The Reviews Are Awesome On This Donald Trump Christmas Decoration

This $150 "Make America Great Again" Christmas
ornament has gotten some AMAZING revies on Amazon.  

It's Thanksgiving!
 
Which means from now until the end of December it's All Christmas All The Time.  

You know that actually means we are being order by the Powers That Be to Buy! Buy! Buy!

I'm here to help.

You just HAVE to decorate your Christmas tree with just the right ornaments and have I got the decoration for you!

It's a little Donald Trump red "Make American Great Again" hat for the low, low price of $150.00. It's finished in brass and 14 karat gold, just for you.

The reviews on this little gem at Amazon and elsewhere are more priceless than the actual ornament.

Go over to Amazon and check all the reviews out. Here are a few of the best ones.

(H/T BoingBoing)

"It called Mary a nasty woman, told Joseph to go back where he came from, built a wall around the manger and then when you press it it sings, "I'm Dreaming Of A Totally White Christmas."

"Every time I hang it on a branch, it yells "WRONG!" No matter which branch I try, it's "WRONG!" My brother and father can hang it up just fine, but when my mother and I try it's "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!"

"The angel on top of my tree just hired a lawyer."

"I gave this to my husband as a gift, and now he has a spray tan, tiny hands and a really bad combover."

"I put it above my nativity scene. Jesus wept."

"It tried to put my nativity figures into an internment camp."

"I bought one and Joe Biden came to my house and punched me in the face. I want a refund."

"My Trump ornament keeps telling the other ornaments it's going to help them, while sawing off the branches they depend upon for support. I somehow don't think this is going to end well."

"I didn't even order this, but it keeps showing up in my 13-year-old's bedroom."

"Unfortunately, it was really thin skinned so when I touched it without using velvet gloves it completely fell apart."

"Despite ordering a more reasonable ornament, this one arrived. It. Is. Yuge. It's absolutely yuge. It's the biggest ornament. Yuge. I hung it on my tree but it is so yuge that it has totally unbalanced my whoe tree. No matter where I hang it, the tree leans waaaaay over to the far right. "

"Does yours really say 'Made in China'?  Mine says 'Made By Russian Hackers.'"

"I was so excited to open this and deck the halls...but as soon as i did, wouldn't ya know it, it jumped off the tree and grabbed my pu**y!! Thanks Obama!!" 

Everybody Going Gaga Over Lady Gaga's Super Bowl National Anthem Performance

Lady Gaga performs "The Star Spangled Banner"
at the start of tonight's Super Bowl.

As I write this, Super Bowl 50 had just gotten underway, so I have no idea of the outcome.

But one thing already happened at this year's Super Bowl that will be incredibly memorable.

They picked Lady Gaga to sing the "Star Spangled Banner" at the start of the game.  

Of course they were going to get a great singer to do this. It's the biggest televised sports event of the year.

But Lady Gaga out gaga'd herself. It will go down as one of the best, if not the best Super Bowl National Anthems ever. It's at least as good, if not better than the famous Whitney Houston performance in 1991

All the more reason to be a huge fan of Lady Gaga. Listen and see for yourself:

No, That Movie Is Not "A Comedic Masterstroke"

No, reviewer AA Dowd did NOT say this
movie was "a comedic masterstroke."  

I've got new evidence that those blurbs you see from critics in movie advertisements aren't what they seem.

Yeah, they always say the movie was terrific, an Oscar contender, boffo, all that.

You can never believe those blurbs, can you?

So it was that the cover on a Canadian-produced DVD of a movie called "Nailed" quoted movie reviewer A.A. Dowd as calling it "a comedic masterstroke."

Consumerist says "Nailed" was a widely ignored movie that was released in the United States after many people abandoned working on the film in frustration. Its American title was  "Accidental Love."

Here is the full quote from Dowd's review of "Nailed" that didn't appear on the DVD cover, according to Consumerist:

"To be fair to whoever refashioned "Accidental Love" from the abandoned scraps of "Nailed," there's little reason to believe that the ideal, untroubled version of the material would have been a comedic masterstroke."

Yeah, Dowd really didn't like the movie. So much for a comedic masterstroke.

Dowd wrote an open letter to Mongrel Media which put out the DVD with the false blurb, calling them out on it.  He wrote:

"Framing me as a big fan of Nailed isn't just a lie, it's an attack on my critical reputation. What if someone reads that and really thinks I see a "comedic masterwork" in "Nailed."? They'll never trust me on a comedy again."

 Dowd asked for an apology, and got said apology from Mongrel Media. Future copies of this pretty bad movie won't have Dowd's out of context blurb about it.

So here's my review: A masterful performance by Dowd! And that's not even taken out of context!

Hotel Stops At NOTHING To Stop Bad Reviews; Imposes $500 Fines If Your Friends Hate The Place

An angry chill has descended on
the Union Street Guest House
in Hudson, NY and it has nothing
to do with winter weather.  

UPDATE: To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Union Street Guest House has rescinded its policy of fining people for negative reviews on Yelp and other online rating sites.

The owners said the whole thing was put on the web site years ago as a joke and never taken down.

Uh, right, whatever.  Now I wonder if they will ever recover from the shitstorm they created for themselves:

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: The owners of New York State inn have discovered the obvious: If you have a draconian policy against negative reviews, you're going to get LOTS of negative reviews.

A place called the Union Street Guest House in Hudson, NY tells people that if you have a wedding in the area, and your guests stay at Union Street Guest House in Hudson,  then write a negative review about the place, you're subject to a $500 fine for each negative review, says the inn's owners

Here, let's have the inn itself explain the situation to you themselves, in all their pretentious, horrible glory:

"Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may not. This is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer --therefore we expect you to explain that to them."

Yes, the EXPECT you to explain that to them. Like little children. To stay at this inn, apparently you have to be as pretentious as the owners.

Anyway, the inn's verbiage goes on:

"USGH and Hudson are historic. The builders here are old (but restored). Our bathrooms and kitchens are designed to look old in an artistic "vintage" way. Our furniture is mostly hip, period furniture that you would see in many design magazines. (although comfortable and functional-obvious all beds are brand new.) 

If your guests are looking for a Marriott type hotel, they may not like it here."

I already don't like it there and I haven't seen the place. The hip period furniture, as they put it, might be cool, or maybe they got them at a third rate garage sale in Schenectady, for all I know.

Do the bathrooms look old in a charming way, or are the toilets tilted, leaking and so full of rust you can establish an iron mine in the bathroom?

So here's the bottom line:

"If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any Internet site, you agree to a $500 fine for each negative review."

And who decides if the review is actually negative?  If someone wrote, "The place was awesome, but my only complaint was one chair was slightly uncomfortable," does that earn a $500 fine?

The bigger question is, why would anyone want to stay at this inn with the policy in place? I'd be terrified one of my wedding guests would write something negative just for fun, and I'd be out $500.

Who wants to take that risk?

The inn generously (HA!) says it will rescind the fine if the review is taken off line.

As I noted, the best way to generate negative reviews is to whine that you don't want negative reviews and try to make people pay ridiculous amounts of money if they do.

I've got an idea! Why doesn't the Union Street Guest House ensure the place is comfortable and the staff is nice? I bet that would put the kabosh on negative reviews a lot faster than a fine of any dollar amount.

With news of their ridiculous fine rattling so fast around the Internet, Yelp is now rife with people saying terrible things about the Union Street Guest House. Some are kinda funny, too.

Here's one:

"Feel the power of the Internet
While you are getting wrecked
Hope it drills some sense into you
Coz this is going to be a long day for you."

Here's another good one:

"This place is actually kind of decent. Derek, who was working the front desk, had pee stains on his trousers, but I'm only deducting one star because it wasn't immediately clear whether the pee was his or someone else's.

Plus the vintage bed clothes gave me herbes, but I'm looking at that as a positive because it's one more way of getting out of having sex with my husband while his dorky cousin  Ben Reiter looks on.

There was also a super sweet chaise lounge in our room, though it smelled a touch musty. Every negative had a corresponding positive, and vice versa, hence three stars. Would I stay here again? Yes, if Derek paid me to, like last time."

Most of the hue and cry on Yelp is more along the lines of the inn taking people's free speech away, but  that only applies to the government. However, there might be a grey area on speech involving public accommodations, so we have to see if there's any lawsuits, or threats of any.

Hudson, NY has revived in recent years and now it seems like it's a great place to visit. I just might do so. But I'm sure I'll find great accommodations other than the Union Street Guest House.

Video Proves 2013 Country Music Was Mostly Just Cliches

Believe me, there is such a thing as an incredibly well crafted, well written, catchy, wonderful country song.

Unfortunately, like a lot of genres that are pretty mass market, most country music recently has consisted of tired old cliches. Which is why I generally don't listen to Top 40 country radio stations.

Want the proof? Watch this video that shows that in 2013, country music was only about trucks, dirt roads, riverbanks and hot girls in tight jeans.

Yawn:

Another Reason Not to Trust What You Read Online

Boy, you can't trust anything anymore.

A handy dandy online tool is to look at the reviews of businesses with which you want to deal. You can go on Yelp and Angie's List or any other review site to see if people like them or warn you away.

Brad Newman and his "review card" that lets businesses
know they're being reviewed.

But there are so many ways those reviews are manipulated, or manipulative, that you have to wonder if you can trust anything.

Writing in the L.A. Times, David Lazarus says a California guy named Brad Newman has started a business called ReviewerCard. People who get one of these cards show them to a place they're going to review, say a restaurant, to tell the business owners to expect a review.

Newman is quoted as saying "I'm going to review them anyway, so why not let them know in advance? I'm not hurting anyone."

Well, yes your are, Brad. How can we trust the review you posted if we suspect the business you're describing went off the charts trying to give you good service, above everybody else, to avoid a bad review?

The web site The Consumerist has this take:

"For instance, he tells Lazarus about walking into a Geneva hotel, showing his card to the desk clerk and asking for 50% off the room price in exchange for a positive TripAdvisor review. He claims he was successful. And then there’s the time he says he was able to skip the line at some Chicago restaurant by showing his card."

The bottom line comes down to this, The Consumerist notes:

"Other customers, who should be just as important as any online reviewer, could be receiving worse service because attention is focused on the cardholder. And the reputation of the review site is damaged, as the business will view it as a place for bullies and consumers will learn they can’t trust the reviews."

I wonder if Yelp, Angie's List or any other online review outfit can somehow screen reviews. Are they jacked up by the ReviewCard? Or are they an honest assesment of the customer's experience?

I guess you have to figure out if a business is good the old fashioned way. Ask a trusted friend or just go see for yourself.