only 81. The Cardinals and Browns time-shared old Sportsman's Park in St. Louis for 33 years, from 1920 to 1953, and the arrangement didn't keep the Cardinals from winning 9 pennants and 6 championships between 1926 and 1946.
I think this idea is a winner. Everybody comes out ahead-- the Yankees, the club owners, the players, New York City baseball fans, even the second-class baseball fans that live outside New York City. If Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez can live and work-- and win-- in harmony on the same side of the infield, than anything's possible inside that magical ballpark.
Any 'Hope' left?
You would think that anybody who had such low expectations for a progressive Barack Obama presidency would be incapable of feeling as disillusioned as I feel exactly one year after his election to office. In virtually every respect, 2009 has felt like a Year Nine of the George W. Bush White House:
-The Iraqi occupation is still a nightmare for the U.S. military and for Iraqis.
-The situation in Afghanistan is about to worsen as the president prepares to escalate.
-The reckless mismanagers of Wall Street have taken a potful of no-strings-attached bailouts, running in the trillions of dollars, but Main Street is still being neglected, and more and more homeowners are choosing to simply walk away from their mortgages, if they haven't already defaulted.
-Obama and his 'snake-in-the-grass' chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel are
working to gut the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, passed to protect consumers in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom scandals.
-Single-payer health insurance, a safety net for each citizen in nearly every other country in the West, remains a pipe dream for Americans as the president promotes a health care initiative that would act as a bailout, in effect, for health insurance companies. He's even gone soft on the public option of late.
-Despite Democratic control over both houses of Congress, he has not led with action on climate change, labor and trade agreement reform, or gay rights.
The people spoke yesterday, and the evidence is that Obama is losing fast politically. The "bipartisanship"-focused, centrist Democrats were once again pummeled-- in governorship races in Virginia and New Jersey. Their wishy-washy fig leaves of reform are being rejected for the big-business-approved economic Band-Aids that they are. The young Obama voters that were going to change the world have gone back to their Facebook, their Hollywood escapism, and to burying themselves in their jobs, trying not to lose their employer-provided health care.
The policy on Afghanistan, as one example, has left Obama open to punishing attacks by Republicans, who should really have no credibility in offering advice on the war. They accuse the president of trying to "manage" the war, rather than to win it. Of course, the war is utterly unwinnable, but Obama endures the body blows because it's clear to all that he
is trying to manage it politically when the U.S. military should be out of Afghanistan entirely.
Has Obama broken many of his campaign promises? Not many that I can recall (the glaring exceptions being the issues of military commissions, private defense contractors, and state secrets). For the most part, we're getting the president that Barack Obama promised he would be, the one that had been validated in advance of the campaign by the Washington establishment. He promised a bipartisan, "centrist" government, and this is that product we're seeing now in all its glory-- compromise proposals in which only one side compromises, and a Republican/Blue Dog Democrat opposition so intense, so bought and paid for by special interests, that it was hellbent on opposing the president regardless of whether his agenda turned out to be a radical one or a moderate one.
The outlook for the nation isn't rosy on the one-year anniversary of Obama's historic election, but it will look even worse as we reach the two-year pole if Obama doesn't make a radical shift leftward in his outlook and agenda. If he refuses, the blood will be in the water and November of '10 promises to usher in a right-wing revolt in the midterm elections that will make the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 look like child's play.
The World Series issue
With this year's World Series, a Yankees series victory means the Cardinals become the clear-cut choice as National League team of the decade. Granted, this is a title as mythical as the college football national championship. Still, I'm rooting for the Phillies because they're not the Yankees. There are only three acceptable reasons for being a Yankees fan-- 1) you live in the South Bronx, 2) you currently play for-- or at one time played for-- the Yankees, or 3) an immediate family member plays for-- or at one time played for-- the Yankees (two or fewer generations ago).
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I nearly spit out my low-fat strawberry yogurt when I sat down to watch the World Series pre-game show Wednesday night. Sound techs at the new Yankee stadium piped in Darth Vader's "Imperial March" for the introduction of the Phillies' starting lineup, then, as the Yankees' starting nine was introduced, they blared the triumphant "Throne Room" piece that ended the first installment of "Star Wars" in '77. Uh, huh. That's right-- the Phillies are the Evil Empire, and the Yankees are the rebel alliance. I immediately recalled that scene in "Star Wars" in which Han Solo charged the blonde farmboy $1600 for a seat in the Millennium Falcon Legends Suite and then Lando Calrissian accepted the 10-year, $275 million contract to fly attack missions against the Death Star.
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Look no further than Pedro Martinez for evidence that club owners were colluding last winter in refusing to sign veteran free agents. A 37-year-old pitcher with a 214-99 lifetime record, 3,000+ strikeouts, a five-time league ERA champion, and a guy who threw six scoreless innings with six strikeouts and no walks during his showcase performance in the World Baseball Classic in March couldn't find work with any of 30 Major League teams, each of which always claiming to "never have enough pitching." Pedro wasn't signed by Philadelphia until August, and then for only $1 million, a little more than double the league minimum salary. He proceeded to go 5-1 over the last month and a half of the regular season, and has allowed only three runs in 13 postseason innings thus far. Fans of other National League teams, be sure to congratulate the Phillies on their 2009 league pennant. That should have been your team.
Generations of steroid use by players could still never come close to matching the scale of damage that's been inflicted upon baseball's competitive integrity over the years by club owners colluding to hold down player salaries.
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When I hear news stories like the one about the Philadelphia woman arrested for allegedly offering sex for World Series tickets on Craigslist, I have to just shake my head. Why in the fuck are our financially-bankrupt municipalities wasting time, money, and energy on policing that sort of activity?
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Why is it that when Andy Pettitte wins Game 3 of the World Series behind his own RBI single and a two-run homer by Alex Rodriguez, there's not a peep about steroids in any of the post-game commentary? Meanwhile, nearly every major sports website has a posted editorial by some nitwit columnist explaining why the Cardinals shouldn't hire Mark McGwire as their hitting coach even as said-columnist continues to whore the retired slugger for more column inches of income. Why doesn't McGwire absolve himself with the fans and the media, they ask, the way Pettitte did, or A-Rod, Gary Sheffield, or Jason Giambi? In other words, why wasn't McGwire a Yankee? Always remember that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds had already been marked for life as villains because of their exploits on the field. They slugged their way through both Ruth and Maris, and even Mantle (with his 54 "rivalry" home runs in '61) and laid claim to the most-prized individual achievement in all of Yankees history, lore and birthright-- the single-season home run record.
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Baseball is still the nation's punching bag of sport: It's steroids, next it's blown calls by umpires during the postseason. Meanwhile, the NBA is
more crooked than its ball.
Moeller TV Festival VIII: The festival lineup
Here it comes, gang: Saturday, November 14th at noon at my house in Des Moines-- Moeller TV Festival 8: Apocalypse. After years of holding ourselves back out of respect for attendees that are pregnant or have heart conditions, this year's festival promises to pull out all the stops. Chris and Aaron Plus 8.
It's still not too late to submit your favorite episodes for the popular "Open Remote" segment. Forward them to christophermmoeller@msn.com, where you can also RSVP, contact me for directions, or just weigh in on the Chelsea Handler Playboy cover photo. This year's screening schedule will be as follows...
NOON
"Second Episode" Andy Richter Controls the Universe #4 4/9/02
"The Bat Jar Conjecture" The Big Bang Theory #13 4/21/08
"The Great Debate" Welcome Back, Kotter #1 9/9/75
Open Remote
"Venus and the Man" WKRP in Cincinnati #60 1/31/81
"Nothing in the Dark" The Twilight Zone #81 1/5/62
"Jim the Psychic" Taxi #67 10/8/81
"Who Pooped the Bed?" It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia #39 10/9/08
"The Szechuan Dynasty Dana Carvey Show" The Dana Carvey Show #6 4/23/96
"Show 1819" Late Night with David Letterman #1,819 6/25/93
Des Moines residents, especially, it's time to act fast to arrange your attendance! Aaron has recently purchased a condo in Cedar Rapids and threatens to pull the festival back to the City of the Five Seasons for 2010.
As always, food and drinks will be provided at the TV Festival. The new flat-screen will be there. The great television episodes of all-time will be there. The always-popular "comment box" will be there. Will
you be there?
