Volume XXXVIII, issue x - the paper

december 9, 2009 the paper page 20
Best Promotional Offer of the Year:
Free Can of Pork and Beans With the Purchase of a Home
For the past month, Tennessee-based modular home retailer Clayton
Homes has been offering a tantalizing deal to those who buy one
of their models: a free (yes, free) can of Van Camp’s brand pork and
beans in tomato sauce. That’s right; buy house, receive can of pork
and beans. For free. You actually don’t have to pay for the pork and
beans. They give it to you. Now, I know most of you are probably
thinking, “so, what’s the catch?” or “what stupid survey do I have to
take or what annoying company mailing list do I have to sign up for
to get the pork and beans?” Well, dear consumer, there is no catch.
All that one has to do is simply purchase a place of residence, and the
pork and beans are all yours. God bless America.
Runner Up: Federal “Cash for Clunkers” program
Best Celebrity Coming Clean Moment
Now, I have no shame saying that I love John Mayer.
He quite literally coached me though a number of
teenage romances with his albums of catchy, if
not contrite, pop guitar music. And there’s a real
market for that stuff. However, with his newest
album Battle Studies, Mayer nally gets honest.
A verse of the rst single “Who Says” goes
like this: “who says I can’t get stoned? / call
up a girl that I used to know / fake love for
an hour or so / who says I can’t get stoned?”
We’ve all known that Mayer’s previous work
(“Daughters,” “You’re Body is a Wonderland,”
“Flip-ops are Cool and I’m a Virgin”) was total
bullshit meant only for the use of smoothing out
awkward romantic situations, but he never admitted
it. Now, with the truth out there, he can get to making
more of the quality blues-inuenced pop that will take
us into our easy-listening 30s. OMGZ, thank the Lord
college isn’t over yet.
Runner-up: Sarah Palin for unintentionally showing us her
true colors in her new book Going Commando Rogue.
Best Paranoid Conservative Nightmare: Death Panels
2009 was a big year for Conservatives. After working as hard as possible for eight
years to draw as many comparisons to the Evil Empire from the Star Wars series, Conservatives
across America nally had an opportunity to play the righteous victim. The
most ridiculous example of annoying Conservative fear-mongering came from 2008
Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who, presumably, has not gone
away yet. This summer, in response to President Barack Obama’s attempt at health
care reform, Palin voiced her concern over the President’s fondness for “Death Panels.
Unsurprising to any sane American,
these “Death Panels” constituted no
part of President Obama’s plans, and
were wholly a result of Palin’s strange
imagination. The way Palin saw it,
America’s greatest natural resource,
it’s smelly geriatrics, would fall prey
to Obama’s Death Panels, a group of
bureaucrats who would decide which
old farts got dead and which ones
would have their spinal uid sucked
from their necks by Joe Biden. Ridiculous,
yes, but the paranoia fell on
eager ears and became integrated in
anti-reform rhetoric, actually slightly
improving Conservative idiom which
usually amounts to a series of enraged
gurgles and strange farting noises.
Runner Up: Reparation Payments
David Carradine, fatal victim of chickenchoking
Lucy, an unfortunate victim of Sarah Palin’s retarded
imagination
Best Non-Michael Jackson
Death: David Carradine
Sorry, Farrah. Move over,
Mr. McMahon! Aside from
the King of Pop’s big sleep
this year, the death of perennial
ass-kicker David
Carradine on June 3 rd
wins the paper’s vote.
Found in his Bangkok,
Thailand hotel room
with one end of a shoelace
tied around his neck
and the other around his
penis, Carradine’s demise
was ruled by Thai forensic
experts as accidental death involving
autoerotic asphyxiation
leading to an autoerotic fatality. A
rather anticlimactic end (har har har)
for a man who could have ostensibly
kung fu’d the shit out of the entire police
force that came to investigate his
death even though he was a ripe and
pruney 72 years old. I’ll always remember
how you talked about banging
Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Dave.
Rest in peace.
Runner-up: Jon and Kate Gosselin’s
collective dignity.