You suck

Okay, Edwards is out.

I don’t regret my support for him. I don’t regret my donation to his campaign. If Edwards’s presence in the campaign and in the debates pushed the national dialogue (for Democrats, that is, for all I can tell the Republicans are still arguing about the size of their wieners) toward the issue of poverty, and how our government is essentially owned by corporations, then it was money well spent, and support well deserved.

I am still mulling over my vote for next Tuesday. As I’ve said before, I’m a muller. Maybe some of my readers only see me as someone who is, um, a tad opinionated, but you don’t grow up a Democrat in Indiana without acquiring an ability to maybe not appreciate, but at least see, different points of view.

In other words, what y’all see is the end result, which I freely admit can be a bit forcefully stated, and not the process, which is usually a pretty slow train coming.

Spooney can attest to this, as he must suffer through my general daily preoccupation, and my frequent inability to be decisive in what most people would consider a normal time frame.

For example, on any given Saturday, after hitting the farmer’s market, we generally stop somewhere for breakfast. So there is a discussion in the car that goes something like this.

Spooney: Where do you want to go for breakfast?

Me: I don’t know. Where do you want to go?

Spooney: We could go to Frank’s. Or the Tally Rand.

Me: (thinking) Hm.

10 minutes go by.

Me: So are you going to turn here for Frank’s?

Spooney: I didn’t know we were going to Frank’s.

Me: You asked me to decide.

Spooney: Yes, AND YOU NEVER ANSWERED ME.

See? I take so long to decide that I forget that part of making a decision is communicating that decision to the interested parties.

So readers, I’m a bit crazed at work right now, but believe me, I really am mulling over a number of things, included that insanely disingenuous State of the Union, Bill Clinton’s shameful Barack Obama = Jesse Jackson volley, the struggle among Republicans in congress to portray the extension of employment benefits and food stamps as DEFINITELY HELPING THE TERRORISTS, and the recent decision by Michael “I’m different than Gonzalez, I swear!” Mukasey that, as the top law enforcement official in the US, the legality of waterboarding is really none of his beeswax.

So, I don’t know, stay tuned, I guess.

David Bowie was wrong

The spiders were from Mercury, not Mars.

Chapter 47: I'll never have that recipe again

Last night, Spooney and I ventured out of the house long enough to take in Everest at The Echo, a club in LA’s Echo Park neighborhood. Every time I drive by Echo Park, that MacArthur Park song pops in my head, because, well, I don’t know why. The parks kinda look similar to me.

It’s a terrible song to have in your head. Especially when it’s the Richard Harris version.

The Richard Harris version of MacArthur Park. Was there ever a bigger WTF? in the history of recorded music, like, ever?

I can’t believe the internets are letting me down by not giving me a video of Harris performing this song. And no, YouTube, Donna Summer is NOT going to suffice.

Here’s some dude lip synching to Harris’s version, followed by some of worst dancing ever committed in go-go boots:

You’re welcome.

Anyway, so…Jesus, where the fuck was I going with this?

Ah yes, Everest. Fronted by Russ Pollard, husband of Watson Twin Chandra. The band recently played Sundance, where they were pronounced “the real deal” by Neil Young, who has signed them to his label, Vapor Records.

They’re fantastic. You can definitely hear some vintage influences, and yet their music sounds totally modern and surprising.

I predict they’re going to be huge. And I’m not the only one.

Plus, on the way into the club, this sexy big black bouncer dude with a total Barry White voice asked me for my ID. He took it, looked at the picture, looked at me, and ran it through his hand-held scanner. When my age popped up on his screen, he looked back at me with a look of mild astonishment. Then, he smiled at me and said “Superb.”

It was a well-timed compliment. Because. Aw, Christ.

Today’s my birthday, okay? And I’m forty fucking seven, which seems like a hair’s breath from 50, and 50 is my total fucking freakout age, okay?

Okay.

But for now, as long as I can still compare favorably to a llama…

I’m cool, right?

Enough, already!

Hey, SoCal, what’s with the whole “weather” thing??

This morning the California Highway Patrol re-opened the 5 just north of LA in the Tejon Pass after it had been shut down for two days due to snow.

Say what?

First of all, to understand how important the 5 is to SoCal, you should know that in the Golden State, which is full of freeways, it’s called the Golden State Freeway, and the 5 is the only interstate so called.

So what?

Well, freeway names in LA are typically not so much an alternate moniker for the numerical designation as they are an idea, or a concept of where you’re going.

For example, the Ventura Freeway is the 101 N. Except when it’s the 134E.

The Hollywood Freeway is the 101. Except when it’s the 170.

This is a difficult thing for the uninitiated to grasp. That, and the fact that our city planners, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that freeway entrance and exit ramps should cross one another, creating crazy, “anything goes” zones in the middle of each that have been known to elicit yelps of alarm in freeway newbies. Imagine that you’re easing onto an exit ramp, slowing rapidly as you eye that red light a mere 50 yards away. Now imagine that as you’re doing this, a BMW is hurtling toward you from behind, vying for your lane as he accelerates to normal BMW freeway speed, i.e., 85 mph.

But I, as I am wont to do, digress.

So the singularly-nomenclatured 5 freeway was closed for two days, thousands are evacuating in recent burn areas due to the threat of mudslides, cars in Hancock Park are floating, the Sepulveda basin has flooded, water spouts are tearing off roofs in Ventura, the snow line has dropped to 3000 feet, hydroplaning has become the hot new mode of transportation, and if my pond does indeed overflow, my fish will still be able to swim freely in the 3 inches of water standing in my backyard.

Spooney, lover of rain, hail and thunderstorms, is home for all of this, recovering from a recent operation, the details of which I won’t go into. Let’s just say that, apologies to Randy and any others of the fine nursing profession that might be reading this, but I FUCKING HATE HOSPITALS.

You know why? Because they…well, Christ, they’re just so barely holding onto the whole thing, aren’t they?

When they wheeled Spooney away into the OR, I was told to go wait in the first floor lobby, and to tell the front desk that I was family, and the doctor would come to the lobby and talk to me after the operation.

So I go to the lobby, and there’s nobody at the front desk. There continues to be nobody at the front desk for 2 hours. Spooney’s surgery is supposed to last an hour. Finally, the security guard, mumbling something about a shortage of volunteers (the hospital’s front desk is manned by VOLUNTEERS???) takes pity on me and calls up to the nurses’ station. He tells me that Spooney is still in surgery, but I should go to the 2^nd floor “Surgicenter” and wait to talk to the doctor there.

So I go to this “Surgicenter,” and of course there’s no one at that desk either, only an elderly woman dozing in one of the pleather chairs. And what is the point, by the way, of mashing the words “surgery” and “center” together like that? Is the hospital thinking of marketing a 10’ x 12’ waiting room with one television blaring E! and no coffee or water and bad magazines? If not, they should. Because every hospital in the U.S. would buy one.

At this point, I would like to voice my objection to the recent change by all medical waiting rooms everywhere from Good Housekeeping to Parenting as their go-to boring magazine of choice. Please, take pity on me, medical waiting rooms everywhere, because as little as I care about low-cal holiday cookie recipes, I care even less about how to “tame the terrible twos.”

Uh, where was I?

Oh, yeah. So finally this woman shows up the Surgicenter desk, and I tell her why I’m there, and she calls the OR. And guess what? The doctor has left already. The woman delivers this news with a shrug and a shake of the head, and she confides in me that doctors never move so fast as when they are ducking the patient’s family, post-op. I am somewhat disturbed by this admission, as you might imagine, but before I can voice an objection, or ask to see the woman’s ID to prove that she is indeed an official spokesperson and not just some random roving doctor-hater, she announces to me “Here’s what I’m going to do.”

“What?” I say.

“I’m going to call the doctor and tell him to call you. I’m going to call the doctor’s office and tell them that they have to call you and tell you when the doctor is going to call. I’m going to call post-op and find out if your guy is still there, and I’m going to talk to the nurses in recovery and tell them to call you here to let you know when he gets back to his room. Do you have your cell phone on? Good. Give me the number.”

So I say “Wow, great!” and I give her my cell number, and she walks out the door and is NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN.

Eventually, embarrassed by how completely I was duped by the Surgicenter lady’s ability to mimick the behavior of helpful people, I just say fuck the rules and seek out the secret elevator that takes you to the floors they don’t want you going to without their permission, and I find the room that Spooney is coming back to and I just wait there for him. Nurses walk by and stare at me, and I just wave and go back to the article I’m reading, “Making Time for Family Time-Outs.”

They say more weather is on the way. But I don’t care, ‘cause you know what I saw this morning as I stepped out of my front door?

A freaking rainbow, y’all.

Do you know how many years it’s been since SoCal saw a freaking rainbow? Too many, my friends. Too damn many.

Fool me once, fool me 934 times more

The Center for Public Integrity (yes, we have one, shut up) has determined that senior Bush administration officials lied 935 times about WMD and the non-existent link between Hussein and Al-Qaida.

But they’re really, really sorry.

Just kidding. They’re not sorry at all. In fact genius White House spokesperson Dana Perino, when asked about the study, had two things to say:

1. We didn’t do it!

2. Everybody did it!

I don’t know why I would expect anything more than a response such as 4-year-old might offer when confronted with a broken lamp, but somehow I was thinking we might get a bit more than this:

“I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including -- they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world. Because, as you'll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence.”

And then, this little nugget of joy:

"And the other thing that that study fails to do is to say that after realizing that there was no WMD, as we thought as a collective body that there was, that this White House, the president set about to make reforms in the intelligence community to make sure that it doesn't happen again."

Look, Dana, you can’t take the lamp of intelligence, throw it on the floor, hit it with a hammer, jump up and down on it, and then claim to be surprised that it’s broken. Nor can you expect us to feign appreciation at your offer to glue it back together.

Mitt Romney: O.G.

During a campaign stop at a MLK Day parade in Jacksonville Florida, Mitt Romney demonstated that he was not only the “CEO” candidate, but that he could relate to “the people.” NYT:

In his dress shirt and tie, and with his unwavering smile, he walked over and posed for photographs with a group of black youngsters. Putting his arm around a teenage girl, he waved to the cameras and offered, “Who let the dogs out?” He added a tepid “woof woof”…

…Later, Mr. Romney admired a child’s gold necklace and said, “Oh, you’ve got some bling-bling here.”

Romney then Crip-walked up to podium, threw his hands in the air like he just did NOT care, and yelled “Where my bitches at?”

At that point the crowd demanded that the real Mitt Romney please stand up, please stand up, please stand up.

Separated at birth?

Obama - seriously, dude, WTF?

First off, you should tell your campaign manager that expressing an affection for the so-called populism of Ronald Reagan will not endear you to the former Reagan Democrats. Those guys are senior citizens now, and apparently they’re voting for Hillary. At least until McCain becomes the Republican nominee, and then they’re going to stick their fingers in their ears, go “la la la la” every time someone mentions that McCain is a pro-war, pro-nuclear power, anti-choice, anti-gay candidate who has seemingly rewritten the definition of “maverick” to mean “kiss Bush’s ass until ’08,” and then those same voters will leave Hills in the lurch and pull the lever for McCain in November.

Secondly, while I admit that you can be an inspiring speaker, when you try to pull off a move as calculated as this:

Wow. Dude, you’re so wooden that you make Al Gore look like Bill Clinton. And that fake hesitation before you throw Bill Clinton’s name onto the heap of presidents who did not bring sufficient change? You’re not going to win any Academy Award for that bit.

In short, Mr. High Road, you’re not going win any Democratic hearts and minds by talking smack about Bill Clinton. Because you know who loves Bill Clinton?

Most Democratic voters.

You know who hates Ronald Reagan?

Most Democratic voters.

And for the record, Barry, baby, Reagan did not shrink government, he grew it. And I am really disappointed that you didn’t know, or pretended not to know, that. It’s really as simple as this here chart, which you really should ask your campaign manager to get you a copy of:

See? The blue line is what we had to spend. The red line is what we spent.

And finally, I will steal John Edwards’s words to tell you why I am the most disappointed by this whole maneuver:

“When you think about what Ronald Reagan did to the American people, to the middle class to the working people…he was openly – openly – intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment. I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.”

Now THAT’S a sentiment I can get behind.

Cultural icon dead

Founder of the Wham-O toy company Richard Knerr died Monday in his Los Angeles area home. He was 82. Wham-O's most famous and best selling toy was the Frisbee, which was introduced in 1957.

According to the wishes of the deceased, Knerr's remains will be tossed onto the roof of his house, and friends and relatives will have to borrow a ladder, maybe from a neighbor, in order to get it down.

Voter, please!

Is America ready for a black president?

You know, I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and I think they are.

Not that I’m endorsing Obama in the Democratic primary, you understand. I still think Edwards’s views about what the problems are, and how to fix them, most closely match my own.

And not that I think this country has finally given up its legacy of racism. Far from it. I think it will take many, many generations before our nation’s children will have that bred out of them. It will take many gradually less racist generations of parents before we can produce a generation of children who will enter adult life without that overwhelming fear of the other that makes mean our souls and blinds us to what people truly are and can be. Racism is like a rope that connects us to the very beginnings of our nation, and it seems we are incapable of cutting it, we can only slowly wear it away, year after agonizing year.

But even in times and places of deep and persistent racism, there have always been those black people who were allowed by white America to play by a different set of rules.

I remember once when I was but a young thing, I hooked up with a cute boy on the ski slopes of upstate New York. He invited me back to his family’s lodge for dinner, and it was during that meal that I was treated to one of the most unabashed displays of racist attitudes that I have ever witnessed in my life. I mean, when it came to epithet frequency alone, those east coast upper-middle-class WASPs could have given even the most ignorant of my hick Nebraska relatives a run for his money.

And then, immediately after dinner, they settled down to watch the broadcast premier of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. “Don’t you love Michael Jackson?” the matriarch asked me, breathlessly. “We love Michael Jackson!”

And you know what? They really did love Michael Jackson. And not because he had, even at that early date, begun bleaching his skin white, either. To them, Michael Jackson was not black. He was Michael Jackson.

Similarly, if he had been so inclined, I’m sure that especially during the height of his tv popularity, Bill Cosby would’ve been welcome to become the first black man to have the sun set on him within the city limits of certain all-white towns in Indiana. One need only witness the still-pervasive popularity of garish, oversized, fugly-ass sweaters among middle-aged white men to understand the degree to which Cosby was accepted as one of their own.

Even O.J. Simpson, because of his image and his popularity, was given a pass by the LAPD to beat his wife again and again and again. To be clear, it isn’t just money that allows a black man to live by different rules. I’m sure that 50 Cent, if he had beaten his pretty blonde white wife in Brentwood, California, would have gone directly TO JAIL.

So does Barack Obama qualify in the eyes of certain white voters as “not black”? Not to get all Joe Biden on y’all, but does his poise, his speech, his intelligence, his wardrobe, and most importantly, his fame, mean that he is, as certain relatives of mine would put it, “different”?

He’d better hope so.

And if he becomes the Democratic nominee, we, sadly, had better hope so too.

The blogs of others.

Sorry I've been busy today. Plus, no Golden Globes telecast to parody.

But check out Larry's great post about how he's voting for John Edwards over at his blog, Revision 99. I'm afraid I couldn't resist a rather lengthy comment refuting the points of an earlier right-wing idiot commenter, so if you're keen to see me foam at the mouth of bit, go there.

And yet, I still wish he were president

I remember back in ’04, when so many of my friends could not get motivated to get out and vote for John Kerry, saying that he was barely better than W.

“Oh come on,” I’d say, “he may be kind of full of himself in that rich boy kind of way, but his policies are very different.”

“He’s a dick,” they would argue.

And I would be forced to admit that he was kind of a dick. Like that’s so rare among politicians.

Well, today I have been forced to reassess my opinion of Kerry.

He’s a complete dick.

Because today, Kerry endorsed Obama at a rally in South Carolina.

What’s so dickish about that, you say?

Helloooooooo! Way to be loyal to your former running mate FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, dude, who by the way stayed loyal to YOU and your piece-of-shit campaign through all of its

the-voters-love-a-guy-who-windsurfs visuals

and its

no-need-to-rebut-the-swiftboat-veterans miscalculations

and its

I-was-for-it-before-I-was-against-it idiocies.

What, you couldn’t wait until Edwards was out before you endorsed his opponent? Did you think the Obama people were sitting next to their phones, biting their nails and waiting for you to call and bless them with your special campaign mojo?

Dick.

Hey, Mr. High Road!

It's the easiest thing in the world to send out an attack dog to make moronic and inaccurate and emotionally charged points about your opponent, and then once the damage has been done, to claim that the dog was not speaking for your campaign.





All your supporters claim that you're different. That you've got integrity. That you'll change politics as we know it.

You might want to think about setting out to prove that.

The Kristol ball - updated!

Holy fucking shit, I am just so fucking happy that the NYTimes has installed William Kristol on their op-ed page in time for the ‘08 election.

I’m not being sarcastic!

I figure I can go and read Kristol’s columns, and then just like George in “The Opposite” episode of Seinfeld, know that we should, as a nation, do exactly the opposite of what Kristol thinks we should do.

If you’re unfamiliar with the unfailing wrongitude of Kristol, check out this awesome Tom Tomorrow cartoon, which, as usual, sums up the matter quite nicely in just a few frames.

So what choice bit of bizarro-world wisdom did Kristol have for us yesterday as he contemplated the possibility of a liberal Democrat winning in November?

“We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.”

See what I mean? That old “jaws of victory” chestnut! You can’t make up shit like that.

It’s an interesting strategy that BushCo and his hard-core cronies like Madame Kristol have attempted to foist onto the American public: that if you never define the goals of the game, and never leave the field of play, then you can claim yourself to be on the cusp of victory ad infinitum.

Or at least until a Democrat takes office in January of 2009, at which point Nostradamus Kristol and the like will no doubt begin chronicling the many ways in which we are losing in Iraq.

Regarding his invocation of the “nanny state”…it’s touching, isn’t it, when the filthy rich, who can afford whatever trifles their cold, mean little hearts desire, explain to the hoi polloi that healthcare, equal education, and workplace protections are the legislative equivalent of having the hired help wipe your bum for you?

Not that I doubt Kristol as an expert on hired help, I’m sure he’s had his bummed wiped for him plenty of times, I just think that it’s one thing to deny a crust of bread to a starving man, and quite another to tell that man that such mean sustenance is actually Beluga caviar.

And don’t get me started on the “good” done by Roberts and Alito, who, most recently, could not see their way to clear to outlawing a method of prisoner execution so unreliable and possibly tortuous that the American Veterinary Association refuses to use it on animals.

So I think you can all plainly see that, if we are to succeed as a nation, we must elect a president that will care for the people, appoint actual human beings to the Supreme Court, and get the fuck out of Iraq.

How you interpret the above direction, is up to you.

UPDATE:

This week's cover of The Weekly Standard, a magazine edited by none other than William Kristol:

Like I said, you can't make this shit up.

How low can you go?

Okay, folks, it’s officially now THE COLD THAT WOULD NOT DIE.

If it weren’t for VH-1’s America’s Next Top Model marathon and TiVo, I don’t know how I would’ve made it through last week without joining Britney in her San Fernando Valley Fortress of Insaneitude.

Several nights ago, for instance, as I was contemplating suicide via a toxic cocktail of TheraFlu, Ricola, and Black Russians, suddenly there was Tiffany from ANTM Cycle 4, donning a “Cancer the Crab” get-up for a Zodiacal calendar shoot.

The judges proclaimed her “fierce.”

Spooney and I proclaimed her “unintentionally hilarious.”

I nearly wet myself, I laughed so hard. And then I hacked up a lung.

But I stall. You can sense I’m stalling, can’t you?

RE: Iowa.

Speaking of unintentionally hilarious, the Republicans elected Huckabee, who is so not ready for prime time, but is otherwise pretty much the white trash version of George Bush III. While Governor of Arkansas, he vowed to “take this nation back for Christ.” The sermons from his days as a Baptist minister would no doubt reveal other disturbing aspirations, but he has arranged for all records of those to be destroyed. Sound familiar?

All in all, par for the Republican course.

On the Democratic side, in Iowa Hillary Clinton saw her “nothing radical or innovative about me!” strategy come to fruition when the only group of voters she succeeded in capturing were those over 65!

Think about it. Scary bitch Hillary, the woman who was, according to the vast right wing conspiracy, the Lady Macbeth behind every one of Bill’s crazy liberal America-killing initiatives, is now the queen of the Democratic Bible Belt AARP set. To which I can only say, “be careful what you wish for, Hils.”

Regarding my favorite candidate, I am hopeful that the media doesn’t finish him before he’s finished. And if you haven’t seen or heard Edwards’s Iowa concession speech, you really should watch it.

He’s the only one who is talking about what is really wrong with this country, which is that we are completely controlled by corporate interests. In everything from Iraq, to poverty, to bad schools, to criminally inadequate health care, it is all owing to corporations ruling our government.

No, it’s not a snappy new message about hope and compromise and working together. It’s about basic Democratic politics. It’s about the reason why we are Democrats instead of Republicans. Call it old school, if you will. But maybe it’s time we rock it old school up in this foundering, lost old mug of a country of ours.

And if you doubt the direction in which the last seven years have taken us, courtesy our Oilman- and VP Oilman-in-chief, let me remind you that in December of 2000, when five members of the Supreme Court betrayed everything that they were entrusted to stand up for, the average gas price per gallon in the US was $1.65.

It seems like a dream now, doesn’t it?

And so it goes in New Hampshire, where independent voters likely to vote Republican are expressing an interest in either McCain or Huckabee, because they’re the “sane” ones.

Wow. With standards that low, they should start a limbo contest.

Another serious post about John Edwards, dammit

James Denton, actor & personal friend of yours truly, has written a very nice bit of opinion in Salon about why he’s endorsing John Edwards:

Why John Edwards? That's a complicated question. Especially for a Southern Baptist, card-carrying NRA member from the rural South. Like so many Americans, I am simply fed up. Fed up with our government's seeming disregard for the environment and the economically challenged. Fed up with our debilitating dependence on foreign oil. Fed up with the Republican Party (with whom I voted most of my life prior to this administration) preaching that it is the party of the moral high ground when its leadership proves otherwise.

James is not bullshitting about being a Republican for most of life. And the man do love him some guns. So the fact that he has done such an about-face, politically, is not only a testament to his compassion and honesty, but also the most damning anecdote on the failures of the Republican Party that I personally know of. Believe me, when I first met JD, he would’ve rather stuck needles in his valuable baby blues than be accused of even dressing to the left.

By the way, JD is very busy off working for Edwards in Iowa right now, and not likely to read this post, so I believe that tempers the “sucking up to famous people” factor of the above paragraph. Right?

I met Edwards, and I listened to him speak, at a fundraiser at JD’s house a couple of months ago, and I’ve been mulling it ever since. I was reluctant to commit to a candidate that I thought might be perceived by the press as a calculated replay of the Clinton strategy. I was mindful of my disappointment of his performance against Cheney in the ’04 debates, and his unfortunate willingness to go along with massively dunderheaded Kerry campaign ideas, such as the cringe-inducing moment we he tried to make Mary Cheney’s gayness a election issue. Sure, he’s being bold now, I thought, bolder than anyone else about issues that I care about, and yet, will he continue to be bold when he actually has something to lose?

I can’t answer that last question. But I can’t deny that when Edwards speaks, I believe him. He is right when he tells Americans that they must sacrifice to achieve improvement. He is right to fix his campaign message on what is absolutely the most important issue in this country right now: poverty - because poverty is the hub around which a host of evils revolve. And when he says that "it is time for Americans to be patriotic about something other than war," I think that this country might finally be ready to hear that, and believe it.

Joint's too small

Yes, I'm still sick, but I managed to squeeze out two semi-lame posts for the vacationing Grant Miller.

Like he needs more people linking to him.

Spooney basically gave the idea for the Scott Baio post, but I didn't credit him, because I'm a bitch.

A coworker was quizzing me today about my cold, and he speculated that I might have the walking pneumonia.

I said "Yes, I do, but so far I've managed to escape the boogie woogie flu."

He was all "Huh?" I had to explain that it was a song reference that people as old as I am would probably have gotten.

We can haz peace 4 earthz now?

Sorry for my inattention to all of your lovely brilliant blogs. I have a very bad cold.

Although I swear it is not from my recent superhero fantasy adventure, but from an infected coworker. Isn't that always the way? A word to all infected coworkers everywhere: stay the fuck home, okay? Nobody wants what you got, game boy.

Of course, I myself was forced to go into work while infected, because I AM INDISPENSIBLE.

I am also, I suspect, when all is said and done, a big fucking hypocrite. Or maybe that's just the Nyquil talking.

Anyhoos, because I love you all, I have roused myself from the couch and torn myself away from the Hell's Kitchen marathon and the giant lotion-infused box of tissues to wish you all a nice, you know, whatever the fuck it is you're celebrating.

More in 08. Peace.

Twopeat!

For the second year in a row, Bells On has one the much-coveted and pretigious Drysdale Award for Least Influential Political Blog.

I hope, dear readers, that you won't think that fame has gone to my head if I tell you that seldom, if ever, has an award been more richly deserved.

I would like to thank the RNC. Without them, the evil-osity level of the United States of America would plummet, and then what would I write about?

Also, I would like to thank Jesus for this award. I know this time of year is a busy one for him, what with the Golden Globe nominations, and the Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy, and of course the upcoming Patriots v. Dolphins game. Everybody's going to want Jesus in their corner for that one!

Thanks to all who voted for me!

Wheel of fortune

Last night, I briefly became my brother.

Or rather, a lamer, non-medically trained version of my brother.

The day started out scarily, as a car accident happened right in front of me on the freeway on my way to work. I was driving in the second lane from the left, when, about 3 cars in front of me, I saw a white Mercedes careening sidways across all 4 lanes of traffic. Luckily, I had enough of a cushion in front and in back that I could brake safely, and luckily for me, the momentum of the accident took the Mercedes away from my lane and into the right guardrail, dragging 3 other cars with it. Cars in the right lanes started pulling over, probably because they got clipped or bumped, but on my side, everyone proceeded slowly on their way.

Then, on the way home from work, I got stuck in a giant commuter clusterfuck as a 6 car accident took up every lane of that same freeway except the HOV lane, and all the traffic had to squeeze through that one lane to continue on their way.

It was just one of those days in LA. Somedays, on the freeways, you can almost smell a recklessness in the air. Minivans, usually the most predictable of vehicles, suddenly zip past you doing 90 in the slow lane. 20 year-old Chevy Malibus weave in between the other cars at high speeds with mere inches to spare, severely testing the limits of American economy car engineering. On those days I turn down the radio, grip the wheel and stay alert. And it’s saved me from a freeway shoulder tow-truck party more than once.

Then later that same night, I went to a party at a girlfriend’s house, and as I was driving home at about 11pm, it began to rain. Not heavily, but it doesn’t take much rain to confound an LA driver. Generally, LA drivers are not accustomed to “weather,” and if you’re driving in LA when there is actual weather happening, best to stay on your toes, because people tend to freak the fuck out. My entrance ramp onto the 110S featured a stop sign, and as I accelerated from 0 to freeway speed, my car fishtailed just a little.

The road was slick. But it was also deserted. Without other vehicular lunkheads to over- or under-react to conditions, I figured I would get home without incident.

A couple of minutes later, I was merging onto the 5N via a long, two-lane ramp that curved to the left. I was aware that there was another car some distance in front of me, but I could no longer see the car because of the curve of the ramp.

Suddenly, there was that car in front of me, stopped dead in my lane, lying on its side with its hood facing the left lane, and its undercarriage facing the guardrail. It was about a thirty foot drop on the other side of that guardrail to the freeway below.

“Really?” I remember thinking, “Really?”

I managed to stop my car about 15 feet behind the wreck, and I threw on my hazards. I yanked my cell phone off the charger that I had fortuitously not forgotten that evening, and dialed 911 as I ran toward the car.

As I approached, I could see sneakers poking out the driver’s side window. A woman was trying to escape out the broken window by pushing her feet through the four-inch opening between the window frame and the pavement. “Why is she going that way?” I thought. Go out the top. Go out the passenger side door, which as far as I could see was undamaged.

As I got along side it, I could tell the car wasn’t running anymore, and I could see the woman through the unbroken glass of her sunroof. No blood. She seemed alert, if scared. “Are you injured?” I yelled at her through the glass. She thought for a moment and shook her head. I wasn’t sure she understood me. She kept trying to jam her feet out that small opening. It made no sense, but I figured she wasn’t thinking clearly.

Just then, a large pickup truck came barreling down the ramp. I waved my arms and the got the guy to pull over in front of the scene. He was a young hipster dude, and he looked very freaked out. “Watch for cars,” I said.

I reached up to the passenger side door on what was now the top of the vehicle and pulled the handle. Locked. “Can you unlock this door?” I yelled. She didn’t seem to get it. I repeated myself slowly. She shook her head. “Are you hurt?” I asked again. “I’m okay,” she said, and I thought, okay, she can speak, and she seems like she understands me. That’s a good sign.

In the next few minutes two more cars stopped and there were 4 more young men on the scene. None of us could figure out why she could not unlock her passenger door. A couple of guys started rocking the car back and forth, gently, figuring they would set it back down on its wheels. “No!” I said. “Do not mess with the car. Let the fire department free her.”

Unless the car catches on fire, I thought.

“We need to check and see if there is a fuel leak,” I said. I was kicking myself for not thinking of that right off the bat. Several of us moved to the underside of the car, but it was raining – no way to tell if it was leaking gasoline. Then one of the dudes pulled my sleeve and said “This is the gas tank here.” He was running his hands along the sides of what indeed looked like the tank. He peered around the sides of it. “It’s intact,” he said. Whew. “Still,” I said, “we should keep working on getting that passenger door open in case we do have to pull her out fast.”

A couple of the guys were talking to the woman and telling her she was going to go to the hospital, and she should call someone. She was curled up in a ball against the back of her seat, and although she managed to locate her cell phone and make the call, she couldn’t or wouldn’t stand and try to unlock that door for us.

I noticed that the guy on the ramp watching for cars was not doing a super job of getting them to slow down, and I started directing them too, jumping up and down and waving my arms, and then motioning them by once they had gotten into the open lane and slowed sufficiently so that they could safely pass. I thought about how to free the woman. I thought about breaking her passenger window, but that would rain glass down on her, and suddenly, oh look, there’s the Highway Patrol.

Two very young and intense highway patrolmen blocked the open lane of the ramp with their car and got the lowdown from me as they approached the scene. The first words out of my mouth were “a woman is trapped,” and that really kicked them into high gear. After a few minutes, one motorist tried to sneak by the scene in his car after being told by the officers to stop and they really let him have it. They made him roll down his window so they could yell at him up close and personal-like.

Then, I saw two large LAFD trucks lumbering onto the ramp. I realized that since the CHP car and the back-up of traffic on the ramp was preventing the fire department truck from reaching the scene, I moved my car further down the ramp past all the vehicles so that they could get by. Then I walked back to the scene. No cars were being allowed through anymore. Slowly, as the fire department worked on freeing her, my fellow Samaritans drifted away. I was standing by myself again, watching the trapped woman continue to talk on her cellphone. No longer being a part of the scene, the rescue, and watching her through that bubble of sunroof glass as others bustled around her, it struck me that she looked sort of comical. A little LA native in her track suit and sneakers, talking excitedly on her cell, staring out at us like a fish in some kind of broke-down Toyota fishbowl.

“Officer,” I said, “you don’t need me here, do you?”

He turned and looked at me. It took him a second to recognize that I was the same woman who met them when they first arrived on scene.

“Oh, no,” he said, and then he turned back to his work.

“Okay,” I said.

He turned back toward me again, smiling a kind of nice but official-looking smile.

“Thanks for stopping,” he said. He meant it.

I smiled back and nodded. “My brother was an EMT,” I said, more because my brother, and what he would do in that situation, had been in the forefront of my mind that whole time, rather than because I thought it was something the patrolman needed to know.

It was going to take awhile for the whole rescue thing to play out. Meanwhile, I was wet. I hadn’t realized that my uncovered head had been getting steadily soaked the whole time. As I walked back to my car and started the engine, I laughed at the thought of all those motorists I had directed past the scene in my knee-high leather high-heeled boots and my knee-length leather trench coat.

They probably thought “what the fuck?” or maybe “only in LA”.

But would it affect them, I thought? Would they drive slower or more cautiously after that? And what about that motorist who tried to sneak by the road block? Had he learned his lesson, or would he go home and complain to his wife about some jerkoff cop?

And what about the woman in the car? What did she think about what had happened to her? Did she see it merely as the consequences of the confluence of wet road, cheap tires, and shitty compact car, or did she look at it as the hand of fate? Did she cross herself on the way to the hospital, or thank her lucky fucking stars she didn’t go over the guardrail? Did she know how close she came to buying it in those milliseconds of action? Jeez, you change one variable of that equation, that confluence, just a little bit -- you decrease the traction, increase the surface moisture, add another two months of wear on the treads, and instead of a befuddled victim you got a dead victim. I wonder if she’s thought about that yet. I wonder if she ever will.

Me, I was happy that the city had picked someone else to fuck with last night. I was happy that I wasn’t repaid for my sense of responsibility by having some dipshit plow into the back of my car while I was off playing Good Samaritan. They say that no good deed goes unpunished, and I guess I’m here to say that at least until this very moment, I’ve managed to beat those odds.

No Willie Horton

Remember Willie Horton? The Massachusetts murderer who committed assault and rape while out of prison on an extremely ill-advised weekend furlough program? His case was used by (the evil and thankfully dead of brain cancer – hello, karma!) Lee Atwater, head of the presidential campaign of Bush Sr., to bury their rival, ex-Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, under charges of being soft on crime. Never mind that Dukakis was only continuing a program brought about during the administration of his Republican predecessor. Never mind that he was not remotely involved in the exceedingly bone-headed decision to furlough a man who had been sentenced to life without parole. He was the guy in charge when it all went down, and was therefore responsible.

Imagine if we applied that same standard to Giuliani?

Also, I just have to mention that William “Willie” Horton never went by the name “Willie.” The nickname was Atwater’s idea, presumably so that even the blind, who couldn’t see the mug shot used in the commercial, would understand that Horton was black-ity-black-black.

Atwater, and then-media consultant Roger Ailes (why yes, it is the same Roger Ailes who’s now president of Fox News) vowed to make Horton a household name, and they succeeded. Famously unrepentant about stirring up racial tension in the campaign, Ailes remarked "the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

Hey, what’s with the subtleties, guys? How about a knife in one hand, and a watermelon in the other?

In the ensuing years, the Horton commercial has become infamous in the annals of campaign dirty tricks. And now, Mike Huckabee would have us believe that he has become the latest victim of a Horton-style smear.

The perp’s name was Wayne DuMond. He was one of several men whose sentence was commuted by Huckabee at the urging of the perp’s pastor.

DuMond was a bad guy with a history of sexual assault and other crimes. But he was in prison for raping a third cousin of then-governor Bill Clinton, and that made him somewhat a cause célèbre for the rabid Clinton-haters, who said, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that DuMond was framed.

Huckabee had a bad habit of freeing criminals over the objections of the parole board and seemingly based solely on recommendations of right-wing pastors with whom he was personally acquainted. Apparently, all you had to do to get out of prison in Arkansas during Huckabee’s tenure was to buddy up to one of those gullible Christian crackpots.

Predictably, after his release, DuMond wasted little time in returning to his former ways, and within a month of moving to Missouri he had raped and murdered the first of two women.

So much for the “Dumond is an innocent victim of the evil Clinton empire” theorists.

Although Huckabee has been benefitting from a lot of “aw shucks”-type press coverage, I have been suspicious of his motivations from afar for many years.

Why? Because during his entire tenure as governor, he turned a deaf ear to the overwhelmingly obvious innocence of the West Memphis Three.

Has there ever, in the history of American justice, been a more grievous example of railroading than in the case of these three young men? I doubt it. These kids were accused and convicted basically because they were Goths and loners in a town spooked by the gruesome murders of three young boys. But because the so-called “ringleader,” of the three, Damien Echols, is not Christian, Huckabee couldn’t be bothered with him, and that makes him just as bad as the ignorant, malevolent, incompetent bigots who put Damien on death row.

So unlike the frustratingly hapless Dukakis, Huckabee’s current scandal is entirely of his own making, and is further proof that the former preacher would be, as president, more inclined to favor one kind of American over another.

P.S. For more on the West Memphis Three, watch the two excellent documentaries that have been made about them.