The actor with the best name in the business, Rip Torn, was arrested. For breaking into a bank. He was found with a loaded gun.
One has to ask oneself why a successful actor who is in his late 70s would do such a thing. Until one reads that he was "intoxicated."
Ah. That explains it. Alcohol. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems, as Homer Simpson put it.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Gil Scott Heron "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"
Love the song, but I think Gil was a little off base. The revolution will most certainly be televised. Everything else is.
Carl Smith "Go, Boy, Go!"
Here's a swingin' cat in a great suit singing a hep song from a time long ago. I must admit that I never heard of him before I stumbled across this video on another blog. The man in powder blue is Carl Smith and he passed away on January 16 at the age of 82.
David Gilmour "Echoes"
Whoa...huh...huh...dude. Song is trippy.
Sorry. This sort of acoustic version of "Echoes," which can be found on David Gilmour's "Remember That Night" dvd, isn't nearly as trippy as the original on Pink Floyd's "Meddle" album. (For you kids out there, an album was a large, round piece of vinyl that played music when placed upon something called a turntable.) This version also isn't almost 24 minutes long like the original, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Twenty-four minutes of guitars, vocals, and what sounded like whale noises can test one's love of the Floyd, not to mention the nerves of one's spouse.
This is a short, peppy, slightly jazzy version of "Echoes" and I quite enjoyed it. Looks like the band did too.
Sorry. This sort of acoustic version of "Echoes," which can be found on David Gilmour's "Remember That Night" dvd, isn't nearly as trippy as the original on Pink Floyd's "Meddle" album. (For you kids out there, an album was a large, round piece of vinyl that played music when placed upon something called a turntable.) This version also isn't almost 24 minutes long like the original, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Twenty-four minutes of guitars, vocals, and what sounded like whale noises can test one's love of the Floyd, not to mention the nerves of one's spouse.
This is a short, peppy, slightly jazzy version of "Echoes" and I quite enjoyed it. Looks like the band did too.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Some People Suck, Some Do Not
Sucks: Mark McGwire. Why? Now that Tony La Russa, the St. Louis Cardinals manager and former McGwire enabler, has hired McGwire to be a hitting instructor, McGwire knew that it was only a matter of time before he started facing questions, and lots of them, regarding his possible steroid use. He also wants desperately to be a Hall of Famer and realized the vote was never going to be in his favor until he made a statement about steroids. At least a statement other than his shamefully telling a Congressional committee investigating steroid use in major league baseball that he “didn’t want to talk about the past.”
Now McGwire has confessed to something most everybody suspected all along: He used steroids. But he can’t even confess altogether honestly. McGwire said that he only took steroids to help with his injuries, not for strength or to hit more home runs.
No one is buying this. Not until McGwire makes a 100% thorough and honest confession in which he genuinely reaches into his heart to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will he even be considered as a serious candidate for Cooperstown, and rightfully so.
Sucks: the aforementioned Tony LaRussa. Why? How many years did this guy spend managing McGwire in Oakland and St. Louis, watching McGwire bulk up and blast homers with more and more frequency? How could he not know that McGwire was one of the many sullying the game of baseball with his needles and chemicals? How could LaRussa not even have asked if something was up? Because LaRussa is a man with a law degree. He knows enough not to ask a question that he doesn’t want to know the answer to.
Does Not Suck: Conan O’Brien. Why: He is, as Homer Simpson said about God (after Simpson met Him), a “class act all the way.”
I always had some respect for Conan O’Brien. He’s intelligent and can be funny, proven by the fact that he wrote for “The Simpsons” back in their golden years of the early 1990s. But as a talk show host I have always thought he was awful, awful, awful. After all these years he has never stopped looking nervous and jittery and, like many late-night hosts, has no idea how to conduct an interview.
Despite his awfulness as a talk show host, he has proven to be one classy dude in this little dust-up he’s having with NBC and Jay Leno. His statement about not wanting to ruin the “Tonight Show” by moving back it’s time slot perfectly presented just how bright this guy is. He has totally taken the High Road, while Jay and the warlocks at NBC wallow in the mud of the Low Road.
Sucks: Jay Leno. Why? Because he has proven to be a man with absolutely no morals when it comes to getting what he wants, even if means kicking someone else in the balls to get his old job back while at the same time stabbing that person in the back, a nifty and nimble move if ever there was one.
Also, he’s just not that funny. And let’s be honest: putting him back in charge of the “Tonight Show” will backfire. Some people in his audience with think less of him because of all this intrigue and not watch, and many in his core audience aren’t getting any younger and are finding it harder and harder to stay up past the news.
Here’s hoping your ratings tank, Jay, just like you deserve.
Does not suck: America. Specifically, Americans. Why? Just look at our response to the earthquake in Haiti. Compassion and generosity in big, hearty, American-sized doses, be it from the government, charity organizations, or private citizens.
Sure we like to eat too much, get drunk, and wave our flag while shooting our guns, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a heart. When there’s a spot in the world that’s really down on it’s luck, Americans are there to help.
Now McGwire has confessed to something most everybody suspected all along: He used steroids. But he can’t even confess altogether honestly. McGwire said that he only took steroids to help with his injuries, not for strength or to hit more home runs.
No one is buying this. Not until McGwire makes a 100% thorough and honest confession in which he genuinely reaches into his heart to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will he even be considered as a serious candidate for Cooperstown, and rightfully so.
Sucks: the aforementioned Tony LaRussa. Why? How many years did this guy spend managing McGwire in Oakland and St. Louis, watching McGwire bulk up and blast homers with more and more frequency? How could he not know that McGwire was one of the many sullying the game of baseball with his needles and chemicals? How could LaRussa not even have asked if something was up? Because LaRussa is a man with a law degree. He knows enough not to ask a question that he doesn’t want to know the answer to.
Does Not Suck: Conan O’Brien. Why: He is, as Homer Simpson said about God (after Simpson met Him), a “class act all the way.”
I always had some respect for Conan O’Brien. He’s intelligent and can be funny, proven by the fact that he wrote for “The Simpsons” back in their golden years of the early 1990s. But as a talk show host I have always thought he was awful, awful, awful. After all these years he has never stopped looking nervous and jittery and, like many late-night hosts, has no idea how to conduct an interview.
Despite his awfulness as a talk show host, he has proven to be one classy dude in this little dust-up he’s having with NBC and Jay Leno. His statement about not wanting to ruin the “Tonight Show” by moving back it’s time slot perfectly presented just how bright this guy is. He has totally taken the High Road, while Jay and the warlocks at NBC wallow in the mud of the Low Road.
Sucks: Jay Leno. Why? Because he has proven to be a man with absolutely no morals when it comes to getting what he wants, even if means kicking someone else in the balls to get his old job back while at the same time stabbing that person in the back, a nifty and nimble move if ever there was one.
Also, he’s just not that funny. And let’s be honest: putting him back in charge of the “Tonight Show” will backfire. Some people in his audience with think less of him because of all this intrigue and not watch, and many in his core audience aren’t getting any younger and are finding it harder and harder to stay up past the news.
Here’s hoping your ratings tank, Jay, just like you deserve.
Does not suck: America. Specifically, Americans. Why? Just look at our response to the earthquake in Haiti. Compassion and generosity in big, hearty, American-sized doses, be it from the government, charity organizations, or private citizens.
Sure we like to eat too much, get drunk, and wave our flag while shooting our guns, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a heart. When there’s a spot in the world that’s really down on it’s luck, Americans are there to help.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Haiti
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More info and other organizations here.
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From the WTF Video files:
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Blacker Than Blago: The Strangeness of Rod Blagojevich
“I’m blacker than Barack Obama.”
Rod Blagojevich may have apologized for saying it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it. Seeing as how he also believes himself to be a victim being oppressed by the federal government, it’s not out of the question that Rod Blagojevich believes himself to be black. Or at least blacker than the president of the United States.
The Notorious Blago, as Esquire magazine named him (read the notorious interview here), bases his blackness on, among other things, the fact that he shined shoes and lived in a five-room apartment.
I shined shoes as a kid, too. Granted, they were my own shoes, but still. And I lived with my parents in a five-room apartment as well. I’ll see your five-room apartment, Blago, and raise you this: the apartment I lived in was actually in a black neighborhood in North Austin. Therefore, by Blagojevich logic, I am not only blacker than President Obama, I am blacker than Blago.
How silly it all is. Blagojevich enjoys attention, that’s a given. Blago has played the clown, but now this, how black he really is. How silly, how sad.
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Two things strike me about this interview: the awful potty mouth of Blagojevich and his jealousy of Barack Obama.
We’ll start with the foul language. I’m not prude (at least I don’t think I am), but everything has a place, and you would think a politician (really, in his case, a former politician) would understand the value of not working blue, as they used to say. There are kids watching this man, including his own.
That the governor could curse a blue streak was actually pretty well known before the reporter from Esquire spent time with him, at least if we are to believe what is allegedly on the tapes the Feds acquired with wiretaps and bugs. The whole world knows that the gov referred to then President-elect Obama’s soon to be vacant Senate seat as “fucking golden.” (He also uses a very choice word to refer to Obama that I don’t think will play well in the African-American community.)
But the Esquire piece seems to bring home just how much Blago likes to swear. Whether quoting the tapes or quoting Blago in the interview, the f-bomb is dropped early and often, and that and a myriad of other curses are bandied about so frequently, that one could imagine a drunken sailor might tell Blago to tune it down a bit.
I have to ask: Do you kiss your kids with that mouth, Rod?
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The other thing that really stands out is Blagojevich’s jealousy of Barack Obama. Just the mere insanity of thinking you are more of an African-American than someone else because of the surroundings you grew up in, well, that’s just absurd.
But it’s easy to understand why the Blago brain is overheating, and why he has convinced himself he has more street cred than Obama, or why that should matter: You just know Blago thinks that should be him in the White House, not some softy born in warm Hawaii instead of cold Illinois and educated, albeit briefly, in Indonesia, rather than the fine public schools of Chicago.
When Blagojevich was first elected governor in 2002 his name began to be mentioned as a possible presidential candidate at some point, be it in 2004 or ’08. He was young and vibrant and had a helluva head of hair. Still does.
But things went south pretty quickly for this guy. He was remote, distancing himself from state legislators and distancing himself from the state capitol of Springfield, preferring to spend most of his time in Sweet Home Chicago. He got into an extremely bitter and very public feud with his father-in-law, a Chicago alderman. Even after being reelected in 2006, word was that Blago was a little unstable. Nobody whispered his name in terms of being a presidential candidate anymore. He coulda been a contender, but for his quirks and capriciousness. Blago may not have known it, but everyone else did: He wasn’t ever going to get anywhere beyond the governor’s mansion, the one he never slept in anyway.
Meanwhile, stealthily (or so it seemed) and quickly, came the rise of Barack Obama. Also young and vibrant and with an ok head of hair, Obama was achieving the kind of respect Blago yearned for. Obama ascended, Blago descended. Obama was elected President of the United States, Blagojevich was arrested by the FBI.
At one point in the Esquire interview, Blago tells the reporter, Scott Raab, how he once received a phone call from David Axelrod, later Obama’s campaign chief and now a presidential advisor, telling him to think about running for president in 2008. Recalling that conversation, one can only imagine how wistful Blagojevich must feel now, thinking of what could have been.
Obama was sworn in as president in January, 2009, less than two months after Blago’s arrest. Barack Obama moved into the White House with his wife and two children, both girls, same as Blago.
“That should have been me,” Blagojevich must have thought.
But it’s not him. Blago will go on trial, with the very real threat of very real prison time facing him. While the countdown to the trial goes on, so does the sad saga of Blago, reduced to impersonating Elvis at a block party for $10,000. (What block party had 10 grand to spend on an Elvis impersonator?)
Blagojevich is still playing the clown, but he’s a very silly, sad clown now.
Rod Blagojevich may have apologized for saying it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it. Seeing as how he also believes himself to be a victim being oppressed by the federal government, it’s not out of the question that Rod Blagojevich believes himself to be black. Or at least blacker than the president of the United States.
The Notorious Blago, as Esquire magazine named him (read the notorious interview here), bases his blackness on, among other things, the fact that he shined shoes and lived in a five-room apartment.
I shined shoes as a kid, too. Granted, they were my own shoes, but still. And I lived with my parents in a five-room apartment as well. I’ll see your five-room apartment, Blago, and raise you this: the apartment I lived in was actually in a black neighborhood in North Austin. Therefore, by Blagojevich logic, I am not only blacker than President Obama, I am blacker than Blago.
How silly it all is. Blagojevich enjoys attention, that’s a given. Blago has played the clown, but now this, how black he really is. How silly, how sad.
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Two things strike me about this interview: the awful potty mouth of Blagojevich and his jealousy of Barack Obama.
We’ll start with the foul language. I’m not prude (at least I don’t think I am), but everything has a place, and you would think a politician (really, in his case, a former politician) would understand the value of not working blue, as they used to say. There are kids watching this man, including his own.
That the governor could curse a blue streak was actually pretty well known before the reporter from Esquire spent time with him, at least if we are to believe what is allegedly on the tapes the Feds acquired with wiretaps and bugs. The whole world knows that the gov referred to then President-elect Obama’s soon to be vacant Senate seat as “fucking golden.” (He also uses a very choice word to refer to Obama that I don’t think will play well in the African-American community.)
But the Esquire piece seems to bring home just how much Blago likes to swear. Whether quoting the tapes or quoting Blago in the interview, the f-bomb is dropped early and often, and that and a myriad of other curses are bandied about so frequently, that one could imagine a drunken sailor might tell Blago to tune it down a bit.
I have to ask: Do you kiss your kids with that mouth, Rod?
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The other thing that really stands out is Blagojevich’s jealousy of Barack Obama. Just the mere insanity of thinking you are more of an African-American than someone else because of the surroundings you grew up in, well, that’s just absurd.
But it’s easy to understand why the Blago brain is overheating, and why he has convinced himself he has more street cred than Obama, or why that should matter: You just know Blago thinks that should be him in the White House, not some softy born in warm Hawaii instead of cold Illinois and educated, albeit briefly, in Indonesia, rather than the fine public schools of Chicago.
When Blagojevich was first elected governor in 2002 his name began to be mentioned as a possible presidential candidate at some point, be it in 2004 or ’08. He was young and vibrant and had a helluva head of hair. Still does.
But things went south pretty quickly for this guy. He was remote, distancing himself from state legislators and distancing himself from the state capitol of Springfield, preferring to spend most of his time in Sweet Home Chicago. He got into an extremely bitter and very public feud with his father-in-law, a Chicago alderman. Even after being reelected in 2006, word was that Blago was a little unstable. Nobody whispered his name in terms of being a presidential candidate anymore. He coulda been a contender, but for his quirks and capriciousness. Blago may not have known it, but everyone else did: He wasn’t ever going to get anywhere beyond the governor’s mansion, the one he never slept in anyway.
Meanwhile, stealthily (or so it seemed) and quickly, came the rise of Barack Obama. Also young and vibrant and with an ok head of hair, Obama was achieving the kind of respect Blago yearned for. Obama ascended, Blago descended. Obama was elected President of the United States, Blagojevich was arrested by the FBI.
At one point in the Esquire interview, Blago tells the reporter, Scott Raab, how he once received a phone call from David Axelrod, later Obama’s campaign chief and now a presidential advisor, telling him to think about running for president in 2008. Recalling that conversation, one can only imagine how wistful Blagojevich must feel now, thinking of what could have been.
Obama was sworn in as president in January, 2009, less than two months after Blago’s arrest. Barack Obama moved into the White House with his wife and two children, both girls, same as Blago.
“That should have been me,” Blagojevich must have thought.
But it’s not him. Blago will go on trial, with the very real threat of very real prison time facing him. While the countdown to the trial goes on, so does the sad saga of Blago, reduced to impersonating Elvis at a block party for $10,000. (What block party had 10 grand to spend on an Elvis impersonator?)
Blagojevich is still playing the clown, but he’s a very silly, sad clown now.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Jan Gabriel
Jan Gabriel has crossed "the Finish Line of Life," as his website put it.
You may not know the name but if you grew up in the Chicago area as I did, and were in front of a tv at some point, you heard Jan Gabriel's voice. "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, smokin' US Dragstrip 30!!!."
Even if you weren't a gear-head, or even a car racing fan, and I was neither when I heard these commercials as a kid growing up in the North Austin neighborhood, you still loved these ads. You loved that voice. You loved the cheesiness of that reverb as Gabriel shouted "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!" How could you not? All my friends and I had to do to crack each other up (especially in our teen years when our sense of humor may have been enhanced somewhat by certain supplements) was to yell, "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, smokin' US Dragstrip 30!!!" Always got a laugh.
When I look back at the 1970s with rose colored glasses I think of those dragstrip commercials and smile. Gabriel was a wee tiny bit of my childhood, but it's another wee tiny bit that's been lost, chipped away as I get closer to old age than I am to my younger days.
Gabriel lost a battle with kidney disease yesterday. Yes, he did indeed die on a Sunday.
Here's a piece "Chicago Tonight" did on Jan Gabriel a few years ago.
You may not know the name but if you grew up in the Chicago area as I did, and were in front of a tv at some point, you heard Jan Gabriel's voice. "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, smokin' US Dragstrip 30!!!."
Even if you weren't a gear-head, or even a car racing fan, and I was neither when I heard these commercials as a kid growing up in the North Austin neighborhood, you still loved these ads. You loved that voice. You loved the cheesiness of that reverb as Gabriel shouted "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!" How could you not? All my friends and I had to do to crack each other up (especially in our teen years when our sense of humor may have been enhanced somewhat by certain supplements) was to yell, "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, smokin' US Dragstrip 30!!!" Always got a laugh.
When I look back at the 1970s with rose colored glasses I think of those dragstrip commercials and smile. Gabriel was a wee tiny bit of my childhood, but it's another wee tiny bit that's been lost, chipped away as I get closer to old age than I am to my younger days.
Gabriel lost a battle with kidney disease yesterday. Yes, he did indeed die on a Sunday.
Here's a piece "Chicago Tonight" did on Jan Gabriel a few years ago.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Finally, Fleeing Thoughts on the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century
We have told 2009 to go to hell and are now eight days into the new year and the new decade. (Yes, yes, there are those that will tell you the new decade doesn’t begin until the first day of 2011, but I don’t care what “they” say. I firmly believe that when the calendar rolls over from a year that ends in “0” to a year that ends in “1,” then a new decade has begun.) I’m happy to be in a new year and a new decade because it feels like we’re starting fresh. The double-aught years, or whatever you want to call the last ten, had grown stale and were beginning to smell, not a strong, blue-cheese left out in the sun kind of odor, but a subtle, persistent aroma of something foul that you can’t determine the origin of. Understand that I don’t wish time to move faster, because I perceive it to move too quickly already, but I am a man learning to love, and live in, the present and I’ve always looked forward to the future, optimistically assuming that future will always be better, no matter how good today is.
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You know what I never did in the last decade? Sexted. Heck, I’ve never even texted, much less sexted. Quite frankly, I don’t know how to send a text message, and I really don’t give a damn. That makes me sound old, doesn’t it? Don’t give a damn about that either.
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What was the most important thing in the lives of Americans in the first decade of the 21st century? Terrorism? The new Depression? Wars? No. “American Idol.” A show successful beyond belief, more people voted for an American idol in 2006 than in any previous presidential election.
I’m quite proud of the fact that I’ve never spent a minute watching this show. I’ve seen the commercials for it, and I’ve seen clips of it on the “news” (what kind of country are we living in when “American Idol” is news?), and the show appears to be mean spirited in it’s criticisms of the contestants who don’t seem to mind embarrassing themselves on national television.
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I’m no great fan of Barack Obama, but I am glad that George W. Bush is gone. It wasn’t just his mangling of the English language, or his tendency to start wars every once in while. The thing was, I was really getting tired of hearing how Bush stole the election in 2000. I’m from Chicago. Stealing votes is a given. Politicians outside Chicago do it too. If Al Gore hadn’t been such a water-walker and had stolen more votes in Florida than Bush had, Gore would have been president.
I’m surprised the Gore campaign didn’t steal at least a few ballots. Gore’s campaign manager was William Daley, brother of the current mayor of Chicago and son of one of the most famous vote getters of all, Richard J. Daley, who ruled as king of Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976. It was under the first Daley’s rule that the deceased of the city acquired voting rights. And the dead always voted for Richard J.
Since Gore ran an honest campaign he slept well at night, knowing there was no wrong doing on his part. At least that’s what a friend of mine told me.
Personally, I doubt Gore slept at all well during most of the Bush administration. Seeing all the weight he put (which he’s recently lost, truth be told), Gore looked like a guy who woke up in the middle of the night feeling tortured and looking for a chocolate cake to inhale. I would too, knowing that if only I had fudged some ballots to win the election there might not have been an Iraq invasion, and there would be no dead American soldiers nor any maimed American soldiers coming home home to a life that would now be drastically different than the one they left behind.
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Speaking of Iraq, we were right to invade. Or at least within our rights. We (and I’m using the royal “we” here, since I personally didn’t do any of this) were wrong to lie about the weapons of mass destruction, we were wrong to change our reasoning for the invasion over the years (first it was to look for WMD, then it was regime change, then it was democracy building), and we wrong to try and fight a war on the cheap. By that I mean, Bush didn’t try too hard to sell the war to Americans because not only did he not care what we thought, he assumed, based on “intelligence,” that the war would be over soon. So we didn’t have the proper armor for our fighting troops and we kept sending National Guard divisions filled with men and women who were better suited to patrol American cities after a hurricane or some other disaster than they were for desert warfare. It was war on the cheap because Bush hadn’t prepared for an elongated stay. He was hoping for Iraqi women throwing roses at American troops as we drove through liberated Baghdad in Humvees, just as the US Army had driven through a liberated Paris in Jeeps in 1944.
But we were within our rights to invade. The UN made Saddam Hussein a deal, and he signed on to it, wherein he was supposed to allow arms inspectors into Iraq, and if he reneged on that deal, which indeed he did when he told the inspectors to get out, than one of the punishments facing him could possibly be his removal from power, by force if necessary. When the UN chose not to remove him, the US was certainly within it’s rights to do what the UN didn’t want to, in order to protect our national security, which we perceived to be threatened. Just turned not be as threatened as Dick Cheney would have us believe.
Still, a dictator, an enemy of the US, is gone. Some Iraqis are happy about that. Some aren’t. Can’t please everybody apparently. And don’t tell me that we broke Iraq, and now we have to fix it. All we did is remove a tyrannic dictator who had no qualms about torturing and/or killing his own people. The trouble in Iraq now is amongst Iraqis. And they are the ones who need to fix it.
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MySpace and Facebook became hugely popular within the last few years. I don’t have a MySpace page or a Facebook page. Being an anonymous, unread blogger seems like enough to me. Having other social media outlets point out how popular I’m not just seems unnecessary to me.
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I don’t know what the next year or the next ten years has in store for me. Anybody who thinks they know the future is delusional. We may think we do, but nothing, and I mean nothing, is guaranteed. Not even if it’s in writing.
I can predict some generalities. There will be loss. There will be tears. There will be times that drive us to distraction and moments of quiet contemplation. There will be resignation on our parts to accept what we cannot change. We will meet challenges. Sometimes we’ll even succeed. There will be laughter. Drinks will be hoisted, and meals consumed. Friends will be made, friends will be lost. Family will gather.
As ever before, life will be lived.
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You know what I never did in the last decade? Sexted. Heck, I’ve never even texted, much less sexted. Quite frankly, I don’t know how to send a text message, and I really don’t give a damn. That makes me sound old, doesn’t it? Don’t give a damn about that either.
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What was the most important thing in the lives of Americans in the first decade of the 21st century? Terrorism? The new Depression? Wars? No. “American Idol.” A show successful beyond belief, more people voted for an American idol in 2006 than in any previous presidential election.
I’m quite proud of the fact that I’ve never spent a minute watching this show. I’ve seen the commercials for it, and I’ve seen clips of it on the “news” (what kind of country are we living in when “American Idol” is news?), and the show appears to be mean spirited in it’s criticisms of the contestants who don’t seem to mind embarrassing themselves on national television.
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I’m no great fan of Barack Obama, but I am glad that George W. Bush is gone. It wasn’t just his mangling of the English language, or his tendency to start wars every once in while. The thing was, I was really getting tired of hearing how Bush stole the election in 2000. I’m from Chicago. Stealing votes is a given. Politicians outside Chicago do it too. If Al Gore hadn’t been such a water-walker and had stolen more votes in Florida than Bush had, Gore would have been president.
I’m surprised the Gore campaign didn’t steal at least a few ballots. Gore’s campaign manager was William Daley, brother of the current mayor of Chicago and son of one of the most famous vote getters of all, Richard J. Daley, who ruled as king of Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976. It was under the first Daley’s rule that the deceased of the city acquired voting rights. And the dead always voted for Richard J.
Since Gore ran an honest campaign he slept well at night, knowing there was no wrong doing on his part. At least that’s what a friend of mine told me.
Personally, I doubt Gore slept at all well during most of the Bush administration. Seeing all the weight he put (which he’s recently lost, truth be told), Gore looked like a guy who woke up in the middle of the night feeling tortured and looking for a chocolate cake to inhale. I would too, knowing that if only I had fudged some ballots to win the election there might not have been an Iraq invasion, and there would be no dead American soldiers nor any maimed American soldiers coming home home to a life that would now be drastically different than the one they left behind.
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Speaking of Iraq, we were right to invade. Or at least within our rights. We (and I’m using the royal “we” here, since I personally didn’t do any of this) were wrong to lie about the weapons of mass destruction, we were wrong to change our reasoning for the invasion over the years (first it was to look for WMD, then it was regime change, then it was democracy building), and we wrong to try and fight a war on the cheap. By that I mean, Bush didn’t try too hard to sell the war to Americans because not only did he not care what we thought, he assumed, based on “intelligence,” that the war would be over soon. So we didn’t have the proper armor for our fighting troops and we kept sending National Guard divisions filled with men and women who were better suited to patrol American cities after a hurricane or some other disaster than they were for desert warfare. It was war on the cheap because Bush hadn’t prepared for an elongated stay. He was hoping for Iraqi women throwing roses at American troops as we drove through liberated Baghdad in Humvees, just as the US Army had driven through a liberated Paris in Jeeps in 1944.
But we were within our rights to invade. The UN made Saddam Hussein a deal, and he signed on to it, wherein he was supposed to allow arms inspectors into Iraq, and if he reneged on that deal, which indeed he did when he told the inspectors to get out, than one of the punishments facing him could possibly be his removal from power, by force if necessary. When the UN chose not to remove him, the US was certainly within it’s rights to do what the UN didn’t want to, in order to protect our national security, which we perceived to be threatened. Just turned not be as threatened as Dick Cheney would have us believe.
Still, a dictator, an enemy of the US, is gone. Some Iraqis are happy about that. Some aren’t. Can’t please everybody apparently. And don’t tell me that we broke Iraq, and now we have to fix it. All we did is remove a tyrannic dictator who had no qualms about torturing and/or killing his own people. The trouble in Iraq now is amongst Iraqis. And they are the ones who need to fix it.
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MySpace and Facebook became hugely popular within the last few years. I don’t have a MySpace page or a Facebook page. Being an anonymous, unread blogger seems like enough to me. Having other social media outlets point out how popular I’m not just seems unnecessary to me.
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I don’t know what the next year or the next ten years has in store for me. Anybody who thinks they know the future is delusional. We may think we do, but nothing, and I mean nothing, is guaranteed. Not even if it’s in writing.
I can predict some generalities. There will be loss. There will be tears. There will be times that drive us to distraction and moments of quiet contemplation. There will be resignation on our parts to accept what we cannot change. We will meet challenges. Sometimes we’ll even succeed. There will be laughter. Drinks will be hoisted, and meals consumed. Friends will be made, friends will be lost. Family will gather.
As ever before, life will be lived.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
David Gray and Annie Lennox "Full Steam"
Annie Lennox, still mesmerizing and strong of voice, lo these many years after I first saw her in the "Sweet Dreams" video. You can't take your eyes off her, and not just because she's dressed like a cross between Katherine Hepburn and David Bowie in his Thin White Duke years. Annie Lennox has presence, not something a whole lot of performers have. David Gray is good too, and obviously a smart man to get Lennox involved. He certainly looks pretty happy, and quite impressed, at the end of the video.
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