Stonehenge, Wiltshire

Source: Bigstock

The Week’s Most Bummer, Mummer, and Farewell to Summer Headlines

SAGGY ASSES
The actors’ strike marches on!

Well, limps.

The war between streamers and studios on one side and actors on the other has entered a new phase. As union members go broke, SAG decided last week to hold an auction to raise money for the poor suffering black women cast in Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale biopics who are now out of work.

Among the items being auctioned (this is for real—these aren’t gags):

Lena Dunham talks to you via Zoom: $5,100 (no price listed for “Lena Dunham molests your sister”).

Maggie Gyllenhaal talks to you via Zoom for 20 minutes: $910 ($1,200 if you want her to explain why the victims on 9/11 deserved to die).

Natasha Lyonne helps you solve the NY Times crossword puzzle: $3,007, but she’ll cut the price in half if you let her rape your dog (yes, she once actually threatened to rape a dog).

John Lithgow paints a portrait of your dog: $4,050 ($5,050 if it’s being raped by Natasha Lyonne).

Zoom call with Sarah Silverman: $1,825 (for $2,000 she’ll come to your house to find hidden swastikas).

A few items left off the list:

Charlize Theron castrates your children: $4,400.

Will Smith slaps an enemy of your choice: $550.

Robin Williams’ corpse is delivered to your home so you can have the rare opportunity to see him not manic: $10,000.

Same deal with Gilbert Gottfried: $50.

John Landis beheads your relatives: $3,500 (offer only valid in the Muslim world).

Jerry Seinfeld drops by and asks “what’s the deal” about your personal effects: $5,500.

Zoom call with Robert Wagner where he tells you what really happened that night on the boat: $6,700.

Christopher Walken murders you because now you know too much: free add-on to the above item.

BRAND NEW TROUBLE
“First they came for Russell Brand, and I did not speak out, because let’s be honest he was never funny.” —Pastor Martin Kneesläpper

Russell Brand was the Dane Cook of England. There are so few good-looking comics, when you get one with a passable resemblance to an actual human, he becomes instantly popular (in a field in which the beauty scale has Patton Oswalt as the mean and not the ass-end, it’s easy to stand out as handsome).

Brand had quite the heyday churning out unfunny films. And because of his looks, “guys wanted to be him and ladies wanted to be with him.”

And boy, did he indulge the latter. As a self-proclaimed “sex addict,” by his own estimates he “shagged” thousands of women.

That probably seemed fun at the time. But there’s a decent reason to not “shag thousands of women,” and it has nothing to do with herpes, though yes, that’s a concern.

Believe it or not, Brand is now accused of having shagged once or twice without consent.

Well, who could’ve seen that coming?

According to Brand’s foes, he did. The theory floated by British feminists is that Brand purposely dropped comedy from his act (though can you really drop that which you never did?) in favor of becoming a British amalgam of Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and RFK Jr. to give himself a fanatic fan base that would reflexively circle the wagons to protect him once the “nonconsensually shagged” emerged.

Nonsense, screams Brand’s fanatical Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and RFK Jr. fan base! “We’d never reflexively circle the wagons to protect Brand,” they shout as they reflexively circle the wagons to protect Brand. See, it turns out the hidden-hand “thems” came for Brand because he tells the truth about the verminous elites, the puppet masters who control the world.

Well, that’s one theory. Here’s another: That a preening egomaniac addicted to heroin and booze had sex with a thousand women and got #MeToo’d is actually the expected, organic outcome.

If the elites wanted to keep Brand out of politics, they could’ve just made Arthur a commercial success.

Wait, some things are beyond even Klaus Schwab.

TOO FRANK FOR HER OWN GOOD
Russell Brand wasn’t the only person “canceled” last week. A teacher in Beaumont, Texas, was fired after showing her class images from Anne Frank: The Graphic Novel, a cartoon edition of the famous diary, with illustrations of genitalia to accompany the young diarist’s passages about her awakening sexuality.

The fired teacher is now a hero of “free speech” leftists. And maybe she’s also a genius; with so many teachers so determined to show genitalia to students, hiding behind Anne Frank provides perfect cover.

“Sure, it’s a penis, but it’s from Anne Frank’s diary. Fire me and you’re Hitler!”

If Russell Brand did indeed seek cover for his misdeeds by adopting Tucker Carlson/Alex Jones rhetoric, the Beaumont case provides another creative example of pervs seeking immunity and protection.

On the other hand, many critics have credited the Anne Frank graphic novel as a wholly appropriate method for teachers to introduce the author’s work to children. And granted, it’s much better than some of the other comic strip attempts at bringing her diary to life.

The Franks sit around the makeshift kitchen in the hidden annex. Enter Anne’s fat orange tabby.

Garfilte: “What’s for breakfast?”

Papa Frank: “Toast and a shmear of butter.”

Garfilte: “No lasagna? I’m outta here. I HATE Maandagen!”

Then there’s Anne Frank: Peanuts Edition (“Good grief, Charlie Braun”), in which the Frank family is given away by Pig-Pen’s godawful stank.

And this cartoon illustrating Nazi racial science:

Obersturmbannführer: “You’re under arrest for being a Jew!”

Ziggy: “How’d you know?”

Obersturmbannführer: “Dude, you’re literally just a giant nose.”

And this one:

Nuremberg Prosecutor: “You personally oversaw the murder of 80,000 Jews in Minsk. You’re a horrible person.”

Hägar: “Yeah, it’s literally my name, jackass.”

SLY AND THE FAMILY STONEHENGE
Some people haven’t gotten the memo: Blacks built everything. America, the Pyramids, and the other wonders of the ancient world. The Temple of Artemis was actually the Temple of Art Evans. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (originally “Hanging Gardens of Babyface”) grew weed. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was built for those who died in the fast-food wars. And the Colossus of Rhodes was originally the Colossus of Roads, honoring Michael Brown for walking in the middle of the street and refusing to move for police.

Last week Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone, was canceled real good during the promotional tour for his upcoming book The Masters, a collection of interviews with rock legends. When asked why there were no blacks among his “masters,” Wenner claimed that black artists “just didn’t articulate at that level.”

And the music biz went nuts. Wenner was fired from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and his own magazine distanced itself from him. And Wenner’s publishers? They’re hard at work figuring out a way to present Wenner as an autistic Palestinian.

Odd how people are shocked that a book called The Masters is whites-only.

But as Wenner was being pilloried for not giving blacks their due, over in the U.K., they totally got the memo. The new official line is that blacks built Stonehenge. Sure, there’s no evidence for it; sure, it was built by white Europeans. But at least the “revelation” that it was black-built finally solves the age-old puzzle of what Stonehenge actually did.

Turns out it dindu nuthin’.

Stonehenge’s “black” lineage sheds light on the structure’s design. The thin vertical stones represent cold fries. The smaller, wider horizontal stones are cold hash browns. And the arches in the middle? The golden ones, of course.

The altar at the center is where clerks who’d served cold food were sacrificed. The “burial pits” were not just for bodies, but for weaves lost in battle.

Perhaps the best evidence that Stonehenge was black-built comes from the upright stability of the stones. After all, nothing black ever tips (credit to Takimag reader Sonny Lopez for that one).

SCORIN’ BOOBERT
When you’re an incumbent congresswoman and you won reelection in your district by just 546 votes, maybe it’s best to be humble.

MAGA firebrand and QAnon true believer Lauren Boebert won reelection by such a small margin in 2022, Peter Dinklage called and asked for his height if it were represented by an electoral margin back.

Okay, that was needlessly convoluted. Let’s just say, she only won because a few hundred of her district’s Daquans got high and slept through election day.

And now, Trump’s No. 1 Moloch-hunter acts cocky, as if she has a mandate.

CORRECTION: She grabbed cocky on a man-date.

Boebert’s night at the theater is the talk of the town. A few days ago, TMZ caught up with her to ask about her “rough week.”

“It’s always hard,” she replied.

Lauren, you were asked about your week, not your date.

To be fair, the QAnon Beelzebimbo isn’t getting the credit she deserves; vaping and talking loudly in an obnoxious manner in a theater and then acting entitled when asked to leave might be the most creative way a Republican has ever tried to win the black vote.

Even Al Sharpton was like, “I think I’m in love.”

Maybe she can win those Daquan votes after all! Next step: visit McDonald’s and order “them good fries” (remember: “wet floor” signs make excellent weapons).

For her part, Boebert has apologized for “loudly singing along” during the show (though not for “polling” her seatmate). As a point of order for MAGAs unaccustomed to theater etiquette, unless the performance you’re viewing consists of a farmer hailing a dog named B-I-N-G-O, don’t “sing along.”

Here’s to Lauren Boebert: a true patron of the arse.