I Have Reached the Peak of Mt. Paladino. And I Can See Taiwan.

I've been having what the "youthfully challenged" crowd refer to as "senior moments". Now, I'm not quite at the Oops I Crapped My Pants level yet, unless I drink tequila, whiskey and red wine in a single sitting and then the odds are dead even. My "senior moments" are more along the lines of forgetting what I went to the store to buy or not remembering what day it currently is or how to spell rutabaga. And yes, I did have to spell check that just now. It also includes not finding out about rather large events that could possibly have an impact on my life until they are done and over with. While a lot of them are things I can quickly forget about, like bands that I love playing free concerts or a few pounds of C4 being found in the cemetery behind a place I occasionally work at, there are others that wound me to the core. For example, this last Friday, immediately after I finished posting, I was rather perturbed to discover, via Gothamist, that this little tidbit had escaped my drunken-hawk-like scrutiny:




Ho. Lee. Fuck.

This just might be the best Taiwanese export since the Nankang Rubber Tire. As you may or may not be aware, I have a morbid, death pact-caliber fascination with Carl Paladino, and I say to you, it is, quite simply, nothing short of INEXCUSABLE that I failed to notice this treasure, this nugget, this absolute gem of a video until now! This is tantamount to being the biggest Black Sabbath fan, only to discover after a few odd decades of fandom, that someone named Ozzy Osbourne had in fact founded the band and recorded eight albums with them before Ronnie James Dio ever came along. Or something to that hysterically hyperbolic effect.
Anyways, while the video is a well-honed piece of modern journalism, the English subtitles seem to have lost a bit in the translation. Some scenes play themselves out in a straightforward manner, while others delve a little too deeply into the well of symbolism for their meanings to be easily divined. As such, I have taken it upon myself to give you a scene-by-scene commentary that will, with any luck, enhance your understanding of the this most bizarre of nature's aberrations, The Greater Buffaloed Tea Bagger.
Right off the bat, the whimsical kazoo soundtrack really captures the awe inspiring lack of regard for reality at large that has been such a calling card of the Paladino campaign. My only gripe with it is that they went with a generic jingle that sounds like a knock-off of some incidental music from Animaniacs instead of using something much more appropriate when portraying a politician of his standing. We open scene with Paladino, inexplicably wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar (perhaps a reference to the historically corrupt Tammany Hall?), sending "racy e-mails" to a woman who appears to be an attache to Chairman Mao. Clearly stumped over how to render bestiality into CGI without actually making porn, the animators decided to go with the two dogs fucking right through the computer screen.

I can't quite make it out, but I believe the picture in the background is a waist-up photo of Cthulhu.

Next we have Carl hucking apples at a scarlet letter sporting David Patterson before being interrupted by his illegitimate daughter, played to disturbing effect by an inflatable sex doll.

Enraged by his daughter's crass appearance, he turns his anger on a nearby Candid Camera, while a presumably offscreen Peter Funt stares across the eighth dimension for comedic effect.

I can smell your soul.

In the next scene, the kazoo music is ditched for some tuba-heavy "Ompha" to appropriately capture the gravitas of the Paladino-Dicker brouhaha. Carl is all kinds of up in Dicker's grill when a man with a bigger top hat than him runs in between them. Paladino, in fit of millinery pique, breaks off the argument with Dicker to lumber after the hat of his dreams. Halfway down the hall he remembers he missed his cue to start his stirring "I'll Take You Out" speech and opts instead to shoot Dicker with his heretofore invisible tommy gun.

Dicker shows his disdain for Carl's bullets by doing his best Baby Cha-Cha impression before tripping over the corpse of Paladino's credibility and collapsing in a heap of bald.

We suddenly cut to the ghost of Paul Newman, dressed in the finest smoking jacket Hell had to offer, awarding Andrew Cuomo a medal for the ferociousness of his underbite. Cuomo is all like, "Sweet action!" and celebrates with the universal hand gesture for "Facemasking".

"15 yard penalty. First down."

Meanwhile, Carl gets a friendly visit from some neighbors who want to sign people up for their annual block party/rummage sale to support the troops or firefighters or retired police dogs or what have you. While their list of participants is indeed prestigious,

Paladino is forced to politely decline as he was already scheduled to appear at a Spanking Safety benefit in Rio that day.

After this scene, I must admit, I get a little out of my depth as the images take on a decidedly fever dream-like quality. In rapid fire secession we are presented with an aquarium inside of a fireplace:

A gassy Bill O'Reilly:

children's literature:

and an M60 machine gun for the TV shootin'.

My best guess would be that the aquarium/fireplace is representative of how time slips through our fingers like water no matter how brightly we burn, while O'Reilly's cramped face is symbolic of the increasingly desperate fossil fuel industry. Old MacDonald's Farm is, of course, a reference to the Pope and the machine gun is a cipher for the arch-nemesis of Catholicism, The 24 Hour Church of Elvis. When I tie together all these seemingly disparate images, the only meaning I can discern is that China just might be letting Taiwan play "Sovereign Country" for a reason
The poignant closing shot shows Paladino on the receiving end of an unjust baseball bat raping issued upon his person by Leonardo DiCaprio, Aaron Ekhart and a, as of yet unidentified, hood-rat.

Moral of the story: Be sprightly to the incorrect rutabaga farmer.

While this incoherent jumble of CGI is a fantastic testament to how unrelentingly insane Carl Paladino is, I am compelled to inform you that he no longer holds the"Craziest Person Currently Running for Governor of New York" crown. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the founder and CEO of the Rent Is 2 Damn High Party, Mr. Jimmy McMillan:



Now THAT, my friends, is how you get asses in the voting booth.