Thrones Me
by DICK CHENEY
Wow, before I get to the last two episodes of HBO's televised adaptation of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, let me first tell you about a buttnugget named Conor Friedersdorf. Actually, before I do that, let me show you a picture of George R.R. Martin, because it explains a lot about why the most attractive people in Game of Thrones always get murdered.
Christ, he looks like Little Sebastian. GRRM, as he was first called by Greg Bear when they were presumably having doggystyle intercourse in a gigantic bed shaped like Tuf Haviland's starship, is a nerd. But even worse is fucking Conor Booglesdorfermund. This moron is reportedly an associate editor at The Atlantic, which is about as prestigious as being a janitor at The New Yorker.
Friedersdorf is the kind of pseudo-intellectual weevil whose tweets are supposed to amount to some kind of insider-y journalist-speak. (Note: all editorial advice by "working" journalists amounts to, "How do we dumb down our work as much as possible to condescend to our readers, who we secretly believe are idiots?" If you find yourself writing a tweet that Jeff Jarvis could have as easily emitted from his anus, delete and find a new career.)
In analysing my new spectacular memoir, In My Time, Friedersdorf comes up with the following objections to my book. As anyone who lacks the kind of creativity I show on the toilet does, he framed his problems in a listicle:
1) He pushed hardest for an illegal warrantless wiretapping program that spied on the personal communications of countless innocent Americans, and kept the whole thing secret for years on end.
Um, I did what? That's ludicrous.
2) He was instrumental in instituting a program wherein the U.S. would capture a man, hold him in a secret prison, strip him nude, blindfold him, strap him to a board, and repeatedly force water into his throat and lungs in an effort to convince him that he was going to die of drowning.
HOW DO YOU THINK OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS CAUGHT, FREIDERSFUCK? Then again, thanks to the uber-talented Peter Atencio, I now have my doubts about that:
3) He asserted that the president has the unchecked authority to take any U.S. citizen, declare him an enemy combatant, lock him up indefinitely, deny him counsel, and prevent him from challenging his status in the court system.
Uh, doesn't he? Why do you think you haven't seen Bobby Brown in public in several years?
4) His often misleading and at times flat out inaccurate statements about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's supposed ties to al Qaeda were instrumental in leading us into an ill-conceived war.
Didn't this guy's president just make a huge speech about what a success we've had in Iraq? The only thing worse than The Atlantic is The Atlantic when Andrew Sullivan was still employed there.
That's enough focus on my critics. If you focus on your critics too much, you burn out too fast, like Julia Allison or Haley Reinhardt. I think of myself more as the bald Whitney Cummings, and so do the fabulous individuals who agreed to blurb my forthcoming book, In My Time. The working title was of course In Ma Time.
talking over the casting of Varys with a young Donald Rumsfeld
Here are some of the blurbs that due to space concerns we were forced to leave on the cutting room floor:
Dick Cheney's radiant sexuality shines through every page of his new memoir. I especially enjoyed the anecdote about the time he masturbated while imagining Fran Drescher hosting the Academy Awards. Improbable, ill-mannered, and obsessed with Lost, I couldn't put Dick Cheney's new book down.
- the gay guy making out with Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation
Go inside the finest eight years in our country's history with the man who secretly ran it all. If you're looking for 400+ pages of excessively mean shots at Whitney Houston, The Atlantic, and the comedy of Ben Stiller, you've come to the right places. Ty.
- George W. Bush
J.J. Abrams is a stupid geek and Super 8 looks fucking terrible.
- Everyone
Dick was a great man and a better friend. He is also the founder of the website Aloha Giggles. He explained Lost to me when even Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof still insisted it was about a yellow light in a cave. He is also the only person who found the Hawaii Five-0 season finale the least bit believable and for that I thank him.
- Daniel Dae Kim (Jin from Lost)
Fortunately we have the last two weeks of Game of Thrones to soothe the pain of bad book blurbs. Why are you not watching Game of Thrones? Last night's episode depicted two of the most famous moments of the first Song of Ice and Fire novel, and unlike the general casting and character of Neddard Stark, there were no fuckups. This was probably because creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss wrote the episode themselves. The crowning of Viserys Targaryen and the exodus of Tyrion Lannister from the Eyrie were both tremendous, perhaps even better than their relevant scenes in the books.
When it comes to historic settings in modern fantasy, the Eyrie has to be on the short list with Tolkien's Mines of Moria, Vance's watery background for hussade on the planet Truillion, and C.S. Lewis' wardrobe. One of the great things about the genre of fantasy is that is can make all our greatest fears literal. Viserys Targaryen desires a kingdom for the price of his sister, and obtains the crown.
Tyrion cowers in the presence of greater heights and is perched before the titanic drop of the Moon Door. Tyrion's relationship with his rescuer, Bronn of the Blackwater, is one of the great treasures of this world. If you can't understand why that appeals to me, take note of the ample Tyrion Lannister-Karl Rove concordance in this adaptation.
Back in King's Landing, things were a lot more boring. One scene actually was comprised simply of Ned Stark reading a book. Game of Thrones didn't take the proper time to unveil the dragon skulls in the Dragon Keep the way they were meant to be seen: bone-by-bone against the skin of young Arya Stark, until the terrifying whole was revealed. When you read the books, you didn't want the Targaryens to return to Westeros and wreak death upon all your favorite characters, but in this version Daenarys is a great heroine and the King a great monster who beats his wife and can't even treat a Stark with the proper respect.
The previous episode consisted of over 20 percent doggystyle intercourse, but the show seems to be toning back the constant sex of late. (Did we really need to see Theon Greyjoy get laid, or for that matter, any Greyjoy do anything?) I got an e-mail from a misguided friend of mine ranking the books by quality. He argued for 2,4,3,1, which is pretty much the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
A Clash of Kings is known as the worst of the books, concerned as it is with House Baratheon and House Greyjoy, and A Feast for Crows, prematurely divorced as it was from the forthcoming A Dance With Dragons, is about as action-packed as any televised scene in Winterfell. Every true fan regards A Storm of Swords as GRRM's epic achievement, so great a work that the author himself was weeping like a grey baby as he composed the final chapters.
Then again, all of A Song of Ice and Fire is awesome. A woman ate a horse's heart and was applauded for it. You can't even see that kind of stuff on Ricki Lake anymore. A man the size of a mountain cut off a horse's head with his sword and they showed it. A whore on a turnip cart demonstrates her vagina to Theon for under a nickel. A eunuch plots rebellion and the mayor from The Wire plots worse. A prince gave a gorgeous necklace to his bethrothed and promised to never mistreat her. Khal Drogo dropped a pound of his golden semen on the villain's head to kill him, and the guy's sister was just like, "He was never one of us." Fuck America, I have found the greatest land there is.
In so many ways the world of the Seven Kingdoms (the North, the Vale, the Stormlands, the Iron Islands, the Reach and the Westerlands, for those who keep asking) is preferable to our own. The only thing America has that Westeros doesn't is fantasy football, and come September, we won't even have that anymore.
You guys, the last thing I want to do is spoil the last chapter of In Ma Time, but let's just say I have titled it, "America?" The question mark after the name of our country expresses the considerable skepticism I have about this country's future. As I was waiting for Game of Thrones to come on and breaking a chicken I had named J.J.'s neck with my hands, I saw the preview for HBO's original movie Too Big to Fail, about the bailout of Wall Street.
In Westeros there are also bailouts of massive companies/kingdoms, but they come from other companies/kingdoms, as God intended. If you screw up in this hard world, you don't get another chance, you simply die. The stakes are that high. And when the alternative to failure is death, companies simply don't collapse as often. We must try to learn all we can from these people, so start watching GOT immediately when you get home from your job as associate editor of something.
Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find his most recent Game of Thrones recap here. You can find the rest of his work on This Recording here.
"Memories of the Future" - Handsome Furs (mp3)
"What We Had" - Handsome Furs (mp3)
"When I Get Back" - Handsome Furs (mp3)
Sound Kapital, the new album from the Handsome Furs, the duo composed of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner and his wife Alexei Perry, will be released in late June from Sub Pop. You can preorder it here.
