First He Ticked Off Britain and Now He's Made The Donald Angry

Jerry Seinfeld is leaving a host of angry people in his wake:

Donald Trump was not laughing when funnyman Jerry Seinfeld canceled an upcoming appearance at a benefit for his son's Eric Trump Foundation, the New York Post reported Thursday.

Seinfeld pulled out of the Sept. 13 event benefiting the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital because he disagrees with Trump's questioning of US President Barack Obama's citizenship, his reps said.

"I just learned you canceled a show for my son's charity," Trump fired off in a scorching letter to Seinfeld on Wednesday, "because of the fact that I am being very aggressive with respect to President Obama, who is doing an absolutely terrible job as our leader."

Just last week Seinfeld made news when he mocked British royalty. He's gonna have a hard time getting a hotel room in Palm Beach if he keeps this up.

At Least One American Is Not Impressed With the Royal Wedding

And it's not just me.  It's also Jerry Seinfeld:

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld squarely attacked the pomp and circumstance surrounding the upcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middlefield—on a British TV show, no less!

Seinfeld was asked by an interviewer for Britain’s ITV morning show, “Daybreak,” if he was looking forward to the royal wedding.

“Yes, I’m very excited,” the New York native answered sarcastically. “Well it’s a circus act, it’s an absurd act.”

The former funnyman then railed into Brittan’s millennial-old tradition of formality and ceremony.

“You know, it’s a dress-up. It’s a classic English thing of let's play dress-up. Let’s pretend that these are special people," he said. "OK, we’ll all pretend that – that’s what theater is.”
As the interviewer sat slack-jawed, Seinfeld continued his rant.

“That’s why the British have the greatest theater in the world. They love to dress up and they love to play pretend. And that’s what the Royal Family is—it’s a huge game of pretend. These aren’t special people—it’s fake outfits, fake phony hats and gowns.”

Seinfeld, sensing that he was insulting the interviewer and perhaps all of England, backpedaled a little bit.

“It’s fantastic," he hedged. "We don’t have anything like that.”

The segment, taped in New York, was thrown back to the studio in London, where the show’s hosts were not amused.

“How dare he!” chided anchor Christine Bleakley.

Jerry will be performing in London later this year...maybe.

A Post About Nothing

Being a fan of the Seinfeld series I thought I'd run this graphic of things you may not have known about the show:

Via: Online Schools
Another thing - if you saw one of the early episodes you would have seen a different actor playing Jerry's dad. I think he only showed up in one episode.

Just So You Know I'm Thinking of You....

Special Sale - Seinfeld, the Complete Series

Today only you can get the complete Seinfeld series for $84.49, down from $250.  If you're a fan, here's your chance to be master of this domain.

AIDS Activists Feels Like They've Been Forgotten

And they probably have been:

Despite promises from governments around the world to pursue evidence-based policies, AIDS experts are frustrated at a refusal to adapt to new ways of looking at HIV and the people most at risk of contracting it.

It is a stance that displays discrimination and criminal negligence, says Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society, who has led a drive at the conference to get politicians to wake up to the evidence.

"Yes we are treating five million people today, but there are 10 million people who need treatment, otherwise they will get sick and die. Not treating them amounts to criminal negligence," he told Reuters.

At the heart of scientists' frustration is the impressive progress made against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS since it emerged in the early 1980s.

Advances in medicines have effectively turned an acute killer disease into a manageable chronic condition in many wealthy countries. Patients who take cocktails of AIDS drugs can often live normal lives -- they work, have sex, bear children and can even look forward to meeting their grandchildren.

Most new infections are either coming in areas of the world that most people just don't know or care much about, or are occurring in people who should have known better. Tragic stories like hemophiliac Ryan White or transfusion-recipient Elizabeth Glaser aren't happening anymore.  That's probably why the political class doesn't care much about the issue anymore. There isn't a political upside to carrying on that fight, especially with everything else the world has to worry about these days.

When AIDS first started showing up in the 80's it was a great mystery and a lot of young, healthy people were dying. It also became a political football and frankly a lot more government money was thrown at it than it deserved, but no one dared say no for fear of being branded a homophobe. Those days are over.

After all, when was the last time you saw someone wearing the red AIDS ribbon?

Big Stein

When I heard that George Steinbrenner had passed away my thoughts immediately went to Seinfeld and the caricature of Steinbrenner that became a semi-regular on the show.  Maureen Dowd writes about that today:

Big George Steinbrenner could be hard on his employees, especially little George Costanza.

In the hilarious fictional Yankees world depicted on “Seinfeld,” Steinbrenner once had Costanza hauled off to a mental institution.

The Yankees owner testified in court that Costanza was a Communist — “as pink as they come, like a big juicy steak.”

The mercurial billionaire made poor Costanza fetch eggplant calzones and listen to paranoid rants, including one about Babe Ruth: “Nothing more than a fat old man with little girl legs. And here’s something I just found out recently: He wasn’t really a sultan!”

The Steinbrenner doppelganger — shown only from behind and voiced by the brilliant “Seinfeld” co-creator and Yankees fan, Larry David — even scalped his own tickets.

“Who else could be a memorable character on a television show without actually appearing on the show?” Jerry Seinfeld told the OnTheRedCarpet blog after hearing that the larger-than-life Steinbrenner had died of a heart attack on Tuesday, the day of the All-Star Game.

But how did the Yankees owner feel about Big Stein, his oddball yet finally lovable caricature in “Seinfeld”?

You'll have to read the rest of the story here.  Typical Steinbrenner.

"I Was In the Pool!"

Maybe if this guy had used that excuse he wouldn't have gotten so mad:

A TSA worker in Miami was arrested when he "lost his mind" and attacked a colleague who repeatedly made fun of his small penis after the security screener walked through a high-tech scanner that showed his genitalia, according to Miami-Dade police.

When You Control the Mail, You Control...Information!

That quote from a famous Seinfeld episode, and before I go to the story I have to run this clip:

If your mother-in-law's mail goes through the Waterbury or Wallingford post offices, she might not have received the birthday card you sent in time.

Apparently managers at the post office have been hiding mail, Ray Arcovio, president of the Waterbury area postal worker’s union, told the Waterbury Republican-American. And he wants to sincerely apologize.

Workers have been stuffing mail into closets and unused rooms at mail facilities in Waterbury and Wallingford because they don’t know how to keep up with such a high volume of mail, he told the newspaper.

"They're just pushing it aside for the next day," Arcovio told the paper. "We've had issues with them hiding the mail."

Go forward a few years when another government run industry, health care, quotes a government doctor saying "We've had issues with them hiding the old sick people."

It'll happen.

Jerry! The Review

He is the master of his domain.

My wife and I have seen every Seinfeld episode many times each and we still enjoy them. I wasn't sure what a live performance would be like. I was a little bit afraid that free of the restrictions of TV his show might be raunchier. There was a sign as we came in warning that this show included "mature language".

Not at all. Neither he nor opening act Larry Miller (the doorman from one Seinfeld episode) dropped a single "S" or "F" bomb the whole night. The other language was relatively mild and there was nothing in the themes of the bits presented that was the least bit objectionable. It was a hilarious evening.

If you ever get a chance to see him in person, do it. He'll give you 90 minutes of really funny stuff, and now that he's 55 and has three kids, the latter part of the show almost took on a Cosby-like style of family humor. My wife laughed so hard through the whole show to the point where I was almost worried about her.

The only downer of the evening was beating the crowd out of the theater to our car in the parking garage and finding that someone had hit us and not left a note. The damage to the right front fender isn't terrible, but it's definitely there and I hope the slimeball that damaged our car drove off a bridge on their way home.

Jerry!

Tonight's a big night for Mrs. HolyCoast. She's a big fan of Jerry Seinfeld and has always wanted to see him live in concert. For a number of years Seinfeld was doing only a few dates a year in Las Vegas and we never managed to be there at the same time.

However, he's now touring the country (I guess he's bored or something - he certainly doesn't need the money) and tonight he'll be performing in San Diego. When I saw he was going to be there I grabbed up a couple of tickets.

I'm kind of interested to see how his live show will compare to the Seinfeld we're used to seeing on TV for nine seasons.

Should be fun! We'll be leaving early for San Diego so you probably won't hear much from me the rest of the day.

Political Artwork of the Day

From Iowahawk, the "Hipster Doofus":

If you're not a Seinfeld fan, you're not gonna get it.

The Seinfeld Reunion

I don't have HBO and won't order it just for this, but if it comes out on DVD I'll definitely rent it:

The cast of Seinfeld is reuniting on Curb Your Enthusiasm this fall? Giddyup! The multi-episode story line on Larry David’s HBO comedy will follow our favorite pessimist as he recruits Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards for a reunion show. You can read all about it in this week’s EW, but here are some bonus quotes from Mr. Seinfeld.

On why the cast decided to reunite:

“Doing it with Larry and on his show just seemed like the only possible way it would be fun….We would never do the type of thing that these shows usually do. That wouldn’t be our style. But something like this — that was sillier and a little more offbeat — felt like it might be right for us.”

On possibly passing up big bucks if the gang had held out for a traditional “reunion show”:

“I don’t think we really thought about that. If we were about the money we would have kept doing the show. We were about: ‘What would be the biggest treat for the audience?’”

On getting together at Larry David’s house to write dialogue for the “reunion show” scenes:

“We did have this one scene that Larry and I wrote, as we always did, really fast. We were just boom, boom, boom, like a tennis game where you hadn’t lost any of your skills. We knew each other, we could read the lines, it just goes right through the processor: ‘Oh, I know what to do here. I think you’re over here in this one.’ ‘Why don’t you walk, I’ll follow.’ ‘Yeah, right, right!’ That was a lot of fun.”

On being back on Stage 19 of the CBS Radford lot, where the old Seinfeld sets had been taken out of storage and updated:

“The best analogy is a snow globe. You’re walking into a miniature fake environment that has been recreated. As I told people about it, I could go back in your life 10 years and recast your friends, recreate where you live, everything in it exactly how it was, and now somebody with a headset points at you and you walk in now, and there it was, and you go, ‘Jesus Christ, this is my old life!’ We all felt like it was a very special experience. Just to go back in time in life is a fantasy.”

“One of the coolest moments was to sit down again in that little foursome that we always sat in. Somebody suggested something about some camera shot: ‘Can you switch?’ And we looked at the guy like, ‘Are you kidding?’ Because we would always sit in that exact configuration. There was no way we were going to change now.”

There's more here.

My wife and I are big fans of the Seinfeld series. I get so sick of the news anymore that in the evening instead of watching the 10 o'clock news I'll often turn on a local channel that runs two Seinfeld episodes back-to-back.

When visiting the Smithsonian four years ago I even got a photo of the famous "puffy shirt":

We know all the catch phrases and it's funny how often something in real life will spur one of us to say something from the show. My wife's an even bigger fan than I, and for a special Christmas present this year I just ordered tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld in San Diego on December 5th. He doesn't do that many live shows anymore, and we always seemed to miss him when he was in Las Vegas.

Should be fun.

UnHolyCoast Trip Day 2

Here's all nine trip posts: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Final Day

Oh my aching legs! We knew this trip would involve lots of walking, and so far it's been all that. We started our morning with a half mile walk down to McPherson Square where the nearest Metro station is. The Metro is D.C.'s subway, and from what I've seen so far, is a pretty handy way to get around.

McPherson Square

McPherson Square is also the home of an indigenous tribe of winos, including two who had everything they owned spread around them with signs declaring that the U.S. needs to pay reparations for slavery. They're apparently waiting for their check.

Our first stop after leaving the Metro was the Museum of American History. They call the Smithsonian "America's Attic", and this museum captures that better than anything.

Museum of American History

The first thing you see when you enter the museum from the mall is the flag that was draped from the roof of the Pentagon following the 9/11 attacks. It's a solemn reminder of the terrorist attacks.We also saw the original "Star Spangled Banner" that flew over Fort McHenry and inspired our national anthem. It's in pretty rough shape and is currently undergoing restoration.

There were many highlights in the three hours or so we spent there. Mrs. HolyCoast was looking forward to seeing the First Ladies inaugural gowns, and here she is with Mrs. Bush 43's gown from 2001:

While traveling through the transportation section, we were surprised to see a very familiar vehicle - a Dodge minivan almost identical, color and all, to the one we bought in 1989 shortly after our daughter was born. If we'd known that car would be famous one day, we wouldn't have traded it in for a newer one in 1995.

The final highlight of the Museum of American History was this shirt, which will be instantly recognizable to all Seinfeld fans:

"But I don't want to be a pirate!"

Yes, it's the famous "puffy shirt" that Jerry accidentally agreed to wear while having dinner with a "low talker". This really is America's attic.

The next stop was the Museum of Natural History which has a huge collection of animals (stuffed), bones of various creatures, and lots of very expensive rocks, gems and jewels, including the Hope Diamond.

The African Bull Elephant in the Rotunda

The Hope Diamond

The final stop of our day was the American Indian Museum. Mrs. HolyCoast has a number of pieces of Indian artwork, dolls and pottery, and we've discovered that some of our stuff is of a better quality than what we found in the museum. Maybe we'll start our own.

In front of the American Indian Museum

That pretty much concluded our sightseeing for the day. We took our aching legs back to the hotel to relax for the evening. Tomorrow we'll be getting on the Old Town Trolley to travel throughout the city to the various memorials and monuments. See you then.