As True As All That
[ All that.]
For immediate release:
Sadly, No! Blog, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Groupe SEB LLC, Inc., would like to notify our readers of HTML Mencken’s nomination for the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Mr. Mencken’s novel, If on a winter’s night a wingnut, has been recognized as a “new and fantastic” contribution to the genre, and is, in the words of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “a hyper-novel, or the novel elevated to the square or cube.” It is also a best-seller on three continents.
Winning the Nobel would be just the latest coup in Mr. Mencken’s illustrious and eclectic career. In 2006, he won the National League Cy Young Award, going 26-4 in leading the St. Louis Cardinals to their eighth straight World Championship. A left-hander featuring a blazing 102mph fastball, Mr. Mencken endeared himself to baseball fans and indeed all decent people worldwide when, during a 13-0 shutout of the San Francisco Giants, his 2-1 pitch to Barry Bonds actually severed the cheating slugger’s right arm at the shoulder, preserving Hank Aaron’s career home run record.
In 2005, Mencken placed second in the controversial Mr. Socialist Universe Pageant, losing by one point to Matthew Yglesias, who was a college classmate with several of the judges. Mr. Mencken is also a musician: his band, Retardo Montalban, has released seven albums — the latest of which, “Retardation Ruling the Nation,” was certified quadruple platinum and made virtually every critic’s “best of” lists for 2007.
Mr. Mencken is also perhaps the world’s most famous blogger, though his publicist has said he plans on quitting the hobby “because [he’s] tired of low-traffic types like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Duncan Black always begging for links.”
Asked of his plans after accepting the Nobel should he win it, Mr. Mencken replied that he would like to open a chain of restaurants featuring Giant Sammiches, “get more gay abortions,” and spend more time with his live-in companions, wingnut vixens Marie Jon‘ and Amanda Carpenter and identity politics fanatic Ann Bartow, “if [he] can stop Ann from trying to force [him] to go to strip clubs and eat at Hooters all the time.”
While Mr. Mencken is a novelist of genius, he has also written non-fiction. His history of the Russian Revolution is, in the words of Rick Perlstein, “a tour-de-force, the most accurate recounting of the Revolution we’re likely to get, and a huge kick in the balls to that rat bastard Richard Pipes.” Mencken has also written a series of children’s books, The Skeptical Brat’s Guide to American Presidents, each installment of which has won the John Newberry Award.
Mr. Mencken divides his time between Monte Carlo, Manhattan, and a corrugated tin shack in Arkansas.
Bravo! I feel honored just to be able to comment in your thread!
Well, you know how it is for Jonah and pals. If you can’t beg, buy, borrow or steal credibility, just make shit up! What, like it’s going to ruin your reputation?
I thought the Pulitzer Prize was for NaziLibroFascists. Or am I getting it confused with the Nobel?
Anyways: Bwahahaha!
That’s quite the feather in your cap!
Would that be the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature?
That Pulitzer will go great on the shelf next to the Oscar you won for directing the Phyllis Schlafly biopic No Country for Old Bats.
Waitaminute!!
In the post-game you said that pitch just got away from you!?
I thought the Pulitzer Prize was for NaziLibroFascists. Or am I getting it confused with the Nobel?
Arky: Couldn’t be the Nobel. After all, Rush was robbed by that cotton-pickin’ LiebroFascistual Gore.
…that cotton-pickin’ LiebroFascistual Gore.
Cotton-pickin’? Really? This type of vile racist turn of phrase in a sentence about some kind of robbery — widely considered to be a “Black” crime — really gets my non-objectifying pro-feminist undergarments in a bunch.
Perhaps he could follow it up with “The Wingnut in the Trees”?
Hmm, some of the alleged “facts” surrounding Mr. Mencken’s career seem a bit inflated to me.
Legalize, creating our own reality is the new black. Well, it was, not long ago.
I saw Retardo Montalban play the Garden in ’77 (Led Zeppelin opened for them) and was blown away. This was the during the Disco days (as you youngsters may not remember) and they were dark days indeed. R.M. came along at just the right time; with their blend of Heavy Metal , Tuvan Throat Singing and highly synthesized lamellaphone, they were the panacea for our broken psyche.
I’d heard the thumb piano player died under mysterious circumstances in the early 80’s while helping Ross Perot rescue some hostages from Iran, but that can not be confirmed nor denied, which is central to my point.
Teeee, so Jonah’s been “nominated” for the Pulitzer in the same sense that we’ve all been “nominated” to win the lottery.
Why even bother going for something so hard though? I’m sure Chimpy still has a half-full box of Medals of Freedom kicking around in the shed at Crawford. I think he gives them out to pizza delivery guys in lieu of a tip.
I just won a Mercedes or a gazIllion dollars, according to a post card I got in the mail. I’m just like Jonah!
Bah! Until you’re nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine, I refuse to be impressed.
And to think! I knew him way back when he was just a little SGML Mencken! It’s been an honour!
By the way, I’m a dead ringer for George Clooney. When I’m not promoting world peace from my 200 room chateau, I provide life-saving surgery for orphans. Wanna see my etchings?
This just in… the writers guild is going to settle the strike right now so they can begin writing hundreds of treatments for the greatest story ever told. Yes the Jonah DP Mencken Goldberg story is the movie all the A-listers are drooling over…Jolie is willing to kill to be the love interest.
I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices at a loft in New York City. I was doing the organ parts with much patience. I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids – at CBGB. Everyone thought it was crazy.
R.M. came along at just the right time; with their blend of Heavy Metal , Tuvan Throat Singing and highly synthesized lamellaphone, they were the panacea for our broken psyche.
Wait, was that Retardo Montalban or Yat Kha?
(proof that literally every absurdist genre mash-up you might think up for a clever goof has already been done by someone else in earnest)
Say don’t you have an undefeated record vs. Bobby Fisher AND Boris Spassky? Seriously though, these guys are shameless, greedy attention whores.
Even more impressive, Jonah was the inspiration for Bum #2 in Woodie Guthrie’s “Bragging Song”
Well, I’m just a lonesome traveler, a great historical bum
Highly educated through history I have come
I built the Rock of Ages, it was in the year oh one
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done
Now I built the garden of Eden, it was in the year oh two
Joined the apple-pickers union and I always paid my dues
I’m the man that signed the contract to raise the risin’ sun
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done
Now I was strawboss on the pyramids and the tower of Babel too
I opened up the ocean, let the mighty children through
I fought a million battles and I never lost a one
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done
Now I fought the revolution that set this country free
It was me and a couple of Indians that dumped the Boston tea
I won the battle of Valley Forge and the battle of Bully Run
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done
Wait, was that Retardo Montalban or Yat Kha?
I’m pretty Sure it was Retardo, but I was all hopped up on Goofballs and Soapers at the time, so I could be wrong.
Although the 1985 Sub-Saharan Tour really kicked ass. I followed them from Burkina Faso through to Burundi and never felt so alive. Of course, by then, they had changed personnel and were featuring an Irish National (Caoilfhionn O’Brien) on Brazillian Nose Whistle and a diminutive Slav playing a Vietnameese Dinh Goong.
I think they were the inspiration for the Live Aid concerts, but I could be wrong, which is central to my thesis.
Ooooh! Can I submit my blog as a nominee? Who cares if it gets laughed out of the office!
So what? I’m the Queen of the Universe and I’ve been nominated for the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. I’ll be going out this afternoon to purchase my tiara and gold sequined off-teh-shoulder gown for my red carpet harch.
Hey! Stop pulling on my arm! I just got to the dayroom! It can’t be time for meds yet! Why does that damned Jonah always get more computer time than I do? His mom donates to the clinic fund? Oh . . . I see . . . Batshit Wingnut Welfare.
I’ll take the meds now after all. I need them.
I was born about ten thousand years ago
There ain’t nothing in this world that I don’t know
I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playing Ring Around the Roses
And I’ll whup the guy who says it isn’t so.
I saw Satan when he looked the Garden o’er
I saw Eve and Adam driven from the door
From behind the bushes peeping, saw the apple they was eating, and
I swear that I’m the guy what ate the core.
I taught Samson how to use his mighty hands
Showed Columbus to this mighty land
And for Phaoroh’s little kiddies built all the pyramiddies
And to the Sahara carried all the sand.
I taught Solomon his little A B Cs
I was the first one ate Limburger cheese
And while sailing down the bay with Methuselah one day
I saved his flowing whiskers from the breeze.
Queen Elizabeth fell dead in love with me
We were married in Milwaukee secretly
But I snuck around and shook her, to go with General Hooker
To fight mosquiters down in Tennessee.
The Woody Guthrie song above, and this one, are sometimes sung in alternating verses, usually as a duet. Great fun, and proof that Mencken’s feats* have entered folklore. This, in turn, surely has a great deal to do with HTML’s popularity and sagacity — not to mention looks.
Ed
* What is a foot? — A singular feat!
Not that this takes away one iota of glory from the phenomenon that IS Mencken, but ANYONE CAN NOMINATE ANYONE FOR A PULITZER PRIZE. Including themselves.
You fill out a form and send it in to the Pulitzer Committee. Maybe it costs eight bucks or some damn thing.
The wife and I did it for a book we published in 2004. Oh all right. Here:
http://tinyurl.com/25pnos
How can you have all those gay abortions if you’re living with three women? Unless…
MrW,
That was the point.
Hey, remember Mike Bilirakis (R-FL) recommending Hammesfahr for a “Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine”?
.
Nuh-uh. You can only submit a writer/reporter’s name. Submission /= Nomination. See MzNicky’s link on the mighty Flush Limpbag.
And I should know because I AM the PP Selection Committee.
Mr. Mencken, congratulations on your nomination. However, I wanted to point out one thing regarding your “Skeptic’s Guide to American Presidents” series:
Woodrow Wilson: Worst President with regard to racial matters in the period between Buchanan and Nixon. The original “Bubble Boy” President, though by no fault of his own: had a stroke that debilitated him; wife and staff were de facto Presidents. But he was a terrible, terrible President all on his own. Terrible; the guy you want to go back and murder if you have a time machine.
According to Jonah Goldberg, however, Wilson was a Liberal Fascist. Therefore, he must by definition have been one of our BEST presidents. I fear this inconsistency may cost you some points with the Nobel committee.
Yeah, but I won’t support HTML Menken because he once killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
…his 2-1 pitch to Barry Bonds actually severed the cheating slugger’s right arm at the shoulder, preserving Hank Aaron’s career home run record.
And let me tell ya, a good time was had in St. Looo that night.
I personally would fear reading an actual copy of “If on a winter’s night a wingnut.”
My guess would be that if you were to take 10 random chapters from 10 random wingnut books, and put them together in one volume, either a.) it would make more sense than any one wingnut tome by its lonesome; or b.) the concentrated stupid would cause gravitational collapse, leaving a hole in the spacetime continuum.
Let me be the 2105th to congratulate you, HTML!
Congratulations! Onward to Peoria!
My copy of The Cloven Wingtard is all dog-eared, and I’m on pins and needles waiting for the release of Conservacomiche. Congratulations on your well-earned acclaim, H. (Yeah, that’s right, we know each other well enough that I call the great man, simply, H.)
Not that this takes away one iota of glory from the phenomenon that IS Mencken, but ANYONE CAN NOMINATE ANYONE FOR A PULITZER PRIZE. Including themselves.
Stop being a hater.
“My copy of The Cloven Wingtard is all dog-eared,”
A fine book, that. I prefer, though, “The Daffyd in the Trees.”
congratulations.
if you ever need to win an oscar, give me a call.
I just want to be reassured that HTML M. is the same modest, unassuming guy he always has been, preferring to roast squirrels in his popcorn popper in AK than lick fondue off of Maria Sharpova’s lips in Monte Carlo. Right? Right??
Mr. Mencken –
I haven’t had time to read your book yet, what with home schooling my five children and none of the bookstores carrying it, but I wanted to write in and say how amazing your book is, and how brave you are to have written it! The length of time it took you, and the nearly universal mockery you have received only reinforces the fact that your book is intellectual, elitist-exposing, dense, funny, and tells the truth!
A fine book, that. I prefer, though, “The Daffyd in the Trees.”
We shouldn’t forget “The Non-Existent Newt”.
I have proof that HTMLM works were shamelessly plagiarised from his cousin L.A. “Tex” Mencken.
For shame, sir!
L.A. “Tex” Mencken.
For this pun, you should only be pecked to death by geese.
I propose we nominate this post for a Pulitzer. Then we’re Pulitzer nominees too.